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\nBy various, edited by Babak Ganjei<\/b> (Records Records Records books)
\nISBN: 978-0-9566330-5-7<\/p>\n
\nBy various, edited by Babak Ganjei<\/b> (Records Records Records books)
\nISBN: 978-0-9566330-5-7<\/p>\n
Some old fuddy-duddies like me still read prose as well as comics, and being a veteran consumer I can honestly say that what I miss most is the time when short stories – everything from epigrams to vignettes to novellas – were a thriving, vibrant pillar of storytelling.<\/p>\n
Modern book publishing doesn’t like short stories and most magazines (with the possible exception of DC Thomson’s The People’s Friend<\/b>) no longer regularly carry engaging snippets of fiction or indeed even value the creative discipline necessary to telling a tale succinctly.<\/p>\n
The same was true of comics for years but with the recent surge of independent and small press creators that market is changing. There are now a few regular anthology titles, offering a variety of experiences rather than the far more commercially sensible multi-part epics mainstream print-houses always push.<\/p>\n
Every book or comic is somebody’s first but how can you possibly build a solid readership with stories that can be twenty or forty or even more parts long? Life’s just too short.<\/p>\n
So let’s all shout \u00e2\u20ac\u0153well done\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for books such as Steak Night<\/b> which always offers an eclectic mix of strips, gags, art pages and brief prose pieces in an inviting hardback book format, produced with style, honesty, integrity and a broad range of views.<\/p>\n
This third volume contains a selection of works dedicated to the theme of Jobs<\/b>, and after a stirring pep-talk from the editorial team commences with a penetrating dose of reminiscing and self-flagellation in the text tantaliser ‘Keyser S\u00c3\u00b6ze’<\/i> by Victoria Manifold. Then multi-talented Tom Hall Colonial illustrates Henry Clark’s truly disturbing recollections of his early days as an undertaker and the charming on-the-job training he received at the hands of ‘The Butcher’<\/i> \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
A strange and stridently silent cartoon ‘Jobs’<\/i> short about a career in extreme pest-control (also by Hall?) leads into another painful memory as Babak Ganjei illustrates Tom Oldham’s graphic explanation for why he turned down the chance to be a ‘Bigshot’<\/i> in the sex trade, after which ‘A Guide to Achieving Your Career Goals’<\/i> by Amelia Phillips definitively describes her self-perceived failure in clawing her way to the middle of the publishing biz before becoming a happily desperate freelancer\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
Another ferocious fantasy comics page of sci-fi hi-tech ‘Jobs’<\/i> creation segues sweetly into an keenly observed if doggedly obscure ‘Office Romance’<\/i> by Florian Lunaire & Eleanor Summers, whilst Julia Scheele delightfully describes the dilemma all women face on ‘Sundays at the Comic Shop’ <\/i>(actually it’s more a 24\/7 thing) before Melissa Trender examines the role of women in a resolutely post-feminist society with the heartfelt and disturbing ‘Daughters’<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The industrious giant-bug bashing ‘Jobs’<\/i> interludes then end with mankind notionally still on top, whilst ‘Small Hours Dept’<\/i> by Peter Cline lovingly and lyrically examines the whimsical moments that quiet times can offer from an elevated position, after which Wallis Eates’ prose-&-picture fable ‘Where Are you Going?\/Ground Please’<\/i> appealingly compares childhood memories with the solitary insights of a hospital cleaner, before former Bloc Party<\/b> drummer Matt Tong winningly describes his succession of dead-end jobs in Bournemouth (trust me: don’t eat the pizza) in a prose paean to the failings of school careers guidance information entitled ‘The Worst Bad Egg’<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The portmanteau of pictorial pleasures concludes with Harriet Gibsone’s hilariously dark and edgy advice on handling the ‘Big Interview’<\/i> and a manic glimpse at what it’s all about in ‘Going to Work’<\/i> by Grace Wilson\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
Complete with a full contact-&-biography Contributors<\/i> section, this is another superb sampling of contemporary cartoon culture that no lover of the art of storytelling should miss.
\nAnd kids remember, it’s a vocation, not a career, yeah?<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a9 Records Records Records 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By various, edited by Babak Ganjei (Records Records Records books) ISBN: 978-0-9566330-5-7 Some old fuddy-duddies like me still read prose as well as comics, and being a veteran consumer I can honestly say that what I miss most is the time when short stories – everything from epigrams to vignettes to novellas – were a … <\/p>\n