Igubu days

Here's another pin up featuring a character from my dark even-more-indie-than-indie days by my old comics cohort, Cape Town based graphic designer, Moray Rhoda.



Moray was my very first publisher with his line of Igubu anthologies. Igubu was the imprint for a bunch of Cape Town based comics magazines that ran from about 2000 to 2004(?). These Titles included Zero, Helix, Clockworx and Fang Club.

The stories were a weird muddle of horror, sci fi with some public interest and social commentary stuff thrown in. It was a bit like 2000AD, but more bohemian and eclectic, and like any self-published venture, D.I.Y to the burger. The output consisted of a few hundred issues per magazine and was distributed by hand to the few inner city comic and specialty bookshops that there were around at the time.

Although there were a few guys making creative decisions, Moray was the mainstay putting down the cash, doing editorial & design layout, fighting with printers, fighting off our army insatiable fans (ha, right!) all whilst still finding the time to contribute his own stories and art to the mix. Those there are indie balls, son. All good self-publishers have them.

Anyway, in the sheltering enclave of Moray’s massive indie balls, we did our comics. In the days before the internet became the great information sharing platform it is now, meeting up with fellow creative types and sharing know-how was, as far as the arcane practice of comic bookery was concerned, the only real way to improve your skill set. This was especially true for people who weren't educated in art, like myself. What I found really valuable being involved in this thing was constantly having to find ways to improve my own work to keep up with the other guys, who, besides doing comics, were preparing for careers in professional design and illustration (How I loathed you, you talented bastards!)

Yeah, Igubu was the place for cultivating creators who wanted to do South African comics but who weren’t interested in doing anything too commercial, arty or political.

For a while things were going well. We got mentioned a few times in the culture section of the Sunday newspaper and even snuck our stuff into some prestigious Long Street art galleries to slurp wine and scoff crackers with the more erudite breed of white-knuckled political satirists and hard-bitten underground comix artists.

Of course, in the end, it all had to go down the shitter. Too many flies spoiled the broth, I guess. Heads banged. Ego’s clashed. Pelvis bonked (LOL, maybe). I’m not really sure of why, but the project eventually ran out of steam and we went our separate ways to get on with our own art projects. Whatever the hiccup was, I definitely feel that we turned out the better for the Igubu experience, if only for the opportunity to see our work in print somewhere. There's no feeling quite like it and it really chalks up your self-confidence as an artist to be able to show someone some of your published work (tip: no-one cares about the print run, so don't go there ;p)

Yup, those were the days.

*Sigh*

Oh wait! The story doesn't end there. See kids, Moray still has some of his indie balls and will be releasing a new comic anthology in the near future with a fresh bunch of creators. The bugger is even scheming to get the thing listed on Amazon.com this time round so's he won't have to distribute the thing by hand all over the fucking world. I’m an old scab, but I’ve been offered the chance to contribute a few pages too.So much for getting out of the self-publishing thing, eh? ;p

For more of Moray's art, go check out his Deviant Art account somewhere here.

(btw. the Igubu Helix, Fang Club and Clockworx images are copyright Dan Hugo and Vincent Sammy respectively)