Strumpet 2: Our London Launch at Orbital Comics

Wow! What a bash! Our London launch at Orbital Comics was a great success, bringing together The Strumpet, the artists who make it possible, and those who love them - plus some awe-inducing celebrity guests! Sharing with our friends at ink+PAPER made the night even better - not to mention that it was a great privilege!

Our NYC launch will take place at Bergen Street Comics on 7th December, after which The Strumpet - and ink+PAPER 3! - will be available in our Etsy shop.

This weekend (17-18th November) you can catch up with a limited supply of Strumpets at Thought Bubble, located in Leeds and ranking very high up the list of must-visit UK comix festivals.


Comix stars Gary Northfield (Derek The Sheep), Darryl Cunningham (Psychiatric Tales, Activate!) and newly minted Strumpet Myfanwy Nixon talk ink+PAPER.

Many, many thanks to Orbital Comics, located in London's high-drama West End, for their hospitality and generosity with the booze. Karl, Camila, Chris, James, Liz, and all the other staff were phenomenal (and it's Camila's lovely photos we have to remember the night by - check out her Flickr set here.

Thanks again to all of our Kickstarter pre-order folks - some of whom we were lucky enough to meet at the launch - we couldn't have done it without you!

Some fun photos...courtesy of Camila Barboza! Look for her by her full name on Flickr...


A Strumpet and her pals: Issue 2 contributor Karrie Fransman (The House That Groaned, Guardian, Times of London) and two fine gents - Andy Poyiadgi (Teapot Therapy), and Gareth Brookes (The Black Project).


Issues 1+2 Strumpet Maartje Schalkx joins forces with the prodigiously talented Tobias Tak and Comics Gosh!p (London's premier comics reading group) leader Mike Medaglia.


A Strumpet in Motion: Issues 1+2 contributor Tanya Meditzky (The Man Who Clapped, Two Sentences).

Head Strumpet Ellen Lindner prepares for the first purchase of the evening.

Head Strumpet Jeremy Day, two-time Strumpet Patrice Aggs (The Boss, Count Karlstein), and Myriad Editions boss Corinne Pearlman share a laugh at our launch.


The ever-helpful - and ever-cheerful! - Stephen Betts, head of Comix Influx.



Honorary Strumpets Dr. Mary Talbot (Dotter of Her Father's Eyes), Sarah McIntyre (Vern and Lettuce, You Can't Eat a Princess) and Comica organiser Megan Donnolley, assembled into a lovely pyramid of Lady Comix Power.


A happy customer...


Internationally renowned critic, curator, festival organizer and Comica godfather Paul Gravett (1001 Comics, Great British Comics).


The very fetching David O'Connell (Tozo, Monster and Chips), editor of ink+PAPER. Flanking him are John Aggs (The Boss, John Blake, Robot Girl) and comics professor-in-training John Miers.

Thanks so much for coming, London! See you in New York!

Thanks so much to all of our Kickstarter folks!

The book just got back from the printer, and we will be sending this brand new issue

out to you as soon as possible!  It looks fabulous, and we couldn't have done it without you.

Very soon the Strumpet will be headed off on her European tour...but she didn't want to leave without saying thanks....

Sneak peek the next : Kat's squirrel

Just time before bed to offer one last sneak peek from The Strumpet -- this strip by Kat Roberts blew me away when it first dropped into our submissions box, and it's improved on every re-reading. Who are the folk riding the squirrel? What does the squirrel make of all this? You'll have to wait for The Strumpet 2 : Going Places to find out where they are headed. Not reserved your copy yet? Pre-order on Kickstarter.

Joint Launch Party with ink+paper

Joint launch party for The Strumpet and ink + paper anthologies at London's loveliest comic shop Orbital Comics (right by Leicester Square tube station) Friday 9th November 2012 7-9.30pm. We hope to see you there!!! Part of London's Comica festival.

Not ordered your copy yet? There's still time to pre-order on The Kickstarter!

sneak peek the next : Rachael's crows

Back in the 1990s, Rachael Ball ran a women's comic class in the (now long gone) London Comics Centre*, a colourful London venue which at the time offered the only courses in comics in the country. I remember attending occasionally, scraping my way up into the big smoke on a cut-price bus ticket and the promise of a floor to crash on. I met astonishing people there -- Lee Kennedy, artist of life and dreams, and the amazing Cinders McLeod, author of Why are there no Women Cartoonists? (still the definitive work on the subject), many others. Rachael drew comics for Deadline, broadsheet newspapers, trendy magazines, and of course Fanny. I remember her as very glamorous, kind of intimidating, my sketches of her always turned into a mass of curly, scripply lines. And here she is now, in 2012, pen still on paper and facing down a mass of angry crows -- whatever could be happening in her story? You'll have to buy The Strumpet to find out. Pre-order your copy on Kickstarter to be sure of a copy.

*I realise suddenly that I'm not sure if that's it name. Was it the London Cartoon Centre?

sneak peek the next : Karrie's wolf

Karrie Fransman is a fantastically busy artist, and her peregrinations around the comics scenes of the world made her a perfect travelling companion for The Strumpet: Going places. I first met  Karrie's comics in The Guardian, but she has done much, much more than that, including  her remarkable graphic novel, The House That Groaned, is published by Random House's Square Peg and was chosen as Graphic Novel of the Month in The Observer. One of the very exciting things to me about Karrie's work is how varied it is, including cakes, models and even comics sculpture!

There's still time to pre-order your strumpet on kickstarter : go on! Karrie wants you to :)

More  about Karrie; she has talked about her work at Saint Martins, London College of Communication, The University of Birkbeck, the Institute of Contemporary Arts and for The British Council and exhibited her work in London, Belgium and Moscow. Karrie was born in Edinburgh and lives in London in a house not so dissimilar to the one in her book, The House that Groaned.

Sneak peek the next : Myfanwy's cycle helmet

I first became aware of the work Myfanwy Nixon - then Miffy Tristram, Tristram Puppy, or other names and alternative names and pseudonyms of which I am unaware (it was an age of made up names; comics artists collected them and wore them like jewellery) back in the 90s sometime, when the Oxford-Brighton train service and a handy friend with a Kemptown flat (long since moved to America) meant that regular visits to the Brighton small-press comics scene were desirable, possible... inevitable? Miffy was one of the artists in Erica Smith's beautiful, boisterous, Brighton-based underground grrrl zine Girlfrenzy. I wasn't best suited to fitting in with either the hardcore undergrounders or the artschool revolutionaries who made up the bulk of the comics parties in town at that time, and maybe Myf wasn't either, as when we came to discussing it later, I don't think we ever met; but we have met since, though, because she (like me) is a comics artist that was distracted by the internet. We've known each other for ages online, but only met recently when the company she works for now used a cafe in Oxford as a meetspace. When she blogged about doing art duties for someone else's comic, I remembered how much I had enjoyed reading her own stories, and asked her if she would do us one. To my great delight, she agreed.

For such a continuity-based medium, comics often seem to forget their ancestors; I see so many anthologies or titles billed as the only this or the first that, or the ultimate the other. This obsession with firsting and landgrabbing and forgetting your past is risky. When we deny our own predecessors, that bit of history is lost, and in its place another history is substituted, which is typically a simpler story, more ordinary, less diverse, and containing many fewer people, most of whom are men. The Strumpet proudly and humbly salutes those all-female anthologies that have come before us, and those which are yet to come. You are our past and our future. You are our continuity.

You can purchase your own copy of The Strumpet via our Kickstarter. Prices range from $3-$100. Please support us in any way you can.