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.

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.

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.

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...

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! 

Comics Wot I Did In 2019: Part One - Club Sandwich

2019 was, as usual, a bit of a Spencer Nero year. Two stories emerged into the wild.

The first, ‘The Spencer Nero Club’ is probably the most significant, and one of my absolute favourite yarns. It was written some time ago – it was meant to follow on right after The Paragon Paradox crossover – but was delayed due to a change of artist. The talented Alex Mines was originally scheduled to pen this one, but paying work understandably took precedence, and eventually, the spectacular Scott Twells was drafted into duty. This, as it turned out, was a Very Good Thing, and led to Other Things – but more on those next year.

The Spencer Nero Club pulls a number of different threads together – it’s definitely one of my better bits of writing. The framing story concerns Spencer Nero’s fan club, led by Mr. Alabaster’s nephew, Oswald Gypsum. Oz (as he is henceforth to be known) features heavily in at least one unpublished script, and was a key part of the first Spencer Nero text story “…Chairman of the Board”, but had, until this point, only appeared briefly in a couple of very short strips “…Ruthless Rhymer” and “…Elephant in the Room” (plus a cameo in “…the Trouble With Girls”.) In “The Spencer Nero Club”, he really comes into his own – he very much seems to have supplanted William Kitt as the third main character of the series, after Spencer and Alabaster.

The story also introduces his school, Blackabbots – no prizes for guessing where that name comes from – and his chums, Tookey, Smallpiece, Venables and Botts. All these boys derive their names from the Palin / Jones comedy series, “Ripping Yarns”, specifically the episode ‘Tomkinson’s School Days’: the names are either mentioned in passing by the Headmaster or seen written on-screen.

As well as the story of the boys, “The Spencer Nero Club” is the one that gives Spencer the new regular ability to open Janus Arches as teleportation portals. It also deliberately sets a limit on the power – he can’t use it to go to other dimensions, or else the Roman god Terminus intervenes. This is due to the damage that Janus-kin – Spencer’s alternative selves – typically do to the multiverse. I know the idea of duplicate variations on the protagonist is a total cliché, but what the hell – it’s fun! Sometimes you’ve just got to go with it.

A few other observations:

Pages 1-4:

The images of Spencer are supposed to be a bit homoerotic! Everything on the shelves connects to a previous adventure – a Naztec statuette from the first Spencer Nero story, a feather from the Black Caladrius, the Ruthless Rhymer’s tongue - as does one of the newspaper headlines. The other, the ‘weasel’ one, may yet be explored. However, Von Zero’s swastika eye has never appeared before – the Fauna of Mirrors is from a Chinese tale about an invasion by mirrorworld demons who’d hitherto pretended to be our reflections!

In general, I really enjoyed crafting the (frequently bitchy) dialogue between the boys. Venables, the group’s mandatory arsehole, was the most fun to write. Note Tookey’s action figure – in the first Nero text story, it was implied these don’t sell too well, but that someone had recently bought one. Now we know who. Speaking of that story, Sors, Roman luck god and chief antagonist of said yarn, makes his first appearance in comic form. Look for his return…

Pages 5-7:

Welcome to Terminalis, a junkheap world of items that have reached their limit and can go no further. Stranded here are a variety of parallel universe Spencers: I thought the creepy mime, Spencer Pierrot, would prove my favourite, but Scott Twells’s excellent design for Spencer Pharoah made him the standout. Ironically, it’s Panzer Nero who has a life outside of this story – but more on that next year. Spencer Noveau is based around the Art Noveau movement – my instruction to Scott was to avoid straight lines and go for sweeping curves. He’s done a cracking job.

Pages 8-9:

Spencer’s murder of Panzer is a bit vicious – but you know what he’s like with Nazis. I don’t know if Scott did this deliberately – presumably not – but the way the blood drips down Spencer’s face after the Glasgow kiss from Terminus is in the same pattern as his Uncle Bonaventure’s ‘James Hetfield / My mate Graeme’ beard. If Spencer makes it into middle age – unlikely, I know – he might just have to grow such a facial adornment.

