The seemingly endless march of comics to film adaptations continues with Warner Bros announcing they have signed up Jimmy Hayward, who helmed the recent animated flick Horton Hears a Who, to direct a live action movie based on DC’s Western-meets-supernatural series Jonah Hex, which has seen something of a revival in the last few years with both new comics and classic reprint collections. The film is on the fast-track and expected to start production this spring. (via The Hollywood Reporter)

(cover art to Jonah Hex: Luck Runs Out, written by Jimmy Palmiotti, cover artwork by Jordi Bernet, published and (c) DC/Vertigo)

Somehow I missed seeing Round Robin in 2008 - a group of comics artists got together to create a story, adding one frame after another; from the site’s description: “Round Robin” is a game where one person starts a story and then others continue it by adding a piece at a time until the tale is complete. Our version involves seven British comics creators. Between us we will make a comic book, a panel at a time. Our page grid is divided into three tiers… or ‘plates’. Each person adds a tier to the ongoing story, which may be as many panels as they can fit into that plate.”

(a stand-off in Who Killed Round Robin, artwork by and (c) Dave Taylor)

“Nobody knows where the story will go but there is one element that remains fixed: it is a murder mystery. So whatever happens along the way, we know where it has to end. A solution must be found!
Who killed Round Robin?”

I’m surprised I never came across this before - contributors include Colin Fawcett, D’Israeli, Mr Phoenix (could that be Woodrow Phoenix?), Nigel Parkinson, INJ Culbard, Dave Taylor and Craig Conlan. Kenny noticed it and sent me the link and, as he commented to me, the standard is pretty damned professional (both the art and the colouring) considering this is something that the artists are enjoying for a bit of fun (although that said I suppose you could also see it as flying the flag for their talents to both readers and potential future publishers, which is fair enough).

(some panels from D’Israeli)

As you might expect the art style varies considerably given that there are seven different brush-masters creating it (as you can see from just the couple of examples here), but its all rather good-looking stuff. I’ve seen some SF writers collaborating online to create a story while the readers watch it coming together (which is quite interesting to anyone who is fascinated by how a story is created and a good use of the web as a medium where this sort of experiment can be both conducted and read easily), but I haven’t seen comics creators doing something similar until now. Who Killed Round Robin finished on December 31st, so you can now read the entire thing (something I intend to do when I get home) and, even more good news, they have just embarked on a brand new online Round Robin collaboration, Huzzah!, which you can pick up on right now at the beginning.

(the first page of the new round-robin collaboration Huzzah!, art by INJ Culbard)

Toon Books have been going for a few months now and I finally got hold of the set of the first releases. Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing up my thoughts on the whole line. Essentially it’s the latest endeavour from Francoise Mouly, famous for being one of the guiding lights behind RAW and, more recently, the excellent series of Little Lit books designed as graphic novels for all ages by the likes of Gaiman, Burns, Clowes and many more famous names.

However, whilst Little Lit was aimed at an all ages readership, it did demand a certain level of ability. But Toon Books is completely different. It’s entire line is designed for readers aged 4 up. The concept is that simple, and one that is so instantly obvious that you really can’t hink why no-one’s done it before. After all, many of the greatest children’s picture books are comics in all but name. But when Mouly took the pitch and mock-ups round to the publishers all she got was:

“Gee, that’s a wonderful idea. It’s beautifully executed. I wish we could do it but we can’t”

The reluctance was simply down to the fact that there was no existing slot for it, no section in a bookstore to fit it into. Insane? Perhaps. So Mouly decided to go it alone. And the result is the first wave of six beautiful hardbacks, lavish in their design and artwork, yet simple in their words, designed in conjunction with teachers and educators to make it immediately accessible for the initial reader, tapping into that phase of reading where visual literacy far outstrips literacy with words.

“With the Toon Books we were building from (Little Lit’s all ages appeal) … and also narrowing it down to a very specific moment in childhood development where you enter into school, where you enter into literacy. What we set out to do was to share our love of books, of books in general, of the printed object” (Mouly interviewed in Teachers & Writers magazine, Summer 2008)

(Francoise Mouly & her husband Art Spiegelman)

Of course, making the most beautiful kids graphic novels with a simple, controlled vocabulary could have produced just more dull early reader stories. Anyone with children has suffered those at some point. Books sent home from school with an emerging reader that were simple torture to get through as they just failed to engage with the child. Having read all six, and shared them with Molly I can safely say this just isn’t the case with Toon Books. Of course, Molly is 9 and is far above the level that these books are aimed at, but I’m certain that Mouly would get great pleasure from hearing that Molly absolutely adored them as well. After all, what older child doesn’t enjoy re-visiting their own childhood and going down a level or two. At one point Molly wished that these had been around for her and is already planning on giving these review copies to some of the “babies” she knows. All six were quickly read and re-read, with Molly, myself and wife Louise loving the stories, the artwork, the simplicity, the design, the everything really.

Enough with the background, onto the first Toon Book on the pile…..

Jack And The Box

by Art Spiegelman

Toon Books.

The comic fan in me picked this one first to read purely on Spiegelman’s name. And from a sense of curiosity as to whether Spiegelman; a master of the comic form, could adapt his style to such a different and challenging audience as your average 4 year old. Personally, from the view of the grown up I definitely think he does.

Jack receives a little present from his mom and dad, a jack in the box. After initially being frightened of this “silly toy”, Jack starts to play with it and soon realises the fun he can have with his new friend (who he later finds out is called Zack). The initial scaryness of the character is quickly overcome by Spiegelman’s visual emphasis on making Zack just look silly plus the clever repetition of the phrase “silly toy”. Within a few pages Jack ’s reality makes way for fantasy and the adventures of Jack and The Box get wilder and wilder, with the introduction of Mack, who lives in Zack’s hat and his duck Quack, and the lots and lots of little ducks belonging to quack. Chaos ensues in a very Dr Seuss-like way. In fact, with it’s simple set-ups and language, full of plentiful repetition for the young reader to play with, Jack And The Box felt very much like one of the good Dr’s works. And that, of course, is never a bad thing.

