MALUS #2 I haven't a clue as to what's happening here, but so what? Malus fizzes with confidence and energy and leaves you hungry for more. Curiously, Chris Webster's big-panelled sci-fi reminds me of late-period Kirby, albeit with a better script writer. You don't really understand what's going down, but it's a thrilling ride. Malus has bacterially mutated men whose muscles warp and pulse as they seek to escape their cage of skin. There are scientists (their sanity is undecided), devastated cities, giant helicopters shaped like horses, man-monsters and clowns. It's all utterly confusing, but it's a good confusion, like reading the early chapters of a strange but intriguing tale — which, I suppose, it is. Recommended, as if you hadn't guessed. Teddy Jamieson MALUS #3 Crikey! What a roller-coaster! This comic sets off at one hell of a pace and like a joy-rider at traffic lights, dares you to keep up! There's a little expository at the beginning in the form of a dialogue between two T.V. reporters just to give you an inkling of the wider conspiracy and then Chris, launches into his book leaving you to put all the pieces together. The rather basic elements of super enhanced humans, conglomerate conspiracies, and dystopian futures are spun into an exhilarating mix by the force of Chris' drawing and imagination. The draughtsmanship is ambitious, the storytelling cryptic, the characterisation bizarre, and there's a ferocity of events that's plain addictive. It's a lucid perspective on an ambiguous nether-world which springs complete from Chris' mind. His clarity of vision for this alternative reality, down to the designs of people's boots is fascinating, and... well... COOL! mooncat MALUS #2 [24 A4 PAGES] £1·20. CHRIS WEBSTER, BASEMENT FLAT, 13A DULWICH RD, LONDON, SE24 0NT. THE MAN WHO LEARNT TO FLY #1 Nobody can say Frazer Irving isn't ambitious. This is part 1 of a 7 issue series, and is obviously aimed at an audience used to a professional level of quality. As is so often the case with first chapters, this is all set up, but handled in such a way that the reader gets some nice bits of entertainment, a good idea of what's coming in the remaining 6 issues, and yet, it's clear that just about anything could happen. Set against Irving's very strong visuals, (excellent facial expressions, with elements of early Dave McKean, John Bryne and Japanese comic strips) the story opens on a city rooftop where a young man is sitting, remembering 6 very strange dreams and thinking about his greatest desire; the desire to fly. The dreams, each a small drama in it's own right, contain some powerful images and ideas. I won't tell you what happens in them (if you're interested, buy the book) but they're obviously reflecting elements of the central character's psyche and/or life. Since there are 6 dreams, and 6 issues to go, I reckon each forthcoming issue will be based on one dream. The script makes very successful use of narrative voice-over, the plot is solidly set up with plenty of places to go, the psychological underpinnings are pleasantly mature, subtle & deep and the art — well, the art is just to die for. Anatomy, storytelling, faces, backgrounds and inking are all great. This kid's going to go far, mark my words. Oh yeah, halfway through remembering his dreams, he jumps off this very tall building. So is he going to go 'splat', and if so what's going to happen next? Well, let's just say remembering what this story's called, I can assure you that this episode has a very — heh! — uplifting conclusion. David A Simpson THE MAN WHO LEARNT TO FLY #1 [36 26x19cm PAGES, GLOSSY STOCK COVER] £1·50, 3 ISSUE SUBSCRIPTION £4·20, 6 ISSUE SUBSCRIPTION £8. DREAMY COMICS, 48 HIGHWAY AV, MAIDENHEAD, BERKS, SL6 5AQ . MEMORY MAN PROMO EDITION It is rare to stumble upon a notion already fully formed and perfect. Most ideas take some time to take their first hesitant steps from uncertain conception towards immaculate realisation. Memory Man however, is already bombing down the road, pretending it is a supersonic aircraft. Paul Rainey has imbued his creation with the same kind of integrity and sense of its own identity as Pickle or Bone. This is neither random or slapdash. This is the product of care and consideration. Although this first instalment