Tagged: British

BULLDOG DRUMMOND ON THE BBC!

  • News
  • August 10, 2011

Sapper’s BULLDOG DRUMMOND, ex-military man turned adventurer, is coming to BBC Radio on Tuesday, August 9th 2011. An adventure in six parts, read by Julian Rhind-Tutt, the episodes will air in chronological order all week, and will be available on BBC iPlayer for those of you unlucky enough not to be British.

INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST MD JACKSON! BY JOSHUA REYNOLDS!

ALL PULP INTERVIEW –MD JACKSON, ARTIST
BY GUEST COLUMNIST JOSHUA REYNOLDS
AP: Let’s start off with an easy one…who IS MD Jackson? Is he man? Mystery? Monster? None of the above?
MDJ: Well, that depends on who you ask. If you ask my wife she would probably agree with ‘monster’, although ‘bear’ would probably fit better — you know — big and furry, sometimes cuddly and sometimes grumpy, particularly when he’s hungry (although I have heard the words ‘sexy man’ come out of her mouth and George Clooney was nowhere to be seen so…). I am a human (well, humanoid at any rate) and I fall quite definitely into the male camp as far as gender goes, so, yes I am a man. Logically I am a mystery to people who do not know me, but perhaps not one that anyone cares about. Not like the real mysteries of life like; where does the time go? or Why does only one sock come out of the dryer when you know you put two in?
AP: Your work has a real pulp-tastic vibe to it…was that intentional? Is it a conscious style choice, or is your style more organic?
MDJ:The pulp influence in my work is very intentional. One of the things I love most in the world are old pulp magazines. I love everything about the pulps but particularly the cover art. Those covers virtually had to scream from the newsstand PICK ME! PICK ME! That is the kind of visceral impact I can get behind. I figure, why be subtle? Hit people where it hurts. Make them notice you. I know a lot of people get turned off by that, but I’m not Thomas Kinkade. You want pretty cottages then you might want to avoid my website.
AP:Is it true you’re Canadian? If so, how exactly is British Columbia ‘British’? Who’s your favorite Prime Minister?
MDJ:Yes, I was fortunate enough to be born within Canada’s borders. There are parts of Britisch Columbia that are very British, more British than British — Victoria, BC on Vancouver Island for one — but then there’s other parts that are very German. Some places are very Swiss or Ukranian and there’s even some parts that are Hungarian. On the whole the province is very Old World-y and European-y, except where it is Native Land, then it’s not European at all.
My favorite Prime Minister was John A. MacDonald. He was a drunken old Scots reprobate and was a lot of fun. This one time we went on a bender together. It lasted so long the Toronto Star actually wrote a story that he’d died. We laughed our asses off about that one, I can tell you.
AP: What about influences? What artists (if any) do you (did you) take inspiration from?
MDJ:I’m easily influenced. I cave to peer pressure like a house of cards. Artistically, though my biggest influence is Frank Frazetta. Mind you, all fantasy artists are influenced by Frazetta whether they admit it or not (and if they deny it then they’re big old liars).  Boris Vallejo, obviously and James Bama. Remember those old Doc Savage Paperback covers? Love that stuff! All of them were influenced (as am I) by pulp artists like Walter Baumhoffer, Rafael DeSoto, Norman Saunders and Alan Anderson to name but a few.
AP:Still on the subject of inspiration, what other wells do you draw creative waters from?
MDJ: Actually we don’t use a well. Our water comes from a tap. Just because I’m a Canadian doesn’t mean I’m not a modern guy!
I am also inspired by the architecture of antiquity, ancient ruins, ancient armour, castles, period clothes — these things inspire me. Photography does as well, particularly for lighting and mood. And, of course, hollywood movies with their ubiquitous CGI and 3d spectacle. I used to take inspiration from comic books as well, but not so much anymore.
Really detailed pen-and-ink work is inspiring. I could stare at the work of such artists as Windsor McCay, Willy Pogany, Franklin Booth, or Joseph Clement Coll for hours.
AP: You’re Canadian so you should know this…is the Wendigo real?
MDJ: You’re darn tootin’ she’s real! She was my sister-in-law! (did I say that out loud?)
AP: Are you a life-studies man, or do you free-style it?
MDJ: I go back and forth. I can’t afford models per-se and it is hard convincing people to pose for you (but it can be fun if it’s the wife and there’s lots of costumes and props involved) but the final product is always better (I think, anyway) if there are some solid references, particularly for period clothing and genre specific items like weapons and such.
AP: That’s a suspicious answer if I’ve ever heard one. Are you a wendigo?
MDJ: I said Sister-in-law… not sister, sister IN-LAW…!
AP: Describe the ‘MD Jackson Process’ for us…how do you approach a given project?
