Thumping Hearts Hold the Ravens In: 'Spencer Nero Versus Britain' in PARAGON #25

‘Spencer Nero Versus Britain’ has its origin in two somewhat disparate individuals – Jason Cobley and Kate Bush. The former’s role is simple – I’d hoped to read some new adventures of his well-seasoned small-press hero, Winston Bulldog, but Jason was very busy with other commitments (a novel and paying work for Commando comic.) That being the case, I wondered if he’d mind me borrowing Bulldog to reunite him with Spencer Nero (they previously teamed up as part of The Paragon Paradox) for a special story to celebrate PARAGON’s ‘silver anniversary’ – issue #25. Jason graciously agreed. So what was the story to be?

I’d made notes on possible sequels to the Paragon Paradox a while back. One involved the cast all being turned into dogs (apart from Bulldog, obviously) and going on some cosmic hound-quest, which started me down the road of making the story canine-themed. At one point I had the idea that supernatural dog-beings were converging on Spencer because his body had been transformed into a tasty skeleton by an Aztec death-god – and they wanted the bones! I still like this idea – I intend to use it as a separate story – but I decided the dog-angle was a blind alley, as far as this crossover went. Instead, I decided to look at what really connected Nero and Bulldog – and the answer was obvious. Britain. Which is where Kate Bush comes in.

‘Oh England My Lionheart’ is a song in which Bush nostalgically contemplates a romanticised vision of her home country, complete with all manner of iconic British references. But what if these symbols were turned against the nation that had spawned them? What if all that was quintessentially British went bad? Nero and Bulldog were both defined, in different ways, by their nationality. How would they deal with its darker side?

This dark side was personified by Anthony Seyden, M.P. – a politician and psychic fugitive from Bulldog’s world. Seyden – ‘Tony Satan’ to his friends – was based visually on the wildly-ineffective ‘New Labour, New Danger’ campaign, staged by the Conservative Party in the run-up to the ’97 election. The image of Tony Blair with ‘demon eyes’ proved no deterrent to his landslide victory, but it provided a memorable image I was keen to appropriate. As a ‘prosecco nationalist’, Seyden’s politics lean in a different direction to Blair’s, but they both rejoice in the idea of British icons and like to associate with celebrities – though Seyden’s more likely to set fire to his.

Art on this was by Scott Twells, and lettering was by Filippo – we had recently completed ‘The Spencer Nero Club #1’, and with ‘…Versus Britain’, I felt we were firing on all cylinders as a three-man team. It almost goes without saying that they both did a remarkable job, but I’ll say it: they both did a remarkable job. This is the most visually-interesting Nero story ever. I was particularly fond of the way Scott extended Seyden's mouth so that neither it nor his eyes fit properly on his face. It just makes him that little bit more disquieting.

A few comments on the individual pages:

Page 1: We start with what I like to think of as a ‘John Smith’ page – in his 2000AD stories, the great writer made frequent use of these little ‘catalogue of horror’ sections, where he gave multiple snapshots of some unfolding atrocity. I don’t often get a chance to do these but thought it would be a good way to set the stage.

Page 2: This story follows immediately on from the leprechaun yarn – Spencer’s still got the slash-mark from the leprechaun blade on his jacket. I loved Scott’s bone Spitfires – the story is pre-WWII, but Spitfires did exist, and are a reference to the ‘black Spitfire’ that drops Kate Bush to her funeral barge in ‘Oh England…’ Originally there was a line that suggested Seyden’s weaponization of iconography included a predictive element – he could even corrupt things that would become iconic. I left it out for space reasons. Also of note here is Spencer’s use of the Janus mask as an energy-sheathed weapon, opening doors into his foes – this idea came about from an unfinished story in which Spencer tackles a mystical Chinese tong gang, resulting in the creation of a Peckham weasel-god. The weasel-god itself is occasionally alluded to in the strip as an ‘offscreen’ adventure.

Pages 3-4: Originally, Nero and Bulldog got in a fight with the ants, but I thought this version was more elegant – and it followed on from the idea in the leprechaun story that Spencer carries condiments. The downside is that it robs Bulldog of some action by making Spencer the one to deal with the transfigured businessman – this bothered me a bit, but I figured Bulldog got enough to do later to let it go.

