Tripwire Reviews The Jigsaw Review Journal Of Underground And Alternative Comics Issue 1

Putting The Pieces Together

Tripwire’s contributing writer Tim Hayes reviews The Jigsaw Review Journal Of Underground And Alternative Comics Issue 1…

The Jigsaw Review Journal Of Underground And Alternative Comics Issue 1
Writers: various
Artists: various
Gweni Press

Small press and zine creators in the UK enjoyed a boom in the 1980s and were then capsized by the contraction of the comics business in the 1990s, so lately the place to see examples of what they got up to has been back-issue boxes and eBay. But now Mal Earl, one of those creators, has put together The Jigsaw Review to reprint selected UK alternative and underground small press strips from the period alongside a few more recent pieces of work by the same folks, intended as the first album in a series. The hefty 220-page Issue 1 features nine black and white strips, between them connecting back to anthologies such as Escape and Slices, and presenting work by John Bagnall, Ed Pinsent, Denny Derbyshire and several others to a new audience, or to a nostalgia-minded older one.

Curating is an art in itself, and in this case Earl has said he mainly chose creators who are still active in the comics field; a good way to make The Jigsaw Review feel less like an archaeological dig and more like a window onto a sector that still has things to say. But the net has been cast wide, with these nine strips covering ground from serious stories to comic fables, the personal to the cosmic, exaggerated caricature to expressionist flamboyance.

Among the contents is 1988’s “Sadness in Space” by Bob Lynch, taking Lynch’s blissful Everyman character Sav Sadness through a world of autonomous domestic equipment and space vehicles and unemployment. If the scenario and title didn’t spur thoughts of Gary Panter’s Jimbo strips then the look of the main character certainly might, and the story also borrows a move from one classic 1952 EC Comics fantasy story, so Lynch’s affection for comics covers a lot of ground. Mal Earl’s own “Solus” from 1994 is an ecological drama about one of the few remaining men on Earth protecting one of the last whales, a downbeat sci-fi fable drawn in bold heavyweight panels with their own oceans of black ink.

A selection from strips from John Bagnall’s Knitting With Coalsmoke anthology catches British generational whimsy growing from soil adjacent to The Fast Show, in thick ink lines with the solidity of woodcuts. Ed Pinsent and Denny Darbyshire’s collaborations from The Staring Eye barrel through a cascade of styles in surreal vignettes following no one’s rules but theirs, an authentic underground vibe. And Chris Webster’s “Gardenhouse” from 1989 follows an artist drowning in self-doubt and maybe not of sound mind, drawn in swirling scratchy ink lines that make the human body seem to be flexing or melting into something else.

“Gardenhouse” shows how impactful the deliberately uncomfortable can be in comics art, and it’s like nothing else in the book. But the same goes for the other strips, which is the point. With social media upending publishing all over again and leaving creators scrabbling for a square of space to stand on, an archival collection of small-press strips in a big printed book seems almost quaint – Mal Earl himself says it took two goes to get The Jigsaw Review off the ground when a first version collapsed, as if the modern patient simply rejected the old transplant. But these strips all seem right at home here, on paper between covers, and artful enough to earn their spot back again.

Available now from: Amazon/Lulu/Mixam at the link below:

malearl.com/shop