Danny Graydon

A friend directed me to this fascinating and very obscure piece of Batman media from 1973 – which I’d never seen before –  in which Batman, Robin and Batgirl from the Sixties TV show highlight a new Federal law regarding equal pay for women. Now, I’m pretty certain that’s not Adam West – althought whoever it is is doing a fair impression of him – although Yvonne Craig, producer William Dozier (who provided the show’s breathless narration) and a somewhat, er, “enlarged” Burt Ward reprise their roles to ensure authenticity.

I did chuckle at amusingly sexist look of outright exasperation that crosses Robin’s face when Batgirl points out that he’s paid more than her. Given that Bruce Wayne’s a millionaire, not only is he a damned cheapskate, but he might be in hot water from the Feds…! BAM! (I wonder if J.Edgar Hoover had a file of dirt on The Caped Crusader…?)

Can Batman & Robin escape the progress of equality in the workplace?? Will Gotham City ever be the same…?? Tune in next week! Same Bat-Time, Same Bat-Channel…!

Last month, I turned 38 years old – and that’s enough about that. ANYWAY. For many, many years now, I have been haunted by the dim memory of a TV show that I watched when I was a boy. Ever hovering on the edge of remembrance, only two details fuelled its continuing presence in my mind. One: there was a boy with silver hair and who was on the run. Two, and most pertinently: it scared the absolute, goddamned, motherfucking shit out of me.

Really, I had given up all hope of ever finding out just what the hell this show was – and maybe it didn’t exist? The mystery was finally solved after 32 years (!!)  while flipping through the latest edition of ShortList, a free weekly magazine for Men that’s given out in central London. Inside, there was a featured called “Scarred For Life”, presenting a list of the top 20 fictional characters that terrified us in our youth. I scanned and saw some Usual Suspects: Pennywise The Clown from It (1990), General Woundwardt from Watership Down (1978), The Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), Star Wars’ Darth Vader (1977) – but, at no.2, I literally gasped when I laid eyes upon … The Tall, Thin Man from Look And Read: The Boy From Space (1980).

Yes. YES. YES…!!!!!!

The Tall, Thin Man was the source of that primal, creeping dread… and his ruthlessly-pursued quarry was the similarly silver-haird boy from space!! (Cue a flood of memory and excited Wikipedia research.). Meanwhile, courtesy of YouTube, here’s the malevolent bastard in question:

Now, granted, to a viewer in 2012, the above clip probably looks the holiday video of an Icelandic paedophile, but, for my generation of 70’s kids, this guy was Fear personified and the source of a lot of sleepless nights…

The Boy From Space was a feature of the BBC’s Look and Read series for primary schools, which began in 1967 (ultimately running for nearly 40 years) and was  aimed at improving children’s literacy skills. The weekly programme presented fictional stories with an educational slant in a serial format typically running over a couple of months. Half the programme would be an instalment of the story, the other half would be an array of follow-on learning activities, hosted by Wordy, a camp typewriter ball with arms, who lived on his Wordlab space station orbiting the Earth with his tracksuited male companion, Colin (Yeah, yeah, I know…).

The Boy From Space, like all the other Look and Read serials, was pretty simple –  an alien boy gets stranded on Earth and is helped by a brother and sister to evade a adult alien – and was almost laughably low-budget (note the Doctor Who-esque use of a quarry), but it efficiently tapped into then SF-rich zeitgeist (remember, Star Wars would only have been out for two years) and displayed a nice line in cliffhangers. Astonishingly, given that this aired in early 1980, I would not even have been six years old when I saw this. It might look utterly shonky to modern eyes, but this was pretty intense stuff and you simply cannot imagine material like this put out today for an equivalent-age audience. Different times.

Well, thanks for that, ShortList! Nostalgia Mystery solved! And, now… back to advancing middle age.

“Space goes on… foreveeeeerrrrr….”

 

Last week, I interviewed composer Hans Zimmer for EMPIRE to discuss his score for THE DARK KNIGHT RISES for the mag’s TRACK BY TRACK feature (which you can read in the next issue, hitting the stands at the end of this month). At the end of our 40-minute chat – and before a Warner Bros flack called time – the subject inevitably turned to Zimmer’s equally high-profile follow-up gig, SUPERMAN: MAN OF STEEL. Zimmer had pointedly nixed the idea of potentially doing Superman (“ No – and I’m not thinking of rewriting Beethoven’s ninth either. It just sounds like a thankless task, you know? So that’s unequivocally a “no”…”) before, surprisingly, doing a complete U-turn and accepting the gig to score the highly-anticipated feature, likely down to the fact that it is being produced by his Batman and Inception collaborator, Christopher Nolan.

