#229
american horror storY Now even weirder?
january 2013 www.sfx.co.uk
#229
movie exclusive!
interviewed!
PLUS! the inside story on the epic return to middle-earth
groovy interviews!
THE EVIL DEAD
Cult icon Bruce Campbell reveals his heroes! Plus: new movie latest
!
arrow
haven!
grimm!
www.sfx.co.uk
ALSO IN YOUR 140-PAGE ISSUE!
Lone Ranger • Paul Cornell • Supernatural • The Clangers Elysium • George RR Martin • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
January 2013
£4.50
printed in the uk
“If you get bitten by a radioactive spider, that’s not only a B-movie, that’s a 1950s B-movie” – Bruce Campbell
Martin Freeman Ian McKellen Andy Serkis
© 2012 Warner Bros.
Welcome to SFX!
Issue 229 • January 2013
48
news
9 RED ALERT
No time for stories about phone hacking or celebrity scandal here – but you can find articles on Cloud Atlas, An American Horror Story, Carrie, The Evil Dead remake, Rob Zombie, Elysium and lots more.
14 freeze frame
The Lone Ranger – is it or isn’t it fantasy? We take a gander at the trailer just in case.
17 star turn
We exorcise Emily Rose about the third season of Haven.
24 DEVELOPMENT HELL
Looking into the future like most people look into the past, it’s that man Setchfield and his movie news once more.
FEATURES 48 the hobbit
the hobbit: an unexpected journey
The much-loved children’s book becomes three films. We talk to folks behind the scenes and uncover details of first instalment, An Unexpected Journey.
56 supernatural
“It had to be my Bilbo. I couldn’t spend 18 months thinking, ‘How’d Ian Holm react?”
56
90
Now that it’s blasting back for its eighth triumphant year, showrunner Jeremy Carver gives us some tasty titbits about the latest adventures of the Winchesters.
60 wild cards
Looking at the George RR Martin book series that isn’t that Thrones one they adopted for the telly.
68 stephen amell
CLOSE ENCOUNTER The new Green Arrow shoots from the hip.
supernatural “What do they need to do to start believing in each other again?” 4
January 2013
HUGE games preview! “You’ll find tons of information about the new Star Trek universe”
70 bruce campbell
HEROES & INSPIRATIONS The Chin himself reveals what he used to like about movies in the days before he was in them.
17
contents
100 View Screen TV shows like Merlin, Fringe, Haven and Revolution dissected. Plus a two-word one also: Red Dwarf!
DEPARTMENTS
70
26 DAVID LANGFORD
David hands out his regular Thoggo awards to those who richly deserve them.
28 BONNIE BURTON
Our US columnist wonders why sci-fi fails to reflect women’s differing bodyshapes.
31 POST APOCALYPSE
You write, we read, then we publish, on the following: Avengers Assemble, Doctor Who, Fringe, Dredd, James Bond, Revolution and Tron: Uprising. And there’s a Spider-Man gag.
37 BLASTERMIND
A time travel-themed quiz that’s as fiendish as Looper’s plot.
74 paul cornell
BROUGHT TO BOOK The former SFX columnist discusses his new book.
76 teenage mutant ninja turtles
TIME MACHINE Going right back to the start of the Ninja Turtles phenomenon, when they were ickle babies.
bruce campbell “Sam Raimi is a great inspiration
38 WISHLIST
If there’s a Dredd 2 – and we’re afraid that’s quite a big “if” – here’s what you’d love to see in it.
because he was completely insane!”
4o event horizon
You guide to the convention scene, including our take on the recent Star Trek event.
83 couch potato
We do our bit for Anglo-US relations by getting two of our Yankee friends to watch some peculiar British television.
42 competition
90 HUGE videogames preview 2013
44 28 DAYS LATER
What sci-fi titles gamers can expect next year, including the new Star Trek adventure.
Rated
108 CINEMA
Like Red Dwarf? Then you will enter this amazing competition! These are the days of your lives…
45 the wORLD OF SFX
arrow “I like the precision of
archery. I like the ritual of it”
Exciting news on the forthcoming special SFX is treating the world to.
68
46 SUBSCRIPTIONS Join us, Earthlings.
88 PENNY DREADFUL
Our monthly gaze into the abyss of horror, including the Evil Dead remake and The ABCs Of Death.
A small but beautiful selection this month: Skyfall, Paranormal Activity 4 and Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan.
129 BOOK CLUB
Christmas is coming and the DVD section is getting fat. This month choose from the likes of The Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spider-Man, Ted, Brave, Arthur Christmas and Men In Black 3.
