Back from BICS 2008...

Greetings!

Well, technically I was back Sunday night. It's a long story. Long story short - my infuriating monitor (See earlier Blogs) finally gave up the ghost just after I'd managed to transfer all the photos and scans over to it on Sunday night. And so, while this entry was started then it's taken this long to get it out via my Laptop and a touch of swearing.

I had a really great weekend. The Birmingham show is in a really good place right now. It's big enough to be able to attract people like Cassaday, Coipel, and Golden to appear but still on a scale which gives you the chance to actually get things signed by, drawn by and actually speak to the guys. Which of course I did.

I didn't make it to the launch party sadly (Due to late work and travel) so I missed the wonders of Liam Sharp and Charlie Adlard's "Giant-Sized Band-Thing". Luckily, for you and I Liam has posted up some YouTube links over at Millarworld. Go to YouTube and search for "Giant-Sized Band-Thing" or click on the link below to experience for yourself what Mr Sharp describes as:

"The worlds most talented group!!!

Uhm, y'know, artistically that is. In that we can all draw a bit... :b"

Giant-Sized Band-Thing, Live at the launch party

So... it wasn't until Saturday morning that my two cohorts (Hannah and Fliss) and I entered the fray, accompanied a little later by our 2000 AD fanatic, Mike. The Thinktank was a pleasing venue, despite being possessed of some of the weirdest escalators you'll ever encounter. Escalators which appeared to be possessed of a rather temperamental mind of their own. They appeared to go both up and down at will, and never the right way when you wanted them to - leading, rather annoyingly to my missing the first 5-10 minutes of the John Cassaday/Olivier Coipel panel.

Although, to be fair, so did Olivier - that man was in demand, on Sunday! ;D

I had planned to take a hell of a lot of photos across the weekend (By MY standards of documentation) but as it turned out the total number clocked up on the camera was very conservative. Largely because we went to most of the panels in the theatre over the two days (And I feel that there's possibly nothing more off-putting to somebody speaking in front of an audience than a stray camera flash). That said we did try to get a few shots from Saturday morning's Comic Artists Flip Out sketch session, of which the following is the clearest.




From left to right that's Doug Braithwaite, Staz Johnson, Mark Buckingham and at the far end Shane Oakley who filled in for Doug, when he had been delayed.

This session was a lot of fun, with the audience being given raffle tickets on entry, taking requests for sketches from the audience, and then a number being drawn for who'd receive each each sketch. Now it is true that it seemed that Shane Oakley did not truly know how to draw some of the requests fired at him - but his renditions of Iron Man and the Hulk were brilliant fun to watch in progress. As was Mark Buckingham's Doctor Octopus "Look, no hands!" toilet sketch - which Fliss was lucky enough to win.

In the afternoon we decided to go and bother Paul Cornell for a signing. Arming myself with a copy of Captain Britain & MI:13 #1 (Well, what else would it be ;D ) and Fliss with her copy of #5 for signing, that's exactly what we did.

Now granted Paul was at a slight disadvantage that while he was signing he also had John Cassaday to his right doing sketches, and there was a bit of confusion in line as to exactly who was queuing for whom. But amongst the many people queuing up with Astonishing X-Men and Planetary trades I was very pleased to see plenty others with issues of Captain Britain & MI:13, Fantastic Four: True Story and Paul's Wisdom series – which pleased me in particular, due to those being sported both in singles and in trades. I loved that series, and while it has taken a while for the good word to spread about it I'm very glad to see that it has.

I'm sure you'll all be pleased to hear that Paul comes across as being just as nice a bloke in person as he does in interview. We did give him a bit of a conundrum in signing Fliss' cover (#5, brilliant though it is, is largely black. As was Paul's pen ;D ) but he was a good sport, signed my cover, and was even good enough to pose for this rather cod photo.


