In a first for the blog, I'm delighted to present the first of a 2 part interview with indie comics creator, and organiser of last year's Wimbledon Comic Art Festival, Rik Jackson, so without further ado let's here from the man himself...
Who are you? Tell us a bit about yourself -
what you do, where you work?
I’m Rik Jackson, comic creator and illustrator from
south London. I’ve been in the comics game for a couple of years now. I out started doing
occasional illustration work and commissions, but wanted to have a go at doing comics for real. I’d
toyed with ideas in the past, but it wasn’t until 2015 that I made a proper go of it and published my
first small press comic. Since then, I’ve just thrown myself into it - from attending and tabling
at cons, bothering publishers and generally making a massive load of comics noise on social
media. I don’t like to do things by halves, so I even tried my hand at convention organising last
year, resulting in the successful Wimbledon Comic Art Festival.
Here's Rik at Wimbledon Comic Art Festival 2017
I’m currently Kickstarting a print collection of
Rock In Purgatory (here) - my heavy metal horror comic - and getting ready to launch Heads! an ongoing title
I have been planning since last summer. I’m also drawing commissions like a demon right now,
which is great. Ideally, I’d love to be a full time illustrator - or at least earn enough from it
to make changes to my life. I have a day job, like most small pressers, but would love to be able to
either draw or manage comics events for a living.
We first met at the Wimbledon Comic Art
Festival (WCAF) - tell us how that came about?
I
was so pleased to have people like Dan Butcher, Matt Garvey, Gareth Brookes and David
Broughton exhibiting at the event. I had the chance to give newbies like Heather Chapman and
Kaylee McHugh a chance to showcase their work for the first time at a comics event. Plus, I
managed to get indie publishers Centrala and Avery Hill down, which I was really proud of. I
remember spending a day wondering how best to approach Avery Hill about coming, and all of a
sudden they emailed me asking to be part of it!
I used to run a live music promotions company in my
early twenties, so I’m an old hand at organising public events with lots of people and
groups to manage. It was only a matter of time before I decided to apply my event skills to comics
and have a crack at running a con. However, this involved booking twenty exhibitors,
negotiating with a different type of venue and doing promoting in a new way for me, so it was quite a
challenge. But I got the Deputy Mayor of Merton to open it with me, had a fantastic response
from local press and managed to get the attention of a lot of comics groups, such as London
Graphic Novel Network and The Manga Forum, so I must have been doing something right.
I was really lucky to form a great relationship
with the team behind the venue, Merton Art Space. It’s a Merton Council venue which forms part of
Wimbledon Library. They were looking for exciting new events to showcase what the new venue
could do. I pitched my ideas, including the workshops I ran on the day, to the head of
Libraries and Heritage. He loved it, and agreed to give me the venue for free as a one-off. This meant
I was able to offer free tables to all exhibitors and not have to charge an entry fee.
What lessons did you learn about putting on
that sort of event?
Having run a lot of events in the past, I was well
prepared for a lot of issues that occurred on the day. Thankfully, they were very few! The main
trouble I had was getting support from local businesses. I asked many for their help in
promoting the event, offering advertising space and promotional space at the event in exchange. I think
most businesses didn’t really understand what the event was or how it had the potential to
reach new customers. Sadly, I didn’t have a similar event under my belt as a success story to
show off, so that made it harder to get businesses involved.
Would you do it again?
Yes! It was hard work, very stressful and my family
and friends had to put up with my diva strops getting worse as the day grew closer, but yes, I’d
do it again. I think I enjoy organising and hosting events like this more than just having a
table at a convention, strangely enough! I am currently looking at ideas for one or two 2018
events. Merton Art Space are interested in having me back, which would be great, but I’ve also had a
lot of people asking for me to put on a similar event in Epsom. Small Press day was announced for 7 July this year, so I am also considering doing a small pop-up event for that, possibly in Kingston or Croydon. I want to keep things interesting though. My favourite part of WCAF was the workshops, and whatever I do events-wise in the future, I want it to revolve around that. I found that I spent a lot of my time at WCAF speaking to parents whose kids had wanted to do one of the workshops. We ended up with kids drawing comics all day while parents had the chance to look around at stuff they never thought existed. It really helped as an icebreaker to get people who think comics are just for kids to discover there is so much more that the medium - and small press in particular - can offer them.
