This May sees the fifth anniversary of SMOO Comics #1, which debuted in May 2008. To mark the occasion, I’ve got a few blog posts coming up reflecting on making zines and drawing boxes. The first two comprise a little potted history of making comics. So without further ado, here is the first part.

Prologue

2007

• visit Travelling Man on Park St, Bristol. First trip to a comic shop in a while.
• Another visit to Travelling Man. Pick up and flick through Kevin Huizenga’s Curses
• visit Travelling Man, look at Curses again
• Start drawing
• visit Travelling Man, nearly buy Curses
• buy Curses
• Buy Best American Comics 2007
• Travelling Man fountain of knowledge Tom Trewhella  recommends King Cat and Jeffrey Brown. Doomed to an existence of drawing comics about my life
• Go back to Travelling Man. Discover lots of people have been self-publishing for a long time. Feel inspired and intimidated
• Draw my first comic about wandering around town, thinking. Little do I know this will be my formula for the next 5 + years.

Comics begin!

2008

• Publish SMOO #1 in May with the help of Nick and Dom. Print about 20 copies on a photocopier somewhere. Probably at work.
• Visit the Bristol Comic and Small Press Expo. See a lot Dr Who things and people dressed up as comic book characters. Leave comics on tables, trade them with stallholders. Meet Rob Jackson for the first time.
• Start drawing SMOO #2
• Finish drawing SMOO #2 with the exception of one panel on one page
• Do nothing
•  Start drawing more comics that I think will be SMOO #3
• Fail to draw final panel of SMOO #2
• Continue to be crippled by self doubt
• Start drawing a comic about our trip to Lisbon earlier in the year
• In September, start drawing a daily diary. Manage most days until November
• Still fail to draw final panel of SMOO #2
• Fail to finish anything else

A fallow year

2009

• Not really sure what I did this year. I must have done something. Probably did some drawing I didn’t like.
• June: Finally finish that last panel of SMOO #2. It takes about 5 minutes.
• Nick starts making comics. Nick is an old friend and his doing comics helps inspire and push me to do more and publish my work. Try and return the favour. Pivotal moment.
• December: local vintage/art shop SHOP offer me an exhibition and chance to sell comics in the New Year. Decide it’s time to get back on the horse.

Spending valuable time in the photocopy room

2010

• January: publish SMOO #2 and reprint SMOO #1. Host 24hr draw-a-thon at SHOP. I don’t draw much, but it’s fun.
• Start finishing the comics that I had drawn and not published back in 2008
• Do a two-pager for Rob Jackson’s Gin Palace anthology that gets me noticed by Richard Bruton of Forbidden Planet International. He orders my comics and reviews them. Has been a supporter ever since, and a key figure in giving me the confidence to carry on
• Do a piece for the gone-but-not-forgotten Daily Crosshatch
• At some point finish and publish Lisbon zine
• May: attend Bristol Comic Expo for my first time as an exhibitor. Meet Irish contingent including Paddy Lynch and Phillip Barrett. Get them, and us, very drunk.
• Finish comics originally destined for SMOO #3 and instead publish them as SMOO #2 ½, an interim collection.
• Start work on what will become SMOO #3.
• Establish a zine library at SHOP
• Run a half marathon
• Finish my PhD
• Finish SMOO #3 (much hand-wringing and self-doubt)
• Attend Thought Bubble in Leeds with Nick for the first time. Launch SMOO #3. Meet Lando properly.
• Return to Bristol and establish Bear Pit Zine with Nick and Lando.
• Draw picture for my friend’s Christmas Single
• Finish 2010 feeling oddly dissatisfied with the work I’d produced, but excited, too, to be making things and getting work out there.

My year in review from 2010 is here

Next time – all change!

As Spring struggles to spring forth here in mediocrely-weathered Bristol, I’m happy to say there have been plenty of comics things happening.

Very imminent releases

• My new book, Grand Gestures, will debut at TCAF. It’s available to pre-order now from Retrofit Comics. I’ll have copies soon, so you’ll be able to buy directly from me as well. It’s 44 pages long and is a silent story about falling apart and putting yourself back together again. Here’s a process post I wrote while working on the book.

• Nick and I have a comic in the Unknown Origins & Untimely Ends: A Collection of Unsolved Mysteries anthology, edited by Emi Gennis and published by Hic & Hoc. I drew Nick’s story about Jerome of Nova Scotia, a sad and silent soul with no legs found on a beach a long time ago… The book debuts at Stumptown this weekend. 

 Fundraising for SPX  

• I’ll be flying to Washington D.C in September to attend the Small Press Expo in Bethesda. I’ll be sharing a table with Warren Craghead. I can’t wait! It does, however, mean I’m flogging my comics a little more ruthlessly than normal to help raise money for flights etc.

