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 One: Master of Sparks

A homage to... something, not quite sure what. Pencils / inks by Davey Candlish, colours by Jim Cameron

The PARAGON Annual 2016 is out, in more formats than you can shake a rabid badger at. (Not that shaking tends to work - they just tighten their monochromatic grip.) So, if you want to see Spencer Nero, Jikan, Bulldog and Battle Ganesh team up to punch extradimensional evil (and each other) in the face, here's your chance. And here's mine too, to indulge in a multi-part blogging bout, in which I take a self-indulgent look at the genesis and development of 'The Paragon Paradox', my story for the annual. But first - here's how to get hold of the book in the incarnation of your choice.

The hardback:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/paragon-comic/paragon-annual-2016/hardcover/product-22482758.html

The paperback:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/paragon-comic/the-paragon-winter-spectacular-2016/paperback/product-22486883.html

The e-book:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/paragon-comic/the-paragon-annual-2016-ebook/ebook/product-22484146.html

Just 'The Paragon Paradox' itself:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/paragon-comic/the-paragon-paradox/paperback/product-22482820.html

And now, let's turn the clock back to find out how the story came into being. Feel free to wobble productively - this is a flashback after all...

In the worlds before PARAGON, primal chaos reigned...

'The Paragon Paradox' all began with Stephen Prestwood - specifically, this smashing picture that he drew of various PARAGON heroes, standing around looking tough.

Crossover candidates

Davey Candlish stuck it up on the PARAGON blog in March 2015, and I happened to mention we now needed a story where they all teamed-up and fought some interdimensional menace. Of course, saying something like that in front of Dave is like dipping yourself in gravy and dancing naked in front of a man-eating tiger - you can't be surprised when he bites. So it was decided there and then I was to script the multi-hero tale - a tale which the inspirational Mr. Prestwood suggested be titled 'The Paragon Paradox'.

Looking back at my notes, it seems I almost immediately decided to link the whole thing into Spencer Nero continuity by featuring Ekhidna, the extradimensionally-exiled Mother of all Monsters from 'Spencer Nero Goes South' in PARAGON #13. I could have come up with some other interdimensional menace, but since I already had one waiting, why not use her? I'd had plans to write a story called 'Spencer Nero's Army', in which he and various characters from his adventures to-date all teamed up to travel to Ekhidna's realm and rescue his uncle, so I thought I might use this basic framework for the crossover.

Panel from 'Spencer Nero Goes South', art by James Corcoran

I definitely wanted this story to 'count', for Spencer at least - I like crossovers that are very squarely part of a character's continuity, rather than ones that are detached, and never mentioned again. The Judge Dredd / Batman and Judge Dredd / Alien crossovers are perfect examples of the former - both draw on existing continuity, have some impact on Dredd's world, and are obliquely referenced further down the line.

So with that in mind (and deciding also that if I used Spencer's continuity, I had to make damn sure he didn't dominate the story), I had to choose my cast. It wasn't realistic to feature all the characters from Stephen's original drawing in major roles - this wasn't Crisis on Infinite Earths - so I decided to boil it down to a squad of four... a Paragon Patrol.

In the next post, I'll explain, who, why, and what they were originally going to get up to...

I Wanna Be Collected – The Spencer Nero Compendium

Cover by Dave Candlish, colours by Jim Cameron

It’s been two-and-a-half years (!) since Spencer Nero first made his lion-thumping, skull-perforating debut in PARAGON #9. Now, all eleven stories to date have been collected into a single hefty tome (you could club a Nazi to death with it!) documenting Spencer’s two-fisted pulp adventures in the year 1936! What’s more, the collection (subtitled ‘By Jupiter’s Jockstrap!’) also includes my original pitch for the series, as well as bonus sketches by James Corcoran from the ‘White Spider’ story, and a foreword from Spencer himself, in which he reveals his... interesting views on comic-books and their readers.


