This is the imposing 19th century facade of Surgeon’s Hall in Edinburgh’s Southside; last night’s talk by Alan Grant as part of the highly respected Edinburgh Lectures series actually took place in Quincentenary Hall, a modern, custom-designed event space inside the grounds, but I thought this picture was nicer (and my attempt at a quick pic of the exterior of Quincentenary Hall didn’t come out as well, ahem). For fans of the more macabre aspects of history the medical museum within this complex still holds the skeleton of William Burke, one half of the infamous bodysnatchers Burke and Hare (if you want to be even more ghoulish, a notebook bound in his skin is still on display in the Police Museum on the nearby Royal Mile; we’re terribly cultural in Edinburgh, you know).
The lecture, “Writing Tomorrow Yesterday: How Fiction Became Reality”, held under the auspices of the Scottish Arts Council, Edinburgh University and a number of other organisations, was extremely well attended. And it wasn’t just we comics geeks who made up the audience – the range was quite impressive, from children through to senior citizens, male and female, which was pretty heartening to see (on a personal note I was also pleased that a number of folks from the Edinburgh SF book group were there too). Alan was in conversation with bestselling crime novelist and Hellblazer writer Denise Mina, who he previously appeared with (along with Ian Rankin) at last summer’s Book Festival (the audio recording of that event can be heard here) and Denise tried to follow a roughly chronological line of questioning, going right back to Alan’s childhood, being taught to read and write by his grandmother before going to school, where the teachers mercilessly beat him for using his left hand, forcing him to write with his right, sadly not an uncommon practise in days gone past, an early occurrence in Alan’s life which he considers one of the sources for his strong dislike of authority figures, a theme which has run throughout much of his comics oeuvre over the decades.
(Alan Grant and Denise Mina at the Edinburgh Lectures in Surgeon’s Hall)
Naturally it wasn’t long before comics made their way into the discussion, with Alan recalling how he and his siblings were devouring every comic bought for them, from Hotspur to the Beano, then, when finished all the “boy’s comics” were swapped with other family members for the “girl’s comics”. According to Alan this lead him to understand quite early on in life that females were certainly more intelligent than the male of the species, because their comics had far more character development and proper stories compared to the fairly simplistic adventure/war yarns of boy’s comics of the time. Actually this reading of girl’s comics was to stand Alan in good stead years later when applying to work at the famous D.C. Thomson (after being expelled from school) as his early career involved working on a number of romance titles aimed at women. Alan maintains to this day he still has a fondness for the old romantic Doctor and Nurse tale that was a staple of such journals and comics and is always disappointed when he visits anyone in hospital not to detect signs of such sweeping romance in real life healthcare.
Of course 2000 AD, Judge Dredd and his partnership with another British comics legend, John Wagner, loomed fairly large in the conversation (including an anecdote about an early drinking outing with Wagner in Dundee in their D.C. Thomson days which resulted in Alan being lifted by the local constabulary – the glamorous life of the comics writer). As noted on here previously Alan had been re-reading some of his own early work – something he says normal weekly and monthly comics deadlines don’t leave much time for him to do, he rarely re-reads his own work – in preparation for the talk and is still surprised and a little depressed at how much of what he and Wagner wrote ‘as a laugh’, taking then-current social trends and blowing them up to ridiculous proportions (literally in the case of Two Ton Tony Tubbs), has gone from being satirical humour (something 2000 AD and Dredd in particular has always been good at and something I’ve always relished about it) to being rather too close to the bone (the League of Fatties was hilarious in the early 80s, now he reads about childhood obesity epidemics in Britain and America and suddenly the joke’s not as funny anymore; on the other hand maybe it means a business opportunity for an enterprising maker of bellywheels).
The Sly Stallone movie version of Dredd also came up, Alan pointing out that the producers and the star simply didn’t get the fact he and Wagner always poked fun at right-wing authority – in fact he said much of the 80s Dredd was a direct reaction to the excesses of the Thatcher era – seeing him instead as this upright, heroic figure defending the Law. Anyone who enjoys Dredd won’t need to be told that if you miss out the subversion and humour then you are missing about 80% of the whole point of Dredd. Alan did recount how the great Carlos Ezquerra, the artist who first visualised Dredd and Mega City One, wangled a visit to the movie’s set (Alan was in some legal dispute with the makers over royalties and so, sadly, didn’t even get to see the set while it was being shot). Sly wasn’t on the set that day but Carlos spots his Judge costume and asks shyly if he can try it on for a photograph? Of course, they tell Carlos. Now as Alan says Carlos isn’t quite in the same physical build area as Stallone – “he’s as skinny as I am” as Alan put it – but he gets into this large costume anyway. Except the helmet. The costume is obviously far too large for Carlos’ stature. Except the helmet. Which he simply can’t get on. His conclusion was that the actor may have a huge, muscular body but his cranium doesn’t seem to be developed to the same degree. Take from that what you will.
