Michael J. Weller


[Image:Space Opera book 2000.jpg|thumb|Space Opera: The Artist's Book, Michael J. Weller (Visual Associations, 2000)]

Michael John Weller is a British underground comics artist, political writer, cartoonist, activist and album-cover designer.
Weller designed the sleeve for the United States release of David Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World LP, re-released. As "Captain Stelling" Weller wrote and drew The Firm - an early British artist's publication inspired by American underground comic book innovations. In 1973, a page by "Stelling" entitled 'Missile Crisis' was made part of Michel Choquette's comic book The Someday Funnies. In the 1970s Weller was published by Hunt Emerson for Birmingham Arts Lab press. He followed "Willie D" as featured cartoonist on Chainsaw punk zine.
Michael Weller enjoyed a parallel career in the 1980s and 1990s as political writer, cartoonist, activist of the left, and local community organiser based in Penge, south London. In 2006 he became a signatory to the Euston Manifesto.
As 'M.J.', 'Michael John', 'Mick' and 'Mike' Weller - using identity-playing forenames, nicknames and other noms-de-plume - he has produced artists books, comics, zines and small press publications. Affiliated to Association of Little Presses Weller opened self-publishing imprint homebakedbooks 2005–2023. Between 1990 and 2010 he was associated with London's poetry scene. Launch of Beat Generation Ballads was documented in video by Voiceworks, becoming the title of a large-scale musical composition for piano by Michael Finnissy premiered at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2014, winning a solo British Composer Award 2015.
Beowulf Cartoon has been on reading display at Poetry Library exhibitions Visual Poetics and Poetry Comics.
Michael John Weller continues to write, draw, and publish for traditional print and digital mediums, including artists film, poetry glitch and The Metrobolist website.
WWW Official Site

Bookworks

  • Harriet Staunton: A Victorian Murder Ballad,
  • Space Opera: The Artist's Book,
  • Madeline My Love In Death And Fancy,
  • Beowulf Cartoon,
  • Three-part The Secret Blue Book,
  • Slow Fiction: twenty-three tales in a box,
  • Beat generation Ballads,
  • minimus post ode poem,
  • Metrobolist: Five Chapters,
  • Three Piece Bathing Suit,
  • Spurious Purple: 72 serial e-shots from 2016,
  • intermittent,
  • Old New Little Presses In The Age of Electronic Reproduction,
  • Metrobolist 7,
  • An Open Letter To J.K. Rowling From You-Know-Who,

Selected comics, pamphlets and zines

  • the bop that just won't stop!, 1979 Birmingham Arts Lab Press
  • Coffin' Blood, 1979
  • AIN'T BIN TO NO ART SCHOOL,1980
  • the power of rock n'roll zerox poemik, 1980
  • A SONG FOR EUROPE, sheet music, 1983
  • Pinball and the Perfect Lasagne, 1984
  • Systemize, Buiiding a D-I-Y Cartoon System, 1985
  • Fantasy number one, 1990
  • Four-Eyed Flicks, 1993
  • The Fabulous Five, The comical story of the Arbiter, 1993
  • Too Much to Dream, 1994
  • Sugar Paper Rebellion, 1994
  • Michael's Collected Chainsaw Cartoons 1980-1984, 1996
  • My Own Zine nos. 1 and 2, 1996-1997
  • Sortilege of Allotment, 1997
  • Detective Notes, Around the world with The Imaginative Traveller, 1997
  • squad car Verethrangna, More Detective Notes, 1997
  • YES WE WERE SECRET LOVER,, 1997
  • The Ballad of Harriet Staunton, A Life Part 1: South London, 1998
  • The Siege of Carlaverock,, 1998
  • b, 1998
  • The Boys Are Back In Town, 1999
  • k, 1999
  • G a poem of no more, 1999
  • Space Opera, a comic book series 1997-1999
  • Passing Futures, 1999
  • W, 2000
  • Cobbled, 2000
  • Sublimage, 2000
  • Atterdake Ryst, 2000
  • Idiotgram, 2000
  • S Club 7 versus the Anti-Capitalists, 2000
  • The Story of Republic Nine, 2000
  • A Pigment of Imagination, 2001
  • Hitcloh Ilk, 2001
  • visual associations, 2001
  • Climb a Free Wheeler, 2001
  • Beowulf: An Old Old Story, 2002
  • Stem Harvest, nature poems, 2002
  • An Open Letter To J.K. Rowling From You-Know-Who, 2002
  • The Boy and Girl who looked up at the sky in wonder, 2005
  • Mike's Yellow Fever, 2005
  • Redell Olsen's Sharp Exhalations, 2005
  • Mechanically Inadvisable, the tale of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, 2006
  • My Own Zine nos. 1 and 2, 2006-2007
  • The Mother Of All Mermaids, a tale of magical realism, 2007
  • Andrea Brady Poetry Lady, 2008
  • Madeline My Love in Death and Fancy, 2009
  • home'baked, literary artzines in the age of the internet, 2010
  • Holly Pester Does It Better, 2010
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley's Masque of Anarchy Covered as a Zine, 2013
  • Grave's End, ghosting about horror, 2013
  • Zine Tales, 2013–2014
  • , novel biro, 2015
  • Poetry Womble, 2017
  • Litleaf, 2014–2019
  • LeafLit/LitLeaf, European Poetry Festival zine, December 2, 2023
  • BABELEUM, glitchobject score sheet zine, August 9, 2024
  • poetry cartoon, Advent calendar
  • 1961,, January 2026