| Hunt Emerson | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1952 (age 72–73) Newcastle upon Tyne, England |
| Area(s) | Cartoonist, Artist |
Notable works | Firkin the Cat |
| LargeCow.com | |
Hunt Emerson (born 1952) is an Englishcartoonist. He was closely involved with theBirmingham Arts Lab of the mid-to-late 1970s, and with the Britishunderground comics scene of the 1970s and 1980s. His manycomic strips andgraphic novels have been translated into numerous languages.
His earliest strips in the 1970s appeared in suchBritish small press comics asGraphixus,Brainstorm Comix,Moon Comix,Yikes,Animal Bite Comix,No Ducks,Phobos,Streetcomix,Free Comix,Warrior andFish.
A trip to the US put Emerson in touch with theunderground comix publisherRip Off Press, which published hisThunderdogs title; while Don andMaggie Thompson included him in theirmini-comic series, for which he createdCalculus Cat. Emerson's art also appeared in the US underground/alternative anthologiesCommies from Mars andEclipse Monthly.Dogman, andLarge Cow Comix (a five issue series with separate subtitles) were all Emerson work cover to cover, but it wasKnockabout Comics, a British comic book-sized, and later album-sized, anthology that featured some of Emerson's most notable strips, including the characters Alan Rabbit, Calculus Cat, Max Zillion & Alto Ego, Pusspuss, Momo and Fuzi, Charlie Chirp, plus the one-shot stories "Cakes And Bricks," "The Dentist," and "Mouth City". The latter two stories spawned a series calledCitymouth, and later a collected volume.
Square-bound books written by others, such asYou Are Maggie Thatcher andHard To Swallow, showcase Emerson strips and illustrations throughout. InOutrageous Tales From the Old Testament he tackled a version of theBook of Leviticus written byAlan Moore, and inThe Seven Deadly Sins, depicted "Envy". For theDC Comics imprintFactoid Books, in the 1990s, he did biographical comics on everything fromErich von Stroheim toPrince Charles andPrincess Diana. These appeared inThe Big Book Of series. For dozens of issues of the British undergroundBrain Damage, he created "Arsover Tit".
The Emerson graphic novelsLady Chatterley's Lover,The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,Casanova's Last Stand and other adaptations of classic novels and tales have been sold in numerous countries, and translated into several different languages.
For over 30 years Hunt Emerson's strips and illustrations have graced the pages ofFortean Times, a magazine of occult and unexplained phenomena, while his pornographically humorous Firkin the Cat (written byTym Manley) has appeared in hundreds ofFiesta magazines.
He drew the cover design for Terry McCann's 1975 albumStand Back It's Rent-a-Crowd.[1] He designed the 'Beat Girl' icon for Birmingham bandThe Beat.[2] and painted a mural of the band, which was used as cover art for the band's second albumWha'ppen?.[2][3]
In 2016, he designed theWalsall Silver Thread Tapestries.[4]
Emerson drew and created "Ratz" forThe Beano, a strip about mean rats in a sewer. In 2002–2007, he drewLittle Plum for that comic. In March 2009, he revived the "Fred's Bed" strip.
In a 2019 interview, theanarchist cartoonistDonald Rooum described himself as an admirer of Emerson, having taken out a subscription to theFortean Times purely to read his work.[5] More explicitly, aNew Politics article identified Emerson as a fellow anarchist cartoonist alongside Rooum, among others.[6] Emerson had previously exhibited work at theBritish Library showComics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK,[7] and would later contribute work to an exhibition about theVictorian radicalJohn Ruskin.[8] Emerson himself has described ignoringhigh politics, instead choosing to focus oncommunity-based work.[9] He has also said that explicitly political work of his, such as aTitan Books publication withPat Mills aboutMargaret Thatcher, have become dated too quickly as politics moves on.[10]
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