Herbert Stencil's Emphatic Non-Sequiter.

Hello You,

I’m writing this on the second of December, which means two things.

The first thing is that its my sisters Birthday. So lets all say Happy Birthday to her. Send her a message why don’t you (if appropriate). Being born in Christmas Occupied December she gets missed on a little more than people who are born in the inter-holiday no mans lands such as myself. My Uncle was born on Christmas Eve and was one of four. Can you imagine what that must be like?

The second thing is that it means I missed out November from my Newsletter Schedule. Apologies, November was incredibly busy with Workshops, teaching, lectures, all that stuff that left me very tired at the end of the day. I don’t want this to just be an off the cuff email, I want it to have meaning beyond

“What up, its ya boi Nick, back with another reminder I am alive…”

That being said, it is Ya Boi Nick, and I am reminded you I am alive.

Like I say, busy November so I’m going to talk a bit about what I’ve been up to. I will also make up for the lack of a November email by doing a bit of a 2023 retrospective. A review of some shit I enjoyed in 2023, but not exclusively things that were made in 2023. Just an excuse to talk about stuff that I like and you might like. So you can either open that one and read it, or just open it and ignore it. The important thing is you open it. I have KPIs to meet.

The structure of this newsletter will be me talking about:

1) What I have been up to in November and What I will be up to in December

2) The role of character names in Fiction.

So if you want to skip ahead to any of those then please do so now. Or at your leisure. I am not going to pretend to be the boss of you. You’re your own person, and I really admire that about you.

Weird to think that November has Come, track 9 of Gorillaz’ 2005 second album Demon Days might have been the first place quite a few people heard MF Doom. It’s definitely the first place I heard him, playing the album on a CD player in a rented caravan in the English countryside after having seen it for sale in the windows of a Woolworths. Its also weird to think that at 15 years old I could not know that my favourite band in the world (who I was at the time drawing way too much of for my GCSE Graphic design course) could release an album and I not know about it. The next time and possibly last time this would happen would be in March 2008 when I was in the Huddersfield HMV looking through the racks of CDs and see Consolers of the Lonely, the second album by Jack White’s side project The Raconteurs. The excitement and joy I felt picking that up not knowing what was coming. I am not one for nostalgia butit’ss a jarring feeling thatit’ss highly unlikely that could ever happen again. A band goes on tour an app gives me a notification. A new release comes through I get a notification telling me to “pre-save” it on Spotify. The lead singer of Everything Everything breaks too hard within the M25 and I get an alert. That’s the other side of that double edged sword everyone is always banging on about.

November brought a new career highlight for me as I did a lecture at the Leeds Library as part of their programme of events entitled FANTASY: REALMS OF IMAGINATION. The events compliment an exhibition of rare and exciting things from the vaults of the British Library, such as a first edition of Gormenghast, the first illustrated edition of Frankenstein, a giant throne and a dragon, and some really nice editions of classic tales of fantasy like The Green Knight. Featured events were my talk, a panel discussion on Fantasy with authors Adrian Tchaikovsky and RJ Barker, a talk with Reece Shearsmith on spooky stories, and a talk with Neil Gaiman about the role of Fantasy in our lives. Which is ultimately the reason this was a career highlight as I got to see my name in a programme alongside Neil Gaiman.

My talk was on the role Zines and alternative publishing had on the birth of Science fiction, and I may replicate it here one day for you, or you might have to go to one of my events to see it. But it was a great opportunity to speak about the diverse nature of Science Fiction’s authorship, its origins in marginalised communities and voices, and underline the role women had to play in what is seen as such a male dominated male focused area.

In also did a series of lectures at University Centre Leeds on the way print can augment the artistic practice rather than supplement it, a sentence I will now aim to explain. Quite a lot of artists look at presenting stuff as the end point of their work. The afterthought. We make the art and then think about how it will look in a gallery. A large portion of the arts education process, at least in undergraduate/Post-graduate spheres, is to get students to think about how their work will eventually look when presented into the real world. This is an even bigger challenge in a evermore digital arts sphere. I know I draw a lot of sketches and things at the ratio of an Instagram post, something I kick myself for regularly, but its just for ease and convenience because I draw a lot of off the cuff stuff that might as well serve as fodder for the social media machine. If I have made the commitment to draw things for my own entertainment first and foremost the page layout might as well be the compromise.