Visually, Spiegelman keeps things nice and simple, with rabbits playing the main roles and a page limited to 2 panels at most. But within this simplicity there’s a beauty of design. Reality is a dull, faded blue colour scheme, but as fantasy starts to creep in, the backgrounds start to change, first yellow, then pale purple and finally bright orange when things are at their most chaotic. It’s a simple, yet brilliantly effective touch. A child won’t notice it directly perhaps, but the visual stimulus of the increased vibrancy of the colour will definitely have an effect upon the reader.

Jack And The Box would be a wonderful present to give to any young child. But to a child reluctant to enter the world of reading Jack And The Box, together with all of the other fine Toon Books, may just be the best present you could give.

For more information on Toon Books, see the Toon Books website. And there’s a very nice interview with Mouly over on BookReporter.com where she talks in more detail on the genesis of Toon Books.

Richard Bruton.

A slightly different Best of Year for you to enjoy today; you may recall just before Christmas Eva Baillie from the Glasgow branch of the Goethe Insitut (the organisation for promoting German language and culture) talked to us about one of her favourite German comics creators. Well today two of her colleagues are sharing some of the creators in the German comics scene who have been tickling their fancies, first up is Anne Renner who selected Line Hoven:

Liebe Schaut Weg by Line Hoven (Reprodukt)

This ambitious graphic novel skilfully assembles fragments of the authors’ own family history. In a quiet yet moving way Line Hoven tells us how her American mother and German father came to meet each other and describes the problems and prejudices this transcontinental relationship encountered and how her parents overcame them. The storyline develops around memories and keepsakes, an arrangement of fragments interwoven to form a whole. Along the way Line Hoven explores the complexity of human memory and how this can be expressed in the comics genre. As a result, ‘Liebe schaut weg’ (Love looks away) offers an insight into recent history whilst simultaneously giving an authentic and personal perspective.

The author uses a drawing technique which is unusual for comics due to being rather time-consuming. She scrapes the pictures into prepared board, creating black and white images which resemble woodcuts and allow for great detail and depth. Line Hoven furthermore lets her cleverly assembled pictures speak for themselves, not overloading them with text. As it is a transnational story, the book features both the German and English languages.

(a scene from Leibe Schaut Weg by Line Hoven, published Reprodukt)

Before she discovered her interest in comics, Line Hoven worked as an assistant costume and set designer at the Kassel State Theatre. However, she decided to try out something new and started studying visual communication at the Art School in Kassel. After two years, she switched to the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg to study illustration. Since graduation she has been working as a freelance illustrator and comic artist. ‘Liebe schaut weg’ is her first work to be published as a book. The debut immediately received great critical acclaim, winning the ICOM Independent award for the best independent comic in 2008. You can find further information about and more work of Line Hoven on her website.

And her colleague Gisela Moohan picked out this unusual graphical work by Isabel Kreitz for us:

Die Sache mit Sorge by Isabel Kreitz (Carlsen Verlag)

Isabel Kreitz (born in 1967 in Hamburg) is well established in Germany and the winner of an international comic award; her latest publication is a graphic novel entitled “Die Sache mit Sorge: Stalin’s Spion in Tokio”, (”the Thing About Sorge: Stalin’s Spy in Tokyo”) winner of the Sondermann Comic Award at the Frankfurt Book Fair this year.

The notorious German journalist Dr Richard Sorge spied for Stalin during the Second World War and became a source of enormous scandal and embarrassment in German diplomatic circles (he was subsequently honoured by the USSR and the GDR for his antifascist activity).

Set during the months leading to Sorge’s arrest in 1941, the novel accurately portrays the claustrophobic diplomatic milieu in which he moved and the growing sense of alienation felt by the characters who inhabit that world. Alongside her convincing study of the complex central character, Kreitz offers a disturbing insight into life and politics during the Third Reich.

(a Tokyo street scene from Die Sache mit Sorge by Isabel Kreitz, published Carlsen Verlag)

Her finely detailed charcoal drawings, perfectly suited to her subject, capture the febrile atmosphere of Shanghai and Tokyo at that time – sometimes in almost lyrical episodes in which the pictures alone carry the story and convey the passage of time in the very ordinariness of everyday life. For a closer look at the drawings, see the publisher’s website (where there is also a trailer you can watch) and an interview in German (sorry) with the author.

Its a New Year and Malcy Duff has some new comics work for the delictation and delight of refined gentlefolks with his new comic To Live in a Golden Palace You Must Smear Moths on Your Walls - “Badminton, golf and skating encased in golden dead walls” - available (with hand-painted wallpaper cover) from his Missing Twin website and also Will I ever Travel as Far as a Guitar String When its Played? - “the story of cats and a cat duck who finds a way back into his family” - which can be viewed on the excellent Top Shelf 2.0 online comics site.

(a page from Will I Ever Travel as Far as a Guitar String When It’s Played? by and (c) Malcy Duff, published on the Top Shelf 2.0 site)

Sci-Fi London has posted up a video interview with the excellent science fiction scribe Neal Asher.

Today’s Best of the Year comes from someone relatively new to the world of comics (although not to illustrating stories) but someone who has already carved herself a good name, Sarah McIntyre. Currently working on some children’s books for David Fickling Sarah is also the creator of Vern & Lettuce in the DFC, which, as regular readers of the blog will know, was one of Molly’s favourites from 2008. As an extra treat Sarah’s given us a couple of her own sketches paying tribute to a couple of her favourite things (not tied up with string though). Let’s see what Sarah was enjoying last year:

(a scene from Vern and Lettuce by Sarah McIntyre, published regularly in the DFC)

FPI: Could you tell us what your favourite three comics/graphic novels and/or books have been this year and why they stood out for you?