Page 5: Seyden’s secret origin. The Dalmation is Gooch from the Paragon Paradox. I like Scott’s savage black cab – and you can’t beat a good mole joke. Note that the scientists are indeed a mole, a toad, and a vole (or water-rat) – the main characters from another iconic British tome, ‘The Wind in the Willows’.

Page 6-8: When people tell me I write weird stories, I never get it – doesn’t everyone think about wicket-based wicker-men in the shape of W.G. Grace? The implication is meant to be that there are darker and more sinister icons beneath the nation’s psychic surface. I’m particularly fond of Scott’s art on these pages – some grand-scale normalness (ok, madness then.) Seyden’s helpers were referred to in the script as ‘Chaos Cricketers’ – my instruction was to make them look as if Games Workshop had designed their uniform. The wicket-masks give them a slightly ‘Judge Death’ vibe.

Page 9-10: Scott added the idea that Bulldog would give a parting gesture. Scott also pointed out that I’d subconsciously stolen the ‘plink’ sound effect from Zenith – it’s the noise an Einstein-Rosen bridge makes in Phase III when they cross dimensions.

Page 11-12: I decided that Seyden should cycle through iconic British appearances to make the page more interesting for Scott to draw – note also yet another George Formby reference. Is this leading up to something?

Page 13: A version of this was the first page I wrote – it was going to feature alternating panels of Bulldog and Nero describing their respective Britains, with Bulldog seeing the positives and Nero the negatives. The joke was meant to be that their worlds were more similar than they realised, but they both saw Blighty through different lenses, and so couldn’t reconcile their mutual visions. In the end, it morphed into this. I did think about giving the King a stutter for historical accuracy, but it seemed a bit petty.

Page 14-15: It’s now become a tradition that Bulldog makes a profound statement on the last page of their crossovers. Note Seyden’s ambiguous ‘death’ – I wanted this story to give me a new Nero villain to play with. The intention was always to bring him back if Scott and I liked him.

We liked him.

And I hope you liked the story. Downthetubes seemed to – they declared it “utterly brilliant.” I’ll take that!

You can obtain a copy of PARAGON #25 here.

Comics Wot I Did In 2019: Part Two - Das Boot’s on the Other Foot

Concluding my commentary on stories from 2019, and providing previews of things to come this year in 2020.

Right – the leprechaun story in PARAGON #24 was mostly editor Davey Candlish’s fault (though I blame Jim Cameron too, for encouraging / provoking it, and coming up with the title, ‘Spencer Nero and the Leprechauns of Doom’!) Davey had posted the front cover of the novel 'The Little People' on Facebook – yep, it’s same John Christopher that wrote The Tripods - and immediately, it seemed a major omission that Spencer Nero had never gone up against Nazi leprechauns. Within minutes of realising this, I’d come up with the plot – frankly, the story pretty much wrote itself. In many ways, it is the archetypal Nero story – it features folklore, Roman mythology, Nazis, and a hefty dose of silliness and satire. All in five pages!

Sors – Roman luck god and instigator of the plot – was very much on my mind, as I’d been trying to write a 20-page Nero prequel comic, set prior to Spencer joining the Department of Contingency. The chief antagonist was going to be the aforementioned deity, who had cruelly inflicted good luck on Britain – something that turned out to be less fortunate than it appeared. I eventually shelved the idea, but still wanted to see Sors in print. Luck and leprechauns go together like bishops and being kicked up the arse, so he was a natural fit. The first Nero text tale left Sors washing dishes in the Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane – he’s finally finished!

Meanwhile, Sister Von Zero was last seen in County Kerry, facing a beating from the similarly gender-swapped Veleda the druid(ess). I thought about reverting Sister Von Zero back to a man after “…the Trouble with Girls” but I realised that visually, she was much more interesting as a Nazi nun (and probably a lot easier for Scott to draw too.) (Veleda, on the other hand, probably will revert to her original female gender, as I think she worked better as a woman – maybe, like Patsy from AbFab, it’ll fall off after a few months.)

