007: MORE SONGS ABOUT BOOKS, WORDS AND SOUP

LIFE IN THE POST-PETROCENE ERA

Good morning from Yeovil, South Somerset, where someone recently torched one of the Bus Station rubbish bins - possibly in retaliation to the council closing the toilets as a prelude to bankruptcy - or more likely it was an accident and that KFC Hot Wings Bucket really was hot! Either way, I can’t help thinking they not only inadvertently created an art installation, but an entirely new visual horror aesthetic that I’m gonna to name-n-claim as Post-Petrocene. The end of the Age of Fossil Fuels and Plastics - though I’m pretty sure that burning them in the name of art ain’t great for the environment. J G Ballard, eat yr suburban semi-detached heart out.

Annnd, onto happier, less charred, non-plastic things. Last time round, I was singing the praises of Tiverton, Devon, in a nasal-sounding tenor. Not to turn into the Tiverton Tourist Board, but I wanna make a Slight Return to The Town Formerly Known as Twyverton (“The Town on two Fords”), mostly to bring yr notice to this:

And a VERY fine establishment it is too. Boxes and shelves full of books n all sorts of interesting junk spread across three or four separate rooms. Great for a browse-dig-mooch. The owner is a very pleasant geezer who sits behind a circular barricade of books with Radio 3 blasting out string quartets. Had a good rummage and came away with these:

All super-cheap after a chat with the proprietor. The Hank Jansens were, er, considerably cheaper than the Jansens to be found in the vintage book-store in Yeovil and in better nick. I was in the mood for some 90s / 00s Pulp that day - something I know very little about - so I snagged the Anvil book (a writer I know zilch about tbh) as it had a nicely cheesy 90s computer-rendered cover and a Jack Williamson Legion of Space vibe to it. I also liked the look of the Preston-Child book, so snagged it on a whim, not noticing that they were the authors of The Relic - so not really Pulp - though I read it last week and for a mainstream-ish book it had some really nice n strange Pulp-y touches to it as well as being decently written. I’ll definitely check out more of their stuff.

Last time we visited Tiverton there was a small but very interesting book stall in the Pannier Market where I snagged some cool swag, but it was closed this time round. There was also a small comic book shop I’d heard about that I was very interested in checking out, but that seemed if it had shut down for good. There was junk mail strewn across the floor, though some of the stock was still visible in long boxes and slabbed comics were still displayed on one wall. It was a sad sight to see. I visited the D&D / games shop a couple doors up, but the owner wasn’t exactly what you might call welcoming, so I took the hint and hoofed it.

One shop that’s definitely VERY friendly and welcoming is ECLECTIC, to be found in Green Lanes, Barnstaple, Devon, and is run by my pal, Mark. They moved not long ago from one end of Green Lanes to the other. The shop’s clean, well-lit and uncluttered - you can easily see and get to everything. Mark mostly specialises in signed memorabilia and has been a great supporter of my work in recent years, selling signed copies of my books and creator-owned comics. I’m extremely appreciative of his support. He’s a great bloke - lovely to chat to and often found at UK cons. You can score art, comics and merch signed by a wide range of comic-book pros in the shop, but Mark tells me that, unlike a lot of retailers who have moved away from selling comics toward higher margin merch, he’s going in the opposite direction. Mark’s ramped up the amount of back-issue comics he has for sale and has found that side of the business is doing really well, which I’m delighted to hear. If you’re up in North Devon, you should definitely check out ECLECTIC. Tell Mark I sent ya!

And speakin’ of shopping global-local. If you’re ever in Sherborne, just over the Dorset border from Yeovil, you should pay a visit to THE BEAT AND TRACK, the record shop run by my pal, Paul. It really is excellent - chock-full of vinyl, both new and pre-loved, and a bunch of other stuff - with a very chill, friendly social vibe thanks to Paul’s amiable stewardship. It’s a great way to while away some time crate-digging there. I’ve scored some terrific buys at The B n T. Paul also has an album of his own super-chilled electronic music that he’s gearing up to release - more on that when it appears.

And zipping back over the state line to Yeovil where the best cup of coffee in town is to be found at VeGaNuTi, a Ukrainian Vegan cafe at the bottom end of the Quedam. It’s rocket fuel! This week, they’ve been serving up okroshka, which is a ‘cold soup’ - a summer soup - though their version contains tofu, not beef as per the traditional recipe. It’s delicious - and oddly refreshing at the same time - especially during this recent spell of hot weather.

Also: they have a playlist of really great Gelya Zozulya songs. I’ve been waking up at 4am with the chorus of “КОЛЯГАЛЯ” going through my head. That video is some Next Level Adge Cutler shit, I’m tellin’ ya!

