Kingsman: The Golden Circle is the film every Bond movie wishes it were, but never will be.
It begins as it means to go on, with a fist fight in a car chase.Unlike Quantum of Solace (2008), which began the same way, you can see exactly what’s happening and actually become engaged in the action.And, furthermore, it’s all set to a Prince song.So, win-win.
And this sets the tone for the film we are about to see.Scribes Goldman and Vaughn have worked the ideas, so each scene gives more than is strictly necessary.It’s like they decided what they needed to have happen, then sat down and thought about how to also make it clever.Or funny.Or both.That’s good film-making.Do the creative work when it’s just lines on paper ... The cheapest and most fundamental stage of any film’s production.Re-writes and re-shoots are so much more expensive!
Anyway, back at the plot, when Eggsy gets home, after his fight, we find that he has settled down with his anal-loving princess, Tilde, from the end of The Secret Service.When did Bond ever hang on to a woman for more than one movie? Indeed, Eggsy is properly romantic with her. So, we even have a bit of a love story woven into this already busy movie tapestry.
Julianne Moore's Poppy produces all of the world's narcotics from her 50s-style drug store.
Then we meet our super-villain, Poppy (played by Julianne Moore, who is clearly having as much fun as Sam Jackson did in the last film).In her introduction, she explains that she is obsessed with the 50s, back when life was simpler; and her evil lair looks like nothing so much as the town square from Back to the Future, complete with drug store, burger bar and live theatre (in which a kidnapped Elton John has a permanent residency). Here, she serves up a burger made of human meat (there goes the McDonald’s sponsorship deal) and smiles far too widely, in that way that tells you a person is completely bug-nuts.Interestingly, when we learn what her plan is, it actually makes sense and she becomes a genuinely interesting and engaging character.Who is also completely bug-nuts.Take that Ernst Stavro Blohard!
As you’ll know, if you’ve seen any of the posters or trailers, we are also introduced to the Kingsmen’s American counterparts, the Statesmen.They spread their brand all over the world through sales of whisky.Interesting that a quintessentially American drinks-based organisation doesn’t sell cola.(But, maybe that would have been one lost sponsorship deal too many).
These new characters blend in and the dialogue is shot through with spirited exposition which doesn’t leave a sour taste.It’s a neat trick and the proof of good writing from Goldman, who has had the bottle to, once again, set herself a high bar; and it’s all distilled into a film which just barrels along.
(Okay, I’ll stop now.)
There is a lot of swearing, here.Having a film that looks and sounds like a Bond movie, but with down-to-earth English swearing is fun, at first, but we get so much of it that the typical English response of laughing ’cos it’s embarrassing, actually wears off.HhThere's also some outrageous humour which, I imagine, will get some voices raised in anger at the film, as happened about the Tilde gag last time. So, they could have shown a bit more restraint with all that, and displayed a bit more of their obvious wit, but these films are not really about restraint.
Director Matthew Vaughn layers his film with glorious detail; there are so many clever ideas, so many moments when they indulge in a pun or just have fun.Okay, so the golden circle of the title is, actually, irrelevant; that’s okay.It’s a maguffin, nowt wrong with that.Everything in the film is presented in a heightened way, with vivid colours, polished surfaces, snappy dialogue and delightfully clever lap-dissolves from scene-to-scene.No one has had quite so much fun transitioning from one scene to another since Ang Lee made his version of Hulk in 2003.
Missiles maketh man. Taking a leaf from the Robert Rodriquez' Desperado playbook - Taron Egerton's Eggsy is on the case and dressed to kill.
Mark Strong (as Merlin) is even better than he was last time, and gets to sing.Meanwhile, Taron Egerton, (who, I notice, even though it’s his film, still only gets third billing) ably holds his own amongst a growing cast of actors with way more experience than he has, not least Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore, who are two of the best actors of their respective generations!
Channing Tatum is in on the gag (in case you hadn’t noticed, he doesn’t take himself at all serious), but is criminally underused in the film (they’re saving him for the next one, no doubt).This does, however, give an opening for Pedro Pascal to step into the limelight.You know Pedro from Game of Thrones, but here he looks like he’s auditioning for the remake of The Cannonball Run.Fortunately, he’s also in on the joke.Indeed, all of the Americans look like they can barely deliver their dialogue from giggling too much.
Thankfully, the viewer is having fun too.
Any chance we can get Ned Beatty in on the action ... Or Sally Field?
Like a Bond film, Kingsman does a bit of globe-trotting.There’s no reason, at all, for example, to go to Italy, but they do, for a clever and thrilling stunt-scene involving a cable car which, presumably, couldn’t have been done in America.
I don’t like sequels which simply repeat the first film (that’s why you won’t find me writing about Fast and Furious or Transformers, for example); I like a film to push its concepts and its characters along a bit, like Guardians of the Galaxy did, earlier this year.So, yes, we get some of the signature ingredients of the first film faithfully reproduced:the henchman with a fake limb, the punch-up in a pub, the protracted fight-scene with no edits; but we also get a lot of new ingredients thrown into the mix.
There is an infection being spread, which has three stages; the first is a warning, the second is a mad craziness and the third is suddenly more serious.The film has similar sections, with the scene setting of the first act giving way to fun and games with the new characters, before the serious bit which shows, through merciless satire, that the real super-villains of the world aren’t the ones with the secret lairs.The really evil people are the politicians.
Just take a glance at the real leaders of the world, if you want some context.
Speaking of which, Victor Von Trump’s use, just this week, of the phrase ‘rocket man’ may be the most audacious piece of marketing any motion picture has had the fortune to receive - because this film features the Rocket Man himself, Elton John, in a delightful role (much more than just a cameo) where he too demonstrates and real willingness to parody himself.
Man of the match: Elton John!Now there’s a phrase I never thought I’d type.
It
isn't just the presence of Elton John which put me in mind of a Ken Russell film,
when I was watching Kingsman The Golden Circle, no, it the bravura
performances, the riotous colours, the restless creativity and the great music
cues (it's up there with Guardians and Baby Driver as soundtrack
of the year, for me) It’s also the way the film refuses to shy aware from bad
taste, and the characters you enjoy spending time with, no-matter how monstrous
they are. It is fun from beginning to end, with a few serious satirical
points to make along the way.
Part of me is hoping that Eon Productions have the wisdom to tap Vaughn on the shoulder for the next Bond film (he did give Danny Craig his big break with Layer Cake back in 2004, after all), but a bigger part of me is hoping he stays right where he is and keeps showing the flaccid, self-important Bond franchise how it should be done.
First thoughts. That’s
what this piece will be. Half-formed, poorly-considered thoughts.
Having maintained my usual exhausting self-imposed media
blackout on this film … I went to see it today as cold as anyone could. I haven’t opened a copy of ‘Empire’ in
months, have avoided some of my favourite websites and found myself sitting in
the cinema with my fingers in my ears going “La-la-la” while the trailer
played. (If you think I’m joking … You
don’t know me that well).
So, I’m not intending to spoil the film, but by merely
talking about it, I’m going to … So, if you have any ambition to watch this
film … Don’t read on.
Give yourself the chance to see the film …
Okay? So, I’ll assume
you have seen it if you’re still here.
