Portrait of a Single Punk

Guelph Artist Nick Craine: Creator of Hard Core Logo, the Graphic Novel

punk rock: n. 1. fuck you and your damn definitions.

Nick Craine has definitely gone punk rock to get his comic book done. Hard Core Logo, Potrait of a Thousand Punks is an artistic adaption of Bruce MacDonald's new movie Hard Core Logo, which is a film interpretation of the Michael Turner book.

Facing a self-imposed deadline of his 25th birthday, Craine went into artistic hibernation to get it done by November 2nd. That was yesterday. Today, Craine is either nursing a celebratory hangover, or still working frantically.

When I visited him last week he looked like death warmed over. Shuffling up the stairs of the Gummer Building, I get the eerie feeling of a place that hasn't changed significantly since 1950, all fake wood paneling and weird linoleum. A haggard and tired Nick is waiting for me on the top floor landing, in front of the smallest studio imaginable.

One wall is a bookshelf crammed with stuff, one wall is a window, one is the door. The fourth wall, along the right side of the room, is covered with the artwork that will soon make up Potrait of a Thousand Punks comic book. It's an impressive site. The pages seem in no discernible order taped up on the wall, but you can identify the characters and vaguely piece together the plot line. The images are drawings, paintings, cartoons, true-to-life realism, caricatures. Some depict people I recognize from the Guelph artistic community that Craine has brought into the book. While we chat, Nick cuts out characters from Bristol board and, using wire and tape, places them in a cardboard garage - the scene will be photographed by Gummer neighbor Trina Koster and will take its place in the comic book.

This comic book seems to be in many ways as much about Nick as it is about Hard Core Logo.

He's got complete artistic control over the project. It's not so much an adaptation of the movie as it is Nick's vision of the story. Some of the scenes are adapted from the movie, but many of them are straight out of Nick's own head. He shows me the sketchbook he used when he started the project. It's a beat up black thing, with pages falling out all over the place with his ideas inside. You can see the lines from his head to these rough sketches to the pages on the wall.

He's got himself very much entrenched in the book. With the freedom he has, he's embellished and added several new aspects, included some pretty twisted stuff (fire coming out of a superheroes' penis, that sort of thing). Nick lived his own road movie this summer when he went cross-Canada with the band he plays in, Black Cabbage. He can identify easily with the premise of the whole thing, and that comes across in the work. The whole fire-penis thing is the product of a 3 AM, middle of the prairies, just keep the van on the road conversation he had with his own drummer.

Nick himself has gone punk rock with his life to get this done. Little sleep, too many cigarettes, and a huge amount of creative effort for what seems at the moment to be very little material gain. His hair is greasy and he has paint all over his pants and he is talking about getting a "real" job when this is all over so he can make some money and continue to do what he wants to do in his spare time. How punk rock is that?

This comic book will be a magnificent piece of art. I've seen it on the wall and I've known Nick long enough to know that to be true. But more than that, this piece of art has the man's life energy tied up in itัhe has invested part of his soul, part of his love.

That makes it more than punk rock, I think.

By Drew Edwards, Graphics: Hardcore Logo, the Graphic novel

---

Volume 121, Issue 10: November 5th, 1996.
Copyright ©1996 The Ontarion