 Things on offer: new zine, original art and subscriptions …

• I’ve released a zine called Holiday. It’s a short poem/story about our recent holiday to Spain. Features balconies, dawn drives through mountains, men in flat caps and many beaches. A sort of spiritual successor to my Lisbon zine from 2009. It costs as much or as little as you’d like or are able to pay and any money raised will help get me to SPX. Buy it here!

• For a limited period I’m offering to do commissions and selling pieces from some of my comics. I’ll also re-draw and reinterpret pages from my comics. Click here to find out more!

• I’m offering 4 issue subscriptions to SMOO Comics, my regular autobio/comics memoir zine. All the details are here.

Interview: wittering on about pencils

• Warren Craghead and I were recently interviewed by Graphixia.ca. It was great fun, talking about comics, drawing, robot voices and speaking to Warren for the first time ‘in the real world’. I’m really grateful to Peter, Dave and Damon for organising it. You can watch the interview here.

And…

• More generally, I’m getting on with SMOO #7. It’s looking (at the moment) like it’ll be about growing up in the countryside, getting older, change, progress, nature (we’ll see). I’m aiming for a September debut, but we’ll see how it goes – could be sooner, could be later! I’ve also a couple of other projects in the works, but I’ll talk more about them at a later date.

I’ll also be at Thought Bubble Festival with Nick in November.

You can now pick up SMOOs #4 and #5 from Pioneers Press. The newly-named distro was formed when long-running zine distro Microcosm split into two separate entities. There’s some back story to that process, but I’m terribly pleased to have ended up on Pioneers’ roster. Check out my zines here.

It’s true! SMOO is now available via four issue subscriptions. All the details can be found here.

Andy Oliver is the Managing Editor at comics website Broken Frontier, and a contributor to Paul Gravett’s 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die. He is also the man behind Broken Frontier’s Small Pressganged column, in which he reviews and promotes a wide range of small press comics. This week, in his last Small Pressganged post of the year, Andy reflects on ten small-press comics that “represent the diversity and brilliant creativity embodied in the U.K. scene”. I’m delighted to say that Smoo Comics made the final ten. He writes:

“The stark minimalist style of Simon Moreton’s autobiographical Smoo Comics was one of the great revelations of 2012 for me. Honest and often raw storytelling that uses reductionist depictions of landscape and scenery to emphasise mood and emotion, Simon’s work is stirring and quite extraordinary in execution. These are comics that will stay with you long, long after you’ve filed them away.”

It’d just like to say thanks to Andy for his support. As anyone making small-press comics out there will recognise, a few kind words and a sense that somebody digs what you’re trying to do, go a long, long way.

Read the ‘Top Ten’ here

Buy my comics here

Pre-orders for Smoo 6 are only available until 5pm (GMT) on Tuesday 6th November. They all come with little sketches, ephemera, bits and bobs. At £3 UK, £4 everywhere else, including postage, it’s a bargain if I do say so myself.

Pre-order your copy here: http://smoo.tumblr.com/shop#smoocomics

New review from Rob CloughforSmoo #5. He writes:

“… Moreton’s increasingly confident voice and line have made his quiet, reflective and poetic comics a rich and rewarding experience… When drawing figures, he has a new economy of line that gets across the bare minimum of human details but still does a tremendous job with gesture and body language so as to convey emotion.”

You can read the full review here. You can buy the comic from my shop.

Aaron Sewards is a well known face to many artists, musicians, gig-goers, coffee drinkers, and music promoters both in Bristol and further afield. He and his Japanes partner are expecting a baby. They are currently in Japan, wanting to get married and return home to the UK. But newly proposed immigration laws are threatening to prevent him and his family from returning to the UK to raise a family and continue the life they had in Bristol. He writes:

I want to have some kind of safe place to put the child in, and I know which place, it’s the place I live In and met Kano in and where I’ve been investing my time and energy. Its’ where all my friends live, all the people who I want to learn how to be a good parent from. It’s the house my family lived in, where the overgrown garden is takes up the whole world from the front window. I want to have a place where we measure this kid and make a line and write down the date – when I read the new home office policy documents and the fullness of how we maybe do not qualify to even ask to come to the UK dawn on me.

The proposed laws, which means test UK citizens wishing to marry non-EU citizens and live in the UK pose a huge threat to the stability of his future with his partner and soon-to-be-born child. He has written about it all here.

That his, or anybody in his situation’s, ‘value’ to the UK be determined on financial contribution alone, seems ludicrous, unjust and discriminatory. If you read his post, and feel you can do something from where you are, I encourage you to do so.