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"...He is a favourite among those who need
a respite from the self-conscious heavy handedness of serious
comics and mindless superhero drivel." "His career as a cartoonist commenced in 1973, (prior to which
he had been a human being), with the publication of his Large
Cow Comix in Birmingham's alternative Streetpress.
Looking back upon those early days, it becomes obvious that
they have much in common with the classic picture writing of
the ancient Sumerians, in that they are almost impossible to
understand unless you happen to be six thousand years old and
Sumerian, and may be not even then. Slender volumes in which
his works were collected began to appear upon fashionable drawing-room
tables between 1973 and 1975, titles ranging from the oddly
compelling Zomix Comix to the subtly
threatening Adventures
Of Mr Spoonbiscut. The Literati scratched their thinning
pates and quietly agreed that Mr Emerson was certainly ahead
of his time, if not on the wrong planet entirely. In 1976,
Emerson and some fellow members of the proletariat seized control
of the Birmingham Arts Lab Press in a brutal and bloody putsch,
formed the Ar-Zak publishing empire and began to distribute
subversive pamphlets and broadsheets. Although on the surface
these ingenious propaganda tracts appeared to be no more than
innocent children's comic papers, it was easy to detect the
implied criticism of running dog imperialism in a title such
as Dogman and the oblique Stalinist
overtones of Committed
Comix. Whether Mr Emerson is in fact a Stalinist or
not, I cannot profess to know. He did however once share a
bag of crisps with me, which suggests a firm grip of socialist
principals." Born in 1952 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, cult cartoonist Hunt Emerson has lived in Birmingham since 1971. He has drawn cartoons and comic strips since the early 1970s providing a grown-ups alternative to the Warner Brothers cartoons of Chuck Jones, with characters like Alan Rabbit (AKA Bill the Bunny), Max Zilion, Victoria Stork, Calculus Cat and Firkin. Additionally, his comics have appeared in numerous comic books and magazines, but in particular his Phenomenomix strip has appeared regularly in the Fortean Times since 1979, and his two page adult feature Firkin has appeared in the British soft-porn magazine Fiesta since 1981. Most recently he has illustrated children's books for Walker Books and drawn Little Plum for The Beano. Interviews: Resources: Reviews: |
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ESSENTIAL READING: |
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"Rapid Reflexes gets my vote
for the best collection of Emerson's work so far and features
what maybe the absolute peak of his career to date." "If you had any doubts about who is England's funniest,
strangest, most surreal cartoonist, this will put them to rest.
Hysterical!" |
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"How do you solve a problem like Hunt Emerson... Like so many things
about this enigmatic merchant of mirth, it remains a mystery. His work, however,
speaks for him in a deep and masculine baritone." "I was interested in Herriman because
he was so patently an artist among a lot of guys who were just
cartoonists. I found the Herriman universe
fascinating. It was like when I first saw Crumb.
I realised there were things you could do with this medium that
I'd never imagined, so I used to copy him a lot in the early
days... the form was probably more important than the content
- the way you could twist it, play little tricks. I used to do
that with the stories as well as with the art. For instance,
you suddenly jump out of Tapeworm
Tales and get a little
discourse on visual gags." |
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"We did a book called Casanova's Last
Stand, which was based on
stories in Casanova's memoirs, which I stitched together with a
narrative that I invented about the end of his life. It was just
a story. Just a way of stitching together episodes from his life
being flashed back. That never sold as well as we'd hoped. We thought
it was a great book, but nah, it didn't sell." |
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"I started doing this story about a gang of paramilitary guys
and this business where their leader, Major Mongrel gets separated
from the others and trapped in a two dimensional universe, while
they stay in a 3D universe. So there were pictures where their
airplane was landing on the comics page, and they were running
around on top of the page, talking to Major Mongrel inside the
page. It was made up as I went along and it's nonsense, and it
took quite a long time to finish." |
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| SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY: | ||
Books: Short Stories in Graphic Classics: Other: |
Casanova's Last Stand