What's in a Name?

Something is bugging me.

Set the wayback machine to 1998, and a younger me (with hair) really wanted to write and draw comics. With the support of my wife-to-be, and some financial backing from the Prince's Youth Business Trust, I wrote and illustrated four issues of a comic called Missing under the name of "Autocratik Press". 

The old Autocratik Logo

The old logo had the slogan "Autocratik for the Masses", inspired by the REM album, Automatic for the People. I chose the name Autocratik for a couple of reasons – I was given the advice that, especially when it came to getting the comic listed in Diamond Comic Distributor's Previews catalog, to ensure that your company name was high up in the alphabet so it got noticed. You couldn't get any better than starting with A, other than it being at the start of the A's (which it wasn't). I went through the dictionary, looking at words that began with A and there was something about the word that stuck with me. In the dictionary it said that it referred to someone who did things their own way. Kinda rang true, I wanted to do comics, write and illustrate them, I did the layout, the design, almost everything with help from Debs and her graphic design skills, and constant advice. Together we were going to forge a new beginning in comics...

Three of the four issues of Missing, published in 1998-99

Of course, it didn't last. Sales were low. Too low for Diamond to keep distributing it, so after four issues Missing came to an early end. Shame... I had another 91 issues all planned out. Autocratik Press returned a year later for a single comic by the legendary Matt Brooker, called D'Adventures of Israeli: Consequences, continuing the story from Timulo from Deadline. It was amazing – hit nuns with rocket launchers, weirdness, giant haddock. So very cool. 

After that, Autocratik was no more.

When I got into game writing, I went freelance, declared myself self-employed, but I didn't really use the name Autocratik again until 2011. 

Something happened. It was messy, and I won't go into details, but let's just say there was a clash, I was angry. I was annoyed. And above all, I was determined to do things my way. To create, to make the crazy stuff that I wanted to make, and I was damn-well going to do it myself.

I started the blog, used Autocratik as my handle on social media, started specific pages for it on Facebook, it's the name of my Youtube channel, I had business cards done, bought the domain name, and it's been on all of those #RPGaDAY graphics for the last dozen years. 

However, over the last few years, I've heard the term autocratic and autocracy become more and more prevalent, as those with money and power throw their weight about and try to do whatever they want with little regard for anyone else. Now, if you look in the dictionary, the term autocratic is defined as a dictatorship. Sure, it still means someone doing things their way, but now it feels like it's more associated with someone doing things their way to the detriment of others.

Certainly not what I had in mind with the name. 

Which brings me to what's bugging me. I'm wondering if it's time to retire the name, and choose something else? If I did, I'd have to update all of my links, rename all of my social media thingies, get a new website domain, transfer this blog over (which I must admit, I don't know how to do, but I'll learn), destroy all of those business cards and start afresh.

Or do I keep it as it is, and hope that the world changes? Just hope that the term becomes less synonymous with rulers and domination.

Or maybe bring back the "For The Masses" bit, to really embrace the REM-ness of its origins. I may be making stuff and writing things my way, but I'm not forcing anything onto anyone. If you like what I make or write, that's great. I'm not a tyrant. 

If I did rename, what would I change it to? Would people still find me? Do I actually want to be found... maybe I should simply diminish, and go into the west... 

What do you think?

If it wasn't so comic it'd be tragic

 

The old Missing Comics from 1998-9

Many, many, many years ago, back in the very late 90's, I used to write, illustrate, and publish comics. This was back when Autocratik was "Autocratik for the Masses", a play on the REM album name, 'Automatic for the People'. 

My main comic was called Missing, a planned 90+ issue series about a hotel on the Scottish border, after England had become the 51st US State, and after global warming at raised the water levels to the point where cars needed to be amphibian, and highwaymen used surfboards to attack unsuspecting travellers. There were subplots of psycho boyfriends, the local sheriff department, kidnapping of the President's daughter, and weird metal bands. So much was planned, but alas it only lasted four issues and looking back at it now it's a little 90's and a bit cringey. 

After Missing was cancelled due to losing my distribution, I published one more comic for the legendary artist D'Israeli (Consequences) before pulling the plug on comics. I had ideas for a weird story involving a massive cathedral, motorcycling paladins, and an alien creature being worshipped as a god, but didn't get very far. 

