Woodrow Phoenix created these colourful and stylish cards for the comics shop Meanwhile, which had a short but eventful run in Camden Town in the early 1990s. Meanwhile was notable for trying to create a vibe or an image that departed radically from the “traditional” comic shop, and wanted to make the shop look colourful, inviting, and futuristic, with its decor and signs. Graphic novels were still relatively new then, and the shop also supported small press comics.
Woodrow’s images here seem to be aligned with that vibe; they make comics (and shopping for comics) look fun and chic. Woodrow also picked up a flavour of heavily-stylised Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées of that period, especially the work of Yves Chaland. Genre conventions like crime, sci-fi, superhero and horror are given a witty treatment, rather than explicitly pandering to fanboy tastes.
I like the zippy, flat colours, and the fact that outlines aren’t strictly followed, giving a little extra zang. I suppose it would be easy to do colours like this using vector art in the computer now, but Woodrow knew about Pantone and graphic design, and I expect he did this by cutting out sheets of rubylith and Letratone.
These probably date from before 1992, when the shop closed. I have one of these cards with a poignant note on the back written by one of the owners: “Ed…please phone me before we close down A.S.A.P. Bad news to bring.”