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Underground > Comic Books >

Marc Bell

Bastard Shit Man

17:52 / 09.08.03

I bought “Shrimpy and Paul and Friends” a few weeks ago and loved it.

It’s silly and lovely and very funny.

At times I certainly recognise myself and my friends in the characters; at other times, the world Bell has created comes across like a barmy cartoon ecology seething with expressive, fast-breeding, constantly surprising and evolving life. Along with Shrimpy and Paul, there’s their respective brothers, Blimpy and Saul. Then there’s Chiah Man, and Miss Polly; and Mr. Socks, Bingo Bango Man, Cubby, Taco©, Brosse the Goose, Mushroom Hed, Sue the Tooth, Kevin, Ib Ub…

Saul ends up living inside his brother’s nipple. Taco© is a cute octopus-like god who actually answers prayers and personally intervenes to try to make things better. Paul is the kind of genuine fellow who, while reading The Brothers Karamazov, thinks “Jeez, dimitry, …relax!” And goose means greedy.

Does anyone know where I can find more Marc Bell? I know I came across him somewhere before, in Dirty Plotte or Zero Zero or somewhere. There was a big fancy anthology book on the shelves this week with a Marc Bell strip in it, but I don’t want to pay 30 euros just to get a couple of pages of his stuff. Any leads?

04:12 / 10.08.03

Shrimpy and Paul ran monthly in Exclaim magazine untile recently, along with various comics by Alan Hunt, Tony Walsh, Jay Stephens and other great talents. I hadn't realized it had been collected.

I've got a few minis by Bell which I pick up from Canzine every year. My favourite comic of his is Hep, which starred a cool cat with a yearning for Barbie comics.

Bastard Shit Man

07:03 / 14.08.03

Thanks for directing me towards the work of Alan Hunt and Tom Walsh, moriarty. I particularly liked the Hunt pieces I found. (Jay Stephens’s stuff has been giving me kicks for years now. …I really wanted to see Nod pop up in the background of one of King Mob’s acid trips, when Jay was inking the Invisibles…or at least see someone wearing a Space Ape No. 8 t-shirt or something...)

I found an interview with Marc Bell at the highwater books site, and a few pages of comics too. I especially like the first strip, “Cones”. The others are taken from the Shrimpy and Paul collection (…but aren’t really representative of that book, I feel… the last one, “Shrimpy and Paul and Happy Friends”, comes nearest, I guess).

That book seems to be the only thing of his out there at the moment, so I'm going to e-mail him and see if he's got any old mini-comics to sell.

07:57 / 14.08.03

Alan Hunt is so incredibly good (link provided for others who want to check out his work). It's a shame that the Jay Stephens-pencilled Teen Titan book fell through. Good luck getting zines off of Bell. If you have trouble, and if I go to Canzine, I'll pick up a few for you. For more samples of his work and the work of others you should check out the art store at the Beguiling, a Toronto-based comic shop and probably the best comic shop in North America. They sell original artwork by a number of artists.

Bastard Shit Man

03:58 / 19.08.03

When I heard that the Stephens/ Allred/ Haney book had been cancelled… It just baffles me… I can’t understand it…

Thank you for the Beguiling link. The Food Chain strip made me laugh my socks off. “I guess I’m what you’d call a ‘farmer’.” Really liked the Dave vs. Steve page too. “Back in the hole! Back in the hole!” And the Mud Puddle one.

Why aren’t people like Bell and Stephens being paid enormous amounts of money by big companies to produce lots of funny, silly stuff like this?

I suppose Jay Stephens is doing a lot of mainstream work now…but what I’ve seen of that work, it seems like the silliness and absurdity gets filtered out, for some reason. His Chick and Dee strips look gorgeous, but aren’t they allowed be funny, too? Why do Nicolodeon go to the trouble of paying him for Tutenstein and then apparently ignore his style and humour? And why isn’t DC or Marvel giving him wods of cash to do whatever he goddamn feels like with their characters??

[*shaking head, frowning, just not understanding*]