Gillingham 2189

Some of you may recall that I once drew a regular, vaguely-monthly-during-the-football-season strip for Brian Moore's Head Looks Uncannily Like London Planetarium, the organ of Gillingham FC devotion; and I suppose there's a vague chance you may remember this, having purchased my previous collection of recycled fanzine material, Roy of the Aztecs. If you haven't already purchased my previous collection of recycled fanzine material, Roy of the Aztecs, don't worry. I'm sure there's still time.

Anyway, starting 1989 or thereabouts and continuing on for years numbering in what may have been double figures, I wrote and drew a regular comic strip for the aforementioned football fanzine, two pages an issue eventually expanded to four pages an issue. It was the story of Gillingham FC some two-hundred years in the future and was, I suppose, sort of what Billy the Fish might have been had it appeared in 2000AD rather than Viz - very roughly speaking; and it was the strip I drew prior to Roy of the Aztecs - in the event of this making sense to anyone whatsoever. Collected, the whole thing amounts to over one-hundred and fifty pages of an ongoing story in which a football team have all manner of ball-related adventures, including a match played against the unheavenly host of Cthulhu and his fellow Lovecraftian entities (I think Nyarlathotep is in goal but I can't be arsed to check right now), one against Godzilla and the rest of his Monster Island gang, alien invasions and so on and so forth. It's probably not quite up there with Maus, but I did what I could with the brain I had at the time. Plus I'm hugely chuffed to have an introduction from Simon Baker who used to edit the Head thus making it seem like a proper book, or at least something that counts for something in terms of the history of fanzine culture.

Some of the jokes are still funny, and the drawing definitely gets better as you go along, and it would make a perfect and inexpensive Christmas present. Also, if anyone wants a freebie for review purposes (providing you actually write a review of it for something or other*) please drop me a line here.

Gillingham 2189 may be purchased by following this link.

*: Should it require statement, I don't hold with this free stuff for praise bullshit, so the content of the review is up to you even if you think my book is fucking awful.

Free Stuff!

...but not just yet. I will probably be without internet access and thus the ability to make posts of this kind when it's printed, so by way of advanced warning, Robert Dellar has just written:

Southwark Mental Health News issue 128 is at the printers and hits the streets on Tuesday 26th May. It's got Raffy the Psychiatric Labrador, Lambeth Community Mental Health Services/ DWP merger, Maximus Gets the Treatment, Alastair Kemp on why Capitalism is Bad for your Mental Health and much more. Sent free of charge through the post if we have an address for you.

If this seems meaningless to you, Southwark Mental Health News is a reasonably regular magazine directed at inhabitants of the mental health system but of - I would argue - much broader interest, being roughly in the tradition of the older, more intelligent punk fanzines from back before everyone just started writing blogs; and being in that tradition, it's a physical thing printed on paper, at least a portion of which is the Raffy the Psychiatric Labrador cartoon drawn by myself.

Also, it's free if you're on the mailing list, and you can get yourself on the mailing list by calling 020 7358 7279. That's an English phone number by the way, and I'm not too sure Robert wants to have to splash out on too much in the way of air mail, but I suppose there's no harm in asking. He's sent me copies, and I live in Texas, but then I'm a contributor.

More Raffy

There's another installment of my Raffy the Psychiatric Labrador strip in the new issue of Southwark Mental Health News, this time a two page job with multiple panels taking more than two seconds to read. The magazine comes highly recommended as, I suppose, one of the last surviving things you could probably truly call a fanzine, assuming you don't count e-zines, which I don't - reviews of stuff you probably won't have heard of, intelligent articles - notably a good one on mental illness as an inevitable byproduct of capitalism - and plenty of hints as to all the stuff that's wrong with western society, just in case you hadn't already worked it out, as a lot of people apparently haven't. Additionally this one comes with Continuity Mad Pride, a free CD of mostly exclusive stuff by Alternative TV, Ceramic Hobs, UNIT, Mex, the Astronauts and others - and it's a proper CD with a case and a cover and everything too, not some hokey CDR shit. I've been listening to it today and it's pretty good.

As to getting hold of one, there are some copies left which will be sent free to people in the UK if they get a postal address to whoever answers when you phone 020 7358 7279 before Sunday the 15th March, or email your address to samhfunding@gmail.com - I believe this gets you on the mailing list for the next ish, even if you're too late for this one.

I have a couple of spare (and free) copies if anyone here in the US wants one, in the event of which, reply to this post with your email address and I will be in touch.

