21
tripwire
Editor-in-chief: Joel Meadows Associate Editor-Comics: Andrew Colman Contributing Writers: David Baillie, Ed Hipkiss, Gary Marshall, Peter Mann Contributing Artists: Andy Bennett, Tim Bradstreet, Howard Chaykin, Simon Davis, Dave Dorman, Garen Ewing, Duncan Fegredo, Henry Flint, Phil Hale, Jon Haward, Warwick Johnson-Cadwell, Michael William Kaluta, Joe Kubert, Roger Langridge, David Morris, Mike Mignola, Mike Perkins, Sean Phillips, Frank Quitely, Greg Ruth, Liam Sharp, Walter Simonson, Drew Struzan, Bryan Talbot, Dave Taylor, B en Templesmith, Chris Weston Sub-editor: Jack Ryder Design and layout: Joel Meadows Cover design: James Illman Thanks to Mark Chiarello at DC, Grant Morrison for his support over the years, Ben LeFoe, Brady Webb at Panini, Matt Hawkins at Top Cow, Paul Stephenson at PS Artbooks, Michael Moorcock, Guillermo del Toro, Bryan Fuller, Mark Verheiden, Joe Gordon and Richard Bruton at Forbidden Planet International Blog, Tom Spurgeon at Comics Reporter, Rich Johnston, Heidi Macdonald at the Beat, all the artists and writers who have contributed here, everyone who has ever contributed to or been interviewed in Tripwire, with a small tip of the hat to Andy Grossberg, for his assistance on the magazine from 2007 to 2012 and a very big thanks to James Cooper and Simon Teff, wherever they are now, without whom none of this would have existed
TRIPWIRE 21 Published by Tripwire Publishing Ltd, Flat 5 Crescent Lodge, 15 Sunningfields Crescent, Hendon, London, NW4 4RD, UK ©2013 Tripwire Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved. No part or parts of this magazine may be reproduced on any media without the prior permission of the Publishers and infringements may result in prosecution. All characters and affiliated material©2013 their respective creators and copyright holders. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the UK. paperback ISBN: 978-0-9571918-2-2 • hardcover ISBN: 978-0-9571918-3-9 www.tripwire-magazine.com
contents
Page 5 Foreword by Joel Meadows Page 6 Introduction by Mark Verheiden
Page 28 Covering all the bases Editor-in-chief Joel Meadows picks his 21 favourite covers on the magazine
Page 7 PHIL HALE
Page 36 DAVE TAYLOR
Page 8 JON HAWARD/ NIGEL DOBBYN
Page 37 MIKE PERKINS
Page 9 DUNCAN FEGREDO
Page 38 GAREN EWING
Page 10 Hell of A Subject The best of our Mike Mignola interviews over the years
Page 39 ANDY BENNETT
Page 13 MIKE MIGNOLA
Page 40 21 Years in pictures A selection of Tripwire’s photos including Grant Morrison, Michael Moorcock and Mike Carey
Page 14 Tripwire Milestones A list of key issues in the magazine’s 21-year history
Page 49 WALTER SIMONSON
Page 19 ROGER LANGRIDGE Page 20 DREW STRUZAN
Page 51 Valiant efforts Ed Hipkiss looks at the rise and fall and rise again of Valiant Comics
Page 21 HENRY FLINT
Pages 54-55 MICHAEL WILLIAM KALUTA
Page 22 FRANK QUITELY
Page 56 BRYAN TALBOT
Page 50 HOWARD CHAYKIN
Page 23 A League of His Own? Page 57 DAVE DORMAN The cream of our Alan Moore interviews over the past two decades Page 58 DAVID MORRIS Page 27 CHRIS WESTON
Page 59 21 Years of independence 21 years of Image Comics analysed by Ed Hipkiss
Page 63 SEAN PHILLIPS
Page 99 GREG RUTH
Page 64 LIAM SHARP
Page 100 21 years, creep DAVID BAILLIE names the 21 most important figures from 2000AD over the past 21 years
Page 65 Headline acts The 100 most cringe-making headlines lifted from Tripwire Page 69 Are companies making the most of Digital Comics? PETER MANN asks the question Page 72 WARWICK JOHNSON-CADWELL
Page 105 Creators we have lost Listing the 21 most significant comic figures who have died from 1992 to 2013 Page 109 From The Archive Review highlights taken from the magazine’s history
Page 73 TIM BRADSTREET Page 74 Reel life Andrew Colman picks his bad, indifferent and good comic book movies from 1992-2013
Page 127 On The Shelf A selection of classic graphic novel and trade paperback reviews lifted from Tripwire’s long-running GN reviews column plus ten new reviews of key books 2003-2013 just for this volume
Page 88 BEN TEMPLESMITH Page 89 57 channels and nothing on Gary Marshall looks at the influence of comic books on mainstream TV over the past two decades
Page 154 Making a feature The cream of quotes taken from two decades of Tripwire from a who’s who of comics and genre, including Brian Michael Bendis, Greg Rucka, Guillermo Del Toro, Peter Milligan and Jeph Loeb
Page 94 JOE KUBERT Page 95 SIMON DAVIS Page 96 The Right Profile? Joel Meadows takes a look at the phenomenon of celebrities writing comics
Page 165 Sailing the seas of fate The pick of Michael Moorcock quotes taken from Tripwire Page 167 Biographies
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foreword
his book nearly didn’t happen. In 2012, when we were preparing for our 20th anniversary, we decided to do a crowd funding campaign for Tripwire 20 through UK site Unbound. After a few months, we were unsuccessful and so we rejigged the project and renamed it Tripwire 21. In 2013, we put Tripwire 21 up on Kickstarter in another attempt to crowd fund the book. We got a little bit closer but we still didn’t meet our target. But in the intervening time, we had lined up distribution which gave the book that extra momentum it needed. Readers of Tripwire have had little time for editorials and so I shall try to keep this as short as I can. Apologies if it gets a little maudlin at times. It is more than a little scary to believe that it has been 21 years since we started this magazine. I was only 19 years old and we started it as just a bit of fun. The first few issues were very primitive, a few hundred copies photocopied at our local copy shop. But it only took a couple of years before we realised that maybe we had something here. We were beginning to get a reputation and future big-name creators like Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan and Frank Quitely were offering us their time. As the years progressed, and journalism and publishing became a career, I began to feel that we were actually doing something worthwhile and interesting. We interviewed the cream of comic creators from the US and the UK and we even took the plunge with a full colour monthly magazine in 2003, which was a bit of a disaster thanks to our wonderful newstrade distributor. We took a break after 2003 but came back with the first Annual in 2007, which was very well-received. So here we are at 2013 with a book that has taken a long time to put together. I had to go through the issues of Tripwire several times, to hopefully pick out the most interesting classic reviews and the choicest quotes from our features over the years. We did get a little bit of a reputation for upsetting creators but we were young and rather foolish, so we didn’t always know what we were doing. But we were also fiercely supportive of people we felt needed greater attention, so creators like Milligan, Morrison, Fegredo, Quitely and pretty much the entire Vertigo stable of the 1990s were spotlighted in Tripwire. No other magazine gave Vertigo so many cover features and I’d like to think that we played our part in helping to cement that imprint’s reputation as a purveyor of quality material. Also, the fact that we were UK based meant that our approach to comics was very different to the US magazines. We were irreverent, we were honest and we tried to approach our subjects in a more journalistic way than other places. So when I began to think about this anniversary book, it was important that we would reflect the magazine’s history and also that we would need to include brand new content in the book. It’s impossible to reflect every big trend of the past 21 years so we had to be selective. But we wanted to make sure that the new pieces for the book were up to the same high standards we had set in the magazine over all those years, so we brought a number of our regular writers to contribute to the book. TRIPWIRE 21 was intended to be the best thing that has ever borne the Tripwire name and to do justice to the legacy of the magazine, and hopefully it has done just that. We also have future plans and projects, so TRIPWIRE 21 isn’t intended as an epitaph to the magazine, but merely a marker for what we have done so far. 2013 sees a regular Tripwire digital edition and we have no plans to abandon print totally. If you have never read Tripwire, then with any luck, we have distilled its essence in these pages and if you are a regular reader of the magazine, then hopefully there’s enough here to satisfy your appetite for new material. I am very proud that we’ve managed to gather such an amazing list of artists to contribute to the book. TRIPWIRE 21 has been twenty-one years in the making but the journey isn’t over yet. Thanks for reading
Joel Meadows London/April 2013
Joel Meadows founded Tripwire back in 1992 and as well as being its editor-in-chief for the past 21 years, has also written about comics and related subjects for publications like The Times, Time Magazine, Empire, Variety, Independent on Sunday and Big Issue in The North. He is also a highly regarded portrait and urban landscape photographer. TRIPWIRE 21 5
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introduction
elcome to TRIPWIRE 21. If you’re like me – addicted to comics and science fiction and endlessly fascinated with the people who produce our favourite “stuff ” – then chances are this isn’t your first exposure. In which case you really need no introduction, so carry on. But if this is your first adventure with Tripwire, consider yourself lucky, because you’re getting (with apologies to Mark Millar) the kick-ass edition. Editor-in-chief Joel Meadows has chosen some of the best quotes and interviews from past issues, combined those pieces with new articles and some lovely art, and created a fascinating look back at the twenty-one year evolution of genre entertainment. Makes sense, because Tripwire was there for a good part of the crazy journey. I broke into writing comics in the late 1980s, which turned out to be a wonderful time for getting one’s proverbial feet wet. Books like Watchmen and The Dark Knight were coming from the majors, and new independent companies like Dark Horse were showing that it was possible for the little guys to compete with the big boys. There was an exciting, “anything goes” spirit in the air, and fans responded with amazing enthusiasm. It was a blast for me to write comics, but my first love was always film, and things weren’t quite as rosy there. Even with this amazing blast of new, exciting material, science fiction and especially comics were still considered bastard step-children in the worlds of film and television. I had meetings on projects where the fact that I had written comics was not only “not cool”, it was a sign of some sort of creative deficiency. Sometimes it got just plain bizarre – I had written the Lee Falk Phantom series for DC in 1988/89, but that credit was a distinct liability when I went in to discuss a possible Phantom film. I knew too much about the character (!) and refused to chuckle along when the executive dismissively referred to his own project as a second-rate Tarzan. Unfortunately, many executives still saw Adam West when you talked superheroes and Flash Gordon when you mentioned science fiction. There were notable exceptions – Richard Donner’s Superman, Star Wars, Blade Runner and a few others – but it took the Tim Burton Batman movie to prove there was a fan-base ready and eager for more serious and thoughtful takes on the legendary comic book characters. And it took a magazine like Tripwire to document and nurture these projects, taking a more journalistic approach. Not as angry as The Comics Journal or as silly as Wizard, but very much its own beast with a singular voice. Finding a new issue of Tripwire in my comic shop always brought a smile, because I knew I was going to learn about some new comic that had slipped by, or get to know a particularly inspired creator. I can’t remember when I first met Joel – it may have been while I was writing for Battlestar Galactica or Heroes – but I could tell immediately that I had found a kindred spirit. To paraphrase the old Hollywood joke, to succeed in show biz you need passion and sincerity, and if you can fake those, you’re good. Thing is, Joel does not fake his enthusiasm – he clearly loves what he does. His passion has fueled Tripwire, a forum to explore comics, film and the creators lucky enough to find work in one crazy field. I was a fan long before I became a professional, and I suspect I’ll still be a fan when the business is long behind me. And I hope there’s still a Tripwire, because I’m going to need something to read! Mark Verheiden Los Angeles/April 2013 Mark Verheiden’s credits including writing the films Timecop and The Mask, and writing/producing the television series Smallville, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Falling Skies and Hemlock Grove.
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PHIL HALE
TRIPWIRE 21 7
DUNCAN FEGREDO
Hell of a Subject In the history of the magazine, there have been a few creators we have championed regularly. We first interviewed Mike Mignola back in 1996, a few years after Hellboy began. But we revisited him every now and again and he is the comic creator we have interviewed more than any other in the twenty one years of TRIPWIRE. So for your reading pleasure, here’s a selection of quotes taken from our chats with the man himself over the years… “I’ve always been a big fan of old fashioned pulpy, horror fiction. It just got to the point where I needed a character to base these stories around.” – Mignola on why he created Hellboy, TRIPWIRE Volume 1 #14, Mid-summer 1996 “I consciously designed this character to be an old-fashioned good guy and so yes it’s ironic that he’s from hell” – Mignola on why he created Hellboy, TRIPWIRE Volume 1 #14, Mid-summer 1996
“I wanted to do an old-fashioned comic and I thought because of the comics I grew up reading, the greatest villains that need the least explanation, would be the Nazis” – Mignola on why he used the Nazis as villains in Hellboy early on, TRIPWIRE Volume 1 #14, Mid-summer 1996 “I’m in no hurry to do anything but comics and I’m in no hurry to do anything but Hellboy. I’ll do it as long as I can” – Mignola from TRIPWIRE Volume 1 #16, Spring 1997 “I feel like I’ve strayed off the folklore path a lot and I’m going to go back and forth. There are so many different things I want to do with Hellboy” – 10 TRIPWIRE 21
Mignola from TRIPWIRE Volume 1 #16, spring 1997 “I would hope that other creators pick it up and want to do something with some of the stuff I’ve set up. It was just a fun thing to hand over to other people and say ‘here, do whatever you want with it’. It’s been a delight to work with Pat [McKeown] but I don’t have the emotional commitment to it that I have for Hellboy.” – Mignola on Zombieworld, TRIPWIRE Volume 2#1, Sept 1997 “I don’t want it to sound as if I’m trying to get away from Hellboy, because all of this writing work just came up. I’m actually probably more enthusiastic about Hellboy than I’ve ever been. The only thing that I’ve got planned to illustrate is Hellboy. I finally
means. He would say to me: ‘I’ve got an idea for this costume.’ So he would describe it and give me his rough sketches. Then I would expand on it and next he would go to the costume designer who I suspect, ninety-nine per cent of the time, would look at what I’d drawn and throw it over their shoulder.” – Mignola on Blade 2, TRIPWIRE Volume 4#5 May 2001 “I want to do comics because they’re the one place where I can put my ideas on paper.”– Mignola on why he continues to work in comics, TRIPWIRE Volume 4#5 May 2001 “It was just time for me to do a project where I didn’t care if it sells or not. This is me saying ‘Here’s something I think is funny, I’m just going to throw it out there.’ With Hellboy it’s a safer bet and I thought ‘Well it’s time to shake it up a bit’.” – Mignola on The Amazing Screw-on Head, TRIPWIRE Volume 4 #11 Jun/Jul 2002
recently made a list of all the miniseries I want to do and it’s so damn long that I’ve got to get moving.” – Mignola on why he decided to write a number of projects at this time, TRIPWIRE Volume 2#9 Feb/ March 1999
“I’m still trying not to spend anytime really thinking about it. I’d almost rather not read the screenplay. Reading the new screenplay, the only things I winced at were the elements that were exactly like the comics.” – Mignola on whether a Hellboy film would ever happen, TRIPWIRE Volume 2#9 Feb/ March 1999
“Nothing goes away, it all gets thrown back into my head. There are certain miniseries there that are being scavenged, series that are never going to happen so I might as well go and pick out the good bits. My problem is that I make up too much stuff. I have six thousand projects floating around in my head.” – Mignola on recycling unused ideas, TRIPWIRE Volume 4 #12 Aug/Sep 2002 “It feels like I have won the lottery. I was content to have no involvement but Del Toro wanted it to be Mike Mignola’s Hellboy. So they wanted me. Del Toro’s Blade 2 was a warm-up for Hellboy. This film is being done because of Blade 2, that film gave Del Toro the greenlight, and if it didn’t greenlight then
“[I use enough reference] so that, by the time I finish the Conqueror Worm, I’ll be sick to death of drawing castles. Anywhere you see architectural features in this series is based on some reference. I’ve been stockpiling reference for this kind of stuff for years, so the biggest trick is going through all the material I’ve got and thinking, for example, that there’s a particular hallway I want to look at but I’ve got thirty-nine books that it could be” – Mignola on The Conqueror Worm, TRIPWIRE Volume 4#5 May 2001 “It’s hard to say what I did [on Blade 2]. Basically, I acted as Guillermo’s go-between to other people. I was ‘visual consultant’, whatever the hell that TRIPWIRE 21 11
Hellboy would never have been made.” – Mignola on Hellboy the movie from TRIPWIRE Volume 5#1, April 2003 “It was very odd, handing it over because I had imagined so much of the stuff as the way I would have drawn it. But certainly very quickly, as soon as someone suggested Duncan and as soon as Duncan was interested,I realised ‘Wow he can do a lot of stuff that I can’t do,’ so it has made writing it a real pleasure because there’s som much stuff that, as an artist, I wouldn’t want to draw or I couldn’t pull off. So it’s extremely liberating.”– Mignola on getting Duncan Fegredo to draw Hellboy, TRIPWIRE Annual 2007
“I think Guillermo and I, we worked very closely on the first one. I’ve worked very closely with him on the second one also. I’ve been in preproduction for two solid months with him. But my role is a little different. In the first one, it was figuring out how to translate Hellboy into a film. now that problem has been solved and I’m still there to do some really rough early design stuff but I am real busy trying to run everything else and ever since I saw Pan’s Labyrinth, I thought ‘You don’t need me.’ I don’t want to get in the way. Not that I had any doubts about Guillermo doing the first film but certainly after Pan’s Labyrinth,
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I’m just going ‘You do what you do.’ I had nothing to do with Pan’s Labyrinth. I want you to make THAT movie again’, so all I’ve been doing is whispering in Guillermo’s ear for the last couple of months. ‘remember Hellboy is your first post- Pan’s Labyrinth film? You set the bar pretty high’ so I’m just thrilled...” – Mignola on Hellboy 2, TRIPWIRE Annual 2007 “Every time I read something I go ‘ooh I want to do that!’ so there’s a lot. I feel like I’ve just scratched the surface of what I want to do.” – Mignola on why he continues to do Hellboy, TRIPWIRE Annual 2007
MIKE MIGNOLA
TRIPWIRE MILESTONES From 1992 to 2011, we published 55 issues of TRIPWIRE in print. In 2011 and 2012, we also put out three digital issues. So, as part of our 21st anniversary celebration, here’s a few of the milestones from the magazine’s history…
TRIPWIRE Volume 1#1 March 1992 Our first issue, on stapled A4. It was primitive but I was only nineteen when we put this together. Volume 1#2 Sep 1992 Spiked Milligan was TRIPWIRE’s first ever interview, with London-based writer Peter Milligan, where we managed to put his nose out of joint through something we had said in the interview. Volume 1#3 Summer 1993 The first Son of Drivel by Grant Morrison, where we began our association with him, was published. We had begun to get our irreverent reputation by this point. Volume 1#4 August 1993 This was our second interview with Vertigo UK editor Art Young but we also featured an exclusive Ian Gibson U2 caricature in our music section. Plus, it featured our first column by future superstar Mark Millar. Volume 1#5 November 1993 Our second opinion column, this time from Mark
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Millar (following Grant Morrison) and we also ran a right of reply from Peter Milligan for our interview from #2. The Milligan piece also features the very first photo I took for use in TRIPWIRE. Volume 1#6 March 1994 We debuted the Bisley/ Morrison Tapes, a two-part interview between Grant Morrison and Simon Bisley, where we wanted the creators to speak without the interference of a journalist. Volume 1#7 Sept 1994 The cover to this issue was a rejected image from The Invisibles so it was our first exclusive cover image, by Sean Phillips. Volume 1#8 Dec 1994 The premiere of On The Shelf, TRIPWIRE’s longrunning graphic novel and trade paperback reviews column. Volume 1 #9 May 1995 TRIPWIRE’s first Frank Quitely cover and our first chat with the man himself. It also features our first Garth Ennis interview.
Volume 1#10 Autumn 1995 Simon Jowett’s first …A Tragic Column appears. Volume 1 #11 Winter 1995 The first issue of TRIPWIRE to be distributed to the direct market via Diamond Comic Distributors. Volume 1#12 Spring 1996 Thanks to our relationship with both DC and Alex Ross, we got to interview Ross and run an exclusive preview of Kingdom Come. We also got an exclusive Nick Cave caricature from Frank Quitely. Volume 1#13 Summer 1996 TRIPWIRE gets a new logo and we get our first graphic designer in the shape of Michael Grover. Volume 1#14 Mid-summer 1996 Our first interview with Mike Mignola and our first Hellboy cover. Volume 1#16 Spring 1997 Our fifth anniversary issue had our very first full colour cover and we bumped our page count up to 48 pages too. It also featured Liam Bywater’s first Kicking Over The Statues column. Summer Special 1997 Our only issue in a comic format and the first time we interviewed Matt Wagner.
Volume 2#1 Sept 1997 Through our relationship with Chris Bachalo, we were able to run pencil character sketches of his work on Uncanny X-Men and it was also our first regular issue in the 48 page with full colour cover format. We also kicked off our coverage of the British independent comics scene. Volume 2#3 Dec 1997-Jan 1998 We premiered a new logo here and a new cover design. Volume 2#4 Mar-Apr 1998 In our Oni Press launch special, this was the first time we spoke with film director Kevin Smith. It also included our first interview with Frank Miller, about 300. Volume 2 #5 Jun-Jul 1998 The first time we interviewed Jim Lee, on Stormwatch and novelist-turned-comic-writer Greg Rucka. It was also the debut interview in TRIPWIRE with Alan Moore on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Volume 2#7 Oct-Nov 1998 Our Marvel Knights special, where we covered its launch and spoke to future Marvel head Joe Quesada for the first time.
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Special A Nov 1998 The first of two 99p priced slimmed down issues, this one focusing on Moore and O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It was intended to be an LOEG cover but we had a difference of opinion with O’Neill. Special B November 1998 The second 99p slimmed down issue took a look at Jim Krueger, Alex Ross and John Paul Leon’s Earth X series. Volume 2#8 Dec 1998-Jan 1999 The first time we interviewed Bryan Talbot, with this look at Heart of Empire. Volume 2#10 Apr-May 1999 TRIPWIRE’s first-ever music interview, with Brett Anderson from Suede Volume 3#1 May-Jun 1999 The first of our short-lived low cover priced monthly issues. Volume 3#2 July-Aug 1999 TRIPWIRE’s only foldout poster cover with a silver ink logo to tie in with the release of Star Wars Episode I ( we took some particularly bad advice from a clueless contact of ours).
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Volume 3#3 Aug-Sep 1999 TRIPWIRE’s only Preacher cover by Steve Dillon rather than Glenn Fabry too. Spring Special 2000 To test the waters for a new format, we put out this 48 page special just in the UK. It was the first pastiche cover we did and we republished it with a number of updated features for the US as Volume 4#1. This was also our first Alan Moore cover feature and also the first of our 10 Questions With…, a feature which looked at British independent creators. Volume 4#2 Nov 2000 Our first interview with Brian Michael Bendis and our first chat with Todd Mcfarlane. Volume 4#3 Dec 2000 The first of our Sounding Off columns, where we got people in the comics industry to talk about something they considered to be important. Brian Bendis kicked it off here. Volume 4#5 May 2001 TRIPWIRE’s one and only interview with legend Will Eisner and also our first chat with Howard (Black Kiss, American Flagg) Chaykin.
Volume 4#6 July 2001 Our first interview with Joss (The Avengers) Whedon. Volume 4#7 Oct 2001 The end of music coverage in TRIPWIRE after nine years and the inclusion of TV and film content thanks to Gary Marshall coming on board and Simon Teff leaving. Our first John (Planetary) Cassady chat too. Volume 4#8 Dec 2001 The debut of writer-columnist Peter Mann and our only Jim Steranko interview to date too. Volume 4#9 Dec 2001-Jan 2002 The debut of a new logo and our first Frank Miller cover feature. This was also our first chat with comics legend Joe Kubert (Sgt Rock, Hawkman, Tor). Volume 4#10 Mar-Apr 2002 Our first interview with Kyle Baker (The Shadow, Why I Hate Saturn). Volume 4#12 Aug-Sep 2002 This issue contained the first interviews we conducted with Paul Pope and Brian Wood (DMZ, Demo, Conan). TRIPWIRE x 10 2002 Our first book was our tenth anniversary edition
which was a 160 page extravaganza filled with reprints and lots of new material including art from the likes of Jock, Duncan Fegredo, Mike Oeming, Mike Mignola and many more. Volume 5#1 April 2003 The first of our disastrous full colour, 100 page monthly editions, it also included our first Mike Carey (Lucifer, The Unwritten) interview and debuted Studio Space with Phil Hale, a concept which led in 2008 to the book of the same name. Volume 5#2 June 2003 The first issue to be carried into WH Smiths in the UK, it also included our first interviews with Brian K Vaughan (Y The Last Man) and J.Michael Straczynski (Superman: Earth One). Volume 5#3 July 2003 The last issue of TRIPWIRE to be published until 2007. Annual 2007 After a four-year break, TRIPWIRE was back with a new format and the debut of lots of new features including our strip section STRIPWIRE and a thicker format. It was also the debut of the current logo. This issue also included our first Matt Groening (The Simpsons) feature and our first coverage of popular TV series Heroes.
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Annual 2008 Under a newly commissioned Tommy Lee Edwards Doctor Who cover, we covered TV and film in greater depth than ever before. We covered Futurama for the first time, interviewed storyboard artist Martin Asbury and profiled world-famous special effects company ILM. We also spoke to fantasy legend Michael Moorcock (Elric, Hawkmoon) for the first time. Superhero Special 2009 Testing the waters to see if a lower priced magazine could fill the gaps between annuals, this 80 page special interviewed Mark Millar and director Matthew Vaughn about Kick Ass the movie and also looked at the Watchmen film as well as the latest developments in Heroes.
Futurama ™ & ©2013 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved
Annual 2009 Our thickest issue ever, 156 pages long. It had our first ever interview with Stan Lee (Marvel legend). It also included our first chats with Iain (Rebus) Rankin and Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code) and a brilliant new Marvel image cover by Jeff Carlisle. We also spoke to award-winning painter Phil Hale. #54 2010 We returned to our regular numbering, in a way, and rather than make this Annual 2010, called it #54. Our first Futurama cover, we collaborated with Matt
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Groening, Bill Morrison and Fox to put this cover together. We also spoke to artist and filmmaker Dave McKean (Sandman, Mirror Mask) for the first time. Digital 0.01 May 2011 A real milestone for us because it was the first digitalonly issue we had published before. We covered the first Thor movie. Digital 0.02 July 2011 We had learnt from our teething mistakes and put an issue together the equal of any of our best print editions including a big X-Men First Class feature. #55 2011 The last print issue to date was graced with a brand new David Michael Beck Elric cover but it also included the first time we spoke to acclaimed British writer Christopher Fowler (Bryant & May, Roofworld) and to American comic writer Jason (Scalped, X-Men) Aaron. We also exclusively previewed Walter Simonson’s The Judas Coin hardcover. Digital Dredd special November 2012 We had dipped our finger in gingerly before this but this digital issue was our first in a year or so and it points the way to our future. Here we focused exclusively on the Dredd 3D movie.
ROGER LANGRIDGE
DREW STRUZAN
FRANK QUITELY
A League of His Own? After Mike Mignola, we have covered Alan Moore (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Watchmen) in TRIPWIRE more than any other creator or subject, so here’s a few choice quotes from the various interviews we’ve done over the years “With this series, I’ve looked back at the various mythologies that have provided models for such characters as the Flash to Hawkman and onwards but beyond that, I’ve also considered characters and archetypes created during the Victorian adventure-fiction of the 1900s.” –Moore on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, TRIPWIRE Volume 2#5, May/June 1998 “The Victorian period saw the beginnings of a variety of archetypes that have since become commonplace in the comic book medium. For example, I remember Stan Lee and Jack Kirby acknowledging that the Hulk was originally modeled after Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, while the Invisible Girl, as well as all invisible characters, were rooted in HG Wells’ Invisible Man, a book first published in 1897.” –Moore on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, TRIPWIRE Volume 2#5, May/June 1998 “When I was writing it, I became obsessive and decided that if there were any walk-on characters, they would all be from somewhere in the fiction of the nineteenth century. We mention Anna Kypo, also known as Nana, the murders in the Rue
Morgue and we’ve even got some characters from the Pearl, the pornographic magazine. It is a big toyshop because we can basically deal with any characters in literature.”– Moore on explaining the cameos in the first League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series, TRIPWIRE Special A, November 1998
“Comics these days are too divided up. There used to be an incredible range of stories, everything from Little Nemo to Bernie Krigstein’s Master Race. It was a rich field. It seems to me that we don’t really have entry level comics. It’s definitely true to say that we don’t have that many adult comics for people over thirty either, apart from TRIPWIRE 21 23
some Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly material.” – Alan Moore bemoaning the limited choices for readers at the time, TRIPWIRE Special A, November 1998 “I suppose that people could accuse me of wallowing in those elements under the guise of postmodernism and they’d probably be right. I don’t think that you get an unpleasant atmosphere after reading the stories. It’s more British attitudes that are being pilloried rather than the targets of those attitudes. What makes it funny is the absurdity of the Victorian vision, this idea of a supremacist Britain that ruled the entire world.” – Moore talking about some of the more contentious content in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, TRIPWIRE Special A, November 1998 “I was down in Wales minding the chickens during the time that the whole thing blew up. Jim Lee is a gentleman. He came over here, rather than do it over the phone or get an underling to do it, with Scott Dunbier to talk to me. …He did have trepidations because I think that they had both been worried about my
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response. When I got out of the cab at the station and he saw that I had my stick with me, he told me that I half expected me to beat him like a red haired stepchild.”– Moore talking about the sale of Wildstorm to DC, TRIPWIRE Special A, November 1998
“All you’ve got to do with these ideas is strip away some of the scar tissue that people have allowed to accumulate. Ideas don’t get old, it’s only us that get jaded.”–Moore on his approach to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, TRIPWIRE Special A, November 1998 “Everybody goes on about superheroes as if they’re characters. They’re not. They’re a name and a chest emblem. Someone like Batman, he’s an icon and back when you started reading the early DC, you’d have three stories in one issue of Detective and none of them would acknowledge that the others even happened.” – Moore on creating America’s Best Comics, TRIPWIRE Volume 2#10
in Grayshirt would be more at home in something like Chris Ware’s work, why not bring these devices into the mainstream?” – Moore on the future of mainstream comics, TRIPWIRE Vol 4#1, Jul 2000 “Atmospherically, you could talk about a ‘Vertigo’ book and people would know what you were talking about. I think that atmosphere is now old and it was something that was exciting and novel back in the eighties. It’s something that was avant garde twenty years ago and the avant garde is supposed to be a moving phenomenon. There’ve been some great pieces of work, having said that. Work like Garth Ennis’s Preacher, for example, but I can see why he’d want to pack it up this year because he’s being doing it a long time and there’s no concept that you could carry on indefinitely without it getting stale. If this is an illegitimate child of mine, it’s one that I’ve not acknowledged, doesn’t resemble me and I’ve not submitted to a blood test.” – Moore on being named the father of Vertigo, TRIPWIRE Vol 4#1, Jul 2000 “We could carry this on forever. I had a really perverse idea the other day, and I’ll probably never get around to doing it, but it would be funny to have one series set in the 1950s where you have Sal Paradise from Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and his crazy wired-up driver friend, Dean Moriarty, who of course is the great grandson of James Moriarty, or I could say that he is.”– Moore on future ideas for more League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series, TRIPWIRE Vol 4#1, Jul 2000
“I believe that the only real sustainable way out of our difficulties is to have a healthy comic mainstream, both financially and creatively healthy. If you’ve got a creatively healthy mainstream, then the money side will look after itself. The biggest problem is that we’ve ghettoised ourselves and comics is too small a medium to do that. You need to be able to show the wonderful beast that is comics in its entirety and although the devices that we use
“I feel good about this next century. I feel that we’re going somewhere in our minds and our minds are evolving into something. I think that imagination and the world of the imagination are at a premium in these coming times. People’s lives have become increasingly virtual and less material. The technological side is only a material echo of something that’s going on anyway. I don’t know when but probably in the first twenty years of this century, we’ll reach a point of information saturation.” –Moore on the future, TRIPWIRE Vol 4#1, Jul 2000
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The Simpsons ™ & ©2013 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved
From left: Alan Moore in The Simpsons and Silk Spectre in the Watchmen film disowned by the writer “We talk in general terms or if there’s a specific kind of location that needs describing. Kev [O’Neill] sent me this book, it’s the London that never was… London As It Could Have Been. There’s things in that that we wanted to work in. So we haven’t used as much of that as we’ve liked but we knew that we wanted this to be nothing like the real Victorian world.” – Moore on the settings of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2, TRIPWIRE Vol 4#11, Jun-Jul 2002 “I’m enjoying it. It’s horrific, this ridiculous war upon terrorism that seems to be George Bush and his oil company buddies taking the world to the brink of Armageddon to keep his approval rating up despite the dogs of Enron biting at his heels, which I think every liberal in the world is probably thinking ‘Dear God, let him be dragged down by this dreadful mess.”– Moore on the new century, TRIPWIRE Vol 4#11, Jun-Jul 2002 “Hollywood sets new lines upon what we can imagine about the past and this is dangerous because things like the war in Afghanistan are at the sharp end of that. Now that doesn’t give you a very high opinion of the broad mass of humanity but unfortunately world events do seem to bear it out.”–Moore on Hollywood, TRIPWIRE Vol 4#11, Jun-Jul 2002 “Kevin and I are big fans of British comics which always used to give away these useless toys — there was something charming about it… So we thought why don’t we give away some interesting things including a seven-inch vinyl single, which we were assured would be part of the packaging. The A-side is called Immortal Love — it’s a lovely doo-wop number, and the B-side is called Home With You, which is a bit like the theme tune to Fireball XL5. It has a 1960s science-fiction feel to it. I sing on the single but under an assumed name.” –Moore on the Black Dossier, TRIPWIRE Annual 2007 “One of the things about the 1910 story is that we’ve tried to keep true to the original Threepenny Opera, which means we’ve got characters bursting into song at various points through the narrative — it’s a musical, and I think it works quite well. I’ve had to write new lyrics for Mack The Knife, Pirate Jenny, What Keeps
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Mankind Alive and Mack’s Plea From The Gallows.”– Moore on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1910, TRIPWIRE Annual 2007 “It could easily take me another couple of years to finish because I want to get it right — there are a lot of important stories here, national ones, family ones, personal ones…I’ve already got the strap-line for it — ‘Jerusalem: where we go when we die’. To some degree the book will be my attempt at answering that question in an entertaining and, I hope, profound way. But we shall see – I’ve bitten off quite a big chunk of work here. I’m very excited about it. If I pull this off right, it will be monumental.”– Moore on his as of this writing yet to be published novel Jerusalem, TRIPWIRE Annual 2007
“The episode I’m in contains a very me-like rant at big entertainment corporations and, of course, The Simpsons does have quite a history of taking the piss out of both Rupert Murdoch and Fox in general. The decider, though, was that they’d had Thomas Pynchon on the show. If someone that exclusive can turn yellow, lose a digit and move to Springfield, then it’s good enough for me.”– Moore on appearing on The Simpsons, TRIPWIRE Annual 2007 “I autographed a load of stuff for the production team and in return they sent me a signed script from the episode I was in. Dan Castellenata signed once from himself and once from Homer with his left hand. Apparently, at some point, I’m also going to get a personalised Simpsons jacket which you couldn’t possibly wear outdoors without looking a complete cunt but, on the other hand, I can probably pose with it on in a mirror in a locked bedroom and feel kind of good about myself.”– Moore on appearing on The Simpsons, TRIPWIRE Annual 2007 “They know what my position is with this — I don’t want any money from it, I want the money to go to Dave Gibbons and I want my name taken off of it. If they do that I will not make a squeak about the film. If they go for some other novelty option like they did with V For Vendetta then I’m in for another year of excoriating them in every interview I do until they remove my name.”– Moore on Watchmen the film, TRIPWIRE Annual 2007
CHRIS WESTON
COVERING ALL
Here’s my twenty-one favourite covers from TRIPWIRE 1992-2013 with a little bit of explanation about our approach to each… TRIPWIRE Volume 1 #1 March 1992 Alright, it’s a very basic design and looking at it now, it does feel very primitive. But as the first magazine we ever put out, there is a certain stark simplicity to it despite the fact that we got the pun wrong (it should be Lobo’s Back rather than Lobo Is Back). Scary to think that I was only 19 at the time… TRIPWIRE Volume 1#5 August 1993 We used the single colour covers quite effectively and this cover, which features a now long-forgotten Vertigo series from Ted McKeever, The Extremist, was the first issue we published that had a spine. It also featured a proper interview with Vertigo UK editor Art Young and his assistant Tim Pilcher… 28 TRIPWIRE 21
THE BASES
TRIPWIRE Volume 1#10 May 1995 Kicking off our long association with Frank Quitely, I think this cover still stands up pretty well. We built up a reputation for championing new British talent and building rapport with creators and I am still proud of this issue and this cover. Although Quitely has obviously improved significantly as an artist since, you can still see his sense of composition here… TRIPWIRE Volume 1 #11 Winter 1995 This was the first issue to be carried by Diamond Distributors and the use of purple seemed to suit Death and Chris Bachalo’s artwork. Simple but I think it’s still a very effective cover especially as we didn’t have the luxury of colour to play with, so we had to be a bit clever… TRIPWIRE Volume 1 #13 Summer 1996 Another Frank Quitely cover but this issue premiered a new logo and we had got a graphic designer on board, Michael Grover, who designed the magazine for us. Quitely’s Flex Mentallo figure looks suitably menacing and visually interesting and Grover brought a new sensibility to the feel of the magazine… TRIPWIRE 21 29
TRIPWIRE Volume 1 #14 Mid-summer 1996 This issue was a bit of a landmark for us as well even though we didn’t know it at the time. It was our first Hellboy / Mike Mignola cover and interview and he was a creator we built up a rapport with that lasts to this day. Grover played around with the cover makeup and it looks like a more assured design than even its predecessor with the new logo fitting it better… TRIPWIRE Volume 1 #16 Spring 1997 This was a big issue for us for a number of reasons: it debuted our first-ever full colour cover, our first wraparound and it was our fifth anniversary issue. Frank Quitely’s cover, the third in the first volume, was a new 2020 Visions image that he painted specifically for us and there’s something comfortingly garish about this cover design that I still think 15 years later, still looks great, albeit in a slightly dated way… TRIPWIRE Summer Special 1997 Throughout TRIPWIRE’s two decades, we tried to experiment with format and this was the first attempt. Rather than an A4 magazine, we went for US comic format but it didn’t work for us economically so it was the only issue we put out at this size. But the Matt Wagner Mage cover, which I think was given to us, does still work 30 TRIPWIRE 21
visually although the design is a little bit cluttered and it’s fun to think that we published in the comics format, if only for one issue… TRIPWIRE Volume 2 #2 November 1997 We decided to carry on in the same format as the fifth anniversary edition and so started our 48 page with full colour cover. Here our Alex Ross Uncle Sam painted cover doesn’t quite work, as the images are a little faded, but I still like the Stars and Stripes in our logo, which was one of our first attempts to theme our covers… TRIPWIRE Volume 2 #8 December 1998 Speaking of themed covers, here we slapped a Union Jack to commemorate our Bryan Talbot Heart of Empire cover feature. We had premiered another new logo by this point, designed by Marc Laming and Grover had moved on so I was designing it again by this point. It’s a very British-looking magazine and Talbot’s image works well on this cover, and even now it still has its charms. TRIPWIRE Volume 4 #1 July 2000 With Volume 4, we really played with the pastiche idea. This was the first issue after our new graphic designer, Marcus Wray, joined us. Here we looked at Victorian circus posters as our inspiration and Moore seemed TRIPWIRE 21 31
to lend himself well as a subject. This is still one of my favourite covers as I think it still looks striking 12 years on… TRIPWIRE Volume 4 #2 November 2000 Continuing in our pastiche vein, this was the result of wandering around Sheffield to track down old British detective magazines and what’s interesting is how well we approximated the look of them. This was a very creative time for the magazine and again it holds up well even after all this time… TRIPWIRE Volume 4#3 January 2001 A nod to British Mighty World of Marvel magazine from the 1970s, we seemed to be on a bit of a roll here. Phil Winslade’s The Sentry cover worked a treat and Art Director Wray brought a real visual flair here. Again it was a very British approach, which was something we continue to be proud of… TRIPWIRE Volume 4#5 May 2001 The last of the pastiche covers picked here, we got to do our nod to Mignola’s Hellboy covers. Again it was a fairly simple concept but it was fun and again I like to think that it still looks pretty good. It’s hard to put a bad cover together using Mignola’s image considering how great his compositions are… 32 TRIPWIRE 21
TRIPWIRE Volume 4#9 December 2001/ January 2002 After a run of covers with unique designs, we decided that it made more sense to have a consistent logo. I have picked this cover because it was very hard to get decent images from DC at the time but I picked a simple image which really works. This also was one of our biggest selling issues ever… TRIPWIRE Volume 4#10 April 2002 This cover was influenced by the work of design legend Saul Bass and I like the graphic look that we achieved using Sean Phillips’ image. I think it still stands up. TRIPWIRE Volume 4#11 Jun/July 2002 My friend Tim Seelig put this image together, where we superimposed Alan Moore’s head onto an Edwardian photo and it’s another cover where we tried to subvert the medium to some success. Moore gave us a few of our best cover moments… TRIPWIRE Volume 5#3 July 2003 Part of our short-lived full colour monthly run, we experimented with photo covers and this Hulk photo cover, which tied in with the disastrous Ang Lee movie, still does what it was supposed to do. I still think we were ahead of our time doing a comics and genre newstrade magazine… TRIPWIRE 21 33
TRIPWIRE Annual 2009 2009 saw a lot of Obama poster pastiche images but I like to think that ours was one of the best. Jeff Carlisle did a magnificent job on the image and everything works to complement the image. Apparently Marvel weren’t happy with this cover but I can’t understand why. It’s a celebration of why Marvel movies have a certain kind of cachet… TRIPWIRE Annual 2010 This image was commissioned through Fox and it made me smile when we got it in. Drawn by regular artist Bill Morrison, the idea that we got to run a new Futurama image on the magazine is something that I am still very proud of. It showed that we continued to try to create a magazine like no other out there, and that we took care and consideration when thinking about things like our cover designs…
Futurama ™ & ©2013 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved
TRIPWIRE Annual 2011 We commissioned our friend, the very talented David Michael Beck, to paint us this brand new Elric image to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Moorcock’s iconic character. I was happy that we got to show off Beck’s abilities to a wider audience hopefully and despite the fact that this may be the last print TRIPWIRE ever (this anniversary book doesn’t strictly count), I think we went out in print on a high…
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And here’s some rejected cover designs for a few issues of TRIPWIRE over the years. Many of the covers go through lots of different permutations before we hit on the one that works but it has been very interesting to go back through the TRIPWIRE digital archive to see the designs I threw out.
