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12-14-2004, 10:50 AM
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#1 |
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LIAM SHARP LAUNCHES MAM TOR & EVENT HORIZON
 by Benjamin Ong Pang KeanBritish artist extraordinaire Liam (The Possessed, Black Panther, Man-Thing, Spawn: The Dark Ages) Sharp has today launched a new website for Mam Tor, a publishing initiative that was established earlier this year by Sharp and his wife, Christina McCormack-Sharp to publish Sharpenings: The Art of Liam Sharp. “Mam Tor is dedicated to producing creator-driven works that might not ordinarily find a home on the bookshelf, works that are either too niche, radical or unquantifiable, despite the evident quality and commitment they display,” Sharp told Newsarama. And in 2005, Sharp and a whole lot of creators, professionals and amateurs alike, are launching Event Horizon, previously called Mam Tor Gems, a 120-page stand-alone creator showcase that will feature “some of the finest talent in comics and other subculture art forms. ”We launch at the Comic Expo convention in Bristol next year, May 13th, with a panel on Saturday, and lots of signing. We'll be following that up in San Diego later in the year,” he said. ”There are no fees for the work produced, but neither are there the usual editorial restrictions. Everything within Event Horizon has been produced for love of the medium and is an insight into what creators get up to when left to their own devices. ”An alternative limited edition cover is being painted by the near-mythic Glenn Fabry (Preacher). We're hoping to release this piece as a print also. "What's in it for us?" ”Alternative indy maestro Ashley Wood (Popbot) is providing an original story. ”Industry legend Michael Kaluta (Books of Magic) will be doing an interview and gallery for one of the upcoming issues. ”Brian Holguin (Spawn, Kiss: Psycho Circus) has written a highwayman's tale of terror, "The Gallows God", illustrated by the incomparable Dave Kendel. ”Hot as hell horror peddler Steve Niles (30 Days of Night) has written a gritty, brutal barbarian tale "Fucking Savages!" which I'm illustrating myself. ”Shane McCarthy (Batman: Riddle Me That) has written a wonderful futuristic tale called "The Cure", illustrated by newcomer Cardinal. ”Rich Johnston has also written us a story, to be illustrated by the criminally underrated Saverio Tenuta.  ”And Chris Weston (Ministry of Space), Dan Wickline, Kody Chamberlain and other established comic reprobates will all be making their own contributions.”Amongst the new talent, we have Lee Carter (who’s also provided some work for Ash Wood’s Do Not Swallow magazine). Kevin Crosley, who works for Core Design. Justin Murray, a brilliant movie conceptual artist. John Bamber, and a bunch more unsung newcomers. ”And finally Tom Muller (designer of logos and websites for Ash Wood and Kent Williams, among others) will be lending his own unique and inspired design credentials to the proceedings, as well as providing a gallery of his astonishing abstract 3D work. Beautiful stuff.” For the record, the Mam Tor site was also designed by Muller. How did Sharp come up with the idea of creating Mam Tor and how did it all lead to Event Horizon? ”When I started working in comics - well actually, way before then - when I used to draw them for fun, it wasn't something I saw as a chore, a job,” he said. “It was a thrill. I had discovered Epic magazine and Heavy Metal, Bill Sienkiewicz had done that awesome Moon Knight issue, "Hit Me," Dark Knight, Electra Assassin, and all this other amazing stuff was happening, and it seemed like we could do anything. That inspired me so much, that period, but unfortunately by the time I was anybody at all in the industry sales were already going into steep decline. Outlets for this type of work were becoming less and less. Specific kinds of art styles were selling, but nothing was a sure bet. In many ways the more extreme elements of creativity in the industry became risky. Lots of high concept projects bombed. ”What's happened, though, is with the advent of digital technology production costs are lower. You can produce beautiful work in extremely small numbers. So as regards what we're hoping to achieve, it's quite simple: We want to put out four books full of beautiful work by amazing artists and writers. They won't be for kids, they'll be for my generation that grew up reading the same stuff I loved. I was slightly post [Jack] Kirby, [Neal] Adams, and the like. I found European comics, Moebius, Druillet, Bilal, and US underground greats such as Richard Corben, and that's the stuff that set me on fire. I've missed that kind of work. We're not really here to compete as a company with DC, Marvel or Dark Horse, and we're unlikely to make any real money out of it - but it doesn't matter if we only get orders for 500 copies, we're going to put it out there, and it'll be great. Of course if it does sell in quantities then we'll all get something out of it on the tail end, which would be nice!  ”I've been crossing the Atlantic for the last three years now to go to the San Diego comic convention,” he added. “I hadn't been for almost a decade, not since Glenn Danzig invited me over when I was doing Frazetta's The Death Dealer for Verotik, and it felt like time to get my face seen stateside again. I stayed with my very dear friend Steve Morger who had organised a Vegas trip prior to the 2002 con, and the real birth of Mam Tor happened there. Mark Texiera was in Kinkos, desperately trying to put his sketchbook together for the show, but he only had a rudimentary knowledge of Photoshop - and Photoshop was my thing! Anyway, what should have been a fun trip to crazy twinkling Vegasland ended up being me and Tex in Kinkos for 26 hours straight! It’s become the stuff of legend now, that Kinkos story! [laughs] ”Anyhow, ultimately we emerged with two sketchbooks. One great (Tex's), one not so great (Mine. I really didn't have the right stuff with me to put in there, but you learn...). And at the show I realized what the deal was: These Kinkos sketchbooks