Nick Bryan

comics

HOW TO WRITE A COMIC – “Lily’s Voyage”

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So, whenever I tell people I’m writing comics, they always ask, with an air of interest, how it actually works and what that involves. They never mistakenly believe I’m the artist, though – apparently I just don’t present the air of someone who can draw.

Still, in a bid to demonstrate the process and rob me of any artistic mystique I might’ve had, I’m going to take one of my one-page comics, first presented on The Comic Jam, and show you how it was made in punishing step-by step detail.

The one I’ve chosen is Lily’s Voyage, with art by Brian Flint, because it’s one of my favourite comics I’ve done, yet runs only one page long so this blog won’t run to novella-length.

It was originally posted as part of ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ week on the Jam. You can see the layout to the right or, again, click through if you want to see it at a bigger size.

I’d recommend reading the thing at least once before I yank it to literal pieces. Seriously, do it, it’s cute. If you want to read it in print, it’s also part of the Comedy & Errors anthology I’m currently selling on my new shop. (CAPITALISM.)…

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“The Half-Baked Sacrifice” – new comic anthology story out now in print and digital!

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My latest venture into comic writing is out now! It’s called The Half-Baked Sacrifice, with art by Lukas Kowalczuk and features in the new anthology Something Wicked 2016 from Futurequake Press!

Basically, it’s a four page story about a slightly unstable toaster and its important mechanical religious beliefs. There’s also a rodent. I think the story’s pretty fun by itself, but the the art by Lukas is absolutely excellent.

Seriously – buy the comic, look at it. Or there are a few small samplers available in this very post! (Yes, they are quite small samples, but it is a four page story. I don’t want to give away the farm.)

And if you wish to buy it in print, you can go to Futurequake Press’s website here for £6.50 (plus postage)!

Or, for digital comic readers, it’s also up on popular digital comics platform Comixology for the knock-down price of £1.49.

My bit starts on page 74, if you wanted to know.

So yes, check it out. It may not shock you to learn that writing comics is a long-held dream for me, and seeing it realised in such a beautifully drawn way has come close to making my entire 2017 even though it’s only just started.

Oh, and if you want to see more art from Lukas Kowalczuk (and fair enough), his website is right here. Cheers to Futurequake as well, for making the whole process fun and painless. If you’re an aspiring creator and the chance comes up to work with them, absolutely do it.

Ben Reilly And Me – New Spider-Man Clone Saga blogging!

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After a too-long pause with no new writing on the internet, I have written a post about my childhood enjoyment of the Spider-Man Clone Saga and Ben Reilly, which you can find over at the Moderate Fantasy Violence website.

Moderate Fantasy Violence, in case you’ve forgotten, is my fortnightly podcast about pop culture type stuff which I do with my friend Alastair JR Ball. It’s still going, our new episode just came out covering The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch (the new Rivers of London book), new Top Gear copy show The Grand Tour, Doctor Who spin-off Class and me finally watching Taxi Driver. You can search for it on iTunes (and hopefully most other podcast providers), or get it directly from the podcast website.

Best of 2015 – TOP TEN COMICS

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Day two in the Nick Lists His 2015 Favourites house, and we’ve made the logical jump from books to comics. Once again, I’ve read enough of these to produce a nice structured top ten list – just spent half an hour agonising over it in Notepad.

While putting this list together, I glanced at my 2013 comics post and its 2014 follow-up and was saddened how much of the stuff I said I “must read next” hasn’t yet been looked at. I gotta stop buying new stuff in Comixology sales and jumping straight into it.

But in terms of what I actually did read in 2015, here’s the list. The divisions between items in this list are kinda arbitrary in some cases – for example, first item is a crossover spread across multiple comics series…

10) X-Men: Age of Apocalypse by many, many people

Once again, I’ve relied on Marvel’s Unlimited app to supply me with their comics, and my big old-stuff reading project this year ended up being this 90s mega-X-crossover. Has serious shoulderpads/pouchs/tits/arse/grimdark issues, as with many comics of this period, but it’s still one of the highlights of its type. I wrote a longer blog about AoA here if you’re so inclined.

9) Avengers/New Avengers/Secret Wars by Jonathan Hickman and various artists

Sticking in the Marvel megacrossover subgenre for one more entry, this is Jonathan Hickman’s ludicrously ambitious multi-year epic, split across two Avengers titles and culminating in the still-ongoing Secret Wars mini. It’s a bit rambly and dry, not what everyone wants from Marvel action stories, but the scale and twists are great when they work. Especially from the Infinity arc onwards, I thought this did cool stuff.

8) Spectre by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake

Moving house in summer, I had no internet access at home, so was forced to stop reading Marvel. For whatever reason, I settled on this five-year series from the late 90s about DC’s WRATH OF GOD character – writer Ostrander uses him to tackle serious questions of theology and crime/punishment, and Mandrake brings twisted horror images to back him up. It’s aged badly in places, but still, an impressive example of creators using a franchise character to do thoughtful, stylish stuff.