Back to Blackabbots for the final page, and we get a brief appearance of ‘orrible ‘eadmaster Ol’ Bergeron – modelled loosely on Richard Harris – whilst Oswald’s rebellious streak (and fetishisation of Nazi memorabilia) come to the fore. And at this point I started to think “You know what? The framing sequence was the best bit of the story – I could do more with these characters…” and cogs started turning in my brain.

To conclude, as well as Scott's typically brilliant art, it’s also worth mentioning the huge contribution of letterer Filippo to this story – he’s come on in leaps and bounds in terms of his (already perfectly good) lettering skills, and in this one he really lets rip and shows what he can do when you give him some sound effects to play with. Plus he was endlessly accommodating when it came to making changes. What a guy.

 'The Spencer Nero Club' appeared in PARAGON #23 - an extremely strong issue, if memory serves.

Spencer Nero and the Trouble with Blogs

The Ace of Cups. Art by Scott Twells, letters by Filippo.

Is it true? Am I down to only one blog post per year? Blimey! 2018 wasn’t a particularly productive year for me, from a comics-related perspective: indeed, by no standards was it an ordinary year, with too much else work-related going on, sapping time and energy for the creative process. However, a few stories managed to escape into the wild – a couple of Spencer Nero yarns and Something Else. Possibly. Here’s a few words on ‘em:

“I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”

-        - Oscar Wilde

In ‘Spencer Nero and the Trouble with Girls’, from PARAGON #22, an iconic British hero faces a gender-swap, and anyone who has concerns about this is accused of being a Nazi (in one case by an actual Nazi.) What, you may ask, could possibly have inspired this story? Who, I reply, knows? The mind of the small-press writer is sometimes best left unexplored. (As is the mind of his editor, who managed to schedule this story for September 2018, perfectly coinciding with a certain high-profile media event.)

But, this being a blog, we’d better at least have a gentle rummage.

The basic idea for this had been sitting around for a while – to gather up some of Spencer’s former female foes into a Sisterhood of Sirens, and derive some humour out of Spencer’s mistaken inability to take them seriously. (As a nod of the head to the original title for ‘The Pack’, and to suggest Spencer’s dismissive attitude, I’d considered calling it ‘A Few Bints and Spencer’, though I knew I’d never get away with it!) At one point, there was going to be an entire page of Spencer just laughing at the idea of women being a threat to him. In the end, the story went off in a different direction, as a comment on contemporary pop-culture, though Spencer’s off-hand sexism slipped through in a few panels. I’m not sure any of the characters come out of the story particularly well – as is my wont, everyone’s opinion and perspective, including my own, is thoroughly mocked.

It’s also a pretty continuity-heavy tale, featuring, as it does, the skull of Ekhidna from ‘Spencer Nero Goes South’ and ‘The Paragon Paradox’, Veleda the Druidess from ‘The Hour of the Heron’, Mrs. Simpson from ‘Spencer Nero and Mrs. Simpson’ and Dr. Von Zero from ‘The Island of the Naztecs’ and ‘The Hidden Olympics’. The story also features Spencer making greater use of the Janus Mask’s abilities, first unveiled in the aforementioned ‘Paragon Paradox’: technically, there should be a story in between, ‘The Spencer Nero Club’, which really flags this up properly, but I gather it’s still being drawn. Nonetheless, I like it when a series has been running long enough that you’re able to include various callbacks and links to previous continuity – hopefully this wasn’t too disorientating for any new readers.

Simpson attack! Art by Scott Twells, letters by Filippo.

However, the story is a tour de force for Mr. Scott Twells, a gentleman who, of late, has been saddled with the onerous chore of rendering umpteen of my scripts into a wholly undeserved and vivid life. Scott’s got it all, artistically-speaking – a unique and distinctive style, a stunning grasp of action sequences and the uncanny ability to capture characters’ mood, emotion and personality. I think this is probably his strongest Spencer Nero work to date – I particularly love the contrast between his finely-defined characters and his more impressionistic take on the Irish landscape of County Kerry.

You can pick up PARAGON #22 here:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=EBAHA8S3HV2E8

A French ‘Phant! See?