So, hey, listen. We’re living through tough times, so try’n do the things that make you happy. If you can’t make a living from them, then try’n build a life round them instead.

Hold onto hope. Hang onto yr dreams.

Yer pal, Kek

I’m Kek-w. I write comics, books and a bunch of other stuff. I also love making music and art. If you dig the HUMANE DEBRIS newsletterzine - and I hope you do - then please tell your pals about it or point ‘em at the Subscribe Page pronto.

But if this ain’t yr bag, then don’t worry - just hit the Unsubscribe button lurking in the murky Stygian depths at the bottom of the zine. Thanks for checking out HUMANE DEBRIS.

SLATE UPDATE

A handful of my creator co-owned strips dropped recently, some of which were written quite a while ago. What’s that they say about buses and policemen? First up is BUNNI & BLOB by myself, Jack Parsons and Lukasz Kowalczuk, which you can find in WHAPP!, published by Sector 13 Comics. It features the misadventures of a Rabbit Cyber-Mecha-Samurai and a potty-mouthed sentient biomorphic blob of Programmable Matter - the most Unlikely Buddy movie ever! - a funny, fun-packed Cyberpunk meets Manga mash-up. I wrote Bunni & Blob last summer, and I hope you love these characters as much as I do. Jack is already hard at work illustrating a second, 6-page story. You can snag a copy of WHAPP! here.

Meanwhile, in SPLANK! - WHAPP!’s sister publication, whose sales proceeds are going to NHS charities - you can find the All-New, All-Gloomy Adventures of G’LUM THE SPACE GOTH - the universe’s most moribund, black nail polish-adorned alien - G’lum travels the spaceways in a castle turret shaped UFO and a Bauhaus tee with a Sisters of Mercy playlist on shuffle. The Silver Surfer if he was into The Cure. This comes to you via myself and artist, Cat Byrne. You can get a copy here too. Sound THE GLOOM HORN!

Also from Sector 13 Comics, comes the Anno Domini 1900 comic featuring THE EDWARD MONARCH POLICE MYSTERIES by myself, Mauro Longhini and Annie Parkhouse. I wrote this a couple years ago while recovering from Long Covid and I think it turned out beautifully. If an Edwardiana SteamOccultPunk Police Procedural is your bag, then you’re in for a treat! Like the other strips, a second MONARCH tale is being tinkered with, though I’m not sure where it might get published - I’m considering my options atm - and also thinking about who might replace Mauro on the strip if he doesn’t end up being the regular artist. It’s a concept I love - I’ve a mountain of ideas about expanding the supporting cast and Monarch’s world into a grander multi-episode mini-epic. But, like most of these things, it’s finding the time while juggling other work…

Ssspeaking of other work, I’ve recently returned to writing DARK JUDGES: FALL OF DEADWORLD, the grim, fear-drenched Dark Horror series for Rebellion / 2000AD featuring Judge Death by myself and artist Dave Kendall. Gosh, it looks like you can even buy this via Waterstones Who knew! And Simon & Schuster. There are three collected volumes so far - they’re available via Amazon and Kindle too - and hopefully from your local comic or book shop. Forbidden Planet only seem to have Volume 3 available atm.

I’ve just had the script of a special one-off episode signed-off. No spoilers, but let’s just say it’s a sort of, um, prequel to this scene from Cursed, the second series.

Here we see a young Judge Fairfax, one of the series’ main protagonists, laying face down after a beating from fellow cadet-Judges. Part of Fall of Deadworld’s story trajectory follows his Anti-Hero Journey and his relationship with Jess Childs, a young avatar of hope, Fairfax’s antithesis, his foil and possible saviour. When we first met Fairfax as an adult in Series #1, he was an asshole, a corrupt cynical Judge who superficially seemed to be a symbol of toxic masculinity. But broken men don’t emerge fully formed; the world / circumstance / fate conspire to make them that way. Broken societies create broken people. But some find a way to rise up out of the mire and fix themselves. Not everyone has that chance or is able to. Will Fairfax find his own way toward the light? His struggles with both himself and the outside world seem to suggest otherwise. He might have given up on himself, but Jess hasn’t given up on him. Keep reading…

This one-off tale is a direct follow-on from the last Deadworld series and a direct lead-in to a new one which, touch wood, I’ll be starting on soon. I hand-copied this (very rough) Deadworld road-map from one of my note books, ‘cos, quite frankly, the original was completely illegible to anyone but me! And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Of course, a map isn’t a journey. Any of this is likely to change / not happen for a zillion reasons, many of which are beyond my control, But I do have a route through the greater over-reaching story arc and I do (more or less) know where I’m going, though there will undoubtedly be detours and side-quests along the way. But the end is in sight - somewhere behind that mountain of bones or that tower made from human teeth. Whether we get there or not is another question. It’s contingent on a number of things. First, that YOU, THE READER continue reading / devouring / asking for new episodes, and that the publishers continue to publish it. It’s been a strange few years writing / working on this series, mostly in isolation but occasionally talking stuff out with Dave, so it was only when I started meeting people at signings and cons a few years back that I discovered - and was delighted to find - that Deadworld had an enthusiastic reader base. Which was an incredible thing to me. So, thank you all for your support - I really don’t have the words, except to say that yr a freakish, bloodthirsty and dark-cowled lot and I love you all dearly. A thousand hails!

