Saturday 6 January 2007

"Oh, they're tough, mighty tough, in the west"

I used to read westerns, well maybe for a year or so I read 'em, and in the Campbellian way, read every possible author on the market and analyzed the history of the whole thing. But I got the impression I was supposed to be reading science fiction. The whole 'comics fandom' thing was understood by everybody in it to be a sub category of sci-fi. Then in the seventies it became fantasy. I remember one fanzine defining its content as 'all the stuff we're interested in', and I thought: how would you know what I'm interested in? There was a sense of one thing connecting inevitably to another. I never got that. In fact, I've never got the idea of 'genre fiction' either. I mean, as a thing to which you pledge some kind of allegiance. Anyway, for a year, Westerns were for me. I spent an hour this morning trying to google up the cover of a book I owned way back when I was fifteen.



It wasn't easy because I couldn't even remember the author's name. All I could recall is that it was painted by Gino d'Achille. It was in '69, a few years before he came to the attention of American collectors with his painted covers for the Edgar Rice Burroughs books. Looking at those now, I care for none of them. But I did find my cover in the end and I still love it as much as when I once owned that little paperback written by Matt Chisholm. A British writer of westerns (real name peter Christopher Watts), with a painted cover by an Italian; indeed, isn't that cover just saturated with the stylings of the spaghetti western.

The Comic book was my customary means of expression, so I took Chisholm's Apache rogue, Gato, and drew a couple of 13 page stories around him, in full colour. This was in 1971. Don't expect more than juvenlia here, and by the end of the second story it's starting to look too much like Buscema's Conan (perhaps I had shifted my genre-allegiance by then.) Also, and alas, I had a habit then of drawing the action scenes as though I was taking part in them. It was many years before I'd learn to take pains over all aspects of the work. Still, one or two pages show a little promise.



I only located the links for Chisholm (whose name I had forgotten) due to the fact that I named one of the characters in this story after him.

The Black Diamond Detective Agency (my upcoming book from First Second Books- see yesterday's post) is not really a western, but it starts quite westerly, in Missouri in 1899, and then shifts to Chicago and becomes a gangster story (if you need to understand fiction in these terms). It's really more about the arrival of the train than the fate of the horse, but I find it interesting that I seem to have subconsciously remembered that horse from the cover above when i drew this silent sequence in Diamond. If I'd been more conscious of it, I'd have made more of the horse no doubt, perhaps going so far as to swipe that perfectly observed leg in the air in the d'Achille painting. But then I'd have been too ashamed to show the original here.



The title of this post comes from a 1937 hit sung by British jazzman Nat Gonella
"Oh, they're tough, mighty tough, in the west,
and their beards are thicker than an eagle's nest.
Their dentists have bad manners
and they pull out teeth with spanners..."

I have for a long time been of the opinion that this song was the inspiration for the British comic strip character Desperate Dan, which started in december of the same year.

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Friday 5 January 2007

" 'Ja think I'm a cowboy?"

The time has come to reveal the cover of my new book, due on sale in June 2007, or five months from now, from First Second Books in New York. Design work is by Charlie Orr , who also did the designs on my Fate of the Artist. Charlie's idea of a theatrical, or showground, facade on the front/back of that cover has been called, by at least one reviewer, the funniest gag in the whole book.


(click to enlarge)

On the back cover I am pretending to be the protagonist of the book, in a photo taken under our house by wee Callum under my direction:



It's the first time I have been photgraphed as a cowboy since, well since this one I suppose:



The title of today's post is of course the very first line uttered by Popeye, on Jan 17 1929. Castor Oyl is walking along the harbour trying to buy a boat to get to Dice Island. He says to Ham Gravy, "You'll find the scum of the earth right here in this port. So we've got to be careful in picking our crew". In panel 2 he calls to someone off-panel, "Hey there, are you a sailor?" and then in panel 3 we see him, the character who will become one of the greatest ever: Popeye.
"''ja think I'm a cowboy?"
"O.K. You're hired."

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Thursday 4 January 2007

FROM HELL: 9/20

An occasional look at a favourite page from the FROM HELL scripts by Alan Moore.

