Up Against The Wall XXVIII: Southern Softies

We've not had an Up Against The Wall, our highlighting of angry, frustrated and just plain rude graffiti for a while. Here's a slightly different one found on the Central Line in that there London instead. Kissy kissy.

Bad Habits.

So I'll start actually writing about the damned things soon. I've been reading. On the bus, in the garden, at home, in work. I've been carrying comics about. I've been humping books around. I've been toting my tablet. I was going to write about Smell of Steve, but I can't find a decent enough image online. And I'm nowhere near a scanner. So I've stolen this scan from the internet (relax, I do have this postcard at home and could have scanned it in if I'd been somewhere near a scanner). It's advertising Josh Simmons' Habit #1. I took the image form Josh Simmons' tumblr. I hope he doesn't mind.

Habit #1 is one of the comics I will be writing about. It's a new comic. I will mainly be writing about old comics. I'm hoping to be able to pick up on new stuff as a consequence of writing this stuff and doing the consequent digging. Yesterday, for example, I found out that Dark Horse published a Smell of Steve anthology entitled Planet of Beer. When I find it cheap enough I will buy it.

A partial list of comics I've read since June 26th, or plan to read in the next six months includes Habit #1 (see above), It Was The War of the Trenches, Plastic Man, Love and Rockets, Neat Stuff, The Terrible Tales of the Teenytinysaurs, Smell of Steve, Pogo, TV Century 21, Marshall Law, The Comics Journal, Playing Out, Building Stories, The Hive, The Horror! The Horror!, A Handful of Groats, Beer Nutz, Flesh and Bone, Valiant and a fistful of Oily releases.

Watch this space. I'll soon be open to suggestions.

Blah Blah Blah.

I'll be reading this sort of thing. Sorta.

So, over a year since the last post. Apologies. I was going to delete this blog. Then I was going to leave it, but start a new one about the thing that I'm going to go on to write about. But I took a sniff of Wordpress and decided I didn't want to be constantly mithered to update for cash. So, then I thought, well, why not go back to the old place and do some of the new stuff and some of the old stuff and push the other stuff you've been doing in the meanwhile. It's not like I've been living in a cave for the past year (and the year before that to be frank - 14 posts in a year does not qualify one for a Red Hot Lover badge).

So, I've just embarked on a plan to read nothing but comics and comics-related criticism for six months. Hard-reading, not taking my news from Ain't It Cool or listening only to the Ink-Studs podcast. I'll still be operating in The Real World, except that when I read for pleasure it will be words and pictures only. I feel a need to catch-up and mine backwards. It's an art form I've not exactly neglected - I still buy comics on occasion (usually in book form these days, unless they're small press) - but I do feel like I have lost the overview I used to have. In addition, I'm interested in revisiting and revising ways of looking at and writing about comics.

I've also just got a new phone. And a tablet (on which I've been reading lots of comics I couldn't otherwise afford, such as Jack Cole's Plastic Man comics). So, I'm feeling more techno-enabled. And I will be writing about other stuff than comics. You know, the usual stupid observations and self-righteous football postings.

I started the comics thing on June 26th. I'll finish it on Boxing Day, unless I'm having such a whale of a time that I decide to continue. Let's see... And watch this space.