Woodrow Phoenix

You should make one!

Hazelnut bits. Mmmm!

AmbassaDOR

Very short run, riso printed, unexpectedly beautiful thing

Esther McManus

esthermcmanus.co.uk/between-frie...

The first Moomin was drawn at the beginning of the thirties, just for fun, to tease my little brother by drawing the ugliest creature 1 could think of - later on Moomin developed a nicer snout and character. Then Moomin was used as a sort of signature in the corners of illustrations or funny cartoons in a Finnish comic paper called Garm. His name he got in 1939 when I started the first Moomin story, just to do something else for fun, to escape reality. I did this just for myself without thinking about children, and put the story in a drawer. Many years later I illustrated it. Moomin-Mamma is wholly a picture of my own mother. She has always had the gift of letting her family develop its foolishness without comments and at the same time getting it well brought up without the family even noticing it. Also my father - or a bit of him - appears in Moomin-Pap-pa, but Moomin himself' is a mixture of all my friends. Of course, I've borrowed a lot from my neighbourhood for my characters - but I only noticed I had done so afterwards. Part of the books are a picture of my own childhood which was very happy, but Moomin Midwinter, for example, is taken from my grown-up life. Moomin is looking at the world around him with astonishment,but in no way with distrust or disapproval. He is gullible, naive and terribly benevolent. His predisposition to romance (making everything romantic) and compassion, often puts him in confusion. Sometimes he reacts against his meekness with short, astonishing fits of anger, scaring both himself and the people surrounding i him. His friendly, happy-go-lucky attitude is curiously mixed with feelings of responsibility. His life is overshadowed by a faint, constant anxiety: that all around him can't be happy and get on with one another. TOVE JANSSON

Tove Jansson, writing about herself for Puffin Post magazine, 1967

“Most of my books I have written on a small island in the gulf of Finland. My mother and brother and I were the only inhabitants there, and it's an hour's row to the nearest island. The cabin is only one room…”

X

I recognise this scenario very well, unfortunately

"Mark paid careful attention to the small things in the world around him and he made each of us complicit in his process."

Erica Van Horn on the much-missed artist Mark Pawson, a mainstay of the Fair, who passed away earlier this year. Read more about Mark:
smallpublishersfair.co.uk/mark-pawson-...

A bowl of Lucky Charms with a generous dollop of spraycan cream on top

BRADLEYYYY!!

I’m not going to win because I only recognise Twin Peaks

🔥 Finally an EU leader says it out loud:

“We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies.”

I can go with that

I forgot what an incredible grip that first season had on me. I remember a point where Jack dozed off for a second snd that completely sealed the deal

I have always found it kinda cool how you could tell what country someone was from by their handwriting

You know, I can only hear Cud doing ‘you sexy thing’ now, you’ve erased Hot Chocolate in my brain

I think because Ted was such a truly wonderful creation GL got some latitude when he first started all this and we hoped/waited for him to snap out of it. That soon dried up. There was no ambiguity. He’s gone. It’s still marvellous but I have to really try not to think about him to enjoy it now

That horn is mqgkvxvrxxishly good

t’s grisly, depressing and compulsive reading, all right. I didn’t find his prose style as interesting as some of the American noir authors who’d obviously worked in the same direction but he wasn’t sensationalist - which is what makes me dislike ‘true crime’ and fascination with serial killers etc

I would like to see that. Why didn’t you want to put it out?

Gallon Drunk did a collab with Derek Raymond around ‘I was Dora Suarez’ and I ended up reading a few of his novels but that was the high point for me (if that’s the right way to describe it)

Yes, the concert from 1992 with Keitarō Takanami wailing away on guitar next to Maki and Konishi

Front cover of Miss Pizzicato Superstar - a live album by pizzicato five - featuring lots of images of singer Maki in different outfits like a fashion magazine

Coincidentally: I thought about you this morning. I was listening to P5 for the first time in quite a while and was overcome with love for their magpie stylings again on this live recording, as few others would know or appreciate

They HAUNT me, John. It’s been years!

Steampunk goggles: absurdly ornate brass eyepieces and cogs attached with a black leather strap

Have your got your eye protection on?

Lime was the BEST flavour! Counter-intuitive, but once you tried it… and only Wimpys did them *sigh*

I’ll have my usual: Special Grill with extra bender and a lime milkshake. Let’s goooo

The good cartoony head shape isn’t a circle and it’s not an oval either - it’s a wonky place in between and no template quite works, you have to eyeball it and some days this is nearly impossible to get consistent
#ComicsSecrets

Binch update: individually wrapped, thin and crisp biscuit with chocolate coating, highly snackworthy, 4.5 stars