We’ve Redecorated

I hope you appreciate the site’s new look was a good bit of work for me. Send me lots of love! I haven’t been around too much, but as we’re a month into 2012 I had this impulse to drag my Web presence screaming into the new year.

Does this mean I will actually be posting occasionally? Maybe. Lemme think. I always procrastinate, right?

Posted on Saturday, February 4th 2012 at 8:13 pm | Permalink | No Comments »

Lodge Pic

Seeing as I haven’t been blogging much (smacked wrists again), here’s a pic from the Grey Lodge, last Saturday—courtesy of Steve Green. L2R, Steve, Freaky-Tongue Weirdo, Joel Lane, Theresa Derwin, Steve Jones and Adrian Middleton. I performed some Mentalism and Zen Tarot nonsense and am available for limited bookings.

I do sort-of plan to write more often. I always do. I need prodding occasionally.

Posted on Monday, January 30th 2012 at 8:03 pm | Permalink | No Comments »

2012

Guess I’d better squeeze a last posting in while it’s still 2011. I hope everyone has a good year. I have a Resolution or two but I’m not talking about them. Now, where’s that wine…?

Posted on Saturday, December 31st 2011 at 11:13 pm | Permalink | 2 Comments »

Sketchbook: Witch

A bit of spookiness for u.

Posted on Tuesday, December 20th 2011 at 10:19 pm | Permalink | No Comments »

Club Vamporama Cover Pencils

Okay, haven’t blogged for a while. Here’s the news…

Have completed colour-flats on Bryan Talbot’s forthcoming Grandville Bête Noire up to page 50 as of today (preview of page 11 here). Quite pleased with how that’s been going. But we’re here for the Comicana slash Vamporama news. I have decided to fully develop the threads that have evolved from the Webcomic incarnation as a ‘proper’ comic, or should that be graphic novella, running roughly 45 pages, drawn on larger paper and with more care and attention. The official title is Club Vamporama (volume one).

I completed the pencils for the cover today—see below! Click to enlarge, as per usual. This will be inked by none other than Mr John McCrea. I’m excited to see how it turns out! More info as and when. I am still looking for someone to ink the interior pages—I don’t want to do it myself. I’d prefer to concentrate on the pencilling. If anyone reading this is interested, please drop me a line.

Posted on Wednesday, December 14th 2011 at 12:01 am | Permalink | 5 Comments »

Birthday

Yeah, it’s my birthday today. Still not too late to send me a gift via PayPal if you think I’m groovy… or something off my Amazon Wishlist (link in sidebar), if you like…

Did manage to attend the local Grey Lodge horror meet last night. Oddly enough, didn’t talk about horror much, although I did suggest bedroom farce + giallo as a dubious combination of genres. (Not entirely sure whether or not Lucio Fulci managed to do this somewhere or other.) Below is a pic of me with Steve Green. It was a good night and hope to do it again.

Posted on Sunday, October 30th 2011 at 2:16 am | Permalink | 1 Comment »

Grandville Bête Noire Preview

I’m sure a lot of you are looking forward to Bryan Talbot’s new graphic novel, the third in a series, Grandville Bête Noire. I’ve been doing some of the colour-flats for the book and, as the first page I worked on has been fully-completed, a compare & contrast might be kind of neat. To see the finished page (renders by Bryan and his son, Alwyn), go to Bryan’s site—direct image link here—my flats are below. (Click to enlarge.)

While I’m here: the new book 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die has just been published. I contributed 15 entries. Go buy it! 1001 Mini-Site via Paul Gravett. Amazon UK link.

Posted on Sunday, October 16th 2011 at 6:53 pm | Permalink | 2 Comments »

“Something Afoot”

Note: Re-bumped this posting to reflect the addition of colour version! (Original posting: Oct 7th.)

Yeah, two in a week! This was fairly quick & improvised. If it confuses, don’t worry about it… although I did say a while ago, Bette’s Comin’. Fair warning, etc. Click to enlarge.

Posted on Wednesday, October 12th 2011 at 5:27 pm | Permalink | No Comments »

“Sugar, Sugar”

No, REALLY! A new Comicana. I was gonna wait till I’d coloured it but… guess I couldn’t. I’ve had something of a mental block on this one for some time so it was good to get it out finally… I feel it might move forward a bit again now. And, yup, I can ALWAYS use feedback and encouragement, thx. Click to enlarge.

