FROM HELL- 5/29

This is a page of FROM HELLwhere I can see my creative stamina flagging somewhat. That's bound to happen more than once in a 500 page outing. The top row is fine, marking the contrast of the big hands around the small face and the small hand in front of the huge head that Alan Moore asks for in the script (below). I just wish I'd invested more feeling in the lower two thirds, where I seem to have thought a lot of cross hatching might save the day. Just checking the new Top shelf edition (Nov 2006) I notice that in revision I blacked in all of the hatching in the bottom panel in an attempt to rationalize just how much light was getting into the coach from outside, and I've changed the shape of Gull's face too. I shouldn't have tampered with it. I can't remember if this was done way back in '99 for the first collected edition; this scan must be of an older photocopy from my files. Looking at it now I want to rip that panel out and do it again. Or throw the book away and get into some other line of work.
On the other hand, if this was the worst thing that happened to FROM HELL then we'd be laughing, so don't get on my case about it.
In the chapter after this one, six, I got Pete Mullins in to help from the start. He always finished better the I did, more cleanly and decisively, whereas I would start confidently, laying things in boldly before having a head crisis and covering them up with white paint and second thoughts. Having Pete in the room forced me to keep my eye on the ball, psychologically speaking (couldn't let the young guy see me screwing up.) Furthermore, I'm trying to recall what was going on externally, whether this was a time when payments had slowed down. That problem was resolved when I negotiated a situation where Tundra picked up the reprint. That would have been bad for Steve Bissette, who had first dibs on the chapters for his anthology Taboo, but the publishing complications were driving me nuts. Anyway, I would like to think that's why the art was getting a bit ropey around this time (temporarily), but I do remember that chapter six was the last one to appear in Taboo. (1992? 93?)

FROM HELL. CHAPTER 5. PAGE 29. (920 words)
PANEL 1.
NOW A SEVEN PANEL PAGE THAT IS MOSTLY SILENT. THERE ARE THREE PANELS ON EACH OF THE UPPER TWO TIERS AND THEN ONE BIG WIDE ONE ON THE BOTTOM TIER. IN THIS FIRST PANEL IS VERY SIMILAR TO PANEL SIX ON PAGE TWENTY EIGHT, SHOWING MERRICK AS HE REACHES TOWARDS THE ROSEBUSH. HERE, HOWEVER, WE HAVE MOVED IN CLOSER FOR A SHOT THAT'S ALMOST HEAD AND SHOULDERS. ALSO, MERRICK HAS ACTUALLY REACHED THE ROSE BUSH AND IS CUPPING ONE OF THE BLOSSOMS IN HIS GLOVED HAND, STARTING TO BEND IT TOWARDS HIS FACE SO THAT HE CAN SNIFF IT. THIS SHOULD BE A VERY DREAMLIKE IMAGE, POSSESSED OF A KIND OF MONSTROUS BEAUTY.
No dialogue.

PANEL 2.
NOW WE RETURN TO A VERY TOIGHT CLOSE-UP OF POLLY'S FACE AS IT FILLS THE ENTIRE PANEL. HER EYES HAVE OPENED WIDE IN SUDDEN SURPRISE, FILLED WITH A LOOK OF PUZZLED DISMAY, THE PUPILS CONTRACTED TO PIN-PRICKS. POLLY'S MOUTH IS A TINY "O" OF SURPRISE AS SHE STARES OUT OF THE PANEL AT US. WE CAN'T SEE GULL'S FINGERS AS THEY DIG IN LIKE IRON BARS UPON POLLY'S ARTERIES, BUT WE CAN SEE HIS THUMBS, WHICH ARE HERE PRESSING IN HARD UPON POLLY'S CHEEKS, SQUASHING THE FLESH UP IN SMALL FOLDS WITH THE PRESSURE. HER SMALL FACE IS HELD BRUTALLY IMMOBILE BETWEEN THE THUMBS WHILE THE FINGERS, FURTHER DOWN AND OFF PANEL HERE, CLOSE OFF THE BLOOD SUPPLY TO THE BRAIN. AS THE FACT OF DEATH OPENS IN HER MIND LIKE A WHITE FLOWER, POLLY CAN ONLY SUMMON AN EXPRESSION OF DISAPPOINTED INCOMPREHENSION WITH WHICH TO GREET ETERNITY.
No dialogue

PANEL 3.
NOW BACK TO OUR SHOT OF MERRICK AS SEEN THROUGH POLLY'S EYES. HERE, WE HAVE MOVED IN EVEN CLOSER SO THAT HIS MASSIVE HEAD FILLS THE ENTIRE PANEL, THE ONE RAGGED EYE HOLE CLEARLY VISIBLE. WITHOUT BREAKING THE STEM THAT HE HAS CAREFULLY BENT DOWN TOWARDS HIS FACE, MERRICK GENTLY CRUSHES THE ROSE AGAINST THE FOLDS OF HIS MASK, TRYING TO SMELL IT THROUGH THE CLOTH. THUS WE HAVE POLLY NICHOLLS' LAST SIGHT UPON THIS EARTH; THE FOLDS IN THE CLOTH, THE BLACK HOLE OF THE CYCLOPSEYE LIKE A CIGARETTE BURN, THE ROSE PRESSED UP AGAINST THE MASK.
No dialogue.

