Sign of the Hammer!

Sunday 23 March 2014

Vietnam Bayonet Massacre!



At last, Massacre For Boys Picture Library #1 is out there – and what a corker it is! Featuring some of the most talented folks in the small-press world (and me), this work of wonder is wrapped up in a David Frankum cover that’s the equal of anything you’ll find in the pro comics world. For a full rundown of the contents, have a look at mastermind Chris Denton’s blog here. Suffice to say, you need to get your hands on a copy, and pronto!



My contribution, in collaboration with the awesome John Caliber, is the inaugural appearance of The Zen Fusilier, also known as Captain Appollinaire Sartre. Operating in the year 1901, Sartre is a Fusilier Marin who has spent considerable time in France’s eastern colonies and developed a unique philosophy and fighting style that fuses oriental wisdom with Gallic imperialism. Now, he fights supernatural horrors opposed to spiritual ascendance.

The character evolved out of a number of ideas and influences. The main one was my fascination with world mythology and folklore. Put simply, I love monsters, the weirder the better, and as my ‘Martillo’ collection suggests, I also love researching the supernatural lore of foreign lands and discovering the mythic beings that have haunted a culture’s imagination. Connected to this is my fondness for Hong Kong vampire movies, particularly the classic ‘Mr. Vampire’, the film which popularised the jiangshi or ‘hopping vampire’. Even the classic tv series ‘Monkey’, with its insistence that demons are to be fought, helped inform Captain Sartre’s mission.

Another very different jumping-off point was a song, specifically ‘A Shogun Named Marcus’ by the band Clutch, about a redneck samurai. This got me thinking about characters who embodied a clash of cultures, and led to my writing a never-finished comic script featuring a parallel world where different historical cultures had merged together. This was done mostly on the basis of my being able to engage in a bit of wordplay with their names, so it included Naztecs (Nazi-Aztecs, later used in ‘Spencer Nero’) and Kung-Fusiliers (‘Kung-Fusilier’ was my original title for ‘The Zen Fusilier’ strip.)

Captain Sartre was also a bit of a reaction against the aforementioned Spencer Nero from PARAGON, who was steadily and enjoyably evolving into a bit of an arse. As a contrast, I wanted write a character who really was a decent guy – who might be an eccentric, infuriating, never-loses-his-cool know-it-all, but was without doubt very moral, genuinely devoted to vanquishing evil, and completely lacking in pettiness.

So there you go. I am at present working on a new adventure for Captain Sartre - one that will see him visiting France's African colonies. Keep 'em peeled, and watch out for strange lights in the night sky....

Sunday 16 March 2014

I Wanna Be Collected – The Spencer Nero Compendium


Cover by Dave Candlish, colours by Jim Cameron

It’s been two-and-a-half years (!) since Spencer Nero first made his lion-thumping, skull-perforating debut in PARAGON #9. Now, all eleven stories to date have been collected into a single hefty tome (you could club a Nazi to death with it!) documenting Spencer’s two-fisted pulp adventures in the year 1936! What’s more, the collection (subtitled ‘By Jupiter’s Jockstrap!’) also includes my original pitch for the series, as well as bonus sketches by James Corcoran from the ‘White Spider’ story, and a foreword from Spencer himself, in which he reveals his... interesting views on comic-books and their readers.


Here’s the complete contents and the credits:

1: Spencer  Nero and the Island of the Naztecs – (6 pages) – Dave Candlish, lettering by HdE

2: Spencer Nero and the White Spider (7 pages) – James Corcoran, lettering by John Caliber

3: Spencer Nero and the Hidden Olympics (7 pages ) – pencils by Mike Kennedy, inks by Dave Candlish, lettering by John Caliber

4: Spencer Nero Goes South (8 pages) – James Corcoran, lettering by John Caliber

5: Spencer Nero and the Ruthless Rhymer (2 pages) – Neil “Bhuna” Roche, lettering by Nikki Foxrobot

6: Spencer Nero and the Locked Door (9 pages) – James Corcoran, lettering by John Caliber

7: Spencer Nero and the Chairman of the Board (9-page prose story) - spot illustrations by Dave Candlish

8: Spencer Nero and the Hour of the Heron (2 pages) – Dave Candlish, lettering by John Caliber

9: Spencer Nero and the Antechamber (2 pages) – pencils by Tom Newell, inks by Dave Candlish, lettering by John Caliber

10: Spencer Nero and Mrs. Simpson (8 pages) – Stephen Prestwood, lettering by Filippo

11: Spencer Nero and the Last Laugh (1 page) – David Broughton, lettering by Owen Watts

Phew! Quite a murderer's row of small-press talent! What more is there to say, apart from...
By Jupiter’s jockstrap - buy Jupiter’s Jockstrap! (Or buy Jupiter’s digital jockstrap here.)
Vale!