Comic Creator Interview: David Hine on adapting "The Man Who Laughs"

David Hine

David Hine has had an illustrious career in comics, both as artist and writer, working on a diverse range of comics since his debut in the 1980s on titles such as Crisis.

He's currently finishing the first arc of Storm Dogs, from Image, co-created with artist Doug Braithwaite and writing Cowboys and Insects for his old buddy Shaky Kane, for digital anthology Aces Weekly. Work-for-hire projects include The Darkness for Top Cow and an arc of Crossed for Avatar.

downthetubes caught up with David on the release of the stunning graphic novel adaption of Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughed, drawn by Mark Stafford and published by SelfMadeHero...

downthethetubes: You've worked in comics since the 1980s, firstly for Crisis but also Marvel UK, more recently for Marvel and DC Comics, as well as worked on a number of "indie" projects like Strange Embrace and The Bulletproof Coffin. Do you miss the days of British publishers originating more comics?

David Hine: There certainly were a lot more opportunities for freelancers back in the eighties and there was never any shortage of work, though I rarely felt that I was really creating the comics I wanted to do. What we didn’t have much of back then was the opportunity to create full-length graphic novels and in that respect things are healthier now.

downthetubes: One of your latest projects is The Man Who Laughs, an adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel for Eisner Award-nominated publisher SelfMadeHero. How did that project come about?

David: I had written a story for the DC comic Batman and Robin, set in Paris and featuring a French version of the Joker. I knew the story about the creation of the Joker being inspired by a movie poster of the 1929 film of The Man Who Laughs starring Conrad Veidt, and in my story a mad artist disfigures his own child as an homage to Victor Hugo. It occurred to me that I knew very little about the original novel, so I tracked down the English version on the Project Gutenberg site and read it at the gym on my Kindle.

Gywnplaine hears the screams of the drowning Comprachios.
From The Man Who Laughed by Mark Stafford

I don’t know if it was the rush of blood to the head, but I found myself inspired by the story. There were so many scenes that I knew would make fantastic sequences in a comic book. I found myself visualizing pages in my head – the scene where the Comprachicos sink beneath the waves while praying for their souls, Gwynplaine struggling barefoot through the snow, the descent into the depths of Southwark Jail, the confrontation with the massed ranks of the aristocracy in the House of Lords.

I’ve never felt compelled to adapt an existing work before, but this story seemed to be crying out to be made into a comic.

Southwark Jail, as visualized for The Man Who Laughed by Mark Stafford

downthetubes: How do you approach adapting a novel like this? The structure of the original is very different to yours and Mark's adaptation...

David: There were a number of problems with the original novel. It isn’t one of Victor Hugo’s most popular and that’s because it is bogged down in an obsessive catalogue of the titles and possessions of the most powerful aristocratic families and the workings of English law. Hugo clearly had done a lot of research and he was determined to cram it all in there. The narrative structure is also non-linear in a way that actually works against the dramatic effect. I know that’s a bit presumptuous of me, but I couldn’t help feeling he could have done with a good editor.

Gwynplaine and company arrive in London.
Art from The Man Who Laughed by Mark Stafford

The great thing about adapting a book to another medium, especially when the author is long dead and there are no copyright issues, is that you really can cut and rearrange as much as you want. It’s a massive tome, over 200,000 words, so clearly a lot of material had to be cut to reduce it to a manageable 160 pages of comics.

Art from The Man Who Laughed by Mark Stafford

I read the book cover to cover three times. The first time was a straight reading. The second time, I had a hard copy of the book and went through marking the passages that had to be there, and eliminating the parts that were clearly extraneous to the story. There were a couple of nice scenes that could have stayed in, but in the end they reduced the impact of other scenes or upset the pacing of the story. Gwynplaine’s half brother, the illegitimate Lord David Dirry-Moir has an ambiguous role at the end, which is fascinating, but to include it would have ruined the pace of the final scenes, so I was a bit ruthless with him, I’m afraid.

I then re-arranged the order of events. Hugo skipped back and forth in time in ways that sometimes worked against the plot development. Too many spoilers in the early chapters!

Finally, once I knew the scenes that were going to go in there, I re-read those scenes up to a half-dozen times to absorb their atmosphere. After I’d completed an outline of the graphic novel, I re-read the book again from cover-to-cover to make sure I hadn’t missed anything vital.

downthetubes: What's the most difficult aspect of such adaptations? Do you think that it's easier for you to script such work, given your skill as an artist as well as a writer?