I have always suspected that on this page, chapter 9 page 20, Alan was having a dig at my occasional skimping on the details. For instance, in an early chapter he asked me to draw, among various sights in a sordid street view, an alligator crawling in the stinking gutter. Feeling that I couldn't pull this off with a note of authenticity, I just omitted it, confident that it wasn't relevant to the proceedings. Alan managed to get his alligator in by another route, in chapter 6 page 22, when he has Abberline say: "I've seen it all, lad... alligators waddling through the shit in the gutters, albinos being led about on chains..." Since it was in the dialogue this time, I couldn't leave it out.
He got a dig in on another occasion, after one of the several bannings of the book (an example, but not this actual one) (more likely this one: CENSORS CAUGHT BETWEEN ROCKETS AND A HARD PLOT: "In the light of the Directorate's response to the first four, it is equally likely to ban "From Hell", written by Alan Moore, regarded as poet laureate of ...") Called upon to comment on the matter Alan said in an interview (I don't have it to hand, this is from memory), I don't see what the fuss is about. So we showed an erect penis, but it's not like it was a real one. It was an Eddie Campbell penis. It was just a squiggle.
Having written the above, I've just noticed that I shied away from showing the erect penis on this page... not even a squiggle this time... can't remember why I left that detail out. I think the thing with 'all that penis and vagina stuff' (as wee Cal would say) is that in chapter 1 Alan was presenting it as hard evidence--exhibit a, your honour, the penis; exhibit b, the vagina-- even though we were pretty much in the realm of hypothesis, which as I said on dec 20 of this here blog, was the essence of the style I had to fashion: the graphics of theory and guesswork. 'Please tell the court what you saw'. 'A squiggle, m'lord.'



FROM HELL Chapter 9- page 20
PANEL 1.
SEVEN PANELS AGAIN, BUT THIS TIME WITH THE BIG WIDE ONE AS THE BOTTOM PANEL AND THREE SMALLER PANELS ON EACH OF THE TWO TIERS ABOVE. IN THIS FIRST PANEL, THE SHOT IS PRETTY MUCH THE SAME AS IN PANEL FOUR ON THE PREVIOUS PAGE: WE SEE EDDY AND STEPHEN FULL FIGURE, BOTH FACING US SIDE BY SIDE WITH STEPHEN SEATED ON THE RIGHT WITH THE TABLE JUST VISIBLE ON HIS LEFT (OUR RIGHT), AND PRINCE EDDY STANDING ON THE LEFT OF THE PANEL. EDDY’S HANDS ARE SPREAD HERE IN AN EXPLANATORY GESTURE AS HE TRIES TO CONVEY TO STEPHEN THE MISERY THAT HE IS FEELING. HE DOESN’T LOOK AT STAPHEN BUT GAZES HOPELESSLY INTO SPACE AS HE SPEAKS, HIS GIRLISH EYES TORMENTED. STEPHEN, WEARING A CALM EXPRESSION OF NO-NONSENSE RESOLUTION, TURNS BRIEFLY AWAY FROM EDDY AND PLACES THE BOOK OF POETRY FACE DOWNON THE TABLE, PUTTING IT ASIDE.
EDDY: I’d hoped I could shake off this beastly fit by visiting you, but I can’t.
EDDY: I-I return to London in a month. Perhaps I can do something then…

PANEL 2.
SAME SHOT AS LAST PANEL. EDDY IS STILL STANDING, IN THE FLOW OF DISCOURSE, BUT HE STOPS AND LOOKS DOWN AT JEM STEPHEN HERE WITH A LOOK OF SURPRISE. STEPHEN, HIS BOOK PUT ASIDE, IS STILL SEATED. HE TURNS BACK TOWARDS EDDY HERE AND TILTS HIS HEAD BACK TO LOOK UP AT THE PRINCE WITH A LEVEL EYED AND OPEN EXPRESSION. AS HE DOES SO, HE REACHES OUT WITH HIS LEFT HAND AND GENTLY PLACES THE PALM FLAT AGAINST EDDY’S CROTCH, THUS OCCASIONING THE PRINCE’S EXPRESSION OF DULL SURPRISE HERE.
EDDY: … although what can I do? Nobody tells me anything; they won’t let me have a say, and…
EDDY: Jem?