only provides brief polaroids of the fictional city of Victoria, you are left in no doubt that, in Paul's head it is a continually playing technicolour film. Even if he has chosen to depict it in black and white. Whilst his artwork is awkward in places, and perhaps a little too in thrall to that of Paul Grist, it nevertheless shows a pleasing confidence and overall strength of design. It is Paul's authorial voice however, that is particularly impressive; neither the verbose omniscience of a Gaiman, nor the inarticulate clichés of the traditional hacking caption writer, Paul writes with the assured prose of one who is sure exactly what he wants to say, and exactly how he wants to say it. This is splendid, enchanting, marvellous stuff. You have to love it. Lucinda Cowden MEMORY MAN #1 What we have here is a Superhero strip set in an English city, written from a detached, deadpan viewpoint. A lovely piece of work it is too, rendered in a sparse and to the point drawing style, with no unnecessary cross-hatching or detail. Just tight line-work with plenty of white space. The drawing looks like early Paul Grist or Phil Elliot, and is written in that tradition of English whimsy you would associate with 80's small press (Fast Fiction). Paul B. Rainey has only just appeared on the comics scene, and at times his drawing is a little wobbly, but to look at his work, I do get the feeling that he could easily develop into an artist to equal the aforementioned two cartoonists. Paul knows exactly what he's doing and there's real confidence in his approach. I've got no ideas what powers Memory Man has, as he doesn't seem to get to use them in this issue. The story is slight, but Rainey packs it with unusual elements. After a series of violent murders, the police call on Memory Man to catch the killers, (who are interestingly grotesque). As the story moves on, urban scenes jostle with familiar superhero imagery. Paul has an eye for character and detail. The people are well observed and a real feeling for British life seeps through. Memory Man is well drawn and written. What more do you want? Get this. Darryl Cunningham MEMORY MAN #2 Produced with financial assistance from the Milton Keynes Arts Association, this is an alternative Kane-style package (U.S. format, colour cover, B&W interior), and while the art's just slightly ropey in a few places, this deserves to be racked with the pro-alternative mainstream, I reckon. An enjoyable 6-page superhero spoof transforms into a more slice-of-life story about a 13-year old boy coming to terms with his family's uprooting to a new school, and the discovery that he is, by definition "that thing they had called Sean Redmond on a school desk" back in his old town. The art-style reminds me of early Seth (Palookaville) or, in places Chester Brown; and the script is equally as intelligent and sensitively-written. And funny! Paul has obviously put a lot of hard work into this and it shows. Promising stuff! Steve Marchant MEMORY MAN #4 Oooh, I like this comic! Paul B. Rainey has taken a usually shouty (even in parody mode) genre of comicdom and given it an silky articulate voice. He's created characters that although are drawn with a slightly stiff styling really live on the page. Fallible, gullible and manipulative people interact in a fictional new-town — Victoria — a place fraught not only with the nuisance of town planning for the convenience age, but the added bother of a bunch of (nearly) super-baddies who occasionally feel driven to kick up dust. Paul's art is art style is a curious one. Buried within a rather clumsy looking surface is a root of the action master Kirby. Jack Kirby's drawings had a clunkiness to the detail and a sweeping flow to the structure. Rainey seems to have taken the clunkiness of this detail and applied it to the 'whole' of his cartooning. It's evolved into a subtle beast. Rainey uses it to create a greater emotional depth to his characters that allows the reader to feel greater empathy for them. For instance, when a character is feeling put upon her eyes bulge and her head expands. This does not looks as out of place as the mere description sounds, as Paul's art style allows such cartooning emphasis to blend into the flow of the action. A couple of panels later the