How did you get into comics initially? What
comics did you read growing up?
I started out with Transformers and He-man comics
as a kid and just kept picking things up and trying them. By the time I was in my teens I was an
avid Batman fan, and still am. I used to draw a lot back then, and tried my hand at creating my
own, original comics as well as fan comics of Batman and Green Lantern. 
I dropped out of the comics scene for a while after
that though. This was mainly down to money. I was spending about £45 a month just to keep up
with all the Batman storylines (including crossovers and specials). I just couldn't sustain
it anymore and started to feel a bit ripped off, to be honest. Looking back, I can see the business
objective of pumping out overarching story arcs and guest appearances, but it put me off in
the end, as it became harder for me to stay abreast of the stories I wanted to follow. I still have a massive collection of old Batman
comics, which I do love to bits. Knightfall was the story that completely sucked me in and I have every
issue from each title which made up the whole story, including a few issues signed by
artists and writers.
Who are your favourite writers and illustrators etc? Who's had the biggest influence o on you?
One of my favourite comic artists is Kelley Jones.
I utterly adore his gothic style and it was his work on titles such as Batman, Venom and Deadman
that made me get seriously into drawing comics. 
Brett Blevins is another big influence. I
didn’t think I liked his work at first, but I was drawn to it over and over. There is a grotesque
elegance to a lot of his art, and his 90’s run on Shadow of the Bat was a wonderful take on Batman,
in my opinion, particularly the villains.
Conversely, I’ve fallen in love with Laura Braga’s
art. Often drawn digitally, her work is crisp and clean, but has such life in it. I’ve been a fan of
hers since she worked on Witchblade.
In respect of writers, I have to tip my hat to the
likes of Paul Dini and Grant Morrison for being master storytellers. Then there’s Garth Ennis,
who’s dark and dirty writing has always given me an obscene amount of pleasure. And I’ll give Doug
Moench a shout too; I feel his writing is sometimes overlooked as his work often feels so
effortless, letting the panels breath and the beats fall effortlessly.
What comics are you buying at the moment? Where
do you buy them?
From a mainstream point of view, I’m more into mini
series than ongoings, as you can probably guess from my previous comments. I’ve been reading
the new The Demon: Hell is Earth series, as I absolutely love Etrigan. The only ongoing
title I’m picking up at the moment is Bettie Page from Dynamite - it's a great take on pulp spy and
sci-fi comics. 
I’ve got a pull list set up with my local branch of Forbidden Planet, which has these titles as well as my son’s Power Rangers and Doctor Who titles, as he’s a huge comics fan too.
Small press is hitting the mark for me more and more these days. I prefer one shots and anthologies, mainly because of the long wait between issues of ongoing small press titles. It’s understandable that it takes a long time, but I can see why this puts some people off indie comics. I don’t get out to conventions as much as I want to, so luckily creators tend to have good online stores. I’ve also recently discovered the Comicsplus app, which my library provides. It’s a bit cumbersome to use but has a great range of trades and individual issues available; I’m reading the Batman / The Shadow mini series on that at the moment.
What do you like to do when not creating
comics?
I do as many creative things as possible. I’m a
singer and guitarist in a metal band (look up Circus Diabolica on Spotify if you dare!). We haven’t played shows for a little while but we are planning to get back on stage this year. One of the reasons I put on workshops at WCAF was because I love the idea of passing on skills and knowledge to people. I used to work as a volunteer at the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill and the main duty I had was showing people objects and getting them to work out what they were. It was fantastic working in such a creative and engaging way. I absolutely love anything immersive and educational like that.
If you like the sound of all of that you can find Rik on Twitter as @gojacksongo
More to come in part 2 - stay tuned!
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