Here’s the complete contents and the credits:

1: Spencer  Nero and the Island of the Naztecs – (6 pages) – Dave Candlish, lettering by HdE

2: Spencer Nero and the White Spider (7 pages) – James Corcoran, lettering by John Caliber

3: Spencer Nero and the Hidden Olympics (7 pages ) – pencils by Mike Kennedy, inks by Dave Candlish, lettering by John Caliber

4: Spencer Nero Goes South (8 pages) – James Corcoran, lettering by John Caliber

5: Spencer Nero and the Ruthless Rhymer (2 pages) – Neil “Bhuna” Roche, lettering by Nikki Foxrobot

6: Spencer Nero and the Locked Door (9 pages) – James Corcoran, lettering by John Caliber

7: Spencer Nero and the Chairman of the Board (9-page prose story) - spot illustrations by Dave Candlish

8: Spencer Nero and the Hour of the Heron (2 pages) – Dave Candlish, lettering by John Caliber

9: Spencer Nero and the Antechamber (2 pages) – pencils by Tom Newell, inks by Dave Candlish, lettering by John Caliber

10: Spencer Nero and Mrs. Simpson (8 pages) – Stephen Prestwood, lettering by Filippo

11: Spencer Nero and the Last Laugh (1 page) – David Broughton, lettering by Owen Watts

Phew! Quite a murderer's row of small-press talent! What more is there to say, apart from...

By Jupiter’s jockstrap - buy Jupiter’s Jockstrap! (Or buy Jupiter’s digital jockstrap here.)

Vale!

If Only Man Could Moult

PARAGON #14 is out, roaming the streets like a lunatic, and telling wild and improbable tales of action-packed goodness! There are many great things therein, chief amongst which is the jumbo-sized conclusion to Dirk Van Dom and Stephen Prestwood’s wonderful ‘Icarus Dangerous’, which for my money has been the comic’s biggest draw since #7. (Appropriately, its run is bookended by remarkable covers, both courtesy of Matt Soffe.) We also have the start of Tom Proudfoot and George Coleman’s ‘The Major’, which looks gorgeous (in a deeply evil sort of way) and which gets a big thumbs up from me for its Edinburgh setting – as a patriotic Scotsman, I love anything that delves into the myths and legends and indeed entrails of our blood-soaked nation. We also have a dose of laser-whip-fuelled crocodilian lunacy in ‘Jikan’, courtesy of Mr. Van Dom and editor/artist/mastermind Davey Candlish, whose chameleonic art-skills have rendered this one in a Mignola-esque stylee.

For my part, I have contributed two tales, both of which, bizarrely enough, centre around our feathered friends. There’s a Spencer Nero short, ‘Spencer Nero and the Hour of the Heron’, in which our smug hero finds himself dealing with Dartmoor druids and their pagan Heron god, the eyeball-eating Old Nog. Davey Candlish draws this one in a style inspired by ‘Chew’ artist Rob Guillory. The main feature, however, is ‘Spencer Nero and the Locked Door’, in which Spencer’s curator chum William Kitt takes centre stage. Kitt has to deal with a rampaging threat connected with the appearance of a caladrius, the healing bird of ancient Rome. But where is Spencer while all this is going on? Art here is by James Corcoran, and 'tis a dark treat indeed.

At the time of writing, #14 is FREE for download here, so grab a copy – the early bird catches the worm, after all. It is a comic with many feathers in its cap, and we’re as proud as peacocks of it.

Nero @ #13, Part 2: Bon's Caught

 Welcome to the second part of a two-part blog posting about my recent work for PARAGON #13. This bit’s about ‘Spencer Nero Goes South’, which reveals the ‘secret origin’ of Spencer Nero – or at the very least, fills in a key piece of his past. (The previous part, about the Ruthless Rhymer, is here.)

This story serves as the conclusion to the ‘original’ quartet of Spencer Nero stories – that is, the last of the first four full-length story ideas I had when I originally came up with the series. (The one and two-pagers were all written much later.) I have a bit of an obsession with the South Pole, particularly the Terra Nova expedition, and knew from the off that I wanted to set a Spencer Nero story there. My first idea indeed involved Robert Falcon Scott’s party, specifically the ghost of Captain Lawrence Oates, and was going to be called ‘Spencer Nero and the Gallant Gentleman’ after John Charles Dollman’s haunting painting of Oates ‘stepping outside’. The problem, of course, was that I’d already done a story about Spencer encountering the ghost of a dead explorer in ‘Spencer Nero and the White Spider’, so that idea was reluctantly set aside. Likewise, fond as I am of H.P. Lovecraft, I had absolutely no intention of regurgitating the similarly polar ‘At the Mountains of Madness’.

But I did want to pay tribute to Ray Harryhausen, the special effects model-master who sadly passed away not long after the story came out. If there’s an influence present in ‘...Goes South’, then Harryhausen is it, particularly the similarly polar ‘Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger’. Ekhidna, for instance, is a fair amalgam of several of Harryhausen’s beautiful beasts (Medusa via the Kraken, principally – like a ‘Clash of the Titans’ greatest hits.) Plus – hydras, chimeras and great big pigs! What more do you want in a comic? (A decent script? Well, you’re not getting one of those, so just enjoy the beasts.) Let’s pick out a few comment-worthy moments to dwell on– though these are largely just an excuse to showcase the wonderful art of James Corcoran, making his hugely welcome return to the strip.

