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On the way to the day job this morning I was singing Neutral Milk Hotel's "Love You More Than Life" to myself as I cycled through Hyde Park. This is a more difficult task than you might imagine, above and beyond my complete inability to carry a tune. You see, this song - which may not even exist, it isn't on any NMH album - has only four lines where the lyrics are remotely intelligible. There's the chorus, and then "I'm all screwed up and I feel all right, sinking deeper in the night". Or something. Beyond that, it's just the slow thrum of lo-fi electric guitar and the singer's voice, deep, soft and melancholic.

I'd probably not be nearly so fond of it if I actually understood all the lyrics. But this is a love song, and I can only hear fragments of the story. Nature loves a love song, and abhors a vacuum. I am forced to fill in missing lines myself. At a certain point I stop liking the song because it's a catchy little tune, and start liking it because I have put my own story into it to make up for the parts I couldn't understand.

In Lacanian psychology, this is called transference. And it goes like this: we are all tangled little webs of complication, and at some level we are always trying to untie ourselves. We all want to know what it's all about, Alfie. Who am I? Where am I going? Should I have called her again and tried to explain, or is it better that I didn't? We are always looking for psychoanalysts. But, being cheap, and somewhat ashamed, very few of us actually plump for the man and the sofa and the $500 an hour and the "tell me about your father". Instead we look to a parent, a lover, a friend to transfer into the role of analyst. Or even, a pop song.

This is specious, because nobody can answer our questions except ourselves. Hell, most of the time we don't even know what the questions are, or that we are asking them. The thing about writing is it makes you painfully aware of your own themes and obsessions. You find yourself repeating the same ideas, the same characters with minor variations, over and over. You discover that even your sentences are traitor signposts, defaulting to a certain rhythm.

Every story starts with the self, and a lack, or a desire, and grows from there. And if you create enough stories, and are brave enough, you begin to understand those holes in the fabric of your self as they are reflected back at you. Others aren't immune from this, because even if you don't write things down on paper you are still endlessly creating your own story in the way you dress; who you befriend; your loves, catastrophic and repetitious.

The advantage of art (against people) as agents of transference is simple: books don't talk back. They can't argue with whatever you're projecting on to them. Neither can films. Or pop songs - the most widespread experiential currency of our age. Why the dominance of pop songs? They're catchy, they're vague, and most of all they inspire us to sing along. If you want to aid transference, what better way than to get people to tell the story on their own breath? You are the "I" of the story, because you are singing it.

Not that anyone thinks about these things, or plans them. They just happen: the artist creates a song. It's a story. They all are. It's a pretty vague story, because they've only got three minutes to tell it, and lyrical convention says there needs to be a chorus. And, oh bugger, it's got to rhyme. So the perfect, golden thing that the artist had in mind when he or she sat down to write the song eventually comes out, and it's not perfect or golden any more. It's dented and slightly brassy, but it'll do. (This happens with screenplays too; oh dear God does it ever happen with screenplays.)

So they push their little tune out there in the drift, and it bumps up against your boat. You pick it up and listen. Chances are, the backing music is a bit loud, or the guy's got a funny accent, or it's Rickie Lee Jones and really, heaven knows what she was singing on those early albums, and you can't understand all of it. You latch on to what you can; perhaps there's a nice turn of phrase that reminds you of how you felt when you broke up with whatshisname. And from there, you try to fill in the gaps in the landscape. It's not hard, so you think; after all, it's got to rhyme.

But your lyrics are never theirs. Think about it: how many times have you mis-heard the lyrics to a pop song, and then been terribly disappointed when you found out what they actually were? Have the real lyrics ever been better than the ones you made up? And so the artist has forced us - even the most leaden and uncreative of us - to provide our own answers to our secret questions, to music of his choosing. He didn't intend to, but nonetheless, it's pretty cool that it happens.

It goes beyond pop songs. Take this painting of Cupid & Psyche, below. There are only two parts of the painting which matter: Cupid's red and slightly grubby fingers grazing Psyche's neck in adoring disbelief - we've all been there. Those heady first days, when you can be captivated for hours by that little valley where the skin declines from hip bone to belly of your beloved. See, the painter says, here is this archaic myth about a princess and a demigod, but look, it's your story too.