122 BOOKS
Fancy a Boneshaker? How about some 007 and Doctor Who then?
130 COMICS
That fellow with the arrows, Eric Bristow Hawkeye, comes of age.
132 VIDEOGAMES
We’re getting bruised and bloody playing Assassin’s Creed 3 and Hitman: Absolution.
134 MISCELLANEOUS
One of these days there’ll be no Doctor Who audios on this page… but not just yet!
136 COLLECTABLES
What better time of the year to peruse this lovely spread of geeksome products. www.sfx.co.uk
teenage mutant ninja turtles “Mirage Studios was basically a mirage because it was in his living room…”
76
Subscribe!
Picture courtesy Kobal (1)
112 DVD & BLU-RAY
Looking back (we think) at The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.
138 TOTAL RECALL Dave Golder on a comic as big as him.
117
Get 40% off the shop price!
If you found out you could get your favourite food for almost half price, and delivered to your door, you’d jump at the chance, wouldn’t you? So what about your favourite magazine? What are you waiting for, check out page 46 now! January 2013
5
Living the not-so-good life in Elysium ELYSIUM? SOUNDS LIKE PARADISE…
Lance Henriksen turns comic book writer When Lance Henriksen
appeared in HBO’s Tales From The Crypt revival in the early ’90s, the Aliens actor must have felt like pinching himself. For as a child, the 73-year-old was an avid fan of the original EC Comics title, which was notorious for its luridly spooky tales. Now nearly six decades later, Henriksen will be taking readers on a spine-chilling journey of his own in his first comic book, To Hell You Ride, teaming up with co-writer Joseph Maddrey and veteran artist Tom Mandrake (The Spectre). Set in the small Colorado town of Telluride, Henriksen and Maddrey tap into its past as a mining community as a flesh-eating curse is unleashed after some sacred burial grounds are disturbed. “It used to be somewhere that had so little to offer that it was like being sent to Alcatraz so if you said you were going to work there, people would reply ‘well, to hell you ride!’,” explains Henriksen. “This is a story about something that once happened, which is now reaching fruition.”
WHO’S INVOLVED Neill Blomkamp is Writer/Director Matt Damon is Max Jodie Foster is Secretary Delacourt Sharlto Copley is Kruger Alice Braga is Fray William Fichtner is a business CEO
When to expect it H ead to 2159AD in August 2013.
Sci-Fact
Lance Macabre
South African born Neill Blomkamp was named 21st most powerful celebrity from Africa by Forbes magazine in 2011.
TO HELL YOU RIDE
We’ve got some bad news for the Occupy Wall Street brigade: if Elysium is anything to go by, things don’t work out in your favour. Neill Blomkamp’s followup to prawn shock-tale District 9 looks set to follow the same mix of explosive tech-porn and sharp social commentary. The 99% of 2159AD are floundering on a diseased, impoverished, over-populated, underresourced Earth while the lucky elite live literally on high – floating above the wretched globe on an all-modcods luxury vessel called Elysium. “The film definitely has elements of the haves and the have nots,” the director explained at Comic-Con, fresh from finishing the $100 million shoot in Mexico and Canada. “But, hopefully it is a film where that is woven into the tapestry of the story. That subtext is important and pretty apparent, but layered on top of that is a lot of explosions.”
To Hell You Ride is published by Dark Horse on 12 December.
20
January 2013
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscribe
Sponsored by
red alert
Ticket hotline: 08700 110034 www.scifiweekender.com/tickets
WHY’S MATT DAMON ROCKING THE CHROME DOME? The man at the centre of Elysium is Matt Damon’s hard-as-nails ex-con Max, who’s destined for heavenly glories of one sort or another – unless he gets to Elysium and its deluxe health centres within five days, he’ll be meeting his maker thanks to a nasty bout of radiation exposure. So when underground criminals coerce him into a suicide mission – and a badass exosuit – to infiltrate the orbiting elite, he’s got an added incentive. “Max is dying, imminently,” says Damon, “so that’s what’s driving a lot of what he does. That was most of the direction I would get. ‘So, what am I thinking here?’ ‘Well, dude, you’re gonna die!’” Damon was sold by Blomkamp’s production sketches, giving 2159 the same level of detail that aliensegregated Jo’berg or the aborted Halo project had. “There was this graphic novel that Neill had done on his computer with this entire world he had built. Then there was a corresponding book of weaponry, and a whole other book of vehicles. I decided there’s no way I’m going to let this one get away.”