were everywhere! And getting $20 a book as rare collectibles. They were a superb was of showcasing your art, and they were a kind of ultimate business card too! ”I didn't manage to get one together for the next year, so as we were approaching the 2004 con I put my head together with my wife, Christina, (whom I had met when she worked in production at Marvel UK many years earlier) and we set about looking at what stuff I had to go in there. What we soon realized was that lots of it was color. We thought about doing sepia versions, but it wouldn't have been right, so then we started contacting printers and pricing the book up. And it became clear that it was doable! It wasn't insanely expensive. What had started out a sketchbook was now becoming a fully fledged art book, with a spine and 16 full color pages. ”In May, in the UK, we have a great little comic festival in Bristol. I took with me a bunch of proofs for the book and met up with a host of artists who I'd met on my recently built message board. And here was the other clincher: What I saw there was amazing. The quality of their work was stunning, but there was no way it would get looked at by mainstream comic companies. It was either too dark, too twisted, or just too plain quirky and idiosyncratic. And I thought pretty much there and then that we should do a Liam Sharp message board art book to show off their wares and get these people in print. At the exact same time, John Bamber - of www.britcomicart.com - was thinking the same thing. Many of the guys on my board are showcased on his site. So inadvertently, two art books featuring the same unknown artists were conceived. ”Well, that's how the idea got started at least...  ”Event Horizon came about as we began to think everything through,” Sharp continued. “The idea of the message board book was OK, but would be a tiny print run. Maybe 500. So I started to think "what if I can get some big guys to do stories in there - mix it up a bit?" That way, this great art would get seen by more people, and these creators would be side by side with established pros. I talked to John about the idea, and the two projects became one. So then I started asking people I knew if they'd be interested in giving me a story - between five and ten pages, and free - to get this off the ground. Actually here's an early email I wrote to Brian Holguin, outlining what I was looking for. It's kind of become our legend, our "mission statement" if you like:[blockquote]"Think Epic when it first came out, or Heavy Metal in the late seventies and early eighties, but with a card stock cover. Somewhere between a book and a magazine. Ariel the book of fantasy is a reasonable model. Basically anything, as long as you love it! The idea is that it will showcase some of the best creators in the biz, with covers, features, galleries, etc. but it will also give new unseen talent the chance to work alongside, and sometimes with established pros. What is really important is that everybody who contributes is on the same page. This isn't going to make anybody much money. We don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot by printing thousands of copies and selling ten, thereby going under before we even got off the ground. We don't want to be another publishing casualty promising to revolutionize the industry. There's a simple premise behind it, and that's what have you got that you'd like to see published JUST TO SEE IT PUBLISHED. Stuff people have got lying about that's too weird or dark or whatever to sell to the big guys, but that for some reason you just can't put to rest. ...at this stage we just want people to give us their lost gems so we can put them on display."[/blockquote] ”What amazed me was how many people had these great ideas they couldn't sell, and how many more started writing new stuff just for the book! Given how jaded and money-driven the industry can seem at times, it was just so exhilarating to be getting all this work in that was done for the love of it!  ”I took my art book to San Diego and talked to more people face to face, showing them what we'd already put together. (That art book has subsequently had the best reviews of my career, so next year we hope to publish a second, more comprehensive edition and get it out to all the shops - all being well!) So on returning home it became a kind of exciting and terrifying reality. I'd set the ball rolling, but we still had to figure out how you go about becoming a bonafide publisher.”As I mentioned earlier, Christina, my wife, worked in production for Marvel comics, so right away we had that extra know-how. I've been producing print-ready digital files for cover art, etc. for a while - so we had that covered too. We'd done the art book, so we already had one publication to our name. John Bamber had to be involved as we had spawned the idea simultaneously, albeit separately. Plus I trust him hugely, and he has a great love for and interest in the medium, and he had always wanted to publish. Anything. ”We bought the trademark for Mam Tor, and set up the company account - and now we're starting to move on everything... It's a reality! ”Hopefully, there'll be more issues of Event Horizon once people have seen what we're up to. At the moment we wouldn't expect to be able to put out more than a couple a year, so all being well we'll have a winter edition coming out. ”I've certainly got plans to do my own book at some point, but that's a way down the line. We'll also look at putting out other people's work if we think it will fit the imprint. What we're not looking for is more superhero stuff, there's plenty of that out there. We don't want to go up against the mainstream. We're meant to be offering an alternative! ”I have part one of an illustrated novel, The Wayfarer's Gem Book 1: His Call to Prevail waiting in the wings as a possible follow-up title. It's one of those things you start in your childhood and it won't go away. Its roots are in the fantasy, horror and sci-fi books I loved, but it's not quite what it seems. Many of those genre titles, I've found, are formulaic in the extreme - and very poorly written. As