You've probably seen this today already, but I'm going to go ahead and plug it again, because I take a certain pride in its existence. I've became something of an unpaid A&R man at Blank Slate Books anyway, and I took part in the conversation on Twitter that sparked this book off.
British comic creators and fans will always default to the anthology as our comics format of choice. Rob Davis and I are both grumpy old men who regularly bemoan the state of the British comics anthology on Twitter, but Rob has actually done something about it, bless him. I'll give the micro-blogging service its due, it has turned the disparate comics-creating people of the UK into more of a community than ever before; where fans, creators of all kinds, and publishers spend all day hanging out, sharing what they're up to, or just talking shit. This has in turn fed into something of a publishing boom for graphic novels here in the UK. There's three or four ambitious, forward-thinking companies out there at the moment, with more joining them all the time. It's pretty easy for a creator to turn around and pitch something to a publisher these days; especially when you find several of them in your Twitter feed, clicking on your links, laughing at your jokes.
Whereas I am content to berate Tharg from afar for not hiring enough of the artists I champion, and theorize about the dream anthology I'd publish if I won the lottery (a tabloid-sized mash-up of 2000AD, Warrior, Deadline and Wednesday Comics, with a hint of Viz, if you're interested in bank-rolling me); Rob, with his co-editor Woodrow Phoenix, has gone ahead with the business of envisioning something entirely new to do with the great British anthology, and then went ahead and got it off the ground, and then recruited an amazing roster of talent to contribute (with a large contingent of Bad Comedian favourites, funnily enough), and is using it to raise money for charity. I'm full of admiration for the man, and can't wait for the book to be published.
