Comixology's Peter Jaffe Reviews Contraband

Peter Jaffe from Comixology recently checked out Contraband and had a few things to say about Contraband's artwork and narrative.


"The artwork by Phil Elliott (with inks by Ian Sharman and gray tones by Cherie Donovan) has a cartoony feel that consciously focuses attention on the foreground image; faces of characters standing behind the speaker become progressively less detailed as they move farther back in the panel, while important moments are emphasized by a startling realism....the dialogue is nicely written and entertaining, if unremittingly cynical. It does have the effect of making everyone sound like a philosopher, though."

Contraband Review at Newsarama

Here are a few words from Michael May regarding the comic...


"There are rewards for those willing to stick with the book. For one thing, Behe has a great voice in all that text. People in Contraband don’t talk the way real people do, but that’s just fine. They talk better than real people do. They tend to go on and on (Tucker especially loves to speechify and given that he’s usually threatening people at the same time, there were several instances when I wondered why someone didn’t just jump him mid-lecture), but they sure are entertaining as they’re doing it."

France Comics Interview

Met this top chap Christophe Colin from France Comics a few months back at Angouleme who scribed a quick interview of Contraband's development. Folks keen to see a french version of a Contraband sample can drop us a line and we'll get a free pdf off to you asap...

Contraband Review from Oakland Tribune

Randy Myers from the Oakland Tribune threw a few fine words our way in his monthly comics column:



“Cautionary tales about our insatiable appetite to download the misery and humiliation of others have turned into a telling genre unto itself. Behe's twisty take stands out because it's laden with surprises and has an urgent immediacy to it.”

Contraband Review at The Crack

Very cool to see Contraband picked up a recommendation from Newcastle indie mag the Crack this week.


"There aren’t too many graphic novels around that successfully engage with modern anxieties but Contraband is one such work...the real focus - the foreground white noise of a society raised on cheap thrills."

Graphic Novel Review at The Pulse

Jen Contino at The Pulse dropped us a line a few weeks back regarding Contraband.

Contraband Podcast Interview at CGS

Last week, the guys at ComicGeekSpeak touched base to discuss Contraband's themes, background and general stuff about how it all came together.



A bit of background into Contraband's dialogue development:

"TB - I wanted the dialogue to mimic the behaviour of youths posting bits of conversation on mobile social networking channels. Looking through these mobile forums, I’m amazed how many users kind of “step up onto their soapbox” - offering up rather raw and lengthy opinions on how they feel about a specific topic. These meaty (and often passionate) digressions are accompanied with personal signatures, banners - perhaps some sort of animated icon or other digital representation of themselves. The characters in Contraband (active, ambitious, mobile savvy) fit into this category of forum users so it seemed appropriate to bring this across into the comic narrative.”

Graphic Novel Featured at Wired.com

Just had an email letting us know Contraband picked up a recommendaton in the latest issue of Wired online:


"Cell phone geeks will want to pick up Thomas Behe’s new graphic novel Contraband, in which a band of mercenaries return home from war only to get entangled in an underground mobile video network that pays out jackpot-sized fees to sabotage-minded citizen journalists who capture and upload the most twisted, violent footage. The sci-fi thriller unfolds amidst vengeful relationships, insatiable desire, public outrage and mobiles that pack 1,000-volt electric nodes, pepper spray capability and best of all a fully functioning pistol with detachable silencer. Steve Jobs: take note." Todd Jatras

Contraband Preview at The First Post

Here's another short review of Contraband at The First Post...


This is an extract from Danny Graydon's review:

"Eschewing the dark, moody artwork that typically accompanies such stories, Elliott adopts an engaging clear-line style which slickly captures the fast-paced netherworld of phone-video..."

Contraband Reviewed in Financial Times

We're quite pleased to see that Contraband has been given a short but favourable review by James Lovegrove in this weekend's edition of the London Financial Times. You can read the review at FT.com



Contraband is now in the shops and available to order online from the likes of Amazon, Play, Tesco and Slg's own online store.

Gutter Geek Reviews Contraband

Contraband will officially be hitting the streets in a matter of days but we are starting to get some advance reviews and here's one that has appeared on guttergeek.com



We're pleased that the reviewer has really got to the heart of our book... here's a little bit of what he's said...

"(Contraband) actually takes us into some murky ethical territory, refusing the easy glamorization of the rawest energies of internet culture. Downloading pirated music isn’t ethically suspect here because of the infringement on record company property rights, but because of the off-shore sites that have set up troubling partnerships with mercenary forces and despotic governments. At its most daring, the book even draws some sharp lines between the Blackwaters of W’s “new” wars and the exploitation of violence and spectacle for entertainment and profit. “People,” folk-hero Jarvis declares to a teaming rally, “we can now confirm that a number of these hired guns are directly responsible for the surge in mobile abuse we are seeing today.” Like the best works in the genre of speculative fiction, Contraband is less interested in the “What If” that frames its narrative, than in approaching the present at an acute angle. And whichever side of the new culture wars shaping up in this 21st century you might find yourself, Behe will provide you little comfort."

Contraband Interview at Comixology

Peter Jaffe from the comics news and review site Comixology has an interview with us HERE.


Here's is an extract from the interview:

Comixology: In reading Contraband, one of the first comparisons that comes to mind is "A Clockwork Orange". It's a world where kids have taken to committing random acts of violence in order to entertain themselves. Could you tell us about the influences that went into Contraband? And, what inspired you to tell this story?

