"April is the least-blogged month", as T.S. Elliot
almost wrote in an early draft of 'The Wasteland'. Well, it was for me anyway.
But now May is upon us, and no less than three separate new tales of mine are
either already released or on the verge of being so.
The first, and in many ways the most personal to me, is a
tale called 'Lay On, Macduff', appearing in Lizzie and Conor Boyle's new
small-town themed anthology 'Disconnected'. This fine publication heralds the start of Lizzie and
Conor's new publishing venture, Disconnected Press, and I was genuinely
honoured to be approached for a script contribution for the first issue. As I
type this, 'Disconnected' is making its debut at the Bristol Comic Expo 2012,
complete with a cracking, somewhat Ben Templesmith-y cover by comics pro Matt Timson. (Coincidentally, I won his complete 'Impaler' series in one of the
2000AD forum short story competitions a while back - gorgeous stuff.) My artistic partner for this is Gavin Mitchell, winner
of the recent 2000AD pitch-fest, and a rare talent indeed. His work is hugely stylish
and atmospheric: we can expect BIG things of this gentleman! Our story is set,
as the title implies, in the north-east Scottish fishing town of Macduff, which
is where my father and the Meldrum clan in general hail from. Macduff's most
famous citizen is a man called Walford Bodie, the 'Electric Wizard of the North',
an international stage-magician and hypnotist, who inspired Houdini and was
even satirised by Charlie Chaplin. Without spoiling any plot details, Bodie is
the star of 'Lay On, Macduff', and during this historical tale he becomes embroiled in
eerie events in his home town.
The second tale is very different but also on sale in
Bristol - it's my collaboration with Louis Carter for Dr WTF?! 2012. Yup, Nazi
timelord Hauptmann Who stars in 'The Reich Stuff', a frankly ridiculous tale of
the Infinite Reich, silicon-based communism and gestalt reincarnation, all
wrapped up in a decidedly purple haze. I think this might be the oddest thing
I've ever written - I'm certainly very happy with the result, in large part due
to Louis's unbelievably superb art. His colours in particular were just glorious. Working with Louis was definitely a really
great collaboration - as his various blog entries on the subject show, he put
an enormous amount of thought into every artistic aspect of the strip, and
constantly took my ideas and ran with them, coming up with his own psychedelic
or Fortean twists, and at one stage making something implicit in the story
decidedly explicit - let's just say that when I saw the last few panels, my jaw
dropped. I'll do a full self-indulgent 'director's commentary' on the story, as I did
for Dr WTF?! 2011 in due course.
The third tale - well, Paragon #10 looms, and that can only
mean a healthy dose of Spencer Nero is imminent. In this one, he attempts to
climb the dreaded north face of the Eiger, in a Heinrich Harrer-inspired yarn
called 'Spencer Nero and the White Spider'. Art duties this time around go to James Corcoran, who has also blogged extensively on this strip. As is also the
case with Louis and Gavin, I count myself really lucky to have been able to
collaborate with such a talented artist as James - his work is just remarkable
and, to my mind, has captured that tricky balance between ridiculous and sinister
that I hoped Spencer Nero might achieve. Not a tale for arachnophobes, I'll say
that much: something in James's style really gives things a Lovecraftian edge.
More on this one when it's finally released.
Anyway, it's back to work. This collection of Martillo
stories I'm intending on publishing won't write itself, y'know...
Sounds like a cool month for you in terms of comics Greg, well done getting all that out! Look forward to reading! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the encouragement, mate, that's very much appreciated! Fingers crossed these stories go down well - ignoring my meagre contributions, all three artists are of course Really Bloody Good (and very different) and definitely deserving of serious recognition.
Delete