And then - the most important thing about the entire work - Cupid's face is left in shadow. It's a clever dodge. However handsome or noble the painter made Cupid's face, he knew that all you would think is, eurgh, what a git. You would have related to Cupid as an individual, rather than as a space for transference. The painter could not portray Cupid's face because you yourself do not know what your face looks like at that moment in your story. You're too busy staring at the freckles on her neck, you big soppy fool.

So that's it: sometimes, greatness in art comes down to nothing more than knowing when to shut up. A good set-up, a catchy little rhythm, and then a blank space to put yourself in. Look, it's your story too.

...to be kept at the royal kennels near Hampton Court. The dog's collar was engraved thus: "I am His Highness' Dog at Kew. Pray tell me Sir, whose dog are you?"

Well, quite. I have been locked in the flat all weekend doing film rewrites (and associated procrastinory activites: Music and Film sections added to The Annotated Alex. Thanks to the iTunes affiliate programme, a few fractions of pence from any tracks you download will go towards keeping me in the eccentric and ridiculously expensive clothing for which I am known.) I have emerged only to see Patti Smith play Horses at the RFH last night, and go for a long celebratory walk this evening. Now, at twilight: red wine and Italo Calvino's Castle of Crossed Destinies.

Another recent interview with me: "We were a very artistic household, my family. I was always being dragged to museums as a kid, and my mother was always reading poetry out loud or playing the piano (she is a skilled classical pianist). And then my parents were surprised when I wanted to be an artist. I even went to the Rhode Island School of Design for the summer to study graphic design. I was OK. I never would have been great. Because I got good grades, my parents (who, note well, both studied photography at university) said they wouldn't pay for art school, but would pay for me to go to a proper university. I went to Princeton. My parents wanted me to major in something useful, like Politics or Economics. I majored in Art History. [...] My life has been one big detour through Stuff Other People Thought I Should Do, back to What I Always Wanted. Still, the trip was eminently worthwhile, and the scenery was great. No regrets." More.

I have a thing for very large paintings. It may be related an adoration of the cinema screen, or just another symptom of a certain tendency to baroque minimalism. In the large and austere flat I will someday never have, something like this will take up one wall:



Five feet high and almost seven feet long. No frame, probably just propped up against the wall. (For the mythologically-impaired among you, it's Cupid & Psyche.) On another wall, something like this* or maybe a good Anselm Kiefer. And somewhere else, giving into one of my other obscure affections: very overblown Catholic art, the more kitsch the better. And I wonder why I'm single.

Images (except the Basquiat) from the upcoming Sothebys Old Master Sale on 7 July in Bond Street. The big Sothebys and Christies sale previews are the best free, rotating museum of art in the city. Also fun for playing silly games of guess the myth & martyr. Go see.

*No, don't make that face. It is mesmerising in real life; I saw it before it was sold. How a painting is when you stand in front of it is entirely different from how it appears in photos.

I have broken into abandoned palaces in North Poland and boarded-up luxury hotels in Cambodia. I've raced across oceans and snuck across borders. So why, then, am I jealous that someone else has done this?

My ongoing obsession with decay and the skeletons of cities has come roaring back. I also blame Kontroll.

I have spent the last week finishing an 82-page graphic novel, working pretty much nonstop. It features the happiest ending I have ever written. You know me. I'm all about the noir. And don't misunderstand - very nasty things happen in this book. But at the end, the bad guys are decisively vanquished and the heroines ride off into the sunset happily ever after (or at least until the sequel). If it's even half as much fun to read as it was to write, it should do well. More details on it later, when the publisher gives me clearance.

Tomorrow I go back to working on the script for M, again pretty much nonstop until I leave for LA. But to celebrate, I have tracked down and puchased the out of print DVD of one of the greatest films ever made. Soon, gentle strangers:



"I never lose. Not really." God, I love Melville.

SMOKE was named as one of the Best Shots this week on Newsarama: "SMOKE hails from the grand tradition of dystopian U.K. comics. In tone and intent, it shares the school of the best of Moore and Ellis. That this is de Campi's first significant comics work borders on the unbelievable. This book deserves to be huge."