PANEL 4
NOW WE HAVE A SILENT SHOT OF THE COACH AS IT STANDS MOTIONLESS IN THE DARK STREET OPPOSITE THE HOSPITAL, WHICH WE NEED NOT SEE HERE. NETLEY SITS ATOP THE BOX, HIS WHIP RESTING ACROSS HIS LAP. HE IS PRETTY MUCH IN SHADOW. THE PALE AND SICKLY LIGHT IS STILL VISIBLE, BURNING THROUGH THE WINDOWS OF THE COACH, BUT IT ONLY TELLS US THAT THE COACH IS OCCUPIED, AND IT GIVES US NO HINT OF WHAT MIGHT BE GOING ON WITHIN THE STATIONARY VEHICLE. ALL ABOUT THE COACH IT IS DARK.
No dialogue

PANEL 5.
NOW WE CLOSE IN UPON NETLEY AS HE SITS ATOP THE BOX, VIEWING HIM IN WHAT'S PROBABLY A HALF FIGURE SHOT HERE. AS GULL'S VOICE FILTERS UP FROM THE COACH OFF PANEL BELOW, NETLEY TURNS HIS HEAD ROUND TOWARDS THE SOURCE OF THE VOICE AS HE REPLIES, HIS EXPRESSION ONE OF NERVOUS READINESS.
GULL: (OFF BELOW, FROM COACH. ): Netley?
NETLEY: Sir?

PANEL 6.
NOW A HEAD AND SHOULDERS CLOSE UP OF GULL AS HE SITS INSIDE THE COACH, FACING US. HIS EXPRESSION IS CALM AND WITHOUT VISIBLE EMOTION. HE IS HOLDING UP A HAND IN THE FOREGROUND, AND IT MAY TAKE US A MOMENT TO REALIZE THAT IT IS NOT HIS. HE IS HOLDING UP POLLY'S HAND, HIS FINGERS CLOSED AROUND THE WRIST AS HE LIFTS IT. THE HAND DANGLES LIMPLY AS GULL HOLDS IT UP BEFORE HIS FACE TO STUDY IT. WITH HIS FREE HAND, GULL IS REACHING INTO THE PICTURE AND IS STARTING TO TWIST THE WEDDING RING FREE FROM POLLY'S FINGER. HE STARES AT THE RING AS DOES THIS, BUT HIS FACE HAS THE CALM OF A JEWELLER AS HE REMOVES THE WEDDING RING. HE DOES NOT LOOK UP FROM HIS REMOVAL OF THE RING AS HE SPEAKS TO NETLEY, UP ON TOP OF THE COACH IN THE DARK. WE CANNOT SEE ANY MORE OF POLLY THAN HER HAND.
GULL: Could you come down here for a moment, please?

PANEL 7
NOW WE HAVE A BIG WIDE PANEL , WITH WHICH WE FINISH THE PAGE,. WE ARE SITTING OPPOSITE GULL AND POLLY , SO THAT THEIR CARRIAGE SEAT STRETCHES ACROSS THE WHOLE OF THE IMMEDIATE BACKGROUND HERE. GULL SITS MORE TOWARDS THE RIGHT OF THE SEAT. HE IS HOLDING UP THE WEDDING RING, WHICH HE HAS NOW COMPLETELY REMOVED, AND IS WATCHING IT WITH AN UNNATURAL DEGREE OF CALM ABSORPTION AS HE TURNS IT THIS WAY AND THAT, GETTING IT TO CATCH THE LIGHT AND GLITTER IN THE SOFT YELLOW RADIANCE FROM THE CARRIAGE LANTERN. POLLY IS SITTING FACING US, LEANING UP AGAINST ONE DOOR OF THE CARRIAGE, HER HAT TILTED AT AN EVEN MORE ABSURD ANGLE BUT STILL FIXED ATOP HER HEAD BY THE BOW BENEATH HER CHIN. HER HANDS AND FEET SEEM TO BE SLUNG LIMPLY ANYWHERE, LIKE THE LIMBS OF A RAG DOLL. SHE IS DEAD. HER EYES STARE BLANKLY AT US AND HER MOUTH HANGS OPEN STUPIDLY. STTING NEXT TO HER, GULL DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE EVEN SLIGHTLY INTERESTED. HE JUST HOLDS UP THE WEDDING RING THAT HE HAS TAKEN AS KEEPSAKE OF THEIR DARK AND METAPHYSICAL MARRIAGE, WATCHING WITH FASCINATION AS IT GLITTERS CRYPTICALLY IN THE LAMP LIGHT.
NO dialogue

FROM HELL- 5/28

Back on that dark London street, Polly Nicholls is still about to be murdered in Alan Moore's script for FROM HELL. I always thought this page was set up like a scene in a play, with Gull and Polly on one side of the stage, and John Merrick on the other. The hand gestures are clearly in view and you can almost hear the words echoing around the auditorium.

