The Suttons by Phil Elliott
My first exposure to the work of Phil Elliott came in the early 1980s, back during the first heady rush of what might be termed Britain's New Wave of comics. Like many others, I gradually became aware of something new and unfamiliar haunting the trestle tables of the comic-marts that I would occasionally attend: small, xeroxed booklets with print runs small enough and artists dedicated enough to allow such novelties as hand-coloured covers and other engaging quirks of production deemed cost-ineffective by larger publishers. Back then, before the movement attained its highest profile with the advent of ESCAPE, the most prominent of these personalised masterpieces were the regular FAST FICTION anthology, along with individually published pieces by two of its most notable contributors, Eddie Campbell and Phil Elliott.
Though lumped together by circumstance, Eddie and Phil have always been almost diametrically opposed in terms of style, making their occasional team-ups all the more remarkable. Those loose naturalisms of Eddie's drawing is as far removed from Phil's clean and stylised lines as the former's unembellished autobiography is from the latter's delicate and dreamlike vignettes. I've gone on record elsewhere concerning my admiration for Eddie Campbell's work, in other introductions, but have never been so forthcoming when it came to Phil's. I'd like to take this opportunity to put that right.
Phil Elliott is superbly accomplished, both as an artist and as a writer, and never moreso than when he's handling both these tasks himself. This is not to diminish his many collaborations with other writers, but simply to state that in my opinion, Phil's work finds its purest expression when he's in control of both words and pictures. The charm of his insight and observation as a writer so perfectly complement the sensibilities of his drawing that I miss it when it isn't there, however talented his collaborator might be.
I suspect that this factor, more than anything, is what has prevented me from working with Phil myself. Though we've both expressed a keen interest in striking up a creative partnership, the only stories that I have ever come up with that seem compatible with the Elliot visual touch are pale pastiches and imitations of Phil's own work. Nothing else feels right, but there's obviously no point in my writing stories for Phil if they're simply watered-down copies of his own. To be brutally frank, he doesn't need me. I had exactly the same problem with Eddie Campbell, come to think of it.
Phil's own work, from the poignant and nostalgic musings of GIMBLEY to the post-modernist slapstick of DANIEL AND MEYSSAC, is always a breath of fresh air, laden with the scent of unfamiliar and elusive ideas. Strangely enough, however, though I doubt anything could supplant GIMBLEY in my affections, if anything WERE to do so it would be the strip that on the surface seems to represent the most conventional work that Phil has ever done. I'm talking about Phil's regular weekly strip for his local MAIDSTONE STAR, THE SUTTONS.
Original non-syndicated strips in local newspapers are a strange phenomenon, and I like to think of myself as one who knows whereof he speaks in that department. Many of them, commissioned by editors who know nothing about comics from amongst the ranks of unsolicited young hopefuls or old drinking buddies who fancy themselves as cartoonists are, it must be said, terrible.
On the other hand, sometimes it is the selfsame lack of clear editorial ideas as to what a comic strip SHOULD be that allows something special to take root and flourish far from the confines of mainstream comics with their preconceived, strait-jacketed notions of form and content. Such is the case with THE SUTTONS.
On the surface, it seems like nothing new. There have been, and continue to be, many English newspaper strips that deal with episodes from domestic life a semi soap-operatic fashion, from THE LARKS and THE GAMBOLS right up to GEORGE AND LYNNE. One only has to look closely, however, for the differences between the above strips and those comprising this current volume to be strikingly evident. The British newspaper strip has travelled a long way since J. Millar Watt's lyrical POP strip in the 1920s, and many would argue that not all of its travels have been in the right direction. Today, the domestic strip, where it exists at all, exists in one of two narrow categories. Firstly, there are those supposedly humorous domestic strips whose humour seldom reaches beyond that of THE CLITHEROE KID, much less TERRY AND JUNE. Secondly, there are those domestic strips largely entertained by the more lamentable tabloids, where the sole purpose of each day's 'gag' is to reveal the D-cup punchlines of the female protagonists.
Clearly, THE SUTTONS falls into neither of these two camps. To look for antecedents, we must go back much further to the classic newspaper strips of the 1920s and 1930s, when the interest of a readership would seemingly be held by simple, honest, human observation, without recourse to perfunctory puns or gratuitous mammaries. It is in the BRINGING UP FATHER of George McManus, or Frank King's breathtaking GASOLINE ALLEY that we find the real forebears of THE SUTTONS; strips that would rather evoke a quiet, whimsical smile than surrender themselves to the somewhat desperate pursuit of a daily belly-laugh.
In this work, Phil Elliott has created, by instalments, a simply-drawn yet touchingly personal portrait of a young family and the community surrounding them. Some sequences are funny, some are more like beautifully-observed snapshots of suburban life and behaviour, but all of them are suffused with a real human warmth that no amount of slickly delivered gags could ever compensate for.
If you're looking for something that provides a relentless onslaught of melodrama or keeps you convulsed with mirth from beginning to end, them I suggest you put this book aside and watch NEIGHBOURS instead.
If, on the other hand, you're looking for one of the country's finest young cartoonists at the very peak of his form, them you need search no further. In the collected SUTTONS, Phil Elliott has given us what might yet prove to be his most enduring and endearing work.
He has also relived us of the need to move to Maidstone, for which we should remain properly grateful.
Phil Elliott has been active in the comic book industry since the mid-1970s. He launched and co-edited the FAST FICTION fanzine in the 1980s where he introduced his bequiffed character GIMBLEY. He was a regular contributor to the influential ESCAPE magazine and his other work includes ILLEGAL ALIEN, BLUEBERAD, LUCIFER, ABSCENT FRIENDS, THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS, GREENHOUSE WARRIORS, MR NIGHT and THE ROCKPOOL FILES. Phil has recently reprinted many of his early strips funded by successful Kickstater campaigns.
