Superman – Darryl Cunningham

If there is anyone reading this that was following British small press/self-published comics in the late 1980s and early 1990s then they will not need reminding that one of the leading lights in the movement was Darryl Cunningham. In the intervening 30+ years Darryl Cunningham has continued to plough his own idiosyncratic furrow by publishing books which have attracted critical attention from outside the normal comics-centric press because they have tackled subjects such as mental health, billionaires, the global economy, science, and Vladimir Putin. DC’s latest book which is released in the UK today is Elon Musk – American Oligarch. It is a book that has an endorsement from Alan Moore on the cover: “An exceptional piece of work, right when we need it”. The book came out last year in a French-language edition on the continent, but the delay in the publication of an English-language version is due, Darryl Cunningham says, to publishers’ wariness that the notoriously litigation-happy Elon Musk would find something libellous in the book although DC has assured everyone that all the facts in the book have already appeared in disparate sources without any trouble. You can say what you like about Elon Musk … but if it is in the public domain and has any whiff of slander about it then do not be surprised if Musk’s legal stormtroopers come calling.

The above is a drawing I won in the charity auction that took place at UKCAC ’91. It is a drawing of the Man of Steel that featured in that year’s convention booklet. The auction was in aid of The London Cartoon Centre, an institution that sadly seems to no longer exist. Sadly because it was at the time the only full-time school dedicated solely to comic art instruction. This is the third Superman drawing I have posted this year after not uploading any previously. They do say that things come in threes.

My thanks, once again, to the two organisers of UKCAC ’91, Hassan Yusuf and Frank Plowright, and especial thanks to Darryl Cunningham for his generous artistic donation to the UKCAC programme. He has been an inspiration to anyone who, no matter how tangentially, was or is involved in the UK small press/self-publishing scene. I hope that his new book turns out to be a roaring success.