FROM HELL. CHAPTER 5. PAGE 28 (1,198 words)
PANEL 1.
A NINE PANEL PAGE NOW. IN THIS FIRST PANEL WE ARE INSIDE THE CARRIAGE. IN THE FOREGROUND WE CAN SEE GULL’S HANDS AS HE SITS THERE WITH THE GRAPES UPON HIS LAP. LOOKING PAST THIS, WE CAN SEE POLLY ROUGHLY HALF FIGURE. SHE’S NOT LOOKING TOWARDS US, BUT IS SITTING IN PROFILE. ONCE MORE, SHE CLOSES HER EYES AS SHE SPEAKS AND RAISES HER HAND TO HER BROW AS IF DIZZY OR FAINT. BEYOND HER, THROUGH THE CARRIAGE WINDOW, WE CAN ONLY SEE DARKNESS.
POLLY: W-where are we, Sir? I’ve been all over tonight…
POLLY: I remember… I came out of “The Frying Pan”, into…
GULL (OFF): Hush, child. We’re by the London Hospital.

PAGE 2.
NOW WE ARE JUST OUTSIDE THE CARRIAGE WINDOW ON POLLY’S SIDE, WHICH IS THE SIDE FACING THE HOSPITAL. FROM THE SOFTLY LIT INTERIOR OF THE CARRIAGE, POLLY IS TURNED TO GAZE OUT OF THE WINDOW AT US, PEERING INTO THE NIGHT. GULL IS VISIBLE SITTING JUST BEYOND HER, ALSO TURNED TO LOOK IN THE DRECTION IN WHICH HE IS DIRECTING HER TO TRAIN HER EYES. HE RESTS ONE HAND ON HER SHOULDER IN A FATHERLY WAY, WHILE WITH THE OTHER HE POINTS PAST HER, OUT THROUGH THE CARRIAGE WINDOW TOWARDS US AND OUT INTO THE DARKNESS. HE SMILES, A CALM, DARK SMILE OF TOTAL SELF ASSURANCE. POLLY PEERS UNCERTAINLY OUT INTO THE DARK AT US, NOT QUITE SURE WHAT SHE’S SUPPOSED TO BE LOOKING AT.
GULL: I wish to show you someone. Someone who requires an offering at the commencement of each journey or important venture.
GULL: Look there… between the railings.

PAGE 3.
NOW WE CLOSE IN FROM OUR LAST PANEL, CLOSING IN THROUGH THE WINDOW UPON POLLY’S FACE SO THAT IT ALMOST FILLS THE ENTIRETY OF THE PANEL, OVER TO THE LEFT. SHE SQUINTS OUT INTO THE DARKNESS, TRYING TO SEE WHAT GULL IS ATTEMPTING TO POINT OUT TO HER. IMMEDIATELY BEHIND HER, ON THE RIGHT OF THE PANEL, THE REST OF THE IMAGE SPACE IS TAKEN UP BY GULL AS HE LOOMS OVER HER SHOULDER. HE HAS PLACED BOTH HIS HANDS UPON HER SHOULDERS NOW, WITH ONE ON EACH, AS IF HE IS STEERING HER TO LOOK IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. IT ISN’T A THREATENING GESTURE, AND IS CONDUCTED VERY GENTLY, WITH A FATHERLY TOUCH.
GULL: Do you see him, Polly?
GULL: Do you see?

PANEL 4.
NOW WE HAVE THE FIRST OF THE THREE SILENT PANELS THAT TAKE UP THIS CENTRAL TIER. IN THIS FIRST ONE WE ARE LOOKING THROUGH POLLY’S EYES WITH POLLY HERSLF NOT VISBLE. SHE IS LOOKING OUT THROUGH THE WINDOW OF THE COACH, ALTHOUGH IT’S UP TO YOU WHETHER THE FRAME OF THE WINDOW IS VISBLE OR NOT. WE ARE LOOKING WITH POLLY ACROSS THE COBBLES OF THE WHITECHAPEL ROAD TOWARDS THE RAILED –OFF GROUNDS OF THE LONDON HOSPITAL BEYOND. THERE DOES SEEM TO BE A VAGUE DARK FIGURE MOVING THROUGH THE SHADOWS BEYOND THE RAILINGS, BUT AT THIS DISTANCE IT IS DIFFICULT TO MAKE OUT.
No dialogue.

