Comix Reader Issue One, 2010. Cover by Richard Cowdry.

The Secret History Of……

The Comix Reader

Come join me as I travel back in time.... back, back to the dawn of the 21st century.

I was fresh out of college and wanted to be a cartoonist. I had some encouragement, winning a minor award at a Swiss comics festival. They invited me over in 2002 and I had my first insight into the huge Swiss/French/Belgian comic scene. I was stunned... comic artists were treated like stars! The level of funding involved was also an eye opener. Back in Britain there was very little happening. There were occasional comics fairs, but no comics publishers to send my work to. I began distributing photocopied zines and settled into a life of unemployment.

Me with The Bedsit Journal at a comics fair in London (Comiket I think) around 2009.

Fast forward a few years and things had changed. There were still no publishers but there was a lot of small press activity. Oli Smith's London Underground Comics were doing weekly stalls in Camden Market, in Brighton there was Sean Duffield's Paper Tiger Comics collective, Oxford and Bristol had their own scenes. Paul Gravett was organising regular fairs and exhibitions. I was doing an anthology comic called The Bedsit Journal. It was a collaboration with my friend Peter Lally and was an honest expression of our lives spent languishing in cheap rented accommodation while trying to figure out how to assimilate into regular society. It featured our own work plus other people who fitted the dark humourous vibe.

The Bedsit Life page 1. From The Bedsit Journal issue one, 2004. Written by Peter Lally & Richard Cowdry. Art by Richard Cowdry. This story also appeared in Stripburger and MEAT Magazine.

The comic was something of a cult favourite.... but it didn't really fit in with the small press scene of the time. It was kind of its own scene. This was the problem really: it was cool there was all this DIY indie comics stuff going on, but apart from a handful of artists like Mardou, Lord Hurk, Bird, or Hannah Glickstein, I couldn't find many comics I could relate to. Most small press activity was geared towards fantasy and heroics. Not that I’m dismissing those genres… I'm as big a nerd as anyone, but at that time I was looking for funny, personal, self-revealing types of work, and this stuff was scarce.

Illustration by Jimi Gherkin from 2010.

As it happened things were about to change again : a printmaker/cartoonist/zinester then known as Jimi Gherkin appeared and began organising comic fairs in a London pub. Jimi was so friendly, enthusiastic and easy to deal with that comic artists were drawn to his events.

Poster for The Alternative Press Fair by Lord Hurk, 2010.

Helped by Peter Lally, Gareth Brookes and Saban Kazim, he began the Alternative Press Fair, which took place in a church social club in North London. Between Jimi's approachability and openness, and I guess because of the name of the fair, local alternative and underground cartoonists came out the woodwork : Tobias Tak, Kevin Ward, Kat Kon, Tanya Meditzky, Ellen Lindner, Mike Medaglia, Alex Potts, Julia Homersham, Bernadette Bently, Paul Ashley Brown, Saban “Shabs” Kazim, Dickon Harris, Sally Shiny Stars, Sina Evil, Dave Ziggy Greene, Kate McMorrine, Maartje Schalkx, etc, - most of whom I'd never met before.

As the first Alternative Press Fair wound down everyone gathered in the bar, and I found myself among a crowd of artists, ALL of whom were doing work I could appreciate and relate to. What a great feeling!!

For me this was the start of a new scene.

Poster for The Comix Reader Mega Launch by Ellen Lindner, 2011.

The problem (if it was a problem), was that there were still no publishers for our kind of comics. We were all self-publishing and trading with each other. Few of us had any talent for selling, and distributing even a hundred copies of a comic could be tough work for an introvert. But what if we all did something together? I'd heard about a newspaper printer who was open to taking side jobs, and for a few hundred pounds it was possible to get a few thousand newspapers printed. This was interesting but not very relevant to me. Now though I was surrounded by a group of artists who needed and deserved an audience. So what if everyone had a page each, and we got as many copies printed as we could afford? We all chip in towards the costs, everyone takes a share of the print run and sells or distributes what they can of it? People would at least see our work.

Ellen Lindner and Julia Homersham selling The Comix Reader at Green Man Festival, 2013(?). Gareth Brookes is probably hiding in the tent.

I imagined us selling it on the street like urchin newsboys, "Gitcher Comix Reader!!!" And by keeping the price as low as possible - like £1 - people would have little to lose by trying it out. We could expand the audience for comics!

I imagined it like a late 19th century comic newspaper, back in the days before comics were thought of as kids stuff, being read by regular folk with half an hour to kill on the bus, in the pub, wherever.

And it all would’ve stayed in my imagination if the Alternative Press crowd weren't up for it, but as it turned out nearly everyone I asked was interested.

Cover for The Comix Reader Issue 4 by the late Tobias Tak, 2012.

