A Brief History Of Water Melon Comix
1987 - 1992
Written and Drawn by Nic Grey and Ben Jammin Heath
Water Melon Comix issue 1
Summer 1987
Brighton
1000 copies / 46 pages/ 1 colour paper cover
Just left school, in free fall. Lost all my friends apart from from one.
3 a.m. sitting at a table with my one remaining friend drawing cartoons, reading comix, listening to obscure music, sipping rum and coke, popping pills, smoking joints.
Squiggly lines and disjointed concepts fill pages as the first issue of WaterMelon comic takes shape.
Plan A. Spend days in my dodgy Uncles office photocopying sketch books - resulting in unusable wonky copies of ugly artwork.
Plan B. Send photocopies to printers and save a bit of money by not folding, collating or stapling the pages together.
Spend mind numbing weeks folding, collating and stapling pages together for the cause.
Transvestites rehearse their stage routines in our living room, we sit around drawing funny pictures and laugh at the moon.
Water Melon 1 hits the streets and we are living the dream
Water Melon Comix issue 2
Summer Of Love 1988
Brighton
1000 copies / 46 pages/ 1 colour paper cover
Tuesday afternoon around tea time.
8 months of scribbling and giggling later.
Manage to save up cash…Pay Printers…
Boxes of comix fill the room - folded, collated and stapled this time for and extra £100 - bargain!
We staple rizzla packets to the cover as a bonus free gift.
Acid House takes over the clubs and creativity takes over the town.
We distribute the comix throughout Brighton and they fly off the shelves of independent comic shops, book shops and record shops and throughout club land where people are suddenly smiling, wearing bright colours, reaching for the lasers in smoke filled rooms and everyone is a new friend.
Water Melon Comix issue 3
Summer 1989
Brighton - Camden Town
2000 copies / 56 pages/ 2 colour card cover
Days, nights, weeks, months drawing funny pictures, free flowing ideas and surreal situations.
Relocate to London taking boxes of comics. Move into a Camden squat with a punk band rehearsing up stairs. Distribute comix by bicycle throughout Soho, Camden, and Kensington Market.
The money gets spent as it flows back in but that doesn’t seem to matter. Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches, Clubs, Parties and After Parties. Hanging out with Artists, Beatnics, Musicians and DJs all working on creating craziness.
Water Melon Comix issue 4
Summer 1990
Camden Town - Portobello Road
3000 copies / 56 pages/ 2 colour card cover
Set up The Institute of WaterMelonology in a disused bakery in Portobello Road where every aspect of life rich tapestry past our windows for inspiration.
Join a college course to study Fish, give the years grant to the printer, receive delivery of boxes of glossy comix and the smell of fresh ink fills the room. Pile of boxes slowly shrinks as we distribute piles of comix to the top shelves of the new independent shops which have suddenly sprung up all over London.
Reading, writing, drawing, living on fresh air, hashish, mushrooms and laughter, scheming, plotting and planning the next issue
Water Melon Comix issue 5
Summer 1991
Portobello Road
4000 copies / 62 pages/ Full colour card cover
Smaller format, longer strips, denser drawings, crazier concepts and even more pages.
We staple 3D glasses to the cover and the drawings jump off the pages.
We set up distribution through the thriving festival scene and expand our network of shops, clubs through parties and friends.
Broken hearted one of us depends into drug addiction, homelessness and prison, but the show must go on…New members join in to help out and we continue to stay up all night every night drawing and listening to obscure loud music till dawn.
Water Melon Comix issue 6
Summer 1992
Primrose Hill
6000 copies / 64 pages/ Full colour card cover with furry spine
Evicted finally from the old bakery, The Institute of WaterMelonology relocates to The Love House, a crumbling mansion in the heart of Primrose Hill with a goth band upstairs and a medieval wizard in the basement. Ivy crawls its way through the windows and across the walls.
WaterMelon has transformed into a coffee table art concept for discerning intellectuals, complete with a furry cover, pull out double sided poster and mini comic centrefold. A visual tour de force!
A gangster from Kent gives us the cash, 3 suitcases of £5 notes, and we watch the pages roll through the printing presses.
We saturate comic and book shops throughout the country and the future looks bright….
written by Ben Heath
