Francesca Cassavetti, Dan Lester, Sean Azzopardi, Sally-Ann Hickman and Oliver Lamden decided to attend Angouleme ,and they thought it would be a good idea to put together an anthology of comics created by themselves and other UK-based cartoonists to showcase there. I was one of the people that they asked to contribute. Two anthologies were produced in total, and they were called BASTARDS, which stands for British Artists Standing Tall And Reaching Distant Shores.
in his loft and returned them to me, which I was gutted about, as I thought I had got rid of all the bastards long ago. I used them as lures at comic events. You know, “Buy a copy of Thunder Brother: Soap Division and I’ll give you a free copy of Memory Man.” People still respond positively to it, which is nice. Although I feel that my artwork has improved, I occasionally daydream about producing an affordable TPB collection of all the stories. Every couple of years, I see a copy
DW: What can you give us of your past, your influences, and, of course, the question I always ask: what comics did you read as a kid? PR: I started reading comics because I liked Planet of the Apes and Marvel UK published a weekly based on that. I quickly started buying other comics they published, and fell in love with any Silver Age work I came across drawn by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. Over the next few years, I began to spread my comic reading net wider to include DC (The New Teen Titans) and proper UK comics (Action and 2000 AD). The eighties were a great period of comic discovery for me. Just when I had thought I had seen all there was that comics had to offer, let’s say indie comics (Love and Rockets, Lloyd Llewellyn and Neat Stuff ), I would find something else, such as newspaper (Peanuts) and small press (Escape).
DW: Onto the latest project, is Thunder Brother the first time you’ve used the web as a medium? And what can our readers expect to see when they pay a visit? PR: Lazy people, me included, describe Thunder Brother: Soap Division as being like The Truman Show, but in reverse. Imagine all of your favourite TV soap operas are real—if your favourite TV soap operas are British. The stories are told from the point of view of the organization that secretly films the lives of these worlds’ populations. Or more specifically, from the point of view of Thunder Brother and his fourteen-year-old apprentice, Sally Timmins—whose job it is to protect these worlds from unofficial external influences. TB:SD isn’t my first internet strip. A few years ago, I posted a panel a day from my diary strip, Book of Lists, online. TB:SD is, in part, my tribute to Sunday newspaper strips that I have enjoyed (re)encountering in recent years. I would love for people to be so excited by a new page of Thunder Brother: Soap Division on a Sunday morning that they race to read it, just as I imagine people did in the past for Peanuts, Popeye and Calvin and Hobbes.
DW: Thank you Paul. Do keep us posted on the publication date for your graphic novel. One quick question to finish: Memory Man, have you forgotten him?! PR: A friend recently discovered a box of unsold Memory Man comics
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listed for sale on eBay, which I find really amusing. “Good luck with selling that, pal!” I’ve been tempted to bid myself, once or twice, but then I remember that some other friend probably has a box of copies in their loft to dump onto me when I least expect it. More about Paul’s work can be found at: www.pbrainey.com.
Interview by Darren Worrow. www.darrenworrow.webs.com