A bit late on this one. Went along last wednesday (25.09.02) with a few other to an event staged at the ICA billed as “The Mouse vs the mouse: comics and computers”.

Dave Gibbons, Dave McKean – two creator-heroes of mine were to speak on the influence of the universal machine on the form and production of comic books.

Unfortunately, the event focussed on the latter.

It was a fascinating and enjoyable evening nonetheless – but it concentrated on how computers and the internet had made their work-lives easier, not different.

A question each in the woefully-short Q&A period from Yoz and myself attempted to steer the panel round to the possibilities of form and content that the web presented, to no avail. To say nothing of discussing the possibilities of rewiring the creator-audience relationship and it’s possible beneficial effects for both parties as outlined by McCloud and attempted by Ellis et al.

Some positives: I asked the panel if they’d read Patrick Farley‘s awesome, idea-packed “The Spiders” – they hadn’t but a few people who heard me asked the question hunted me down in the bar later and asked me for the URL, so did my bit to spread the word.

Also, AnnaKookymojo, Simon, Celia, Paul, Yoz and myself had an awesome conversation in the pub about bootstrapping an online comicsphere, and many thanks to simon to following up in email with links to ComicsML.

The final positive point was when the fella who organised the talk appealed to the audience to lobby the ICA to stage more events discussing comics and sequential art. IMHO, The Institute of Contemporary Arts should absolutely devote energy and investment into the comics form – which is influencing and instigating more and more ‘mainstream’ creative endeavour, not just blockbusters like Spiderman but more ‘high-brow’ culture like Sam Mendes’ adaptation of “Road to Perdition”*, Ang Lee directing The Hulk and Art Spiegelman’s illustrations for the New Yorker.

So here is the email address of the office Phillip Dodd, the director of the ICA: philipdoddsoffice@ica.org.uk. If you’re in the UK why not write him a nice, polite letter asking for more focus on comics as a popular, yet critically-neglected contemporary art-form that could do with a champion.

I’m just about to…