WHO DOESN’T WANT MATT DAMON TO COME TO VISIT? Unfortunately for Max, intergalactic passport control in 2159 is a bit more lethal than its current counterpart. In charge of stopping the common folk grubbying up the pristine floors of Elysium is Jodie Foster’s immigration chief Secretary Delacourt. “Her antagonism has a point,” reckons Foster. “It does harken back to the European history and this idea that there was something worth holding onto, something in our aristocratic past with class distinctions. She’s hell bent on saying there’s a lot about the way that it was that’s better than it is now.” But while Delacourt coordinates anti-scum operations from paradise, she still needs a bit of muscle on the ground. Meet Kruger, who’s promising to be one of the year’s nastiest villains. What’s surprising is that he’s being played by the usually cuddly Sharlto Copley. “Kruger’s a special forces/black ops guy that hides out on Earth,” says the one time friend-of-Prawns of his latest character. “When the politicians can’t solve things by peaceful negotiation, they call my guy on Earth and he deals with the problems. He’s very dark and very intimidating, but hopefully has a certain level of charisma.”
FINAL NIGHT
Hard Niles
Criminal Macabre crosses paths with 30 Days Of Night Who needs Marvel and DC?
Certainly not Steve Niles. Long a champion of independent titles, he’ll make comic book history next month when Criminal Macabre’s Cal McDonald crosses paths with the ruthless bloodsuckers of 30 Days Of Night in four-issue mini-series Final Night. Niles promises that it’s the end of the road for one of his franchises. “We have a real threat and I have a real decision to make,” says Niles, who concedes that 30 Days’s undead denizens have the edge over Criminal Macabre’s occult gumshoe. “Cal has certainly got everything against him.” Despite Criminal Macabre’s lighter tone, Niles was relieved to discover that the two worlds meshed seamlessly. “It opens up a lot of possibilities because 30 Days is really serious while with Cal anything too serious makes him seem more of a clown,” he says. “I’m as curious as anyone to find out what happens because the only thing I included in the outline was the very end. I left everything else wide open, so I’m going to see what works the best.” Criminal Macabre: Final Night – The 30 Days of Night Crossover starts on 12 December, published by Dark Horse.
www.sfx.co.uk
January 2013
21
the hobbit: an unexpected journey
Hobbit Forming
Seventy-five years after it was first published, The Hobbit will finally appear on the big screen. But are the Lord Of The Rings filmmakers making some risky creative choices? Cast and crew talk Tolkien to David Bradley
T
“
48
he story of The Hobbit is not all
told in The Hobbit!” And with that loaded remark we begin to unpick the knots of how this much-loved book is being turned into three movies. SFX is chatting with Philippa Boyens, whose co-written screenplays for The Lord Of The Rings netted her a barrowful of awards including a Bafta and an Oscar. She’s back on writing duties for the realisation of JRR Tolkien’s original visit to Middle-earth, published as a children’s novel in 1937. The three existing films, it seems, will not only influence the look and feel of its precursor’s adaptation, but also justify the additions and amendments needed to tell Bilbo Baggins’ quest in greater depth. “Professor Tolkien went back and revisited his own storytelling,” explains the New Zealand scribe. “Some of this story is actually told in the appendices to The Return Of The King. He expanded on a lot of things there and we chose to draw upon those, to reshape some of The Hobbit – but only so we could encompass and explain things.” Like what? “Well, Gandalf suddenly disappears off into the blue! Quite often! No explanation in the original book. You can’t do that in a film, people want to know where Gandalf has gone.”
January 2013
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscribe
the hobbit: an unexpected journey
www.sfx.co.uk
January 2013
49
The Hobbit, as generations of schoolchildren know, is the story of how ancient wizard Gandalf persuades the stay-at-home Bilbo Baggins to go on an adventure with a company of Dwarves, who are heading to the Lonely Mountain to reclaim what’s theirs from dragon Smaug. The pint-size Halfling is even smaller than the Dwarves, enabling Bilbo to act as their furtive “burglar”. “We’re trying to balance it and stay faithful to Professor Tolkien’s work but also add those bits of the story that were never fully told in The Hobbit,” says Boyens. It’s in this additional material we’ll see not only the extension of the story, but also the unexpected reappearance of characters such as Gandalf’s chum Galadriel (Cate Blanchett); Peter Jackson and his team are taking the opportunity to frame the events of The Hobbit in terms of people we’ve already met, and that means some familiar faces like Frodo (Elijah Wood) and “Old” Bilbo can receive screen time. “Our instinct was to hand this story over from one Bilbo to the next,” continues Boyens. “Ian Holm is so beloved as that character, we wanted to take the opportunity to literally have him pass the story back. Martin Freeman’s Bilbo is helped by the sense of an older version of him handing the story over for him to tell. And then it became a really natural fit to go to Frodo as well.”
