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

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.

An unpublished Artoon from the CRISIS era...

JohnMK: The cover to Brendan's lost issue of Doom Patrol

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!

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!"

JohnMK: Some more seasonal themed McCarthyism. A couple more of Brendan’s digital Xmas cards and an illustration from the 1989 Christmas issue of Speakeasy magazine. Merry Christmas!

Brendan: A page of design from Gulliver's Travels, a cgi animated IMAX mini-feature that sank into the salty sea of Unproduced Things, about ten years ago... It was fun to work on and I enjoyed the production design - sorting out the look of Laputa the floating island and the set-ups for the IMAX movie. Sadly, it was doomed, due to endless financing headaches. I think this was the last thing I actually worked on for Mainframe Animation, before I went off to Sydney to do Mad Max 4.

Brendan: I think I'm starting to move into a 'digital fauvist' period in my work. 'Digital' in comics is similar to 'Electronic' in pop music - in its effects on the visual impact of the art, especially on the color.

Some revamped ZYBORIA designs, with a digital "wash 'n brush-up" by 2000AD's Boo Cook

Brendan: BATBOY was a pitch for a 'Larry David' kind of slacker approach to the superhero thing. DC Comics turned it down and also, Mark Millar's recently released KICK ASS was a bit too close. Sometimes a good story and good character don't make it, just because of bad timing. But I think there's something about BATBOY that I'd still like to tinker with... and see if I can get another 'take' that works.

Brendan: I've been commissioned by Marvel Comics to write and draw a new Dr Strange and Spider-Man three issue mini series. I'm just getting into it and I expect it to be finished early next year. It's quite a thrill to finally get to draw the Doctor, my favourite Marvel character - and Spidey too.

To harmonise myself with the sublime 'Ditko Dimension', I have been digitally remixing some of his original 60's pages, trying to get a feel for them from another 'fresh' visual angle... And in doing so, realizing just what a total genius he is.

And if anyone hasn't purchased the new Blake Bell Fantagraphics Ditko book - I strongly recommend it.

Brendan: I lived in Vancouver for about 4 years on and off when I was designing REBOOT and all those animated mainframe shows... I created a 'first nation superhero' based on the totem culture of the Pacific Northwest native Amnerican tribes. The art of this region is stunning, especially the masks and mythological sculptures. Even Vancouver airport has a amazing sculpture of Raven creating mankind.

The photographic images in this presentation are not by me, but I was using them as reference for the TOTEM CGI animated TV series I had proposed. I may even turn TOTEM into a comic series... I think it could be quite a bit different to the usual stuff out there.