Tripwire Annual 2009 Sample

New Blood

GUILLERMO DEL TORO opens the file on his new vampire novel, THE STRAIN, and discusses what it’s like for the awardwinning director to move from film to prose… WORDS AND PICTURES: JOEL MEADOWS

original lettering. The drawing, the story, the colouring; every aspect of what’s coming out as much as I can control it. I do it because I feel that what I’m creating as far as story and drawing is concerned should be judged on the basis that this is all my work. Deadlines are a constant that everybody lives with in this business, so it’s necessary under those circumstances very often to get one person to do the pencilling, another person to do the inking, someone else to do the colour and so on and so forth. But I feel very strongly that this dissipates the one direction that a piece of artwork should be taking. TW: How has your speed changed over the years in terms for example of how long it would take you to draw an issue? JK: That’s an interesting question because I don’t set a time slot when I sit down to work. My feeling, my sense is however that I feel a little bit more secure about what I’m doing now than when I was younger and so I believe that the work goes a little faster.

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I have gained a certain amount of surenes and commitment. I do barrel ahead on my work. I have no compunctions and no fears about what I’m doing. I don’t second-guess myself at this stage of the game. I feel quite certain about what I want to do, for good or for bad. I’m pretty certain about what I want to put down on the paper, what I want to communicate and I think because of that, I don’t think it’s a matter of physically working faster, I think it’s a matter of being able to make decisions a little faster that enables me to get the work done. TW: But I presume that the Tor pages were hand-drawn by yourself and then scanned in? JK: I know what I’m trying to do. I’m not quite sure how it communicates to others but nevertheless I know what I’m trying to do. TW: Why do you think Tarzan and adventure still resonate,in light of the fact it’s the eightieth anniversary of the character in comic strip, ?

JK: I don’t know. To me I can only gauge my personal reaction to old characters like Tarzan. As I said before a man I’d never met or even talked to, Hal Foster, was able to do things in his work that communicated

Art from Sgt Rock in Wednesday Comics, out this summer

to me very effectively. So very consciously I tried to create the same kind of effect in the work that I do. I think that there’s a spontaneity and a simplicity, in his work that I’m constantly trying to inject in mine. The other aspect to it is that I try to do enough in terms of finishing my drawings where the person who’s reading it actually finishes the art in their own mind themselves. I try to keep my work as simple and as direct as possible and as spontaneous as possible. This is difficult because it’s a lot easier to throw a lot of stuff into the work you’re doing than to try to simplify and bring the work down to some essence so that it not only communicates effectively but brings the reader into what’s happening, makes them part of the story. I think that’s a positive and a good thing in film, in books, in writing. Some of the best writers I think are those who are astute enough to select the proper words without anything extraneous. TW: Your work, while it looks simple, is very bold and you can see the lineage between your work on Tor and somebody like Foster and some of the newspaper strips. You can see a direct connection between you and their sensibilities… JK: I appreciate that. TW: I’m going to change the subject now. So you’re doing something for

this Wednesday Comics series for DC? Adam [Kubert] is writing a Sgt Rock story that you’re drawing? JK: That’s a very pleasurable deed for me because my son Adam wrote the script and I’m illustrating it and it’s 10 whole pages. I haven’t quite started it yet. But that’s next on the agenda. TW: Did it feel strange, almost like the roles were a little bit reversed?

TW: So how many pages is that? JK: The book will probably contain anywhere between a minimum of 200 and 220 pages. The actual story that I did is 155 pages and in addition to that, there are photographs. It’s all based on true events and there are very few variations from the truth. TW: So they’ll be the photos taken by the soldiers who were actually there?

JK: Yes and I’m enjoying it very much. Every opportunity that I get to work with my son whose work I admire and respect I really enjoy. TW: So you’ve also got another original graphic novel coming out. Who is publishing that? JK: It’s a war graphic novel and the publisher is DC. It’s a story about the Vietnamese War, a story that occurred in 1965. I was fortunate enough to meet some of the principles who were involved in a particular battle in which the American Special Forces and other American soldiers and thousands of the South Vietnamese were routed. I met the people who were involved in it. I thought it was something that I really wanted to do and it’s in the process of being finished.

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“I feel very lucky to publish both Mark Schultz and Gary Gianni’s work.” tors. I commend him for not always focusing on the well-known masters, and bringing forth people you never knew existed. Many of these illustrators were household names for a good reason. Their work is great. I hope, in a small way, some of my books have helped as well. The cool thing is young people are enjoying them, and people in their early twenties are supporting us at the shows. I enjoy it when people of all ages are appreciating the books, and not just a narrow demographic. TW: How have you found reader’s reactions to your titles have been? JF: Very positive. It’s extremely fulfilling to receive kind emails and letters from people. That someone would enjoy a book enough to take the time to write means a lot to me.

The shows are a nice venue to receive direct feedback from those who support us. When people think your stuff sucks, they let you know really fast. You can tell just from their mannerisms if they like or don’t like something. Also, the web provides blog areas for individuals to provide the most honest feedback all while remaining anonymous. It’s totally unfiltered. So far, I’ve only seen a few crummy remarks. I never try to please everyone and expect some negativity. That’s just a part of life. I will say this. Sometimes you’re going through a hell of a week working twelve-hour days trying to get some work done. I’m beat and grumpy. Then, a nice email rolls in and makes all the hard work worth it. TW: Is there one particular artist whose work Flesk has reprinted / covered who has attracted greater attention than the others and if there has been, do you have any idea why this is the case? JF: James Bama: American Realist by Brian Kane is our bestseller. Bama’s art appeals to such a wide

Art from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Gary Gianni 28 TRIPWIRE

variety of people, and most importantly, tugs at that nostalgia string for many who grew up in the 1960s. Paperback books he illustrated the covers for sold millions of copies. Due to the amount of exposure his work had, I often hear the remark that someone fondly recalls a book cover, but never knew who the artist was. The Doc Savage covers alone have made him an icon to modern day fandom. Then there is the Universal Monster model kits, and his fine art. His art moves people, and is combined with an appealing place in time for fans. Adventure, horror, men’s magazines, western art—all genres are done to the utmost perfection. The interesting thing is I was exposed to Bama’s fine art work first. I picked up his two western art collections, one from Bantam (the first and revised edition), and The Art of James Bama published in 1993. It’s these works that have ingrained me with nostalgia. I wasn’t around in the sixties, and too busy learning how to jump over garbage cans with my bike in the late 1970s. Outside of his Doc Savage covers and monster model kit box art, I didn’t have much exposure to his illustration art. This all changed when Brian Kane started sending me samples of his James Bama book in 2003. It was amazing to see all of this material that I didn’t know existed. When I asked Brian if he would consider me to publish the book, I was thrilled when he trusted me enough to publish his book. Brian did a terrific job of showing off Bama’s entire career, while providing a good dose of the material the hardcore fans wanted to see. I’ve become good friends with James Bama in the process. He makes anyone feel like his longlost little brother. Something of note is that we are working on two new books on Bama’s work. One is a collection of his studies, preliminaries and sketches. The other is a collection on his personal unpublished paintings inspired by his travels. These are extraordinary pieces of subjects in China, Turkey, Mexico, and more. It’s an honour to have the opportunity to publish his works, and to know him. TW: You have become associated with the work of Mark Schultz and Gary Gianni. What

a high-tech job for 10 years. Combined with family responsibilities, every waking minute, seven days a week, was booked solid. Things were starting to fall between the cracks. The stress was turning me into something I was unhappy in becoming. Not having the responsibilities of the day job and being able to focus entirely on my family and book publishing has been very rewarding.