Shades Of Fey
It was while integrating all the explanatory material from the appendices and composing the framing structure that the writers realised they had not just the two planned films, but also enough for a third. Boyens again: “It was a very natural process. When we looked at what we’d shot we felt like it was really working, and had the qualities you need to engage people in three films. A three-film structure gives us room to deal with some of the trickier elements in the story. The dragon dies about two thirds of the way through the book! The ‘story’ is basically over: they’ve got to the mountain, they’ve got their gold... But Professor Tolkien chose for that not to be the case. And the remaining chapters have a very different pace; they are the parts that lead you into the world of Lord Of The Rings.” But some fans have expressed concern that melding The Hobbit – a book Tolkien composed with his own children in mind – with his later, weightier work will rob the former of its light spirit. Might it lose its intimate tone? Step forward Andy Serkis, who
Gollum returns, younger but not prettier than before.
50
January 2013
Gandalf pays a visit to Bilbo Baggins at Bag End.
reprises his role as Gollum but also assumes duties behind the camera as second unit director: “We saw our version of The Hobbit as an extension or prequel, so it can be thought of as six films. But it has just tons of humour in it! The characters are very vivid, especially the Dwarves – they’re individual and exciting and fun. There are characters and sub-plots which give it this texture and depth like Rings, but that isn’t to say it doesn’t have a brighter tone.” Boyens agrees: “Even though Professor Tolkien did write it for children, it was always set against a larger whole. There are very strong elements that lead you into the wider
Run as fast as your little feet can carry you, Bilbo Baggins…
mythology embedded in The Hobbit. But we wanted very much to keep its unique tone, that’s part of its charm! So we worked very hard at that, especially in this first film, which is your introduction to it all. The Dwarves, for instance, are very different to a bunch of posh Elves on a quest – they’re much more like a rugby team!” Many of the Dwarf actors come from comedy backgrounds, with actors like The Almighty Johnson’s Dean O’Gorman, Being Human’s Aidan Turner and Waking Ned’s James Nesbitt under the make-up. And accompanying the quest as Bilbo is Martin
Ian McKellen as Gandalf: older but younger. Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscribe
the hobbit: an unexpected journey
Gandalf The veteran: Ian McKellen
Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy weaves his magic as Radagast.
“We should just make Gollum really hot. He’s 60 years younger!” Freeman, perhaps best known for his comic roles in The Office and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Does he help keep the tone light? “His great sense of comedy is something we do need in the story,” enthuses Boyens. “He’s quintessentially English, and that’s a hard thing to define, and one of his great gifts as an actor is he’s immediately likeable.” And unlike Frodo, who had the unenviable task of saving the world thrust upon him, Bilbo’s quest starts out altogether less epic. Boyens continues: “There’s nothing obviously heroic about tumbling out of your door going off chasing treasure – and not even knowing exactly why you’ve done it either! So we www.sfx.co.uk
Just one part of the unexpected journey.
Did you reread The Hobbit before you began making this new film? Oh yes, yes, yes! There was a big pocket in my gown in Lord Of The Rings and I used to carry around the paperback edition of that trilogy – I used to irritate Peter [Jackson] by saying: “On page 237 it says so-and-so. Can we put that line back in?!” I became a sort of guardian for Tolkien. And I did it again with this one! Always read through the scene that you’re going to do in the book. It’s obviously not going to be the same, but there might be little things you can pick up. Has the move from two films to three created lots more work for you? No, thank goodness, only two weeks more. My heart sank at first; I think I’ve devoted enough time to Gandalf for now. They’re making three movies because there is enough material for three movies – not because they’ve suddenly had a bright idea, I think; although I wouldn’t put it past Peter to have known all along he wanted to make three movies! The Hobbit is a children’s book so will this be a less violent adaptation than Lord Of The Rings? Children love violence don’t they?! There’s plenty of violence in the book, and it’ll be there in the film. It ends with a big battle. But we’re constantly invited to be funny; Peter wanted The Hobbit to be light-hearted. He cast a supreme comedian as the Hobbit! There are a lot of comics in the movie: Barry Humphries and Billy Connolly and Sylvester McCoy as the wizard. People whose stock-in-trade is making the audience laugh. Was it exhilarating filming those fight scenes? In those wonderful battle sequences it’s probably not me most of the time. If you see Gandalf on a horse, that ain’t me. I’m not going on a horse! A friend of mine died on a horse in a film, Roy Kinnear. These are dangerous beasts, I won’t have it. But others will. Viggo Mortensen used to sleep with the bloody horses. I think he took one home to America with him. But I am only an actor, I have doubles for that. If it’s a close-up of my face then that’s me under the make-up. Thankfully the morning regime is just 45 minutes this time. It used to take an hour and three quarters!