David: The most difficult decision was the language. The book was published in 1869 and set in the early 18th Century. Victor Hugo’s language was that of the 19th Century, so it was already a modernization and there was a temptation to update it further. In the end I chose to keep Hugo’s voice and that’s where all the re-reading came in useful. I often used Hugo’s actual words when appropriate but I felt confident enough that even where I was inventing scenes or dialogue, I had absorbed enough of the feel of his writing to keep it consistent and hopefully it reads seamlessly.

Art from The Man Who Laughed by Mark Stafford

downthetubes: There are some superb and startling images in The Man Who Laughs that condense almost entire chapters in the original - Gwynplaine's horrifying encounter with the hanged man, for example is told in just two panels. Do you decide that kind of thing as a writer or was it a matter of joint discussion?

David: The form of the novel is perfect for getting into the heads of the characters and that internal voice is where there is often a problem with adaptation. In Hugo’s case, he was a very visual writer. Discussing scenes with Mark, we soon realised we were both imagining things in a similar way. The internalised emotions are a little more difficult but when you’re working with Mark the problems are solved very easily.

Some of the most powerful scenes are wordless. I have experience as an artist so I always break down a script into thumbnails, roughing out the pages and panels to make sure they are working. I didn’t give Mark those thumbnails because that would be imposing too much of my vision, but I knew that structurally it would all work. Then I gave Mark as much information as I could on what was going through the characters’ heads and when appropriate, cutting and pasting some of the key passages from Hugo as well. The script ran to over 45,000 words in the end, so there was a lot for Mark to wade through.

That scene with the hanged man, for instance, included the original description giving every detail of the canvas the corpse was wrapped in, the snails that had trailed across it, much of which we decided to leave out. We probably talked more about that full-page spread than most other pages. It’s a powerful image that mirror’s Gwynplaine’s own suffering. In the end that single image sums up several hundred words of script.

Mark has a genius for depicting very complex and often conflicting emotional information with his drawing and I don’t think there are many artists who could match what he has done with this book. I gave him the near-impossible task of drawing a character with a face that is fixed in a permanent horrifying rictus, and then asking him to convey every emotional nuance imaginable.

At the start I think Mark was reluctant to draw the facial disfigurement as extreme as I wanted. There’s a recent French film that draws back from showing the sheer horror of that physical abuse and it undermines the whole story. Hugo leaves no doubt how awful the mutilation was. Gwynplaine had to be utterly repulsive in order to make the nobility of the character shine so clearly. That was a hell of a challenge for Mark, and he rose to it with his usual aplomb. By forcing the reader to look at the horror of his face, you find that after a while you are seeing past it. The acting is all in the body language and the upper face, particularly the eyes. You see through the fright mask to the sympathetic character that lies beneath.

downthetubes: You've worked for both small and large comic publishers on both commercial and, I assume, more personal projects. Does your work on series like X-Men, for example, afford you the opportunity to work on (perhaps) smaller stories like The Darkness?

The cover of The Darkness #112
by Stjepan Sejic

David: When I began writing for a living in 2004 I was exceptionally lucky to start with X-Men and other well-know characters. I’ve written Daredevil, Spider-Man, the Inhumans, Batman, Green Lantern, all kinds of iconic characters. I even had a run on Will Eisner’s The Spirit for DC, which was actually the most gratifying work-for-hire I had done. I could imagine writing Batman, but I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be allowed to write my all-time favourite character.

Now I have made it clear that I no longer want to work on the bigger corporate characters of Marvel and DC. There are too many issues. However, working on those books has made it a lot easier to find publishers for my more personal work and even on work-for-hire I’m given a lot of free rein by the guys at Top Cow and Avatar.

I guess I’ve gone about this ass backwards. Most people seem to do the smaller books with the aim of reaching the heady heights of working for the Big Two and that turned out to be the reverse of my career path. It’s still tough to make a living from the creator-owned work, but it’s so much more creatively satisfying. What the DC and Marvel work did was to get my name out there a bit and also helped me to develop my craft.