MDJ: Once I’ve accepted a commission the first stage is usually PANIC! “How am I supposed to do this? Am I insane? I’m not talented enough to do this! What was I thinking?” that sort of thing.
Once I calm down I usually sit down in a big comfy chair with a cup of hot tea and my low-tech equipment: A 9″ X 12″ sketchpad and and H or H2 pencil. I will just turn of my brain and let my had do all the work. I start with thumbnails for composition and I will do anywhere up to a dozen or so little sketches until I get two or three that I think will work. If I’m working for someone else I will work these thumbnails up into more detailed sketches and let the client see and decide. If it’s just for me I’ll usually just pick the one I like best and go with it.
After the client chooses one layout then I’ll start collecting references, shoot some photos if I have to, and start narrowing down a colour scheme. After that I start working. I paint digitally using Corel Painter X. I usually work background to foreground and work on each figure individually, blocking in basic shapes and colours and then working each figure with finer and finer detail until it is done. Then I sign it and ship it off.
Easy, right?
AP:  Are you certain you’re not a wendigo? That sounded like a wendigo answer. I’ve heard they’re tricky…
MDJ: Okay, I’m sorry I called my sister-in-law (my EX sister-in-law) a wendigo. She’s not really a Wendigo. A Wendigo eats people. My sister-in-law only ate Snickers bars.
AP:  Black and white or full color? What’s your preference in regards to your own work?
MDJ: I love working in colour. I started with a somewhat limited colour palette but I have recently opened up and begun producing more colourful images. Just right now I’m working in black-and-white which can sometimes be unforgiving. It certainly makes you appreciate the colour when you are forced to work without it.
AP: How’d you get your start? What’s your origin story? Bitten by an artistically inclined spider? Bathed in the fumes of a paint factory? Are you a mutant? Possibly a mutant wendigo?
MDJ: I might be a mutant. I do have freakishly abundant body hair. I’m not a Wendigo. I don’t eat people. I prefer cookies.
I have been drawing for as long as I have been able to hold a pencil. My mother was a landscape painter. I preferred pencils and pen-and-ink for the longest time. I dabbled with oils and water colours but couldn’t find a way to make them medium really sing until I discovered digital painting. My mind was blown and there was no going back. Digitally I could do all the things I wanted to do with brushes but just couldn’t.
Aside from that there is no magic or mutant powers — I just do it as best I can and then try to do it better next time.
AP: Which piece of work of yours has been your favorite? Least favorite?
MDJ: Like most artists my favourite piece is usually “the next one”, but I do have a few pieces that I have a vertain fondness for. IN THE SWAMP is one of my favorites. I like the look in the swamp monster’s eyes. I also love a piece called MARRIED TO THE WIND because I did that for my wife. I have a piece I called GENERIC WESTERN COVER in which I tried to emulate James Bama’s style, which I think I sort of captured. I also have a piece simply called SPACE which encompasses a lot of what I love about classic space opera illustration. Oh yeah, I also did the cover art for a book called DRACULA LIVES! That one turned out alright.
I would prefer not to talk about my least favourite works. If I hadn’t had the temerity to accept money for them and if they weren’t despoiling the covers of some otherwise fine books and magazines, they would have been dumped down the bit-bin never to be seen again.
AP: I understand you also do a bit of writing on the side…give us the lowdown.
MDJ: I don’t write all that much. Jack Mackenzie, on the other hand, he writes a lot of pulpy, fast-paced, action-y stories and he’s been published in Encounters Magazine, Neo-Opsis Magazine, Dark Worlds Magazine and in the anthologies SWORDS OF FIRE and SAILS AND SORCERY among others. Mind you, he’s a fairly unpleasant character. He is boorish and insulting and he smells. He says he is bad tempered because he’s written four novels and none of them have been published yet.
I think it’s just because he’s a bastard.
AP: Where can we find you on the wide, wild interwebs?
MDJ: I have three main online galleries:
Visit them at your peril!
AP: Consider this last bit your designated shilling space. Snake-oil it up and tell us where we can give you money…
MDJ:If you give me money I will make you a nice picture. I’ll do a neato cover for your book or magazine or website, I’ll do a portrait of your favourite child/parent/great aunt/kitty cat — I’ll do anything except for a Velvet Elvis or dogs playing cards. There’s already too many of those in the world.
Contact me at one of my galleries and we can negotiate.

ALL PULP REVIEWS-FORTIER TAKES ON ‘GHOSTS OF WAR’!

