CO2: I DREAM THE WORLD

I dream the world. Each person, each creature each plant that inhabits it, from the shape of the coasts and the depths of the sea to the pattern of the stars in the sky, but it is transformed from a series of black pixels on a screen into frames that you can loose yourself in, as you clock the splendid details, by the skill of the artist. I have come to realise that the writing is secondary to the image in sequential art ( that's comics to us-Ed. Oh and by the way when are you going to stop pillaging Incredible String Band songs for titles?). Making the setting believable is the first step in this process, and this takes many hours of living in your head like a hermit.

This past fortnight I have been conducting a conversation concerning the motive power of the airships in CO2. I have to confess I had been anticipating this question. I had seen a line of development from the one person fliers of Dragon Empire that soundly defeated the slow, lumbering airships of The Church of The Holy Footprint in the Second Dragon War. Discovery of this new technology would have plunged The Church into both a practical and a theological dilemma. Practical because they had to develop countermeasures that would stop their airships from being shot out of the sky and theological because the engine was powered by a series of explosions and carbon dioxide was a waste product. I viewed the development of the bioethanol engine as heretical science that is adopted by The Church as a short term expedient measure that has never been rescinded because it is essential to their infrastructure.

So when David asked me what powered the airship I was able to reply Wankel engines ( look it up on Wikipedia-Ed). I was waiting for him then to ask me what powered the airships up to the end of the Second Dragon War. This had taken a little thought and what I had arrived at was that in 1830, Maple White, a Balancer in the Southern American Continent had found out on the pampas, a series of isolated valleys. Living in these valleys were the last Giant Sloths. The discovery of this untouched Eden led The Church to blockade the area to preserve the habitat.

Later, when adaptions of animals were seen by The Church as theologically acceptable, a search took place for an animal with the least mass and the most strength to power a theoretical super weapon-the airship. I am sure you are ahead of me, yes, the poor old Giant Sloth got the gig. And in the first of the Maplin Heresy Sequence you will see above the streets of Barcelona, the airship of The Head of The Church, powered by an adapted Giant Sloth. As I say it's the artist who are the real heroes, not us authors.

THE ALL SEEING EYE

This week Steampunk Czar Tim Hart tells us about The All Seeing Eye!

There is a phrase we often hear banded about Big Brother is watching you. These days it is a hackneyed cliché used by those who welcome or loathe public surveillance. But if you go back before reality television and even before George Orwell, for me it has another, far more personal meaning: the idea that you have an older brother who is watching to keep you safe.

So how does my take on a cliché relate to the glorious steampunk sequence that is Victoriana? The idea that there is an organisation that observes and records reality is central to the narrative. This organisation The Agency of The Eye was formed in Georgian days to gather information, you could say that The Agency is the ultimate fence sitter, for me the organisation personifies the very word neutral (although they may occasionally gives events a helping hand).

So quite what do they do? They are simply the observers, recorders and facilitators. From the upper-class Goodship Estate in Central London, a whole network of communications and subterfuge stretches out across the world like a spiders web, with its centre in deep underground facilities. The official origin story that goes around the office, is that there was a terrible prophecy, one that foretold the fall of the British Empire. Unfortunately the details of said fall were not apparent at the time and a decision was made to ensure that the Empire would never fall. The Agency was given a large government stipend to develop resources to prevent the factors – unknown as they are - from coming into play. The rest, of course, is history.

The Agency is currently under the command of Lord Erasmus Mayfair (the third head of the facility) and under his leadership it has flourished. London is constantly monitored and agents span the globe from the New World (that’s America to you lot-Ed) to Hong Kong. These reports are returned by various means, telegraphs, coded messages and by courier pigeon.

So how is the organisation structured?

There are ranks within the Agency;
Top Level: Overseers & Acknowledgers.
Mid Level (Sergeants): Seers and Specialists entities.
Lower Level (Agents): Observers and recorders.

And at the very bottom the Gatherers. These hail from all walks of life and are paid well for any titbits of information they provide. These are the vital lifeblood of the Agency, it is their work that ensures the constant flow of information.

So by now you are asking how do the Sisters Bast come into this?

Well, the answer to that question is simple. Once The Agency has gathered and recorded every foreseeing, prophecy and rumour, The Agency allows them to happen. Even if this does mean that there must be some interference to make certain it is fulfilled. Be that a loose cobble or an accidental Laudanum overdose in a politician’s morning coffee. The Sisters just aren’t there in anything and that is why The Agency must find out as much as it can about them.

Welcome to the Weird Era my friends.

THE SIXPENNY MURDER

This week we have been all astir as we received a new publication off our favourite comic tycoon, John A. Short (http://kultcreations.blogspot.co.uk/) and it has caused no end of discussion here at the rookery. We recently interviewed John and have in the past reviewed his excellent comic The Clock Strikes. His new comic The Sixpenny Murder is something very different.

It concerns a senseless crime, the murder of a passerby in Liverpool in 1875 by a group of youths who ask him for a tanner (that’s six old pence to all you post decimalisation dudes out there, who are not as aged as us here in the rookery) (That’s two and a half pence in today’s money – Ed.) to buy beer. John economically and elegantly tells the tale of the “Thithebarn Street Outrage” as the press of the day dubbed the murder, in a brief afterword he explains that all the events and the dialogue are based on actual records of the case.

