The Alternative Hero

by Tim Thornton

  Which I’m not going to bore you with.

  As I reach the southern end of the street the memories are older, often of an Islington that no longer exists. The Camden Head pub, once the second-best jukebox in London, now replaced by the questionable music taste of the bar staff. The old pizza restaurant, long since replaced by something trendier, where Alan and I used to do the all-you-can-eat buffet thing for about three quid, scoffing vast amounts of stodgy, nutritionless mush before going to gigs at the Powerhaus. The old tube station, prerenovation, without ticket barrier, an essential bolt-hole for every discerning student fare-evader. And then: the Powerhaus itself.

  Today, the idea of an impossibly dingy, dirty, sick-smelling indie hole parked squarely on the front line of Islington’s retail paradise is as incongruous as ordering a snakebite in Starbucks, but exist it did, and we fucking loved the place; the scene of some of our crunchiest, scummiest gigs: Extreme Noise Terror, Die Cheerleader, Tad, Cardiacs (I’ve also heard Alan boast to people that we saw a very early Radiohead show there, which I regret to say is bollocks). It was the perfect alternative venue, a fabulous, feedback-drenched sin bin of head-crushingly loud musical chaos; you could smell the clientele as they rolled across Islington High Street, particularly after the gig, when the cider, beer, sweat and patchouli oil had blended to form a now sadly extinct compound we christened Powergunge, caking the boots, leather jackets and hair of the faithful as they headed home. That the Powerhaus was replaced in the mid-nineties by an All Bar One tells you all you need to know about London’s descent into chain-driven consumer nonsense. That the All Bar One subsequently became a branch of the Halifax is where social commentary and I go separate ways.

  By this stage in my thoughts I’m standing right opposite our former glory hole, getting my breath back. It’s just hit me how knackered I am and how many beers I’ve had, and considering it’s now quarter past one in the morning and I’ve still not put finger to laptop for the Webster project, I probably ought to start thinking about home. But an unseen force is drawing me across the wide road. I skip across to the central reservation and wait for a half-empty police riot van to pass, its passengers eyeing me suspiciously as I itch the back of my legs. I hurriedly take off my woolly hat and tidy my hair—my typical, feeble knee-jerk attempt at looking innocent—and the van switches on its siren and speeds off in search of real criminals, leaving me to stroll over to our old haunt with its unchanged mock-Tudor front. I stare through the sterile windows, now advertising tax-free savings and personal loans rather than appearances by The Fall or Huggy Bear, and wonder if customers ever feel the Ghost of Indie Past as they fill in their deposit slips, whether the staff realise their quiet, carpeted office is exactly the room in which three hundred unwashed lunatics rucked to Crazyhead, spat at The Damned, gaped at Polly Harvey or blissed out to Orbital, or if they know they’re interviewing new mortgage customers in the very same space of air from which Wayne Hussey once breathed to serenade his eskimos. It’s doubtful.

  I linger awhile, not entirely sure what I’m trying to find. Perhaps nothing. I suppose it would be enough to think that, very occasionally, an office junior shifts some file boxes in a back room and wonders what that foul smell is, or speculates on the origin of the awful substance clinging to the bottom of the filing cabinet, or asks why his suit always reeks of patchouli oil after working late. Satisfied by this notion, I’m taking a deep breath and turning to go when something odd—no, make that bloody extraordinary—catches my eye.

  On an otherwise standard-issue black signpost between the Halifax and Snappy Snaps are the remnants of a sticker: a black, triangular sticker that somehow resisted the efforts of the graffiti removal teams. Although it’s faint, I can still make out an unmistakable red-and-yellow comic-book-style emblem, formed from the letters A and H, an emblem I first beheld about sixteen years ago, not ten yards from this very spot, emblazoned on the cover of a fanzine entitled Alternative Heroes. The geeky bloke enthusiastically peddling the fanzine to the gathering pre-gig crowd was none other than Mr. Billy Flushing.