“When the rumours came out that I was going to do Superman, the fact was that nobody had asked me!” says Zimmer, who swiftly realised that his off-the-cuff comments could be interpreted that he was actively being sought for the film. “The horrible thing was that I had never met Zack Snyder and, suddenly, poor Zack must have been reading that the crazy German is going to be doing my movie and I’ve never even met him! So, I had to squash those rumours. Plus – and let’s be honest – I am only human and John Williams is super-human. That Superman theme is beloved and iconic. It’s a pretty hard act to follow and it’s like me saying to you can you turn this interview in to a decent piece of Shakespeare. You’ll say “Maybe not today…!”

“I phoned Zack and said I am really, really sorry about these rumours – it wasn’t me, it’s just a misunderstanding. You’ve got your composer and I never tried to get in between relationships or anything like that. We started talking and he told me about his ideas for the character and his take was really interesting. I started getting a couple of ideas as a result. I said to Zack – and Warners and Chris [Nolan] and everyone involved – “don’t talk to me about it until we finish [The Dark Knight Rises]” …. and, within 15 minutes of finishing it, we were talking about it.”

So, despite his earlier, extreme reticence about the task of remaking one of the most famous themes in Film music, does he now feel confident that he has a strong course to pursue?

“I don’t feel confident at all. I never feel confident. But, a little bit of fear has gone a long way to being inspiring in the past. John Williams is the master and I am not even going to try and go in that direction. I’ll try my best not to embarrass myself and my colleagues on the film. I’m definitely going to have a go! In a funny way, it’s exactly because Superman is such an opposite character to Batman that I am welcoming the opportunity to do the music.”

Has he seen footage from the film? “Yes. All you’re going to get out of me is a “yes”! No elaborations! I’ve started it and am in the ideas phase. I am driving people crazy with my experiments and am trying to write a tune.” The one thing Zimmer will say is that his signature use of percussion – which he jokingly refers to as “his endless quest for the perfect drum-hit” will not be as prevalent in MAN OF STEEL as on his Batman scores. “I am going to try and avoid it. It’s a big conversation I am having with myself right now: how can we avoid that…!!“

It’s interesting to speculate whether there was actually another composer lined up to do MAN OF STEEL and who was dispensed with once Zimmer expressed serious interest, or that there wasn’t and Zimmer just assumed there was someone in place. Whatever the case, it’s very encouraging to know that Zimmer is entirely aware of the enormity of his task and that he will not only be steering away from the dark, sturm-und-drang of his Batman work but also Williams’ approach. Time will tell…

(Interview reprinted with kind permission from EMPIRE.)

The news that composer Hans Zimmer has signed a deal to score next summer’s highly-anticipated reboot of the Superman franchise, MAN OF  STEEL was as surprising as it was, to be honest, tediously inevitable. Surprising, because he’d previously forthrightly nixed the notion on the most obvious (and entirely understandable) grounds: “John Williams, the greatest living composer – full stop. And that happens to be one of his greatest themes. So no. And I’m not thinking of rewriting Beethoven’s ninth either. It just sounds like a thankless task, you know? So that’s unequivocally a “no”…”

The man wasn’t wrong, frankly. With Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, Zimmer has skillfully provided muscular and dramatic scores anchored on an minimal two-note core motif, that was markedly different – but no less vivid and effective – than Danny Elfman’s memorably baroque music for Tim Burton’s 1989 film, the main theme of which was adopted for Batman’s excellent and highly influential 90’s animated iteration. Yet, the fact of the matter is that Batman has never had a musical signature as flawless as the one John Williams crafted for Richard Donner’s seminal Superman: The Movie in 1978.

With it’s wondrous three-note horn fanfare that seemingly proclaims the character’s name (“Su-per-MAN..!”), Williams’ Main Theme – also known as The Superman March – captured the character’s core traits of heroism, wonder, nobility and patriotism with such unerring precision and success that it quickly grew in pop cultural stature to the degree that it is arguably aligned with every version of Superman, not just the beloved Christopher Reeve iteration it was written for. When the composer John Ottman came to score 2006’s Superman Returns, one was left with the distinct impression that he utilised Williams’ core themes not merely because the film was a tacit sequel to Donner’s film, but more that its presence was expected – and that, probably, he too knew that attempting to better it was a fool’s errand.

All of which is not to say that Superman’s newest screen incarnation could not or should not have a new musical voice – it’s just that Zimmer is a mildly disappointing choice for the task. Hence the sense of tedious inevitability: for nigh on twenty years, Zimmer has been a pre-eminent name in blockbuster film scoring, his vast sucess consolidated by the fact that a great many of his proteges dutifully – nay, slavishly – adopt his stylistic approaches, resulting in much of Hollywood’s summer output now having a generic sound (big percussion, choirs, vast horn sections etc, etc). Aside from the fact that Man of Steel’s executive producer is Zimmer’s Batman collaborator Nolan, ensuring Zimmer immediately sprang to mind when considering the Superman score, it’s certainly likely that Warner Brothers were only too happy with the choice. After all, Zimmer is a very safe pair of hands in this regard.

