A
SHORT HISTORY AND EXPLANATION OF
THE MONTHLY MONTRÈAL COMIX JAM
(MMCJ)
Held the last Wednesday of the month @ Casa
del Popolo
Contact the Monthly
Comix Jam
Collaboration has been part of sequential art, comics & cartoons, since their reinvention as a mass Pop media during the golden heydays of the American Newspapers.
As soon as Comics became a central feature of any self-respecting newspaper artists were hired in bulk to work together in some way or another to rapidly produce the daily strips and weekend colour features.
Before then most comics had been the result of individual creators.
The First Jam?
In the early 60's in San Francisco, Robert Crumb & the Zap all Stars produced short often non narrative comix that are the earliest well documented use of the name 'Comix Jam'.
As the Zap crew pioneered them Jams are free form collaborations in the spirit of Free Jazz Jams.
As with Jazz Jams, Comix Jams are only as 'good' as the players. So often they are perceived to be creative Circle Jerks by some, that make up for lack of narrative with sheer energy and often anger. And it's true that many bar room Jams do produce a great deal of beer inspired juvenile scatological humor & ranting.
In this mode a comix jam is a creative night out with the gang. They become focal points for the social lives of comics communities they are held in - armatures and professionals alike getting together, building friendships [and feuds] networking, and sharing knowledge.
Always useful things these are especially so in the world of comic artists, who are by nature of trade, prone to spend unseemly hours shut away at work.
Some Jams are more about the art and storytelling, rather than blowing off steam and hanging out.
In this mode a Jam is essentially a constraint-based exercise reminiscent of the Surrealist Exquisite Corpse, or Raymond Queneau's Oulipo: Workshop for Potential Literature and its subsequent comics arm, Oubapo: Workshop for Potential Comics.
The only real difference between these and the social Jams are the degree to which the participants take the comics they collaborate on seriously or not.
In either case for the most basic form of Jam, Participants take turns drawing consecutive panels, composing spontaneous, collaborative stories. Some are narrative but often the artist will rift on ideas rather than a conventional story in a linear manor. Usually the pages are kept in a pool of work in progress between the artists, and then when complete posted on a wall, or printed in a book for all to see when done! Again as with Jazz, the inherent experimental and unstructured nature of the form leads to mixed results but a good number of pages get created that stand out as brilliant. In fact the incident of OK pages in low, they tend to rock or suck and not much in between. For those that Rock it's worth it, as the degree of novelty that comes about in these is really very educational for those taking notes, and Jams do in fact act as excellent hot housing workshops for artists. I know of few who have attended them on a regular basis and not learned quite a lot as a result. Regardless of how seriously the people jamming take it, you cant work with your pears in such close proximity, and not learn a lot.
The Montrèal Comix Jams started years ago with cousins, David 'abu' and Carl 'zip' Bacha. Making them up as the went they drew comics together as kids. As the grew up David and Carl retained their imaginations and introduced more of their artist friends to the ‘game’.
"They were the core of a collective they called "Beware the Funny Farm Freaks". They produced a shitload of silkscreened comics over the years and always impressed me as active and powerful artists. Their Jams often involved friends who had never made comic art before. Their enthusiasm for comic art was infectious."
-Bernie Mireault, long time jammer
The
Funny Farm Jams would take place wherever, bars, apartments, as live events
or privet gatherings.
In time a young Montrèal artist named
Rupert Bottenberg was introduced to the Jams, and the growing culture
of the jamers community of friends sharing their love for the comix medium.
An innate organizer Rupert picked up the torch and began promoting the
jams as public events around town...
"Rupert Bottenberg"
"......I started hosting Jams years ago, at a bar called Purple Haze, where I (Rupert) was working as a busboy. I selected a crew of 16 of Montreal's best underground cartoonists, and organized a free evening of jamming, whereby the artists could improvise and collaborate on single-page comix strips. Given the limited time frame ( and rapid consumption of alcohol ), very few really eye scorching pages were being generated. However, as more such evenings transpired, the artists came to be familiar with one another, and the basis of a larger Montreal alternative comix community was established...no mean feat, considering the linguistic divisions we contend with, here in Quebec. I felt it was necessary to expand the appeal of the event to others outside this immediate circle, a step towards increasing the public's interest in intelligent and worthwhile comix art. I relocated the events to the Stornaway gallery, booked a few good bands, and hoped for the best. It worked. Those who felt like drawing did so, establishing a regular gang of about 40 artists, pro, amateur and otherwise ( I chose not to set any rules for participation ). Those who didn't feel like drawing, and found a room full of people hunched over their papers utterly boring, could check out the bands or socialize. A few of the bands that have performed at the those Jams were Pest 5000, the Planet Smashers, Broken Girl, Bliss, Plumtree, Venus Cures All, Fuzz Aldrin, and Mystic Zealots. I set up a merch table where the artists could sell comixs and launch new publications. Also, I brought in more unusual forms of entertainment, such as a puppet show, magic, fortune tellers, a sitar player, handmade board games ( ideal for drunks ), and Star Wars Theater, wherein two idiots act out the entire trilogy in 20 minutes flat......."