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MIKE PERKINS
GAREN EWING
ANDY BENNETT
21 YEARS IN
PICTURES Over the past 21 years, we have built up quite a library of photos of comics and genre figures. It was thanks to TRIPWIRE that I got interested in photography and decided to take it a bit more seriously. So here is a small selection of some of the photos contained in TRIPWIRE’s photographic archive. All of these photos were taken by me‌
Grant Morrison (The Invisibles, Batman Inc) at UKCAC in London way back in 1995
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Award-winning portrait artist Phil Hale at his studio in East London in 2009
Andrew Colman (left) and Gary Marshall (right) on the Tripwire table at Bristol Comic Expo 2008, where we launched the Studio Space book
Comic writer and artist Ted Naifeh (Gloomcookie, Courtney Crumrin) at Wonder Con in San Francisco in 2009
Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, Monty Python) at San Diego Comic Con in 2009
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Above: Dave McKean (Sandman, Mirror Mask) at his studio in Kent in April 2010
Above: Chris Weston, artist on The Twelve and 2000AD, at his studio in Eastbourne in Sussex in November 2011
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Christopher Fowler (Bryant & May, Roofworld) in his flat in London in February 2011
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Clockwise: Fantasy legend Michael Moorcock in St James’s in London in July 2011; Mike Carey (The Unwritten, Felix Castor) in East Finchley, London; Roger (The Muppets, Snarked) Langridge at Bristol Comic Expo in May 2012 and director Guillermo del Toro in Covent Garden in London in April 2009 (Pacific Rim, Pan’s Labyrinth)
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Scottish writer Grant Morrison at New York Comic Con in October 2012
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Alan (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Watchmen) at Gosh Comics in London in July 2010
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Author Ian Rankin (Rebus) at Waterstones in Leadenhall Market City of London in December 2012
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Actor Karl Urban (Dredd 3D, Star Trek) in London in August 2012
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WALTER SIMONSON
HOWARD CHAYKIN
VALIANT EFFORTS
ED HIPKISS takes a look at the rise, fall and possible rise again of Valiant, the company that was created to rival Marvel and DC in the mainstream comics market back in 1992
B
ack in 1992 we saw fledgling publisher Valiant, along with Image Comics, become the first genuine challengers to Marvel and DC Comics’ monopoly of the comics industry. It’s easy to forget now just how big this publisher was in the early to mid 90s. Founded in 1989 by former Marvel Editor-In-Chief Jim Shooter along with Steven J Massarsky, and heavily financed by Triumph Capital, Valiant started out publishing bland computer game spin offs. Hardly the stuff from which empires are built. However with the announcement that they had secured the rights to three of Gold Key Comics’ (a comics publisher from 1962 to 1984) characters – Magnus Robot Fighter, Solar Man Of The Atom and Turok Son Of Stone, they were able to bring to fruition their original plan – to create a shared universe with their own characters similar to Marvel and DC. At the time, the comics industry was going through a phase of artwork being given a greater emphasis than story, and it was by taking the opposite approach of concentrating on characters and story telling that Valiant began to achieve the popularity that would briefly make them the third largest publisher in the United States; almost matching DC Comics in terms of market share. Launching first Magnus, then Solar in their own series gave Valiant the chance to slowly build what would become the Valiant Universe from the ground up. Magnus introduced the first original character Rai, the spirit guardian of 41st Century Japan, as a back-up feature in issues 5-8 before giving him his own series in March 1992. But Rai was not the first of Valiant’s “original” heroes to be launched into their own title. That accolade went to Harbinger in January 1992. Harbinger followed the exploits of a group of teenage outcasts with special powers, written by Jim Shooter and illustrated by David Lapham. In many ways, Harbinger was the template for what would become the television series Heroes nearly 15 years later. Issue #1 would go on be named “Collectable of the decade” by industry magazine Wizard.
What followed a month later in February 1992 would prove to be Valiant’s most enduring character – X-O Manowar. With the high concept of “Conan gets the Iron Man armour”, the series follows the exploits of Aric of Dacia, a Visigoth, who while fighting the Romans is taken prisoner by aliens. He eventually escapes, taking a suit of sentient armour and its control ring with him. Unfortunately, 16 centuries have passed on Earth due to the effects of time dilation from travelling at the speed of light, and Aric is now a man out of time with an advanced suit of alien armour. Valiant started many initiatives and innovations. Both Magnus and Harbinger offered coupons in their early issues that, once collected and redeemed, could be sent away for a bonus “zero” issue. Rather than have the traditional origin story in the first issue, these zero issues covered important character moments or plot points prior to the start of each series. Valiant used them effectively as both events (Rai #0 was presented as the bible for the Valiant Universe’s entire timeline) and as pre-cursors for new series (Archer and Armstrong #0 presented the characters origins ready for the launch of their series during the Unity storyline). Summer 1992 saw the first company-wide crossover, called Unity. By this point, Valiant had 6 monthly titles, back issues of which were now highly sought after and expensive. Whilst characters had appeared occasionally in each others books, there were still 2 distinct timelines – Magnus and Rai based in the 41st Century, Solar, Harbinger, X-O Manowar and Shadowman based in the present day. Unity was an attempt to tie everything together and have all the characters interact. Valiant used the event to launch an additional 2 titles: Archer & Armstrong who had appeared in their zero issue a month earlier, and Eternal Warrior which covered the adventures of Armstrong’s Immortal brother Gilad. Unity also launched with its own zero issue as part one of the crossover and was offered free to readers. The old practice of “give them the first hit free then put up the price” working successfully.
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Shooter (centre) at the Valiant offices in the 1980s After Unity, it appeared the only way was up for Valiant. Aside from one major setback. Jim Shooter was forced out of the company with Bob Layton replacing Shooter as Editor-In-Chief. Shooter’s removal inevitably meant changes to the overall vision for the company and sadly in the long term these appear to have done them more harm than good. In summer 1993, Valiant and Image Comics announced that they would crossover their characters in a series called Deathmate. On the face of it, the two hottest publishers in town joining forces was an exciting move. However the more practical realities of this pact would cost Valiant dearly. Image at the time were notorious for publishing books late, so making each book self contained and colour coding them rather than numbering them so that each one could be read in any order appeared to be a way of giving them some leeway. But although the two books published by Valiant (Blue and Yellow) shipped on time, the 2 Image books (Black and Red) were so spectacularly late that most readers had lost interest by the time they saw the light of day. Retailers were left with piles of unsold and unreturnable comics. Whether this is the event that caused the collapse and end of the early 1990s comic boom is open for debate, but there is no doubt that sales of Valiant’s books, in common with most of the industry at the time, declined sharply afterwards. Having made a small fortune off their investment, Triumph Capital decided to pull out of Valiant and instructed Massarsky and Layton to sell the company. The eventual buyer was computer game company Acclaim who paid $65 million to acquire Valiant, a company that by this point was valued at $30 million. With some new investment in place, Valiant cancelled 8 of the books in their line and launched a new initiative called “Birthquake” to try and bring sales back up on the remaining 10. What Birthquake amounted to was to pay big money for big name creators such as Ron Marz, Bart Sears, Jackson Guice and Dan Jurgens to take over some of the books and bring in new readers. What actually happened was to alienate existing readers whilst failing to attract new ones. In short, Valiant had tried to do what
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everyone else was doing rather than concentrating on what had set them apart in the first place – emphasizing the characters and their shared universe rather than the creators. Valiant started losing money, staff started being laid off, and with a group of big name writers and artists on hugely expensive contracts that they could no longer justify paying, the decision was taken to cancel all the titles and relaunch everything from scratch. What became known as “VH2” was instigated by new Editor-
In-Chief Fabian Nicieza, who had been a former editor at Marvel and had written several titles for them including New Warriors and X-Men. VH2 was a re-imagining of the characters from the original Valiant universe with many vastly different from their original versions. For example uber-cool hitman Ninjak was suddenly a teenager fighting demons that came to life from computer games. In addition to these, several new series were launched such as Troublemakers and Quantum & Woody. The relaunched Valiant debuted in 1997 with sales figures below where their original books had ended the previous year. Although many of the new titles were well written, they never captured the imagination of readers the same way the original books had, perhaps lacking the clear direction of the original line. Acclaim found success developing some of the Valiant characters into computer games – most notably Turok in Turok, Dinosaur Hunter and Turok 2: Seeds of Evil. The games did not help sales on the comics and eventually Acclaim had had enough. Having already lost a lot of money on the Birthquake initiative, they pulled the plug on the entire VH2 line; deciding to concentrate on mini-series and one-offs instead. Most staff were laid off and those remaining relocated to Long Island where Acclaim was based. Nicieza resigned 4 months later. In 1999, an attempt was made to tie the 2 versions of the Valiant Universe together in the mini-series “Unity 2000” which featured the return of Jim Shooter as writer along with Jim Starlin of Warlock and Thanos fame as artist. But only 3 issues of the 6 planned were ever published before Acclaim decided to cease publication on all their titles. No new issues were ever released, and the company that was voted Diamond Distribution’s “Publisher of the year” in 1993 and that had once challenged Marvel and DC’s supremacy was gone, seemingly forever. After a series of expensive flops and having lost several computer game licences, Acclaim finally filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in 2005. After a lengthy legal battle, the rights to the Valiant characters were finally purchased in 2007 by a group led by Jason Kothari and Dinesh Shamdasani – both fans of the original Valiant. Three collections containing early issues of the original Valiant series were produced with Jim Shooter writing a new 8 page story for the X-O Manowar and Harbinger volumes. Shooter was appointed Editor-In-Chief of what was now Valiant Entertainment in 2008. A new line of comics were promised but what looked to be a happy ending soon turned sour. The copyright on the 3
Gold-Key characters that had helped start the Valiant universe had reverted back to the holders long ago, and with Dark Horse Comics reprinting the original pre-Valiant material in archive editions they took the logical next step to try and publish new material. Shooter was offered and accepted the opportunity to write new material for Magnus, Solar and Turok at Dark Horse. Valiant Entertainment sued him for breach of contract. In August 2011, former Marvel CEO Peter Cuneo invested in Valiant and joined the board as chairman. Plans began in earnest to revive the original Valiant characters. In 2012 plans became reality with “The summer of Valiant”. 4 books were relaunched with one new title per month, beginning with X-O Manowar in May, followed by Harbinger, Bloodshot and finally Archer & Armstrong. Although these comics were all fresh starts as more than 20 years had now passed since the original launch, all the books remain close to their original versions and so far have been a great success. Like the original Valiant, the new Valiant have pioneered several new programs – most notably the “Pullbox Variant”. This is an incentive to readers to reserve or pre-order the comics with their retailer by offering them a different, exclusive cover to certain issues. X-O Manowar #1 also saw the world’s first “talking” comic book cover as a special variant – now regularly reaching triple figures on the back issue market. The early signs for the new Valiant are encouraging, clearly having learned the lessons from the slow build of the original universe. However more recent decisions suggest that success may have started to go to their heads; whilst initially staying faithful to their original concepts, they seem to have been playing fast and loose more recently. Doctor Mirage has undergone a sex change, while Quantum & Woody are set to return not as estranged friends, but estranged brothers. Time will tell if these changes are logical or pointless. In a case of history repeating, Valiant was recently voted “Small Publisher of the Year” by Diamond Distribution. “Publisher of the Year” award inexplicably going to DC, who, other than copying Valiant’s pioneering Zero Issue initiative for their entire line and alienating several of its writers offered little in 2012. While its doubtful Valiant will ever be the number 3 publisher again, the return of a company that put character and storytelling first is something to be celebrated, admired and supported.
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MICHAEL KALUTA
MICHAEL KALUTA
BRYAN TALBOT
DAVE DORMAN
DAVID MORRIS
21 YEARS OF
INDEPENDENCE
ED HIPKISS analyses the history of staunchly independent comics publishing house Image, who began life as a collective formed by creators who wanted to make their own mark on the comics industry and have now become one of the most influential houses in modern comics ing at Marvel. Having made a concerted effort to market their top artists (most notably Todd McFarlane & Jim Lee as well as Liefeld) ahead of some of the most instantly recognisable characters in their library, there was no immediate suggestion that this was anything other than a brief side project. Until Todd McFarlane got involved. McFarlane had revitalised sales on The Amazing Spider-man along with David Michelinie, but had grown tired of having no input on the direction of the title. He eventually succeeded in persuading Marvel to give him his own book as both writer and artist; the result was the 1.7 million selling Spider-man #1 in 1990. Recently married and with the birth of his first child, he decided to take a break from comics and left Spider-man with #16 in late 1991. With the difficulty he’d had in persuading Marvel to let him have greater control still fresh in his mind, McFarlane, a close friend of Liefeld, spied an opportunity. With Liefeld becoming increasingly disillusioned with Marvel over the royalty payments he was receiving for use of
I
n 1992 an event took place that would forever change the face of comics. Yes, Tripwire first appeared but garnering slightly less attention was the formation of Image Comics – the largest independent comics publisher in the US. The beginning was innocuous enough. A small independent publisher called Malibu announced plans to publish a 3 part series by Marvel wonderkid Rob Liefeld ; described by comics magazine Speakeasy in 1991 (April Issue #119) as “the best thing since – well, perhaps not sliced bread, but Arthur Adams at least”. Liefeld was given his break taking over the lowest selling of the then 4 X-men books The New Mutants with carte blanche to revitalise it. Introducing characters such as Cable, Shatterstar, and Deadpool, Marvel felt confident enough to bring The New Mutants to a natural conclusion with issue #100 and allow Liefeld to take the characters in a new direction. The result was the 3.9 million copy selling X-Force #1, and it was off the back of this that Liefeld felt confident to test the waters with Malibu. The result was the superhero team Youngblood. This in and of itself wouldn’t have set the alarm bells ring-
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his characters and artwork, he and McFarlane decided to go it alone and form their own company, Image. However they knew for Image to succeed they would have to target more of Marvel’s bankable artists. With Erik Larsen between assignments (ironically, he had replaced McFarlane on both Amazing Spider-man and Spider-man) and Jim Valentino the writer and artist of Guardians of the Galaxy and a longtime friend of Liefeld’s the number of creators grew to four. However, they had a much bigger target in sight... Jim Lee was Marvel’s golden boy. Having worked exclusively for the publisher for nearly his entire career he had taken over Uncanny X-Men – Marvel’s best selling title. Despite selling well before he arrived, his dynamic artwork saw sales double within a year and nearly quadruple within another 6 months. Marvel moved Jim Lee with longtime X-men writer Chris Claremont onto a new book. X-Men #1 (1991) sold 8.1 million copies and to this day is the best selling comic of all time. Liefeld and McFarlane knew if they could persuade Lee to join them they would have effectively removed the entire tier of top creators at Marvel. Lee agreed, bringing along with him his studio mate Whilce Portacio, who had taken over from him on Uncanny X-Men, and Marc Silvestri who Lee himself had replaced on Uncanny and who was now the artist on the solo Wolverine book. Together the seven creators announced the formation of Image Comics. Almost immediately this new company was dismissed as a flash in the pan, with many predicting they wouldn’t last a year, and certainly the initial signs were not good. Youngblood #1 arrived first in April 1992 to huge sales but poor reviews. The general consensus seemed to be that it was badly written; the abrupt ending in order to split the book into 2 stories – one for the “home” team, another for the “away” team – not helping the flow. Issue #2 didn’t fare much better - introducing the character of Prophet who appeared to have an origin stolen in its entirety from Captain America. The perceived lack of attention to story was one thing, but with horrible delays to all of its titles it looked like the seven Image founders were seriously out their depth. Youngblood itself, initially touted as a 3 issue mini-series, wasn’t concluded until the fifth issue arrived (the success in terms of sales meant Youngblood becoming an ongoing series was the obvious move)
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IMAGE’S BACKBONE Spawn has run since the company’s inception and despite not selling anywhere near what it did in its heady early days, still has a solid following in July 1993; some 15 months after Issue #1 shipped. But Liefeld was far from the only culprit. Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon launched in June 1992 as a three issue series but by the end of the year only 2 issues 4 months apart had seen the light of day. Marc Silvestri’s Cyberforce#1 arrived in October 1992. Issue #2 did not turn up until March 1993. Todd McFarlane’s Spawn (6 issues in 8 months) and Jim Lee’s WildC.A.T.S. (3 issues in 5 months) were positively punctual by comparison. The Image 7 quickly became the Image 6. Whilce Portacio opted not to join the initial launch due to family illness. His proposed book Wetworks was finally published in 1994 and the rights to Wetworks were sold to Jim Lee under his Wildstorm imprint. Image’s success led several of the founders to quickly set up their own imprints and expand their portfolio of books. Marvel Comics once more became the whipping boy as, unable to illustrate more than 1 book per month, they searched for talent elsewhere. Having lost their top tier of creators others were promoted to illustrate the books they had left. Many of these in return were quickly poached. McFarlane, for example, gave up art duties on Spawn and approached Greg Capullo, Liefeld’s successor on X-Force, to take over. But the Image founders were also searching out talent on their own, as Liefeld’s Extreme Studios, Lee’s Wildstorm and Silvestri’s Top Cow all mounted talent searches. The likes of Jeff Matsuda, Brett Booth, Scott Clark, Joe Benitez and Michael Turner all broke into comics through these initiatives. Image quickly expanded by offering other creators the opportunity to join them. Of this second wave many were axed as quickly as they started; not finding the success of the initial books. The likes of Al Gordon and Jerry Ordway’s Wildstar, Mike Grell’s Shaman’s Tears and Larry Stroman’s Tribe all fell by the wayside. But there were great successes as well, most noticeably Sam Kieth’s The Maxx which quickly became a highly successful animated series on MTV and featured an issue guestwritten by the legendary Alan Moore.
Indeed, it was Alan Moore that influenced a lot of the early image books. Todd McFarlane approached several writers that he admired to write an issue of Spawn for him to illustrate. The first of these was Moore which led to more work with him down the line, not only with Mcfarlane but also with Liefeld and Lee. It also led to Moore writing 1963, a wonderful parody / homage of early Marvel comics. But it was not just Moore and Kieth’s influence that led to a diversification in the Image line. Jim Valentino, who had enjoyed success with his Shadowhawk series about an HIV positive vigilante, stepped back from illustrating his own work and sought out books to bring to Image under his Shadowline imprint. Lee followed suit with his Homage Comics imprint bringing several books including Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise and Alex Ross, Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson’s Astro City to the publisher. It looked as though not only was the publisher diversifying, but in doing so had also defied the critics who told them they were doomed to failure. And then it all started to go wrong... In 1996 Marc Silvestri removed his Top Cow imprint from Image and set up as a separate publisher. While Silvestri initially refused to go public with his reasons for doing so, it quickly became apparent that there had been a falling out with one of the other Image founders. Regardless of the critical perception of the books he was publishing, Rob Liefeld’s Extreme Studios titles were selling well. Prophet was particularly popular due to the hiring of veteran writer Chuck Dixon and latest art sensation Stephen Platt; another one poached from Marvel. The accusation appeared to be that Liefeld was now attempting to poach creators from Silvestri’s studio. In addition to this,
Liefeld had also begun publishing books as a separate publisher – Maximum Press – in addition to Image. Several of the Image founders were unhappy with this and felt he may even have been using his profile and status as CEO at Image to promote this separate company. A meeting was called where the other 5 Image partners discussed removing Liefeld from the company. Liefeld subsequently resigned and gave up his share in the company in September 1996. Silvestri returned to the company. Then in 1999, Jim Lee announced his intention to sell the rights to all of his creations to DC Comics and subsequently left Image. It’s interesting to speculate on what might have become of Wildstorm had Lee remained with Image. At the time of the sale to DC, Lee had just announced the foundation of the ABC (America’s Best Comics) Imprint with Alan Moore writing the 5 books that would form it (Tom Strong, Promethea, Top Ten, Tomorrow Stories and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Despite Moore’s misgivings having vowed never to work for DC again in the wake of the rights issue over Watchmen, he agreed to Lee’s proposal that any money owed would be paid by Lee personally so that he didn’t have to work for DC. Ultimately disputes over DC’s handling of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Tomorrow Stories saw Moore reduce and ultimately end input into ABC, and take League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (to which he retained the rights) elsewhere. Moore was not the only one to suffer. The Authority saw changes to Mark Millar and Frank Quitely’s run on the book and an entire relaunch of the book by Brian Azzarello and Steve Dillon cancelled in light of the events of September 11th 2001. The 21st century has seen Image continue to diversify its output and challenge its readers. The Image partners expanded to 5 in 2008 when Robert Kirkman became the first non-founder to be made a partner. Responsible for hits such as Invincible and Super Dinosaur, Kirkman is best known for The Walking Dead with Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard which recently passed its 100th issue and is now a highly successful TV show regularly posting record breaking viewing figures and recently finishing its third season. More recently, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have brought their successful partnership at Marvel’s Icon imprint to Image in the shape of Fatale, their noir / horror mash-up to great acclaim. Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson brought their new series Happy! to Image, and Greg Rucka and Michael Lark are shortly bringing Lazarus to the publisher. Lazarus is described by Rucka as “The Godfather meets Children of Men. Hard sci fi in dystopian future, the main character gets hurt a lot, gets up and keeps coming at you”. And 20 years brings things full circle with the return of Rob Liefeld’s creations to Image. Although Liefeld himself returned to the publisher in 2007, 2012 saw a full return for Glory, Supreme (including the final unpublished Alan Moore script), Bloodstrike, another return for Youngblood this time written by screenwriter John McLaughlin, and the pick of the bunch Prophet, light years away from its 1990s predecessor and described by writer Brandon Graham as “fucking future space Conan-ish”. So Happy Birthday to America’s third largest comics publisher!
THE NEW FACES OF IMAGE Books like Fatale, Happy!, Morning Glories and Thief Of Thieves (clockwise from top, overleaf) symbolise the current ethos of Image Comics
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SEAN PHILLIPS
LIAM SHARP
HEADLINE ACTS Over 21 years, TRIPWIRE has been responsible for some pretty cringeworthy headline puns. So we have sat down and picked out the one hundred worst offenders in chronological order… Spiked Milligan (interview with Peter Milligan, Volume 1#2, Sep ’92) Malice in Chains (cover strap for review of The Extremist#1, Volume 1#4, August ’93) Automatic For the Steeple (review of Jesus & Mary Chain’s The Sound of Speed, Volume 1#4, August ’93)
Ellis’ Ire Land (review of Ruins#1 and Doctor Strange#80, Volume 1#10, Summer ’95) Sunday Mourning (review of Death The Time of Your Life#1, Volume 1#11, Winter ’95) Better The Devil You Know (review of Hellboy Wake The Devil#1-2, Volume 1#13, Summer ’96) On The Wayne (Review of Batman 530-531, Batman Shadow of The Bat 50-51, Batman Black and White#1, Volume 1#13, Summer ’96)
They’re Only In It For The Mummy (review of Scarab#1, Volume 1#5, November ’93)
Robin us Blind (review of Nightwing #1, Volume 1 #14, Mid-summer ’96)
Bog Standard (review of Swamp Thing#140, Volume 1#6 February ’94)
Situationist Vacant? (review of The Invisibles Volume 2 #1, Volume 1#15, Winter ’96)
Heart of The Motter (review of Heart of The Matter OGN, Volume 1#7, September 1994)
Down The Tube (Review of BBC’s Neverwhere, Volume 1#15, Winter ’96)
Cooper Scooper (review of Alice Cooper: The Last Temptation, Volume 1#7, September 1994)
Never Mind The Pollacks (review of Timebreakers #1-2, Volume 1#15, Winter ’96)
That’s Not The Way To Do It (Review of Mr Punch, Volume 1#8, Dec ’94)
Raising Hell (Mike Mignola Hellboy interview, Volume 1#16, Spring ’97)
Tekno For An Answer (Review of Neil Gaiman’s Mr Hero The Newmatic Man#1 and Leonard Nimoy’s Primortals#1, Volume 1#8, Dec ’94) Quitely Does It (Frank Quitely interview on Blackheart and Missionary Man, Volume 1#9, May ’95) Peter Cooked (Peter Milligan interview, Volume 1#9, May ’95)
House of Old Dears (Review of Cable -1, Daredevil -1, Uncanny X-Men -1, X-Men -1, Deadpool -1, Silver Surfer -1, Summer Special ’97) Crock Circus (review of Kiss: Psycho Circus#1, Volume 2#1, Sept ’97) TRIPWIRE 21 65
The Gene Genie (interview with Chris Bachalo on X-Men, Volume 2#1, Sept ’97)
On The Hoof (Feature on Hellboy and plans for 1999 with Mike Mignola, Volume 2#9, Feb-Mar ‘99)
The Shite Album (review of Be Here Now by Oasis, Volume 2#1, Sept ’97)
James Robinson’s Justice (review of All-Star Comics#1, Adventure Comics#1, All-American Comics#1, Smash Comics#1, Sensation Comics#1, Star Spangled Comics#1, Thrilling Comics#1 and All-Star Comics#2, TRIPWIRE Volume 2#10, Apr-May ’99)
Sapphire and Steal (interview with Vince Danks and Roger Gibson on Ariel Press, Volume 2#2, Nov ’97) Stars and Strife (Uncle Sam feature, Volume 2#2, Nov ’97)
The Anderson Tapes (interview with Brett Anderson of Suede, Volume 2#10, Apr-May ’99)
Hammered Horror (review of Man Thing#1-2 and Werewolf by Night#1, Volume 2#3, Dec ’97-Jan’98)
Jedi, Steady, Go (cover strap for Star Wars Episode One coverage, Volume 3#3, Jul-Aug ’99)
Emotional Bagge (review of Hate#25-29, Volume 2#4, Mar-Apr ’98)
Better Latex Than Never (Interview with Nick Dudman on Star Wars Episode One, Volume 3#3, Jul-Aug ’99)
We’ll Always Have Harris (Tony Harris interview on Starman, Volume 2#4, Mar-Apr ’98) Porn Free (review of Pulp’s This Is Hardcore, Volume 2#5, JunJul ’98) Byrne’s Victims? (review of Sensational Spider-man 32-33, Amazing Spider-man 440-441, Peter Parker Spider-man 96-97 and Spectacular Spider-man 262, Volume 2#7 OctNov ’98) Knights To Remember (feature on launch of Marvel Knights with Joe Quesada, Jimmy Palmiotti and key creators, Volume 2#7 Oct-Nov ’98) Hells Belles (review of Batman/ Hellboy/ Starman #1-2, Special A, Nov ’98) Historical Differences (feature on Heart of Empire with Bryan Talbot, Volume 2#8, Dec ’98) The Unforgiveably Dire (Review of U2’s The Best of 1980-1990, Volume 2#8, Dec ’98) 66 TRIPWIRE 21
Dancing With The Devil (interview with David Mack on Daredevil, Volume 3#4, Sep-Oct ‘99) Cutting Hedge (Review of Swamp Thing#1, Spring Special ‘00) Knights To Forget (review of The Punisher #1-6, Marvel Boy #1-2, Volume 4#1, Jul ‘00) Alphabet Soupçon (feature on Alan Moore on ABC and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 4#1, Jul ‘00) Born To Be Mild (Review of Neil Young’s Silver And Gold, Volume 4#1, Jul ‘00) The Man Who Wrote Too Much (Interview with Brian Bendis, Volume 4#2, Nov 2000) Nice Knight For It (Interview with Marvel’s Joe Quesada, Volume 4#3, Dec 2000) Sale of The Sentry (Review of The Sentry#1-5, Volume 4#3, Dec 2000)
Chaykin All Over (Review of American Century#1, Volume 4#4, Feb 2001)
Dredding The Future (Interview with John Wagner on Judge Dredd, Volume 5 #1, Apr 2003)
Classless of ‘77? (Review of 2000AD Progs 1223-1226, Volume 4#4, Mar 2001)
A Man of Wealth and Taste (Interview with Mike Carey on Hellblazer and his career, Volume 5 #1, Apr 2003)
A Design for Strife (Review of Manic Street Preachers Know Your Enemy, Volume 4#5, May 2001)
The Man Without Peer… (feature on Daredevil movie, Volume 5 #1, Apr 2003)
Getting Shafted? (Review of Green Arrow #1-4, Volume 4#6, Jul 2001) Elektra Assassinated (Review of Elektra#1, Volume 4#7, Oct 2001) Life of Brian (interview with Brian Bendis on Daredevil, Volume 4#7, Oct 2001) Bat To Basics (interview with Greg Rucka on Batman, Volume 4#8 Nov 2001)
No.1 With A Bullet (feature on Bulletproof Monk, Volume 5 #2, Jun 2003) Doing The Write Thing (interview with J.Michael Straczynski on his career, Volume 5 #2, Jun 2003) Seeing Red (interview with Cully Hamner on Red, Volume 5 #3, July 2003) Hero Worship (feature on Heroes TV series, Annual 2007)
Speaking Frankly (interview with Frank Miller on Dark Knight Strikes Again, Volume 4#9 Dec 2001-Jan 2002)
The Devil’s In The Details (feature on Hellboy in comics and on the big and small screen, Annual 2007)
Skill and Crossbones (feature on Obergeist: The Empty Locket, Volume 4#10, Apr 2002)
Bongo Players (feature on Matt Groening, Bill Morrison and Ian Boothby on Simpsons comics and Simpsons on TV, Annual 2007)
Biblical Proportions (interview with Kyle Baker on King David, Volume 4#10, Apr 2002) Ahead of The Game (interview with Mike Mignola on Amazing Screw On Head, Volume 4#11, June 2002) Quatermain and The Pit (review of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2#1-2, Volume 4#12, Aug 2002)
Baked Alaska (feature on 30 Days of Night the movie, Annual 2007) The Empire Strikes Back (feature on British genre TV resurgence, Annual 2008) Back To The Futurama (feature on Futurama, Annual 2008)
State of Independents (feature on independent publishers, Volume 4#12, Aug 2002)
Behind The Screens (features on Pinewood Studios, ILM and storyboard artist Martin Asbury, Annual 2008)
Cooking The Books (interview with Darwyn Cooke on DC The New Frontier, Volume 5 #1, Apr 2003)
It’s No Joke (feature on Watchmen the movie, Superhero Special 2009) TRIPWIRE 21 67
Millar’s Crossing (feature on Kick-Ass the movie, Superhero Special 2009)
Royal Blood (interview with Michael Moorcock on Elric, #55, 2011)
Gutter Presence (interview with Rich Johnston, Superhero Special 2009)
Turning The Other Cheek (interview with Walt Simonson on The Judas Coin, , #55, 2011)
The Mark of Kane (feature on Solomon Kane, Annual 2009)
MAD Man (interview with Sergio Aragones, #55, 2011)
Gripping Yarns (interview with John Fleskes of Flesk Publications, Annual 2009)
Taking The Law Into Their Own Hands (feature on the history of 2000AD, Digital 0.01, April ‘11)
King of The Stone Age (interview with Joe Kubert on Tor, Annual 2009)
Bringing The Hammer Down (feature on Thor the movie, Digital 0.01, April ‘11)
Crime Does Pay (interview with Ian Rankin on Hellblazer, Annual 2009)
Barbarous Behaviour (feature on Slaine The Horned God, Digital 0.02, July ‘11)
Treading The Boards (interview with storyboard artist Trevor Goring, Annual 2009)
Getting In The Saddle (feature on Blueberry, Digital 0.02, July ‘11)
Teenage Kicks (feature on James Bond in comics and Young James Bond, Annual 2009) New Worlds Order (interview with Michael Moorcock on his career, #54, 2010) Cut To The Quick (feature on Madam Samurai, #54, 2010) Changeling of The Guard (interview with J.Michael Straczynski on Superman and Wonder Woman, #54, 2010) Creating a Stark Reality (feature on Double Negative’s work on Iron Man 2, #54, 2010) Hard Boiled (interview with Jason Aaron, #55, 2011) London Made Him (interview with Christopher Fowler on his career, #55, 2011)
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First Class Entertainment (feature on X-Men First Class the movie, Digital 0.02, July ‘11) Sense of Dredd (feature on Dredd 3D movie, Digital Dredd Special, Nov ‘12) He Is The Law (interview with Karl Urban on Dredd 3D movie, Digital Dredd Special, Nov ‘12)
Are comic companies taking full advantage? Digital comics have become commonplace in the last few years but are the big players really capitalising on what could be a new halcyon period? PETER MANN looks at the evidence
S
everal years ago, when I first wrote about digital comics in Tripwire, I was enthusiastic about the idea. At that time I assumed that comic companies would use the advent of digital comics to both expand the audience for comics, and to experiment with form and content. I recognise now that there was nothing in the history of the comics industry that could have rationally led me to these conclusions. The history of the comics industry from day one has been to hang on to a format that was old by the end of the 1940s, reducing story pages and increasing the cover price as they went. The fact that their audience over some 70 years has plummeted to a small hard-core composed mostly of adults who apparently want to see super heroes become as violent and unpleasant as possible, and who resist any other kind of subject matter, has not dissuaded them either. Pimping out once-great children’s characters such as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman to meet the ‘grim ‘n’ gritty’ fantasies of an ageing demographic is only the last in a series of rear-guard actions against the inevitable. So why on earth would I think that the advent of a new technology to exploit had the possibility of leading to a new Golden Age? Well, it’s the day job you see. In the day time I’m not mild-mannered Peter Mann, I work as a Business Analyst, mostly for banks, supermarkets, and other industries who see new markets and technologies as something to exploit. There are three issues I have with the way the digital market has been broached. My first disappointment is the lack of any attempt to genuinely enlarge the marketplace. The big players in comics have literally millions of pages of material that they could use to attract an audience that currently barely knows they exist. Of the top 10 franchises in the cinema worldwide, three (the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Batman, Spider-Man) originate in comics. The truly remarkable job that comics companies have done in failing to convert cinemagoers to the joys of the print version of what they’re seeing borders on the incredible. Do you imagine that Lee Child’s titles saw a blip after the Jack Reacher film? How about Harry Potter? Do you think the success of the films may have increased sales of the books? I’d imagined that repurposing these millions
My first disappointment is the lack of any attempt to genuinely enlarge the marketplace. The truly remarkable job that comics companies have done in failing to convert cinemagoers to the joys of the print version of what they’re seeing borders on the incredible of pages as affordable intellectual property for devices such as the iPad and the Kindle Fire HD would have been a good and obvious strategy, eventually bringing buyers into both comic shops and towards graphic novels. This possibility has been cleverly avoided by creating the equivalent of a “walled garden”– Digital distribution through businesses such as ComiXology, which require you to a) already know that comics exist, and b) where they can be obtained from. A further cunning move was to make digital comics exactly as expensive as the print version, thereby making the average digital comic book proportionally much more expensive than its digital paperback equivalent. ComiXology, to be fair, often
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release free comics, but the tie-in to an app makes simply downloading and trying them out tedious. ComiXology is good within its remit, working well on most platforms. Releasing a load of comics “into the wild” in a neutral file format along with a free app might be a more effective way of leveraging back catalogue material to bring in new readers. The app could read both the neutral file format and the DRM protected format preferred by comic publishers, driving new customers towards vendors such as ComiXology. What publishers have tried to do is apply the “walled garden” technique used by Apple and Amazon to comic books. The difference is that there was already an audience of billions for books. Comics, especially of the North American superhero variety, simply don’t have that big an audience any more. So whereas the Apple/Amazon strategy (in effect) bought herds of cattle into their ranch and put them up for sale, the comic book strategy hid the cattle in a canyon, where no one could see them. I suspect this is not an expansionary tactic. The second disappointment is the material itself. Again, if you look at what’s happening in the digital book market, you will see widespread experimentation with formats and subject matter. Admittedly a large amount of the subject matter appears to be erotic, but as well as erotica, westerns, romantic fiction, hard-boiled crime and a whole host of genres that probably don’t sell enough at 7.99 to 9.99 in a bookstore are selling in sufficient numbers to make their authors a decent living, a fact that the successful TV and crime fiction writer Lee Goldberg (Diagnosis Murder, Monk) has posted about on his blog A Writer’s Life (http:// leegoldberg.typepad.com/). Classic genre fiction has been revived in the digital age by publishers such as Piccadilly
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Publishing, and the horror genre is represented by One Buck Horror and (obviously) more zombies than you can shake an axe at. There are also many writers publishing their work in the form of serials, a form of publication that has not been seen for many years. Usually serial episodes run to less pages than a normal paperback, with a far cheaper cover price, and often a free first episode. So in comics what do we have, given that digital comics remove the burden of cost incurred by printing, distribution etc.? More superhero comics, running to the same or a lower page count than the regular titles. Let’s be clear about this: both Marvel and DC could be investing in almost any kind of comic. They could offer the same kind of deal to creators that Image do and act as a clearing house for digital publishing. They could publish ranges including any of the subjects mentioned above, and I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a queue of people waiting to write and draw them. What they’ve actually decided to do, rather than vastly expand their appeal to tablet-toting audiences in search of new material to consume, is produce Arrow, Smallville, and in the case of Marvel, some god-awful animated comics. Because, Marvel, your audience is indeed underachieving 12-year-olds. The opportunity to experiment with length has also been squandered: although the frequency of some digital comics is greater than monthly the restrictions of the 20 pages or less format impose constant artificial cliffhangers. To be fair this is partly down to the conditioning of writers and artists, but especially in comics where superheroics aren’t the order of the day (few as those are) – significant events in every five minutes of reading time don’t help with the suspension of disbelief. So, opportunities have been
I would personally prefer to read a reasonably priced digital version of the comics I like, and then buy a hardcover edition when one becomes available. I’m a grown up, I have limited storage space for comic books. squandered. What’s my final point? Third, and last: cash. A long-term problem besetting comics is the price/page ratio. At the moment, a US comic costs around 38% of the price of a 7.99 paperback, and the same percentage of a cinema ticket. The average price of a cinema ticket in 2011 was $7.93 (National Association of Theatre Owners statistics), a comic $2.99. I know there are comics more expensive than that and I’m guessing that there are cinema ticket prices more expensive than my example as well. In 1967 the average cinema ticket cost $1.22 and the average comic cost 12 cents. Over 45 years cinema ticket prices have increased about seven-fold, comic prices have increased twenty-five-fold – around four times the rate of cinema tickets. Meanwhile movies are the same length or longer than they were, in colour, sometimes in 3D, have Dolby sound, digital projection… Comics have better paper and colouring, and around a third less pages. Digital offers a way to combat this, and to leverage back catalogue. I have on my shelves the hardcover DC Library Batman: The Annuals, reprinting the first three 80 page Batman Annuals. Imagine if items like this were made available digitally at around 99 cents an Annual. Again with the reduction in overheads from digital new, and experimental titles could be made available at 99 cents, encouraging people to try new titles, new formats, et cetera. Amazingly, in many ways Archie Comics is more experimental than the big two publishers,
in both subject matter, and how they market digital comics. DC Comics has the Minx BW graphic novel line, aimed at teenage girls: most of the books would (I believe) work very well in a digital colour format for tablets. Titles like The Plain Janes and New York Four have a well-defined demographic likely to be receptive to new technology. I understand that comic publishers have to be careful that in getting the best out of digital publishing they do not alienate or marginalise comic shop owners, but by adopting more expansionary tactics I feel that they would in the end push people into specialist shops. I would personally prefer to read a reasonably priced digital version of the comics I like, and then buy a hardcover edition when one becomes available. I’m a grown up, I have limited storage space for comic books. In fact, I think the future of all bookshops is converging: bookshops of any kind will have to focus on added value, and at a bare minimum that means providing the customer the ability to look through an attractive printed version of a book. I think it’s unlikely that book chains can continue to exist in their current configuration: many of the books we read are disposable entertainment to be read on the train, plane, or at the beach. I bought my first digital e-reader (the Sony PRS 500) back in 2007, mostly due to spending a great deal of my life on planes between London and Los Angeles. Several e-readers later I wouldn’t be without one, but it hasn’t slowed down my book buying: I simply buy more hardcovers and art books. I suspect that the time left for selling colour pamphlets containing 20 pages or less of story is running out. To not at least explore some of the alternative possibilities seems foolish. Options are running out: pirates are currently better at servicing the market than the publishers themselves. The digital market will never be 100% free of piracy. Best not to wait as long as the record companies did, eh?
