Paul Ashley Brown: Comic Creator of Browner-Knowle Zine https://www.paulashleybrownart.com/
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the urge to review anything comic-book wise (as my esteemed host Mr Hooper knows only too well !). There’s very little these days in Comic Book land that makes me feel even the vaguest hint of genuine drooling excitement, whether it’s sat on the shelves of your local comic book store (sorry friend Meesh!) or the rear corner of your trendy Bookshop’s Graphic Novel selection (sorry nobody!). Oh sure, I’ll occasionally pick up some overhyped title or latest lauded GN I’m meant to care about, to see what the fuss is, and yet a split second later put it back on the shelf – I couldn’t tell you if it’s written well because usually the artwork is so appallingly awful and visually uninspiring I can’t get past the first page.
Every now and then though, even a jaded old curmudgeon like me can be suddenly lulled out of their all-too-snug cynicism by something that suddenly drops into view. So it was a week before Christmas, aptly enough, when a parcel arrived that made this tired old Ebeneezer Scrunge suddenly be reminded that there may well be hope and redemption, even when all seems lost. That was when I opened the package containing the first two issues of The Cancel Haus by Hroge.
What? What’s a Cancel Haus ? And what’s a Hroge ? I hear you ask. (And if you aren’t then you really should!!)
It’s a very good couple of questions to which I still don’t know the whole answer. What I do know is that Hroge is the writer/artist of The Cancel Haus, which is a planned 15 issue comic book series that he’s been working on in splendid isolation for the last 12 years (!!!), separate from the somewhat hysterical and overhyped Emperor’s New Clothes of the current comic book landscape, which he’s got off the ground via a Kickstarter, like a lot of people whose work otherwise might never see the light of day. I’ve always had somewhat conflicting views on the value of Kickstarters, so it’s rare for me to go and back one, but when I saw the artwork teases posted on the site, I felt it was my artistic duty to show support for what appeared to be a genuinely promising-looking project. I’m happy to report that on the receipt of the physical first two issues, I’m really glad I did.
Firstly, it’s a rather beautifully printed book on some quality paper stock that has the added bonus of also smelling really nice. (yes I am the kind of person that sniffs paper stocks in art shops and strokes the textures of drawing papers and art boards if you must know!!!) As well as the 24 pages of full colour artwork per issue, there are additional pages featuring quotations, lists of films and music playlists compiled by Hroge and mysterious design collaborator Esther, that act as almost supplementary indicators of influences and mood, and pull the whole thing into a very simple yet sophisticated overall design package, which suggest some serious proper thought has gone into creating a whole world for the reader to enter. It’s the small details like this that impress me; in its modest way it’s similar thinking to how each issue of the original Watchmen was a conceptual piece in its own right while being part of a bigger whole. Or the way Vaughn Oliver might design an album for 4AD say. Congrats to whoever Esther is, but she deserves kudos for her collaboration here.
Anyway, what about the actual comic-strip content?
The first two issues introduce a lot of characters and locations. There’s a man in a stetson sat waiting for a motorbike courier to arrive in an exotic location who may or may not be our reliable narrator or veteran covert spook operative. There are a group of French detectives/police/
covert undercover operatives in the Palais de Justice, a bunch of twatty twenty-somethings hiking in the middle of Scotland that come across a remote pub called The Broken Cormorant, some young women beach combing and a couple of dodgy geezers robbing some reasonably well-off yuppie thirty-something. Then there are some dodgy blokes in a curry house plotting something and talking bollocks that may be in for a surprise when their taxi turns up and a young woman pouring through a bookshop for hidden messages. And who is taking dubious snaps of a young woman on the hospital bed at the end of issue 2? Don’t ask me, but I’m definitely intrigued already.