Anyone who is very familiar with Zimmer’s career will be aware that he is undoubtedly capable of great diversity – listen to the likes of Hannibal or The Holiday –  and he’s certainly got not shortage of innovative ideas (Inception a notable recent example), but there is something dreadfully rote these days about the bulk of his mainstream work (Pirates of The Caribbean, anyone?). Add to this the fact that the Zimmer sound is so very pervasive now, there’s a distinct sense of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” – and it would disappointing to see Superman succumb to that.  Personally, I was hoping the gig would go to a fresher name like Michael Giacchino, whose Star Trek score was a fine example of taking an established and beloved musical identity and giving it a fulsome new sheen that harkened back to the franchise’s action adventure roots. Another good choice would have been Henry Jackman, who, like Giacchino, places an accent on the epic orchestral sound.

So, has Zimmer had a creative Eureka moment with regards to re-establishing Superman’s musical identity, promting his about turn? I harbour suspicions of a tactical move, whereby if Zimmer does (inevitably?) end up crafting something that pales in comparison to Williams classic work, then he’s successful enough to ride it out with ease – and at least you can be absolutely sure that it will be grand, which Superman certainly demands. Now he has the gig, I can only hope that he truly attempts to excel himself. After all, he’s up against perfection…

Last week, legendary UK Comics scribe Pat Mills posted some exceedingly good news on his Facebook page:

“DC Comics confirm Marshal Law omnibus for firm publication date of Spring 2013. It will feature all the Law stories apart from the crossovers.  These might be included in a later omnibus edition.  Sorry about  delays, but this does sound as though it’s finally set in stone.”

Hurrah! Let Joy and Jubilation reign! Finally…! Criminally-underrated, Marshal Law – penned by Mills and blessed with a visual tour-de-force by League of Extraordinary Gentlemen artist Kevin O’Neill –  remains one my all-time favourite comic books, a wonderfully funny and scabrous swipe at Superheroes that, twenty-five years on, has lost absolutely none of its merciless satirical edge.

Given that so many classic comics series are bestowed deluxe hardcover collected editions these days, Law’s deserved passage to the same has been frustratingly glacial, thanks to a lengthy stint in limbo at Top Shelf Comix where the promise of a two-volume, slipcased collection of all the Law stories kept slipping back over a period of years, for reasons never explained. However, despite the rather amusing irony that Law has ended up at DC, home of the superhero archetypes that Mills and O’Neill so savagely mocked, the bottom line is that a truly great series that is ripe for discovery will once again be available. It’s a shame that this initial omnibus won’t feature the crossovers, but one mustn’t complain – at least it’s actually bloody happening.

To mark the happy news, here’s a feature on Marshal Law that I wrote for Judge Dredd The Megazine back in early 2009, entitled “FEAR AND LOATHING IN SAN FUTURO!” in which I spoke to Pat and Kevin about their infamous creation.

Enjoy!

In 1987, as superhero comics embraced a “Grim and Gritty” period typified by ultra-seriousness and not-a-little pomposity, writer Pat Mills and artist Kevin O’Neill – both 2000AD legends – provided a savage satirical riposte with Marshal Law, a blackly-hilarious and shockingly-blunt series that took Comics’ most beloved genre to task. A shamefully-underrated Comics gem remembered very fondly by its fans and ripe for rediscovery, Mills and O’Neill spoke to DANNY GRAYDON about the sheer pleasure of taking caped Gods and “blowing the bastards away…!”

When it comes to superheroes, Pat Mills is pretty damned unequivocal: “I fucking hate the bastards…!” he declares, somewhat gleefully, down the phone. A little extreme? Perhaps, yet this is no knee-jerk snobbishness on the part the veteran comics scribe: “When I say I hate them, let me quickly add to that: I hate the value systems that they seem to stand for. If you had superheroes who were actually doing something heroic for a change, who were dealing with real-life issues, as opposed to tokenism. If you had stories which were actually interesting – as in Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns and a minority of others.”

 Given that Mills illustrious 40-year career in Comics has been anchored on vivid and varied explorations of the term “hero” and its complexities, generating no shortage of classic characters, his innate dislike of the comparatively-lightweight ideologies and straightforward action that defines the superhero genre is understandable. However, in the mid-80’s, Mills intense dislike of anything involving a cape and tights magnificently fuelled one of his most potent characters: the futuristic super-hero hunter Marshal Law. Created with his long-time 2000AD collaborator Kevin O’Neill, Marshal Law gained instant notoriety for its scathing and ruthless dissection of the superhero genre. Possessing a rare combination of outright hilarity and righteous indignation, Marshal Law is a modern classic.

First appearing in 1987 and then sporadically over the following eleven years via a handful of publishers, Marshal Law was a popular success – providing Mills with his most significant foray in to the American market – but the character never attained the recognition it deserved. Indeed, it’s criminally-underrated. “It’s funny,” observes O’Neill, “There was a book called The Dark Age about the 80’s superheroes, ‘Grim and Gritty’ period of Punisher and the like, and they managed to cover the whole decade but they didn’t mention Marshal Law at all! It surprises me, because the book was popular but now it almost seems to be forgotten.” Perhaps, but the character undoubtedly has a fervent cult following amongst comics fans, with such high-profile followers as acclaimed Scots comics scribe Mark Millar (Wanted, Civil War), who fulsomely proclaimed “I love Watchmen. I love Dark Knight Returns and I worship Will Eisner, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, but Marshal Law is still my favourite comic book of all time.”