PANEL 5.
NOW WE START TO CLOSE IN UPON THIS IMAGE, SO THAT WE APPEAR TO HAVE CROSSED THE ROAD AND ARE PASSING THROUGH THE RAILINGS HERE. WE CAN NOW SEE THE FIGURE MORE CLEARLY, BEING CLOSER TO IT, AS IT WANDERS SLOWLY AND FORLORNLY THROUGH THE GROUNDS OF THE HOSPITAL. AS WE SEE IT HERE IT IS SHAMBLING SLOWLY TOWARDS ONE OF THE SICKLY ROSE BUSHES PLANTED AROUND THE FRINGE OF THE GROUNDS. IT WEARS A CLOAK, AND A GIGANTIC SAILOR’S PEAKED CAP. OVER ITS GIGANTIC HEAD IT WEARS A WHITE BAG WITH A SINGLE EYEHOLE ROUGHLY CUT INTO IT. IT IS STILL PROABABLY TOO SHADOWY AND INDISTINCT HERE TO MAKE OUT ALL THESE DETAILS, BUT I’M JUST TELLING YOU FOR FUTURE REFERENCE. THE FIGURE IS, OF COURSE, JOHN MERRICK, OUT FOR A NOCTURNAL STROLL AROUND THE HOSPITAL GROUNDS.
No dialogue

PANEL 6.
WE CLOSE IN EVEN FURTHER FOR A HALF FIGURE SHOT OF MERRICK AS HE PAUSES TO GAZE AT THE SICKLY ROSE BUSH. IN WHATEVER WEAK LIGHT SHINES FROM THE HOSPITAL WE SEE HIM, A SHADOWY YET UNMISTAKEABLE FIGURE. HE STOPS BY THE ROSE BUSH, REACHING SLOWLY OUT TOWARDS ONE OF THE BLOSSOMS.
No dialogue.

PANEL 7.
NOW WE ARE WITHIN THE CARRIAGE ONCE MORE, SITTING BESIDE GULL SO THAT HE IS CLOSEST TO US HERE. HE IS TURNED AWAY FROM US WITH POLLY SITTING JUST BEYOND HIM, ALSO TURNED AWAY AS SHE GAZES OUT THROUGH THE WINDOW INTO THE NIGHT. GULL STILL HAS HIS HANDS RESTING GENTLY UPON POLLY’S SHOULDERS FROM BEHIND, BUT SHE APPEARS NEITHER TO MIND NOR NOTICE AS SHE GAZES OUT THROUGH THE WINDOW. IF WE CAN SEE ANY OF HER EXPRESSION SHE LOOKS VAGUELY SURPRISED AND PLEASED TO HAVE LOCATED THE FIGURE THAT SIR WILLIAM WAS POINTING OUT TO HER.
POLLY: Why… why… yes! I sees ‘im, standin’ by the rose bush there. That mask. He…he looks so quaint…
GULL: Yes, yes. Now, child, there’s something you must SAY for me.

PANEL 8.
REVERSE ANGLES NOW SO THAT WE ARE LOOKING AT POLLY FROM THE FRONT AS SHE GAZES TOWARDS US OUT THROUGH THE WINDOW OF THE COACH, ALTHOUGH THE WINDOW NEEDN’T BE VISIBLE HERE, BEING OFF PANEL IN THE FORGROUND. SHE GIVES AN OPIATED HALF SMILE AND LOOKS VAGUELY PUZZLED, NOT LOOKING ROUND TOWARDS GULL AS SHE DOES SO BUT CONTINUING TO GAZE DREAMILY OUT INTO THE NIGHT TOWARDS US. BEHIND HER, WE SEE GULL. HIS HANDS STILL REST UPON HER SHOULDERS, AND HE HAS COMMENCED TO GENTLY STROKE EITHER SIDE OF HER FACE WITH HIS THUMBS. SHE DOESN’T SEEM TO NOTICE. GULL’S EYES ARE IN SHADOW AND HIS SMILE IS DARK AS HE WHISPERS INTO HER EAR FROM JUST OVER HER SHOULDER,
POLLY: Say, sir?
GULL: Yes. You must say “salutation to Ganesa”. Can you do that?