Also, I contribute an article to Ninth Art this week where I get artist friends Simon Fraser, JJ Dzialowski and Igor Kordey to talk about must-own European comic books. This will be my last Ninth Art column for the summer, as I'm just swamped under deadlines.

"Where are the loos?"

"Over there. Take a left at the fat chick."

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realised that the chick in question was, in fact, the singer of The Eighteenth Day of May, the band I'd gone to see two days before at the Spitz. The Twisted Folk/Track and Field mafia are a tight group, and they all show up to each other's gigs. Most of the Broken Family Band - the group I was seeing that night - had been at the Vetiver/Hinson gig at the Lyric the week before.

The Eighteenth Day of May (whose singer isn't actually fat) were lovely on Sunday night. Song of the evening had to be "Lady Margaret". The 18s, as I shall now call them, being far too lazy to type out their ridiculously long name, aren't really pushing new musical boundaries, but their Byrds/Mamas & Papas-esque prettiness makes for a hugely enjoyable evening at a sit-down venue like the Spitz. And the world needs more pretty.

The 18s were only the opening act on a three-band slate. Next up was Tunng: three guitarists, a screechy girl, a rack of electronica, and a percussion section consisting of a snare drum and bits of seashells and dried grass suspended from a rope. I like ambient electronica. I like John Fahey-esque acoustic guitar. So why did my brain judder so much when confronted with a mash-up of these two things? I kept thinking, "I'm going to leave," then, half-out of my chair, I'd stop and sit back down again, captivated by a turn in the song. Tunng have the sort of music I'd listen to while writing. I still left before the final act. Hey, it was Sunday. I was tired.

Now back to Cargo on Tuesday, where Mr Brown, his musician friend, and I lean against the wall next to the DJ booth and wait impatiently for Currituck County to get the hell off the stage. The 18s are a couple feet away. Currituck are two bearded young folkies who had opened the Vetiver/Hinson gig. I hadn't been impressed then. Now I actively wished them pain. Tonight, Track and Field cleverly put them second, after the fun, energetic Magoo (of which I want to hear more) and before the Broken Family Band. I think they realised that nobody would have shown up for them otherwise. Now, I like American roots guitar. I listen to John Fahey and Leo Kottke CDs pretty much every day while I write. I've stumbled upon a blinding performance of Kottke's stuff live in the lobby of the National Theatre, played by a slide guitar/slap bass duo (is there anything more wonderful than good slide guitar and slap bass? I think not.) So I know what these guys are trying to achieve, and I know just how short they're falling. Boring, noodly, bloodless acoustica. The only song that had a pulse was a cover.

I probably would have retreated to Cargo's amply stocked bar, had it not been for the 60 year old bleached blonde chick with the orange tan and the Sailor Moon costume. As everyone else stood around in a quiet half-circle and shoe-gazed, she marched up right in front of the stage and gyrated her hips in ways I haven't seen outside the more downmarket Wan Chai strip joints. She kept it up for their entire set. Her taste was atrocious; her stamina, impressive. I prayed she was the mother of one of the Curritucks.

Finally they went away and The Broken Family Band started. Countryish indie with sarcastic, amusing lyrics. They don't quite have the bravura musical brilliance of a Flipron, but they're good fun live. Best song is the one about being left alone in the make-out room, which describes in great detail how much the lead singer wants bad things to happen to his girlfriend. I have the new album, WELCOME HOME, LOSER at home and it hasn't really grabbed me yet.

Last night... Last night involved entirely too much Jack Daniels. Four band slate at Up All Night in Hoxton Square. Great little venue, and Up All Night are my new favourite promoters for managing to back the sort of fantastic, unusual acts that make me excited about music. First: Horsebox, a duo that were a lot Robyn Hitchcock, a little Noel Coward. Good start.

