“BB: It looks like a good year for British comic book scribes in Hollywood with both The Losers and Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass  released later this year. Why do you think British comic book writers prove to be such successes and are there any other British led comics you’d like to see get the Hollywood treatment?

British comics I’d like to see get the Hollywood treatment? There’s loads, but top of my list would be Phonogram and Suburban Glamour, along with three decades’ worth of stories from the untapped intellectual property goldmine that is 2000AD, starting with my personal favourite, Strontium Dog. Old British war comics like Battle are also filled with stories ripe for adaptation.”

Oh yes, I think we’d go along with some of those choices for film versions, oh yes indeedy…

By Edward Ross

Self published

I spotted this mini-comic on a recent trip to Edinburgh’s Filmhouse (spiritual home to the city’s film festival and a mecca for those who love quality cinema from around the world). A short comic on film theory? Unusual topic but since I spent a fair chunk of my college time studying film theory I was intrigued and picked it up (admittedly a considerable part of my studying involved watching movies in that same Filmhouse, but that counts as research, not bunking off classes, honest). Film and media studies can leave mental scarring for life, with victims still moved years after university to indulge in pseudo-academic discussion (or talking cobblers in the pub post-film, depending on your point of view and level of inebriation) in which they use terms like “the paradigmatic and syntagmatic nature of the text.” I shall endeavour not do that here. Filmish is a short work, black and white, nice, clear artwork with card covers,  and obviously it can’t cover several decades of film theory in any depth, but Edward opts smartly to take just three areas as examples and discuss those: Monsters, Food on Film and Point of View (the longest of the three chapters).

Monsters was a lot of fun for me – it will surprise no-one that I worked the more fantastical and horror genres into my film studies back in college. Actually this wasn’t just because of my own interest in those genres – films with science fiction, horror and monsters in general are a hugely rich subject area for academics. It shouldn’t be surprising since these are genres which often use the theatrical trappings of the fantastical to explore real, everyday human fears and concerns. Edward notes this and how the filmic monster has changed throughout the decades in response to historical and cultural forces: Gojira in early 50s Japan playing on the fears created by the atomic bombings which ended World War Two, the ‘reds under the beds’ scare of McCarthyist America in the 50s and how the original, classic Invasion of the Bodysnatchers fits the rampant paranoia of the time and the fear of the enemy within, through to the body horror of the 70s and 80s (step forward Mr Cronenberg) and the 21st century return to the big monster movie with Cloverfield, linking the rampaging, city-destroying monster with post-911 fears.

Point of View is the longest segment in the comic and covers rather more than the simple, technical meaning of POV (i.e. the viewpoint presented by the camera’s ‘eye’ to the viewer) but also the cultural point of view: the way a scene or character is framed and the way that influences the way the viewer ‘reads’ the image. Sadly this does mean a bit too much Laura Mulvey and the ‘male gaze’ for my taste (at college I thought Mulvey made some interesting points but as with many academics in this field, only selectively, there are many examples that don’t fit her theories). That said Mulvey is a major writer on understanding film and my personal likes and dislikes aside Edward would be remiss if he didn’t include her in this chapter (thank goodness he didn’t quote Barbara Creed and her ‘monstrous feminine’ or the various Freudian film analysts though).

The POV chapter also takes in later cinema which established different ways of seeing and presenting the world to the audience and changes in the sorts of lead characters audiences are encouraged to identify with, changes which mirror the way society has changed its views on, for example, women. I would question one scene though, where he implies that it was these later films that now allowed the audience to “participate with the film and think about and question the ideology of the onscreen image”; it seems to assume earlier audiences didn’t think about what they were watching, which seems unlikely. The passive audience has often been brought up by media theorists for various mass media, but I’ve never really bought into it (and indeed the old ‘hypodermic needle’ model of totally passive audience acceptance of what they are presented with is largely discredited among many media studies types. Some elements of audiences have always interpreted the text differently from the preferred reading encoded by the maker).

The third and final short chapter is Food on Film – you might have expected something more obvious like a chapter on genre theory, perhaps, but as Edward explains “Wait” Hear me out” It’s not as daft as it might sound. In fact food has long played a major symbolic role in the movies”. He then goes on to cite a number of examples, from the early, silent era (a starving Charlie Chaplin carving up of an old boot as dinner) to more indirect uses of eating to portray characters’ state of mind (the ever increasing breakfast table, one of the simple but incredibly clever devices used to portray the cooling of a marriage in Citizen Kane) through to the more modern era and humans themselves being on the cinematic menu, be it as prey to other nightmare creatures (back to the monsters again! Cinema and film theorists can’t leave monsters and horror alone) or being served up to other humans (as in The Cook, The Thief, The Wife and Her Lover).

