The Dancing Plague

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Breakwater by Katriona Chapman. It's a really beautifully drawn and involving read about dealing with self-destructive behaviour. It doesn't offer easy answers and stays with you a long time after you close the book. I first heard about The Dancing Plague form reading an article about dangerous dances. The well-known rapper Drake had just released a video where he jumps out of a moving vehicle whilst still doing a special dance to go with his song. Copycat Tik Tok-ers were injuring themselves as a result. The 1518 dancing plague was listed in the article as the tenth most dangerous dance in history (I can’t remember any of the others) so I looked it up, and immediately knew I wanted to draw it despite the number of crowd scenes involved. Yes, some people's attitudes do change. They’re suddenly very impressed by essentially the same thing you showed them a year ago. You get teaching, and get asked to go on podcasts or panels, and you feel like everyone wants to know the secret to your tremendous success. But the secret is that there’s no difference between what you’ve been doing all along and what you’re doing now. The money’s not much more, the process is the same, you still have to sit behind tables at cons and not sell anything. From Threadbare, 2019 For me it’s all about the vulnerability and struggle of wrestling with these very physical processes, the creativity and unexpectedness that comes from not knowing what you’re doing and always being in danger of failing. I’ve heard people say it takes 10,000 hours to master your style or your line or something, but to be honest I think it takes 10,000 hours to become boring and mediocre. The moment you master something is the moment you stop being creative. Broken Frontier soundbite: “Those looking for an introduction to experimental uses of the form will find The Dancing Plague an excellent entry point to comics that challenge the conventions of the medium, while long-term fans of the work of Gareth Brookes will find their eager anticipation for this latest tome will not be met with disappointment.” Read the full review here

I don't think there's a simple answer and I don't really try and speculate too much in the book, like all good mysteries, it should (and probably will) remain unsolved.

Parents protest weapons supplier ahead of Gaza ceasefire demonstration in London

Ha! Some of that’s just bad drawing I’m sure, but yes, in a lot of early medieval painting there was a hierarchy of scale, figures being more important the larger they were and the closer to the middle of a picture they were situated [in], often a building is depicted as just big enough for one person to stand in. At the center you’ll sometimes get a massive adult man Christ baby, it was considered heretical to ever think Christ was an actual baby. To complicate matters, medieval people didn’t really see their bodies as closed objects of a certain size, more as grotesque transformable forms. All this gave me a sanguine attitude to getting the drawings right. There’s one bit where I drew a young girl and a child running away from a lecherous priest. I accidentally drew the priest massive and the girl and child tiny, but somehow my attempts to redraw it just didn’t seem as medievally, or as distasteful, so I went with the original drawing.

It's a fascinating, totally original subject matter and it's handled wonderfully. Everything feels thoroughly researched, and the comic provides insight into the society it depicts without ever coming off as explicitly educational. Similarly, Brookes critiques sexism and organized religion without ever being preachy. Moreover, the story itself is enthralling, full of unexpected twists and turns, and the protagonist is fleshed out and complex. The Dancing Plague of 1518 is definitely one of the strangest mysteries to ever exist. One summer’s day the inhabitants of Strasbourg, in what’s today France, began to dance in the streets. This began with a single person who started dancing and wouldn’t stop; not at the behest of their family, not to sleep, not to eat. They just kept on dancing. But then it spread to others, and more and more people began to join in. By the end up to 400 people were taking part, with no obvious reason or cause. They danced until their feet bled and they dropped from exhaustion. As in most of his work, Brookes applies some unusual artistic techniques, eschewing simple ink on paper. Here he depicts the mortal world using pyrography, lending it an earthy, drab, somewhat oppressive quality. He contrasts this against the story’s otherworldly elements, which are depicted with brightly coloured embroidery. The effect is great, and the whole thing is just a pleasure to look at, with a suitably mediaeval aesthetic. It's important to understand that medieval people wouldn't recognise our conception of gender. If anything, the gender stereotypes we live with that are the root of the misogynistic attitudes in today's society come from a romantic Victorian reinterpretation of another medieval idea, that of chivalry, which sees women as "damsels in distress" in need of protecting and saving. You're right though, ultimately it all amounts to the same thing. Broken Frontier soundbite: “Cleverly constructed, ever playful with the form’s language, and employing some sparkling dialogue and characteristion, it’s a graphic novel you will return to time and again. In fact, this joyous, witty, poignant and, most importantly, very human story is the book we all needed as a counterpoint to the challenges of 2020.” Read the full interview hereGareth has produced a number of self-published books, including The Land of My Heart Chokes on Its Abundance. His work is also published by collectives such as The Alternative Press and The Comix Reader, while his two-comic collaboration with artist Steve Tillotson, Manly Boys and Comely Girls, is available from Avery Hill Publishing. The whole digital replication of traditional techniques, complete with programmed imperfections, I guess is trying to convey this, the human touch. I've spent ages working on a digital pencil drawing of a pencil, just for my own amusement. This distinction, between the elements of the narrative that belong to the heavens or the earth, ultimately proves important to the climax, specifically through the red shoes worn by the hapless dancing citizens. The Dancing Plague In 1518, hundreds of inhabitants of Strasbourg were suddenly seized by the strange and unstoppable compulsion to dance. Known as The Dancing Plague, Gareth Brookes recounts the events from the imagined perspective of its witnesses, Mary. Prone to mystic visions as a child, betrayed in the convent to which she flees, then abused by her loutish husband, Mary endures her life as an oppressed and ultimately scapegoated woman with courage, strength, and inspiring beauty.

