Notes from the Small Press 15: Spandex #7, by Martin Eden; Mini-Comic Review

In the two years I've been posting these intermittent small press comics missives, the name of one comics creator in particular has remained conspicuous by its absence: Martin Eden. Martin's been a leading light in the British small press scene for over a decade, first with his epic superhero soap opera The O Men, more recently with his gay superhero saga Spandex; but more than that, for twelve years he's been one of my closest friends – which is why, quite frankly, it's an outrage that it's taken me this long to get round to featuring him.

I haven't ignored him completely, mind: I wrote about the publicity storm surrounding Spandex's launch in 2009, and I've mentioned the comic a couple of times since – plus I reviewed this year's splendid Titan Books hardback collection of the first three issues of Spandex. Still, an appearance in Notes from the Small Press is not only long overdue but, I have little doubt, eagerly awaited by Martin himself (ahem), so the recent publication of the seventh issue of Spandex strikes me as the perfect opportunity to right a wrong.

That said, if you haven't yet read Spandex, this issue is a perfectly ridiculous place to start, seeing as it's the culmination of over two years' worth of plots and subplots, with questions answered, motivations revealed and, ultimately, lives lost. The confidence of Martin's artwork and storytelling, however, is plain for all to see: clean lines, bold blocks of colour, and a tale that moves from clever fight scene to quiet character moment to explosive climax with admirable aplomb. By this point in the story the cast has become so extensive as to be verging on the unwieldy, but Martin still finds space for individual character moments (some very touching), the tying up of character arcs, and even a discussion between team leader (and cross-dresser) Liberty and Spandex stalwart Prowler on the potential ramifications of God being a lesbian.

That's actually something of a spoiler if you haven't got this far in the series, an audacious twist which provided the cliffhanger at the end of Spandex #6 and prompts a number of philosophical debates and metaphysical excursions in this issue, perhaps the best of which being a two-page sequence illustrating Martin's notion of heaven: cherry blossom falling onto a tiny, floating island where one is reunited with one's soul mate. But if that makes Spandex #7 sound a bit highfalutin, fear not: the comic's innate sense of fun is never far from the fore, whether it be a disgraceful misappropriation of the "Fastball Special" or indeed a special guest appearance by Wolverine himself, telling Liberty in no uncertain terms what she can do with her invitation to join the team.

In "Little Notes from Martin" at the back, Mart is at pains to point out that this isn't, in fact, the final issue of the series; there's another one to come, a Spandex Special, due in the second half of 2013. But Spandex #7 does mark the end of this particular storyline, and so Martin has included not only a bonus mini-comic, Spandex Black and White, featuring interpretations of the team by small press stars like Paul Rainey, Grant Springford and Graham Pearce, but one of ten different badges as well (mine sports a picture of Pussy).

Spandex #7 is available to order for £3.20 for UK readers and $7.00 for US ones (both those prices including postage and packing) from the official Spandex website, along with all six previous issues. I can't recommend them highly enough – and I'm not just saying that because Martin and I are mates. Well, not entirely...

Previous Notes from the Small Press:

Notes from the Small Press 1: Fast Fiction Presents the Elephant of Surprise

Notes from the Small Press 2: Monitor's Human Reward by Chris Reynolds

Notes from the Small Press 3: Small Pets

Notes from the Small Press 4: Anais in Paris by Mardou

Notes from the Small Press 5: The Curiously Parochial Comics of John Bagnall

Notes from the Small Press 6: Ed Pinsent's Illegal Batman and Jeffrey Brown's Wolverine: Dying Time

Notes from the Small Press 7: The Comix Reader #1

Notes from the Small Press 8: A Help! Shark Comics Gallery

Notes from the Small Press 9: Some Gristavision Comics by Merv Grist

Notes from the Small Press 10: Some Sav Sadness Comics by Bob Lynch

Notes from the Small Press 11: a Review of Illegal Batman in the Moon

Notes from the Small Press 12: The Sky in Stereo by Mardou

Notes from the Small Press 13: First by Tom Gauld and Simone Lia

Notes from the Small Press 14: Planet 4, a Monitor Story by Chris Reynolds

Graphic Novel Review: Spandex: Fast and Hard, by Martin Eden (Titan Books, 2012)

As Jayne Mansfield once sagely noted, "A 41-inch bust and a lot of perseverance will get you more than a cup of coffee – a lot more." Now, I can't speak to Martin Eden's chest measurement (although I suspect 41 inches might be pushing it), but I can certainly vouch for his perseverance. In the ten-plus years I've been friends with him, Martin has been tirelessly plugging away at creating and self-publishing his own mini-comics, chiefly his superhero soap opera The O Men. He's never been short of critical plaudits, and The O Men is surely one of the most successful British small press comics ever published, but that success never quite translated to mainstream acceptance.