While I’m getting my head around just who everyone is and who fits where with what, I love the writing in this, alluding to the current climate of hysterical insanity and underhand conspiracy spook hauntology we find ourselves in, while referencing historical narrative leylines if you like, but having its own poetic tone and vocabulary that seemingly stream of consciousness crosscuts and cuts-up the parallel visual narrative. As with all genuinely great work, what you have is a fully realised vision of a world which, as a viewer and reader you want to fully inhabit, are pulled into and want to know. Both the writing and art are creating a tension, threat and mystery, causing us to wonder at where these seemingly disparate characters are headed, and how they are linked if at all, and by what. On occasion it felt to me like it had an echo of the opening of the brilliant Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective – you’re aware of a sense of uncertainty and unease, an undercurrent of darkness you feel drawn into.
These moods and tensions are ably aided and abetted by the art in the book, a significant part of that due to the thoughtful and considered colour palette that complement these narrative tonal shifts. As to the actual comic-strip technicalities on display here, let me firstly state this. I’m someone who rarely has time for a lot of the reductive, poorly observed and badly-drawn visually empty nonsense that passes for comic strip artwork these days. There are still a few out there whose work suggests all is not lost. I can assure you Hroge’s drawing here can be more than added to those quality few. It was a pleasure to find a whole comic resplendent with beautifully rendered, observed and considered drawing, perfectly realised and imagined consistently throughout, and having an understanding of how to move a story graphically along in comic-strip narrative language and form, utilising well paced and, pleasingly constructed layouts and neatly visualised panel compositions.Initially Hroge’s work reminded me of classic British artists like Arthur Ranson and John Ridgeway, beautiful drawers and immaculate renderers, yet he’s definitely his own man, who’s certainly made his own mark with the content here. It’s rare for me these days to find a comic I’m drawn to by the sheer quality of the drawing alone, but this one’s got it.
The Cancel Haus is both an aspiring and auspicious debut which, in an intelligent, reasoned and nuanced cultural and critical landscape would be being rightfully lauded as a major new work by a major new artist. Personally, I’m not entirely sure that’s where we are right now, but I really hope people out there recognise just what’s being done here. It’s an incredibly striking and commendable achievement thus far. I look forward to what comes next.
If you’d like to know more, including how to get your own copies, please go to www.thecancelhaus.co.uk
Paul Ashley Braunhaus
Mark Tonderai : Screen writer / Film Director. https://marktonderai.com
I wanted to just… give you my initial thoughts on your book such is my excitement. It’s… great. I love it… and here’s why.
It has character for one. In this… bland word we live in, where stories are ‘product’ your story takes you by the hand and starts to lead you into a maze. I have no idea where that maze is going to take me, Christ I have no idea that it is a maze but man is it exciting. The person behind your story has a point of view. A voice and a swagger.
Our grandfathers were expose to only 2500 hours of fiction by the time they hit 25. An average 25 year old is now exposed to over million hours of it. It’s so hard to get ahead of audience story expectation. Serial killer with a heart of gold? Seen it. Serial killer as superhero? Seen it. But your story obliterates that. Obliterates story expectation. I truly had no idea where we were going but I didn’t care. It is… and I use this word very, very… carefully – operatic genius. I genuinely mean it.
For me a great story does one thing simply, makes me want to know what happens next. I have read it twice and the 2nd read is better than the first because you see more. The story reminds me of early Morrison, but better. The artwork feels like it’s been scratched with a fountain pen from your heart. such expressive lines… this is excellent.
Okay, that first page. The man sitting in the chair. What an opening. You think hold on. Is he in the desert with a beer? But it’s the captions… some of those lines, ‘The age of Horus has settled in and put its feet up.’ This is the beauty of your work. Every page if you read it properly has layers and truth… It’s great writing, just great. I also think the artwork is so unique, so interesting. Again, like your story it can not be put in a box. For example: The patterns behind the cowboy hat man. I don’t know what they are but they give the panels an organic quality and they make it so interesting. You don’t follow the rules and make your own up and it’s magic!
Page 2. The cat! Oh man. Again there are 6 panels on the page and 5 of them are about the cat. Again there’s a truth there and another characteristic of your work that I love: humour. This page cracked me up. But again who does that? Devote time to a cat? You do! And it’s class! Again some idiots would say ‘what’s it got to do with the story?’ well everything… is the response. It’s who you are and how you tell your stories and again it’s unique and brilliant.
