Noe-Time Like the present..

Many many thanks to all of you who came down for the Noe The Savage Boy issue#1 signing at the Forbidden Planet International store on Ann street Belfast. Rob, Stephen and myself were kept real busy and we got to meet some really cool people from all walks of life, ages, shapes ands sizes. Our signing time ran over to accomodate the footfall but the Craic was good and a great time was had by all. Thank you for the intrest shown in the launch and for all the bits and pieces of our pasts brought along. Comic boxes were dusted off and old titles brought back into the light. Happy Days. Thank you to all the staff at the store for keeping the whole thing grounded and special thanks to our pirate chums for keeping it charmingly barmy.

Mad,Bad And Dangerous to Noe..

                                   
                                                                Lifes a funny old thing..
You go a whole lifetime without meeting a single pirate, you write one comic involving the pirates of the Barbary Coast and the most famous pirate in the history of piracy shows up.Har,Har,old Saucy Jack himself.
He drunkenly tried to pressgang me into joining his wicked crew but I outfoxed him by taking myself hostage with the rogues very own pistol.
             COME AWAY AND SEE ALL THE WONDERS OF THIS SPINNING GLOBE
             BEFORE IT BECOMES AS DULL AND FLAT AS A PANCAKE. ALL THE
             UNSEEN CORNERS OF THE MAP ARE BEING FILLED IN AND THIS
              COULD BE YOUR LAST CHANCE TO SEE THEM BEFORE THEY
                                               DISAPEAR FOREVER!
He rasped rumly promising great adventure in a most rambling but compelling fashion. Alas he could not
quite grasp that I loved reading about adventures not actually having them. A situation I do hope does not change anytime soon. My old heart would not be up to it. Still, he is as you can see a terribly well read pirate. And if you are going to read at least one pirate comic this year why not ours.
                            He has promised in his rum induced fugue to support the
                            signing at the Forbidden Planet Int store in Ann St Belfast
                            this Saturday. Why not come along yourself and do the
                            same. Have a wee bit of an adventure yourself...

Devils Haircut

Is a haircut something you get or something you are?

The question might sound trivial but whats wrong with that?It has taken us milions of years to get to the point where we have the necessary freedoms to ask trivial questions. Consider the Cosmic Engineers who kickstarted life on Earth by sacrificing one of their own in a primordial soup experiment. Not a hair on their heads. Just a bunch of stunningly hairless albino giants whom we have outevolved. Probably.

Devils Haircut is a short story that attempts to answer that very question. As opposed to some other question which would off course have a very different answer. I wrote and drew it a while ago but it was recently lettered by a gentleman called Jon Ashby( who is a grand artist in his own right and a friend of Sir Roger Moore whom he bumped into in Monaco. I think they were both looking for Ernst Blofell. Which is a bit like Waiting For Godot only it has bikinis,guns and girls).

Devils's haircut also features a guest appearance by The Sabrejets. A Belfast born Rockabilly band who have been around the block and back. They sound like the kind of band who would have been blasted out of that blood red roadster Christines speakers as she wracked supernatural havoc in some alternate reality American small town. Its the sound a bad girl makes as she picks warm wet bubblegum from her angora sweater whilst setting fire to her high school on prom night.

One night I watched them play a blistering set on the stage of the Rotterdam pub that would have scorched a coffin lid. Its a venue that so suited them with its old school underground lair ambience lost in space and time. Trying to capture the energy of a band playing live in a comic strip barely seems possible. The magical chemistry that makes a live act worth catching operates on completely different principles to the medium I choose to work in. The static nature of art versus the moveable feast of sounds played live. One of the strengths of comic book storytelling is that it is possible to a degree to create a sense of movement between panels and I have tried to capture some of that atmosphere. Rather than just storyboarding the lyrics of the song I wrote for the story. So theres no point in looking at the Sabrejets back catalogue for it. They never recorded it( However That Bastard Chapman and his band Thee Higher Beings can be seen performing it on stage in the Pavillion bar. Dander on over to Youtube and feel your grip on reality slip. Scratch breathed life into my booby babble lyrics releasing the primal rockabilly for all to hear. Thank you old chum.) I do hope the Sabrejets feel I did them no diservice. The angry God of RocknRoll might rise from his Memphis tomb and smite me.

