Of the eight stories in this edition Barret manages manages to find tragedy in the comic and the comic in the tragic, only once lurching into full-blown melodrama. The opening piece, Smashment, is a fable about the fine balance between empowerment and loneliness when a young man famous for his superhuman strength finds himself an outcast when he takes a shine to a local lass. From there we get a whistlestop tour through cross cultural misunderstandings, psychic powers and what to do if you mistake a leprechaun for a…never mind.

The most intriguing of the stories, Ash Wednesday is a deceptively complex morality tale involving a burglar and a priest that hints at far darker undercurrents than a simple tale of material larceny. That Barrett can manage to balance text and subtext in only 12 panels is achievement enough to warrant each story get a second, or even a third, once-over to make sure nothing else has been missed.

Barrett has been known to experiment with levels of detail in his artwork in previous Matter collection but here he opts to keep it simple and let the stories take centre stage. This writer’s new personal favourite? The single image on the back cover of a woman all dressed up and going nowhere outside a wig shop. What comes across as filler on a first pass yields hidden depths through incidental details like the downturn of the lips, the anxious posture of a girl feeling the cold. In this sense it is classic Barrett: modest, unassuming and utterly compelling.

b/w, 16 pages, A5, W/A Philip Barrett www.blackshapes.com

Writing oneself into a work is a risky strategy for any creative. When it comes off well (Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation, Martin Amis in Money) it’s a puckish move that adds a layer of finesse to the plot and makes for a more engaging, even intimate, read. When overplayed (Charlie Kauffman in Adaptation, Martin Amis in Money) its a confidence trick to hoodwink the reader into thinking they’re reading something not at all as smart as they think it is. The line is a fine one indeed.

By laying out his stall almost from the first panel Kelly lets the reader know exactly what the rules are. This is his story, his thought experiment, and Jim is his proxy (or ‘sigil’). Where the story goes neither creator nor character have any clue. Thus the stage is set for a virtuoso piece of narrative noodling with the occasional powerchord of fate thrown in for good measure.

The action proper in For Sale #1 takes place at a gallery where an exhibition of groupie polaroids sees Jim meet Morrigan, a girl who knows the value of a casual encounter but also lets on she’s a part of Tommie’s grand plan – not that Jim bothers to notice.

For a first issue, Road Crew sets itself up in a position of strength, establishing a world where consistency may go out the door in favour of experimentation and a few forays into metafiction. Kelly’s art mixes it up nicely, giving Jim enough of a goofy look to remind to everyone who ever wore a black t-shirt and learned to mosh to anything other than emo what it’s like to be young(ish) and dumb. Morrigan is the kind of finely drawn character everyone wants a piece of: a perky girl next door with a dash of sluttiness.

If there can be a criticism of the book it’s the balance between the prologue and the story proper. A 50/50 prologue/action split doesn’t give the main narrative enough time for the main narrative to take hold. A punchier setup could have got the ground rules out of the way in record time to give Jim more of a chance to endear himself to the reader.

Pacing aside, there is enough in this first issue to carry the casual reader to the second to the next at least. Kelly’s tale of magick and loss has the potential to become an anthemic paen to the power of philosophy and rawk. Best read with a beer at your side and the entire Led Zeppelin back catalogue to hand. On vinyl.

$3.99; colour, 24 pages, US. W/A Tommie Kelly www.roadcrewcomic.com

Set in London, the story follows two characters, each struggling with their own sense of identity. Jessica, a determined, self-absorbed writer, is determined to get her novel finished, even if it means destroying her relationship. Meanwhile photographer John is suffering from a serious case of city sickness, made more acute by the absence of his impossibly gifted and beautiful girlfriend. By chance they share a moment in Stansted Airport going in opposite directions: he’s leaving London for New York for love; she’s waiting on ‘a friend’ coming in the opposite direction for the same reason. As it turns out they share more than frustration and both return home empty-handed and alone.

Confronted with the inevitability of a life of claustrophobia in London do Jessica and John, never to meet again, stick with their respective lives of quiet desperation or twist and move on to somewhere (anywhere) better. As fate would have it the decisions they make occur in much closer proximity than they know.