Working to insane deadlines really is also a great way to focus the mind, and even the frustrating editorial “directing” does push you to find a way to tell a decent story against the odds. I’ll always be grateful to the guys like Joe Quesada and Mike Marts who gave me those openings at Marvel and DC. I know I often slag off the Big Two but I have a lot of respect for many of the individuals who work at both companies. And kudos to the creators like Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Si Spurrier, Frazer Irving, Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and many more, who somehow manage to rise above.

downthetubes: What's your next project and when does it launch?

David: Storm Dogs is the big one at the moment. The fifth issue has gone to press and the last part of the first arc is being drawn right now by co-creator Doug Braithwaite. This is my first serious attempt at science fiction since my Mambo series for 2000AD back in the 1990’s.

Then there is a second arc of Night Of The Living Dead for Avatar and I’ve just written the first part of my second arc of Crossed for the same publisher.

I’m also working up to the death of Jackie Estacado and The Darkness. Talking of iconic characters, I’m getting to kill off this one! It’s a strangely positive project to be working on and I think the mini-series ‘Darkness Falls’ that follows the end of the monthly series could be one of the defining episodes in the history of The Darkness.

Bulletproof Coffin
© David Hine & Shaky Kane

downthtetubes: You're also working on a number of digital projects and you and Shaky Kane have constructed a very different version of Bulletproof Coffin in its digital form. Are you excited by the opportunities and challenges of this new comic storytelling medium?

David: That’s an interesting development. When we did the cut-up issue of The Bulletproof Coffin it was the realisation of a concept I had running around my head for the best part of 20 years. I had wanted to write a story as a set of cards, with a single image on each card, which would be sold in a pack and would be shuffled and read at random. I’m fascinated by the way we perceive ‘story’, attempting to impose a narrative structure on even the most random of elements. Initially the idea was to present a story in pieces and find the ‘correct’ structure. So that was the theory, but I never got around do doing it.

Issue 4 of The Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred was the closest I got. That was a collection of 84 images, some of them related, but mostly created as a stream of consciousness with a deliberately random approach. That culminated with sitting in a pub with print-outs of those 84 images and having everyone round the table re-arrange them at random. The order we ended with was the order in which they were printed.

The next stage would have been to create a digital version, which would create pages in random sequence, but I just assumed that would need some amazingly complex piece of software to achieve, so we never did it. We did encourage people to ‘cut and paste’ their own digital versions of the comic and a number of people posted PDFs of their re-arrangements. Then we heard from this guy called Inigo Saenz who contacted me to ask if he could post his version.

When I saw it I freaked. The pages were genuinely random and you could go on clicking for new pages indefinitely. This really was the Endless Coffin, just as I imagined it. Inigo asked me if I could think of any improvement and I very flippantly suggested weird music and animated psychedelic gifs, which he duly added. It’s quite a trip and you can see it here: http://84.fanthoman.com

I love the way our readers have become involved in the creative process. In a sense the reader or viewer is always a part of that process. No one ever reads the same book as someone else, or sees the same movie or hears the same music, but with the Coffin, the involvement has become more proactive. I love it and in many ways The Bulletproof Coffin has become the most important piece of work I’ve been involved with. I hope Shaky feels the same.

And by the way, we promise not to sue anyone who recreates that fourth issue of The Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred in any way, shape or form. It’s all yours to mess with in any way you want, provided you make the result available for free.

Cowboys and Insects © David Hine & Shaky Kane

We are now working on Cowboys and Insects, which is a whole other kind of science-fiction that draws on 1950’s B-movies for inspiration. It will make its appearance in June on David Lloyd’s digital site Aces Weekly. It’s a natural outlet for Shaky’s work. Now you can see his art the way it was meant to be. Shaky tells me he’s been taking the opportunity to turn the brightness on the colour up to eleven.

downthetubes: Above anything else, what one piece of advice would you offer aspiring comic creators?

David: I spend too much time telling people to work on their craft. That is important of course, but there is too much highly crafted, efficiently sterile work out there. Be original. Look at everything, soak up everything, from every medium, every genre, let it percolate in your head and then turn off the personal censor and let it all out.