There is also a pop video version of the song directed by Brian Mullholland over his StayBueatifulFilms sight. Its a quite literal visual translation of the song filmed with its slobbering tongue in cheek. Have a peek.

Devils Haircut is a short story I am hoping to put out in the near future if all goes well. In another issue of Good Craic comics. It will be accmpanied by another story Blood Sucking Spide. A story about joyriding and vampires. Joyriding vampires to be more accurate. Keep an eye open for it. Actually keep two eyes open for it. That doubles the chances of you seeing it.

Noe The Savage Signing

Here's a four page preview of some of Stephen Downey's art work

for Noe The Savage Boy#1 from Atomic Diner. How sweet are they.

Stephen immersed himself, as it's possible for one so perfectly formed,

in a former world long passed to get the right tone for the story of Noe

and his family. Without a Tardis, visiting 16th century Cork is no more

possible than a quick trip to the floating mountains of Pandora but his vision

of that long ago Ireland has a certain truth.

We will be having a signing to launch the first issue of Noe on Saturday the 9th

of February at the Forbidden Planet International store in Ann Street Belfast.

Come along between the hours of 1 and 3 in the afternoon and be asssured of

a most cordial welcome. Stephen Downey, Rob Curley and myself extend an

open invitation to all lovers of good comic books everywhere.

See you there.

Isabella's Tail.

Poor, poor Isabella. My heart goes out to the people who lost such a beloved animal especially under such cruel circumstances. Its not hard to imagine why this noble little beast was so prized, so valued as a pet and a pal to the children of the area. It is hard to imagine the dog that savaged her being held in the same regard. Mind you I do not believe that such dogs are born vicious. They have to be brought up that way. Either by intent or neglect the cruelty gene requires nurturing.  Animals are as complex as human beings when it comes to how they turn out.

What a noble beast is a donkey. They have been almost as constant a companion to humanity as dogs have but they have never come to occupy a place in our shared affections in the same way. They have proved themselves loyal, dependable and hardworking to boot with no history of ferocious attack.

  I had an uncle who used to race donkeys in donkey derbies. By that I do not mean I had an eccentric but quite fast uncle who used to run rings around donkeys.  He stabled them and trained jockeys for that. His favorite , The Brown Lad, was a legend in my ma's kitchen. The Brown Lad won races and brought home trophies. He was a good natured animal, gentle but strong. Uncle Hughie once tried to train me to be a jockey but I was much too big a fop. All that bouncing around on a donkeys back was murder on ones crown jewels and I did not half cut a peculiar sight. Shooting along a grass verge past Castleblaney Castle Hotel bobbing up and down like a Punky Hobbit who knows his time has come. I ended up in a hedge being stung by nettles. My youngest sister Bernadette became the jockey I was destined never to become. Riding The Brown Lad to victory on more than one occasion. Fetlocks blowing in the wind to quote The Divine Comedy and Father Ted from their magnificent Eurovision Entry My Beautiful Horse. 

Last year I drew a card for friends showing Oscar Wilde and his famous entrance into Jerusalem one Easter Sunday many years ago  atop a donkey that carried him into the history books. He was going to stay with the Hebrew King Herod and watch Herod's step-daughter Salome dance for their entertainment. Wild wrote a play about his visit which was banned everywhere on account of it being bonkers and dirty. Like Christine Aguilera only all biblical. Oscar Wilde could be like that.

"THIS CARD IS SO WRONG MAL. I JUST DONT KNOW WHY."

A really catholic friend told me when they got the card. Which pleased me no end I can tell you. Its the small victories that count. Even the ones that make no sense. 