The illustrations by the mighty David Hitchcock are superb, he captures the essence of the brutal times the criminals existed in and the hopeless lives that they had lived. David manages to convey the soulless, machinery of the law, blind justice grinding inexorably onward. I suspect that David has visited the cells at St. Georges Hall (http://www.stgeorgesliverpool.co.uk/visit/heritage_centre/index.asp) as he captures the atmosphere of the cells and law court with his artwork. He lovingly evokes Victorian Liverpool, one of the rookeries favourite cities (after Barcelona – Ed). I’d also like to highlight the lettering by JAS (could this be the hand of the magnate himself we ask?).

What has set us yorping and arguing all week has been how contemporary aspects of this murder are, demonised youth, knife crime and the role of the press in making a brutal, senseless act, that had dire consequences for all concerned, into an opportunity to sell papers and promote a frightening view of society. We have also been struck by the lack of support services available to the dispossessed and the disadvantaged, how the government had failed the vulnerable (sound familiar? – Ed).

The story was edited by Emily Alison of Portagoras Forensic Services and Interventions Ltd and is produced as part of the Change Places + scheme. The aim of which is establishing a positive core  identity for young people, increasing confidence, empathy and interpersonal skills. A key aim of the programme is to reduce gang linked and weapon orientated violence. The comic is a non-profit venture and so we here in the rookery take our hat’s off to John. 

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

PREPARE

FOR THE COMING

OF

THE JOWLER

Here at the rookery we are nothing if not diverse, in fact diversity is the touchstone of our business plan- or would be if we had one- letting the cat out of the bag there!

This is a roundabout way of announcing that our next publication will be a novel. An exciting steampunk mystery, the first in a sequence of novels featuring Captain James Owen, ex of His Majesties Cheshire Regiment, and now working for the Special Investigations Department in Whitehall.

The SID was created by Charles Forte for the newly elected Liberal government in the early 1900’s. Its brief is to investigate happenings too bizarre for the local police. And there is nothing stranger than the death of Julius Richmond who drowned in a paving stone. Your eyes do not deceive you, the actually stone liquefied and smothered the innocent mill worker on the night of the 20^th September 1926, in Frome in Somersetshire.

Intrigued? We hope so. The novel will be available as a paper edition and an eBook. 

There will be more information in the coming weeks. For now I shall repeat my warning- prepare for the coming of The Jowler.

ELEGY

The death of those we love is a rite of passage in every human’s life. We may not understand it, we may be angry, sad or relieved, and it may make us suddenly aware of our own mortality. That realisation is another marker in itself. Another is the death of people your own age, this underlines our essential fragility.

Then there is the death of those more famous people you have always liked, even though you have never met them, people who are public property through their creations. 

Everyone in a generation remembers where they were when they heard the news of the death of Kennedy, Hendrix, Elvis, Lennon, Strummer-take your pick, it will define your place in the timeline that is the big parade of humankind. (I just want to say for me it was Elvis, 1977, I was in The Queens Arms in Widnes, a Wednesday night I think, and the barman told us he’d just heard it on the news. We could not believe it, Elvis had always been there.)

Where am I going with all this you may ask, on a blog that deals with graphic novels?

Well, I was at the Purbeck Folk Festival this last weekend and on the Saturday night, I was watching The Mother Ukers, three older men playing ukuleles. It was about 10.30pm and they were just about to play their version of Space Oddity and almost as an aside they introduced the song with the news that Neil Armstrong had died that day.

I spent the rest of their set thinking about that news. I never met the man, I only really knew him for one thing, one tremendous event. I thought of Buzz Aldrin on After Hours, a Channel 4 late night chat show in the 1980’s, talking about the Moon Landing and how Armstrong had taken over the control of the Lunar Module and landed it with twenty seconds worth of fuel to spare.

I thought about how everyone Armstrong met must have wanted to ask him about that one event, those few fleeting hours in a long a rich life. It is no wonder he withdrew from the public gaze and became an academic.

For some people the whole event was just another date in a history book, it was and was not. It was the culmination of many years of hard work by an army of humans. The trouble was there was no next step. It was essentially a sideshow to the Cold War.

That’s all I wanted to say today, yes I know it’s me mourning the possibilities of my youth. I don’t care. I am leaving you with a poem:

On Hearing the Death of Neil Armstrong

Before he spoke that causal throwaway line,

The swallowing clouds,

Congregated to conceal from prying eyes.

But earlier I had seen it, a pearl perfection,

The quarter Green Corn Moon.

On the way back to my tent,

My head torch shines a circle on to the ground,

Each contour of the soil the moon’s sad face.

COMIC MAGNATE JOHN A. SHORT SPILLS THE BEANS!