Then Flipron. Stage, festooned with fairy lights and Hawaiian flower chains. Sound, Aladdin Sane reeling down Margate Pier with Flanders & Swann. Super-tight set. They didn't play nearly long enough. And their new album, from what I've heard of it, is going to be magnificent. Standouts are the song about Cerberus, the many-headed guard dog of Hell - "You throw him a stick, and it's the shadow he chases" - and the immensely danceable (or maybe it was just the JD) "Dogboy vs Monsters". If Flipron are still speaking to Jon and myself after we finish defiling "Raindrops" by video, my quarter's on the pool table to do something for Dogboy vs Monsters. You know it has to be a Silver Age-style comic story of a lonely half-boy/half-beast who saves the town and finally gets the girl, only to dump her for the neighbour's Alsatian.

Thomas Truax made Flipron look mainstream, though. Half-shouted, half-sung, lanky streak of grease up there all by himself, with an assortment of Rube Goldberg-esque handmade instruments. The "drummer" was a spiked metal wheel apparatus named Sister Spinster; the first song featured The Hornicator, which looked like the top of an old wind-up gramophone, ripped off and mutated. There was a percussive rucksack-type-thing called the Backbeater. It was as if Laurie Andersen and Kraftwerk had a baby, and forced it to make its own toys from discarded household appliances. My favourite song was a tale of a man and a butterfly on the run, and the human propensity to violence, with the sounds of the butterfly's wings made by applying the blades of a battery-operated personal fan to a guitar's strings. Mental? Yes. Enthralling? Yes.

Last up was Misty's Big Adventure, most of whose set on the Track & Field All-Dayer I had missed for reason of Bertolucci. I have been converted to the Church of Misty. They sound like the B-52s raping Billy Bragg with a Speak N' Spell. They look like pedophiles, and their live gigs feature a man in a giant burgundy boiler suit adorned with stuffed blue gloves, jumping up and down frantically to all the songs. I hope by now I am getting across the true awesomeness of the Misty's experience. The samples on their site, while fine, have nowhere near the energy they get across live. All their albums will soon be mine.

I'm still reeling from so much good music from so many different acts in one night. Everyone walking out of the gig had an expression on their face like they'd just had the best sex of their lives. All nights should be like this.

"For Venus was born out of seafoam
For Venus was born out of pride
But a goddess today - if she is grade A
Is assembled upon the assembly line
La da dum, la da dum, upon the assembly line.

Now Julie was born as was proper
Her every proportion was planned
She was poured from a mould - exquisite and cold
And she grew up untouched by human hands
La da dum, la da dum, untouched by hu-man hands."

I didn't write that. (I wish I had.) It's from the Fernand Leger piece in Dreams That Money Can Buy. Yes, I'm still crushing over that film. And nice people have sent me a disc of clips from it. The film is just as weird and wonderful as I thought on first impression. If the NFT doesn't release a proper remastered DVD of this, I'm going to throw a large artistic tantrum.

"You're a dream dealer? I want to sell you one of mine. I have so many, you know."

I may not post very much in the coming weeks. I am buried under deadlines, and then off to LA and San Diego to rattle my tin cup. I'm also away on a film-directing course this weekend, because I'm still not sure what I want to do artistically. I'm 33, and I haven't figured it out yet. May never do. No, that's disingenuous. I'm mostly sure I don't want to write a novel.

For ages I've felt I should, because that's what Proper Literary Writers do. Comic writers and screenwriters not being Proper Literary Writers, of course: in a recent survey, 10 out of 10 mothers agree... So I try. I sit down in front of the computer, the blank page beckons - and I stare at it, completely unexcited. Sure, an important part of the creative process (the one that separates writers from dilettantes) is hammering away at it when the words don't flow easily, or at all. But there is a deeper problem.

Novels paint vast inner landscapes with words, and... that's not me. I like silences. The space between words. I'm interested in lies. In subtext. Most of all, I'm in love with images. My happiest moments are sitting in the front row of a cinema - so close I am almost inside the plastic world; like Orphee I can reach out to the silver and into my own distorted reflection onscreen - and waiting for the lights to dim. Waiting for the show to begin.

And music! This animated music video lark, I'm amazed at how captivated I am. I shouldn't be, really. Although I'm without a shred of musical talent, I soundtrack my entire life. Walking down the street. Starting a new script. Waiting to be served at the pub. Songs for all. Other people's songs, but nonetheless... I don't mean I listen to an iPod all the time. In fact, I never do. Don't need to. The songs are in my head - and I hate closing myself off from the ambient noise of the city.