As I said at the start it seems an unusual subject matter for a short comic, but the fact that it is using comics on a different theme from many I read is one of the things which interested me. The brevity means there’s no time for much depth in the chosen examples, understandably – you could fill 10, 000 word essays on each of these areas easily (and for some of them I have, in a former life), but obviously Edward isn’t trying to pretend he is giving you that. Rather he’s picking out some major examples and citing some of the important writers in the field of film studies and, importantly, he concludes each chapter by listing both some relevant films and some of the authors and their books which he quotes from, so if you are a movie buff but haven’t delved much into the academic study of the medium there are some good suggested examples of further reading should the comic inspire you (on a personal note I’d add Pam Cook’s excellent The Cinema Book, published by the BFI, as a perfect general primer for anyone interested in learning more about film theory and studies). It’s an interesting wee comic which I enjoyed; I don’t think you have to have any familiarity with film studies to enjoy it though; in fact for those unfamiliar with the field but interested in cinema it probably functions nicely for introducing a few key ideas from the field that they can then follow up for themselves.

There you go and I didn’t use the term ‘intertextual’ once and I have refrained from stroking my beard in a thoughtful manner while discoursing on postmodernism in cinema. You can check out more of Edward’s work via his blog, where I see he is another of our comics community who is taking part in the Hundred Days project and posting up the results, so go check it out.

No idea yet if and when it will get a release in the Anglophone world and given the fact Tardi’s name is not as famous with as large a readership here as it is in France I wonder if it will get a general release in the UK or if it will be on the European/arthouse circuit only, but I guess we will just have to wait to see what happens with UK screenings further down the line.  For those unfamiliar with Tardi’s work I’m delighted to say that the good folks at Fantagraphics have been working on English language editions of some of his work -- You Are There (regarded as one of the earliest full-length European graphic novels) and West Coast Blues (a powerful graphic novel adaptation of Jean-Patrick Manchette’s 70s crime novel) were both released in 2009 and his It was the War of the Trenches is due for publication from Fantagraphics this spring. If, like a lot of the English-language world, you’ve not had much exposure to Tardi I highly recommend having a look at them. I’m currently having a sneak peek at Trenches, a work I’ve seen a little of in French and wanted to read in translation for quite some time and I’m sure I’ll talk more about that soon. Meantime it would also be nice to see some of the Adèle albums translated, hint, hint!

Update: George, one of our reader, has kindly left a comment with a link to Fantagraphic’s Flog where they confirm they’ve been translating Adèle for publication later this year (thanks, George!). Great news.

Strip!: Yetis, ghosts and other things that go bump in the night!, tonight at 5pm on Resonance FM, podcast after transmission at Panel Borders

Continuing children’s book month on the show, Alex Fitch talks to two creators of atypical titles for kids, which are being published by Walker Books. John Dunning is the writer of Salem Brownstone: All along the watchtowers, a Graphic Album in the European format which combines his script in the style of American horror writers H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe with Nikhil Singh’s elegant artwork, reminiscent of Victorian illustrators such as Aubrey Beardsley. Salem Brownstone was originally serialised in the small press anthology Sturgeon White Moss and Alex talks to John about the process of creating this unusual title.

Alex Milway is the author of The Mousehunter trilogy of pirate novels for young adults and in his new series of books – The Mythical 9th Division – which tell the tales of a trio of crimefighting Yetis who work for the British government, he is pioneering a new kind of storytelling in which every chapter of the books segues from sequential art into more traditional text. The two Alexs talk about the first of the Yeti books – Operation Robot Storm – which is being released in June and how comics can be used as another device to get kids into reading.

Clear Spot: Directing low budget Science-Fiction films, on Resonance FM on the 17th at 8pm, first segment now online at SciFi London

In an hour long panel discussion recorded live at last year’s London Science-Fiction and Fantastic Film Festival, Alex Fitch discusses the many aspects of creating engaging and convincing SF scenarios on film with a quartet of eminent low budget film directors – Marc Caro (Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children), Stuart Hazeldine (Exam), Cory McAbee (Stingray Sam), Gerald McMorrow (Franklyn) and Richard Jobson (A Woman in Winter). The panel was sponsored by The Directors Guild of Great Britain and Mr Caro’s translator was Virginie Selavy.

Recent podcasts:

Panel Borders: Robots of various sizes

Starting Children’s Books month on the show, Alex Fitch talks to two artists who have inadvertently found themselves making comics for younger audiences. Joe List is a graphic designer and animator who, with his first collection of comic strips inspired by Saturday morning cartoons – Freak Leap – has compiled a whimsical series of adventures starring pirates, monsters and giant robots with spindly legs suitable for all ages. Paul Collicutt is a children’s book illustrator who has previously been engaged in fully pained artwork for traditional picture books but now, as the creator of a series of Robot City Adventures, is telling tales of a Retro Sci-Fi future where robot Private Detectives and coastguards mix with humans and sea monsters alike.

Lucky Cat podcast: The films of Park Chan-Wook

Episode 4.6 of Resonance FM’s Asian culture show presented by Zoe Baxter. This episode is a Park Chan-Wook special to coincide with the UK DVD release of the Korean auteur’s vampire film Thirst. Zoë Baxter is joined in the studio by Mira Stout (author of bestselling novel “One Thousand Chestnut Trees”, playwright, and film critic) and Alex Fitch (broadcaster and assistant editor of Electric Sheep film magazine) to discuss Thirst and Chan-Wook’s oeuvre.