PANEL 3.
SAME SHOT. STEPHEN NOW CLIMBS DOWN FROM HIS ARMCHAIR AND ONTO HIS KNEES IN FRONT OF EDDY, STILL WITH THE SAME CALM AND SERENE EXPRESSION AS IF NOTHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY WERE HAPPENING. KNEELING, HE BEGINS TO UNDO THE FRONT OF THE PRINCE’S TROUSERS. EDDY LOOKS SHAKEN, UNCERTAIN ABOUT WHETHER TO OR HOW TO PROTEST. MAYBE HE CLUTCHES THE BACK OF THE CHAIR FOR SUPPORT, STILL GAZING DOWN AT STEPHEN INCREDULOUSLY, TRMBLING SLIGHTLY FROM THE SUDDEN EROTIC STRESS OF THE MOMENT
EDDY: J-Jem? Jem, what are you…?
STEPHEN: Shhh
STEPHEN: I want to gamauche you, Eddy. Do say I might.

PANEL 4.
NOW WE START TO CLOSE IN SO THAT WE ONLY SEE EDDY ABOUT THREE QUARTER FIGURE HERE, WITH STEPHEN ABOUT HALF FIGURE KNEELING THERE AT HIS FEET. THE TOP OF EDDY’S TROUSERS IS OPEN, AND STEPHEN HAS RELEASED THE PRINCE’S COCK, HALF AWAKE HERE; HALF ERECT. HOLDING THE SHAFT IN ONE HAND WHILE CUPPING EDDY’S BALLS WITH THE OTHERHE CLOSES HIS EYES, DREAMILY. AND STARTS TO SUCK ON THE TIP. EDDY REELS, HOLDING ON TO THE BACK OF THE CHAIR FOR SUPPORT. HE STARES INTO SPACE WITH A HAUNTED, ALMOST FRIGHTENED LOOK AS WE SEE THE WILLL POWER AND RESISTANCE SLOWLY LEAKING FROM HIM WITH EACH NEW WAVE OF PHYSICAL PLEASURE. PERHAPS HE PLACES HIS OTHER HAND GENTLY UPON STEPHEN’S HEAD AS IF TO PUSH IT AWAY. BUT THERE IS NO FORCE OR INTENTION BEHIND THE GESTURE. EDDY IS LOST.
EDDY: Jem, I… I don’t think we should. It’s not…
EEDDY: I mean, I … oh, God.

PANEL 5.
CONTINUE TO CLOSE IN SO THAT WE SEE EDDY ABOUT HALF FIGURE HERE, FACING US. ALL WE CAN SEE OF STEPHEN IS THE TOP OF HIS HEAD, DOWN AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PANEL. EDDY’S HAND RESTS LOVINGLY IN HIS HAIR AS THE PRINCE GIVES UP ALL PRETENCE OF EXISTENCE AND GOES ALONG WITH THE ACT. HIS EYES ARE HALF-CLOSED AS HE GAZES OUT OF THE PANEL AT US HERE. AS THE STRESS MELTS FROM HIS FACE HE LOOKS LIKE A DRUGGED CHILD, EYSES HEAVY LIDDED AND MOUTH HANGING SLIGHTLY OPEN.
EDDY: Oh, god, Jem.
EDDY: Jem, I’m so weak. I-I’m not bad…

PANEL 6
CLOSE IN FOR A HEAD AND SHULDERS SHOT OF EDDYE NOW, WITH STEPHEN NO LONGER VISIBLE, OFF PANEL BELOW. EDDY TIPS HIS HEAD BACK SLIGHTLY AND CLOSES HIS EYES AS HE COMES, UTTERLY LOST IN A WARM AND INFANTILE PLEASURE THAT HE KNOWS WILL ALWAYS LEAD HIM, HOWEVER GRAVE THE CONSEQUENCES.
EDDY: Just weak.

