My friends in the Edinburgh City of Literature tell me that today we are celebrating the very first Robert Louis Stevenson Day (on Twitter hashtag #RLSDay). Regular readers will already know of my passion for ‘dear Louis’; from childhood reading right through to today RLS has remained one of my very favourite writers, a sheer delight, be he telling tales of high adventure and history with Kidnapped, derring-do Boy’s Own Adventure in Treasure Island (still one of the best adventure stories ever), his elegant poetry, the travel literature which even today still draws the reader in with wonderful descriptions of people and places (there have been many fine travel lit writers since then, but Louis, he described the places he saw through the eye of an artist and the soul of a writer. Remarkable).

(childhood home of Robert Louis Stevenson in Edinburgh’s New Town, pic from my Flickr)

One of the aspects of living in Edinburgh – apart from it being one of the most visually beautiful cities on the planet – is the fact its history teems with writers; this is a city built upon books and words and publishers as much as it is high history, towering stone edifices and the Enlightenment legacy it bequeathed to the world. And the footsteps of some of its native writers still echo in these stone streets – you can still drink in some of the bars RLS did, take in the same views he did from Calton Hill (extolling them to the visitor), walk past his childhood home… There are little parts of the city linked to so many writers here, current and classic, RLS not least among them. I’ve always liked the fact that our own BlogCave sits only moments from where scribes like Stevenson and Conan Doyle would have gone for their lectures (or in Louis’ case, ducked out of lectures to go smoking and drinking). But RLS is much more than an Edinburgh or even Scottish or British author, he is, like a select few others such as Austen, Cervantes and Twain, a writer who belongs to the world, read in many languages, endlessly reprinted, stories that will, you just know, continue to be read for as long as humans read stories. Of the vast legions of writers published over the last few centuries only a handful of them achieve that form of immortality.

(haunting ‘double negative’ cover image for SelfMadeHero’s Jekyll and Hyde by Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal)

My very favourite Stevenson, though, has to be, without a doubt, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Many people find this curious – they think it a fairly simple tale that they all know well from film or stage plays; even those who have never watched a film version (and those have been in existence almost since the dawn days of the silver screen) still think they know the story because this novella has impacted right into our culture, arriving just as the new sciences of the mind were getting going in the 19th century, it fascinates layman and academic alike and the phrase ‘Jekyll and Hyde personality’ has passed into normal useage even a century after the tale was written. But, as I tell them, if you haven’t read the original story, you don’t know it. You don’t know it at all…

For those who formed an idea of the story based only on a film, TV or stage adaptation, the story is fairly simple: saintly Doctor Jekyll, respected man of medicine and status in London, victim of his own scientific genius, an experiment gone wrong, loosing his inner beast that lurks below the civilised superstructure of any society man, waiting to be free (Stan Lee, half a century later, would make good use of this very notion). The good man battles the bad for their collective soul. But that isn’t Jekyll and Hyde at all, not that simplistic nonsense. Jekyll and Hyde is, as is fitting for a tale coined as psychology was first becoming a science, a much more complex, cerebral tale of human invention, desire, depravity and they way they are all combined into multiple twists inside each of us. There is no simple division between good and bad man here: Hyde is Jekyll. He is the chemically released distillation of all the depravity Jekyll would like to indulge in but dare not for sake of his fine reputation. Hyde is a way to indulge without the possible societal shaming if exposed.

(the transformation is complete and far from being horrified the good doctor feels liberated – a scene from SelfMadeHero’s Jekyll and Hyde by Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal)

It’s about our desires and the restraints we put on ourselves and the ones society adds – and the hypocrisy of both. It’s an examination of human nature, our raw psyche probed and screaming open on the dissection chamber floor, cut open not by a scalpel but by imagination and the pen. It remains for me one of the greatest horror tales of all time, not because it has a good monster and a twist (remember in the 1880s readers had no idea Jekyll and Hyde were the same person split), which it does, but because it deals in true horror – the realisation of our very own human nature and just how close even the nicest, most civilised person of us could be to the animal brute driven only by desires and not intellect and morality. We are all of us both Jekyll and Hyde and we will all wrestle with both of them our whole lives, we are them, they are us, there in lies the horror – Louis exposed a truth of human nature and we cannot look away and pretend it doesn’t apply to us.