According to O’Neill, the character’s gestation period came at a time when they were struggling to crack the US market: “Pat and I had done a book called Metalzoic for DC Comics which, unfortunately, came out the same time as The Dark Knight Returns and so wasn’t very successful. While we were doing that I scribbled down some ideas, made the play-on-words “Marshal Law” and drew the rough image of him. I posted to Pat and said maybe we could do something with this. Originally, it was going to be a Mad Max kind of strip, with lots of weird cars and strange mutants and stuff like that.”

               “We knew that Marvel Epic wanted a story from us and Kevin came up with this incredible design for a character.” Mills recalls, adding that, at that point, superheroes weren’t even a consideration. “I came up with a classic crime thriller plot, involving an illegitimate son who comes after the father. The original intention was to show the plot from six different angles and to have a central character who was corrupt.” However, rather inevitably when Marvel Comics is in the equation, superheroes became a consideration. “Both those elements were diminished when the superhero element took centre stage. I kept looking at the guy and thinking there’s a kind of superhero thing here and Marvel is the home of superheroes so I really should do them. But how the hell can I do them? I loathe them! I’m not really qualified to write about superheroes, but I’m sure as hell qualified – in fact, uniquely qualified – to write a superhero-hunter.”

This Eureka moment gave the character, as Mills saw it, “an energy that is very much unique to him.” It certainly inspired O’Neill, who created potent new elements to surround the character, notably that the character work in a dystopian, earthquake-devastated future version of San Francisco – dubbed San Futuro – which would be populated with superheroes, who had returned from a Vietnam-style conflict as disenfranchised, disillusioned veterans, albeit dangerously powerful ones. “Kevin and I are extremely influenced by the surreal and cutting-edge fantasy of Metal Hurlant Magazine, which was coming out with the most astonishing, surreal fantasy and we were trying to adopt that style.”

In O’Neill’s hands, San Futuro became a vividly baroque mix of dystopian city and surrealist nightmare. “We wanted it to be a recognisable ruin of San Francisco but also to be incredibly operatic.” says O’Neill. “There is some wonderful Surrealism that Kevin gets in but he draws it with a “straight bat”, adds Mills, referring to the gloriously-OTT environment of the San Futuro Police Department, replete with giant Magnum .44 elevated walkways and a Commissioner’s office where the desk is surrounded by a small shark-infested moat, a location, according to O’Neill “became more ludicrous each time we went there in an effort to show just how duplicitous (Law’s Police handler, McGland) was.”

Crucially, the leather and barbed-wire sporting Marshal Law (O’Neill: “The Gestapo look always works!”) would be powered by the contradiction that he himself is a super-powered war veteran, who retains his ideals and chooses to become a licensed vigilante charged with policing his own kind with terminal prejudice. “He’s the only one who wanted the job of doing it to his own.” says Mills, “He feels he has to do something about this plague of so-called superheroes who are swamping his city and behaving reprehensibly. Of course, inevitably, his attention strays to the upper-echelon superheroes and, let’s face it, superheroes would be a rich elite.”

The first storyline, Fear and Loathing, saw Law brought into conflict with America’s Greatest Super-Hero, The Public Spirit, whom Law sees as a corrupt mockery of heroic ideals. While the ultra-patriotic The Public Spirit was generally perceived to be a swipe at Superman, Mills maintains that his focus was broader than that. “Indirectly, you could say he was. In fact, the main inspiration was the American iconic figures who have something in common with Superman. A prime source was Ronald Reagan. I had a book of Reagan’s speeches and he had this very jingoistic, Wild West gunslinger rhetoric. From a visual point of view, he is the ultimate hero, but I was actually using lines directly from Reagan. Additionally, I used some John Wayne lines. If he comes across as very real, it’s because he is based on real figures, all of which adds up to a very scary image.”

If Marshal Law’s despised nemesis was a determinedly cynical mix of The Man of Steel and US political icons, there was something decidedly unsettling about The Sleepman, not only a serial killer but The Public Spirit’s illegitimate and more-powerful son. In fact Marshal Law’s young, supposedly-disabled assistant, The Sleepman’s hideous appearance and penchant for raping women dressed as The Public Spirit’s super-heroine girlfriend expressed a grim perversion of Spider-Man’s signature mantra – “With the greatest power comes the greatest irresponsibility…” – and underlined the extent of the ruthlessness which Mills was applying to the genre.