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WARWICK JOHNSON-CADWELL
TIM BRADSTREET
REEL LIFE ANDREW COLMAN ranks the good, the bad and the indifferent from the vast crop of comicbook movies which have been released between 1992 and 2013
AH, COMIC BOOK MOVIES. Movies based on comic books. Two-dimensional four-colour
images beloved and treasured by baby boomers turned into bombastic two-dimensional celluloid merchandise aimed at the children they used to be. The fuel for countless chat room arguments, the commercial apotheosis of the medium, the inevitable and invariable disappointment. So many fans with their unique vision of how the film should be, and the gulf between their transcendent imaginings and the cold, mechanical version hastily assembled by a retinue of disinterested journeymen, helmed by an overpaid auteur director (more often than not) who may not have ever been concerned with the source material in the first place. Or even like comics. And yet fandom unquestionably would rather they were out there. Until as recently as the early noughties there had been very little in the way of high-production event movies featuring our favourite comic characters – diehard fans had until then been starved of such entertainment, being forced to make do with sitting through the two decent Christopher Reeve Superman flicks, as well as Tim Burton et al’s increasingly shambolic and ludicrous Batman franchise. And where in Midgard was Marvel? Apart from a particularly pedestrian (and no-budget) Spider-Man film, the publisher didn’t seem to care about the commercial possibilities of a properly-made screen transfer. And shoestring, mostly straight-to-video offerings like Dr. Strange, 1990’s Captain America, the Punisher and Howard The Duck certainly did the company no favours either, while Stan Lee’s attempts throughout the eighties and nineties to co-produce a Spider-Man or X-Men film were continually and frustratingly put on hold due to studio bankruptcies, terminated deals (pun intended) and Hollywood’s general lack of faith in comic-based properties. The sea-change in Marvel’s cinematic fortunes arrived with the release of 1998’s crossover vampire movie Blade, starring A-listers Wesley Snipes and Kris Kristofferson. It proved to be a great success which led to a mini-franchise, but more importantly it created the impetus for Marvel to get its act together and produce a quality super-hero film, which turned out to be X-Men. The project had languished for the better part of a decade, with a rotating list of high profile industry names linked with it – but once Bryan Singer, fresh from his success with The Usual Suspects, had been coaxed on board (after numerous attempts), things finally fell into place. X-Men, although not all that inspired a production, at least had some of the hallmarks of Claremont and Byrne’s definitive version, which meant profits, and sequels, were a certainty. Clearly there was a demand for big-budget versions of other Marvel heroes, and with technology having finally caught up with the concepts outlined in the comic version, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man from 2002 raised the bar and proved to be the watershed, the catalyst for a decade’s worth of projects to come. The muchmaligned medium was finally to be the belle of the cinematic ball, its supporters and enthusiasts validated for their long-term marginalized devotion. Not that it was that monolithic an art form of course – there have been a raft of excellent non-spandex movies, a few of which, such as Ghost World, will be spotlighted in the lists that follow. And these lists are far from comprehensive – there have been far more comic movies released since 1992 than you would assume the marketplace could stand. Whittling the list down to thirty meant focusing on those movies that represented the best, the most archetypal, and indeed the very worst of the crop. To kick off, the movies that should have stayed in development hell…
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THE BAD
10
Elektra (Rob Bowman, 2005)
Another spin-off that never should’ve seen general release, this production concerns itself with Daredevil’s loveinterest (Jennifer Garner) being revived only to assume her career as an assassin for a cartel she quickly betrays. Regardless of all the elements imported from Frank Miller’s Easterninfluenced comic series, this film never rises above the level of a TV movie, with wooden, arch performances, a stilted script, and the usual amount of coincidences undermining credibility. At the time the lowest grossing Marvel film since Howard The Duck, the production is quintessential in its humourless, generic blandness – like many a super-hero film it’s a study in logistics, but unlike other features, it has nothing else to speak of or recommend it.
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9
Constantine (Francis Lawrence, 2005)
This film should’ve come with the tagline – “Classic DC character, specially ruined for you by Hollywood”. There’s a raft of things so patently wrong with this travesty, one wonders what input the original creators had, and what was said at the committee meeting. Taking a quintessentially cynical, ruthless, misanthropic and above all English character and transposing him to LA while turning him into Keanu Reeves does lead one to believe that respect was not on the agenda. Besides removing Johnny from the dark streets of London, there’s the milieu and supporting cast, who are so hopelessly at odds with the essence of the book that there’s not much point in explaining when the movie loses its way. And as for the film itself? It’s a fair to middling meller with some tired horror thrown in, in the decidedly non-gothic setting of Los Angeles. None of the actors sufficiently pull their weight (with the possible exception of Tilda Swinton) which does draw you away from the mechanics of the plot. Who was Gavin Rossdale meant to be again, and why is he in the film? In the end, Keanu prevails against that Satan dude, gives up smoking and then takes up surfing. All right, I lied about the last bit.
8
Fantastic Four (Tim Story, 2005)
Marvel’s breakthrough title has remained second only to Spider-Man in terms of importance in the publisher’s canon – a classic Silver Age series by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby that helped redefine comics and dazzled the reader with ambitious concepts and realistic characterization. And yet the movie version, well-meaning and moderately faithful as it is, is as flaccid, childish and empty as those shoestring Saturday morning cartoons of the super-team so unbeloved by fandom. Again, this is a case of the filmmakers simply ignoring the differences between the two media and slavishly re-enacting the first several issues of the title, with a cast forced into emoting dumbed-down dialogue that only fleetingly captures the spirit of the comics. Like all super-hero films, convention dictates an origin retelling, but that essentially is it. Michael Chiklis’ Thing mooches around like a punch drunk boxer, Jessica Alba is quite definitely not the Invisible Girl, and Ioan Gruffudd is barely given anything to work with. Only Chris Evans, playing the Human Torch, looks to be enjoying himself. A film exclusively for children then – and maybe that was all it ever could be.
THE BAD
7
The Hulk (Ang Lee, 2003) Lee’s decision
to take on Marvel’s monosyllabic behemoth seemed like an excellent idea on paper – an arthouse director, fandom assumed, would provide a layered and considered representation of the character, lending weight to the Banner / monster scenario. What ended up on multiplex screens however was a predictably mannered and languid affair, culminating (after a decidedly long wait) with some admittedly excellent special effects that could not prevent the film descending into a weak and muddy climax. The cast, especially Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly and Sam Elliott as the leads, are all passable, but the expository scenes between them eventually pall, and by the time our jolly green giant makes his entrance you sense it’s all far too late. You can spot the loose plot strands and rewrites when at the end of the film Bruce’s dad David, played by a somnolent Nick Nolte, morphs first into one villain from the comic title (Zzzax) and then another (The Absorbing Man) with no explanation whatsoever. A missed opportunity.
6
Tank Girl (Rachel Talalay, 1995)
Tank Girl rode onto cinema screens on a wing and a prayer, an amateur project that ignored cinematic and commercial concerns and precepts. Adapted by the original comic’s creators, Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett, the somewhat overhyped movie was so desperate to come across as both likeable and hip that it forgot that those two components are generally bestowed by the viewer. Left behind in all the bluster and flashiness were a decent script and pacing, the actors hamstrung hopelessly by the creators inability to see the distinction between newsprint and celluloid (rather important, that) which left us with a superficial lead, resplendent in dystopian chic, muttering cheesy inanities at the rest of the cast. Difficult to be harsh with this homegrown project nevertheless, as the comic certainly had its followers, but its wholesale failure meant the end of Deadline.
5
Superman Returns (Bryan Singer, 2006)
Despite the generally positive reviews this production received on its release, including from Rotten Tomatoes, Tarantino and other leading lights, this film is a stultifyingly bland exercise that fails even as an homage to its more illustrious late 1970s forebears. Despite all the talent and megabucks, the project resolutely refuses to come to life, with broad set-pieces, wafer-thin characterization and a lead actor (Kevin Spacey) clearly phoning it in from his Old Vic fiefdom. A shame as with a charismatic lead, naturalistic dialogue and a worthwhile denouement (Superman and Luthor are onscreen together for about one minute) this could’ve worked. Overlong, with a half-baked, unwieldy plot, (Luthor steals Kryptonite to create a new continent in order to destroy the rest of the world) one wonders just how bad a film has to be before it is concensually panned.
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THE BAD
4
Catwoman (Pitof, 2004)
The trouble with producing a spin-off movie from a successful franchise is that the character in question has to be more than a foil or romantic interest in the first place. The producers of this obvious dud had clearly no notion that Catwoman was always the weakest of Batman’s rogue’s gallery in any case, regardless of her debut being in Batman #1. Not that the movie wasn’t undermined by the all-consuming laziness and cynicism of its direction, with lead actress Halle Berry’s transformation from meek cipher to avenging creature of the night exuding all the gravitas of a witless teen comedy. Perhaps to spare some of DC’s blushes, Catwoman’s name was changed to Patience, which would certainly be a requirement for the audience.
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3
Batman And Robin (Joel Schumacher, 1997)
The fourth installment of a franchise that had already descended into lurid, demented pantomime was a cynical and empty exercise that made no effort to hide the producer’s contempt for their target audience. By now the pain of having to take part was etched on the cast’s faces, not least George Clooney, whose constant expression of disbelief at his career choice is perhaps the only reason to sit through this farce. Clearly the filmmakers thought it best to shoehorn as many characters into the mix, regardless of plot constraints, and then told the actors to ham it up shamelessly, no doubt to out-kitsch the 1966 version. Whatever interest you may have in the protagonists evaporates after Arnie’s turn as the relentlessly gurning and miscast Mr. Freeze. Barry Norman’s pick for worst film of that year, and he was right.
2
Spawn (Mark Dippe, 1997)
Todd McFarlane’s production of his own megaselling title at least remains faithful to the strip, but lack of production values and the fact that the title was bland and vapid in the first place ensure that the film could never be more than a vanity project. The storyline about a betrayed assassin who ends up striking a deal with the Devil in order to exact vengeance is standard comic fare, although with a decent script, and actors who can actually act, it could have been passable. Despite the unprofessional, bog standard feel and dreadful dialogue Martin Sheen is thankfully on hand to remind the audience that they’re watching a movie.
THE BAD
1
The Spirit (Frank Miller, 2008) Miller’s green-screen version of Will Eisner’s unsurpassed comic strip wastes no time in being not just the worst comic-based film ever, but perhaps the nadir of all mainstream movies. A mere two minutes of inept dialogue, diffuse direction and the sight of a bunch of actors twisting in the void is enough to recognize the sheer hopelessness of the project. Miller, a celebrated and innovative artist and huge fan of Eisner, was unwisely let loose as writerdirector on a film that sadly exhibited all the inadequacies of cinema when dealing with virtuoso, ambitious source material. The plot (Samuel L. Jackson’s villain The Octopus battles the Spirit for an immortality serum) is needless to say, perfunctory and very silly. Congratulations are in order if you manage to make it to the end.
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THE INDIFFERENT
10
Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010)
The first Iron Man film was a breath of fresh air for super-hero films – an instantly entrenched franchise, coupled with a top tier actor in the lead role and a deft,knowing script meant that the entertainment on offer was always going to be decent. The follow-up however suffers from the usual sequelitis – Favreau clearly assumed that audiences would want more of the same, and to be fair he was right. But what was produced was lazy, workmanlike and far too reliant on (and indulgent with) sfx and overwrought action sequences. The lead villain, played with some relish by Mickey Rourke, is presentable enough yet his motivation is never made clear, whilst the battle segments between Stark and his friend Rhodes or the finale between him and Rourke’s Vanko have all the brio and cinematic splendour of a video game, and are confusing with it. Meanwhile Scarlett Johanssen’s functional Black Widow is little more than a plot device, as if you didn’t know. A meretricious piece of dashed expectation.
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9
300 (Zack Snyder, 2007) Snyder’s chroma-
key swords and sandals epic certainly can lay claim to being as close to the original comic material as any movie, bar Sin City. A historical fantasy lifted from the pages of Frank Miller’s graphic novel, the movie focuses on the shouty, belligerent King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) leading a paltry band of 300 Greeks against a legendarily insurmountable Persian army. All bare teeth and gruff declamations, Butler’s Leonidas is the motor of a fairly simple premise, but there’s no question that despite the obviously superficial treatment of this mythical portion of history, the film looks great and has a modest ring of authenticity. A phenomenal success, this visually arresting film is still a curate’s egg in its somewhat cynical compulsion to put stylization and format first. One can lob brickbats regarding its pomposity and selfregard, but the movie still plays, and at the very least was suffused with ambition and the need to validate the source medium. Not a triumph, but by no means a failure either.
8
The Incredible Hulk (Louis Leterrier, 2008) Probably the definitive
competent and generic movie transfer, 2008’s pants-straining reboot carefully acknowledges all comic debts without ever attempting to stray from them, even whilst playing around with continuity. Not that it matters. Consciously different from Ang Lee’s offering, the film is careful enough regarding the supporting cast (they’re all present and correct) but once again is a prosaic bit of fluff with a professional yet vapid script, excellent special effects and no subtext to be gleaned. On the plus side, there’s the neat tie-in with Captain America and the supersoldier formula, the Abomination is the correct choice for Greenskin’s foe and Ross’s attempt to flush out a fugitive Banner is adept and has ingenuity, but (there’s always the but!) it’s all hamstrung by the old mandatory superfluous characterization and absence of motivation amongst the protagonists. Good to see the always worthwhile Tim Roth make a committed appearance, but apart from that and a reasonably non-emetic romantic sub-plot, that’s all folks.
THE INDIFFERENT
7
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Gavin Hood, 2009) The
opening portmanteau sequence, which portrays Logan (Wolverine) and his half-brother Victor (Sabretooth) drifting through a century’s worth of sepia battlefields is possibly the highlight of the movie and does send out the wrong message – this is a straightforward actioner, with little pretence to be otherwise. Barely a super-hero movie in terms of its tone, it dispenses with Wolvie’s origin as quickly as possible in order to get on with the stunts, pyrotechnics and retractable clawings. There are cursory references to the source material but basically this is a po-faced shoot-em-up with several Chuck Norrises leading the cast, all grimacing whenever things are looking awkward (but they slice their way out quite easily). A passable enough take on the central character (functional script notwithstanding), not to mention Deadpool and Gambit, the most fascinating aspect of the film is how much Jackman made ($25m, as it happens) from this state-of-the-art schlockfest. Switch off and enjoy, but don’t expect to remember much once the closing credits roll.
6
Dredd 3D (Pete Travis, 2012) Travis’s
hyperkinetic, stylized revamp of Britain’s favourite fascist cop is an engrossingly fun B-Movie, a post-urban spaghetti western with lashings of ultraviolence, mazy claustrophobia, and a smidgeon of future-shock context thrown in. Dredd and his newbie partner Anderson are assigned to a tower block in downtown Mega City to shut down a drug pushing ring and find themselves enmeshed in a cat and mouse game with the building’s very own Cruella De Ville (and chief nasty) Ma-Ma. As with the source material that it apes, there’s little time for character arcs amidst the highvelocity bullets, but the intent and provision here is pure lowbrow crowd-pleasing entertainment, and on that level it succeeds. Old-fashioned, reactionary frolics never provided as much guilty pleasure, although you’ll prefer to look away when Ma-Ma gets her rather graphic comeuppance at the end. A sleeper hit in the Robocop mould then, although a few more ironic one-liners wouldn’t’ve gone amiss.
5
Green Lantern (Martin Campbell, 2011) The first major
DC super-hero project not to showcase Batman or Superman, Green Lantern was an odd choice for the cinema – a cosmic hero from the Eisenhower era, beloved by some corners of old-school fandom but a hitherto unknown for everyone else. Cramming decades of convoluted history, character refits and high concepts into two hours was always going to be an unwieldy undertaking, which inevitably does lead to the usual shorthand plot developments – Ryan Reynolds’s all-too wholesome Hal Jordan being haphazardly shunted from one phase in his transformation to the next without stopping for breath. Nevertheless the movie, once it hits its stride, does briefly engage when the new Green Lantern heads across space to Oa for a meeting with the Guardians and future foe Sinestro – a sequence that looks excellent. After that, there’s the half-baked soul-searching, redemptive noises, grandiose finale and routine enemy vanquishing before the closing credits. As offhand as the film is, the potential for a superior sequel is certainly there, but it’s unlikely to get the green light.
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THE INDIFFERENT
4
The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012) Nolan’s folie de
grandeur is the only blip in his otherwise exceptional canon – as always there is the sweeping ambition, but on this occasion it is marred by an atypical lack of discipline. With so much to squeeze into its three hour running time, it gradually becomes evident how the director, who is normally so deft at tying divergent plot strands together, just gives up trying. As with its predecessor, DKR’s setting and tone is hellish, brutalist and militaristic, underpinning Nolan’s unique vision. However his need to make Batman’s war with Bane look epic sees him dispensing with the subtleties and focus of The Dark Knight. The plot, which ties in with Batman Begins, sees our hero comprehensively defeated by Bane and then having to endure a heavily drawn-out redemptive sequence that does stretch credibility. It all looks masterfully gothic (unlike Tim Burton’s twee gothic), but with so many gaps in continuity, not to mention a tiresomely monolithic villain, it is the quiet and reflective aftermath of the conflagration that evokes the most interest. Nothing succeeds like excess? Not this time.
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3
Daredevil (Mark Steven Johnson, 2003) A Marvel film out
of kilter with all their other releases, Daredevil was a studiedly dark and noirish effort, a movie aimed at an older demographic that was also keen to retain its pulpy roots and as a consequence ended up pleasing nobody. Situated in a far more grimy and realistic New York than the one witnessed in Spider-Man, the film does at least possess a somewhat decent script and adequate leads, with a suitably imposing turn from the sadly-missed Michael Clarke Duncan as the Kingpin. However despite the cast and all the dutiful nods to Frank Miller’s celebrated retrofit of the long-running comic series, it promises more than it delivers, particularly with its weak denouement. Some ably handled sequences (Daredevil’s origin, Bullseye’s viscerally graphic battle scene with Elektra) elevate what is for too much of its length a slick box-ticking exercise. Not deserving of the vilification meted out by fandom, however.
2
Captain America: The First Avenger (Joe Johnston, 2011) The
decision by Marvel to ensure that none of its properties received a “grim ‘n’ gritty makeover weighed most heavily on this period venture, which is a shame as, despite his flag-waving nationalistic undertow, Captain America was always, in the right hands, a sympathetic character. Not that the film’s producers were unaware of his potential – the first half of the movie features an excellent origin sequence and witty historical framing that remarkably doesn’t advance the plot or contain ponderous exposition. However once he lands in Italy to begin his mission behind enemy lines, everything reverts to type, with some welldirected but run-of-the-mill action set pieces, none of which quite capture the Simon and Kirby spirit. The film’s biggest flaw, apart from having an underwhelming supporting cast, is its desire not to offend – the Nazis and their barbarism are barely touched upon, replaced by a cookie-cutter super-villain who is vaguely reminiscent of the Red Skull. It is here, when the story dips into genre convention, that it comes across as a two-hour Avengers trailer.
THE INDIFFERENT
1
Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2002)
Obviously not as pivotal a movie as Star Wars, Spider-Man nevertheless was a hugely significant work in pop culture and the template for many films that came in its wake. Despite its importance, it is still only marginally more than the film that came with the poster – an event product that established genre convention by resorting to cliché, lightweight tropes and wholesome leads. The plot is serviceable and reasonably faithful to the comic, but what stood out for audiences were the action sequences, with Spider-Man’s web-slinging particularly impressive. What was missing however was the sly humour that was a touchstone of Lee, Ditko and Romita’s classic stories and pacy direction. Overall, the film’s huge success was predicated on not taking chances, maintaining a lightness that bordered on the trite, and providing a framework for sequels, although at least the well-cast Willem Dafoe (as the Green Goblin) managed to chew the scenery whenever he wasn’t in that absurd costume. Even though the ownership of Marvel’s pantheon of heroes was split among several studios, the formula for all successive productions began here.
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THE GOOD
10
Blade (Stephen Norrington, 1998)
“Some motherf---ers always trying to ice skate uphill!” Not the most auspicious endgame line to wrap up this franchise-begetting star vehicle, it has to be said. However Wesley Snipes’ biggest box-office success is an assured, reasonably intelligent and low-key affair, echoing the source character’s early Tomb Of Dracula appearances. Detailing the battle between Snipes’ vampire-hunting “daywalker” and Stephen Dorff’s Deacon Frost, a renegade vampire bent on controlling and harvesting humanity, the movie retains an even, moderate pace as it progresses towards its climax. There’s a modicum of depth in the characters and their relationships, and Snipes is excellent in the lead role. Very much an upgrade of a minor yet significant player in the Marvel universe, the film succeeds in splicing two genres together, whilst creating an acceptably benighted milieu. The characterization and script may be throwaway in places but there’s no doubt that this was an important project for Marvel, who (like a lot of the industry) may not have expected anything.
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9
X-Men 2 (Bryan Singer, 2003)
Singer’s second mutant outing is a classy pulp entertainment that is easily superior to the first – a far darker, better acted piece with sterling performances from Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, who are all given some weightier lines to work with on this occasion. Focusing on anti-mutant fanatic William Stryker’s (played with some aplomb by Brian Cox) attempt to wipe out the X-Men and their kin, the movie strikes the perfect balance between excellent special effects and the grim hostility faced by the team of outsiders. A film that handles difficult concepts and an ensemble cast quite seamlessly, there’s much to enjoy here – the salty interplay between Magneto and Xavier, not to mention the younger X-Men, as well as the enmity between Wolverine and Cyclops. The only film of the three to capture the essence of the original 1970s title, it’s an accomplished work that dispenses with mawkish sentiment in favour of realism, and aims for subtlety rather than histrionics. Possibly the best of the Marvel films.
8
American Splendor (Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, 2003) The late Harvey
Pekar was always the oddest of oddballs on the fringe of pop culture, but his work in his own autobiographical comic rivaled Charles Bukowski’s prose in its delineation of innercity loserdom. Berman and Pulcini’s creditable transfer elicits shades of Woody Allen and Albert Brooks in its evocation of Pekar’s working class upbringing on the streets of Cleveland. Dealing mainly in the years leading up to and including his appearances on the David Letterman Show, the film captures the spirit of the comic by constantly breaking the fourth wall, at one point stopping the actors and letting the real Pekar and his workmates take centre stage. Despite being firmly ensconced on life’s bottom rung, while befriending characters who are even more socially awkward than he is, the Pekar story is a classic slice of Americana, which like Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb film does not flinch in its portrayal of these players but ensures that they are humanized. And Paul Giamatti’s sympathetic central performance is pitchperfect.
THE GOOD
7
Unbreakable (M. Night Shyamalan, 2000) Shyamalan’s
overly low-octane yarn is a clever hybrid of two genres, but wasn’t marketed as a comicbook movie, much to the chagrin of its director. The film focuses on the everyman David Dunn (Bruce Willis), who, due to the intervention of handicapped comic art gallery owner Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), begins to realize that he has superpowers. The film has similar tropes to the director’s previous work, The Sixth Sense, with an equally schematic ending. Needless to say, the foreboding atmospherics and Willis’s understated performance (one of his best) provide enough tension and suspense for the audience, regardless of the film’s measured, stately pace. Despite the rather contrived and unsatisfactory ending, the production is an excellent rejoinder to all the frenetic bombast normally seen in comic movies, with barely any action sequences at all. Shame that the feeble art in Price’s gallery was so unrepresentative of the fourcolour medium, though, but we’ll let that go.
6
Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan, 2005) Nolan’s first
attempt at the Dark Knight came with a directive – to restore credibility to DC’s only genuinely bankable film property, whilst providing a neat origin adjustment that would create the platform for his trilogy. Very much a pared-down, low-key effort in comparison to Tim Burton’s portrayal, the film’s more naturalistic dialogue and direction was underpinned by the early 1970s version of the comic, along with Frank Miller’s classic Year One. The plot, which details how the young Bruce Wayne started out as a criminal before being trained by arch-villain Ra’s Al Ghul’s League Of Shadows, certainly uses the title’s backstory effectively, whilst the film’s themes of fear, isolation and needing a father figure are all central to the Batman mythos, so it seems that the filmmakers did their homework. Excellent work from Liam Neeson and Cillian Murphy as the enigmatic baddies, as well as Gary Oldman as the future Commissioner Gordon. Without question, the interpretation of the character that fandom had been waiting for, and the best was yet to come.
5
The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012)
Following on from hits like Iron Man and Captain America, Marvel’s sixth installment of their super-team stable was the ultimate audience pleaser, and an inevitably gigantic success. Such is fandom’s slack-jawed approbation for this mega-potboiler, it’s somewhat difficult to leave out of our top ten, and it is indeed here on merit (just) – Whedon does successfully imbue the movie with sufficiently rip-roaring one-liners (well, six of them) and adequate personality conflicts that the enterprise is likeable and entertaining enough. The fanboy in me wanted to delight in finally witnessing all those wondrous Marvel characters chewing the same scenery, and there are certainly some enjoyable moments. But the film does anthologize every cliché in the book, has no thematic depth, doesn’t really allow enough of a spotlight on some of the heroes, and can’t help but seem like a tag-team bout during the finale, with a rather questionable alien menace providing the destructive hi-jinks. Such hyperbolic action segments always worked better through the medium of Buscema or Perez’s pencils, so I’ll get with the throng and state that Whedon’s version made a damn good fist of it, nevertheless.
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THE GOOD
4
Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001)
Despite the presence of creator Dan Clowes as scriptwriter, Ghost World is a considerably different entity compared to his comic-book version. In Clowes’ strip, the characters have little room to grow in their solipsistic bedroom pods, whilst in the film, regardless of their at times strident immaturity, the leads do develop and change. Basically a drama about two adolescent girls approaching adulthood in a disconnected, hermetic town, this remarkably involving film details the protagonists’ gradual estrangement from their environment and each other, whilst dragging a desultory loner (played with marvelous verve by Steve Buscemi) into their orbit. Faithful to the comic’s muted, barren tone, the film is an excellent evocation of the pain of introspective youth, its fear of the future and contempt for its surroundings. The two leads, played by Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson, are perfectly cast, whilst the look of the film, both garish and washedout, remains consistent throughout. A film that never patronizes either the characters or the audience, it’s an underrated work that deserves cult status.
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3
Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008)
Perhaps the movie that most accurately replicated the sense of fun and dry humour of the comic-book version, Favreau’s effort works due to an intelligent script, and above all the star quality of the film’s lead, Robert Downey Jr, who practically reinvents the role as himself. Another step-up for comic-based cinema, the film successfully balances the excellent special effects with developed characterization, which to all intents and purposes, guaranteed success. Nevertheless, the film suffers from the usual pitfalls – the rather jingoistic plot and routine villainry, not to mention the dated nature of some of the supporting cast (despite Favreau’s desire to modernize the mise-en-scene) do rankle somewhat, and there’s a general offhandedness to the whole affair, as if the filmmakers needed to remind the audience that it’s only a comicbook movie, folks. If there is a subtext, it’s surreptitiously buried beneath some dazzling action sequences (was there ever a hero more tailor-made for genre cinema?) and RDJ’s career-saving performance.
2
Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)
Dismissively considered the “unfilmable film” during its extended period in development doldrums, Snyder’s Watchmen movie arrived on cinema screens to general bemusement and indifference – after all, who would be interested in a subversive appraisal of the medium featuring unfamiliar, skewed characters with no star actors? Meanwhile, devotees of the graphic novel would no doubt see it as flat, superficial, overly-slavish and reductive. On second viewing however, it becomes clear that the original misgivings regarding the project were back to front – the adaptation could not fail with such detailed, painstaking storyboards in place, and indeed it doesn’t. There are the clunky montage scenes, backed by some rather too obvious song choices, and the ending lacks the intensity of the book, but the movie plays, and plays surprisingly well. What’s most impressive is how the film doesn’t succumb to portentousness, and manages to entertain, whilst its production values do justice to the source – in short, it retains that vital comic spirit. The tagline states that Snyder is the visionary here, but make no mistake, this is Moore and Gibbons’ vision. Which in the end is all we could ask for.
THE GOOD
1
The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008) Nolan’s baroque tour
de force remains the only example of a comic-based film that asks questions of its audience – a subversive, cutting-edge work that maintains thematic cohesion and is dizzyingly entertaining with it. Central to the film of course is Heath Ledger’s Joker, who once on screen confounds and baits audience expectation with demonic, ruthless alacrity – a genuine mercurial psychopath compared to Nicholson’s subdued clown. Nolan’s remit as director is to willfully ignore and play havoc with convention, and to keep the viewer as in the dark and off-balance as the players – the ferry scene for instance being a point where one simply doesn’t know what’s coming next – quite a feat in modern cinema. Not that the cast don’t play their part – Bale’s Batman is a commanding presence, whilst Eckhart’s performance as the doomed Harvey Dent is moving and thoroughly believable. Evoking the brutal urban gothic of graphic novel masterworks like The Long Halloween and The Killing Joke, one could argue that the movie is a dark, psychological thriller with a gadget-laden costumed hero in tow – a “serious and mature” revisionist piece that transcends rather than elevates. And you’d be half-right – it’s actually what comic books are capable of. Hats off to Mr. Nolan.
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BEN TEMPLESMITH
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CHANNELS AND NOTHING ON
Since 1992, comic-related TV has become a dominant force in modern programming, arguably driving some of the most popular shows on TV. GARY MARSHALL takes a look back at how the success of comicbook movies has influenced the small screen as well and how the landscape has changed in the last 21 years
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wenty-one years ago, when Tripwire crawled from the primordial ooze, its fledgling editorial policy was to take a swipe at (or joyfully embrace) just about every kind of pop culture entertainment, but especially comics and music. Creatures must evolve, or go the way of the Dodo, and so too did Tripwire move and change with the times. The music petered out, but the comics grew stronger. Then comics themselves morphed as the superhero genre ebbed and flowed onto the shores of cinema and television. Ten years ago when the magazine went newsstand in the UK and the US, a buyer at a now flagging High Street news vendor couldn’t understand why we put a photo of a comic book movie on the front cover. Fair enough, Daredevil didn’t hit all the marks for comic book movie greatness: but Daredevil was that month’s number one film at the cinema. Spin forward a decade and we have the remarkable sight of a comic book movie smashing (pardon the pun) box office records and threatening to topple iconic movies from the top of the box office heap. Avi Arad and the team at Marvel should be congratulated on their brilliantly executed plan bring classic heroes to an audience that, more than ever, need the kind of escapism these films represent. And, of course, to drag Marvel licenses into the 21st Century.
But the real challenge is not the films, but the comics themselves. For all the millions of dollars pouring into the coffers from the films and associated merchandise, comic book sales remain a shadow of their former self. Is there about to be a further evolution of the comic book industry, where the monthly issue is little more than a proving ground for Hollywood scripts? Where fanboys provide the social media approbation for the next big silver screen outing? The answers should be no: no publisher can afford the production costs of a monthly book as a write off. That means the comics themselves are in a precarious position. We shouldn’t congratulate movie makers too soon. The Avengers might be an aberration, with its gross outstripping the sum of all its team players’ individual outings. Nolan’s seminal vision of the Dark Knight, and Raimi’s initial take on Spider-man proved winners. These are tentpole characters firmly ensconced in the public’s pop culture awareness. This is proved by the drive to reboot Spidey, with passing success, following Raimi’s messy third outing. However, it only took Singer’s banal Superman Returns 120 minutes to prove that the most beloved character can flounder in the fickle world of the cinema. This is why comicbook heroes, if they are to live to fight another day, must take a lie down on the TV exec’s casting couch.
