Thursday, 28 May 2009
Brendan: A sketch image for a pitch I concocted for DC Comics:
DELINQUENT JIMMY OLSEN was an idea for a three part miniseries that I planned to write and draw.
The Reverse-Flash, Professor Zoom, attempts to reverse-engineer a Bizarro back to human form, but instead unleashes a terrible reverse-Bizarro plague. Superman is imprisoned in a purple-kryptonite cage. As society crumbles, Superman's pal, Jimmy Olsen, finds that he and a few others are immune to the contagion. They are outlaws in a lawless, bizarro world. It is up to these delinquents to save our lives.
DELINQUENT JIMMY OLSEN
Coming soon.
They didn't go for it, but I think it would have made a good comic miniseries. Saturn Girl was in it too. And a new character, Dr. Zyxtiplytk, appears as well. Something a bit different...
The Reverse-Flash, Professor Zoom, attempts to reverse-engineer a Bizarro back to human form, but instead unleashes a terrible reverse-Bizarro plague. Superman is imprisoned in a purple-kryptonite cage. As society crumbles, Superman's pal, Jimmy Olsen, finds that he and a few others are immune to the contagion. They are outlaws in a lawless, bizarro world. It is up to these delinquents to save our lives.
DELINQUENT JIMMY OLSEN
Coming soon.
They didn't go for it, but I think it would have made a good comic miniseries. Saturn Girl was in it too. And a new character, Dr. Zyxtiplytk, appears as well. Something a bit different...
Monday, 27 April 2009
Brendan: I was clearing out some old cupboards and a few old copies of 2000AD fell out. I'd kept them because there were episodes of SOONER OR LATER on the back covers. This was a one-page strip that I did with writer Pete Milligan over 23 years ago. When I saw the dateline on the cover, I had a hard time believing it was so long ago.
Unemployment was the big social theme back then... and Swifty is feeling like a contemporary character again. I guess things really do go around in a circle.
Pete Milligan wrote S&L. We just knocked it up one afternoon on a phone call. We had the title first, but no idea of what it would be about. Pete named the hero after one of his favourite writers, Jonathan Swift. Tony Riot drew about a third of the strips with me and was the unofficial "other artist".
That reminds me, I must go and revisit Tony's one and only solo strip for 2000AD, "Tribal Memories", which also written by Pete. Wonder if anybody remembers it!
It's astonishing to think of the variety of strips that Pete was writing around that (white-hot) time in British Comics: Bad Company, Paradax!, Johnny Nemo, Mirkin The Mystic, Sooner or later, Skreemer, Shade The Changing man, Rudcliffe and Williams, The Extremist, Rogan Gosh, Skin... That's an amazing slab o' stuff! A very wide difference in tone and mood, from very dark violence to a surreal and foppish wit.
And, whatever happened to that 'Bizarre Boys' comic thing written with Grant Morrison and to be drawn by Jamie Hewlett? I saw one weird bit of art and that was about it...
Interestingly, it was Jamie Hewlett who took over Sooner or Later for a sequel, which was also written by Pete.
Unemployment was the big social theme back then... and Swifty is feeling like a contemporary character again. I guess things really do go around in a circle.
Pete Milligan wrote S&L. We just knocked it up one afternoon on a phone call. We had the title first, but no idea of what it would be about. Pete named the hero after one of his favourite writers, Jonathan Swift. Tony Riot drew about a third of the strips with me and was the unofficial "other artist".
That reminds me, I must go and revisit Tony's one and only solo strip for 2000AD, "Tribal Memories", which also written by Pete. Wonder if anybody remembers it!
It's astonishing to think of the variety of strips that Pete was writing around that (white-hot) time in British Comics: Bad Company, Paradax!, Johnny Nemo, Mirkin The Mystic, Sooner or later, Skreemer, Shade The Changing man, Rudcliffe and Williams, The Extremist, Rogan Gosh, Skin... That's an amazing slab o' stuff! A very wide difference in tone and mood, from very dark violence to a surreal and foppish wit.
And, whatever happened to that 'Bizarre Boys' comic thing written with Grant Morrison and to be drawn by Jamie Hewlett? I saw one weird bit of art and that was about it...
Interestingly, it was Jamie Hewlett who took over Sooner or Later for a sequel, which was also written by Pete.
Saturday, 18 April 2009
JohnMK: An new exhibition of the art of Brendan McCarthy is being shown at London's newest comic book store, ORBITAL COMICS. The show features images of Brendan's comic book work for both UK and US publishers from over the last twenty years. Featuring a lost image from the graphic novel SKIN, some drawings from a new comic project, DREAMTREES, a number of published ARTOONS from the CRISIS period of the early 90's and more pictures from Brendan's archive of unpublished art.
Brendan is currently working on a new Spider-Man/Dr Strange mini series for Marvel Comics, out later this year.
ORBITAL COMICS is the UK's newest major comic book store, located just off London's famous Leicester Square.
Orbital Comics & Collectibles
8 Great Newport Street,
London, England
WC2H 7JA
Phone: 0207 240 0591
eMail: comics@orbitalcomics.com
Brendan is currently working on a new Spider-Man/Dr Strange mini series for Marvel Comics, out later this year.
ORBITAL COMICS is the UK's newest major comic book store, located just off London's famous Leicester Square.
Orbital Comics & Collectibles
8 Great Newport Street,
London, England
WC2H 7JA
Phone: 0207 240 0591
eMail: comics@orbitalcomics.com
Friday, 27 February 2009
Brendan: The ELECTRICK HOAX was my first solo strip after Sometime Stories, when I was starting out as a comic book artist. Although it's pretty embarrassing looking back at all my dodgy artwork from 1978...