So when is a trilogy not really a trilogy?
I was reasonably indifferent to Batman Begins (2005). I
enjoyed it but, y’know, it wasn’t the ‘Batman: Year One’ I’d been hoping
for. And it had Liam Neeson, which, in
his post-Phantom Menace, (1999) pre-Taken (2009) ‘wilderness years’ was
rarely a great thing. Then there were
the unconvincing sets (The Narrows) and dodgy special effects (all that mono-rail
stuff … please). But it did have the
relationship between Wayne and Alfred and Lucius Fox. It had the development of the armour and the
Tumbler. It had some pretty bloody
spectacular location photography (fighting on a frozen lake, etc). It at least attempted to be a grown-up
superhero film. A first for a DC-owned
property, in my humble opinion!
Then The Dark Knight
(2008) arrived. It was a
phenomenon. Everything that I felt was
wrong about Begins was right about
this film. Everything that I had thought
right about Begins was even more
right. Gone were the dodgy sets and
effects … This time it was shot on location and the effects were practical …
where practical.
You won't hear any mentions of either The Joker or Arkham in this film. No joke.
My straw-poll survey made The Dark Knight the second favourite film of the decade and it was
my second favourite too. It remains my absolute
favourite superhero film … And I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Marvelite.
TDK (as its
friends call it) was such a profound leap forward from BB (as, I suspect, no one calls it) it vastly surpassed my
expectation. As such, The Dark Knight Rises was almost bound
to be a disappointment … Simply because it couldn’t possibly exceed the now
stratospheric expectation.
I knew this going in.
As he did with TDK,
he begins by catching us off guard.
Whereas that film’s prologue was a bank heist, this film has a full on
Bond-movie pre-title sequence, complete with jaw-dropping aerial stunts. I don’t suppose Nolan is pitching to direct
the next Bond but, if he were, this audition would doubtless secure him the
job.
Then we go into a lengthy, but necessary process of
catch-up. It’s been eight years since
Bats took the fall for the now-sainted Harvey Dent … Eight years when he has
not once donned the cape and cowl. So
far so very ‘The Dark Knight Returns’.
If you felt Bats coming out of retirement rang a few bells ...
If you’ve never read Frank Miller and Klaus Janson’s definitive vision of The
Batman (the one that effectively made every subsequent story unnecessary) then
treat yourself. The build-up to Bats’
inevitable return is mythical and his arrival is seismic. Sadly, by comparison, Batman’s return in this
film is something of a damp squib.
Anyway, as before, Nolan has lifted elements from a variety
of Batman comic-books, 1993's 'Knightfall' by Doug Moench and Jim Aparo, of
course, Miller’s 'Dark Knight Returns', touches of Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke's revamped version of Catwoman and, as usual, the atmosphere of the Loeb/Sale stories. He also refers back, often in cunningly
subtle ways, to his own previous films (the burning bat symbol, the frozen
river, the circular pit) all of which is mixed together with an awareness of the
world-wide audience’s rage at the elite rich having destroyed our economy in
the years since the last film came out.
There was clearly no plan at the beginning to make a trilogy
– hence the clear visual and tonal difference between the first two films, but,
never-the-less, Nolan (and his fellow script-writer, his brother, Jonathan
Nolan) have woven enough of the thematic fabric of the first film into this third
to create a satisfying conclusion. Very
much in the way the Die Hard With a
Vengeance (1995) ties up the threads of Die
Hard (1988).
Problems there are, certainly. Small problems, such as … Why is Wayne
limping for the film’s first half hour and where does the limp go? How come a punch in the back cures a
shattered spine? Who is in charge of The
Pit and why is it there? And Matthew
Modine … Ehm … Why?
Then there are larger problems … Such as my failure to
connect with Bane. Maybe it is because muscle
is inherently less interesting than cunning.
Where The Joker was an evil genius, expressively performed by Heath
Ledger who was inspired by the opportunities the role afforded him … Tom Hardy
is literally muzzled as Bane.
Hardy, no stranger to out-methoding Bale put on two stone of muscle for this. Bale grew a tache.
His scenes with Batman are perfunctory and largely consist
of them whacking each-other in a, frankly, not very cinematic way. Nolan has never really made a big deal out of
the fight scenes with these films. I’m
not complaining, particularly, since fight scenes hardly constitute the
intellectual high-point of a movie.
Maybe some of the limitation is brought about by Bale’s insistence on
doing most of that sort of stuff himself, maybe some of comes about because the
IMAX screen of which Nolan has become fond, doesn’t lend itself to rapid
editing and whip-pans. Whatever the
reasons, the fights have never been the point of these films … So, to reduce
Batman and Bane’s conflict to a street-brawl seems anti-climactic, as though it
is beneath the dignity of both characters.
And there is some dignity to Hardy’s performance of Bane, even if it is
stifled by that (never fully explained) mask. It is also worth mentioning that the slightly fuzzy vocal effect they have put on Hardy's voice makes some of his dialogue difficult to follow. So, if you have no idea what he's saying, don't worry, you're not alone.
Okay so, unlike, say, Darth Vader, he can at least use his
eyes … Which he does, to great effect. There is some humour here, not least in his Yoda-like dialogue delivery … But times several I found myself
wondering if the dialogue was being added afterwards and Hardy was mere miming. He seemed like the passion and aggression
that his physicality demanded was lacking.
Sadly, Hardy is perfectly cast in this role, but is simply not allowed
to play to his considerable strengths.
Watch Bronson to see him being
uncontrollably physical and truly, disturbingly terrifying. Here, only in his final scene with Batman does he become
a fully rounded character but it is too little too late.
So I was disappointed with Tom Hardy … Not disappointed by him so much as for him.
Notice how the eyes seem to follow you round the room ...
Maybe if this film hadn’t been shackled to its 12A
certificate and, therefore, it’s need to not upset anyone above the age of five,
maybe then we could have seen Bane let off the leash. Maybe characters we are supposed to be
invested in could be allowed to die on screen.
Maybe the realistic vision could be permitted some realistic
blood-letting. But none of that is
directly Nolan’s fault, that is down to the MPAA and the BBFC who censor the
wrong things for the wrong reasons.
But what about the story?
Does it have the multi-layered complexity of TDK? In spades! Lesser film-makers would have made massive
set-pieces, if not entire movies out of sequences which Nolan references in
passing – such as the blowing-up of the bridges, or the trapping of the entire police-force underground. Indeed, the number of plot-threads is
actually too mind-boggling to follow in a single viewing. This is not helped by the way that the film’s
structure seems to fly apart in the third act.
Our hero is lying on his back on the other side of the planet while, in
the space of a montage, three months passes and Commissioner Gordon is leading
a resistance movement in the unruly streets of chaos-riven Gotham and them … It’s
three weeks after that and a few hours till a nuclear bomb is going to turn
Manhattan Island (sorry, Gotham Island) into Hiroshima 2.0.
But, hang on, didn’t The Joker mine the bridges last
time? Well, he said he did … But we didn’t
see any blowing up. Here we do.
Sorry … Did you mention a nuclear bomb? Yep.
Another touch of the old Bond movie!
