Spirou

It’s raining outside. Pouring. Chucking it down. Cats. Dogs.

Inside, it’s too hot or too cold depending on whether the single brown electric heater in the corner is switched to on, or to off.

I’m inside a temporary “mobile” building that has been in use for a few years longer than it was intended. Timber beamed floors stretch and strain and scrape and groan as people walk across them. Some windows are locked tight having expanded in the wet air, others won’t close. The sound of the rain is ever present, bouncing off of the felt roof above. Everything echoes. There is a slow, drip, drip, drip, drip… drip toward the centre of the room. A space has been cleared and a bucket fills under a small hole in the ceiling where the felt has failed. It smells. It’s a mix of wet dog damp, as the soaked occupants slowly dry, competing with the dry dust, throat choking burn from the electric heater and Dean Birch’s ammonic underpants that haven’t been washed this month.

I am ten or eleven years old.

It’s another wet playtime at school.

As a class we are imprisoned, hunched and dejected at our desks, unable to talk to one another as Mr Collins, our tweed clad teacher wants a few minutes peace and quiet. Guard and fellow inmate, Collins is crashed, jauntily backward in his chair, his legs crossed, red socked and brogue’d feet resting on the desk top. Eyes closed, he is lost in a personal reverie that no doubt involves Guinness; he unconsciously twirls one end of his waxed moustache. He’s a decent teacher. Fair. Engaging. Funny. Caring and considerate. But no one risks his wrath. Silent, we sit.

A few minutes earlier, we’d all lost a race to collect the scraps of comic books and annuals kept at the back of the room for such occasions. Dean Birch always won. Less because of the smell and an unwillingness to get too close but more for the threat of the psychotic kicking that he would threaten and inevitably mete out by you winning. The comic books were years old. Creased and faded. They’d been read a hundred times by hundreds of souls in the same position as I. They had been fought over so often that they were now ripped to shreds. I doubt that there was a complete comic in the collection. It was standard to be left with a few pages of part stories from Eagle and if you were lucky and Dean Birch had overlooked it, a single crumpled page from Beezer or Dandy.

But my overriding memories were of reading Asterix and TinTin. I didn’t like either. As a kid I was Roman obsessed, so always picked out the historical inaccuracies in Asterix and hoped that the Romans would win. I mean… “What did the Gauls ever do for us?” And TinTin was, just, painfully bland. As a hero, he lacks such bite and charisma that there was never a hope of me warming or remotely caring what he did or why.

I’d not thought of either for an age until I found myself absorbed in an exhibition space in Castillo de Santa Catalina, Cadiz back in September. 

There was an exhibition dedicated to Spirou, a Belgian/French comic character that originates in the 1930’s but continues in a form today. A dozen or more artists had interpreted the character and it quietly captured me. I loved so many of the pictures.

But I had never heard of Spirou.

A bit of research shows that Spirou sits in the wider European tradition of comic strips and storytelling. I won’t get involved too much in its history, but the first few years are of interest, to me, if only because of the changes and compromises that had to be made to the character, the stories and who his enemy was. First published in late 1930’s Belgium, the strip continued through German Occupation. Spirou has continued and remains, in a form today.

Spirou was originally a bell hop working the lift of a plush hotel. He became embroiled in adventures alongside a journalist side kick. Through the years his character has changed. He is now, also, an investigative journalist. But still, today, he continues to be pictured dressed in the red/purple harking back to his original uniform.

I have no idea if the comic strips remain any good. I have struggled to find any English translations and my only point of reference is the video linked above. And that is crap. My search for translated versions is also tempered by my general reluctance to embrace the art form.

Back in Mr Collin’s classroom and claustrophobic rainy day playtimes, one of my key issues reading comics was that, I never saw the need to use the form as anything other than a vessel for laughs. At home, I was a regular subscriber to Beano and would look forward to Friday evenings to pour through the latest edition cover to cover. But looking back, I can recall few of the characters or strips that I was reading… Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, Bashstreet Kids… There must have been more, but they are lost in the annals of time.

Summer holidays were spent in Dorset, where my Grandma would save up editions of Sunday Post’s cartoon section for me. Hours would pass, lost in Oor Wullie and The Broons. It wasn’t until the 1990’s that I realised that the strips were written in dialect/colloquialism. I used to pour over them and try and guess what the characters were saying and what they meant. It was as if I was treating them with the same intrigue and reverence as A Clockwork Orange. 

I don’t know if this made the stories better or worse.

Oor Wullie "hanging" after a night of ultraviolence and Knifey Moloko's down at the Korova Milk Bar.

So, I've never bought into the whole serialised story telling that comic illustration offered. Even as I grew older and my parents subtly tried to encourage me to read (I was quite late, catching the “reading” bug; even today I question whether I have ever really caught it) I would rather pour over football statistics in Match Weekly and Shoot than follow a story.

I’ve a vivid imagination and a visual memory. Perhaps the whole comic “thing” passes me by because I feel cheated at having such a large part of a story laid out and controlled for me. Comic books offer a strict visual interpretation of a character. It makes me lazy, so I’m not inclined to worry about the content. Through the years, I’ve watched friends become lost in graphic novels that stalk the edges of fantasy. Even when I became a semi-avid reader - through fantasy – they left me cold. I couldn’t see any depth. The simple comic screens and friezes made language cursory and blunt. I may be wrong. But that’s how I saw it and still see it today.

But it doesn’t mean I dislike comic strips. I don’t. As I grew older, I realised that they are a perfect tool for satire and humour.

My father always had about 100 copies of Private Eye sitting around the house. As a teenager, I found the majority of the serious and quality information impenetrable. The rag has always delved into detail and the minutiae of stories. The net result was that it often offers views, perspectives and ideas on topics that I had no knowledge of. Match it alongside the small typeface and busy layout I found it near impenetrable. But, the jokey middle section and the comic strips drew me in. I have the most incredibly warm memories of “Taffy” Kinnock’s heroic failures dealing with Herr Thatchler, Von Tebbit and Rudolph Hesseltine in “Battle for Britain” and even greater memories of the follow up strip after 1987 – “Dan Dire Pilot of the Future?” I couldn’t get enough of the Eagle pastiche, setting Kinnock as Dan Dire fighting against The Maggon and Han Solotine.

It was the age of Spitting Image on the telly. Satire changed its game and became quite personal and increasingly challenging. It became incredibly visual. I suppose it was a result of TV having a far more hands on approach to journalism. More channels, more news shows, better technology meant that MPs – even backbenchers – became visible and better known. Like it or not, they became celebrity. Between our MPs and media, they played up to it. And comic strips of the time captured me. Who can forget John Major and his underpants in Steve Bell’s works?

As I have aged, I’ve grown to accept the beauty in the design of comic strips. Helped by some real quality of work churned out by Private Eye but also by illustrators such as Gerald Scarfe. Ihave come to look beyond the literary aspet of comic strips and focus on the “art”. Even looking back at the bland, short comings of dear TinTin, I recognise that the strips are beautifully crafted. Simplistic yet detailed. Created to make the most of the constraints in newspaper printing techniques, many have become iconic.

Which is why I can end up losing myself for a short while in Cadiz looking at images of a Bell Hop and a squirrel that I know nothing about. Imagery that captures a moment of action or emotion with the briefest and minimalist use of colour or line. Images that have an air of timelessness about them, despite the obvious mid-20^th Century airs.