PANEL 7.
THIS PANEL IS BASICALLY A CUT TO THE GOLDEN LANE MORTUARY WHERE THE INQUEST ON CATHERINE EDDOWES IS OPENING. I DUNNO HOW THIS WILL SOUND TO YOU, BUT WHAT IF WE CUT TO A TIGHT CLOSE-UP OF THE GOLDEN LANE STREET SIGN, BOLTED TO THE WALL, SO THAT THE WORDS ARE NOT COMPLETELY VISIBLE… PART OF THE G IN GOLDEN IS MISSING FOR EXAMPLE, AND THE L AND THE LOWER PART OF ‘ANE’ ARE MISSING IN THE SECOND WORD… WITH THIS EXTREME CLOSE UP OF THE STREET SIGN FILLING THE WHOLE OF THIS COMPARATIVELY LARGE PANEL? I THOUGHT WE COULD MAYBE TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SHOW SOMETHING ORDINARY AND MUNDANE IN SUPER-REAL AND HYPER CLOSE-UP DETAIL, SO THAT WE SEE THE CRUMBLING MORTAR IN BETWEEN THE BRICKS THAT MAKE THE WALL ON WHICH THE SIGN IS BOLTED, AND THE SKIDMARK SMEAR OF RUST THAT’S CREEPING DOWN THE METAL SIGN FROM WHERE THAT BOLT THAT HOLDS IT TO THE WALL HAS OXIDIZED. PERHAPS A SMALL BUT PERFECT WALLFLOWER ISSUES TENTATIVELY FROM THE CRUMBLING MORTAR IN BETWEEN THE BRICKS, A FRAGILE THING AGAINST THE SOOT-STREAKED WALL. I FIGURED IF WE ESTABLIS SOMETHING IN INTENSE DETAIL, JUST ONCE, THEN IN A WAY IT IMPLIES TO THE READER THAT THE WHOLE OF THE WORLD THAT WE’RE SHOWING IS THAT COMPLEX AND DETAILED, EVEN IF WE DON’T SHOW THE DETAILS ALL THE TIME. DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL, OR HAVE THE MAGIC MUSHROOMS STARTED WORKING? ANYWAY, IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT AND HAVE SOME OTHER IDEA THAT WILL CONVEY THE CHANGE OF SCENE AS ADEQUATELY, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO STICK IT IN (AS J. K. STEPHEN SAID TO THE DUKE OF CLARENCE AND AVONDALE).
No dialogue.

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Wednesday 3 January 2007

The Pick-up Truck of Hieronymus Bosch. part 3

Thanks to the perspicacity of my pal Evans, the truck upon which we have been feasting our gaze has been identified as the work of Brisbane sculptor, Christopher Trotter. There is a page of detail close-ups at the artist's site, but I'm finding it frustrating there as we really need to both zoom in on and enlarge some those details to get a full appreciation of the job. So here we go, working from the back up the left hand side.

Stork:



in the passenger seat...



looks like Feathers McGraw:







these hood ornaments are the piece de resistance.





* * * *
That second from last is a picture of me, blowing my own trumpet.

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Tuesday 2 January 2007

The Pick-up Truck of Hieronymus Bosch. part 2

The truck again. If memory serves, I photographed it quite thoroughly because around that time I was planning a big book that would have been titled The History of Humour. I would have tagged this truck onto the end of a chapter on Hieronymus Bosch, the man who dropped the detritus of gothic marginalia on the welcome mat of the High and noble Renaissance. This would have been the Truck of Fools careening to its doom, like a medieval metaphor for all of society.

The front is a mad sea creature with ill matched eyes:




Here is the Hell door, with memento mori:



and hermit crabs:



composite creatures:



including Arcimboldo guy:



Scorpion tail:



I wish I had a decent shot of the rear. Cal says there was a metal mouse peeping out of the exhaust.

The best parts tomorrow, final.

Waitaminit. phone call. It's Evans. That looks like Christopher Trotter's work... And I'm to make sure I don't claim this insight as my own... yeah.. Evans knows the score? bugger off, I'm not saying that... yeah, okay... okay, I'll bung an email to Mr Trotter and we'll have this confirmed by tomorrow.
and thanks for roning.

Confirmation already:
"Hi Eddie,
I am currently away on holidays. back in a weeks time. Can send info regarding "The Scavenger" then.
Cheers,
Christopher"

So the truck is titled 'The Scavenger' "...(Christopher Trotter, 1998), based on a war-surplus 1940 Ford Crane truck, New Farm Park, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia."
And here's another link found in my quick browse: Life Forms Sculpture
Don't things move fast in this age of blogging. Christopher Trotter's work can be seen in many places around Brisbane. There's a great bus stop with metal wallabies climbing all over the bench seats. I'll see if I can get a photo or two.

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Monday 1 January 2007

The Pick-up Truck of Hieronymus Bosch. part 1

Thought for the day: "What if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today." -the Bill Murray character in Groundhog day, which was on the box here yesterday.

So far, the new year is going much like the old one. I still can't manage to get a picture uploaded to the profile thing on the right there. So apologies to the 843 people who have looked in there and found nothing (or the one person who has looked 843 times). I've noticed, here and there, folks who are having trouble with the new version of Blogger. Well, here at Castle Campbell we are no different. I can only upload a couple of pictures immediately after I've first signed in. After that it refuses me and I have to sign out and then sign in again, and even then I have to lean slightly to the right and chew my tongue in a certain way. In fact it is so suited to our mental condition here that there is even a suggestion going around that the new version of Blogger may even have been designed by Campbell.
* * * *
To business. In the first photo you see a truck that I observed parked in our town square here in Brisbane, in a roped-off, on-show way, some six or seven years back. I don't know from where it comes, whether it's local or flown in, or who is responsible for it. All I know is that it is one of the most magnificent things I have ever looked upon.