  My face is now so close to the signpost I’m practically licking it, but I still can’t believe what I’m seeing. When did the Powerhaus close down? 1995? 1996? I’m pretty sure Billy wasn’t still doing his fanzine right up until that point, but even if he was, a sticker like this couldn’t have remained on a signpost for the eleven years since. Stuff like this gets blasted off almost immediately these days, even in Camden. No, this sticker must have been slapped on recently. What’s more, unless there’s another oddball out there with a job lot of Alternative Heroes promotional stickers, it’s Billy himself who’s been doing the slapping.

  This established, I don’t hang about. I turn and run back up the street, frantically hailing a passing bus. I whip out my mobile and call my own number, leaving one of those ridiculous aural notes-to-self as I pelt down the Essex Road, after which I sit down for a moment and ransack my memory.

  The Powerhaus gig Billy showed up at with his stack of fanzines was a fan-club-only Thieving Magpies show to launch the single “Roundpeg Squarehole” in June 1991. By this point our once enthusiastic friendship had completely evaporated, but I nodded at him outside the venue and strolled over to look at his creation while Alan scoffed and went inside.

  I must confess my heart sank when I examined it. Evidently using Billy’s brother’s stationery resources to the full, Alternative Heroes had a glossy cover and proper, newspaper-style pages. Inside, Billy had combined his knowledge of music with his deeper love of comics, creating double-page strips featuring some of the alternative world’s current stars: a wacky, Beano-style battle between Faith No More and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a ghostly drama concerning The Cure’s Robert Smith, a seaside caper involving The Wonder Stuff, a sitcom with the Pixies as a dysfunctional American family, and on the front page a swashbuckling adventure story starring all four members of the Thieving Magpies. It was imaginative, original, witty, frequently surreal and decidedly well-constructed. In those terms at least, it was streets ahead of Vorsprung Durch Peanut—and Billy, of course, knew it.

  “Nice ’zine, Billy,” I offered.

  “Thanks!” he replied, neglecting to look me in the eye, instead eagerly rooting out potential punters. He was still wearing his school shirt and trousers but had removed his glasses for the occasion, which must have made life a little tricky. “Come on, don’t be shy!” he yelled, eliciting a cringe from me. “Alternative Heroes, only forty pence.”

  “Forty pence!” I exclaimed. He was mad. It must have cost at least seventy to produce.

  “Opening offer,” he commented.

  I flicked through the pages again.

  “It’s odd, though, Billy—aren’t these bands a bit too, um … normal for you?”

  “Of course,” he shrugged, “but business is business.”

  Except it wasn’t. Although a few people stopped to look, no one was buying; Alternative Heroes went straight over everyone’s head. In the time I stood next to him I managed to sell four copies of the Peanut without even trying. The indie-verse simply wasn’t ready for Billy’s comic-book/music-press crossover.

  “Well, see you in there,” I said after a few minutes.

  “Don’t be silly!” Billy frowned, his eyes meeting mine for the first time. “I’m not going to the gig. I don’t even like the Thieving Magpies.”

  I made my excuses and shuffled inside.

  The final time I saw him was a year later at a pointless, premature school-reunion lunch my parents forced me to attend. Again, the conversation was stilted and we made no move to remain in contact, but I remember thinking he’d become an altogether more confident presence. Tellingly, he spent much of the afternoon chatting to a girl from our year who wouldn’t have even acknowledged he belonged to the same species a year previously.

  I sit back in my bus seat, strangely calmed by my latest plan. It’s always good to occasionally know what you’re doing. Soon I’m marching down my own street, p
ast Lance Webster’s house, which I acknowledge with a two-fingered salute that wouldn’t look out of place in a primary school. I jump down the steps to our flat and burst into the kitchen, where Polly’s latest conquest (a tall, curly-haired posh bloke) leaps up and grabs the nearest dishcloth as Polly calmly butters some toast. They are both unavoidably naked.

