Artemis Draws

The mini-comic is here at last! And the Cabaret Voltaire is born! Ah yes, possibly a pretentious name for my periodical comic of assorted short stories but this is also the name of a MUD that I set up and administered way back in the mid-90’s when, among my responsibilities as a test lab engineer, I was also doubling up as a bored system administrator in a laboratory full of Unix machines. That was in another life, one I can barely recognise now. This MUD never took off beyond alpha-testing by another administrative user and myself (Fernando, where are you now?). I suppose, like many art-obsessed young people, I was fascinated by the Dada and Surrealism art and literary movements because of their preoccupation with the absurd and meaningless. Having moved on a long way since then, I still find the name of the Viennese nightclub somewhat catchy and apt for my comics journal – I intend to publish 2 short stories in each issue and print them from time to time, for comics festivals and such so I can keep my material fresh. And “cabaret” suggests a sort of variety show and these short stories are definitely varied, if nothing else! And quite appropriately, one of my short stories here is called “The Dream”, which is pretty self-explanatory.

Cover of the Cabaret Voltaire

I haven’t decided whether I should try and stock a few of these books at Gosh Comics and Orbital next week or just release them to the public the first time at Comica Comiket London in early November. I’m tending towards the latter at the moment, but I’ll also put them on sale right away on my website via mail order, and they’ll probably be priced at £2.80 a book with much cheaper postage and packaging prices, since they are rather slim volumes (30pp). Details will be on my website soon once I update the relevant pages.

Anyway I am very pleased with the printing and overall binding quality of these books. I’m very much happier with the paper (off-white, recycled, 120gsm paper) and the quality of the binding, which seems more robust. These printers InkyLittleFingers were recommended to me and they’ve definitely met their high expectations, I received my books exactly when I expected to, everything was easily done through a web interface online and the packing was also excellent, ensuring no damage in transit. Definitely a stellar first experience and I would recommend them to anyone.

So maybe I should be breaking out a bottle of bubbly tonight….