Now people let me put stories to these songs. Not illustrate the lyrics; that's just bad karaoke. But create new stories in counterpoint. Another story arrived while I was half-dreaming last night. It was so clear: strange, beautiful, and new. I am compelled to bring it to life somehow. And I need the artistic control that comes from directing, because I really think I see things better than other people.

So it seems I will never be a Proper Literary Writer. I move in pictures, and sometimes - increasingly - those pictures move. I guess I'm just a dream-dealer (I have so many, you know); an entertainer, waiting for her own show to begin.

Still. There are worse fates.

Candidate Romeo Ramirez looked up wearily at the four teenage virgins giggling in the corner and poured himself another drink. The fat one made goo-goo eyes at him and crumpled the antimacassar of the overstuffed chair with her stubby hands. Her chewed fingernails bore the remains of purple nail varnish. It was going to be a long night.

The junior men in the party, the ones for whom he was a giant striding down the sidewalk of life, assumed the dark circles under his eyes each morning were due to nightly feats of sexual athleticism. But they were actually from the litre of whisky required to achieve sleep in the same room as four excited and unsatiated fifteen-year-olds. Women revolted him.

His advance man, Pico, found it easy to round up seven or eight girls in each town who were secretly not virgins and thus would otherwise bring great shame on their family on their wedding night, when their non-wholeness was discovered by their new husband. In this way, he was performing a service to the people of the Philippines - probably the most tangible service he would ever provide. But he got no peace. Although the stories that he devoured four virgins a night made him a hero of the man on the street from Aparri to Zamboanga, the priests - those corrupt, flapping crows - criticised him at every turn. The Cardinal Suarez (who had at last count eight illegitimate children, two by nuns) even dared to call him "a moral disgrace and unfit to run for president".

Later, Suarez brought it down to "the leader of our country should ideally have strong morals and a sincere concern for the people, but if a man cannot be found with both, then the latter is of greater importance." But it cost Ramirez and his supporters the million pesos they had embezzled from the Cocofund shares, that the previous president had nationalised from that Chinese tycoon, who had appropriated them from the farmers, who had gotten them as a pre-election bribe. Ramirez was still sore about losing that money. He was going to buy a house in California with it.

His ex-wife, who bleached her dark Asian hair hair platinum blonde and lived in a comfortable ranch house in West Palm Beach (that middle-class carbuncle growing off the playground for the sun-addled American rich) was continually hounded by political enemies of Ramirez to return to Manila and denounce him. Suarez had been to see her twice in the last month. But the house, and her allowance, were all still in Ramirez' name, so until the church was willing to subsidise her $10,000-a-month handbag and cocaine habit, Ramirez was safe from her stories about the problems with "little Romeo".

The fat girl, egged on by her little buck-toothed friend, clambered onto his lap and began to nuzzle his ear. She smelled like grape jam. Ramirez gagged, and pushed her off. So forward! What were girls coming to these days? He stuck his nose in his whisky and cursed Suarez as he inhaled. This is the Catholic Church's fault, Ramirez thought, spending all its time politicking and thus letting the country's morals slip so precariously...

When I was little, my mother and I had a game. It was called "Which painting would you steal?" It was pretty simple. We went to an art museum, and then we would go get ice cream. Black Cherry for me, Pistachio for her. While we were eating the ice cream, Mom would ask me which painting of all the ones we saw that I would steal, and why. It was never "buy". Always "steal". My mom was pretty smart, and one of the best educated people I ever met. But she knew us Clares, how good we were at pushing the self-destruct button whenever things started going well. We'd never get beyond poxy suburban houses and secondhand cars. And if we ever wanted paintings, we'd have to steal them.

It's her fault, really. I worked hard in school and thanks to that and a track scholarship, got into a good university. And then instead of majoring in something useful, something that might get me a job, I studied Art History. That's what she gets for dragging me to all those museums as a kid.

I think of her every time I cut a canvas from its frame.