From the first panel, James shows us this is going to be something special, art-wise – I love the way the boat’s shadow, plus a few floating pieces of ice, create the image of the Janus Mask.

 

 

Here, Bonaventure Nero, Spencer’s uncle, makes his first flashback appearance – it won’t be his last. He and his nephew both derive their names from the actor Spencer Tracy – Bonaventure was Tracy’s middle name. Having Spencer brought up by an uncle whose subsequent fate he feels guilty for may be an unintentional nod to ‘Spider-Man’, although rather than breeding a sense of responsibility in Spencer, the exact opposite happens – it’s his cue to blame everything on someone else!

The Supra-Centurion’s been name-checked several times in the strip to date, but now we find out a little more about the Janus Cult’s master – it turns out he was a bloodthirsty lunatic who fantasised about slaying creatures that didn’t exist. This probably surprises no-one.

 

 

And speaking of creatures - I do like to see a great big pig in my comics. It is a motif of which I’m very fond. The idea of including frightening hogs in my scripts is a nod of the head to my favourite author, William Hope Hodgson, who seemed, as China Mieville put it, “to have had serious misgivings about pigs”. (Read ‘The House on the Borderland’ to see these misgivings in terrifying action.)

More fear with the exquisite Ekhidna – she’s a crowning triumph of James’s art. Going back to the Harryhausen connection, in one of his books, Harryhausen noted that his design for Medusa incorporated horrible features atop a beautiful bone structure – I wanted a bit of that for Ekhidna as well (it seems to have been made manifest in her cheekbones.) James has also given her an extra pair of arms, which just adds to the Dynamation potential of the character. Imagine seeing a stop-motion version of this creature crawling around the Antarctic! The ‘real’ Ekhidna is a genuine monster out of Greek mythology, who did indeed spawn a whole host of abominations – she certainly kept the Greek mythic heroes busy, as her multiple offspring bedevilled Hercules, Theseus, Bellerophon, Prometheus, Perseus, Jason and Odysseus. The father of most of these beasts was the monstrous Typhon –  for my version of Ekhidna, I’ve assumed she can give birth to creatures without needing a mate at all, but the results are less impressive than if they’re fathered by some unfortunate soul.

So, that was ‘Spencer Nero Goes South’ – probably my favourite episode of the strip to date, even if the script does turn into a big mad scramble to cram everything in at the end (let’s just call it an attempt to represent the chaos of battle.) Luckily for me, James’s art really sells the frenetic nature of the denouement, complimenting his cracking creature designs. Beautiful stuff.

Teenage Kicks - PARAGON hits #13!

Yup, PARAGON comic reaches its teens – a bloody impressive tally for a small-press publication, so major kudos to editorial mastermind Davey Candlish for reaching this milestone! As for whether the comic’ll start getting moody and moping about, angsting over girls, remains to be seen. But what is on display, appropriately enough, is a flashback tale featuring a teenaged Spencer Nero, in what amounts to an 8-page ’secret origin’, set at the South Pole. And yes, there’s a spot of girl trouble too, as an... err... older woman comes between Spencer and his uncle. An older woman of mythological proportions... with some rather angry offspring. If you want a better look at her, just check out James Corcoran’s remarkable full frontal reveal or Bhuna’s brilliant, sanity-blasting cover!

And speaking of the talented Bhuna, he also lends his artistic might to another 2-pager, ‘Spencer Nero and the Ruthless Rhymer’. Written, as the name suggests, in verse, this odd little tale celebrates my love of both Rupert the Bear and the utterly black-humoured poet Harry Graham. In it, Spencer takes on a very cross man whose violent means of dealing with pet peeves should in no way be interpreted as wish-fulfilment on the part of the equally grumpy author. Ahem.

I’ll do my usual self-indulgent digging into the entrails of both stories in due course, but first, grab yourself a copy of PARAGON #13 and hold it: hold it tight.  At twenty-eight pages, it’s five-fourteenths me, but don’t let that put you off. It has proper writers too, and all the artists are playing a blinder. If you need excitement and need it bad, PARAGON is here for you.