‘Spencer Nero and the Elephant in the Room’ was written in a matter of hours to provide an elephant-themed story for this year’s Ganesh-centric PARAGON Winter Special. As stories go, there’s not much to it – editor Davey Candlish originally suggested Spencer and Oswald tangling with a haunted African tribal mask, but somehow I ended up thinking about fictional elephants from children’s books instead. A quick check, and yes – it turned out Babar was indeed from the 1930s, and therefore the best fit. Somehow, Scott Twells (there’s that man again) managed to use my pretty thin premise to conjure up some typically glorious art. I don’t know if tarot cards were involved. In retrospect, the title of this story bothers me – it needs to work on another level, as well as being literal, and it doesn’t. Unless the elephant in the room is the British class system, and Spencer’s subordinate status to Alabaster. All right, that’ll have to do.

Art by Scott Twells, letters by Filippo

 You can get your copy of annual here:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=9M3DVT9FZUTP6

Rocket Man

Now, the third thing this year has, improbably enough, also featured Scott Twells, but I’m not sure if it’s been officially released. The Psychedelic Journal, to which I’ve contributed in the past, has done tales of Time Travel and the Wild West, but has subsequently moved on to the theme of Wizardry. As such, I concocted a story about a real-life sorcerer, the remarkable 1930s Thelemic sex-wizard and rocket engineer Jack Parsons. Now, I’ve seen the completed comic, but I haven’t seen it for sale on Comicsy, so I don’t know if 'Babalon Working' was fully unleashed to the general public. For the moment, here’s a random panel.

A bit phallic, innit? Art by Scott Twells, letters by Chris Mole

Happy new year!

Martillo: The Spanish Composition, Part Two:

As I type, 2017 draws to a close, meaning it's time to do likewise with my commentary on 'Martillo'. This post deals with the second half of the story - and the future for the characters. (The first part is here.)

Cuatro: The Sharp and the Dull. I really like the telephone conversation that opens this chapter. It reveals a lot about the characters involved and suggests a more complicated relationship than at first seemed apparent between Martillo and Gallo - they clearly are, on some weird level, friends. This is definitely the point in the story at which I'd  decided to  do a bit more with Gallo, and I particularly enjoy his reaction to Martillo's request for a weather update. (Of course, Gallo's completely wrong to say a thunderstorm comes with low pressure - it's the opposite. I always get these things confused.) However, the best thing about this chapter is the notion that the Toledo priests have a rota for riding the bicycle, in order to keep the Sharpener trapped. When I visited Madrid, hearing the distinctive trilling whistle of real sharpeners was something that really stayed with me, hence I knew I had to include a reference to it in 'Martillo'. (You can hear it here.) As for Nuberu - though he ended up looking a little more of a classical mythology-style muscle-man than I expected (I was imagining something slightly more abstract), he turned out to be a surprise survivor of 'Martillo' - he's present in the first chapter of 'Gallo', though never directly referred to in dialogue, only visually.

Cinco: The Good Workman. The truth of Martillo's supernatural talent - that any workman's tool becomes a holy instrument in his hands - came out of an idea I once had for a non-player character in a Marvel Superheroes RPG campaign, set in the UK, focusing on distinctly British archetypes. The character was going to be called 'Hammer Horror' - his superpower was what the rules referred to as 'Ultimate Skill - Blunt Weapons'. (I have a note somewhere of an idea for Martillo having an adventure at sea, where he uses a hammerhead shark as a weapon - swinging it around by the tail, presumably.)

This revelation out of the way, time to throw in as many Spanish monsters as possible in a cavalcade of the grotesque. Time also to fry David Broughton's brain by casually requesting he draw a giant winged serpent in a photo-accurate Plaza Mayor, fighting historically on-model tanks. Oh, and all this in a page with five other panels! When David says I made him work hard drawing Martillo, I sometimes suspect this page (and the bank on the next) may be the perfect example.

Speaking of the bank, the Ramidreju are, I believe, much less 'An American Werewolf in London' in actual mythology, but the idea of bad weasels on the rampage was irresistible. Martillo's cry of "Weasels!" is a recycling of a war-cry uttered by a particularly infamous AD&D character I played in my teenage years, whereas Martillo's mad drilling antics are halfway between 'Driller Killer' and 'Bad Taste'. But the real triumph of this chapter is the 'Home Del Nassos' - the Man of Noses. He's based on a Catalan legend which suggests he has as many noses as there are days of the year remaining - children are encouraged to look for him on December 31st, when he has only one nose left (and could therefore be anyone.)  Inevitably, I wanted to know what he looked like when he had lots of noses - utterly horrific and disgustingly Freudian, as it turned out. As such, David and I took a jolly folk tale and turned its star into an absolutely horrible bogeyman, adding the idea that he also has nostrils in the palm of his hand. I wish I'd done much more with him - he could have carried a whole story himself, rather than receiving the short shrift we gave him.