was it about their work that made you and them natural bedfellows? JF: I feel very lucky to publish both Mark Schultz and Gary Gianni’s work. Despite their artistic styles being very different, they both have a lot of similarities. Both of them are perfectionists. They work tirelessly to improve themselves. They are both good businessmen, and they know exactly what they want. I’ve been a fan of their respective work for a good decade before I met them. It was nice to discover they are genuine, friendly, and humble. These are guys who, if they weren’t artists and I wasn’t their publisher, I would still consider myself fortunate to know as friends. I would say what has made us work well together is a naturally formed relationship. Publishing a book on Mark Schultz, then Gary Gianni—it all just happened. It wasn’t forced. I got to know them, we got along, and we made some books together, and we are doing some more. I feel the same way about James Bama and William Stout, too. They know I focus on every nuance in regards to the quality of our books. I am always thinking about their reputation and how their art is presented. A bad book reflects very poorly on both the publisher and artist. I’m always thinking of the long term, and know how it can affect them if I screw up. I am always trying to improve upon each new book. I also like to collaborate closely with them when we put together a book. I want each book to be an extension of the artist, in that they were a part of the design and decision making of the book. I think both Mark and Gary appreciate this. TW: A number of the artists whose work has been published by Flesk are masters of pen and ink. What is it about that particular medium that appeals to you as an aficionado / publisher? JF: I think my affinity towards comics starting at a young age, has made me appreciate line art. I’m amazed at what an artist can do with a pen, or brush and ink. From a thin line to the spotting of blacks, I am amazed at what can be done with the absence of color. Mike Mignola is a modern-day king of spotting blacks. The Bernie Wrightson Frankenstein plates made a profound affect on me

TW: What are your longterm plans?

early on, which led me to Franklin Booth. Gianni’s work helped steer me towards Joseph Clement Coll. Then, I began devouring books with linework. Daniel Vierge, Dan Smith, Heinrich Kley, T.S. Sullivant and Orson Lowell—they all make an impact on me. I can’t really explain exactly why, but I do tend to favour black and white art. TW: All of your books are produced to a very high standard in terms of their production values. How important is it for you to present these creator’s works in a suitably durable format? JF: One of my bosses while working at the bungee jumping company, an incredibly smart mechanical engineer, always told me, “What’s worth doing is worth overdoing,” and, “Don’t do something unless you’re going to do it right!” I still hear his words echoing in my head to this day. I can’t cut corners, and I won’t turn in a book to the printer to meet a deadline. My books often come out later than expected because I believe once it is out you can’t make any changes. I think customers will forgive me if the book comes out late, but looks great. As I expressed earlier, a poorly produced book reflects bad on yourself and the artist. It is my responsibility to do my best work on everything I handle. Plus, again, I am very competitive. Even though we are relatively small, I want our books to stand alongside anything put out by a major art book publisher, like Abrams.

JF: First of all, now being able to focus full-time on publishing, I will be putting out books more frequently. This summer we have three new titles coming out. Mark Schultz: Various Drawings Volume Four is first, followed by Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon: A Lifelong Vision of the Heroic. This book collects Williamson’s complete works on Flash Gordon. Major Thrill’s Adventure Book by Gary Gianni is a fun collection we are doing for the conventions. This is a 32-page book featuring an assortment of Gianni’s adventure art. I have a few pen and ink books that I am working on. The first one is on T.S. Sullivant and will be out early next year. I also want to focus on more books on the master illustrators. To start, I am publishing the new Harvey Dunn book by Walt Reed. The Dunn book will be a highly important book in the illustration field. No book of this scope has ever been done on him. We are producing a new book by William Stout titled, The New Dinosaurs A-Z: Dinosaur Discoveries of the Last Two Decades. In regards to more adventure type material, I’ve been talking to Gianni, Schultz and Stout about them picking out a classic adventure book of interest to each of them to illustrate. So far, Gary and Bill have expressed interest, and I’m hoping to use them as leverage against Mark! Actually, I joke with Mark a lot, but he’s focusing on his new book, Storms at Sea for now. This illustrated novella will have 32 new pieces of art accompanying 32 pages of text. We have ten books in the oven right now. I also want to expand the type of art books we do. I have a few photography books I would like to get to in addition to our line on comic and illustration artists. Overall, you will see some expansion in the artists we publish, and the genres we cover. q

TW: Are you still a fan of the work you have published even though you have gotten to know some of the artists whose work you have collected or represented? JF: More so. Definitely. I am more stoked now than I was when I started. Every artist I have worked with has been a pleasure. Mark, Gary, Bill Stout, Steve Rude, and James Bama, have all been inspirational to me. I appreciate them more now. I still marvel at seeing a new piece of art by any of them. TW: Do you run Flesk as a full-time job? JF: Starting on Jan. 23, 2009 I began running the business full-time. Up until then, I was working at

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“Hergé sent an assistant to sketch the British landscape and revised the book to be more accurate in its depiction of the country. ” for the Flemish population of Belgium. In 1952 Casterman translated The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure into German, Spanish and English. The identity of the English translators is lost in time, and these 1952 editions are rare collectors’ items, but they seemed to have the desired effect: By the end of the 1950s Tintin had been translated by several overseas publishers for their home markets. In the UK in 1958, Methuen Childrens’ Books published their first English edition. Key to this was the eagerness of Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner to do the translations. LonsdaleCooper and Turner had a unique relationship with Hergé: The 1966 revision of The Black Island was at the suggestion of Lonsdale-Cooper and Turner, who felt the English and Scottish miseen-scène would be unconvincing to UK audiences. Hergé sent an assistant to sketch the British landscape and revised the book to be more accurate in its depiction of the country. Many of their suggestions extended to influencing the revision of the French editions. Lonsdale-Cooper and Turner introduced British readers to Tintin in a different sequence to Europe, concentrating on introducing principal characters first, and saving books with difficulties for a British audience till last. As a result the first British editions were The Crab with the Golden Claws and King Ottokar’s Sceptre (both 1958). Lonsdale-Cooper and Turner shunned literal translations focusing on an English version that worked on its own terms, with guidance from Hergé to ensure they preserved the author’s intenand, in 1947, he said: “Tintin is no longer me, that, if he is to go on living, it will be by a sort of artificial respiration that I will have to practice constantly and which exhausts me, and will exhaust me more and more” (Hergé & Tintin: Discover a world of Tintinology—Paul Gravett, The Comics Journal, 2003).