Original sketch for I in the WILD major arcana

Since then, things have been very quiet with my drawing. I gave up completely, only really putting pencil to paper when I was storyboarding the webseries, or doing my initial sketches for the tarot cards for WILD. 

WILD was always going to be a square book, and I found a company making cool square sketchbooks for artists (so of course, I bought three, one of each size). 

However, I realised my art wasn't up to scratch for WILD, and Stoo and I recruited my old friend Gareth Sleightholme to do the Tarot deck, which came out brilliantly.

I thought about using these sketchbooks to do something different, something autobiographical, but I only really got a handful of pages into it before I gave up again, mostly due to the frustration of what was in my mind not making it onto the page.

During the pandemic I was inspired to do something, to finally get drawing and creating again. And again, my mind went to something autobiographical. Maybe it was the stresses of the pandemic, and the weird paranoia it brought on, but I really just wanted to get things on paper.

I went to the art department of our local department store where they had a great deal on A5 exercise books that had blank, sketchbook quality pages. I bought ten of them, inspired by artists I'd seen on Instagram, and thought this was going to be my next creative pursuit...

But once again, what I saw in my mind just wasn't what came out on the page. Frustrated, I gave up again, and those many sketchbooks seem to taunt me from the shelves next to my seat. 

I keep getting the urge to draw, but I just don't seem to be able to do what I want. Maybe I'm too impatient? I remember when I was working on Missing I used to work on that daily, determined to get it done, but looking at it now I kinda think it was pretty awful. 

Will I ever go back to comics? Will I get over my own self-doubt and hyper-critical self-depreciation? 

Who knows, but for now, I'll remain a lapsed comics artist...

[Roll Your Own Life] The Comics That Shaped Me (Part 13)

LOCKE & KEY (2008-2013, and more)

Another one I came a little late to, I completely missed the first few issues of Locke & Key when it first launched. Which is ridiculous as the writer was someone we'd known about before. Joe Hill. Probably bored of being called Stephen King's son, Joe Hill had a novel out in 2007 called Heart Shaped Box, and he came to our hometown to do a signing at the bookstore where Debs worked - I remember she created this display in the store of an old suit she'd bought from a charity shop, suspended from the ceiling. It was really creepy. Debs loved the book, and his other works, so it was surprising we completely missed the first few issues.

Those first issues sold out really quickly so we just waited until IDW produced a collection of the first storyline, Welcome to Lovecraft. We bought the cool hardcover, and were blown away by how cool it is. The storytelling is phenomenal, with some amazing art by Gabriel Rodriguez that has you looking over pages again and again to get every little detail.

It's so brilliantly drawn there's one bit that really stands out where the characters are looking for keys in Keyhouse and they pass one hidden on top of a clock (I think it is), then go back and find it... but you could see it in earlier panels, just a little detail that the eagle-eyed would spot.

Anyway, for those who don't know, Locke & Key is about a family (the Lockes) who move back into their old ancestral home (Keyhouse) after the father of the family is brutally murdered. While there, the three kids (Bode, Tyler, and Kinsey) discover the secrets of the house, of their family, and the various keys in the house that each have a unique power.

Unfortunately, Dodge, a mysterious stranger is released from their imprisonment and tries to gather all of the keys for their own evil doings and to finish what had been started a generation before.

It's just brilliant. The characters are great, each with their own hang-ups and flaws, while Bode (the youngest) tackles each key discovery with dangerous joy. The moment when they discover the Head Key, one that literally opens your head so you can remove aspects of your personality, or revisit memories, and Bode is just stood there with his head open thinking it's the coolest thing ever... Amazing.

As the past is revealed and you discover what happened with their father and his group of friends, it just adds a sense of horrible foreboding that it'll all happen again. And the final volume was so tense, it was a really sweaty-palm read.

So tense it was, just the memory of what happens made the final couple of episodes of Netflix's adaptation of Locke & Key even more scary. You knew how bad it was in the comic and kinda couldn't believe they were going to do it on TV...

Brilliant stuff.

The main storyline of Locke & Key finished in 2013, and there are some lovely hardcover collections out there that are a must have for anyone who likes spooky, cool and incredibly imaginative comics. And if you watched the Netflix series and enjoyed it, seriously read the comics.