As for the over-riding plot of 'Martillo' - a fascist scheme to engender terror in the populace, fear being the very root of fascism - I've always been fascinated by the idea that the shadow of a hawk triggers an instinctive fear in mice, even if they've never actually encountered said bird. Where does it come from? Ancestral memory? Might there be creatures whose spiritual shadow is so terrible that human beings subconsciously know it is upon them? For the purposes of this story, the answer is a resounding "Si!"

ABC #2: The second ABC page is all tentacled-up, so two of the stories can't be properly read. Until now, that is!

Bank of Madrid Closed For Refurbishment

The Bank of Madrid has announced the temporary closure of its central branch, in order to complete a full redecoration. Whilst apologising for the inconvenience this would cause the general public, a spokesman for the bank told ABC that the refurbishment was necessary to improve the experience of customers. “We feel it’s best to briefly shut the branch, as an extensive job of this nature is not the kind of thing that can be accomplished weasily otherwise. I’d hate it if, for instance, customers got paint on their stoat. I mean, coat. Coat.”

Swift Arm of the Law

A member of the Higher Police Corps was involved in a high-speed road-chase yesterday with a thief who had attempted to rob a local grocer. Detective Andres Moles, 30, who was off-duty at the time and visiting a local churro stand, was somehow able to close a significant gap between himself and the thief, Alberto Garcia, 28, in order to get his man. When asked whether Detective Moles was afraid of driving at such high speeds, he replied: “There’s not much that frightens me, except the possibility of criminals getting away. It’s just a case of focus and shutting out distractions. I like to think I’m the sort who can keep it together when all around are going to pieces. Unless there are churros involved, obviously. I can’t control myself around those!”

Seis: Apocalipsis Madrid

2000AD artist Ben Willsher, who very generously drew us an illustration for the inside of the comic, asked why Martillo stays totally bald in prison, even though his beard grows. Complex answer: it's something to do with the shock his system received when he first discovered the existence of the supernatural in the form of the Knave of Thorns - on witnessing that being's horrible growth, Martillo's scalp elected to remain barren henceforth. Short answer: male pattern baldness.

But the real question - why did I decide to make the sum total of Spanish fears take the form of a big jellyfish (a Portuguese man o' war, no less)? I have no idea. The final foe of the piece was always going to be a gestalt entity - I love gestalt entities - but I'm not sure when it specifically became an 'aguamala'. (Don't you love the fact that in Spanish, a jellyfish is literally a "water baddie"?) The presence of Picasso's 'Guernica' as part of the aguamala is much more directly attributable to my seeing the original painting in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid - it is both huge and hugely powerful. Seeing a picture of it doesn't remotely compare to the impact of experiencing it in person - but I bet seeing elements of it incorporated into a Godzilla-sized jellyfish would have a greater impact still!

In this final chapter, I brought elements of every previous chapter together. This was planned from the outset, particularly El Coco's role in proceedings, though the precise details of how each chapter would contribute developed as I was writing them - the use of Nuberu in Gallo's car, for instance. I slightly regret killing off Detective Moles - I liked the character, and he'd evolved organically to become a fun foil to the other two - but I thought it appropriate that this more amiable, overtly comedic figure received a darker fate than the two surviving cynics, Gallo and Martillo. That said, Gallo nearly didn't make it out alive either - my original plan was that the duende got him! However, it occurred that someone needed to be left behind to know the full story - and besides, I always love stories that feature leftover / supporting characters taking on lead roles. There's a reason the Muir Island X-Men - #253-255 - are my favourite iteration of that team. (Besides, I got a chance to return to Moles in 'Gallo', and in the process explain why Gallo, given the choice, preferred an incompetent sidekick.)