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What the silver screen has clearly demonstrated is that there is a huge appetite for costumed heroes, and as a storytelling medium comic books lend themselves wonderfully to both live action and animated adaptation The silver screen has demonstrated that there is a huge appetite for costumed heroes, and that the larger-than life characters and plots of comic books lend themselves wonderfully to both live action and animated adaptation. But where cinema’s running time and budget limitations mean only the favoured few can achieve greatness, the long form TV season offers a purer opportunity to adapt and reflect the epic storylines and the deeper character arcs which are so often cast aside in film. Given the recent cinematic successes of comic originated content, the TV networks – both broadcast and especially cable – are now more than ever more open to developing TV shows from comics. More interestingly for comic fans, TV producers are open to adapting more obscure, as well as high profile series. This is hardly a new idea: TV has been plundering comic books for the best part of the last 70 years to varied levels of success and viewer appreciation. When the synergy between comics and television works it can be hard to beat. Why so much interest in last year’s The Avengers film? For many, it was a desire to see one character more than any other work again on the screen: The Hulk. Arguably the first comic book character to really embrace the capabilities of the small screen was Kenneth Johnson’s reimagining of the The Incredible Hulk airing between 1977 and 1982. While Johnson took a lot
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of liberties with Marvel’s character, the show was a phenomenal success, which took the character beyond the often limiting comic book tropes. Given the budget limitations – painting Lou Ferrigno green – this is a series which deserves a television reboot. What would deliver success though is a human anchor for the series. The real powerhouse of the original show was the tightly-controlled performance of Bill Bixby, who gave the TV audience human appeal to latch onto, as opposed to the flash of a CGI creature (Ang Lee take note). Humanity characterised other big breakthrough successes, such as Lois & Clark, and more recently Smallville. Smallville’s ten-year run says more about the series’ ability to engage audiences than any other thing. Smallville worked because it unceremoniously dumped all the Superman accoutrements. With angst driven teen relationships and Smallville’s “monster of the week format”, it’s easy to see how a large part of the initial audience didn’t even realise they were following the early days of Superman! Smallville defined the way TV could whole heartedly reinvent comicbook heroes, but, at the same time, could be true to the core elements of the character, and drive the mythos forward, eventually feeding back into the comics themselves. That audience involvement formed the success of a show, which from the perspective of Warner Brothers, was playing with
characters that had lost any great value on the screen following the disastrous final season of Lois & Clark, and even worse efforts to franchise Superboy in the 1980s. For all its success, the producers never achieved their aim of introducing the young Bruce Wayne into the world of Smallville. A decade ago, Batman was one character that you couldn’t play with. It’s an interesting “what if ”: would Nolan have been less inclined to reboot the Bat if he’d been a regular on the small screen? Instead we have Green Arrow, a character the CW feels is worth his own spin-off franchise, retooled for a more mature audience that grew up with a decade of Smallville on their TVs. We’ll politely close the door on the ongoing farrago that is the The Fantastic Four on screen, whether small or silver, and the recently anticipated Wonder Woman which departed before the
budget for the invisible jet needed to be found. Consider that one of the most successful TV adaptations of a comic character, if not in terms of run, but in terms of entering the public conscious was Batman. Between 1966 and 1968, Adam West and Burt Ward’s iconic take on the dynamic duo worked because, for once, it didn’t take itself seriously. Batman’s request in a restaurant to not take his usual, but one at the back, as he is incognito remains one of TV’s greatest gags. Let’s face it, without the modern costume and FX technology available to directors today, most Golden Age era super heroes tend to look a little ridiculous. Batman’s camp take on the genre rang true for the wider audience, and was great fun for the kids. But it rapidly wore out its welcome, and in the long term destroyed pretty much any attempt for comic heroes to be taken seriously until Tim Burton
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gave Bruce his dark soul back in 1989’s Batman. Bruce Timm followed up with one of the best genre series in 1992’s Batman: The Animated Series. Extending the feature films dark tones, and combined with Timm’s unique visual style, animation proved it was not just for kids. The spin-off Justice League (2001) cracked the team superhero dynamic like no other show has managed to do before or since. Creatively, animation is still throwing up some of the most interesting takes on genre franchises. While not comicbook originated, the now sadly canned Star Wars: Clone Wars series and Disney’s animated Tron haven proven visually dynamic as well as better written than their big screen siblings. Kudos must be given to the fabulous, though short-lived The Tick. If nothing else, this 1994 animated series showed that while superheroes could still be played for laughs, they were never going to be the cheap gags of the 1960s Batman. So if superheroes have struggled to find serious recognition with TV audiences, the same cannot be said of alternate comic genres. From horror, through thriller to the funnies, real success stories abound. The seven-year run of Tales from the Crypt ran with a who’s who of the great and good of Hollywood’s directorial talent and served as a rich homage to the original EC Comics. Given the love of all things undead, EC could well have a few graves disinterred as the studio execs look for likely putrefying corpses to pick over for ‘new’ ideas. On the flip side, it is hard not to admit to falling for a certain teenage witch, the hot older aunts and a
sarcastic cat in the 1990s adaptation of Archie Comics’ Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Sabrina exceeded all expectations running like a teen Bewitched and pretty much throwing out any and all reference to its source material. Like the 1970s Hulk, this was a series that succeeded due to casting: one generation’s Bill Bixby was another’s Melissa Joan Hart. Given TV’s love of the procedural crime thriller it is surprising that more of the past decade’s hard boiled comic series haven’t made the move to TV. Throwing out its comic-book origins may not have been the best move for 2010’s Human Target, as fans were disappointed to lose the Vertigo Comics series’ psychologically intense, master-of-disguise stories. Fingers crossed that Brian Azzarello’s fantastic 100 Bullets gets a better treatment, and with the Dark Knight screenwriter David S. Goyer attached there is high hope this could add to the value of future comic book adaptations. And there are many adaptations in the pipeline, which does mean for every Walking Dead, there is unfortunately going to be a Locke & Key, left at the pilot stage. In today’s cutthroat TV landscape, going to pilot is no guarantee of ever airing: even when airing the Sword of Damocles that is the ratings hangs ominously low. Cable network Showtime has its sights set on crime, developing Image Comics’, Chew, a cannibalistic procedural which certainly distinguishes itself from the pack, and Oni Press’ The Damned, where mob war meets demons, courtesy of X-Men/Watchmen screenwriter David Hayter. Both interesting sells. Tipped to at least make our screen in some form though is Brian
For every Walking Dead, there is unfortunately going to be a Locke & Key. In today’s cutthroat TV landscape, going to pilot is no guarantee of ever airing and even then, the Sword of Damocles that is the ratings hangs ominously low
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Michael Bendis’ Alias, in preproduction as AKA Jessica Jones, the adaptation is in the capable hands of Dexter screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg. Jones is a dark, complex character, and, although that may not play quite so well on the networks, there is no arguing over the popularity of presenting strong female leads in action driven vehicles. It is surprising to see ABC consider such a project, but recent success with Once Upon a Time, suggests it may happen. Certainly the big networks are not averse to developing portfolios of more mainstay comic book characters. ABC is developing Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger with a more family-orientated audience in mind, alongside Mockingbird, whose comic history ties her to the forthcoming SHIELD TV series, as well as husband Hawkeye. This could be a very interesting concept, a family friendly series that leads younger viewers into Joss Whedon’s Agents of SHIELD series which is being fast tracked prior to The Avenger 2 in 2015. Not surprisingly The Incredible Hulk reboot sits firmly in the ABC mix in the strong, if busy hands of creatives Guillermo del Toro and David Eick, mastermind of the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Fox also has Marvel strongly in the mix, with The Punisher in development with a put pilot, rebooting Castle as cop by day, vigilante at night. There’s a strong chance this will air on the network as a result. The other big name at Fox is The Spectre, a DC character at last, and one with a supernatural bent as this deceased cop hunts down more earthbound criminals. Expect the suit and green cloak to disappear faster than you can say spandex! When and if any of these adaptations actually hit the small screen is a duck shoot, but one that has more than a fair chance is FX’s take on Brian M. Bendis’ Powers. With a pilot already in
the can, and starring Jason Patric and Lucy Punch as homicide detectives investigate crimes involving the superhero community this promises a unique mix of noir and superheroes. DC also has two aces up its sleeve, first, Supernatural creator Eric Kripke is bringing Deadman to the CW, the possession McGuffin of Boston Brand is a great hook for an episodic TV series, and it fits well with Arrow and in the gap left by Smallville. But for many comic fans the big news is that Warner Bros has been circling the rights for Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, another project which Kripke’s name has been attached to in the past year. Sandman has had an ongoing saga of failed efforts to bring the mythological family to the big and small screen almost as long as its comic book run. Sandman is one of the few comic books that has successfully crossed to a wider audience, with a devoted female readership. Sandman’s genre busting adult storytelling, and broader audience make it, like Garth Ennis’ Preacher, ripe for TV adaptation. The difficult material which has held back their leap to the screen may finally pay dividends. Winnow out the dross of reality TV and the cloned singing competitions, and we are experiencing a halcyon period of dramatic television writing and production. That this has, for the first time, segued with effects technology that can stand shoulder to shoulder with cinema at a budget which is manageable for a weekly show, and there is perfect storm for genre TV. Where the cable channels have led, and taken large audiences with them, the networks now need to follow. If the audiences are there then comic characters will remain firmly ensconced on the small screen for many more years to come.
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JOE KUBERT
SIMON DAVIS
THE RIGHT PROFILE? their name on the front of a Batman or superhero comic cover. First out of the gates was US indie film director Kevin Smith. He began his comic writing career spinning his Clerks creations off the big screen and into print through Oni Press back in 1999. Smith has always been a big comicbook fan and his work at Oni led to him writing an arc of Daredevil for Marvel and later a run on DC’s Green Arrow series. At the beginning of this decade, Smith also penned a Batman series, The Widening Gyre. As well as Smith, the same decade saw future superstar movie director Joss Whedon, who had built up quite a following thanks to his work as showrunner on successful genre TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, enter the comic-writing field. Unlike Smith, Whedon’s effort was the creator-owned Fray for Dark Horse, a science fiction comic which was connected to his popular Buffy TV series. Whedon then went on to write Astonishing X-Men for Marvel, a run which was pretty well-regarded. He also acts as a consultant on the long-running Buffy The Vampire
The phemonena of celebrities writing comics is one that has come to prominence in the last two decades. JOEL MEADOWS takes a look at its rise and fall...
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he idea of using a celebrity to sell comics is not a new concept. For decades, companies like DC, Dell, Marvel and scores of others have published licensed titles featuring the adventures of popular TV and film stars and characters like Bob Hope, Hopalong Cassidy, Sgt Bilko and many others. In the 1970s, Marvel licensed films like Star Wars and popular TV series like Planet of The Apes and Battlestar Galactica and even huge US band KISS got in on the act. But in the 1990s, a new phenomena was born: Celebrity-written comics. With the short-lived boom in sales and attention focused on comics and graphic novels, scores of TV and film figures crawled out of the woodwork to proclaim their love of the four colour page and their long-held desire to see
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But with the change in the market and the coming of the recession, the celebrities began to stay away. Slayer comic series that Dark Horse has published since 2007. The appeal of writing comics at a time when they were seen as easy money and a way to boost your profile as a celebrity brand also attracted other lesser figures like Ron Zimmerman, who was best known as a contributor to the Howard Stern show. His Rawhide Kid and Ultimate Adventures comics both for Marvel gained him a short-lived notoriety thanks partly to his revamp of the former to make him a gay character but his ‘career’ in comics ended over a decade ago. It wasn’t just TV and film figures who were drawn to comics (pardon the pun). Authors like crime writer Brad Meltzer (Green Arrow and event series Identity Crisis), crime writer Eric van Lustbader and successful American author Jodi Picoult, who wrote Wonder Woman for DC, also decided to try their hand at writing comics, to varying success. Even Dark Horse got in on the act with My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way creating and writing The Umbrella Academy and Lance Henriksen’s To Hell You Ride, which came out in 2012. Way showed that he was an inspired choice with a real understanding of comics and the two volumes of The Umbrella Academy were well-conceived and a worthy addition to Dark Horse’s library. But with the change in the market and the coming of the recession, the celebrities began to stay away. With comic sales significantly down, it became less
appealing for celebrities to turn their hands to writing comics. The last hurrah was a small burst of UK celebrities like chat show host Jonathan Ross, who wrote Turf and America’s Got Powers, which were both published by Image Comics, and comedian Frankie Boyle, whose Rex Royd appeared in the spoTRIPWIRE 21 97
It is possible that the phenomena of the celebrity comic writer may have run its course radically published Clint magazine from Titan. But neither were particularly successful creatively: Ross brought two very talented artists on board (Tommy Lee Edwards and Bryan Hitch) but didn’t really know when to step back and let the artist shine. Boyle also showed that he really didn’t have a strong grasp of structure either, with his comic reading like a poor photocopy of Grant Morrison’s writing. The problem was that was that Ross wasn’t a writer, just a fan trying to parlay his TV celebrity into a career in writing, and sometimes enthusiasm isn’t enough. And the same charge could be leveled at Boyle. The problem with celebrities writing comics is that while many of them are genuinely aficionados of the form like Ross and Smith, a lot of them don’t understand the delicate dynamics that underpin a good comic series. And some of them also feel that, because they have a brand and a public profile, they have a sense of entitlement to dabble in things that they aren’t really qualified to do. Whedon is of course an exception. Since he is an experienced writer, he gets things like structure and the importance of letting the artist contribute to the work. Comics is at its heart a visual medium and so sometimes the writer needs to take a back seat and let the artist work his or her magic. Comic companies would hire celebrities because 98 TRIPWIRE 21
they thought that it would attract a greater profile to the title they become attached to, but since a higher profile doesn’t always guarantee impressive sales these days, it is possible that the phenomena of the celebrity comic writer may have run its course. For comics, this is arguably a good thing as it may mean that celebrities will leave the writing of comics to those who have spent years honing their craft and who really understand what makes a good comic or graphic novel.
GREG RUTH
21 YEARS, CREEP
A look back at the past 21 years would be incomplete without a piece on the impact that 2000AD continues to make on comics. So we gave our man DAVID BAILLIE the task of picking the 21 most important creators from the galaxy’s greatest comic…
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t horrifies me that I’m now old enough to have been doing anything of note twenty one years ago. But I have to be a man and face facts. In April 1992, (twenty-one years ago, almost to the day) I bought my first ever fresh, newly minted copy of 2000AD. I’ve been buying it every week since. It wasn’t the first 2000AD I’d ever purchased. I had hundreds stacked in numerical order in various cupboards and wardrobes all over my parents’ house. But none of these had been new, I’d hunted them down at various car boot sales and market stalls all over the country. Every comic shop owner in Edinburgh and Glasgow knew the nature of my addiction, and would greet me with a list of recent 2000AD-related acquisitions whenever I paid them a visit. 2000AD holds a special place in my heart. We were both born in 1977, we both used to be a slightly different shape and it is my earnest belief that we’re both massively under appreciated by the world’s media. We also have a reciprocal financial arrangement. In my my teenage years I spent most of my pocket money tracking down 2000AD back issues, and these days 2000AD pays my rent. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. My mum and I were travelling from Glasgow to Manchester to visit her twin sister, my Aunty Margaret. The sun was shining and we were both in good spirits. My mum, however, was dreading the long bus journey. I couldn’t wait. You see, I’d packed two A4 binders full of classic 2000ADs which I planned to re-devour for the fifth or sixth time. I was prowling the concourse of Buchanan Street bus station, eagerly waiting for the boarding announcement when I spotted it hidden amongst the glossy magazines in a news kiosk. 2000AD Prog 780. It had simply never occurred to me to buy a new issue of 2000AD. There were so many old ones to track down, after all. Hundreds of stories to be pieced together, years after they’d been published. I mean, surely I’d just buy this week’s issue from a market stall in five or ten years time. What was the rush? Right? But the cover of issue 780 had grabbed my attention and would not let go. Judge Dredd pounded towards
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me, ready to leap off the page, his Lawgiver poised as he outran a cover-wide explosion with no obvious concern for his own well-being. A banner on the cover promised me new ABC Warriors from Pat Mills (who at the time I assumed was some sort of ethereal warlock, living in an entirely different reality) and luscious acrylic art from Kev Walker, who I knew could do no wrong. There was also a free gift a credit card wallet bearing the beloved 2000AD logo. There was no use fighting it any longer. I surrendered my 50p and walked away with the first new issue of 2000AD I’d ever bought. So when Tripwire said they wanted an article about the 21 most important figures in the last 21 years of 2000AD, I knew I was the man for the job. After all – I was there for every one of those years as they happened.
Andy Diggle Diggle took over as editor in the year 2000 and quickly sent out a memo to creators, setting the agenda for the next few years. ‘It was all about giving the readers a fast, dense hit of action and imagination – a “shot-glass of rocket fuel”. I wanted to strike the right balance between classic characters from veteran creators and new strips from new talent,’ as he told previous editor David Bishop for Thrill Power Overload, the history of 2000AD that Rebellion commissioned to celebrate the comic’s thirtieth anniversary.
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Anthony Williams A fan-favourite artist whose work has appeared regularly throughout the last two decades of the comic. Strips he has drawn range from the bonkers (and under-rated) Kola Commandos, some classic Dredd stories (like Wagner’s Wot I did During Necropolis and Garth Ennis’ A Man Called Greener), the only 2000AD story to-date that has led to a question being asked in the house of Commons – Big Dave (as written by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar) through to recent stints on the revamped classic, the V.C.s and Sinister Dexter, both in collaboration with Dan Abnett. A fine body of work!
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Chris Blythe A master colourist, Blythe has a gift for understated palettes and an ability to set the tone of a story with laser-precision. This is never more evident than when he’s colouring Judge Dredd, where his hard work makes very diverse artists’ interpretations of Mega City One look like they really might exist in the same world. Blythe eschews a host of Photoshop techniques commonly
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used in the industry and prefers to hand render form, textures and effects in Painter. He’s also tried his hand at writing, having scripted five Future Shocks for 2000AD and Angel Fire, a graphic novel with the artist Steve Parkhouse. Colin MacNeil Unfortunately a lot of what MacNeil is particularly famous for at 2000AD falls outside our remit (Chopper: Song of the Surfer, America, The Death of Johnny Alpha) or else he’d appear a lot higher in this list. But the work he’s produced in the last 21 years has been exemplary, marking him out as an archetypical and highly influential Judge Dredd artist.
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Kev Walker Kev Walker’s luscious brush strokes first graced 2000AD in a period when painted art was often muddy, confusing and homogeneous. His work on the ABC Warriors story Chronicles of Chaos and Judge Anderson instantly blew all of his competition out of the water. In recent years he has adopted a more paired-down chiaroscuro style, influenced by Mike Mignola but at the same time undeniably his own. His sense of storytelling and composition is admired throughout the industry and his art has appeared on some of the most memorable stories in 2000AD’s history.
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Boo Cook This artist drew his first sample pages with a Bic Biro but was encouraged by then-Tharg Andy Diggle to use a more traditional tool for his first commissioned work. Boo’s début opened the stylistic floodgates at 2000AD once more, heralding a new age of visual experimentation.
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Rob Williams A Welsh writer whose first work was the creator-owned series Cla$$War for small UK publisher Com.X. This lead to a number of highly acclaimed series for 2000AD, including the eerie Breathing Space and Low Life, which explored the lives of undercover Judges, or the Wally Squad as they’re otherwise known. He’s also responsible for the unforgettable character Dirty Frank, and two pitch-perfect episodes of Judge Dredd – Outlaw with Guy Davis and Meat with Dylan Teague.
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John Smith Smith was the first writer to create a connected universe for his 2000AD tales to exit within. The Smithverse is a Byzantine web, the strands of which reach through Tyranny Rex, Indigo Prime, Firekind and Pussyfoot 5. Smith is a master of the weird, and employs a battery of surrealist techniques to produce his mind-bending epics. The incredible high regard he is held in became obvious when he unexpectedly ended the recent series Dead Eyes by having characters from Indigo Prime appear for the first time in two decades. Which led to many fans actually, literally exploding. (Okay, not literally.) I would also recommend checking out Slaughterbowl and his recent simmering horrorfest Cradlegrave.
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Simon Davis With his first work for 2000AD, Davis boldly took painted comics into stripped-down, expressionist territory. His pages are still handdelivered to the editorial office, affectionately known as the Nerve Centre, where they are carefully scanned for publication. It’s just been announced that Davis is to be the new artist on Slaine. I asked him what 2000AD meant to him. ‘I used to read it when I was young, it has had and still does, some of the best writers and artists working for it... It has been consistently good and simply put, I couldn’t have done full colour painted strips for 20 years for any other comic. I love its uniqueness and ability to span sci-fi and horror whilst still keeping its sense of humour... It’s quite simply ZARJAZ!’
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Frazer Irving Another stylistic maverick and another Andy Diggle find. No one draws like Frazer – from his first monochromatic work, where he mastered using negative space to stunning effect on the relatively large 2000AD page, to his transition to the purely digital realm, he continues to produce stuff that causes the readers, en masse, to gawp. ‘2000AD was less about the characters and more about the creative environment for me. The people that worked there as creators and production/editorial gave each “era” its specific magic, and when I started with them I felt totally at home with every aspect of it, as if it was destiny. Prior to that period, I hadn’t had much interest in the mag, so it was luck/hand of god that I ended up there when I did.’
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Alan Grant Originally tasked with merging Tornado with 2000AD in 1979, Grant went on to form a successful writing partnership with John Wagner, often co-writing Judge Dredd under the pseudonym T. B Grover. But all of that was well before our 21 year cut-off point. In more recent years, as a solo writer, he’s penned many a Dredd, whole swathes of Robo Hunter, a well-remembered fantasy called Mazeworld and the epic star-spanning adventures of Psi Judge Cassandra Anderson.
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Henry Flint It’s impossible to overemphasise the influence a definitive Dredd artist can have on the perception of the character and the rest of the comic as a whole. As the years roll on it becomes harder for a new artist to make their mark on the world of Dredd. There’s just so much to get to grips with – the architecture, the uniform, the chin. Henry Flint is the latest to do so. It didn’t take long for him to become a fan-favourite and in 2004 he won Best Artist at the Diamond National Comic Awards. Also notable for providing the art on the fabulous Shakara, written by Scot Robbie Morrison.
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D’Israeli 2000AD has excelled in cultivating inimitable artistic talents and D’Israeli the D’Emon D’Raughtsman (Matt Brooker to his friends) is the perfect example. Previously a colourist on Miracleman and an inker on Sandman, D’Israeli came into his own in the year 2000 when he drew three Future Shocks from his own scripts. A productive partnership with writer Ian Edginton was to follow, as were a series of stylistic transformations – first towards a process which used carefully crafted 3D Models and the vector tools of Adobe Illustrator, and then a new virtuoso style which started as a tribute to the complex collage work of Argentinian artist Alberto Breccia.
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Gordon Rennie His Wikipedia entry says that he describes himself as ‘a grumpy Scottish git’. Having never met the man I can neither confirm nor deny this for you. Rennie began writing comics just over twenty years ago (and indeed wrote a few columns for Tripwire many moons ago) and most of his best-remembered work has appeared in 2000AD. Stories such as Missionary Man, Necronauts and Storming Heaven with Frazer Irving, Rogue Trooper (he also wrote the script for the game), Caballistics Inc. and Aquila. He was hailed as the heir apparent to John Wagner and shortly afterwards announced that he was quitting comics to work in the games industry. (Although he says he was misquoted and has returned to comics since then.)
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Dan Abnett Mr Abnett is one of the most prolific contemporary genre writers known to man. He famously works seven days a week and is the second most credited writer in the last twenty one years of 2000AD’s history. His Sinister Dexter may have started out as a Pulp Fiction pastiche, but its longevity proves that it has become something a lot more complex and interesting. Other epics his pen has produced include the V.C.s, Durham Red, Kingdom and the recent politically-flavoured hit Grey Area. (Although my personal favourite is Sancho Panzer from 1998.)
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Robbie Morrison Two words: Nikolai Dante. Perhaps the most highly regarded character in 2000AD’s recent history. A sprawling epic that began in 1997 and related the Russian rogue’s life during bitter war and even more bitter peacetime. Last year’s final episode surely brought tears to a thousand eyes. Morrison was also responsible for the brilliant Shakara with Henry Flint.
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Jock His cool, stripped-down style has become synonymous with Judge Dredd. When the new Dredd film was still in the planning stages, Jock was the artist the production team called upon to design the world and re-design the Judges’ uniform. Jock flourished at 2000AD and his work on Dredd was instantly iconic.
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Pat Mills – The man who created 2000AD 35 years ago is still a regular contributor. His recent works include Invasion, Defoe, Greysuit, the continuing adventures of the ABC Warriors, and of course Slaine is still going strong after all these years. I asked him what makes 2000AD different. ‘I always knew it was a very special comic because I’d had a year to prepare it and had created some powerful characters, who would be rendered in a unique way that was influenced by the pre-super hero art in America such as 1984, Weird, Eerie, with artists like Mike Kaluta and Bernie Wrightson and the French Metal Hurlant and its translation as Heavy Metal with artists like Corben, Druillet and Bilal.’
Carlos Ezquerra He designed Judge Dredd. (That alone would be enough to justify his place on this list, since that uniform has appeared in 2000AD more often than any other design.) His futuristic cityscapes inspired co-creator John Wagner to set Dredd further into our future than he had originally intended. His gloriously gritty European art style is the first port of call when a Dredd mega epic is in the works. Once, my friend Leon asked him why he inked those little dashes around the outlines of his characters. ‘It makes the page move,’ he said. The man is a magician.
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John Wagner – A man of few words, a classic Wagner panel description reads: ‘Dredd. Bike. Grim.’ No one writes Judge Dredd like John Wagner. He created him. Many say he’s the best comics writer in Britain. Few disagree. Matt Smith Of course, the answer is obvious. The person who’s had most influence over 2000AD in its last 21 years is its current editor Matt Smith. The longest reigning editor in 2000AD’s history, having taken the helm in 2002. He picked up Favourite Editor awards at the Eagles in 2007, 2008 and 2011 and this year steered the comic towards its first Eisner nomination. ‘It’s hard to be objective on my editorship, but I’m always striving to put together a good-looking prog, with a nice balance of stories and art, and I think I’ve achieved it on a few occasions,’ Smith told me. ‘It’s hard to believe that in 2000AD’s 34-year history that I’ve been editing it for just under a third of its life!’
1
I’d like to thank Wakefield Carter for mining this data from his fantastic online 2000AD database, BARNEY. As you can see, letterers Ellie De Ville, Annie Parkhouse, and the sadly-missed Tom Frame are the oft-unsung heroes of 2000AD’s long success. As the old adage says – the reader only notices lettering when it goes wrong. And with these talented artisans at the wheel it very rarely has done. Cat Sullivan also deserves a mention for his brilliant cartoon Droid Life, which has appeared in over a hundred issues and even earned its own (pint-sized) collection.
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CREATORS WE HAVE LOST
The last twenty-one years has seen the comics industry lose many of its key figures, with the distance from the golden age get greater and greater. Here are 21 of the most important people who have gone between 1992 and 2013 in chronological order of their passing. As we went to press, Carmine Infantino died so sadly we couldn’t fit him in…
Jack Kirby (1917-1994) One of the greatest comic creators of the Golden and Silver Age, a writer, an artist and an innovator whose impact can still be felt today. Key Works: Captain America (Marvel) , Fantastic Four (Marvel), Thor (Marvel), Fourth World Saga (DC)
Archie Goodwin (1937-1998) Highly respected editor and writer, whose career spanned four decades, with a reputation for nurturing talent. He worked extensively at Marvel and DC. Key Works: Creepy (Warren), Manhunter (DC), Epic Illustrated (Epic/ Marvel) Bob Kane (1915-1998) Co-creator of Batman and a prominent Golden Age writer at DC. His assocation with the character continued up to his death as he worked on Tim Burton’s Batman (1989). Key Works: Batman (DC), Detective Comics (DC)
Gil Kane (1926-2000) He was a prolific artist who worked for both Marvel and DC. He worked almost constantly from the 1940s right up to his passing. He was well-known for his dynamic work. Key Works: Green Lantern (DC) , Captain Marvel (Marvel), Blackmark (Bantam), John Carter (Marvel) Don Martin (1931-2000) One of MAD magazine’s best and most respected cartoonists, Martin’s brand of weird humour attracted a huge following for his work. Martin alsom influenced people like Matt Groening. Key Works: Captain Klutz (Signet), MAD Magazine (EC) TRIPWIRE 21 105
Robert Kanigher (1915-2002) A writer and editor most closely associated with DC’s war books, he created Sgt Rock with artist Joe Kubert. His partnership with Kubert was one of the most notable things about his career. Key Works: Sgt Rock (DC), Enemy Ace (DC), Wonder Woman (DC) John Buscema (1927-2002) The ultimate Marvel artist, Buscema worked on series like Silver Surfer, The Avengers and later Conan for the company. He also drew The Punisher in the 1990s. Key Works: The Avengers (Marvel), Silver Surfer (Marvel), Conan (Marvel) Will Eisner (1917-2005) One of the first professionals to champion creator rights, Eisner created The Spirit and is also credited with popularizing the term ‘graphic novel’. Key Works: The Spirit (Quality/ DC), Contract With God (WW Norton), Fagin The Jew (Doubleday) Martin Nodell (1915-2006) Artist who was best known as the creator of the Golden Age Green Lantern, he moved into advertising in the 1950s buit made a brief return to comics in the 1980s. Key Works: All-American Comics (DC)
Michael Turner (1971-2008) Comic artist most associated with Image’s Top Cow imprint, on characters Fathom and Witchblade. He also provided covers for Superman/ Batman at DC. Key Works: Fathom (Aspen), Witchblade (Top Cow)
Craig Flessel (1912- 2008) Flessel worked extensively for DC Comics in the Golden Age including the classic covers for the pre-Batman Detective Comics. He also contributed cartoons to Playboy magazine. Key Works: Detective Comics (DC)
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Frank Frazetta (1928-2010) The master of science fiction and fantasy art and arguably the greatest comics painter of all time, Frazetta first came to real attention through his work at EC. His Conan book covers are considered to be true classics. Key Works: Shock Suspense Stories (EC), Legacy (Underwood)
Al Williamson (1931-2010) Williamson was a comic artist and cartoonist whose career spanned six decades. He became closely associated with newspaper strips like Star Wars and Secret Agent X-9 with his friend Archie Goodwin. Key Works: Al Williamson Archives (Flesk), Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon (Flesk)
Dick Giordano (1932-2010) An artist and inker best known for collaborating with Neal Adams on Batman and Green Lantern/ Green Arrow in the Seventies, he also transformed DC as its Executive Editor from 1981 to 1993. Key Works: Batman Illustrated by Neal Adams Volume 1 (DC), Green Lantern/ Green Arrow (DC)
Jeffery Catherine Jones (1947-2011) Jones was a comic artist who brought a lot of fine art influences to bear on his work. Jones painted a range of book covers and also contributed to Heavy Metal and occasionally to DC’s horror and fantasy lines. Jones became a woman in later life. Key Works: Jeffery Jones: A Life in Art (IDW)
Gene Colan (1926-2011) Colan was the master of drawing the moody superhero. He spent long stints drawing Daredevil for Marvel and Batman for DC but he also drew the acclaimed Tomb of Dracula series with writer Marv Wolfman. Key Works: Tomb of Dracula (Marvel) Detectives Inc (Eclipse) TRIPWIRE 21 107
Jerry Robinson (1922-2011) Artist Robinson worked closely with Bob Kane and Bill Finger on DC’s Batman and Detective Comics in the Golden Age. He coined the name ‘Robin’ and also created Batman’s most iconic adversary, The Joker. He was a ‘creative consultant’ for DC from 2007. Key Works: Batman (DC), Detective Comics (DC) Joe Simon (1913-2011) Simon was a little unusual in comics, as he worked as a writer, artist, editor and publisher in his decades in the industry. His most well-regarded collaboration was with Jack Kirby, which lasted throughout the 1940s. He created Captain America with Kirby. Key Works: Captain America (Timely), Sandman (DC) Moebius (1938-2012) Born Jean Giraud, this bold, French comics artist cast a huge shadow on both bande dessinee and the US comic industry, influencing scores of mainstream US comic artists. He is best known in the Englishspeaking industry for Blueberry, Arzach and The Incal. Key Works: Blueberry (Epic/ Marvel), Arzach (Self Made Hero) Joe Kubert (1926-2012) Kubert was one of the most important figures in comics ever. He worked as an editor, a writer, an artist and he even started his own school that bears his name back in 1976. Kubert was most closely connected with DC. Key Works: Tor (DC), Sgt Rock (DC), Hawkman (DC), Yossel (DC)
Tony Dezuniga (1932-2012) Filipino artist Dezuniga began his career working for DC in the late 1960s. He went on to become one of their regular contributors. He created western character Jonah Hex with writer John Albano. His gritty linework won him many fans. Key Works: Jonah Hex (DC), Savage Sword of Conan (Marvel)
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FROM THE ARCHIVE
Over 21 years of publication, TRIPWIRE has assessed a cross section of different titles. At one point we even used to include music reviews, which were replaced by films. So here’s a selection of reviews of key comics, albums and films over the years. When I first started TRIPWIRE, I was only 19 years old and so some of my reviews are a little bit primitive. They’re filled with grammatical errors and the arrogance of youth so they’re more than a little bit embarrassing to look at two decades later. Our remit was to offer a more independent view of what was happening but sometimes I felt it was my mission to heap my wrath on some subjects who weren’t necessarily deserving of my ire, something which came back to haunt me years later. We wanted to offer something more irreverent than what was available at the time, which backfired sometimes. It was good grounding for a career in journalism but sometimes I just didn’t know what I was talking about. It was tempting when we were putting this book together to improve them, but we decided to represent them, warts and all, to act as a snapshot of TRIPWIRE. If a review is written by someone else, then they’ll be identified…
Legends of The Dark Knight #28 Writer/ artist Matt Wagner DC Comics
This is the way that Batman should be done. This is the best Wagner stuff I’ve seen since since Mage. Bruce Wayne bids for a small island while a darkly menacing Two-Face scares the shit out of Gotham’s residents, aided by a grisly gang of malformed circus rejects. Wagner instills tangible terror into the reader and the whole thing comes across like a 1940s horror film. The art is dark but never murky; Oliff is an exquisite colourist and the colour compliments Wagner’s wonderfully cartoony renderings. Without peer this month Story ****1/2 Art ****1/2 Overall Quality ****1/2 Taken from Volume 1#1, March 1992
VALIANT EFFORT?
