The Kindness Of Strangers

WHOEVER YOU ARE,I HAVE ALWAYS DEPENDED ON THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS. So said Blanche Dubois in the Tenesse Williams play Streetcar Named desire. And poor Blanche was as nutty as a fruit-cake. I myself am something of  a fruitcake. There is no denying it. My own experiences of the random reactions of strangers being along the common lines of WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? or WHY ARE YOU NOT ME? Although I share the ache of fictional characters sadness at the lack of empathy at broad in the world I try not to get too hung up on it. Indeed, every now and again I am pleasantly suprised by the actions of others and when this happens I feel rich with life. Take this for an example. I am not the fastest human being in the world. In fact I am a rambling tangle of uncoordinated limbs that at times seem to act independently of each other. When I tried my hand at waitering my nickname by the other waiters was Lightning. For I was anything but a lightning bolt. These days I am worse than ever, my circus days long behind me. One morning I was ambling along in an attempt to get a bus to work. The driver had seen me but was not prepared to wait and started to pull off leaving me in my usual state of embarrassment and abandonment. I sighed trying to feign indifference. I DID NOT WANT TO GET ON YOUR STUPID BUS ANYWAY. Then it stopped and a figure leaned out and waved me forward. C'MON She said with a wide friendly smile. I speeded up and hobbled forward(part of my brain was saying PLEASE DO NOT SHOUT RUN FORREST RUN as all the bus passengers press their faces against the bus window and howl with laughter. I have history after all)actually managing to get aboard dignity intact. She had kindly asked the driver for a little patience and that is what he demonstrated. I was so grateful and it even caused a ripple of smiles amongst those seated.     
            Anytime we saw each other after that we would always say hello and chat. Just about the ups and downs of life in general and particularly the minefield that is retailing. I learned she was from Poland and that she and her husband were both making the most together of a new life in Northern Ireland.
             I asked her name.
             MAGDALENA she replied.
             I babbled a load of comic related gobblydegook in suprise. A few years back I had worked for an American Comic Book Company called Top Cow. Amongst the things I had done whilst working for them was to create a character called The Magdalena. And this was the first time I had ever met anyone with that name. That is her in the photograph with a copy of the re-released graphic novel of the origin story of the character. I felt she had to have a copy if only to prove I was not some looney she had unwittingly encouraged with a simple act of kindness. I mean it was not as though I had claimed  to have visited the moon (although in truth I have, in all its many phases.)
             MAGDALENA meet THE MAGDALENA.
             The most recent comic I have worked on is about North African Pirates making slaves of Irish people.
              I think if I was running for a bus and a Swarthy Swashbuckler leaned out beckoning me forward I might now pause.
              Wait ten minutes.
              Get the next one.

The Woods Are Dark And Deep.

Just look at this tree. Is it not magnificent? I had been down in the country staying with my sister Anne, working on a script for another issue of Noe The Savage Boy. In my mind I felt as though I had spent weeks at sea on a nightmare journey on a North African Pirate Ship called The Issabella. (Not because my sister was mistreating me but because that is what the next part of Noe's story involves.) Feeling a bit stir crazy I decided to go for a hobble around The Black Island. My own Island of Adventure. As a boy I had stumbled across a downed Sontaran war Machine and only just managed to foil its pilot Field Marshall Soldar's attempts to conquer the Earth. I did so by jamming his breathing tube with a Peggy's Leg cola flavored stick of rock. A top tip if you should ever find yourself face to face with a lone Sontaran warrior. Also, it is not widely known but beneath the dark waters of Lake Muckno which surround The Black Island are a Zygon spacecraft (Who's crew rest in suspended animation) as well as a colony of Sea-Devils/Silurians (Who also sleep in suspended animation). Someday both sleeping crews will emerge from their deep sleep and that will truly be squeaky bum time. I feel connected to The Black Island. I always have. Even on the worst of days I have been able to draw some strength from it. I have sat beneath the spreading branches of ancient trees as rain of biblical proportions has fallen to earth. The trees never notice I am there. They rarely notice us as we move through our lives so quickly. To a tree man-time is like the beating of a humming-bird's wings. I have sat with my skinny legs dangling off Lake Muckno Bridge feeling the night draw in. Watching tree tops sway in a breathing motion as the wind explores its branches. Dark water below mirrors the darkening skies above as twilight spreads. Like a curtain falling signalling the end of one act and the beginning of another. A hunting man armed with a shotgun and a brace of Coneys passes me following an excited springer spaniel who's nose vacums the ground. The grass has stories to tell and a good springer can read them all. A sublime night is meant for walking on the water...And a tree like this is why this place is so special to me. I even scrambled about its rooty mossy base looking for a Carroll-like entrance to a world beyond this one. The kind of entrance a waistcoat wearing rabbit with a fob-watch might use. Alas no such Coney showed. No magic rabbit bounded by. No magic entrance or exit revealed itself that day. The day it does will be the last day this world sees me. 
                   ...Now if I can only remember where I found this tree...

