By J. Webster Sharp (Avery Hill Publishing)
ISBN: 978-1-910395-84-4 (TPB)
This book includes Discriminatory Content cited from historical sources and included for dramatic effect. If any incidence of such slurs, epithets, terms, behaviours or treatments might offend you, you really should not be reading this book or – arguably – maybe you need it more than most.
I don’t generally give full-on serious warnings about books, usually depending on my standard jolly and avuncular old git “watch yourself” waffle to dissuade those just looking for a hobbyhorse to dog whistle at. Here, however, is an incredibly bold but potentially deeply upsetting work of graphic literature both fiendishly fascinating and disturbingly distressing which truly needs the reader to pay attention whilst proceeding with caution…
George Cecil Ives (1st October 1867 – 4th June 1950) was an English poet, writer, pioneering penologist/criminologist, cricketer and homosexual law reform campaigner. Born in Frankfurt and living most of his life in in High Society… and Lewisham… he was also a dedicated amateur archivist. Between to 1892 – when he began college – and 1949, Ives compulsively clipped-&-saved newspaper articles that eventually filled 45 big scrapbooks. his archive material exclusively focused on “unusual and interesting” items such as murders, punishments, physical freaks, plots, melodramas, theories of crime & punishment, transvestism, homosexuality and the psychology of gender.
And cricket scores.
Ives was a lifelong covert warrior in the battle to decriminalise homosexuality and normalise sexual variance (differences?). In 1897 he founded The Order of Chaeronea (a secret society of gay people culled from upper echelons of the ruling classes) and in 1914 cofounded The British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology. He was deeply invested in the study of punishment and prisons and visited many whilst compiling his vast catalogue of human oddity, eccentricity and depravity.
According to some sources the minor writer and prominent society figure was also the model for E. W. Hornung’s gentleman thief A.J. Raffles…
Here his library of vintage articles has been cherry-picked and applied to spur the incredible imagination of celebrated cartoonist J. Webster-Sharp (Fondant/Human Furnishings, Pretty Flavours, Sea Widow, Jade and her Schizophrenia), inspiring a chilling panoply of shock: a beautifully rendered catalogue of Body Horror icons, strangely compelling horrific moments of abstracted and mutated organs, mutilations, fetishism, bizarre puzzles and upsetting revelations absolutely not for the squeamish.
Webster’s book is divided into straightforward sequences of interpretative illustrations and strips generated by her responses to reading The George Ives collection. The former portraitist turned confirmed comics creator in May 2021, and uses graphic narrative as a means of therapeutic self-help. This tome offers a second section of images and tableaux revisiting the archive material in a more direct and free-wheeling manner. The resulting barrage of unsettling experiences expand upon and imply how visualising those vintage snippets impacted her own mental state and health: a brave and honest examination of psyche and self not all of us would ever consider sharing with an unknown, anonymous and potentially hostile audience…
These untitled psychosexual images and psychedelically surreal variations more deeply explore and potently depict human/animal bodies of varying ages, mythological monsters and more modernsmilestones of terror like clowns, operating theatres and autopsies and are followed by a return to basics as the comics counselling session concludes with a gallery of original prose newspaper articles and clippings, all re-rendered with chilling calligraphic expertise. They include such elucidating extra detail as ‘Youth fascinated by handkerchiefs – Detective and “This Mormon Business”’, ‘A Portsmouth scare – Mother frightened by stories of man who slashes at children’s boots’ and ‘Death Chair for “Nice Old Man” – His country home a charnel house. 100 children killed in 20 years.’…
Confronting taboos with surgical skill, an anatomist’s understanding and a detective’s passion, the auteur has crafted here an emotional experience both enticingly lovely and yet intrinsically profane, but one I fervently wish every reader could look at with open, unprejudiced eyes. The plan here is to inform not deter but of course, the choice is yours…
© J. Webster-Sharp. 2024. All rights reserved.
The Scrapbook of Life and Death is scheduled for release on September 3rd 2024 and is available for pre-order now.
If you’re London based/adjacent – or just a fan with time on your hands – there’s a launch party for an exclusive The Scrapbook of Life and Death bookplate edition on September 5th June at Gosh! Comics, 1 Berwick, London, W1F 0DR from 7-9 pm.