I got older I started looking for stuff that was less predictable, but that touched on, exploited, or had a sense of the genre. Work like Will Self's amazing Great Apes. The magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marques' One Hundred Years Of Solitude. The brutal, genre defying contemporary fiction/future-noir of M. John Harrison's Light. Fearless work. So I kind of decided to be as fearless as I could allow myself in writing this, and while there are many classic set-ups, I've tried to take the reader off in new, unexpected directions at every turn. At its heart it's a fantasy epic, but there are a bunch of things that happen that will shock some people and amuse others. Whatever, they're certainly not what you expect from the genre! “Plus it's got some of my best art ever hidden amongst the pages. I’ve also got a comic idea I’m bursting to draw, but we have to see how Event Horizon goes over before we put anything else out and risk overstretching ourselves!  As for Mam Tor and Event Horizon, Sharp said that he received a lot of submissions and that he is still receiving stuff from creators from all over. “There's been a flood of interest though, and I think it's because we're giving everybody the same chance - everything gets looked at, be it pros or amateurs - in the same light. If it's good, and it fits the bill, we'll try to use it. Some of the work has a certain underground feel, and some of it really feels fresh and full of energy, even if it is a little unpolished. Like early issues of Heavy Metal magazine, or Epic Illustrated, it wasn't always about the slickness of the art, the professionalism of the writing. Often it was sort of an unquantifiable cool - you couldn't help liking what you were seeing or reading, though you might not exactly know why! But there's a good balance with work from people who've been around the industry for a long time. I can't wait to see it all together!”For more information about Mam Tor and Event Horizon, check out the newly-launched website at http://www.mamtor.com/ Interested creators, be it pro or otherwise, are invited to contact Sharp at the following address: Mam Tor Publishing P.O. Box 6785 Derby DE22 1XT United Kingdom Or email him at: info@mamtor.com |
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12-14-2004, 11:03 AM
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#2 |
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All of this art is just fantastic. Good luck to Liam and everyone involved in these projects.
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12-14-2004, 11:48 AM
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#3 |
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The art does look cool, I wonder what kind of responses it will get on the shelf vs all the slicker material out there.
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12-14-2004, 02:00 PM
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#4 |
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Looks absolutley fantastic! I think it'll be a huge hit for the simple reason that there's nothing else like it on the market. I'd love to see it become an ongoing thing.
Best of luck to Liam and the gang! |
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12-14-2004, 02:06 PM
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#5 |
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So it will be like Heavy Metal only with consistently good artwork?
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12-14-2004, 03:46 PM
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#6 |
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I'm just glad to see - like with Swallow - that rather than sticking to the same formula of comic -> trade, comic -> trade, or maybe the off-chance OGN, some people, like with this and IDW/Ashley Wood's Swallow, are trying some new and different formats for a change.
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12-14-2004, 03:51 PM
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#7 |
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Looks and sounds great. I have always liked Liam since his days on Death's Head II so I make it a point to check out his stuff whenever I notice it, this really sounds like something that will be big for him.
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12-14-2004, 05:55 PM
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#8 | |
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Quote:
I'm impressed what I see so far and look forward picking it up. |
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12-14-2004, 06:26 PM
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#9 |
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I always liked Sharp's art, wondered what he's been up to.
I'm just wondering, because I didn't locate it in the article, what exactly does "Mam Tor" mean? |
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12-14-2004, 07:51 PM
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#10 | |
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Quote:
LOL - you don't know what Mam Tor means!?! What rock did you just crawl out from under... Wait... no... Really, what does it mean? I have no idea either...  |
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12-14-2004, 09:34 PM
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#11 |
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Something in the same spirit as heavy metal then? Sounds good. The industry needs at least one such magasine.
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12-14-2004, 11:51 PM
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#12 | |
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Mam Tor's A Place
Quote:
From http://www.cressbrook.co.uk/hopev/mamtor.htm "Mam Tor is a famous viewpoint and landmark, rearing up above the valleys of Hope and Edale. Known as the 'shivering mountain', it is comprised of shale and the East face is a dramatic and loose expanse of crumbling rock." BTW, the book looks cool too!  |
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