(Mattotti’s rendering of Jekyll, not a saint but a man sweating as he witness decauchery all around him and longs to give into his lusts, if only he could so so without fear of losing his reputation… Borrowed from the Jekyll & Hyde Laboratory blog)

Jekyll and Hyde continues to fascinate modern artists and audiences and readers, be it Doctor Who’s Steven Moffat re-imagining a modern version or the endless adaptations of the original story into other mediums, not least comics. Like many a classic tale it has been adapted time and again into comics forms over the last century, but for me two of the finest have to be the ones created by Jerry Kramsky and the great Lorezno Mattotti for NBM (old review by me here), and a more recent SelfMadeHero interpretation by Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal. The latter (reviewed here) carries the duality of human nature in the tale even further with both artists splitting their visual work to enhance that feeling of difference (and growing up in a city split between Georgian New Town and the cramped, historic Old Town, RLS was familiar with duality, going from genteel New Town home to disreputable Old Town taverns). The monochromatic artwork suits the tale and gives the feel of one of the early cinematic versions, but unlike those it stays true to the written tale’s more complex morality.

(Hyde has no such reservations about indulging his every fleshly desire in Kramsky and Mattotti’s NBM adaptation)

The Kramsky-Mattotti is a looser interpretation, a beautifully painted work which places the struggling duo in a Wiemar-era style setting of high life and decadence, which Jeyll longs to experience but dare not – but Hyde, oh he is in his animalistic element there. Mattotti changes styles, expanding on that post First World War era setting to draw inspiration from the twisted artworks from the likes of Otto Dix and others who were reacting both to psychology (as RLS was) and the trauma and butchery of the Great War, art and fantasy and horror in a perfect match for the spirit of Jekyll and Hyde. It was also the first real exposure for me as a reader to the genius that is Mattotti. Both are remarkable adaptations and I highly commend them to any reader not only as fine adaptations but for their beautifully composed artwork.

And naturally I also commend to you sitting down some dark, winter night, and reading the original story – it’s fairly short, barely a novella, you can even get it free from the fine Project Gutenberg people. Read it and luxuriate in the imagination of a writer who has left us characters and a dark tale that has haunted the collective dreams of humanity for over a century.

Reminder for folks in Glasgow and Edinburgh, the most excellent Paul Cornell, scribe behind numerous SF&F novels, some of the best scripts in the revived Doctor Who and a whole brace of comics (including, now, part of the massive DC 52 relaunch we’ve been covering extensively on the blog), will be in the Glasgow Forbidden Planet on Buchanan Street (by the Underground) tomorrow, Wednesday 21st September from 6 to 8pm, then on Thursday 22nd Paul shifts from west to east coast to visit the Edinburgh FP on South Bridge (a moment’s walk from the Royal Mile) where he will be signing from 5 to 6pm, so please do come along and take advantage of a chance to meet one of the most remarkable writers in the Brit comics scene and get your new DC signed as well!

(Bill Skinner by and (c) Alasdair Gray)

Not comics but I’d think bound to be of interest to many of our readers with the emphasis on printmaking, design and featuring some of those ancestors we proudly claim for our comics heritage such as the great Gillray – the Edinburgh Printmakers have a new exhibition entitled The Writing on Your Wall, exploring “the history of polemical, iconoclastic and satirical printmaking”. The exhibition takes in artists as diverse as Gillray, King Mob, Turner-winning Jeremy Deller and Scottish national treasure, artist, writer, playwright and more, Alasdair Gray, taking in both historical examples and some freshly commissioned works. From the official description:

“‘The Writing on Your Wall’ is an exhibition that looks at printmaking as a socially concerned, democratic media designed to disseminate radical ideas. The exhibition, featuring contemporary commissions and historical examples and artifacts, looks back to a history of polemical, iconoclastic and satirical printmaking. Taking its name both from the biblically inspired idiom (Daniel 5:25–28) and a British Situationist poster from 1968 the exhibition not only proposes political change but can perhaps also be seen to acknowledge the increasing marginalisation of print in a digital age.”

(The Handwriting Upon the Wall by Gillray)

Sounds like it should be well worth a visit – The Writing on Your Wall is curated by Rob Tufnell and runs until October 29th at the not-for-profit Edinburgh Printmakers on 23 Union Street.  (via the BBC Scotland site)

A reminder for your diaries this month – screenwriter, novelist and comics scribe, the excellent Paul Cornell, will be in our Glasgow store on Buchanan Street on Wednesday 21st of September from 6 to 8pm and in the Edinburgh FPI on Thursday 22nd from 5 to 6pm. Mark it in your diaries now, peeps! Keep up with the latest from your local FPI branch via Facebook.

