MAM TOR & MOTHER TAKE TIME OUT WITH “FOUR FEET FROM A RAT”

[MattBrady]

by Benjamin Ong Pang Kean

Liam Sharp’s Mam Tor Publishing Ltd. has collaborated with Mother (London) Advertising Ltd. to produce a 16-page quarterly comic inside the London edition of Time Out magazine (March 19th 2008). It's called "Four Feet From a Rat" and features four London-centric stories; "The Crane Gods" illustrated by Liam Sharp, "The Little Guy" by Chris Weston, "Routemaster" by Dave Kendall, and "Don Pigeone" by Kev Crossley. All the scripts were provided by Mother.

Indeed, London's leading arts & entertainment weekly has added comics to pop culture.

Mam Tor was set up by Sharp and his wife Christina McCormack in 2004 to publish Sharpenings: The Art of Liam Sharp.

Together with designer Tom Muller and friend John Bamber, Mam Tor then went on to launch the critically acclaimed and the Sci-Fi-London Award-winning anthology, Event Horizon, which featured short stories by some of the UK’s (and world’s) best writers and artists in the comics field such as Steve Niles, Glen Fabry,Ashley Wood,Simon Bisley, Alan Grant, Brian Holguin, Emma Simcock-Tooth, Ali Powers, Kev Crossley, Lee Carter and Dave Kendall.

Matt Coyle, whose groundbreaking graphic novel Worry Doll was also published by Mam Tor, won the 2007 Rue Morgue award for 'Best Comic Book Artist'.

Each issue of Time Out contains information about events in film, theatre, fashion, literature and all other artistic events happening, as well as eat out and night out sections. On teaming up with Mother, Sharp said that “This is a great chance to take this kind of work to a whole new audience.

“Both Mother and Mam Tor are always looking for exciting new ventures and possibilities, and we're both prepared to try new stuff out,” the editor-in-chief of Mam Tor elaborated to Newsarama. Comics are appearing in Sunday newspapers now, so why not another popular outlet like Time Out? The hardest thing for independent publishers like Mam Tor is getting firmly established, and comics are a tricky marketplace! Basically, for us, it's a gift-horse.

“I think there was a great conjunction... the planets aligned, and we found ourselves in orbit round each other... Actually, we heard from Mother early in January, an intriguing email about a possible collaboration on a comic project. We talked, and it just kind of got more exciting! Some of the writers at Mother are really passionate comic fans, and the company had been promised some space in Time Out. Mother were in a position where they had written scripts, cleared them with Time Out, and were looking for the best way to bring artists to the project. A couple of the writers knew about Event Horizon, and their suggestion was that myself and Mam Tor were the best people to approach to do that. We had a meeting, I read the scripts, and very quickly it was clear who would be great for each of them - and in an astonishing brief time it was all under way!

“The comic will be appearing inside the London edition of Time Out on March 19th, and every story really has London as it's protagonist,” he continued. “"The Crane Gods" is set in the future in a flooded London where alien anthropologists are piecing together the human story. [Chris Weston’s] "The Little Guy" is the first part of a two-part story, set in the near future, where corporations rule with an iron fist. We're leaving Chris's work black and white on this one. It's remarkable. "Routemaster" is a fantastic little horror story set on London buses with a really inspired central character designed by Dave [Kendall]. And "Don Pigeone" tells the formerly unheard story of the city's indigenous pigeon population, their trials and triumphs, through the warped eye of Kev Crossley. They're all very tight three- or four-page tales of the unexpected, not unlike early 2000AD.”

According to Sharp, there are plans to collect the stories into a single book later on. “What we're talking about is collecting the stories produced over the year in "Four Feet From a Rat", possibly with extra all-new content, and putting them into a trade paperback,” he said. “We've not ironed out all the details yet, but certainly if that goes ahead we'd make it available through Diamond to all the comic stores in the UK and US, and where ever else Diamond distributes!”

Expect to see other big names in future editions of “Four Feet From a Rat” but for now, Sharp decided to keep the surprises close to his chest.

Other than these short stories and other recent releases like Lap of the Gods, Worry Doll, St. Cyborg's, Mam Tor has quite a few projects to offer in the near future. “We have The Enemy's Son: Erth Chronicles Book 1, a young-adults sci-fi novel by Richard Johnson (not to be mistaken for Richard Johnston!) coming out. Richard has built up this great online community of artists and creators around Erth Chronicles, which has been covered in magazine's like ImagineFX, www.erthchronicles.com, and www.terminalcondition.deviantart.com. He's a fantastic artist and designer too, and lectures at Nottingham University.

“There's a proposed artbook featuring myself, Kev Crossley and Dave Kendall, and a Chris Weston artbook to celebrate his 20th year in the business.

“We're even talking to a couple of authors about a thriller and an equestrian book, so who knows where the future will take us!”

As for Sharp himself, he has illustrated the recently cancelled Testament comic series from DC/Vertigo with writer Douglas Rushkoff. His other known project, Countdown Presents: Lord Havok and the Extremists with writer Frank Tieri concludes with issue #6 later this month.

What about new projects? What has he got on the horizon? “I've got a pitch in with DC at the moment with writer Mark Andreyko, so fingers crossed there, and I'm also the new cover artist on his book Manhunter which I'm really thrilled about.

“As for the end of Lord Havok - I don't think it is...”

[NICKD]

Looks great. Check out his Mamtor Forums at

http://mamtor2.nyxxunderground.com/index.php

[Liam Sharp]

To anybody not in London, Mother have provided a link to a free download of the whole comic you can access from this article. Enjoy!

Very best,

Liam.

http://creativity-online.com/?action...ehind_the_work