  “Sorry, Clive,” Polly murmurs, while the chap smiles awkwardly—but I am out the other side of the room before further discussion can ensue. Seen it all before anyway.

  I barge into my bedroom, open up the almighty, creaking laptop again, jam my finger firmly into the hole where the on button once was and retire for a tactical loo break while the dear old thing boots up. Ten minutes later, I’m excitedly awaiting the results of a Google search. I’m not entirely sure what I’m expecting: a few cursory references to the man perhaps (I’ve even got a few of my own if you look hard enough), maybe a MySpace page. I’m starting simply with “Billy Flushing.” What I don’t realise is it’s the last search I’ll need to bother with.

  Welcome to BillyFlushing.com – home of visual artist, graphic novelist and publisher

  Join the mailing list. www.billyflushing.com/welcome.htm – 3k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this [more results from www.billyflushing.com]

  Billy Flushing – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  Billy Flushing aka “RoyaleB,” “Fsycho Bill” (born Watford, England, on 23 January 1973) is an internationally recognised comic artist, graphic novelist and critic. He founded the XCarto … en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Flushing – 43k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this

  Billy Flushing

  Billy Flushing in my opinion is the king of modern comics. Having read his stuff as RoyaleB I didn’t think anyone could beat it, then I discovered he was also Fsycho Bill! Amazing, he … www.graphixchat.com/board/forumdisplay.php?f=42 – 94k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this

  Xcarto corporation – Billy Flushing CEO founded Xcarto after leaving univ … 21/12/2006. Xcarto Webshop Spring Offers 10/1/2007. Billy Flushing in Comic Zone Magazine (issue 120) – Fsycho Bill – new hardback retrospective with DVD extra OUT NOW … www.xcarto.com/ – 13k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this

  Graphic Novel Art @ Forbidden Planet – The Online Entertainment … Forbidden Planet feature. For the first time, we interview graphic god of our time Billy “RoyaleB” Flushing on the eve of his retrospective interactive hardback Fsycho Bi … www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/ … /Fmag/Features/Billyflushing.htm – 19k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this

  And that’s just the first five.

  With a movement straight out of Fawlty Towers, I slam the lid of my laptop and wait for a second, then reopen it and look again, desperately hoping all the references will have magically disappeared. They haven’t. Resisting the temptation to instantly phone Alan, I delve a little further, first checking Google Images for proof that this world-beating graphic icon really is my gormless former schoolmate (it is—he wears funky white space-age specs and his hair is a bit spiky but otherwise seems quite unchanged), then reading some of the articles just to check he hasn’t written them all himself (he hasn’t; there are simply dozens of the damn things, in online newspapers, magazines, on the BBC, art-gallery websites, publishing briefings—the list goes on). In addition to his artistic prowess, the Xcarto company he founded some ten years back appears to have acquired most things worth bothering with in the comics world, providing proof that the embryonic business acumen I suspected all those years ago grew into something formidable and produced—most surely—a hefty bank balance. He’s had his own exhibition at the Tate Modern and even warrants a compendious page on the Internet Movie Database, thanks to an abundance of technical and artistic-consultant credits, some stretching back as far as 1998, and a story of his—Dawn of Zfly (I mean, really)—being turned into a 2004 Paramount film starring Crispin Glover, Brittany Murphy and Michael Gambon, the existence of which has somehow completely eluded me.

  As my mother would say: Hell’s teeth.

  Two questions immediately spring to mind.

  Not, you may be surprised to hear, “How the hell has that total dweebhead loser boy managed to become such a super-successful, globally inspirational graphics megabloke?”—which is certainly the first thing that would emerge from Alan’s lips. In fact, I can totally see how the Billy I knew became the high-achieving eccentric guru who stares at me from his home page. It was all there from the very start. All he needed was to not be at school. No—the question I really want an answer to is “How the hell did I manage to miss it?” Granted, I pay about as much attention to the ins and outs of the comics industry as I do the history of agriculture in Lithuania, but you’d think I’d have spotted his (far from common) name at least somewhere.

