Free Spencer Nero… In Every Pack!

In a time of global crises, political uncertainty and civil unrest, what everyone needs is a big man in a mask to punch things better! Which is why Filippo, Scott Twells and I present A Smidgen of Spencer: Dwarfs, Dames and Dopplegangers! Compiling stories from PARAGON #22-24 and PARAGON Annual 2019, this FREE digital comic features the Civil Centurion having issues with little men, girls and himself – in short, it’s ripe for psychoanalysis! Or you could just read it and laugh at the usual spate of mild perversion and boy’s own thrills!

Features a guest appearance by lettering pro Jim Campbell!

Download it 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! 

Mythconceptions - Spencer Nero in India

And that's just for starters.

Some time ago, I wrote a story in which the protagonist was a Nazi. I was always worried that someone might think I approved of his beliefs and behaviour, but he was a one-off character, and it was hopefully pretty clear that I was mocking both him and his ideology fairly relentlessly.

But what happens when you do something similar with a long-running character who's supposed to be the hero? 'Spencer Nero and the Misapplication of Karma', as featured in Spencer Nero Vol. 2, poses that question. It's always been pretty clear that Spencer is a mass of contradictions - a cheerful, educated, heroic fellow, who can behave in the most boorish, grotesque and petty manner imaginable. He is, in short, all that is good about the British pulp hero, as well as all that is bad. Nonetheless, despite his personality quirks, he is usually on the right side, and though his means may be suspect, his end is generally laudable.

Not in this story.

This was in fact the fifth Nero tale ever written, but it's been a long time in gestation. At this point, Nero seemed to be hanging out in a different country every issue (he seems to spend most of his time in Britain these days) and it seemed inevitable he should at some stage end up in India. But an agent of the British Empire enforcing colonial oppression in India is a problematic figure, to say the least, so I decided not to hold back, and make Spencer flat-out ridiculous in his self-superiority. However, the only way I could see it working for the character is if his reasons for looking down on the locals weren't what you'd expect. Spencer isn't a racial supremacist - he's a mythological supremacist. India worries and confuses him because he doesn't understand the various belief systems that exist there, and he thinks his own belief - in incestuous Roman divinities - is more straightforward and user-friendly.

True, there's a get-out clause for him - the runic magic from way back in the Olympics story - and for a while I did consider this might become Spencer's equivalent of Father Ted's "That money was just resting in my account!" In the end, I didn't pursue this idea, though it does feature in early drafts of 'The Pack', and is resurrected for Spencer's introduction to the collected edition.

The Compass Mantis went on to front a quiz show with Richard Osman.

Does the story work? In terms of script, I don't know - I'm not convinced I properly resolved the tension between playing with the 'Indiana Jones'-style representation of the subcontinent, and mocking the attitudes associated with that representation. In retrospect, I feel the story tries to have its cake and eat it, and there's a couple of panels that, if you took them out of context, could give completely the wrong idea about where I was coming from. On the other hand, I do like a couple of the jokes - Spencer's business card amuses me - and I like the Compass Mantis, despite his cheerfully punning name and his dreadfully stereotypical use of the phrase 'Infidel!' He is probably one of the most capable opponents Spencer has faced, and were it not for karmic complications, the fight might well have panned out differently. It's also interesting to see Spencer taking orders from someone who isn't Mr. Alabaster - Governor Anderson is a real historical figure, and the later namesake for WWII Anderson shelters. And finally, this is the story that establishes Spencer's talent for offending deities, something which becomes a recurring theme throughout the series. (See 'Spencer Nero Feels Your Pin', also by Scott Twells and Jim Campbell.)

And speaking of those two gents, as far as art and lettering go though, there's no question - both of them play a blinder. Scott delivers what may be his finest work on a Nero story to date, handling humour, characterisation and action sequences with the kind of aplomb that make him one of the most exciting talents on the small-press scene. I'm particularly fond of some of the stylish perspectives he adopts, which really make the characters leap off the page. Meanwhile, Jim's font for Durga is sublime, and his ability to render my excessive dialogue in a readable format is remarkable - plus, if anyone does a better piano-falling-on-an-idiot KCHANNNGGG sound effect, I'd like to see it.