And yes, that is John Cassaday on the left of the photo. Oh and please note:



It's "Mr. Sword" now. Paul says so. Show respect accordingly. ;D

Cornell later joined up with Dave Gibbons, Mark Buckingham and Doug Braithwaite for one of the highlights of the weekend, Geek Syndicate podcast's Brits in American comics panel. In which we discovered a number of things - including Dave Gibbons' lesser known past, posing as in house superhero Big E, for Tornado magazine. It was actually a pretty interesting panel providing some insights into the British Invasion of American comics (Although as Gibbons pointed out in many ways it wasn't so much 'an invasion' as American publishers contacting them, with some very fair incentives). In many ways it was a shame that this one was limited to 45 minutes (As were all the panels). When you get four creators such as these in a room together you really want to give them as long a time as they're willing to offer. There were still several hands up for questions as time was being called (Mine included) and another 15-20 minutes would have allowed for that.

A lot of praise was given for 2000 AD here, and while that's great I did want to counterbalance things a little by bring up the subject of Marvel UK. Mark Buckingham had worked for M:UK as had Doug Braithwaite (As was mentioned briefly) and I had wanted to ask how effective a route into the American market they felt that had been, and as to whether they thought how much of its passing had been a factor in the eventual decline of the British comic Industry through the 90s.

For those interested - and I think it might be of some particular interesting to some of our American readers - Geek Syndicate have put the whole panel up online as a podcast. You can find it on their site (http://geeksyndicate.libsyn.com/), or via searching for Geek Syndicate on iTunes.

Mow, Going back to Mark Buckingham, yes, he did indeed work for Marvel UK. He's far better known for his work on Fables, Hellblazer (and Marvelman, for those with longer memories) but I decided to go and surprise/confuse him by queuing up on Sunday morning and asking him to sketch something slightly more obscure - which is largely how I introduced myself. He seemed quite curious as to what the request might be, but when I mentioned it was a character from a book he did with Nick Vince he very quickly realised what I was talking about.

"Ah! Immortalis," he replied, rather enjoying the word. I knew from there that my request was okay. ;D


Regular readers of this Blog will probably know of my enthusiasm for Mortigan Goth. Back in 1993 Marvel UK did a short line of more adult focused, Vertigo style books, under the sub-imprint of "Marvel Frontier Comics". Mortigan Goth: Immortalis was one of the books which was part of that. You can read more about the character here: Who the hell is Mortigan Goth?

Mark said that it was nice that somebody still remembered the character. I think he was quite surprised when I told him that Mortigan had actually been referenced a couple of months ago in Captain Britain and MI:13 (It's in #2, if you were wondering, when Wisdom, Spitfire and John encounter Excalibur for the first time). I chatted for a while with Mark, his other half and Manolis Vamvounis of Comic Nexus (Whom I've spoken to many a time online, and even judged in Comixfan's Supervillain Idol contest earlier this year, but amusingly neither of us actually realised we were talking to each other until after the con.) as he drew the sketch. He came across as a genuinely top bloke, and said that he would have no problem with my displaying the sketch on this blog. So here it is (Click to enlarge):



Not bad, eh?

Other highlights of the weekend included the John Cassaday and Olivier Coipel panel (Again, I wished they'd been given a little more time), Paul Gravett's Incredibly Strange Comics (If you are a fan of sites like superdickery.com, you'd have loved this) and watching the two heats of the BICS 2000 AD pitch competition. It really was a great weekend all round. I was utterly knackered by the end of it, of course, but that's all part of the fun! A big thanks to Shane Chebsey and the guys for organizing this one. I look forward to next year.

One more item of news though. Going back a couple of Blogs you'll remember that I was talking about the (Sort of) announcement that Marvel would be putting out a Captain Britain Omnibus in 2009. Well, on Sunday I got talking with the guys on the Panini UK stand, and specifically the guy who is currently editing the Captain Britain: Birth of a Legend volumes which reprint the earliest Captain Britain continuity. Embarrassingly, in the days since the con I have completely forgotten this guy's name. Embarrassing because I spent a good twenty minutes speaking to him (A tall guy with long brown tied back brown hair, and eyeliner) about Captain Britain, Death's Head, the upcoming Dragons Claws trade even Night Raven (Which apparently cannot be collected right now, due to copyright/creative problems he didn't feel it would be professional to go into).

We got talking about the Captain Britain reprint trades. Vol 3 will be out shortly, and they are going to be collecting the Black Knight/Captain Britain stories Steve Parkhouse and Steve Dillon did for the UK Hulk Comic. I then brought up the subject of the Captain Britain Omnibus, saying that of course we don't really know what that's going to be collecting.

