This issue is called ‘Night Shift’, and basically follows the characters that start when Flo and Hettie and the girls clock off. Women were not allowed to take the night shifts in telegraph offices, for their own safety, so it was all men. We tried to get across the end of day muddle with people coming in and leaving, but the telegraph still being ‘live’ at all times. Like a call centre or similar, the telegraph offices were manned at all times to receive and send the messages rattling in from across the world.

Page One, we see ‘F’ Verity’s online love interest, at his own key in a newspaper office. Newspapers were some of the first places to install their own dedicated line, just because they needed to hear the news first before their competitors. Reuters news agency was created for the telegraph, so reporters in different places could send their stories back to one central place and their stories could be sold and sent out again from there. The main telegraph room in Reuters office was apparently a thing to behold, with wires actually coming in through the apex of a domed roof, and then snaking down to reach numerous keys on plinths around the room. Reuter himself sat like the spider at the centre of his own web. My favourite thing about this page is that nobody is actually working. Everyone is sat about daydreaming about the weekend, about girls or boys and slacking off messaging each other on the internet during work time.

Page Two: Hettie is taking one last message for the day, which happens to be a little admin error fix from Charlotte Scott over at Bennett’s. When Charlotte breaks off it baffles Hettie, as they are both really good professional operators, but there is nothing she can do but listen for the beeps from the other end of the line. Operators who spoke to each other every day on a single line, would have become really attuned to each other’s way of sending, and would even develop a telegraph manner which only the other person could receive correctly.

Page Three: I can’t go past this page without pointing out how awesomely horrible Florence is. Hettie is worried about her friend, and all Flo wants to do is say she’s a slag. Wonderful stuff. I really must write more bitches!

Page Four: Here we see Grayson Standish in full predatory wolfish mode, which of course his natural state. Emily doesn’t really have a answer for him, and it’s hard to see whether she just thinks he’s a creep or if she likes him a bit. Life is tough like that. Quite often it’s the least suitable people that make the biggest impression. Or was that just me?

Page Seven: This was a fun page to write just for the mystery of whatever’s up with Archie and the subtle and not so subtle ways Emily tries to get it out of him. She wants to keep him in, but knows there’s no way she can, and however badly he’s messing up, her best hope is to stay close to him, and be there if anything happens. Tough decisions that fall on the shoulders of friends and family around anyone with issues. Archie seems really tired and hungover all the time, so maybe he’s an alcoholic, or an opium fiend? He might be spending all his money in card games, or brothels, Emily has no idea. He’s a worry, but then Emily is so sensible she makes everyone around her seem quite extreme.

Pages Nine and Ten we learn the truth behind George’s mysterious comments to Jenks earlier on. These were lovely pages to write, but a bit hard with the vocab we had to put in. Its ended up rather ruder than we expected but that’s probably all to the good!

Pages Eleven and Twelve we see Emily having a lovely evening Skype to her dad away working in Malta in the military hospital there. It’s so nice to see them remaining close despite the miles between them, and you really get a sense of how he has parented her across these wires for rather a lot of her life. She hasn’t suffered really, and seems closer to him than lots of the other characters do with their parents. I love the cosy fire and the rainy window. Just what a rainy Manchester night is all about.

Page Thirteen onwards is the drama and the real meat of the issue, so I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say that incidents of this type were not uncommon at all, especially remote posts out in the American plains, far from civilisation. I love George and his “Health and Safety in the Workplace” awareness. He’d be employee of the month for sure.

FPI would like to thank John and Leah for sharing their thoughts and talking us through some of their cool new series – new episodes of The Thrill Electric go online every Thursday.

MB: How did you come up with the idea for The Thrill Electric?

Leah: It was actually one of those mythic “sit bolt upright in bed and have to write it all down” moments, which, to be honest, I’ve never had before and didn’t really believe in either. I’d been looking at an amazing website about the telegraph and must have read almost all of it in one day. I found it fascinating that way back in the 1800s people had a form of instant messaging. That small fact kind of changed the whole way I’d thought about the whole of the Nineteenth Century! I’d previously thought of them all as very ponderous old men, sitting in their gloomy studies growing huge sideburns and being philanthropic.

