START // 10.24.02

UNFASHIONABLE MALE
By Alasdair Stuart

Introductions first.

My name's Alasdair Stuart but most people call me Al. I manage the York branch of Travelling Man, a comic and game company in England that has four stores situated in the north of the country. I write, I manage, I spend too much time at the cinema. I've been here at SAVANT for a while too, doing reviews and the RETAIL column, in which I try and inform people about what this business looks like from my side of the counter and how I deal with my job.

All this has, apparently, convinced SAVANT editors Dave Potter and Gus Dahlberg that I'd make a satisfactory replacement on the Editorial Board of this publication for the departed Matt Terl. Which is why you're now reading my writings in the START column, making me only the sixth person to ever grace this section of the magazine.

Hi. Glad you could join us.

I've mentioned this in RETAIL before, but I keep coming back to the fact that I have a frighteningly good memory. I have near total recall over much of my life, which is both a blessing and at times something of a curse. The dreadful hair experiment I undertook in the early '90s still haunts me (for example), but by the same token I'm able to remember some extremely cool moments with absolute clarity. I also, of course, recall a lot of the more mundane things and it's one of those that's come back to haunt me recently.

For example, about a year ago I was serving a customer on Thursday, which is new comics day in England. I'd grabbed their order for the week and was laying it out in front of them, chatting as I did so. They were getting MIDNIGHT NATION and I distinctly remember telling them that this particular issue was a lot of fun.

They paid, left and David, one of the other staff members, looked a little oddly at me. I asked him what was wrong and he said:

'It's weird, not very many people describe stuff as fun anymore.'

He wasn't disturbed or anything, he just felt it a little odd that I could describe a comic as 'fun'. Of course, with MIDNIGHT NATION being a dark, often very nasty story, "fun" was possibly the wrong word to use, but that little exchange got me thinking about how I react to the things I read, and what that says about me.

Hence, the title of this piece.

Because as far as comics go, I'm a resolutely unfashionable guy. I don't follow specific companies, specific characters or specific authors and never really have. I had a brief Warren Ellis period during the later stages of his run on STORMWATCH and the opening stages of his THE AUTHORITY run but other than that, I don't pick and choose things by who wrote or drew them. I pick up comics and graphic novels based on whether or not they interest me--nothing more, nothing less.

As a result, my purchasing habits tend to be a little odd. The last month has seen me buy STYLISH VITTLES VOLUME 1-I MET A GIRL from creator Tyler Page, the complete run to date of JONNY PUBLIC from Strang-Frost Productions, the first issue of the relaunched BLACK PANTHER, the latest issue of Micah Wright's splendid STORMWATCH-TEAM ACHILLES and the final volume of surrealistic manga horror UZUMAKI. These books have nothing in common other than the fact that they interested me. In other words, they looked fun. As it turns out, they are as well.

Having buying habits like this pays dividends for my job because I'm always looking for new things for the shop but it also has a knock-on effect on how I view comics. Despite, or possibly because, I spend my days selling them I have a lot more distance from the industry than I first thought. I don't follow trends, companies, characters or creators, I follow what appeals to me.

I follow what's fun.

Now, for the day job that means that I'm always looking for new and unusual stock, but it also has an effect on this, my newfound editorial gig at SAVANT. I'm the new broom on the REVIEWS section and a few other fun ideas that we're putting together and you'll start seeing in the coming issues. What I'm planning on doing with these sections is exactly what I do when I pick stuff up and talk to customers about it. For all the doom-saying there's an impressive amount of work published in this industry which is either educational, inspirational, fun or all of the above. No pretensions, no preconceptions, just what's good and why. That's what I'm planning on doing.

Stick around. It should be fun.

Discuss this column on the SAVANT forum.