Thomas: The idea came about while working on a user-generated project at a UK mobile operator. Some sneaky kid had upskirting a woman on an underground train and posted the clip on our network. So while top management were blowing their nut and the tech team began implementing an age-verification layer, I was thinking how some nasty bloke could probably offer a good revenue share to motivate sh*t-disturbing kids to send in more.
I thought up this violent channel called Contraband, a sort of "urban theatre", where youths prowl city streets secretly film strangers then post sensational, erotic and violent mobile videos. So men can no longer shower in gyms. Women in dresses avoid seats on trains. Teens run daily exhibitionist mobile blogs featuring candid clips of close friends and family members. User-generated mobile spy-cam content becomes big business as society demands increasingly radical videos.
But it's also tough to police corrupt individuals like Tucker because it's not in the mobile operator's best interest to do so. They've beaten the government (ID card), internet community portals and banks in the race to create robust personal profile to track people, sell them products, invade their privacy for commercial gain. So it all kind of spirals out of control...

Strip for Me Interviews Phil

If you'd like to know what films and books Phil has recently been enjoying, then head to Douglas Noble's strip-for-me.com where there's an informal chat with him

Home from Angouleme

We're back from Angouleme where we met up with a number of European publishers, with an eye to releasing some translated versions of Contraband.

If you ever get the chance you must visit this festival. It was unlike any comics convention we'd been to - Phil will be posting some of his recollections soon.

In the meantime here's a snapshot from the festival:



Contraband is now available to buy from the Slg shop and will be in shops very soon. You can also order from Amazon and many other online stores.

Grab Contraband Graphic Novel at SlaveLabor.com

Just a quick note from France to let folks know the first few Contraband books are now available at SLG's online book store.

18 Hours...

That's how long it is until we're in Angouleme. Its been a long-term ambition of mine to attend this festival and I can't believe that its taken me this long to achieve it, considering how close I live to France.

I haven't been able to find out exactly who'll be there but I know that Paul Gravett is going for sure. I haven't met Paul in a while and I'm looking forward to seeing him again and showing him Contraband. I've known Paul since I was a young teenager and we used to visit the monthly Comic Marts in London together - over 30 years ago! - and it was Paul who published some of my early comic strips in Escape magazine, that he edited with Peter Stanbury. Escape was an influential magazine in the 80's and published early work by, and interviews with, many influential artists, including Dave McKean and Eddie Campbell...and José Muñoz, who is the President of this year's Angouleme committee.

This is the front cover of Escape 1 (c.1982), drawn by yours truly and hand-separated by Peter Stanbury (no computers to do that task back then!)...



And here's a link to an article by Paul on the history of Escape

We hope to be able to regularly post observations and pics from Angouleme so drop by again soon. Phil

Phil's in France

Phil flew to France on Saturday and is staying with his in-laws in the Midi Pyrenees - Lot region before driving North to Angouleme on Wednesday. Here's a photo of him standing outside Restaurant Morgues in the nearby village of Peyrilles, which he used as reference for a scene in Contraband. The scene is actually set in Belgium and Phil also used some artistic licence to introduce trees in the foreground.





It turns out that the owner of Le Morgues, Jean-Claude is a big BD fan and was well-pleased to have his restaurant featured in a comic book. Phil would like to point out that Jean-Claude is no where near as grumpy as the barman featured in Contraband: "We eat at Le Morgues everytime we visit Fiona's parents, and they've been living in France for over 15 years now. If you're in the region, call in for a meal or a beer and tell them that "L'artiste de la Contrebande m'a envoyé"".

Contraband Hitting the Shops

We're proud to say that Contraband is now printed and heading to shops. The official release date is 6th February, and that's when copies will be turning up in your local store, but we've got some advance copies to take to Angouleme next week. So if you're attending the festival and want to have a look then simply come up and ask - Thomas will be wearing his ubiquitous paisley tie and Phil will be in red.

Angouleme and Contraband

We've been laying low knocking out a few early interviews for Contraband while finalizing our schedule for meeting French and Belgian publishers at Angouleme next week. We're excited with the response so far as 1/2 dozen publishers have set up a time to chat after liking our blog sample. Phil heads off Saturday to spend a few days visiting relatives south of the city (the SLG folks had our first few dozen copies sent there directly from the publisher!) I fly in Wednesday and after picking Phil up at the hotel, we'll tear straight off to the event. I have to say it's been a tad tough contacting a few of the right people at these publishing houses so we'll start hunting them down in the festival halls the moment we arrive.


Here's a snippet of an upcoming interview conducted with Peter Jaffe from top comic site Comixology talking about our trip to the continent:

PJ - A lot of the story takes place in Belgium, which has a great comics tradition closely connected to the French bande desinnée. Is Contraband being distributed (translated or otherwise) in France and Belgium?

TB - I’d love to get Contraband into non-english-speaking markets. I think the comic’s art and storyline could attract a fairly strong readership in plenty of North European countries. Phil recommended we attend France’s Angouleme BD festival in late January so we’ve picked up some pro passes for the trade exhibition. And couple of nice folks from a social networking site were kind enough to translate our first chapter and synopsis into French & Flemish - so we’ll have something to hand these guys. It’s funny but being a kid growing up in North Bay (near the Quebec border) I studied French until I was 13. And there were lots of European publishers’ BDs floating around in classroom. Casterman, Delcourt, Glenat. Here we are 25 years later and we’re going to show some of these same companies Contraband..."

Phil Elliott Q&A at Comics Village

In his latest Village Gossip column, UK comics guru Craig Johnson asks Phil 20 rapid-fire questions about his latest work, tastes, the cleanliness of his hands (!?) and this rather nervy encounter with some Watchmen artwork:

"The scariest package I ever received contained a piece of original artwork by Dave Gibbons - a painting of The Comedian from Watchmen for the cover of a UK magazine, Arkensword 22 that I had to do the lettering separations for. I'd never done anything like this before and was shit-scared that I was going to ruin it all. Turned out okay though."


Check out the whole interview at Comics Village - where its Page 45 column has also made Contraband one of the top preview titles for Feburary.