Moir: Stand Up, Comic

MOIR: STAND UP, COMIC

FOREWORD

MOIR began life in 2001 as a vague notion to do a story about a private detective. After a couple of brief attempts to get the thing started - a short story here, a webcomic there - I shelved the idea. A story about a man who swaps one dream for another was, perhaps, a little too on the nose for my liking.

Then, in 2005, I had the chance to write a story for an anthology that a friend was putting together. When asked for a bittersweet love story, Moir wasn't the obvious choice, but I had recently begun visiting a friend in his new flat in our former University city of Manchester. Geography became History, of course, and a trip down Memory Lane began to inform the story, even before I put pen to paper.

The anthology came and went - without me, in this instance, which was for the best. But I had still found time to thrash out a thirty-page script - the longest such story I had written to date. And after an aborted attempt to draw the thing (and a heck of a lot of photoreference), I put Moir back on the shelf, to await a better day.

Cue the time-lapse montage.

Then, in June of this year, I found myself staring down the barrel of a University Reunion party. Not wanting to turn up empty-handed, I cast about for something to draw. And stumbled upon the script for this story, looking up at me with expectant Is.

I couldn't have drawn MOIR two years ago. Without the experience of drawing two long Hondle adventures, all those shorter strips - and, of course, Trouble Bruin - I would have struggled with both the "acting" and the composition.

Two weeks of non-stop, slam-bang drawing followed. Eighteen-hour days, two, three, sometimes four pages layed out, pencilled, inked and shaded in a day. I worked my fingers to the bone. The context of seeing all my old University chums - of it being okay, just for a moment, to be locked into that time, that place (instead of being cursed by it, as I sometimes feel) - lent the work speed, and power. The photoreference helped immensely: while most of it makes no appearance in the finished story, it gives the characters a real environment to explore, and grounds the story in reality. Indeed, Manchester becomes a character in her own right - the only one intended to resemble someone real.

It's just a shame that the floods stopped me attending the reunion.

There's probably more than a little autobiography in these pages. Less than you might think, more than I might want. But I hope you enjoy MOIR, all the same.

It's been a long time coming.

Click here to begin reading. A B&W print edition of the strip is also available.