But how something sits in a gallery, or on a page, or in a book, can be used to fundamentally inform that piece. If you design a piece of art to be in a pop up book then leaning into that as the informative element of the design would be incredibly rewarding. If you instead just drew something that then would be cut up and made into a pop-up book you’d have the print version of one of those soulless late 2000s CGI 3D conversion films. If you have an idea in your head as you’re making the piece about how it will be presented then it can better inform the work. I think that comic book people have a special insight into this because the best comic book people (and I’m talking to you specifically here) think about how panels layout on the page. Not just that but how they will be viewed across a spread and how the page turns inform the narrative, and that sort of construction of narrative in the formation of not just the story but the medium of story communication is what separates good comics from great comics. How something is laid out and presented shouldn’t be the final thought, it should be an integral of part of its continual development, almost as important as what media you have decided to use to make your art.

That then translates across to all art as the artist must think about the impact on the viewer, even if that viewer is you. How would I like to view this artwork? How would I like to experience my artwork? Which then boils down to one giant question:

What story am I trying to tell?

I have believed this for years, but my recent… support (I read it, used it, and provided notes) to Jon Lock’s Comic Book Writers Journal project changed the question in my head slightly which is;

What question and I seeking to answer?

Whether its visual art, conceptual art, design work, or writing, I think that you have to approach it with the idea in your head that you’re seeking to answer a question. Even if you don’t answer that question, if you’re just aware in your mind that there is a question that needs answering then that will change your practice. It canh change your life. When you leave the house on Monday, ask yourself “What question am I seeking to answer?” when you choose your outfit ask yourself the question. See what impact it has.

Anyway I did a multipart lecture series on that and probably got equally emphatic about it.

Its hard for me to then bang on about what other stuff I’ve been up to in November after loosing myself a little bit there, and is probably a strong argument for why this should be weekly rather than Monthly as you’ll end up with probably something like 3000 words in your inbox by the end of this. But we will soldier on.

I also did a few Markets in November, including the Kendal Zine fair. I met some really cool people and sold some cool zines. If you want to meet me and buy some stuff off me in person so far I am signed on for a convention in April of next year which I don’t know if I am allowed to talk about yet, and also a market in December I know I am. Please find me at the York Zine fair on December the 16th. It’s a Saturday.

I just want to take a moment and tell you this email is sent to you via a service called Beehiiv. Selected because its not Substack a service that currently has a bit of a Neo-Nazi problem. As a service user I get a lot of emails from the company telling me about their services and their products. How I can optimise my by-line you high grade SEO Synergy. Methods I can implement to encourage a growth mindset in my demographics. How I can get a large barge with a radio antenne tower on it that will charge up my discharge. The usual. What’s special is that some of these are penned and sent by the companies CEO, a man called:

TYLER DENK

I love a good name. Whether its Key and Peele’s East v West Collegiate football video or any of the characters in Toast of London I think that a good name is the quickest way to making me crease up like a cheap pair of trousers.

But as both a writer and a big reader I think a lot about names and how they represent the characters and the world in which they live. To me TYLER DENK is a weird name because the people I live in a world where people are called Chris, Kate, and increasing Alex. England is a nation filled with people who think they are ordinary therefore they have really ordinary names. I’m speaking to you collective Johns. America is a nation where everyone is promised that they can be someone therefore I think that’s reflected more in the naming conventions, which is how Tom Hank’s character in Castaway can be called Chuck Noland and no one raises an eyebrow.