Art on this was by Scott Twells - I'm running out of superlatives for this chap's work, but as ever, he pulled off a blinder. So much character in his... characters! Lettering was by consummate pro, Jim Campbell, a real friend to the small press - it's always a pleasure to have his touch on my Nero. As it were.

A few brief notes:

Spencer’s bath-time rendition of ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’ continues the strip’s ongoing flirtation with George Formby. We’ve seen Oswald with one of Formby’s ukuleles (more of that this year) and a newspaper headline pertaining to a Nero / Formby team-up (a reference to a hitherto unpublished musical story, which needs a bit of revision before it appears.) More tangential Formby to follow…

Leprechauns aren’t the only supernatural beings compelled to count grains – vampires seem to have a similar affliction. It seems Spencer habitually carries granular items on his person to deal with said foes – but what else does he have in his jacket? All will be revealed in his next outing.

And speaking of which, it wasn’t planned at the time, but Sors’s mention of British Bulldogs oddly foreshadows the guest star of the very next Spencer Nero…

Yep, coming later this year in PARAGON – Spencer Nero Versus Britain, in which our hero teams up with Jason Cobley’s storied creation, Captain Winston Bulldog, for a 15-page fight against a nation gone bad! (Many thanks to Jason for his permission to bring Bulldog back to the series, after the pair first teamed up in The Paragon Paradox.)

But before that…

The Spencer Nero Club #1: Folklore and Fire! 28 pages of all-new 1930s fanboy antics, starring Oswald Gypsum and chums! Art by Scott Twells, cover colours, lettering and design by Filippo. More on this ‘un soon! 

The Paragon Paradox Part Two: Tres Hombres (Plus One.)

Art on Paragon Paradox by Scott Twells - more on him in the next part!

Happy new year, and welcome to the second instalment of my rambling commentary on 'The Paragon Paradox' from PARAGON Annual 2016. (First part here.) In choosing my Paragon Patrol, I had three characters in mind from the off. Obviously I'd use Spencer Nero - Ekhidna was his nemesis, after all, and I figured his tendency to jump to conclusions might cause a bit of friction with his peers. But although leaning heavily on Spencer Nero continuity with the story, I wanted Jikan to take a leading role. He's the comic's flagship character - PARAGON's equivalent of Judge Dredd -  and I deliberately held back his arrival till Part Two to give it more impact. Jikan subsequently galvanises the team and is pivotal to all that happens afterwards. I've never written Jikan before, and whilst he looks like Toshiro Mifune, I originally thought he should probably come across like Tomisaburo Wakayama  - Ogami Itto from the 'Lone Wolf and Cub' movies. (Yeah, I know they're based on some remarkable comics - I have the first couple of volumes - but I saw the movies first and they've had a lasting impact.)  That notion didn't really stick - Jikan seems more amiable than the gruff Lone Wolf - but he does carry out some theatrically over-the-top blood-letting that is hopefully in the spirit of the films.

Lettering by Jim Campbell

Next up was Ganesh: a mainstay of early issues of PARAGON, who these days only appears in his 'Li'l Ganesh' or 'Oor Ganesh' incarnations (both of whom also make cameos.) I wanted to bring him back in his full atomic-stomping glory. I wrote him as quite knowing and slightly fed-up - he really just wants to get back to his celestial garden, but the universe keeps conspiring against him, in ways whose outcome is all too clear to him. I also gave him a slightly pompous side - he's a god amongst mortals, after all.

Spencer Nero's role in the story is basically to screw things up. Everything that happens is his fault (dating right back to PARAGON #13) and he doesn't make things any better by picking fights with his team-mates, getting his uncle into difficulties, and breaking the entire multiverse.

It's a running theme that Spencer is often architect of his own troubles, or at least doesn't always make things easier for himself, and that plays out in spades here. But what's really significant is that this is the story that properly settles whether or not the Janus Mask does actually have mystic powers, or whether it's all in Spencer's head. It turns out it does indeed have remarkable, untapped powers - but Spencer's spent fifteen years using it on its most basic 'setting'! Might we now witness him trying to explore these powers in future stories? We shall see. There's something of same conceit here that Arnold Rimmer faced in Red Dwarf: Back to Reality - the suggestion that he was stuck playing the useless-gimp-cover-identity of a vastly more capable secret agent.

