Benutzer:Radh/Cyclops (London)

The comic-strip tabloid Cyclops, The First English Adult Comic Paper, was published in London, in 1970. It was developed by a group of people from the British underground paper International Times, led by photographer Graham Keen. Its publisher was Innocence & Experience. It lasted for four issues.

Keens photographs had appeared in IT and he became involved with the editorial team. One of IT's founders, Barry Miles, was an old school friend from Cheltenham College and Keen shared a room in the house occupied by Barry and his wife Sue in North Lord Street, London. Keen managed to bring William S. Burroughs to contribute the series The Unspeakable Mr. Hart. Burroughs wanted Malcolm McNeill to do the art work ("I'll work with this guy"). Malcolm McNeill, who had not read much Burroughs, was a senior student at the Hornsey College of Art.

Cyclops reprinted comix by Spain Rodriguez, Vaughn Bode and Gilbert Shelton, it also published orignal work by U.K. artists like Raymond Lowry (# 1-4), Edward Barker, also called Edweard (# 1,2, 4), Mal Dean (# 2-4), David Jarrett (# 1, 3, 4) and Australian Martin Sharp, a poster artist from OZ magazine. Some early Alex Raymond-Flash Gordon was reprinted in issues 2 to 4.

• Cyclops, No. 1, July 1970, also included work by Vaughn Bode, Richard Glyn Jones, Larry Lewis, Bernard Power Canavan, Martin Sharp.
• Cyclops, No. 2, August 1970.
• Cyclops, No. 3, September 1970, also included work by Mike Bygraves, an advert by Alan Moore (Dark They Were...) on p. 8; again in # 4, on p. 12.
• Cyclops, No. 4, October 1970, included Judy Watson, Richard Jones, Mike Harrison, Spain Rodriguez.

McNeill and Burroughs continued to work together for a while, but only eleven pages of their Ah Pook Is Here was published in Rush Magazine, in 1976. John Calder and Viking produced a text-only version in the Burroughs collection Ah Pook Is Here: And Other Texts. Ah Pook or Ah puch was the name of the Mayan death deity. Burroughs admired the Maya codices and he and McNeill wanted to create "an unprecidented, full blown word/image novel." Only fragments of this ehrgeiziges projet, called Ah Punch Is Here, have been published until now and only online.

Literatur

• Artist Malcolm McNeill: On Beat Writer William S. Burroughs, 'The Unspeakable Mr. Hart' Comic Series, 'Ah Punch Is Here' Graphic Novel, and London 1970s Art Scene. Interviewed by George Laughead, August 2007.