Today I went to visit Comics Unmasked, ‘UK’s largest ever exhibition of mainstream and underground comics’ to quote the library’s website . As someone who has read a lot of comics it was fun to see some of them in a museum case.
I am not sure if that means my comics are actually that significant. Like pop songs there is something ephemeral about comics. As popular culture, comics seem to reflect the moment in which they were created, so some seem very out of place now. The appropriation of comic characters into other media such as computer games, television, and movies was touched apon, but as this is much more american heros, there wasn’t much opportunity. Sadly whilst a single example of Hogarth was available, other such as Blake were not shown. Certainly to have Aleistar Crowley and John Dee and their mysticism, which has clearly influenced Gaiman, Moore and Morrison and no William Blake seemed odd. Over all I found it to be a bit to earnest and the rooms were very gloomy, I don’t know if this was to help the atmosphere or preserve the comics. But it was great to see Zenith again, a proper flashback to my youth. Zenith was created by writer Grant Morrison and artist Steve Yoewell. Apparently Brendan McCarthy did the original character designs which might explain why Zenith is so like Paradax.