If you recall last week I was really impressed with Rian Hughes’ delightfully ghoulish cover for Insomnia’s upcoming Burke and Hare graphic novel which was on Insomnia’s Red Eye blog. Also on the blog the guys were promising a Q&A with the writer Martin Conaghan and this week they’ve followed up on that promise with an interview on their blog which I have to say makes me want to read this even more – Martin clearly knows his stuff and has done some serious research, both literary (Stevenson’s famous The Bodysnatchers tale) and historical (and indeed medical-historical), while artist Will Pickering has gone to equally great lengths to try and make sure his depictions of early 19th century Edinburgh are accurate.
“While researching the case at Edinburgh University I was able to take a look at one of the original anatomical sketches made of one of the later victims – and, of course, we got to stare into the face of William Burke himself when the medical faculty at Edinburgh University granted us permission to view his skeleton.
Life masks were also taken of the duo (with Burke’s death mask also being taken), so we had the opportunity to gaze right into their faces as they would have been in 1828. Will and I also wanted to make sure that our story was as faithful as possible to the era, with proper visualisations of the Edinburgh streets and accurate representations of all the real-life figures that appear in our narrative.”
I think it always shows through when writers and artists take the time to base their work on some research rather than simply thinking, hey, its fiction, just make it up. And I’m also normally of the opinion that creators who show that respect for detail are also treating their readers with that same respect and putting more effort into offering them good work. Crawford and the guys at Insomnia tell me that Burke and Hare should be due this autumn and it and some of their other works, such as Cancertown (which went down so well at a signing event in our Belfast store last month) will all be appearing in Previews soon, so I’m looking forward to seeing those being more widely available. Looking at it I’m also thinking that the Burke and Hare is the type of work that should be able to cross over to the non comics readers too. One to watch for.
Leave a Reply