A Night At the Museum.

I was gifted a copy of this wonderful book by the author whom I had the pleasure of meeting and eating with at dinner the other night. I had been to the Ulster Museum for a talk by the author Jeffrey Deavers. A night organized by David Torrance of the No Alibis Bookstore in Botanic Avenue. It was a lovely evening with the sun splitting the trees and the choice of venues was just great for a talk by the creator of Lincoln Rhyme. I was there by invitation of my boss John Mc Mahon who knows  I always have an appetite for good food and good company. The evening was a sell out, loads of the authors new hardback The Kill Room were shifting and the craic around the dinner table afterwards was as they say up to ninety. We walked from the museum to Connors for a late evening meal. Afterwards we strolled to where John had parked his car, down in the holy Land. It was as I said a really lovely evening and the campus grounds around Queens University were balmy and oddly quiet. Just ambling along with these two fine mystery writers who had travelled so far to entertain their fans. They were obviously good friends who brought out the best in each other conversationally. Jeffrey's voice seemed deep and precise. John's danced for joy. John gave me a copy of his book refusing to personalize the signature as it would devalue the book in the event of his death. A Poe like modesty that endeared him all the more. Anyone who knows me will know that MR James is one of my favorite authors and antiquarian ghost stories one of my favorite genres. I am not keen on pastiche. I like authors to just go for it. To write as though they are the first and only authors to write in this vein. And that is how John Connolly allows this story to unfold. It is a one sitting read that demands an almost immediate reread. Just as I reread A Christmas Carol every December I now think I shall reread the Wanderer in Unknown Realms every...
              ..well,every time I feel like it.
              Special mention must go to Emily Hall for her disturbing black and white plates that punctuate the text. They really are quite haunting. The product of some Ghostly Edwardian nursery.
               My momento of a lovely evening is a book that gave me disturbing dreams.
               Just wonderful.

Magic with Science.

ITS SATURDAY TEA-TIME IN 1977 ALL OVER AGAIN!Ring out Tom Baker's majestic brown tones. And you know,that is what it feels like. It would appear Big Finish Productions have managed to discover the secret of time travel. it is a combination of talent, good scripting and high production values layered with dollops of affection for the material. Its Magic with Science.
                Oh what a joy. A whole season of stories with the 4th Doctor and savage Leela. Six audio adventures that tick so many boxes and all of them blue. Whovanna! What else can I say.The season picks up with the Doctor and Leela departing Victorian London leaving behind them the wonderful Jago and Litefoot after a near fatal brush with The Talons Of Weng-Chiang. There is Space Station Nerva. A Morovanian Museum. Roman Britain and The Iceni. Daleks. Riots in central London(who would have thought.). There is the Master. A giant Wyrm Of The Earth and There are Kraal. All with wonderful guest performers and retro soundtracks.
                 Big Finish are a marvel to me. What a hotbed of talent this company is. The very best actors and actresses pass through its doors. All of whom seem willing to return to work again and again. Along with great and atmospheric scripts that entertain on every level. All carried along on waves of sound that takes you just about everywhere in space and time.
                 Tom Baker is on top form here. He remains for me the worlds greatest living Englishman. Born with a voice that transcends the passing years. Give him a Bafta. Give him a knighthood. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, give him a big hand. Tom Baker. Sigh.
                  Louise Jameson is equally spot on. The years have been kind to this dear lady. She seems even more talented than I remember her as a child. Her Leela rings so true. The feral warrior with the true heart. By turns brave, wily and witty. And I mean Louise as much as Leela. I could listen to Louise Jameson talk all night. Listen to the extras at the end of each adventure and you will see what I mean. Leela has some of her finest moments here. They expand on the notion of her being on an Eliza Doolittle learning curve experiencing a growing enlightenment as a companion to the Doctor. Losing her savage belief in magic to an understanding of science as an explanation for events. The tone is occasionally darker than that of the originally transmitted material but it never strays into feeling like some thing other than the period that it originated from. Some of Leela's attempts to understand the motivations and actions of others are insightful and warmly human. An endearing foil to the Doctor's occasional alien excesses.
                  What a season this is. Six stories that range from Gothic science fiction to historical drama and Ken Russell/Bram Stoker inspired Peak District Looniness. With such attention to period detail and invented possibilites you realise the only limits here are the listeners imaginations.
                   Geoffrey Beavers is in here. What a voice. What a magnificently nuanced voice. Sibilants rattle as he madly rages.
                    Micheal Cochrane is in here. Playing a wholly English character with all the virtues and vices this entails. The sun never set on his characters Empire.
                    Rachel Stirling is in here. Proving that talent does not just run in her family. It gallops like Arkle.
More please.
                    During this period of Who in '77 I still missed the lovely Liz Sladen as Sarah Jane smith. The show was changing yet the presence of this savage aboard the Tardis felt right to me. I was changing a bit too. My mum had been having a bit of a hard time so this other family took me in over a long summer past. They were a lovely family and when they took me in they treated me as one of their own. Although they did cut off all my hair and put me in shorts. Not for any mean spirited reason. I think they feared the thick foilage on the top of my head may have harbored nits. Not unlikely. My own ma said my bugs wore hard-nailed boots. She used to drag a nit comb through my hair that could have deforested a strip of bush in the Amazon. Up to that point I had grown a wild shock of thick curly hair. My Tom Baker hair I proudly believed. I was probably more like Stig Of The Dump. A feral Gallifreyan wild child. So they took me to a barber and had it all chopped off.  What a sight I was to my brothers and sisters with my shaved head, skinny body and shorts.
                 Even minus my sock of curly hair I thought Tom Baker the coolest looking person ever. He remains to me now as then magical. His image combined with the growing influence of punk rock which had crept across the sea and penetrated the bubble of the Northern Irish troubles began to weave a spell upon me I would carry for the rest of my life. Just the seed of change when change was what was needed.
                   Anyway, I believe there is another story in this series out there. Night Of The Stormcrow. A story that sounds just great.Available to subscribers only. I have never subscribed to  nor belonged to anything(apart from the Dennis the Menace fan club. I used the pass for i.d. back in the day. It never failed to gain me entrance to pubs or nightclubs). For the first time I feel like I may be missing out. Oh well.
                   As I said this season was a joy. It might seem old fashioned. It is not Timey Whimey. It is not humany wumany but it was a series of really well made engaging adventure stories.
                   Would it be so wrong to want more?    
               