Sarah: ‘Three Shadows’ by Cyril Pedrosa nearly made me weep, it was so beautiful: the drawings, the three shadow figures, even the paper’s deckled edges. Pedrosa’s use of shape and line made me painfully nostalgic for so many artists whose work I’ve seen in the past, such as Daumier, Doré, and even Alaskan folk art.

(Sarah’s reaction to Three Shadows)

‘The Arrival’ by Shaun Tan: This book is perfect; subtle and ingeniously crafted. The way Tan turns the reader into an immigrant along with the story’s main character is pure genius, and I love his use of internal symbolism. (Here’s a review I wrote.)

‘How to Heal a Broken Wing’ by Bob Graham. I don’t think the comics world gave this book a huge fanfare when Walker Books published it, but I see it as the quiet way forward for the introduction of European-style Bande-Desinée to English-speaking children. I thought Graham did a sensitive and graceful job of telling the story of a boy rescuing an injured pigeon from a busy city street (Review here.)

FPI: In other art forms was there anything in the world of radio, TV, film or other artistic endeavours that really drew your attention this year?

(Vern and Lettuce go all Monkey in this sketch by Sarah)

Sarah: Three things: the staging at the Royal Opera of ‘Monkey: Journey to the West’; the first screening of Marc Craste and studio aka’s magnificent new animation, ‘Varmints’; the jaw-droppingly energetic European premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s ‘Percussion Concerto’ by the London Philharmonic, conducted by Marin Alsop. I wish I could draw they way they bash their xylophones.

(a Varmints tribute by Sarah)

FPI: On the professional front how did you see the comics world in 2008, from your own point of view as a creator putting your work out there (did you feel it was a good year for you?) and what did you think of the way the comics biz was in general this year? The business becoming more diversified, more accessible to new readers and creators or less welcoming?

Sarah: The launch of the DFC made this a hugely thrilling year in comics for me. David Fickling took a real risk commissioning my strip, ‘Vern and Lettuce’, since almost all my past experience was in picture books, not comics. So much in comics is new to me that I’m making new discoveries every day, which means I’m hugely optimistic about comics in general. And I can see marvellous work brewing by other upcoming artists whenever I check my LiveJournal friends page (see here for Sarah’s own LJ blog). I hope more publishers more follow the lead of David Fickling and Walker Books and make comics to appeal to children, in all sorts of genres. Get ‘em young, I say.

FPI: What’s the next project you are working on that we can look forward to?

Sarah: Look out for more episodes in the DFC of ‘Vern and Lettuce’! And I’m coming out with two picture books, one with David Fickling called ‘Morris the Mankiest Monster’, written by Giles Andreae, and another which I have to keep secret!

FPI: Lastly, are there any new names you’ve come across recently you’d like to pass on as one to watch for?

Sarah: Yes, so many! I’ll choose Ellen Lindner, the person who shepherded me toward comics as a medium, who’s recently come out with ‘Little Rock Nine’ with Aladdin Paperbacks.

And David O’Connell, who took me on the most exciting-ever comics jam this year, and creates a comic called Tozo.

And have a browse of the DFC’s creators page; you’ll find a whole host of new talent there!

Gianluca Costantini and other cartoonists in Italy and elsewhere are reacting to the upsurge in violence in Gaza which escalated over the Christmas and New Year period (New Year, same horrible old story - one group attacks an other, that group hits back harder and in-between as usual on both sides innocent civilians suffer while politicians and militias posture) and has also been posting on the subject on Channel Draw:

“Twenty years ago we created Kufia, Italian pencils for Palestine, with the help of many artists and associations supporting the Intifada. An exhibition of the artists’ original drawings toured more than 70 towns in Italy, Israel and Palestine, including Jerusalem. Prints of the portfolio were sold to raise funds to support Palestinian’s rights over their land and their right to return to their land.

Today, we wish to re-launch the Kufia campaign and possibly to widen it. Together with il manifesto, Alfabeto Urbano, Mano magazine, and other political organisations and press companies, we are now working on a new edition of the portfolio and exhibition. It will host major Italian comics artists and, hopefully, Israeli and Palestinian artists (as in the past edition). Although we know that humanitarian support and alternative information - offered by important associations such as Emergency, Un ponte per, Action for Peace, Peace Brigades International, Indymedia and others - is absolutely fundamental to many areas in the world, we still think that more can be done in the field of communication, culture, and art for the sake of Palestine. We want to bring together different experiences, all stemming from Palestine’s emergency call, and develop new theoretical and practical strategies. In the following days more information on Kufia will be found in the newspaper il manifesto, including the different steps of our project and other coming publications.”

Just a couple of days before Christmas we posted up Pádraig’s interview with the one and only Neil Gaiman as an early Yuletide treat, but for those of you who may have already hit the road home for the holidays when it went up we’re re-posting it again today for your delictation and delight:

Here’s a very special early Christmas present for our readers: Pádraig Ó Méalóid (who is rapidly becoming our Roving Interviewer At Large, following his excellent chats with Todd Klein and Alan Moore) met one of my very favourite writers Neil Gaiman during Neil’s recent busy tour (does Neil do any other kind of tour?) for his new Graveyard Book. While poor Neil had to try and combine actually getting to eat some lunch with an interview Pádraig talked to him about his career, Miracleman, the importance of his blog, conventions, Doctor Who, Stardust, Neverwhere and whether one should have Wasabi or mushy peas with chips. Over to Pádraig and Neil:

This interview took place in the Clarence Hotel in Dublin City at lunchtime on Thursday the 30th of October 2008. This was literally Neil’s lunch, and I got to ask him questions while he had a spare half hour between other engagements. Neil looked very tired, no doubt due in large part to his partying until the wee small hours the previous night in Manchester with Leah Moore and John Reppion, amongst others. I was suffering from a very heavy cold, so between us there are bits of the interview that, even after repeated listening, I’m still not sure what we were trying to say. Still, here it is, in all its glory…:

Neil Gaiman [entering the room]: Leah and John send their love. They told me that Mel [Melinda Gebbie] is coming to stay with you.