While Fear and Loathing and its successor, 1989’s Punisher/Marvel pastiche Marshal Law Takes Manhattan, were controversial but very popular, the third instalment seriously ruffled feathers in the industry. 1990’s Kingdom of The Blind (published by the short-lived UK comics publisher Apocalypse) in which Marshal Law faced a very thinly-disguised version of Batman called The Private Eye, perfectly coincided with the immediate aftermath of the phenomenally popular Tim Burton Batman movie released the prior year and which had ignited massively renewed interest in the character. “[That story] was an absolute blast,” recalls O’ Neill “the first one we did outside (Marvel imprint) Epic. Batman’s in the news now, but he was very much in the news then. Pat did warn me that people might find it objectionable – and indeed they did, that one more than any other. It made people blanche! Pat was always amazed that I was a Batman fan and that he never was – but some of the more venomous stuff came from me, as I was always pushing him to go further. It just didn’t bother me.”

“Within the industry, I think it’s pretty fair to say that just about everybody was pretty critical.” Mills adds, “These characters are considered to be almost Gods and, certainly, professionals both in Britain and in America took particular exception to Kingdom of The Blind. I think (artist) Simon Bisley, amongst others, thought it was very mean-spirited.” Not unsurprisingly, because the pair’s deconstruction of the genre’s most popular character was utterly unforgiving: The Private Eye was a supremely vicious thug with a murderous hatred of the lower classes and whose suspiciously-large number of teen sidekicks was down to the fact he was harvesting their organs in an effort to prolong his own lifespan. As for his alter-ego, billionaire Scott Brennan was an arrogant and vigorously-elitist Orwellian poster-child possessed by a pathological fear of his inherited riches being taken away. Ouch.

“I read a book about the dreams of very rich people and a very common dream, I discovered to my great delight, that for all their billions, they are absolutely tormented that someone was going to take it all away from them. That was my story: he’s a billionaire who’s going to get out there and do it to them before they do it to him!” It allowed Mills to exercise one of his most vigorous complaints about superheroes: “It’s very bad to have these wealthy, patronising people made in to heroes, when the working-class heroes are thin on the ground. These people are scared and to eulogise them as Percy Blakeney’s and the like, it’s ludicrous!” The story remains a firm favourite to the pair, especially O’Neill, as “that was the one where I was really happy with the artwork.”

Visually, one of the series’ joys was the profusion of punning graffiti that often filled O’Neill’s panels. From an over-sized bullet emblazoned with “This is it: THE BIG ONE!” to a gun barrel marked “Swallow This” to a superhero corpse with his head smashed through a TV with “Turn on, tune in, drop dead!” scrawled on the side, they all amusingly added to the series already very mordant humour. “When I was a kid, I was a huge fan of MAD paperbacks,” O’Neill explains, “They were so densely populated with background material, notations, the equivalent of Graffiti, I guess. I was a big fan of Bill Elder and Wally Wood and it just seemed incredibly American, that form of density. You could read it three or four times and it would still be funny.” For Mills, this seemingly-simple visual extra provided a vital service to the series: “Those graffiti lines were pure Kevin. You can look back at certain scenes in the script which might not have been particularly humorous, but by the time Kevin’s worked on it, there is a dark black humour there.”

One of the best aspects of Marshal Law, Mills notes, is that “he’s not a character who runs out of steam when you’ve satirised the obvious superhero targets.” Following the duo’s masterful filleting of The Dark Knight in Kingdom of The Blind, the subsequent stories demonstrated Law’s genre versatility, although maintaining the core superhero satire. The Hateful Dead (1991) and Super Babylon (1992) received a hearty infusion of Zombies, while 1994’s SF Horror entry Secret Tribunal is essentially Law vs. Alien. The character also indulged some high-profile crossovers, with the existentialist horror of Law vs. Pinhead: Law in Hell (1993), Image Comics big-hitter The Savage Dragon (1997) and finally – as well, as somewhat surprisingly – The Mask (1998). “We got in to the notion of crossovers as it is a good way to promote the character and a good way to take him further.” Mills explains. “One of the reasons is that these people who secretly pray to these icons probably thought to themselves “Well, okay, you’ve taken the piss out of Batman and Superman, why don’t you f**k off now?” but Marshal Law isn’t that slight a character. Those big superheroes were the ones I guess we had to start with, but he is very much an all-round character. You can hit all kinds of notes. It’s a much wider concept.”

While Marshal Law has faded from view in the last decade – save for two text novellas, collectively titled Origins, published last year – an intriguing reminder of Mills and O’Neill’s creation came in late 2006 with the publication of The Boys, a creator-owned series written by Garth Ennis (Preacher) and drawn by Darick Robertson (Transmetropolitan). While not pastiche-led nor as surreal or dystopian as Marshal Law, instead favouring Preacher-style ultra-violence and sexuality, the series concept – about a super powered CIA squad whose job it is to keep watch on superheroes and, if necessary, intimidate or kill them – is remarkably similar to Law (particularly the main super-antagonist, “The Homelander” essentially being a post-9/11 version of The Public Spirit) a fact seemingly totally lost on the book’s fervent core audience, likely too young to remember the barbed-wire clad Marshal.