And now, let's finish up, as is customary, with some random observations:

• On page 3, Spencer's 'Oh... bother' is borrowed from Winnie-the-Pooh, which is the best children's book ever written.
• Edward VIII is on the wall in Governor Anderson's mansion because this was originally written as a 1936 story - it was probably going to slot in between "...Goes South" and "Mrs. Simpson."
• Punching out big cats really is Spencer's speciality - it was the first thing we ever saw him do in a comic strip.
• The Compass Mantis's name was inspired by a line from an Ian Gillan / Tony Iommi charity single, 'Out of My Mind', whereas Spencer's line about 'Instant Karma' is a John Lennon reference, several decades before the fact.
• The Compass Mantis's South-South-East Strike occurs at (more or less) a south-south-east angle. And Spencer's response, 'Pedicabo Ego Vos Et Irrumabo' is the most unpleasant thing he's ever said, though I don't think he intends to do it literally. And no, I'm still not translating it.

And on that refusal to co-operate (in the spirit of Ghandi, I'd suggest) we end.

"I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order."

Things Get Hairy - The Spencer Nero Compendium, Vol. 2

He's back! And this time he's screwing things up more spectacularly than before, and refusing to accept the blame more vehemently than ever! Yep, 'By Minerva's Merkin', Vol. 2 of The Spencer Nero Compendium, is finally out, and the Civil Centurion punches some serious bottom therein!

Wait, no, he kicks it. Kicks it.

I'm really happy to get a second volume of Spencer's stories out, not least because it makes my labelling the first collection as 'Volume 1' a lot less presumptuous. Who would have thought we'd manage over 60 more pages of 1930s shenanigans? Who could have imagined so many lovely artsy and lettersy fellas would contribute their time and talents to bring my demented scribblings to life and immeasurably improve them? Here's the complete contents and credits, so that blame is properly assigned:

Cover by Davey Candlish and Jim Cameron. Collection edited and compiled by Davey Candlish. Introduction by the actual Spencer Nero. (Born 29/2/1904, died - wait, I'm not telling you that bit.)

1: The Paragon Paradox, Part 1 - (6 pages) - Scott Twells, lettering by Jim Campbell

In which Spencer teams up with Jikan, Battle Ganesh and Bulldog to fight slavering beasts from another dimension.

2: Spencer Nero and the Dry Camel - (3 pages) - art and letters by Jim Cameron

In which Spencer actually does something nice.

3: Spencer Nero's Secret - (8-page prose story) - spot illustrations by me and Filippo Roncone

Crivvens! Jings! Help ma boab! Can it be true...?

4: The Paragon Paradox, Part 2 - (6 pages) - Scott Twells, lettering by Dave Metcalfe-Carr

The return of Bonaventure Nero and a startling revelation!

5: Spencer Nero and the Reckless Return of the Ruthless Rhymer - (8 pages) - Dave Snell, lettering by HdE.

My personal favourite story in the whole thing. Spencer strangles the ghost of Edward Lear with his own beard! Don't pretend you don't want to read that.

6: The Paragon Paradox, Part 3 - (8 pages) - Scott Twells, lettering by Ken Reynolds

The power of the Janus Mask unleashed against Spencer's arch-nemesis, Ekhidna!

7: Spencer Nero and the Bicycle Tree - (2 pages) - James Corcoran, lettering by John Caliber

Spencer gets wood.

8: Spencer Nero Feels Your Pin - (2 pages) - Scott Twells, lettering by Jim Campbell

The sort of thing the Two Ronnies would have written, if they'd had less talent and punched each other more.

9: Spencer Nero and The Pack - (8 pages) - art and letters by Ben Rose

Lots of nice dogs (and one bad dog.)