PANEL 9.
IN THIS LAST PANEL WE CLOSE IN UPON THE IMAGE IN OUR LAST SHOT, SO THAT WE ARE SO CLOSE TO POLLY SO THAT WE CANNOT EVEN SEE ALL OF HER FACE. ALL THAT WE CAN SEE IS THE LOWER HALF OF HER FACE. AND HER EYES ARE NO LONGER VISIBLE. WE CAN ALSO SEE HER NECK AND HER SHOULDERS CLEARLY. GULL’S HANDS ARE VISIBLE, REACHING INTO THE PICTURE FROM BEHIND TO EITHER SIDE OF HER THROAT. THE WAY HIS FINGERS ARE ARRANGED WILL SEEM A LITTLE UNNATURAL, BUT I THINK IT CAN BE DONE: HIS THUMBS REST ON HER CHEEKBONES, OR THEREABOUTS, HOLDING HER FACE IMMOBILE BETWEEN THEM. HIS INDEX FINGER AND HIS SECOND FINGER ARE SPLAYED OUT SO THAT THEY ARE LOWER DOWN, AND ARE JUST RESTING LIGHTLY AGAINST THE SIDES OF POLLY’S THROAT, WHERE HER CAROTID ARTERY IS LOCATED. THE OTHER TWO FINGERS ON EACH HABND CAN BE WHEREVER THEY LOOK BEST. THE HANDS ARE RELAXED HERE. AND STILL ONLY TOUCHING POLLY VERY GENTLY. THEY ARE LIKE THE CARESS OF AN AFFECTIONATE PARENT, OR PERHAPS A LOVER, AND THEY AROUSE NO SUSPICION. POLLY’S EYES ARE DREAMY AND UNFOCUSSED AS SHE GAZES OUT OF THE WINDOW AT US, HER MIND CLOUDED BY DRINK AND LAUDANUM.
POLLY: Ha. I… I think I can, sir.
POLLY: “Sa… sal’tation… to Ga-nee-sha.”

"One of those close English friendships that begin by excluding confidences and very soon dispense with dialogue."

Somebody has put the whole Codex Seraphinianus on Flickr (some 350 pages). (Thanks for the heads-up to drjon in the comments yesterday for my March 12 post)
Codex Seraphinianus, by Luigi Serafini - 1983, US edition. Not that it matters what edition it is as the whole book is written in an alien script of the author's invention. It's an imaginary encyclopedia. As usual with this sort of thing, I arrive to find John Coulthart is there before me:
"The Codex Seraphinianus is unique in placing its invented world centre stage and, even more uniquely, purporting to be a product of that world itself. Its creation seems the inevitable result of a trend of fantasy writing that delights in invention purely for its own sake, particularly invention that goes to great lengths to seem authentic or authoritative, academic even. The great precursor here is Borges’ short story ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ which relates the invention of a Britannica-style encyclopedia describing with the greatest detail and authority a completely fictional world. Typically for Borges (as for Harrison), the story is also a commentary upon this kind of invention, as well as the effect it can have on our “real” world—for Borges and Harrison reality is more mutable than people like to think. Luigi Serafini takes the whole game a very difficult step further, by creating a complete work which describes his own fictional world in detail, with numerous colour illustrations and the whole written in a completely invented language and alphabet."

This guy's telling you how to get a print copy.

Codex Seraphinianus, Hallucinatory Encyclopedia, an essay on the work by Peter Schwenger.

More, with some other works by the artist.

The story by Borges, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius referred to by John above can be read in English here.
"Some limited and waning memory of Herbert Ashe, an engineer of the southern railways, persists in the hotel at Adrogue, amongst the effusive honeysuckles and in the illusory depths of the mirrors. In his lifetime, he suffered from unreality, as do so many Englishmen; once dead, he is not even the ghost he was then. He was tall and listless and his tired rectangular beard had once been red."
I like Borges' take on the British.
"He and my father had entered into one of those close (the adjective is excessive) English friendships that begin by excluding confidences and very soon dispense with dialog."

anyway, the meat of the matter:
"Now I held in my hands a vast methodical fragment of an unknown planet's entire history, with its architecture and its playing cards, with the dread of its mythologies and the murmur of its languages, with its emperors and its seas, with its minerals and its birds and its fish, with its algebra and its fire, with its theological and metaphysical controversy. And all of it articulated, coherent, with no visible doctrinal intent or tone of parody."

and our favourite subject here at campbell blogspot:
"In literary practices the idea of a single subject is also all-powerful. It is uncommon for books to be signed. The concept of plagiarism does not exist: it has been established that all works are the creation of one author, who is atemporal and anonymous. The critics often invent authors: they select two dissimilar works - the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, say - attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres..."
******

Michael Evans links me to this piece by Rick Poynor about the various covers over the years on the front of J G Ballard's novel, Crash
Collapsing Bulkheads: The Covers of Crash Mon 12 Mar 2007
"J. G. BALLARD’S Crash tests the limits of the reader’s taste and sympathies in the most profound ways and it has always provoked strong reactions – positive and negative. British novelist Will Self has said, ‘I only have to look at a few paragraphs of Crash to feel I am in the presence of an extreme mind, a mind at the limits of dark imagination.’ He meant this as a commendation. Even Ballard sometimes seemed ambivalent. ‘How many people are there who’d want to read a book like Crash?’ he once asked. ‘Not many.’"