Pádraig Ó Méalóid: Mel is coming over for a week. She’s coming over next Monday, and she’s doing a talk, so I get to do the interview with her as well.

[Gestures to recording device on table] I mean, I’ve already got Alan [Moore] and I’ve got you on this, and my friend Catie [CE] Murphy – I was going to mention her later, she’s doing a comic, she’s done a lot of fantasy writing, fantasy novels, and now she has a comic coming out from the Dabel Brothers soon called Take a Chance.

NG: Did I get given a comic by her?

PÓM: I don’t think you did.

NG: I’m trying to think if I… It may have been your friend in Kinsale?

PÓM: Kate, Kate Sheehy. I’m meeting Kate in about an hour, off the train, so… She was kinda cursing herself ‘cause she was going to be here as my lovely assistant, or something like that, you know. I presume your day is entirely filled from here right to the end, so there’s no fear of squeezing in a cup of tea with myself and Kate at any stage?

NG: No, Cormac [from Repforce Ireland, who was looking after Neil’s diary for the day] has built this thing – you are my lunch…

PÓM: Yeah, I know, I feel bad about that.

NG: That’s alright, I can talk to you while eating chips.

PÓM: Yeah, that’s cool.

Anyway, I’m now officially going to start.

NG: OK, start your official interview! And this is for the FPI blog, the one that I’ve linked to in the past?

PÓM: Yes, for Joe Gordon’s thing, and Joe says thank you very much. The Todd Klein interview I did that you put a link to, I sent a mail to the two of them saying, “We got Gaimaned!”

NG: I think they can normally tell when they’ve got Gaimaned.

POM: Yeah, ‘cause it goes Boink! Todd said he noticed an immediate spike in the sales, the orders for the prints.

NG: Todd is so nice. Every time I mention it he gets…

PÓM: Yes, I imagine so.

(Before You Read This, a signed print of a free-form verse by Neil Gaiman (partially obscured to preserve a surprise until you see the actual print) and lettered and designed by Todd Klein, available from Todd’s site)

NG: It’s the strange thing about a blog, though. You kind of imagine that you’re writing to an audience of people who are reading you day by day, and the truth is that you’re not. You’re writing for an audience of people who are coming in and going out, and some of them are reading you day by day, but some of them are going to catch up every Friday, on what you’ve done the previous week, and one of the things that I’ve noticed is, if I mention something I should probably, if it’s something important that I want to mention, and I want people to know about, I will try and remember to mention it three times over a period of about three weeks, because at that point I can catch a lot of people…

PÓM: I used to just drop in and out myself, and then somebody would say, “There’s this on Neil’s blog…”

NG: And they you get caught up for a few weeks, and then you drift out because it’s the way that it goes.

PÓM: Well eventually what I did was I just put it in as a LiveJournal feed, which is what I should have done all along. It’s much easier, ‘cause I don’t have to do it, LiveJournal does it for me, and it’s the one thing I religiously look at every day. I don’t necessarily read everything…

NG: I had to explain to the people at HarperCollins that we used to have one point four million unique visitors a month to the blog, and then over the last few years that’s dropped to about four hundred thousand, and they were going, “We’ve lost a million readers,” and I said, “No, no, no, we really haven’t. Here’s LiveJournal, where you now have seventeen thousand, you know, there’s seventeen thousand nine hundred on LiveJournal subscribed to it. You’ve got this RSS fed here, you’ve got this RSS feed there, and they’re showing up as one hit, but then they’re feeding it to another fifty thousand people here, and a hundred thousand people there.”

PÓM: So you really have to go and search all the bits and pieces to see where it’s all going?

NG: You kind of do, and then you don’t worry, you try not to think about it!

PÓM: Well, somebody somewhere presumably gets to do it. Actually, this is something I was going to ask you about later on. You are very successful, you get a lot of hits on your blog, people tend to know what you’re doing, and what you’re on about, and I think you said something about when you were at Eastercon, that you felt you were…

NG: [As his lunch arrives] Thank you.

PÓM: That is the poshest fish and chips I’ve ever seen!

NG: It’s like a work of art.

PÓM: Isn’t it?

NG: [Pointing to a container with a green substance in it] You’re going, “That could be mushy peas, it could be Wasabi, it could be… How will we ever know?”

PÓM: [Carrying on with the question] I think you said you felt that there was a really nice, a really great con going on in the next room that you couldn’t go to, or something like that. You weren’t being let loose in the wild, kinda.

NG: Well, there’s definitely… I think, I mean the con in the next room, I think I was talking more about the fact that, honestly, more about the con experience than anything else. It’s the point where you look around and you realise you are Jumbo the Mighty Elephant that everybody’s coming to the zoo to see, and everyone’s getting a wonderful day out at the zoo but you.

And as a zoo attraction, it’s not a bad thing, it’s just a thing. I miss… I miss conventions, I really do. I would love to be able to go to a convention and people say, when I say that, people say, “Why don’t you come to our convention? It’s a lovely little convention, and there’s only a hundred people there,” and stuff like that, and I used to believe that. Every time people used to say, “Come to our convention. We’ve never had more than a hundred people there, and it’s lovely, and it’s just like little conventions, and we’ll all treat you like family,” and I’d say, “Great.” And I would come to them, and then nine hundred people would show up, and they’d be going, “We’ve never had this many people here before,” and I’d start feeling like a bowling ball on a rubber sheet.

PÓM: I know exactly what you mean, yeah. It’s the black hole thing.

NG: Yeah.

PÓM: It just completely distorts the space-time continuum of the con. At the beginning of this month we were at NewCon in Northampton, and because we were there, and because of one or two other things, Alan Moore and Melinda [Gebbie] came along, and they made an appearance here and there, which I think had people’s necks craning all weekend, but everyone was very nice, and actually didn’t go near him at all, but obviously he could not have set foot near the place if anyone knew he was going to be there, and even at that I think he was quite nervous.