The Clear Line

Most of us see the early Tintin through a revisionist prism: in 1944 Hergé, who had already began revising the early work, added Edgar Jacobs to his staff to help with the work. Despite only working with Hergé for three years, Jacobs aided the transition of the albums to what we recognize today as the Hergé ‘Clear Line’ style. In all eight albums from Tintin in the Congo to The Crab with the Golden Claws were redrawn, with The Black Island being revised twice, once in 1943, once in 1966. Jacobs bought to Tintin the attention to realistic detail that we now think of as Tintin’s world: “[The Clear Line] …combines very iconic characters with unusually realistic backgrounds. This combination allows the readers to mask themselves in a character and safely enter a sensually stimulating world.” (Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud, 1993). Jacobs left Hergé in early 1947: Following his departure Hergé formed the Hergé Studios, and the Tintin we recognize today was born.

Tintin in English

By the 1950s Hergé was a giant in the francophone world, but there were no foreign language editions apart from a Dutch edition

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“Golden Press of New York had six books translated by Danièle Gorlin and Nicole Duplaix in 1959 / 60. An unenthusiastic reception (8,000 copies of each sold over the Christmas period) led Golden to abandon the project.” Golden to abandon the project. Whether this lack of success was due to the inferior quality of translations (something generally agreed on) or simply giving up too soon (the UK edition took five years to really take off) is hard to say, but these versions are now collectors’ pieces. In fairness to the translators, many strictures were placed on them by the mores of the US at the time. The US censors didn’t approve of mixing races in children’s books, so characters had to be replaced, Captain Haddock’s drinking (and presumably that of Snowy) was excised and at one point it was suggested that Snowy be renamed ‘Buddy’. In 1974 Little, Brown, bolstered by the serialization of Tintin in Children’s Digest and the TV exposure of the Belvision cartoons, inaugurated a new American edition, publishing all of the available Lonsdale-Cooper / Turner translations by 1979. Tintin is fixed indelibly in the public imagination due to the success of these editions, aided by TV series from Belvision and Eclipse / Nelvana, and both animated and live action movies. This success has led to the forthcoming motion capture 3-D film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure. Peter Jackson’s company Weta Digital is providing the animation, and I suspect and hope that the film with will bring another generation of children back to the books that started it all. q

tion. Many books presented problems: For example in The Land of Black Gold Hergé redrew and rewrote part of the book, which was originally set in Palestine and the nascent state of Israel. He removed all references to the British and Jews, and moved the story to the imaginary emirate of the Khemed. The Blue Lotus took a long time to appear in the UK due to the setting of the Sino-Japanese War; Tintin in America needed severe revision due to its portrayal of blacks (and was still banned in Canada). The crude anti-communism of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and the colonialism of Tintin in the Congo presented such problems that they only appeared in archival editions. Congo is still only published in the UK with a band pointing out its historical context. Many of the settings of Tintin’s adventures were anglicized in the translation process, for example, Captain Haddock’s Chateau de Moulinsart becomes Marlinspike Hall, leading to strange anomalies, such as Belgian police patrolling England. I have to say that as a child I just did not notice this at all (or possibly thought that the countryside had a better class of police officer than the city…). Hergé died in 1983 leaving Tintin et l’Alph-Art unfinished. Despite his wish that Tintin should die with him his executors published it in unfinished form in 1986. Lonsdale-Cooper and Turner translated it into English for publication in 1990, completing thirty years of translating Hergé’s works.

The ‘Other’ English Edition

Reasoning that US readers would need an ‘American’ Tintin, Golden Press of New York had six books translated by Danièle Gorlin and Nicole Duplaix in1959 / 60. An unenthusiastic reception (8,000 copies of each sold over the Christmas period) led

START THE PRESSES Here are five of the Tintin books that no discerning reader should be without…

The Crab With the Golden Claws The Calculus Affair The Castefiore Emerald Destination Moon Flight 714

Investigative Behaviour: Can Peter Jackson (left) and Steven Spielberg (right) make Tintin an international success on the big screen with The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of The Unicorn in 2011?

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THE DARK KNIGHT BEGINS DC’s other cultural icon celebrates 70 candles on his cake so TRIPWIRE takes a glance at Batman’s anniversary WORDS: ANDREW COLMAN

I

t wouldn’t have seemed plausible back in 1939, but DC’s decision to include a non-superpowered spandex hero in one of their established titles would prove to be as important and innovative an idea as any in pop culture. The Man Of Steel had exploded into the young medium, immediately establishing a new genre and becoming an icon in the process. Batman however had progenitors and was steeped in the pulpish noir of the era, not to mention that he was just another crimefighter when he first appeared in Detective Comics#27. Despite this he has proven to be as durable and probably more popular than any other character in comic history. And as Golden Age heroes go, his mythos has scarcely dated, whilst he has been more adaptable than his original contemporaries. The key to Batman’s early success was how bizarre and elemental he looked, and how he dealt with crime. A genuinely gothic character at this stage, he was even more sinister than his forebears The Shadow and The Spider. Borrowing from cinema as much as pulps, creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger understood that mystery and darkness (the very antithesis of Superman’s milieu) were crucial to the strip. And unlike

Supes, Batman was all too vulnerable in his own benighted backyard—as Kane stated about his creation, “I want him hurt”. Kane and Finger were also aware that a character borne out of vengeance rather than idealism was too monolithic to last—depth and a backstory were required, which would inevitably humanize and demystify the character. His highly credible origin story, in Detective Comics #33, which detailed how a young Bruce Wayne was orphaned by a street thug was simplicity itself, and certainly struck a chord with the title’s young readership. The first eleven issues of Batman’s tenure in Detective were, under the auspices of Kane, Finger and new writer Gardner Fox, in a similarly grim vein, as Batman dealt with foes of an especially ruthless leaning, such as Dr. Death and Hugo Strange. With issue 38, the tone of the strip would change dramatically as sidekick Robin was introduced. Purists may point out that with his arrival, Robin drained both Batman and his stories of the brooding, filmic menace that had been so compulsive, and immediately ushered in a new lightweight, humorous era. Of course this was true, but this move was to grant Batman his longevity. As Robin co-creator and artist Jerry Robinson pointed out, his presence added to Batman’s heroism and gave

younger readers a character to identify with, rendering Batman more human in the process. Bill Finger felt that Batman’s Sherlock Holmes needed a Watson, and that it would add necessary dialogue to the strip. Within a year of Detective 27, Batman gained his own title and cemented his place in the industry. As important as this milestone was, it was more significant for the first appearance of Catwoman, and arch-foe The Joker. Despite DC’s newly self-imposed code regarding magazine content, this new character brought in an unabashed level of psychosis and dark, twisted humour. Created by Jerry Robinson, The Joker was a combination of the playing card and the harlequin, a grotesque, irrational and tawdry figure who captured the imagination immediately and proved effectively that a hero needs a good rogue’s gallery. As Robinson mentioned, “I felt the time had come when Batman needed a superior villain with which to cope. I wanted a character that embodied the qualities of intrigue and mystery, yet with a great visual flair”. Although it was too early for anyone to suggest that these two archetypes defined one another, he was always the main draw, as evinced by repeated appearances in both books, usually (as was the case with Batman# 11) with a classic cover. If anything