Asker’s story is deliberately paced, the organisation of panels on each page lending an almost procudeural rhytmn to the early exchanges between characters. The use of a double page spread with mirrored layouts for Jessica and John’s meeting, establishing both as pivotal characters without implying the dominance of either in the overall narrative is a particularly striking example. Later, repeating panels are employed to illustrate the characters’ shifting power relations (to explain any further is to head into spoiler territory) demonstrating Asker’s feel for the emotional without overplaying his hand.

London itself is depicted as a city reproduced not much by the artist as interpreted in the minds of his characters. Barring some establishing shots or the city at night, the Capital is more talked about than given enough page space to become imposing or inspiring. As for the characters themselves, Asker’s crisp designs are simple and clean enough to create enough empathy for the reader to appreciate, if not quite fall in love with.

Hardly the most sympathetic of protagonists, Jessica and John are deeply unhappy by their repsective situations and act as such. John is a shoegazer who can’t believe his luck when he gets a shot at the kind of beauty he has only viewed from behind his lens but feels emasculated by his inability to break out of his comfort zone. In contrast Jessica sees her other half as a convenient crutch, her work making her physically and emotionally unavailable. Neither would be much fun at parties.

Asker’s conclusion is a mixed bag that culminates in a beautiful full page splash that, while visually and emotionally perfect, creates just enough doubt to question the relatively clean ending. Still, Second Thoughts is a graceful study of love in a time of uncertainty, when economic lines are being redrawn and everything is coming under question. You can’t not read this in one sitting.

€tbc; b/w, 80 pages, US, W/A Niklas Asker, Top Shelf Comics www.topshelfcomix.com

To tackle the first point lets look at the form of the compilation. Each entry is composed of six uniform rectangular panels filling a single page. The first panel is always black with white text on which there is a title (some examples: Honour, In Dreams, Family), with the additional frames building to a punchline. The reasons for this structure is deliberately related to Brainfist’s intended form of distribution, the iPod. On this level Brainfist certainly holds up. Using little movement, identical formatting and generic pastel backgrounds, Merlin Goodbrey creates a space for each individual comic to breathe and for the reader to engage with the (limited) action.

On the basis of this sparse presentation one can see how easy it would be to take in each piece quickly and easily, enjoying a directness of expression that doesn’t build to a joke so much as a general observation or confession. It’s tightly written and the move away from quick yuks in favour of an epiphany-driven approach is refreshing in an age of novelty comics using similar shorthand.

Now for the hard part: does it work as a narrative as well as a structural experiment? In this respect the ‘action’ is broken down to seven characters: a femme fatale, a girl with no eyes, a cowboy, a religious zealot, a stoner, a demonness and a cat. Each of these archtypical actors come from different backgrounds of abuse, discrimination, violence and copious indulgence. In turn we get a musing in five panels recounting either a traumatic event or random musing based on their own condition or how they see others. These perspectives reveal a lot more about the dramatis personae than convention would have you expect.

Some of the characters, a rather lovely serial killer and Jesus freak respectively, give fairly typical accounts of lives riddled with anguish manifesting themselves in acts of torture and brutality delivered with disturbing clarity. Comic relief is provided by the stoner and the cat, the latter showing a particularly nasty rapacious streak. The cowboy comes across as a grizzled veteran of “the plain” though one wouldn’t be too surprised if his experiences stretched no further than the M1 than Dodge City.

The most interesting characters would have to be the demoness (a remarkably humane creation) and the eyeless girl, whose ruminations on her act as a reversal, throwing the focus not on her disability but how society reacts to it.

The uniting factor of these elements is a coolness flat affect. Each observation has the delicacy of a confession, bereft of passion and delivered with the kind of curiosity found in children dissecting frogs in biology class. Each comic demands the reader pause to make sense of each observation, agree/disagree then move on. It is this forced discourse with the reader that introduces the concept of philosophy as a comfort – or as is often the case here – a source of discontent.

Finally, the question has to be asked, does the whole reflect the sum of its parts? Making the move from a free online presence to a paid anthology has become something of a holy grail for creators, a final acid test of their talent. Brainfist just about carries it off thanks to a series of endings that provide some measure of closure, and relieving the prospect of subsequent collections.