NG: You would have had thousands of people, just coming in.

PÓM: I got to introduce him to Paul Cornell. I was very pleased to introduce the two Captain Britain writers…

It’s unusual in a way for a writer to be the victim of their own success, because they’re generally invisible. You’re not. I mean, you do a lot of touring, you’re doing a big tour for this, you’re going to spend the day doing interviews…

NG: True, but only up to a point, because if you talk to Cormac about how many authors he has come through who tour, he will tell you how many authors he’s had in this month, and it’s not like authors don’t tour, it’s that authors don’t - you know, I was in Manchester last night, and they sell out a six hundred and fifty seat university hall, there’s this giant monstrous signing afterwards, it’s all bizarre, and at some point the head of the programme who was there comes down completely baffled, he says, “We didn’t get a turnout like this for Martin Amis,” and it’s not that Martin Amis doesn’t tour and doesn’t do the media…

PÓM: I suppose it’s that we’re all aware that you’re touring, where we’re not always aware of others. Sometimes someone says, “Did you know such-and-such was in town signing last week?” and no, I didn’t, obviously because we’re not all reading their blog or wherever it’s being mentioned.

NG: That’s why I love the blog, though, because I’m not the victim – if victim is the right word – of whether or not a shop knows how to promote my appearance any more. I’m not, I don’t actually have to worry as much as other authors do about whether a publisher is taking out the advertising and promoting the book.

PÓM: You’re kinda looking after that one yourself.

NG: I’m certainly… I have an amount of control over my destiny from the blog.

PÓM: I see exactly what you’re saying.

NG: Last night I wound up being the first author at Manchester University ever to have a backing band, well, a support band, and, for the end of my signing, they’d more or less been vamping it for as long as they were allowed to, and I went down and made a guest appearance at the Jonathan Coulton gig.

PÓM: With a tambourine, I believe?

NG: With a tambourine. I did the second verse of Creepy Doll…

PÓM: Which is what? It’s a song they do?

NG: It’s a Jonathan Coulton song. It’s lovely, it’s like a little horror… it’s a Stephen King story about somebody with a creepy doll that always follows you. You buy an old house and it’s haunted by this thing and you throw it on the fire and it’s back the next morning. So… And of course you know that because you’ve read the blog already.

And in the evening I was talking to Jonathan after this was all over, and we were talking about the fact that… Jonathan was saying “If I was a medium successful person, when my contract with the record label is up in music, I cannot understand any reason why anybody would ever sign another contract. Why give that percentage of control and that percentage of your income to a record company who needed to exist as a gateway, but why if you don’t need a gateway?” There is no reason to have an intermediary between you and your readers, or you and your listeners. And while I like not being bothered with so many details, and letting people do their jobs, there are places where I feel like I’m now a safety net. Would The Graveyard Book have spent two weeks at number one on the children’s list if I had been, when it came out? Probably not, not with the blog, because everybody who wanted it knew that it was coming out.

PÓM: And another thing I noticed on the blog is that you were getting an awful lot of feedback from people about its availability, its unavailability, and you seemed to be able to chase that up in real time, as it was happening.

NG: As it was happening.

PÓM: There are some misunderstandings that I see that people at Borders are having, but I suppose that’s par for the course.

NG: The trouble with the internet is people don’t read the actual thing, they read what they think they’ve been told.

PÓM: I’m going to run along, because I see we’re already fifteen minutes in and I’ve a couple of things…

NG: Go for it.

PÓM: How was China? What were you doing in China?

NG: Researching a book. I decided it was time to, I really decided it was time to step outside my comfort zone, and it’s been twenty years since I did a non-fiction book, and the last non-fiction book I did was, um…

PÓM: Was that Ghastly Beyond Belief?

NG: Don’t Panic, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book.

Then I thought, I want to do a non-fiction book, so I’m doing a non-fiction book about me going to China, and about Monkey, and about Buddhism, and about seventh century history and sixteenth century literature, and just, mostly it was that thing where nobody is waiting for it, and nobody particularly wants a book by me about China, and it seemed like a really good reason to write one.

(the cover artwork to Batman #686, written by Neil Gaiman, art by Andy Kubert, (c) DC Comics, published February 2009)

PÓM: Mind you I see that you are – having started off as far as I can see as a comics’ writer and then becoming a novelist you’ve kind of gone back to being a comics’ writer. You’re doing a Batman story for DC, and are you meant to be writing the prequel, the Sandman prequel story? I know you said something about doing that before.

NG: I don’t know if that will ever happen. Maybe. It’s weird, because I talk to people who will tell me with a straight face that I stopped writing comics in 1996, and I say, “OK, let’s go to this century. Since 2001, I’d written two adult novels, or had published, two adult novels - Anansi Boys and American Gods; two children’s novels – Coraline and The Graveyard Book; two major children’s picture books…”

PÓM: That’d be, what? Wolves in the Walls and…

NG: Wolves in the Walls and…

PÓM: The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish?

NG: No, actually that was 1998, so, let’s say the MirrorMask book. I’ve done two and a half movies – Beowulf and MirrorMask, and Stardust is my half. And I’ve done three graphic novel-length works – The Eternals, 1602, and Sandman: Endless Nights.

PÓM: That’s a fair body of work just for the past eight years, mind you.

NG: But it doesn’t seem to me that it’s substantially weighted against comics. In terms of page-count that’s three books, each of which was more or less novel length, and about the same the same amount of work it would have taken me to write a novel, and, you know, hearing people describe my career to me as if it was one of those weird little charts where you start off coming out of the ocean and then you become a monkey, and then, you know…

PÓM: I think people can only see you as what they see as the primary part of your output. You were a comics’ writer and maybe other things, and now you’re a novelist and maybe other things, and possibly that’s it, you know.

I was going to ask you, what did you make of Stardust the movie?

