Daredevil convention drawing 1992 – David Mazzucchelli

[continued from the previous post]

I did manage to find someone to publish the interview, probably via a contact given to me by either Jenni or Luke. In the nine months or so that it took me to transcribe the discussion I had from a low base managed to pick up enough know-how to submit the interview in a form that was desktop-published camera-ready with the two drawings I am posting, panels from DM’s other work including from Rubber Blanket 3, and the accompanying photograph. No payment was made and I was just happy for the interview to be seen, and in a publication with an alternative comics ethos to boot. I thought the interview was printed in an obscure black and white UK zine called BattleGround but the two digitised issues of BattleGround on the internet don’t seem to feature the interview and were it not for my distinctly remembering they stripped out all the artwork and illustrations I provided and ran it as just straight text then I would think my memory was playing tricks on me. My one comp copy is lost amidst the detritus of 30+ years. Why did they discard all the formatting and have someone laboriously type up all the text again (OCR software was not readily available in 1992)? Space limitations, fear of copyright infringement? Who knows?

If you are interested in reading the interview I will be totally frank and say that the effort you might expend in tracking it down would only increase the exasperation you might feel in reading it if you could find a copy, and this is not through any fault of DM. As the interview was my first and a straight transcript, and not an article which feature quotes, then my rather rudimentary interview technique is laid bare: bombarding the interview subject with a series of questions. “Questioning is not the mode of conversation amongst gentlemen,” as Dr Johnson said. I would instead point you towards the interview DM made with The Comics Journal in issue 194 in which the interviewer was much more intelligent and informed than I was and the conversation flows organically.

Incidentally, and for its relevance to the readers of CAF, I did not want to taint my high-minded dialogue with DM about comic art and the wider cultural value of the artform by broaching the base subject of commerce and asking whether he was selling any of his original art. In other words, it never crossed my mind for a second to query him about this. Sigh.

My great thanks once again to DM for the two beautiful drawings, the first of which “christened” the drawing book which was to accompany me for the remaining UKCACs I attended. Also I should thank him for his extreme patience during the interview. I am sorry to be testing his patience again by making him wait [almost 30 years!]for a hardcopy of the interview I made with him but just as soon as I track down my one copy (which I don’t remember reading and which I will not read when I find it) I will send it on together with all the photographs I took which are relevant to him.

These two drawings were executed on the 19th and 20th September, 1992 (as they used to say at the end of the intro to The Comics Journal interviews; well, sort of).

For a long time I have found September slightly depressing, and even though I would never have called myself a Royalist/Monarchist there was extra reason to feel sad this year, together with the fact that I lost an uncle and an aunt, both to cancer, this month. Prior to this year the main reason for September being such a downer for me is that UKCAC took place in September or the start of October, except for the last three instances (yes, Wikipedia is wrong about 1996). I have been to a handful of other comic conventions since UKCAC ended in 1998 but they are just not the same. “Has the world changed or have I changed?” Probably a bit of both is the accurate answer. This upload makes it three from three where I acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Frank and Hassan, the two main organisers of UKCAC, without whom this posting would not exist. I never spoke to Frank who always seemed to be busy, busy, busy; and I exchanged words with Hassan only once when as we were all leaving at the end of the convention one year and I saw him taking down the posters I told him what a great time I had had and that I was already looking forward to the following year’s event, which was a comment he accepted graciously. I hope that one day I will see them again in person and thank them properly for all the happy memories I associate with UKCAC. It is sorely missed.