The Game Is still Afoot.

It was no Study in Scarlet and I am no Sherlock Holmes but it remains a mystery to me. Where did the Elephant go? Who took it and why? It is now ten years to the month since I wrote and drew this strip for fortnight magazine. It was the first thing I submitted to the then editor Malachi O Doherty. He greatly encouraged me to speak in the medium I was most comfortable with and wanted to communicate ideas through. Hence the monthly slice of Boobie-Babble that was Ouija Board Ouija Board. I remember at the time the mystery of the vanishing Elephant was unfolding in real time. I expected developments. I expected answers and in real time they never came. I felt I was Truman Capote and this was my In Cold Blood. The mystery remains just that. As yet I have no resolution.
             Please do not mock.
             Even though it might appear more Scooby Doo than Ripper Street.
             That Elephant remains a pretty damn charming icon of a former time now passed.

Homopacedermus.

Please say hello to Nick Elephant. A wee strip written by myself and drawn by Sean Doran. Its the true story of one of my friends. Although certain small details have been changed in order to protect the identity of the person concerned. Mind you if you met him you would probably guess it is about him. He and Nick share certain physical characteristics which are hard to disguise. They do however have completely different names which should protect him from the readers insight.
           Sean is just one of the best artists I have ever worked with. He is unique as an artist and as a human being. I have always felt him to be one of the best human beings I have ever interacted with on the earthly plain. Just a sweet guy who was great company. I knew Sean would never judge me harshly. I sensed from the moment we met that he understood perfectly how messed up I am and yet he had the generosity of spirit to accept me as a friend. Finest Kind as Hawkeye Pierce used to say. He and I fathered a few odd but loveable children together.Major Power and Spunky. Catholic Lad and off course Nick Elephant. I miss him a lot since he left Belfast to live in the Great Babylon London. The city that eats Irish people.
              The elephant has become something of an artistic and spiritual totem for me. I have used the elephant more than once in a story or a piece of artwork. I even have a tattoo of one on my upper right arm. It is the Elepant headed Indian Deity of wisdom which I hope in time will impart some in my jam filled mind. I like the idea that elephants are a reminder to us all that giants once roamed this earth. That Mother Nature used to grow her own. That with the right nurturing and protection they will continue to walk this earth as long as we do. In the story of Nick I do hope it comes across that it is not so much his wee elephant head that is his defining and unique physical characteristic but his Ghandi nipple. To have a piece of your anatomy resemble an iconic figure can be quite a burden at times.
              People do not half stare when he goes swimming.