Mixed-in (had they but known) with a touch of The Avengers. That, I confess,
was a bit of a stretch. For a series
that had striven to be real, to pitch realistic characters with realistic
motivations against each-other in realistic ways … The nuclear stand-off and
its resolution was pushing things a bit.
Okay, so I had problems with the film … Problems which may
evaporate with a second viewing. But
there were also pleasures.
What's new, pussy-cat?
Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle is a pitch-perfect delight. She isn’t there as cheese-cake. I didn’t notice a single lingering shot of
her arse in her tight costume. She doesn’t
need Bruce to come along and rescue her … indeed she does the rescuing … And no
one, at any point, even contemplates calling her ‘Cat Woman’. Oh. Thank.
God.
Joseph Gordon Levitt is spot-on as John Blake a character
who takes up the campaigning reigns of a younger Jim Gordon, who is now
polluted by the lie he has been telling about Harvey Dent all these years. Indeed, as the film proceeds, he evolves from
being a proto-Gordon, to a proto-Bruce Wayne … And there will be much interweb
speculation about where that particular story thread will lead.
Rather like Bale before him ... The uncomfortable teenager has all grown -up and is an action movie star in the making.
Michael Caine succeeds (once again) in bringing a lump to
the throat as Wayne’s Better Angel, constantly telling him the unvarnished
truth … Even if one or two of his exchanges did echo with the recent memory of
Martin Freeman’s astonishing turn as John Watson in the TV version of Sherlock.
I loved the way that this film (inadvertently) turns over
the coin to its scarred side and shows us what a big city is really like. In The Amazing
Spider-Man (as well as in Raimi’s more fantastical versions of the story)
we got New Yorkers pulling together to protect their own. But Gotham, as seen by Nolan (and, before
him, Frank Miller) is a very different kind of New York. Here, when the ‘ordinary Gothamites’ are cut
loose … They just ransack the place, freeing prisoners, setting up kangaroo
courts and hanging ‘the guilty’ from bridges.
This is a city where freedom from the shackles of law-and-order simply
means anarchic self-destruction.
I loved the hectic, dizzying pace of the third act, with its
echoes of Robocop (1987) and Escape From New York (1981). I loved the sheer scale of the visuals … From the size of the sets (the huge,
Goya-esque court-room … The multi-story sewer … The run-off where the police
are trapped … The Pit) as much as the audacious way the locations are shot (as
often as not from the air).
Half upside-down insect / half helicopter hybrid ... If I can't have Deckard's Spinner - I want that!
I love The Bat. I
love the fact that they don’t call it a Bat-Wing and I want one!
I love the ambition of taking a superhero movie and making
it about class-war, terrorism, social group-dynamics, personal-morality and
war!
I love the fact that the last act rambles over five months,
has none of the unities script-writers are trained to observe, and yet still
hangs together as an energetic and epic story.
I love the fact that the film has about four false endings
and I only guessed two of them.
I haven't mentioned The Bat Pod ... But Selina Kyle just looks too cool on it to ignore.
Ultimately, this is not
as satisfying an experience as The Dark
Knight. It strives for so much scale the human element gets
lost. It strives for so many narrative threads that the
coherence gets lost. It lacks the
charismatic heart The Joker gave to the last film and it lacks his
clearly-defined motivation. We never do
really know why Bane is doing what he’s doing.
But it is an experience, a truly
epic experience full of ideas … And
there are precious few of those in most $250 million movies.
If Nolan has failed it is only partially and it is only because
he was too ambitious. And God bless him
for it. That ambition worked in The Dark Knight and gave us the first
IMAX block-buster. It worked in Inception and gave us the most
intelligent block-buster probably ever … And it works here more than it doesn’t.
None of that 3D nonsense for our Christopher.
More than anything else … I love the fact that this is in 2D. And always will be.
I also love the fact that, in a few days, I will be seeing
it again on an IMAX screen! So I might
be back with more …
When you have seen the film you, if you're anything like me, probably like to peek behind the curtain to see how it was done. Well, rather conveniently, this 13-minute-long making-of has been on-line for a while. Just the job.
… Meanwhile, as you may know, there has been a typically
American tragedy at a midnight screening of this film. In a town apparently just fifteen miles from
Columbine, another psychopath starved of publicity has decided to make himself
famous in the wrongest way possible.
The news media, which is whacking itself dry with excitement
over this, is sparing is no lascivious detail of what they are already calling ‘The
Batman Killings’. Indeed, as I type
this, they are telling us that the perpetrator was made up to look like The
Joker. This will, inevitably, re-ignite
the Media effects Debate that rages on year-after-year and which I will, in all
likelihood, be evoking to my Media students at some point in the future.
Over at Zap 2 It, they have noticed that Miller's 'Dark Knight Returns' chillingly dealt with this issue (including the notion of the media's culpability) in its Arnold Crimp tableau:
The message here is that a deranged mind - and let us not forget that no-one chooses to be mentally ill - will take inspiration from any source, will confuse and misinterpret that inspiration and will fit it into a skewed reality. Wiser voices than mine have noted, many times, that you cannot legislate for the infinite variety of human personality. But one thing we can do, is not obsess over the details.
Earlier today, a friend and ex-student reminded me of this …
It’s short, it’s pointed and it’s the single most coherent comment I’ve ever
heard on this type of atrocity …
For now, if you were intending to go and see The Dark Knight Rises … or any other
movie … Go. Don’t let the weakness of
one mad individual, or the cumulative weakness of one mad society, dictate your
actions.
If you want to know more about violent crime in American – watch Bowling For Columbineand if you want to
understand the irresistible power of the media over our minds … I urge you to
look up the name Adam Curtis.
This follows on from my review of the less-than-impressive Thor, which you'll find here.
Maybe we have reached the point in cultural history where we have used up all our originality. I can’t help it, whenever I watch a film these days, I find it puts me in mind of one or more existing films. Maybe the paucity of imagination in this summer’s movies is simply a symptom of a wider cultural malaise … Greater artists than we have today have used up all the good, original ideas. There’s none left. Maybe, from now on, everything will be a parody or pastiche of something else. Maybe post-modernism really is the death of cultural evolution.
All of which is clearly not the fault of Joe Johnson or his team making Captain America here. After all, this is an adaptation! It must resemble something existing … Otherwise what sort of adaptation would it be? The comic book Captain America was born in the 1940s and I'm glad they felt the need to keep him in his proper place which, inevitably, leads to some 1940s pastiche. That's okay, it is a right and proper requirement of the story.
However, I began my viewing experience confused … For no immediately obvious reason the modern-day prologue of this film is a clear, unambiguous homage to the original 1951 The Thing From Another World. That came from ten years after the origins of Cap, from a very different world, a world worried about The Russians and Nuclear War. I suppose one could make the case that the thing they are chipping out of the ice is from another world – a world at war with Germany.
So we begin the film proper – By travelling back to Cap’s roots in 1942. America has finally, reluctantly stepped-up and joined in the war. Against this background, jobbing comic-book creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Cap as a patriotic character, wrapped in the flag, partly to cash in on the immense popularity of Superman (first published in 1938) but also to inspire young Americans to support the war effort. As such, he is clear, unashamed propaganda.