Posted on Wednesday, October 5th 2011 at 1:49 pm | Permalink | 3 Comments »

Hello September

Still grafting on a few things—but not, it must be said, as vigorously as I’d like. The juggling can get a bit confusing sometimes. One thing I want/need to do is work up a sample of an idea I’ve pitched somewhere. One or two pages. The idea is kind of fun if I can find the focus I need. I’m also doing some colour-flatting for a fothcoming graphic novel (by someone else; more later), which has been educational and very different to my usual working methods. I’m always up for for doing something different.

I’m all right overall! I had someone call me ‘deeply untalented’ on Monday, but you know, that’s my fault. I made a futile attempt to engage a Monster Ego on something resembling a level playing field and got bitten.

I guess, by this blog’s standards, my Jack Kirby posting got a good reaction (and I assume loads more people looked at it than actually commented). I’m all for writing more involved pieces like this, but sometimes it’s for want of finding the subject and time/attitude to get it done right. I’ll throw something else out soon—for now, this fluffy entry will have to do!

Posted on Friday, September 2nd 2011 at 5:51 pm | Permalink | 2 Comments »

Jack Kirby

It’s Jack Kirby’s 94th birthday. Quite a lot of people will be remembering him, but arguably fewer than his long career might suggest. His major involvement in the development of the 1960s Marvel Comics line—a period that resulted in characters that have become multi-million dollar franchises—has still not received full recognition. Marvel’s then-editor Stan Lee took all the creative credit, and continues to do so.

Oddly enough, my regret isn’t really to do with Marvel (in the usual sense). The 1960s were a significant period of artistic growth for Kirby, but as a man whose chief interests were mythology and science fiction—with an increasingly philosophical leaning—a line of comics with a primary superhero slant wasn’t particularly his ideal platform. The development/success of the line did a few (negative) things to Kirby: (1) it forever typecast him as the “King” of superheroes and POW! BAM! action; (2) it cemented perceptions of Kirby as an “artist” more than a creative writer-artist (cartoonist), thanks to Stan’s most creative work—the credits on the books; (3) it put him in a straightjacket for ten years, where his ideas were restrained by mannerisms of a genre he was pulling away from.

Of the latter, a few examples suffice. In the Thor book, which initially was intended to be a rather lame Marvel version of Superman (note the costume colours, the nerdy alter-ego, the female co-worker he loves but who seems to love the hero more, etc), clearly it was Kirby who pushed it towards heavier mythological & SF ideas, but note how following an impressive stream of wonderful, other-wordly fantasy ideas—including Ego the Living Planet and the High Evolutionary (#129-135)—the book quickly thuds back to earth with a comparatively tedious run of standard superhero books… I’ve no doubt Lee asked Kirby to bring it back down a bit, keep it ‘on-formula’, thereby weakening the books and diluting Kirby’s ideas. Likewise, when Kirby had an idea for radically revamping the book—bringing in a wave of ‘New Gods’ and reworking existing characters (including Thor himself, presumably), an idea which would surely have brought it even closer to the mythological core that so interested him—the concept was vetoed. (Imagine Mike Love saying to Brian Wilson: “Don’t fuck with the formula.”)

In Fantastic Four, too, Kirby dragged the title increasingly towards SF, notably in introducing the Inhumans, Galactus and the Silver Surfer (#45-50). He saw the Surfer, herald of the ‘devourer of worlds’, as a pure creation of the godlike Galactus. Lee saw it differently and moved the character to a solo book with artist John Buscema, which revealed him to be an inhabitant of a world Galactus formerly attacked (i.e. basically a human being in a silver suit) who sacrifices himself to save his race—cue much Grade Z angst, mourning the loss of his lover and embarrassing philosophising. Kirby was not happy. In FF #66-67, Kirby did a story about a humanoid creation (“Him”) which he conceived as an examination of scientific ethics—the scientists were so absorbed in their work they didn’t consider the moral questions. Lee disliked the angle and made the scientists into standard villain types, castrating the whole point of the story by removing its deeper themes.