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“I’ve been a fan of [Hellblazer] since issue one. He’s a private eye, like an old-fashioned Sam Spade private eye.” – IAN RANKIN

an existing character or you can come to us with an original idea and a brand new character.‘“, he recalls, sipping his tea. “So I said to them ‘That’s great’ but I was busy doing novels so I told them I would get back to them. And then they responded: ‘Look we’re approaching other mainstream writers,crime writers, novelists and we’re going to have this run of books about crime, Vertigo Crime’. But by then I really decided that I wanted to do Hellblazer because I’ve been a fan of the character since issue one. He’s a private eye, like an old-fashioned Sam Spade private eye. That’s what he’s like but he deals with the supernatural and I thought ‘That’s nicely different from what I’ve done before but still with one foot in the door of what I’ve done before.’ So I came up with this idea which was basically a take

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on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, where people in a haunted house are disappearing one by one. But instead of making it an old-fashioned traditional haunted house, I made it a game show. So it’s a haunted house in which contestants are trying to find the way out while being scared out of their wits and being watched by a TV audience. But stuff starts to happen on the set that the producers aren’t responsible for, so they bring in Constantine under the guise of a new housemate, trying to work out what’s going on.” Rankin has become known as quite a thoughtful writer and the prospect of penning an adventure with one of his favourite comic characters was one that seemed to appeal to his sensibilities. But the format was undecided at this point.

“It just sounded like a lot of fun and they had said to me originally it might be five or six issues of the magazine. Then they informed me ‘No we’re going to do them as standalone graphic novels’. Then they asked me: ‘How long is it likely to be?’ and I told them it would be about 100 pages.” But as a writer new to comics, Rankin didn’t realise how his work would translate to actual pages in the comic, as he recalls. “So I started writing it, having never written a comicbook in my life and with nobody giving me instructions, and when they broke it down into pages, they told me, ‘This is 210 pages long.’ So I said to them: ‘Okay how much do you want me to cut?’ and they responded with: ‘We don’t want you to cut any of it. We’re just going to do it as a 210 page graphic novel.’ So that was great.” The author seems surprised at the level of support that Vertigo have granted him. “And that’s really interesting to me because as a fan of comic books, often times for me the art comes before the story. It stands or falls by the quality of the art and they were saying to me all the way along that ‘this has got to be the way you want it to be. The visuals have got to be the way you imagined them to be.’ So they keep sending me stuff from the artist whose name is Werther Dell’Edera. I think he’s quite young. I don’t think he’s done a huge amount but when I said to Vertigo there are aspects of the story that will bring in hell and demons, my editor, Will Dennis, said ‘well we’ve got a guy. He’s good. He’s got demons’. I’d been over in New York anyway doing something else so I’d gone into the DC offices and spoken to them. They showed me some of his artwork and I said ‘that looks perfect’. But I’ve only seen the final pages in the last few weeks. I’ve been able to go through the book and correct some things that I thought were wrong. They thought the ending was a bit too dark. Can you believe it?,” Rankin laughs sardonically and then continues. “He said ‘We need a little spark of hope for humanity’ so I’ve given a small spark of hope. I’ve not made Constantine quite as callous at the end as he was going to be in the first draft. Other than that, I’ve had a lot of freedom and that’s made it a lot of fun.”

He has been writing professionally since 1984 but comics wasn’t as easy as he first thought it might be, as he admitted. “You always like a new challenge. You like to try and do something in a new genre or something that stretches your brain a bit.” Luckily, some of the people in the comic industry he has encountered had some advice for him. “When I met Alan Grant a few times, he told me over and over again: ‘When you write a novel, you’re only using one part of your brain because the reader is doing all the hard work for you but when you’re writing descriptions to let the artist know what you think this looks like, you need to know all the visuals. You’re actually more of a director so it’s not just about the writing, you’re also the editor, the photographer and the director; you’re everything. And that is a challenge that I really enjoyed. But it is hellish hard work. You look at a comic and you think ‘well there’s not many words on the page. How hard can it be?’” Writing Dark Entries has given Rankin the chance to fulfill a lifelong dream as he got to visit the DC offices to meet his editor on the book. “I met Will Dennis when I went to New York. They also introduced me to Karen Berger and various other people. What was great is that I got to wander round and see all the different floors of the building. I got to go to the Mad floor because they are on a floor below Vertigo. For someone who’s read comics from the word go, for whom comics were a big inspiration in the early days, this was amazing,” he tells us, finding it hard to contain his smile. “As a preteen one of the first things I ever tried to write were comics, so it was just such a buzz to walk around there.” Working on Dark Entries has also allowed him to meet fellow British writers like Neil Gaiman and Mark Millar and he is impressed at the sense of community that exists in the comic industry. He is also aware that British creators still have an influence in the modern comics field, even though it is not as evident as it was in the early days of Vertigo in the 1990s. “It’s filled with Brits doing good work. To be honest, I knew this from the days I read 2000AD. A lot of the writers from 2000AD went on to work for Marvel and DC. But it’s still happening. Mark Millar was very funny about it. He said that what he wants is for Scotland to take over the world when

it comes to comicbooks. There’s a whole coterie of writers who do stuff. You’ve got someone like Denise Mina who is a Scottish crime writer who’s done a run of Hellblazer and is now doing her own series or her own graphic novel featuring her own characters, which is also for Vertigo, I believe.” In fact, Mina sent Rankin some of her pages from Hellblazer to give him an idea of what to write. The experience has given him a lot to think to about, as he admits quite honestly. “You’re learning about what you can cut out and what you don’t need and time can pass within the frame. So somebody can be doing something left of frame and, by the time you get to right of frame, time has passed. Whereas writing novels is possibly

the laziest kind of writing there is because you’ve got as many words as you need and you’re making the reader do all the work for you. You don’t have to describe the characters in intricate detail, what they’re wearing or their surroundings. But for your artist in comics you need to give them some clues.” It also gave him the chance to write scenes that he couldn’t use in his Rebus novels and there is one in particular from Dark Entries that he remembers with some mischevious detail. “There’s one scene where a demon gets a blowjob. I loved writing the words down and thinking ‘I can’t wait to see if he does that or not. Will he do that? Will Vertigo let him do that?’ And indeed they did and it was very tastefully done as these things go, I would