Keep Me Covered (x 2)

Two separate stories of mine have garnered two different cover spots, it seems: always an absolute honour, I should add. The first fantastic frontispiece is for Paragon #13, showcasing an eighteen-year-old Spencer Nero’s flashback conflict with the sort of creature that would give Ray Harryhausen a profound dose of the heebie-jeebies. The intrepid and highly talented artist is Neil Roche, also known as Bhuna, and the creature in question is based on designs by James Corcoran, who draws the interior strip, ‘Spencer Nero Goes South’. Neil has also drawn a Nero two-pager, ‘Spencer Nero and the Ruthless Rhymer’, which follows in a Paragon tradition of rhyming stories. Not sure if that’s in #13 as well or being saved for a later issue, but having seen Neil’s completed art, I can confirm that it looks gorgeous – albeit in a deeply sinister way.

The other cover is for ‘The Zen Fusilier’, as mentioned in a previous posting, which has been chosen as the cover story for the forthcoming Massacre For Boys Picture Library. The art here is by David Frankum and is, frank(um)ly, jaw-dropping. As I commented to Massacre impresario Chris Denton, there’s a strong Brian Bolland vibe to David’s line-work on this awe-inspiring piece: precise, detailed and evocative. Unfortunately, it sounds like the Picture Library will be out later than the Massacre boys originally intended, but good things come to those wait, particularly in the small press.

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...

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!

Falling Towards Apotheosis

So for all my banging on about Spencer Nero like he’s the second coming, it’d be remiss of me not to mention what else appears in Paragon #9. Matthew McLaughlin and James Corcoran contribute a prehistoric Jikan tale with a delightfully Hammer / Amicus sensibility, the art for which is truly lovely, Corcoran’s atmospheric swathes of black being a particular highlight. The same writer also teams up with the mad, bad and dangerous to know Louis Carter (that’s bad in the sense of Byronically wicked, not a critique of the art!) who illuminates this month’s outing with some wonderfully stylised robo-philosophical musings. And explosions. Carter’s art is lovely stuff – I could absolutely see his robots as animated figures in some peculiar cartoon. Meanwhile, Davey Candlish couples (ooer, missus) with Alan Holloway for a violent western outing, ‘No Compromise’. There’s something about the western genre that Davey just seems to excel at – crumpled gunslingers must be one of his favourite subjects. And the strip’s first line, about how a stranger ‘rowed into town’, is a very witty conceit.

And finally, there’s Dirk Van Dom and Stephen Prestwood’s ‘Icarus Dangerous’. There’s a lot to like here, not least the muscular,action-packed art, which plays around with perspective (as is suitable for a flying hero) and which has a real weight and power to it. Gorgeous stuff. Of course, I’m a sucker for mythology too, and the whole ‘Greek myths in space’ thing makes me think of 'Ulysses 31', the best cartoon ever. Meanwhile, little references like Icarus suggesting his dad would enjoy the local architecture give the science-fantastical fusion a charming grounding. And despite the fact that several months pass between issues of Paragon, somehow ‘Icarus Dangerous’ manages to keep up a breackneck pace, rattling along with all the vip and vigour of a weekly-scheduled strip, full of energy, pressure always piling onto the hero.

The strip also made me muse on the likeability of the lead character. One of things I enjoy about this series is that Icarus is a bit hapless. I love characters that screw up or aren’t entirely sure what they’re doing, particularly if it’s their own fault. I find it a trait that’s extremely easy to identify with: indeed, one of my all-time 2000AD favourites is Ace Garp, a past-master in the field of creative balls-ups. In the case of Icarus, he seems, to paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt, to be doing the best he can with what he has where he is, but that clearly comes with a few bumps along the way. So much the better – in my experience, readers love seeing characters on a learning curve. Look at how popular the teenage New Mutants were with Marvel fandom when they debuted in the 80s. For a character so strongly associated with the concept of ‘the fall’, it’s a sharp move by Dirk Van Dom to give Icarus this slightly blundering quality, whilst at the same time reminding us that we fall to rise.

Indeed, the whole notion of haplessness is one that’s going to become more apparent in my own character, Spencer Nero, in forthcoming stories. In his first outing, he’s uber-confident and doesn’t make many mistakes, but as I tease out the darker aspects of his character, you’ll see how his arrogance increasingly makes him put his foot in it. In a script I’m writing at the moment, set in India in the time of the British Raj, I take this to an extreme, and Spencer becomes pretty much sole architect of his own problems.

Anyway - Paragon #9. Go buy. Bye.