May Deadworld’s strange, dark and twisted journey continue…

MERCH ALERT

I’ve recently released an eBook version of my historical horror conspiracy thriller novella, THE RECONSTRUCTED MAN. It’s available here from the KOBO store. It’s also available to read via a Kobo Plus subscription, along with a zillion other titles. If you like the grim horror of my work on Fall of Deadworld and / or the historical fantasy elements of The Order, then THE RECONSTRUCTED MAN could be right up your dark, cobbled, piss-puddled street!

If, like me, you prefer physical books, you can score a paper copy directly off me from my Bandcamp.

KID SHIRT’S CRATE DIGS

Back in May, I went to see the queer avant garde puppet collective, Bean Pig, at the Cube Cinema, Bristol. A performance with an improvised soundtrack provided by Owen and Charlie from the Liquid Library label, who I spoke with back in issue-episode 001 of HUMANE DEBRIS. It was as beautifully garish and life -affirming as I hoped it would be. At points - particularly in the second part of the performance - the performers, their costumes, and the smaller and larger puppets all seemed to flow together, combining / recombining in different (potentially endless) permutations to create increasingly fabulous composite organisms. And that, I suspect, is the underlying ethos / mission statement of both Bean Pig and the performance: “We are all One.”

It was funny, touching and inspiring. The barriers between people and puppets - the biological and the inorganic - broke down. The inanimate became mobile. Individuals became part of larger people-puppet ‘object-masses’: everything was non-hierarchical: the Smaller flowed in and out of aggregates, combined with the Larger on an equal basis rather than being subsumed by them. It was an anarcho-surrealist morality play, lo-fi shamanism.

I had a brief email flurry with Gary, Bean Pig’s ‘manager’ who told me:

"We are a collective of queer puppeteers and performers, who believe in the life of all things. Everything has the potential to change: people, bodies, and society. Part of our understanding of transformation comes from our own experiences as queer and trans people. By demonstrating the power of objects we like to empower the audience to dream beyond what they thought was possible, and to break the boundaries of real/not real and broaden the imagination. We like to use expanding the imagination as a revolutionary tool, to practice dreaming of other worlds, and realise that they are possible. These ideas are conveyed in abstract and surreal puppet shows, we like to see our performances as more of a ritual of facilitating the lives of our puppets, and ultimately they chose how the story ends."

Gary, I should add, is one of the puppets. Gary is a cult figure: it was exhilarating and enchanting to hear the audience chant their name at points in the show. Here are a few photographs (apologies for my poor photography).

You can get a copy of the collective’s BEAN ZINE from them directly or at one of their performances. It’s wonderful. PUPPETS MAGIC FUN is such a beautiful mantra statement.

Eleni Poulou and Hilary Jeffery aka Organza Ray have a couple new tracks / releases available on their Bandcamp. “Hold off Jotter” is one of them: liltingly meditative and poetic, it shifts too and fro, hypnotically, like the deck of a gently swaying boat, with Minimalist electronics that sound like a harmonium and remind me in some way of Eno’s 1975 album Discrete Music. It takes its time to gently unfold and is all the better for that. Healing music, innit.

“If you live in a small town
You might count things in a cupboard
Or
Lines on your hand
In your hand
Around your hand”

Meanwhile, my pal, Robert Ridley-Shackleton (who we didst spake widst in issue-episode #2 of HUMANE DEBRIS), has issue #3 of his Card Mango Zine-CDr out now - a full colour Boxing Barnies special edition! - via Dylan Nyoukis’ Chocolate Monk label. Oh, yus.

Finally, I’ll just leave you with this:

CHILL WITH KIKI (AND PATTI)

This time round, Kiki is joined by her bestie pooch pal, Patti.

Karl Marx was only partially right: not only must we seize the Means of Production, we must also seize the Means of Slack! In these stressy, messy times we live in that are full of breathless side-hustles and running just to stand still, try’n emulate these two when you can. They’ve got the right idea. ‘Til next time…

Catch some slack. Skive off. Touch grass. Soak up some solar vitamin D.