It featured Johnny Rotten as an Irish punk, a Patrick McGoohan robot, The Subliminal Kid, Moby Train and Human Ken. The last enigmatic words of the Hoax strip were, "It's beyond me". It was also where me and Peter Milligan first started working together.
The first image shows the first episode and the last two pages are the final two episodes. Another shows me and Pete appearing in an episode commenting on the story's progress, in true post-modern art-student style.
It's a historical UK comic curio, very much of its time, with the collaged cut-up lettering and punk-rock designed characters.
You can read more about The Electrick Hoax here
It featured Johnny Rotten as an Irish punk, a Patrick McGoohan robot, The Subliminal Kid, Moby Train and Human Ken. The last enigmatic words of the Hoax strip were, "It's beyond me". It was also where me and Peter Milligan first started working together.
The first image shows the first episode and the last two pages are the final two episodes. Another shows me and Pete appearing in an episode commenting on the story's progress, in true post-modern art-student style.
It's a historical UK comic curio, very much of its time, with the collaged cut-up lettering and punk-rock designed characters.
You can read more about The Electrick Hoax here
Thursday, 19 February 2009
JohnMK: The lastest issue of Bizzare salutes the heroes of British comics, who include Leo Baxendale, Hunt Emerson, Pat Mills, Alan Moore, Posy Simmons... and Brendan who talks about his upcoming Spider-Man and Doctor Strange team-up. If your credit's slightly crunched at the moment you can also read the article on Paul Gravett's website.
Friday, 16 January 2009
Brendan: Sad news. The Prisoner was my favourite TV series. I remember seeing some of it when it was first broadcast in the 60's, I was about 11 years old. It took ages to repeat it too, about 10 years or so... That was in the days before VHS recording, so it became a kind of weird memory of a TV show as time went by and in my young mind, different to what was actually shown.
Naturally, I became a member of 'Six of One' and made the pilgrimage to Portmerion.
I wonder if any of you remember the REBOOT TV series I created the visuals for? There was an episode that paid homage to The Prisoner: "Number 7"
Also, when I was working on Mad Max 4, I met Mel Gibson, about 4 years ago. The first thing I asked him was what happened to his production of The Prisoner movie, in which he was going to play the McGoohan role, nearly 20 years ago (See him in Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously to get a feel of how good he might have been). The movie didn't happen, for whatever reason, but he liked McGoohan as a person after spending some time with him, and so cast him as Edward Longshanks in Braveheart.
I worked briefly on a movie version of The Prisoner a few years back. I wasn't in love with the script and had some serious objections to it, so they 'let me go'! Rightly, I suppose...
I even did a short "Punk-Prisoner" comic strip in my punk fanzine, Electrick Hoax, about 30 years back, in which Patrick McGoohan meets Johnny Rotten! Maybe I can dig it up from somewhere.
What a great and wonderful TV series!
Good luck to you Mr McGoohan, wherever you may be - you have escaped from the Ultimate Village!
Sunday, 11 January 2009
JohnMK: Happy New Year McCarthy Punters! 2009 is a landmark year for the site as it enters ten years of bringing you the wonderful strangeness that only Brendan can create! Speaking of which...
The Lost Doom Patrol
Brendan: "I found this DOOM PATROL script the other day that I had doodled all over, from Grant Morrison... It was an episode that Grant wrote for me to draw back in 1991/92 or thereabouts: I asked for an old style DC 'imaginary story' with Danny The Street as the central character. But by the time the script turned up, I had to do a film so I couldn't draw it and I think eventually, we all sorta forgot about it... It would be fun to draw it up after all these years and release it as a VERTIGO ANOMALY one shot."
Spider-Man/Dr Strange update
Brendan: "My Spider-Man/Dr Strange story is now at the half way point. It's a three issue mini-series that will appear under the Marvel Knights banner, probably in the early summer. It's been great fun drawing and writing the series, and Marvel seem to love what I'm creating so far. I'm coloring the book with SteveCOok, who designed the SWIMINI PURPOSE book for me a few years ago.
Although I can't show any of the art yet, I have been messing about with some classic Ditko images from that superb story he created with Stan, for the second Spider-Man annual in 1965. TWIIIP!"
And finally an 'Artoon of the Day'
Brendan: "Can there be artistic lineages? If there is, mine's a Ditko!"
The Lost Doom Patrol
Brendan: "I found this DOOM PATROL script the other day that I had doodled all over, from Grant Morrison... It was an episode that Grant wrote for me to draw back in 1991/92 or thereabouts: I asked for an old style DC 'imaginary story' with Danny The Street as the central character. But by the time the script turned up, I had to do a film so I couldn't draw it and I think eventually, we all sorta forgot about it... It would be fun to draw it up after all these years and release it as a VERTIGO ANOMALY one shot."
Spider-Man/Dr Strange update
Brendan: "My Spider-Man/Dr Strange story is now at the half way point. It's a three issue mini-series that will appear under the Marvel Knights banner, probably in the early summer. It's been great fun drawing and writing the series, and Marvel seem to love what I'm creating so far. I'm coloring the book with SteveCOok, who designed the SWIMINI PURPOSE book for me a few years ago.
Although I can't show any of the art yet, I have been messing about with some classic Ditko images from that superb story he created with Stan, for the second Spider-Man annual in 1965. TWIIIP!"
And finally an 'Artoon of the Day'
Brendan: "Can there be artistic lineages? If there is, mine's a Ditko!"
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