That all changed late in 2009, when Martin created a new mini-comic series, Spandex, featuring what was touted as the world's first gay superhero team. The story was picked up by national newspapers and sales of the comic quickly outstripped those of The O Men – and now Titan Books have collected the first three issues in a fetching hardcover, published this month.

The first thing to note is how much more striking Martin's artwork is at the hardcover's larger size (US comic size, as opposed to the original A5). When he began working on Spandex he largely eschewed the extensive crosshatching he'd deployed on The O Men (something I'd been urging him to do, although I've no idea if that had any influence), with the result that, enlarged, his clear linework and simple, vibrant colouring looks spectacular. Though his influences lean towards mainstream superhero fare and manga, his artwork actually has more in common with British small press originators like Phil Elliott and Paul Grist.

There are similarities with Elliott and Grist (and Ed Pinsent, Eddie Campbell, John Bagnall, Glenn Dakin, etc.) in the choice of locale and storytelling, too. Spandex live in a recognizable Brighton (where else would a British gay superhero team be based?), and while the comic is ostensibly a superhero saga, Martin's more interested in the relationships between the team-members – who spend a sizable proportion of the story hopping in and out of bed with one another (and with their nemeses) – than he is in bouts of fisticuffs. There are those too, of course, notably an extended, thrilling sequence which sees Spandex pitted against an army of pink ninjas, but the charm of the comic comes in its quieter moments – the team's "off-duty" home lives, their intimate exchanges, irreverent conversations, catty squabbles and fleeting, sometimes furtive glances.

As with the aforementioned Elliott et al, there's a very British, quirky, small press sensibility at work in Spandex: Fast and Hard, evident right from the off when Brighton is attacked by a 50 feet-tall lesbian. It's difficult to imagine such a gloriously daft opening being conceived anywhere other than the UK, but in the context of the history of the small press scene in this country, it makes perfect sense: it's precisely the kind of absurdist scenario you'd expect to find in a British mini-comic.

But beyond that, beyond the brilliantly simple idea of a gay superhero team, beyond the deft characterization (each member of the team is colour-coded, but also possessed of their own individual personality, with team leader Liberty being particularly well-defined), culturally specific references, jokes and fight scenes, what makes Spandex: Fast and Hard work is its emotional core. As with all of Martin's work, there's an intimacy to the piece, born of his personal thoughts and fears and concerns, something he explores more explicitly in a handwritten note at the back of the book. As he says:

Whether you're gay or straight, sometimes the pressures of day-to-day life can take their toll. This story deals with that (if you read between the lines a bit), and beyond the 'gay zombies' and hermaphroditic villain of this issue, it is a very personal story to me.

That Martin's stories are personal to him is true of all of his comics, of course; but it's kind of fitting that the work which will finally see his cup runneth over with coffee is the one that perhaps best represents the real him – both as a comics creator, and as a person. 

Martin will be signing copies of Spandex: Fast and Hard at Forbidden Planet in London on Thursday 24 May at 6pm. He'll also be signing at Dave's Comics in Brighton, date and time TBC.

An Ill-Tempered Announcement About Commenting, and Some Links and Plugs

Let's get the ill-tempered announcement part of this post out of the way first, and then we can move on to more pleasant matters.

If you've tried to leave a comment on Existential Ennui recently – an unlikely scenario, I know, but indulge me – you might have noticed that there's now an additional step to negotiate: word recognition, or "captcha", to use the common parlance. This is the process whereby you have to retype in a little box at the bottom of the comment panel the randomly generated – and partly nonsensical – words which you can see in another box just above that one, to "prove you're not a robot", as Blogger puts it. Slightly offensive to robots (some of my best friends... etc., etc.), but there you have it.

I've enabled this feature because a gradually increasing number of spam comments have been making it through Blogger's spam filters and onto Existential Ennui itself, culminating in a massive spam attack a week ago, when over 500 spam comments went straight through to the blog. As you can probably imagine, that was incredibly fucking annoying, and if I ever get the opportunity to royally fuck with the witless cretins responsible – I'm looking at you, Coach Factory Outlet Online, Coach Outlet Online Store and Louis Vuitton Outlet UK (and please don't Google these cocksuckers and contribute to their worthless hits) – then I will grasp that opportunity with both hands and gleefully fuck them in their eye sockets.

Until that joyful day arrives, we're all stuck with word recognition on commenting. I hope you'll understand why I've had to introduce it, and why I may yet have to go even further and introduce comment approval, too; even with captcha enabled, the odd spam comment is still making it through the spam guards. Hopefully it won't come to that, but we'll see how we get on. Either way, please don't let it put you off commenting.