There have been some short stories published since that tell various tales of Keyhouse in the years before the Locke kids show up, and the most recent one hints at a new continuation. Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez are working on a new storyline, which leads into a cross-over with the universe of Sandman (another of my favourite comics), joining Lucifer's Key to Hell into the Keyhouse mythology.

I can't wait.

Must admit, I do think it would make an excellent tabletop roleplaying game... (hint hint)

[Roll Your Own Life] The Comics That Shaped Me (Part 12)

THE INVISIBLES (1994-2000)

I was there when the revolution started. I saw the molotov cocktail fly. I saw it start... but I turned away.

That's kinda how it happened really. In the early 90's I picked up everything that Vertigo produced. Grant Morrison is a bit of a legend, and I'd read anything he produced. So when Vertigo announced this new comic by him I picked it up from issue 1. I have this strange memory of the first issue having a weird cover - besides the simple graphic of a hand grenade? Anyway, it was weird. The first issue was strange, and I wasn't sure if I completely got it... and that was how it continued until about issue 10 when I gave up altogether.

What an idiot.

Once again, it was the staff at my lovely friendly local comic shop (Abstract Sprocket) that made me look again. Volume 2 was just starting, and the manager said that I really should give The Invisibles another go - it was about conspiracy theories, alternate dimensions, and freeing your mind.

So, I went back to it. I picked up the trades for the first few volumes, and tried again.

I think the problem was that The Invisibles is meant to be read in big chunks - if not, all in one sitting. I read somewhere that The Invisibles is a spell. A magic spell, and the ritual of casting this spell is to read it in one sitting. It'll open your mind.

The story of Grant Morrison being abducted by aliens and becoming aware of fifth dimensional creatures while writing The Invisibles just adds to the legend.

But The Invisibles is even more mindblowing than that. It has connections to one of my favourite movies of all time. Let's see if you non-Invisibles readers can spot it...

Young guy who's a bit of an anarchist is recruited by a leather clad bald guy. Young dude discovers he is the next messiah, the new Buddha. He joins (and leaves, and joins again) a group of revolutionaries who are trying to bring down an organisation from an alternate dimension who want to enslave humanity and make them conform and docile.

Hmmm. There is a theory that you can cut up panels from The Invisibles and make The Matrix out of them, and The Invisibles were around five years before Neo became "The One". But this is also inspired by Grant Morrison's earlier work on a pair of sequels to the cyber-movie The Lawnmower Man, where a group of teenagers discover that their reality is actually a simulation controlled by extradimensional insect creatures manifesting as men in suits.

Anyway, I digress. The Invisibles completely blew my mind - as it's supposed to do. Especially as the manager of the aforementioned comic shop was already feeding my brain with Robert Anton Wilson and Philip K. Dick, this was just fuel for the brain. When it got to the Magic Mirror substance recovered from Area 51, and the characters were informed that we were being lied to - there are more than 26 letters of the alphabet, there are in fact 64. When you are aware of those letters, you can see the things in our reality that we couldn't before because our brains couldn't comprehend them without the vocabulary.

Insert that gif of the guy going "Mind Blown" over and over again.

In summary, I loved The Invisibles. Once I got over myself with those first few issues that I probably wasn't prepared for, it became one of my favourites. I've read the whole thing a number of times - though I really should look into tracking down the second two hardcover collections. The complete hardcover is a bit big to comfortably sit and read.

It's a bizarre and very progressive comic that feels very 90's, but still resonates a bit today.

That said, it's the last in my list from the 90's. Nothing really struck me with as much force comic-wise for many years to come, until the final two titles on my list...

[Roll Your Own Life] The Comics That Shaped Me (Part 10)

HELLBOY (1994-)

You'll remember I mentioned that the manager of the awesome local comic shop (Abstract Sprocket) was great at recommending new comics to me that would quickly become favourites? Well, here's another one of those great recommendations. I was a huge fan of Bram Stoker's Dracula movie when it came out, and there was a comics adaptation of it that was in such a unique and brilliant style, it was etched onto my memory.

Of course, that comics adaptation (that has recently been rereleased) was by Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy. I remember having issue 1 of Hellboy: Seed of Destruction waved at me at the comic shop saying "You'll like this! It's also got a talking monkey in it." (Referring to the rather excellent support strip at the back of the issue featuring Art Adams' Monkeyman & O'Brien).