“I’ve heard about this!” Mills exclaims, “I deliberately haven’t read it myself because it is in the same genre as Law. It is flattering that there are other anti-superhero characters out there. I suppose whatever motivates Garth may be the same as what motivated me, but in the case of Marshal Law, what makes it so strong is that it is very apparent that we really mean it. It’s not in tune with the fashionable sensibility in modern comics which is to be very cynical and very violent. Marshal Law may have those elements, but it’s primarily because I feel so passionately about the notion of heroes and heroism and the way they are so devalued.”

               The series’ descent into relative obscurity has in large part been down to the fact that getting hold of the various stories has long been a difficult proposition. This year, however, the series will get the treatment it has long deserved when indie US comics publisher Top Shelf publishes a lavish hardcover collection of every Law story. Unsurprisingly, the prospect thrills Law’s creators: “It needs it, doesn’t it? It’s such a classic character.” Says Mills. “It’s amazingly gratifying.” O’Neill enthuses, “There’s still an undercurrent of interest in Marshal Law and it’ll be good to get a complete collected edition. It’s running to at least 500 pages and will probably end up being a couple of volumes in a slipcase. It’ll certainly be substantial. I will be looking through boxes of stuff to find sketches, notes and various other things.” While the extras are to be determined, Mills confirms that the Savage Dragon episode – collected for the first time since its 1997 printing – will be coloured and the Law Vs.Pinhead tale will be re-coloured.

“When I was doing a signing tour for [The League of Extraordinary Gentleman] The Black Dossier,” O’Neill mentions, “the question I was asked most often was “when will there be more Law books?”.” Unfortunately, it won’t be happening in the immediate future as O’Neill is fully committed to the forthcoming fourth volume of League, while Mills is busy maintaining his considerable output for 2000AD and his French comics series, Requiem Vampire Hunter. Encouragingly, though, the enthusiasm is only too apparent: “Of all the things I’ve worked on, Law is the one I’d go back to – but it’s when we both have the time. I’m sure we’ll do more as we never got fed up with it. . Whenever talking about the earlier books, we always end up laughing our heads off and talking about what we should be doing.” O’Neill says. “I’d always make time for Kevin,” says Mills without hesitation, “but the compromise solution we have at the moment is the novellas – which isn’t entirely satisfactory, but I think there is a market for pulp fiction and therefore a Law pulp fiction novel. If Kevin doesn’t have time to do another Law graphic novel, we will probably end up writing another text novel.”

After 23 years, Mills enthusiasm for Marshal Law clearly hasn’t dimmed, likely because the character directly caters to the core concern of his writing: “Once I get into Law, I find it quite a wrench to come out of again. What he’s saying is actually very, very important: people who have the label “hero” are often undeserving of it and there are so many everyday heroes who are ignored. Marshal Law is so important to me for that reason. Kevin and I still miss the character a great deal because there is so much we can still do with him.”, before mischievously adding, “Here’s this character waving two fingers in the air at characters who are regarded with quasi-mystical significance and to me, it’s like, I can’t think of a better reason to blow the bastards away…!”

On March 14th, I made my debut appearance on BBC 1’s flagship and long-running Film programme, Film 2012, in a video segment covering Comic Book Films. Hosted by my good friend and EMPIRE colleague Christ Hewitt, the segment features myself, Scottish comic book writer Mark Millar (Kick-Ass), Pixar director Andrew Stanton (John Carter) and MARVEL Entertainment’s Kevin Feige discussing the current state of comic book cinema in what will be a banner year for the genre, thanks to such hugely anticipated fare as The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers.

It’s long been an ambition of mine to appear on this programme, having watched it since I was very young, and I was enormously pleased with how this came out (and given that I am speaking alongside three dsitinctly heavy-hitters, I thought I acquitted myself well!). Oh yes, and I get to show off some sartorial geekery via the War of The Worlds leather jacket!

Here’s the entire six-minute clip, via YouTube:

Huge hanks to Chris and BBC Producer Suniti Somaiya for inviting me to take part! Hope to do it again sometime…

Bryan Singer’s SUPERMAN RETURNS gets a terribly unfair rap, not least maintained by the simple-minded cacophony of online fanboys, whose criticism seems confined to a small array of gripes (e.g: “Superman just lifts things!”; “Superman’s a deadbeat Dad!”; “Superman’s doesn’t punch anything!” etc) that are tediously parroted in a knee-jerk fashion, with determinedly little or no recognition of the film’s strengths. I’m a hearty defender of Singer’s film, in spite of knowing only too well that he essentially remade (and sequelled) Richard Donner’s hallowed 1978 original with a melancholic sheen.