  The other question I’m now pacing up and down my room mumbling to myself is the following: If he’s this successful, this busy and this artistically satisfied, what on earth is he doing plastering stickers of his long-forgotten indie fanzine on a signpost outside a former scuzz-rock venue in Islington?

  And the immediate explanation my dazed, confused and self-centred brain settles for? That Billy Flushing—wherever he is now—is trying to communicate with me.

  I click on his website’s “contact” page—annoyingly, it’s just one of those mailing-list forms, and there’s no actual address. Returning to my original Google search I get myself to the Xcarto website and do the same. There are two addresses—one in New York (but of course) and one in London. A glance at the postcode—EC1V—tells me the London office can’t be more than a few streets away from my old work. Who knows, I could have been buying my lunch from the very same Tesco Metro as Billy—when he wasn’t having his caviar coptered in and carried to his drawing board on a velvet cushion by a team of trained meerkats.

  (A quick aside to this fascinating stuff: in all seriousness, I sometimes wish there was a Web site that could tell you other people’s movements throughout their life in relation to yours, so you could type in their name and see a kind of joint route map; how many times have people said, “Oh, I was at that gig too” or something. With this site you could see how close you actually got; perhaps you were unwittingly waiting next to each other at the bar or some such … but then I also wish there was a device that could magically tell you all sorts of random facts and figures about your life, e.g., how many Jaffa Cakes you’ve eaten, which is the bus you’ve taken most often, how many times you’ve been through East Croydon station, which is the person you’ve had sex with the most. Like a sort of itemised phone bill of existence … a universal statistics engine … hmm …)

  The Xcarto site’s contact page displays a few email addresses—the standard “info@” one, a few named entries for the sales and marketing people, but nothing for their exalted CEO. However, I notice the format is pretty standard, “firstname.surname@”—so, it being too late at night for procrastination, I take a wild stab in the dark and quickly bash out this:

  From: CLIVE BERESFORD (cliveberesford@hotmail.com)

  Sent: 27 April 2007 01:57:04

  To: billy.flushing@xcarto.com

  Subject: the geeks shall inherit the earth

  Dear Billy

  I hope this has reached the correct destination! Blast-from-the-past time. Yes, it really is that Clive Beresford. Sorry. Imagine my surprise when I passed the old Powerhaus on Liverpool Road this evening and saw an Alternative Heroes sticker on the signpost. Can’t imagine it’s been there for over a decade, so I figured maybe you’d been feeling nostalgic? You seem to be one of the few people from school doing something slightly interesting with their lives. Glad to hear it. It’s amazing what dull jobs people have ended up with! I’ve actually lost touch with almost everyone, apart from Alan Potter, who you probably remember. You may shudder at the name, but Ben Simons sent me an email recently (maybe he did the same to you?), which I have to admit I completely ignored. If the photo on his MySpace page is anything to go by, he’s exactly the
same—slightly overweight and perpetually angry.

  Despite my cynical tone I haven’t become some completely bitter 33-year-old drunken mess. I’m actually quite happy with life, doing what I want (most of the time). Hope you are too—it appears so. Drop me a line if you get a sec—take it easy.

  Clive

  p.s. sorry about Spike Island

  Okay, so there’s a couple of fibs in there to give it a bit of sparkle. I refresh my inbox page a couple of times and nothing comes hurtling back at me saying the email address doesn’t exist, so it seems to have gone somewhere. Well then, we’ll see.

  Having accomplished this task of dubious benefit, I’m just about to shut down and finally make a move towards bed when I remember bloody Webster and this fabled novel I’m meant to have started. Satan’s arse. As I’m meant to be seeing a job agency tomorrow morning, I really need to have a go at the bloody thing now.

  Wearily, I open up a new Word document and—risking a second encounter with my naked, toast-eating flatmate and her bit of equally naked posh totty—return to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

  SUGGESTED LISTENING: The Cure, Disintegration (Fiction, 1989)