Urban
Paranoia
One of
Borin Van Loon's earliest engagements with the
community/radical press which burgeoned in the early 1970s* was with
the
Wandsworth/Balham/Tooting community magazine Lower Down. Bof, his
post-sixties character wanders through these tiny one-liner strips,
more-or-less as they appeared in the pages of the magazine with an
additional strip drawn when Borin and partner escaped the IRA bombs of
London to the Suffolk countryside ('Rural Paranoia', naturally).
Weighing in at a mighty 36 pages and only 7.5 by 21 cm in size, this
tiny book proved very popular. Published by Alan Courtney's Suburban
Books imprint in 1977, printed by Rye Express, Peckham, it was followed
by Intellectual
Bull Comix.
A sample page from the book. An old Suffolk man once
described the London Underground as 'Mole country', which inspired this
strip. Tooting Bec station has never looked so lovely.
An original hand-coloured Bof
badge
Bizarreries of the Internet world
2011: this tiny book spotted on eBay for sale by a seller called
'fungamecafe'. Item: Urban Paranoia UK Comic - Borin Van Loon 1979 VERY
RARE. Date: 1979; cover price: 20p.Condition: This comic is guaranteed
to be in near mint to mint (NM/M) condition. Price: $999.99
[!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!] Oh yes, plus $2.99 postage & packing.