Harbinger #11
Writer & Penciller: David Lapham, Inker Gonzalo Mayo Eternal Warrior #4 Writer Kevin VanHook, Artists: Yvel Guichet and John Dixon X-O Manowar#10 Writer Bob Layton, Artists Mike Leeke and John Ryder Valiant Comics In August, Jim Shooter left Valiant, allegedly due to ‘personal differences’. People might say that quality will drop now that Shooter has left but the quality can’t be that eroded because it was never there. Shooter always seemed to approach Valiant, I feel, as more of a hobby than a business: You could just imagine him sitting at home, babysitting while writing 3 titles on the trot. It seemed to exude an air of amateurism. I have never read Harbinger, X-O Manowar or Eternal Warrior before but it has occurred to me that perhaps the Valiant line doesn’t deserve to be feted at all. If ITV brought back Crossroads, who would praise them for producing quality television? And who would continue to laud them if they showed a selection of programmes under one banner that were as mediocre and crass as Crossroads but with a new set of characters and storylines? As far as I’m concerned, Magnus: Robot Fighter and
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Dr Solar were never particularly good in the first place. Although Harbinger, X-O Manowar and Eternal Warrior are ‘New’ characters, they have a very secondhand, almost ‘lived-in’ feel to them: how many times have you seen a group of superpowered teenagers with personal problems in fiction (Harbinger) or hard-bitten adversaries that are being constantly reincarnated (Eternal Warrior)? Harbinger#11 is just an atrocious soap opera with half-way decent art and hackneyed dialogue. It is handled clumsily and so whatever initial potential it might have had has been crushed like a bag full of Digestives being stomped upon by an elephant. X-O Manowar #10 is particularly awful, like Dallas with superpowers. A powerful god runs a large corporation, who happens to have a homosexual lover. Throw in some aliens after the god’s armoured exoskeleton and you have a plot that makes your average Vic Reeves sketch chillingly coherent. Eternal Warrior #4 really is a bit of a stinker. Its closest antecedent is ‘Monkey’ but ‘Monkey’ without the humour. It is replete with ‘Inscrutable Orientals’ and more action/adventure clichés than you could pack into a B-52 bomber. I can’t slate these titles absolutely, even though I’ve tried, but a feeling of indifference is just as infuriating as anger at very poor quality. It might be admirable for Valiant to use untested creators but it might be nice if some of these creators possessed more innate talent than a school of illiterate dolphins. Not much to recommend, really. Harbinger 11 Story **1/2 Art *** Overall Quality **1/2 X-O Manowar 10 Story ** Art **1/2 Overall Quality **1/2 Eternal Warrior 4 Story ** Art *** Overall Quality *** Taken from Volume 1#2, September 1992
MOB RULE The Invisibles #1-2 Writer Grant Morrison Artist Steve Yeowell Vertigo/ DC DC describes The Invisibles as ‘provocative and compelling, certain to cultivate as intense and loyal a following as THE SANDMAN.’ For me, it has the potential to totally eclipse Sandman. It is a whirling miasma of Clockwork Orange, Lindsay Anderson’s If, The Prisoner, Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum and The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton. It is everything a comic should be: suspenseful, exotic, stimulating and exquisitely well-crafted. The central character, Dane MacGowan (a deliberate Pogues reference, there) is a disenchanted Liverpuddlian teenager who is caught firing his school. He is sent to a sinister correctional facility, Harmony House, where he discovers how the warders keep their charges so docile. He is freed by a group of Invisibles, led by King Mob, who then proceeds to disappear. In the second issue, we are introduced to Mad Tom, an Invisible who can see another London and a pack of killers with a penchant for dressing as upper crust hunters. Invisibles is much more than the sum of its parts: Morrison here is more seductive and bewitching than he’s ever been before. It is a literate but not impenetrable story, full of enough mayhem to satisfy action junkies but with facets set to appeal to those after a more cerebral read. Invisibles is unsettling, anarchic and uniquely British. Unlike a film like Shopping, which attempts to pander to the American market, this comic makes no concessions to an audience raised on Arnold Schwarzenegger and Star Trek: The Next Generation. It deserves pride of place on anybody’s shelves. But what about Steve Yeowell’s art? It compliments the story supremely well. Yeowell comes from a long tradition of British comics artists: it flows and is easy on the eye. In black-and-white, it’s a joy to look at. Printing it as colour might reduce the effect but not greatly. Packed with depth, this is the first new regular from Vertigo in a long time that I can unreservedly recommend. Story ***** Art ***** Overall Quality ***** Taken from Volume 1#7, Sept 1994 TRIPWIRE 21 111
IF YOU HATE SOMEBODY SEND THEM THESE Their Greatest Hits INXS Fields of Gold The Best of Sting Crossroads The Best of Bon Jovi Bon Jovi Some hate Christmas because of claustrophobic family get-togethers and the attendant rise in divorce rates. Some hate Christmas because of the rampant commercialism that forces the less well off to confront their own poverty as endless adverts for ridiculously expensive products are paraded on television. Me? I hate having to listen to compilation albums from ghastly acts that have amassed enough repellent hits to justify double albums of the stuff. Let’s begin then, shall we boys and girls? The continued success of INXS or ‘little U2’ as they are known (or should be) is enough to baffle the wisest of us. They themselves even wrote a song called ‘Mystify’ about the whole bizarre phenomena. You know what to expect. Michael Hutchence tries to impersonate Jim Morrison while the rest of the band attempt to play watered down funk rock. They succeed. And why are their bloody videos always moving constantly forwards or from side to side. Do they try to save money by hiring cameramen with malaria or what? I feel sick. Now onto Sting. What on earth happened to Sting? Alright, his fake Jamaican accent always grated but at least ‘Message In a Bottle’ and ‘Every Breath You Take’ were catchy. No self-respecting pop fan wants to hear sanitised jazz experiments or bland collaborations with obscure South American musicians. They want tunes. Whatever happened to the tunes? That’s enough Sting. Now for Bon Jovi. Beginning to feel weak now. Must…finish…review… ‘Keep The Faith’ was nice. So was ‘Wanted Dead Or Alive’. But not the rest…not the rest… Will this do? SIMON TEFF Rating Who Cares? Taken from Volume 1#8, December 1994 112 TRIPWIRE 21
UNION JACK THE LADS The Great Escape Blur (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? Oasis Different Class Pulp Please forgive me if I address these reviews to our new American readers but they will have become more than a little cynical about the British music press. Endless waves of overhyped bands and everchanging musical ‘scenes’ may well have numbed them to the current state of music in the UK. Plenty of great British bands such as The Smiths, The Jam, Suede, Madness or The Stone Roses have failed to make much impact in America. Whilst US success is not necessarily a benchmark of quality it is a shame that mass audiences should miss out on truly great music of which there is little enough anyway. The cliché that the US/UK music crossover is almost exclusively one-way traffic is dangerously close to the truth. After all acts as diverse as The Beach Boys, Ice Cube and Mariah Carey have always found keen audiences at different levels throughout Britain, whereas UK acts only tend to break through in America if they sound vaguely American, eg Led Zeppelin, Bush, Def Leppard. And so a whole new wave of exciting British acts that sound distinctly homegrown may not thrill US readers to the bone, but perhaps they should. Because Britain is experiencing a range of acts that have created the best musical scene in the country since the beginning of the pop era. Better than the ‘60s and better than punk. In both of those periods only a few acts were really outstanding (The Beatles, Stones, Kinks and The Who in the former; The Clash, Sex Pistols, The Jam and the Buzzcocks in the latter). ‘Scenes’ tend to congregate around one or two class acts but the range here is breathtaking. The cinematic trip-hop of Portishead, the tuneful invention of Supergrass, the epic rock of Radiohead or the bubblegum punk of Elastica. It’s all in there somewhere. And then there’s Blur, Oasis and Pulp… Blur’s fourth album The Great Escape is a consolidation and improvement on the impressive achievements of the preceding two (don’t bother with the first one – even they don’t much care for it). What do they sound like? Well it’s become a cliché to compare them to the Kinks, especially
since they’ve long since surpassed any single reference point. The Great Escape is chock full of wildly differing styles of pop from the incisively heartbreaking ballad ‘Best Days’ to the Nirvana-atthe-fairground of ‘Globe Alone’. Often any direct comparisons simply fail to do justice to the songs. The warped oriental lovesong ‘Yuko and Hiro’ or the hugely cinematic ‘He Thought of Cars’ need to be judged purely on their own merits. Damon Albarn’s vocals flicker between cocky Bowie-isms and affecting directness. Only a couple of Blur-bynumbers tracks (‘Top Man’ and ‘Dan Abnormal’) restrain this endlessly inventive album from total victory. Next up is Oasis. We’ll gloss over their bitter rivalry with Blur, simply because British readers will be bored silly of it by now whereas US readers probably couldn’t give a toss. Let’s simply point out that Oasis play The (Northern) Rolling Stones to Blur’s (Southern) Beatles and seem to have divided the country in similar ways. Oasis play up their grittier working class ethics as opposed to Blur’s art school experimentation, but are easily as impressive in very different ways. Their previous album Definitely Maybe was a masterclass in punk/ rock tune stealing, pinching shamelessly from T.Rex, The Beatles and even The New Seekers. The band are fired by the sibling rivalry between Noel Gallagher (older brother, songwriter, guitarist) and Liam Gallagher (younger brother, singer, shaking the tambourine a bit). Morning Glory veers closer to rock than punk but the inspired theft continues, this time including Gary Glitter and R.E.M. Liam’s superb vocals are pitched somewhere between Lennon and Johnny Rotten, and Noel’s songwriting hits new peaks on beautiful stringTRIPWIRE 21 113
laden ballads like ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Don’t Look Back’ and ‘Cast No Shadow’. New drummer Alan White gives them a rhythmic kick that was previously missing, whilst epics like ‘Champagne Supernova’ and the title track impress immediately. A classic album by any standard. Of all the ‘Britpop’ bands Oasis are the most likely to achieve international success, due to their familiar reference points and avoidance of any career-damaging regional accents. Not so Pulp who make a virtue of their grim Sheffield backgrounds. Their sly witty views of life from the margins have won the band’s lead singer Jarvis Cocker enormous public affection as well as regular chart success. Up until now they had always seemed like a good idea in search of a good sound, but with Different Class they seem to have located it by updated the dark epics of Kurt Weill and Scott Walker to reflect modern life as seen through the eyes of an outgoing sociopath. ‘I Spy’ is the apex of this approach – a six-minute tale of loathing and revenge, set against a sweeping orchestral backdrop; “You see you should take me seriously, seriously indeed / Cos I’ve been sleeping with your wife for the past 16 weeks.” Cocker’s lyrics are so finely tuned that it only takes the 2 opening lines to ‘Sorted Out For E’s and Whizz’ to 114 TRIPWIRE 21
illustrate his ambivalent attitude to rave culture; “Oh is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel? / Or just 20,000 people standing in a field”. If you want an album full of memorable and catchy ‘story’ songs in a similar vein to Squeeze’s masterful ‘Up The Junction’, then you’re in for a treat. And there you have it…Britpop’s three key players releasing extremely classy albums in rapid succession. Don’t take times like these for granted, because the UK music scene runs through peaks and troughs just like any other and who knows how long this can last? Apologies to UK readers for telling you what you already know, but who cares what you think anyway? We’ve got some American friends now. SIMON TEFF Blur ****1/2 Oasis ***** Pulp **** Taken from Volume 1#11, Winter 1995
DOOM SAYER Flex Mentallo 1 Writer: Grant Morrison Artist: Frank Quitely Vertigo/ DC The state that comics is currently in is a cause for worry to anyone reliant on the industry for their bread and butter. In a recession, the first casualty is unique, innovative product. Flex Mentallo bucks the frankly squalid state that Vertigo has been in for the last two years. Flex is a musclebound, Charles Atlas advert come to life. In this premiere issue, Morrison goes some way to give him a third dimension. But at this early stage you can’t help feeling that he is constricted by the very concept of the character. Be that as it may, it throws up a number of intriguing scenes. There are a clutch of mystery trenchcoated figures, all working for the mysterious Faculty X, who go around leaving black globes painted to look like bombs. Flex has to discover the secret behind Faculty X and in doing so encounters an old ally of his, The Fact. Comic creations are spilling out into reality and Flex’s creator Wally Sage is involved somehow. Morrison has always been one of the best at writing, and I hate to use the word because it sounds so trendy, postmodern comics. His Doom Patrols were undervalued: they were surrealism more chic than a designer suit and served as a precursor to all the UFO/ first contact/ government subterfuge fiction that’s been very fashionable for the last couple of years. Flex has some of the Doom Patrol’s weird but well-written sensibilities: Wally Sage’s poignant and heart-rending reminiscing while talking to The Samaritans works extremely well and the air of intrigue runs through it like the word ‘paranoid’ in a malignant stick of Brighton rock. Never before has a conspiracy been so well-constructed in comics. I would be remiss if I ignored Frank Quitely’s sizeable contribution to Flex Mentallo. His delicate and animated art lends real class to the comic and Flex really rings true as a comic character who’s escaped into the real world. He’s little known in America (The Megazine’s distribution over there is rather spotty) but I hope that Flex will catapult him
into the big league of comic artists. Recently, there’s been a tendency to marginalize Vertigo: A million Sandman rehashes and selfindulgent sixth form angst poetry does not make for a mature comics line. Preacher has remained consistent but Flex marks a milestone in Vertigo’s history. It is a tight, imaginative and incredibly ingenious treasure of a comic. It makes me remember why I used to get such a buzz from comics. When it comes out in April, beg, borrow or steal it but you must own a copy of Flex Mentallo #1! Story ***** Art ***** Overall Quality ***** Taken from Volume 1#12, Spring 1996
Preacher has remained consistent but Flex marks a milestone in Vertigo’s history. It is a tight, imaginative and incredibly ingenious treasure of a comic. It makes me remember why I used to get such a buzz from comics. TRIPWIRE 21 115
SECOND COMING Kingdom Come 1 Writers: Alex Ross/ Mark Waid Artist: Alex Ross DC Comics Well, here it is. After eighteen months of waiting, it’s arrived. I can almost feel the tension mounting as I write this review. Firstly, let’s talk about DC’s advance publicity. If Kingdom Come were a film, you can imagine the trailer with the fake Orson Welles voiceover: “1986: DC Comics makes history with BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS…Ten years later, DC does it again.” To begin with, it’s more than a little unfair to saddle KC with this kind of pressure. On the other hand, I can’t remember the last time there was such a buzz about a new comic. Probably around the time of Dark Knight. But whereas DC hoped Dark Knight would be a massive success, they are confident that Kingdom Come will be the biggest comic released this year. And they are probably right too. Kingdom Come is an Elseworlds story, that takes us ahead by about twenty years, when all of the established DC superheroes are either retired or going about their activities in a clandestine fashion. Superman has recreated his Kansas farm at The Fortress of Solitude, Green Lantern sits like some omnipotent observer in a space station above the earth and The Flash still operates in Keystone City, secretly. Earth is dominated by nihilistic, violent superpowered individuals with names like Magog and Alloy. So our central human character Norman McCay is thrust into a world of apocalyptic visions when he is counseling the dying Sandman (Wesley Dodds) who is plagued by images of hellfire and damnation. When Dodds does die, he passes on these dreams to church minister McCay, who is then visited by The Spectre, who proceeds to show him where the old heroes are. Magog causes a horrific accident and this prompts Superman to come out of retirement and save the situation. But McCay continues to see these frightening revelations. And so Book One ends. Now that I’ve spent a great deal of time discussing its plot, let’s talk about its execution. Waid and Ross are equal partners in the writing and they go about setting up the near future with remarkable style and grace. Ross’s art was alive in Marvels but it is a hundred times more vibrant and 116 TRIPWIRE 21
humming in Kingdom Come. My only complaint is the way that Batman’s been redesigned: he looks like a giant dark Transformer. Apart from that, Kingdom Come is widescreen comics, a cross between DeMille, Kirby and Lean. When Superman appears in costume at the end, he looks like a demi-god. The other heroes we only see in passing but we shall obviously encounter them in more depth in future issues. McCay works very well as a lost soul in a future he’s lost faith in and it is the centering of Kingdom Come in a human fallible character that is it’s greatest strength. Kingdom Come opens with a massive smack in the face and its first issue is punctuated with things to pique your interest: the concept of superheroes who live only to beat the shit out of each other, regardless of the consequences to bystanders, is an intriguing one. If Marvels was a walk in the park on a bright summer’s day, then Kingdom Come is a haggard run through an unlit alleyway at night. It sets up a number of possibilities and I can’t wait to see how this series is played out. Book Two will be out as you read this. I can’t recommend Kingdom Come strenuously enough: purchase should be compulsory. Story ***** Art ***** Overall Quality ***** Taken from Volume 1#13, Summer 1996
GIRLS AND BOYS Girl 1 Writer Peter Milligan Artist Duncan Fegredo Vertigo Verite/ DC Comics The Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix 1 Writer Peter Milligan Artists John Paul Leon & Klaus Janson Marvel Comics Peter Milligan has an amazing ability unrivalled by anyone else currently working in comics. He can handle gritty social realism as well as accessible fun, but intelligent, mainstream work with the deft hand of a literary conjuror. Girl is the third in Vertigo’s Verite imprint. Girl is what can best be described as a cross between social commentary and kitchen sink drama. Simone is a fifteen year old disenchanted teenager who lives in ‘Bollockstown’, who feels that her life is going nowhere. Her father is a loud brash, ignorant brute who regularly beats her mother and she is ostracized by her peer group for being too weird. So, it’s quite accurate to agree that she has a right to be pissed off. What you might not expect, unless you are familiar with Milligan’s work, is that there is a great streak of black humour running through this. Okay, her life’s repellent but Simone is a bitter and very funny teenager who works very well as a sympathetic protagonist. The dog dies, even her father falls out of the broken window in their council flat, but they elicit an uneasy laugh from the reader. The first issue of Girl is blessed with the marvelous scribblings of Pete Milligan’s regular artistic collaborator, Duncan Fegredo, whose loose renderings add a touch of off-the-cuff, spontaneous elegance to the proceedings. He looks as if he draws quickly but this is not to the detriment of the comic. Fegredo’s got a wonderful way with facial expressions and some of the panels almost scream off the page. Girl #1 is, to be honest, a bloody excellent read. It’s out now, so stop what you’re doing and go and buy it. Getting back to Mr Milligan’s incredible writing ability, we have The Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, a veritable cornucopia in the wilderness that is Marvel’s current output. With him on this are two extremely talented craftsmen, J.P.Leon and Klaus Janson. I wasn’t aware that Janson was going to be inking this: he is best known for inking Frank CONTINUED OVERLEAF TRIPWIRE 21 117
Miller’s Dark Knight Returns and numerous other Batman stories but he fits Leon’s loose magic marker work like a Savile Row suit. Leon has worked previously on DC’s Milestone line but this year he seems to have come into his own. First the Logan one-shot earlier this year and now this. Him and Janson work wonders in bringing to life the scummy streets of Victorian London and its surrounding environs. This is a sequel to last year’s Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix (it must have taken Marvel’s editors weeks to come up with such a snappy title) and it craps all over the previous series with class and breeding. We find out that X-Men villain Mr Sinister begins life as a brilliant but mocked and derided scientist, Nathaniel Essex, who argues that if racially superior individuals breed, that across generations, humans will mutate and develop into, well, mutants. He is criticized and shouted down at the Royal Society for being immoral and so our tale begins. Essex comes across a gaggle of thieving Victorian freaks and the imprisoned body of Apocalypse. Meanwhile, Cyclops and Phoenix find themselves transported to Victorian London. Their purpose at this moment is unclear, but it is evident that they have been sent to stop Mr Sinister from carrying out his plans. Milligan weaves an enchanting and mesmerizing tale of morality and power. Aided by Leon and Janson, past London hums with life. There’s no subDickensian, jolly rascals or fog-lit streets, just a city, the most important city in the world, it could be argued. Essex is suitably sinister and driven and it all makes for extremely diverting reading. So, there you go. A modern drama and a period X-Men comic, both with their own merits. #2 of … Cyclops and Phoenix should be out as you read this. I am genuinely looking forward to seeing where Milligan takes this series. And I am intrigued to see what happens next with Girl. It’s such a rarity to find two good comics from such different genres running at the same time, so make the most of it. Girl Story **** Art **** Overall Quality **** Cyclops and Phoenix Story **** Art **** Overall Quality **** Taken from Volume 1#13, Summer 1996 118 TRIPWIRE 21
FATHER FIGURE Older – George Michael You can’t trust anybody these days it seems. Disappointment is a word that I had come to associate with George Michael records, but never because I was disturbed to find that I actually didn’t dislike it. And if you can’t untangle that preceding sentence it simply means that against the odds, GM has produced an album which has attained the heady heights of ‘not bad.’ The initial superslick singles ‘Jesus To a Child’ and ‘Fastlove’ are spat out in sequence at the beginning of the album, leaving a record that tackles the easy listening genre with a surprising amount of class. Robbed of those annoying videos that overflow with fascistic images of glistening supermodels at play, GM’s voice somehow seems a little less grating and a little more understated. Jazzy minor chords and swelling keyboards are the order of the day for much of ‘Older’, as exemplified by the title track which would slip comfortably onto the incidental soundtrack of a Bond movie. Portishead would also appear to be a strong influence on ‘Spinning The Wheel’ where distant samples mingle freely with twangy guitars and laidback beats. The whole thing even closes with ‘Free’, an impressively ambient little instrumental that neatly summarises the new sound that GM has been developing in his enforced six year hiatus. Let’s not go mad however. After all this is still George Michael that we’re talking about. The antichrist and all that. Moments of inexcusable blandness still infect this album. Just not quite as much as they used to. SIMON TEFF Rating **1/2 Taken from Volume 1#13, Summer 1996
SITUATIONIST VACANT? The Invisibles Volume 2#1 Writer: Grant Morrison Artists: Phil Jiminez & John Stokes Vertigo/DC Comics I can’t believe it’s been two years. Two years of some of the most thought-provoking and exciting comics ever published. A dazzling array of talent and ability displayed regularly. So why did The Invisibles Volume One have to end? For a number of reasons. Firstly, our American cousins didn’t take too kindly to chopping and changing artists every two seconds (although they didn’t seem to mind persevering with Sandman but that’s another story). This led to a drop in sales and so Mr Morrison has given in to chasing high sales and big numbers and bitten the bullet. Or has he? Invisibles has always been a more challenging title than say Sandman because although Sandman had its moments, at its heart it is a conventional but well-spun fantasy comic whereas The Invisibles is a whiteknuckle rollercoaster, brown trouser ride of a title, encompassing everything from Chaos to conspiracy theory, The Sweeney and back again. It was its innate Britishness that alienated some American readers. And so here we are again, at the beginning of a new story. King Mob is recuperating in America after his ordeal at the hands of Sir Miles. The rest of the cell are brought in to capture the cure for AIDS from a high security installation in New Mexico. It could be argued that the inception of Vol.2 is less complex, more straightforward than Vol.1#1. But then, on a second reading you see that Morrison still wants to make his readers work for their money. Jiminez and Stokes are flashy, polished collaborators, but you miss the idiosyncrasies of Steve Yeowell, whose Invisibles runs were marred by Dick Giordano’s lumbering inks, or the genius of Steve Parkhouse or Chris Weston. The art is very American, which is more in keeping with the new, ‘improved’ US-friendly Invisibles. I’ve always thought that Morrison’s public image, that of a PVC clad, E-popping hedonist hides the real truth: that he’s partial to bingo of an evening and relaxing in front of the TV with a chocolate digestive or two. Morrison is a rarity amongst name comic creators: his ego hasn’t swelled to the size of a
continent (ala Neil Gaiman) and he’s still able to have a sense of humour about his work. Indeed, his work is shot through with humour and quips. Invisibles Volume Two seems to be promising as many complexities as Volume One delivered, so it’s a very strong start. Situationist Vacant? I don’t believe that for a moment. Story ***** Art **** Overall Quality **** Taken from Volume 1#15, Winter 1996
The Invisibles is a whiteknuckle rollercoaster, brown trouser ride of a title, encompassing everything from Chaos to conspiracy theory, The Sweeney and back again. Invisibles Volume Two seems to be promising as many complexities as Volume One delivered, so it’s a very strong start. Situationist Vacant? I don’t believe that for a moment.
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CALIFORNIA SCREAMING Fantastic Four 1 Writers: Jim Lee & Brandon Choi Artists: Jim Lee & Scott Williams Captain America 1 Writers: Chuck Dixon, Rob Liefeld & Jeph Loeb Artists: Rob Liefeld & Jon Sibal Marvel Comics It’s an old trick, but it tends to work. Take established ‘A-list’ characters and return them to basics with a new, fresh start and, theoretically, a new, fresh audience to supplement your die-hard fans. That appears to be the thinking behind Marvel’s relaunch of a number of its big-hitter titles. Not having read a Marvel comic in more years than I can remember, but reading a lot of DC’s portfolio, it’s safe to say that I’d fall into the new, fresh target audience, if anyone would. So…did it work? Jim Lee and Brandon Choi are responsible for the new angle on The Fantastic Four, billed on the credits as “The rebirth of the world’s greatest comic magazine!” So we’re bound to be disappointed by anything less than sheer greatness, aren’t we, folks? Falling back on the ‘rewriting the original story’ ploy, Lee and Choi at least guarantee that anyone at all can just pick this up and get right into it with little or no knowledge of the characters. The changes made to the origin (as far as I remember it…) for this rewrite go some way towards giving the old hand something to buy it for, too. This time around, the Four actually steal the spacecraft on which their lives are changed so dramatically, in an attempt to thwart the aims of an unscrupulous government agency. The resulting accident transforms the crew into the superheroes we’ve all come to know and…well, just know. Not bad, up to that point. And then it all goes pear-shaped. Without even the merest opportunity to pause for breath, the quartet are capture by (wait for it) Moleman. Now, I’ve already admitted that I’m not really up to speed on the Marvel universe but wouldn’t it make sense in this huge new launch to represent a huge old, crowd-pleasing villain? No, we get a blind guy who digs up your garden in the middle of the night. Perhaps the image of a Moleman wouldn’t seem so ridiculous if we hadn’t already been bludgeoned by the ridiculous dialogue. OK, it’s the 120 TRIPWIRE 21
first issue, you need a bit of exposition, but many of the frames groan with the weight of the text. Coupled with the awful think bubbles (do you really mean to tell me that if you’re in the process of burning alive you’re going to be thinking “I’m lit up like some kind of Human Torch! Got to put out the flames! Wait there’s water below me! Just have to reach it!” and not just simply “Aaaaaargh!”), you’re fighting to stifle the sniggers by the arrival of the villain. On the plus side, some of the art is quite nice, but equally some is appalling. Not my bag, I’m afraid. Can Captain America do better? When you read in the credits that Chuck Dixon, who by now has to be responsible for more hack work than Conan the Barbarian, has done the plot assists, it doesn’t bode well. We don’t even have a new origin to ease us into it. Instead, there’s confusing dreams, mysterious characters and a bit of a punch-up. So far, so what? The basic gist is that Captain America seems to have forgotten he’s Captain America, then finds out he is again. Oh, and there’s some Neo-Nazis (run out of ninjas, then, Chuck?). And some nukes. Not even the art can save it, bordering on the painful at its nadir. So there you have it. Two of the new Marvel titles. Anyone for the Flash? PETE KEMPSHALL Fantastic Four 1 Story ** Art ** Overall Quality ** Captain America 1 Story * Art * Overall Quality *
Iron Man 1 Writers: Scott Lobdell & Jim Lee Arrtists: Whilce Portacio & Scott Williams/ JD The Avengers 1 Writers: Rob Liefeld & Jim Valentino Artists: Chap Yaep & Jon Sibal, Rob Liefeld & Marlo Alquiza Marvel Comics “All art is quite useless” Oscar Wilde must have had Marvel’s current clutch of Heroes Reborn titles in mind when he penned this observation. As someone unfamiliar with the source of the characters, one would imagine that I would be a perfect candidate for appreciating Iron Man and Avengers. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Let us start with Iron Man. Tony Stark is a man driven: he has designed an experimental propulsion suit that has resulted in the death of one of his friends, Rebel, and this has left him tormented and tortured. Stark is a wealthy playboy industrialist, a character wellfavoured in comics. He has an abrasive personality but, hey, he’s a good man inside. The art inside Iron Man makes a twisted mockery of perspective: I’d be surprised if messrs Portacio and Williams have had any formal art training but if they have, there’s no evidence of that here. Apparently, the supporting cast surrounding Stark are established Marvel creations: a friend, more knowledgeable in these matters than myself, informed me that the scientist who becomes the Hulk, Bruce Banner, is present, as are several SHIELD members. So, if you like, these Heroes Reborn titles are Marvel: Year Zero: a retelling and retooling of Marvel’s halcyon days with today’s top creative persona. Iron Man’s main adversaries are a group called Hydra, led by a woman who looks more like Hinge & Brackett than a femme fatale. But perhaps that’s just the art inadequacies. Iron Man holds no interest for readers outside of comics and I’m not entirely certain that the restructuring of the plot in an attempt to lure the children of today will be successful. The Avengers is a slightly different case. Whereas Iron Man attempts to attain the ambience of something like Mission: Impossible, The Avengers wants very much to be The Champions. The Avengers is Marvel’s flagship title: even I have been exposed to some previous issues of it. This incarnation of The Avengers starts from the beginning and its number
now includes a man with a Romulan, pudding bowl haircut, called The Swordsman, a newly defrosted Thor, who now resembles a homosexual bodybuilder, and a deformed Captain America. If Portacio’s art failed to please in Iron Man, at least it had some semblance of style. Liefeld and his disastrous compatriots seem to have no concept of style or composition whatsoever and so The Avengers is like a child’s sketchbook: the enthusiasm is there but sadly this cannot compensate for the absence of talent. The Avenger’s first threat is Norse God Loki and a buxom woman in green and gold, whose name is unrevealed. I can find nothing at all to recommend in either title: Iron Man has the slight advantage over The Avengers in that there are one or two panels which one could loosely call competent but don’t take that as an endorsement or as encouragement to go and part with money for it. James Williamson (JOEL MEADOWS) Iron Man 1 Story * Art * Overall Quality * The Avengers 1 Story 0 Art 0 Overall Quality 0 Taken from Volume 1#15, Winter 1996
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CROCK CIRCUS Kiss: Psycho Circus 1 Writer: Brian Holguin; Artists: Angel Medina & Kevin Conrad Image Comics There are some comics, and some bands, who are so irretrievably awful that the English language just fails to do justice to their staggering lack of ability. Kiss is just such a band: a group of clucking cretins in ridiculous facepaint with unconvincing stage theatrics whose songs and image have grown blander and more laughable as the years have passed. Like Alice Cooper, they seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that they possessed some sort of credibility once. But, hey, this is a comic review so let’s talk comics. Kiss has appeared in comics previously: briefly published by Marvel in the seventies but nothing in the field until now. It seems appropriate draw comparisons between this project and Marvel’s illfated line of music titles that spluttered to a halt three years ago. Their Alice Cooper comic was portentous and pretentious, a feat in itself if not for the fact that it was aided by Neil Gaiman, a man whose ego has been known to block out the sun. But at least that possessed the delicate tones of artist Michael Zulli. Kiss: Psycho Circus isn’t even nice to look at: it’s as if artists Medina and Conrad have, after a particularly heavy curry and lager session, decided to forego the pleasantries of the toilet bowl and ejected the contents of their guts onto some Bristol Board. I’ve never liked Medina as an artist: he made reading The Hulk an ordeal of monumental proportions for the several years he was on. Inker Conrad has been involved with a number of Spawn projects and you can see this in the finishing: many of the panels seem to have been designed with a contortionist in mind and the splash pages are unreadable. But let us not leave out writer Brian Holguin. No smacked wrist and sending home for him. Kiss: Psycho Circus is a Todd McFarlane Production but Holguin has written for Marc Silvestri’s Top Cow line. To be fair, he’s probably had to piece this together with considerable input from the band itself, which is blatantly obvious. Although they only appear on three occasions in this first issue, it’s obvious that they are setting things up for a more extended visit. It must be a dream come true for a band to involve themselves with a project of this nature: you can indulge in wish fulfillment to a ridiculous degree. And that’s what this smacks off: like a five knuckle shuffle 122 TRIPWIRE 21
on paper, its only purpose is to massage the egos of what must be amongst the most ludicrous-looking and talentless collection of arseholes around. Kiss member Gene Simmons pens an afterword to this aberration, which is quite something to read. In it, he draws comparisons between the band and McFarlane. The comparison is an erroneous one: When McFarlane started out, and even as late as the second year of Spawn, he was displaying some modicum of ability and nous. Kiss have never even come close. Perhaps I’m taking all of this too seriously, but when the existence of the comics industry is hanging on by its teeth, titles like this are detrimental to the market. I haven’t even summarized the story for you: well, here goes. A circus is in town, led by a demonic ringleader (like Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes) and a disenchanted kid summons the spirits of a mystically powered version of Kiss. Or something like that. I don’t know if Psycho Circus is going to be an anthology with different creators on each story but regardless of who they get, it won’t work. It’s as creative as a McDonald’s Lost World Cup and that is why music comics will never, ever work. At least the Alice Cooper comic looked appealing. Story ½ Art ½ Overall Quality ½ Taken from Volume 2#1, Sept 1997
FEAR OF HEIGHTS
Joel Meadows takes a look at a month of DC’s Vertigo imprint Hellblazer is the only survivor of the pre-Vertigo era. Although a comic that’s existed for over ten years, it’s only had three regular writers on it. The Delano era was partly good but marred by a cavalcade of indecisiveness on the artists’ front, Ennis’s work still beats 95% of anything he’s done on Preacher and that leaves us with Paul Jenkins. Jenkins has had three and a half years to make Constantine his own and he has still yet to make a truly distinctive mark on the title. Certianly, there have been highlights: #100 was a very well-played emotional game and Up The Down Escalator threw up some valid points but most of the time it’s sub-crusty ecological fables that never really amount to anything. #125 begins the final four parter of Jenkins’ tenure on the title and sees the return of Demoness Chantinelle. Warren Pleece is a very unique artist and Sean Phillips’ cover is haunting and eerie. I hope that Jenkins can end this story with more finesse than most of his other multi-parters but it does begin well. Constantine is still only truly convincing maverick character left in the Vertigo part of the DC Universe… Essential Vertigo is a good idea: reprinting the Alan Moore Swamp Things and Gaiman’s entire run of Sandman in a more affordable format than the collections and it’s very telling to read them now. Starting with Swamp Thing #20 (reprinting Saga of…#39), I find it hard to believe how feted Moore was as a writer in those days. Granted, it was like nothing else around at the time but reading it now, you are all too aware of its shortcomings. Moore packs his panels with purple prose and sixth form poetry. Bissette and Totleben’s art is still horrifying enough to keep you looking over your shoulder once you’ve read it but the accompanying dialogue and plot is strangely disconnected and unemotional. There are some plus points: the brief appearance of Constantine shows Moore’s mastery of the character and scenes here and there do affect you but it’s far too pretentious and portentous to really do the trick. However influential his run was on the title, I think it’s high time for a reappraisal… Sandman 23 (reprinting, strangely enough, Sandman#23) gives us the second part of Season of Mists, arguably the best, most gripping of any of The Sandman epics. For all of Gaiman’s faults, and I don’t want to get started on that yet again, Season of Mists had it all: brilliant, elegantly twisted art from Kelley Jones and a witty, ingenious and thought-provoking plot from the mind of Gaiman. Here, Morpheus visits Hell only to find that Lucifer has sent all of the residents packing and it ends with the King of Hell handing Sandman the key to the place. Comparing this, or any of his Sandman work, Jones’ art on Batman over the last few years looks like a pallid copy. Season of Mists is horror at its most worrying and Essential Vertigo: The Sandman is a nice cheap way to pick and choose the best bits of Sandman… When The Sandman finished, Preacher took its place as Vertigo’s top-selling regular title. Preacher has always been a one-joke comic and now it’s really beginning to bore. Once you get past the ridiculousness of Arseface and the various fin de siècle apocalypse cult shenanigans, you’re left with a bad action film, the sort that goes straight to video, populated by a collection of TV has-beens. #38 follows on from the apparent death of Jesse Custer in the issue before (but this is comics, so you know that this is bound to be temporary) and so we see Tulip and Cassidy coming to terms with it and find out the fate of Starr, who has fallen into the hands of a group of retarded cannibals. Steve Dillon continues to be a proficient artist but when a writer appears to have lost interest in maintaining the plot, it’s very hard for anyone else to care. Unless it can get back on track, there’s no hope of it regaining even a portion of its former glory. Stop releasing pointless tie-ins and spin-offs and concentrate on refocusing, otherwise just call it a day…
A partial excerpt of the full review taken from Volume 2 #5, Jun-Jul 1998
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TAKING A PEEP Peep Show 1-6 Writer/ Artist: Joe Matt Drawn & Quarterly
Peep Show is an autobiographical comic, in which creator Joe Matt basically plunders his diaries for material. Like Hate,, it is very scatological, very scathing and very funny. Hate Matt is, in my opinion, a better cartoonist than someone like Minimum Wage’s Wage’s Bob Fingerman. His art, whilst extremely simple, lacks the contrivances and shortcomings of Fingerman’s work. Unlike a series like Hate Hate,, Matt has decided to skip the pretence and place himself as the central character. Peep Show portrays Matt’s life as a mess of contradictions and neuroses. Living in Canada, we are privy to all of his personal failings. We see him urinate in the sink, beat himself up over his various relationships and watch his regular get-togethers with fellow cartoonists Seth and Chester Brown, both of whom are seen as much more together, less paranoid people. The standout issue here has to be #6, where Joe takes his Chinese housemate out and we are witness to some excruciatingly embarrassing moments. The one criticism that I have to level at Peep Show and it’s one that I’m sure you can see coming, is that it’s very selfindulgent. The danger that any cartoonist who takes directly from their lives faces is that the finished product can come off as very self-serving. Perhaps that’s why Fingerman and Bagge have created fictional personas, who they’ve imbued with aspects of their personalities. Using this as a means to distance themselves and this deflect criticism. Using your life as a springboard can also mean that some of your work will read as slight and insignificant. But I shall give Matt his credit: it takes guts and vision to expose your life and your shortcomings quite so viciously. Matt’s portrayal of himself is so unrelenting and unforgiving that he becomes an object of pity in the reader’s eyes. I’m not certain if that was his intention but it’s certainly the feeling it elicited in me. Matt hasn’t published an issue of Peep Show since 1994 (#6 here is the last one) and I think it’s a shame that he’s so slow as a creator. If he could only have kept up the momentum, he could have been as important an indie cartoonist as Peter Bagge. Be that as it may, Joe Matt is an extremely twisted and very unique creator and Peep Show is worth picking up. Hunt them down at your local comic shop. Story ***1/2 Art ***1/2 Overall Quality ***1/2 Taken from Volume 2#6 Aug-Sep 1998 124 TRIPWIRE 21
EPICS ILLUSTRATED? Tom Strong#1 Writer: Alan Moore; Artists: Chris Sprouse & Al Gordon Promethea#1 Writer: Alan Moore; Artists: JH Williams & Mick Grey America’s Best Comics both Superhero comics in recent years have been suffering from a lack of invention. Apart from the odd standout special or miniseries, the industry’s big guns have been going through the motions, fighting the same old villains and encountering the same old quandaries. Alan Moore’s America’s Best Comics is about restoring the sense of wonder that mainstream comics used to elicit from its readership. Starting with Tom Strong, it’s clear that Moore’s sense of humour is very much to the fore here. Tom Strong gives us a hero who is the product of a Victorian scientist’s social experiment, raising the child in isolation on a fictitious desert island (Attabar Teru) at the turn of this century. The first issue is framed by one small boy’s trip to school, who sits reading the origin of Tom Strong. I was never that big a fan of Moore and Sprouse’s Supreme but Tom Strong’s clean stylings suit Moore’s slightly naïve but extremely fun and accessible script to a tee. The desert island scenes reek with parrots cawing and tropical waves lapping and, like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, it is a return to simpler times. Full marks to Chris Sprouse for his visual differentiation between the scenes from the origin of Tom Strong that the child is reading and his trip to school. It’s obvious that Moore has his tongue very firmly in his cheek here but I could very easily see Tom Strong adding complexity as time goes on, without it losing its wide-eyed sense of wonder. Promethea is, at first glance, a very different kettle of fish. I’ve always enjoyed JH Williams and Mick Gray as artists and whereas Tom Strong is very open and stripped bare, Promethea seethes with tension and a world beneath the surface. Promethea has a very folkloric feel to it, right down to the Scissorman-like foe that she encounters. Promethea is a fictitious archetype that’s existed for centuries, fuelled by a pantheon of new gods and made flesh by creative people who have maintained her in fiction. The story goes that she was a real little girl who existed in fifth century Roman Egypt. The first issue deals with the handing over of the mantle of Promethea and New York is a far more foreboding place like Millennium City, the setting for Tom Strong. In fact, taking a look at the settings, Millennium City seems to have stepped right out of a fifties architectural wish fulfillment whereas New York, although as full of cutting-edge technology and futuristic buildings as where Tom Strong is situated, is a far more unsettling habitat. Atmosphere drips off the pages in Promethea and Williams’s art is some of the most ornate that I’ve seen on a comic page for many years. His use of panel borders and visual symmetry adds to the overall experience. I promised that I wouldn’t give away too much when reviewing these two titles. What I will say is that they both have strengths of their own but my particular preference is for Promethea, swung merely by the art. I’m not denigrating