A number of other areas were touched upon, including giving a certain young wannabe comics writer by the name of Alan Moore a shot after he sent in a possible Future Shocks script which Alan had looked at and thought was good but far too wordy, so he returned it saying ‘Tharg’ would be happy to buy this script if he could chop 40% off the wordage, which Moore did and the rest, as they say, is history. On a related note Alan was quite delighted by a comment once made by Moore when he said the best editor he ever worked with at 2000 AD was Alan Grant, because he was the only one who would stand up to him and say a script needed some editing. Actually he still loves Alan’s writing and his success but thinks that a good editorial run-over wouldn’t go amiss from time to time.
(The brilliant Bogie Man by Alan Grant, John Wagner and Robin Smith)
The all-but-forgotten BBC take on his and Wagner’s bloody brilliant Bogie Man also came up. Alan recalled how he and Wagner had watched representatives from DC cherry-picking some of the exciting new comics talent coming out of Britain (and especially 2000 AD, which seemed like a nexus for new talent) at the time, like Moore and Bolland, and with one eye on the chance of royalty checks they thought, why not us as well? The Bogie Man, then set in San Francisco, was pitched to Karen Berger and Vertigo, but they didn’t get the humour and weren’t interested in a comedy tale pitched at adults, so back on the shelf it went until someone noticed Glasgow was to be the European City of Culture in the early 90s and one of them should do a comic set in the city; the Bogie Man was dusted down and the original location changed (for the better, I think) and, as Alan noted with some pride, it went on to become the most successful independently published comic in the UK. Sadly, he added, the BBC and star Robbie Coltrane, then hot from the John Byrne (the Scottish playwright/painter, not the comics artist/writer) penned Tutti Frutti also had a problem with the humour content and tried to play the TV adaptation straight and dramatic, with disastrous consequences; dreams of the Bogie Man becoming a huge hit like Tutti Frutti evaporated…
Still, it wasn’t all bad – returning to the DC theme Alan went on to say how he and Wagner were approached by Denny O’Neill about trying out for the then-ailing Batman series (struggling around the break-even point). O’Neill admired their work on Dredd and wondered if some of that magic might work on one of their oldest superheroes. A two issue try-out was successful, they were onboard and dreaming of those big, American royalties checks they had heard of. Except the comic was in the doldrums and losing money when they were called in, so there weren’t any royalty checks. Wagner left soon after but Alan stuck it out for what is now commonly seen as a brilliant run on Batman; the readership climbed back up and then Tim Burton’s blockbustingly successful movies arrived on the scene and a new Batmania hit. Ka-ching, finally well-received stories and some decent money! “I won’t say how much,” quipped Alan, “but I have a very big house now. The house Batman built.”
(Batman: Anarky, written by Alan Grant, cover art by Norm Breyfogle, (c) DC)
The issue of how comics are perceived in the pantheon of the arts and media was raised, with Alan noting that many other countries – especially in Europe – consider comics as a legitimate, cultural force, a ‘proper’ artform and yet for some reason the US and UK still have a less savoury view of the medium, although things have improved (personally I’d consider Alan being invited to the Edinburgh Lectures series as a sign of how the medium is being taken more seriously by cultural forces in the UK these days). Still, as Alan points out, we shouldn’t be too dismayed when some people don’t take comics too seriously because they are an entertainment – they can have a message, make points about society, but they are also an entertainment and for him that was their first job; as long as they were pleasing the readers that’s the main thing, cultural approval from the Guardians of Refined Taste just isn’t as important.
(Alan chats to a fan while signing books after the lecture)
All in all it was a terrific talk and ran on rather longer than expected by the time the audience had a chance to pitch a few questions of their own. Despite this Alan still happily agreed to stay on to sign some graphic novels for some of the audience who had brought along some titles in the hope that he might (I saw one man with the original Bogie Man mini series under his arm and kicked myself for not bringing my own to get signed). It was a great mix of people attending, from comics fans to rather refined looking folks (some of these people wore ties! Gasp) and it reminded me that, whatever the cultural status of comics, pretty much everyone in Scotland has read D.C. Thomson comics and journals at some point growing up and so someone like Alan is always going to be interesting to a broad cross-section of people, even those who probably don’t consider themselves comics fans. And with Alan teaming up with Cam Kennedy and publisher Ron Grosset for another Robert Louis Stevenson adaptation – this time the superlative psychological horror tale Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde – following last year’s highly visible and successful Kidnapped adaptation, again as part of the Edinburgh City of Literature’s reading campaign, it looks like Alan will be continuing to present our favourite medium in a very good light to a broad audience. Alan will also be the guest of honour at the Hi-Ex convention in Inverness this weekend.
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