This is very well represented in the film version, with a young, weedy, diminutive Steve Rogers constantly trying to enlist and constantly being rejected. For a while, there, I was convinced they’d done an amazing job of finding an actor who looked just like an 8-stone version of Chris Evans, but eventually had to concede that they were doing some remarkably clever Benjamin Button-type stuff with the real Evans. Remarkable. This special effect version of Evans has to carry the film through its first act, whilst making Rogers human and believable. What they can’t do these days!
When his steely determination to volunteer finally bears fruit, he is assigned to Tommy Lee Jones’ ‘Strategic Scientific Reserve’ unit. Jones has great fun as the scenery-chewing Col. Phillips, the traditional officer who will never openly betray the respect he clearly has for Rogers’ bravery.
These boot camp scenes are lovely, showing Rogers still being bullied, still coming last, yet being the smartest kid in the platoon and using his bravery and intelligence to win over the respect of his fellow recruits and the heart of Peggy Carter, the initially quite aloof Intelligence Officer.
He and his friend, the perfectly-normally proportioned Bucky Barnes take dates to the Stark Expo – which gave me a moment a joy … I love the way these Marvel Movie Universe films are all folding into each other … And we meet a young Howard Stark. The relationship between Stark and Rogers will, I have no doubt, be the cause of much conversation in The Avengers next year … But enough wandering from the point -
Let’s mention the bad-guy: Johann Schmidt, a Nazi officer with his own army within the German army – known as Hydra. He is played with cold, creepy efficiency by Hugo Weaving – hot from his turn as Abberline in Johnson’s last movie – The Wolfman. He is looking for “Odin’s Tesseract” (a gentle reminder of Thor, this summer’s other Marvel Movie Universe movie – Because, of course, whilst X-Men First Class is a movie based on a Marvel comic, is not set in the consistent Marvel Movie Universe … But then, neither are Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Blade ... Oh, it’s complicated, don’t worry about it … ). This is a glowing cube – The Cosmic Cube for those of us who’ve read the comics – An infinite source of magical power to fuel Schmidt’s super-weapons. “And” He laughs scornfully “The Fuhrer digs for trinkets in the desert”. That isn’t the last Raiders reference we’ll get here, but it’s certainly the funniest.
World's easiest Rubik's cube!
Schmidt has an opposite number – a good German scientist, played by the fatherly Stanley Tucci, who plays his stereotypical German, Dr. Erskine for all he’s worth. It is Erskine who brewed the first Super Soldier Serum
Schmidt has a secret – one that the trailer and much of the pre-release hype has spoiled but, in case you’ve avoided it all, I’ll play along … He was the first subject for the Super Soldier Serum (you know – the serum they gave to Tim Roth in The Incredible Hulk a couple of years ago … See, these films are slowly all heading in one direction!) The serum had strange side-effects on Schmidt, but it has since been perfected and now it is safe … Safe for a weedy little volunteer like Steve Rogers.
It is said that the serum ‘amplifies’ the person who receives it … So it made Schmidt even more ruthless and egomaniacal; with Rogers it will accentuate his determination and his unwavering decency. That’s always been the key trait with Cap, no-matter the situation, however vexing the problem, he approaches it with an absolute, unshakeable moral code.
Foreplay completed, the film proper begins with Roger’s transformation into the bulked-up, rippling form of the real Chris Evans who is, distressingly, not CGI’d … He really is that fit. Bastard.
"I'm up 'ere, luv."
From here on in, it’s pretty-much action-scene after action-scene. The film jumps from incident to incident, hopping around the world, and we follow it because they have invested in creating such interesting characters in that long, careful first act.
The transformation of Steve Rogers Super Soldier into Captain America is dealt with beautifully – entirely in-keeping with the period and presented as a musical number! Inspired! Such a clever way of introducing the iconography of the comics!
The costume he finally wears is taken from the much more contemporary Ultimate version of Cap, written by Mark Millar and drawn by Bryan Hitch; but that was specifically designed to look believable and wearable in the real-world; so they were wise to borrow it!
See ... Casual yet practical.
In the middle of one battle sequence, we get a glimpse of a tell-tale bowler hat and I let out an impromptu cheer – for there they are: The Howling Commandoes! Never referred to as such in the film, but that’s who they are, Dum-Dum Dugan, Falsworth and the rest. And wouldn’t Tommy Lee Jones have made a brilliant Sgt. Fury, if things had gone another way? There’s a thought!
Anyway – the movie’s numerous action set-pieces are smoothly and economically constructed, with a minimum of plot between them; but each sequence leads logically and inevitably to the next so we, the audience, feel like guests along for a ride rather than customers being shepherded from one fair-ground attraction to another.
If anything, they are too economical – hurtling past with no time for us to feel any sense of danger. So, yes the sequences are thrilling, but you never feel that anyone is in peril. Of course, that may be a deliberate ploy to lull the viewer into a possibly false sense of security.
There are several hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck moments in here; Such as the first time he throws that shield and catches it again. I got a buzz out of that comparable to the first time Hugh Jackman snikt his claws in that cage in the first X-Men movie. I also loved the more-understandable-than-The-Thing reference to Powell and Pressburger’s Matter of life and Death.
This film works like a clock, every sequence perfectly designed and machined to work perfectly with every other sequence. Every detail is there for a purpose. I just love the design, from Cap’s final costume to the art deco motorbikes ridden by the Hydra thugs and beyond. The film looks lovely – every bit the follow-up to The Rocketeer that I’d hoped!
Which offers me the perfect opportunity to feature one of my favourite posters of the last twenty years.
Captain America is that rarest of things – a tent-pole summer movie that could have done with being longer! I would have liked more character development and more dialogue scenes between the fights. I’d have liked the Howling Commandoes to get more screen-time – and, in the flip-side, Toby Jones’ Dr. Zola also needed fleshing out more. Maybe in the BluRay.
One sour note that rang wrong as the film’s credits were rolling … Simon and Kirby are not afforded a credit in the main titles … But Stan Lee is! Yes, they are named in the credits roll, but not in the main sequence. The bad blood that exists between Marvel and now Jack Kirby’s estate is a matter of record - particularly in this extensive article from The Comics Journal - and it is sad that the corporate giant can’t just bury the hatchet once and for all.
Indeed - since writing that paragraph, the battle has raged on, as detailed in this recent piece from Hollywood Reporter.
Of course, I only noticed this because I was sitting through the credits, waiting for the inevitable post-titles sequence. I wasn’t disappointed – there it is: The first teaser trailer for next year’s The Avengers. With fair fortune and a following wind … I’ll be assembling on May the 4th!
"See, Chris, you CAN appear in a good Marvel movie ... Even if you are only after the credits."
Dave Sim wasn’t – and isn’t – like other comic-book writer-artists. He decided that his comic, Cerebus, was going to run for 300 issues. Then stop. Since he was publishing it with his own money and owned it outright, it was his call. So it ran to issue 300. Then stopped.
What does he have to do with movies? Well, frankly, not a fat lot. I mean, movies have played their role in influencing his work, as they have everyone's, but his comics are not cinematic, they are literary and ... well, comics. But the worlds of movie-production and comic-production are becoming increasingly inter-connected and inter-dependent. How glorious would it be for someone to slap down the money it would take to make a good animated version of just one Cerebus phonebook? Stranger things have happened.
