OPPOSITES ATTRACT

Bushey’s Martin Langston began his art career in graphic design before moving into art direction. After a hiatus he has returned to his first love, comics

- Sandra Smith

Keeping track of Martin Langston’s career arc is a little like following the government’s Covid-19 guidelines. Any lapse in concentration and you’re at risk of missing a major shift. As we juggle an interview over the intermittency of Skype at a time when social distancing continued to restrict face-to-face meetings, it’s apparent that the scale and variety of his creativity is as impressive as it is varied.

Let’s begin with a genre that was an influence throughout his childhood and continues to impact his style. Born in Hemel Hempstead, it was his grandfather’s job in what was the ‘print town’ of Watford in the 1960s that kickstarted his love of comic illustration.

‘I always found comics fascinating. My grandfather was a print machine operator at Odhams Press where they printed the comics Smash!, Pow! and Wham! and he would bring home copies for me and my brother. Around the age of eight I suggested to my dad, a stereotyper at the Sun Printers, that he could swap part of my pocket money for having a comic delivered every week.’ Such was the allure of the images – he proudly shows me a 1959 edition of the Dandy Annual – that Martin amused himself by reproducing his own versions and even pondered the notion of drawing comic strips as a job. Attending Watford School of Art, however, opened his mind to modern art.