Really Free.

rachaelball, originally uploaded by mithering.

Sometimes things just fall into place. Spent some time on Twitter recently wondering what had happened to Rachael Ball, the fantastic and talented comic book artist who I was lucky to work with for a very short while at City Life. Then, on Sunday, having been instructed that 'those shelves will have to go' I was going through some old boxes of stuff and came across various issues of Hungry and Homeless, a free magazine I used to produce with Mr. Richard Hector-Jones and Mr. Jay Taylor. On top was the one which had a cover drawn by Rachael Ball.



Hungry and Homeless started out as an A4 sheet, folded down to A7 in order to create a pleasing little beast which we used to leave in the bars, shops and public conveniences of Manchester. To quote one issue, "Reviews hardly ever exceed 20 words, features end around fifty, and interviews are usually one question." Those were the rules. We accidentally invented Twitter. In the end we produced about 16 issues, the later ones, including the Rachael Ball one above, were A3 folded down to A6, with covers drawn by a number of comic book 'superstars', including D'Israeli, Evan Dorkin, Sue Platt, Phillip Bond and (to his great confusion) Art Spiegelman. Random interviewees included Arthur Lee of Love, DJ Superstar Justin Robertson, Her out of Bikini Kill, Al Jourgensen of Ministry and Ornette Coleman.



In the spirit of giving, I rescued a small number of spare copies from the bin and will send them to those of you who want them, and who promise me they will not be offended, insulted or otherwise outraged by the offensive juvenalia contained therein. e-mail details to rapwithlester -AT- googlemail -DOT- com (reconstruct the address using Airfix Glue).