FUTURE CRIMES #1

February 2nd, 2022

If the plague era has taught us anything it’s that the power of raw delusion should not be underestimated.  With Future Crimes #1 we set out to prove that anything can be a holiday if you’re suitably alienated from yourself.

  • In Personal Development, we explore how being grilled by your boss can be a gateway to conspiracy!
  • In Your New Bookshelf: A Lover’s Guide, we explore the previously underappreciated erotic potential of mass produced domesticity!
  • In Return to the Borderlands, ex examine the distances you can travel just to get a peak at the back of your own head!

If theme isn’t your thing, Future Crimes #1 also hosts a brief outbreak of poetry and a previously unseen page by Leith-based artist and spirit wrangler Shaky Ghost, who will return with a full strip in issue #2!

UK readers can buy the print edition here, and anyone who’s interested can download a free PDF copy here!

KIND WORDS FROM HANDSOME STRANGERS…

“Inventive, impressive, and surreal” – BrodyQuixote

“Fantastic and surreal chap book” – Garry Mac

“Would you describe it as Ballardian? And would you say some of the stories took place a liminal space?  Jesus Christ David, did your mother not teach you shame?”The Hitsville boys

PREVIEWS AFTER THE JUMP!

There are many bad poems in the world.  The ones in this zine fall into three categories: bad poems that were written to be performed quickly and messily, so the author could get out of the scene before the punches started flying; bad poems that were broadcast to the author from one of the world’s many untrustworthy surfaces; bad poems that were written in the “Un”-Happy Shopper notepad the author carried around with him in his youth.

All of them are bad in different ways. We hope that most of them will amuse.

BUY THE PRINT VERSION HERE

or

BUY THE DIGITAL VERSION HERE

 

-Print version is 40 pages, black and white, hand-stapled. Digital version is 38 pages, all black and white except the cover.
-Both version contain 23 poems of questionable value and are lousy with doodles and photographs illustrating the action.
-Each and every copy reeks of squandered ambition and shame, a stench so pungent that it may even be detected through the screen.

Four comics about empty places & the people who live there + extras, now available in print. 176 beautiful black and white pages, created by me and brought into the physical world by Comic Printing UK.

Includes: Looking Glass Heights, Labyrinths, the Alasdair Gray adaptations of Beyond Whiles and a brand new comic called Raptor, which brings the LGH sequence to a close.

You can buy the print edition here and the digital version here. Nae extras in the PDF version, and it can’t sit on your shelf making you look damn attractive like the book can, so weigh both options accordingly.



PRAISE FOR NOT BECAUSE OF THE PEOPLE

The best haunted house comic you’ve never read” – Dan White, artist of Cindy and Biscuit and Sticky Ribs.

Classic British indie small press pamphlet, and a sharp burst of mood and ideas. It’s very much comics as poem – it’s the sort of work that Douglas Noble has been known to do” – Kieron Gillen, writer of The Uncanny X-Men and The Wicked + The Divine

A spooky zine… Liked this a lot. The writing is really strong and the art suggests just enough to make you uneasy” – Sarah Horrocks, artist and creator of Aorta and Goro

***

If you enjoy Not Because of the People or have enjoyed any of the individual LGH comics in the past, please consider giving some time or money to Living Rent (Scotland’s Tenants Union) or another similar group closer to home –

thanks,

David

MINDLESS DECADE: PLAYGROUND

February 24th, 2018

A few years ago I was asked to provide a back-up strip for a notable sci-fi comic that Image was publishing at the time. It didn’t end up being used but I thought I might share it with you for this whole Mindless Decade shebang. Enjoy!

A collaboration with Edinburgh based artist and ghost merchant Shaky Ghost, Cut-Out Witch contains twenty five pages worth of lost souls and lo-fi monster magic – imagine a teen goth Terminus and you’ll be on the right track.  Shaky Ghost provided the pictures, I added the words, but if you want to cleanse yourself with holy water after reading then I’m afraid you’ll have to bring your own bottle.

“Cut-Out Witch is really good… Lovely creepy stuff” – Twitter’s own James Baker

Almost every page made me laugh or smile or feel things” – comics’ own Ales Kot

“You do seem to be able to dash such things off quite easily, I kind of wish I could do that…” – A Trout in the Circus’ very own Plok

You can buy the print edition here if you want to make a couple of lost souls happy, but Cut-Out Witch is now available for FREE in PDF format!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD CUT-OUT WITCH!

If you read the comic and enjoy it, please have a look at the Young Leith Ghost
site
for more of Shaky Ghost’s work and consider donating some cash to the Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH).

Click here for a preview!

SMASHback #1: The Tower

April 3rd, 2016

Back in February, I appeared on a panel at the London Graphic Novel Network’s S.M.A.S.H. event. There were a lot of great speakers at those events (including our own Maid of Nails, friend of the website Kieron Gillen, America’s next top comics critic J.A. Micheline, Mazin off the Kraken podcast, and Jam Trap poet Chrissy Williams), staggered across three panels focusing on MEANING, ART and REPRESENTATION in comics.

The plan was to write series of posts inspired by these talks, but then this happened.

Trying to appear big and clever on the internet has never felt less important to me than it did in the aftermath. 

Anyway, I spoke on the art panel at S.M.A.S.H. and as a comics critic in the company of artists/editors, I figured I would be the least qualified person to talk about the subject so I did what I always do: I overcompensated. Only Mister Attack will ever see the first draft of my introductory talk, the charmingly titled “COMICS ARTISTS ARE WASTING THEIR LIVES”. In the end, I settled for a slightly less arsey approach that focused on different modes of reading, and how we might want to develop our understanding of our own biases so we can better make them fight to prove which opinions are best.

You can listen to what I actually said and the subsequent panel debate here (headphones recommended, audio’s a but quiet!), read the version of this pitch I submitted here, or if you fancy getting the right mix of depth and brevity you can now read the text I brought with me on the day below.

None of these versions are quite the same. None of them quite get across what I thought I was trying to say. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Taste the glory!

Illogical Volume S.M.A.S.H.

February 5th, 2016

If you’re in or around London tomorrow, I’ll be speaking about comics art and community intelligence at this event.  I’ll be on a panel with Katriona Chapman, Hannah K Chapman, Maggie Chapman and Mark Stafford, so even if I’m reduced to shouting the words “ART PARAGRAPH!” over and over again, the other speakers should ensure that it’s not a total disaster.

As you can see from the poster above, I’ll be in good company, with friend-of-the-site Kieron Gillen, artist extraordinaire Alison Sampson and free-roaming Mindless element Kelly Kanayama/Maid of Nails also speaking words at the event.  The SILENCE! boys will be attendance, and the whole thing will almost inevitably end in drunken tears, so please – JOIN US!

 

The Multiversity 1

August 22nd, 2014

10:22 PM, I get an email. “New Arrival! BoJack Horseman is now on Netflix”
10:24 PM, I open the comic. The first page on the inside is an advert for BoJack Horseman. It has today’s date on it.