If you introduce what was effectively a Victorian Internet into that idea then they become much more recognisably modern, feeling people. The other thing that really struck me was the fact that it was a really big breakthrough industry for women getting into the workplace. It was a clean respectable, white-collar job that young girls and women could get into and rise through the ranks of. I couldn’t stop thinking about this really modern story, of a girl starting her new job at the telegraph office. It just seemed so cool to me.

MB: How did it come to be placed with Channel 4?

John: We got an email out of the blue from Andrew Mettam at Hat Trick Productions saying he liked our work and that he’d like to meet up and discuss the possibility of us working with them on something to pitch to Channel 4 Education. We knocked a few rough ideas together to show him the kind of thing we thought would be interesting and educational for 14 to 19 year-olds, and The Thrill Electric was one of them. Andrew really liked what we’d come up with and was keen for us to push things forward. Within weeks we were down in London meeting with Hat Trick and pitching our ideas with them to Channel 4. The Thrill Electric was the one that everyone seemed to really love. Within a couple of months of Andrew contacting us we had an agent and had signed the contract to write the series. It’s all very exciting.

MB: I’ve been describing The Thrill Electric to myself as a ‘motion comic’, but it’s not is it? It’s an enhanced digital comic. But what’s the difference?

John: Up to this point in time, motion comics have largely been stories that have already been printed in the normal format and then later been digitised and enhanced to add something a bit extra. This has resulted in some of them basically turning into sub-par animations, complete with dodgy voice acting.

Because we’ve written The Thrill Electric specifically as an enhanced digital comic, we’ve been able to stick to what we see as the fundamentals of comic-book storytelling – pages, panels, word balloons, captions – and add extra layers.  So, we have things like sound-loops for each panel that set the scene and provide a bit of ambience; we have panels stacking up one in front of another to form corridors, or becoming the walls of a 3D space; we have clickable icons serving the same function as old-fashioned thought balloons, allowing you to see what a character is thinking.

We’re not trying to hide the fact that it’s a comic by adding a load of bells and whistles. We’re trying to make it everything a print comic is and more. Even though the reader for The Thrill Electric was purpose-built for the project by LittleLoud, we’ve ended up pushing it to the limits of what it’s capable of, which can only be a good thing.

MB: Why did you go for that approach, rather than a ‘straight’ comic or animation?

Leah: I think it’s appropriate for Thrill to be like that, because, like the protagonist, it’s embracing the surge in technology. We wanted Thrill to be available to its audience in an accessible form, so they can read it on their phones, their tablet PCs or Ipads. You often get existing comics sold as digital copies, or motion comics where they have been adapted into semi-animated comics with a voiceover. Obviously that has a place in the industry but we didn’t want to do that.

The Thrill Electric is essentially a 150-page graphic novel written specifically for the digital online format, which I’m not sure anyone else has done before. We wanted to do all the things you definitely can’t do in print, but that you see all the time in online content, soundtracks, music, movement etc. It has been a challenge to make all of that work and make it fit with the story, but I am really pleased with the result. I think it’s a really fun story and hopefully the format will be something new for people. A new way to enjoy comics.

MB: What is Emma Vieceli’s role in The Thrill Electric and how did she come on board?

Leah: We’ve known Emma for ages and loved her work, so when we were asked who we might like to draw The Thrill Electric, she was one of our very first suggestions. Unluckily for us, she was much too busy to draw and colour 150 pages of comic all of a sudden. Luckily for comic fans, this was because she was already drawing the Vampire Academy graphic novel adaptations, which, I believe, recently made the New York Times best-sellers list! Despite being so incredibly busy, Emma kindly offered to design the characters and the whole feel of the story, and then put us in touch with Windflower Studio who would go on to draw the comic in Emma’s beautiful style. The whole thing couldn’t have worked better really. Our only worry is that Emma will be in such demand now we’ll not get a look in! We’ll have to snag her on something else soon!

MB: Please tell us about Windflower Studio and their involvement.

John: All-female UK-based comic book collective, Windflower Studio has turned out to be a perfect fit for the project. They’re all incredibly talented and have properly slogged their guts out on the series. To get The Thrill Electric ‘look’, the foreground, midground and background of each panel had to be drawn separately, so you can imagine how much work went into every single page. I just hope we haven’t put them off doing more comics work, not least because I’d love to see more from them in the future.