GHOSTS OF WAR
By George Mann
Pyr Books
231 pages
Available July 2011
Hot on the heels of earning a Pulp Factory Award nomination for Best Pulp Novel of 2010 for GHOST OF MANHATTAN, writer George Mann unleashes the second novel in this steampunk series.  Although considering the archetype pulp trappings these books are totally saturated with, one would suggest labeling them steampulp.
This new adventure of Gabriel Cross, the haunted veteran of World War One who protects New York City as the rocket-boot propelled, black garbed vigilante known as the Ghost, begins only a few weeks after the end of his last, horrific case.  He is still emotionally wounded having witnessed his lover, Celeste, sacrifice herself to save mankind from outer-dimensional monsters.
When a new threat to his city arises, he gratefully dons his Ghost garb and goes into action.  Weird hybrid mechanical flying creatures called Raptors are swooping out of the night sky and randomly kidnapping people with no apparent pattern or purpose other than to cause city wide terror.  The Ghost sets about catching one of these horrible monstrosities with the help of his friend, Inspector Felix Donovan, who shares his secret identity. 
At the same time, Donovan is given the task of hunting down a British spy by his superiors.  He is told the secret agent is a catalyst with information that will ignite a war between England and America.  When elements from both assignments suddenly come together, the Ghost and Donovan begin to suspect a much darker plot with tendrils leading to corruption among the highest ranks of City Hall.  In the end the Ghost allows himself to be captured by the raptors and taken to their hidden lair.  It is his one chance to uncover the evil mastermind behind the attacks and discover the true horror that awaits all mankind unless he and his small band of allies can save the day.
Hideous creatures from another dimension, a mad scientist more machine than man, an armed, massive airship on a mission of doom and more thrill-a-minute action than any other ten, oversized thrillers on the market today.  GHOSTS OF WAR is even better then its predecessor as Mann is truly warming up to this alternate world and his remarkable, colorful and appealing cast of characters that populate it.  This is new pulp fiction at its finest and I’m predicting there’s another Pulp Factory Award nod in its future.  Long live the Ghost! 

The Point Radio: BEING HUMAN U.K. VS U.S??

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It appears that BEING HUMAN will be the next British show to get an American makeover, but how does the original cast feel about that? And what can they leak about Season 3 which is being filmed right now? Plus your favorite DC Comics set to music?  Does Warner Brothers know?

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Barrowman Warns ‘Torchwood’ Season 3 Softened for America

  • News
  • December 31, 2008

John Barrowman told the British press that season three of Torchwood, the five-part "Children of the Earth", was being slightly toned down out of concern for its American viewers.

"The next series is about Torchwood fighting the government rather than just aliens and is a lot darker,” Barrowman said. “Jack has to make a decision no parent – that’s a big hint — should have to make.

"We’re not swearing or doing anything close to the bone because it’s been a huge success in the US and the networks won’t accept it with all that stuff in it."

The actor, known for dropping trou at a moment’s notice, reassured listeners that "I’ll still be getting naked and it will still be saucy – but it’s done with taste. We’ll doing everything so it doesn’t have to be heavily edited for the US."

Barrowman added, "I love playing Captain Jack and if I could play him until I’m 90, I would. But I’d rather do a series of 10 or 13 episodes because it’s a lot of work for just five.”

Iris Wildthyme Back for Second Season in February

  • News
  • October 18, 2008

iris-wildthyme-8711333Big Finish, the British audio producer, announced this week that four new Doctor Who pastiches will be released featuring their own character, Iris Wildthyme.  She was created by writer Paul Magrs and she’s described as “Bracing the temporal winds in her trusty bus and accompanied by the ever-loyal Panda (a ten inch tall stuffed bear), Iris travels from the depths of space to the gates of Wonderland and beyond. Iris and Panda will bamboozle and befuddle a host of new friends and enemies while always having time to mix a sharp Gin and Tonic.”

Katy Manning, a former companion of The Doctor, will reprise her role as the voice of Iris in this second season of adventures. David Benson also returns as the voice of Panda.

The new season kicks off in February with The Sound of Fear, written by Mark Michalowski. “Iris and Panda encounter the deadly Naxians aboard space station Radio Yesterday, along with Iris’s ex-husband, Sam.”

The second installment, Land of Wonder, from Magrs, features “Iris exiled to Earth and working with top-secret organization MIAOW to investigate dark happenings in the Underground.”

Simon Guerrier writes The Two Irises and “Panda has not only the return of the Naxians to deal with, but there’s a new Iris aboard the bus – an Iris who is decidedly male…”

The concluding escapade will be Mark Margs’ The Panda Invasion. “As San Francisco celebrates the millennium, Iris must save the world from destruction, while Panda faces his evil twin, and all because somebody spilt their gin and tonic…”

Big Finish intends to release the four dramas as single CDs, available monthly beginning in February, or a single box set.

