FETISH MAN: Issue 7: Know your Extreme Porn

Fetish Man Comic Book at Fetish Fair - The top video clips of the week are here

Geof Banyard has tapped in to the kind of juxtaposition, twisted comedy that only a true bdsm psyche can offer up. His new short film outlines the guidelines on the laws banning extreme images in the same humourous vein.

With the advent of the new laws banning certain freedoms pertaining to extreme pornography. Fetish Man: Issue 7: KNOW YOUR EXTREME PORN at this month's LFF takes a jab at the UK's newest and most ludicrous law.

LFF: Hi Geof. How long the comic has been running and when did you start drawing it?

GB: I think I drew the first fetishman strip in the summer of 2000, but it wasn't until 2004 that I decided to make the jolly fellow into a comic - it was a choice between that and a couple of other ideas but fetishman is a little faster to draw and is such a unique addition to the comics genre.

GB: I've been drawing since I was really quite wee, as numerous Xmas presents to startled relatives will testify. I think I was a runner-up in a competition which resulted in a comic of mine appearing in the East Anglian Daily Times. I don't think it was rude though.

LFF: Are you an active member of the fetish scene?

GB: On balance I think I have to say I'm not an active member of the fetish scene: I get up to rudeness in my own time and I hang out with a fair number of deviants and perverts, but I would be reluctant to claim more than that.

LFF: Who are your favourite artists?

GB: These lists are never complete, but here goes:

GB: Comics: Jhonen Vasquez (Filler bunny, Invader Zim), Evan Dorkin (Milk & Cheese), Goscinny & Uderzo (Asterix), Michael Manning (Spider Garden, Tranceptor), Andy Sparrow (Bloodrunners), Cartoons: Thelwell, Bil, Heath-Robinson, Mordillo, Terry Gilliam Comedy: Morecambe & wise, Blackadder, Flanders & Swann, Father Ted, Black Books, Mark Lamarr,Tom Lehrer, Carry On movies, the Tate Modern, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, Stewart Lee

GB: But basically everything around me affects how I see the world and thus what I think makes a good comic: adverts on TV and billboards, the place I grew up, my mates, stuff like that.

LFF: Drawing inspiration from real life. Do you base a lot of your characters on past experiences in the London fetish scene or elsewhere?

GB: AHAHAHAHA! like I'd tell you even if they were? I'd be a dead man!

GB: I'd say mostly not: chunks of it are inspired by people I know and love, other bits arise from discussions I've had, some of it is inspired by fleeting observations of the scene but much of it is just the frothing of my psyche. I mean, do you really think I know ~that~ many nuns?

LFF: The humour of English style bdsm. Do you think that the psychology between a top and bottom shows the greatest contrast of contrary humour?

GB: Possibly. I can say it's definitely up there with the greats. I feel that the greatest humour is that of contrast. Top of the list for many years has been the contradiction of cute things and violence: like the classic roadrunner cartoons where jolly bubbly cartoon animals suffer the most hideous extremes of injury and harm. The Ds interaction is subtler but much richer as a source for comedy: the question of who has power over whom is beautifully confusing.

LFF: How is the comic doing?

GB: Very nicely thank you. It doesn't make enough revenue to support me but it is paying for itself and I'm shifting a reasonable amount of comics. It's not a global empire yet and it needs some good promotion and a revamp of the website (tell your friends! tell your neighbours! apologize to your neighbours after telling them!) but if you'd have told me a year ago it would be doing this well I would have been pleasantly surprised.

LFF: Anything else you would like to add?

GB: Um, next issue is due late April 2008

LFF: Yippee! Thanks for that Geof! Good luck with Fetish Man ..and see you at the next London Fetish Fair!