MB: Even though it’s set in the Victorian era, the Thrill Electric is actually quite contemporaneous in terms of its subject and themes. Would you agree with that statement and to what extent, and in what way? (Cor, that one’s a bit like an essay question. Soz.)

Leah: Whoo. Okay. Loving your use of the word contemporaneous by the way! Yes, it’s dealing with young people going into the workplace for the first time and how daunting that can be. It’s about what an online network like the Internet, or the Telegraph actually means for people in their everyday lives. Gossip spreading faster than people could imagine, online bullying, sexting, spam and scam artists, online gaming and Skype-type intercontinental communications.

It’s about being in a world where you can hear the voices of so many other people and more importantly, they can all hear you too. It’s about a group of young people suddenly finding themselves at the very cutting edge of technology, and almost becoming a species of their own, with their own language, their own slang, their online buddies, their Siemens telegraph key. I’d say in a way it’s one of the most modern things we’ve ever written, even though it’s set in the 1870’s.

MB: Finally, what haven’t I asked about the Thrill Electric (or the creators involved) that I should have?

John: The fact that it’s set in Manchester is a pretty big deal and quite important. When we were still at the pitching stage we were thinking of setting it in London, which would have made things very different. Manchester was the first truly industrialised city on the planet and was viewed by the rest of the world as a kind of metropolis of the future. The cotton industry was incredibly important, of course, but there was just so much industry – so many inventions and innovations that were changing the world all coming out of this place that had been little more than a small market town mere decades before. Victorian Manchester is about as steampunk as it gets.

MB: Leah and John, thanks for your time.

Leah Moore and John Reppion are the critically acclaimed writing team behind such works as The Trial of Sherlock Holmes, Albion, Raise the Dead and Wild Girl. Their website can be found here, while the Thrill Electric is online here.

Windflower Studio is a UK-based, all-female comic book studio. For more on Windflower Studio, check their website.

Emma Vieceli is the acclaimed writer/artist behind many works including Marvel Girl Comics and Dragon Heir: Reborn. For details of Vieceli and her work, have a look at Em’s site.

Matt Badham has written articles for the Big Issue in the North, Comic Heroes and the Judge Dredd Megazine. He’s also had three of his comic scripts realised, in 2000 AD, Commando Picture Library and Zarjaz. He can be contacted via mattbadham (at) hotmail (dot) com. He doesn’t have a blog or website because… well, he’s doesn’t do enough interesting stuff to justify having a blog or website. (Last night he painted the bathroom door. Tonight he’s going to give it another coat… or two.)

This week (Thursday 27th to be precise) Channel 4 will unveil the new work we’ve been hearing a bit about in recent months, the new comic from Leah Moore, John Reppion and Emma Vieceli, The Thrill Electric. This Victorian slice of steampunk ‘enhanced comic’ (we’re told to expect not just comic panels online but layering and animations by Littlecloud, plus links to relevant points for more information) is much more than an excuse for Mr Reppion to don his silk top hat and silver walking cane, however. From the description:

“The Thrill Electric tells the story of Emily Bagley, a sassy and intelligent young woman who breaks with tradition and becomes a telegraph worker. In addition, there’s a whole host of characters to follow through the series as they tackle issues of sexual identity at a time when it was illegal to be gay; trying your best to better yourself in the face of peer pressure from gangs; the dangers of creating a false impression of who you are online; and female issues of body image and sexual inequality. And for eagle eyed readers, there’s a secret storyline hidden in the code.”

I’m a sucker for Victorian-set work like this and the parallels that period has with our own hi-tech, modern era (it is after all the period which gave us the original information superhighway, the telegraph, not to mention the idea of computing machines with Babbage’s remarkable mechanical computing device, the Difference Engine). And frankly they had me at the line up – Leah, John and Emma working on a project together? Really, that alone, for my money, says you should be paying attention to The Thrill Electric. The enhanced comic will appear online (and for mobile devices) in ten part each week, beginning this Thursday, so bookmark the site now.