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WORDS: PAT MCGREAL Comic geeks like me often pride themselves as being fans of the work of Stan Lee from way ‘back in the day’. But… which ‘day’? The early 1960’s, when he unleashed an explosion of superheroes that revolutionized comics? The 1950’s, when he shrewdly treaded water in a sea of publishing uncertainty? Or the 1940’s, when he presided over a Golden Age of iconic characters who whomped on the Axis and stirred the hearts of red-blooded American children? The truth is, Stan Lee is a man of many a ‘day’. He was there almost from the beginning. And he’s still going. I arrive at POW Entertainment, located in the poshest part of Beverly Hills, on a cloudy June morning. A guy named Mike escorts me through the suite of offices and into its inner sanctum. The Man himself greets me with a smile that seems to dispel inclement weather. No matter how you look at it, Stan Lee is Stan Lee, upbeat and unshakably positive... TRIPWIRE: It’s great of you to agree to talk with us. STAN LEE: Yes, it is, rather. TW: Can you tell me what were you doing to make a living immediately before you came to Timely Comics? SL: Well, I had a couple of jobs. I was an office boy for the second largest trouser manufacturer in America. It was called H. Lissner & Sons. And I was the office boy… there were two office boys. And in those days they didn’t have ballpoint pens, they had pens that you dipped in ink or fountain pens and there were salesmen that sat in the place. They each had a little cubicle and when their pen ran out of ink, they’d yell: “Boy!” They never bothered to learn our names. And whichever one of the two office boys was the closest had to come running: “Yes, sir!” “Fill my inkwell!” or “Sharpen my pencils!” That was the type of thing I did. And I also got the mail. I had to go to the post office on 34th Street and 9th Avenue, get a load of mail and bring it. I walked eight blocks to the office with that big, heavy sack of mail every morning. Before nine! I only got paid from nine to five but I had to be at the post office at a quarter to eight to get the mail. But it was a job. And then… a better job… I was an usher at a big theater in New York called the Rivoli on Times Square. TW: A movie palace? SL: It was a movie palace. And being an usher was like being a West Pointer. Every morning the manager, he’d line us up and he’d check our uniforms and we were standing sort of at attention. Everything had to look just so. There were six of us, six aisles, one at each aisle. And when someone would come in, each usher tried to get the person to come down their aisle. If somebody was heading toward you, you had to go… (Gestures grandly) … “This way!” It was so hard to learn that gesture. The first few days I hit myself in the chin. You had to go… (Gestures with a flourish under his chin) … like that, right under the chin. So the first day, I did this… (Hits himself in the chin) But after a while I learned. I’m very good at it. (Stands up and gestures with a flourish) “This way, Sir!” TW: They actually taught you the gesture? SL: Oh, yeah! And let me tell you the biggest thing.

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One day Franklin Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, came into the theater. Well, you can imagine — the President’s wife! We all hoped she’d come down our aisle. I got her. She came down mine. I guess I did that… (Gestures again) … so well. And I was so proud. I was walking down the aisle with my flashlight shining for her and my head high and some son-of-agun had his foot stuck in the aisle and I tripped over it and I fell on my face. The next thing I knew, the President’s wife has me by the shoulders, helping me up and saying: “Are you all right, young man?” (Laughs) I’ll never forget that. TW: How old were you at the time? SL: Oh, I don’t know, seventeen. It was a big thing to be an usher. I was very proud. TW: I heard at one point you also were writing

obituaries… SL: Oh yeah. That was when I was in high school as a spare time job. I wrote obituaries for a news service of people who were still alive. See, if you’re a celebrity, they have your obituary already written. ‘Cause you may wonder, somebody dies and in the next edition of the paper there’s a two-page write-up. How did they do it so fast? It’s been on file. TW: Right. SL: So that’s how you can tell you’re a celebrity. I’d love to think my obituary is on file somewhere. (Laughs) TW: I’m sure it is. (Laughter) So what brought you to Timely Comics?

“The interconnectivity will be that extra bit of fun for comic fans.” – KEVIN FEIGE, Marvel Studios Man earlier in the year. “The best and worst moments of Robert’s life have been in the public eye. He had to find an inner balance to overcome obstacles that went far beyond his career. That’s Tony Stark. Robert brings a depth that goes beyond a comic-book character who is having trouble in high school, or can’t get the girl. Plus, he’s simply one of the best actors around.” Downey Jr had a lot invested in Iron Man too, as he revealed last year. “Jon Favreau (the director) and I have been working on this for a long time and we’ve put all our hearts and efforts into it. Iron Man took up two years of Jon’s life and we knew we only had one chance to do this right and that making more movies based on this character would depend on the success of this first one.” So with Iron Man a hit at the box office in 2008, speculation was rife that Marvel would greenlight a number of other movies based on their top properties. But Kevin Feige, head of Marvel Studios, was cautious when he was asked whether Iron Man would open up the floodgates for a deluge of Marvel movies, especially ones that have a shared continuity. “The sky’s the limit right now. It’s us being very cautious and careful about how we do these crossovers so that we don’t collapse under our own weight — as even every 12 or 15 years the comics do; they revamp and do new number ones and get back to what the characters were all about. I don’t want [the movies] to forget what the characters are all about and, knock on wood, the interconnectivity will be that extra bit of fun for comic fans. And I think that everybody that stayed in their seats to watch

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Iron Man (left) and Incredible Hulk (right) were a new breed of Marvel movies: funded and made by Marvel themselves the Nick Fury scene at the end of Iron Man because I’d rather be dead than live in are, whether they read comic books or not, your world.” The lissom Scarlett Johanssen fans of the bigger Marvel continuity.” has also been announced as Black Widow But here we are over halfway through and in the movie continuity apparently she 2009 and Marvel’s movie plans are pretty will be seen as an assistant to playboy Tony clear now. First out of the gate is Iron Man Stark who later unveils her true purpose. 2, released on May 7, 2010. Then KenFavreau spoke in general terms about Iron neth Branagh’s Thor, which will be out on Man 2 in summer 2008. May 20, 2011 and in the same year but on “I have never done a sequel to a film, July 22nd is The First American: Captain nor have I in the past worked on anything America. Then in 2012, May 4th will see where a sequel felt organic. I think it’s the The Avengers out at the cinema. Of course, nature of Iron Man because it comes from there is also talk of a Nick Fury movie with a serialized piece of source material, that Samuel Jackson but Marvel are keeping it does lend itself to having sequels. It’s all very tightlipped about that one. So let’s take new ground for me, it’s new ground for each of these movies in turn: Marvel, although they have been partnered up and done sequels with other studios. There are a lot of different approaches you could take. Hopefully we end up going for a sequel that is going to be bigger and better than the first one.”

Iron Man 2 Jon Favreau is back, as is Robert Downey Jr. Don Cheadle replaces Terrence Howard as Jim Rhodes. Added to the cast after his career resurrection in The Wrestler is Mickey Rourke as Whiplash who gave a few little snippets to The Guardian in June: “I decided to do half my role in Russian,” he says, “and that’s hard because the Russian language doesn’t roll off the English-speaking tongue very easily.” “I spent three hours a day with a teacher, and after two weeks I know four sentences! Let me see, it’s sort of like... ‘Yezzamee menya... Yezzamee manya obott... Er, nemaboootty menya...’”, which means “If someone kills me, don’t wake me up,

Despite a disappointing critical reception, Spider-man 3 did decently at the box office and a fourth film is in production

years of the comics. We look to raid from the best,” he continued. Cast is Chris Hemsworth (George Kirk from Star Trek), with a Nick Fury cameo by Samuel Jackson and it is also rumoured that none other than Brian Blessed will play Odin.

