Running Rings

So, as work on Paragon #12 proceeds apace (see James Corcoran's gorgeous blog for some mind-blowing artistic previews of the forthcoming 'Spencer Nero Goes South'), time to document #11's episode, 'Spencer Nero and the Hidden Olympics', with pencils by Mike Kennedy, lovely inks by Davey Candlish, and lurid lettering by John Caliber.

Here's the thing. I decided to set the first Nero story in 1936 fairly arbitrarily - the 1930s is the natural epoch for pulp adventure, but I picked '36 on the basis that the sixth year of a decade showcases said decade's defining characteristics. (I had read somewhere that the 90s, for example, really became what we recognise as the 90s in 1996.) Fortunately, however, it turned out that 1936 was a pretty fertile year in terms of stories. Ascents of the Eiger, international turmoil, abdications (ssh! Keep reading your Paragons for that one) - and of course, the Berlin Olympics. (The story wasn't inspired by the London Olympics - it was written quite a bit before, but was fortuitiously published just after.)

Like many comic fans, I'm not much of a sports fan: I have neither interest, talent nor ability, and I'm not remotely competitive. (I'll watch the odd game of Highland League football and the odd game of darts - that's about it.) But what did interest me was the idea of using the '36 Olympics as the backdrop for a secret war of hex, counter-hex and mystical shenanigans with Spencer as the pawn. As such, it was a chance to make Mr. Alabaster more central to the series: this is by far and away the most on-panel time he gets in any Nero story, though he'll be allowed to narrate a short one sometime soon. So, let's pick out a few panels and explain the thinking:

Trackside: I originally planned to have Nero's trackside rival be Dr. Von Zero, and have Alabaster duel with his Nazi opposite, who was going to be a Mr. Marmor (Marble) from the Department of Möglichkeit (Possibility.) I changed my mind, letting Marmor vanish into the ether (maybe I will get him into print one day) and instead reshaped Von Zero into a behind-the-scenes manipulator, with a golem as his representative: Anton Klumpen, whose surname is German for 'lump'. As for Von Zero's unlikely survival - well, I don't know how clear I made it. When he discusses 'Atlantean throat techniques', my thinking was that he used his Thule Society talents to magically command the swordfish to cut him free, but frankly, it sounds like he did something obscene to it instead.

Lumps and Bumps: On page two, the guy next to Klumpen is US athlete Glenn Morris. Historically, this all-American, square-jawed young athlete won the Decathlon - he does in this version of reality too. I quite enjoyed bringing out Spencer's more bullying streak as he tries to psyche Klumpen out, a streak that will reach its apex in about two strips time. Though Spencer does much more terribly violent things in the first story, he seems a lot nicer in that one - by this story I had settled into writing him as a bit more of an arse (albeit a charismatic one.)

Runes vs. Tarot: I don't think I ever want characters to be firing lightning bolts at each other in the 'Spencer Nero' universe, or otherwise engaging in D&D-style magic. I'd prefer to give it some kind of grounding in real-world mythology or mysticism and have the effects generally be more subtle. (Subtle? 'Spencer Nero'?! I know, I know.) As such, the implication is that ceremony and specially-attuned artefacts are important. Davey Candlish astutely described the weird duel that dominates the story as oddly reminiscent of Bill & Ted vs. De Nomolos at the end of 'Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey'.

The Super, Soaraway Sun: I love this image of Mr. Alabaster as tarot card XIX: Endearing and eccentric. Elsewhere in the panel, Spencer is drinking ass's milk (in the script there's a little milk carton with a donkey on it, but there was no room in the panel.)

 

Rogue Discus: You know, I did stop and think "Is it too obvious to have Hitler K.O.-ed here? Should I use Himmler or some other senior Nazi, to give Spencer a more individual rivalry with a less 'A-List' fascist?" And then I thought "No. Sometimes the most obvious target is the most satisfying. You can't pass up the chance to demean the Fuhrer yet again."  (See Dr WTF?!2012.) I'm not sure I'll ever get bored of this pursuit.