You probably know the basic story of Hellboy from the awesome Guillermo del Toro movie with Ron Perlman - Hellboy is a demon summoned during the last days of WWII by Nazi occultists. When he arrives, he is just a baby and is taken in by the US military and raised by Professor Bruttenholm as the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense is being formed (the BPRD).

As an adult, working for the BPRD alongside other persons of unique abilities, Hellboy basically goes around with his big, stone hand and punches evil supernatural creatures back to the hellscapes they came from. It's great, funny, action-packed, pulp adventure.

But that artwork. Man, that artwork is amazing. Such a unique and vivid style, with amazing high-contrast shadows. It's just something else. Absolutely love it.

We faithfully bought all the individual issues, and then when Dark Horse produced the Hellboy Library editions, we bought them all again collected in gorgeous clothbound hardcovers. Ooooh yes.

[Roll Your Own Life] The Comics That Shaped Me (Part 9)

THE CROW (1989)

I've put 1989 as the date here, but chronologically I didn't discover The Crow until 1993. I missed all of the Caliber Comics versions, and the Tundra reprints, and like most readers I first read The Crow with the Kitchen Sink Press graphic novel that came out in '93. I remember I was at my local comic shop (Abstract Sprocket) and the awesome manager was great at recommending things to me that he thought I may like - Sin City was one, and The Crow as definitely the next (and not the last).

I don't know what it was about it. Maybe it was a combination of the story behind it, James O'Barr - the writer and artist was inspired by the grief and anger he felt after the death of his girlfriend at the hands of a drunk-driver. The sheer anger and emotion that was poured into every page of the comic is seriously hard-hitting and moving.

Combine that with the extremely goth artwork, with black and white art throughout. It was a similar style to the comics I was producing, and had that angry drive behind it that reminded me of my own angsty annoyance at the world.

It was inspiring, moving and quite a revelation in its simplicity. It was an indie comic that suddenly became huge. There was talk of a movie coming soon, too. Heck, if a cool goth indie comic can get turned into a movie, maybe I could do the same?

I read The Crow in one emotional sitting, and read it multiple times afterwards. So taken by it, we bought the limited edition of the graphic novel - a hardcover in a slipcase, signed by J. O'Barr, complete with a CD by John Bergin (O'Barr's collaborator) and his band Trust Obey. Fear and Bullets is a seriously doom-laden stream of extremely dark goth - mostly shouting in-character as Eric Draven (The Crow) over heavy drum-machines and guitars. Nothing like walking in to work with it on your headphones, shouting along "I am fear, I am complete and total madness, You're all going to die!"

You get some funny looks...

And then came the movie. The horrible accident on set that took the amazing lead actor, Brandon Lee, shrouded an already emotional story with another layer of sadness. Brandon Lee was brilliant in his other movies (I loved Showdown in Little Tokyo) and was absolutely perfect as Eric Draven. A brilliant and faithful adaptation of the graphic novel. It's one of those movies we watch every year, usually on Devil's Night.

If you haven't already read The Crow, do hunt it down. May inspire you to put ink on paper to vent your frustrations.

[Roll Your Own Life] The Comics That Shaped Me (Part 7)

SHADE: THE CHANGING MAN (1990-1996)

I mentioned last blog post that a lot of the early 90's comic reading for me was dominated by DC/Vertigo and the range of cool, yet darker, comic series. Hellblazer, Kid Eternity, Doom Patrol, Enigma, etc. But just after Sandman started, another really experimental comic came along that had me even more hooked, and remains my favourite series of all time - Shade: The Changing Man.

With the early covers by Brendan McCarthy (yes, the Brendan McCarthy that brought Mad Max: Fury Road to life), the title really stood out on the shelves as being something a little weird. After all, the "New McCarthyism" as he was credited sometimes was certainly not your average comic cover design. (see left)

The insides were even weirder in places, but the story reflected that. I'd never read any of the first incarnation of Shade from 70's, so this was my first experience of Rac Shade - a poet from another world who leaves his body behind on Meta to inhabit the body of Troy Grenzer - a serial killer about to be executed.