The Thrill Electric is a 10 part motion comic from Hat Trick Productions and Channel 4 written by Leah Moore and John Reppion, with character design by Emma Vieceli. The series premieres in October 2011, available online, on the iPhone and iPad. And it looks rather good indeed.

“The Thrill Electric is set in Victorian Manchester and draws parallels between the electric telegraph and the modern day internet: flirting, gender roles, sexual politics, gang violence, and the constant chatter of online gossip. Everything that makes the Internet buzz today was right there in Victorian England via the telegraph.

The Thrill Electric follows teenager Emily Bagley as she takes a job at The Electric Telegraph Company and for the first time in her life finds herself an independent, young woman in Manchester at the height of the industrial revolution. Office romances, work place politics, sexism and sexual experimentation all provide the backdrop to tackling very modern teenage themes through the beautifully realised Victorian Manchester.

by Leah Moore, John Reppion and Aaron Campbell

Dynamite Entertainment

There are two ways to go with any classic icon such as Holmes; either reinterpret an existing Holmes tale, as with SelfMade Hero’s series (reviewed here) or, as is the case with The Trial Of Sherlock Holmes, take the riskier option of creating a completely new story.

But here, the risk has paid off handsomely, and whilst it may not be up there with Conan Doyle, this first volume of a series of new Sherlock Holmes tales by the writing team of Reppion and Moore is certainly true to the spirit of the classics and nearly as enthralling.

(Holmes and Watson in familiar scenes, discussing the case that will see Holmes accused of murder. From The Trial Of Sherlock Holmes, art by Aaron Campbell, published Dynamite Entertainment)

The story is a simple one, played out over five chapters, with Holmes being the unwitting victim of a locked room mystery. Called in to consult with a dreadfully ill former assistant police commissioner, Holmes finds himself in the difficult position of holding the smoking gun over the bedside of a dead man, who seems to be in possession of papers alleging that Holmes and the infamous Moriarty are actually one and the same. I hope I’m not giving anything away here by revealing that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Holmes is ever bit as innocent as he protests. Because the guilt or innocence of Holmes isn’t the mystery here, it’s all about the search for the truth behind the dead body in the locked room.

(Could it really be? Could Holmes be the murderer? Could Holmes and Moriarty be one and the same? ….. Of course not. That’s not the point. The fun is in the journey towards the final proof of innocence. From The Trial Of Sherlock Holmes, art by Aaron Campbell, published Dynamite Entertainment)

Holmes is arrested on murder charges and both Inspector Lestrade and Doctor Watson seem powerless to help their old colleague and friend. But Holmes’ intellect and formidable determination quickly come to play, he escapes from incarceration and sets about putting everything in place to finally reveal the truth at his own trial.

Put like that, the story seems rather lightweight and flimsy. But the story is far more than it’s plot here. This is all about the games being played behind the scenes as Holmes struggles to carry out his investigation whilst staying ahead of his recapture until he deems it necessary. And in that Moore and Reppion have spun this plot light story out rather expertly, making every page a potential clue for those of us attempting to work out the mystery before the great detective reveals all in the final chapter. And, once you’ve finished it, you’ll be wanting to go back through the book, spotting everything that was laid out before you, if only you’d have been looking in just the right place.

(Holmes finally gets his day in court and the whole plot is revealed. From The Trial Of Sherlock Holmes, art by Aaron Campbell, published Dynamite Entertainment)

The characterisation of all the main cast is spot on, with Holmes, although on the back foot by his incarceration, still having the chance to  display his usual cold, deductive reasoning before making his grand resolution to the case. Watson is handled as the stout and dependable friend, not an equal, but certainly not the bumbling oaf he’s often mistaken for. There are well handled appearances from Lestrade and Mrs Hudson and a subtle, cold and potentially cleverer elder Holmes brother in Mycroft as well.

The art from Aaron Campbell is solid stuff, certainly more than up to the task of keeping everything moving along, his handling of both slower, dialogue heavy expositionary scenes and the infrequent action sequences perfectly in keeping with the style and feel of the story. Mention must go to colourist Tony Avina as well, for the subtle and mysterious colouring throughout the series, very nice work.