January 2013
51
needed somebody with a great range, who lets you in, and is also really quite athletic too – it’s a physical role.”
Larger Than Life
Unlike last decade’s film series, today’s project was filmed in 3D and at 48 frames-persecond, twice the cinema standard. News of these technological advances has not thrilled audiences who are both leery of gimmicky 3D and troubled that the higher frame rate might bestow on scenes the bland precision of television. Serkis is keen to reassure us they’re using these tools wisely: “We use 3D very conservatively; only at dramatic moments where you want to experience something from a character’s point of view do we use it in a more aggressive way.” Warming to his subject he criticises how in some films 3D has “been used badly” but says his experiences on The Hobbit were nothing but positive. “Having directed for 200 days wearing 3D glasses and watching people’s performances in 3D, it’s wonderful, it’s immersive. That, with the combination of 48 frames-per-second, makes it pretty spectacular.” Ah yes. But the public has seen a few minutes of that at the CinemaCon festival and the feedback was, um, mixed. “Look, the film wasn’t graded, the special effects weren’t finished,” says Serkis. “It’s like people judged a cinematic technique rather than be engaged in the story. What people were looking at was a clarity that didn’t match their romance of celluloid and its usual motion blur. I don’t think you can truly judge it unless you watch the whole story unfold. That’s when you see the benefits of it, because you are immersed in a way where your brain is operating at a slightly different level.” Perhaps referring
All well and good, but because of this film we’re waiting ages to see how Sherlock survives!
He does have nice blue eyes though.
Former Guy of Gisbourne Richard Armitage plays Thorin Oakenshield.
Splitsville! W e do love a bit of controversy here at SFX Towers, and nothing at the moment is more controversial than the question of how, exactly, a book as small as The Hobbit will be spread across three films. Some wail that there’s not enough material; others fear that there’ll be too much padding; others – the ones who’ve read every appendix and short story going – are convinced there’s more than enough action to go around. Here’s what we think
52
January 2013
Cate Blanchett returns as Galadriel.
How do we think The Hobbit could be split into three films?
could happen... but bear in mind that Peter Jackson could surprise us all!
An Unexpected Journey
Bilbo meets up with the Dwarves (a meeting which will probably take up a fair chunk of the first half, including songs) and they have adventures, including an unfortunate encounter with some wargs and a riddling competition deep under the Misty Mountains. As the film closes, our gallant band are heading into the
mysterious Mirkwood Forest – and we catch a glimpse of a hairy spider the size of a horse scuttling after them...
The Desolation Of Smaug
Spiders and elves await our heroes inside Mirkwood, and then once they leave we meet and get to know the inhabitants of Laketown. Gandalf heads off on a mission to learn more about a mysterious Necromancer. Arriving at the Lonely Mountain – after the possibility of
flashbacks showing how the Dwarves lost it in the first place – the dwarves and Bilbo wake up the dragon Smaug. Hellfire ensues. We end on Laketown burning.
There And Back Again
There’s a gigantic battle with Smaug that should take a while, plus an even lengthier siege between the Dwarves and the humans. Finally we come to the epic Battle of the Five Armies. Then our heroes – and us – can all go home again.
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscribe
the hobbit: an unexpected journey
Bilbo Baggins
The newcomer: Martin Freeman Hugo Weaving is back as Elrond (not L Ron Hubbard).
Do you feel the weight of expectation because the film hinges on you as the central character? I think it hinges more on Peter Jackson really! I don’t feel too much pressure, I really don’t. If I was in charge then I would be probably a bit more nervous. Well, I’d be very nervous; I’d be a shit director! No, I’ve done the best I can possibly do; I’ve been an actor for a while now and although I feel pressured to make it good, it’s never once occurred to me to worry about what people think in that way.
“The Dwarves are not a bunch of posh Elves on a quest – they’re a rugby team” to his own much-lauded role as the motioncaptured Gollum he continues: “I think it works particularly well for the interaction of CG characters and live-action characters.” The technology has moved on behind the scenes too. “When I played Gollum 12 years ago I would go back onto the motion capture stage at a later date and reshoot all of the scenes again to capture the physicality of the role,” explains Serkis. “This time around the performance capture is shot at exactly the same moment as the live-action actor. So Martin is performing as Bilbo, I’m performing as Gollum, the cameras are filming both. There’s no disconnect whatsoever. There’s no www.sfx.co.uk
delay or repetition, the technology we have allows the performances to be more truthful.” Like the Ring itself, which is only a small part of Bilbo’s first quest, Gollum’s role this time is much reduced; but Serkis thinks they may have missed one opportunity when they were deciding what to include in this December’s first instalment. “We should just make Gollum really hot. You know, he’s 60 years younger!” he jokes. “Let’s go after the teenage girl audience on this one.” The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey by New Line Cinema and Warner Bros Pictures will be released on Friday 14 December.