 

Bashmite Ethan: Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I could never quite get this pun to completely work, largely because the first word doesn't mean anything. Trust me, there's a bit of paper somewhere with all sorts of variants written down - "Smazhmi Phasin", "Kikkmi Hedin" - that sort of thing. (Actually, Kikkmi Hedin's better, isn't it? Sounds like a 'Sinister / Dexter' character.) I think this came out of a running gag from when I was a student about a made-up British martial art called 'B'oot-in'.  It was a lot funnier after you'd been drinking White Lightning, I'll tell you that.

The Golem: I will freely admit there is nothing original in the whole 'change a letter on the golem's parchment' conclusion - this is very much taken from traditional Jewish tales. I don't think any of them change it with a javelin though.

Jesse Owens: African-American super-athlete Owens was, of course, the hero of the games, with gold medals in the 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay and long jump. He apparently didn't regard Hitler particularly badly - as he says at the end of the story, in Germany he could stay in the same hotel as a white man, and Hitler apparently waved hello to him, even if he didn't shake his hand (he only actually shook the hands of German victors anyway.) Indeed, US president FDR didn't even send Owens a congratulatory telegram for his astonishing performance, whereas Hitler sent a signed photo (!) In private, however, the Fuhrer was apparently as foul when speaking of black athletes as you might expect.

So that's the Hidden Olympics, after which Spencer does a runner... all the way to the South Pole. Thanks once more to my collaborators on this one: Mike has a distinctive style that combined with Dave's inks puts me in mind of the work of Alex Maleev. Gold medals all round, lads - and the wooden spoon for me for the 'Bashmite Ethan' bit.

MOREtillo!

Work continues apace on the Martillo collection, in which the Saint of Labourers' most devout, hammer-wielding servant goes up against the forces of El Diablo in 1940s Europe. The second story, Martillo ³, is now completed, so here's some preview art. This one features two rather important historical personages of a Spanish nature - General Francisco Franco, the nation's one-time fascist ruler, and another gentleman of a rather more... artistic disposition. Once more, I hope you enjoy David Broughton's cracking linework!

Hammer to fall - Martillo on the rampage

A bad case of face pollution

"Art is a lie that makes us realise truth."

 

General Franco implores you to return soon!

Heading For A Funeral In Berlin?

Glad the Olympics are over? Well, tough, 'cos Paragon #11 is heading for the finish line all too soon, and within its pages Spencer Nero struts his stuff at the Games - Berlin '36-style, of course! But who's that in the crowd? Mr. Alabaster, squaring off against... the late Dr. Von Zero? Seems the nefarious Nazi's playing dirty on his home turf - are Spencer's chances for a gold scuppered from the off?

Yes, pretty much. But read it when it comes out anyway. You get to find out Mr. Alabaster's first name and what he's been doing at midnight up the Funkturm. Pencils by Mike Kennedy, inks by Nero's dear chum, Davey Candlish.

Dr. WTF?! 2012 - Page-By-Page Commentary

Over on his blog, Louis Carter has posted a wonderful entry that reveals the creative process behind his art for our Dr. WTF?! 2012 story. I know I'm biased, but his post makes for a bloody good read, and the more I find out about his approach, the more I am blown away by his attention to detail. Anyway, here's a bit about the genesis of the story from my perspective, and a similar page-by-page commentary.

