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Leatherjack

Started by Colin YNWA, 16 July, 2010, 09:20:00 AM

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Emperor

Quote from: The Corinthian on 17 August, 2010, 09:43:52 PM
Sorry, but I have sources to protect!

Yes, but... biscuits...
if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Fractal Friction | Tumblr | Google+

The Corinthian

What sort of biscuits?

JOE SOAP


Emperor

if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Fractal Friction | Tumblr | Google+

Colin YNWA

I'd even raise the stakes to cake!

Noisybast

I'll stump up for a packet of Chocolate Hob Nobs, if it'll help.
Dan Dare will return for a new adventure soon, Earthlets!

The Corinthian

I am now immune to biscuit bribery.

Emperor

#22
A terribly disappointing turn of affairs.

Quote from: The Corinthian on 17 August, 2010, 08:51:22 PMVertigo was built on Gaiman's Sandman, but that was always going to be a finite thing and so there was a tussle between the direction it might take once Sandman was done. On the one hand you have the Gaimans and the Milligans who I regard as 'The Mad Mod Poet Gods', and then there were 'The Lads' - the Morrisons and the Ennises and the Millars. And the Lads won, but I do wonder what might have happened if Smith had got a foot in the door, given that he kind of straddles both camps (who else could write a story about serial killers fighting each other with dinosaurs as a competitive sport then bookend it with 'Firekind' and 'Deus Ex Machina'?)

The way I see it Vertigo started with two camps:


  • The Over-writers Guild - who wrote their prose hard and put it away wet, like Gaiman and Delano
  • The Neo-Weirdoes - who stopped you worrying what they'd taken when they wrote it and made you start worrying what you might have taken, partly your Mad Mod Poet Gods but also including early Morrison (like Doom Patrol but also Animal Man and The Invisibles to some extent)

In some way The Lads were a backlash to both (although you can see Ennis tinkering with Neo-Weirdism in that Hellblazer story where he goes to American) or perhaps a backlash on what they became - everyone thinking they had to massively over-write their text (even though it often came across as angsty scribblings in school notebooks) or scatter in some trippiness (although it often felt like they were trying too hard, like the kid who thinks he is tripping when older boys have just palmed him off with a square of blotting paper). I imagine this happened in the same way Watchmen helped lead to the Dark Age of Comics - a shallow reading of the story lead people to think the key to its success was the grim and gritty take on superheroes, which was then implemented by writers with only a fraction of Moore's ability.

As you say, Smith did seem to have a foot in each camp but his prose was lighter and his weirdness both more focused but also less in your face (it is often not vital for... exposition or driving the story forward but evokes... moods, so that it adds to the depth of the story - so in Fetish and Cradlegrave you can almost taste the heat and in Herod/Frogs/Sirius it is like Fortean white noise/mood music. I think the most telling thing is the fact that quite a few people didn't notice the missing captions from the second Devlin Waugh trade paperback). This does seem to mean his writing is not so easy to classify and may take a bit of work to get into, less so than a lumpen chunk of over-written prose that isn't that challenging but makes the reader feel that the comic they are reading is almost like a "proper book."

The falling out with Vertigo is a real pity, as it does seem like a natural home-away-from-home which would also expose his work to a different audience. After all I can't see him getting a gig on a mainstream superhero title at the Big Two, although, as I mention above there are corners of even their core universes that would benefit from a bit of Smithing. As it seems things are a little frosty at Vertigo, I do wonder if there might be other avenues worth exploring - Avatar spring to mind and I do seem to recall him saying he has an idea for a horror story that might be too much even for 2000 AD. As Avatar publish Crossed they are clearly not ones to shy away from comics that might be a little controversial.
if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Fractal Friction | Tumblr | Google+

Hoagy

What's the title of those comics Matt Timson is producing art in?

Are they strong enough to hold a bold horror?
"bULLshit Mr Hand man!"
"Man, you come right out of a comic book. "
Previously Krombasher.

https://www.deviantart.com/fantasticabstract

TordelBack

#24
Great posts, Corinthian and Emperor!  The Over-Writers, the Neo-Weirdos and the Lads, and Smiffy between three stools (in many senses) - love it.

Editorial politics aside, why Smith and Bagwell don't have their own ongoing title at Vertigo is a complete mystery to me.  A stable that can accommodate ambitious material like Ba's Daytripper should also have a place for John Smith.

I'd like to think Avatar could be a good home, but it seems to be lurching ever further into outrageous gore and depravity rather than the subtler more skin-crawling sicknesses Smith excels at.

Emperor

Quote from: Krombasher on 19 August, 2010, 05:56:31 PM
What's the title of those comics Matt Timson is producing art in?