Shade teams up with Kathy, whose parents were killed by Grenzer, and Lenny, and they travel the US in a weird roadtrip to battle the madness that is infecting the land.

It's nuts. Whole sections are within "the Madness" and you could spend days trying to see all the detail within those pages. Not only was Peter Milligan's storylines bonkers and brilliant, but the art...

Oh the art...

One of my favourite artists, Chris Bachalo, who I'd first seen in an issue of Sandman, brought the madness to life in some of the coolest artwork I've seen.

Bachalo's style was simply amazing, and iconic with the cross hatching on the character's noses. I loved it. I still love Bachalo's art, and have followed it through his career into Marvel's Generation X, X-Men and Doctor Strange. It's awesome.

Over the years, Shade died about four times, inhabited different bodies, and different cool coats. It got really weird and surreal, but I loved every minute of it. 

Ultimately, it came to an end, and I was really excited recently when Gerard Way announced his DC imprint (Young Animal) would see a new series called Shade: The Changing Girl. It was good, but compared to Way's awesome revival of Doom Patrol it just wasn't as weird, or gripping as I'd hoped. The new Doom Patrol did it so much better. Oh well...

My dream would be for Noah Hawley, who did the awesome TV series Legion, would decide to make Shade into a TV series, inspired by Peter Milligan's run. Oh, we can hope...

[Roll Your Own Life] The Comics That Shaped Me (Part 1)

Over the last couple of weeks I've been challenged to a couple of those Facebook meme things. First it was 20 Albums That Had an Impact on Your Life, then it was D8+3 Tabletop RPGs, and most recently it was 10 TV Shows.

The weird thing is, during these times of crisis and panic when just reading the news can make me come out in a cold sweat, I've found doing these little blog posts every day to be calming, and to get me motivated into actually doing some normal writing every day - when most of the time I'd want to just lay on the floor and pray for everything to go back to normal.

Yesterday was the last day of the most recent challenge - 10 TV Shows That Had an Impact on me, and I didn't want to sink back into an unhealthy routine. So, I'm going to keep going...

With COMICS!

Randomly found a pic of the comic on
the internet. Weird.

I know there may be some of you who read this who only know me from writing tabletop RPGs, but for a long time I wanted to write and draw comics. Just after I left school, Pete decided to form a little comic publishing company called Swampland Comics, and I drew the first issue of Ninja Secretaries from Beyond Dimension X, that was based on Pete's script, and I wrote a drew a standalone comic of one of the characters (loosely based on me) called Drowning In Darkness. It was gloomy, introspective and self-aggrandising tale of a gun-toting vigilante facing a vampiric threat in his hometown.

Looking at it now it's horribly embarrassing, but it did get some interesting reviews and I remember one that called me the "Goth Hergé". I don't know if that's just because of the lead character's hairstyle...

I went to university wanting to specialise in comics, and ended up studying animation. I think the Illustration lecturer wasn't keen on comics at the time - I think he's since come around. After I graduated, I continued my desire to draw comics and, with the help of the Prince's Trust, launched my comic publishing company (Autocratik Press). I published four issues of my ongoing comic, Missing, before it was cancelled by the distributor - not selling enough to keep distributing me.

Missing, the comic I wrote and drew in the late 90's. Feels horribly dated now...

I also published a one-shot for the awesome Matt Brooker (aka D'Israeli) called Consequences, which continued his D'Adventures of I.S.R.A.E.L.I. that ran as Timulo in Deadline. That was particularly awesome, (mostly because I didn't draw it), but that was the entire of my attempt to get into comics...


But behind the scenes, I've been reading comics for years. So many comics. I read comics before I read books, and some of them had a huge impact on my writing and art.

So I thought I'd do another one of those "Things that have had an impact on my life" things but focus on the comics that shaped me. And, after discussing this with Debs, I've decided to do 14 rather than 10, so it's a round two-weeks of this nonsense you have to put up with.

Without further ado...

THE FOURTEEN COMICS THAT SHAPED ME





PART 1

SUPER SPIDER-MAN (AND THE TITANS / WITH THE SUPER-HEROES) (1976-1979)

I have a very distinct memory of Spider-Man. It's very weird. I think Spidey was the first real superhero comic I read, and certainly the first superhero I really got into. The only others I used to read about that time were the annuals I'd been given for Christmas which were usually Superman/Batman double bills.