To which he responded that he did, because Marvel US had called him the previous week asking for the files! You see, as many of you may already know, a lot of the Marvel UK original art for many books simply doesn't exist any more (A fair chunk of artwork also ended up being chucked out when the Marvel UK imprint years ended, and the office was cleared out) and so the guys at Panini have been working really bloody hard to find original issues of Captain Britain, scan them and clean them up for publishing. And they've been doing a great job.

So what does this mean for the Omnibus? well, I guess it depends what material Marvel US already have and when they intend to release the book. Panini have been putting out a Captain Britain trade one a year for the last three. The scanning of all this past material is still very much a work in progress. We'll have to wait and see just what turns out to BE in the omnibus, but if scanning is underway for those Black Knight and Captain Britain stories (Especially with the two being reunited now in Captain Britain and MI:13) I think it's a fair bet that Marvel would be pretty likely to include them.

My own personal reckoning is that if we see a Captain Britain Omnibus released very early into 2009 I would imagine it to probably cover all of the Captain Britain Weekly and Super Spider-man and Captain Britain stories, and finish with the Marvel Team-Up issue with Spider-man (Written by Chris Claremont and drawn by John Byrne). If the Omnibus is released a little later into the year we'll almost certainly get those Hulk Comic stories and maybe more besides (After all, Marvel do have the David Thorpe/Alan Moore/Alan Davis stories which follow, as they follow directly on and They've reprinted them before in the 90s).

It's not a definite answer, but it's a bit more info in the right direction. In the meantime the Panini volumes collect a lot of good stuff, and American readers may be able to purchase them through Amazon.

Anyway, that's me for the time being. I received a fair few sage nods from people at the Birmingham Show - Which either means I may have seen some of you, or simply that I'm the kind of person people like to nod sagely at. I'm not sure which. But if you were there I hope you had a good time.

Speak soon folks

Mark

(MR. Sword)

Who the Hell is: MORTIGAN GOTH?

In comparison to my Who the hell is: DIGITEK piece (where I featured a character who while sound as a concept, I felt required a lot of work creatively in order to fit into modern comics) the character of Mortigan Goth is a very different story.



Back in the early 90s, shortly before the demise of Marvel UK, a new sub-imprint of the brand was introduces - Marvel Frontier Comics. Frontier comics differed in approach to the rest of the Marvel UK line in as much as, primarily, they did not deal with Superheroes per se, but with characters closer tied to the more fantasy related areas of Marvel Comics and the occult. In that respect it is perhaps possible to draw a parallel between these books and DC comics' Vertigo imprint - in a way which Marvel US's MAX line has never quite managed. Creatively, as Marvel UK came to a close, it seemed more likely that in all likelihood this was really the direction which the imprint would have continued in, had it continued itself. It was something very different, and infinitely held more possibilities than the standard hero comics could offer. The imprint launched in 1993, with four limited series, and later a one shot anthology book - Marvel Frontier Comics Special #1. Among the people involved with the line, were the likes of Simon Jowett, Charlie Adlard, Liam Sharp, David Hine and even D'Israeli. It really makes you wonder just what could have been.




Anyway, among those limited series was the book I'm choosing to focus on, here, Mortigan Goth: Immortalis, by Nick Vince and Mark Buckingham. Nick's name you might recognise from his work on Marvel UK's Warheads, and Buckingham from everything from Marvelman to Fables. Mortigan, on the other hand, you probably don't. Aside from this four issue mini, a prequel story in the Frontier Comics Special, and an entry in a recent Marvel Official Handbook, Mortigan has not appeared anywhere else.


And frankly, I have wonder how and why? Because, as I see it, here we have one completely rounded character, with ties to the mainstream Marvel Universe through Doctor Strange and to Marvel UK via the Falsworth family.

And, of course, because he's pretty bloody interesting. ;-)


Basically, at its simplest, Mortigan's story is one of a Faustian pact made with Mephisto.


(Note: While in the mainstream Marvel Universe Mephisto has, at best, been a bit of a pantomime villain, this was not the case across his many appearances in titles for Marvel UK. Here he very much appears as The Devil, with all the powers that provides. He's the kind of devil who plays sick little games with mankind, daily, and in a Clive Barker-esque way. Not so nice.)


