Tuesday's Folded House - available now, and very limited

Hi everyone,

I've been talking about it for a while now, but it's finally here: my first 'drop', which I hope means 'releasing a lot of comics at once' becasue that's how I've been using the word. These have all been printed by me, at home, and it's been *something* let me tell you.

To try and simplify postage, I've bundled them all together to start with - if I don't sell the bundles as they are I'll split them later on. But this way I can tuck them all in an envelope and charge £2 P&P in the UK. Eventually I'll put 'Curse' and 'House' up on Gumroad, and they'll probably end up in Explosive Sweet Freezer Razors, too.

The comics being sold are: TUESDAY'S SALTED CURSE; FOLD MOUNTAIN; NOT THIS HOUSE

You can buy them here: https://buysmallpress.com/product/tuesdays-folded-house/

Here comes some more information about them all which you may find interesting, or you may not, it's totally up to you. If you want to just go and buy the comics and avoid all this, please be my guest.

Tuesday's Salted Curse: During the month-long Hackney Comic & Zine Fair I decided I'd make a brand new comic and use Twitter to track the process. I started by taking a random selection of paper from the Discarded Paper Box in my office, and then started working into it - a lot of the pages were from where I tried to print out Moon Puke but instead of printing the images it printed the code that described the print job. Once that was all done and scanned I printed out a second copy and worked back over the top of that, using watercolour for the most part. That was enough, really - after the second iteration there wasn't really anywhere for me to take it.

Then it was the writing part. The art reminded me of a fantasy landscape, and I wanted to do something similar to Mars Volta's Desloused In The Comatorium, telling a story about a very abstract but mapped-out place. From that point I meandered a fair amount - at first the narrative was just a description of people and places in this place, then I tried really hard to create plot and characters using two characters from a previously unrealised figurative comic, but that got tired too. I was flailing around a bit, until the Petrol Crisis happened. Remember that? Loads of people were told by the press that they shouldn't hoard petrol, so they immediately ran out to hoard as much as they possibly could - as far as I can tell, it was particularly prevalent in the South of England, around my neck of the woods. And I was angry and disappointed by the whole thing that I wrote a fantasy about witches ending the world. It's nasty - the witches are not nice people, and they don't do nice things. It's also very cathartic.

Fold Mountain: Not too long ago I did an art show where I invited people to send me their versions of Utopia on little templates that could be turned into buildings and racked up to create a 'City Of Utopias' - here's a photo of it:

 

To make it multi-level I made some weird paper structures, full of half-thought-through structural elements, stuck together with Pritt-Stick and tape. When the show closed and I brought all this stuff home I couldn't bring myself to throw away all this paper, and so on a whim I fed it through my paper strimmer and created a whole bunch of paper strips. And then with nothing else to think of, I cut those strips in half and folded them in half and voila I had 30-odd little covers for comics. Then I had to think of something to fill them up with.

A few hours of folding paper later (inspired by Colossive Press' innovations) I had this idea of interlocking mountain ranges which could be folded in and out of each other. I managed to work out a way to fit 8 basic mountain ranges onto two sheets of paper and after a bit of cutting and folding fit neatly inside the covers I'd made. I whacked some paint on the covers, stuck some staples in the whole thing and wham: lots of unique little foldable mountain ranges. I mean, that sounds easy - between me making mistakes and my printer being a fuckface it was a ballache to put together.

Not This House: After I'd printed Tuesday's Salted Curse, I'd used up a lot of colour print cartridges but very few black ones, and so thought I'd make a black and white comic to even it all out. I actually had the artwork already - it's a very long story, but if you've read Thunders you might notice that the page layouts are the same, although the pages are in different orders.

I then decided to write, but didn't know what. But I'd recently done a visualisation excercise to help get rid of some psychological baggage that was very weird, so that went in. And then I thought about the nature of ghosts, and imagine that I was a kind of ghost now that I work from home, and I just sort of float about the house not doing much, and that got twisted further, and then I got fed up with myself and wrote a third act. Not This House is the most structured thing I've read in a long time - it's got three definite 'acts' of 4 pages each, which is interesting if that sort of thing interests you.

The cover went through a lot of iterations - at one point I thought it would be nice to have a mostly white cover becasue it would save on ink, but I couldn't make it look nice and then spent a couple of days layering different types of paint onto a piece of cardboard, which after a bit of tweaking became the actual cover. It looks much better here than it does in real life, trust me.

AAAAnd that's all I have the energy and attention span to talk about for the moment.