Chuck Noland and Tyler Denk have protagonists names. If their names were Simon Bottomley he would be less of a protagonist. The main character in the first few instalments of the Assassin’s Creed video games series was called Desmond, which I think was a writing device to underline the lack of importance this character has in the ordinary world in juxtaposition to his heroic role in the the increasingly strange and convoluted back streets of Assassin’s Creed’s plot line. But imagine that, a main character in an action spy thriller erotic romance TV show called Des. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in Commando is called John Matrix. Even when you have a regular Joe name, the surname is heroic and powerful. Imagine a world where Tony Stark is called Tony Pipkin, Tony Field, or Tony Stiffling. This is kind of flipped around when we think of Captain America, as his is name is Steve Rogers before he becomes Captain America, but its a great way of highlighting the ordinary nature of the man behind the star spangled shield. Steve Rogers is just anyone, but Captain America is a hero.

The name you give your character adds a weight to the cultural grounding they exist in. I was about to write how I think this is unique to literature but then I thought about emails from work colleagues you’ve never met, and how what they are called and what they choose to call themselves impacts the idea you have of them in your mind before you’ve ever really interacted with them. A persons name gives us a view of their gender, ethnicity, and social status, but also the hopes and dreams that their parents had for them that hints at a wider cultural existence. Take a group of people and look at their names and it gives you a social topography of the scene within which they exist. You can show a room of people to be culturally diverse, or socially homogenous by giving us a list of names. Similarly it can set the tone for the whole world. A names absurdity, its musicality, its cadance, and silliness can tell us about that world immediately. For example, Iain M Banks has a lot of fun in his Culture novels showing us just how strange and Alien the society of the Culture is. His first novel, Consider Phlebus names its protagonist Horza a fairly ordinary but very much science fiction name for a character who stands on the outside and look into the Culture. The Culture, by the way, its a technosynergous anarchist utopia where people have embraced technology and multiculturalism to overcome death, eliminate scarcity, and just seemingly have a lot of orgies and write poetry about it. By book three, we deeply bedded within the Culture and its workings and the protagonist is called Rasd-Coduresa Diziet Embless Sma da’Marenhide. The construction of the name is eventually discussed and explaned, but immediately you’re like: Okay, that's some high sci-fi shit.

Whilst most fiction tries to use its naming conventions to influence the audience in a subtle way, at least I hope to God they try and be subtle even if the end point result isn’t, I think the most entertaining and probably most exciting naming conventions come from Postmodernists authors who absolutely do not care a turd for being subtle. Which is kind of what I wanted to talk about all along but needed to write the lengthy prologue to get to this. Hence this sections title.

The most notable of the unsubtle namers is Thomas Pynchon who I will go off large about in a coming paragraph, but I think its interesting to look at this tradition amongst all the Post-Modernists including their elder statesmen. James Joyce employs it in Ulysses with pin point skill (however hard it is take any naming advice from a man whose lover was called Nora Barnacle) his absurd characters existing in a very real Dublin. Or are they very real characters in an absurd Dublin that Joyce himself lived in. The main character is Leopold Bloom, a fictionalised version of a friend of his' name, but the first name singles him out immediately as an outsider to Ireland as the son of a Jewish émigré, and his surname gives us images of growth, development, and change. As a retelling of the Odyssey this is a key theme to the protagonists journey. He is a journeyman, only rather in far flung isles its his own homeland. Later chapters concern Stephen Daedalus, an author insert character who made his debut in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and who takes his name from St Stephen who was Martyred for Blasphemy and Daedalus the ancient greek inventor who built the Labyrinth for the King of Minos and whose winged inventions would be his son’s downfall. Themes of imprisonment, religion, and fatherhood are all tied into Stephen’s character so from introduction we get a man whose name is drowning in tragedy and defeat. Other names of note are Punch Costello an antisemitic bawdy drunk, Private Carr a british soldier (whose name singularly conjures the ideas of sealed doors and social division in the transit network), and Paddy Dignam the most Irish of men.

Yes Christopher, I have read some of Ulysses.