This book is made using pyrography and embroidery on calico. Basically, it's a soldering iron with pyrographic attachments allowing you to burn onto a surface, in this case fabric. It's a really nice way of working because you're never completely in control of the line. I used a flat attachment to get the tones and a very fine one to do things like the cobbles on the street. It isn't much more time-consuming than using a pen, although some of the darker tones do take a while, and I worked in A2 (so each panel is A4 size) which increased the work! And so in one scene we also see Jesus bleeding from the abdomen, with blood spilling down as scarlet thread. This is mixed medium art, conceptually anchored in religious iconography. It is remarkable. In 2017 he took part in the British Council Korea’s Storytelling City exchange project to Seoul, South Korea, culminating in an exhibition and webcomic. He has been a guest speaker at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, The Manchester Literature Festival, The Bradford Literature Festival and The Toronto Comic Arts Festival. He is a Tutor in Foundation Studies at City and Guilds of London Art School, and a regular visiting Lecturer on Illustration at Lincoln University. Once I had got started, I went to the V&A and did some sketches from medieval tapestries and manuscripts. By 1518, the Renaissance was already underway, but the ordinary people of the period would not have had access to the latest artworks, and their visual language would be dominated by medieval art, so particularly for the visions Mary experiences, I drew from the art of a slightly earlier period. In the end I became good at inventing demons, mixing, matching and improvising from various bits and pieces of features I’d spotted in medieval art.Creator description: The Dancing Plague tells a true story, from 1518, when hundreds of inhabitants of Strasbourg were suddenly seized by the strange and unstoppable compulsion to dance, from the imagined perspective of Mary, one of its witnesses. Prone to mystic visions as a child, betrayed in the convent to which she flees, then abused by her loutish husband, Mary endures her life as an oppressed and ultimately scapegoated woman with courage, strength, and inspiring beauty. All artwork in the book is created using pyrography and embroidery on calico. I drew from visual sources across the medieval period too, but most notably Bruegel the Elder (who was born shortly after the Strasbourg outbreak and made drawings of a dancing plague) and Hieronymus Bosch whose Garden of Earthly Delights has exactly the kind of demented atmosphere I hoped to capture in some of my dancing scenes. Women also had access to law. The issue of "The Marriage Debt" was an interesting example. This was where a spouse, male or female, had a right to expect sex from a partner, otherwise the marriage could be annulled. There are many examples from the ecclesiastical courts of women suing for divorce on grounds of a husband's inability to perform this duty. A wife could even stop her husband from going on the crusades if she objected to being deprived of the sex he "owed" her. The Dancing Plague tells a true story, from 1518, when hundreds of inhabitants of Strasbourg were suddenly seized by the strange and unstoppable compulsion to dance, from the imagined perspective of Mary, one of its witnesses. Prone to mystic visions as a child, betrayed in the convent to which she flees, then abused by her loutish husband, Mary endures her life as an oppressed and ultimately scapegoated woman with courage, strength, and inspiring beauty. The mystics I chose to base my character on were Christina the Astonishing and Margery Kempe. Christina the Astonishing could levitate, sit in an oven without burning, and stay underwater for days at a time. Margery Kempe on the other hand didn’t have any superpowers but was more of a rebel and an eccentric. She was a middle class business woman, mother of fourteen children who pronounced herself holy and travelled around delighting and irritating people with her divinely inspired pronouncements and constant crying and wailing at any mention of Christ’s passion. These crying fits would last for hours or even days and made her unpopular with fellow pilgrims who travelled with her on various pilgrimages. Anthony Bale is a leading expert on Margery Kempe so I was able to get some valuable insight into her as a character. I would urge everyone to read The Book of Margery Kempe, which is the first autobiography written in the English language.

Publisher’s description: A stunning first graphic novel by a Cape/Comica/Observer graphic short story competition winner – a tale of a skirmish in the ice-cream wars that is worthy of Alan Bennett. In the small seaside town of Dobbiston, Howard sells ice creams from his van, just like his father before him. But when he notices a downturn in trade, he soon realises its cause: Tony Augustus, Howard’s half-brother, whose ice-cream empire is expanding all over the North-West… Flake, Matthew Dooley’s debut graphic novel, tells of how this epic battle turns out, and how Howard – helped by the Dobbiston Mountain Rescue team – overcomes every obstacle and triumphs in the end.

Hmm... not quite my thing. I was very intrigued by this title, and the art style is super interesting with heat-scorched images meeting embroidery. I'd love to see more titles that utilize this type of media-mix approach to comics. As difficult to interpret now (as a psychological reaction to social injustice?) as it was then (as a collective demonic possession?), the story of the “Dancing Plague” finds suitably extraordinary expression in the utterly unique mixed-media style Gareth Brookes has devised to tell it. The pioneering blend of his trademark “pyrographic” technique with sumptuously colourful (and literal) embroidery perfectly reflects, in a beautiful work of art, the enduring fragility of our human condition – from “choreomania” to coronavirus. So, in answer to your question, I don’t really think about being ‘professional’ anymore, it’s an idea that other people have. The thing I probably most struggled with is the fact that I’d always done comics as a ‘hobby’ after work, and that now I was doing it all the time, I needed a new hobby. I tried brewing beer for a while, or playing guitar, but in the end, I realized comics is still my hobby, it’s just that now I do it all the time.