From the outset, despite a creeping residual paranoia that someone out there would think I actually approved of his views, there was never any doubt in my head that this new Doctor would be a Nazi. As such, the story would be one of excess, with everything turned up to 11, featuring insanity on a grand scale. I later came up with the idea that the Doctor liked Nazism so much because it reminded him of Gallifrey - lots of middle-aged men dressing up in fancy costumes and issuing edicts. (Indeed, there was a line in the first draft of the script to that effect, but it got cut for space reasons, and 'cos editor Owen Watts rightly wanted to limit references to 'proper' Who continuity / chronology.) So, if my protagonist was a Nazi, who could his opponents be? There really wasn't much choice - I had to go for the dialectic opposite of Fascism, in the form of Communism. (I think I was also applying 'Battle' comic logic - when they ran 'Hellman of Hammer Force' and 'Death Squad', two strips with German protagonists, the characters generally ended up fighting the Russians, so that readers wouldn't get irate if they saw them triumphing over the British.) Anyway, here's how it all went:

Page 1:

Hauptmann Who is, in a very, very tangential way, kinda sorta based on a guy who taught me Film Studies at university. He wasn't a Nazi (as far as I am aware) but he did want to be seen as pretty rock 'n' roll, despite being a kind of authority-figure, and occupying a not-particularly-rock 'n'roll position in life. He wore a long black leather jacket, jeans (with turn-ups), DM boots and black t-shirts. The t-shirt here is one of many examples where Louis improved on my ideas - I originally wanted an umlaut over a question mark in blackletter font (as used by Motorhead for their logo.) Louis instead shifted it underneath, where it also serves the function of making the whole symbol look... well, slightly rude. I very specifically wanted the character to actually be named 'Who' in the story -A) in tribute to the Amicus Dr. Who movies B) in tribute to the William Hartnell story 'The War Machines' ("Doctor Who is required... bring him here.") and C) 'cos 'Who' is such an intrinsically funny sound.

 Jimi Von Hendricks, the Hauptmann's partner, went through a couple of script incarnations before I was happy with him. He was inspired by a mod for the game 'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas'. The lead character in said game, CJ, is African-American, but apparently white bigots, keen to enjoy a spot of gang-banging, couldn't tolerate playing as a black man. Therefore, they created a modified version of the game for themselves, in which the main character was white, but everything else was the same. You have to laugh at these people, you really do. That was the original concept  for Jimi - that he literally WAS Jimi Hendrix, but made white by Nazi science, so that racists could enjoy rock 'n' roll without feeling like hypocrites. However, at some level, the idea of visiting such an injustice upon Jimi started to offend me, so instead I decided that the real Jimi's talent had been transplanted into the body of a no-hope, poodle-permed glam-rocker instead (and Jimi disposed of.) Louis took the transplant theme quite literally, hence the stitching on Jimi's forehead. Given rock 'n' roll's undeniably black origins, it seemed suitably ironic that bigots woud want to appropriate it.

I do not know (or can't remember) why I picked the asteroid belt to become Communist. I definitely wanted a celestial body to do so, showing Hauptmann Who found the ideology so insidious that it could literally infect inanimate objects on a massive scale. I discovered there were lots of different types of asteroid, of different chemical composition, and then it all made sense.

The phrase 'reich und roll' was stolen from the band Carnivore's song 'Jesus Hitler' (by the late Peter Steele of Type O Negative). It was about what might happen if Jesus and Hitler both got reincarnated in the same body. It was therefore the trigger for the 'Marley Luther Lenin' idea on Page 3. (More of that when we get there.)

Page 2:

"You are the Masteroid!" is almost my favourite line in the whole thing. As previous blog posts may have indicated, I am easily amused by my own wordplay.

Germania - Many will be aware that Hitler did plan to reconstruct Berlin as Welthauptstadt (World Capital) Germania, designed by architect Albert Speer. A few elements of this reconstruction project were successfully completed, but the fortunes of war pretty much put an end to it. Not here!

World War Minus One and the Forever-Fuhrer: Well, if you had time-travel, why not win wars before they start, therefore preventing them from ever happening, in some ridiculous temporal paradox? (So much for no triumphing over the British then.) Likewise, I could imagine that Hitler would have found some way to exist concurrently in multiple different forms, like some crazy eternal version of the triple-goddess Morrigan from Irish mythology. Of course, the Former-Fuhrer was just a baby, the Flux-Fuhrer was in disarray, and the Future-Fuhrer dead, so every incarnation epitomised a sense of helplessness. Some people don't like Hitler being used as a figure of fun, but personally, I think relentless mockery is probably the best way to demean his memory.