• Thanks to David for his time. You can keep up to date with latest news on David's work on his blog and find links to his work in print at Waitingfortrade.com or on davidhine.tumblr or @hinedavid (Twitter)

•  Mark Stafford's Hocus Baloney (blog)

Radio interviews with Al Davison, David Hine, Tom Humberstone and Tony Lee

Panel Borders: From small press to mainstream

In a panel discussion recorded at SCI-FI-LONDON, the London International festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film, guest presenter Matt Badham talks to comic creators David Hine, Al Davison, Tom Humberstone and Tony Lee about starting their careers in independent comics and how that influenced their style and choices when breaking into the 'mainstream' industry. (Edited by Alex Fitch)

• 8.30am, Monday 22nd April, repeated 3pm, Thursday 25th April, Resonance 104.4 FM / streamed at www.resonancefm.com / extended podcast after first broadcast at panelborders.wordpress.com


• Last week's episode featuring interview with Louis Roskosch about The Adventures of Leeroy and Popo, and Matt Fitch and Mark Lewis about Frogman is available online now.

Cooking up a treat: Busiek, Hine, Lloyd and Emerson join Lakes International Comic Art Festival line-up

Kendal's Lakes International Comic Art Festival has revealed more of the writers and artists who will be taking part in the event later this year.

The festival, which will run from 18-20 October 2013 in Kendal in Cumbria, now has a guest list running to more than 50 writers and artists from the United States, Europe, South America and the UK.

The latest guests announced by the festival again show the diversity of the medium including superheroes, comedy, adaptations of historical novels and innovative new story-telling.

American Kurt Busiek has won over two dozen industry awards for his work.  He has had runs on Avengers, Spider-Man, Superman, Conan and others, and has co-created books such as Thunderbolts and Arrowsmith.

He is best known for his work on the multiple-award-winning Astro City and Marvels.  A commercial and critical hit, Marvels tells the story of superheroes like Spider-Man and the X-Men from the point of view of an ordinary man on the street.  Stan Lee described it as 'a giant leap forward, bringing us to a new plateau in the evolution of illustrated literature'.

David Hine is a British writer who has worked with Marvel on comics such as X-Men and Spider-Man, as well as writing Batman comics for DC.  He is currently working with fellow festival guest Doug Braithwaite on Storm Dogs and has also worked on a comic adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel The Man Who Laughs, illustrated by Mark Stafford, which is published this week by SelfMadeHero.

Hunt Emerson has received several comics industry awards and in 2000 was named one of the 75 Masters of European Comics by the CNBDI, the noted French comics Academy.  He has produced witty adaptations of stories such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, as well as two books based on the ideas of Victorian philosopher John Ruskin. His latest book is a riotous take on Dante's Inferno.

David Lloyd, who launched a new digital comic Aces Weekly, last year, is the well-known illustrator and co-creator of V For Vendetta. He has also produced stories for the Hellblazer series, Aliens, Marlowe, War Stories, and the acclaimed crime thriller, Kickback.

Pete Doherty is an artist and colourist who is particularly known for his work on Judge Dredd.  He is currently colouring Jupiter’s Legacy, a new epic tale by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely.

Stephen Collins began cartooning for The Times in 2003, and has since won several awards, including the Jonathan Cape/Observer Graphic Short Story Prize 2010. He contributes regular comics to the Guardian Weekend and Prospect magazine. His first graphic novel The Gigantic Beard that was Evil is published by Jonathan Cape next month.

Warren and Gary Pleece’s Montague Terrace, published by Jonathan Cape last month,  is a series of surreal vignettes based in and around a decrepit London block of flats. The Observer's Rachel Cooke said the Pleece brothers' black and white drawings are 'brisk and economical, they have an energy that pulls you along. Their story gets under your skin.'

Steven Harris is a British cartoonist and writer, based in London. His first graphic novel Eustace was also published by Jonathan Cape last month.

Artist Rob Davis is best known for reinventing Roy of the Rovers and for drawing Judge Dredd. He has recently finished illustrating a second volume of Don Quixote stories, which will be published by SelfMadeHero in May.

Belgian Ivan Petrus is the author of The Nieuport Gathering, a moving historical comic book on World War One, in which a Belgian, French and English soldier meet each other on the front line, starting a friendship that will transcend life and death.

Nicola Streeten is an illustrator and the co-creator of Laydeez do Comics, a graphic novel forum with a focus on the new wave of comic work based on the drama of everyday life.  Her first graphic book, Billy, Me & You, was published by Myriad in October 2011.