So, who would the fourth man be? Originally, I thought Icarus Dangerous might be good, not least since he actually hails from Ancient Greece, and would therefore be a logical fit with Ekhidna. I imagined Spencer Nero would look at him with the same kind of star-struck awe in which teenage girls view boy bands - a living, breathing person from classical mythology! But that didn't prove possible, so Davey Candlish suggested I use Bulldog. Bulldog was created by Jason Cobley, who very kindly agreed to let me write his character - for a brief history, have a look at Jason's blog here.

Bulldog I saw as working-class (even though he's an officer), effective and fairly blunt - the sort of chap who might prick the pomposity of the more flamboyant members of the team, and undercut their pretensions with a dry quip. Bulldog's role swiftly became the guy who gets things done - the reliable, sensible backbone of the squad. Compared to the other three, he seemed a much more straightforward, much less troubled character. In some strange way, it felt to me like having Bulldog in the story somehow 'legitimised' it, helping draw a clear line to some thirty years of small-press comics history (but more on that in the next post.)

So, this was the team, with a few others pencilled in as cameos, to show Ekhidna's impact on various parallel worlds. Except, in my original synopsis, Ekhidna was only the first villain the heroes would face - she'd swiftly be superseded by a related character (and, in even earlier drafts, his minions too), out for revenge. I'm not going to name these fellas here, as I still hope to bring them into 'Spencer Nero' in the future, but if you know your Greek mythology, you'll know that Ekhidna didn't create most of the monsters of antiquity on her own...

The problem was, of course, that this was wildly overambitious, and as usual, I was trying to squeeze too much in. At one stage, I even wanted some of the PARAGON heroes to end up stuck in the dimensions of the cameo characters - I had a plan that they'd have to escape from Oor Ganesh's Dudley Watkins dimension, in which Spencer Nero (secretly Scottish - see PARAGON Annual 2015) might end up going native. Actually, I still like that idea - might make for an interesting Nero two-or-three pager.

Oor Ganesh, by Davey Candlish

Anyway, that's quite enough for now. In the next and final part of this series of posts, I'll provide commentary on the finished strip itself, speculate on whether Scott Twells likes thrash metal, and explain what the story's really all about...

Tree's Company: PARAGON #16 Branches Out

Spring has sprung, flowers are in bloom and the latest PARAGON has hit the proverbial stands, chockfull of nature’s bounty. Not that I’m suggesting great comics grow on trees, but my small contribution, a somewhat experimental ‘Spencer Nero’ two-pager, certainly features plenty of bark, and hopefully a little bite. The story is based around my strange fascination with metal-eating trees, focusing specifically on The Bicycle Tree of Brig O’ Turk in the Trossachs, albeit suitably embellished. Not that such things are unique to the Loch Lomond neck of the woods – here’s a photo I took of a hungry tree near the village of Strichen.

Art on ‘The Bicycle Tree’ is by small-press star James Corcoran, with a particularly pivotal lettering job by John Caliber. The original plan was to do the story as two nine-panel grids, but it’s ended up as two splash pages instead – probably for the best, particularly when it comes to showcasing James’s sublime art. And indeed, corking art is the order of the day in #16, with a lovely double dose of the fantastic El Chivo, the Newell / Candlish combo breathing life into Mark Howard’s ‘Bludd and Xandi’ (haven’t read that one yet, looking forward to it!) and, of course, the PARAGON debut of Jason Cobley’s legendary Bulldog, ably handled by Stephen Prestwood (see, Prestwood – another tree connection!) By sheer coincidence, I happened to pick up two ‘Bulldog’ collections in Aberdeen’s Oxfam Books quite recently –  they’re the work of a man who clearly has comics flowing through his very veins. Cracking stuff – the new story is a real highlight of the issue.

And so it only remains to suggest you pick up a copy – c'mon, don’t be a sap!