same character shoots someone a withering look that is underlined by the fact that she seems to droop — her shoulders and breasts look as though they emerge from the middle of her torso. And this still doesn't look overtly out of place! Clever. Memory Man himself is only present in a handful of panels. The bulk of the comic book is taken up by the machinations of the auxiliary characters. He tells his stories of surreal super-humans (lets face it the whole concept of 'a superhero' is pretty surreal, to say the least) with an insightful eye and a tone that while not out and out hilarious has a warm humour about it. But it's the care Rainey takes over his characters; their quirks and motivations, that makes this comic a delight. The brash world of superheroics given the voice of quite British reserve. mooncat MEMORY MAN PROMO EDITION [24 25x17cm PAGES, GLOSSY STOCK COVER] £2. MEMORY MAN [EACH 28 27x18cm PAGES, FULL COLOUR GLOSSY COVERS] £1·80 EACH (+P+P?), SIX ISSUE SUBSCRIPTION £10·80, £15 (EURO), $27 (U.S.). PAUL RAINEY, EMERGENCY STOP PRESS, 60 STAFFORD GROVE, SHENLEY CHURCH END, MILTON KEYNES, MK5 6AY. MICHAEL'S COLLECTED CHAINSAW CARTOONS 1980-1984 My only previous experience of M.J.Weller's work comes from the self-indulgent exercise in semiology Detective Notes*... This new collection (of old material) is far more worthy of your time and money. Chainsaw Cartoons... is a demonstration of a versatile talent as equally capable of the bleakly sinister War Blummies as the well-observed piece of comic trivia, Emile... Barber To The Stars. Weller's strong and decisive line-work is showcased in War Blummies, a creepy piece of prophecy about the effects of nuclear war. This strip has the chilling frisson of those disturbing animated government safety films that told you what to do in the advent of nuclear attack. Weller's post-nuclear mutants have twisted, expressionless faces and distorted bodies covered with hair and stitching drawn in a hauntingly childlike manner. These are eloquent images of horror. Emile, in complete contrast, is a whimsical piece about an eccentric barber resembling a ventriloquist's dummy who attempts to help aging hipsters hide the onset of baldness. Some of the pieces in the collection are a little fragmentary and tail off toward the end, but most of the material is varied and interesting. There is experimentation here, as there was in Detective Notes, but this time it is more firmly rooted in the established conventions of comic narrative and so is, ironically, more effectively thrown into relief. Vic Pratt MICHEAL'S COLLECTED CHAINSAW CARTOONS 1980-1984 [40 A4 PAGES, COLOURCOPY COVER] £2·95. MJ WELLER, VISUAL ASSOCIATIONS, 3 QUEEN ADELAIDE COURT, QUEEN ADELAIDE RD, LONDON, SE20 7DZ. *See Vic's review in ZUM!#9. MICROWAVE MONTHLY Not a monthly comic ...and not about microwaves for that matter. This is Chris Butler's show — he treats it as less consequential and more 'lo-fi' than other work he's done with Chris Hogg* so he's free to play and experiment giving the proceedings an eclectic, fun atmosphere. Chris allows guest stars to perform with contributions he's had no hand in; comic strips from Lee Kennedy and Mark Robinson. Other contributors bend to Chris' will — illustrating stories written by him in text and comic strip form. Chris even has a go at drawing a comic strip himself! Al + Biff look like reject shapes from Russian Constructivist Art. They ramble across the page pushing the comprehension of events to the extent that on one occasion Chris feels the need to lead you by the nose with numbered panels. This isn't really necessary — if he were to separate the characters from the cloying panel borders it would give the strip the room to breath and read perfectly logically. Among the text pieces Excerpts from diary, 1995 stood out as my favourite. Chris weaves such convolutions and writes in such a wonderful & entertaining way that I found myself doubting the truth of it. The amount of anecdotal detail he layers in and the sheer fact that life is stranger than fiction won me over to believing in it as reality. Gave me a real thirst for more! mooncat MICROWAVE MONTHLY #1 [20 A5 PAGES] £1·20, 3 ISSUE SUBSCRIPTION £3·50. CHRIS BUTLER, MICROVAVE HOUSE, FLAT 3, 112 HARCOURT RD, SHEFFIELD, S10 