There was a wee book in our house in Etna Drive by the writer Paul Gallico called The Small Miracle. It is a very simple but moving tale skillfully crafted and deeply moving. " A BEAUTIFUL STORY ABOUT THE SIMPLE FAITH OF A BOY IN INVOKING THE HELP OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI TO CURE HIS SICK DONKEY." That is what the Glasgow Herald said about this book way back in 1952. It is not much more than a short story, just less than fifty pages long. But like all good stories it is exactly as long as it needs to be with not a word wasted. It is tempting to say that it is a story from a simpler time but I do not believe simpler times ever existed. It is perhaps just that we who lived through it saw with simpler eyes. Please seek a copy out. And make an effort to go looking for it in an actual second hand bookshop in the real world. They do exist and they really need your patronage. You never know what else you might find so it is a double-plus good situation.

There comes a point in every young man's life when he sees with absolute clarity that he will never become The Astronaut he one day dreamed of becoming. Fortunately I had filed away a fall back plan for a second choice career. I used to believe I was going to become A Rag and Bone man. Going from street to street , door to door, collecting junk and second-hand clothes, loading them onto my cart pulled by my faithful donkey Bucephalus. The Rag and Bone man was not an unfamiliar sight on the Edwardian streets of my childhood and someday I hope to make it so again. It is not an ignoble profession. Few ways of making a living are.  

Donkeys have occasionally clip clopped their way onto the broad stage of the modern zeitgeist. One of Winnie the Poohs best friends and Shrek's chum for starters. And in literature too as I have minutely demonstrated. I have a childhood memory of my sister Nuala standing in her st. Gemma's school uniform rehearsing her part in Shakespeare's A midsummer Nights Dream. In her well worn and tatty copy of the play was a full page artists impression of the donkey headed Bottom. Surely one of the most familiar visual rifts in the history of theatre. I had not a fucking clue what she was saying but I loved the rythmn of the words as she tried to give them life. I thought I was hearing magic 

words and that is what I associate Shakespeare with...

Magic Words.

Woodland magic. It makes you want to lie in a leafy glade where sunlight plays between the browning leaves of autumnal trees that fall like confetti at the wedding between the real and the weird. The last place in the world where you are likely to be abused by someone in a loose ensemble of sport casuals.

Before I stop waffling I see a light break through the shutters of a movie projectors lens throwing the untold ending of Issabella's tale on a movie-house screen. The film stock it is recorded upon is a little scratched and the quality somewhat degraded. The film is after all the product of my minds eye and like everything else about me its a bit frayed about the edges. 

Do not walk out just yet though. Please stick around to see how it ends. If for no other reason than every movie shown in this particular theatre is proceeded by the sound of the national anthem of Utopia being played on an accordian. You will not even have to get to your feet to stand in respect for it.

No-one ever does.

In the flickering light on the screen thrown on the screen we see the image of a small town square huddled beneath a dark starless December night. It is as dark as a December night can get in this part of the world. Gaudily lit store windows display their wares behind glass encrusted with mid-winter frost. The kind that comes from spray can. The people of all shape, sizes and ages who shuffle accross untrustworthy pavements can see their collective breaths in front of their faces. They make their way to an unofficial assembly point festooned in decorations dripping with win driven rain which fringe the edges of every cable and rainbow bare bulb like gray decorative lace. Droplets dangle of ruddy noses and ruby cheeks that peek from gaps in scarf wrapped heads as songs are shared and sung aloud to ward of the winter chill. They are all gathered around the statue cast in bronze of Issabella the donkey. A nicely designed memorial to a little animal that brought a lot of joy.

Its only a thought. Not a short film at all.

In the total scheme of things Issabella's tale is a small one that few people outside of the immediate area she lived in has even heard off. But its the stuff of life and the whole worlds made of that.

The Purple Gum Boots Of Destiny

It was raining again. Some days it feels as though the rain will never stop in this town. It just pours and pours.All day and all of the night. They have been saying its been the wettest period since records began. I suspect they mean since Noah started keeping a diary. It just comes on so quickly too. The sky darkens over and the rain clouds burst spilling their contents on we mere mortals below.