That tiresome piece of business out of the way, I thought I'd take the opportunity to throw a few Marvel Bullpen-style links and plugs your way, beginning, naturally, with a link to something I wrote:

ITEM! If you'll cast your mind(s) back to January, you'll recall that I ran a series of posts on Desmond Cory and his Johnny Fedora spy thrillers, during the course of which I reviewed Cory's 1962 mini-masterpiece Undertow. Well, seeing as Mike Ripley's Top Notch Thrillers imprint reissued Undertow late last year, that review can now be found – in an altered and quite possibly improved form – on the website of Shots Magazine, one of the UK's longest-running and most respected crime fiction publications. It's my first review for Shots, so go have a read and see what you think.

ITEM! Back in December of last year I mentioned that Ethan Iverson's brilliant Do the Math website had linked Existential Ennui, something I was dead chuffed about because Do the Math's overview of Donald E. Westlake had been instrumental in helping me navigate Westlake's Byzantine backlist. Well Ethan's been at it again, and now has a page dedicated to the work of another author who's a firm favourite round these parts: Ross Thomas. It's a lengthy article, but Ethan's in-depth, detailed research and insight into each of Thomas's novels – including the Oliver Bleeck ones – make it an essay deserving of your undivided attention.

ITEM! The sixth issue of my pal Martin Eden's splendid gay superhero team comic, Spandex – which I've blogged about before – is out now, and can be ordered here. This issue is especially noteworthy because it also comes with three free mini-comics featuring some of the more minor characters from the series, produced in collaboration with different artists – the Cherry Blossom Girl mini in particular, with art by T'sao Wei, is rather fine. Titan Books will be publishing a collection of Spandex in May, so I'll be returning to Mr. Eden and his cast of colourful characters then, but in the lead up to the pub date, Martin is blogging about various aspects of Spandex on the Titan website, so check back there for updates.

ITEM! Talented Lewes-based book cover designer Neil Gower – who I've mentioned once or twice previously, and whose splendid work is simpatico with the ideals of this similarly Lewes-based blog – popped up on BBC Breakfast the other week, being interviewed as part of a piece on teenagers designing new covers for William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Neil puts in a fleeting appearance towards the end of the item, but it's worth a look because it affords a glimpse into both his working methods – very much traditional as opposed to digital – and his studio. And I'll have more on Mr. Gower soon...

ITEM! British cartoonist John Bagnall posted a short but interesting piece on a twentieth century British artist I'd never encountered before: Algernon Newton. Newton's largely people-free landscapes and cityscapes are, to my mind, curiously appealing, and I'll certainly be exploring his work further. John's blog continues to be a great source of inspirational artwork, both other folk's and his own; I'd urge you to bookmark it if you haven't already.

ITEM! Lastly, if you've any interest in books as physical objects, doubtless you'll have seen this much-shared Flavorwire post showcasing beautiful bookshops (which provoked a caustic response from secondhand book dealer Rick Gekoski on the Guardian website). But what you might not have noticed is that Flavorwire has since followed it up with a post on beautiful personal libraries (link via The Spectator), which is perhaps even more envy-inducing. I do fear for the spines of some of the books in the featured libraries, though: a number of them appear to be shelved in direct sunlight, so I can foresee some severe spine fading occurring – unlike the books in my own "library":

which are largely hidden from the sun's rays; recent house guest Sammy the cat admiring my shaded shelves, there.

Anyway, enough of the linkage: what can you look forward to on Existential Ennui in the not-too-distant future? Well, later this week there'll hopefully be a Westlake Score and a Notes from the Small Press, and the week after that will see the return of two firm friends – of each other that is; they're more passing acquaintances of Existential Ennui's – Kim Philby and Graham Greene. And looking further ahead, in the tradition of previous Existential Ennui chats with Anthony Price and Jeff Lindsay, I have a couple more exclusive interviews lined up for you. Before all that, though, let's have a guest post, courtesy of a good friend of mine – and an occasional commenter – Adam Newell, on a little-known Roald Dahl novel...

EXCLUSIVE: Spandex Issue #2!

Mart has just sent out a press release for his second issue of Spandex, the gay superhero comic that caused quite a kerfuffle when it launched last year. Issue #2 will be on sale in time for the Bristol comics festy thing later this month, but there are a few preview pages with the press release, so I thought I'd re-post them – the first time anywhere on the web (er, right Mart?). It's looking utterly splendid. I love the Queen peeping out of the window of Buckingham Palace in that second page. (More info on Spandex here.)

Spandex Review

As in, a review of my friend Martin's fab comic Spandex. Not by me, mind. By J. Caleb Mozzocco, a perceptive, encouraging, and indeed glowing review, which can be found here. Well done Mart, and well done Mr. Mozzocco – nice to see a reviewer really get where Martin's coming from. Er, so to speak.

Spandex Mania!

The world and his wife seems to have gone crazy for my friend Martin's small press comic Spandex. Mart sent out a press release to various people and all of a sudden it's been picked up by the Sun, the Metro and is all over the interweb. Martin is now panicking slightly. Bless. It's all well deserved though.