Martillo Goes Large!

When duende attack!

It's been quiet on the ol' blogging front, but that's in part 'cos I've been busy working on an extended project which will see me venturing into self-publishing for the first time. I've been both inspired and impressed by the great comics various fellow small-pressers are putting together - Lizzie and Conor Boyle's Disconnected Press, Davey Candlish's Paragon, Dirk Van Dom's cracking Vanguard and Owen Watts's Dr. WTF?! and Psychedelic Journal of Time Travel, to name but a few - and so intend to give it a go myself. The project is a collection of 'Martillo' stories - my 1940s Spanish exorcist character who first saw light in a four-pager in Temple APA #10. Myself and unstoppable artist David Broughton, Martillo's co-creator, are joining forces once more to put together a collection that will see over 40 pages of new Martillo strip material (most likely 6 new 7-8 page stories), in addition to the aforementioned four-pager as a prologue, and hopefully a few little prose stories as bonus excerpts from Martillo's case files. The aim (fingers crossed) is to have this come out early next year and to try and get it on sale at a few conventions as well as online.


Gallo investigates...

To set the scene: the year is 1948, and, nearly a decade after the Spanish Civil War, General Franco holds power. But there is still unrest in Madrid, city of Lucifer - unrest of the supernatural kind! Only one man is capable of dealing with this strange eruption of devilish danger - Martillo, ex-member of the Civil Guard, now ordained as Spain's least subtle priest. His mission - to crack some diabolic nuts with a literal sledgehammer, and woe betide those who get in his way!

For now, allow me to present a few preview images from the already-completed first proper story in the collection. We kick off with 'Que Viene El Coco' (or 'Here Comes the Bogeyman'), in which Martillo must deal with a ravenous threat to the city's youth, with the help of his sometime-foil, Detective Gallo of the Higher National Police Corps.

Hope you like 'em!

El Coco comes calling... be afraid!

Heavy Fluting

PARAGON #10 hits the ice (wrapped up in an astonishing cover by major talent Matt Soffe), and with it comes 'Spencer Nero and the White Spider'.  This strip is probably the point at which 'Spencer Nero' really starts to intersect with my personal obsessions in a major way. Ever since seeing the film 'Touching the Void' many years ago, I've developed a total fascination with human survival stories in icy climes. (A related obsession involves the South Pole - keep your eye on future issues of PARAGON for that one.) If you're not aware, 'Touching the Void' is the true story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who attempted to climb Peruvian mountain Siula Grande in the 80s and nearly paid for the attempt with their lives. Joe himself was inspired by the writing of Heinrich Harrer, whose book 'The White Spider' is regarded as a seminal mountaineering text. Harrer was part of the first team ever to successfully climb the dreaded North Face of the Eiger, but the most famous failed attempt on the Swiss peak was made in 1936 by a German climber called Toni Kurz and his team. Their doomed journey has been recounted several times on celluloid, documented by the aforementioned Joe Simpson in 'The Beckoning Silence', and dramatised in the movie 'North Face'. The tragedy of Toni Kurz is in just how much he went through and how horribly close he was to rescue.

Toni, however, did not reach the White Spider - a treacherous, arachnid-shaped ice-field that some reckon to be one of the most difficult parts of the Eiger to traverse. Literally-minded as I am, of course, my story involves Spencer Nero squaring off against an actual White Spider, animated by the spirits of the dead, in an effort to save the soul of Toni Kurz. As well as the Spider, the story introduces a new nemesis for Spencer in the form of Saturn Reisen, a soul-gorging mystic. There were two main inspirations for Reisen - one was the artist Goya's infamous painting 'Saturn Devouring His Son', which I'd seen in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, but had first encountered in one of my dad's books of fantasy-related artwork when I was a young lad. If you ever get the chance, you need to witness this masterpiece and Goya's other 'Black Paintings' first-hand - 'Saturn...' is both repulsive and utterly compelling. The other source was, oddly, the Ditko-era villainous cast of 'Amazing Spider-Man', many of whom seem to represent the dominating power of age and experience levied against the vigor of youth, embodied by Peter Parker. As a kind of avatar of the Roman god of old age, Saturn Reisen seemed like he might perform a similar function for Spencer Nero. We will undoubtedly see him again...

