Today, amidst my usual Panopticon Feed, I saw that it was the birthday of artist extraodinaire, Simon ‘Biz’ Bisley. It having been over a year since my last ‘Painting Metal’ blog entry, the time seemed ripe to post another. Bisley has been creating covers for metal albums for nearly thirty-five years, on top of playing in various metal bands himself. The man is one of us, sword-brothers. ER. "International Miscellanea: 1993 UK Comic Art Awards," The Comics Journal #161 (August 1993), p. 40. The fourth collection of the adventures of Sláine, the Celtic warrior, this one follows his trials and tribulations as, after becoming king of his tribe, he now proposes to gather and unite the tribes of the Earth Goddess under a High King to fight off the twin threats of enemies from the north (the monstrous Fomorians) and the south (the drunes armies lead by the Lord Weird Slough Feg). I think they’re combined! I mean look at Bill Sienkiewicz – or even some of my stuff. You can see the use of abstract in it. Comic book artists, a lot of them, are real and true artists. The people who draw that line with fine art – they’re the ones that are pretentious. They’re defining themselves and defining me and people like me, and defining themselves against me and separate from me and us and them. You can’t get more pretentious than that. It’s a class system that’s entirely wrong because, again, look at Sienkiewicz’s stuff – you can take his frames and blow them up and it’s a whole other process, I think, because you’re not doing it solely to tell a story for a corporate company.

Yes! Apparently someone can program in my stuff and it’ll come out looking like that. The thing is, what am I going to do? There’s nothing to do. If they want to put my signature on it… well…now this relates to what you’re talking about. Painted art against digital art. Well this is digital art. It’s another form of digital. So if it’s happening, it’s happening. As long as people can separate the two, and they don’t put my name to it…I can imagine that if you still offered it people would absolutely still pay you in beer. They’d probably pay you in as much as the equivalent of your pricing if you requested it [laughs] Pat Mills’ writing and editorial career started in Dundee, working for D.C. Thomson on the teenage romance magazine Romeo. Later he went freelance and started a long relationship with IPC Magazines, initially writing for girl’s titles like Tammy, Pink and Sandy. He then worked with Malcolm Shaw on devising Jinty before moving over to rejuvenate boy’s comics. He created Battle (with John Wagner), Action, Misty and 2000 AD. Other notable works include Marshal Law, ‘Third World War’ in Crisis, and Requiem Vampire Knight. Okay. Good. Brilliant. Anyway, traction these days…I think my prices are more than they used to be. So you just tend to get the guys who specialize. That feels…surprisingly sentimental for you? Maybe not though. It makes sense given what you’ve told me about your creative process before – being able to look at anything and try to find the artistic value in it. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. Every single piece of art that anyone’s ever conscious of doing exists pretentiously, because you’re doing something to show people… I mean, how do you want to define pretentious?

This was simply excellent. I listened to it over the course of a morning and was totally enthralled. The performances were outstanding including Colin Morgan as Sláine and Gerry O’Brien as Ukko, the dwarf, who is Sláine’s companion and the chronicler of his adventures. Ukko is very much comic relief with great banter between him and the druidess Nest, who ‘encourages’ Ukko to write down the saga. Nest, who was portrayed by Fiona Glascott, was my favourite character. Batman/ Judge Dredd: Judgement on Gotham (with John Wagner and Alan Grant, 1991) ISBN 1-56389-022-4 On the other end of the spectrum for you… I found an interview from around – oh jeez – probably from ’93 or ’94 in Tripwire Magazine that was between you and Grant [Morrison] , talking about art – specifically fine art. And one of the first things that you say in this interview is that art is pretentious. Bisley started his career doing magazine and album covers, his first work being a T-shirt design for heavy metal magazine Kerrang! As I finish reading this collection for perhaps the 10th time, I find that Slaine is a very easy 5 stars for me.

Timed to coincide with the 35th anniversary of its first publication in 2000 AD in 1989, this new edition of Pat Mills and Simon Bisley’s groundbreaking and best-selling collection will feature brand new scans – meaning readers will be able to see its fully-painted art in unprecedented new detail. I mean there’s rows and rows and rows of people making art here at this show – pretentiously or not. What do you think the distinction is for people who say there’s a divide between what’s considered fine art and what’s considered fine comics art? Simon Bisley's Illustrations from the Bible: A Work in Progress (Heavy Metal Magazine, July 2007, ISBN 1-932413-78-2)