Unapologetic, cryptic and conflicted, Brainfist is a challening, occasionally harrowing read – in any format.

€tbc; colour, 130 pages, UK, W/A Daniel Merlin Goodbrey www.e-merl.com

On the surface, How To Date A Girl… is a classically structured boy-meets-girl fauxmance. The first meeting of our protagonists Tom and Kate starts as a boozy night down the local before ending in a tube station with a cough, an awkward kiss and the promise of more to come. Before you start to settle in for a cosy night with cocoa and a happy ending be warned, this is an autobiographical work. These things rarely end in a neat little package.

Broken down in to three acts, Humberstone’s story is constructed around dialogues between friends as he counsel from his friends on how to win Kate over. From page one it’s plain that this is a comic for readers, where the words seem to leap off the page to the extent that you can hear the clink of pint glasses and buzz of crowd scenes as a small cast of well-wishers impart their, at best vaguely useful, advice. The downside to this approach is that some of the pages come off as overloaded, with the characters almost tearing speach bubbles apart to try and make eye contact with each other. Humberstone overcomes this largely by avoiding rigid panel structure for a more montage-driven approach that lets the conversation flow across the page. It’s a refreshing way to deal with scenes that so easily could have descended into uniform panels of talking heads against a neutral background.

Aside from his page construction, Humberstone’s crosshatched artwork is as imperfect as his characters: awkward, expressive and full of gentle humour. Using a scratchy, sketchbook immediacy for the majority of the book, it’s a shame that he abandons this for a more slick presentation in the final act.

Humberstone’s honest style stretches far beyond the style of his pen and ink work as well, and here begins the tough work of how to accurately assess this book. Dogged by self-doubt, the Tom we are presented with is a slacker-by-numbers and knows it. To liven up procedings we are given the Harvey Pekar treatment of occasional asides to the reader, something Humberstone himself is called out on by Kate at the first opportunity. If anything, Tom draws such attention to all of his failings (and his attempts to cover them up) that he takes ownership of them, injecting an almost Woody Allen vibe ­ the namechecking of Manhattan at the end a deliberate poke in that direction.

Having got this far, where How To Date A Girl…  ultimately falls down is in its denouement. Essentially we have 50 pages of banter with nothing to show for it at the end. Had Tom been struggling with writers block at the start, come out of a damaging relationship or toyed with leaving town then the reader could appreciate the necessity of telling the story, of marking an important point in his life at which things made a turn for the better or worse. In the absence of any wider context (and we are assured he has gone on to a more loved-up and fruitful existence) we have a story of romantic missteps with no real point beyond a nod to the redemptive power of art.

Playwright Neil Simon knew to bend the truth Biloxi Blues for the sake of a good story, but in flagging the bits he made up at the end he got away with constructing the ending he wanted rather than the one life gave him. How To Date A Girl… is real, charming and messy, but it just lacks a killer punchline. Sometimes there is a thing as too much honesty.

£tbc; b/w, 54 pages, A4. W/A Tom Humberstone www.ventedspleen.com

Your artwork has a kind of imprecise quality, like you’re scribbling down ideas in a notebook. Are you that guy scribbling away in Starbucks or is your process much more deliberate?

I guess it’s really important for me to retain a sense of spontaneity in my drawings. I’ve often found that if I tighten these up too much they become stiff and lifeless. However, I do plan everything out in advance, as far as storytelling and artwork is concerned. It goes through several stages from scribbled notes, concept sketches, thumbnail plans with all the dialogue written alongside, pencil drawings, and finally inked and lettered artwork. So it’s not like what you see in the printed comic is lifted directly from my notebooks. There are several stages of refinement.

Following on from that point on style, your characters often look like they’re held with string physically and emotionally.

When telling a story through comics, each panel only needs enough information to convey what’s happening in the narrative, it doesn’t need to be a finely rendered illustration in its own right. I often find that overly rendered artwork can be distracting. I keep my art loose and ‘conversational’ to service the story. In essence, you could say my drawings are a bit like my handwriting: easygoing, not fussy, maybe even a bit messy.