Did you look at what Ian Holm did in the Lord Of The Rings films? Yeah, it was fucking rubbish [laughs]! No, he’s a very good actor and it’s no surprise that what he does as Bilbo is very good. You just take what’s helpful, without being slavish to it. I attended to it, I watched and listened to it. If you see and hear a little bit of Ian Holm’s Bilbo that will be enough. It had to be my Bilbo. I couldn’t spend 18 months thinking, “How would Ian Holm react?” I had a flavour of him, Ian and I are quite a good match. But I was too busy worrying about just playing the part. Was it a new experience for you, doing all the green screen work? Yes, lots of tennis balls and tape for eye lines! Actually once you’ve done it a couple of times it’s just another form of storytelling. I didn’t think I would, but I kinda liked it. It’s pure, in a way – you’re using your imagination, like when you’re a kid playing war in the woods. There’s an interesting challenge in something like Bag End, when technology allows us to film the parts simultaneously: Ian’s in his own green screen set, we’ve all got earpieces in so we can hear each other. He’s in an exact replica, just two thirds of the size. It’s like rehearsing a play where the other actor actually isn’t there! What was the most challenging scene to film? Scene 88 took on a mythical proportion, because it was just endless shots of us running across the south island of New Zealand. We’re running away from wargs. It just seemed weeks long! In the film it will be exciting and scary but for us it was like, oh Christ, enough!
January 2013
53
The story behind the SF and fantasy of yesteryear
1 9 8 3
They were the unlikely green reptiles who took over the world. Jim McLauchlin traces their origins
I
n the immortal battle of the
lobster vs the turtle, the turtle finally won. Kevin Eastman is the co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But back in 1982, he was a 20-year-old comic book fanatic making a living by spending the summers in his native Maine cooking lobsters for the busy tourist season. Then a chance meeting with a creative partner and a turtle changed both his life and the pop culture landscape for all time. Eastman had tried selling some cartoons to a subversive, hippy-dippy New England magazine called Scat one autumn while the tourists were away. The staff there wasn’t interested in his work, but they thought Eastman might mesh well with another local cartoonist named Peter Laird. They gave Eastman his address, and the pair arranged a meeting. “I sent him a letter, cos that’s what you did in those days,” Eastman recalls. “I know — seems painfully slow by modern standards. But he wrote back and said, ‘Yeah, why don’t you come over and have a visit.’” Eastman and Laird quickly found that they spoke the same language. “When I walked into his studio, he had a framed, unfinished Jack Kirby pencil page up on the wall,” Eastman says. “I thought I was the biggest Jack Kirby fan on the planet, but he really one-upped me, and he had a piece of original art as well. We really hit it off from the word go. So we agreed to try and work together. We’d both pencil something, and later get together, and swap them and we’d ink each other.” Eastman headed back to his summer job working over a hot pot cooking lobsters. And by fall of 1983, the Lairds had moved to Dover, New Hampshire, a mere 20 minutes from where Eastman lived in Maine. And Laird was looking to rent a room.
76
January 2013
“He told me, ‘Hey, when you’re done cooking lobsters for the summer, why don’t you move into our spare room? We’ll form a little studio and work on selling our skills’,” Eastman says. The pair got to work, but saw very little in the way of success. “We sent out a lot of samples to Marvel, DC, everyone, and collected a lot of rejection notices.” Still, Mirage Studios was up and running. The name? It was an inside joke. “Mirage Studios was basically a mirage because it was in his living room,” Eastman chuckles. “But we wanted to sound bigger than we were.” Something bigger happened to them almost immediately.
from little sketches…
A scribbled-on piece of paper worth more than most…
In November of 1983, Eastman did a sketch late one night of a turtle standing upright, with a mask on and nunchakus in his hands. He threw it on Laird’s desk with a humorous little note saying, “Hey, here’s the next big thing, the ninja turtle!” Studio camaraderie took over from there. “He thought that was funny, and studios are always competitive, so of course he had to one-up my sketch, and I one-upped his, until finally I did these four characters in an action pose with different weapons with this cartoony lettering that said ‘Ninja Turtles’,” Eastman says. “He added in ‘Teenage Mutant’ and inked my pencils. And after that, literally the next day, as we didn’t have much distracting paying work going on, we resolved to come up with a story that told how these characters came to be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” The duo started the Turtles on a whim, but they had a template to follow: Dave Sim had been successfully selfpublishing Cerebus for over six years, and had already made quite a name for himself in the comics business. Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscribe
www.sfx.co.uk
January 2013
77
Violent, but in a kinda cute way.