Raffy the Psychiatric Labrador

For whatever it may be worth, I've recently dusted off my wax crayons and returned to comics, specifically a cartoon strip called Raffy the Psychiatric Labrador for Southwark Mental Health News #126. It's just four panels, but Southwark Mental Health News is something deserving of support, so it seemed worth mentioning here. The magazine is put together by Robert Dellar, author of the excellent Splitting In Two: Mad Pride and Punk Rock Oblivion (published by Unkant, a thumping good read, and reviewed within by Stewart Home) and is more in the line of yer proper fanzine than the list of charity coffee mornings and biscuit making evening classes one might anticipate given the title; and it's print, a physical thing with pages which you hold in your hands, which is nice. Whilst Southwark Mental Health News is undoubtedly published with a fairly specific readership in mind, it should be of interest to anyone who has ever had any sort of dealing with the psychiatric profession, and not just residents of Southwark (as I was myself about five years ago in case anyone was wondering).

Raffy, by the way, is an actual sniffer dog employed to locate illegal narcotic substances smuggled in by patients at Maudsley hospital, usually tobacco which has been banned from the premises because some fucking genius decided that any person of sufficient derangement as to be sectioned under the mental health act and admitted for treatment, observation or whatever might also benefit from finding themselves additionally forced to give up smoking whilst in the bin because it's so unhealthy and makes your clothes smell blah blah blah... the idea seemed ripe for sarcastic commentary. Also, there are reviews of CDs by UNIT and a couple of groups I've never heard of but who sound worth hearing.

Southwark Mental Health News #126 is free if you (I think) send an A4 stamped addressed envelope to:

Southwark Association for Mental Health,

Cambridge House,

1, Addington Square,

London,

SE5 0HF,

United Kingdom.

...or possibly you could phone 020 7358 7279 and get yourself on the mailing list. I have no idea what you would do should you live outside the United Kingdom, maybe try the phone number, or ask me if you're here in the US as I have a couple of extra copies.

The next issue is supposed to have a free CD of various Mad Pride associated groups which is sure to be well worth a listen, so get yourself on the mailing list if you want to cop one of those.

Andy Martin on Roy of the Aztecs

There haven't been any reviews of my Roy of the Aztecs collection because I haven't bothered to send out any review copies and wouldn't know who to send them to if I did, but - for what it may be worth - I've just had a couple of emails from my friend Andy Martin whom some of you may remember as one time singer of the Apostles, and here's what he said on the 25th September 2014:

I'm now on page 44 of Roy Of The Aztecs and I am amazed I never bothered to read this strip when it was first produced. I've never liked comics, even when they're done by people I know. I remember a few frames you photocopied and stuck on your toilet wall - the famous frame with Roy off his tree on peyotl which ends the trees, the trees.

Basically this is easily one of the cleverest and most hilarious items I've ever read. I laughed out loud on the D6 bus to work today and I chuckled aloud on the 277 on the way back home.

...and then on 26th September 2014:

I finished Roy early this morning - it stopped me going to sleep because I had to read just one more page and then just one more...until I realised I only had 5 more pages to go and so I decided to read on until the end.

The chap with the punk haircut - can't remember his name - who kindly provides preposterously (and obviously) contrived end of strip cliff hangers by playing thoroughly impractical practical jokes - is splendid!

So there you go. That's why you should buy it. If you've no idea what it actually is or what it's about, then please refer to this blog post, and then open your wallet in the general direction of this webpage. If you still have doubts, ignore them. Just buy it.

Ta very much.

Roy of the Aztecs

As about three people in the entire universe may remember without too much wincing, I was once a regular contributor to Brian Moore's Head, the award-of-some-sort winning Gillingham F.C. fanzine, drawing a regular four page continuing strip called Roy of the Aztecs which appeared in issues 59 though to 79, running from late 1996 to October 2000. Brian Moore's Head, so far as many were concerned - myself included, was one of the better football fanzines more or less regardless of personal investment in Gillingham F.C., or even in the game itself, which I personally never quite understood, and it was a pleasure to be involved, and to feature in the same vessel as the mighty data correlation of Professor Tarquin Zoological-Garden.

Roy of the Aztecs was a ripping boys' tale of ballgames and human sacrifice in ancient Mexico - essentially Roy of the Rovers with more pyramids, tortillas, and creaking puns - the tale of one young Mexican's rise from obscurity to becoming the star ball player for his theocratic city-state; and now it's all collected together in a single volume with a fancy painted cover.

In case this all sounds vaguely familiar, I've spent two years trying to load this thing up to Lulu, each time managing to print out a single copy before the Lulu book generator throws a wobbly and tells me that my masterpiece is flawed. Anyway, I've finally worked out what I was doing wrong (I had black and white images set to default rather than grayscale, which apparently is terrible) and so at long last, you can buy the thing should you wish to do so.

It may not be Watchmen, but I know at least three people who laughed at the jokes; and it's reasonably cheap, and you can buy it here:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-burton/roy-of-the-aztecs/paperback/product-21071284.html