Brandon Routh was a fine Man of Steel – it’s a genuine shame that he’ll never reprise the role – and I consider the film’s deliriously-exciting airline rescue sequence to be one of the very best action set-pieces produced in the last decade, a bravura showcase of digital effects. Yet, what I continue to find particularly admirable was the film’s bold focus on Superman’s most vital element – behind the invulnerability and superpowers, he’s a man with a vulnerable heart – and the film’s plot presents him with a singular emotional challenge – a son unknown to him –  that cannot be overcome by physicality. Granted, it may not have been a plot element that was riven with excitement – and one that couldn’t possibly have been ignored in any sequel –  but it effectively mined a seam of emotional drama that most summer blockbusters would be less than concerned with.

Five years on and the recent release on Blu-Ray of the existing five Superman films released between 1978 and 2006 provided the opportunity to finally see the discarded alternate opening to Superman Returns, a seven minute sequence in which Superman travels, via a crystalline spacecraft reminiscent of that which rocketed him to Earth in Donner’s film, to the radioactive remains of the planet Krypton in a fruitless search for survivors. As cut scenes go, it was a bloody expensive excision – reportedly costing $10 million! – but, as you can see below, it was impeccably rendered and provides a nicely moody atmosphere, if perhaps a little too dark, sedately paced and a low-key introducion of our hero.

Does it make a valuable addition to the film? I think so: aside from the opening text, the mission’s failure is only mentioned by Clark to his mother (“That place was a graveyard…”) and it adds a level of gravitas to the later revelation that he was actually duped into leaving Earth, also foreshadowing the climactic peril of New Krypton. It also features a nice development of the detail in Donner’s film that Superman’s S shield motif is actually a family crest of sorts, and it’s certainly dramatic to see it here as a monolithic stone monument. The film’s ultimate opening makes an immediate connection to Donner”s film with the shot of the barren Kryptonian terrain that opened that film – replete with Marlon Brando’s voice over – and so was much more effective in setting out its stall, but the Return to Krypton sequence is far from a deservedly-dumped dud – for ten million clams, one should hope so!

Once Blu-Ray emerged as the clear victor in the so-called Format Wars with HD-DVD a few years back, that was the green light to embrace hi-def home video. Since then, I have been an enthusiastic convert, building up a growing library of new releases and upgrades of my favourite classics. With the latter, there’s no doubt that Blu-Ray is a veritable minefield of “double-dipping” – but, let’s face it,  it is difficult to turn down the prospect of films like The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Close Encounters of The Third Kind, Taxi Driver, Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Back To The Future and The Lord of The Rings Trilogy in stunning, fully-remastered transfers. At least, that’s what I tell myself.

Of course, one of the inherent ironies of Blu-Ray is that, in many cases, double-dipping is part of the package, with a DVD version offered alongside the Blu-Ray disc. Initially, I thought this was resoundingly pointless – why would you want another copy in lesser quality? – but, actually, it’s become rather handy, as it gives me a version that I can show to my students via my laptop (which has a B-D drive, but which doesn’t function with the university’s overhead projectors). In “Triple Play” editions, you also get the added bonus of a “Digital Copy” – to play via iTunes or Windows Media Player – which perfectly caters for the vast increase in mobile consumption. Again, it’s handy to have a stash of movies available on your laptop, readily available if, say, you’re travelling.

Except, I discovered that the generosity of a digital copy turns out to be an irritatingly limited gesture.

Recently, I upgraded my laptop and transferred over an existing selection of digital copies that included regularly-watched fare like the JJ Abrams Star Trek, Inception, The Hangover, Watchmen and others. When I tried to play them on Windows Media Player, the DRM (Digital Rights Management) kicked in and asked me for the code that came with the Blu-Ray. I got the case for Star Trek off the shelf, got the code and typed it in… only to be told that I have exceeded my one-time-only use of the code. With the exception of one film – The International – all of the others did the same thing.

So, basically, the effusive promise on a Blu-Ray’s packaging that you have “a digital copy to watch whenever and wherever you want!” has a hidden caveat – so long as you don’t upgrade your fucking laptop/desktop/tablet/iPhone. (Which, I add, is an anathema to every consumer electronics manufacturer in existence.). The digital copy is undoubtedly offered a means to offset the hugely-damaging effects of online Piracy, so why apply such a limitation? I suspect the answer may lie in a corporate eye for future dividends ie – “Upgraded your laptop but want to have a digital copy of Inception to watch on the go? Well, come and get it on iTunes for just… etc“

Except: why in the hell would I want to do that? I bought the Triple Play Blu-Ray set for £2o, so surely I should have the right to have the contents available for perpetuity. I’m certainly not going to buy the Blu-Ray set again – although I’m quite, quite  sure the studios would love that! As a friend of mind rightly pointed out: “DRM hurts no one but the consumer.” Of course, this isn’t the end of the world: I do have two versions of the film to watch, but it’s irritating that the version that’s purposely meant to allow more flexible viewing has been taken away because I simply purchased a new laptop. Yet, the biggest irony of all is that such behaviour by the studios is surely utterly self-defeating. If you’re determined to have a digital copy of your favourite film and have been denied ongoing access thanks to the vagaries of DRM, then there is one avenue that can sort your issue out with no added cost: Bit Torrent.