1DJ. * See reviews of Tales of Skittle Sharpers and Thimble Riggers, Comico, and Killer Fly reviews in ...previous ZUM!s. MITTEN BRAIN #3 (Adopting a 'Dennis Norden-sitting-on-a-swivel-chair-rolling-a-Murray-Mint-round-his-mouth' sort of voice): If, like me, you enjoy a certain expressionist flavour to your surreal, slice of life comics, you might enjoy this latest Cabinet of Caligari from the talented Ms. Wright. Luella's writing and drawing skills improve each time I see new work; in this issue, there's an amazing 18-page account of her alter-ego(?)'s experiences during a trippy afternoon with friends. She experiments with the narrative flow of the story to give one of the closest representations of spending all day out of your box that I've seen in comics. Weird, entertaining, and — importantly — accessible stuff. Luella Jane Wright: the Harry Osborn* of indie comics. (God, I'm old.) Steve Marchant MITTEN BRAIN #3 [30 A4 PAGES] £1·50 (+P+P) LUELLA JANE WRIGHT, 6 RUDLOE RD, LONDON, SSW12 0DS. *Mooncat: Steve included an explanation of this in case I didn't understand the allusion. I didn't, so I'll pass on to you that this is "a reference to Peter Parker's druggie room-mate in the first non-Comics Code Authority issues of Spider-man." THE MOJO ACTION COMPANION UNIT #4 The best strips in this very personal but appealing collection by Canadian artist Marc Bell are exhilaratingly gloomy pieces. How The Losers Took Over The World is a chilling and concise piece of cynicism with creepy drawings. Stupid Goddamn Shitty Day recounts the mundanity of the artist's tortured wage-slave life as a kitchen porter. My personal preference is for the bleak comedy of the material outlined above, but for the more whimsical among you there are lighter pieces, including Oh Happy Day, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the genius Crumb's Cute Little Bearsy-Wearsies in Arcade. If you're gonna wear your influences on your sleeve, wear the best, so no problems there because Marc has a distinct voice of his own (most of the time). It's a little too meandering and sugary to justify its length, but it is a pleasant, well-executed tale nonetheless. Dish King is enjoyably whiny and suitably critical of the rock-oafs who worship the group Rush and I'm No Pagan deals with the guilt of an illicit fling with a friend's girlfriend. Strong composition, lots of thick lines, solid blacks and cross-hatching give this comic a grainy quality which sates the jagged mood of the stories. This is good warped entertainment, if a little on the brief side, as Marc himself readily admits, owing to the pressures of his dishwashing day job. But even us ar-teests have got to earn a crust somehow, more's the pity! Vic Pratt THE MOJO ACTION COMPANION UNIT #5 Why do I like Marc Bell's stuff so much? After all there's often scant narrative imparted and what there is, is of the in the mode of slummy grubbing around and the minutia thereof that has come to stretch the patience since the queen of the 'genre' Julie Douchet became precise and lost the lustre of novelty. But I find the way he tells his little stories and his method of telling them, (God help me) completely compelling! And if I were to analyse the appeal it would probably make for a dry wearisome review, so... I first came across Marc's work some years ago in a comic shop where his Hep comic, (published by a tiny company who I forget... Possibly Aeon?) had somewhat inexplicably found it's way to these shores. It was so full of wonderfully scatological humour, (sad but true; one of my favourite sorts) and had such a totally groovy 70's riff that I was inspired to write to him — including a silly drawing, no less (the first time I'd ever done such a thing!). Sadly I received no reply and never saw another comic until I noticed familiar scratchings in more recent issues of Gavin McInnes' Pervert comics. To short cut further tedious explanation, I found Marc had not disappeared but was doing the self published grind. My excitement unbound I wrote to him to elicit further samples of his comic book work to receive M.A.C.U that I'm now burbling and enthusing you to send off for with the blind enthusiasm of a child. No, really... It's fucking COOL!! I really like It! You should get it! You'll