If you're going to print several thousand newspapers they are going to arrive in bundles of 100 copies, wrapped in plastic, fixed to a pallette. Where do you store 600kg of comics? We all lived in small rented flats and bedsits. My partner made it clear they weren't coming our way. Thankfully Lord Hurk, at great inconvenience to himself, offered to sneak the delivery into his work place in Tooks Court, London.

So a printing date was set for 18th November 2010: 9000 copies. A few cartoonists waited around Tooks Court for the delivery. When the van arrived it couldn't fit down the alley, so the driver had to leave the pallet on the street corner. We ripped open the package and carried 90 bundles of comics down the road to safety (Hurk's storeroom). Thankfully : no rain.

Elliot Baggott relaxing with The Comix Reader Issue 5, 2013. Cover by Alex Potts.

We had a launch party for Comix Reader issue 1. I wasn't sure how many people would make it (imagining myself broken and humiliated in an empty room) but it was far busier than I could have imagined. There were guests before I'd even arrived, and by 7.30 we'd filled the room, and were spilling out into the main bar. After that we began meeting monthly at The Crown in New Oxford Street. Always a great crowd of cool & friendly comics (and non comics) people turned up. Wonderful! It was still a new thing for me to know a bunch of people with the same interests. Looking back it was a thrilling time which I probably didn't appreciate enough. I miss those people sooo much!

We made 4 issues over the next two years, with me moving to Berlin shortly before issue 4 came out. Issues 5 and 6 took a lot longer to put together.

Comix Reader Issue 6, 2015. Cover by Richard Cowdry.

Comix Reader distribution was ad hoc to say the least. This was cool in a way as artists could do whatever they wanted with their share of the comics (the print run peaked at 11,000, so there were plenty to go round). The paper was available at music festivals, comic shops, zine fairs, comedy gigs, pubs, etc. But to continue long term I think we would've needed more conventional, predictable distribution. Some shops, like Gosh!, in London, were super-supportive and kept it permanently on display, while others didn’t want to stock it because it was too cheap.

Chris Donald, creator of Viz Magazine, with The Comix Reader issue 1. Photo by Saban Kazim, probably taken at one of Shabs comedy gigs. 2010.

Most contributors lived in London or Brighton, so these cities were saturated with Comix Readers. I had an easier time selling it when I moved to Berlin ... ComicInvasionBerlin was the perfect home for it.

Comix Reader Issue 3 contents page. Logo drawn by Elliot Baggott.

By the last issues it was becoming embarrassing to ask the artists to pay towards the print and delivery costs. We needed a different model to finance it but we only ever ran one advert, which was a sponsored page by Knockabout Comics. Tony Bennet, Knockabout’s publisher, was a big supporter of the Reader. The only other money we got was from Wildseed Studios, an animation studio that was working with Ralph Kidson. We didn’t get any support from the British Arts Council. If we’d got some money, what else could we have done? Peter Lally said that with 20 grand we could have revolutionised British comics. We’d certainly have done something worthwhile.

Comix Reader Issue 5 cover detail by Alex Potts. 2014.

In 2014 I sent Issue 5 to the Festival de la Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême. It got lost in the post, but when it when finally arrived, months later, they kept it for 2016 festival, where it made the selection for best Alternative Comic. That was nice.

Comix Reader Issue 3 cover and launch poster. Drawn by Elliot Baggott.

Writing this now, I just remembered we were also represented by Diamond Distribution. This didn’t work for us... we would have needed our own alternative distribution (man).

Storage was an issue too. When Hurk was no longer able to store the comics they all went to Mike Medaglia’s garage. When Mike left London, thousands of copies were given away, and the remainder went to Julia Homersham’s place.

When I moved to Albania in 2015 I felt too removed from the comic scene and figured it was time to stop.

Maybe if I'd stayed in London we'd have worked out the financial & distribution side of things. As such I feel like the experiment wasn't completed. I would have liked Julia Homersham to draw the cover for Issue 7.

The sad thing for me is that some wonderful cartoonists from the Comix Reader no longer make comics. I wish our society was more encouraging and supportive and placed more value on this kind of art and these kinds of comics.

Launch party poster for The Comix Reader Issue 6 at Gosh! Comics in London. Art by Richard Cowdry, Dan Locke, Lord Hurk and Maartje Schalkx.

I'm not sure if The Comix Reader will be remembered, even as a footnote, in any official history of British comics, but this account will exist here for as long as I’m able to pay the website subscription fees.

Further information:

***Daniel James Baldwin’s documentary about the Alternative Press Fair.***

The old Comix Reader blog (featuring loads of reviews, etc).

Review by Rob Clough on HIGH-LOW.

Broken Frontier article by Andy Oliver and Amneet Johal about the second International Alternative Press Fair.

Illustration by Tobias Tak, 2010.

All images shown here are copyright to their respective owners and are protected under international copyright laws.