Gareth Brookes is known for his unusual approach to materials, using embroidery, textiles, lino-cut print, stenciling and even pressed flowers in his work.  In 2012 he was the winner of the First Graphic Novel Competition. Myriad Editions is due to publish his book The Black Project in September 2013.

The guests who have already been announced include Ed Brubaker, Jose Munoz, Posy Simmonds, Viz creators Simon Thorp and Graham Dury, Judge Dredd creators John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, comics journalist Joe Sacco and Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard. The founder patrons of the festival are Bryan and Mary Talbot, and Sean Phillips.

The Lakes International Comic Art Festival aims to make the whole town of Kendal part of the festival, like the popular festivals on the continent in places such as Angouleme.

There will be a wide range of talks, special live drawing events, workshops, films, exhibitions and a kids’ zone.  Some of the events, including the exhibitions and the kids’ zone will also be free.

The festival's Comics Clock Tower will champion breaking talent from all styles and genres.  Many of the big name writers and artists visiting the festival will also be appearing in the Comics Clock Tower over the weekend.

Festival Director Julie Tait says: “We want to turn Kendal into a comics town for the festival weekend and we are looking forward to welcoming all the writers and artists who will be coming here from across the UK, the US and Europe.

"Whether you call them comics, graphic novels or sequential art, this is a medium that is growing in popularity, so this new festival couldn’t be starting at a better time.

"We want to give the comic fans the chance to discover something new and encourage others who think comics are just for kids to pick up a graphic novel and find out what they're missing.

"We'll be celebrating people like Kurt Busiek and David Hine who have made their names taking forward the stories of some of our most famous superheroes.  We'll also be exploring the work of the many talented young British graphic novelists who are using comic art to tell a huge range of exciting and innovative stories.”
​
More details about the new event are available at www.comicartfestival.com.  It is also possible to keep up to date with plans for the festival by following @comicartfest on Twitter or by liking the Lakes International Comic Art Festival Facebook page. Tickets will go on sale 13 May 2013.

David Hine, Mark Stafford create graphic adaptation of Victor Hugo's "The Man Who Laughs"

The Man Who Laughs, Victor Hugo’s scathing indictment of the injustice and inequality within Britain’s political system, is the latest graphic adaptation from publishers SelfMadeHero, released in paperback this month.

David Hine and Mark Stafford have produced a gripping adaptation of Hugo's story of abduction, mutilation, loss and prejudice that captures the macabre social satire of the original novel.

Set in 18th-century England, Gwynplaine is the two-year old heir to a rebel lord, who is abducted upon the orders of a vindictive monarch, who has him mutilated (to produce a permanent, grisly smile), then abandoned. After years of living frugally he is re-introduced to the aristocratic life, and resolves to become the voice of the voiceless, whether he is heard or not.

Victor Hugo wasone of the most prominent French writers and political figures of the 19th century, perhaps best nown for writing Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. His influence can be found in the works of other great 19th-century European novelists such as Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

He wrote The Man Who Laughs while in exile on the Channel Islands. The book has been celebrated in film and theatre, but comic fans will know Batman creator Bob Kane found inspiration for the Joker’s look in the story – and Brian Bolland equally considered the silent film adaptation ideal source material for his own rendition of the macabre villain in Batman: The Killing Joke.

The adaptation is the work of David Hine and Mark Stafford. Hine has worked in comics since the 1980s, and has written for DC (Detective Comics, Arkham Unhinged), Marvel (Spider-Man Noir, X-Men, Silent War) Image (Storm Dogs), and 2000AD (Tao De Moto). It was during his work on Batman that he discovered the appearance of the Joker was based upon Gwynplaine’s likeness in the 1928 silent film adaptation of The Man Who Laughs.

Artist Mark Stafford is a cartoonist in residence at London’s Cartoon Museum. He has collaborated with Costa Award-winning creator Bryan Talbot on the Cherubs! graphic novels, painting dead hillbillies and writing about cinema for Electric Sheep magazine. Stafford previously collaborated with Hine on "The Colour Out of Space” for SelfMadeHero’s critically acclaimed Lovecraft Anthology Vol. I.

