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| On the left: Winwood and Cord in Killing Time (An Indigo Prime story) Part 5 Page 1. Art by Chris Weston, written by John Smith, Letters by Tom Frame On the right: Prep page done for my reinterpretation. "The Intercorstal: After Smith" is a series of artworks reinterpreting comic pages written by John Smith. It will be exhibited at Projectroom 404 in Bremen from 11th September - 4th October 2015.
A few months ago I was approached by Gregor Straub of Projectroom 404 in Bremen to participate in a series of exhibitions running this year that cover the Abstract Comics movement. Obviously, I agreed, and then set about worrying about what I'd exhibit.
With time to worry, I continued work on The Intercorstal 2, which naturally ended and turned into The Intercorstal 683 (which I'm still being a little coy about sharing). The last page of The Intercorstal 2 was a reinterpretation of a page from Revere, which ran in 2000AD in the 90s, and is one of my favourite comics of all time. On posting it, Tom Whiteley, who blogs at the superlative Suggested For Mature Readers, mentioned on Twitter how good it would be to reinterpret Revere in its entirety. I think he was only half-joking.
That thought merged over time with my thoughts of continuing the After Wainwright series that I started for the Lakes Comic Art Festival and then coalesced into paying tribute to one of the writers that has the most effect on my life - John Smith.
It's impossible to quantify the effect Smith's writing has had on me, both as an artist and person. I very much doubt The Intercorstal would have existed had it not been for his influence, although I hadn't actually realised when I started it. I joked recently that my entire 'swirly line style' is a subconcious attempt to recreate Winwood's hair as it appeared in Killing Time, which is probably more true than I'd like to admit.
So, 'After Smith'. I've selected 10 pages from his work for 2000AD based solely on how much I liked it and how much the series it appeared in had an effect on me. The selection also covers a number of my favourite artists, including Chris Weston, Sean Phillips, Edmund Bagwell, and Simon Harrison.
As prep, and so that I can be sure the whole idea's not going to fall apart, I've completed two half-size pages which I've included here, alongside the original pages I've worked from.
As the project continues, I'll be adding WIP images to Twitter (where I'm @grthink) and hopefully adding updates here where I'll try and go into more detail about why I've chosen particular pages/series and why I like them so much.
If you're around in Bremen during September, I hope you'll take a look.
Splundig Vur Thrigg.
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| On the left: Still Life Page 7. Art by Sean Phillips, written by John Smith, On the right: Prep page done for my reinterpretation. |