Page 3:

Marley Luther Lenin was originally just Martin Luther Lenin, on the fairly obvious basis that the ultimate enemy of Hauptmann Who would have to be both non-white, pro-equality, and a Communist. Bob Marley was added to the mix for yet another musical angle, to allow me to give the character dreadlocks with impunity, and to bang in some more excess.

"Never wear anything that panics the cat." - This is my favourite line in the story. I originally just wanted to have the Future-Fuhrer give some completely irrelevant fashion advice (I think he's gone senile), and then I stumbled upon this P.J. O'Rourke quote.

Einstein and Laika - Einstein was certainly no fan of Nazism or capitalism, and was accused of being a Communist on more than one occasion. He was definitely a socialist. As for why his head is floating in space, I am convinced this hails from one of my frequent influences, cartoonist Gary Larson, who once drew the crew of the Starship Enterprise trying to cope with the floating head of Zsa Zsa Gabor. As for the canine pilot, well, I like dogs, basically. I am full of nothing but total and utter contempt for those that took a lovely little dog like Laika and shot her into space to die. I'd shoot the bastards into space myself, given the chance. So here she is, salvaged from an alternate timeline and still loyal to a regime that is happy to sacrifice her yet again for their own ends. No matter who's in charge or what the ideology, dogs (and nature in general) always get the short straw (look at Hitler's dog Blondie) - but dogs love us irrespective.

"Now there's a novelty!" is one of comedian Eric Morecambe's less-prominent catchphrases, coined by writer Eddie Braben. I often feel the temptation to slip lines or paraphrased lines from 'Morecambe and Wise' into my scripts.

Page 4:

I sort of think of this as the 'Yellow Submarine' page. (It's Jimi's trousers that do it.) To my eyes it is probably Louis's greatest triumph in the whole story. I think the way he turns panels four and five into a beyond-the-panel-limits free-floating psychedelic experience is so much cleverer and more fitting than anything I'd have come up with. It expertly conveys the nature of existence before the regular rules of existence kicked in. The idea of time-travelling to the Big Bang (and calling it 'Event One') is a direct lift from Dr. Who - 'Castrovalva', one of my favourite Who stories.

"That didn't happen, Jimi!" - The odd things is, because he can time-travel and has created an alternate timeline, it may not have done. But he's probably just in denial.

Page 5:

Too much dialogue as I struggle to cram everything in. And another Motorhead reference! ('Eat the rich!') Well, Lemmy is known for collecting Nazi memorabilia.

The final panels. Yes, quite. I am only partially to be credited (or blamed) for these. Louis took something implicit (the homoerotic friction between the two leads, and the associations implicit in the phrase 'Give free vent to your love for me!') and, well, less ran with it, more hit Mach 3! Here is the script as was originally written (the dialogue is the same):

Hauptmann Who points commandingly at Jimi, who obliges by jamming on his guitar and singing of his devotion to the Hauptmann. Jimi should be throwing some kind of rock god shapes as he does so, while in the background the primal atom throbs away and the kaleidoscopic primordial void creates hallucinogenic patterns, like some atmospheric sound-to-light programme.

You will notice the lack of nudity, quasi-dimensional snogging, stereo-genitalia or singular spherical objects of a non-primal-atom nature. Basically, I wanted 'em to go out on a song, and use the famous Hendrix mondegreen in the process. A private rock'n'roll concert at the dawn of time - what could be more overblown? But Louis... naughty, naughty Louis wanted to show us what 'free vent' really means. As a result, both my Dr. WTF?! scripts now end with the main character about to indulge in acts of carnality. But let's be clear - this is the kind of collaboration I like. Er... not pre-historical misbehaviour, but where the artist takes the writer's script and gives free vent to his own ideas. I take it as a massive compliment that Louis felt the story was worth putting his own stamp on in such a way. Didn't stop my jaw dropping when I read the thing, mind!

