Background Traditionally, a
small press publisher was simply a
publisher who operated on a small scale, often with a manual printing press in-house. They produced limited print-runs of publications that larger, more commercially inclined publishers would reject. The history of British small press comics is tied up with the
underground press of the 1960s, with publications such as
Oz and
International Times. The British underground comix scene was led by
Nasty Tales and
Knockabout Comics of the 1970s, as well as the popularization of
Punk zines in the late 1970s. The latter had a larger audience from cheap and accessible
photocopying. This dramatic lowering of technological
barriers to entry meant anyone could produce a publication with a print run, regardless of its commercial potential. Within the British comics
fandom of the 1970s and early 1980s there were many zines
about comics, mainly concentrating on American
superhero titles. Since high-street retailers of comics were scarce, these zines ran
mail order services and relied on the postal service for distribution. The first and most famous of these was
Fantasy Advertiser. There were also regular
markets or "marts" which served as a social meeting place for artists and fans. This was the backbone of small press comics.
The 1970s Among the earliest British small press comics was
The Tale of Beem Gotelump. It told the story of an aging jazz musician who was tasked by the
Archangel Gabriel with playing the last trumpet at the end of the world. It was created and published by
Eddie Campbell under the pseudonym "Roland Bunn" in 1975.
Kevin O'Neill and co-writer Jack Adrian published
Mek Memoirs in 1976. It was a 12-page "stripzine" about a robot war, which can be seen as a precursor to O'Neill's later work on
2000 AD.
Near Myths was an
underground comics anthology published in
Edinburgh from 1978 to 1980. It ran for five issues and featured the first professionally published work of
Grant Morrison,
Graham Manley, and
Tony O'Donnell. It also featured the start of
Bryan Talbot's seminal graphic novel
The Adventures of Luther Arkwright. Teenager Grant Morrison's contribution,
Gideon Stargrave, later found his way into Morrison's
Vertigo series
The Invisibles. Perhaps the most successful of all British small press comics is the adult humour comic
Viz, first published in Newcastle in 1979. It grew out of the punk fanzine scene, and went on to successful newsstand publication, continuing to the present day.
The 1980s The first flowering of British small press comics centered on
Fast Fiction, which began as a stall run by
Paul Gravett at the bi-monthly
Westminster Comic Mart in London in 1981. It later developed into an anthology, a mail order service, and a news sheet, lasting in various forms until 1990. Artists associated with this scene included
Eddie Campbell,
Phil Elliott,
Glenn Dakin,
Paul Grist,
Ed Hillyer,
Woodrow Phoenix,
Rian Hughes,
Bob Lynch,
Ed Pinsent, and the teenage
Warren Ellis. Campbell claims he persuaded his fellow artists to call their publications "small press comics" rather than "fanzines", after seeing the term "small press" used for similar publications at a poetry festival. Gravett and Peter Stanbury published many of the Fast Fiction artists in
Escape Magazine from 1983 to 1989. Between 1983 and 1995 Zine Zone (later Zine Zone International), a Bristol-based company specialising in mail order, comic mart service and publications, focused international attention on UK small pressers and helped a number go on to mainstream comics, including
D'Israeli and
Duncan Fegredo. In 1987
Jamie Hewlett,
Philip Bond and
Alan Martin (then students at from
Northbrook College,
Worthing) produced two issues of a small press comic called
Atomtan. This caught the attention of
Brett Ewins, who invited them to contribute to his new comics magazine,
Deadline, which began in 1988. Hewlett and Martin created the magazine's flagship character,
Tank Girl, and Hewlett went on to work in animation, most notably creating the cartoon rock group
Gorillaz.
The 1990s After
Ed Pinsent finished with the last incarnation of Fast Fiction, cartoonist Luke Walsh (later known as Luke Temple Walsh) and reader Mike Kidson took over their mailing list with
Zum! their new review zine. The first issue appeared in August 1991.
Zum! distributed copies of comics submitted to a panel of reviewers, often cartoonists themselves, who were encouraged to write critical reviews of significant length. It also featured reproductions of the comics under review.
Zum! continues as a website run by Paul Schroeder.
Caption, a zine-cum-
APA devoted to small press comics edited by Jenni Scott, ran from 1992 to 1998, and spawned the long-running
Caption small press comics convention, held annually in Oxford from 1992 to 2017. The 1990s saw the reemergence of fanzines about comics in the
Fantasy Advertiser mold.
Battleground, edited by Andy Brewer, was at first mainly concerned with American superhero comics, although it also featured reviews and articles on small press comics, and interviews with the cartoonists.
Vicious, edited by Pete Ashton, was more free-form, and promised to print all material submitted. Ashton also created
TRS (
The Review Sheet), collecting capsule reviews and contact details for small press comics, in 1995. In 1996 he set up the BugPowder distribution service, which sold any British small press comics that cared to be listed as well as importing selected books from the US and Europe.
TRS was discontinued in 1998, before being revived as
TRS2 by Andrew Luke. BugPowder closed as a distributor in 2000, but the BugPowder blog continued to spotlight British small press activity, including the now-online
TRS2.