NG: I enjoyed it. It wasn’t the film that I would have made if I’d set out to make a Stardust movie, but I thought it was a lovely Stardust movie. I could quite happily watch a completely different Stardust movie, if that makes sense. It was very much a “this is a lovely Stardust movie.” I guess I felt about it, it’s weird, because I suppose – with Coraline in May, over here, you’ll get the Henry Sellick Coraline movie which, from what I’ve seen of it so far, I’ve very much enjoyed. In May on Broadway you’ll see the first performances of the Stephin Merritt Coraline which in terms of plot hews, as far as I can tell, exactly to the book, but he’s doing some weird and wonderful things, including casting a fifty year old lady as Coraline, and casting a man as the other mother, and stuff, and I don’t see either of those as being, “This is now Coraline legitimised, this is what this is,” I see them both as versions, with every bit as much legitimacy as the Irish Puppet Theatre version.

PÓM: I know you weren’t happy with Neverwhere, the TV series…?

NG: I wasn’t.

PÓM: Are they remaking Neverwhere?

NG: There’s a film that’s meant to be made. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, I remade Neverwhere when I wrote the novel. The whole point of the novel was, “No, this is what I meant.”

PÓM: Certainly the novel was far more satisfactory. The TV series wasn’t bad, but it was of its time…

NG: It wasn’t just of its time. Honestly, they could have, its time, it was of its time in the world in which it was up against X-Files. It was of its time in a world in which I am saying, “We need to be forty five minutes long, it need to be shot on film or it’ll look like crap,” and they’re going [adopts posh BBC accent], “my dear boy, we’re the BBC, we’ve been doing things like this for years. It’s like Doctor Who, and that’d twenty eight minutes long and shot on video. That’s what people love. And by the way, in order to accommodate that we’ve thrown out half your script…” You know it was, I wasn’t happy with it, I felt like it had the wrong director, and it was, it needed somebody who was going to say, “It need to be forty five minutes long…” I loved the fact that when Doctor Who came back it was forty five minutes long and shot on film, or looked like it.

PÓM: Are you… there are persistent rumours that you are going to write a Doctor Who story?

NG: There definitely are.

PÓM: And is there any truth to those?

NG: Well, there’s truth in the fact that there are rumours.

PÓM: Well, that would be a good thing. You know that David Tennant has just announced he’s stepping down at the end of next year?

NG: So I heard. I actually, I was rather sad, ‘cause I’d emailed, we were trying to figure out who was going to host my Halloween event for tomorrow, and about a week ago I had this brilliant idea, and I emailed Paterson Joseph and said, “Why don’t you host my event, ‘cause that will drive people mad, ‘cause there’s Doctor Who rumours about you and there’s Doctor Who rumours about me, and if you host the event, nobody in the world, and then, we don’t have to mention anything, but nobody in the world will think, they will feel there has to be something…” and I got a think back from Pat saying he would love to but he’s actually right now in Africa filming for the BBC on something.

I mean, he is thrilled by the Doctor Who rumours, but I think mostly thrilled because it’s suddenly taken him from an actor who nobody really quite knew who he was, you’d have to say, “Well, he was the guy in the Numberwang sketch, or he was the guy from Peepshow, or he was…” to people going, “Yes, Paterson Joseph, he could be the next Doctor Who,” and so it’s done amazing things for him.

PÓM: Doctor Who does seem to turn people into just enormous superstars.

I have to ask you the obligatory Miracleman question. At what stage is Miracleman at?

NG: Currently Todd McFarlane is suing me, claiming he owns all of Miracleman, and I am going, “You are mad, because as far as I can tell right now, neither of us owns anything of Miracleman, it is actually still owned completely by Mick Anglo, who is still alive, and who has asserted his copyright on it, and everything that Dez Skinn said back in Warrior days was apparently a lie, and this thing is Mick’s, so I don’t really see why, why are you suing me now, Todd?”

(Miracleman #23: Silver Age by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham, published Eclipse and (c)… Well, just have a look at what Neil says!)

PÓM: I can’t help thinking that Todd should just do the right thing and say, throw his hands up and say, no matter what happens, he will never come out the good guy on this one, and just walk away.

NG: Yes. I don’t know why, it’s like, it’s all mad.

PÓM: The thing is, I think I’m doing a panel at Eastercon next year called Who Owns Miracleman? which is obviously what all this stuff is [pointing to a file folder on the table marked Miracleman] and I’m going to write an accompanying article that I’ve been promising to write for at least five years, and every time I look into it, it gets a little more complex.

NG: Well…

PÓM: It’s very complex unless you go all the way back and say, “Mick Anglo owned it, and kept the rights to it.”

NG: Yeah, and what was interesting is, there was a trail of lies spread chiefly, as far as I can tell – whether intentionally or unintentionally – by Dez Skinn.

PÓM: Thank you for that, for saying, “intentionally or unintentionally”!

NG: No, I think Dez made some assumptions about the law, I think there were thing that he definitely told people at the time, and that history has proved to be untrue. The biggest one was simply that he’d obtained, you know, there was a version of events in which he had obtained the rights from the official receiver. Then we discovered that Miller & Son was never, it never went bankrupt, it had simply been would up.

PÓM: The L. Miller properties had been sold to Alan Class, as far as I know, was one of the things I had heard said.

NG: No. There are many things that people have said. No, from everything that I can tell, it simply went into voluntary liquidation. It was wound up, and Mick owned Miracleman slash Marvelman before, during, and after. He held the copyrights on it. L. Miller and Son never made any claims to owning it or to having sold it.

PÓM: OK. I was always wondering that, even given that Mick Anglo created Marvelman, Marvelman was obviously, and was meant to be, almost an exact copy of Captain Marvel, who was of course a copy of Superman…

NG: Ah, now there it gets, you know, the trouble is, you have this weird magic world in which it is a can of infinite worms, and every time you reach further in there are more worms come out.

PÓM: Undoubtedly, yeah. Anyway, I’d better move on, or we’ll never get any further.