CBR says about SMOKE: "The first issue, despite being 48 pages long and priced at $7.49, has had unusually high reviews and repeated sellouts from stores as well as disproportionately high message board buzz. This could well be the first breakout comic of the decade."

ComiXfan gave us a 5/5 and said, "Couple this return to peak form by Igor Kordey with a spectacular debut by Alex de Campi - who crafts together a complex and thought-provoking vision of a futuristic London beset by political intrigue, moral and financial bankruptcy, extreme and unusual acts of terrorism, and British espionage - and we have an introductory issue that excites me to the extent that a Warren Ellis or Alan Moore penned tale would do so on the same subject matter. It's a fantastic debut issue, and acts as a great pick-me-up from a market saturated by mediocrity and hype-laden events."

Ladies and gentlemen, my emotions on SMOKE's unexpected success have officially crossed over from bemused happiness to sheer terror.

Out again, Saturday night. The Twisted Folk Tour at Lyric Hammersmith, a baroque music hall encased inside a concrete box on King Street. Opening duo vaguely forgettable noodly acoustic rock. Then Vetiver, which occupy a space on the musical landscape somewhere between CSN&Y and Pet Sounds. This is a good space. Three beardy guitarists, a Girl Of Many Uses (flute, electric bass, double-bass, and other assorted instruments) and a drummer. They had me hooked from the lovely harmonics of "Farther On" and the deep double-bass thrum of "Ooh Papa".

Music like this is always better live, when you can feel the vibrations of the strings in your sinews. It also helps that band member Devendra Banhart is a great improviser, giving "Los Pajaros del Rio" an entire orchestration of background noises and extra verses, carried away and gesturing, then suddenly remembering he had to play the guitar AND sing, and his naughty truant hand stops doing Hindu dance moves and dashes back to the strings before anybody misses it. The only duff song is "Amour Fou", because watching an earnest beardy male do the mouth movements required to sing "Lovelovelovelovelovelovelove" brings to mind attempts of enthusiastic yet clueless college boys to go down on a woman for the first time.

Then came Micah P Hinson, Headliner. Mr Brown and Mr Carey like Hinson; I regard him as the speedbump before the Earlies (Hinson usually opens for them). I thought I would be charitable and give him a try as a headliner. Never again. Hinson is Emo Boy incarnate: pudgy; cult 80s rock shirt (Sonic Youth); baggy-arse jeans; black-rimmed glasses and a collection of small buttons and badges scattered over his person. He putters around stage in a faux-naif unprofessionalism, trying to gain our pity but instead putting me to sleep. Hinson is tolerable when drowned out by his band; but unfortunately his new style is to plink a few strings on his guitar and then bray, unaccompanied, a song's opening verse, with passion, brio and a complete lack of respect for commonly-accepted practices of tunefulness. It did my head in. I left after four songs.

Forthcoming attractions: The Broken Family Band at Cargo on the 14th. Flipron and Misty's Big Adventure in Hoxton Square on the 16th. Both should be cracking gigs, although the combined madness of Flipron and Misty's together in the same room might actually endanger the space-time continuum. Also, delight of delights, I have been given two prime tickets to the great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson at the Royal Albert Hall on 1 July. Now comes the hard part: finding someone to go with, who understands the sublime beauty of this sort of thing. (If you're interested in this Peterson fellow, him playing the Gershwin Songbook remains the most perfect late-night CD ever created.)

For cinephiles, the NFT's July season is going to be... expensive. A Crime season, a Robert Mitchum season, and a Carole Lombard season. Not to miss: Lombard and William Powell (one of the greatest comedic actors ever to grace the screen) in My Man Godfrey. Mitchum in Night Of The Hunter (you ever wonder where 'Love' and 'Hate' across the backs of fingers came from? This film); Cape Fear ("counsilluh"); Angel Face (of which I have already spoken); and Out Of The Past. Lastly, Point Blank on the big screen on 30 June, followed by a Q&A with director John Boorman. I may just expire from joy.

The lovely James Sime Esq, of Isotope Manor, San Francisco, is giving away 20 free copies of my new book, SMOKE. Email him before 12 June; winners selected at random. Details here.