Garth Ennis on “Battlefields”

  • News
  • August 23, 2008

bf-nightwitches01-cov-00-5127467Over at CBR, Kiel Phegley has provided the highlights of a nice conversation with writer Garth Ennis (Preacher, The Boys) about Dynamite Entertainment’s upcoming "Garth Ennis Month," which will feature the debut issue of a nine-part limited series titled Garth Ennis’ Battlefields. The World War II-themed series will unfold in three connected stories this October, the first of which will be titled The Night Witches and feature art by Russ Braun.

Here, Ennis explains the ties that bind the three stories together:

“If there is an element that unites the three stories — this is something I like to leave up to the reader, so I’ll keep it vague — it might be a look at various ways of approaching conflict, depending on who you are, where you come from, what you’re up against,” Ennis said. “How the Russians fought the Germans was not quite like how the British fought them, for instance, and how the British in turn fought the Japanese was different again.”

It would seem that the subject is a near and dear one to Ennis, as the writer offers up quite a few thoughts about his plans for the series, his creative process with regard to the each story’s schedule and the artists with whom he’ll share creative credit. He also gives credit where it’s due with respect to the subjects of the stories.

“If nothing else, the stories in Battlefields highlight the courage of people whose time has almost passed and whose stories are fading. ‘The Night Witches,’ for instance: young women in their teens and early twenties, flying obsolete biplanes at night against the most lethal military machine in the world, facing potentially catastrophic consequences should they be captured alive. Or ‘The Tankies,’ men going into battle against heavy odds, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the enemy has them outmatched and outgunned on every level, but doing it anyway. That, to me, is heroism, and that deserves to be acknowledged.”

For more on Battlefields, including some art from the series and the cover to issue #1 of Night Witches (a small version of which is posted here), head over to CBR.

SDCC Interview: Mike Mignola on the Hellboy Universe

  • News
  • July 29, 2008

hellboy2poster-00-8033153Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy has certainly been a star in the comics scene for some years but the spotlight must be shining a little brighter now that his franchise  includes two hit movies.  We were lucky to get a chance to talk to him briefly at the show this year about the future of his book, the impact of the movies on his own storytelling, and the difficulties of letting go of the art chores on the book.

“If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I don’t know what’s going to happen to the book,” said Mignola about the notion of passing the book off to other creators.  He said he couldn’t imagine letting go of the character the way Todd McFarlane has let other people work on his most popular creation, Spawn.

When asked if, given that, it was hard to stop being the artist on the book, Mignola said it was at first — but he really likes the look of the book these days and he’s fond of the work Duncan Fegredo has done for the book.  “Besides,” said Mignola, “if I was still doing the art it would take forever.”

Readers of Hellboy are undoubtedly aware of the way Mignola uses real-world mythology, so we asked him what we should be brushing up on for his upcoming books.  He said they were going to be doing a take on some British mythology and that the content would be similar to the second film in a few ways.

We also asked if he was concerned that Guillermo del Toro’s film franchise seems to be building to a very different conclusion than his comics are. “The only thing that worries me is that the third movie will come out too soon,” said Mignola. Adding that he had a very firm plan for the comics and that this plan might take 15 years to be realized in the comics.

The Question Spotted… at Wimbledon?

The online edition of the British newspaper The Daily Mail is reporting sightings throughout the country of faceless, well-dressed people at events like Wimbledon.

Comic fans might suspect that DC Comics’ The Question, investigator of social corruption, has crossed over to our universe. Not really, but we really wish that would happen.

Instead it’s creative marketing from car manufacturer Lotus.

That is, unless car manufacturers are up to something evil… Hmm.

Darth Vader Gets Drunk, Attacks Jedi Church

darthvader-9314371To be filed under "Sometimes This Stuff Really Writes Itself," Newsweek.com is reporting that a 27-year-old man who dressed up as Star Wars villain Darth Vader (complete with garbage-bag cape)  and attacked members of a British group calling itself the Jedi Church, has been officially spared any time in jail.

According to reports, Arwel Wynne Hughes attacked church founders Barney Jones (a.k.a. "Master Jonba Hehol") and Michael Jones (a.k.a. "Master Mormi Hehol") with a metal crutch two months ago. The cousins created the "Jedi Church" after a 2001 U.K. census reported 390,000 people (0.7 percent of the country’s population) who claimed "Jedi" as their religion.

Here’s the best part, though:

Hughes claimed he couldn’t remember the incident, having drunk the better part of a 2 1/2-gallon (10-liter) box of wine beforehand.

Seriously, there’s nothing worse than a drunk guy who can control The Force. If I had a nickel for every party that ended when someone force-pushed another guest through a wall…

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