I have to say, I loved the dragon in, was it in Anansi Boys that there was a dragon who speaks just like Leslie Phillips?

NG: He does! Thank you for noticing.

PÓM: I just loved that, and I felt that he should have a book all to himself because that was absolutely super.

NG: [Laughs]

PÓM: And there’s a big man looming over us…

NG: [To Cormac, who is running his diary for the day] You need me? I haven’t even finished my tea, and you need me. What’s next?

Cormac: The filming.

NG: OK

PÓM: Two things: one question, and a photograph.

NG: And something to scribble on, or…

PÓM: I have a few things to scribble on, if that’s OK.

[Pádraig produces a camera and two books for Neil to sign, which Neil then signs, while Cormac takes photographs of the two of them.]

(Neil signing some books for Pádraig; Neil being Neil I suspect he’s having a look at the book and what edition it is. Pic borrowed from Pádraig’s Flickr stream)

Why red balloons? Red balloons come up in your stories all the time.

NG: Well, I was probably bitten by…

PÓM: A radioactive red balloon in your youth?

NG: No! I was going to say PL Travers, in my youth, that amazing story in Mary Poppins where everybody floats in the park on balloons. It’s definitely iconic, in its way, and that would be, if I had to point at anything, that would probably be where the balloons come from.

PÓM: Thank you very much, that’s great. And your public awaits.

NG: They do.

PÓM: Is there any possibility, in the next umpteen years, that we could do a long email interview, or is that just taking too much of your time?

NG: I was saying earlier, every interview seems to end with somebody saying, “Can I send you a few more questions in email?” Several times they started sending me things that are basically new interviews in email, and I hate doing email interviews, only because there’s this point where I’ve sat there and typed for two hours, producing replies, and I think, at least if I was being interviewed, I’d be having a conversation.

PÓM: OK. Let me turn this thing off…

I turned off the recorder, and Neil was led away to his next appointment, cup of tea still unfinished. Exactly thirty minutes and thirty six seconds was what I got, from beginning to end, and I couldn’t help feeling that I could easily have spoken to him for another thirty minutes. He did promise we’d get to do something the next time he was in Dublin, hopefully a longer interview, which I look forward to. Looking at my list of question topics, I saw I hadn’t got to talk to him about the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund, which I know is close to his heart, and which I’d meant to get to, partly because we’d touched on it before the interview proper started, in relation to CE Murphy’s Take a Chance, the first issue’s profits of which are going to the CBLDF, and which he’d seen preview pages of.

I did get to ask Neil one more question that day, however. After his reading at Eason’s bookshop in Dublin he asked for questions, and I stuck my hand in the air and asked, “What’s next?” He told us about Blueberry Girl, a poem he wrote for Tori Amos’s daughter Tash in 2000, which is being drawn by Charles Vess, and which is due out in March 2009, and he held forth at great and comic length about the China book, which is due out god known when. I’ve always felt that Neil would have a good chance at an alternate career as a stand-up comedian. He’s certainly got the comic timing.

FPI would like to thank Neil Gaiman very much for sacrificing his lunch break and risking indigestion to take part in this interview and thanks to Pádraig for conducting it and writing it all up for us to share with you. The Graveyard Book is out now from Bloomsbury and the fourth and final (and rather beautiful looking) volume of the Absolute Sandman has also been published recently; you can keep up with Neil, his writing, appearances and occasional semi-demonic Salsa making by visiting his very fine online journal.

For some reason the following went totally below my radar, and therefore, my apologies:

Last year we already reported on BD Comic Strip 2009, the year-round comics festival in that’s being organised in Brussels.  The kickoff to that festival was taken on December 12th, 2008, when a gigantic mural (below) by cartoonist and educator Johan De Moor was presented to the press and the public at large.

The mural is situated at the Place Horta, near the Gare du Midi, which probably best known among Britons as the Brussels EuroStar station. It comes a no surprise, then, that the EuroStar itself is featured quite prominently on the mural, along with a real cornucopia of classical Franco-Belgian comic characters.  The focus is on characters that were or are published by the Editions Lombard (the mural takes up one side of the block that also used to house that famous publishing house, along with the editorial offices of Tintin Magazine, which in turn now is the address of the Fondation Leblanc - indeed, it all connects).

De Moor’s qualities as a chameleon artist really shine in this piece, since he manages to more or less mimic the original style of characters such as Jonathan, Olivier Rameau, Chick Bill, Benoit Brisefer, Michel Vaillant, the Schtroumpfs, Ric Hochet, Thorgal, Odilon Verjus, Cubitus, Vasco, Yakari, Niklos Koda, Bob Morane, Modeste et Pompon, Victor Sackville, Pirlouit, Clifton, Luc Orient, Rubine, Bruce J. Hawker,Litteul Kevin, La Vache (which is a creation by De Moor himself), Kinky et Cosy, Spaghetti, Buddy Longway, Chlorophylle, Dan Cooper, Red Dust, Corentin and Robin Dubois.

BD & Fresques Murales, a blog focusing on initiatives like these, has published a quite detailed pictorial on this new addition to the Brussels Comic Route, as well as a report on the opening ceremony.

Just a couple of short hours since the announcement and PJ Holden (he of Judge Dredd, the ‘86ers, DeadSignal and more - portfolio on his blog here) already has the first Matt Smith illo up online:

So that’s it then. The new 11th Doctor Who is Matt Smith.

All of the speculation, all of the hype. It’s now been replaced by cries of Who? Who is Who?

So congratulations to Steven Moffat for keeping it so quiet and spinning the speculation away from Matt Smith. Everyone was wrong. Rich Johnston called it for Matt Smith earlier today via twitter. But it does mean that his daughter doesn’t get new shoes for a while because Rich put a bet on Paterson Joseph.

