Posted by Pete

closing shots from a grassy knoll

John Robbins, contributor to TRS2, on the UK small press scene - a 2000 word essay.

Why do you do it?

There prevails a misconception among small press creators that they are rebels with suppressed talent, struggling against the might of the inferior mainstream, and producing work of greater substance. This romanticised view also alludes to a notion that any production of material beneath the small press umbrella is somehow 'underground' in nature.

Occasionally some elements of the underground do surface. However, in these rare cases, work is generally obsessed with that aspect of underground material preoccupied with fucking or thinking about fucking; or that offers an approach that is zany and over-the-top, wherein little depth of feeling exists and the thrill of wallowing in perverse and twisted situations is essential. In truth, most small press efforts concerned with comics - and comix - bear little or no resemblance to those genuine underground publications that reflect counter-culture sensibilities through the conventions of the comic strip form.

The true underground makes no concessions to mainstream publication - more often than not, it is occupied with individual creative expression encapsulated in the discussion of taboo subjects, of jaundiced society, and of a neurosis tinged excavation of the soul. Often work is of a cathartic quality, and at times the motivation for creating a piece of wrenching grotesqueness - that invites the ire of the establishment - is suggestive of a person profoundly unhappy with life. In the subconscious effort to inflict a kind of self-harm, work can resemble somewhat the act of 'small cutting', and maybe is even conceived to ultimately shock the artist themselves out of a detached numbness. These 'cries for help', these exorcised communications, these desperate lunges for attention that might address the real problems that plague the artist - these are not dressed in spandex and bestowed with powers of invulnerability - they are stripped naked, made real, and sent out into an over-entertained world.

Continued...