The Pugilist

This is The Golden Age DC character Ted Grant AKA Wildcat. Champion of the Underdog. Scourge of the Underworld. Pugilist of the Pulp Era of comic book crime comics. An angel with a bloodied face. I remember coming across some reprints of his adventures on the mean streets and being completely knocked out. Like some of his opponents I suppose. The character never seemed to find the appeal or audience I believe he deserved but is that not the way of it? The hero who falls between the cracks. A place where Wildcat would have survived. A world of crumbling tenements. Zoot-suited scoundrels and fedora wearing gangsters with no mercy or grasp of grammar. For myself he had the pulp aura appeal of The Shadow or even Doc Savage. I held him in the same regard as The Gaurdian and the Newsboy Legion. Brave Ted Grant with his fists of stone. Built like a Paddy Wagon and squeezed into a skin-tight cat costume. Holy Smoke whats not to like. I thought the character would have been perfect for a Republic serial like the classic Captain Marvel. I can see the painted dramatic lobby posters in the flickering shadow-gallery of my minds eye.
                My brothers boxed. It may well explain why I was drawn to the character. Seeing something beyond the romance of the pulp era. An earthy truthfulness. They boxed for the joy of it. I did not. I was too much of a nerdy fop and utterly lacked the competitive spirit necessary to step beneath the ropes and into the ring. If anyone in my company had the desire to proclaim themselves the champion of anything I was quite happy to let them do so. No matter how outrageous the claim. You could suddenly stand up and proclaim yourself the worlds tallest dwarf and I would clap you on the back WELL DONE THAT MAN! I do not believe I was born with the instinct needed to slip on the gloves and take and trade blows. Which is pretty ironic given that I  had to fight almost every day growing up in Ardoyne. Not by any choice of mine. Quite the opposite. I do not think a day passed when I was not involved in a scrap of some sort. It is impossible not to when you just about tick every box in the bullies charter.
                The sport of Boxing seems to strike some deep primal chord in my brothers that provokes a wild joy. One I cannot tap into or even feign in the hope of familial acceptance. The geek-gene. The nerdy-chromazone. Whatever the cause it marked me as unnaturally unengaged by competitive sports/conflicts. Two men punching each other always seemed to me like two men who are already losing. I explained this to one of my brothers and he immediately punched me.
                  In our house my brothers shared the roof space which had been converted into a room. It had a sloping roof with a creaking misty skylight that opened outwards. Held on by a rusting hinge that let in water during heavy rain fall. It also did not let in a lot of light. The attic space was accessed by a square hole in the floorboards. A trap door built by Micky and Barney my stepbrothers which could be reached by a ladder built by them as well. A wire ran from the floor to a hook in the ceiling from which hung a bare bulb. The heat from the house below rose and unless snow was resting on the tiles above it was a cosy and warm space. It felt secret. It felt safe.
                  The eves caused weird acoustics. Sounds travelled oddly. Some amplified. Some muffled. Sounds from the street below from the district surrounding. Not all of them pleasant sounds. Most awful were sounds of whistles and binlids being hammered against the pavements. To announce the anniversary of Internment or to mark the passing of a hunger striker. Terrible bedlam sounds. I thought this is what the sound of the end of the world must be like.
                   I remember a box. A box my brothers kept their cool stuff in. There was a hand-made catapult Barney made. A pen-knife. A single hand-painted lead soldier with a red coat and a busted musket. There was a spud gun that smelt of moldy potato. Football cards, loads of marbles, some domino pieces and some jacks. There was also a paperback copy of Lord Of The Flies. With a cut and paste photo cover that showed poor doomed Piggy holding the conch. My step brother Micky once began to read it to me but got bored after a page and a half. Told me I should learn to read for myself.
                   Which I did.
                    And still do.
                   Its a gift for life.Reading.
                   It was a box of treasures. Boys treasures. Every thing you would need to survive if you were cast away on a desert where dinosaurs still roamed and giant white mountain gorillas beat their mighty chests.
                   There were black and white and grey pictures of boxers and wrestlers pinned and taped to that sloping roof and a pair of boxing gloves swung by their laces from a hook. You could lay on your back and look up at them and be transported to a grey boxing ring world far far away. It must have seeded something in my imagination. My favorite origin story for a superhero is the first Daredevil The Man Without Fear strip. It has all the pulpy elements I so admired in the Wildcat stories. The down at heel crumbling tenementness. The genuine noirish qualities of the artwork. Its a crime noir story with a superhero at its heart.
And what a costume. I read it in a black and white reprint. In a Mighty world Of Marvel Christmas annual.
In my head library it occupies the same shelf as The Hard Goodbye by Frank Miller.
                    My brother Micky died when he fell out of that attic room at the top of the house. He tumbled down the stairs and his head struck the hard floor. I remember standing in my bare feet staring at the blood on the floor which had not yet been wiped away.
                    The floor was so cold.
                    The world seemed so cold.
                    The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines the word pugilist as a practitioner of the art of boxing, a boxer, a fighter. Time and misuse and even intent can blur and grey the accepted meanings of words. Language has an elasticity that allows words to adapt to whatever its currently being used for. Wicked can mean class. Bad can mean good.
                      We are all fighters.
                      We are all pugilists.