Arsy Bands - The Interviewer's Nightmare?

I posted a truly uncomfortable interview from 1993 with  the Las a couple of days ago, when the hapless bimbette interviewing Messr's Mavers and Power, proceeded to dig herself deeper and deeper into a hole and then when the going got so uncomfortable even she must have registered that perhaps things were not going to plan then proceeded to throw earth over herself so that her guests could tamp the whole lot down with their heels.

In truth there is a certain fascination watching habitues of the world of rock music play to type, the fascination of watching a train wreck in slow motion. Here's an example of a particularly pissed off Keef being interviewed by a Dutch journalist in 1973. Sensing the bad kharma she tries to ingratiate herself with wholly unsatisfactory results.



But for that classic Golden Moment, here's The Stone Roses' debut on BBC TV when in 1989 and much to presenter Tracey McLeod's discomfiture things went a little off script.

 

And if you think that was bad then try this:



But there are moments when the interviewer can put in a reasonably good showing, despite the forces of adversity ranged against him.



And the there's Patch William (I love this so much - my Mum would have liked this band - lots!!!)



Awwww...

Bless.

A Snippet (Literally) of Wrath of the Gods

Due to a fortuitous piece of reformatting the forthcoming "Wulf the Briton" book is going to include more samples of Embleton artwork which is pertinent to the story behind the creation of this epic but still relatively unknown strip.

So here's a sample spread from "Wrath of the Gods" which was Ron's first major strip following on from his work on TV Express. This episode hints at the darkness to come, in fact I'd speculate that "Wrath of the Gods" was about the darkest strip Embleton ever worked on, which might have been instrumental in his decision to walk away from the series after completing the first 23 episode story.

There is a hint of a possibility that  a book on "Wrath of the Gods" shot largely from the original art could be a goer.

We shall see...

The Warped Genius of Patrick Wright

 Here is another member of the Wright Dynasty, this time it's Patrick son of David (Carol Day) Wright) who although noted as a wonderful comic strip artist (his work has appeared in Battle Picture Weekly, Commando and even a short run of Modesty Blaise dailies) is also one of the funniest cartoonists ever to inhabit the planet.

Patrick was a highly talented draftsman from an early age but writing was his first love and his ambition was to adopt the lifestyle of a French existentialist poet. He managed to secure a job as lavatory attendant and all went well until his girlfriend fell unexpectedly pregnant - these things happen... So needs must and young Patrick needing to get himself some extra spondoolies, semi reluctantly but knowing he had to do something - took himself off  to illustrator's agent Barry Coker at Bardon Press and walked out with his first of many jobs.

But eventually and tiring of the awful deadlines and the terrible returns and having to put a pillow over the telephone, so that he didn't have to pick up the phone to the eternal question "where's the work???", he decided to come up with his own ideas and as Barbara Woodhouse was doing a TV series on dog training he created a spoof book called Walkies, which was so successful that he was pretty much able to buy his first house on the strength of the royalties.

He did several more books in this vein all with the mordantly edgy humor and brilliant observation that makes Patrick's work so engaging and if you want to see some of his best humorous work just check out the following samples from a now out of print gem called "Affairs of the Heart".

This book it has to be said was perhaps one of the least successful of his collections, as his literary agent said, "it's very funny Patrick, but it's too true for people to want to buy it". Be that as it may it's still one of the funniest collections of ideas I have yet come across - hope you feel the same...

Jerry Robinson - The Man That Added Lustre To The Batman

I've already mentioned Jerry Robinson's remarkable work on the early years of the Batman, he it was the either created or co-created (it depends on who you're getting the story from) the Joker and he who came up with Robin as a humanizing sidekick for the Batman and if these achievements weren't worthy of guaranteeing Mr Robinson a place in the Comics History Hall of Fame, he was also an artist of exceptional talent whose capabilities extended well beyond just being one of Bob Kane's anonymous ghosts.

Someone working at DC comics when the Batman was still a new but rapidly rising star also thought the same, as the work being sent in from Kane included pages that were increasingly beginning to look as if they had been created by someone with considerably more ability than Kane. The changes had been gradual as Kane had started Robinson on lettering with work on backgrounds and then inking rapidly following on. But it got to the stage where with the launch of a comic devoted solely to the Batman who would feature in four stories that even with an initial quarterly publishing schedule, Kane's required output had more than doubled within a year.

Robinson found himself drawing full length stories as other inkers and assistants helped cover the chores that Robinson had initially covered - most notably George Roussos. The observant editor at D.C. - may well have been Batman editor Whitney Ellsworth, spotted that the work was too good to be Kane's and having made a few enquiries put Robinson directly onto the D.C. payroll.

More can be gleaned about this fascinating artist in N.C. Christopher Couch's newly published book on Robinson, "Jerry Robinson: Ambassador of Comics" published by Abrams and a definite Christmas list essential for anyone remotely interested in the early years of comic books.

Here as an appetizer is a gallery of some of the most exciting work to grace the covers of U.S. comic books as well as a photo of Robinson himself and some of his comic book collection.

Three copies of Batman No. 1???!!!!

All Batman images © DC Comics 2010

Arsy Bands and a Bit of a Deadline Stress

Sorry, having just been stopped by our local constabulary and grilled for half an hour today's blog posting is going to be a little bit minimal as the deadline I am working to is going down the Swanee.

Anyway apropos of arsy bands, i.e. not the sort of chaps who are exactly media friendly but whose work is touched but genius here's a truly toe curling interview with Lee Mavers and John Power, but the performance of "Timeless Melody" is just heartachingly brilliant.