Sprouse and Gordon’s efforts but Promethea is such a step up from anything that Williams and Gray have drawn before that I would be remiss to do anything else. The contribution of letterer/ designer Todd Klein deserves a mention as well, as the lettering is very appropriate in both books and there is a real feeling of visual unity for America’s Best Comics. I didn’t get my hands on Top Ten, as it’s unfinished as we go to press, but from the evidence so far, Moore has assembled a coterie of comic talent and America’s Best Comics may, as he hopes, restore some wonder to today’s jaded comic reader. We can only hope. Tom Strong 1 Story **** Art ***1/2 Overall Quality ***1/2 Promethea 1 Story **** Art ***1/2 Overall Quality ****
Taken from Volume 2 #10 Apr-May 1999
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DOUBLE OR QUITS Jonny Double 1 Writer: Brian Azzarello Artist: Eduardo Risso Vertigo/ DC Comics Jonny Double appeared very briefly in Showcase back in the sixties, which makes it an odd choice for a comeback now. Writer Azzarello has been kicking around for a few years, contributing to Vertigo’s Weird War Tales and Gangland anthologies, whilst Eduardo Risso drew the Aliens: Resurrection adaptation for Dark Horse. It’s always an unexpected pleasure to find a new series that gels. Jonny Double relocates the eponymous protagonist to modern-day America, getting him involved in a case that leads him to throw his lot in with a gang of teenage robbers. Their plan is to rob Al Capone’s savings account, untouched in decades. This is the second detective comic to appear this month, the other being Oni’s superb Whiteout, and it may be pure coincidence or a pure accident, but you could almost say that the genre is coming back in vogue. It’s a fairly simple plot but contains enough of the staple ingredients of detective fiction to amuse the aficionado. For the regular Vertigo reader, there’s enough sophistication (both in Risso’s flowing, alive lines and with Azzarello’s deft handling of both the dialogue and the pacing) to keep them more than happy. If anything, JD looks more European than American, with its soft lines and interesting camera angles. Azzarello has used the shift from the sixties to the nineties and put Double in a deliberately different era. Sometimes this works but there are occasions in this first issue, specifically the flashback sequence, that just don’t make it. It is these shortcomings that force me to knock half a point off its rating. People must be sick by now of me moaning about the lack of variety in Vertigo’s output and their over-reliance on what they know. Well, Jonny Double will do nothing but good for the line as a whole and, as a series in its own right, is a superb chunk of detective noir. Story ***1/2 Art ***1/2 Overall Quality ***1/2
Taken from Volume 2 #6 Aug-Sep 1998
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IN SPACE NO-ONE CAN HEAR YOU CRY Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace Director George Lucas; Producer Rick McCallum Starring Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson Lucasfilm/ Twentieth Century Fox “You’ve bought the toys, now see the film!” It’s a real shame that we’ve had to wait sixteen years. It’s also a real shame that Lucas has dispensed with the things that some people argue are essential for a film: things like plot, direction, characterization, pacing and dramatic tension. Episode One The Phantom Menace is nothing more than a two and a half hour toy catalogue, showcasing the new line of Darth Maul and Qui Gon Jinn figures and playsets. The opening of the film gives you false hope: the entrance of Jedis Qui Gon Jinn and Obi Wan Kenobi is nicely handled and the light sabre battle is exciting. Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from the first ten minutes, when we meet the horror that is Jar Jar Binks, a CGI created monstrosity that makes you miss the Ewoks, cursed with a voice that is a mutant hybrid of Dale Winton and Bob Marley. For the British readers who have avoided any of the tie-ins, I shall skim over the rest of the plot in vague outline. The Phantom Menace tells the story of Anakin Skywalker as a child and how Obi Wan Kenobi got together with him, interspersed with some intrigue involving Senator (later Emperor) Palpatine. The intrigue is interesting but plays such a small part in the proceedings that it’s hardly there. Tension is nonexistent in this film because you know the outcome: Ewan McGregor goes on to become Alec Guinness and the annoying child becomes Darth Vader. In fact, McGregor does his most annoying Guinness impression here to tip you off that he’s the younger version of the old bloke who gets killed in Star Wars Episode Four A New Hope. So if you’re still conscious later on in the film, this will grate. I’ve dwelt on the negative aspects of The Phantom Menace but, I hear you cry, there must be something that succeeds in this film? Well, yes there are moments that make you smile: The light sabre battles between Darth Maul, Obi Wan Kenobi and Qui Gon Jinn are pure spectacle, the double dealing of Palpatine is cannily handled and the Pod Race is visually exciting. But set pieces which should be dynamic are dull and artificial: the battle on Naboo between the Trade Federation’s battle droids and the Gungan, Jar Jar Binks’ people, smacks of a scene grab from Tomb Raider and Darth Maul is in it so briefly that it makes you question the press’s emphasis on his presence. Having said that, when you consider that he is the most visually striking of any of the characters,it’s not particularly surprising. So overall The Phantom Menace is a very flawed, messy piece of filmmaking that fails to satisfy. Just because you know what’s going to happen doesn’t mean that tension has to be lacking: Just look at The Godfather Part Two to see how you can weave in new elements in a gripping and ingenious way. The film carries so much narrative baggage with it that it cannot be enjoyed on its own and surely that’s the most damning criticism of any creative work? Taken from Volume 3#2 Jul-Aug 1999
On the shelf
We pick the most significant trade paperback and graphic novel reviews taken from TRIPWIRE’s long-running On The Shelf reviews column. We have tried to pick those books which are historically important but it was quite tough to whittle it down to just fifty, as On The Shelf ran for many years. All reviews are by Joel Meadows except where stated
Sin City (Titan, Frank Miller). This ran as a serial in Dark Horse Presents and began a return to form that continues in Daredevil: Man Without Fear. His renaissance, which started, to be fair, as the writer of Give Me Liberty, a scathing political satire with a hard edge, has seen him return to the mean streets of crime fiction. Sin City, carved out in menacing black and white, gives us a protagonist who is amoral and seems to almost revel in violence, who shares a night of tenderness with a prostitute, who is brutally murdered. We are then led on a breakneck chase through the streets of a fictitious city until it reaches its adrenalin-soaked conclusion. Miller really is economical with words here: There are pages that would make a mute seem positively talkative and the art is kinetic and wildly satisfying. A sequel is planned but this is hard to visualize, considering the end of this. 1993’s really been Miller’s year; (Volume 1#6 March 1994) The Collected Judge Dredd in The Cursed Earth (Titan, Pat Mills, Mike McMahon & Brian Bolland). I know that I’ve upset Pat Mills in the past but I found this collection invigorating, compelling and fast-paced. Dredd has to transport some vaccine to the ailing citizens of Mega City Two. The main obstacle is that he has to cross the Cursed Earth to reach it. He is accompanied by a criminal biker, Harvey Spikes and three judges. Mills has a good line in dialogue and he treats the action sequences with the mix of humour and violence that they require. McMahon’s art looks a little bit haphazard here but it’s intriguing to notice that he draws nothing at all like this anymore and Bolland’s early work still looks as good now as it did in 1980. The scenes featuring Satannus shine with a raw elegance and Mills certainly knew how to give the punters what they want. It’s a shame that the majority of his work since seems to have descended into a tragic parody of itself but for prime Dredd, you could do worse than pick this up; (Vol 1#7 Sept 1994) Hellboy (Dark Horse, John Byrne & Mike Mignola). Hellboy is a demon conjured by the Nazis fifty years ago who becomes a paranormal investigator. This comic is like a cross between Indiana Jones and The X-Files. John Byrne makes good use of the dialogue and Hellboy is a little bit of a cipher as a character. But that’s probably deliberate: we are not meant to know much about his background. Mignola’s art is moody and deliciously dark and the whole thing moves along at a very fast pace, making it a very worthwhile and thoroughly diverting 128 TRIPWIRE 21
comic collection. In this premiere story, Hellboy has to track down some missing explorers, with the aid of his amphibian partner Abraham Sapien and pyrokinetic agent Liz. You can really tell that the creators involved are having fun with this: it exudes enthusiasm. Mignola intends to produce more Hellboy stories and I for one am very glad that he has. A fun and carefree 30 minute read, Hellboy is definitely a comic I can unreservedly recommend. (Vol 1 #8 Dec 1994) Akira (Katsushiro Otomo, Mandarin) is a bollockbusting masterpiece of a comic. Mandarin have decided to reprint the first six issues in this mammoth (356 page) volume, solely for the British market. The story, which deals with shriveled white figures with telekinetic powers, a gang of bikers and a shady government department, makes more twists and turns than an epileptic cobra and things only just start to come to light in these first six issues. But it is exciting, stimulating and gripping the way that good comics or even good books should be and aren’t very often. I hope that Mandarin plans to reprint the rest of the series: the American series from Epic finished about six issues short of the conclusion and it’s been such a long time since I read them that I’d need to look at them again. This could definitely be described as ‘decent reading matter.’ (Vol 1 #9 May 1995) Enigma (Vertigo/ DC, Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo). This collection leaves me as bemused as the first time I read the story. Fegredo’s art looks a little rushed and his style changes part of the way through, looking scrappy rather than gloriously free-flowing the way it does in Face and Milligan has his moments but mostly it’s a jumble of mystery, lack of clarity and unsatisfactory episodes. It certainly lives up to its name. Enigma is an interesting curio that, while failing to live up to its ambitious framework, at least aspires to greatness, if falling short when it really counts. Milligan can pull off great writing coups: his six part run on Animal Man and Skreemer were both superior comics. But this doesn’t do the trick for me. (Vol 1#10 Autumn 1995) Sandman: The Doll’s House (Vertigo/ DC, Neil Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg & Malcolm Jones III, Chris Bachalo & Jones III and Michael Zulli & Steve Parkhouse). The Doll’s House towers above Preludes and Nocturnes [The first Sandman collection]. It is by the far the best Sandman story published thus far: Gaiman has weaved a mesmerizing and hypnotic tale that deals with four escapees of the Dream realm. This book also has the auspicious honour of providing current Death artist Chris Bachalo with his first TRIPWIRE 21 129
published comic work. (It’s interesting to look at this debut and compare it with any of his work of the last three years: he has developed significantly since this. But it’s still an agreeable effort) Two of the refugees, Brute and Glob, have set themselves up in the home of dead former Infinity Inc hero Sandman whilst The Corinthian is a vicious and amoral serial killer. ‘Collectors’, the issue set at the serial killers [convention], is an incisive and cutting episode, drawing some frightening parallels between the mindset of the gathered killers and your average comic convention. This is perhaps the best single issue of Sandman ever published, with the art of Dringenberg and Jones 3rd melding to create a brilliant mix of terror and movement, Morpheus is here for the first time given real presence and power and it is to Gaiman’s credit that he has invested the character with many human frailities. Out of the three [initial Sandman collections], Doll’s House is by far the best; (Vol 1#11 Winter 1995) I’ll save my praise for The Tale of One Bad Rat (Bryan Talbot, Titan/Dark Horse) which will be the best penny-under-a-tenner you’ll spend this month. The ‘bad rat’ of this tale is Helen Potter, a girl living rough on the streets of London to escape the sexual abuse of her father. At first, she blames herself for what happened, having vivid suicidal visions, but gradually these change as she finds a strong link between her life and that of Beatrix Potter, who has fascinated her from childhood. Gradually, Helen retraces Potter’s steps from her unhappy life in London to the Lake District, where she finds the strength to exorcise her personal demons. …Bad Rat probes one of the last taboos we have, that of sexual abuse, and in a way that tries to make you understand rather than repulses you, a fantasy story of very harsh reality. The book doesn’t want you to turn away, and Bryan’s realistic artwork punches home his storytelling, mixing moody inks and watercolours, a beauty to behold. (Neil Cooper/ Steve Holland) (Vol 1#12 Spring 1996) If you’re easily offended, then you might want to steer clear of Preacher: Gone To Texas by Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon (DC Comics/ Titan Books £10.99). They’ve got something to say, and they start saying it in frame 3. You want the plot? Jesse Custer is the minister of a small American town and is slowing losing his faith until a comet with the face of a child bursts in during a sermon and merges with him, blowing up the town and killing everyone except him. The comet was Genesis, the offspring of a demon and an angel, and 130 TRIPWIRE 21
“‘…Bad Rat’ probes one of the last taboos we have, that of sexual abuse, and in a way that tries to make….The book doesn’t want you to turn away, … a beauty to behold”
this is only part of an even more shocking secret that Heaven wants to conceal from Mankind. But Jesse, now possessing Genesis’ power and knowledge, wants to find out the truth and with Tulip, his gun toting exgirlfriend and Cassidy, an Irish vampire, they set out to find God and fuck him up, running into a whole host of bizarre characters and leaving a trail of death and devastation in their wake. That’s the plot. What it actually is is Garth Ennis running with the Texas myth that has the whole state filled with redneck bastards. Good ol’ boy Joe Lansdale sums it up in his introduction pretty darn good. Texas is a state of mind, which makes it the perfect location for pot shotting at Yanks: the story runs at a blistering pace, infused with violence, blasphemy and humour. It’s Ennis throwing acid in the face of America, and the dardnest thing is they’re lapping it up and begging for more. Maybe Texans are America’s Romford boys. Red necks, white socks. Black humour. Bled dry. You’ll love it or hate it. And, hell, the artwork’s Steve Dillon’s best. (Neil Cooper/ Steve Holland) (Vol 1 #13 Summer 1996) True Faith (Garth Ennis & Warren Pleece, Vertigo: DC, £4.99) Back before he had to rely on cheap pyrotechnics and spurious American dialogue, Garth Ennis was a very talented, one could almost say precocious talent. True Faith, serialized in Crisis and then reprinted in a single volume by Fleetway, caused instant outrage when the collection hit British bookshops. But before you could say ‘storm in a teacup’, everyone forgot about it. It’s fascinating to read now, in light of Preacher, Hitman and The Darkness. The original has an introduction by the ubiquitous Grant Morrison who says some perceptive things about religion. True Faith does that too: it’s about a schoolboy who falls in with a former travelling salesman. The salesman, Terry Adair, formerly a religious man, watches as his wife dies in childbirth and then proceeds to go doolally, making it his crusade to obliterate churches from the face of the earth. The schoolboy, Nigel, is similarly cynical but sane and gets entangled in Adair’s world. Pleece’s art is typically British and down-to-earth and Ennis is spot-on with the dialogue: some of this will crack you up. I’m not sure what the Americans will make of it: unlike Preacher, it’s a very British affair and it may meet with blank stares from them. But I hope not: True Faith also deals with redemption but I’m not totally clear what Ennis is saying about religion, as it has a tragic conclusion, but it is still a very diverting read. Go on, buy it, you know you want to… (Vol 2 #1, Sept 1997) TRIPWIRE 21 131
Jason Lutes’ Jar of Fools is an elegant and mesmerizing tale of redemption and human emotion. The story, about a man who is haunted by the accidental death of his escape artist brother and his search for forgiveness, is blessed with some of the most delicate and understated comic art I’ve ever seen. Lutes’ art marries a European sense of design with a Japanese eye for movement and everything, from the production of the book to the lettering, is just perfect. Jar of Fools is a bittersweet poignant collection and it should be on everyone’s must have list; (Vol 2 #3 Dec 1997-Jan 1998) Transmetropolitan: Back On The Streets, by Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson and various inkers, is top notch sleazy science fiction. Spider Jerusalem is a bearded recluse who is forced to come back down into the steaming cesspit of The City because he needs to earn some money. The fact that he looks the spitting image of Grant Morrison is pure coincidence. Jerusalem is a total bastard: a gonzo journalist who smokes and indulges in all manner of narcotics and vices. But unlike Tommy Monaghan in Hitman, has a human edge to his foibles. In later issues (#1-3 are reprinted here) we are privy to true heart-rending emotion. But these three comics, which deal with the emergence of a cult of humans who get their kicks by transforming genetically into aliens, are a fine, stimulating start to what has been an escalatingly mindbending series. Robertson is the perfect foil for Ellis’s twisted concoctions. Like injecting coffee straight into your heart, Transmetropolitan just keeps on improving; (Vol 2 #4 Mar-Apr 1998) Road To Perdition, by Max Allan Collins & Richard Piers Rayner, is a brilliantly taut and gripping gangster thriller in Paradox’s very occasional series of Graphic Mysteries. It deals with an Irish hitman Michael O’Sullivan, nicknamed ‘The Angel of Death’, who is forced to leave his home when his son unwittingly witnesses a mob execution, which has tragic consequences for the whole family. Collins paints a vivid and very emotive story, and Piers Rayner’s art is ideal for a story of this nature, showing his mastery of human faces and sets the scene with unusual skill. It’s taken four years to complete this masterpiece but it’s definitely been worth the wait. It’s criminal that books in this format (the small paperback size) don’t do well commercially: DC deserve success with these things and Road To Perdition, as with Wagner and Locke’s History of Violence, is a book that should be compulsory reading for everyone who appreciates quality storytelling; (Vol 2#5 Jun-Jul 1998) 132 TRIPWIRE 21
Unknown Soldier, by Garth Ennis & Killian Plunkett. Vertigo don’t always get it right but Unknown Soldier, published in 1997, was one of those occasions when everything clicked. A blistering indictment of American foreign policy (of sorts), Ennis and Plunkett have taken DC’s classic war hero and used him as a mirror for all of the dirty dealing that the US government have indulged in since World War II. Protagonist William Clyde is a CIA agent who gets drawn into the mystery of the identity of the Unknown Soldier seemingly by accident but the chase that ensues ends in a truly gripping and fear-soaked conclusion. Everything here is perfect: from Ennis’s gung-ho dialogue to Plunkett’s wonderfully loose and fluid lines and even Tim Bradstreet’s covers fit together to make a collection that is one of the best comics published in the last five years. Killian Plunkett’s Unknown Soldier is a deranged, unhinged maniac: just take a look in his eyes. Walk, run or sprint to your local shop but pick this up; (Vol 2#6 Aug-Sep 1998) Hellboy The Chained Coffin and others, by Mike Mignola. Mike Mignola is an incredible comic creator. Starting life as an artist on several of Marvel’s less well-known titles (like Alpha Flight), he moved onto carving out a niche as an illustrator with a wholly unique style. Incorporating gothic mystery and myths and legends into his own brand of supernatural skullduggery, Hellboy has given us some of the most entertaining and disturbing comic work to pass readers’ eyes in many a decade. The Chained Coffin reprints a selection of Hellboy short stories and vignettes, including what is surely the funniest Hellboy story ever to see print, ‘The Corpse’, which sees Hellboy wandering around Ireland trying to bury a dead body by the time the sun comes up or a baby will be lost to the faeries. Mignola has always been a master at melding folklore with modern horror and this book is a treasure trove of wonders. ‘The Wolves of St August’ is a sad melancholy tale of a town in the Balkans, haunted by a cursed ancient family and is the other highlight of the collection. Mignola is the only artist working in comics today who can capture the eerie atmosphere of an Eastern European graveyard or a Medieval edifice with equal artistic uniqueness. His thick blacks, married to marvelously muted colours, are the perfect foil for this sort of gothic supernatural mystery. I always enjoy Hellboy and The Chained Coffin is a cornucopia of Mignola at the height of his prowess; (Vol 2 #7 Oct-Nov 1998) TRIPWIRE 21 133
Family Matters, By Will Eisner. It shows that age hasn’t dulled Eisner’s facilities and this tale, which deals with a family reunion and an old man’s will, is spot-on: emotion pours from every panel and the use of colour (black and white and a soft pink) adds depth. The flashback sequences are delineated in a very accessible way and the dialogue is as strong as you’d expect. Eisner is a genius and this will only add to the accolades that he’s received already. He continues to be a significant presence, even in today’s market and this is a welcome addition to the library of Eisner volumes; (Vol 2#8 Dec 1998) You Are Here, by Kyle Baker. Sometimes, just sometimes a comic is published that makes me remember why I’m here. Kyle Baker was responsible for the sublimely fantastic Why I Hate Saturn, a witty, urbane dissection of modern life with lines that Woody Allen would kill for. You Are Here takes Baker’s strengths (his cracking dialogue, his expressive art) and brings them out in a 156 page magnum opus that contains enough suspense, humour and intelligence to shame the best that Hollywood has to offer. You Are Here deals with a hitman who has struck up a relationship with a woman from outside Manhattan who is oblivious to his true occupation. It’s only when he has to return to the city that a man from his past sets out to kill him. The pacing is frenetic and sharp and Baker’s art, which incorporates computer colouring with hand drawn lines, has developed from the simple work he was doing on Why I Hate Saturn to the rich alive panels contained here. The only problem with a book like You Are Here is that it sets such a high standard that there’s no way Baker could maintain it, and it makes everything you read afterwards pale miserably in comparison. If Vertigo could capture a fraction of the talent here in their regular titles, they’d be alright. (Vol 2#9 Feb-Mar 1999) Fred The Clown, by Roger Langridge, makes you wonder why Langridge hasn’t already taken over the world. He is definitely the most unique humourist to be produced by modern comics in the last decade. Fred The Clown is a fictitious newspaper strip creation and the most fun here is to be had reading the fake biographical information and ‘history’ of the character. Langridge ridicules all manner of conventions, everything from ‘Flash Gordon’ style science fiction adventure to late sixties underground comics. Nothing is safe. My personal favourite is the wonderful parody of Little Nemo, ‘That’s Our Villy, Lost in Funny Cheeseland’ but Langridge’s ability to pastiche a number of very different comic strips from the turn 134 TRIPWIRE 21
of the century onwards is a rare one. Fred The Clown is a strange read: there’s no coherent story to speak of but this mustn’t be seen as a criticism. Parody has been the lifeblood of comics ever since Mad and Fred The Clown is a suitably perverse addition to its ranks; (Vol 2#10 Apr-May 1999) Starman: Times Past, by James Robinson and various. Ever since Harris left and Robinson has been co-writing the title with David Goyer, it’s been a shadow of its former self. This collection shows how a superhero title can be done if it’s considered properly. The finest story here by far is the glorious ‘Back Stage, Back Then’, a story that features The Shade at his malevolent best and a cameo from Oscar Wilde. Robinson has remade The Shade from an indifferent Golden Age villain into a flamboyant and enigmatic gentleman adversary. Starman has benefitted from Robinson’s lightness of touch and it is very much in evidence here. The JSA story has a really nasty undercurrent running all of the way through and Robinson has really fleshed out a team that was merely a collection of brightly clad archetypes before. Times Past is chock full of humour, albeit dark at times. If you like the Starman regular and want to have the Times Past in one volume, then this comes highly recommended. If you’ve never read Starman and want a taste of what it can be at its peak, then you shouldn’t waste any more time. Go and pick it up; (Vol 3#1 May-June 1999) Whiteout by Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber, Oni Press It’s been a superb year for crime fiction in comics: Vertigo’s Scene Of The Crime, 100 Bullets and this. Rucka has come from writing several detective novels featuring his bodyguard character Atticus Kodiak to indulging in his longtime love of the comic form. Whiteout shows the breadth and scope of Oni Press, a company that has turned into a quality purveyor of comic fiction. Whiteout is set in Antarctica - not the likeliest of settings for a taut modern crime story, but Rucka and his supremely talented artistic collaborator Steve Lieber (a graduate of the Kubert School and former illustrator of Hawkman and Grendel) carve out a gripping tale. At its centre are two very different female characters, US Marshal Carrie Stetko and British intelligence agent Lily Sharpe,who have to team up to solve a murder mystery which leads them into some of the most forbidding places in the world. Stetko receives a permanent injury thanks to the conspirators and it is this sense of reality that takes Whiteout out of the ordinary. Rucka’s dialogue TRIPWIRE 21 135
is crisp and purposeful and for once we witness an English protagonist who doesn’t sound as if they’ve escaped from Mary Poppins. Marshal Stetko is stationed in Antartica as a punishment for something that she did in the States and it makes perfect sense that her penance should be to end up in such a cold and unforgiving place. The sense of atmosphere works so much better in black and white than it ever could in colour. It adds an extra air of bleakness to the proceedings and Lieber has never been seen with his full talents on display until now. His figures and faces are as consistent as his scenery and technological devices. Rucka and Lieber have finished a sequel, Melt, which comes out in September and Rucka has become regular scripter on Detective Comics. As a debut comic project (for Rucka anyway), Whiteout is an appropriately inauspicious start. If the followup Melt is half as fast-paced and credible as its predecessor, it’ll blow away most of what else is on the market but even if it is disappointing, this book should be on the shelf of anyone who appreciates unique modern crime fiction; (Vol 3#3 Aug-Sep 1999) Manhunter, by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson. Before Frank Miller, this series was published in the back of DC’s flagship title in 1973. Manhunter is a perfectly formed comic: the writing is gripping, the art, although primitive, suits the writing impeccably. Contained here is a twenty page silent story started by Goodwin just prior to his death which has been drawn by Simonson over the past couple of years. It proves that Simonson still has what it takes and is a fitting tribute to Goodwin. It was a groundbreaking series and pointed the way to come. Anyone who cares about comics should own a copy of this book; (Vol 3#4 Oct-Nov 1999) The Authority: Relentless, by Warren Ellis, Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary, Wildstorm:DC Comics/ Titan Books. Ellis’s rise to prominence over the last three years has been meteoric enough to give Halley pause for thought. The Authority takes some of the Stormwatch characters and moves them away from the UN-sanctioned activities of Stormwatch into an arena where they are very much at odds with the governments of Earth. This book, which reprints the two four parters, sees Ellis, with the aid of the dynamic Hitch and Neary, destroy Earth on a scale not often seen before in comics, and try to have fun with the superhero mythos. “Shiftships”, about the alternate Britain, Sliding Albion, is a good natured pastiche of Alan Davis’ Captain Britain run (ironic because Neary used to be Davis’s inking partner) and 136 TRIPWIRE 21
Ellis seems more comfortable in this story than he does in the first. For me, The Authority has gone off the rails since Mark Millar took over. Ellis always saw Stormwatch and then The Authority as a very accessible way of exploring some interesting questions about the role of power and the ethics of government, whereas Millar’s Authority is just brutal and cruel. Ellis has proven himself to be an exemplary writer of modern comics and The Authority only serves to cement his already burgeoning reputation; (Vol 4#1, Jul 2000)
“‘…Scene of The Crime is an intelligent and engrossing comic detective tale that takes time to read, Brubaker has created a detective in the classic mold”
Scene of The Crime, by Ed Brubaker, Michael Lark and Sean Phillips, Vertigo: DC Comics, is just brilliant. An intelligent and engrossing comic detective tale that takes time to read, Brubaker has created in Jack Herriman a detective in the classic mold, with just enough new twists to make it seem fresh. Lark and Philips are perfect for the art, making an evocative and believable setting for the story, with some interesting page layouts. Vertigo’s burgeoning crime line has been one of the best things to happen in the last few years and Scene of The Crime is worthy of comparison with the cream of crime fiction, whether comics or prose, TV or film; (Vol 4#1, Jul 2000) Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes, Jonathan Cape. This is a British book publisher reprint of the series which ran in Clowes’ Eightball, soon to be a film. Clowes has captured the ennui and paranoia of American teenagers and skillfully woven a story that is at once blackly funny and very well-observed. The protagonists are tragic and sympathetic individuals, the two colour artwork gives the whole thing a kitsch-gone-mad feel to it and it just proves that Clowes is still the master of his art; (Vol 4#2, Oct 2000) Batman: Ego, by Darwyn Cooke, DC Comics. A prestige format oneshot that delves into the psychological side of Batman’s life. Cooke has worked as a storyboard artist in the animation industry and his sense of design is fantastic. Each page has its own artistry and he makes a story which may sound maudlin and superficial affecting and actually very moving. He owes something to Alex Toth in his sense of movement but he manages to incorporate a sensibility that has more in common with David Mazzuchelli and Mike Oeming and takes his influences further. It’s rare that these Batman special projects are more than just pedestrian yarns dressed up with some impressive art but Ego manages to succeed on every level; (Vol 4#2, Oct 2000) TRIPWIRE 21 137
Lone Wolf and Cub: Volume One The Assassin’s Road, by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima, Dark Horse Comics. Dark Horse have been getting a lot of flak off retailers for the format of this book and one retailer even consigned them to damnation verbally. It’s smaller than paperback size but for me, it’s perfect. It’s compact and portable: you can take it with you on the Tube or on a bus, it can fit into your pocket and the size sharpens the art. When First made their attempt at publishing the series over ten years ago, I will admit that I didn’t read them. Having read this collection, which contains nine stories, it is obvious what effect these comics have had on Frank Miller. The pair really know how to pace a story and their action sequences come alive on the page. It’s not just the fighting that draws the eye either: the delicateness of Japanese architecture and nature at its most powerful are portrayed with equal skill. Some of the images here are very graphic but they never strike you as gratuitous; (Vol 4#2, Oct 2000) Inhumans, by Paul Jenkins & Jae Lee, Marvel Comics. In the wake of the appointment of Joe Quesada as Marvel Editor-in-Chief, Marvel Knights titles take on a new importance. Inhumans was one of the first out of the starting gates: Jenkins had just come off a patchy run on Hellblazer at Vertigo, whilst Jae Lee was best known as the creator of a comic, Hellshock, that came out so infrequently that it made Lee look like he was competing for the title of the world’s slowest artist. But once Inhumans started appearing, the pair proved everybody wrong. Inhumans is a powerhouse of a story: Jenkins sets it on slow simmer at the start but, by the time we’re halfway through, the pot’s beginning to boil over. Inhumans are characters that have never been very well-served beforehand: usually seen as a group of goofy deviants, Jenkins creates a moody medieval Attilan, a place of hierarchy and deep-seated troubles, two siblings at war and a fully fleshed out cast. Lee draws alien landscapes as if he takes regular holidays to the surface of Jupiter. His figurework is visually dynamic and a perfect counterpoint to Jenkins’ sometimes sardonic, sometimes poignant script. It’s encouraging to see that Marvel have instigated a programme of maintaining a decent-sized backlist. Inhumans should be on the shelf of anyone who likes intelligent writing and kinetic illustration; (Vol 4#3, Dec 2000) Promethea Collected Edition Book 1, by Alan Moore, JH Williams & Mick Gray, Charles Vess, ABC: DC Comics/ Titan Books. Here’s another hardback to review. Promethea has been the dark 138 TRIPWIRE 21
horse of the ABC titles: no-one really knew what to expect when it came out. It has to be said that Promethea is far and away the best of Moore’s ABC line: it combines a nifty sense of humour with a great sense of design. Promethea, imagination’s most powerful force for good, is blessed by the superb art of Williams and Gray but Moore’s writing is a step above what it is in Tom Strong and Top Ten. The passion and enthusiasm that is missing in Tom Strong and Top Ten is very much in evidence here: Moore has created a unique and intriguing female character and uses the setting to play around with questions of gender and humanity. It’s sometimes quite a hard book to read, as Williams enjoys experimenting with the page composition to match Moore’s dialogue. Having said that, the effort is rewarded. Moore has concocted a vivid and dynamic world, both in the Immateria and the alternate real world, and Williams has realised them with a rare flair. If you buy one ABC collection, then it should be Promethea; (Vol 4#3, Dec 2000) Nick Fury: Agent of Shield and Nick Fury: Who Is Scorpio, by Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Jim Steranko & various, Marvel Comics. You may have remembered Steranko whingeing about these books last year. Before Steranko became a parody of himself, he was producing some of the most blisteringly brilliant comic art for Marvel. His run on Nick Fury, reprinted here, displays his imaginative layouts and sense of design, combined with some nifty plotting and dialogue. Fury was cut from the same cloth as Bond but archetypically American. Marvel, at last, has been plundering its archives for the best of its past and both of these volumes should be on the shelves of every mainstream comic fan; (Vol 4#4, Feb 2001) Heart of Empire or The Legacy of Luther Arkwright, by Bryan Talbot and Angus McKie, Dark Horse Comics. The original Luther Arkwright was a long time ago and Talbot has developed significantly as an artist and as a creator. The Adventures of Luther Arkwright was the product of a young, slightly naive mind whereas The Heart of Empire is a fully realised bawdy epic, uniquely British, complete with gloriously vivid colours from Angus McKie and a plot that encompasses multiple worlds and political intrigue. Talbot has created an alternate world where the sun never sets on the British Empire and this displeases this reality’s Pope, who sends his best assassin to force the queen, Anne, to accept the Catholic faith, or to perish. The book builds up to a dramatic crescendo from the first page, involving a worldTRIPWIRE 21 139
spanning catastrophe, and Talbot maintains the pace with real skill. He also knows when to introduce wit and humour to leaven a scene and, reading The Heart of Empire, you are struck by his talents as a writer. In terms of accessibility, this volume is accessible and linear, more conventional than its forerunner, but I say that as a compliment, rather than a criticism; (Vol 4#5, May 2001) Opus Volume Two, showcasing the glorious art of Barry Windsor-Smith, contains commentary from the artist himself of such pretension that even Neil Gaiman would be ashamed to admit to it. There’s no denying his talent as an artist, as his use of simple line and classical figurework is superb, but it would have been preferable to have had an editor put the pieces in context with some more lucid comments from BWS. Opus 2 is a great art book, like its predecessor, and there are two more volumes to come. Let’s hope, although it’s probably a vain one, that Windsor-Smith will have either had his medication increased or decreased, or that someone else will furnish the text. Regardless of the quibbles about the text, it’s still a phenomenally well-produced, welldesigned look at the illustrator’s career; (Vol 4#5, May 2001) 100 Bullets: Split Second Chance, by Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso, Vertigo: DC Comics/ Titan Books. Although Azzarello continues to come across as a weak and feeble writer on Hellblazer, with 100 Bullets (his creation) he continues to deliver the goods. This collection reprints #6 -14 of the regular series and a particular highlight is ‘Parlez Vous Kung Fu’, where we get to see Dizzy, from the first story, in Paris and we get a few more clues about the real purpose of enigma Agent Graves. Risso, like Frank Miller, is an illustrator par excellence and his use of shadow and light is second to none. Also, Risso’s faces are expressive and he manages to convey more emotion in three panels than many series aim for across an entire issue. It’s uncertain whether Azzarello can maintain the quality for an extended period of time (there’s been talk that 100 Bullets is planned as a five-year series, at least) but if he manages to rein in his more dubious literary ticks, (some of his street dialogue sees him trying too hard) then there’s no reason why he couldn’t leave a great body of work at the end; (Vol 4#6, July 2001) Lucifer: Devil In The Gateway, by Mike Carey, Scott Hampton, Chris Weston & James Hodgkins, Warren Pleece & Dean Ormston. I will admit that, 140 TRIPWIRE 21
when Vertigo announced that they would be publishing a Sandman spinoff featuring the Devil, my first thought was to run for the hills and wait for its inevitable cancellation. However, Mike Carey has proven himself to be a likable and talented writer and Lucifer exudes an easygoing charm that Neil Gaiman hasn’t been able to muster as a scripter very often. Scott Hampton’s gorgeous paintings help matters but so do the naturalistic renderings of Vertigo mainstay Chris Weston. Lucifer is highly recommended to anyone sick of the indulgences that Vertigo (and especially Sandman and The Dreaming) has been guilty of in the past. Carey’s handling of Lucifer’s quest, to find his place in the world stripped of his rank, is superb; (Vol 4#6, July 2001) Joe Kubert’s Tor Volume One, by Joe Kubert, DC Comics. Kubert is the last of his generation: a true original, he didn’t really hit his stride until the sixties. This lavish hardcover reprints his fifties Tor work and, as such, is pretty basic stuff. But there are flashes of brilliance, some to equal Toth at his most dynamic, and you can trace the lineage from here to Barry Windsor-Smith’s Conan run. This collection is more of an interesting curio than an out-and-out masterwork but it’s clear, even from this material, that he’s had an enormous influence on many artists who’ve followed him. The aborted newspaper strips at the back give a clue to his later sophistication. Tor Volume One is a well-assembled, magnificent work of archival comics history and it’s about time; (Vol 4#7, Oct 2001) The Complete Ballad Of Halo Jones, by Alan Moore & Ian Gibson, Titan Books. Out of print for six years, this book illustrates why Moore is a bit of a comics phenomenon. For anybody reading the ABC books, who is ignorant of his earlier work, this is highly recommended. Reprinting the three books that ran in 2000AD in the 1980s, Halo Jones is classic science fiction. Each book has a different tone and a different feel: the first one introduces the character, who lives in an overcrowded future New York, and her contemporaries, who do their best to exist in a very stressful environment. You are struck instantly by Gibson’s talent for portraiture and figurework: whilst his art is stylised and highly exaggerated, there’s real life in his characters. The second book sees Jones away from her home, working as a waitress on a space ship, and the tone switches from frenetic to almost elegiac, with Jones witness to some very strange goings-on. The final book is the darkest of the three: Jones’s life has not gone to plan, so she TRIPWIRE 21 141
decides to join the army. Gibson decides to take his art to a new place here and where there were caricatures, now there are grotesques. The war that Jones gets embroiled in is so soul-destroying that Gibson chose to ape this in his illustration. The Complete Ballad of Halo Jones is compelling: from Moore’s highly-developed (even here) sense of balance to Gibson’s wonderfully evocative and fully-realised alien settings, everything works in concert; (Vol 4#7, Oct 2001) Daredevil Visionaries Frank Miller Vol 1-3 (written by Roger McKenzie & Frank Miller, drawn by Frank Miller & Klaus Janson/ various, Marvel Comics) collects the entire Miller run that broke new ground and made his name in the early eighties. On Daredevil, Miller went back to the source: realizing that he was originally a pulp hero, he grounded him in pulp conventions with a twist, threw in some mysticism and stirred. The difference in quality between Volume One and Volume Three is staggering: it’s not that Miller was a bad artist when he started out but by Daredevil #183, he managed to transcend his influences. Miller did do so much that it’s hard to know where to begin: he brought so much vigour and energy to the title, he created a rogue’s gallery that was unique at the time (The Kingpin still has the power to dominate every scene he inhabits and The Hand is still the coolest group of assassins in comics) and is still yet to be surpassed. Daredevil deals in justice rather than vengeance, and this is very clear, particularly during his run-ins with The Punisher. This desire to see justice done is reflected in Daredevil’s alter ego Matt Murdock, and it is obvious that they are two sides of the same person, of equal importance, unlike Batman, whose Bruce Wayne persona is merely a shallow masquerade. Volume Three sees Klaus Janson take on the art chores but it doesn’t matter: since Janson worked with Miller in the formative stages of his career, the quality is maintained. Janson is more an illustrator from the traditional school of comic illustration, whereas Miller is more experimental but sometimes it seems that some of Miller’s tricks have rubbed off on Janson: witness the intro to ‘Siege’ in Daredevil #189, where colour and grayscale are mixed. Daredevil Visionaries is superb, blessed with a visual and narrative consistency rarely seen since; (Vol 4#9, Dec 2001- Jan 2002) Scatterbrain, by various, Dark Horse Comics. Scatterbrain was published as a four-issue miniseries in 1998 and now has been collected in an oversized hardcover. Scatterbrain is a humour anthology that takes twisted to a new level and the sheer consistency here is very rare, especially in an anthology. It’s hard to 142 TRIPWIRE 21
pick out highlights when there’s so much great material here but I’ll try: Dave Cooper’s Pip and Norton manages to be sick and appealing at the same time, Jim Woodring and Tom Dougherty’s Bronco Teddy is probably the most unsettling take on the western ever published and Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer’s Fisher Price Theatre 1984 is one of the most refreshing ‘adaptations’ ever. There’s a wonderfully diverse range of contributors: everyone from Mike Mignola to Evan Dorkin, Daniel Torres to Killian Plunkett is here and they’re all turning in exemplary work. Scatterbrain is the future of comics: it’s intelligent, satirical and very, very bizarre. In this reasonable hardback format (only $19.95), it’s an ideal present for the comics virgin; (Vol 4#10, Apr 2002) 100 Bullets: Hang Up On The Hang Low, by Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso, Vertigo: DC Comics/ Titan Books. 100 Bullets has been the saviour of Vertigo. Once Sandman packed it in and Preacher came closer to its end, the line needed something with a punch to take the pride of place. This volume is the third collection of the regular title and the more 100 Bullets you read, the more you admire Azzarello (and Risso, obviously). 100 Bullets shouldn’t really be published monthly but consumed in trade paperback, as the pieces of each arc fit better together in one sitting. It would be like turning The Godfather into a series of twenty minute chapters. In Agent Graves, Azzarello and Risso have created a grade-A enigma and thrown him into a brutal and venal world where, most of the time, he calls the shots. Like the best crime fiction, 100 Bullets is immediate, cinematic and cut to the bone; (Vol 4#10, Apr 2002) Powers: Roleplay, by Brian Bendis & Michael Oeming, Image Comics. Powers is now the centrepiece of the Image line and this book represents #8-11 of the series. Bendis and Oeming have taken the concept of a city populated by superheroes and regular people and created a fully-realised setting, complete with emotional depth and broad characterisation. ‘Roleplay’ sees someone picking off students who are dressing up as ‘powers’ and it sheds new light on Detective Walker’s past, while showing another side to partner Deena Pilgrim’s personality. Powers is easily the equal of quality TV series like Law And Order, The Sopranos or Six Feet Under, and Oeming’s Toth-like figurework brings the city to life with classical ease; (Vol 4#12, Aug-Sep 2002) It used to be that the name Frank Miller was a guarantee of quality. As a powerhouse creator in the eightTRIPWIRE 21 143