And so, after the aguamala is dealt with, Martillo jacks it all in. History dictated I couldn't give General Franco what he deserved, and besides, I'd run out of book. Still, Franco getting away with it scot-free bothered me, and became an impetus to write 'Gallo', in which I finally dish out a lasting punishment to him. But why does a career as goat-herd beckon for Martillo? Well, there's nothing too untoward here. On some level, I think there's the weird influence of 2000AD's Tyranny Rex, who ends the story 'Soft Bodies' by randomly becoming a nun. On another, there's my own oft-stated exclamation "That's it! I'm going to go and work with goats!" whenever I get fed up of my own day-to-day job. But really, it was to bookend the whole collection with goats, and pose the reader a question. Is Martillo choosing to keep an eye on goats, because he still believes they're Satan's animals? Or does he regret lobbing them out of windows, and now wishes to repent? You decide.

My own overall assessment of the story? Well, it's a bit too long - some of the chapters are a bit similar - and it's too wordy (as usual) but it's also got the best art I'd seen David draw up until that point, and as a collaborator, he was tireless in his efforts. No ridiculous panel description was too much for him (though he did have to expand Part Seis by a couple of pages to properly fit in the El Coco vs. Aguamala scene.) But I do like both Gallo and Martillo as characters - I quickly found a 'voice' for both of them, which made them both very easy to write, and easy to return to. I feel 'Gallo' (the spin-off) is the better-written story though.

So, what is the future for these characters? Well, as I've said, Gallo stars in his own book, in which Martillo makes an appearance. Gallo also gains a new partner, Toro - together, their names mean 'Cock and Bull', which seems fitting. I would like to do a second Gallo story, but I do also have an idea concerning what Martillo gets up to in the countryside - the smiting never stops! However, David Broughton is a busy man, working on not only his popular Shaman Kane sci-fi / horror stories (one of David's preferred genres) but also a savage superhero saga, Slaughterhawk. So whether a gap will open up in his schedule, and whether he'd want to draw the continuing adventures of either Spaniard remains to be seen. (I'd keep the architecture to a minimum this time, David!) Anyway, if you bought a copy of 'Martillo', you have my thanks, and I hope you enjoyed it. And if you didn't buy one, well, we're probably going to do electronic copies eventually, so the possibility remains open.

And with that, happy new year! May it bring much comicsy goodness.

Martillo: The Spanish Composition, Part One:

'Martillo' is a sell-out!

I don't mean he's changed his sound to appeal to a mainstream audience - he's as Manowar as ever. But the final copy of the first print-run is gone, which gives me the opportunity to do one of my perennially self-indulgent 'director's commentary' posts on the various chapters of the story. So here we go:

Chapter Cero: Maneras De Vivir (Ways of Living - the title came from a song by the Spanish rock band, Leño) is a four-page prologue that first appeared in Temple APA. I discuss it here. The original description of the character, from which artist David Broughton brought him to life, was as follows:

• Martillo is a powerfully built, imposing man in his early 40s. He is fairly tall and exudes a sense of menace and solidity. He has a broken nose, a shaved head and a permanent look of grim contempt. He may have a few interesting facial scars if you so wish. However, he dresses in a priest's dark robes, complete with dog-collar, wearing a black cassock that makes him look like a shadow come to life. Around his neck hangs a huge ornamental cross. He wears very specific headgear, a remnant of his days in the Guardia - a black tricornio hat / helmet which gives him a distinctive and odd silhouette.

ABC #1: Including the two pages from ABC, a pro-government newspaper of Franco's era, was David's idea. I really liked how these came out - the masthead is quite authentic. Most of the stories in the first ABC frontispiece refer to later chapters of the book, but the 'Devil' story is all that remains of an idea for an alternate chapter in which Martillo would encounter Lucifer himself, ready to offer the priest some unwanted infernal aid. The 'Saint Xabat' story, meanwhile, is the first mention of an individual who would later feature in 'Gallo'.

Uno: Que Viene El Coco (Here Comes The Bogeyman) is named after a terrifying engraving by my favourite Spanish artist, Francisco Goya - the engraving was indeed the basis for El Coco's appearance, and you can see a rendering of it in the book Martillo holds on the second page of the story.

