Sign of the Hammer!

Monday 8 June 2020

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!


It's a Spencer Nero Club world!


A quick post to document another positive review for The Spencer Nero Club #1, this time from Howard Fuller of Howie's World of Comics. Howard is a recent convert to the small press, but gave us a five-star review, so he's clearly not lacking in taste. We've been down the tubes - now we're on top of the world! Thanks, Howard.

Sunday 7 June 2020

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!





The Spencer Nero Club Goes Down the Tubes

"Excuse me, sir - do you think our story is ever-so-slightly bawdy?"

Earlier this year, myself, Scott Twells and Filippo Roncone released 'The Spencer Nero Club #1' - the spin-off adventures of Spencer Nero's fan-club. It has been well-received by those who've read it - maybe the most flattering comment was that it seemed like 'the Famous Five written by Alan Moore'. In this hugely insightful review by Peter Duncan from Downthetubes.net, he also sees a bit of an Enid Blyton influence, which I can't really deny - my favourite books as a younger child were those concerning the magic Faraway Tree, in which young people step into mystical lands. However, my Blytonisms have gone a bit 'seaside postcard' and fallen prey to a mildly perverse interpretation. I blame Moonface and his Slippery-Slip.

You can buy The Spencer Nero Club #1 here.

'Mind-bending'? I thought it was one of my saner outings...