“Since Dave had done Cerebus as this Barry Smith/Conan The Barbarian send-up, we decided to parody our favourite comics of the time,” Eastman says. The teenage mutants of X-Men and ninjas in Daredevil were coincidentally chart-toppers at the time, and that synergy played right into Eastman and Laird’s hands. “So we came up with a 40-page comic one-shot that we just hoped people would enjoy reading.”
coming up with the cash
Coming up with an entertaining comic was easy. Raising the money to print it? That was harder. But Eastman and Laird beat all the bushes: Eastman used $500 he got from an income tax return. Laird took $200 out of his bank account. Eastman put the arm to his uncle Quentin for a $1,000 loan. After scrimping, saving and turning over the couch cushions, the pair had scraped together just enough money to print 3,000 copies, and take out one ad in Comic Buyers Guide. Their brilliant business plan? To sell the book at $1.50 plus postage. If they were lucky, they might make enough for their efforts to split about $60 a page for writing, penciling, and inking the book. On 5 May 1984, Mirage Studios started selling copies of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 at a small comic convention in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. But some people took notice of the Comic Buyers Guide ad, and magic happened when Laird sent out a press release on the book that got picked up by the Associated Press and United Press International. Mirage’s phone started ringing off the hook. “We wound up doing interviews everywhere,” Eastman says. “Comic stores started asking to get it from their distributors, and suddenly we were part of the burgeoning direct market. We started off by thinking it’d take us 20 years to sell these 3,000 copies and make money back. It turned out to be a lot shorter than that.” In fact, in 25 days, the entire press run was sold out. Eastman’s response? “I went back to cooking lobsters. That’s what we do in Maine, y’know? That’s how we make our money in the summer! But orders kept coming in, so Pete called me and said we should do a second printing. We agreed to do a second one of 6,000 copies, and by the fall, we were getting calls from distributors saying ‘Hey, when’s issue 2 coming out?’ So in September of 1984, we said, ‘Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.’” Eastman and Laird hadn’t even set out to do a second issue, but they had accidentally created a cottage industry. Small-press black-and-white comics took the industry by storm in the mid-’80s, and the Turtles were at the forefront. Even Turtles copycats such as Adolescent Radioactive Black-Belt Hamsters and the Pre-Teen Dirty-Gene Kung Fu Kangaroos sprouted up.
“At the height there were about 3,000 licenses worldwide”
78
January 2013
A lark then, $71,000 now… The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles started on a humble sheet of typing paper. That paper is now worth $71,700. Heritage Auctions just sold the Big Bang of the Turtles for that princely sum in May. At a mere 8.5-by-11 inches, these turtles run about $766 per square inch. Eastman sold the art as part of a massive liquidation as he cleared out his home in Los Angeles in preparation for a move to Florida. Eastman was born and raised on the East coast of the US, and just felt it was time to get back to his roots. “I got rid of almost everything,” he says. “Our archives, which included one of every Turtles product, are now owned by [cable network] Nickelodeon.” So one well-heeled collector who remains anonymous now owns a piece of comic history. But fans can see it reprinted in IDW Publishing’s TMNT Ultimate Collection: Vol 1.
Despite being in black and white, the comic was a huge hit. Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscribe
teenage mutant ninja turtles
The one product they WOULDN’T license… Circa 1990 and the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, the Turtles were… everywhere. Eastman and Laird had connected with a megamarketing company called Surge Licensing, and there was
seemingly a Turtle on every product known to man. Well, except one. The Turtles crew actually had a condom offer, but Surge’s Mark Freedman declined it. Still, he mentioned
the idea to Eastman and Laird just for giggles. “Yeah, Mark pre-rejected that one, and it was just as well. Pete and I would have nixed it,” Eastman says. “A guy wanted to do glow-in-the-dark Turtles condoms that would even have a shell pattern on them. It wasn’t really age-appropriate.” Eastman said one other factor tipped the balance in his mind, too. “I wouldn’t exactly know how to explain that one to my mom.”
When pre-orders on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #2 came in at 15,000, Laird broke out the calculator. He called Eastman after doing the maths and made a fateful call. He told him, “You don’t have to cook lobsters any more.”
Evolution of the Turtle: lucrative.