“Gotham has batman, Metropolis has superman, Edinburgh…not so much.

But that’s about to change.

Murder, mystery, romance, comedy…safety goggles. Jazz and Wolf go through it all. you’d think that would be enough…

and then the ‘real’ Electric Man shows up…

sparks will fly”

(mock up of issues 1 of Electric Man by Stuart Beel, borrowed from the Dugbus site, (c) Dugbus)

According to their website the Dugbus crew are working on a micro-budget approach, using sponsors and donations – more help is welcome from the looks of it, with contributors securing themselves a wee bit of screen glory with their names in the credit, so check their site.

(Edinburgh, the West End of Princes Street in the 1950s; the shops and buses have changed but other than that most of this scene looks the same today. From The Illusionist by Sylvain Chomet, (c) Django Films)

Long time readers may remember quite a while back I blogged about the brilliant Sylvain Chomet working on a new feature length animated film, The Illusionist. Chomet, who brought us the fantastic Belleville Rendezvous (with its fabulous, partly Ralph Steadman influenced artwork), has been living in Scotland for several years while working on the film from a studio in Edinburgh; sadly he has now moved to France, but the good news is that the film is complete and had its premiere in Berlin this week, although it isn’t expected to go on general release until this summer. The Illusionist sounds like a double treat for film fans -- not only a new animation from a top creator but it is also based on an un-filmed story by France’s legendary Jacques Tati, one of cinema’s great icons; Tati’s daughter gave Sylvain permission but sadly she passed away before the film was completed.

(a scene from The Illusionist set on Salisbury Crag, part of the huge extinct volcano which sits right in the middle of Edinburgh; the dome of Edinburgh University’s Old College Building can be seen on the right in the distance; (c) Django Films)

The Illusionist tells of a stage magician struggling in Paris as his audiences are drawn away instead to the glamour and buzz of the new rock’n'roll performers in the early 1950s. Offered a show on the beautiful Scottish island of Iona he falls for a local girl and together they travel to 50s Edinburgh. The original Tati script was set in Prague, but lovely though that city is Sylvain wanted to move the location to Scotland’s distinctive capital: “”I fell in love with Edinburgh when I presented Belleville Rendez-Vous there. I found the city a magical place – there’s something about the constantly changing light.” As someone lucky enough to live in that historic city I wouldn’t argue that point; I can’t draw, but the geography, architecture, history and the way different light and seasons changes its appearance has inspired me to take literally hundreds of photographs of the city over the years. Obviously those of us who call Edinburgh home will get an extra special buzz from seeing it rendered in Sylvain’s beautiful animated style, but I think all of us who love animation, regardless of where they live, will be delighted at the thought of a new Chomet work coming our way in the next few months. And I also suspect it will make many more people fall in love with the city’s charms. You’ll have to forgive my excited manner, but a new Chomet work and set in my remarkable home city -- can you blame me for being excited? Among all the 3D, CG works we will doubtless see this year it is this traditional 2D work I am most looking forward to. I’ll leave you with a clip from Chomet’s wonderful Belleville Rendezvous:

(souce: The Scotsman, via French Edinburgh’s twitter)

(Black Dog’s Progress by and (c) Steve Irwin, one of the contenders for this year’s British Animation Awards)

Well at least this year that problem will be addressed somewhat – there are no less than 27 venues taking part in screening a programme of BAA 2010 contenders throughout February: “The Public Choice awards allow the film-loving public to have a say about which animations have captured their imaginations. We’ve put together a shortlist which reflects the best and most innovative talent that the British animation industry has to offer,” BAA director Jayne Pilling. Entries range from Rhiannon Evans’ Heartstrings – “if falling in love means being tied together, what happens when you discover the length of string?” – to Manchester’s Philip Bacon with the wonderfully titled Yellow Belly End (”a man who meticulously records the deaths from an enormous cliff edge”), alongside animations created for bands like Coldplay and Gravenhurst.

(a frame from Philip Bacon’s Yellow Belly End, another of the contenders for this year’s British Animation Awards, (c) the artist)

The screenings start today and will be shown throughout February in 27 cinemas across the UK, including Belfast (Queen’s Film Theatre), Bradford (National Media Museum), Bristol (Watershed), Cardiff (Chapter Arts), Derby (QUAD), Dundee (DCA), Edinburgh (Filmhouse),  Glasgow (GFT), London (BFI Southbank), Liverpool (FACT), Manchester (Cornerhouse), Norwich (Cinema City), Wolverhampton (Lighthouse) and more. The screening dates and times will vary from cinema to cinema so check with your local venue for screenings – a full list of the various programme strands can be found here on the BAA site and there’s also a full list with links to the participating cinemas around the nation, so do consider going along and supporting some interesting Brit artists. Who knows, you may get the first glimpse of our next Nick Park. The British Animation Awards will be announced in London on April 8th.