7) X-Force by Si Spurrier, Rock-He Kim and others

Si Spurrier popped up in the 2013 and 2014 top-tens as a writer of note, and here he is again, this time taking on the X-Men black ops team concept. And I don’t just mean that as a flowery way of saying he worked on the book, he really does take on the concept. Sometimes aggressively. Starts slow but ends up one of this year’s most interesting Marvel books, for me.

6) Batgirl of Burnside by Brendan Fletcher, Cameron Stewart and Babs Tarr

Already a cult hit without any help from me, this reimagining of Batgirl from troubled veteran vigilante to young, dynamic burst of energy is just fun. Is this how the kids really talk? I have no idea, but it’s incredibly likable, the art is beyond charming and, crucially, the lead character is always trying but allowed to screw up.

5) The Wicked And The Divine by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie

A big hit from last year and still delivering great stuff with second arc Fandemonium. Big fan of Gillen/McKelvie’s willingness to experiment and go in brave directions with their characters. It’s a nice reminder that you can be populist without taking the easy route – if anything, it just makes you more popular. Not yet caught up on the latest arc, but excited to check that out, as well as their Phonogram continuation.

4) The Sandman by Neil Gaiman and others

Kinda veering off the current-comics track now. I’ve been slowly catching up on a few classic books over the last couple of years, and in 2015, I took the plunge and re-read Sandman for the first time as self-aware adult. I… quite liked it, yeah. Interesting to see Gaiman working in a slightly more raw style, before he really developed a signature approach. The slow dreamy pacing is well realised (although when a story/arc isn’t working for you, it drags), and the art is lovely. Probably a good thing to have properly read.

3) Cindy & Biscuit by Dan White

As you may have spotted from the rest of this list, I don’t often venture beyond the Marvel/DC/Image Big Three bubble, so full-on indie books are a rarity. But I listen to the SILENCE! podcast and picked this book up at Thought Bubble as it’s by one of the presenters. And yeah, it’s a great girl-and-her-dog-versus-monsters story. Charming with a dark smile (not grim-and-gritty, just… not too saccharine), this works for me. Available from the creator’s website if it takes your fancy.

2) The Invisibles by Grant Morrison and various artists

Another one from the classic-catch-up-project, this is Grant Morrison’s weird scifi project, in which an anarchist cell try to defend us from the weird monsters that lurk behind the Establishment. I haven’t read the last two volumes, so it may fall apart, but from the place I’m currently at, this is hugely fun, fast-paced, brainbending stuff that really could only work in comics. I couldn’t always tell you exactly what’s going on, but I remain entertained.

1) Hitman by Garth Ennis and John McCrea

And at the top, another comic from a couple of decades ago. Hitman is a DC comic from the late-90s/early-00s in which a superpowered paid killer tries to make his way in their shared universe. It’s Garth Ennis at his most OTT comedy-drama with perfectly matched art by McCrea and it’s one of my favourite things I’ve ever read. A longer blog about it here if you want.

Potentially controversial to say I prefer Hitman (a superhero-violence-semi-comedy) to Sandman and Invisibles (two titans of the Serious Adult Comics field), but… the others are probably better technical works, but I’ve always been a huge Garth Ennis fan and I think it might be one of his best. Certainly the best thing by him I’ve read in a while.

And that, folks, was the comics of 2015. For next year, I might try and actually read some current comics again. Putting together this list, I can’t help but notice I’ve fallen massively behind in all the Image books I was following, for example.

Hitman by Garth Ennis/John McCrea – A comic about men, violence, superheroes and undead seals

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I’m a big Garth Ennis fan – his Preacher series was important to me in my teens, his Punisher Max run one of the best things I read in my twenties and I’ve never read a comic by him that isn’t full of strong storytelling. Even when he might not be working on a classic concept, the man knows his way around a comic book page.

I’ve recently been filling some gaps in my cultural intake, including a few major Ennis works that I never got round to. First up, almost exactly a year ago, was his Hellblazer run with Steve Dillon and others.

Today, I’m moving on to Hitman, a five year series with artist John McCrea about Tommy Monaghan, a super-powered gun-for-hire running around the DC Comics superhero universe. It wasn’t easily available for a while, but DC have put it back into print in seven collected books, not to mention slapped the whole thing up on Comixology.

So, I read the entire sixty-issue series (plus the extra bits and bobs reprinted in the collections) over the course of about a month. Normally it’d take me longer to read a run of this length, but as I said earlier, Ennis is just that good, and so is McCrea. The stories slip down.

HIT

Zombie sealife – no, it wasn’t a joke

When writing the above intro, I almost didn’t mention the super-powers aspect of Hitman because it often barely seems to matter. The focus is always on the character of Tommy Monaghan and his friends, a crew of fellow hitmen who all hang around in the bar, take jobs and then go back to said bar to bitch about them. They rip the piss out of each other but always have each other’s backs when it comes down to it. It’s sweet, in an incredibly violent kinda way.

