Smallaxe #1
Us size, 32 pages

Northern Ireland as a patch for comicbooklets to grow from has brought only a few sporadic bursts over the the past thirty years years; proportionately less than its mainland Uk counterparts. The graphic arts seem to be much more popular in hardcore rape, gay and guns porn which is more likely to adorn the walls of the province, production relating to organisations with acronym abbreviations.

Artists affording to turn comics into even a part-time paying gig in the last thirty years, oh, about five in number, and in mini-comics artists per decade, about five. Comics aren't really top of the agenda here. About once a decade, a collective anthology comes along. In the 70s & 80s it was Ximoc, faturing Davy Francis, Ivor Lightning and David Morris. In the 90s, DNA Swamp, featuring PJ Holden, John Farrelly, Christian Kotey and Mal Coney. Coney appeared in Crisis, around the same time John McCrea and Garth Ennis brought 'Troubled Souls' to a wider audience. A tale of a group of friends getting caught up in terrorist murder had all the hallmarks of an amateur writer, Ennis' first work, though McCrea's watercolours were/are brilliant. What Ennis did bring to the piece was that all-too-rare in comics glimpse of Northern Irish humanity, which when Ennis isn't overindulging dick and fart jokes, is what he does best (eg. Hitman, and I state, one of the finer serials of all-time, Preacher.)

With SmallAxe, this unique regional voice returns, in multitude. Each of the stories here in some way tap into craic, mannerisms, community/anti-community, geographical relativity, slabberin' and blabberin', darkness, eccentricity, and that funny peculiar way. This is a comic steeped in a sense of Northern Irishness, and as any is a better snapshot of the people than Ennis has provided, and I suspect he'd be quite taken with it. I've only glanced away from the scene for a few years, myself, 11 of the 12 contributors are new names. This is sweet. Only Coney is previously familiar to me among them, and here he treats us to a short yarn about a gay social scene, where he has picked up the pen of the cartooninist himself !

SmallAxe is supported by funding from the UnLtd Millenium Awards Scheme. 'Belfast's Greatest Comic Magazine' came out a season ago. Not sure if theres been a second edition, I'd very much like to see it !