CLiNT

My relationship with comics has always been on and off. My first real foray in to their world was in the mid 90s, when a friend of mine (INDIA) introduced me to the world of the then excellent MAD magazine.
INDIA had many friends who studied at Baghdad International School, as such he had access to a lot of MAD copies. Of course, MAD is a very cool kinda comic. It's a satire of everything mainstream, and featured many great artists and writers, and the infamous side comics scribbled around the margins of each page.

When I came back the UK in 2000 (Damn! 11 years ago!), I almost immediately subscribed to MAD via a magazine import specialist. Unfortunately, the magazine has lost a lot of its charm. Advertising (something famously missing from it) crept in and has taken over almost every other page. Also, "political correctness" has generated a very "safe" and "bubble-wrapped" MAD. I very recently saw some digital copies of the magazine and unfortunately its just the same.

And that was about the end of my relationship with comics. When I lived in London I used to regularly visit the amazing Forbidden Planet, a haven for everything movie/cartoon/comic. But I used to mainly go there for the figurines or Muppets toys. I hardly ever went down to the basement where the comics lived.

Things changed a few years ago when I bought my first laptop, an Apple PowerBook Pro. I stumbled upon a programme called Comic Book Lover that let you read digital scans of comics on the mac, and even included an awesome portrait mode, where you held the laptop like a book, hence the screen orientation was more like a real page. The digital comic scene is still very vibrant, and still mostly underground and illegal. With the rise of iPad and the slew of tablets to follow, comic publishers like Marvel and DC have all got their own dedicated comic apps and stores for you to legally purchase and read comics. The underground scene on the other hand is a group of very dedicated people that painstakingly scan comics and compress them. You can get these scans from anywhere naughty on the net, and read them using many programmes, one of which is Comic Book Lover.

So I started reading comics again. Some I found myself, others given to me by another friend (anarki13) and so on. And I started realising how awesome the world of comics is. The art just adds a huge dimension to the story, and the stories aren't all "man has super powers and saves damsel in distress". In fact, the stories of many writers (Mark Millar, Garth Ennis to name two) are in fact dark, vicious, and very adult.

Comics also tackle some hard subjects, in a way that perhaps a traditional novel can't. The amazing Pride Of Baghdad is a great example of a comic tackling the harrowing effect war has on the country, and particularly on a pride of lions starving in the zoo of the city. The art combined with the story give a real sense of depth and emotion to such a dark and difficult topic. Something I doubt the writer could have expressed with words alone.

And, just like with music, people who read/listen to illegal material also tend to be the people that actually purchase the most legal stuff, or attend more music gigs and buy merchandise, actually spending more on the industry than the average CD buyer. Hence, I started paying attention to real print comics, and also built a collection of digital comics purchased from the publishers.

Which takes me to CLiNT. CLiNT is a magazine published in the UK by Mark Millar, and has only just reached its 5th issue. The magazine features many regular strips by Millar and others (including the phenomenal Nemesis series), but also features articles. These articles are what I love about the mag. They're simple, printed in a large font and very easy to read. The longest article is 2 pages, and they cover topics like "magicians who died on stage" to "actors who have been fired". Trivial stuff but exactly the kind of thing you want to read between comic strips.

The language throughout CLiNT is very adult, swear words and soft sexual scenes can be found in the strips and articles, but it's all done with good taste and in context. There's none of that "sexy woman in bikini holding a piece of tech" crap you find on the cover of almost every man-interest magazine out there.

In fact, what CLiNT reminds me of a lot is the heady days of MAD. True the strips and subjects are very different between the two, but it's that exciting sense of getting the magazine and reading it from cover to cover in one delicious, greedy sitting. CLiNT has literally been designed for this purpose. I've subscribed and bought all issues, only because I really want the magazine to thrive, but if it doesn't at least I'd have the full set.

Mind you, nine years a go I thought the same about GamesTM, a new multi-format games magazine that I loved but I was convinced would not survive two years.

I've collected every one of the 104 GamesTM issues, and it's still going strong. Here's wishing the same success to CLiNT.

PS: the magazine is called CLiNT because the word was actually banned from print in British comics during the 70s, just in case a couple of letters merged during the printing process, creating a whole different meaning.