Massacre For Boys In Cover

So here's the cover of MFBIC:



Art by Steve, logo kindly contributed by Bolt-01.

The official release date is March 28th. The complete contents of the comic is yet to be finalized, but as soon as it is I'll post that here too.

The Tempest

PR is not my strongest point, and nor are our humble efforts automatically guaranteed press coverage of any kind. So it's fantastic when one of the big players gives us the time of day, let alone the oxygen of publicity.

So hats off to Forbidden Planet International, always a friend of MFB, for publishing their review of Walking Wounded this week.

Particular thanks are due to Richard Bruton, who agreed to take a look at the comics and who added some further comments about the WW platoon's printed adventures on his own blog.

It's testament to the influence of the FPI blog that two of my friends independently noticed this article go up on the day it appeared.

To cap it all, yesterday I received a cheque from FPI in payment for the sales of Walking Wounded #1 through their website.

This is the first time a third party has ever actually paid me for comics they've sold on our behalf. There are three other third parties that probably should have given me some money by now and haven't, so it was maybe more of a surprise than it should have been and just emphasizes what a classy outfit Forbidden Planet are.

In fact, you should probably go and buy something from them right now :)

What Next for The Animal Hatmaker?

As work on Massacre For Boys in Colour nears completion, I notice that we have a 1-page Jimmy Baker script that won't be included for want of an available artist. As our future plans mean if it misses this comic it won't appear for years, I very much fear this story will remain an orphan.

Shame as I reckon it's not bad at all:

JIMMY BAKER ANIMAL HATMAKER: Bones
A US Format colour 1-pager by Chris Denton


1) A distinguished looking, scholarly gentleman, CURATOR JONES, stares disconsolate at an open and empty till. He is sitting at a box office window, which we can see because the word “Box Office” is visible, reversed in the glass.

CAPTION: NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, LONDON, 1952.

JONES: NO VISITORS, AGAIN! I NEED TO DO SOMETHING FAST OR WE’RE GOING BANKRUPT.

2) Detail of Curator Jones’ finger skimming down to the “Animal Hatmakers” section of the Yellow Pages. Just above this is a small advert for “Lady Vanessa, Animal Hairdresser.” The only animal hatmaker in the book is Jimmy Baker, and he has a large ad, which also doubles rather cunningly for the logo. The story title and credits can probably fit around here too.

3) Medium shot of Curator Jones gesticulating wildly, with JIMMY BAKER looking on. Behind them are a very grand set of double doors.

JONES: SO YOU SEE, MR BAKER. WE SIMPLY DON’T KNOW WHAT KIND OF HATS THE DINOSAURS WORE!

LINK: OF COURSE, PEOPLE AREN’T INTERESTED IN ANIMALS WITH BARE HEADS SO IT LOOKS LIKE THE MUSEUM IS FINISHED!

4) Close on Jimmy, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Behind him we can see part of the tail of a brontosaurus skeleton.

JIMMY: NOT NECESSARILY, PROFESSOR. I HAVE ONE OR TWO IDEAS…

5) Close on a newspaper-style billboard. It proclaims “T. REX – PREHISTORIC HIGHWAYMAN” and pasted over the bottom right hand corner of this is in slightly smaller text is the phrase “SOLD OUT”.

CAPTION: A MONTH LATER…

6) Close on the skull of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It is wearing a Dick Turpin-style Tricorn hat.

T. REX (DISTORT): STAND AND DELIV – RAAARGH!

CAPTION: JIMMY BAKER COMES UP TRUMPS AGAIN!

Any artist out there fancy doing a quick job on this?

Name that plane

So, here's the first page of pencil and inks for Night of the Big Heat:

It will be coloured, but I thought I'd post it now as it looks to me to be a fairly perfect page of comic art. Obviously, I put this all down to the script :)

The plane is based on a real one (WW2 buffs might recognise the make and model? Let us know if you do) and I did specify it in the script. However what I did not do is look too closely into how the plane was laid out internally, I just made some assumptions based on how I expected it to be. Eg basically like a smaller Boeing 747.

Of course, as all graduate management trainees know only too well, to assume makes an ass out of u and me. So when Steve was researching it he noticed that some of my directions were slightly, not to put to fine a point on it, impossible. He's corrected them all and that's meant some changes to some of the panels, like frame 2 on this page for instance.

I bring this up because I think it's a great example of how story-telling responsibilities in comics are divided between writer and artist. Even in the British method, where each panel is specified by the writer, the artist should have the creative freedom to be fairly liberal about he interprets these. As a writer this has never worried me at all because you would expect the artist to have a better grasp of how things work visually.

Eeek, it's 2009!

Happy New Year! Or at least, it will be if we can defy the deadlines and get our latest comic ready for the Thing.

I've written a new Walking Wounded 6-pager to go into Massacre for Boys in Colour, and as I've got nothing better to blog I thought I'd explain a little about how this story came about.

Necessity being the mother of invention, the main reason why I wrote this script is because we really need a new Walking Wounded story in MFBIC. They're our main brand, especially at the Thing, and we don't want to turn up without a new WW adventure.

Then I needed an idea. I actually find it pretty easy to come up with new concepts for Walking Wounded strips, I think it's because their universe has been going round my head for the better part of twenty years. This one started off as a response to Paul Harrison-Davies' fine zombie pinup (see previous posts). The image was so powerful it gave me the pivotal moment of a story pretty much straight away.

So it had to be a tale featuring our old friends, the Nazi zombies. But I needed a new setting for them, and that's where my wife chipped in by reminding me about high-concept horror Snakes on a Plane. Okay, so it's not that great a movie, but Zombies on a Plane, now that could really work...

As the plot was now taking shape, the title became obvious. I had called the first Nazi zombie appearance "Island of Terror" after a 60s British sci-fi movie I greatly admire, and so naturally their return would have to named after that film's companion piece, Night of the Big Heat.

So that gave me two more important details, as I could scarcely now set the strip during the day or omit to finish it with a good deal of flames. After that, it was pretty much a case of transcribing into Microsoft Word what I had in my head. Well, almost. Comic scripting is pretty technical so I had to have each panel on each page planned before I actually wrote the script. That's essential if you don't want the finished comic to be crap.

Now I have done all the writing I need to do so I am going to spend the next few months as a publisher...