I think David did well to capture some of the ungodly horror of Goya's sheet-sporting nightmare: from the very start, I always knew El Coco would prove pivotal in resolving the overall plot of the book. This chapter also introduces Detectives Gallo and Moles - Gallo was based on Donald Pleasence (probably my favourite actor) in the film 'Death Line', and wasn't originally intended to appear in 'Martillo' quite as much as he did. However, I loved David's design for him and really began to enjoy writing the character's dialogue, hence his larger presence later in the book. By the time I'd finished writing the whole thing, I found I liked Gallo more than Martillo, which is why we gave him a spin-off comic rather than doing a straight sequel.

Dos: Martillo³. This is my favourite part of the story - I think this chapter is one of the best comics I've worked on,and a good example of the sort of thing I like to write. (Mad stuff, basically.) It's fun to see Martillo in a different context, and there's lots of little character moments I enjoy - his disguise (note El Coco on the shelf in the panel where he contemplates going undercover), the fact he wears a hair shirt to curb the allure of the prostitutes, and the fact he regards a couple of Frenchmen sitting in a cafe as somehow depraved. I also like the fact Martillo feels compelled to use Picasso's full (insanely lengthy) name - Picasso's response is an Eric Morecambe line. But the main reason I love this chapter is David's art - the way he handles Martillo's passage through increasingly abstract transformations is absolutely superb, and one of the best pages in the collection. His design for Dantalion is also excellent - I've toyed with the idea of the 71st Duke of Hell returning in 'Gallo'. Dantalion is one of the 72 goetic demons from the Lesser Key of Solomon - these fellas are a handy resource to plumb any time supernatural wickedness is required in a story, and if the sequel to Brahms & Liszt ever emerges, you may just see me returning to this source again...

Tres: Agony in the Garden. David had a free hand in designing the Knave of Thorns - here's one of his earlier try-outs:

This chapter is basically Martillo's origin story, and reveals his real name - Lucero Martinez. I figured we had to have a story like this, since I might never write the character again, and I wanted this book to be a complete picture of him. (The origin is hinted at in the prologue, where Martillo is shown battling a thorny, tendrilly thing.) I love the panel of Martillo trying to machine gun the Knave - David's choice of perspective is superb. I'm not actually so fond of my scripting in this one though - it feels a bit overwritten, though I quite enjoy the Knave's off-kilter speech patterns.

Right. Before the year is out, I'll discuss chapters Cuatro, Cinco and Seis, in Part Two of this post. That article will feature an unusual rota, the sound of David Broughton's brain frying, the unexpected horror of noses and why Martillo's beard grows when his other hair doesn't.

Drunk Enough to Know No Fear: The Genesis of Brahms & Liszt

Many years ago*, when I was young, I got an email from Davey Candlish, editor of PARAGON. He had a number of projects he was interested in instigating for his comic, and was wondering if any writers fancied pursuing them. To me, one idea leapt out immediately - and this was it:

"A buddy movie / amateur detective type tale set in 1853 Weimar. Two

professional musicians who actually dislike each other's work team up to

solve... whatever, you choose. I want a light hearted tale with lots of

quips and digs at each other. Their names? Brahms and Liszt. You don't

need to know their music, or indeed like it - it's just a hook to hang

the story on."

 Brahms & Liszt, the famed composers, as music-themed detectives? I liked it. And almost immediately, I started to see how the double-act would work, and how it would suit the kind of stories I like to write.

My first point of reference, oddly, was the Tom Hanks / Dan Aykroyd comedy movie 'Dragnet', with the roles reversed. Liszt, the older man would be the wilder one - the maverick 'rock 'n' roll' showman, almost a Keith Richards of classical. He'd have the Tom Hanks 'Pep Streebek' role - the easy-going good guy. The younger Brahms would be the more uptight, OCD perfectionist of the pair, with an eye for detail - analogous to Dan Aykroyd's 'Friday' character.

Digging into Brahms & Liszt's first meeting in Weimar, both Davey and I simultaneously discovered that the local Grand-Duke had perished around the same time - could foul play be involved? I also discovered that the duo had not got off to a good start - Brahms had fallen asleep during one of Liszt's performances. With a little more research I was able to flesh out their characters. Here's the notes from my original pitch:

Franz Liszt: 42-year-old Liszt is a pop star before the term was invented, a somewhat Byronic ladies man who lives a Bohemian existence. Worshipped across northern Germany, Liszt goes in for theatrics and a baroque ‘n’ roll aesthetic. Liszt lives with a married Polish princess, Princess Carolyne, in Weimar. He has children from a previous relationship who live in Paris. For all his celebrity status and quasi-mystical hold over his audiences, Liszt is also a great humanitarian – he’s so wealthy he can afford to give away huge sums to charity, and whilst he seems to have a maverick quality, he has a strong moral core.