The best part of the book being out is hearing from people who have read it, or who are trying to persuade their shops to carry it. A tip of the hat to occasional correspondant Legba C, who writes:

"You owe me.

Seriously. Like big time.

So yesterday I tore out of the house to find SMOKE somewhere inWashington, DC. I am super excited about this. First, I've been convinced this book was going to be brilliant ever since I started following your stuff on Ninth Art like a year ago; you throw around the weight of a veritable public intellectual with no small amount of humour and it reads wonderfully. Second, this adds one to the, I dunno, ten or so women who work in the industry and this makes me no short of very very very very happy.

But now I hate you.

I went through hell to get this $@#%$^^*^$ comic. HELL.

First store I went to never got their shipment for it. Fine. Go to another store. Guy says, hold on, I gotta look. Fine. I'm standing around next to the counter. A gentleman of significant girth comes up to me with two issues of something put out by DC clutched in his fists, sweating profusely, eyes bulging, and appearing to be in astate of no small distress.

"WHATISWRONGWITHYOUPEOPLEISSUE216DOESNOT
GOINFRONTOF217ANDTHESEAREOUTOFALPHABETICALORDER
ICANTTAKETHISWHATKINDOFSHOPAREYOURUNNING!"

He breaks down and starts crying. I feel bad so I try to give him some kind of assistance.

That's when he starts hissing, spitting, and kicking at me. The guy comes out of the back and has to PRY this man off of me, and said man tears out of the store holding both comics. The shop proprieter immediately informs me they do not in fact have your book.

Fine. I go to a third store. As I'm walking into this one in Georgetown, a cop stops me.And proceeds to accuse me of hijacking a car. No, I am NOT lying. It comes to the point where I almost get put in handcuffs when a second piggie comes crawling up to say oops, mistake, they made a mistake, I'm THE WRONG GENDER.

Fine. Okay. FINE. I go in. I ask for the FUCKING COMIC BOOKS. THEY SAY, NO, BUT THIS OTHER STORE HAS IT.

AND IT'S THE FIRST MOTHERFUCKING STORE I WENT TO.

So I go BACK to the first store.

AND THIS IS WHERE I FIND OUT THAT IT'S A PRESTIGE FORMAT 48 PAGER AND IT COSTS $7.49 AND I ONLY HAVE 4 BUCKS.

I spent the next 20 minutes FUCKING PANHANDLING FOR THE MONEY TO BUY YOUR Q$#^%$&#$&% COMIC BOOK. And yes, it was good. It was so good, I considered eating it. It's covered in tears. But god dammit, I enjoyed every page of it.

But if we ever meet, I want your first born."

My local, Sunday afternoon. Somebody - no, I don't know who - plays ragtime on the old piano. ('One of the wits of the school', your chum would say - Hot diggity! - What the hell went wrong for you, Miss Emily?) The rhythms point counterpoint my old book of Berryman's, verse irregular and passionate - (You sailed in sky-high, with your speech askew But marvellous, and talked like mad for hours, Slamming and blessing)

I curl on the leather sofa, London outside undecided between summer and rain. This time of year, it always starts bright and new, but wet by afternoon, sure as any sure thing. (Grey rooms all day, green streets I visited, Blazed with you possible; other voices bred Yours in my quick ear; when the rain was cold Shiver it might make shoulders I behold Sloping through kite-slipt hours, tingling)

They know me here. Me and my dog. Know me enough to smile when I come in, enough to look away when on the last stanza of Purgatory I begin to cry, sure as any sure thing. (O my brave dear lady, yes I will. This is it. I certainly will miss at 6.25pm. you.

And if you can carry on so, so maybe can I)

The football. A pint of cider. Heap of newspaper, allsorts, messy and off their table. The fine art of being alone in company. I page on. (Scribbled me once, it's around somewhere or other, word of their 'Edna Millay cottage' at Laugharne, saying come down to and disarm a while, and down many a few -)

Well. Sunday afternoon, I'm in the W-, (drinking your ditties and (dear) they are alive, - more so than (bless her) Miss F who teaches farmers' red daughters & their beaux my ditties and yours & yours &) a man plays the best damn ragtime piano as the old air outside grows grey and soft, sure as every sure thing. Tell me: who would leave this town?