It’s a worthy addition to the Sherlock Holmes canon, and the hardback, along with it’s plentiful extras would make a great present for any Holmes fan. But it’s also a good, solid comic story, whether you like Holmes or not. The extras here include scripts, artwork, an afterword by world renowned Holmes scholar Leslie S. Klinger and an original Conan Doyle Holmes short story – The Devil’s Foot – illustrated by Campbell. It’s perhaps the greatest compliment I can give to Moore, Reppion and Campbell’s comic story that the presence of a Conan Doyle original does nothing to diminish the enjoyment of their own original work.

Richard Bruton.

Strip!: Doctor Who comics now, this evening at 5pm on Resonance FM, podcast on Panel Borders after transmission

Alex Fitch talks to the creators of a couple of recent innovative Doctor Who comics about bringing a new angle to the popular franchise. Leah Moore and John Reppion wrote the recent one off comic “The Whispering Gallery” which sees the Doctor and Martha exploring a terrifying museum on an alien planet. Also, Alex talks to Richard Morris, creator of the popular and unauthorised web comic, “The Ten Doctors” – an epic serialised graphic novel which celebrates almost every aspect you can think of from 46 years of the Timelord’s adventures (see here).

(Doctor Who, the Whispering Gallery by Leah Moore and JOhn Reppion, art by Ben Templesmith, published IDW, DW (c) BBC)

I’m ready for my close-up: Fly me to the moon (Patrick Moore & Gerry Anderson), tonight at 10.30pm on Resonance FM

On the 40th anniversary of the moon landings, Alex Fitch talks to two television pioneers who were inspired by the events of July 16th 1969. Sir Patrick Moore covered the events of the Apollo 11 mission live on TV and discusses the events of that day with Alex as well as the highlights of his six decades presenting The Sky at Night. Alex also talks to Gerry Anderson about how the space race and technological innovations of the 1960s inspired such shows as Fireball XL5 and Thunderbirds. N.B. The interview with Sir Patrick is available to download now from SciFi London.

Reality Check: Torchwood in print, on SciFi London on the 19th of July

In a panel discussion recorded live at a meeting of the British Fantasy Society, late 1980s Doctor Who script editor Andrew Cartmel talks to a quartet of Torchwood novelists – Mark Morris, Sarah Pinborough, Guy Adams and Joe Lidster – about bringing the show to the printed page and expanding the adventures of Jack, Ianto and Gwen to the length of a hardback novel.

Previous podcasts:

Reality Check: Female action heroes, online at SciFi London

To coincide with the release of updates of the Terminator franchise and Blood: The last Vampire, Alex Fitch talks to actress Linda Hamilton about her career, working with Arnold Schwarzenegger and becoming a feminist icon. Alex also talks to anime expert Helen McCarthy about the various incarnations of Blood: The Last Vampire, the Japanese version of Buffy which has moved from TV animation to manga, video games and now live action cinema.

Panel Borders: Small press Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Continuing Sci-Fi comics month on the show, we have a couple of interviews recorded at comic book conventions with small press creators who are working in the SF and Fantasy genres. In an interview recorded at this year’s Bristol Comics Expo, Dickon Harris talks to comic book creator and musician Dave Lander who contributes to the anthology comic Decadence which in the last couple of instalments has been heavily SF themed, Dave also produced a CD soundtrack to go with recent issues and there are extracts in the podcast.
Also, Alex Fitch talks to Rob Jackson about his fantasy comics Random Journeys and Bog Wizards which combine unreliable narrators, humour and magical landscapes, in an interview recorded at a pub in the East End after the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing.

Coming soon:

Strip!: Doctor Who comics then…

Alex Fitch talks to two of the creators of Marvel UK’s seminal Who comic strip printed in Doctor Who Weekly. Pat Mills co-wrote the first 43 instalments of the weekly Doctor Who strip with fellow 2000AD cohort John Wagner, bring to the page such outlandish tales as The Iron Legion and The Star Beast about a Robot Roman army and a psychotic cute alien who befriends children. Dave Gibbons drew 56 of the first 60 instalments of the Marvel comic, making him the most iconic artist to be associated with Tom Baker’s Doctor in comic strip format and drew the first episode of Peter Davison’s run, as his swan song. Alex talks to Pat and Dave about their work on the comic and also about Pat’s forays into Who on the radio, writing scripts for Colin Baker and Paul McGann.