... Rupert's large Comix Jams became a Montrèal tradition, and
then lore.
Very early
on, the Jams began attracting artist from outside of Montrèal's
already large Comix scene and for a time binding the local community tighter
than ever before. One outsider drawn in was me, Max Douglas. Then twenty-four
year old Toronto based artist working under the pen name ‘Salgood Sam’.
While visiting New
York in 1995 I was introduced to Ruperts artwork by Montrèal Comix
legend and longtime friend Bernie
Mireault, creator of ‘the
Jam’ and ‘Dr
Robot’ as well as an early participant in Dave and Carl’s Jams. At
Bernie's suggestion I attended a Jam a few months later at the Stornaway
gallery later that year and was immediately hooked. Sitting in the basement
of the old Stornaway, I found the simplistic joy of doodling coming back
to me, that three years of working as a 'Pro' for Marvel comics had robed
somewhat.
As I looked around at the pages being draw by the other artists, I was introduced and reintroduced to the many different ways one can tell a story, and recognized Jams as being a rare opportunity for comix artists to expose themselves directly to new ideas and different approaches to art & storytelling that seldom present themselves in the quiet solitude of their own studios.
Within a few years I had arranged with Rupert to bring the Jams to Toronto and they had already spread to Ottawa and Boston by then. The first Toronto Comix Jam held at the now defunct Hyper Bar inspired another local Comix enthusiast, Dave Howard, to start holding them monthly at the El Mocambo and later at the Cameron House on Queen st where they continue to be a local well attended monthly tradition.
"Most professional cartoonists work at home all day and that can wear on you," says Dave Howard. The jams helped solidify the comic scene in Montrèal, and Howard believes the regular jams are having the same affect there. "It allows cartoonists to meet and socialize with each other. It's healthy for the artists' own work and the scene."
A Few
years after Holding the first Jam in Toronto, I moved to Montrèal.
While Rupert Bottenberg still held larger Jams a few times a year, I missed
the regular camaraderie of the Dave's monthly jams as a creative outlet
not to mention an opportunity to see what other artist were doing in town
so in the fall of 2000 I organized the first of what would become the
Monthly Montrèal Comix Jam. For 4 years I hosted them every month
[except dec], and printed many zine compilations of the best work produced
by the gatherings.
As in Toronto, the Montrèal Comix Jams became cornerstone events
in the local comix scene, helped a great deal by the already existing
networks of friendships built by the still recent events held by Rupert.
These Monthly Jams were smaller & more intimate gatherings than the large Jams held at the now defunct Stornaway, but they provide a social continuity to the local Comix scene and continued a strong tradition of experimentation and growth for the participating artists.
Larger events such as the ones wrangled by Rupert in the past were, in addition to many other things, ideal broad public PR tools to revamp the image of comix from being a geeky children's medium to being a vital poplars all-ages medium. Anyone looking to do such a thing should take note: it worked here. At Ruperts Jams, TV crews were often to be seen prowling the floor leaning over shoulders of the artists and blinding them with lights, looking for cute quotes for the nightly news on local events. At the monthly Jams we were visited by a number of print and web media reporters and more than one documentary crew.
In 2004 I retired from hosting and organizing the Jams, but they continue to this day hosted by long time jammer Jane Tremblay. They have evolved and now the monthly Jam in Montreal has sadly become a uniligual event, made up predominantly of the circle of creators involved in the monthly local BD zine, Mensuhell.
For a time a second monthly jam was held in Montreal, organized by Jai Granofsky and held at the Roy st Collective. Sadly both the collective and the jams are defunct at this time to my knowledge.
Comix Jams continue to be held all over the world now, and with the net have continued to evolve very rapidity in a number of ways in the last 8 years.
For more on Comix Jams click here...