Chris Hemsworth: Marvel’s God of Thunder Thor After Matthew Vaughn was attached to the big screen adaptation of Marvel’s blond Norse god, it is now official that British theatre thesp Kenneth Branagh is now directing it. He did a small interview about the film with MTV News in June: “I think that [‘Thor’ stories] go through golden patches and purple patches and everyone has personal favorites,” Branagh told MTV News. “The recent runs have been marvelous. The J. Michael Straczynski run has been a tremendous achievement.” “But I’ve also been reading way back, reading classic, vintage runs as well,” added Branagh. “There are many Thors and many accounts of the stories across nearly 50

Sam Raimi (top left) and Tobey Maguire (top right) will be back for Spider-man 4 in 2011 but it is uncertain whether Kirsten Dunst (right) will be joining them…

The First American: Captain America Director Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park 3) has not picked his Steve Rogers as yet but rumours are that Shia LaBoeuf will have a screen test for Captain America. The one thing that is certain is that it will be set in World War II and we’re pretty sure that Cap’s sidekick Bucky will appear. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who wrote the two Narnia films, have been named as the writers of the screenplay. Spider-man 4 Sam Raimi is back after the critical kicking that Spider-man 3 received and a New York playwright David Lindsay-Abaire has been working on a draft of the script. Tobey Maguire will be back but it is uncertain whether Kirsten Dunst will return. Rumours for villains this time around include Morbius and The Lizard, especially since they have spent some time building up Curt Connors’ role in the Spider-man movies. The Avengers Little is known about Marvel’s group blowout movie except that Downey Jr will play Iron Man, Ed Norton may return as The Hulk, Don Cheadle will be James Rhodes just like in Iron Man 2 and Samuel Jackson will probably be Nick Fury. q

Flag carrier: just who will fill the costume of Captain America on screen?

Avengers Assembled? Robert Downey Jr, Ed Norton and Samuel Jackson will probably all be playing their costumed counterparts in Marvel’s The Avengers (2012)

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ON THE EDGE

TWENTY YEARS OF THE SIMPSONS (AND BONGO’S NOT FAR BEHIND) WORDS: PAT MCGREAL

Summer is fast approaching, so I drop by the offices of Bongo Comics for a chat with intrepid editor-in-chief Bill Morrison. It’s getting to be a yearly Tripwire ritual… TRIPWIRE: Tripwire wants to catch up on what’s going on with Simpsons Comics. Is Bongo in any way involved with celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the TV show? BILL MORRISON: Well, as far as the comics go, you will notice that there’s a 20th Anniversary logo appearing now on the cover of every Bongo comic throughout

the celebration. But we don’t just do the comics. Bongo is also the publisher of all the Simpsons books. We do the Episode Guides, the Little Library of Wisdom books, Bart’s Guide to Life, all that kind of stuff. The one really cool thing we’re doing that ties in with the 20th Anniversary celebration is… as I mentioned, we have been doing all the Episode Guides and we stopped at season 14. That was the last season that we covered and now, with the 20th Anniversary celebration, we’re catching up with an omnibus that will cover all twenty seasons. A lot of people already have the original Episode Guides, so we decided to go back and expand the originals and update them. We want to update everything. We’re giving every episode a two page spread and giving every Treehouse Of Horror a four-page spread, so…

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“The biggest thing is we are welcoming Sergio Aragonés, one of the greatest cartoonists of all time, as not just a guest artist but a regular Bongo contributor.” TW: You’ve now tied Gunsmoke, right? BM: Yeah. Actually the first milestone was longest running primetime animated show. We beat The Flintstones after, I think, seven years. Then the second milestone was The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, which was the longest running primetime sitcom. And that was sixteen seasons, I believe. TW: (Ominously) The Ozzie And Harriet barrier… BM: Yes. (Laughs) Leaving the only milestone that’s really possible to conquer, I think… being the longest running primetime scripted show, which was Gunsmoke and that ran for twenty seasons. Next year, we will break the Gunsmoke record. TW: Remarkable.

Sergio Aragones art from Bart Simpson #50, the title he is joining as a regular contributor

BM: Well, in Futurama, as I’m sure fans will note, The Simpsons is still running. And not just in reruns—it’s still in production a thousand years from now. So if that comes to pass, then I’m sure we will have broken every record. TW: So what’s going on with Bongo Comics? What’s new? Any changes? Surprises? Any treats in store? BM: Yeah. The biggest thing is we are welcoming Sergio Aragonés, one of the greatest cartoonists of all time, as not just a guest artist but a regular Bongo contributor. He’s doing the cover of Bart Simpson #50, he’s written and drawn an eleven-page story, and he’s doing a regular, on-going feature called Maggie’s Crib. Those are one and two page silent Maggie adventures.

TW: So this is a huge book. BM: A huge book. It’s like a phone book. It’s a hardcover, slipcase, deluxe edition. There’s a ton of new artwork and updating of facts and more video grabs and all kinds of things. TW: Sounds gorgeous.

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BM: Yeah, we’re really excited about it. So that will be the thing that we’re really tying in with the 20th Anniversary of the show. That will be Bongo’s big contribution. TW: How amazing is it that this show has gone on for twenty years? BM: I know. It’s phenomenal.

TW: And they’ll appear in every issue of Bart Simpson? BM: There’ll be at least one and possibly more in every issue. And Sergio is currently working on a full length, twenty-five page Simpsons story, for which he’s also doing the cover. TW: Is he writing it as well as drawing?

ALIEN: 30 YEARS OF SILENT SCREAMS WORDS AND ILLUSTRATION BY JEFF CARLISLE

“IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM...”

Everyone saw the poster and the advertisements heralding the arrival of Alien in 1979. There were the unsettling commercials and movie trailers,

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with flashing lights and shrieking sounds...and a creepy egg beginning to crack. There was a buzz building, a sense that something different was coming our way...and it was going to terrify us in new and groundbreaking ways. Thirty years later, it still haunts our consciousness and our dreams. Alien is a film that has many influences at it’s heart, and like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is basi-

cally a B-Movie elevated to A-Status by the love, dedication and grueling work of it’s crew and director. One doesn’t have to look hard to see the influence of The Thing from Another World, Forbidden Planet, It: The Terror from Beyond Space, Space Vampires, as well as many Science Fiction stories and Horror comics. All these sources were percolating in the brain of Dan O’Bannon when

The horror begins: the crew of the Nostromo don’t realise what it is they have encountered he was a film student at the University of Southern California, where little did he know that a Beach Ball would one day inspire the greatest Science Fiction Horror franchise of all time.