Mortigan Goth's story begins in 1349 AD, in England, with the country firmly in the grip of the plague. Mortigan is returning to his hometown, after some years away, and is overwhelmed with despair at seeing thousands dying of plague as he makes is way home. Feeling sure that God has abandoned mankind, he finds himself pleading to the devil, to spare his life.


And curiously, the devil actually answers.


Mephisto is interested in Mortigan, because he sees in him a soul which is bright enough to inspire hope in others - and, well, that's the kind of thing that could really throw a spanner in the works for him right now. So, he proposes that he and Mortigan play chess together (Anybody else having a Bill & Ted flashback, right now?), gambling Mortigan's soul for the chance of immortality. Only, much to Mephisto's amazement and annoyance Goth actually wins. Immortality is his.

But naturally it doesn't end there.

When Mortigan returns home he finds his mother dying of plague, and that his sister has been hanged by the local priest, for having murdering her infant. An infant who, as it turns out, was fathered by the priest. It's all a little bit messed up...

But being the good son and brother he is, Mortgan goes to sort the priest out, only for Mephisto to stop him. Apparently he has other plans, for the priest. He has promised him Immortality, also, in exchange for the killing the unknowing townsfolk - all of whom have begun to worship Mephisto in hope that they too will be saved. To seal the deal, Mephiosto demands the priest slays the youngest infant of the town. But Mortigan steps in. He offers his soul in exchange for the child's. He's immortal now! What the hell does he have to fear? It's not going to kill him.


Bad move. Because Mephisto takes his soul, and leaves Mortigan to be stoned into unconsciousness by the now angry and despairing townsfolk. He awakes weeks later, in a plague pit, the whole town having died.


Mephisto then appears to him again, taunts him for his choice, and names him 'Immortalis'. Mortigan vows that he will spend his immortal life fighting the devil, at every turn. But Mephisto tells him that for every hurt he tries to do him, he will torture his soul at thousand times. Mephisto's curse is that Mortigan will be forced to watch mankind's suffering for the whole of history, knowing that he could help, but daring not to for what Mephisto will do if he tries.


And there's your pathos.


So, other than having a surname which is now more associated with overly emotional teenagers than the macabre, what do we know about Mr Goth which is of practical interest?


Well, Mortigan is immortal - although, while he cannot die he does feel pain, and can suffer injury. It just won't prove fatal.


He travels around the world, and has encountered a number of Marvel characters in his past. He has also gathered a rather impressive knowledge of the occult - partly in the hope that he could use these things against Mephisto, partly because... well, what else do you do to pass the time?


Throughout the four issue mini (Which I would also like to say is actually pretty well-written, and stands the test of time far better than many Marvel UK titles) the focus is mainly on a story in the present day (or at least present day for 1993), with most of the origins of the character shown in flashbacks. That central story surrounds rumours that Mortigan has been travelling the world, and killing off other immortal. Doctor Strange, who has known Mortigan for many years, travels to England to speak to him, at the one address where he is most likely to be found; Falsworth Manor - Home to one Jacqueline Falsworth, the woman who is better known as the British superhero Spitfire (who fought alongside Captain America and the Sub-mariner as part of the ww2 team The Invaders).




(As a note to fit this story into continuity, at this point Jacqueline has not yet had the second blood transfusion from the original Human Torch, which made her the sprightly young thing we've recently seen in New Invaders or Ed Brubaker's Captain America. She's a woman very much in her late 60s, at this point, and long since retired as a hero. Doctor Strange is also without many of his original powers at this point, having refused to serve the Vishanti in the War of the Seven Spheres storyline, in his own book. )



Only the problem, when you deal with the Falsworths, is that you inevitably end up dealing with the legacy of the other half of the Falsworth family. You know, the half that happen to be vampires...

And that forms the second story running through the series. Back in the 1940s Mortigan Goth became a close family friend of Falsworths. They even gave him his own wing of the house to stay in. They knew that he was immortal - that was never hidden - but it never really became a problem until the arrival at the house of one Katherine Ainsley-Jones, a distant cousin of the Falsworths, in 1940 - having been evacuated from her home in London.