Impaler.

Quote from: Krombasher on 19 August, 2010, 05:56:31 PMAre they strong enough to hold a bold horror?

They being... the publisher or the art? Respectively, I'd say: possibly (I don't know of Top Cow knocking anything back for being too... bold but then again I can't think of anything they've done being controversial or extreme) and yes (but Matt is slow, but then again so is John so it might be a match made in heaven - I'd definitely like to see them on a story together).
if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Fractal Friction | Tumblr | Google+

Hoagy

Argh, Gads.

Yes that really tore up the grammar. "Is that company", would have served the sentence better.

Saying that, the idea of Matt doing the artwork was floating around the noggin whilst writing the question.

As Tordle says, top post Emperor.
"bULLshit Mr Hand man!"
"Man, you come right out of a comic book. "
Previously Krombasher.

https://www.deviantart.com/fantasticabstract

Colin YNWA

Quote from: Emperor on 19 August, 2010, 05:47:26 PM
After all I can't see him getting a gig on a mainstream superhero title at the Big Two, although, as I mention above there are corners of even their core universes that would benefit from a bit of Smithing.

This particular bit of your fantastic post has been rattling around my head since I read it. I have no idea whether John Smith has any interest in writing for DC (He has said he drafted Doctor Fate so)he would be blooming glorious if he got hold on some of their characters. Imagine his take on Fourth World (well Fifth World after Final Crisis) the very thought sends me giddy.

I'm so rubbish a wonderful set of post and all I can think of is uhh what if he wrote my favourite this or that. Shame on me!

Emperor

Quote from: Colin_YNWA on 19 August, 2010, 07:14:05 PM
Quote from: Emperor on 19 August, 2010, 05:47:26 PM
After all I can't see him getting a gig on a mainstream superhero title at the Big Two, although, as I mention above there are corners of even their core universes that would benefit from a bit of Smithing.

This particular bit of your fantastic post has been rattling around my head since I read it. I have no idea whether John Smith has any interest in writing for DC (He has said he drafted Doctor Fate so)he would be blooming glorious if he got hold on some of their characters. Imagine his take on Fourth World (well Fifth World after Final Crisis) the very thought sends me giddy.

There are always corners of a big fictional universe one can tinker with, even if you don't want to write capes. DC is trickier as it split its horror off to Vertigo but some of that is coming back and I'd love to see him on Swamp Thing. There are also organisations that would be ripe for pushing the envelope - the Human Defense Corps is a non-superpowered group trying to ward of alien invasions and seems to be making a comeback, while the Department of Extranormal Operations is the DC equivalent of the Men in Black. Or you can push on into sci-fi where there is a tonne of potential, you mentioned the Fourth World (although we are now in the Fifth World and no one is 100% sure what that all means ;) ) but there are also the Omega Men and more shifty aliens that you can shake a moon at, the Khunds and Durlans stick in my mind. Pity Elseworlds has been pruned down and jammed into the 52 as there was always room there for an odd take on the characters.

Marvel have a lot of horror/weirdness sewn into the fabric of their multiverse. As I said above I'd love to see what he could do with Man-Thing, as I mentioned elsewhere I really enjoyed the Essential Man-Thing (having first read the stories in Marvel UK's Savage Action) - the mix of creepy tales and multiverse hopping weirdness would be an idea fit and the character is back to prominence thanks to Marvel Zombies, which led to his key role in the Thunderbolts. However, as I say there is a lot at Marvel that could work - from Dr Strange to Marvel Cosmic (and the Microverse is making a bit of a comeback), plus they seem happier with dimension-hopping than DC are at the moment. It is a pity his one try-out at Marvel never seems to have gone anywhere.

So yes, plenty there.
if I went 'round saying I was an Emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

Fractal Friction | Tumblr | Google+

The Corinthian

The Over-Writer in Chief is Alan Moore. He abandons the technique later on (and part of his 'How to Write for Comics' is an elongated mea culpa for spawning a generation of writers who think that's it) but some of the text for Swamp Thing and (especially) Miracleman look like clogged arteries in prose. This is a good thing, as he gets better when he takes the opposite tack, and because the talented writers who follow him know how to avoid his mistakes (e.g. Gaiman, whose prose style is a lot suppler and more considered than Moore's by a mile).

Interesting, Our Man Smith takes the prose-poetry caption to a kind of logical extreme, so that the text doesn't just counterpoint the image but acts as a kind of synaesthesia, conveying in words images that can't be drawn. 'Leatherjack' is probably the most literate thing Tooth has ever published, not in the sense of being "well read" but more "acutely conscious of the power of the word".