sure enough, there's John Coulthart in the comments
****

I just noticed it was Poynor, mentioned more than once in my archives, who started EYE magazine. I noticed it in his biog at The Design Observer site, where I went to read a review by Dan Nadel, the fellow who put together the Art Out of Time book last year. I liked the book, but as for this review of his, I'm starting to think Nadel may be what we call in our house a 'surface dweller'. He knows a lot of names but doesn't leave me with any feeling of increased wisdom.
*****

Apropos of my talking about The state of reading awhile back:
thislondon.co.uk: 20 March: Schools refuse gifts of 'boring' classics
"Dozens of schools have rejected gifts of free classic books because today's pupils find them too 'difficult' to read, it has emerged.
Around 50 schools have refused to stock literary works by the likes of Jane Austen, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens after admitting that youngsters also find them boring.
The worrying figures were released by the Millennium Library Trust, which donates sets of up to 300 books to schools across the country.
David Campbell, who runs the Trust, also revealed that a further 50 schools had sent back the gifts."

I don't know what to say. Let them eat comics
******

Finally, on the subject of cake, and relevant to yesterday's post, Jim Burrows has an illustrated history of the pin-up. What I like most about his site is that at the bottom of his opening page he has negotiated an ad with cheesecake.com: "our gourmet cheesekakes are made entirely by hand, from scratch, and fresh to order. Discover for yourselves why food critics call ours 'The world's most indulgent cheesecake' "

Calendar Girl

Showing those old LP covers a couple of weeks back made me remember a treasure I once owned and now It's 'melancholy March, meet melancholy me' (to quote a line from the precious artefact) because I let it go (can't even remember when... undoubtedly during one of those periods I was strapped for cash.) I found it in a junk shop way back in '78, one evening when I was walking home from work at the factory. I didn't know anything about Julie London at the time, but this object was just too beautiful to not take a chance on. Calendar Girl, an Lp with twelve songs, six on each side, one for each month of the year (there's another version of this lp with an extra song thrown in... I think the British edition must have logically thrown that one back out... or something) and on the cover Julie London herself poses in idiomatic costume twelve times, one for each month.



Maybe it was her famous Cry me a River turning up on the V for Vendetta soundtrack that brought her recently back to mind. That was a track from her first Lp, which had a pristine and perfect pared down accompanimant of only guitar (the first rate jazz guitarist Barney Kessel) and base, and was a big success against the odds in the year that rock'n'roll arrived in the public consciousness, 1955. It was produced, as were her first handful of albums, by her husband Bobby Troup, himself famous as writer of the song Route 66. Her second album, Lonely Girl was even more sparse, with just a soft guitar. Calendar Girl was her third, and an orchestra was brought in this time. Half of the numbers were standards and the rest were written specially including two by Troup himself and two by the guy who wrote Cry me a River.
While googling around i found a chap named Godfrey King mulling over one of these,
'FEBRUARY BRINGS THE RAIN' (Troup)
breaks the Winter's icy chain,
that's a song I heard so long ago"
I think he must have been recalling Sara Coleridge's (1802 - 1852) poem known as 'The Months'...the second line goes
"February brings the rain, Thaws the frozen lake again". It is at least an adaption from it and, as her father ST Coleridge
is my favourite poet , the song becomes a shared memory beautifully sung by Julie.
the album affects people like that.
I recently was able to retrieve it to some extent when it appeared on a cd, but it was paired with her 1959 album which had an orchestra arranged and conducted by a young Andre Previn in a godawful syrupy style. After Calendar Girl they started mucking about trying to find a winning approach, and there was an occasional return to form, but the 1955-57 albums are the best. My favourite Chet Baker session went for the same kind of simplicty. Dated 1957 it was probably carefully taking note of London's first outing. That's on Embraceable You. The record company apparently decided that wasn't saleable and put it in the vault for thirty eight years.

I scanned the above piccies from the cd booklet, but there's a site here with a far superior scan of the original lp sleeve, and lots of information on Julie London and her recordings.

My brain turned to Calendar Girl in 1997 when I needed a story for the Bacchus serial Banged Up. The set-up was that Bacchus was in jail and each of the various characters he meets there has his own story. Thus the book becomes a little set of short crime stories, including the man who killed santa Claus, the punk who pissed on the grave of Elvis, etc. This story was titled The Snatching of Miss July. An old inmate finds that his favourite pin up has been stolen out of a calendar that he has kept for years. The other pinups comment on the stituation:
Miss June: "I was looking the other way at the time."