I was on my way into work when I got caught out by a sudden cloudburst. I had no umbrella and was not carrying a walking stick. I had intended a leisurely dander to the bus stop so I was not prepared for the sudden imperative to get under shelter. I have arthritis in both my legs so if I push it by suddenly hurrying up I end up lurching from side to side as I perambulate. Its not my favorite way to get from A to B as I believe shanks-mere should be an altogether more graceful affair. In my own head I hear circus music played by an organ grinder as his monkey in a fezz dances.

After an interminable wait for a green light I managed to cross a very busy road. I had my head down against the rain and the wind and did not notice until I got to the bus shelter that it was almost full. There were four blokes in track suits and hoodies huddled together beneath the sheltering heavy plastic roof. Each of them clothed in garmets made from no fabric found in nature. If I had seen them before making for the bus shelter I would have kept moving. Feigning indifference I would have faux-casually made my way to the next stop despite the biblical downpour. Now however I was committed and had to sit down.

The four blokes not only wore the same clothes they wore the same expressions. Snarling smirks with cats-eyes embedded on the road to perdition. They were in the zone. The every day party zone that most spides live in where linear time means nothing. Elvis time without end.

My stomach was full of butterflies but I did my best to look unruffled. I knew what was coming. Not the details but the general gist. I tried to concentrate on the cars flashing by in the rain but the game was afoot.

"FUCK ME ITS DOCTOR WHO"

One of them helpfully pointed out to his chums.

"HE NOT DOCTOR WHO HE MISTER BEAN"

His colleague begged to differ.

To be honest I have been called much worse. This was nothing. There was much more and worse I suppose in  among the general sniggering and swearing. The Jango-Jango speak of collective spides. It always sounds a bit like crab claws plucking on violin strings punctuated by swearing and hilarious blasphemy. This continued for a bit. The four of them mocking me as we all waited together for a bus to arrive. The whole time there was the back ground pitter patter of raindrops on the bus shelter roof. Even the shelter seemed to be mocking  me as their in-house ad lied with the words one bus every twelve minutes.

"MISTER MAGORAM."

Out came another insult accompanied by a chorus of guffaws.

"FORREST FUCKIN GUMP"

Said another to an encore of hoots.

I have had moments like this all my life. The mocking laughter of strangers(Which sounds like a southern gothic tragedy by Tennesse Williams.) I flashed back in time to my first day at school.  My first morning at Holy Cross Boys. That dark morning many years ago when I had paraded around our living room in my new school uniform. New clothes were something of an occasion for me as I had only ever worn second hand or hand-me-downs. Clothes that fit were a new sensation. I stood on the arm of a chair and posed in front of the mirror that hung above our fire-place. I thought I looked very smart and felt sure all who saw me would agree. The only item of new clothing I refused to wear were the new shoes. Sensible black school shoes. They were not real to me.

I wanted to wear my favorite pair of purple gum-boots. They were a pair of bright shiny purple boots. A bit like wellingtons only better. Up until that day I had worn them all my life. At least that is how I remember it. I  could not recall a life before them. It was as though my own sense of being began when I put them on. They were my day wear. They wear my night wear. I wore them when I thought I was a pirate on the Black Swan. I wore them when I thought I was a spaceman on the Forbidden Planet. I was the only member of the Magnificent Seven who owned a pair. I even wore them In Sherwood Forrest evading the crooked sheriff. I loved my purple boots and would often fall asleep wearing them. Someone would slip them off my feet and there they would be at the side of the bed in the morning. They seemed indestructable too. They never seemed to wear down and no matter how dirty they got all it took was a wipe down with a wet cloth to make them shine like new. This probably meant they were made of some cheap nasty plastic but to me they were priceless. 

My ma tried to get me not to wear them into school. That my school clothing grant bought shoes were the ones I ought to wear. That the purple ones would be waiting for me when I got home from school. I would not hear of it. I was looking forward to school. It was going to be a whole new adventure and for that I would need the proper footwear.

The purple boots of adventure.

I may have believed I was born to the purple but no-one else at Holy Cross Boys did.