(O down many a few, old friend, and down many

a

few)

The first issue of SMOKE came out yesterday, and I spent the day shamelessly ego-surfing the internet, waiting for reader reactions. So far, it's all unanimously positive (nobody is more suprised than I) - and the book is selling well. Anecdotally, we're already sold out in New York and London.

SMOKE has also gotten a double 10/10 and double Pick of the Week at The Fourth Rail, the toughest review site there is. We're the first book in two years (since Andy Diggle and Jock launched LOSERS) to achieve this. From Don MacPherson's review:

"This is a spectacularly impressive effort from relative newcomer Alex de Campi. The extreme characters and political commentary remind me of the sort of thing one expects to see from Warren Ellis, but it's tempered with a grounded, emotional core. Cain's affection for the colonel and his daughter really took me by surprise. Cain is humanized quite well later in the book, and such connections make it a lot easier to relate to these intense characters.

Smoke is a British Farenheit 9/11 crossed with The Bourne Supremacy. De Campi's commentary on economic manipulation and media lethargy pack a particularly powerful impact given the dominant state of right-wing politics in the world's last remaining super-power."

To balance my karma, I'd like to mention some other wonderful books. Bolland Strips is a collection of illustration deity Brian Bolland's independent comic work, and is worth the price alone for the marvellous "The Actress & The Bishop" stories, told in rhyme. Brendan McCarthy's wild and unique Swimini Purpose is due out soon. I saw pages at Bristol, and was quite overwhelmed with jealousy.

That was quick. We have our song: Jon and I will be animating "Raindrops Keep Falling on the Dead" by Flipron.

Flipron's debut album, FANCY BLUES & RUSTIQUE NOVELTIES, is probably my favourite CD purchase of the year - measured by how few tracks have me reaching for the "skip" button. I first encountered the band at a live gig at the Social back in early March, with Mr Watson. In my usual shameless way, I sent them a note afterwards saying I'd enjoyed the gig and written it up here. (It's great having a website; it's an excuse for all sorts of terribly un-English behaviour. Also, you'd be surprised how much any creative endeavor consists of pouring your heart and soul into an audience-shaped void. They might be enjoying it, but they never tell you. So it's always nice to say "thank you" to the person up there squinting in the spotlights, playing for your amusement.

I suppose it's easier for musicians, though. People either show up to the gig, or they don't. They cheer, or they don't. But writing? One puts little paper boats into the stream, boats made from the torn-out pages of one's life, and the current takes them away. The end. There are over 3,500 people who read this site, you know. Who are you? Why are you here? I only know about 10 of you.)

But back to the song, and the video, slouching towards Glasgow to be born. "Raindrops" is two minutes and 50 seconds of zany pop bliss; a great beat and Flipron's usual wryly inventive lyrics. Jon reckons he can listen to it the requisite gazillion times for the animation process without going crazy. This is important. Plus, we already know what we're going to do with it. In short: imagine the young Luis Bunuel and Hanna-Barbera teaming up to do a '70s disaster flick.

Stay tuned, gentle strangers.

SYNDICATION: LiveJournal

ARCHIVES: October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007

& FOR HER NEXT TRICKS:

KAT & MOUSE 2
January 2007
ISBN-10: 1598165496
$5.99 / All Ages

AGENT BOO 2
January 2007
ISBN-10: 1598168037
$4.99 / All Ages

***

RECENTLY:

MESSIAH COMPLEX 1
October 2006
ISBN-10: 2731617667
EUR12,90 / Teen

AGENT BOO 1
Sept 2006
ISBN-10: 1598168029
ISBN-13: 9781598168020
$4.99 / All Ages

KAT & MOUSE 1
July 2006
ISBN-10: 1598165488
ISBN-13: 9781598165487
$5.99 / All Ages

SMOKE
December 2005
ISBN-10: 193323928X
$24.99 / Teen

***

Brief Loves:
Music: Berlin Cabaret Songs
Film: Chetyre (4)
Book: Camera Lucida