This epic work is still available, gathered together as sixteen trade paperback collections. The details of that and much else are here at the Cerebus Wiki.
After he finished Cerebus, he started a magazine about Cerebus called, appropriately, Following Cerebus.
He produced a one-off comic called Judenhass, which was his very personal, thought-provoking and deeply troubling take on The Jewish Holocaust.
In 2008 he started another ongoing comic – called Glamourpuss. Issue 18 of which – published earlier this year – features the first new appearance of Cerebus since issue 300 - in a parody of the TV show Madmen.
Terms and conditions apply. Cerebus brings his head-hunting skills to Madison Avenue. Click to enlarge.
Sim also runs an occasional video blog called Cerebus TV which you can find here.
Partly because he is such an eccentric, willful and persistent character - but mostly because he is so darn good - Sim has gathered a dedicated fan following. Here, for example, is a very well-informed blog about his and Gerhard's original artwork. Here is a very detailed analytical blog of the man and his work. Here is a very passionate fan community.
Finally, if you're the sort of lucky sod who has everything - including a pocket full of spare money - you can make your life complete by commissioning Dave and/or Gerhard to create a drawing for you - either a recreation of a Cerebus page or an entirely original piece - by contacting them directly here.
I've had the privilege of interviewing Dave Sim twice and on both occasions - despite his formidable body of work, his ferocious reputation and his intimidating intelligence - I found him to be a thoughtful, warm and witty interviewee. I think some of that comes across in this short video intro to Dave and Cerebus I found lurking on YouTube:
Hopefully some of that also comes across in my interview, which is pretty much as I wrote it up 18 years ago - when Cerebus was still a decade from completion.
Thanks again to Dave and to Gerhard for giving me an hour of their time, when they really had a lot more important things to do, and to Stephen Holland for arranging for me to be there.
This interview was conducted during the Aardvarks Over The UK Tour, the first time Dave Sim and Gerhard had toured this fair isle since 1986. During their travels they stopped over at Fantastic Store in Birmingham, and that’s where I caught up with them.
A moment should be taken here to introduce Cerebus The Aardvark to those who haven’t yet enjoyed it. The comic began life in 1977, written and drawn by Sim. It didn’t exactly set the publishing world alight, but he kept plugging away. Initially Cerebus the Aardvark took the form of a Conan the Barbarian pastiche, focused around the adventures of a three-foot Aardvark in an imaginary land populated otherwise almost entirely by humans. Since then, the characters and basic setting remain the same, but the comic has changed dramatically, evolving until it stands today as one of the most elegant, literate and politically aware comics ever to grace the medium. And those early issues are now worth a fortune!
Sim worked alone on it for the first few years, then teamed up with Gerhard, and their method is, to the best of my knowledge, unique: Sim writes the script and draws the characters, then Gerhard fills in the backgrounds. This may sound like money for old rope, but pick up an issue and you will see just how much work goes into those backgrounds!
Cerebus is available in two formats, monthly installments of twenty pages each or gathered together into books, affectionately referred to as ‘phonebooks’ because of their inevitable size. Both are self-published by Sim through his company Aardvark-Vanaheim, and he has become a vociferous champion of self-publishing over the years, a position which, for reasons he explained to me, has not endeared him to the big publishing companies.
Dave Sim and the pretending-he-isn't-loads-taller Gerhard in the UK in 1993 - photo courtesy Stephen Holland's Page 45 website.
Before the mammoth signing session at Fantastic Store, I took them on a sight-seeing tour of the town and we ended up sitting beside the new Egyptian-style waterfall in Birmingham’s city centre. As Gerhard was happy to gaze at the cascading water, I began as the comic had, with Mr. Sim: Why had he pinned his career on the adventures of an aardvark?
The original idea for Cerebus was simply to do a more interesting comic book. I wanted to do something that had adult values applied to it, as opposed to just doing something along typical comic-book lines. You know, “let's do a superhero 'cos they’re selling okay”. And the further along I’ve gone, the more I’ve tried to do something that makes me happy, something that is satisfying to me. I enjoyed superheroes the same as any twelve year old, when I was twelve, but I’m almost forty now, so I put things into Cerebus that I’m interested in now!
Was simply earning a living a consideration at the beginning?
“For the first five years I could have made more money babysitting than I did doing Cerebus, but that’s one of those things about discipline, the realisation that you do something that’s a bit difficult at first, with the idea that it won’t always be that way. If you really care about it, it really doesn’t matter how much you’re making off of it, as long as you’re able to eat and pay the rent. And now that we’re substantially past that point, the money is just there to throw at people to make 'em go away. Y’know, people who come to cause trouble, most of the time all they want is a little bit of money and then they go away.
“One of the things for me, particularly in a starting environment - comic books being sold in comic book stores was a very new thing when I started - was that you could get discouraged if you wanted to, but if you stop, you have to start doing something else. I didn’t wanna go out and get a real job and I sure as hell didn’t want to draw Spiderman, so that narrows down your options right there. You look at the fact that it’s providing a not terrible living for you, you look at the fact that you’re able to do what you want to do and very little besides that, which is very unusual in this day and age, and then you just have to have the faith that everything’ll come right in the end. Or, at least some time before 2004, I didn’t know when. March 2004 is when the last issue comes out, issue 300, and the last working day is Friday February 29th ... it’s a leap year. And we always finish up on a Friday, so that’s worked out just right.”
Cerebus is unique as far as I know, because you create it, self publish it and know exactly how long it will run; so where does the inspiration come from?
“Well, influences are something that you have when you’re starting out, basically because you need some form of road-map to follow. What did I want it to be like? I wanted it to have a lot of the same qualities of Jules Feiffer’s cartoons, or political cartoons which have adult values to them ... that ingredient which allows people who’ve never read a comic book in 25 years to be quite happy reading Jules Feiffer.
“But, in terms of influences, the greatest influence on me now is my own thinking. You know, you just get off by yourself, look at what you’ve already said and try to come up with as many imaginative ways to emphasise what you’re trying to say now, you try as much as possible over the course of 6000 pages to tell people: “This is how things look to me, does this look familiar?” It’s the same thing with being a stand-up comedian, you have to have the identification, right away, with who you’re talking to or the joke is going to fall flat. I’m trying to put into Cerebus something where people say ‘Oh yeah, I know people like that!’ or ‘That’s happened to me and I thought I was the only one!’.”
'Most Holy' Cerebus was a character unlike any other (with the possible exception of Howard The Duck and Fritz the Cat).
How did you discover the works of Giles, which you have surreptitiously made reference to on occasion.
“I think anywhere in the English speaking world, Giles is a Christmas tradition, with his collections with the before and after shots on the front and back covers. I know Christmas wouldn’t be complete for me without picking up the new Giles book, and I usually end up getting two or three more as presents.
“But it’s the same as with Groucho Marx and the Senator Claghorn character; there are voices and looks that are just a perfect shorthand. I was having to come up with a mother-in-law for Cerebus during his brief marriage - obviously it would have to be some counterbalancing force to this walking id, this three foot tall aardvark with the bad attitude - and I just could not get the picture of the Giles grandmother out of my mind, so, my sincerest apologies to him, but it is a wonderful character.
Rumours of Groucho Marx's appearance in the comic have been greatly exaggerated.