With any of my work done so far you could say that the stories are pretty subtle. It’s not like I fill them full of bombast and high drama. I’m trying to reflect situations and experiences that might happen in everyday life, and what is life but a series of events? There’s no ‘story’ as such, it’s our own interpretation of these events that creates the narrative. Comics in some ways can be quite like poetry: very quick to read initially, but the best stuff reveals layers of meaning only on repeated readings.

The second issue of Last Bus broke up the main story and brought in a lot more humour. Do you see your work continuing in this vein?

More humour? Absolutely, if it works.I love doing the shorter pieces. It gives you the chance to try out different voices and new or experimental approaches that, if successful, can be incorporated into the longer stories. In the first issue, all the shorter pieces were concentrated at the back of the comic and maybe it seemed like they were throwaway ideas or ‘filler’.  I love the early issues of Adrian Tomine’s Optic Nerve comic and Chester Brown’s Yummy Fur, where it’s full of short stories between 2 and 10 pages long. I always wanted to get that sort of feel in the second issue of Last Bus but the main story was way too long. Putting those short pieces slap bang in the middle was a way of breaking up the main story at a point where I felt like it needed a pause, maybe balancing the somber atmosphere of the main story and achieving that episodic format I wanted the comic to have.

As an independent creator you’re kind of forced to be your own salesman as well. Do you hate having to share the same floorspace with mainstream creators drawing men in tights?

No, not at all. Those superhero stories got me into comics when I was a kid. I’m extremely grateful to any shop that takes a chance on my work and put it on their shelves. Comics aren’t a genre-specific type of fiction, it’s a unique art form in itself – there’s room for all types of stories. Hopefully we’ll get to the point that when people think of comics they’ll think of the likes of Art Spiegleman, Robert Crumb or Chris Ware as quickly as they think of Batman, Spiderman or Wolverine.

What made you decide to start working on comics?

I studied Visual Communications in NCAD, which is really a graphics course with illustration. Over the last 10 years, I’ve worked in everything from production design for film to animation, illustration, storyboarding, murals, painting and set design. The comics really came from working on my own animated short films. I got frustrated with the time consuming nature of the medium; my last film was 10 minutes long and took three years to complete. I felt that it was pretty stale by the time I was finished. Working on comics was a way of telling more stories, much faster.

Your webcomic Flatmates is something of a departure for you in that it requires regular updates and a lot of humour. Were these conscious decisions you made at the outset?

Writing it online was a means to make sure that I continued with the comic. Once you have an online audience, if you’re late with an episode, they let you know about it! Also, I had only made animations from other people’s scripts in the past. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my own ideas, so I decided that the best way to overcome that was to publish them as a blog where anyone could comment on and critique them. [I think] all of my own writing had always been humorous; it’s just that I’d never put it out there before. Mainly because I was sure that I was the only person who would find it funny! Thankfully it seems to work with Flatmates – people get the jokes both here in Ireland and abroad.

Your Outsider exhibition took a mixed media approach to creating a narrative environment. Did you find this to be a tougher sell than if it were, say, a photo/video presentation?

With Outsider I was invited to interpret the space with a paper installation. I was very fortunate to be given such freedom by the gallery. When I began to research my ideas, the narrative element came in very naturally. My curator at the gallery loved the idea and was very supportive of it, particularly the fact that the show itself gathers more stories from the public as they walk among the paper cityscapes. To be honest, what I do probably doesn’t sit in the fine art world. I’m not quite sure where it does fit, I just tend to make it as I wish and let people interpret it as it appears to them.

Do you see yourself doing more work with such immersive spaces?

Absolutely, I really love creating spaces that people have to enter into and engage with. I have a couple of other ideas for much larger scale paper works. I just need to find the right places to install them first, then convince the building managers that it’d be a great idea!

Longstone Comics is both a label and an artist collective. Do you think that brings a certain dynamic to the stories you publish?

Longstone started out as a collection of stories, images and expressions. It wasn’t restricted to any particular genre as it was about what we wanted to do and what we could realistically produce. The first official volume came out for the 2008 Free Comic Day in Dublin, and was more an exercise in ‘can we do this’ and we found we could.