Lobsters were the past. Turtles were the suddenly lucrative future. “For us, that was when the dream came true,” Eastman says. “We were officially doing comic books for a living.” By the end of 1985, Eastman and Laird had cranked out Ninja Turtles #2, #3 and #4. By #4, orders had vaulted to 50,000 copies. Things only got better. The world took notice, and a Turtles Saturday morning cartoon was on network TV in the USA by 1987. The licensing wheels starting rolling, and by 1990 and the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles feature film, the momentum was unstoppable. The film grossed over $200 million, and the Turtles were everywhere — on lunch boxes, tennis shoes, backpacks, trading cards, action figures, plush toys and god-knows-what-else. But Eastman and Laird kept a close eye on all the proceedings. “Peter and I saw everything, and had approval over everything,” Eastman says. “We had a studio of around about 20 artists creating most of the artwork that went on the packaging and so on.” Turtles mania ran rampant worldwide. It seemed no one knew just how big the brand was. “Everybody throws out these really dramatic numbers, then in the retelling, they get doubled and tripled over the years,” Eastman says. “To hear some people tell it, we have Saudi oil barons as our butlers. But at the height, in 1991-92, there were about 3,000 licenses worldwide. That might mean belt buckles in the US, belt buckles in Turkey and belt buckles for nine other territories. Then colouring books, action figures, apparel, and a lot of other stuff. It was crazy fun.” The impact of the Turtles ran deep. Laird once took a vacation to Brazil, and was part of a tour group deep in the Amazon rain forest. “We saw people who had very little contact with civilisation, who were living the same as they had done hundreds of years ago,” Laird says. “I saw a little boy, maybe six years old. He had a piece of cloth tied around his head like a sash, and he was waving a little stick like it was a sword. I asked the translator what he was doing, and he told me, without knowing who I was, ‘He’s pretending he’s a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.’ You really realise the enormity of what you’ve created at that point. It’s amazing that an idea could penetrate that far. It certainly wasn’t what we ever expected.” January 2013
Image © moviestore collection/rexfeatures (1)
the future is green
79
personal recollections of timeless sf
Treasury Editions Dave Golder, Online Editor
Like Wagon Wheels, my parents and the number 100, comics seemed to be bigger when I were a lad. Except that in some cases, comics were bigger. It wasn’t a mere memory trick. Some of them were huge. Y’see, I was lucky enough to grow up when Marvel and DC Treasury Editions were all the rage. There had been some before the mid’70s, and there were a few after 1982, but the heyday of the Treasury Edition coincided exactly with the time I fell in love with US superheroes and started devouring them like Cola Cubes. So, what were they? They were like the forerunners to graphic novels, only larger, slimmer, floppier and not quite as well bound. Despite some being both stapled and glued, the binding was so slapdash, pages would often crease and crinkle at the spine no matter how carefully you turned the pages. But that was all part of the charm. Modern cars might be sleeker and better built than some vintage banger, but they don’t have the same magic. Treasury Editions were generally 10 inches by 13 inches, just under double the usual size of a Marvel comic. Sometimes they contained reprints. Sometimes they contained all-new stories. They always contained comic art shown off in the best mass-produced format ever seen. The panels didn’t just seem larger; they seemed more vibrant, more alive and more thrilling. Better still, no adverts on the back! Instead, glorious artwork, often specially fact attack! commissioned. We really were being spoiled. Legendary comic artist Alex This was the format in Ross calls Treasury Editions, which Spider-Man battled “Hands-down my favourite Superman, and Superman form of entertainment that comics ever provided.” Muhammad Ali. This was The first ever DC/Marvel the format that has The collaboration came in Thing dressed up as Father Treasury Edition format – Christmas. This was the bizarrely it was an adaptation format that gave us Marvel’s of The Wizard Of Oz in 1975. The cover of Marvel Treasury Star Wars and The Empire Edition #18 – The Astonishing Strikes Back adaptations Spider-Man – was based on in the comic equivalent of the cover of the Wings album IMAX (sadly, Return Of The Band On The Run. Rudolph The Red-Nosed Jedi didn’t follow suit). Reindeer was another DC TE. I loved them. They felt Marvel Treasury Edition #22 special. But then again, I has a pin-up of the Daily loved it when UK Marvel Bugle offices, accompanied (under the editorship of Neil by the caption, “What would you do if you had an extra Tennant, no less) went all page to fill up and nothing to weird and produced reprints put on it?” in letterbox format. Maybe More wonderfully trivial it’s just that I like strangetrivia like this can be found at TreasuryComics.com. shaped comics.
see you next month! wednesday 12 december details on page 25 138
January 2013
Subscribe at www.sfx.co.uk/subscribe