ies, he created a unique reputation for himself. After the success of Dark Knight Returns, Miller seemed to have a harder time fitting into the market. So it’s ironic that his most high profile work for a number of years is a return to the character that pretty much cemented his reputation, Batman, although some may argue that he did this with his exemplary work on Daredevil. A lot has been said about Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again, since rumours of a sequel to Dark Knight Returns started springing up around 1999. When it hit the stands in 2001, it was met with everything from abject horror to apathy. Now that it’s been published in a hardcover edition, DC Comics/ Titan Books in the UK, it’s a little easier to read it with some perspective. Miller obviously knew that he had his work cut out for him, putting it mildly, attempting a sequel to something as successful and popular as Dark Knight Returns. Putting aside all of the snide comments and the knee jerk reactions for a moment, the question here is whether it’s as bold as its predecessor? A lot has changed in the comic market since DKR was published in 1986: there’s been the rise and fall of the speculator market, the rebranding of Marvel and the increased prominence of companies like Image and CrossGen. Dark Knight Returns was a very classic book in every sense and for Miller to return to that mindset probably wouldn’t make sense now. Most of the criticisms levelled at Dark Knight Strikes Again have been aimed at its art and colouring. To be honest, it is only really with the third chapter here that Miller and Varley’s efforts strike a chord. The art looks rushed in the first two chapters and Varley’s palette is all over the place. There are some truly dramatic sweeps in the final installment, worthy of Dark Knight Returns: Superman’s chat with Supergirl and Batman recuperating for what feels like the final battle. But the problem here is that the plot is flabby and unclear. Miller’s greatest strength used to be that he was able to boil down his grand visions into a taut and gripping story. Dark Knight Strikes Again, set in a world where Batman is an underground maverick, the JLA are merely puppets of Lex Luthor and many superheroes have either gone insane or destroyed themselves, has a staccato feel to its plotting that disrupts its flow and you’re left asking yourself where the Miller of old has gone. Dark Knight Strikes Again is too mired in inaccessible comic conventions and let down by a messy and tenuous plot. File under disappointing; (Vol 5 #1, Apr 2003) Mike Carey has fitted rather neatly into a slot over at Vertigo, taking up the slack where Neil Gaiman left off and mostly doing so in a more likeable and wellcrafted way than the leather-jacketed one. The Furies 144 TRIPWIRE 21
is a sumptuous hardback, painted by John Bolton, that gives Carey the opportunity to further the story of Lyta Hall, last seen in the pages of The Dreaming. Hall, whose life has lacked meaning since the loss of her son, finds herself caught in the middle of an ancient feud between mythical figures. The Furies has an elegaic, almost dreamlike quality to it, helped in no small part by Bolton’s eerie renderings. Carey’s poetic prose finds its equal in Bolton’s pages and here is a hardcover that’s mythic without being portentous, that’s worthy of its format and cover price; (Vol 5 #1, Apr 2003) Batman: Black And White Volume Two, by various, takes the backup stories from Batman: Gotham Knights #1-16 and sticks them in an oversized hardcover. Like the first volume, there are some spectacularly talented and unexpected contributors, creators like Steve Rude, whose elegance and simplicity continues to dazzle, Jim Lee, turning in some of his most cinematic work in some time and Paul Pope, who succeeds in making the Dark Knight Detective human and alien at the same time. There are so many wonderful vignettes in this collection that it seems rude to pick out individuals but Harlan Ellison and Gene Ha use the eight pager to its fullest advantages and Tim Sale, abetted by writer Kelley Puckett, shows why he has become the consummate Batman artist of the last ten years. It’s also heartening to see that the stories go up and down the emotional scale; (Vol 5 #1, Apr 2003) The Art of Hellboy, by Mike Mignola. Mignola has grown in stature as an artist from a jobbing fill in guy at Marvel and later DC to become the preeminent spiritual successor to Jack Kirby in modern comics. No one else has the sense of composition, lighting and motion in comics today and this 200 page lavish hardcover puts The Art of Sin City, also published recently by Dark Horse, into the shade. There is historical context here as the development and maturation of Mignola as an illustrator can be plotted through the character studies, rejected cover designs and standalone images. The scary thing is that you know that there was a lot of material that Dark Horse had to throw out of the book because of space considerations. Scott Allie, Hellboy’s editor almost since the start, puts it all into perspective with his canny and intelligent introduction where it becomes obvious, even to this day, Mignola is still very self-conscious and unsure of his abilities as a comic artist and general illustrator. From the evidence of this book, Mignola has nothing to worry about. The
“There are so many wonderful vignettes in Batman Black and White Volume 2 that it seems rude to pick out individuals”
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Art of Hellboy is a well-edited peek into Mignola’s sketchbook and is definitely worth the cover price as the oversized hardcover format shows his versatility off to spectacular effect; (Vol 5 #1, Apr 2003) Daredevil Volume 2, by Brian Bendis & Alex Maleev, Marvel Comics. When Marvel relaunched Daredevil back in 1998 initially under Kevin Smith as part of its Marvel Knights line, it didn’t exactly set the world alight. It was riddled with scheduling problems and trundled along for the next four years.With the introduction of new creative team Bendis and Maleev, the pair brought the hyperrealistic cinematic qualities to the book that they have made their own.The oversized hardcover format brings new life to Maleev’s expressive kineticism and gives the story the broad sweep it deserves. Bendis’s first move is to dispatch the Kingpin in a scene that has echoes of the demise of Caesar and renders him powerless, figuratively by removing his influence, and physically, by making him blind. Fisk here is a diminished figure, lonely and pathetic.The attempt on his life by one of his newer lieutenants, is brilliantly handled by Bendis and Maleev, with perfect pacing and drama. The colour here must be mentioned, as the contribution of Matt Hollingsworth is equally as important as that of Maleev in setting the tone and maintaining the emotional highs and lows of the story. The botched assassination of The Kingpin has consequences and Bendis cleverly dovetails these nicely into the next story, where Daredevil’s identity is made public and his life is turned upside down. Bendis makes DD more human than he’s been since Frank Miller’s days and he uses New York as a character in its own right, with its gothic edifices and its seedy bars. Daredevil under Bendis, Maleev and Hollingsworth, owes much to groundbreaking crime TV like The Shield, The Sopranos and CSI but still succeeds in playing to the strengths of the comic medium. There are very few comic series that deserve more room to breathe but the first year of Daredevil by Bendis and Maleev requires the large hardback format so that the reader can immerse themselves in the material. If Quesada is remembered for nothing else, he should be remembered for bringing these two together at Marvel; (Vol 5 #2, June 2003) The Absolute Authority, by Warren Ellis, Bryan Hitch & Paul Neary, Wildstorm/ DC Comics. A lot has been said about the year that Ellis and Hitch spent on The Authority. Ellis turned Stormwatch from a fifth- rate generic superhero book into something powerful and original and The Authority was a direct result of that. The Absolute Authority is a massive 146 TRIPWIRE 21
“If Quesada is remembered for nothing else, he should be remembered for bringing [Bendis and Maleev] together at Marvel on Daredevil”
hardcover, reflecting the scale and importance of the series. As the first widescreen superhero series, it was only fitting that it was reprinted in a suitably dramatic format. Hitch’s art looks so elegant in the oversized hardback format that the reader has no choice but to be drawn in by the world that he’s realised here.The three stories here all different but with a smilar feel to them:‘The Circle’ reads like a classic X-Men tale given a twenty-first century spin, with the demonic Kaizen Gamorra as the team’s central adversary and the large scale destruction of several of the world’s best known cities. ‘Shiftships’ is my personal favourite here: like a love letter to Moore and Davis’ Captain Britain run, Ellis explodes the concept of an alternative world with great style and panache and Hitch creates in Sliding Albion an otherworld that exudes menacing cool. Thanks to the size of each page, spreads hit the reader in the face like a sharp left hook. The final story ‘Outer Dark’ sees the Authority battling against the creator of the earth in a tale that reads like a cross between Quatermass and Doctor Who, with a smattering of Fantastic Voyage thrown in for good measure. Ellis created in Jenny Sparks comics’ first truly sexy English female superhero and the chemistry between the various members of the team is well-managed. The Authority may have been Ellis’ finest moment so far and with the assistance of Bryan Hitch, inker Paul Neary and the spectacular palette of colourist Laura DePuy, The Absolute Authority is a work of supreme luxuriance, showing the creative team’s work in the format and that it deserves; (Vol 5 #2, June 2003) X-Force: Famous, Mutant & Mortal, by Peter Milligan, Mike Allred, Darwyn Cooke and Duncan Fegredo, Marvel Comics. Marvel’s decision to relaunch X-Force, previously one of the company’s most insignificant titles, with Pete Milligan and Mike Allred was considered foolhardy and risky by observers. Here you had two creators from a different discipline tackling a book in one of the most heavily generic and convention- heavy lines. But their choice has proven to be popular and Milligan and Allred have managed to create an X-Men book like no other: the team is constantly at loggerheads with each other, and the decision to treat the idea of a mutant team like some sort of deranged boy band creates an atmosphere unlike any other X-book, either before or after. Unlike Daredevil, X-Force is not a beautiful book but Allred’s pop art on acid pages look even more disturbing and unhinged in this larger format than they ever did at the regular size. Every character here is throwaway, a concept that is at the heart of Milligan’s manifesto here. It is the contrast between the charming naivety of
“The Absolute Authority is a work of supreme luxuriance, showing the creative team’s work in the format and with the lush production values that it deserves”
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Allred, and on one occasion Darwyn Cooke, and the hardnosed intellectual cyncism of Milligan’s writing that creates sparks. Only the story drawn by Duncan Fegredo, ‘X-Storm’, brings things back down to earth with his more realistic style. X-Force:Famous, Mutant & Mortal is a bold and dynamic book; (Vol 5 #2, June 2003) Swamp Thing: Dark Genesis, by Len Wein & Berni Wrightson, Vertigo/ DC Comics. DC brings the classic Swamp Thing comics back into print for the umpteenth time. It doesn’t matter because they still hold up as brilliant examples of gothic comic book suspense in the same mould as some of the best of Universal’s vintage film series. Cut from the same creative cloth that influenced illustrative masters like Frank Frazetta, the power of Wrightson’s drawings continues to dazzle and Wein’s scripts still have a certain magic to them. Dark Genesis needs to be on the shelf of anyone who considers themselves a serious comic reader; (Vol 5 #3, July 2003) The Incredible Hulk: Return of The Monster, by Bruce Jones, Brian Azzarello, John Romita Jr & Tom Palmer, Lee Weeks & Tom Palmer and Richard Corben, Marvel Comics, reprints in one of Marvel’s lovely oversized hardcovers ten issues of the regular and the four-issue Startling Stories: Banner series that appeared a little while ago. When Peter David stopped writing the green goliath’s adventures, a lot of readers deserted the book. It is to Bruce Jones’s credit that he has managed to give the title a much-needed lift by repositioning it as a modern espionage horror tale. Jones has an impeccable sense of pacing and with the help of first John Romita Jr, doing some of his most dramatic and kinetic work ever, and then Lee Weeks, an old school comic artist in the best sense, has constructed a compelling, intelligent series, complete with pathos and substance. The Startling Stories tale is a beast of a different hue: Azzarello has decided to look at what would happen if the US government decided to take the ultimate measure and kill off the Hulk once and for all by lobotomising Bruce Banner. The real problem here is with Corben’s art: he makes the Hulk look like the ogre from Shrek, he draws Doc Samson like a stoned metalhead and his figurework is ugly and stuck in the early seventies. It’s a shame because Azzarello has put together a decent four parter. Banner spoils what is otherwise a great collection; (Vol 5 #3, July 2003) 148 TRIPWIRE 21
On the shelf extra
When we kicked off the Annual after taking a break, we didn’t see much point in running On The Shelf in the magazine. But 2003 to 2013 has been a halycon period for graphic novels. So as a special treat, here’s reviews of ten notable graphic novels and collected editions in no particular order published in that period. We have tried to be a little bit eclectic with our titles Criminal: The Dekuxe Edition Writer: Ed Brubaker Artist: Sean Phillips; Icon / Marvel Ed Brubaker continues to be probably the best mainstream comic writer to emerge in the past decade. He has a rare ability to switch from superheroics to hardboiled thrillers. Criminal, his occasional series from Marvel’s Icon series, created with artist Sean Phillips, is a brilliant slice of a hardbitten world, where women usually betray you and your friends will stab you in the back without a moment’s thought. Criminal: The Deluxe Edition is a whopping 432 page monster that respresents Volume 1 #1-10 and Volume 2 #1-3 of the series, accompanied by Brubaker’s fascinating essays on subjects like Out of The Past and John Woo plus page roughs and covers from Phillips. And Phillips’ contributions must not be overlooked here: he has a real knack for storytelling but is equally at home creating dynamic single images. The first story, ‘Coward’ is a classic robbery-gone-wrong tale with thief Leo returning home and joining a gang to carry out what seems like an easy robbery. The second story, ‘Lawless’, deals with Broderick Lawless out to avenge his dead brother. But even a seasoned pro like Lawless can find himself out of his depth. There is something so simple and primal, yet so universal about Brubaker and Phillips’ Criminal that it can’t help but strike a chord. These are stories of the sort that we’ve seen a million times from Chandler, Hammett and Spillane and yet they manage to invest them with something fresh. This Deluxe Edition packs a punch that a paperback couldn’t. JOEL MEADOWS Conan The Frost Giant’s Daughter Writer: Kurt Busiek Artist Cary Nord; Dark Horse When Marvel Comics ended their Conan The Barbarian series in 1993 it was widely assumed by fandom that the sword and sorcery genre that it had basically owned for the better part of 25 years had completely played itself out. In 1970, when Roy Thomas and Barry Smith brought Robert E. Howard’s primeval non-hero to comics it immediately attracted attention as the lead was amoral and unreconstructed, and the stories faithful to their visceral source material. Within several years, the franchise included two black-and-white magazines, spin-offs, and a second comic series, King Conan. When Dark Horse acquired the rights to the character a decade after Marvel’s cancellation, it was considered a brave yet foolhardy move — Marvel’s tenure on Conan had long run out of steam prior to its end. But writer Kurt Busiek and artists Cary Nord and Thomas Yeates not only proved everyone wrong in such assumptions, they produced their publisher’s best comic series in many years. This book rapidly shows what Busiek and Nord were to contribute to the character’s rehabilitation — the aesthetic this time being a painterly artistic dreamscape that is as much influenced by Frank Frazetta as by Barry Smith. Busiek and Nord set their stall out here quickly — amidst the folkloric mysticism there is extreme, explicitly portrayed bloodshed. And Conan, despite his callow youth, is already the shrewd, instinctive pragmatist. Undoubtedly the centrepiece of the book is the story arc which sees Conan being captured and enslaved by the Hyperboreans. More than anything, this book is a reminder of how much the medium had missed Conan, and that in capable hands there would be much mileage left in the character. Robert E. Howard would be proud. ANDREW COLMAN
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Scalped Volume One: Indian Country Writer: Jason Aaron Artist RM Guera; Vertigo/ DC After a decade of existence, Vertigo outgrew its fantasy obsession and became a place for exceptional crime and thrillers. After 100 Bullets, Scalped, created by Jason Aaron about an undercover Native American FBI agent Dashell Bad Horse, was the mustread series from Vertigo for the five years that it ran, making a superstar of writer Aaron. This first collection introduces us to Bad Horse and a motley collection of characters including corrupt casino owner Lincoln Red Crow, Bad Horse’s estranged mother Gina and ex-girlfriend Carol. Aaron has an effortless way with characterisation (he manages to throw us into the thick of it from the start) while he is able to shift tone without throwing the reader out of the action, weaving emotional depth into the series like very few other contemporary comic writers. He also has a great line in gritty dialogue, something that can make or break great crime or thrillers. His artistic collaborator RM Guera lends a subtle European air to proceedings and is the perfect match for Aaron’s hard-bitten modern noir. Guera is also able to switch between high action and introspective character scenes with rare proficiency. Cover artist Jock must also get a mention here. His brilliant covers set the tone for every chapter and it’s almost impossible to imagine Scalped without one of his images on the cover. Although we have seen seemingly every possible story in the crime genre, Aaron manages to offer us something that is fresh and contemporary while still containing the ingredients of a classic crime thriller. Scalped is gripping, exciting and hard to put down. JOEL MEADOWS All-Star Superman Writer: Grant Morrison Artist Frank Quitely; DC Morrison and Quitely’s Superman fable is old-school with edge, a clever, thoughtful rendition of the Man Of Steel that works outside the regular mythology but manages to tie in just about every aspect of it into a satisfying, cohesive whole. Eschewing his usual outré tendencies, Morrison’s version of Supes is sympathetic and human, whilst his supporting cast are far more fleshed out and interesting than their established versions. Structured on the twelve tasks of Hercules, the maxi-series has our hero imbued with extra powers by arch-antagonist Lex Luthor, at the cost of having only one year to live. After Luthor is imprisoned and sentenced to death, Superman reveals his identity to Lois Lane, and then resolves to help humanity through the twelve labours. Morrison’s delineation of Superman throughout his tribulations is both humourous and reverent – he understands the essence of the character and rather than alter it, decides to play to its strengths. The episode, for example, on the Bizarro-infested Cubeworld is both hilarious and exudes pathos – trapped with the backward Bizarros, and with his powers fading, there’s an element of ludicrousness that sits rather well with Superman’s Boy Scout characterization. Even better is his confrontation with two renegade Kryptonians, the appallingly effete Bar-El and Lilo, where he has to endure all kinds of indignities. It is here that Morrison is at his best – through the use of such supercilious creations, he can ask ironic questions of the character and his motives whilst explaining his durability and greatness. Grant Morrison once again shows here why he is a premier league writer, casually tying up all the discordant plot strands after Luthor’s amusing defeat – while Frank Quitely’s art is possibly his best work, lending a surreal, tilted slant to the tale. A story that demands to be read in one sitting – if only all such series were so compulsive. ANDREW COLMAN
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Blankets Writer/Artist Craig Thompson; Top Shelf Thompson is now a well-known figure among the adult graphic novel industry but when Blankets came out back in 2003, he had only produced Goodbye Chunky Rice before. Blankets won two Eisner Awards and four Harvey Awards back in 2004. Blankets is a touching, lowkey autobiographical tale of Craig, a young man who is at a pivotal place in his life. Should he train as a priest or follow his heart and become a cartoonist? Meeting Raina,a girl who he falls for, forces him to reassess his priorities and to make his own choices. Blankets is a hefty book, clocking in at an impressive 582 pages and it is certainly a very ambitious work. You can see that Thompson’s art is heavily influenced by the likes of Will Eisner and Jules Pfeiffer but he also manages to bring a contemporary feel to his work. His characters are expressive and he makes the Wisconsin setting for Blankets really come to life on the page. In terms of his writing, Thompson has a deft hand for measured pacing and he also has a good ear for credible dialogue. Emotionally, Blankets rings true and sometimes it feels very raw, so the reader feels privileged that Thompson has let you into his private world. The autobiographical independent graphic novel is a welltrodden path for creators but here Craig Thompson succeeded in bringing us something that feels honest, thoughtful, truthful and emotionally connects with the reader. He is a very talented creator, certainly one of the best in the independent graphic novel field. Blankets is a work of genuine honesty. JOEL MEADOWS Rainbow Orchid Writer/Artist Garen Ewing; Egmont Ewing is a creator who has been around for a number of years, self-publishing his work. Rainbow Orchid is a classic adventure strip in the Blake & Mortimer or Tintin mould and so when it was picked up by mainstream publisher Egmont, it wasn’t a surprise. Rainbow Orchid deals with adventurer Julius Chancer, whose mission here is to stop the wonderfully-named evil Urkaz Grope getting hold of the fabled Rainbow Orchid. He is helped by a group of friends like actress Lilly Lawrence and daredevil pilot Benoit Tayaut. Ewing comes very much from the ligne claire or clear line tradition of European cartooning and his work is simple yet elegant. His page composition is spectacular, moving the story along while keeping things visually dynamic and he makes good use of settings. Despite the European influence, Rainbow Orchid still feels like a very British affair. Ewing manages to pack a lot into 144 pages and Chancer is a suitably sympathetic protagonist. Like Herge’s Tintin, Rainbow Orchid is filled with exotic locations and slightly odd characters. It’s also sophisticated enough to appeal to a slightly older audience while still more than suitable to give to a child. Like the best graphic novels, Ewing manages to imbue Rainbow Orchid with a sense of the comfortable while injecting a fresh vigour into proceedings. This volume reprints the first three Rainbow Orchid stories but Ewing has created a rich and vibrant world populated with intriguing characters, so hopefully this debut adventure of Chancer and friends won’t be their last. JOEL MEADOWS
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Wednesday Comics Writers: Various Artists: Various; DC When DC published the twelve weekly issues of Wednesday Comics back in 2009, people thought that they and editor Mark Chiarello had either lost the plot or come up with a brilliant new way to publish content in the 21st century. The format of Wednesday Comics, a newsformat periodical that harked back to the original home of the comicbook in the first half of the twentieth century, was very popular and the series captured jaded readers’ attention. When it was announced that it was going to be reprinted, there was much discussion as it how they’d be able to replicate the experience of the weekly issues in a durable single collection. DC and Chiarello must be applauded for bringing out a hardcover that is beautiful and well-crafted while being accessible at the same time. Chiarello has made his name bringing groundbreaking titles to the market, like Solo and Batman Black and White. Anthologies are a hard sell in the American comic market but Wednesday Comics brings together some of the best creators working in comics. As with any anthology, not every strip will appeal to everyone but I enjoyed at least 60% of it. Standout strips are Batman by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso, Kamandi by Dave Gibbons and drawn by Ryan Sook and Paul Pope’s Strange Adventures. Azzarello and Risso have worked together on the Dark Knight Detective before but there is a real immediacy here with their work. On Kamandi, Sook channels Williamson, Frazetta and Krenkel and Gibbons’s script pops off the page. With Strange Adventures, Pope manages to bring a surreal pulp sensibility to Adam Strange and his alien home of Rann that uses the format to its full advantage. Wednesday Comics is that rare beast: something that feels new and yet familiar at the same time. JOEL MEADOWS Grandville Writer/Artist Bryan Talbot; Jonathan Cape/ Dark Horse Talbot’s career has been incredible. Starting off as the ultimate British independent comics auteur, thanks to five decades in the business, he now has the luxury of picking and choosing his own projects. Grandville is an anthropomorphic steampunk adventure set in a world where Britain is just a French colony. At its heart is Inspector LeBrock, an English badger policeman and his trusted sidekick, rat Detective Ratzi, who is drawn into a conspiracy to discredit the Socialist Republic of Britain. The conspiracy’s major players are some of the most influential people in France and the story pits LeBrock against a cross section of the country’s movers and shakers. Grandville, as with everything that Talbot produces, displays his rare erudition and obsession with research. There are nods to everything from Tintin to Brian DePalma’s Scarface but the joy here is that Talbot is able to distill his research into a thoroughly enjoyable and intelligent pulp romp. The creator has created a well-realised milieu for the characters to operate in and another thing that Talbot does that very few others are capable of is to use the fantasical setting to ask questions about the world that we live in. Just because he has replaced humans with animals, Grandville is no wilfully obscure piece of indulgent fluff. It is hard-hitting, cinematic and cleverly constructed. Talbot has produced two other volumes of Grandville as of this writing and it is testament to his versatility that he is as comfortable here as he is on something like A Tale of One Bad Rat or Alice in Sunderland. JOEL MEADOWS
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Silverfin Writer: Charlie Higson/ Kev Walker Artist: Kev Walker; Puffin James Bond is one of the most recognisable fictional icons in the world. Silverfin is a graphic novel adaptation of Charlie Higson’s Young Bond novel of the same name. Artist Kev Walker, well known for his work on 2000AD, isn’t necessarily the first choice that springs to mind when casting around for an artist to convert Higson’s prose but as soon as you open up Silverfin, you realise that whoever chose him was very canny indeed. The graphic novel even has an opening, pre-credits sequence the way that a Bond film does, tantalising us with mysteries that will be solved later in the book. The first proper section of the book shows us a young Bond at Eton, making a rival of the son of American industrialist Lord Hellebore. We get to see a James Bond in the making, acquiting himself admirably among the pompous toffs of Eton. Then we move on to see young Bond visit his aunt and uncle up in Scotland where he crosses paths with Lord Hellebore and his son once again. Hellebore has a terrible secret and Bond, with the assistance of ‘Red’ Kelly, an urchin he meets on the train up there, has to solve this mystery. Walker’s art is kinetic and full of life, moving the story along with panache and pizazz. His panel composition and page structure is clean and easy to follow. Walker has a great way with characters too: Hellebore is portrayed as a hulking brute on the page while young James Bond has a little bit of Connery and Moore in him. Adaptations are hard to do well but Silverfin is entertaining, fast-paced and a rare accomplishment. It will appeal to younger readers but also offers something for adult fans of Ian Fleming’s most famous creation. JOEL MEADOWS Berlin City of Stones Writer/Artist Jason Lutes; Drawn & Quarterly Jason Lutes’ series about a disparate group of people whose lives intersect in late 1920s Berlin is an understated yet resonant work that quietly builds and draws in the reader – a minor masterpiece of bold characterization, historical breadth and grim simplicity. The story begins with Marthe Muller, a naïve young art student from Koln, and her first meeting with future lover (and the story’s hub) Kurt Severing. The other key protagonists are Gudrun and her husband Otto, a married couple with a brood of kids whose disintegrating marriage is underscored by the hothouse politics of the era. While Berlin inevitably sinks into political extremism, the characters arcs are adroitly and subtly fleshed out through internal monologues, period framing and Lutes’s subtle, ligne claire art, which is equally stark, precise and chiaroscuro. Juxtaposing the trite (Marthe’s innocent art school set) with the jackbooted horror that is waiting to engulf the cast (Gudrun’s husband joining the Nazis and inculcating his son into their ideology) the series succeeds in giving a broad overview of all corners of lateWeimar life. Amid the harsh cityscapes are a genuinely real set of characters – the developing relationship between Marthe and the jaded journalist Severing is all too believable in its fragility, while Gudrun’s drifting into Communism’s orbit after being abandoned by Otto is handled very adeptly. Although there is a slack, unhurried pace to the series, it’s all about the naturalism of the piece, which allows for historical framing and flashbacks, all of which provide the context for why Germany had reached its benighted predicament. At times there’s a tendency for Lutes to be somewhat precious with his cast but on the whole, this is an excellent, sometimes challenging read that never sermonizes. Deserving of a higher profile. AC
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MAKING A FEATURE
Peter Milligan
In its two decades of existence, we interviewed and covered every major player in the world of comics and genre. So here is a small sample of the most interesting quotes taken from features that span the magazine’s history from its very beginning to 2011. When we began we didn’t really know what we were doing and so we managed to upset a few people at the start. But we learnt as we went along and features actually became one of the strongest aspects of the magazine… Volume 1 #2, Sept 1992 “I think that, as the characters grow, the story really starts to work well, they start to tell you things about themselves. I know it sounds a bit pretentious and a bit arty but the writer becomes a vessel for the characters” – PETER MILLIGAN, Spiked Milligan
Volume 1 #4, Aug 1993 “I don’t think any culture being sublimated by another culture is good. I certainly don’t want to see a lot of shopping malls spring up in England. I really don’t want to see England become like America. Certain things, though, I think would definitely benefit. A toilet that you don’t have to flush three times before it actually works would be one.” – ART YOUNG, Never Trust a Hippy “We are trying to deliberately get people who don’t necessarily read comics, into comics, which is the direct opposite to elitism. The whole point of the miniseries or one-off is that it’s very easy for Joe Public to jump into. If you start getting elitist, you’re going to cut your own throat.” – TIM PILCHER, Never Trust a Hippy
Volume 1 #6, Feb 1994 “I’d prefer to be a starving artist somewhere, to be honest. Just a bit of food to eat, enough room and space to throw paint on huge canvasses, have exhibitions, and talk to pretentious arseholes, you know? ‘Cause there’s something that really fascinates me about the whole art world.” – SIMON BISLEY, The Bisley/ Morrison Tapes Part One “But the thing is that basically you do these books, no matter if these guys recognise you or you’re on the Late Show and the book’s gonna sell 2,000 copies at most if it’s lucky. Most modern literature is selling something like 2,000 copies when it comes out. I mean, even the lowest-selling comic that I’ve done has never sold less than 35,000. The sales are so much higher in comics and you’re reaching more people.”– GRANT MORRISON, The Bisley/ Morrison Tapes Part One “The whole Image thing is like some crappy Kylie single that reaches No.1 because it’s easy to hum along to.”– GRANT MORRISON, The Bisley/ Morrison Tapes Part One
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Volume 1 #7, Sept 1994 “I move towards Dali but can’t go that way because it’s like I’m trying to emulate him. It seems a natural way to go. I just want to go there but I feel, no, I can’t do that.”–SIMON BISLEY, The Bisley/ Morrison Tapes Part Two “Look at the Kirby Fantastic Four. That stuff was really weird. Seriously bizarre. Look at any DC comics, with things like Superman’s head turning into an ant’s. That stuff is much more bizarre than anything they’re doing now.”–GRANT MORRISON, The Bisley/ Morrison Tapes Part Two “It wouldn’t surprise me if someone comes up with an idea which then enters the field and begins to resonate, causing other people to have the same idea, in the same way that experimental rats learning a maze in California influence the morphic field of all rats in China to learn the same maze.”– GRANT MORRISON, The Invisible Man Part One (Maggie Knight) “You have to teach yourself to at least be able to imagine what it would be like to be the servant of a Lovecraftian ultra-terrestrial cult or a fifteen-year-old boy with no money and no future. Bad writers write every character as themselves and every narrative voice the same, which is the writer’s own.”– GRANT MORRISON, The Invisible Man Part One (Maggie Knight)
Volume 1 #8, Dec 1994 “I have been intrigued by the prospect of shaping a story around Cosmetic Plastic Surgery for some time. Having, as my photograph attests, no need of the magician’s knife, I felt able to journey into this strange and intricate world without succumbing to the temptation to improve on God’s handiwork.”– PETER MILLIGAN on Face “More than anything else, I wanted to do something which followed in the tradition of the films and plays I love most; things like the aforementioned ‘If…’ and ‘O Lucky Man’ or the black, anarchic dramas of Joe Orton. I wanted to write something which
Kingdom Come
had the freewheeling anti-authoritarian energy of British drama in the Golden Age of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when playwrights were breaking all the rules of decency and taste.”–GRANT MORRISON on Kill Your Boyfriend “Last time I felt this close to my work, in Doom Patrol, the critics, especially here in Britain, attacked me with the yapping, mindless ferocity of rabid Chihuahuas. It’s no particular vindication now to look around and see that every new superhero title which isn’t ripping off Zenith is pinching wholesale from Doom Patrol and doing it really badly.”–GRANT MORRISON, The Invisibles Man Part Two (Maggie Knight)
Volume 1 #9, Apr 1995 “We worked quite closely together while we were setting this up. Working from vague suggestions from me, Steve [Dillon] became entirely responsible for the look of the characters. The only time I stuck my oar in was on the Saint of Killers. Steve wanted him to look like Lee Marvin but I wanted a more Clint Eastwood look. In the end, he became an amalgamation. He’s got Lee Marvin’s haggard looks but he’s got Clint’s killer eyes.” – GARTH ENNIS on Preacher, “Now Hear The Word of The Lord (Tim Pilcher) “The only comic I read regularly was Mad. It was brilliant. They used to use a lot of old-fashioned-looking artists who were great and, of course they had Sergio Aragones and Jack Davis but my favourite was always Mort Drucker.”– FRANK QUITELY, Quitely Does It “I remember talking to Frank Wynne [Deadline editor] about it, if I were to do Tank Girl and Jamie [Hewlett] were to do it, wouldn’t it be fun to base it on something as absurd as James Joyce’s Ulysses and Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’?” –PETER MILLIGAN on Tank Girl The Odyssey, Peter Cooked
Volume 1 #10, Summer 1995 “For storytelling I prefer black and white because it’s much more direct. I don’t think there are many stories that warrant a fully painted book anyway.”– DUNCAN FEGREDO, Duncan Divulges (Tim Pilcher)
“I think [it becomes] easier in some ways perhaps. If you’re a living person, moving and breathing and walking up and down in this world, and you’re keeping your eyes and ears open then you’re gonna have ideas. If not then you’re in the wrong business.”– PETER MILLIGAN on whether it gets easier or harder to write as you get older, Peter Cooked Part Two
Volume 1 #11, Winter 1995 “I see art as a journey; it’s always progressing in some direction or another. It’s something I’m very conscious of and I’m always aware that I’m changing it. I look at other artists to see what they’re doing.”–CHRIS BACHALO, Death Becomes Him “I’m just a fan of art in general. Anything from sculpture to Renaissance art, Leonardo and Michelangelo, Botticelli, Titian, Van Eyck and I really enjoy the French Impressionists.”–CHRIS BACHALO, Death Becomes Him “Working with Chris [Bachalo] and particularly the way Chris evolved into an increasingly more cartoony style was a freeing force for me because that was the way I’d always wanted to work” – MARK BUCKINGHAM on collaborating with Chris Bachalo on Death: The High Cost of Living, The King and Die
Volume 1 #12, Spring 1996 “If I branch out anywhere, I’d like to branch out into comedy. I don’t think I could write urban realism because my life is not very grim. I think that one of the things that’s been most ruinous to the industry in the last five or ten years has been young men who have bright happy futures trying to write angst-ridden crap.” –MARK WAID on whether he has any literary pretensions, Quick As a Flash “The seeds were first grown for Kingdom Come when I was working on Marvels. Halfway through anything, I think about possibilities for my next project…I’d always wanted to use my dad as a main character for something. My dad is a seventythree year old minister. He looks like a throwback to the 1930s.”– ALEX ROSS on the genesis of Kingdom Come, Son of A Preacher Man
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Volume 1 #13, Summer 1996 “The first battle was with myself. I didn’t bother in school. I wrote short stories and I was good at drawing and I was in a dream world. Not unlike Simone in [Girl]. It never occurred to me to actually work…The problem with the working class background is that it can be quite closed.”–PETER MILLIGAN on Girl, The Changing Man “Coming from someone who is so socially well-adjusted it is quite strange, isn’t it? I guess because their madness is a mirror to the society that makes them so. But perhaps because they are on the outside of society that they sometimes allow us a view.” –PETER MILLIGAN on his obsession with outcasts, The Changing Man “There isn’t one main inspiration rather a collection of ideas that I never got the chance to explore when I was doing Mister X. I wanted to give it the feel of a 1940s film but also of the future… One of the direct inspirations was the 1939 World’s Fair and popular science magazines from that era.”–DEAN MOTTER on Terminal City, Terminal Flashback “He caught their essence but he gave them this charming aspect. Writing the book became more of a possibility because the characters had a life of their own.”–DEAN MOTTER on getting artist Michael Lark for Terminal City, Terminal Flashback “I think it was originally Lou Stathis that phoned me. I really can’t remember anything about those early conversations we had. People kept phoning me late at night. Art Young phoned to try to tell me something about it…He sent in a synopsis that Grant [Morrison] had done years ago and I could make sense of that – then Grant phoned up, and managed to make it all sound interesting.”–FRANK QUITELY on the genesis of Flex Mentallo, After The Facts (Maggie Knight)
Volume 1 #14, Mid-Summer 1996 “I wanted to make sure that anybody who picked up any issue of Astro City by itself could read it and enjoy it so that it wouldn’t be impossible to understand. If you look at the early issues of Spider-man or Fantastic Four, they are all one issue stories.”– KURT BUSIEK, City of Dreams
Volume 1 #16, Spring 1997 “I think there’s a British sensibility to my writing that still holds true even though I’m in America. I think that the roots to my artistic intentions or whatever that I went into comics with when I lived in England, are still present in Starman and in the work I do. I think people of my generation, all of us are a little bit the children of Alan Moore.”– JAMES ROBINSON, An Englishman in Opal City (Christopher Woodward) “I’ve only been to Miami once. It seemed to fit just right for this noir story. The strange thing is that Miami seems to be the wrong place for a noir story because it’s all neon and pastel colours with tropical heat. But it works quite well. Miami for me is the cheap end of American culture, which gives it a perverse attraction.”– JAMIE DELANO on 2020 Visions, Grave New World “Sometimes I get frustrated with comics just because, like any medium, it has its limitations and sometimes I want to do things that you can’t necessarily do in a comic book. I’m underway with a novel. I’ve written about three or four chapters. When I find a bit of time and when I’m in the right mood, I do another chapter. I’ve been thinking about TV or drama but I was put off by Neverwhere.”–JAMIE DELANO, Grave New World
Summer Special 1997 “The problem is I’ve been so heavily engaged in cutting new ground that the taste for going back over old territory no longer stays with me. While I’ve been doing Spirit covers [for Kitchen Sink’s reprint series], I’ve never really wanted to continue doing it.” – WILL EISNER, Spirit in the Sky (Steve Darnall) “I really think now I needed the distance on it to do it correctly. I’d have to say I was able to get back to Mage with that sort of distance whereas I think if I had done it then it would have resembled Grendel more than I would have liked.”–MATT WAGNER on Mage: The Hero Defined, Magic Circle “It’s the story that everybody tells a zillion times. The key to making it truly mythic is to personalise it like Mike [Mignola] has done with Hellboy, like I’m trying to do here with Mage. When it becomes an internal quest, it becomes mythic.”–MATT WAGNER on Mage, Magic Circle Flex Mentallo
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Batman The Long Halloween
Volume 2#4 Mar-Apr 1998 “The comic stuff is far more descriptive than any of the movie scripts I’ve written…The nicest thing about comics is that you write it, forget about it and then five months later, you’re holding a comic book that you wrote.”–KEVIN SMITH on the difference between writing comics and film, Smith’s Crisp “When I was a kid, I saw a movie that was based on this littleknown battle in 480BC. It made a permanent impression on me, an impression that eventually led to my obsession with Ancient Greece and the history of the war between the Greeks and the Persians. And I’d been telling myself for years that I should turn this into a comic book, because I knew how good a one it would make.”–FRANK MILLER on the genesis of 300, The Secret War, (Scott Braden) “The first five or six issues of that book are just shlock. It was later on when I finally found my pace on that book and my spot.”– TONY HARRIS on Starman, We’ll Always Have Harris
Volume 2#1 Sept 1997 “This book is a completely different beast from Generation X. I think that if one were to follow my career, they would see that whenever I take on a different project I always adjust the style to conform to what the book is about.” – CHRIS BACHALO on Uncanny X-Men, The Gene Genie “The feel is traditional Western but there are anachronistic elements, modern elements that I’m looking at through the lens of that genre. I think that genre fiction done right can tell any kind of story. You don’t have to be tied down to the traditional elements of a particular genre.”–JEFF MARIOTTE on Desperadoes, A Change of Image
Volume 2#2 Nov 1997 “At the risk of offending some of your readers, I think there are obviously some parallels between British and American history, in terms of having a rather shaky grip on a world empire.” – STEVE DARNALL on Uncle Sam, Stars and Strife
“There was this huge speculator boom that occurred in the late 1980s that has spoilt us, because now books are going back to what they sold before, and it just tells me that comic books have a core audience and I think it’s too late to break free to any great extent.”–JAMES ROBINSON, Starstruck (Elliot Lewis)
Volume 2#5 Jun-Jul 1998 “I think it’s a hell of a lot harder than most people realise to write a successful graphic story. It is really difficult to appropriately wed image and words. I’ve been accused of hyper-realism and I’m very reductive as a writer.”–GREG RUCKA on the difficulties of writing a good comic, Coming in From the Cold “I do think that the private investigator is a very American form. One of the things that has happened is we have all ethnicities, all creeds, all sexual preferences in the private eye novel at this point. In a very romantic sense, this reflects one of the ways that
