Featuring new strips by Richard Cowdry, Peter Lally, Bird, Tim Levin, J Edward Scott, and Mardou & Fortenski.
Read 'Fatty'
Featuring new strips by Richard Cowdry, Peter Lally, Takashi Makita, Alex Levin,
Tim Levin, and Matt Dunton.
Read 'Fashionable Fascism'
Read 'So,
You Want To Be An Artist?'
Read a review. (See more reviews at the bottom of this page).
A 32 page comic by Richard Cowdry. It's kind of like the Bedsit Journal issue
0.
Read 'Communication'
Read 'Les Bandits Jovial'
Read 'Everything
Sucks/Irony Free Zone/Students Premonition'
View the contents
Read a review.
Reviews For Bedsit Journal Issue 1 :
A Bit Nice Dot Com :
First up, a A4-sized compilation featuring the likes of Richard Cowdry, Peter
Lally, Alexandra Levin and others. I’d enjoyed Cowdry’s work in Kartoon
Kuts a year or so ago, but the others were all new to me, figuring that if the
works were of a similar nature to Cowdry’s, then I couldn’t go far
wrong. And boy, did it pay off.
This is an excellent purchase. It’s filled with dark humour throughout,
with a mixed bag of drawings to keep you on your toes - Makita & Cowdry’s
slickly polished styles, Lally’s biro scrawl, Dunton’s angular carvings.
It’s great, and has lots of ‘real life’ stuff that small-pressers
crave, but unlike 90% of ‘real life’ stuff, there’s a funny story
worth telling. Plus the final story ‘Samuel the Salesman’ made me
spit out a mouthful of tea (and if you know me, you know I don't waste tea lightly).
Hunt it down today!
WordPress.com :
The Bedsit Journal No. 1 Various artists. Found: Mega City, Camden Town
Set in Dublin and refreshingly bitter. The artwork is loose and conversational,
varying in topic and quality, generally circling the bedsit lifestyle of those
who either attempt to live from their art or compromise with a soul-leeching
office job.
The point of view for the entire collection could be the rat who, realising
he’s been poisoned, dies a long Shakespearean death. These are the people
who have no place in the city’s boastful, goodtime craic culture. They
may be too intelligent or individual to fit in, or just socially repellent;
which of these, only time will tell. The collection offers an example of both:
one, Pat Keenan, who made nights out more interesting—and safe—with
his unreasonable demands, and another, a hammy old stage and tele actor who
plans a drunken advice session with a young actor to turn into a creepy seduction
attempt.
Most of these characters, keenly aware that they will turn into one or the other
depending on future artistic success, are living forward in retrospect, mostly
paralysed. Isolated in grim little boxes, they are without dependable friends
to provide perspective, and are easily overwhelmed by the demands of greedy
acquaintances. Painfully familiar amusing stuff that left me recharged to get
on with my own neurotic efforts.
Overall: intimate and promising series.
Bypass Review :
Richard Cowdry came to my attention in the multi-artist Rocket Science (review
: bypasszine, 27/1/06). The Bedsit Journal # 1 (A4, 32pp; £3.00) is a
black-and-white-throughout six-contributor, "adults only (sorry kids)"
collection "for the discerning reader", featuring work by Cowdry,
Matt Dunton, Peter Lally, Alexandra Levin, Tim Levin - and Takashi Makita, who,
in the Fashionable Fascism double-page spread - a collaboration with Cowdry
- expounds upon the true Japanese way of life : pollution, sexism, overpopulation,
servility and giant insects are just a handful of the less appealing aspects
of a country romanticised by Fruits book-owning, toy-collector westerners cooing,
"Isn't Japan cool ?".
Co-authored by Lally/Cowdry, The Bedsit Life takes a peek into the world of
a rented accommodation-dweller, starting with an at-school misfitdom which continues
through sixth form and college, the solitary living only serving to perpetuate
the chap in question's lack of social skills.
Tim Levin's Rat Poison follows the thoughts of a luckless rodent whose easily-won
feast turns out to be its last. And I love Levin's The Lousy Life Of Unkle Spider
: seven frames, in vertical format, in which Unkle S. becomes rich, albeit momentarily
- he gets sliced by a dime !
In Dunton's Psycho City, a pensioner with a walking stick, sick of irresponsible
along-the-prom cyclists, feigns a heart attack and fells a bike rider with the
aforesaid cane. It's nicely structured, with a large frameless picture at the
top and some of the smaller panels drawn around the lower legs and front wheel
of the first pic's cyclist.
In Alexandra Levin's two-sided Samuel The Salesman, the at-breaking-point Samuel
fixes upon the perfect solution to his problems. All is revealed when the reader
turns the page - I'll say no more.wn today!
Suicide Notes :
At least one person involved in new 'alternative' comic The Bedsit Journal really
does live in a bedsit. It's actually quite nice in a quaint, seventies comedy
way! And the tenants are perfect hosts with great social skills and manna like
packets of Resolve. However, there is no Morrissey-style romanticism whatsoever
in any of the strips. In 'A Tale of Dublin City', Richard
Cowdry and Pete Lally depict the life of loser Kevin Karolan, and his search
for love and acceptance...or just sex. Cowdry's Crumb-inspired style perfectly
suits Lally's acerbic writing and characterisation. In 'Fashionable Fascism',
Takashi Makita and Cowdry ask why Japanese culture is so popular in Britain.
The rest of the strips are filled with outsiders (rats, Columbian crack cocaine
dealers, dominatrix). Though there's much identification, there is a thick dark
streak of humour running through this collection...There's something very amusing
about self-aggrandizing misery that's captured by the writing in this collection.
Issue one is out now in shops and available direct from their website.