Now, that’s worthy of a hearty “D’OH!”…

I am a big fan of the Downfall spoof. The long-running internet meme – anchored on re-subtitling a key scene from the superb 2004 film Der Untergang, in which Adolf Hitler receives the news that the tide has turned against The Third Reich, prompting his unrestrained fury – has proved so wonderfully malleable, even if, much to the producers chagrin, it does make light of a very serious moment in world history. The internet is teeming with then now (and the true gems are certainly far outnumbered by the vaguely-amusing ones…) but, in the wake of the News International phone-hacking scandal that’s dominating British Media at the moment, a new stone-cold classic has emerged- and which, rather refreshingly, doesn’t use the same old sequence…

“Oh yeah, I’M THE BOSS…!” Love it. Whoever did this: top work…!!

These days, the only time you hear about Danny DeVito’s 2002 black comedy Death To Smoochy is when it’s the punch-line to The Daily Show host’s Jon Stewart’s habitual self-mockery of his acting career, the pinnacle of which, he quips, was as the film’s “fourth male lead”. In actual fact, the genial Stewart was being a little self-aggrandising: he was at best fifth. “Ho-Ho” etc.

If Stewart’s amusing self-deprecation gives the impression that Death To Smoochy was a bad film – he’s also played on the fact that it was the last film he ever appeared in – then the film’s performance certainly reinforces that notion. Despite receiving a wide release in over 2000 cinemas in the U.S, it  was a box-office disaster, grossing just over $8 million from a budget of $50 million and international earnings were negligible (although, in the U.K, the film was the victim of sheer bad luck as the intended distributor went under shortly before the release date, so only attendees of the press screenings ever saw it). The reviews were mixed and it swiftly swan-dived into obscurity.

It was an ignominious fate for a film that appeared to have a lot going for it. A merciless and gleefully misanthropic skewering of the world of Kids TV (a wonderfully designed one, too…), it had the the presence of two high-profile stars in Robin Williams and Edward Norton, bolstered by a fantastic supporting cast including DeVito, Catherine Keener, Pam Ferris, Harvey Fierstein and Stewart. Then there was the fact that, as a director, DeVito had a proven track record in the realms of satire tinted with gallows humour, notably with 1987’s Throw Momma From The Train and 1989’s The War of The Roses. DeVito himself seemed genuinely perplexed by the film’s reception, ruefully opening his commentary on the film’s DVD release with: “Hello. It’s Danny. It’s been, um… I guess now a few months since the release of Death to Smoochy, so the mourning period is over…”

The film’s outright failure has always surprised me because it’s actually a tremendously funny film. Williams, who at the time was exercising his acting muscles with considerably darker roles in Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia and after Smoochy, One Hour Photo, is terrific as the hugely popular but woefully corrupt host “Rainbow Randolph” whose wilful bribery of parents desperate to have their kids centre stage on Randolph’s show is exposed by a Police sting operation (“And for what, Randy?? Asswipe Money!” admonishes Stewart’s similarly-corrupt TV executive) and which launches him into a hilariously-embittered vendetta with Norton’s swiftly-placed, squeaky-clean successor Sheldon Mopes a.k.a “Smoochy The Rhino”. Long criticised for squandering his huge comedic talents in overly-saccharine roles, here Williams puts his famed manic energy and improvisational skills to great use in creating a proper bastard sinking to increasingly amusing  lows. Randolph’s efforts to sabotage Smoochy’s show with phallic-shaped cookies (“They’re made from dil-dough!”) and later frame him as a neo-Nazi ringleader are particular highlights of Williams’ performance, which, quite unbelievably, got nominated for a Razzie Award.

Moreover, it’s a satire with real bite. However: this, I suspect, was a big part of Smoochy’s downfall. Culturally, Kids TV is something of a sacred cow in the U.S, a slice of Americana that generated genuine and fiercely-loved icons from long-running and resolutely clean-cut shows like Sesame Street and Mister Roger’s Neighbourhood. A mainstream Hollywood film portraying it, therefore, as riddled with corruption, graft and Mafia ties, eagerly pursuing barely-concealed commercial agendas, with presenters who are heroin addicts and which manipulates children’s perceptions  – beautifully done in a sequence where Norton’s Smoochy leads a group of kids in a song about dealing with an abusive stepfather – was always going to struggle to get a widespread audience, especially in the ultra-sensitive national mood that dominated America post-9/11.

Yet, in the years since, Death To Smoochy has never graduated to full cult status – not really – which is surprising as it has all the hallmarks of a solid and enduring cult film, not least via a script stuffed with quotable lines. There’s no time limit on attaining cultdom, obviously, but it’s a film that’s undoubtedly ripe for rediscovery and reassessment no matter what. Nowhere near as poor as dismissive reviews, vastly-erroneous Razzie nominations and Jon Stewart quips might lead you to assume, DeVito delivered a dark comedy to savour.