10: Spencer Nero and the Misapplication of Karma - (9 pages) - Scott Twells, lettering by Jim Campbell

Spencer Nero in India, and as enlightened and sympathetic to the people whose country it actually is as you'd expect an agent of the British Empire to be...

11: Whatever Happened to Anton Klumpen? - (3-page prose story) - spot illustration by me.

Find out what became of the animated mound of clay from the 1936 Olympics. I know you've all been wondering.

And there you go. Don't wig out - buy 'Minerva's Merkin' right here!

Vale!

The Paragon Paradox Part Three (Final Part, Honest!): Eliminate 'Er!

Welcome to the final part of my thoughts on 'The Paragon Paradox' - and rest assured, it is the final part. (First part here, second part here.) First, a few words on the artist currently known as Scott Twells - a remarkable talent. I first  encountered his work when he illustrated a yet-to-be-published story of mine for a yet-to-be-disclosed comic. Discussing his work with the editor, it struck me that though his style for that story was deliberately scratchy and cartoonish, it was also blessed with a remarkable sense of composition and some sublime posing. Oddly, Davey Candlish had also sent Scott a short Spencer Nero script to illustrate, which meant he ended up drawing two of my stories in quick succession - before being handed The Paragon Paradox on the strength of 'Spencer Nero Feels Your Pin'. The upshot is that only David Broughton has ever drawn more pages of my scripts* - a gent with whom he shares a similar talent for swiftness, without ever sacrificing quality.

Now for a few random observations:

Part One:

Lettering by Jim Campbell

• The Dalmatian hanging out with Bulldog at the start is called Gooch - this is not a reference to any weird piercing (look it up! No, wait, don't!) but in fact a nod of the head to a book I enjoyed as a child, namely 'Mr. Gooch and the Penny-farthing', a story about some dogs that run a bicycle shop. The lead dog is a Dalmation in a boiler suit.

• Mr. Twells notably places the number '18' on Bulldog's hangar - 'Hangar 18' is, of course, a key song on Megadeth's 'Rust In Peace', one of the greatest albums in the history of the human species. Ergo, I posit that Scott Twells is likely a thrasher of some description.

• Ganesh's foe is a Promethean Eagle - the horrible thing that used to pull Prometheus's regenerating liver out on daily basis. At one point I was going to have Bulldog carried away by the eagle - until I remembered he'd just been carried off by a pterodactyl in his own series a couple of episodes ago!

Part Two:

Lettering by Dave Metcalfe-Carr

• Jikan's arrival line is paraphrased from 'Shogun Assassin', in which Ogami Itto exclaims "They will pay... with rivers of blood!" On reflection this sounded a bit Enoch Powell, so I changed it. It wouldn't have been the most appropriate line for a story in which extradimensional immigrants threaten Britain...

• Ekhidna's changed slightly from James Corcoran's depiction - she's a bit better looking (still got nice cheekbones) and actually closer to what I originally imagined she'd look like.

Part Three:

• It struck me as I reached the end that this story is a Freudian nightmare - a gigantic archetypal mother-figure gets gang-banged mauled by a bunch of macho men. Someone had to articulate it (but not excuse it.)

Lettering by Ken Reynolds

• Bulldog and the big hairy metaphor: Wait a minute - didn't I say in my last post that Bulldog was the most down to earth of the team? Why is he going all metaphorical here? Well, given his lineage and pre-eminent status as small-press icon, I decided he was the best person to articulate the subtext of the story - namely that it's all about the difference between small-press comics and the work of 'the big boys' (as Davey Candlish likes to call them) at Marvel and DC.  Ekhidna represents the latter - constantly repeating herself, squirting out debased copies of myths that once mattered, unable to do anything particularly original but always ready with a new #1. She's finally floored by the PARAGON characters, who of course represent the small-press: varied, versatile, hit-and-miss, off-the-wall and representing the true spirit of their creators. All done in the context of the crossover, that most quintessentially American of comics formats, filtered through PARAGON's 70s/80s Brit sensibility.

And that, as they say, is your lot!

*James Corcoran has drawn the same number as Scott.

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...