(It’s interesting to note that when Kirby again waded into the area of scientific ‘creation’—artificial life, cloning, etc—in his reluctant work on DC’s Jimmy Olsen title, he did not bother addressing moral questions to any great extent. He still remembered Lee’s editorialising; he gave the company the pap he assumed they wanted. Brilliantly imaginative pap it might have been, but compared to the work he was doing concurrently on his own books—the ‘proper’ Fourth World books, New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle—it was completely shallow and disposable.)

So, today Kirby is not regarded as a writer. Yet Stan Lee, for some obscure reason, is. Stan Lee, who gave the God characters in Thor that painful, embarrassing quasi-16th Century English speak, who had his characters spout melodramatic garbage that would’ve seemed too purple for a cheap daytime soap opera, who balked at anything resembling ‘deep’ content for the stories in favour of the banal and obvious, who seemed most at home writing cheap wisecracks that were, at best, mildly amusing. Yes, Stan Lee, who struggled to come up with ideas and plots of his own and who devised the brilliant ‘Marvel Method’—which involved letting the ‘artists’ do all that work for him.

Kirby pales next to this genius? Perhaps, for those who favour pap, who groove on nostalgia, who prefer a rosey tint and a safe & warm feeling of familiarity. The people who say Kirby’s writing is ‘awkward and stilted’ because it doesn’t read like Stan Lee’s hackneyed scripting. Don’t get me wrong. Kirby was human. As a writer, and as an artist, he screwed-up occasionally. But the best of his writing, alongside the overshadowing quality of his visuals, is remarkable—powerful and unique, unlike anything else.

I don’t see the Marvel period, then, as Kirby’s peak. I see it as chances missed and undermined. The best of the work he did before Marvel, in the ’40s and ’50s—romance stories such as “Different”, “Mother Delilah” from Boys’ Ranch #3—stories he wrote and drew himself—tower above almost anything he did that was polluted by Lee’s dialogue and restraining influence. The seeds of his focus on myth and science fiction, in ’50s DC mystery titles and Harvey’s Alarming Tales, further show a maturing and development that would happen with or without the Marvel years. Unlike Lee, Kirby actually read the old myths, and Shakespeare, and by contrast devoured science journals, as well as being a huge fan of movies and television. He was a sponge, endlessly interested in all kinds of material. He seldom produced superhero concepts per se on his own terms, and increasingly the slam-bam action aspects become less important. Creatively, the Marvel period did nothing for him. Financially, he was screwed. And the credits were largely a fantasy.

For me, Kirby’s peak was 1970-83. Until 1981, he remained stuck within the formula of the Big Two (Marvel and DC), but at least was able to negotiate some leeway that permitted relative freedom—and a wealth of beautiful work came out of it. In 1981, he finally was able to do independent, creator-owned works. Marred by erratic schedules and poor inking & production, Captain Victory and Silver Star nonetheless have much to offer—including some of Kirby’s finest writing and countless unfortgettable images. Sadly, this opportunity came a little late in the day. Kirby’s tired hands were getting shaky and, following more creative frustration and restraint at DC (albeit for good money), he retired from comics in 1985. His hands were shot. He didn’t want to continue without them (for instance, doing just scripting—besides which, his writing then, as now, was not as regarded as it deserved to be).

Kirby is my favourite cartoonist—WRITER-artist. What he achieved was remarkable in itself, but also an indictment of an industry, in terms of how poorly regarded he was as a cartoonist per se, the scandals of the credit & money situations, the thwarted ideas and possibilities. In Europe, Kirby would’ve been cherished and his pure, unique vision would’ve been given a chance to soar… without lesser hands stealing (and mutilating/diluting) his thunder.

Let’s remember Jack Kirby, then—the AUTEUR.

Posted on Sunday, August 28th 2011 at 12:44 pm | Permalink | 12 Comments »

Concept Drawing

This is a quick concept drawing I did on the idea of a ‘kiddie’ version of Comicana (mused over previously here). Click to enlarge.

Last year, I also did kind of a throwaway little strip around this idea, which I never got round to posting. See it here.

Posted on Tuesday, August 16th 2011 at 5:42 pm | Permalink | 2 Comments »