300
Volume 2#3 Dec 1997- Jan 1998 “The main reason why we work together so often is that he is very much the cinematographer to my director.”–JEPH LOEB on working with Tim Sale, Bat To Basics “Since The Godfather made the family system work so well, particularly in the case of characters like Tessio and Clemenza, we decided to utilise it.”–JEPH LOEB on parallels between The Godfather and Batman: The Long Halloween, Bat To Basics “I do think superheroes, in a lot of ways, are pretty ridiculous and this book is a perfect way to show how bizarre that reality really is. It’s like the antithesis to Astro City. Astro City is a glorification of the super powered world but done in a realistic manner, whereas Chase is showing the seedier side of things.”–JH WILLIAMS, Cut to the Chase
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Americans define themselves, as a big melting pot country.”– GREG RUCKA on the appeal of writing private eye fiction, Coming in From the Cold “Starting Image was definitely the right choice. So many incredible things have happened since I left Marvel that there is no way I would ever regret that decision. On the other hand, running a business has been a challenging experience, made more difficult by the hard times we are all facing.”–JIM LEE on whether he regretted starting up Image with the other partners, Wild at Heart “I love designing the sets. I love designing them as though you could build them and film on them. It’s similar to a Star Trek set, if anything.”–BRYAN HITCH on redesigning the setting for STORMWATCH, Wild at Heart
Volume 2#6 Aug-Sep 1998 “It’s true I visited a plastic surgeon while researching Face. In fact, I’m still trying to get this fucking supernumerary nipple removed…Naturally, having an editor who is both Jewish and a New Yorker helps. The subject matter that The Minx deals with is stuff I’m interested in anyway, so really the book is a platform for me to play with my interests.”–PETER MILLIGAN on The Minx, Cult Following “I’m probably old-fashioned in thinking that some things ought
“People want to see the hero. They want to see Batman in a recognisable setting, to understand who his friends are and want the comics to just tell some stories. Stop fucking up the costumes. Stories should not take years to finish.”–GRANT MORRISON on his take on Superman and Batman, The One Million Dollar Man
Volume 2#7 Oct-Nov 1998 “The characters that we fancied creating new stuff with were always the characters that we considered second tier and they just haven’t had their moment in the sun. These characters require a lot of motivation and creative juices from the writers and artists to keep it fresh and interesting.” –JOE QUESADA on setting up the Marvel Knights line, Knights To Remember “What you have here, I think, is a wealth of untapped possibilities as far as heroic myth is concerned. You have a city that’s home to two or three thousand unique individuals - a perfect opportunity to ponder ‘What If ’ in the pages of a comic book.”– PAUL JENKINS on the Inhumans, Knights To Remember
Special B Dec 1998 “I’ve always hated the X-Men as a book so I found that the perfect way to destroy them was to fully embrace them. In fact, that was my reason for calling the series ‘Earth X’ in the first place. If you go into a shop, you see that wall of X-titles, full of characters you
Stormwatch
to be hard work. And comics sometimes must fall into this category.”–PETER MILLIGAN on why comics sometimes shouldn’t always be an easy read, Cult Following “I don’t want to get into bitching about it but there are significant problems and everyone thinks they’ve got a solution. I think what’s lacking is stories because, if you get a good story and you get a good character, you get people following the character.”– ALAN DAVIS on the problems of the comics industry, Hitting the Nail on the Head “I think that people find it hard to go into comic shops. They look like porn shops. The minute that a woman walks in, it has the same effect as Clint Eastwood walking into a bar in a Western.”– GRANT MORRISON on the problem with comic shops, The One Million Dollar Man
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can’t be familiar with unless you’ve read the titles for years.”– ALEX ROSS on Earth X, Down to Earth “I think that the reason that my projects have worked out so well is that I am the audience. I’m not a step above them on the evolutionary chain.”–ALEX ROSS, Down to Earth
Volume 2#8 Dec 1998 “You never know when something is going to pop up again. And though there’s no denying that I’ve got a lifelong affection for Matt Murdock, it wouldn’t be any truer to him than it would be to me to play a game that’s as old and tired as what’s going on now at Marvel. So, yeah I’ve got tons more Daredevil stories to tell.”– FRANK MILLER on whether he’ll ever return to Daredevil, Lost Tales: Daredevil: The Devil’s Own (Scott Braden)
Preacher
Volume 3#3 Sep-Oct 1999 “The minute that I started writing comics, I pretty much stopped writing about them. I don’t think that you can comment on something that you’re a part of. If I reviewed Preacher for example, and gave it a good review, I’d be seen as Garth’s mate. If I criticised it, then I’d be Garth’s competitor, which in a way I am.”–PETER HOGAN on why he gave up the comics journalism, Hogan’s Heroes “Preacher gets away with somewhat more edgy content because of the context it provides. It gets away with somewhat more than most titles because that’s part of its shtick.”–AXEL ALONSO on Preacher, Religious Conversation
Volume 3#4 Oct-Nov 1999 “I have written for other people but the challenge here is that I have never written a character that I have not created, so I have had to write a character where you need to respect everything that’s been written by other creators whilst incorporating new things.”–DAVID MACK on Daredevil, Dancing with the Devil “When I write and draw comics, I’m going to do something that not so much pushes the envelope of the medium because I don’t really acknowledge any envelope but I do try to write and draw in an unconventional way.”–DAVID MACK on his approach to work, Dancing with the Devil “I expect that I’ll get to it within a year or a year and a half because as it’s an allegory of my life, the events that I’m describing in The Hero Defined actually happened to me about ten years ago, so I have the distance and the life experience to tell more stories.”– MATT WAGNER on the third Mage series, Medical Attention “I’ve told this one in a completely different way [to Luther Arkwright]. The first book was very self-consciously experimental and I wasn’t interested in doing the same thing again. The story’s a lot more linear and accessible. I tried to write a classic adventure story, which is actually a great deal of fun.”–BRYAN TALBOT on Heart of Empire, Historical Differences “I can’t pigeonhole the series because it’s not really like anything else that’s out there at the moment. It’s a multi-genre story: part detective story, with a horror story trope in it and there’s erotic sequences.”–BRYAN TALBOT on Heart of Empire, Historical Differences
Volume 3#2 Jul-Aug 1999 “The good thing about doing a movie for Lucasfilm is that you’re only dealing with George [Lucas], because he has the final say, rather than a bunch of men in suits with different opinions.”– NICK DUDMAN on Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Better Latex Than Never “The crew that we had was much bigger than any crew we worked on with Return of The Jedi or Empire Strikes Back. The way in which Rick McCallum and George Lucas put the film together was very different. It was far less traditionally structured which gave you a lot more freedom.”–NICK DUDMAN on Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Better Latex Than Never
“Do I miss anything? You miss your family but, after twelve years if you’ve lived in that place, you look upon it as your home. It’s a funny place, America, because it’s very much misunderstood.”– PAUL JENKINS on whether he misses anything about living in England, Inhuman Behaviour
Volume 4#1 Aug 2000 “The advice I would give to any potential self-publisher is to find out as much as you possibly can before you start (read Dave Sim’s Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing for chrissakes!) and then do it your own way. Follow your own vision, be true to yourself.”– GARY SPENCER MILLIDGE on the pitfalls of selfpublishing, 10 Questions With… “There’s nowhere else for the industry to go in Great Britain. You have to go through 2000AD to get your work seen and then the majors in America chase you if you’re good enough. We want an outlet for the British over here.”–EDDIE DEIGHTON on offering another outlet for British talent, The X Factor
Volume 4#2 Oct 2000 “The comics industry needs a kick in the pants right now; it needs to show that there are a lot of different types of stories and genres that can be told in the comic format besides super heroes.”–GUY DAVIS, Revolutionary Zeal “I never feel experimental. But I do get bored easily…sick of the sound of my own voice creeping into a character after a while. Mainly though, my ‘career’ has been a completely unplanned, haphazard progress from one project to another.” –JAMIE DELANO, Chain Reactionary
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“The older I get the more I come to understand that ‘Justice’ for most people in this world is an aberrant occurrence in an otherwise fucked-over life…and consequently should be celebrated and applauded wherever it finds the courage to show its face.”–JAMIE DELANO on whether injustices still annoy him, Chain Reactionary
Volume 4#3 Dec 2000 “Completely different and eerily the same – as odd as that sounds. Mark [Chiarello] had an impossible task. He was expected to fill the shoes of a man who we all loved. But he never tried to fill those shoes, he just brought his own into the room and that was the smartest thing to do. Archie was first and foremost a writer. So he looked at the material that way. Mark is first and foremost an artist – so his perspective is different.”– JEPH LOEB on having a new editor on Batman: Dark Victory, Lucky For Some
“My mom actually taught me how to hustle. She works in publishing while my cousin is an award-winning illustrator whose work has appeared in the New York Times. I learned how to do it at a very young age and that really gave me the edge over some of my classmates in college because I was already working full time as an illustrator at college.”–BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS, The Man Who Wrote Too Much
“For me, Sentry is both an exploration of the superhero myth concept and also an exploration of the evolution of comics over the decades of their existence.”–PAUL JENKINS, Sentry Duty
“I saw dead bodies in college and that’s enough. I lived with a biochemist when I was in college and she used to come home with arms wrapped in butcher paper and tried to stick them in our freezer. I’d say to her: ‘Get that out of here.’”–BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS on researching post-mortems, The Man Who Wrote Too Much
“Matt Hawkins is pretty savvy but Matt has to fight this established Image way of thinking. It’s full of a bunch of young artists who think that the sun shines out of their arse who haven’t published more than four comic books so far. But, all credit to him, he’s teaching them the value of storytelling and the value of writing.” –PAUL JENKINS on working for Top Cow, Sentry Duty
“The best part about Powers is that I come from a generation of comic book artists raised on Dark Knight and Watchmen. If you were raised on them, you think that there is really no point in doing a superhero comic…I’m also a big believer that, if you want to write Batman, then you should get a job writing Batman.”–BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS on the genesis of Powers, The Man Who Wrote Too Much
“We’ve blown a full generation of kids who’ve never been exposed to comics, so I’d like to start reaching the next generation. I’d love to see fans looking at our books, saying ‘I can feel the discernible difference.”–JOE QUESADA on his hopes for Marvel, Nice Knight for It
“If you want to self-publish then you have to take the long term view. It’s not a get-rich scheme.”– PAUL GRIST, 10 Questions With…
Grendel
“Actually I write all my stories in Maori and then have them translated into English by a Norwegian linguist who lives in the boat shed by the crayfish nets…But seriously though, I lived in London – Hackney in fact, which is Tim’s home turf for a couple of years not that long ago, so I just imagine my flatmates delivering Tim’s lines.”–DYLAN HORROCKS on being a New Zealander writing a British character, Magic Moments
Volume 4#4 Feb 2001 “Our culture and their culture have very distinct similarities and very distinct differences and the melding of the two can only be a good thing. My Grendel work, in particular the Hunter Rose stories, are influenced by the Far East. Rose has a certain Samurai mentality to him.”–MATT WAGNER, Devil to Pay “If there’s a comic-book holy trinity, mine is Jack Kirby/ Russ Heath’s Sgt Rock/ Herge’s Tintin. No wonder I’m all mixed up! Beyond comics I’d point to the author Nabokov, whatever is currently going on around me culturally/ socially.”–ED HILLYER on his influences, 10 Questions With…
Volume 4#5 May 2001 “There wasn’t a big need for research – even though I’m only in my late twenties. I read a lot of period fiction, and I’ve worked on a number of period books.”–HOWARD CHAYKIN on bringing American Century to life, Cold Warriors
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“Again with the cynic bullshit. I think people misname an honest, no bullshit approach to life as cynicism. As I have said before, I’m not a cynic – I’m a romantic realist. I may have mellowed a bit in the last few years, but only on the inside. What is misperceived as cynicism is actually a healthy scepticism.”– HOWARD CHAYKIN on that ‘cynic’ question, Cold Warriors
“[Milton Caniff] was a tremendously strong influence, as was George Herrimann. Caniff, Herrimann and Segar [the creator of Popeye–ed]. These were the men I was studying most assiduously because I felt that they made the greatest underlying contribution to the work I did.”–WILL EISNER on who influenced him, Speak Easy (Andrew Colman) “One of the reasons why, in my interviews I don’t discuss preeminence is because everybody’s constantly contributing. I loved Caniff, there was something very dramatic and powerful about what he was doing. Pure storytelling. It filled my imagination, but your experience would, of course, be different to mine.”–WILL EISNER on his attitude to pre-eminence, Speak Easy (Andrew Colman)
Volume 4#6 July 2001 “They gave me some old Alan Moore scripts and he describes things in such detail that I can’t even get through the first panel. I got the basic format from looking at a couple of scripts. To be honest, I’ve been reading comics for so long now that if I can’t figure it out now, then I’ve got no business writing them.”–JOSS WHEDON on moving from TV to comics, Entering the Fray “I think that [Minotaur]’s better [than Vertigo]. I think that Vertigo is full of trite garbage and I think that their sales reflect that.”–TONY HARRIS on the short-lived Minotaur imprint, Marathon Men
Volume 4#7 Oct 2001 “Looking at a typical comic shop makes me think most retailers order books using a Ouija board…or more likely one of those D&D twelve-sided dice. Nobody’s selling huge amounts in comic shops now. But that should be a good reason to try and broaden your stuff beyond just appealing to the dwindling (and ageing) faithful.”–WOODROW PHOENIX, 10 Questions With… “I’d like to see other new ideas come out of Marvel but all of these things take time. We’ve been the king of super heroes for so long and we will always be the king of super heroes but now it’s time for us to expand to do well in other genres.”–JOE QUESADA on his first year at the helm of Marvel, One Year On… “Sometimes I wish that Daredevil was in black and white. That doesn’t take away from what Matt Hollingsworth is doing with the book because, once I see it in colour, I get excited again… My instinct has always been for black and white but then, when I see what the colourist can do, I realise that creates a whole new palette of emotions for me.”–BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS on Daredevil, Life of Brian “Todd [MacFarlane] doesn’t owe me any money, he doesn’t owe me anything. He can fire me just because of my bald head. That’s work for hire. If Joe[Quesada] gets sick of me tomorrow, he can do the same thing. I go in, knowing that.”–BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS on leaving Todd MacFarlane’s employment, Life of Brian “When there are challenges, I tend to jump into it and find myself constantly excited . Warren [Ellis]’s a phenomenal comic writer because he understands the graphic side of storytelling.”–JOHN CASSADAY on working with Warren Ellis, Feeling at Liberty
Brian Michael Bendis
Volume 4#8 Dec 2001 “I picked up an X-Men comic recently. I couldn’t find a single character in it who was wearing regular clothes, or talking about anything I could understand without having read the last ten years’ worth of the title (and possibly not even then). I put it back. Life’s too short.”–ROGER LANGRIDGE, 10 Questions With… “This is the Lord of The Rings of the Marvel Universe. It’s a giant sprawling epic. The post-Quesada line is telling a lot of very important, very personal stories about the Marvel Universe. This I suppose is a balance for that.”–JIM KRUEGER on how Paradise X fits into the post-Quesada Marvel line, Paradise Lost “I write out of outrage a lot – I see something that makes me just livid, and the only way I can purge it out is to put it on paper.”–GREG RUCKA on 9/11, Bat to Basics, Volume 4#8, Dec 2001 “My general feelings are far too complicated to even begin to put down here, and change from moment to moment. Ask me again in two years, maybe – MAYBE– I’ll have a pertinent answer. But it’s too close, it’s too personal and too painful, and it’s far too complicated to even begin to answer, generally or otherwise.”–GREG RUCKA on 9/11, Bat to Basics
Volume 4#9 Dec 2001- Jan 2002 “It’s good I had this much time away from superheroes. Off doing Sin City and 300 and Martha Washington with Dave Gibbons and all that crazy stuff with Geof Darrow. I got to travel wide and far. So, to turn around and take another gander at Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman and the rest, well I can only say I have fresh eyes.”–FRANK MILLER on Dark Knight Strikes Again, Speaking Frankly
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BAKER on the advantages of creating comics over film, Biblical Proportions
Volume 4#11 June 2002 “Jeph [Loeb] and I have this little retro comics cottage industry going because we, for the most part, are 40 year old guys who love most of the same things about comics and have found a way to touch on what we think works best in them and emphasise that.”– TIM SALE on working with Jeph Loeb, Rhapsody in Blue “Amazingly I’m as excited about it as ever, and this month marks 30 years in the field. Part is love of the form and part is dissatisfaction with my one work and the hope that maybe this time I’ll get it right.” –P CRAIG RUSSELL on how he keeps his enthusiasm, Operatic Tensions
Volume 4#12 August 2002
Frank Miller “Batman’s one of the few gods in the superhero pantheon. Most of the rest – Spider-man, The Flash, etc. – fit the classical definition of heroes, not gods. They haven’t got the same stature.”–FRANK MILLER on Dark Knight Strikes Again, Speaking Frankly “I’ve had a great time with my Hollywood adventures. It’s a fun, sexy business. Not much crazier than comics. I was just trying to give everybody a heads-up that Hollywood wasn’t going to save our sorry butts.”–FRANK MILLER, Speaking Frankly “The influences I’d pick which most heavily bore on me were that, first of all, even as a child, I loved reading comic strips in newspapers. At the time, back in the Stone Age, when I was reading them, artists like Hal Foster who did Prince Valiant and Harry Lampert who did Flash and Milton Caniff who did Terry and The Pirates. Those three were the three icons who influenced most people trying to get into the industry at that time I was trying to break into the business.”–JOE KUBERT, Sixty Years Later… “The collector’s and speculator’s market in the nineties had terribly negative effects on the quality of the books. Nobody ever read them; you know you had to collect No.1”– JOE KUBERT on the state of the market, Sixty Years Later…
Volume 4#10 Apr 2002 “Always remember why you’re drawing comics – because you love them and you can’t imagine doing anything else.”–JEFF SMITH, 10 Questions With… “Very fast artist or talentless hack? Some days I find it hard to tell. Don’t worry I’m still churning it out same as ever. Things might change when the Gamecube gets to the UK though.”–SEAN PHILLIPS on his reputation as a fast artist, Stormy Weather “It costs me very little money to create an army of thousands of soldiers. I can recreate entire mountain ranges with only a pencil. I can build enormous golden palaces for just pennies.”– KYLE
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“In an effort to become a better writer, I was really trying to get into the short story form. I started reading the works of the great short story writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, primarily American writers, though not necessarily.”– PAUL POPE on bringing influences from outside of comics, Playing the Percentages (Keith Giles)
Volume 5#1 April 2003 “It is such a shame that so few women do this work, as I was very nervous about handling a female character. My approach was that I wanted my mum to be able to look at my work.”– DARWYN COOKE on Catwoman, Cooking The Books “I learnt to read from comics. The first comics that I was ever passionate about were the so-called Powerhouse Comics which were the titles that Leo Baxendale wrote and drew after he left the Beano.”–MIKE CAREY, A Man of Wealth and Taste “I do reread my old stuff a lot and things niggle me, things that I get wrong that I’d go back and think ‘he wouldn’t have said that.’”–MIKE CAREY, A Man of Wealth and Taste “You need to see a fallible, vulnerable side to him, see that he is operating by the seat of his pants but also it is important to remember that he is a confidence trickster more than a magician.”–MIKE CAREY on John Constantine, A Man of Wealth and Taste
Volume 5#2 June 2003 “When I got out of art school, I was an industrial designer first of all. Getting into the film industry I did visual effects and when I moved to LA from San Francisco, I moved into illustration. So I’ve been all over the map. The illustration definitely helps in terms of conveying an idea.”–GUY DYAS on his background in art, Designs on Generation X “Where you want to end up as a writer is the point where you know structure well enough to start rearranging the cards in unusual or different ways, to turn the format of the story on its head.”–J MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI, Doing the Write Thing Part One (Bill Baker)
Volume 5#3 July 2003 “Batman is a great character to draw as an artist. The environment the character is in is awesome; Gotham City’s like another character within the book itself.”–JIM LEE on drawing Batman, Vigilante Strikes Again! (Bill Baker)
Annual 2007 Summer 2007 “I really think the success comes from the vey relatable characters Tim [Kring] created. I think audiences responded because there’s almost someone for everyone to relate to.”–BRYAN FULLER on the success of Heroes, Hero Worship “I pretty much spent four months on a massage table after 300 because I had so many injuries!”–GERARD BUTLER, A Heroes Welcome “The novel established my credentials with my friends and family who don’t regard writing for comics as proper writing.”–MIKE CAREY on writing prose, Turning Japanese “As with the novels, it was always something I’d wanted to do. I grew up with superhero stories. I don’t have any contempt for superheroes and I love them if they’re done well.”–MIKE CAREY on tackling X-Men, Turning Japanese “One of the things about The Simpsons that makes it relevant to people’s lives is it’s a fun house mirror of our society.”–BILL MORRISON, Bongo Players (Pat McGreal) “I think if Fox ever did find something objectionable, they would let us know. So far it hasn’t happened. We’ve never had a complaint that I know of from Fox.”–BILL MORRISON on publishing The Simpsons comics from Bongo, Bongo Players (Pat McGreal) “I was always convinced that I would be drawing cartoons in some form or another no matter what direction my career took.”– MATT GROENING, The King of Springfield (Pat McGreal)
Futurama ™ and © 2013 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved
“Many years ago I was visiting Bali and I was in a small village and some American tourist pulled out a Bart Simpson figurine and showed it to one of the wood carvers in this village and
Futurama
said: ‘Do you recognise this?’ and the wood carver said ‘Mickey Mouse?’ So we haven’t penetrated everywhere. Thank God, there are uncorrupted pockets of purity in this world.”–MATT GROENING, The King of Springfield (Pat McGreal)
Annual 2008 Summer 2008 “The art of animation is sustained attention to details. It starts with the writing and goes through to the very end. It’s a huge collaborative process.”–MATT GROENING on developing a second animation show, Back to the Futurama (Pat McGreal) “The rules started to melt away as we went along but the one thing we stuck with is that we want to make sure we have a real solid story about the characters within the science fiction framework of each episode.”–DAVID X COHEN on Futurama, Back to the Futurama (Pat McGreal)
Annual 2009 Summer 2009 “You can draw parallels with zombie movies or you can draw parallels to David Cronenberg’s Rabid. But at the end of the day, we wanted to make it a medical thriller almost. It’s almost like a medieval plague movie, like a medieval plague phasing a world that falsely feels sophisticated because pandemics provoke medieval fear.”–GUILLERMO DEL TORO on The Strain, New Blood “I’m very grateful to the gods to still retain the sort of passion that pushes me to do these things…I’m driven to it and it’s not real work. I’ve told many people that, since I was twelve or thirteen years old, I’ve never worked a day in my life.”–JOE KUBERT on maintaining his passion for comics, King of the Stone Age “There was a time when I think we were turning out more titles than anybody, close to a hundred a month. We were just grinding them out like sausages.”–STAN LEE, It’s a Marvellous Life (Pat McGreal) “It’s definitely a very human film. It’s about missing home really so it’s different to Terminator 4 or the big popcorn effects film but at the same time I think that, for a little British independent science fiction film we’ve managed to put something on screen that doesn’t give away that fact.”–DUNCAN JONES on how Moon punches above its weight, Man on the Moon “I did the illustration for four or five years, but didn’t really enjoy it. I just felt like I could produce better pieces, and become a better painter if I didn’t have to consider the feelings of the art director.”–PHIL HALE, Broad Strokes “You have to make a commitment to something and I’d rather have the analogue with the problems than the digital with its perfect virtual nothingness.”–PHIL HALE on why he still works physically rather than digitally, Broad Strokes
Superhero Special 2009 March 2009 “It used to be that you couldn’t make a movie unless you had a movie studio but now people can make a movie on their computer. There’s been a democratisation of the whole creative field. It’s the same in comics: you don’t even need a publisher anymore.”– MARK MILLAR, Making His Mark
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TRIPWIRE 54 Summer 2010 “I think what’s happened is that there are enough people who are now creating stuff in their twenties and thirties who grew up hearing about Watchmen, Dark Knight and Dan Clowes. In my mind there’s a gap between Crumb and Clowes where there is a movement which is underground still but now it’s come out into the daylight. So if you’re a 12-year-old kid right now, you’ve got now an oeuvre to get into for inspiration.”–GLEN DAVID GOLD, Golden Years “I couldn’t do a monthly title. It just wouldn’t suit my life. I’m happy just doing individual books and short stories that I can collect into volumes and I’ve just become more confident as a writer.”–DAVE MCKEAN, Creating Moods “The Italians have a word ‘creativo’ which is just anybody who creates almost anything. And it covers people like Fellini who was a cartoonist, a filmmaker and a costume designer and it’s because he has a worldview, he can express anything. And I like that.”– DAVE MCKEAN on how he describes himself, Creating Moods “It’s a very arduous process and the fact that the show is this much fun seems like a very science fiction concept. It’s so much fun that we think ‘Of course, we should come back!’ But we’re just happy that we are back.”–MATT GROENING on the return of Futurama, Future Shocks “I think they actually got better and I don’t exactly know why. Maybe it was pent-up enthusiasm, maybe they’ve been watching the old shows and just seeing what works and what didn’t. There’s a long feedback on an animated show where they can keep honing the voices.”–DAVID X COHEN on how the voice talent on Futurama has improved, Future Shocks “The only time in almost forty years that I had anyone pose for me was when I did Back To The Future II and III. I actually got to go on the movie set and Michael [J. Fox] and Christopher [Lloyd] actually posed for me, so I took photographs. I took them home and painted from the portraits I was able to take. But all the rest of the time, it was based upon the movie and the stills they shoot on set. Because by the time I get to them, the movie’s in the can, the actors have moved on and they’re somewhere else in the world. So I had to paint from the reference material.”–DREW STRUZAN, Movie Masterclass “I could tell stories about how I did paintings for Pan’s Labyrinth. I worked directly with my friend, the director and filmmaker and I made a painting that captured the movie. He said: ‘you’ve captured the whole spirit of the movie’ and yet the studios refused to use it. Even though the director had his power and his taste said I made him something nice. They just got used to the new way of doing things and they don’t even want art anymore.”–DREW STRUZAN on why the art of the movie poster appears to be lost, Movie Masterclass
TRIPWIRE 55 Summer 2011 “What I thought was ‘‘Wouldn’t it be nice in a graphic novel to do something we can’t do in the books rather than just extend the books.’ What’s clearly in the books is a nostalgic feeling for London. So what if it took place in a London we kind of wish existed.”–CHRISTOPHER FOWLER on his approach to bringing
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Pan’s Labyrinth poster by Drew Struzan Bryant & May to comics, London Made Him “The rights are still all sold. It’s expensive to shoot in London. One of the problems is that we keep picking people who die. I think you pick younger people and age them up.”–CHRISTOPHER FOWLER on the pitfalls of adapting Bryant & May for TV, London Made Him “The thing is I am myself. I am naturally very outgoing and not a socially inept shut-in at all. What’s really funny is an interviewer was interviewing Bret Easton Ellis and before they went on, apparently he was very very charming and affable and then he said ‘Forgive me for the way I am going to be on stage.’ So when he was on stage, he was an absolute arse and rarely spoke to her. And then when he got off again, he was really nice again. But I think that’s much more common in America”–CHRISTOPHER FOWLER on the idea of a persona for a writer, London Made Him “We don’t have any big Native reservations in Kansas, though there is an old Indian Mission just down the street from my house. Native culture was just something I was always interested in, going back to when I was a kid.”–JASON AARON on the inspiration for Scalped, Hard Boiled “I’ve tried to make every character in Scalped as complicated and multi-faceted and morally ambiguous as I can. Those are the sorts of characters I love to read and the ones I have the most fun writing.”–JASON AARON on the characters in Scalped, Hard Boiled
When TRIPWIRE returned as an annual in 2007, we focused our attention on wider subjects worthy of inclusion. So we began our association with fantasy legend Michael Moorcock and since he has supported us as well, we thought it was only right to give him his own spread here like we did with Alan Moore and Mike Mignola
PIC: JOEL MEADOWS
SAILING THE SEAS OF FATE “All my early fantasy books were written in a maximum of three days. I had been a working journalist, used to turning out copy for the next day, let alone the next week. I was used to getting copy out at speed — feature, comic strip, fiction and so on. Journalism paid so much better than novel writing, three days was the economical amount of time I could take.” – MICHAEL MOORCOCK, Sailor on the Seas of Fate, TRIPWIRE Annual 2008 (Andy Grossberg) “Like most people who find themselves in this situation, we never set out to be ‘subversive’ – we were interested in what we were doing and how best to do it.” – MICHAEL MOORCOCK on New Worlds, Sailor on the Seas of Fate, TRIPWIRE Annual 2008 (Andy Grossberg) “Elric was a hero of his time, without doubt. The same sort of troubled hero was very prominent at that time – James Dean, Elvis, Gene Vincent – and I no doubt picked up on the zeitgeist. Stormbringer is about dependency…We wanted sturdy metaphors which could carry a lot of symbolic weight.” –MICHAEL MOORCOCK on the genesis of Elric, Sailor on the Seas of Fate, TRIPWIRE Annual 2008 (Andy Grossberg) “For light reading I’m as inclined to pick up a P.G. Wodehouse or a good Walter Mosley mystery.” –Sailor on the Seas of Fate, TRIPWIRE Annual 2008 (Andy Grossberg) “To be honest, Elric was a version of myself as a teenager of around 18. A couple of early articles I wrote on this theme are reprinted in the new Elric: The Stealer of Souls (the one illustrated by John Picacio).” –Sailor on the Seas of Fate, TRIPWIRE Annual 2008 (Andy Grossberg) ‘Look how people regard Ayn Rand in the US — as a profound philosopher only a shade away from Tolstoy... Everywhere else in the world she’s marginalised and regarded as a minor loony. I’m still astonished by the popularity of Lord of the Rings!” –MICHAEL MOORCOCK, TRIPWIRE Annual 2008 (Andy Grossberg)
“I’ve always argued that science fantasy / fantasy is better able to handle certain themes than, say, social fiction. Good writers have frequently turned to SF techniques to express an idea (The Machine Stops, Brave New World, The Old Men at the Zoo). We live in a world where we feel some urgency concerning the fate of the human race and some of us need to address that subject from time to time.” –Sailor on the Seas of Fate, TRIPWIRE Annual 2008 (Andy Grossberg) “I did several fanzines long before I realized there was a whole fanzine culture out there. My first after Outlaw’s Own was Burroughsania (mostly based on my enthusiasm for ERB.) My first great loves as an author were P.G. Wodehouse and Richmal Crompton, both humorous writers. Through them I discovered the world of ‘story paper’ collectors. These were similar to pulps — actually a bit closer to dime novels.” –New Worlds Order, TRIPWIRE 54 Summer 2010 (Andy Grossberg) “But I didn’t get back to professional music until Hawkwind invited me to write and perform with them, then I was offered a contract by United Artists. The Deep Fix was the title of an early novella for Science Fantasy and then the name of Jerry Cornelius’s band. By that time, living as I was in Ladbroke Grove, almost everyone I knew was in a band — it was the UK equivalent of Haight/ Ashbury.” –New Worlds Order, TRIPWIRE 54 Summer 2010 (Andy Grossberg)
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“I wasn’t interested in publishing a ‘little magazine’ like Ambit or Transatlantic Review, though I had nothing against them and was on very good terms with the editors (we shared contributors frequently).” –MOORCOCK on New Worlds, New Worlds Order, TRIPWIRE 54 Summer 2010 (Andy Grossberg) “People said I should have used pseudonyms for my quickies but that always felt slightly hypocritical to me. Maybe I should have used my middle initial (as I’d originally done when writing Sojan!) like Iain Banks. But I just couldn’t bring myself to disown in any way that early work.” –New Worlds Order, TRIPWIRE 54 Summer 2010 (Andy Grossberg) “Probably A Cure for Cancer is my favourite pre-1970 book, but I also have a soft spot for Stormbringer and The Final Programme. The early Cornelius shorts, too, I think contain some of my best writing of that time. Why? Because with Cornelius I’d found a technique for confronting the contemporary world, something which Elric was hard put to do...But I still like the sheer madness of that first Elric novel.” –New Worlds Order, TRIPWIRE 54 Summer 2010 (Andy Grossberg) “Mike’s writing is incredibly visual. His stories offer a wealth of pictorial possibilities that, for a comics artist, presents an unusual problem. It isn’t difficult to find inspiration in his work; the difficulty is trying to edit the imagery down to a manageable level.” –WALTER SIMONSON on collaborating with Moorcock, sidebar, Royal Blood, TRIPWIRE #55 Summer 2011 (Joel Meadows) “I went back to Elric who I had already started to create with Jim Cawthorn, with whom we’d just done it sort of back and forth with letters with Jim sort of drawing bits. And I thought I just wanted to make it as different from anything else that had been done before.” –Royal Blood, TRIPWIRE #55 Summer 2011 (Andy Grossberg/ Joel Meadows)
“It’s about symbolism. because basically I’ve got Freud and Jung in the back of my mind all the time,” he says. When asked if thought of Elric as an archetype he responds, “I’m writing as it were a true Romantic form. It’s to do with the landscape and the weather reflecting the inner consciousness of the character. I mean it’s just like Wuthering Heights or anything else and so that’s what I’m doing. I’m doing it very consciously. And people say ‘world building.’ I don’t build worlds. The world effectively creates itself as the story progresses.” –MOORCOCK on what’s at the heart of Elric, Royal Blood, TRIPWIRE #55 Summer 2011 (Andy Grossberg/ Joel Meadows) “I wrote one story and thought that was it. Then I wrote three stories and thought that was it. Then the public kept asking for them so I kept doing them.” –MOORCOCK on how the perennial success of Elric has surprised him, Royal Blood, TRIPWIRE #55 Summer 2011 (Andy Grossberg/ Joel Meadows) “Identification with the tortured soul. He can’t help himself, and he is pulled by his needs and desires into acts he loathes and regrets. Perhaps many fans can relate to that. But I rather think it has more to do with Moorcock’s wonderful imagination and visually compelling writing. For an artist there’s a challenging and enticing picture on every page!” – artist MICHAEL WHELAN on why Elric has endured all this time, sidebar, Royal Blood, TRIPWIRE #55 Summer 2011 (Joel Meadows)
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BIOGRAPHIES
David Baillie
Howard Chaykin
Baillie writes and draws comics. His work has appeared in highly-respected titles such as 2000AD, Judge Dredd Megazine, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Tripwire. He also works in TV a bit – drawing storyboards and writing scripts.
Tim Bradstreet
Starting his career working with Tim Truman on Dragon Chang back in 1990, Bradstreet has gone on to carve a unique niche for himself as an artist and illustrator in comics, video games and movies. He drew long runs of covers for Hellblazer at Vertigo and Punisher at Marvel.
Howard Chaykin
Chaykin has worked for five decades in comics as a writer and an artist. He has worked extensively for Marvel and DC but he is still probably best known for his own creation, the awardwinning American Flagg!.
Andrew Colman
Colman’s association with Tripwire began in 1999 and he has written consistently for the magazine ever since. He also contributed to the book Studio Space, which was put together by Tripwire’s Joel Meadows and Gary Marshall.
Simon Davis
A British comic artist whose comics CV is predominantly filled with 2000AD work like Sinister Dexter and Ampney Crucis. Davis is also a portrait painter of some repute, coming second in the BP Portrait Award in 2008.
Dave Dorman
A comic artist and painter, US-based Dorman is best known for his painted cover work on Indiana Jones, Star Wars and Aliens. His distinctive style has garnered him an international following.
Garen Ewing
Garen Ewing is the creator, writer and illustrator of The Adventures of Julius Chancer: The Rainbow Orchid. He has contributed to The DFC, The Phoenix, Nelson and adapted Shakespeare’s The Tempest into comic form, as well as having his work chosen for a Royal Mail stamp.
Henry Flint
Jon Haward
A British comic artist who has illustrated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Judge Dredd and Sinister Dexter, Haward has also adapted Macbeth and The Tempest for Classical Comics.
Ed Hipkiss
Hipkiss has written for Tripwire since 2003. He got his break writing comic strips for the short-lived anthology Dream Factory, and has worked predominantly in the theatre writing short plays. He is also one of the writers of the book 500 Essential Graphic Novels (Ilex Press 2008).
Warwick Johnson Cadwell
British artist Johnson-Cadwell, whose work has been seen in publications like Birdsong, New British Comics, Solipsistic Pop and West, has built up a following thanks to his distinctive, idiosyncratic style.
Michael William Kaluta
Coming to prominence in the early 1970s thanks to his ornate work on The Shadow for DC, he is now one of the most highly respected comic illustrators in the business. His two pages here are storyboards for an abandoned Princess of Mars movie.
Joe Kubert
Kubert was a true one-off. An artist, writer and editor, his contribution to comics over eight decades was immeasurable. He was associated mainly with DC where he drew Hawkman, and created Sgt Rock and Enemy Ace with writer Robert Kanigher.
Roger Langridge
Flint broke into comics via 2000AD in the 1990s and soon built up a reputation as one of its boldest artists through his work on series like Judge Dredd and ABC Warriors. He has also worked for Marvel and DC.
First getting noticed through his work on The Straightjacket Fits in the Judge Dredd Megazine, artist Langridge has gone on to become one of the most highly regarded comic cartoonists thanks to his work on his own creation Fred The Clown and on series like The Muppets and Snarked for Boom!
Hale is one of the most respected portrait painters in the UK. He began his career as an illustrator but moved onto figurative painting and has been shortlisted in the BP Portrait Award a number of times, coming third in 2000 and joint second in 2001.
Peter Mann
Phil Hale
Mann is a writer, consultant and business analyst for hire. He travels the world analyzing businesses, and picking up comics in different languages. He collects EC comics and wishes superhero comics were still for kids. His interests include playing the guitar loudly and running slowly for charity.
TRIPWIRE 21 167
Gary Marshall
Marshall is a writer, photographer and consultant on new media and archaeology. He regularly contributes to the UK press. Marshall teamed up with Joel Meadows to relaunch Tripwire as an international media magazine and he continues to contribute to Tripwire from time to time.
Joel Meadows
Editor-in-chief and founder of Tripwire, Meadows has also had a career lasting more than 20 years as a freelance journalist. He has been published in places like Time Magazine, The Times, Variety, Empire and Big Issue in The North. With Gary Marshall, he co-edited the book Studio Space in 2008. He is also a portrait and urban landscape photographer.
David Morris
UK-based artist who also runs Corvus Press, Morris is the cocreator of Dee for Detective and the creator of The Baker Street Irregulars. He is also a professional illustrator.
Mike Mignola
Mignola got his start at Marvel in the early 1980s and built up an impressive body of work in mainstream comics. But it was the creation of Hellboy in 1995 that really put him on the map and he’s never looked back since.
Mike Perkins
British comic artist Perkins, who is now based in the US, has a CV that includes Captain America, The Stand, Carver Hale and House of M: Avengers. He is also a successful illustrator.
Sean Phillips
Phillips has drawn comics since the age of fifteen and he first came to attention through his work for Fleetway. He spent a significant time working for DC’s Vertigo line but over the last few years, it is his collaborations with Ed Brubaker on Criminal and Fatale that he is currently known for.
Frank Quitely
Scottish comic artist Quitely first came to prominence through drawing Missionary Man for Judge Dredd Megazine in the 1990s. He has since worked on a cross section of high-profile projects, many with fellow Scot writer Grant Morrison.
Drew Struzan
Drew Struzan
The last great film poster artist, Struzan’s art has graced some of the greatest movie posters of all time, including The Shawshank Redemption, Raiders of The Lost Ark and Back To The Future.
Dave Taylor
British comic artist Taylor got his professional start at Marvel UK in the early 1990s but he has gone on to make a name for himself on series like Batman and Judge Dredd. His Europeaninfluenced art has quite a fan following worldwide.
Ben Templesmith
Australian comic artist Templesmith is best known for his collaborations with writer Steve Niles, with who he created 30 Days of Night. He has also worked as an illustrator for books, films, video games and trading cards.
Bryan Talbot
Acclaimed US illustrator Ruth has worked for a selection of commercial clients but he has also drawn the acclaimed Dark Horse Conan series and collaborated with Steve Niles on Freaks of The Heartland.
Talbot first came to people’s attention through creating the Adventures of Luther Arkwright in the 1970s. Since then, he has become one of the greatest ambassadors for comics to the mainstream thanks to books like Alice in Sunderland, Grandville and Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, written by his wife Mary Talbot. The art in the book here is an image Talbot created for the Lakes Comics Festival.
Liam Sharp
Chris Weston
Greg Ruth
Sharp is an artist, writer and publisher. He made his debut drawing Judge Dredd in the late 1980s for 2000AD but he has worked for Marvel, DC and Dynamite. Sharp is one of the partners at digital comics publisher Madefire.
Walter Simonson
Simonson began his career at DC in the early 1970s, coming to attention with his art on Manhunter. Since then he has become one of the best-loved comic artists in the business, thanks to his work on series like Thor for Marvel and Elric for DC.
168 TRIPWIRE 21
Weston’s first big break came with Judge Dredd in 1988 but he has gone on to collaborate with some of the biggest names in comics, including J Michael Straczynski, Grant Morrison and Garth Ennis. His uniquely British style has made him a fan favourite.
SUPPORTERS Over the next few pages are adverts from companies who have been kind enough to support this book. They are tucked at the back so they don’t spoil the flow of the book but we are grateful for their patronage and assistance
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