Gary Spencer Millidge: Creator of the Strangehaven graphic novels https://www.millidge.com
Really beautiful stunning work. Hard to tell where the story’s going at this point, but I’m along for the ride anyway. I love the delicate lifework, slow page, muted colours, hand lettering and loose panel borders… all of it. Very European in flavour. I admire your dedication in in completing such a mammoth undertaking in secrecy. I feel like I’ve been granted a sneak peek at a major work.
Paul Gravett, Comics Author and Journalist, http://www.paulgravett.com
I admire fierce independence. I recently heard from a UK cartoonist pen-named Hroge, who told me: “I met you in London when I was something like 16/17 years old and we were discussing me working on ‘Pssst’ magazine (I think that’s what it was called)… I’m 57 now. I sadly discovered a long time ago I am unable to work with other creative people.” And now he’s just launched his solo, self-published graphic novel series The Cancel Haus whose first 100 customers will get a collectors’ edition signed, numbered and stamped with a wax seal. “I worked on the Cancel Haus for 14 years. Some of those years nothing has happened as I was once waiting for a summertime photo shoot involving five people whom I just couldn’t corrall together in one place at the same time! I worked it out that each page was about 5 days solid work to produce… there’s 360 pages of art, not counting the 100 + pages of extra work included in the printed comic.” The first limited-edition issue offers 24 pages of story plus supplementary extras.
Hroge is doing something refreshing, daring and ambitious here, very much on his own terms, and says he considers this “…a spiritual piece of art… albeit with a sense of mischief.” Multiple narratives, casts and locations shift from page to page, and there’s a hint of Moebius here. Hroge’s captions are playful with language and allusions, running away with his wry, witty sentences, flowing with ellipses from caption to caption (not sure I’ve seen this done before quite like this), playing with the gaps between what is written and what is drawn. One storyline is set in the desert with Roman Totales, another follows apparent holiday-makers ‘in the Andalusian town of Nerja, Year 2026’, accompanied by an account of Bartholomew Steere, leader of the abortive agrarian revolt in 1596 in England. A third follows a group of friends who stumble across an puzzling pub way out in the wilds of Scotland, and then there’s a CEO in Knightsbridge who receives some unwelcome visitors. I for one am pleasantly baffled, completely intrigued and eager to see where Hroge unfolds and interweaves his casts next.
Don Moore, Reviewer and Podcaster, http://www.bunchofdorks.com/twodimensionpodcast
You’re not afraid of space, you let the story kind of breathe. I got a little lost at one point, when I went and read it a second time I kinda found the rhythm to the story, how your writing and pictures was almost like a song…
If you had a drummer playing a 4/4 beat and another drummer playing a 3/4 beat at the same time it would seem haphazard, it would seem a mess, but the 12th beat always lands at the same time, in reading this, it’s basically how I felt, I’m reading the12th beat. It’s like a lot of different random things coming together, even to the point of the drawings (they) had a looseness to it, but it also had a tightness, so when you see the whole package with the colouring it looks really tight , it seems like a cohesive unit. When you start looking at the panels and you see some of the drawings kinda sketchy, kinda loose, but when its all put together… its something special.
When you finish with the 15 issues i think this is going to be something to behold. there’s a rhythm to the story telling is unique and I haven’t seen anything like that in a long time.
It’s a beautiful book, it’s a unique book.
Jemma Cooper, Ex-BBC Presenter and journalist
… Hroge, has spent the last 14 years developing comics … (it’s about) conspiracy, waking up, esoteric themes, a spiritual journey, it’s all in there, and it’s funny. It’s an extremely well illustrated body of work. There will be 15 comics in total, it’s a massive body of work that will go down as a legacy. That’s a form of activism.
Ben Emlyn-Jones, Author and Podcaster, https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/
A comic book for critical thinkers.
T H E . C A N C E L . H A U S 