This is the first Spencer Nero strip drawn by the remarkable James Corcoran, but it certainly won't be the last. It's safe to say he's absolutely nailed it, amplifying the sinister side of the script and presenting a characterful take on Spencer, who runs the gamut in this strip from determined to smug, baffled to psychotic. I defy anyone to read this and not feel a bit cold - James has given this one a real sense of place, and draws some damn fine snow. Hope that doesn't seem like a back-handed compliment - he really has excelled with the chilly environment of this story. In fact, James is lined-up to draw an Antarctic adventure for Spencer too... hopefully we can talk him into doing another one set in sunnier climes as well sometime, so he doesn't feel typecast! Also on-board providing lettering for the strip is the multi-talented John Caliber, with whom I have a future project over at Massacre for Boys comic, for which John provides some particularly smashing artwork. More on that another time. For now, simply a recommendation that you get your hands on PARAGON #10 - at 52 pages, it's the biggest issue yet, packed full of high-quality adventurous yarns.

May Triarchy

"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...

You're the doc, Doc!

Dogbreath #25 comes barking onto the scene this month, pausing only to scratch itself and sniff another fanzine's rear, and within it is a 6-pager by myself and artist David Broughton, focused around 'Strontium Dog' villain Doc Death. Some of you may remember Doctor Lionel Death, who was the main antagonist in 'Bitch', the story that so memorably introduced Durham Red to the Strontium Dog universe. Whilst this errant S/D agent met his end at fangs of Miss Red, I always thought he was a fantastic character, with a distinctive, bug-eyed appearance, excellent taste in headgear, sparkling dialogue and a memorable trademark (he views torture as an art form.) I particularly enjoy writing well-spoken or verbose characters, so he seemed an obvious choice to frame a story around.

A quick re-read of 'Bitch' revealed one key piece of background information about Doc Death: he got his degree in torture from the University of Santiago in Chile. I certainly hadn't realised it at the time, but this was clearly a Wagner / Grant swipe at the Pinochet regime of the 1970s and 80s, whose torture-friendly dictator our beloved Maggie Thatcher was only to eager to cosy up to. As I explored this fragment of Doc's history, it eventually became clear what an odd little loophole this created in the Strontiverse. As Dogbreath's editors pointed out, if mutants could be routinely educated to degree standard in Chile, why didn't they all just move there, instead of off-world? It was decided that Doc (and his newly-invented tutor, Henry Hojeda ) had to be special cases. (Hojeda, incidentally, was very loosely patterned around Roald Dahl's sadistic, finger-lopping character 'Man From the South', played in the 'Tales of the Unexpected' tv series by Jose Ferrer.)

So having decided to bring Doc back to his alma mater, I had to come up with a problem for him to face. I liked the idea of having him torture someone who was conventionally impossible to actually torture - but who would this individual be? After a quick web-search to find things associated with Chile, I was left surprised (not for the first time) by my own ignorance: I hadn't realised that Easter Island was off the coast. It was at this point that the idea of bringing a Granulan into the strip (from the story 'Stone Killers') occurred. A silicon-based life-form who couldn't actually feel pain seemed the perfect nemesis, and if he happened to look like one of the iconic stone heads of Easter Island, so much the better.

And so the stage was set. The most enjoyable part of the scripting (apart from Doc's endlessly piquant dialogue) was trying to figure out the different torture methods Doc would try (and fail) to use against the Granulan, along with said Granulan's nonchalant (and frequently rather bitchy) retorts. Readers might wonder what aspect of Chilean life the Granulan was spying on and who he was working for: your guess is as good as mine. On the one hand, I figured that it didn't matter to Doc in the slightest - he was only interested in the torture process, not the actual information gained, so it wasn't actually important. On the other hand, in retrospect I think I could have tied it all together elegantly by suggesting he was trying to find information on Henry Hojeda.

Now for some words on the art. Having collaborated with David Broughton several times now, I've learned something: he is a master of detail, and remarkably talented at not only including every  precise reference that's in a script, but many more of his own, besides. For instance, the panel description for the Dean's office (page one, panel three) includes this:

Some manner of militaristic portrait hangs on the back wall, possibly one of Bernardo O’Higgins, one of the founders of Chile.

Well, do a quick web-search for Bernardo O'Higgins and look at the Dean's wall - that's O'Higgins, all right! Things like that may not be vital to the plot, but they really add to the flavour and atmosphere of a strip, even if only appreciated by a select few. More obviously crowd-pleasing were David's additions to the graduating year-group in panel one of the same page: a few very suspicious and familiar characters there! For my money, one of David's other great strengths is his amazing skill at drawing technology - I'd envisioned the Granulan kept prisoner by fairly basic manacles, but instead David amped up the tech factor and delivered a marvellous containment ring of cyber-circular majesty. Glorious!

