Benutzer Diskussion:Radh/Cyclops (London)
Here are some notes from research over the weekend:
Cyclops founded 1970 by a group from IT, led by photographer Graham Keen. The publisher was called Innocence & Experience.
Keen was an old school friend (from Cheltenham College) of Barry Miles, one the founders of IT and shared a room in the leased house occupied by Barry and his wife Sue in North Lord Street, London. His photographs had appeared in IT and he became involved with the editorial team Cyclops reprinted US strips by Spain, Vaughn Bode and Gilbert Shelton along with some original UK artists. These included work by Ray Lowry (who went on to be a cartoonist for New Musical Express and Private Eye), Ed Barker, Malcolm McNeill and also Australian Martin Sharp, a poster artist strongly associated with Oz magazine. Sharp’s strip in issue one was extremely similar to a strip done by Victor Morosco in the US magazine Zap, issue 2. The last three issues reprinted some of Alex Raymond’s early Flash Gordon comic strip.
Cyclops was relatively expensive for the time, A3 format and carried some advertising to start with, but didn’t sell very well and only lasted four issues. However it was fairly adventurous probably helped by its IT background, which was one of the most literary of the underground newspapers, both from its editors interests and contributors that included Allen Ginsberg, Alex Trocchi, John Michell and William Burroughs.
Ray Lowry’s work appeared in all four issues. He remembered* that Keen left IT following a police raid (April 1969) when all the copies were confiscated and a prosecution that they didn’t contest and almost resulted in the end of the newspaper. This was based on the “want ads” at the back of the paper that carried some homosexual contact ads and it was alleged that some of these had been placed by people under 21, which was at that time the age of consent for homosexual relationships in the UK.
What actually happened was that Barry Miles resigned as a director and Keen, Peter Stansill and Dave Hall were left to run IT’s publishing company until the court judgement bankrupted the company.
Adult Comics: An introduction – Roger Sabin, Routledge, 1993.
Nasty Tales* – David Huxley, Critical Vision (Headpress), 2001
Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels – Roger Sabin, Phaidon, 1996
In the sixties – Barry Miles, Jonathan Cape, 2002
(Keen’s girlfriend at the time was Jean McNeill – any connection?)
Also another page with information on Reality Studio site with copies of Cyclops covers: http://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/printing/offset/
Coincidentally an email from my friend who is contact with Macolm MacNeill this morning that included this quote from his email from MM:
> > A note to tell you that I signed a deal with Fantagraphics in April to release Ah Pook as a box set. Ah Pook is Here with the original BB text plus Observed While Falling. It's scheduled for publication next summer. Observed While Falling turned out to be quite a good book I think. > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/13/william-burroughs-graphic-novel > > http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/09/william-s-burroughs-lost-graphic-novel-coming-in-2011.html >