• The Man Who Laughs by David Hine and Mark Stafford is on sale from 18th April 2013

• SelfMadeHero: www.selfmadehero.com

• David Hine's official site: www.waitingfortrade.com

• Mark Stafford: www.hocus-baloney.com

Radio show with David Hine, Mark Stafford and Catherine Anyango

Panel Borders: Darkness and inhumanity in literature

Continuing our month of shows about comics and literature, Alex Fitch talks to a trio of graphic novelists about adapting classic 19th century novels as sequential art. In a panel discussion recorded at Comica Comiket in 2011, David Hine and Mark Stafford discuss their adaptation of Victor Hugo's The Man who Laughs, a tale that has already cast a long shadow over comics, as the lead character Gwynplaine was supposedly an influence on the creation of The Joker. Also, fine artist Catherine Anyango discusses her visual approach to her 2010 adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, best known as the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, which sees her intricate pencilling style married with both text from the original novel and also Conrad’s The Congo Diary.

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness adapted by David Zane Mairowitz and Catherine Anyango is available now from SelfMadeHero / Victor Hugo's The Man who Laughs adapted by David Hine and Mark Stafford is released in April 2013.

6pm, Sunday 17th February 2013, repeated 4.30pm, Tuesday 19th February, Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com / podcast at www.panelborders.wordpress.com

Please note, Resonance FM is currently running its annual fundraiser to help pay for the station's continuing programme of refurbishments. As well as variety of film and music related items in the auction, comic books and graphic novels include a hardcover omnibus of Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars which includes a unique sketch of The Hulk by David Lloyd, a 1st edition UK TPB of Watchmen including a sketch by John Higgins and framed signed comics by Gail Simone, Dave Gibbons, Jonathan Ross, Frazer Irving and many more.
Please visit http://resonancefm.com/auction2013 for more info.

Quitely does it - New X-Men artist latest Expo guest

Renowned comic book artist Frank Quitely will be joining the hundreds of top comic artists and writers assembling at MCM Expo’s famous Comic Village this weekend. Best known for his collaborations with Grant Morrison on titles such as New X-Men, WE3, All-Star Superman and Batman and Robin as well as his work with Mark Millar on The Authority, Quitely will be attending the show on Saturday to meet fans and sign autographs.

The Expo has also announced that two more top comic creators, David Hine and Rufus Dayglo, will be at the London Comic Con on Sunday.

David Hine is best known as a writer on Marvel titles such as X-Men: The 198, Civil War: X-Men and Silent War, while he also worked on manga series Poison Candy and the Two-Face issue of DC’s Joker's Asylum.

Currently working alongside Alan Martin as the main artist on the Tank Girl series, Rufus Dayglo draws for 2000 AD and Titan Books in the UK as well as IDW Publishing and Image Comics in the United States.

• The downthetubes review of the MCM Expo held in May 2010 is here.

• For more Comic Village info, visit: www.londonexpo.com/comicvillage

• For London MCM Expo tickets please visit: www.mcmexpogroup.com/store

• To stay up-to-date with Expo news, follow us on www.twitter.com/mcmexpo and facebook.com/mcmexpo

Exeter Comics Expo Announced

Ever a glutton for punishment, Mike Allwood, considered the driving force behind the Bristol Comics Expo team, has announced he's also working on a one-day Comics Expo in Exeter, Devon, for early 2010, with artists Mike Ploog, David Lloyd and David Hine already lined up as just some of the guests.

Organised in association with the local council-supported Animated Exeter and Colchester-based Ace Comics, the Exeter Expo will take place on Saturday 13th February 2010 at the Southgate Mercure Hotel.

Headlining the event will be David Lloyd, who has a bibliography that spans from V for Vendetta to Hellblazer and his own crime-noir thriller, Kickback, and who has brought visual life to the work of Alan Moore, Jamie Delano, Garth Ennis and Grant Morrison, among others.

Mike Ploog is best known for his work on Marvel Comics' 1970s Man Thing, Monster of Frankenstein and Planet of the Apes series, and as the initial artist on the features Ghost Rider and Werewolf by Night. After many years away from the world of comics Mike returned with the critically acclaimed Thicker Than Blood series for Full Circle Publications.

David Hine has written for all the major US Comic companies, including Civil War and Son of M for Marvel, Brave and the Bold and Joker’s Asylum for DC Comics and is now working with fellow Brit Shaky Kane on their new Bullet Proof Coffin title from Image, which will be previewed at the Expo.


Also aboard are 2000AD and Wildstorm artist Lee Garbett, designer of the New Batgirl, Judge Dredd and Green Arrow Year One's Jock, writer Rob Williams and Shaky Kane.