And that's your lot. This was one of my favourite comic collaborations, because Louis brought so much to it, and gave it a colourful beauty greater than it probably deserves. A word (or several) also needs to be said for Owen Watts's lettering - I bloody love that man's sound effects! (Oh, and several more words need said for that man's remarkable skill in organising and putting together the whole smashing anthology!) Hope you enjoyed the story, or were at least suitably disturbed.

Martillo Goes Large!

When duende attack!

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


Gallo investigates...

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

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

Hope you like 'em!

El Coco comes calling... be afraid!

Heavy Fluting

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

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

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

May Triarchy

"April is the least-blogged month", as T.S. Elliot almost wrote in an early draft of 'The Wasteland'. Well, it was for me anyway. But now May is upon us, and no less than three separate new tales of mine are either already released or on the verge of being so.

The first, and in many ways the most personal to me, is a tale called 'Lay On, Macduff', appearing in Lizzie and Conor Boyle's new small-town themed anthology 'Disconnected'. This fine publication heralds the start of Lizzie and Conor's new publishing venture, Disconnected Press, and I was genuinely honoured to be approached for a script contribution for the first issue. As I type this, 'Disconnected' is making its debut at the Bristol Comic Expo 2012, complete with a cracking, somewhat Ben Templesmith-y cover by comics pro Matt Timson. (Coincidentally, I won his complete 'Impaler' series in one of the 2000AD forum short story competitions a while back - gorgeous stuff.) My artistic  partner for this is Gavin Mitchell, winner of the recent 2000AD pitch-fest, and a rare talent indeed. His work is hugely stylish and atmospheric: we can expect BIG things of this gentleman! Our story is set, as the title implies, in the north-east Scottish fishing town of Macduff, which is where my father and the Meldrum clan in general hail from. Macduff's most famous citizen is a man called Walford Bodie, the 'Electric Wizard of the North', an international stage-magician and hypnotist, who inspired Houdini and was even satirised by Charlie Chaplin. Without spoiling any plot details, Bodie is the star of 'Lay On, Macduff', and during this historical tale he becomes embroiled in eerie events in his home town.

The second tale is very different but also on sale in Bristol - it's my collaboration with Louis Carter for Dr WTF?! 2012. Yup, Nazi timelord Hauptmann Who stars in 'The Reich Stuff', a frankly ridiculous tale of the Infinite Reich, silicon-based communism and gestalt reincarnation, all wrapped up in a decidedly purple haze. I think this might be the oddest thing I've ever written - I'm certainly very happy with the result, in large part due to Louis's unbelievably superb art. His colours in particular were just glorious. Working with Louis was definitely a really great collaboration - as his various blog entries on the subject show, he put an enormous amount of thought into every artistic aspect of the strip, and constantly took my ideas and ran with them, coming up with his own psychedelic or Fortean twists, and at one stage making something implicit in the story decidedly explicit - let's just say that when I saw the last few panels, my jaw dropped. I'll do a full self-indulgent 'director's commentary' on the story, as I did for Dr WTF?! 2011 in due course.

The third tale - well, Paragon #10 looms, and that can only mean a healthy dose of Spencer Nero is imminent. In this one, he attempts to climb the dreaded north face of the Eiger, in a Heinrich Harrer-inspired yarn called 'Spencer Nero and the White Spider'. Art duties this time around go to James Corcoran, who has also blogged extensively on this strip. As is also the case with Louis and Gavin, I count myself really lucky to have been able to collaborate with such a talented artist as James - his work is just remarkable and, to my mind, has captured that tricky balance between ridiculous and sinister that I hoped Spencer Nero might achieve. Not a tale for arachnophobes, I'll say that much: something in James's style really gives things a Lovecraftian edge. More on this one when it's finally released.

Anyway, it's back to work. This collection of Martillo stories I'm intending on publishing won't write itself, y'know...