As we moved on, it became apparent that a more coherent and structured approach would benefit the comic. The second volume tried more structured individual pieces and short strips. The zombie cover by Deirdre de Barra was a massive leap forward as well. In the third volume we pushed it again, with Peter Loftus writing with all our styles in mind so we could each contribute six pages as part of a continuous story. That was a massive undertaking in so many ways, but we got through it. Volume 4, which is only out about a month, is the best example of what we can do when we put our minds to it. Looking back now I feel this is where we wanted to go with it all along, it just took a while to get there.

Longstone releases generally have a small print run. Do you think there is a subversive quality to keeping things to a deliberately small scale as opposed to, say, making everything free online?

In this case there is nothing subversive in it as it simply boils down to the cost of printing! It all comes out of our own pockets and so the smaller the print run the less it’ll cost us. The cost of the comic can then be kept to a price that is realistic. There is little room for profit – it’s just about making back the printing cost to fund the next project. Making comics free online can definitely work to your advantage, and for those able to commit to such an undertaking it is fantastic. Web comics are a great way to build up a fan base, people get used to your work and then you can make it available in paperback. People still want a comic in a printed format, so it’s all good.

Your own comic Superhilbo is a strange mix, written by an adult but looks and feels distinctly child-like.

Superhilbo came onto the scene in 2008 when I couldn’t sleep one night. I started doodling because this character just wouldn’t get out of my head! Next thing she had taken over and a number of stories started to form. Her whole vibe is based on fun with Roast Beef (her dog) and dealing with annoying situations and villains in time for sausages. The sole purpose of the Superhilbo stories is to simply have fun drawing and inject humour into the world. I love drawing her and more importantly I love watching peoples reactions when they read it.

Having seen some of your more mature sketchwork are you planning on moving away from Superhilbo to do something more contemporary?

I intend to work on both to be honest. Superhilbo is something that has yet to be fully developed and my mature sketch work is certainly something I want to push and grow into a body of work I can be proud of. In the past I was more involved with the production and editing side and contributed work that reflected my skills at that time.  Moving on from Longstone, however, is going to be fun pushing my standard with new projects. It’s a constant process.

The Point Village Comics Festival was a new opportunity to showcase local talent. Were you surprised by its reception?

I was completely overwhelmed by the positive response and the enthusiasm from all the exhibitors. I was really amazed at how many people really wanted this to exist and be a regular feature in the market. The creative talent at it was fantastic (see www.pointvillagecomicfestival.com for the list) and it worked really well having a broad range of artistic expression there. There is room for everything so we’ll see what can happen for next year.

So to kick things off, the inimitable Alan Moloney…

You’d be known for doing sketches more than narratives. Is there something about the short form you find particularly appealing?

The lack of planning! I can’t plan a long narrative for love nor money so short form gag’s are about all I can stretch to. Usually ideas come to me as jokes or situations that I find funny – short form suits this perfectly. Any attempts I’ve made at long form comics going longer than a page have been godawful abominations that I’ve been too ashamed to put anywhere near where someone might see them.

In what way is WSHD a departure from Looseville?

The only departure I can think of is how much easier it is for me to write. Looseville was an attempt at character driven humour – and in that regard I suppose it must not have worked seeing as how I don’t write it anymore. WSHD was my way of getting back into gag comics after I’d gotten terminally bored with Looseville early last year.The humour of WSHD and Looseville is very similar, I think. Especially in the dialogue. The only difference is, in Looseville sometimes I’d hit a brick wall when I’d try to think of something for the characters to “do” that would fit their personalities – in WSHD that wall doesn’t exist because it’s usually just some random character I’ve parachuted into a joke and that suits my writing style much better.

Have you found your writing style change to suit online comics?

The only difference is the swearing. In the Cork News there can’t be any swearing, like, at all, whereas other publications are laxer depending on the style of the magazine. There is a greater freedom when it’s online, of course, but my style doesn’t change for print. Usually the only thing that changes is the wording.

WSHD recycles a lot of stock/recycled/generic images. Where did you get the idea to work this way?

