The Oli Smith

Oli Smith has recently updated and relaunched his website – www.theolismith.com. For a young man who writes gentle, thoughtful comics (Hazy Thursday, Summer Ball)he certainly has a real knack of pushing himself forward.

He’s also getting better and better at making his promo videos for the London Underground Comics group. The last one; promoting Comiket at Paul Gravett’s Comica festival is excellent. And the upcoming movie Weekend Friends looks very good as well (Weekend Friends trailer). Multi-talented and young. Damn him.

PROPAGANDA Reviews: Oliver Smith’s Hazy Thursday & Summer Ball

Hazy Thursday & Summer Ball

by Oliver Smith

I’d guess that if you’ve heard of Oliver Smith it will probably be because of his tireless (and shameless) promotion of the Camden Comic Stall and London Underground Comics as he does his very best to become a nexus of London small press activity in much the same way Paul Gravett did with the Fast Fiction stall in the 80s. Frankly, if you follow UK comics at all it’s been pretty hard to miss him. His London Underground videos are always a treat and the (comic) celebrity endorsements have been coming thick and fast from such luminaries as Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. (Alan Moore video, Eddie Campbell You Tube). So in his endeavours as a marketing man for the British comic scene he’s doing wonderfully well, but what gets talked about less is the actual comics that Oliver makes.

(Cover to Hazy Sunday by Oliver Smith)

I’ve seen two so far, Hazy Thursday (2006) & Summer Ball (2007). There’s much to enjoy here, as Oliver writes simple & emotional / sentimental autobiographical tales illustrated by lush, almost watercolour effect washes over his black pen and ink. In Hazy Tuesday the effect is almost more children’s book illustration than anything else, a black & white floaty, almost Shirley Hughes style whereas the style in Summer Ball is cruder, starker, more ink than wash. Anyway, with his sentimental, emotive writing and wistful artwork these comics are very enjoyable indeed.

(Page from Hazy Thursday by Oliver Smith)

Hazy Thursday is a simple but affecting story told in dreamy, half asleep speech of a young boy / Oliver as his mother takes them on what is implied as just the latest in a series of attempts to find some idealised, better life. On this particular Hazy Thursday they’re off looking for a commune, which turns out to be no more than a doss house. The story drifts and flows with the dreamlike thoughts of the boy as we capture a series of snapshots of a day and get a growing sense of unease in the writing, as the young boy’s desire for something fixed beneath his feet gets stronger with each page.

Flash forward a few years to the events of Summer Ball – dedicated to all those people Oliver never said goodbye to. After drifting through his Prom, bumping into friends our Oliver is still looking for his ex, who’s here with someone else, someone new. But our man, with the forlorn hope of one so young, has come along to see her, possibly to attempt some daft scheme to win her back, hopeful that everything will go back to the way it was, that whatever bad thing happened to break them up will be overcome or ignored and life and love will prevail. We’ve all (if we’re lucky) been there and it’s a credit to Oliver that he nails the turbulent emotions, the quiet desperation and frustration, the awkwardness of being young and out of love so well. Oliver’s mum sums it all up beautifully on the last page

“So, did you talk to Pippa in the end?”
“Nah, she went home early.”
“Christ, two years of Ross and Rachel romance, and you let her leave early?”
“I guess”
“What an anticlimax”
“You’re telling me”

But Summer Ball is more than just a teen mooning over an ex-girlfriend. Oliver manages to give us the impression that we’re there with him, and sets up numerous sub-plots and supporting characters, as we drift in and out of each scene with Oliver. These are never really explored, as we’re just passing through with Oliver, drifting and a little lost. It’s a clever touch from such a young cartoonist, to draw us in and play us so well.

(Summer Ball by Oliver Smith)

All in all, Oliver Smith’s doing some pretty nice comics and he’ll be one to watch with each release to see how he matures and develops. There’s a confidence, an arrogance even, throughout the work that belies his age. From this he’s able to present us these very relaxed, flowing and understated tales of childhood trauma and teenage angst / anger so very well.

He’s very busy with London Underground so his output is hardly prolific, which is a shame that doing something so useful has stopped him making comics. However, his latest; Bloc, illustrated by Oliver Lambden (of Tales from The Flat fame) is due out sometime soon (I’d imagine before the Birmingham Show in October).

Oliver’s website – although most of the time he’s doing more with London Underground Comics.

Alan Moore at Resonance FM – Lost Girls

The latest show over at Resonance FM (through their weblog Panel Borders) is an Alan Moore special:

“In an hour long St Cyril’s Day special, Alex Fitch is talking to Alan Moore about his 16 years in the making, 264 page, 3 volume hardback graphic novel Lost Girls (finally available in the UK) in an interview recorded last month at Gosh! comics in Great Russell Street, London. Alan also talks about his Dalek-like domination of artists, showing off his rippling abs on The Simpsons and techno-organic copulation in The Saga of the Swamp Thing. With a ten second cameo by London Underground Comics’ Oli Smith and a competition to win a copy of Lost Girls, this may be the most romantic thing you’ll hear all day!”

London Underground Comics

Welcome to the world, little London Underground Comics.
It’s the brainchild of Oli Smith, and is really the rebranding (what a hateful word) of the Camden Comics Stall. Which, as you all recall is a new initiative down at Camden Lock market to get comics from the creators into the hands of the general public. It highlights the sheer diversity and brilliance of some of the comics being produced right now.

Joe at FPI blog has an interview with Oli here.

Oli’s looking like a little Paul Gravett right now, setting up his own version of the Fast Fiction stall from over 25 years back. And he seems to be doing it for exactly the same reasons.

Enter Camden comics alternative. A stall that sells comics to people who are looking for something new and most of whom don’t realise non-spandex comics exist. With a regular turnover of different punters, a fantastic social atmosphere and with sale figures that mean, not only does it require no investment, but it also turns comics from an expensive hobby for people with spare cash kicking around to, at the bare minimum, a past-time that pays for itself. Why spend £80 on a table at a convention selling to the saturated market of people who came last year, when you can spend £2 on rent and sell ten to twenty copies each week as well as getting to spend time with fellow comics-creators.

I tout the stall as non-profit making cooperative, with me only taking the money from wares of my own (I kick myself every day for saying that I would do that), but it just goes to show what you can achieve without ANY investment whatsoever, and if we can do that, so can everybody else. We hope to lead by example and if I had a few grand kicking around I could have easily done something more spectacular (the world’s first small press comics shop- not far away now, mark my words), but would it have inspired as many people to come and join in?

Having broken the thousand comics sold mark a month ago, (that’s three months after opening for people counting), never having failed to make the rent, with deliveries of new stock at least twice a week and the idea of a permanent second table being kicked around as well as branching out to Spital Fields Market, it can’t get much better (oh did I mention ALAN FRICKING MOORE?!).

So it seems that we have a new movement starting up. It’s going to be really interesting to see how it all turns out. After all, we know what happened to the last lot of young bucks running a comics stall don’t we?

Compare and contrast time. On the left, Fast Fiction in the 80s.
Eddie Campbell, Ed Pinsent & Peter Stanbury.
On the right, London Underground Comics, right now.
Sean Azzopardi, David Baillie & Oli Smith.

The London Underground Comics Website.
London Underground Comics on Facebook.
The FPIblog interview with Oli Smith.
Oli at You Tube – including the Alan Moore endorsement.
Fast Fiction pic via Comic Reader archive.
(update – according to Eddie Campbell – and he should know, being in the pic after all – it’s from a Fast Fiction appearance at UKCAC 86 and thinks the photographer was Phil Elliot.)