In Herne Hill, London, I had a long lunch at the Regent pub with my old pals Ed Hillyer (top, with Hayley campbell) and Woodrow Phoenix (below, with me).



Woodrow's book Rumble Strip, first published in June of last year by Myriad, is worth your attention. It is a very human story told without the depiction of a single human, and for what seems for most of its duration to be an essay about road rage, it all comes to a potent and moving conclusion. Phoenix uses nothing but the iconography of the road, but while this is a somewhat depersonalized graphic language, I like that i always see the touch of a human hand in the artwork. Brushed black infill sometimes does not come all the way up to the holding line. Sometimes it spills over. And even though Woods has made a computer font of his own lettering, I have seen it enough in its early stages (eg. he lettered volume 4 of Bacchus), and remain fondly familiar with it, to still imagine his hand making every letter, and his voice in every word. This book is hugely underrated. It's a good solid piece of work at 200 pages and very nicely produced in black and white.


I wrote about Ed's upcoming prose novel, also from Myriad, back here. Meanwhile he's illustrated one of the manga Shakespeare line published by Self Made Hero (I realize I'm a little out of touch with the British publishing scene), King Lear. Just to compound idioms further, the story has been shifted to 18th century North America among the Mohicans.


Ed was one of the first people i knew, back in the '80s, to pick up on what would become the huge manga trend. I never feel that a book like this is aimed at me, but every now and then I enjoy seeing Ed going for a striking atmospheric effect with the grey tones and I recall how we used to talk about stuff like that a long time ago.