like it! You wi-i-ill!! G'won y'bugger! mooncat THE MOJO ACTION COMPANION UNIT [#4 40 22x14cm PAGES, HAND TIPPED CARD STOCK COVER] $2·50 (+$1·50 P+P) [#5 32 11x18cm PAGES] $2 (+$1 P+P) MARC BELL, # 1016 DALHOUSIE DRIVE, LONDON, ONTARIO, N6K 1M7, CANADA. MONKEY PUNK Blimey — the night of a thousand stars... This collection of 14 short stories is written by the estimable Chris Butler, and illustrated by a veritable Who's Who of the small press usual suspects, including Chris Hogg, Steve Marchant, Ed Pinsent, Lee Kennedy, Andi Watson, Simon Gane, David Morris and Mark Robinson. So, let's face it, you've probably already bought this, but I'd better go round it anyway. Highlights include the 2 opening stories, Chris Hogg's Wanda's Night Out and Steve Marchant's Gone, Cat, Gone trade heavily in real-life irony, focusing on the gap between their protagonists' perceptions and reality. Equally enjoyable are the deadpan slices of absurdity illustrated by Simon Gane and Dave Morris, demonstrating respectively the hidden dangers of soft toys and hippopotami. Ed Pinsent's Miserable Slaves of Dogs is, as ever, a joy to look at, but unfortunately proves difficult reading. By their very nature, anthologies tend to be hit-and-miss affairs, and here are a couple of the misses come over as particularly disappointing, given their high expectations attached to a writer of Chris' proven quality. However, when judged by the standards of most small press anthologies, this is great; even where the plot or premise of a story isn't enough to captivate the reader, the crispness and ease of Chris' writing, especially in his dialogue, springs from the page. And if all else fails, you can just look at the pretty pictures. Try doing that with Proust. Four quid might seem a lot for a comic, but it's only 2 pints in old money and it's certainly better value than most of the equivalent Comic Product you could obtain for your 4 sovs. Get your people on the line and tell them to BUY!! Tom Murphy MONKEY PUNK [68 23x17cm PAGES, 2 COLOUR GLOSSY CARD COVER, SQUARE BOUND] £4. SLAB-O-CONCRETE, P.O. BOX 148, HOVE, BN3 3DQ. MY LEGENDARY GIRLFRIEND #1 This latest offering from 'Farmer Hirst's Dairy Cows Productions' is not like his previous work on The Jock (light, music based dystopian fantasy) or Slick (outlandish Tarantino rip-off). In a nutshell, it's one of those 'slice of life' stories, albeit with the usual, rather tiresome by now, Rol-motifs (eg. loads of pop posters). The story (what there is of it) involves archetypal 'ordinary bloke' Greg Carter, going to the funeral of one of his former classmates — while there, he meets some of his old mates and goes off to the pub. He then witnesses an accident and goes home, only to find his 'legendary girlfriend' Astrid there waiting for him. This is the 1st issue, so I can accept that the plot would be a bit thin to allow the time for the characters to be introduced, and he does manage to set up a bit of mystery involving Greg's school drama group. On the other hand, the story does have some fairly risible elements. The most glaring is Greg's scottish housemate, called (just so we really don't miss the point) Scotty, who has one of the worst transcripted accents ever seen in comics. Rol also places his characters in situations that have been done to death: talking crap in a pub, waiting for a long time for news in a hospital, it's all there. Perhaps though, these clichés are used as familiar situations that the characters work off rather than a simple lack of imagination. Let's just hope that in the 2nd issue we'll see where Rol is going. Matthew Lawrenson MY LEGENDARY GIRLFRIEND [] 75p. ROL HIRST, RUSHGROVE FARM, HOLT HEAD, SLAITHEWAITE, HUDDERSFIELD, W.YORKS, HD7 5TY. Also see Dangerous Drugs, The Jock and Slick reviewed in this ZUM!. NINE PANEL GRID #3 Two stories from James Pyman: School's Out and Greetings from Asbury Park NJ part 3. The first is a slice in the life of a slightly nerdy boy as he makes a new friend of a passing nihilist kid who stomps on butterflies, smokes his Dad's pot and seems to think most things are "shit". They sneak a peek at Underground comix and listen to Led Zeppelin (well, it is 1972), and generally do all the stupid stuff you do and say when you're 11. There's no real drive