Miss August: "It happened right under my nose but I aint saying nothin. More than my life's worth."
Miss December: "you ask me, she got what she deserved. She was so up herself, all that flag wavin' an' bugle blowin'."
It turns out in the end that Miss July was the old geezer's wife of twenty-odd years ago, and he's still doing time for her murder.




















The attraction of the story was that I was able to draw on one of Pete Mullins' strengths, the depiction of that kind of period style cheesecake, and have him do a great deal of the art on that chapter. We had a lot of fun with it. You can just see my drawings of Bacchus and his cockeyed mayhem behind the pin-up of Miss January, which appears to have been left lying over the artwork. It wasn't unlike the kind of tricks Eisner used to pull in the great days of the Spirit.

It slithered out of my pal Best's other shoe!

A subject that occasionally comes up here is the sweet and lovely wildlife of Australia, this country in which I got stuck twenty years ago and have not managed to get out. Here's somebody else who got stuck. These photies are being passed along by my pal Best, who has only recently recovered from the necrotic flesh malady caused by a spider setting up house in his Florsheims:


Waitaminnit, that's him on the phone!
"Eddie, did you get the photos? Some tourists on holidays came across the snake caught in an electric fence at a cattle station near Nyngan, being continually shocked, and getting very angry! The group wondering what to do, decide to divert the current, cut the wire AND let the snake go! (As you should do)."
wha? how they-



"When the property owner found out he went ballistic, besides being upset about his fence, the snake had been eating lambs in the area, and he'd been trying to track it for ages. He did not appreciate the help!"
I hope that's not anybody we know inside it.
"Speaking of which, are you coming in for lunch?"
No, I think that'll be me off back to Scotland.
But thanks for roning.

*******
Another thought on yesterday's RULE #5.
When I was sketching the criminal trials for the tv news, there were a couple of times they weren't allowed to show the face of the accused, because he was underage or whatever. So they pixilated the face in the sketch, which at the time seemed daft to me, to pay somebody to go and get a likeness of the guy on trial when they knew in advance they'd have to hide the work. Later it occurred to me that all the tv news wants is pictorial evidence that a trial took place, and also that they had a person covering it. Similarly, on another occasion I saw them throw a story out because they had nothing visual to support it.

"Dying is pointless." (and Rule #5)

My pal Michael Evans emailed me in disgust a few days ago to say he tripped over this nonsense about the death of Captain America in the Guardian of all places, while looking for the obituary for the philosopher Jean Baudrillard. It was only a couple of days later I realised how clever that was.
Obituary . Jean Baudrillard. Wednesday March 7, 2007 Guardian Unlimited
"Jean Baudrillard's death did not take place. 'Dying is pointless,' he once wrote. 'You have to know how to disappear.' The New Yorker reported a reading the French sociologist gave in a New York gallery in 2005. A man from the audience, with the recent death of Jacques Derrida in mind, mentioned obituaries and asked Baudrillard: 'What would you like to be said about you? In other words, who are you?' Baudrillard replied: 'What I am, I don't know. I am the simulacrum of myself.'
Baudrillard, whose simulacrum departed at the age of 77..."

March 12, 2007 02:19 PM Guardian blog. Why Captain America had to die
"The superhero's demise is being analysed in the blogosphere as a damning indictment of George Bush's America.
You've probably heard by now, Captain America - the comic-book superhero - is dead. Certainly if you live in the United States, it's a story that's been hard to miss."
Here stands the noble chap while he was still a picture of health:


That's from one of the two issues I drew in 2004. I thought it would be a good move for the overall benefit of my career to do a short stretch of that kind of work as I had once been in danger of getting a reputation for not being a team player. That happened way back in '93 when I was writing a thing for Dark Horse's ambitious superhero universe, and got to sit in on the script committee for a session. I figured the experience might make for some useful observation. Now those guys are good at their jobs and long may they thrive, but there was one odd issue that came up during the long conference. Having created the superhero team at the centre of this 'universe', they put one member in there who died at the end of the first story. This is standard practice. I call it the Eden effect. These characters lived in a state of grace, and then one died. Mortality has now 'been seen' (remember that phrase) to exist in this 'universe' (Junior Juniper RIP, Thunderbird RIP... I'm embarrassed to admit I know all this crap). The character that had to be offed also happened to have the power to restore mortally wounded people to life by the laying on of hands. No more immortality. Symbolically it all fit exactly so. But one of the notions that got kicked around briefly was of bringing this character back from the dead, except that her powers would now be in reverse and anybody she touched would be turned into a zombie. I exerted all my energy to shoot that one down since it threw the whole universe out of whack, as horror stories operate on reverse principles and you can't play it both ways simultaneously (matter/anti-matter). Or you could, and it would be shit, and besides I'd be the muggins who was going to have to write this particular series. And what would I know, the kids would perhaps have thought it was a 'cool' idea. I lasted five issues before I got the boot.
(The ideal zombie story needs to take place in a separate world because it will be an atheistic apocalypse. It must annihilate without hope. The scene going on behind the end credits in the recent remake of Dawn of the Dead is what a good zombie movie is all about. I threw that in just in case you think I'm being snobby.)