Johannes Brahms: 20-year-old Brahms is Liszt’s opposite, a young orderly, traditional man, of set routines and habits, and a notorious perfectionist, with a strong eye for detail and a slightly obsessive streak. He is a deeply sarcastic, taciturn figure, an old man before his time, who is always ready with a put-down or an expression of scorn for Liszt’s extravagant lifestyle. However, he gets on well with children, and enjoys nature. He is not at all vain, and dresses rather cheaply: brought up as a Lutheran, he has the classic Protestant work ethic and disdain for flamboyance.

With this in place, and an overarching plot whose nature I'll not yet reveal, I had the ingredients for what I hoped what be an enjoyable buddy comedy with a dose of murder, mystery and a slight touch of the paranormal. And now, drawn by Davey, coloured by Jim Cameron and lettered by Spencer Nero alumni Fillipo Roncone, 'Wotan Walks in Weimar' is finally about to make its debut in PARAGON #21.

I hope you enjoy it -  it's been fermenting a long time!

 *2011, to be precise.

Go Wilde in the Country

I love Oscar Wilde.

As a student, I studied his works at university; as a teacher, I've taught his works to senior pupils. My first ever published comic even featured Wilde's lover, Bosie, as the time-travelling companion of a particularly rum Doctor. I've always admired his insight, humanity and sometimes misguided courage, not to mention, of course, his revelatory wit. But it wasn't until The Psychedelic Journal of the Wild West that I finally attempted to write the man himself.

When the Journal moved from being solely about time-travel to focusing on a different genre per issue, I was intrigued. I hadn't written anything for at least a couple of issues of the comic - I'm not sure I had anything else to say about time travel at that point - but the Wild West brought fresh inspiration. At the time, I was fully immersed in the world of Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (not as many middle names as Picasso from 'Martillo', but pretty memorable nonetheless) as I'd recently been teaching his plays to an Advanced Higher class. I knew Wilde had toured America in 1882, somewhat quixotically attempting to make the aesthetic movement the basis for this fresh civilisation's development, so he seemed a perfect fit. Thus 'Wilde Wild West' - its name a nod, of course, to the 60s spy-fi show - was born.

From the off, I wanted to get away from the idea of the laconic Eastwood-y cowboy type: Wilde's verbose nature was a perfect fit for my notoriously dialogue-heavy yarns. Indeed, much of Wilde's dialogue in the story is either a direct quote from one of his works, or at least a modified version thereof. I wasn't going to kid myself I could write with Wilde's incomparable talent, so it seemed best to hew closely to his actual words if I were to do him any justice.

I of course wanted Wilde to deal with something derived from Native American mythology - there's nothing I like more than delving into the folklore of a specific region and borrowing its monstrous denizens for my nefarious purposes. My first thought was to put Wilde up against the horrible Baykok, a foul emaciated Chippewa demon, that shoots men with invisible arrows, beats them to death with a club, and then eats their liver (not necessarily in that order.) I've always wanted to get the Baykok into something, every since I first read of the awful thing as a child, in Tom McGowen's 'Encyclopaedia of Legendary Creatures'. (See similar remarks on the phantom black dog from a recent Spencer Nero tale.) But this wasn't the right place, and I didn't want to diminish the creature's horror by having it fall victim to Wilde's wit. Besides, as a man and a writer, Wilde was firmly on the side of redemption, and the Baykok seemed rather hard to redeem.

Unlike the Rolling Head.

Coming upon this Cheyenne tale of a discombobulated fallen woman (slain by her husband for an affair with a river spirit, served up to her children for dinner, and then subsequently reanimated as a vengeful cranium), it struck me how easy it would be to shape her into a Wildean figure. Wilde loved women (well, to write about, anyway) and women with a past particularly fascinated him. Mrs. Erlynne from 'Lady Windermere's Fan' and Mrs. Cheveley from the brilliant 'An Ideal Husband' are two perfect examples of Wildean femmes who successfully reinvent themselves and find different ways to regain a place in the world of respectability. Therefore it struck me that Wilde's solution to the problem of the Rolling Head had to follow similar lines - he had to find a way to reintroduce her to society. In 'An Ideal Husband', Wilde wrote that "Sooner or later, we shall all have to pay for what we do," but also noted that "No one should be entirely judged by their past." I like to think my story follows this logic to the letter.