(Nathan Metcafle of Gosh Comics fame strutting his Edinburgh Fringe stuff, pic from my Flickr)

It was a grand night – comedy, comics talk, good ale and on the way home we saw a Tyrannosaurus wrapped up like a brown paper parcel in a department store window (no, really, we did). And Sarah being Sarah of coure she has blogged about the event and posted pictures from her Book Festival trip and a cracking cartoon summary of it in which you can even spot me, sporting my Most Awesome Pussycat T-shirt. I’m rather delighted to be in a Sarah McIntyre cartoon, especially since I have long believed the world would be much more fun if real life were more like a cartoon. And I’m even right next to a comics verison of Shaun Tan and the wonderful Julia Donaldson. How fabby is that?

(art by and (c) Sarah McIntyre, shamelessly borrowed from her blog)

You can find more Edinburgh Book Festival comics-related posts on the blog – here for the reports and pics from the event with Pat Mills and Rodge Glass and the Jonathan Cape double-header, here for Grant Morrison’s talk and here for the Audrey Niffenegger talking to Neil Gaiman event.

(Pat Mills on the left and Rodge Glass on the right signing after their talk at the Edinburgh International Book Festival at the weekend; all pics from my Flickr, click for the larger versions)

The Edinburgh International Book Festival for 2011 came to an end last night and over the final weekend I was lucky enough to catch not one but two final comics-related talks, both of them double headers, with Rodge Glass, author of Dougie’s War, talking with Brit comics godfather Pat Mills about the portrayal of conflict in comics and the aftermath of various effects on the men and women who have to engage in real warfare. This was followed later on Sunday evening with two of Jonathan Cape’s latest alumni, Nick Hayes and William Goldsmith discussing their recently published works.

My Sunday at a soggy but still happily buzzing Book Festival started with the Rodge Glass and Pat Mills event, where the focus was on the depiction not only of warfare in comics but the effects the events and stresses of combat have on real life soldiers, especially after the conflict is over and they find themselves on their own, away from the support network of the comrades in their unit and the infrastructure of the armed forces and back to ‘normal’ on civvy street. Rodge wrote the recent Dougie’s War, the title itself a nod to the influence of Pat’s earlier work (and one of the great classics of British comics) Charley’s War. Where Charley’s War shoved us into the brutality of the mud and blood of trench warfare in the First World War Dougie’s War deals with a contemporary conflict as our protagonist has to deal with his return to everyday life back home after fighting in the dust of Afghanistan, with an admirable focus on having to cope (or failing to cope) with the emotional and mental after-effects from the intense strain of combat situations, seeing and being involved in violence and death.

And as we know men in general are rather poor at seeking medical help at the best of times, with a proud former soldier, meant to be self reliant and tought, it can be even harder to ask for that help (if it is available) but if they don’t the effects can spiral – it’s a very sad thought that quite a number of veterans in the UK, USA and elsewhere will end up with a broken family, homeless or with a criminal record all from the effects of what they called Shell Shock in the war Pat and Joe Colquhoun so clearly documented and what by the time of Rodge’s book would be known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, soliders who have performed often heroic acts at great peril, unable to reconcile themselves back to normal life afterwards. The pictures on the AV display flicked between the earlier and later comics works and some documentary photographs, from the bizarre electrical and optical devices scientists cobbled together to try and treat Shell Shock in the Great War to modern psychologists who mean the best but usually can’t totally relate to the soldiers they try to help because, simply, they weren’t there… Both Charley’s War and Dougie’s War both took pains not to varnish the truth or to make warfare look glamorous and both have been well received by actual veterans as well as readers and critics.

In the evening I was at the Jonathan Cape double-header with William Goldsmith and Nick Hayes, both of whom had some very interesting debut works out from Cape this spring, William with the visually unique and fascinating Vignettes of Ystov (there’s also a sample of his style to be found in the Karrie Fransman-inspired Imaginary Cities anthology from the London Print Studio) and Nick with the massive Rime of the Modern Mariner (you can read a Director’s Commentary with Nick talking us though Mariner here on the blog).

William’s Vignettes of Ystov is a series of interlinked short stories, each only two pages, set in a fictional city with a central/Eastern European feel to it, each story standing on its own but also, as you progress through the work, building connections, weaving up a tapestry until, like the acclaimed Raymond Carver in Short Cuts, the stories of various seemingly unconnected individuals in a big city come together to show the connections we all, often unknowingly, share in a large urban environment, all with a very distinctive, loose art style (William said he experimented with different styles at art school but the final, loose art came to him when he realised he only had a few weeks to his project deadline!) that is, visually, one of the more unusual and unique (not to mention interesting) looking comics works in the UK this year, with the mutliple short stories set in the same city allowing us to take in a large cast of quirky, eccentric and sometimes wonderfully absurd characters (which may be why he said the short story form appealed to him so much, despite the fact that it demands a real economy of storytelling on the part of the creator). I’m happy to report that he is planning further Vignettes in the future.