I'm only dating my photo approximately based on the guessable age of the wee person in this second photo: Callum Campbell. He looks about eight here. He's now taller than me, has long hair and knocks around on a skateboard all day.



He was last seen in print in The Fate of the Artist mooching cash from me to buy a condom:



Back then we used to occasionally go into town and 'hang out', as our American chums would say. We'd call it our 'father-son day out'. On these special occasions, among our frivolous quips and jollities, I would sometimes instruct him in the ways of the world. In one such moment of seriousness, we had stopped in the middle of the main street, the busy Queen Street Mall, I said to the wee lad, "There's nothing a woman likes more than when you put your nose in her belly button and go (like big flobbery dog with loose jowels) flubadubadubadubba!"
And he logged this imporatant information away in his lttle head while replying, "Yeah, never mind all that penis and vagina stuff, hey Dad?

Tomorrow, the details.

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Sunday 31 December 2006

'Another year over.'

I have a long post I'm going to split into two or three parts. It will be titled 'The pick-up truck of Hieronymus Bosch'. But I don't want to split it over two months, never mind years, in the archive, so I'll save it till tomorrow. Meanwhile, I was clearing out my wallet for the end of the tax quarter and came across this scribbled on the back of a receipt. I lifted it from a women's magazine while waiting for my lad, Callum, at the doctor's the other day. He has a gaping hole in his shin from a skateboard accident, but it appears to be healing.
On women taking their husband's name. "Anyone who gets married is a fool. I can understand why a man would get married. Everybody can use a wife. it's just that nobody needs a husband. If women are fool enough to get married it really doesn't matter if they take their husband's name or not. Marriage is a very odd arrangement. A contract with no terms, a sacrament with no ritual. you don't know what it is you promised until you're told you didn't do it and you're being divorced." Germaine Greer.
* * * *
And while I'm having a clearing out, a few links that have gathered over the last couple of weeks:
TIME magazine's 10 Best Books of 2006, By LEV GROSSMAN, RICHARD LACAYO, December 17. I like that Alison Bechdel's Fun Home is no.1 without any qualifiers about it being a 'graphic novel' (sorry, but that expression is now permantly spelled with the quote marks around here). The next step after the 'graphic novel' being recognised as just another illustrated book is for it to be recognized as just another book. Then it will no longer exist and we will have achieved something.
On the same theme: Dirk, I loves ya, but I think you're being counterproductive in your first item here.
* * * *
Alan Moore's old strip from the British weekly, SOUNDS, 'The Stars my Degradation' is being assembled online here. There's a special long Christmas edition from dec 25 1982 which comes up on my screen as a load of code, so it's lucky that this other guy here has posted it too (thanks to Dirk Deppey for the link, see above). Alan was drawing this series when I first met him in '82. (1979-1983) When he stepped out of the Sounds spot Bryan Talbot had a go for a year and then Phil Elliott and I collaborated for two years, 1984-86. It was a great spot, a quarter tabloid size (down from Half when Alan was doing it), going all the way across the page. Not sure why Sounds was the site of so much activity. It's not like they were very bright or had any notions about the comic strip having cultural value. Mostly Phil and I tried to do good work while throwing enough toilet jokes to keep them distracted. Anyway, that was my first regular job as a cartoonist. Here's an example from 6 august 1984. Phil and I would draw alternate weeks, and I'd letter and sign them all 'Charlie Trumper', while Phil handled the paperwork and dealing with the publisher as I had a daytime office job. That's how we did it at the beginning anyway, and this is one I made myself. The title reads 'Everybody loves the government' and it's as true today as it was back then. (click enlarge)

* * * *
good review of Fate of the Artist in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
* * * *
In comments a few days back, Steve Block linked me to this. Josh Lacey signs up to Daniel Pennac's wise and liberating 10-point manifesto, The Rights of the Reader from The Guardian of Saturday October 28, 2006. And I'd like you to go into 2007 with this thought from Pennac: "By making time to read, like making time to love, we expand our time for living."

May all of your gods, false or otherwise, go with you.

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