• The Exeter Expo will run from 11.00am - 5pm. Entry £1 under 12'S Free with adult. For more info on the event, which will also feature retailers such as Ace Comics, Impact Books, Krackers Game Store and many others, and a small press section organised by Fallen Angel Media, a consortium of fringe artists and writers based in Bristol and the surrounding areas visit www.fantasyevents.org. A dedicated web site will go live in November. Contact comicexpo@fsamil.net

Tube Surfing: Billy the Cat, Cradlegrave and Cla$$ War for iPhone

• Over on his brilliant site Bronze Age of Blogs, Pete Doree has posted a short article on DC Thomson's much-loved teen hero Billy the Cat, prompting artist Sean Phillips to respond with this fab drawing of William Grange in action...

• Cradlegrave, from John Smith and Edmund Bagwell, has proven to be one of the most popular stories in 2000AD for years. Over on the 2000AD Review Siet, thanks to John Smith, you can now read the script for episode 9 - so you can see how it made the transfer to the page. Warning: there are spoilers and there is bad language...

• Geek Syndicate is running a competition to win a signed copy of ComX's upcoming superhero-styled Forty-Five comic, due for release in December.
Forty-Five is a series of Superhero interviews documented by James Stanley. As a soon-to-be father, James wants to find out what lies in store for his family if his unborn child turns out to have a Superpower.
Forty-Five features Forty-Five different industry artists, all having just one page to capture the essence of each interview. More info on the Com.X web site: www.comxcomics.com

• Talking of Com.X, a company never averse to innovation, they've just announced, in collaboration with Iconology, Inc., that Com.x comics are now available for download from the iTunes store. The first wave of releases features Cla$$war #1, #2 and Path. These will be followed by the rest of the Cla$$war series and other, soon to be announced, titles.
The application is available for £0.59 or ¢99, dependent upon your location. Once you have purchased the app, which enables you to read the comics, you will be able to download Cla$$war #1 and the first chapter of Path free of charge. If you like what you see, you can then download the rest of the books for 59p/99¢ and £1.79/$2.99 for Cla$$war and Path, respectively.

• 2000AD #1646 features a new Future Shock with art by the legendary John Cooper, from a script by Mike Carroll.

• David Hine and Shaky Kane are working on a new Image comic called Bulletproof Coffin.

• Over on the BBC web site writer Mark Gatiss and radio producer Simon Hollis offer a revealing insight into their love of Doctor Who Target books, the focus of their recently-aired Radio 4 documentary, recent Radio 4 documentary, 'On The Outside It Looked Like An Old Fashioned Police Box'. They rightfully sing the praises of those with painted art covers...

• Over on the Coventry Telegraph's web site, David Bentley has an interview with Coventry-based artist and author Al Davison, who is taking Tennant's popular Time Lord to a whole new dimension. Al's new Doctor Who comic for IDW Publishing will consist of alternating two-part and four-part stories, all written by Tony Lee.
Al is drawing the two-parters while the artist on the four-part arcs ironically has the same name as the new Doctor Who, Matt Smith.

The ongoing series is launched with Al's first story arc, called Silver Scream and sees the Time Lord investigating an unearthly mystery in 1920s Hollywood.

"The first arc has already had a very good response, it's a very strong Doctor Who story," Al says. "Tony has really captured David Tennant's voice and personality: you read it and it really does sound like Tennant. Read the full interview, which covers much of Al's prestigious comics career Coventry Telegraph - The Geek Files.)

• Swindon will play host to the Swin City Comics Retro Fair on 26 September, to be held at Wharf Green. More details here on Facebook.

• After a few months concentrating on his The Spine Chillers webcomic, artist Ben Clark has moved hisMagic Beans! to a new location on Blogger. Expect the usual Clark madness to ensue in the coming days!

• Talking of web comics, Forbidden Planet International honcho Kenny Penman has been talking to Richard Cowdry and Daniel Locke recently, with the result that they’re going to be doing the new resident strip for the FPI blog. First Somersault went live recently and should be every Tuesday, just like they did with Darryl Cunningham’s Super-Sam.

• Complied with thanks to Matthew Badham

Creator Signings in Bedford

This coming Saturday (27th June), an all-star line up of talent will be in Bedford attending the five year anniversary signing for comic shop Close Encounters.

