Somewhere
off Brighton’s Western Road, in a basement crammed with haphazard piles
of books and shared with a music pr company, a one-man publishing business
called Slab-O-Concrete thrives, run by the appropriately named Peter
Pavement.
Peter was an architectural
technician until 1990, doing pavement art on the side. When the economic
downturn came, he went to Australia and persevered with the pavement
art, which is where he acquired his nickname. He has been drawing and
publishing comics since 1991. The fad for adult comics and graphic novels
by the 
mainstream
publishers had been and gone. When he attended an independent comics
conference, Peter realised distribution was the problem and Slab-O-Concrete
was born. It started as purely mail order, with five copies of each
title and then grew to a small distribution round, with Peter carrying
zines and comix in his rucksack. Before long he was handling hundreds
of titles, had started to get distribution organised and began to publish
in book format. He is now the second biggest publisher of independent
and underground comics in the UK, producing 22 titles in 1999 with 14
planned for the year ahead. Sales overall are very poor still in Britain
- key outlets are Borders, Tower Records and Virgin - with most sales
being
made abroad, particularly through the US book trade. Comics are out
of fashion, comic shops in Britain are very conservative and there are
general problems affecting the book trade as a whole that impact on
small publishers. Nor do comics translate easily to the web, though
this may prove an effective sales medium in years to come. ‘Britain
has always had a very sneering attitude to comics,’ says Peter. He has
been recently teaching story workshops and trying to interest kids in
developing their own photostories. He says the Library service are really
interested ‘as they recognise comics as a really good way into literacy.’
Peter is now very
interested in independent media and DIY production techniques and plans
to produce a 
book
about the nuts and bolts of DIY media, a guidebook to making it happen
yourself with limited resources. Meantime, he is waiting for the resurgence
of interest in comics, ‘which happens every 10 years,’ whilst continuing
his valuable solo publishing efforts.
John May