'Blood From A Stone', then - one I really enjoyed writing and am largely happy with. I'd vainly like to think I managed some vague approximation of Wagner and Grant's infamous 'hard-edged lunacy' - ridiculous antics but with an edge. Either way, if you fancy a feast for the eyes, capped off with the ever stellar lettering work of the mighty Bolt-01, Dogbreath #25 is available at the FutureQuakePress shop: get 'em while they're hot (but not stone-baked.)

Review to a Kill (or two)

 First up - I expect many reading this have already seen Davey Candlish's 'Comic Heroes' cutting, in which Paragon #9 is reviewed and given a lovely 4.5/5 verdict. Well, as my blog title implies, beating my own drum is not an activity to which I'm a stranger, so here's the review again:

I do feel that reviewer Rob Power (now there's a wonderfully villainous name!) has completely nailed what Paragon is and should continue to be - a spectacle of madcap action, frenzied energy, and gripping narrative. Happy to see the comic getting this kind of well-deserved praise, and particularly great to have my own strip singled out as a highlight: Davey Candlish and I share the audacity plaudits with Mighty Matthew McLaughlin and the indomitable James Corcoran, the latter of whom will be lending his not-inconsiderable talents to my next Spencer Nero tale in Paragon #10. (Can't wait to see the end result.)

Next review is from David Hailwood over at Temple APA, regarding the Martillo strip on which I collaborated with David Broughton for that very same august publication. It reads:

• Greg Meldrum and David Broughton. A well-polished and thoroughly enjoyable first contribution. The Martillo strip had great artwork; I especially liked the hard edged angular nature of the characters. Very amusing script as well; I enjoyed the complete lack of subtlety that Martillo displays when dealing with his exorcisms (when in doubt, bash it with a sledgehammer). Favourite line? ‘I shall require an open window. And this goat.’

Once again, jolly happy with that: plans to do more with the character are beginning to gather momentum. (If you don't have a copy of Temple #10, you can download it free HERE.)

And that's that. So, before my ego expands further... vamanos, dear reader. Vamanos!

¡ Vete Al Infierno !

Temple APA #10 is out (with a cracking cover from the mighty Malcolm Kirk), and within its varied virtual pages lurks an odd little story by myself and collaborator David Broughton (with lettery goodness fresh from the fragrant fingers of foxy Owen Watts.) As indicated previously, the story is the debut of a man called Martillo, a grim-faced Spanish priest with a skull-busting past and penchant for a very specific form of defenestration.

Download the pdf HERE, bask in David B.'s ridiculous talent, and then gasp in amazement when you realised he rustled up the art for this in less than a fortnight.

As for the origins of the story, well...  many years ago, I was introduced to the violent and often extremely funny films of Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia, whose work I loved, to the extent I'm frequently seen sporting an 'Accion Mutante' t-shirt in tribute to his first film. One particular highlight was 'El Dia De La Bestia' (The Day of the Beast), in which a Catholic priest struggles to avert what he believes will be the modern reincarnation of the Anti-Christ. To achieve this end, he begins sinning as vigorously as he can in the hope of being allowed into the Devil's confidence. The film ends with the surviving characters in Retiro Park, next to a famous statue of Lucifer. I was absolutely fascinated by the notion that Madrid had a statue of the Devil on public display, and when I finally paid the city a visit, I made a beeline for said monument.

Whilst Martillo himself has little in common with the  film's main character, aside from their mutual profession, the presence of that infernal statue was very much the inspiration for the strip. What a wicked place Madrid must be if it celebrated its sins so publically! Likewise, Martillo's unique approach to exorcism was derived from Spain's reputation, deserved or otherwise, for being every-so-slightly lacking in concern for animal welfare. Martillo, as you will have noticed, has no concern for anyone's individual welfare - an ends-justifies-the-means type, he is firmly in the mould of Doomlord from 'Eagle' in his approach to fighting evil.

Will he return? He may indeed. I certainly like the idea of digging into Spain's occult history and juxtaposing that with the state of the country under the Franco regime. A fertile setting indeed...

...for evil!

Sign of the Hammer

A little preview for something put together for Temple APA #10 - a four page strip from myself and the ever-wonderful artist David Broughton, with lettering by Owen Watts. The strip, 'Martillo', stars a Madrillian exorcist who is also a former member of the Guardia Civil, Spain's somewhat notorious military-status police force. This means his approach to the delicate matter of spiritual redemption is somewhat... blunter than one might usually expect.

And also more likely to involve creative use of a goat.

Peculiar fun then, from the only European capital city to host a public statue dedicated to the devil.

(Oh, and in case you were wondering, Martillo is the one on the left.)