And because this is set in the DC universe, where every fantasy or sci-fi genre convention has been introduced somehow, Ennis can throw almost anything at Monaghan and friends, and they just nod wearily and do darkly comic ultraviolence to it. Demons and vampires? Dinosaurs? Zombie sealife? Batman? They’re all in here somewhere, having their arseholes filled with grenades. Well, not Batman, he just gets puked on.

But as I say, these clearly aren’t the parts that really interest Ennis. The stories where Monaghan and crew mutilate genre standards are usually the fun comic relief storylines between the main ones, which deal with the mob, the military and the real-life consequences of living a life full of ridiculous violence. Especially towards the end, as the constant waves of death start to finally penetrate the main cast, it gets downright sad.

And his super-powers, well, Ennis doesn’t seem that bothered. Monaghan can do x-ray vision and telepathy, but their only purpose is to maybe explain why the hero is a little better at surviving gunfights than most. It was the same in Preacher, to be honest – Jesse Custer could compel anyone to do anything via the Word Of God, but tended to just punch them instead.

If you enjoy a charismatic likable-but-doomed anti-hero story, then Hitman is definitely worth a shot. He and his friends are a great ensemble, the jokes are funny, the gunfights and action are beautifully executed by McCrea. Some mainstream artists struggle to make complex fights clear without the shortcut of bright costumes or obvious energy blasts, but McCrea renders the environments clearly and communicates every important move. It really is like a good action movie.

In fact, McCrea nails it when the superheroes show up and when Tommy and friends are hanging around drinking in the bar and when Tommy gets zapped into the future and when the dinosaurs show up and every other thing he’s called to draw. The consistency and clarity is a joy to behold.

Ennis says in the text piece that ends the series that he feels like he could’ve done more Hitman, and I loved the book, so obviously part of me thinks that’s a shame. On the other hand, I can also respect the clear beginning, middle and end here. And if the ending isn’t the one Ennis was planning, he does a damn good job still making it feel entirely inevitable and necessary.

MAN

The award-winning Superman issue

That was some heartfelt verbal masturbation I just wrote. A real embarrassing outpouring of positivity. Tommy and the guys would hate it. In the name of not seeming like a fanboy, I’ll talk a bit about some weaknesses.

Yes, if you’ve read many Garth Ennis comics in the past, you’ll notice some recurrence of pet themes. There’s male friendship, the consequences of violence, flashback stories about soldiers, a quick trip to Ireland and the need to poke fun at superhero comics (although also an excellent Superman issue where Ennis plays them entirely straight).

And yes, he has tackled these things a lot, but as someone who has read a lot of his work: this is one of his best renditions. These elements always feel in service of the story.

Like many 90s-and-earlier comics, it occasionally hits some bum notes when re-read with 2015 cultural sensibilities, but (perhaps due to the PG-13-level content rating), it rarely goes hardcore awful for laughs like Preacher sometimes did.

There aren’t many women in the supporting cast beyond Monaghan’s one love interest – as I say, Ennis clearly wanted to ruminate on male comradeship here. Although to give the book some credit in this paragraph, the all-male crew of hitmen are not too uniformly white.

In short, yes, I loved this series, it was right up my grimly comic, urban-fantastic, Ennis-liking alley. Hitman was kinda ahead of its time – a talented writer/artist team telling their own stories against the backdrop of an established superhero universe, just a few years before the balance in mainstream comics shifted from following franchises/characters to individual creators. If it existed nowadays, it could well be a cult hit. Now that it’s finally back available, worth giving it a shot.

ADMIN FOR THE ADMIN GOD – Video reading! Guest blog! Thought Bubble!

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Hello! Yes, it’s been a few weeks since the last brief admin post and now here’s another one. Sorry. Got at least one thing to blog about, but I have to get a train to Leeds in about an hour for reasons you’ll discover shortly, so it’ll have to wait.

But! I have managed to write a guest blog post for someone else entirely (because I secretly hate you etc), so at least there’s something to read. This is on the excellent If These Books Could Talk blog and is me musing about prose serialisation (yes, my pet topic), complete with recent examples and the inevitable bodily fluids joke at the end. It’s a good post, check it out.

Outside the written world, I also did a reading at the lovely Big Green Bookshop (where you can now buy all three Hobson & Choi books in print!) as part of the Novel London series. If you couldn’t make the reading due to only hearing about it now, that’s okay, as Novel London filmed it and the result is now up on YouTube and also embedded below. Note the delicately beautiful product placement of H&C3 in the background.

Thanks to Safeena of Novel London for setting all that up, and if you get the chance to read at or attend a future event, give it a go. It’s fun.

Last of all, I am off to Leeds shortly to both visit my godchild (also called Nick, it’s weird) and attend one day (Saturday) of the Thought Bubble convention, which I hear on Twitter and many podcasts is one of the best comicon type events in the UK. Excited for that. Do say hello if you’ll also be there, I am wandering around by myself so may look scared. I also have a copy or two of The Gathering: Noir anthology featuring my published corporate noir story, so that’s exciting.

That is it! I hope to manage a more meaningful blog post next week. Or at least before the end of November.