And here's a portion of what's taking up my every waking minute when I'm actually at my studio desk.

The Only Ones - A Cautionary Tale for Record Executives

There was a time during the recording of the Libertines second album that Pete Doherty was causing such concern with his erratic behavior that some bright spark at the record label thought it might be a good idea if the young lad could be shown where all this wild living was going to end up. So the plan was to introduce Pete to another Pete, this Pete being the legendary Peter Perrett of The Only Ones.

Now The Only Ones provided one of those brief but brilliant flashes in the history of rock music that confirmed they were artists first and foremost and careerists by a long second, they weren't nice young tousled haired chappies like Patch William, the Mumfords and Noah and his Ark or whatever they call themselves. But like the aforementioned they were very driven and convinced that they were the best there was, to the extent that even before they had a record label behind them, they recorded and self promoted via Perrett's manager and missus Zena, their own debut LP calling themselves England's Glory, as they with some justification, believed that they were the best.

But even with that kind of drive and determination it wasn't by any means a rapid rise to fame and it wasn't until 1978 with the release of their debut LP that the band now renamed as The Only Ones shot to a brief five minutes of fame with some of the most inspirational music ever committed to an album with the euphoric, "Another Girl, Another Planet" as a stand out rock classic.

The key to the Only Ones undoing lies in the lyrics to "Another Girl, Another Planet", the song is not about Peter Perrett's love of a girl  it's really about Peter Perrett's love of the needle and that what is precisely what screwed up The Only Ones glittering career. The deteriorating fortunes of the band hit their nadir when on a tour of the U.S.A. Perrett attempted to run over a car park attendant that he'd just had an altercation with, the result was that Perrett had to flee the U.S.A. and was unable to return there without fear of arrest. He returned to a life of increasing drug dependency, at one point living a hermit like existance in the basement of his house with no gas or electricity.

For years and years the story of The Only Ones provided a kind of cautionary tale of what to avoid if you want to build a career as an A&R man. Here is a film made on the cusp of the 21st century of a visit by Perrett and his two sons to  a local radio station and despite all, the magic when he performs is still there in spades.



The irony of the story was that when Doherty met Perrett it was love at first sight and despite his truly pitiably frail condition old Mr Perrett had a new surge of energy and started doing a few gigs with Doherty that led to The Only Ones themselves reforming for a tour in 2007.

Sometimes the best laid plans of mice and record execs do go astray...

Lost in Translation - Ian Kennedy's Tybalt

It's interesting to reflect that in a weird way Dutch and Scandinavian comics have provided an outlet for UK comic artists and writer when their options over in the UK seemed circumscribed.

Take for instance the story of Don Lawrence, who in 1976 at a UK Comics Covention discovered that  his Trigan Empire work was appearing in comics all around the globe. Like Dan Dare creator Frank Hampson who had made a similar discovery when he was invited as guest of honor to the Lucca Comics Convention a year earlier, he felt flattered but also irritated that he was receiving no extra remuneration to enhance the fee he was receiving for continuing to produce The Trigan Empire.

Lawrence decided to have it out with the publisher and within half an hour found himself to all intents and purposes unemployed.

Unbelievably, within a week he received a phone call from the Dutch publisher Oberon who were wondering if he might possibly be able to provide them with a strip. That phone call led to "Storm" a strip which Lawrence would continue to work on for the rest of his life.

Or take the story of Norman Worker who was happily working in his father's furniture shop whilst dreaming of a career as a writer, when the "safe" job disappeared with the bankruptcy of the business. His cousin Peter O' Donnell who would find fame as the creator of Modesty Blaise, recommended he try his hand at writing comics and whilst the UK market was relatively tough to break into he did with O'Donnell's help get an introduction to the Swedish Publishing house Semic.

His work initially included scripts for Buffalo Bill and The Saint, but it was as writer for adaptations of Lee Falks The Phantom that he really found his niche. He wrote 127 Phantom stories along with a lot of other features for comics such as Fantomen. The cross pollination of talent continued as UK artists working for publishers such as Semic and Oberon were regarded as well as treated with a lot more favor than was the case back home. It wasn't surprising then that Ian Kennedy was high on the list of desirable artists when it came to putting visuals to some of Worker's scripts.

At this point I'll let Andreas Eriksson take up the story:

Norman Worker and Ian Kennedy produced the adventure comic "Hunter" for the Swedish comics anthology Agent X9. Seven episodes were made from 1987 to 1990. The main character Mark Hunter was a typical adventurer who got into all sorts of troubles.

The concept was retooled, as the main character was forced to change his identity to Rey Tybalt, and he took work as a pilot - presumably to let Ian Kennedy draw more airplanes. References to his Mark Hunter background were made throughout the Tybalt episodes however, so despite different titles it is essentially one comic from start to finish. The name change also meant that Tybalt moved to the comic book Fantomen instead, a book dedicated to Lee Falk's jungle hero The Phantom. (Worker was also one of the main writers of Phantom stories for Fantomen).

32 Tybalt episodes were published from 1990 to 2002, from 1998 and onwards Swedish writer Mats Jönsson was the scripter. The first four Tybalt episodes are in b/w, the rest in color as Fantomen turned to color printing from 1991 onwards.

And here as a taster is some pages from the last Tybalt black and white comic, it seems amazing (and ironic) that these stories have never appeared in English.

Many thanks to Andreas for providing us with these amazing scans and background information.