The first day of that big adventure did not go quite the way I thought. The older boys were very aggressive to all the new boys but there was something about me that singled me out for special treatment. Because my ma and da were from the country and spoke with accents this identified the family as gypsies. And my purple boots confirmed this. All gypsies wore wellies. Everyone seemed to know this as one of those for-certain school yard facts. Everyone except me and mine.I was not even sure why being a gypsy could be percieved as being a a bad thing. As a child I imagined the life of a gypsy to be one of great adventures all beginning and ending in a colourful moving house on wheels. At break time and lunch time a crowd gathered to tell me how wrong I was. They loomed above and around me. Pushing and shoving, jeering and laughing.I tried to get away but they blocked me at every turn. I was terrified of them and felt butterflies in my stomach for the first time. Since I could not escape them in the school I escaped the only way I could. I turned and faced the wall and tried to tune out. The insults and the jeering continued even as I raced home through a gap in the school railings at the bottom of Brompton Park alley.

This first day set the template for the rest of my schooldays. It pretty much continued all through primary and all through secondary. I never talked about any of it at home and have not since. Until now. 

Malachy Moondust with his head in the clouds.

I never wore my purple boots again. I stuffed them under the bed and wore the school grant ones.My purple boots were eventually thrown out. I wish I had a different end to that story. That I could say I stood up to the people who mocked and won their respect.That would not be true. It was too late by then. I had been singled out for good

I was snapped back to the present by the arrival of three buses at once. The four blokes got on the first bus. I got on the second. The third bus whizzed by. No reason to stop.

"RUN FORREST RUN."

One of the boys shouted at me as I made my way with giddy motion to the second bus.

Even I thought that one was funny.

It was then I noticed that one of my black suede brothel creepers was letting in rain.My sock was all sloshy with rain water. Oh for reliable footwear whos only weakness is molten magma. Hot lava being the kryptonite of gum boots.

My purple boots are probably still out there somewhere. Quietly refusing to rot in some landfill site buried under decades of discarded rubbish. 

My brave and loyal little purple boots whom I betrayed and threw away.

Wherever you are I salute you.

Noe: The Savage Boy

Noe News Is Good News.

                  Hey ho here we Go. Here's the cover for a new comic I have been working on for the Irish comic book publisher Atomic Diner. It is the first issue of a three part series about the traumatic life of a sixteenth century Irish boy Called Noe. It is based on actual historical events from an idea by the Atomic Diner editor Rob Curley. At his invitation I have adapted that idea into a thrilling adventure yarn illustrated by Stephen Downey(artist on one of my favorite titles at the moment Jennifer Wilde).

                  In 1631 the occupants of a small fishing community in the southern most extreme of Ireland vanished overnight. The Sack of Baltimore, as it became known, was carried out by Algerian pirates who spirited away all the people of that village to the North African Coast where they were sold into slavery. It is a really heartbreaking tale of desperate inhumanity that is all the more breathtaking as it is true. Imagine the headlines on the cover of the British red top newspapers or even the Web top headlines if such an event were to occur today.

                  Its the story of one family and their experiences. In the main it is the sons tale, Noe. How he goes from being an innocent boy to a savage warrior and ruthless assassin. Its the story of a family learning to survive against staggering odds and the unbreakable bonds shared between loved ones. Its about the bonds forged and formed in the face of adversity and cruelty at the hands of man.

                   I am hopelessly compromised but I believe Stephen has done some of his best work on this first issue. He has managed to bring to life a period and a location I do not remember seeing in a comic book before. Ireland in the sixteenth century. Page after page filled with a sense of a space and a time long gone by. The sight of the prow of the pirate ships cutting the waves and the wind in their sails. It has been a while since I last wanted to swash my buckle so ardently.

                    I have not written a history lesson though. It is first and foremost an adventure story even if  birthed in historical fact. As historical fiction it is not rooted in any particular genre either. I find life rarely is. Life is comedy and life is tragedy. Life is happiness and life is horror. I think the editor Rob thinks this too and he allowed me to take minor historical liberties for the sake of brevity in storytelling. Allowing me the full stops real life does not.

                     If you would like to read and see more Noe should be here soon.