Matt Smith is the youngest Doctor yet at 26 and his C.V. is hardly substantial, with his biggest part so far being Party Animals and The Ruby In The Smoke (with that strange Docotr Who synchronicity of sharing the screen with Billie Piper). And there’s this interview with Smith in the London Theatre Guide. And a piece on thisislondon.co.uk with an article entitled “That Face To Watch”. Oh how right that proved to me.

But I imagine the Internet will be awash with information about him in the next few months. The backlash will probably start with cries of “he’s too young” but this happens every single time the Doctor regenerates. The only way we’ll know for sure is when the 11th Doctor takes his place sometime in 2010. (Unless some of the wilder rumours about Tennant stepping down earlier than planned due to the back problem are true.)

Beanworld Holiday Special

by Larry Marder

Dark Horse Comics

I’ve been a huge fan of Larry Marder’s Tales of the Beanworld since first picking up an issue back in the mid 80s. When the series stalled in the early 90s after Marder took up a position at first Image Comics and later Todd McFarlane’s toy emporium I began to despair that I’d never see another original Beanworld comic. But I should have had more faith in Marder. Because, some 14 years after the last issue came out, he’s finally back in the Beanworld with this Holiday Special from Dark Horse. And if you’re expecting any kind of un-biased viewpoint here, you’re going to be disappointed.

Beanworld has always been about more than just a quirky tale of strange little bean characters. It’s billing on the front cover as “a most peculiar comic book experience” really doesn’t do justice to the complexities of Marder’s story. Whenever I tried to introduce it to customers and friends there were two reactions after reading it; complete bemusement or complete adoration.

For Beanworld is not a simple thing. Just have a look at the map below to get an idea. It looks so simple, mapped out like that:

But Marder has created a complex reality within this simple framework, with a complete ecosystem. Every element, every character of the reality has an important role to play in Beanworld life. It’s a beautiful and complex allegory of the wonder of nature. Similarly his characters are all incredibly simple, highly iconic things. This means that the Holiday Beanworld doesn’t seem to feature characters over 20 years old, they look very fresh and modern.

So with the return of Beanworld Marder is obviously faced with the difficult decision of how to simply and effectively reintroduce his wonderful beans without completely bogging down the comic with backstory. Does Marder manage it? Of course he does.

The holiday special tells a tale of the Pod’l'pool Cuties (baby beans) and their reluctance to talk to each other. No big deal? Not in Beanworld. If the Cuties don’t talk to each other, how are they going to communicate when they grow up to be Chow Raiders? After all, once Gran’Ma’Pa offers it’s daily gift of the sprout-butt, skillfully caught by Mr Spook it needs a lot of communication to find just the right Hoi-Polloi Ring in the Ring Herd and get it back into the Chow pool for the Beans to grow.

And that last paragraph should give you a little idea of exactly how wonderfully complicated Beanworld is. And how delightful. But the way this Holiday Special is constructed walks a perfect line between enough background to make it understandable and enough mystery to hopefully have you as intrigued and adoring as I remember being after my first Beanworld experience. The Big*Big*Picture is something none of us readers have just yet, we’re waiting for at least some of the mysteries to be revealed in the new Beanworld graphic novel “Remember Here When You Are There!” appearing later in 2009. In the meantime we have this Holiday Special, neatly and cleverly bringing in all of the Beans and the wonderful, unique vision of the Beanworld.

After this, your next stop should be to pick up the first of two hardback collections of all the previously published Beanworld stories, coming from Dark Horse in Feb 2009 (Beanworld Book 1: Wahoolazuma).

Larry Marder’s Tales Of The Beanworld. There’s nothing like it in comics. There’s never been anything like it in comics. It’s unique, magical, wonderful.

Pick it up, but like it says on the back page ad: “Research indicates that thinking about Beanworld can be habit-forming”.

And it’s a marvellous habit to have.

For more Beanworld information head to the following websites:
Larry Marder’s weblog: Larry Marder’s Beanworld.
And three excellent fan created resource sites: Beanworld Wiki, Beanweb, Gunk’l'dunk.

Richard Bruton.

Via Boing Boing comes a link to this Flickr group where the members post their photographs of real world re-enactments of Gary Larson’s brilliant Far Side cartoons:

(Flickr user Evaxbera’s chicken and the eggs dilemma Far Side re-enactment)

Ah, for that you’ll have to wait until Saturday 3rd January at 5:35pm when it’s going to be announced as part of the Doctor Who Confidential on BBC1. (BBC News story)
But tomorrow may finally prove that you should always back Rich Johnston’s predictions early at the bookies. He made his prediction for Patterson Joseph on October 13th:

“My last couple of Doctor Who leaks were fairly solid — Neil Gaiman to write 2010 “Doctor Who” and Tom Baker returning to the series proper in an unnamed role. Both have been bubbling under ever since. The next one is not so tied down. It’s still rather up in the air. But it’s quite a possibility.

The sixth series of “Doctor Who” (2011) will star Patterson Joseph as The Doctor.

Previously playing Roderick in the “Doctor Who” episodes “Bad Wolf”/”Parting Of Ways,” Joseph is known for fine upstanding and terribly-well-spoken-dontcha-know roles as Johnson in “Peep Show,” the Marquis De Carabas in “Neverwhere,” Space Marshall Clarke in “Hyperdrive,” Lyndon in “Green Wing”……and more importantly Benjamin in “Jekyll.” Written and produced by upcoming “Doctor” Who showrunner, Steven Moffat.”

I imagine the odds would have been fantastic then, as opposed to todays 10-11 (bet £10 to win = £9 profit). I’ll kick myself and promise to always listen early if Patterson Joseph is finally confirmed tomorrow. Update (thanks Rich via Twitter): The odds were 14-1 back in October.

And of course, there are equally strong predictions that it will be someone else: Craig McGill has Sean Pertwee and Chiwetel Ejiofor neck and neck. But he’s also put up a very nicely thought out post on why the announcement is so early and why that means it’s probably going to be either Paterson Joseph or Chiwetel Ejiofor.
But we’ll know soon enough. We know where we’ll be Saturday 3rd January at 5:35.