Private Carr is an interesting one because it leads almost directly to the character Major Major Major Major in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, a character whose name is a repetition of the meaningless authority he holds over the air force base. He is the picture of ineptitude of leadership and is totally defined by rules and process. The protagonist of Catch-22 is called John Yossarian, though his first name isn’t revealed until far into the book, instead just called Yossarian, a name meant to highlight his position of alienation within the military process and arguably America at large. My favourite Catch-22 name is Milo Minderbinder a sociopathic capitalist who doesn’t take sides as long as he is making money. The book is one of humorous miscommunication that leads to tragedy death and horror. It is to World War 2 what Black Adder goes Fourth is to World War 1, so whilst you have funnily named characters desperately trying to avoid the nightmare of a war that will most likely kill them in ridiculous ways, it is juxtaposed with the fact that it is killing lots and lots of people. Another portrayal of the absurdism of Global Warfare is Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, a novelist who I love and am able to bore anyone about at length at a moments notice.

Gravity’s Rainbow is concerned with the absurdism of trying to find meaning in warfare. Its pointless to try and be concise about this 901 page novel so I won’t spend too much time on the plot Paul F Tompkins once described the film Magnolia as having “a phone book sized script, and the plot of the movie is that “everyone in the phone book starts talking to each other” and I feel that is basically a wonderful summary of Gravity’s Rainbow. But Gravity’s Rainbow at least in part concerns the prediction of V2 missile strikes by tracking the sexual exploits of a man called Tyrone Slothrop from Mingeborough Massechuettes. Tyrone, with his all American first name and slovenly surname is tracked by Pirate Prentice, a rapscallion military officer and banana obsessive, who can hijack and experience other people’s fantasies. Inept people have inept names, like Brigadier Pudding and Richard Zhlubb.

The Pynchon naming convention is present across all his books, and lead to a pretty active Hashtag on the old Twitter of finding people with ridiculous names and sharing them with other literature nerds. Oedipa Maas spends the whole of Crying Of Lot 49 concerned with her relationship to an older man who once loved her but has now passed away. Zoyd Wheeler is a former hippy crawfish salesman and locally famous smasher of windows who goes on a directionless manhunt in Vineland whilst himself being hunted by all-american Nixonite Brock Vond. Human cartoon and dope smoking detective Doc Sportello has to investigate his ex Shasta Fay Hepworth’s current boyfriend’s disappearance in Inherent Vice. To me Shasta Fay Hepworth is one of the best names in literature, immediately capturing Hollywood dreams and American stardom even if not gained by the character. Sportello’s reluctant LAPD co-conspirator is Lieutenant Bigfoot Bjornson, a man with a “30-weight voice” and his own dreams of being a TV star. His surname translates as “Son of a Bear”, his first name is Christian, his nickname implies size, weight, and a certain air of the mythic. He is described as the “LAPD’s own Charlie Manson” and a badass. He is also a violent sociopath.

The names in Inherent Vice underline the madness of the early 70s but also the weirdness of America. All of Pynchon’s books are about America, and the names of the characters of a nation of Protagonists highlight what sort of a world they exist in. One filed with people named after sodas, with nominative determinism being weighted down on a cosmic scale. Reading Pynchon is like learning a new language, and I feel the names are like a primer to this. You just have to go with it, and let the sentence structure wash over you like a song and take in what you can. The names serve a plot purpose, a narrative purpose, and also a functional purpose as they slowly warm up the pot of water around your soft frog body as you lay complacent in plot soup.

As a writer who is very aware they rarely name protagonists I think I have a lot to learn about how to name people. I had a lot of fun in Black Dragon ( a comic which I think has a heavy Post-Modern inspiration in terms of comic book digestion and cultural regurgitation) with naming people absurd things. I think that we shouldn’t be afraid to be absurd, or at least unsubtle in our naming of people and things. Act as if its a statement of intent. We have too many Jon Matrixes (Matrices?) in this world, but not enough Herbert Stencils.

Sure was, I actually had to cut a few sections out of the email because I was aware I was going on a bit. I might have to move this to weekly, and write out a whole months worth of releases in one go rather than write out a whole essay and then send it in one go. I don’t know. Its hard to guage. Personally I love a long read and fell that the internets attention economy doesn’t reward that.

Maybe I will be the immovable rock in the unstoppable river, defying the current of short blaps of entertainment with my rocky shell of Long form writing.

Thanks for Reading as always, tell your friends about the mailing list. Tell me what you want from my in future editions. Email me at

[email protected]

Talk to you later.

Nick