Nick explained some of how he approached Rime of the Modern Mariner, which, inspired by Colerdige’s original verse, uses clever rhymes with the comics frames to deliver a contemporary take on the classic poem which takes a much more environmental bent. In fact Nick explained that he was originally inspired by reading about some of the horrific messes humans have made of our planet, such as the North Pacific Gyre, a vortex where many worldwide ocean currents converge, which also means it has become a focal point for the garbage we’ve dumped into our seas, mostly especially plastic that refuses to biodegrade but does, as Nick explained, photo degrade, slowly shrinking until small particles of it float in this large mass of plastic and are consumed by marine creatures… and then later in the food chain by those who consume those marine creatures, including humans. It isn’t all doom and gloom, thankfully – Nick takes his repentant mariner on a voyage both literally and metaphorically, which eventually opens his eyes and mind and soul to the natural world, and showcases some fabulous imagery, not least a beautiful depiction of a blue whale. Published in a format similar to a hardback prose novel it is a huge but very satisfying work.

The event went very well, I’m pleased to say and there was, despite it being late in the evening and rather cool and wet (ah, the joys of the late Scottish summer! But rain is no stranger to Book Fest veterans and doesn’t stop us!) and both writers/artists being fairly new to the scene, with a good line of readers eager to get their books signed (I had to kick myself for leaving home with my books, carefully left on the table near the door so I would remember them, left behind… bugger…) and those readers all having a good chat with the Cape boys. Great night and both books much commended for your reading delight.

And so ends another year of the world’s biggest book bash, just under 800 authors have graced the graceful Georgian environs of Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square and thousands of book lovers, with folks from the comics community playing their part in the diverse make up of the festival, from talks to comics workshops (in fact I bumped into Metaphrog’s Sandra and John during the Pat Mills signing as they were on their way to run a comics workshop for kids, still obviously delighted at their earlier chairing of a masterclass event with Shaun Tan at the Festival). Again it is great to see such a major literary event embracing the medium so happily, backed up with a good display of graphic novels in the on-site bookstore as well. Many thanks to the organisers and especially to the lovely folks in the press office for sneaking me into the events. You can read reports with photos from the Grant Morrison and the Neil Gaiman talks at the Book Fest earlier on the blog.

When I stopped to enjoy them and look more closely I couldn’t help but think that these pictures with texts in each window were like a sequential graphical story, basically a short comic strip but one placed on architecture rather than on paper, with window frames rather than inked borders, a comic strip about city life being told right on one of the city’s buildings. I was quite taken with it, so had to stop and take a picture of each and share them on here with you, certainly made me pause and smile. On the artist’s site Astrid explains that the older inhabitants are leaning out of their windows looking – often disapprovingly – at the revellers of the Festival. Astrid also advises passing by after dark (which tends to be rather late in Scotland at this time of year) when it is illuminated from within, making it look as if the building’s older residents are keeping an eye on the boisterous Fringe goers as they go from venue to venue, doubtless with several pub stops between shows… (pics from my Flickr, the art is (c) Astrid Jaekel, click to see the larger versions):

The excellent Paul Cornell, writer extraordinaire with SF novels, a whole brace of major comics and, of course, some of the best episodes of the new Doctor Who series to his name, is going to be in Scotland next month and oh lucky readers, he will be making appearances in both our Glasgow and our Edinburgh stores. As part of the celebration of the enormous relaunch of DC Comics’ main titles, Paul will be in the Glasgow store on Buchanan Street on Wednesday 21st of September from 6 to 8pm and in the Edinburgh FPI on Thursday 22nd from 5 to 6pm. It’s a great chance to come along and meet on of Blighty’s finest comcis & SF scribes, do come along and take advantage of it! As ever you can keep up with news of events, new releases and offers in your local FPI branch via their Facebook pages.