to the plot, it just starts, happens and finishes; the atmosphere seems more important. Is it the US or the UK? Hard to say — but that's irrelevant when the theme of boyhood is universal. As the title says, it's all done in nine-panel pages, and given a fine polish by the inks of Caspar Williams*. The second story, however, is all James Pyman's artwork. This is fine in most cases, except for the human figures who turn out somewhat lumpy — which is a shame when they're usually the focus of the plot. Unlike School's Out, Pyman lets scenes extend into virtual double or triple-sized panels out of the eponymous omnipresent grid he uses. The story is like the ends of some of those road movies when they run out of road and have to go and do a moody on the beach instead. Once again, no drive, just the tetchy conversation of two people who've been stuck in the same car too long and the atmosphere of a coast resort out-of-season. Pyman has a pretty good ear for dialogue throughout... Moody, thoughtful... I wonder what happens next?... Terry Wiley NINE PANEL GRID #4 NINE PANEL GRID #5 NINE PANEL GRID [EACH 28 26x17cm GLOSSY PAGES, #5 HAS 2 COLOUR COVER] £2 EACH. JAMES PYMAN, 106 LEDBURY RD, LONDON, W11 2AH. *Of Nervous Tales — see review in ZUM!#9 NOITARUMPU #5 Noitarumpu is Finnish for 'Witchdrum' and previous numbers have carried suitably shamanic emblems like the last issue's subtitle matka on hallusinaato or 'journey into hallucination'. Issue 5 comes with the less prominent label Classics Illustrated, staking out it's territory in linguistic terms. Whereas other issues have come out in Finnish, with a separate English translation included for the many of us in the rest of the world who will never take the trouble to learn Finnish, this one comes with English in the word balloons and the caption boxes, just where we want it. As usual, the contents of this anthology bang to pretty varied beats. Notable this time out is the first part of Matti Hagelbergs's Matti Hagelberg Encounters Death. Matti loiters among the distressed, diseased surfaces of his scraperboard city drawings and is moved to mad love by the sight of the Reaper in tight top, microskirt, fishnet tights and scythe. The mere four two-panel pages of grim clunkiness that play out this brief, initial encounter just aren't enough. Lighter contributors include Kallio and Pirinen's hep and punky Ornette Birks Makkonen story, outstanding cartoon versatility from Maria Björklund in 6 short pieces and Petri Bergman's take on Charlene's shit-brained M.O.R. classic I've Never Been to Me, in Sad, Rich, Lonely Bitch Blues. However I kept returning to Matti's ruined innocence, which he also supplies in the form of a cover image. As co-editor Paavo Rajamo acknowledges, the text isn't in entirely stable English and the resulting amalgam, 'Finnglish', provides some shaky verbal moments. Some pages, Pirinen's particularly, seem cramped at A5. In all other respects, however, this is as good as the best of Brit small press and these Finns have done us an excellent favour by shoving their sampler under our wheezing snouts. Steve Edgell NOITARUMPU #5 [32 A5 PAGES, ISSN 1236-6005] 2 OR 3 I.R.C.s ("OR ANY INTERNATIONAL CURRENCY WORTH $2 OR $3" — ie, NOT SHARES IN RAILTRACK) NOITARUMPU, PL56 70101 KUOPIO, FINLAND. OKABA TOXIC BATARD #4 This is a fucking monster, in a huge format that conforms to no standard, Euro or otherwise. I had to take out my long ruler to get its measure: 385x540mm; small press, right? Usually it's only four-year-olds that get their mits around books that stretch the page-turning capacity like this. In fact, think back to four years old: all prepubertal size and untamed polymorphous perversity, fondling big paper pictures with impossible meanings. Blur this memory with all the badness that has encompassed the intervening years and you're holding a book which offers you retrospective warning of life's shit factor; a book, in other words, very like Okaba Toxic Batard #4. Behind this issue's thick board covers, pages of screenprinted graphiste mayhem from Paquito Bolino and friends alternate with matching texts of bodily and figural excess. It comes on as is Kathy Acker were doing a news report from North Peckham. "It's here that everything which starts with