Slab-O-Concrete was a mail-order distributor and publisher set up by
Australian pavement artist Peter Pavement and also Dave Hanna in the early 1990s. Its first title was Pavement's own
Pavement Pizza, and it soon began selling British small press comics (including such titles as
Time Warp: The End of the Century Club, by
Ed Hillyer;
Sugar Buzz by
Woodrow Phoenix, and
Witch by Lorna Miller) and zines on marts in
Brighton and Hove, and importing books from the US, Australia, and Europe. Slab-O-Concrete developed into a full-scale publisher, repackaging small press comics for the bookshop market and originating new work. It avoided the
direct market of comic shops and made connections with underground publishers, zinesters, indie record labels, and other
subcultural scenes. Slab-O-Concrete ended due to cash flow issues in 2001. Other groups included Dachshund, run by Andy, aka Andy Konky Kru, which published
Graphic Reviews, a review zine featuring reviews in comic strip form by Lee Kennedy and others, and an A8-sized anthology,
Itsy Bitsy. Andrew Moreton set up Massive, a small press distributor, in 1992, and also published a zine,
The Comics Cut Quarterly.
Psychopia, was a zine and distributor set up by cartoonist B. Patson in 1994, which still exists online. Other cartoonists sold their work through classified ads in
Comics International magazine. Notable self-published comics of the 90s included
Paul Grist's
Kane,
Gary Spencer Millidge's
Strangehaven,
Sleaze Castle by Dave McKinnon and Terry Wiley, and
Strange Weather Lately by
Metaphrog, all of which received widespread distribution through
Diamond Comic Distributors.
The 2000s From 2000 until 2011 Metaphrog went on to produce the full-colour Louis series of graphic novels which received mainstream media attention and book shop distribution. Recent creators to have launched through the small press include
Gary Northfield, whose
Derek the Sheep has gained a recurring slot in the
Beano. Writer Jason Cobley, who has been self-publishing his
Bulldog comics since the mid-90s, and former
Bulldog Empire artist
Neill Cameron, now work for
The DFC and
Classical Comics.
Garen Ewing, who worked in small press comics in the 1990s, moved onto the web with
The Rainbow Orchid, soon to be published in print by
Egmont UK, and also contributes to
The DFC.
The Etherington Brothers (Robin and Lorenzo), creators of the small press comic
Malcolm Magic, have gone on to create "Monkey Nuts" for
The DFC, "Yore" for the Dandy and "Baggage" for
Random House.
PJ Holden,
Al Ewing,
Arthur Wyatt and
David Baillie (comics) emerged from the small press to work for
2000 AD. One of the current leading distros is SmallZone, founded in 1999 by Shane Chebsey, which also provides a printing service for small press creators. Chebsey and Andrew Richmond also publish comics under the Scar Comics banner. In 2006 the first Scar Comics graphic novel,
Falling Sky by Ben Dickson, won "Best Indie Surprise" on
Ain't It Cool News. Another activist for British independent comics is writer/artist Barry Renshaw. Founding the Engine Comics imprint in 2000, Renshaw wrote and published the
Rough Guide to Self Publishing, which is now in its fourth edition (2007) and was described as 'essential purchase for budding self-publishers' by industry paper
Comics International. In 2004, Engine Comics launched
Redeye Magazine, a news/reviews magazine specifically created to educate and promote small press and self-published comics to the wider public. It has been described as a 'vital read' by
SFX magazine and "a must-have" by Ain't It Cool News. Other titles include
Seven Sentinels and the
Fusion anthology. Accent UK, a collective headed by Dave West (
Deva Comics) and Colin Mathieson (
M56 Comics), was formed in 2002 and produced themed US-format anthologies featuring contributions from dozens of UK independent creators. In addition to the founding members, regular contributors to Accent UK publications include Andy Bloor, Jon H. Ayre,
David Hitchcock,
John Reppion and
Leah Moore (daughter of
Alan Moore), Bridgeen Gillespie (
Mr Maximo & Rabbit), Garry Brown, and David Baillie. The 2007 anthology
Zombies, included a cover by American artist
Steve Bissette. The
Judge Dredd Megazine featured a regular small press spotlight section between the years of 2007 and 2009, featuring columns by Matt Badham and David Baillie and a selection of strips by creators from the small press scene.
FutureQuake Publishing was originally set up to publish the anthology comic
FutureQuake. By a combination of launching new titles and taking over existing ones whose owners retire from the scene, they have built up a stable including
MangaQuake,
Something Wicked and
Lost Property, as well as
2000AD fanzines
Zarjaz and
Dogbreath.
Solar Wind has won numerous awards for its long-running series of parodic comics, which pastiche the style of children's comics of the 1970s. The group publishes
Solar Wind,
Sunny for Girls,
Big War Comic,
Omnivistascope and is connected to
The End Is Nigh (through Solar Wind editor/writer
Paul Scott and other creators). London Underground Comics is both a weekly market stall in
Camden Lock Market and a loose collective of U.K. based small press creators whose work is sold and displayed on the weekly stall. London Underground Comics was founded in November 2007 by Camden-based creator Oli Smith who co-ran the stall with the help of a variety of small press creators until 2009. LUC also ran larger one-day events that took up an additional of Camden Lock Market such as No Barcodes in April 2008 and Low Energy Day in August 2008. LUC promoted their stall and events via
YouTube videos. The UK Web & Mini Comix Thing was a yearly event in London run by Patrick Findlay that brings the British small press and webcomics communities together to sell and promote their work. Radio 4 broadcast a series on small press publishing, aired late 2009. One of the episodes focussed on small press comics, reviewing titles from both The UK and from the USA/Canada. One of the titles featured was the cult London small press comic "Eat, Drink & Be Buried." Recent yearshave seen the rise of the small press both online and in print with conventions around the UK on an almost weekly basis and vibrant review platforms like
Broken Frontier and
Slings and Arrows supporting creators’ work. == See also ==