In other news:

Once I've sold all of these and posted them, I'll be getting Ghosts In Things ready to print! Finally!
I'm also working on a four page short for the Observer Comic Prize thing which probably won't win but I'm trying very hard to make something the judges will at least nod and shrug in confused admiration at. It's currently about a fishing village going to church, but their church is a cave and everyone's a baddie.
I did a five page comic for a Brazilian anthology called Autofagia which I think is coming out soon - it's all in Brazilian and my tired brain can't make any sense of what's happening.
A while ago I did two one-page comics for Tales From The Quarantine which I think is finally about to be posted.
OH and best of all: I was asked by German comics scholarship magazine Closure to do a five page comic for their non-narrative issue but ended up making a 12 page comic and a 10-page photo-comic about making comics. I've put my favourite page from that process comic here, it looks like nonsense but in context it's a very strong metaphor for how I work:

If you've made it this far: well done, I'm proud of you. If you buy my comics I hope you like them.
 

Imagining Utopias - a Young Blood Initiative project *CALL FOR COLLABORATORS*

 

From the 2nd to the 25th September the Young Blood Initiative will be on location at 48 Aberfedly Street, London, running a program of activities, performances and other artworks based on the theme of 'U(DYS)TOPIA(S) - the dream of a perfect society, and how lurking within that is a totally imperfect one.

For my small part of the proceedings, I'll be building a city out of buildings, with each building representing a different idea of 'Utopia' (which under the defnition I'm using here is 'a perfect society'). Each 'building' will be built from a simple template.

Which is where the call for collaborators come in. For this 'city' to be monumental, it's going to need more ideas that I'm capable of by myself. So I'm making what I've put together so far available as a download - there's either a ZIP of all the assets I've made, or just the basic templates. I'm inviting you to download the template and fill it up with whatever you think would be appropriate as a Utopia - it can be very specific, or a little bit abstract, it's up to you. You can adapt the template, within reason, too. For instance my 'Jungle' one has a part that sticks up out of the top of the structure, and 'Neon Cosmic Waste' has a bit in the middle to get chopped out.

Send me a digitised version of the completed template and I'll print it out onto thin card/thick paper and stick it together, then put it in the 'City'. I'll also add it to this blog post for posterity, if you fancy it.

There's now another way that you can get involved, too - just send me a description of your idea of Utopia in 5 words or less and I'll interpret it for you. Those that have been done in that way are tagged below with "5W".

Email any completed templates to GARETH@GRTHINK.COM.

Here's some examples that I made:

Here's a couple that my daughter made:

Here's the blank templates. You can shrink them or expand them as much as you like, although they'll need to fit an A4 sheet so that I can print them.

Here's a link to the ZIP with all of the assets I've made in: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19t_l22DWBND5YwVUxMWMdWfIkC4wk1DH/view?usp=sharing

Here's the basic template (it really is very basic) if you just want to Right Click/Save As:

Here's a cleaner version of the template, submitted by my friend Daryl:

FAQs (from actual people, Simon and Sarah):

Q: What's the deadline?

A: I'll be setting up the initial cityscape at the end of August, so anything in by the 30th August will make it in from the start. After that, new buildings will get added to the display sporadically throughout September, so I'll be taking new buildings that whole month. But obviously the earlier the submission comes in, the longer it'll be on display for..

FAQs (that I've made up):

Q: Does it have to be that box shape?

A: No, not at all. But it does need to be easy enough for me to fold and stick together.

Q: Will I get my printed 'Building' back?

A: I don't know what I'm going to do with the installation once it's done with, but I think it's unlikely I'll be able to post the building to you. If you're nearby you could pick it up?

Q: Do I get paid for collaborating?

A: Unfortunately not. You'd be doing it for the enjoyment of activity.

Q: Will I be credited in the gallery?

A: The buildings will move about, so keeping track of which building was done by which collaborator will be tough. However, I will keep an update list of collaborators and the name of their utopia on display in the space. You will get direct credit here.

Q: What happened to all the No New Ideas stuff? Did the comic get made?

A: I lost the drive with all the tidied up files on it, so the comic didn't get made. I do intend to return to that project, though.

Q: How are you?

A: I'm well, thank you for asking, if a little tired - but then, I always am. Thank you for asking, I hope you're well also.

Q: Have you got an idea of what this thing will look like?

A: In my head, yes. The closest I got to realising the picture in my head was when I tried photographing the buildings I already have for use as a poster - the photos weren't good enough, but here's what it looked like anyway. I'd really like a much more impressive city, though.

User submissions follow below:

Daryl Morris

Aliki Chapple (@amaenad)
(5W - "Curvilinear" - Aliki actually gave four other words, I'm doing one at a time)

Dr Matt Finch (@DrMattFinch)
(5W - "Running Water Never Grows Stale)

Bill Hopkins - Not On Twitter
(5W - "Dungeons And Dragons Land, like lots of dragons and swords and magic and stuff" "This is supposed to be five words or less, Bill." "OK, DRAGONS. Just one word."

Kate Dowling (@waveatthetrain)
(5W - Always Space For Dogs)

Sarah Harris - @implausible17

Tom Alexander - @tomlxndr

Maxim Peter Griffin - @maximpetergriff

Susie Gander - @susiegander