“She hasn’t been in for the last two years; but those were some of the most enjoyable times at the drawing board, sitting down and trying to get the grandmother just right. It’s the perfect image. I just saw the poster that they have for The Giles Exhibition, and it just screams ‘Britannia’. It’s about time that the she was somewhere, six or seven feet tall, with that attitude that only she can do so well!”
I recently heard in-jokes in movies referred to as ‘less movie-going, more train-spotting’, how do you react to that?
“Primarily, when I’m at my happiest, I do the book exclusively for myself, so I put the things into it that I like, you know, if I enjoy drawing it, it’ll most likely end up in the book. If there is an issue that I want to talk about, I’ll talk about it in the book. So, of the in-jokes and what not, out of the dozens, even hundreds that I’ve done, I’m probably the only one who gets all of them, and that doesn’t trouble me at all. I think that, if it becomes really self-conscious, where you’re using it to try and liven up a scene that’s otherwise dead, then I think that’s probably a failure of creativity. But, if you’re just coming up with a name for a character, and it really doesn’t matter what the name is, to borrow that from the real world, or just use the name of a friend, I don’t see that that hurts anything.”
Wolveroach - He's the best at what he does. But what he does isn't very good.
What is the Roach character doing, so far he’s been MoonRoach, Captain Roach, Wolveroach, Punisher Roach ...?
“He’s just comic books personified! All of the things that I do with him are improvised at the time based on whatever is going on in comic books, and it becomes more and more difficult to do a parody of a superhero, because most superheroes look like parodies anyway now. You can take as many spikes and chains and capes as you want and it’s not going to look too terribly different from the superheroes that are at the top of the sales charts right now.
“Basically, because I’m trying to do a life, and I’m talking about my own life as much as life in general, that’s what my life is made up of, it’s a very ordinary kind of life, and every once in a while I go to a comic book convention or a comic book store and there they are the guys in the four colour tights, all around me. So I just condense them all down to one superhero. But that is a very strange way to live, whereas I think my life is a lot like everyone else’s, except every once in a while along come the guys in the long underwear.”
Over the last few years you’ve made yourself rather unpopular in some circles over the issue of creators’ rights, why is it so important to you?
“With creators’ rights it's a matter of feeling responsible, as a current custodian of comic books as a medium. I think I’ve always tended to have an historical perspective on the medium, and there have been various times when I think that someone or some group have had a large effect on changing the exploitative business practices employed in comics. Now, attributable more to longevity than to anything else, I’ve become someone that people say, “Oh, well, y’know, he’s okay.” That makes it a good time to be vocal about not needing business men and not needing publishers.
“Your job as a writer and artist is to put your story down on paper as clearly as you can, and then your second responsibility is to stay alive, and indoors if possible. So that comes down to a negotiation over what it takes for you to put food on the table and pay your rent and be able to write and draw your book. And I don’t think publishers are the best solution to that, in fact I think there’s hardly a worse solution.
“So, really, I’m just someone who’s picked an alternative route. I guess it would be easy to say “Well, I managed to hack my way through the underbrush, and got to the clearing, then start radioing back that it’s impossible to get through, that I was just lucky. But, if there was any net effect of Cerebus when it is done, if we have a hundred people who start self-publishing, making it work, making a good living at it, giving exposure to young cartoonists in the back of their comic books, or whatever else, then, on the real world side of Cerebus, I’d feel that I’d accomplished a great deal."
Dave Sim today - still doing things his own way.
But doesn’t filling in the tax returns and talking to the lawyers detract from the artistic endeavour?
“No. I do understand the starving artist in the garret idea; this belief that if you know anything about business you can’t be an artist, but I think that’s just a scam that goes back a couple of thousand years to make sure that business people can make money off of art. It’s really the only thing of any great consequence where the people around whom it revolves are not the ones making the lion’s share of the money.
“As long as you realise that you’re creativity is your primary interest, as long as you’re spending, oh, let’s say a maximum of twenty percent of your working day on the business side; what you find out is that it’s really not that difficult. Business people, and particularly multinational corporations, have a vested interest in making the business side seem like this immensely complicated interwoven maze that a poor artist will never be able to muddle through.
“As long as you decide, “I’ll keep it very simple and very basic, I want to write and draw my comic book, I want the copies printed, I want them to go to a distributor who sends them to the stores, and I want to get paid for them”, after that it’s just a matter of having enough money on hand to give to the government when they come calling, enough money to give an accountant so that he can make out the tax returns, and as for the lawyer, apart from doing the original articles of incorporation and drawing up a will I don’t have any need for a lawyer. I’m not suing anybody and nobody’s suing me, so ...”
How important to you is your habit of featuring material by other artists in the back of Cerebus?
“I think, being a current custodian, you just have the medium for a while. In my case, who knows, Cerebus could be completely forgotten two months after the last issue comes out. But if you’ve got 20,000 readers and you run across someone’s work that you think is really good, that you think should be seen by a wider audience, it's really not that difficult to leave eight pages at the back of your comic book to get them that kind of exposure, to help them on their way. I have no urge to publish other people, because that’s one of the things that I’m trying to fight against - artists using either other artists, or businessmen, as crutches. It’s your career, it's your responsibility, I’ll help you out, I’ll give people a chance to see your work who wouldn’t see it otherwise, but I’m not a bank or a youth hostel or a charity. It’s up to you to find out what it’ll take to get your work solidly entrenched in the market!
“And it’s very important to me! It’s one of those things where just the fact of doing it will, I hope, provoke people, when they find themselves in a comparable situation, to say, “Oh yeah, Dave Sim used to run other people’s work in the back of his book, I think I’ll do that in mine.”
“It just seemed an opportune time, with Maus winning the Special Pulitzer last year for Art Spiegelman. If we now have a comic book that has won a Pulitzer, it is very sad that the stores are still filled, primarily, with guys in long underwear beating each other up.
NOT the first comic to use anthropomorphism to create a great work of actual art.
“So, essentially, it’s a combination of trying to get Cerebus better known and therefore getting the sales up, but also helping to reinforce the knowledge that there are quality comic books out there. To encourage people who don’t read comic books ordinarily to find the right store and the right store owner, someone who is willing to find out what their individual tastes are, and who is willing to recommend Hate or Love and Rockets or Eightball, or any of the books that get the critical acclaim, that get covered in newspapers.
“And travelling around for a couple of weeks, signing autographs and building a line-up of people outside a shop, if that’s gonna help, then that’s what we’re trying to do. And the same thing with giving promotional materials in raw form to the stores. Here’s a t-shirt design, you can print up the t-shirts and sell them yourself, if you want more you go and print more. That’s as opposed to saying ‘All roads lead to me!’. You don’t have to come and sign a contract with me and I don’t have to get all of the money. If we want comic books to receive a wider acceptance, then we have to make the better material more accessible, and that’s a matter of putting more control in the hands of store-owners and not relying on the big distributors to do all the promoting.”
The five-hour signing session - Gerhard left, then Dave, then Nabiel Kanan (Exit) with Paul Grist (Kane and Jack Staff) in the distance.
How do you react to these queues forming outside shops?
