Comix Influx Blog: Blank Slate Books!

Trains Are Mint and We Can Still Be Friends are available at Forbidden Planet International at a big discount (30% and 40% off respectively) until 4th July.

Blank Slate Books is a brand new UK comics publishing house, launched by Kenny Penman and James Hamilton of Forbidden Planet International. It’s just published its first 2 books: Trains Are Mint, a collection of the three mini-comics by Oliver East, and We Can Still Be Friends by the popular German comics creator Mawil, a translation of his book,Wir können ja Freunde bleiben.

The first thing to say is that the books are beautiful. They have a similar form factor to books from First Second, with wraparound illustrations on the front- and back-covers, and are printed on nice thick paper. It certainly looks like Blank Slate have put a lot of effort into getting these looking just so. Interestingly they chose to put Trains Are Mint out as a handsome hardback and We Can Still Be Friends as a nice, accessible paperback. I’m not sure why they chose that configuration – Trains Are Mint does have more of an “artbook” feel to it, and you could imagine the Mawil having a broader appeal.

Trains Are Mint by Oliver East is a sort of travelogue comic showing East’s journey, on foot, following the train track from Manchester to Blackpool. The overall feel is very much of a sketchbook, using watercolour over black ink. The drawings are fairly simple outlines – no shading with the pen – and the watercolours employ a subdued palette, evoking overcast English weather. There are a few lovely moments – the first time in the book that East sees a train go past is great. Taken in isolation his sketch could be an abstract watercolour of a tranquil, seaside twilight, but in context becomes the blurred streak of a train at full pelt.

The art effectively captures the feel of the post-industrial North East – its cities, suburbs, farmland and, notably, the ill-defined areas inbetween – the seams that join them together. These are the bits that people passing through wouldn’t normally see, and what, in part, make East’s book so distinctive. East isn’t documenting a disappearing Britain but observing life at the joins, often with a genuine affection. He maintains an amused detachment from things he relates, and, for example, is regularly disappointed with the poor quality and paucity of the graffiti he passes.

East often interweaves the text directly into the art, so that his
narrative takes the place of advertising hoardings, logos on lorries, and signs in shops. This again takes the comic away from just being a sketchbook, and also makes the images highly personal – you are always aware that you are seeing things through his eyes. This subjectivity is enhanced by the lack of people depicted through the book; East’s journey is largely solitary, and those that are shown are essentially featureless, sometimes reduced to just their clothes. East is also a very passive narrator. He observes and comments, but does not really interact with his surroundings. Indeed, the most exuberant page in the book shows East’s joy at getting to start a new sketchbook.

Trains Are Mint is not about the destination or even about the places that East passes through. Life goes on around him. He doesn’t investigate curiosities, such as a shop intriguingly called Escapito Pinkos, and a pub advertising a “Meat Draw”. A traditional travel book would turn those into the focus; East observes and notes, but passes on, content to acknowledge them amongst life’s mysteries. The journey is the thing. For example, we know that East is breaking his journey up, and returning home at the end of each day’s walk. But there is no mention of the return legs at the end of a day’s walk, nor the journey to pick up the route again, nor anything else that happens in his life. We don’t even know for sure whether the journey is conducted over consecutive days. This stops Trains Are Mint from being a standard sketchbook diary, and focuses attention on his quest. And this is what the book most feels like: a modern, existential updating of a Knight’s Quest, where the actual goal (Blackpool in this case) is rarely the point of the narrative but is instead a device by which to hang other stories. In this case, the other “stories” are East’s asides, musings, observations and day-dreams (which occasionally drift into the obscene).

This might make it sound as if the book feels somewhat pointless, or even dull, but this is not the case. For one thing, East is an entertaining narrator, undercutting the unavoidable social commentary with bathos. He also wryly acknowledges his faults (commenting that if this were a “proper book” he would do better research on what he was seeing, “but Scrubs’ll be on”), and questions the “legitimacy” of his journey.

I like East’s comics. They are highly individual and the book is completely immersive. We may reach the end of the book without any real idea why East is on this quest. Never apologise, never explain: he just is. And that’s enough.

Mawil is one of the most popular comics creators in Germany. He has had 6 books published in his home country, with Beach Safari published in English by Top Shelf. Mawil created this 64-page comic as his MA thesis, and it deals humorously with 4 unrequited (naturally) crushes he had from when he was a boy up to a student. He maintains a lightness and humour, never descending to the narcissism or self-pity that many such autobiographical comics would have done. In part this is helped by having the stories told as if they were being discussed in a bar with friends (with the associated laughter, incredulity and commiserations). I’d be surprised if anyone didn’t find some sympathy with at least one of the situation that Mawil describes.

In East’s book the reader is gradually drawn in, but in Mawil’s case the art has a very easy, accessible appeal that grabs the reader from the outset. He utilises regular line drawings with flat greyscale shading, and his style tends toward the cartoony, emphasised by his slightly formless figures. There’s a strong feeling of motion within Mawil’s drawings – on occasion he draws his characters with multiple limbs to show rapid movement.

But additionally, in the mess of broad, cartoony fluidity he can also freeze a moment very effectively; when his Spanish admiree shakes the sea out of her hair, the change in pace shows the strength of feeling attached to that memory. It’s a very effective switching of gears, which Mawil uses well.

In addition he also makes good use of different panel layouts. He generally sticks to pages with a regular 3×3 panel layout. But the linking scenes in the bar use a varying number of borderless panels, emphasising the less structured conversation. There’s another page which is a page from an exercise book, overlaid with the hands of different writing in it, and their speech-balloons of their simultaneous conversation. Difficult to describe, but it’s an inventive panel that works very well. Mawil is a naturally inventive cartoonist, with a very relaxed, engaging style. While the stories in this book are not ground-breaking, he brings them to life effortlessly, making it a truly engaging book with universal appeal.

This is an impressive start from Blank Slate Books, and I like their approach of publishing new artists from the British small-press and authors that have achieved success in other countries but are not yet recognised over here. For both books, it is not obvious what other UK publisher would have given them an opportunity, so I hope that Blank Slate Books manage to make this a productive and successful niche. I eagerly await the next books they have lined up.