Death in comic books is just this kind of clay pigeon kind of death, a video game where everything is back in place the next time you plug it in. And I'm not the bloke that should be writing it. In my own books, every character I ever offed I can explain exactly why it was done. No gratuitous death in my 'universe'. The only vid game I ever had any time for is the original version of Mario Kart. In fact, I'd play it right now if wee Cal was home from school.
When wee cal was actually 'wee' instead of six foot two, he said a thing which had an effect on my thinking. This was way back in August 1997, when he was five and the news was coming through about the tragedy of Lady Diana Spencer. The lad was getting pissed off because he wanted to watch his superhero animations, and the adults had taken over the television, and eventually he complained loudly and said what was on his mind. "I don't think she's really dead anyway, because you didn't see the car hit the wall".
This would become one of Eddie Campbell's RULES*.
RULE #5: In a visual medium, an event has not occurred unless it can be seen to have occurred. Thus, you can't refer back to something that only happened in a word balloon. Technically it didn't happen at all. (Well, of course you can do it, but you must recognise that your reader will probably be doubting your veracity. You may wish to use that to your advantage, but now we're getting complicated.)

Without wishing to get into arguments about Baudrillard, as I am not equipped to do so, this line, taken from a review of his writings, strikes a note relevant to the current blather, and allows me to exit without leaving you with the bad taste of comic books on your palate: "(essay by Baudrillard...) proposes the familiar notion that we are imprisoned in a world of media simulations, video phantasms, and that we cannot come to know the real not because we are ignorant but because we are overinformed: 'we will never in the future be able to separate reality from its statistical, simulative projection in the media.' This isn’t an uncertainty we’ve experienced in the past, but a brand new kind of uncertainty brought about by an excess of information."

postscript. My pal Evans is the fellow who killed me inThe Fate of The Artist. He would perhaps be fair in claiming as justification the fact that I had killed him in three other books. One day, when I think my publisher is not looking, I will tell you the whole sorry story, and how he got his ultimate revenge, apart from killing me I mean, because as I have been at pains to demonstrate, in comic books Death is pretty bogus.

"Just these insipid portraits of clowns, all signed very large, "Bob Kane."*

*Mark Evanier recounts great anecdote about Bob Kane's paintings as told by the late Arnold Drake
*****
Campbell is resting his brain. Here is another passage from Walter James, one of my favourite writers:
"Often enough in my adventures among wines I have found myself with a mouth full of thoroughly unpalatable liquor, and often too in company where there was nothing to be done but swallow it. But these little worries have been quite unsought; they have rarely been embraced in the cause of Science or of its mother Curiosity; I cannot claim a place at the same table with such men as, for instance, Mr Wyld and Mr Greatorex who went into St Paul's after the great fire of London and came across the broken lead coffin of a famous dean who had died a century and a half before. They found the coffin in the shape of a pie and filled with 'a liquor which conserved the body.' This the two gentlemen blandly sampled, finding it somewhat insipid, with a slight taste of iron. The body itself felt, 'to the probe of a stick which they thrust into a chinke, like boyld brawne.'
Yes, they were hardy in those days, there's no doubt of that. Thomas Willis, a doctor who practised in London about the same time as the curious visitors to St paul's, is remembered as the first physician to observe sugar in the urine of diabetics. And, it is on record, the test which he used to detect sugar was the test of the palate. With what 'eclat would he have performed the function of wine-taster at certain Australian vineyards.
It is on a not dissimilar note that one more Londoner, Mr S F Hallgarten, in the course of a recent treatise on German hocks, describes a certain defect in the wine. "Mauseln, or the smell of mouse urine," he says, "is a recognisable smell and taste, which remains suspended on the palate." Now, just what does Mr Hallgarten mean by that "recognisable" smell and taste? Has he really laboured in the cause of drinkers with the same devotion as Dr. Willis in the cause of diabetics? Or is he drawing upon other men's records, as he is earlier in his book when he makes the startling assertion that "Asparagus, the recognised king of all vegetables, was cultivated thousands of years ago by the Egyptians and has lost none of its flavour in the course of time."

That's from The Gadding Vine, 1955. James prefaces the book with this:
"The Portugese Ferdinand Mendez Pinto when in 1558 he settled down after many years of wandering, wrote an account of his life and observations which he called the Perigrinacam. but nowhere could he find a publisher. Wishing that at least a few souls might be improved by his story, he bequeathed the manuscript to the governor of an institution for fallen women, stipulating that it should be read to the inmates."

*******
have a good Sunday.