SEQUENTIAL

I’m writing this on Martin Skidmore’s birthday… Martin was the very first member of comics fandom I spoke to. You see, I’d gather together all my 5p coins and go out to the local telephone box and call him… I was 14, he was in his early 20s and he’d been foolish enough to print his phone number in his fanzine Worlds Collide… At the time I had nobody that I could speak intelligently with – these conversations were a godsend.

I never really socialised with Martin in person, even when I was publishing the non-superhero fanzine Infinity in 1984/85… but he continued to be a supporter even when he rightly chastised me for bemoaning the superhero-centric nature of fanzines, when I was not really featuring enough good material in my own fanzine… Infinity got better at that, to the point where a letter of his (I still have it) defuses my mock complaint about him getting articles from Pete Campbell and others on non-superhero comics for FA: “…it’s all a plot to make Infinity less necessary…” he wrote. That made me proud.

Well, it’s the digital age, and I’ve somehow found myself in a position to both publish graphic novels by the likes of Eddie Campbell, David, Lloyd and Hunt Emerson, and create a digital (iPad-only at the moment) platform for graphic novels without spandex. SEQUENTIAL is the recently launched digital storefront app from my company Panel Nine, and through our partnership with Blank Slate, Myriad and Knockabout we’ve got a huge selection of graphic novels available to download to your device. The app itself is free, and there are free stories to download and sample, and you can buy graphic novels like From Hell, The Lovely Horrible Stuff, The Playwright, Hugo Tate, Rumblestrip, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, and many more, from within the app.

We’ve also partnered with SelfMadeHero, Walker Books and Jonathan Cape, which means even more great material will be on SEQUENTIAL soon – including two of my favourite British sequential artists, Posy Simmonds and Raymond Briggs…

About a year before Martin was diagnosed, I did get to spend about 5 hours, just me and him, reviewing the world of comics over the previous two-and-a-half decades (sitting outside The Phoenix pub in Victoria). I’m pretty sure he would approve of what we’re up to. But it’s sad he’s not here for me check that, or to wish him a happy birthday — no matter how many 5ps I save…

Anyway, do take a look at SEQUENTIAL. And let me know what you think.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/sequential-digital-graphic/id629759394?mt=8