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| Lilibet and the Queen image © Speakeasy |
Learning of Her Majesty's passing yesterday, shortly after I updated this blog, was a bit of a shock and while not a royalist, her passing deserves respect for her longevity, service and the loss her family and many more will mourn. Farewell Queen.
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| Accent UK's Original Logo |
Well the news is slipping out and sadly it's true, Accent UK, the long running independent comics collective run by Dave West and I is no more and is disbanding its operations.
We've been fortunate to last so long and achieve what we have in what has been a fun rollercoaster ride along the independent comics wave these last 20 years or so.
Dave and I, along with Barry 'Baz' Renshaw and others were all producing our own small press comics in the Greater Manchester area in the early 2000's and meeting at local comic marts, chatted about joining forces to pull resources and have a greater voice within the UK's burgeoning indie comics scene.
So it was that on Remembrance Day 2002 (or was it 2001, my memory is hazy now!) that Accent UK was born in a Stockport Mill with Dave, Baz and myself agreeing to drop our respective small press publishing identities; Deva Comics, Engine Comics and M56 Comics and adopt our new moniker on all future publications. This we did and our new themed anthology comics cemented the partnership and welcomed contributions from the UK's brightest new indie talent at that time including likes of Dave Baillie, Jason Cobley, Ben Dickson, Garen Ewing, Dave Hitchcock etc.
We kept things fairly informal with it understood that our shared objectives should not prevent us individually pursuing whatever other creative opportunities presented themselves, thus Baz left the collective in 2006 to pursue a new publishing venture building on his success with the popular (and much missed) Red Eye comics news magazine and also to concentrate on his freelance comic art work.
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| Accent UK's New Logo |
Dave and I continued and had a relaunch of sorts in 2007 which, embracing better quality printing and working closely with WOLFMEN artist and graphic designer, Andy Bloor resulted in a significant step up in our production values. The year before, I had met industry giant and lovely fellow, Stephen Bissette during our second trip to Copenhagen for the Komiks.dk festival, (introduced by our chums, Leah Moore & John Reppion) and although retired from comics, he agreed to provide the cover for our next anthology, ZOMBIES, as long as he could also submit a strip he was working on with his son. This coup together with the rise in production values provided a welcome boost and clinched global distribution for our new titles through Diamond Comics Distributors which until then had been but a pipedream.
More anthologies, one-shots and collaborations followed with returning contributions from not only Stephen Bissette, John and Leah but Keiron Gillen, Mark Buckingham, Frazer Irving, Dave Hitchcock, Ben Dickson, Owen Johnson and many more. Dave turned more to writing and alongside his WOLFMEN titles with Andy Bloor, produced several one-shots under the BLESSED CURSED theme, picking up an Eagle award in 2010 for his and the sadly missed Marlene Lowe's WHATEVER HAPPENNED TO THE FASTEST MAN?
We became more adventurous in our convention plans and buoyed by our Danish experience, where we successfully grew a loyal following through attending Copenhagen events from 2004 until 2019, when Covid (and Brexit) interrupted matters, we attended many overseas conventions including New York's MoCCA, Seattle's Emerald City Comic-Con, Chicago's C2E2, Toronto's TCAF and Finland's annual comic art festival in Helsinki.
This was of course in addition to the ever expanding UK comics convention scene where there were now multiple events compared to the much missed Bristol Comics Expo that we had first attended. We did our best to go to as many as were viable, often joined by our family members, Adam, Scott and Jemma who all regularly took turns behind the table and helped Dave and I have a welcome breather.
Our Danish connection was further enhanced by a trilogy of titles published from writer/artist Martin Flink in his distinctive, thoughtful style; THE MAN OF GLASS, THE TROLL and THE LIZARD, all of whom were warmly received.
Although, global distribution became tougher in later years through changing submission guidelines (which thankfully seem to have recently relaxed), the evolution of crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter provided a new opportunity along with the increased frequency of events to get our titles into the hands of an eager audience.
A new collaboration between Dave and frequent anthology contributor, Gary
Crutchley gave birth to WESTERNOIR, the supernatural tale of gunslinger Josiah
Black in the Wild West, which arguably replaced our themed anthologies as the
most recognisable of all Accent UK's titles. Planned as an ongoing series its
first collection quickly sold out, requiring a colour reprint and its subsequent
volumes are warmly anticipated. Dave's writing continued and further successful collaboration's followed with artists Indio on STEPHENSON's ROBOT, Ian Ashcroft on KIA WORDSMITH and PJ Holden in WASTLELAND, the V2A band comic co-written with it's lead singer, Kev Judgedrone.
My own artistic contributions ebbed and flowed alongside my museum art commissions but I was pleased to produce a couple of issues of MOMENTS OF ADVENTURE featuring my historical strips, coloured by frequent Accent UK collaborator, Matt Soffe and Aljosa Tomic, which have been warmly received since their release.
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| Special Steampunk Logo |
In recent years, regular invites to the annual Asylum Steampunk Festival in Lincoln saw a return to our anthology roots with a trilogy of comics inspired by the splendid people we met there. The most recent of these, ESCAPE FROM THE ASYLUM with its intriguing 'Q' concept was launched at this year's festival, a mere 2 weeks ago and is likely to be the last new title with the Accent UK logo, although discussions are ongoing about this.
As stated earlier, we've always kept things informal so that our shared objectives shouldn't prevent us individually pursuing other opportunities and so it is now that Dave and I recently found ourselves at a creative crossroads. Realising that Accent UK couldn't fairly continue without the both of us, we've decided it best to gracefully retire the brand.
We can both be justly proud of what modestly we've achieved in our small part of the independent comics landscape and give thanks to everyone out there who has been part of our journey, whether it be a contributor, reader, supporter, retailer or reviewer.
Dave and I both plan to remain active in the comics community so please watch this space and our social media channels for news of forthcoming events and projects.
Thank you for reading and for your support over the years.
Colin
Well that was fab! Very busy and very hot, but a full on Return to the Asylum Steampunk Festival was splendid fun as always. A lot to digest and with an immediate trip North, I'll have to make do with just a few of the many photos and familiar faces I caught up with again for now. Many of whom are featured in our comic of the same name, freshly released at the festival where, flying solo, I was busier than normal, conducting comic chats and a well received drawing workshop - more later, when time allows!
