Three more creators tell us why they love the form.
Jim Alexander
As I sit down with a cup of peppermint tea, a ginger slice, and a brand spanking new comic in front of me waiting to be read, it's like I'm standing at a door. The merest touch of my fingers on the door handle; a prelude - a tiny flirtation - the anticipation of the journey to come.
A comic is like a movie where you are an active participant. You read it at your own pace. You immerse yourself. A comic is like a novel, but where the images, locations, the interaction between two characters, come to you instantaneously and simultaneously alongside the unfolding of the story. You're in it, you're there.
To the outsider I suppose my love with the comic book is a strange thing indeed. I've no internal objection to breaking the spine of a novel or leaving a smudge on a DVD. However, when I turn the pages of a comic book, I do so with a surgeon's caress. I've never drank peppermint tea so carefully, never eaten a ginger slice so diligently, I turn the pages as surely as a ghost would.
At the end I want the comic to be read without leaving any signs that it has been done so. It's a journey with no visible footsteps left behind. It is a secret lover's kiss, furtive and glancing, and ignored by a disinterested world.
Immersion. That word again. A great comic book will suck me in and entrance and engage me like no other medium. And now I'm standing again in front of another door.
Jim Alexander is the writer and co-creator of Planet Jimbot, which publishes books including Amongst the Stars, Wolf Country and Amazing & Fantastic Tales. The Planet Jimbot shop is available online at: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/PlanetJimbot
Lovern Kindzierski
"Why? Because! Because I always have. My oldest memory is of trying to draw a comic book out on our clothesline stand. Comic books incorporate all of the arts I love. This art-form allows me to bring my experience and knowledge of literature, film, design, sculpture, painting, martial arts and drawing into the creative arena and play with them. I can get as involved with the complexity of the world or focus on the simplest of thoughts. I can compress the Odyssey into a short story or expand the few seconds of a coffee spill into a full issue. Unlike all of the earlier mentioned arts, comic books are not limited by the size of my studio or my wallet.
These are just some of the reasons I love comics. I don't have enough room here to go on about the talented artists and writers working in the medium that always amaze and impress me and keep me wanting to read more and make more of these little picture books."
Lovern Kindzierski is the author of the Shame trilogy, a collaboration with the legendary artist John Bolton, published by Renegade Arts. Based in Winnipeg, Lovern has written for Spider-Man and Wolverine and has been nominated for both the Eisner and Harvey Awards.
Eddie Campbell
I just like little inky characters who become like real people in your life. And when you remember them you can't remember if they're real or inky characters. What they've done seems so real that in your memory they've acquired the stature of real people. To me Chris Ware's Rusty Brown is a real person. Krazy Kat really walked the Earth in my vaguely confused version of reality.
Born in Glasgow, Eddie Campbell is one of the pioneers of the autobiographical comic with his Alec strips, drew Alan Moore's From Hell and has created a huge sprawling take on the Greek myths which has now been gathered together in Bacchus by Top Shelf.
Look out for an interview with Eddie on Herald Scotland in July.
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