“I enjoy it. I mean, the great thing about touring is that it’s the complete opposite of creativity. When I’m at home, as I say, I have a very, very ordinary, go-down-to-the-local-pub and watch-the-sports-on-television and drink-some-beer and smoke-a-few-cigarettes kind of life, and apart from that I write and draw usually about eight or nine hours a day, seven days a week. But that does become a very isolated kind of existence, so basically touring helps just because it’s all social. It’s people telling you how great you are, it’s signing autographs, it’s doing quick little sketches for people which, no matter how bad they are, they love. Apart from that, it’s going out for dinner with people, drinking at someone else’s expense, staying in hotel rooms at someone else’s expense, and it’s a very nice contrast from the complete isolation and the complete lack of socialisation that I think you need for creativity.
“And, of course, I do enjoy meeting the fans, it’s always nice to find out that you’re not just sitting in a room writing and drawing twenty pages and then sending it out in the trash. It did get printed up, it did go around the world, and that comic book I drew nine years ago in a little office building in Kitchener, someone has a copy of it in his hand and I’m autographing it in Birmingham, England. Y’know that feels pretty good! That’s one of the hidden sides that you don’t see until you go out and do the grip’n’grin circuit."
There’s a lot of Victoriana in recent stories, is Britain of that period an interest?
“Well, yeah, but it goes with the territory when you’re trying to document things as accurately as I can. Because one of the benefits of being in Canada is that you can see more clearly that everything did start over here in Britain. I mean, America did not, as much as it likes to think so, spring full-blown from the head of Zeus, there was something before it. I think there’s no question that, being in Canada, there’s more of a UK influence, you know, the British traditions, and there’s a genuine affection for things Victorian, for the works of Oscar Wilde. The story of Oscar Wilde itself is one of those great tragedies where you can read nine biographies in a row and you’re still on the edge of your chair when you get to the critical part. I think there is something to the idea of bloodlines tracing back as well! I mean, my dad was born in Glasgow and my grandparents in Edinburgh, so you realise that you’re a little closer to something seminal than you are in America.
“There is still a great deal of British influence in Canada, particularly in Ontario where we live, but North America is becoming very North American! They’re everywhere! Certainly, there’s a good deal more American presence in Britain than I saw on the last tour back in ‘86. But we still came from somewhere, there is historical precedent.
“I think that people are not that much different from the way they’ve been for hundreds of years, I think it’s just the cosmetics that change, and when I’m doing Cerebus, I try to emphasis that as much as I can. Religion is religion whatever the age or location, politics is politics, mothers are mothers and daughters are daughters. Economics all fall along the same lines whenever and wherever you are, and that’s what I’m trying to point out in the book, probably more than anything else.”
Recently you have used a lot of cinematic techniques in the frame breakdowns and in the lighting; is it difficult not to let technique get in the way of the storytelling?
“In my case, because the writer is in charge, the idea is to get the story across. Sometimes you do that with a flashy bit of storytelling which has immediate impact when someone’s looking at the page; but, most of the time, if you’re trying to get across quiet dialogue or something like that, you don’t want a rousing or complicated image going with it. So it depends on the page.
“And comic books are idiosyncratic, they have their own means of expression. Everyone says, ‘Oh well, you know you have this cinematic approach in your comic book’, but to me that’s a lot like saying an opera is heavily influenced by a ballet. Yeah, there are elements that are in common, but opera is opera and ballet is ballet. Comic books are comic books.
“This is one of the things that we’re starting to discover now, because it’s only been fifteen years that comic books have had a reliable place to be seen in: comic book stores run by comic book fans. This allows us to say “So, what makes a good comic book?”, and you find out that, yeah, there’s lots of flashy cinematic techniques, but it's a matter of doing them right or doing them wrong, and it’s the same thing in finding out that they’re different from comic strips. There are brilliant comic strips - Prince Valiant, Little Nemo - but I can’t look at them and take anything from them, because it’s a completely different artform. It’s one page a week, and that’s a very different way of telling a story from doing six thousand consecutive pages.”
And finally, how has Gerhard influenced the look of the comic?
“Well, why don’t we ask him!?”
So, snapping Gerhard out of his waterfall-induced trance, I did just that. Firstly I asked him how he got involved in such a personal ongoing project.
“Oh, there’s the big question, isn’t it! One of these days Dave and I are going to make up a proper answer for that question, because neither of us can remember when we first met. It was sort of, I dunno, call it evolution, call it fate, call it divine punishment, call it whatever you want. We really don’t have an answer for that one.”
So, what were you doing prior to this?
“A lot of drugs.”
Ehm...
“No? Okay. I was doing anything I could. We’re both high-school drop-outs, and I tried to earn a living in the traditional manner: doing a lot of really bad jobs, which I didn’t stay with for any length of time. But, slowly, I moved closer to the artistic field, which meant working in a silk-screen shop, an art-supply store, and in my spare time, usually between six o'clock at night and four in the morning, doing any drawing that I could, for newspaper advertisements and things like that.
One of those early colour experiments from Epic Illustrated, which resulted in Gerhard spending the rest of his working life chained to a drawing desk. Thankfully.
So how does the workload break down?
“I’m not involved in the scripting at all, it’s Dave’s story, it always has been, it always will be; so, basically I get surprised by each new page. Sometimes I have questions dealing directly with the background, but most of the time it’s pretty obvious what needs to go where. I have pretty much a free rein as to what goes into the backgrounds. Every once in a while I have a question on the storyline, so I’ll ask Dave about it and he’ll ask me if I really wanna know, then it’s like “No, no, I’ll wait and find out, like everyone else!”
Over the last few years there have been many pages of text accompanied by a single illustration, did you influence this?
“Oh no; again, that’s a storytelling device, so that’s all Dave’s decision. The most recent section of the book is called Reads , and that’s the basic format - one page of text with a single illustration on the facing page. That’s entirely a storytelling technique. But I enjoyed it! I prefer doing the single page illustrations 'cos I get to spend more time on one single drawing, rather than having to do between six and nine on a page.”
Given that Dave is sitting within arm’s reach, how do you think the comic compares now to before you arrived?
“Oh, it’s much better, isn’t it! It’s like night and day. There’s no comparison.” (Dave isn’t listening, he’s checking out the lion statue we’re seated behind.)
“No, I was very intimidated starting on it. I basically didn’t know what I was doing and it was a very slow, painful learning process, that about 25,000 people got to watch. I think I’ve got a better handle on it now though, but at first I was basically trying to do what Dave had done previously. Only ... I draw in a certain way, I wish I could draw differently, but no matter what I do, it always comes out looking like I did it, and there’s nothing I can seem to do to change that.”
Gerhard's work is known for its striking level of detail and very subtle, moody use of colour (when he gets the chance to use it). Click to enlarge. Go on, enjoy yourself.
Do you work together or in separate studios?
“We’ve got a quite lovely hundred year-old brick house in downtown Kitchener, which is completely just studios and offices. We both have our separate residences, of course. What used to be the living room is Dave’s studio, and the dining room adjoining it is mine. We’ve turned the kitchen into a library and the offices are upstairs. So we work in fairly close proximity.