(Grant Morrison in conversation at the Edinburgh International Book Festival at the weekend, all pics from my Flickr)

This weekend I enjoyed a late evening literary bash at the Edinburgh International Book Festival as Scots superstar comics scribe Grant Morrison took the stage in front of a packed audience, which, I’m delighted to note, had a pretty good gender mix (so much for the oft-repeated but simpyl wrong mantra that comics are only for boys…). In fact later on when I was getting my own copy of his new Supergods book (part history of superheroes, part autobiography, very interesting – out now from our friends at Jonathan Cape) I mentioned to Grant how well his recent signing at our Glasgow store (a location he knows well) had gone (he spent over three hours happily signing for everyone who patiently lined up round the block to see him) and he commented that there too and at other events to promote the new work he’s been really pleased to note how large a proportion of the audience are female.

It was, as you’d probably expect from one of the more consistently inventive writers in the medium, a pretty interesting talk, with Grant elaborating on some of the themes in Supergods, such as taking the superhero figures that have been the industry mainstay for eight decades as ‘real’. By this he didn’t mean real as in actual superbeings walking (or leaping tall buildings) among us, but that the effect and inspiration such characters can have on readers, that is real. And as Grant continued he brought together one of the arguments he’s proposed before and in the book, that with the convergence of humans with their constantly progressing technology it may only a matter of time until ordinary people in future generations will have ‘superpowers’ and abilities beyond those natural evolution gave us, with a look at one of the possible causes of recent unrest we’ve witnessed in UK cities, pointing out that some youth don’t care about society because they feel no connection to it, abandoned by it and with no future – what of a future where those kids grow up to have these new scientifically enhanced powers? Surely, he argued, the heroes we’ve grown up with, Superman, Batman and the rest, offer up a decent role model of how to behave responsibly with powers and abilities. Perhaps one day when superhuman abilities are commonplace that generation will look for role models and guidance on how to deal with their enhanced abilities and they could do worse than look back to our superheroes.

(cover to Supergods: Our World in the Age of Superheroes by Grant Morrison, published Jonathan Cape)

With DC’s imminent reboot of their universe with fity two new issue ones he was asked about reworking classic characters and why it seemed that Superman seems to be remade fairly frequently while Batman, for all the ups and downs creators have put him through (including Grant himself, of course) still tends to retain his backstory more. Grant put this down to the fact that Superman seems to require more re-imagining than Batman and as a character seemed more open to it as well, while Batman’s more complicated back-story and universe simply serves the character so well that although every generation makes changes, it doesn’t need radical overhauling, it works too well. He was also asked about Wonder Woman; in the book he discusses how the earliest strips of our Amazonian were rife with S&M elements, many of which reflected her creator Marston’s own sexual interests (having had a look at a memo Marston wrote, usually locked in a secure DC vault, Grant’s opinion was that Martson was certainly a bit bizarre on some of his sexual preferences and kinks). And yet it seemed these bondage and sexual elements were clearly an important part of her make-up, he said, noting how quickly Wonder Woman faltered after Marston’s passing, how that took something important out of the equation that makes her work. Asked about how he intended to approach this classic but often very hard to write for character, Grant couldn’t elaborate too much for the obvious reason that it is a work in progress. He did tell the audience that he was fairly confident he had found a way to incorporate those original sexual elements back into the world of Wonder Woman but without being sleazy or exploitative – not an easy trick to pull off, he acknowledged with a smile, but he feels he has a handle on how to approach her and hopefully 2012 will let us all read that result for ourselves.

It was a great event, taking in iconic characters that have lasted decades (as Grant said, you can’t kill the superheroes, even in the wake of Watchmen in the ‘Dark Ages’ of comics of troubled, screwed up characters, when a lot of folks thought that was game over for the traditional hero, they came back. And they always will, the superhero was designed to take on all assaults and problems, after all), treating the comics universes as real, almost like a virtual universe but made of paper (a theme he elaborates on in Supergods), magic and meta fiction, the influence of Hollywood’s interest in comics (perhaps making too many writers try to show that they can write a Hollywood style script for their comic with one eye to being optioned and maybe being asked to become a screenwriter; part of his response has been to try and devolve more power to the artists again on layouts and design of pages, rather than the writer dictating too much on that, telling his artists to to go back to enjoying using those devices that only comics can do rather than trying to be ‘cinematic’ – play with the perspectives and slicing up of time that only a comic strip can do convincingly), gender and just why we still feel compelled to tell and read tales of superheroes. The talk was pretty good natured throughout, with plenty of humour and the queue for the signing afterwards stretched out the tent and down the walkway; it took me almost an hour to get my own books signed and when I left the end of the line still hadn’t even made it into the signing tent! Undaunted Grant was happily signing away and chatting to each and every reader. Hugely enjoyable talk from one of our best writers. Thanks to the press crew at the Book Fest for being kind enough to sneak me into the talk.