(For our American readers this was because even several years before America joined the war Britain's cities were having the crap bombed out of them on a nightly basis, by German planes hoping to take out munitions factories. Children and teenagers were evacuated from cities, and arrangement was made to have them relocated with families out in the Country, away from possible harm. You probably know all this, but in case you don't, there it is - Historical Sword ;-) )

She fell hopelessly in love with floppy-fringed Mortigan, and he for her. But realising that he could not bear to watch he grow old while he never aged, he left one morning never saying a word.

Heartbroken, Katherine chose to pour her feelings out to her cousin John Falsworth (Jnr), who told her that he might be able to provide a solution. For those of you who do not already know the irony in this, John Falsworth was a vampire - he sided with Germany in both world wars, under the costumed identity Baron Blood.


I think you can probably guess what happened next... ;-)


So, when Mortigan eventually returned to the manor, the newly vampired Katherine threw herself at him, and knowing her now to be immortal as well he even entertained the idea that they could be together. Only he now found her lifeless body to be cold, clammy and... well, a bit dead, really. Angered that even now Mortigan would not be with her be with her, she tried to bite him herself , in the hope of making him a vampire too.


Mortigan awoke four days later, having recovered from the bite, to be told that drinking his blood seemed to have cured Katherine of her vampirism. Though, after being told by Mortigan that he did not love her, and fearing the cure might not be permanent, she left. Destination unknown.


Well, half a century later, guess who's come home - all vamped up, and looking for a cure again? ;-)



And yes, this is the 90s. All vampires look like this. I think it might be the law...


Mortigan, of course, refused to cure her again. It's a pretty torturous existence he's given her and it really is about time she was properly laid to rest. And so - with Mortigan no longer an option - Katherine tries to drink Jacqueline's blood. She, after all, was once cured of vampirism, herself, by a blood transfusion from the original Human Torch. Only drinking her blood makes Katherine burn. Literally. She is consumed by fire and incinerated. A shame, but like I say, this is not a happy superhero tale.


And as I also say, that's not the main story. Somebody has been bumping off immortals, and and as far as onlookers are concerned, whoever is doing it looks like Mortigan. Same hair colour, same build, same androgynous look. It's pretty damning. But as he explains to Stephen Strange (The Doctor, that is, not the bloke from the 80s) he was in San Francisco at the time of these killings - a whole different continent. There's no way it could be him.


Or could it?


You see, while Mortigan had been out walking the world for the past few hundred years, his soul had been trying to escape from hell. At first of course that bright shining soul, that ray of hope, fought nobly - and showed encouraging strength to battle its way out of hell's many circles. Only as the centuries went by it began to be corrupted, twisted, and damaged. It was now Mephisto's plaything.


And you know how vampires are not supposed to be have a reflection in the mirror - because, so the legend goes, they do not have a soul? Well, Mortigan's always been the same. Only now it seems that he does. His soul is being sent through mirrors to kill off immortals who Mephisto has decided to sever contracts with - in exchange for eventually being allowed to extract revenge upon Mortigan himself.



Mortigan encounters his twisted soul springing from a mirror. It tears out his left eye, but tells him that it won't kill him today. It's going to take its time, slowly taking a piece at a time - it wants him to suffer as long as it has had to. But oddly, Mortigan is happy about this. Having lived so long, even though it will be an unpleasant experience, he now knows that one day he will die. And that makes life both sweet and precious to him, once more.


So, that's Mortigan Goth, in a nutshell. It reads extremely well, and had Marvel UK not come to an end I honestly would have hoped that the character would have continued. This series certainly has the feel of a test for either an ongoing or a series of limited series, in the Hellboy model of storytelling. Obviously, in particular with Buckingham's artwork, it's easy to draw potential comparison with DC Vertigo's Hellblazer. He's certainly nowhere near the same character and certainly not so self-enclosed from Marvel continuity, as perhaps John Constantine is from the rest of DC's universe. But the character had potential. Even now, purely from this series, I would not find it out of place if Mortigan turned up at Doctor Stranges front door, in an issue of New Avengers. That's how well-formed a character he is. I just don't think, in 1993/94, Marvel were really ready to embrace anything which wasn't a highly pumped up superhero tale. These days, with Ghost Rider back as an ongoing and mini series for the likes of Blade and Hellstorm, written with a more serious tone in place, times have changed.


He's a character well-formed enough to be believable, but with enough open avenues for new work. I hope that some day we might see him again.