“In Dave’s studio there’s twenty nails in the wall, with clips on them. When he finishes a page, it goes up on the wall and then I take it down and take it onto my drawing board, I do my bit, then put it back up on the wall, so at the end of the month you have twenty finished pages. And then comes the worst part, taking them all down and having an empty wall, then it’s like ‘Lord, no, we have to do it again ... and again ... and again’.”
And of course, working so close together, you must love each other’s company.
“Oh yeaahh!!! No, we do definitely have separate lives! Especially with working together that closely, and going out touring occasionally, we’re in constant contact with each other. Therefore, I think it’s important to have separate lives, your own way of doing things.”
And what will you get up to after you become officially unemployed as of the 29th of February, 2004?
“Well, what are you gonna be doing in ten years? Actually, I don’t look upon it as being unemployed; I prefer to look upon it as being retired. Or maybe just semi-retired.”
*
I then spoke to Stephen Holland then of Fantastic Store – now of the equally excellent Page 45 - who had been largely responsible for the tour. I include him here because Stephen had further insight into the work and character of Dave Sim and also because he stood then – and stands now – for an intelligent and independent style of comic shop that is all too rare in the UK. Furthermore: He talks here about the important role Dave and 'Ger' played in creating Page 45.
As the interview was originally intended for local radio, I asked him the classic question all good radio interviews begin with - what did he have for breakfast that morning - and when the answer came back “Coffee and a Jack Daniels. Isn’t that awful!” I knew we were talking the same language!
So how did you go about bringing Dave over all the way from Canada?
“He mentioned in the back of Cerebus at the beginning of the year that he wanted to come to England, but no one was taking enough interest. Well, the one signing we’d always wanted to do was Cerebus, because it’s something we believe in and think can appeal to a wider audience, wider than are actually reading comics at the moment. We knew it was something we could actively promote rather than just be a passive signing venue for, and we wanted something that we could put all our energy behind to make it quite a spectacular event. So we said, we’d like to do it.
“Dave wrote back, asking if we wanted to get people interested, did we want to organise the thing. Well, we thought long and hard about it and, after a couple of bottles of wine, we thought Oh, what the hell, let’s go for it. So we wrote back and said 'sure'!
“Then, over the next couple of months, we worked out a strategy between here and Canada of which other stores to contact. Basically, we wanted independent, friendly stores who were already supporting independent comics, so they too would put as much energy into it as us. You see, enthusiasm is invaluable. You can’t pay for enthusiasm.
“We know Nabiel Kanan well, he self-publishes Exit comic, so we asked him which stores take his comic, got together a list of those, sent out feelers and drew up a proper tour plan, letting them know exactly what they were in for and what the benefits were. Our main aim was to show this as part of a wider thing which could only benefit their stores.
“DC rightly claim that The Death of Superman brought a lot of new people into comic stores, but they bought it, read it, went away thoroughly disappointed and they’re not coming back; this was a chance to really reach a wider readership. To get a wider base of customers in, to bring in different groups of people, you need to show them something that they can enjoy in comics, show them that it isn’t an inherently esoteric medium. There’s nothing about the medium of comics which stops there being a comic for everyone, just like there’s music for everyone, and films. Everyone reads books, but only a small percentage, at the moment, read comics and it just doesn’t have to be that way.
Won't get fooled again. Not the first time DC 'rebooted' a comic. Not, apparently, the last time, either.
“Cerebus was a great starting point. Its sales were rising, Dave was prepared to come over here, and he’s an active campaigner, he’s not just gonna show up and sign. So, once we got a number of stores confirmed, Dave took it one stage further and upped the ante. He said he’d send over the phone books right away, so we could keep them on our shelves in the lead up to the signing, and he sold them to us at a 25% rate, which is an extraordinarily generous offer. But, of course, that has helped the tour work out so well, because, again, it’s not just a tour, it’s a campaign in advance, designed to actively promote Cerebus and Indie comics.
“It's not just a Fantastic Store signing, although there are three of our stores involved, we also managed to get the Newcastle branch of Forbidden Planet, who are, in some ways, our arch rivals. In fact, they are one of the stars of the tour, because they alone ordered as many books as our three shops did put together. And that is the great thing about this tour, it’s brought together retailers who don’t normally co-operate. Everyone’s a little suspicious, we don’t want the other guy to know what we’ve sold out of, where we’re making the money, and certainly not what we haven’t made money out of. But with this, everyone across the board has co-operated completely. Which is a good sign for the future of comics retail, and it’s a great sign for the future of comics publishing, especially independent self-published comics.
“I mean, if Cerebus can do it without in-house advertising and still pull off a crowded signing like this one, and all the others have lasted over four hours, then there’s no reason why we can’t do it for, say, Jeff Smith’s Bone. Ultimately, this is all good news for the reader, because they won’t be stuck with the same old dross to choose from. If the retailers can make money out of it and publishers can make money out of it, then the readers are going to get a wider range of material on their shelves.
“Early coups like getting a plug on the cover of the trade mag Comics International, which is unheard of for an independent comic, were a big boost, then we were able to report back to them that in just one shop we’d sold 400 copies of the special commemorative Cerebus Zero in just two weeks, which broke all our records. You compare that with X-Men No 1, which is supposed to be the biggest seller ever: even though it came out with five different covers to make people buy more than one copy, we sold 350 in two months!
“Now part of that relies on active salesmanship by the retailers, but most of it is down to the quality of Cerebus, otherwise they wouldn’t come back for more. At the moment, in my Nottingham branch we sell something like twenty phonebooks a week yet we’re lucky to sell more than one Marvel trade paperback every fortnight, and we’re a mainstream shop! But we know where the money is now! People are sick of being charged £2.95 for what they call ‘a limited edition’, which has the same number of pages as a regular comic, but with a gimmick cover slapped on it, either embossed with silver foil, or a hologram or something. They’re really charging you £2.95 for the pleasure of buying their cover. Cerebus Zero is four times as long as a normal issue, 96 pages, and it’s only £1.25. That’s a giveaway!”
I noticed that Dave brought with him some of the Zeros with the special gold cover - a gimmick cover, I suppose - and he’s given them away, rather than selling them at ten times the price!
“Again, it's a mark of his generosity and determination, and it really shows him putting his money where his mouth is. He was very pleased with our ideas - such as an advert in NME, that everyone was prepared to put some money into, to get Cerebus seen in the music press. It is a natural cross-pollination, if you read the letters column in Cerebus, everyone is as obsessed with music as they are with the aardvark. It’s so, obvious, I can’t understand why it hasn’t been done before. Well, Dave put up half the total money for that. And now, as you say, he’s giving away Cerebus Gold, which is rare in this country and is selling for anything up to fifty pounds. He’s giving away twenty-five of them at each signing. Multiply that by fifty pounds. That’s generosity; he didn’t have to do that!”
Go on, be honest, how exciting is all this for you?
“Inestimably! There’s no point in just sitting behind a desk and taking money off people. If you’re gonna go to work, you might as well have fun doing it. So to actually get your favourite creator over, someone who you respect, to do a tour, and for it to be as successful as this has been - We feel great about it and it’ll keep us going for the next part of the campaign, probably for years. And, apart from everything else, I get to rub shoulders with the rich and famous, which is ... kinda nice. It’s a real bonus. I’m a roadie at heart. Some would say I’m a groupie, but I’m a roadie!"