DARK STAR AND STAR BEAST

In 1975, Dan O’Bannon was without a house or car and suddenly without a job. He had just returned to Hollywood to secure camera equipment after six months working in Paris on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s attempted film version of the classic Science Fiction novel Dune. Jodorowsky had been impressed by the film Dark Star that O’Bannon had co-written and made two years earlier with fellow USC film student John Carpenter. Dark Star, a 45 minute long, tongue-in-cheek science fiction comedy short about the misfit crew of a damaged spaceship, was impressive enough that a producer invested money to have the student filmmakers expand the film by 38 minutes so it could be released as a feature film. To expand the plot, they added a humorous subplot where a character has to hunt down a rogue alien through the ships labyrinthine air ducts—albeit an alien which was little more than a painted beach-ball with claws for feet. Jodorowsky was impressed with the impressive and cost-effective special effects and invited O’Bannon to join the Paris-based production. But, now in Los Angeles, O’Bannon learned

the project had fallen through. Desperate to get any project off the ground, O’Bannon found himself sleeping on his friend Ron Shusett’s couch—and they agreed to put all of their efforts into writing a script which could be written quickly as a potential low-budget “Roger Corman-style” space horror film. Time being of the essence, they returned to an older script of O’Bannon’s called Memory, which was inspired by classic science fiction stories like Forbidden Planet. It was essentially the first act of Alien, where the crew of a lone ship in space is woken from its cryogenic sleep to investigate a mysterious alien signal. Using that as the beginning, the two writers added the air-shaft creature hunt from Dark Star as it’s middle, this time as a horror film rather than a comedy and re-christened the project Star Beast. The two worked night and day to try to work it into a manageable shape. The title morphed into the more pleasing Alien after O’Bannon noticed the world on several pages of the script and realized that as both a noun and an adjective it was a perfect title—and one that had not been used before. The major problem they had with the script, how to get the titular creature on board, took more time to solve. Just having the Alien sneak aboard the ship wasn’t interesting or visceral enough for the young writers. It was Shusett’s turn for a revelation. He told

O’Bannon that the Alien should “simply screw one of the crew”, jumping on a character’s face, depositing it’s seed into the mouth of it’s hapless victim and later the gestating creature would violently explode from the body of it’s host. It was so shocking, so horrifying and so unprecedented that the sheer excitement propelled them to lock down, according to Shusett, “85 % of the film’s plot” in only three weeks. Instead of a simple monster movie, they had something truly different on their hands. According to O’Bannon, “This is a movie about Alien, Inter-species Rape.” Now it was time to shop the script around, with Shusett acting as producer with the intent of having O’Bannon direct. They had Ron Cobb, an artist friend of O’Bannon’s who had worked on Dark Star, start sketching up early designs of the spaceship and the Alien, so that they had visuals to show prospective clients. They came very close to signing with low-budget producer extraordinaire Roger Corman, but their friend Mark Haggard showed the script to director Walter Hill, who in turn showed the script to his partners David Giler and Gordon Carroll at their new production company, Brandywine productions—and they all saw potential. According to David Giler they all thought “the script was terrible—but it had one great scene” in the famous “Chest-burster” sequence. The Brandywine team optioned the script

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TRIPWIRE spoke with Moon’s director Duncan Jones and its Effects Supervisor Gavin Rothery at the London Expo in Excel in May 2009. TRIPWIRE: So what was the genesis of Moon then? DUNCAN JONES: I met up with Sam Rockwell about three years ago to talk with him about another film script where I wanted him to play one role and he wanted to play a different one. So we basically met up in New York to try and convince each other. Unfortunately that didn’t work out but we got on very well, so we started talking about science fiction films. We also discussed things we enjoyed, films we enjoyed and the kind of project that the two of us could work on together and I said that I would write something for him. That was the genesis of Moon. We talked about a lot of the science fiction films that we loved from the late 1970s and 1980s, like Outland and Silent Running and the fact that they had a lot of blue collar characters, real believable working people but in a future environment and how you didn’t really get that so much any more. TW: So ironically is it quite a down to earth film in terms of the characterisation?

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DJ: Well 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 films 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. It looks like a much bigger film.

Director Duncan Jones (left) with Visual Effects Supervisor Gavin Rothery (right) at London Expo in May 2009

TW: So where was it shot?

S A M

R O C K W E L L

DJ: Everything was at Shepperton Studios. We had two sound stages there. GAVIN ROTHERY: We used four altogether, over the course of the production. We moved around. DJ: There were two main ones. There was the interior of the moon base and there was the exterior of the lunar landscape so we used model miniatures. GR: That was really fun actually. We decided that there’s all kinds of reasons but models look cool. They look cooler than CG. We explored every avenue for the visual effects because it’s such a huge part of the film. There’s about 450-odd VFX shots. It’s set on the moon so it’s going to have to be VFX heavy. So we decided that we’d go for miniatures because they just look cool. They always have done and they always did. Miniatures just look good so we went for miniatures augmented with traditional computer-based post on top of that. It’s just got this weird look that people seem to like.

DJ: Yes, we used Cinesite and we basically had two grades of work that needed to be done. Cinesite did a lot of the more complicated work and we had another company called Molinaire that came in. They did a lot of the grunt work, but they did a terrific job on it. So we had two post houses. We got an amazing deal from them because everyone wanted to support and help a little British independent film. GR: We got a lot of goodwill and people were really into what we were doing and wanted to help us. You can see it in the film because there’s a lot of good work in there that people contributed.

T H E

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STAGE 6 FILMS PRESENTS A LIBERTY FILMS PRODUCTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH XINGU FILMS AND LIMELIGHT SAM ROCKWELL “MOON” DOMINIQUE MCELLIGOTT KAYA SCODELARIO BENEDICT WONG MATT BERRY MALCOLM STEWART CASTING DIRECTORS JEREMY ZIMMERMANN AND MANUEL PURO MAKE-UP AND HAIR DESIGNER KAREN BRYAN DAWSON COSTUME DESIGNER JANE PETRIE CONCEPTUAL DESIGN GAVIN ROTHERY PRODUCTION DESIGNER TONY NOBLE VFX & CHARACTER ANIMATION BY CINESITE DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY GARY SHAW MUSIC BY CLINT MANSELL EDITOR NICOLAS GASTER LINE PRODUCER JULIA VALENTINE EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS MICHAEL HENRY BILL ZYSBLAT TREVOR BEATTIE BIL BUNGAY CO-PRODUCERS NICKY MOSS ALEX FRANCIS MARK FOLIGNO STEVE MILNE STORY BY DUNCAN JONES WRITTEN BY NATHAN PARKER PRODUCED BY STUART FENEGAN TRUDIE STYLER DIRECTED BY DUNCAN JONES

DJ: We built the entire base on one of the sound stages and that was a 360 degrees set so we’d go in there in the mornings through the airlock. They’d close it up and we’d be there for the rest of the day… ALL CITY MEDIA LIMITED

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1 SHEET POSTER

MECHANICAL SIZE Bleed: 13.625” x 20.125” Trim: 13.5” x 20”

FINAL SIZE: Bleed: 27.25” x 40.25” Trim: 27” x 40”

GR: Inside a loony bin. TW: So did you use a London post house?