That's right, comic publisher, business magnate and all round nice guy John A. Short, the brain behind Kult Creations (http://kultcreations.blogspot.co.uk/ ), was kind enough to call by the rookery recently and answer all manner of questions that I put to him. Recently we reviewed John's excellent comic The Clock Strikes! If you have not ordered a copy yet-why not? This is excellent stuff and you are doing yourself out of a reading treat-and the artwork is superb. But enough of my blusterings, lets hear from the man himself.

Why comics?

My brother got me into comics when I was young. I don’t think we should put the storytelling mediums into a pecking order (as some often do.) Many people put films, theatre, prose or even opera at the top of the pile and comics are usual way down near the bottom (along with radio drama!) But I think they all do things that the other mediums can’t.

  As I writer I love comics because they allow you to tell epic, fantastic stories with a tiny budget and little interference editorially (compared to TV or movies for example.)

How did I get started?

My first professional work was writing and organising comic strips for a local free newspaper called the South Coast Express. But I was soon sending strips to things like Rip Off Comix and Fantagraphics Magazines in the States. It wasn’t until I started selling scripts to kids humour strips in Egmont’s Toxic Magazine nearly ten years ago that I was able to turn fully professional though.

Who inspires you?

I get inspired by many things (a lot of them from outside comics.) 2000AD creator Pat Mills was an early influence, Alan Moore made me sit up and take notice on his Warrior strips. Garth Ennis and Mark Millar have shown how to break moulds. Outside comics, I’ve followed the work of (Doctor Who show-runner) Steven Moffat since his break-through TV series Press Gang in the 1980s. I love Joss Whedon’s work. Screen writing is often under-rated (no-one ever advertises a film by who wrote it… only who the actors are!)

Looking back what would you have done differently?

Maybe I wouldn’t have sold the rights to my Robin Hoodie strip to Egmont? You assume when you give away the rights to one of your creations that if you do a good job they’ll keep you on it… But the editor sacked me so that his little chum could write it instead (Not Egmont’s fault… I’m sure they never even noticed.)

What’s coming up?

We’re talking to some larger publishers about continuing ‘The Clock Strikes!’ (maybe into a graphic novel.) ‘The Clock Strikes!’ is a revival of the first ever masked hero in comic books – the Clock, from 1936. So far we’ve produced a one-off under the Kult Creations imprint… with fantastic art by Vincent Danks (currently drawing the Harker books for Titan Books.)

  But in the next few weeks we’ll have the second issue of Savage! Jungle Princess out on sale. SJP is a full colour romp under the Kult banner (http://kultcreations.blogspot.com) featuring dinosaurs, Nazis and (in the second issue) ninjas! With colourful, fruity art by Gabrielle Noble who draws my strip Mayfair Magazine (Ms. Fortune.)

In a film of your life who would play you?

An actor, I hope. Long after I’m dead (so I won’t be embarrassed by the whole sorry mess!) 

Thanks John. Modest to the end. Seriously if you don't know Kult Creations get over there now and have a good look.

SOME THOUGHTS ON SCIENCE FICTION

 I was going to write about the lack of science fiction poetry this week, stating that the only anthology I had ever seen was Frontier of Going from 1969 (my copy is the 1973 reprint), edited by John Fairfax. The Introduction to the volume speaks of its time.

If you consider the thousands of people who are closely involved-and remotely we are all involved-in the space programme, if you consider this and ask yourself “why?” then you are getting to close to where the poet stands.

Fairfax continues by stating that this questioning is the essence of all poetry. The need to make sense of the times the poet finds himself (or herself-oh 1969 and the maleness of our language!)living in.

I love this slice of unwitting testimony, Fairfax’s words take for granted a continuing commitment to space, he talks of progress, assumes that a mythology will grow around the space programme as space travel becomes more commonplace. From 2012 these thoughts and the numbers involved in the space programme seem both naive and optimistic. Hell! In 1969 we were all optimistic, (to quote my favourite person from Saturn) space was the place. Not anymore.

Anyway I digress, onto one of my main moans, the death of the space programme. A quick line search surprised me that there was more science fiction poetry out there than I had supposed. There is a Science Fiction Poetry Association (http://www.sfpoetry.com/ ) and there are some fine poems there. It’s well worth a look.

Then I thought I’ll write about my favourite space songwriter, Pearls Before Swine main man Tom Rapp. Then I found a very informative interview with Tom here (http://psychedelicbaby.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/pearls-before-swine-interview-with-tom.html). There was in the 1970’s much mystery around Mr Rapp and his band. One story I heard from Bob Pegg (http://www.bobpegg.com/ I know when to name drop for maximum effect), was a rumour that Tom was a rich American who lived in Italy and only returned to the US to record the lps. The other rumour was that he was a grave digger. If you are anyway interested in acid folk or psychedelic music then read this interview, it very good.

Here is a youtube post of Stardancer.

His best lp was either Stardancer or Balaklava, side one of which is amazing, multitracked vocals, who else would quote Herodotus? The Balaklava portions of the record are bookended by two historic recordings Trumpeter Landfrey (the inspiration for same name character in the soon to be published by Corvus steam punk novel The Jowler)and Florence Nightingale. If you have not heard this album then you are in for a treat.

Phew, I’m going to stop there, put Blaklava on the turntable, my headphones on and hopefully I’ll be back next week.