Leah Moore and John Reppion (Dracula), David Hine (Strange Embrace), Adi Granov (Iron Man), Glen Fabry (Preacher) and lots more are scheduled to put in appearances.

• The signing starts at 1pm at Close Encounters, 59 Midland Road, Bedford, Bedfordshire. Tel: 01234 270 777. Click here for a map and other contact details

Frazer Irving Goes Orbital

The great Frazer Irving, doodler of the dark and diabolical including Judge Death, From Grace and amazing writer David Hine, currently writing on Spider-Man Noir but whose credits stretch back to the 1980s with strips for Crisis, 2000AD and Doctor Who, will be signing at London's Orbital Comics on 28th March at 3.00pm.

British comic artist and musician Irving broke into comics via 2000AD and since then has drawn" for all the big shots in comics" as well as playing in a band called the Atom Heart Brothers.

Orbital Comics
8 Great Newport Street
London WC2H 7JA
Tel: 0207 2400591
Email: comics@orbitalcomics.com

Hine, Braithwaite on Brave and Bold

British creators David Hine and Dougie Braithwaite team up on DC Comics Brave and the Bold title for the next four issues, delivering a story which begins with a strange child channeling the Green Lantern oath and scrawls it on a wall, a summons from forces located in another galaxy.

A fantastic civilization that has its own Green Lantern requires immediate aid and their only chance for survival rests in the hands of Hal Jordan and the Phantom Stranger.

The comic is available from all good comic shops in the UK and the US.

"This is one I'm really proud of," David posted recently."If you were into Brave and Bold in the Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams period, that's the spirit we were trying to recapture. Like those old B and B stories, you can pick it up cold and enjoy it for what it is, a good old-fashioned story with a solid science-fiction background, plenty of drama and some very cool depictions of alien races and environments from Dougie."

The story was Dougie's last job before he signed his exclusive deal for Marvel Comics.

"I've known Dougie for many years," says David. "I actually inked one of his strips for Marvel UK back when Dougie was first starting out and we've been wanting to collaborate again for a long time, so we pitched this book at the beginning of 2007. It has actually been finished for a while but we had to wait for a slot on the Brave and Bold monthly.

Over on Newsarama, David explains both he and Dougie are both big fans of the body of work that Neal Adams produced for DC in the late 1960s and early '70s. "We wanted to recapture something of the excitement of those books: The Brave and the Bold, the Deadman series in Strange Adventures, the Green Lantern and Green Arrow series written by Denny O’Neil.

"If we’ve been successful, the story will recreate the appeal that DC comics had for Dougie and I when we were kids. While the Waid/Perez run on The Brave and the Bold is a tip of the hat to the Silver Age, we’re looking to acknowledge our love of the watershed era at the end of the '60s, when realism began to enter mainstream comics, spearheaded by Neal Adams. I guess what you’d call the Bronze Age, although I don’t like that term. It sounds like a poor third place after Gold and Silver. For me it’s the real Golden Age.

"We wanted to do a story we could really sink our teeth into and create a whole alien world as a setting. Dougie's art on this one is some of the best work he has done."

The story will run for four months, to be followed by J. Michael Straczynski as new regular Brave and Bold writer.

David is now busy with many other projects, while Dougie, whose recent projects have included Secret Invasion: Thor, continues with Marvel projects.

"Right now I’m concentrating on my writing for an upcoming vampire book from Radical Comics," David told Comics Bulletin recenty. " That’s a really exciting project. Radical have a rare enthusiasm and vision for the comic book medium. They look set to become one of the major players in the next couple of years.

"I'm also developing some things for Top Cow and Image. One of those will be a one-shot for Elephantmen, which I’m drawing as well as writing. Richard Starkings, the creator of Elephantmen is the only man who can persuade me back to the drawing board these days and he’s foolishly letting me loose on his pride and joy.

"I also want to do something with the genius of British comics, Shaky Kane. We’re still in the early stages of throwing ideas at one another. I’m pretty sure it will involve dead superheroes, a bulletproof coffin and a cave girl in a bikini.

• Click the box left to order Brave and the Bold #19 from amazon.com sellers
• Read an interview with David Hine about the story on Newsarama
• Read an interview with David Hine about Brave and the Bold on Comics Bulletin