DJ: I’ve been going to Shepperton Studios to shoot short films and music videos for about 10 years so they knew me around there. They knew that one day I was going to come and do my feature film so they were there to help us out. TW: So what is the Hollywood high concept one-line description of Moon? DJ: I’m not sure. I’m not really good at that kind of pitch.

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Cover painting to Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (published in 2007, Penguin Books) Despite the fact that he wasn’t suited to working in illustration, Hale did work on a regular basis for Playboy, an arrangement that suited him, he admits. “I kept going with Playboy for a while just because by then I didn’t even have to give them a sketch and they were nice to deal with. It was really funny because I was working with Tom Staebler, and when I used to nick copies of Playboy when I was 12, there he was on the masthead. His name was in there as the art director, so it was strange and familiar talking to him. But he would send me the manuscript, nicely, respectfully and you would say to him ‘What about this?’ And once he’d okayed it, you’d go through it. There was no fuss, and they weren’t paying me that much, so I didn’t have to worry so much about their feelings.” Working for Playboy was something that he found very useful. “It meant you could do something relatively quickly and be paid for it and then have some freedom. You’d really make your money from selling the original. And I always worked big; they were always three or four feet high. I wanted to learn how to paint; I couldn’t do that in a square foot. But I

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found the illustration tough. If you wanted to make something good, you just couldn’t. You have to stay inside the brief. And it’s not even that that’s always a problem, but even when you’re settling down to consider the possibilities, just having that as a filter stops you from pursuing other possibilities that might be perfectly acceptable to the client.” But he moved from illustration to the world of portraiture, something that he was a much more natural fit for his temperament as an artist, he readily admits to me. “Portraiture is what I’ve done for eight or nine years now. I painted a doctor—a psychiatrist—and he entered it into the National Portrait Gallery annual competition, and it came third, and suddenly the National Portrait Gallery was taking my work and showing it to people, it was close on having them as an agent.” It was being shown at the National Portrait Gallery that helped himreinvent himself as a portrait artist. “I did that one painting and then they asked me to paint the composer Thomas Ades for them, which was a terrific job because he was such a wonderful guy, he gave me a lot of time, which I needed. Then

I did work for Lords Cricket Ground, which led to painting Tony Blair for the House of Commons.” The amazing thing about Hale’s transformation is that he has switched from drawing comic work for Epic Illustrated to painting for Playboy and then being asked to paint someone who was the most powerful person in the country in quite a short space of time. It is a reflection of his talent and tenacity that this has occurred. He didn’t have the luxury of the former British Prime Minister sitting for him but nonetheless he managed to make it work. “There were no sittings. It wasn’t possible. There were two or three photo shoots. It was really quite peculiar because I had limited time by portrait standards, but ridculous access by any other measure.” I asked him if he ever felt that the artifice of photographing people ever got in the way but he seemed to be quite philosophical about how one would deal with that “You have to accept that. You minimise it and in fact with this shoot because I had so little time I had to think quite carefully ahead of it. I had to know what kind of lighting there was going to be, that he was going to be sitting down. I needed to know that I wanted some kind of panel behind him. I didn’t want him floating in space. You try and contain it before you get there. That’s a really unusual one because normally you’d have seven or eight sittings and with that there was just nothing.” The Tony Blair painting is something that he is obviously pleased with as it was designed for a purpose that only a physical portrait could fulfill, as he explained to me. “It’s an anti-illustration, that one in particular. It’s designed to be seen in person, it’s not designed to be reproduced to a postage stamp, and when I see it reproduced it makes me feel slightly odd, gives me a headache. When I see the repro I feel a little flat about it. When I see the original it’s something different, better. 500 people will ever see the painting itself,” he says openly. Hale also found himself as part of a clique of fellow artists, thanks to his exposure at the NPG and in the runup to his work on the Blair portrait. “One of the things that happened off the back of the National Portrait Gallery was . . . there’s a group of 10 significant portrait painters and they’re often not the established ones. not yet. They’re invisible in a funny way. But they are the ones who are emerging, who will eventually become

the doddering old men of portraiture. But they’re all smart and likable and talented, skilled in ways that are shocking and quite radical if you come from illustration,” he reveals sounding very animated. “So they were incredibly helpful, useful, very open as well. I thought they would be competitive and prickly. But they weren’t. I ended up grouped with them and once you’re known and in, the whole scene starts to link up.“ Working on the Blair portrait threw up a lot for the painter. “The key thing with the Blair portrait was that you could not make it exciting. You could not jump it up with an exciting composition or exciting colour or ask him to do something. Because it’s fake, it’s an interference. It’s a fraud if you do that, and dilutes whatever is actually there. You have to paint exactly what’s in front of you. That’s the purest possible form and you’re denied anything except to reproduce what’s there, and anything else would distort and deform and misrepresent it. But in a way because those standards are so clear and you know when you’re stretching them; it’s clarifying, you are forced to deal with the real problems. You don’t get to load it with sugar and salt.” He is now well-regarded as a painter, but when he made the switch from illustration to portraiture, it wasn’t an easy process. Traditional painting did seem to have fallen out of favour, I argue, but he seems confident that the pendulum has swung back towards it in recent years.

Cover painting for Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (published in 2007 , Penguin Books) “It did. It’s back in now for some reason, I don’t know why. Certain elements of craft are coming back in as well. I’m sure it’s cyclical, people are going to tire of it at some point because they’ll be glutted. On a personal level, when I met those portrait painters and saw what they were considering when they painted, what their priorities were, how their approach worked. It was so different from illustration. It worked so well and it gave me a way forward. I had to learn how to paint over again. That was the biggest, most shocking thing and I had to be willing to do lousy paintings for a while, even now, until it became habitual; because you can’t be micro-managing every second of working with the brush, you have to ingrain it as a habit.” Even though he has embraced the portrait work, he has returned on occasion to his roots. In 2007, he was commissioned by Penguin Books in the UK to come up with new cover images to their series of classic Joseph Conrad novels. From his demeanour, it was a job that he really enjoyed. “Samantha Johnson at Penguin had the catalog to a show. She gave me a lot of

leeway—they didn’t even see rough images or anything before I painted. She gave me complete freedom. I did a couple of images that didn’t go in. I did multiple paintings for some covers. I did three paintings for Nostromo and two for Heart of Darkness. I was able to carry over an approach, a development, from one piece to the next.” The Conrad images really gave him something to sink his teeth into. “I did about 10 paintings. I found a fantastic scene in Heart of Darkness which I couldn’t believe hadn’t been done before. This is the scene where Kurtz escapes. He’s been under arrest in a steamer, and he escapes in the middle of the night. And he’s crawling on his hands and knees through the bush to get back to his hut and to the native encampment. It was such a fantastic image and nobody had done it, what a beautiful central image. That was the final cover. I did two versions of it but one was clearly better than the other.” As with any bigger project, there were some that he was less happy with. “The ones that were illustrational, like Secret Agent, worked less well. They were

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