This was the first story of mine Scott Twells ever worked on, and he was a revelation. I was immediately drawn to the way that his panels are all framed within the expanse of a larger one. His art here is a mixture of rustic and cartoonish, his scratchy linework and expert grasp of perspective making him the perfect fit for the tale. Since then he's drawn many other stories I've written, and there'll hopefully be more to come in the future. A shout-out goes also to Andrew Scaife for his sterling job on the lettering.

Here's a few page-by-page comments:

Page 1:

• Wilde is wearing an artificially-coloured verdigris carnation throughout the story: he loved the idea of the artificial, and believed nature should imitate art. When I wrote this story, I didn't know if it would be illustrated in colour, but in retrospect, I'd have quite liked if the green carnation had been the only piece of colour in the story.

Page 2:

• Wilde really did go to Leadville to lecture on the early Florentines - this is memorably depicted in the film 'Wilde', starring Stephen Fry, where he gets a very positive reception from the miners. In real life, Wilde was particularly tickled when he saw a sign reading "Please don't shoot the pianist" - he loved the idea of bad art meriting death!

• I'm not sure exactly what the Head lady does with that snake, but Scott has certainly given it a smug look. Almost as characterful as the profoundly demented gleam in the husband's eyes.

Page 3:

• I like the fact that Jerome, the younger cowboy, is  remarkably ineffectual, and when the Head arrives, he goes into a flap and runs around waving his arms about. You could argue that while this subverts the stereotype of the capable cowboy, it plays into another one about the effete gay man. (His behaviour's in a similar vein to the chap who gets the spark in his hair in The Simpsons' gay steel mill.) The thing is, I'm pretty sure Wilde would have liked to play the role of hero to that sort of chap: he saw protecting the vulnerable but beautiful as his duty.

Page 4:

• There's a fair bit of 'Pygmalion' in Wilde's attempts to re-educate the Rolling Head: fitting, as Wilde was good friends with George Bernard Shaw (Shaw sensibly encouraged Wilde  not to pursue a court case against the Marquess of Queensberry: Wilde, of course, didn't listen, it all backfired, and Wilde was jailed for homosexuality.)

And with that, I shall leave you with the words of Oscar himself.

"Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance, apart from buying a print copy of the Journal here, or a digital one here."

Gallo: Done and Done 'er.

Watch your step, young Toro - those stairs look treacherous.

As 2016 careers towards the finish line, like a police car with a lightning god in the engine, so too does 'Gallo'. Yep, David Broughton and I have finally completed work on our 28-page tale, 'Detective Gallo and the Unholy Company' (to give it its Sunday name) and are pleased to report that it'll soon be winging its way to the printers. Spinning off from 'Martillo', 'Gallo' shows us how the tetchy titular 'tec deals with the supernatural in the absence of his hammer-wielding ally. But it also focuses on Gallo's relationships with three different colleagues - relationships which turn out to be closely intertwined. The story therefore consists of three separate sections, but all are linked by the mysterious bullet-ridden Cross of St. John - and the legacy of Spain's fascist ruler General Franco.

Having now seen 'Gallo' in its final state, I'm pretty happy with it. The creative process being what it is, inevitably that'll change at some point, and I'll find myself bemoaning various flaws that only I can see (whilst remaining oblivious to those that are screamingly obvious to others) but for now, I like it. It's a much tighter story than 'Martillo' - it has to be, it's about half as long - and there's a confidence and boldness in David's art that really pleases me. David currently hopes to debut the comic at the True Believers Comic Convention at Cheltenham Race Course, on February 4th 2017. After that, it'll also be sold online - more details as we have them. For now, though, the 'Gallo' team wishes you season's greetings - or as Gallo himself would say: 

Feliz Ano Nuevo!

(Actually, he probably wouldn't say that. I mean, all things considered, he's a bit of a dick. How much of one? Find out soon...)