It’s Dark in London

‘Here we see a city of looming towers, shadowy embankment and subterranean sleaze; of public bars and private vices; of huckster artists, strippers, vandals, thugs and addicts.’

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A book and exhibition from comic and graphic novel publishers SelfMadeHero sets out to expose the seamier, seedier underbelly of our beloved capital.

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It’s Dark in London sees writers such as Iain Sinclair, Alan Moore, Tony Grisoni, Neil Gaiman and Alexei Sayle paired with comic artists such as Warren Pleece, Jonathan Edwards and Oscar Zarate.

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It was Zarate who put the book together, and decided that it was the perfect opportunity to hold the accompanying inaugural SelfMadeHero exhibition of the prose and images in Soho’s Orbital comic shop’s gallery space.

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 Doug Wallace, SelfMadeHero marketing manager, says, ‘We had a lot of original artwork – I think everyone worked manually other than Dave McKean.’

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All the images are in black and white, and 25 artworks will be displayed alongside enlarged sections of prose. Much of the artwork has been made using photocopiers, creating pictures with sifting cut-and-paste imagery to give an analogue, motion effect.

The stories range from Alan Moore’s tale of a ‘disinterred corpse in the passenger seat of the Mini Cooper’ to Steve Bell’s war recreation in Penge to Alexei Sayle’s My Life as a Cat – which looks set to be as surreal as the title suggests.

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Wallace says, ‘It’s really a love letter to London – you can see the bad side of it but you love it anyway.’

It’s Dark in London runs from 5 – 27 April at Orbital Comics, 8 Great Newport Street, London WC2H. The book is available from SelfMadeHero priced £14.99. visit http://www.selfmadehero.com/ for more information

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  • Simon Evans November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    gawd what a hell hole- glad I don’t live there – hangabout I do !

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