However, I have a very distinct memory of my dad going to the newsagent to pay his monthly bill for the newspaper deliveries (two a day), and saying to me that I could pick a comic to get every week and we'd add it to the delivery. I picked Spider-Man.

Super Spider-Man was a British reprint of the American comics in a weird format. It was landscape, and had a double page spread from the US comic on each page, so as you read it each open spread contained four of the American comic pages. They were also completely in black and white except for the glossy cover. But, it meant you got a lot more comic and story every week in each issue. It wasn't just Spidey in there - each issue contained a complete issue from Spidey, as well as a complete issue of Thor, Captain America and Doctor Strange. The actual line-up of supporting strips varied from time to time, but I distinctly remember reading those ones.

The centre pages were a super-widescreen style bit of poster art (which I foolishly coloured in with felt tip pens on some issues - my desire to draw comics getting the better of me at that early age).

It was just at the awesome era of classic Spider-Man. The art was gorgeous (Gil Kane, John Romita Sr.), and I was stunned at The Night Gwen Stacy Died. I remember the Spider-mobile, the death of the Green Goblin, the Jackal cloning Gwen and Peter, the first appearance of The Punisher. Oh man, that was all great.

The "back up" stories weren't holding back with their punches either. I read The Invaders, saw them dredge Captain America's bullet ridden cowl out of the river, and was completely freaked out by Gene Colan's amazing and spooky art for Doctor Strange.

Just thinking of them makes me want to reread them.

I do have a load of them still, but they're not in great condition (felt tip, remember). I have a weird memory of a strange centrespread poster of weird bird-like aliens invading, riding spacecraft-like bikes... It didn't have anything to do with any comic within the pages, but I remember being fascinated by that image and wondering if they were ever going to appear.

Many, many, many years later, the old nostalgia feeling brought me back to those Spider-Man comics, and when Marvel did the very economical Essential Collections, they started from the first issue reprinting Spider-Man in black and white, just how I remember it, in massive and fairly cheap books the size of phonebooks. The black and white really showed off the awesome art, and reading them again was brilliant and I felt like I was eight years old again.

It's a real shame Marvel stopped doing those Essential Collections. I bought all of the Amazing Spider-Man collections, and the Peter Parker: The Sensational Spider-Man, ones. I even bought the first Doctor Strange collection, and Howard the Duck, but they came to a halt as the reprints got up to the 80's and I guess they wanted you to get the more expensive colour collections.

Loved those comics. But, by 1977 something else came along and I was only allowed one comic per week... SciFi took priority, sorry Spidey...

That Time We Were in "Legends of the Dark Knight"...

Last post I talked about comics, and my feeble attempt to get my little shoddy comic published. I mentioned briefly that there was a tale to tell when it comes to D'Israeli's work on Batman. Well, are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...

So D'Israeli had done a lot of work with Ian Edginton in the past, and the pair teamed up again for a two part story in the epic Batman storyline "No Man's Land". Split over Legends of the Dark Knight 117, and Shadow of the Bat 85, it featured D'Israeli's awesome art as Bats battled the loons while Gotham was in ruins.

Anyway, in one of the issues (I think it's the end of Legends of the Dark Knight 117) there's a panel where the Penguin's ranting, and there are loads people around him, his goons, minions, general Gothamites. And D'Israeli needed inspiration for the crowd, and drew a load of people he knew in there. So, in the background of this scene, you'll find a particularly evil looking Debs, and me (back when I had hair).

Debs (in the front row of the crowd, next to the person who looks like Tyrion Lannister) and
Me (in the middle row at the back, with my old larger glasses and some hair!)

Which is particularly awesome! Immortalised in the world of Batman.

Unfortunately, when Christopher Nolan decided to add No Man's Land to Knightfall to make the third of his Bat-films "The Dark Knight Rises" we were not called in to be extras in the background. We certainly would have been happy to appear in it. Would have given me a chance to try to convince Nolan to do a second Inception movie.

--

Meanwhile, I've been a bit slack with the "Daily Sketches". I'll post a load soon to catch up. Honest! However, I've a load of proofing to do, so back to work for me!

Until next time, stay multi-classy!