Yep, for a while I did use a lot of other images for WSHD and the main reason for this was laziness, I think. My day job (graphic design) can be very taxing on my drawing reserves and sometimes when it came to comic time at 11 pm I’d have a joke to tell but absolutely zero will to draw it. So I’d use some stock vectors, or copyright expired illustrations and mold my joke around them. I always felt a little bad afterwards but oddly enough I think some of these comics were the best I’ve done. Then a few weeks ago, I made a few characters of my own that I could move around and customize pretty easily so that the visual style would stay consistent. It also means that I can stitch a whole bunch of comics together really quickly which is great when I’m wiped out after a weeks work.

Do you prefer to see your work in print or online?

In print. Every time. I started off in print before I was ever online so it’s always had a special place for me. Nothing beats the sight of walking around Cork on Friday morning and seeing people in a bagel bar flicking to the letters page and showing their friend WSHD. That’s unbeatable for me and the internet will never top that. For me, the internet is a means to an end i.e. to get myself into papers and magazines. I have a very love/hate relationship with the internet. I love how interactive it is, and how, as a platform, it’s possible to reach so many people – especially with Twitter and Facebook. It’s also great for forming relationships with readers and other web comic artists.
On the other hand though, there’s so much bullshit that goes with it. There’s a lot of self deception when it comes to webcomics. I see some people throwing money away on advertising their comic thinking that the next €50 they spend on Project Wonderful or Google ads will be the last push they need to go “Penny Arcade” or Kate Beaton when it blatantly isn’t. I see people with 700 twitter followers thinking it’s a big deal and not realizing that 500 of these people are other webcomic artists that’ll retweet you, sure, but they aren’t reading your stuff and neither are any of their followers (who are also mostly webcomicers too).

I see people spending a fortune on printing up 1000 books and then selling 4. Madness. It shouldn’t annoy me, but it does. It enrages me sometimes.  I suppose, one of the main reasons I prefer seeing WSHD in print is the validation it gives me. Every time I see it in the Cork News or Totally Dublin or any other magazine it means that somebody (an editor!) thought it was good enough to put into their publication and that’s a rush that makes me want to do another.

So what did I find? Links to my podcast (work-related), profiles on Twitter and LinkedIn, a comment I left on a blog post ages ago, some fiction that was published too far back to even consider part of my current body of work, an article I did for Film Ireland and a Wikipedia entry. Between that lot, it could be said Web 2.0 applications were driving my profile, but the most powerful endorsements were from other people referencing or re-posting my work (without permission I hasten to add).

I’m actually pretty happy with this state of affairs. I’m at the stage of my career where I shouldn’t need a blog to manage my visibility, and I’m much happier tracking the global conversation than influencing it. Interpretation and reportage are the functions of a journalist, that requires a certain distance from the stories to avoid (or just limit) bias. This is easily done for me when writing on technology and film as the locus of action is usually thousands of miles away. Things become more complicated when writing about local stories as I know the people involved are good, decent folk working hard to produce something they believe in – and occasionally failing badly. Some stuff I like, some I don’t but my analyses are fair, backed up by facts and never personalised. Play the ball, not the man. Not an easy thing to do with ‘precious’ characters but that’s more their problem then mine. That’s how I work and I have a byline that proves it. You can be sure Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Charlie Kaufman and Will Oldham don’t have to worry about their Google rankings. Their work pushes demand, not linking tactics.

The point is if you’re looking to be seen let your work, not your website’s architecture do the job for you. Concentrate on what you want to promote, not the back end of your pimped out WordPress-powered blog.

As a final observation, at the first Dublin Web Summit WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg fielded a question from an audience member about new standards and how they will affect the platform. Mullenweg answered the question in a calm, easy manner that didn’t go over anyone’s heads. In reply his interrogator listed off all the standards his blog complied with and how good his SEO was. Mullenweg basically said ‘good for you’ and moved on. I noticed he didn’t ask what the guy actually wrote about. It’s like a tree falling in the woods, if no onecares what you write about does your ranking even matter? So just shut up and work on what you’re supposed to. And don’t waste your time or money on SEO courses that will be obsolete in a few months when Semantic Web starts rolling out.

Just be good at what you do. Best SEO ever.