porn," reads the first text, much too feebly translated here from the French, for which I apologise, "comes to slaughter and slake its appetites... Here evil infests every brain, joy has long since withered, shit falls in showers and drugs lay everything to waste...". Then it goes into a delirium of physical and psychic satiation with a welter of scribbled pricks and pussies in eye-splattering black and purple lines over red, green and pink ink. Yes, it's extreme. Yes, it will do very little to further the cause of getting comics recognised as an artform. Yes, your life will be improved by it. Its embrace of the obscene is a salutary lesson, a bracing graphic encounter with everyday baseness. Toxic only as a vaccine, this is a thoroughly repugnant piece of nastiness whose very fabric oozes responsibility, socially redemptive quality and utterly compelling art. Steve Edgell OKABA TOXIC BATARD #4 [24 'KIN' HUGE COLOUFUL PAGES, CARD COVER, ALBUM] ?_ (WRITE FOR DETAILS). LE DERNIER CRI, 38 RUE FLEGIER, 13001, FRANCE. OUCH #1 Holly Stammer seems to be a natural fluid cartoonist desperate to give her work edge. Most of the time she chooses to depict scratchy little characters in depressingly familiar 'slummy' situations in an attempt to create something depraved. As you might tell from my withering description I don't believe she succeeds in creating anything remotely dangerous. It doesn't hit home for me because I suspect she's trying so hard to be 'alternative', it lacks a clarity of truth — it all seems too forced. This is a problem for quite a few comics creators — in striving to be alternative they end up being clichéd. Recycling alternative posturing. In the one strip where she seems true to herself and really lets rip, flowing with her natural cartooning flair the effect is marvellous! Bold exuberant lines flow across the page tugging your eyes in all the right directions across the course of the narrative -— beautifully designed comic strip pages. It's worth getting this comic for these 3 pages alone! Paradoxically, the distortion she puts into depicting the emotion of the characters faces here creates better 'ugly art' than her previous scrawls come anywhere near. Buy her comics, as although I have my doubts about some aspects of this one, I suspect Holly will find a clarity of vision, and you'll delight in it (ever the optimist!). mooncat OUCH #1 [20 22x18cm PAGES, COLOUR STOCK BLUE PHOTOCOPY COVER] $2 (+$2 P+P?). HOLLY STAMER, 4221 ST. URBAIN, MONTREAL, H2W 1V6, CANADA. OW First published in 1966 and reprinted for the 30th year of the Association of little Presses (ALP) is Bob Cobbling's venture into graphic narrative, OW. Thirty years ago OW would have been described as a concrete poem with the emphasis on the look of letters and words: formations in space — sounds in either, rather than literary symbols signifying meanings and ideas. OW (which reads like an affectionate pun on Allen Ginsberg's pioneering beat poem HOWL a decade earlier!) is read here as the story of marks "O" and "W" told through images reproduced from an original and unique artwork Cobbling subsequently sold to an American art collector. Cobbling's work has been described as the wacky end of modern poetry but make no mistake; as an innovative English poet in his mid-seventies he is productive as ever. OW is an artist's book for art lovers on Income Support. Cobbling has stubbornly resisted high culture/low culture divides ("comics are one of the only things worth reading") for over forty years as a performer. OW 2 OW 2 was composed in 1996 to commemorate thirty years of ALP and tells the continuing story of "O" and "W". Jogged into Cobbling's memory by the finding of a carrier bag in the street (a found poem) with the words "WE KNOW HOW..." printed upon it, Cobbling retells OW's graphic story through new images taken from the bag and processed through the photo-copier. OW has recently been performed live at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) with Birdyak. Cobbling is the ensemble's long standing vocalist. Mike Weller OW [12 A5 PAGES, CARD COVER] 75p, OW 2 [16 A5 PAGES, CARD COVER] £1 (AS AN INTRODUCTION TO COBBLING'S WORK BOTH TITLES ARE AVAILABLE TO ZUM! READERS FOR £1·50.) NEW RIVER PROJECT, 89A PETHERTON RD, LONDON, N5 2QT.