Primitif: Sting of the Arrow

"Primitif first appeared around the summer of 1983, The character and his look came to me almost spontaneously. I didn't think anything much would come of it. All I knew at the time was he wore a mask, was a hunter, and chased wild boars. The character seemed to call for an extremely stylised way of drawing. The first 3-pager was drawn so as to appear as if each page was a solid piece of hewn bark or rough stone, on which the strip had been drawn. Drawn, perhaps by someone else less significant in Primitif's tribe. He himself would be far too busy to even recount his adventures, let alone tell them to anyone. I liked that idea of a 'shaped' outline that would provide a sort of grid for the strip to appear on. The year before, I had been experimenting with mini-comics shaped like 3-D boxes or with windows cut out of them. There followed four or five more stories in 1984. In his second story, Primitif defies one of the gods by flying on the back of an eagle. This was another of the recurrent 'themes' of the character's life, finding himself and his destiny controlled by forces he doesn't understand. In "The Rape of the Land" he is taught a sharp lesson about stewardship and ecology, by being literally subsumed inside the body of an insect god who shows him portentous tableaux of destruction and waste. This story was later published in "Escape" magazine. At 12 pages, it was the most ambitious Primitif story I'd come up with, and one which I'm still proud of. The artwork was already getting very intricate with lots of patterned bands filling up every available space between panels. Visually, I had started out thinking of Primitif as a mudman from Papua New Guinea. But the drawings had always been based on magic books from Mexico. Or at least, on my half-baked understanding of that particular art form. In a similar magpie-fashion, I often borrow fragments from mythologies and cultures of other ages, continents, and times, and adapt them for Primitif. I do this inconsistently and without any deep understanding of any of what I read about or behold. Any serious student of anthropology would be appalled by my superficiality. Four more stories followed between 1985 and 1988, including the lengthy and moralistic "Volcano Mask" story. Then between 1990 and 1991, I spent long months creating the full-colour "Land of the Dead" strip, filling in my original ink drawings with Caran D'Ache Neocolor crayons, which are water-soluble. This was around the time of a trip to Angouleme, and the thought that I could sell my work to a French audience of BD fans, if only it looked convincing enough. Nothing came of this venture. Primitif is an aggressive and headstrong character, but at least he knows what he wants, and he acts rather than questions. Even though his gods and enemies drag him down to the most miserable level, he always bounces back and returns stronger than before. Even when he doesn't learn his lesson. But, who does? As the less significant author, I like the discipline of drawing a Primitif story. It is the only one of my comics which consistently never uses word balloons. There are other stylistic rules I have to follow, but I won't bore you with those. The best thing is when the character himself comes to life and starts telling me what he's going to do next. And when he does, I don't argue." - Ed Pinsent, London, March 2006.

Table of Contents:
Sting of the Arrow Land of the Dead

About the Author :
Ed Pinsent was a mainstay and prime mover of the UK small press comicsscene as a regular contributor to Escape magazine, editor of Fast Fiction , handling the distribution service of the same name, as well as self-publishing his own work in a stream of diverse one-off titles. Inrecent years Pinsent has stepped away from comics to concentrate on his music magazine The SoundProjector , which nevertheless comes lavishly illustrated with his mind-bending images. His return to comics was marked with last year's Voice of the Wilberforce (Kingly Books), collecting work produced between 1992 and 2003. Primitif, featuring one of his most popular and enduring characters is his first all new collection in some time. A development no doubt welcomed by long-time fan Dylan Horrocks and other independent comics creators who owe him a huge debt of influence.

Review :
"These are visionary comics, not linear or plotbound, but rich with dreams, signs,languages, alchemical symbols; they fascinate like parables open to endless interpretation." Comics International "Visually reminiscent of Dr. Seuss in its accumulation of heavy, restless ink. Pinsent takes the reader on a journey through acres of disjointed, dreamlike imagery. Each frame is memorable." The List