The Strangeness of Brendan McCarthy: January 2009

Friday, 16 January 2009

PATRICK McGOOHAN RIP

9:26 am | Posted by John M. Kirkham | Edit Post

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!

2 comments

Sunday, 11 January 2009

2009 - Ten Years of McCarthyism

4:04 pm | Posted by John M. Kirkham | Edit Post

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!"