What Are Artists Worth?

Over at CosmicBookNews, comic writer  Mike Luoma has been writing a column called Making It Up, about his experiences creating comics on his own and with artist collaborators.  A few weeks ago he wrote Shut Up and Put Out Yer Comic Book! -- a call to arms giving nutshell basics to creating a comic and getting it out there.

Due to the limited space, the column delivered pretty broad but generally helpful advice... Talk to the artist in your own voice being one prime example.

Writing dialogue, you write in the voices of your characters. That's a given. But your descriptions of each panel should be in YOUR voice. Your panel descriptions are one-way conversations with your artist, whoever they will be. Talk to them, and do your best to describe everything they need to see to tell the story. If you have to give away the ending so that the art is correct in the first panel, do it. Don't surprise your artist. And always remember you are describing static action, not movement. Movement is implied between the frames...

Mike posted a link to his post over at LinkedIn, a business networking site that is finding more comic book people signing on. The response to the LinkedIn was furious focused primarily on one sentence, which has since been removed from the original post.

Basically, Mike was saying that unless it's a true (and by that I mean, pre-negotiated and agreed upon) partnership or collaboration, you should assume you'll be paying your artist. Mike suggested $50 as a fair figure.  Since I knew the article was not an in-depth how to guide, I understood that to mean Mike was just trying to say, be fair to your artist. But reaction was swift as artists took issue with Mike insisting upon such a low page rate.

Soon, the chat exploded into a lengthy exchange discussing everything from status of the artist, work for hire and being up front in all business dealings. I commend all the contributors to the talk for being able (eventually) to move past their initial, emotional responses and move on to passionate debate and civil discussion.

I had planned to provide an overview of the discussion but Mike himself has gone further, providing a blow by blow account of the debate for your enjoyment, with extensive quotes.

You can read it all at Making It Up! - Part 13 - What's An Artist Worth?.

All the points are well worth considering if you're thinking of putting out a comic book.  My takeaway? Be up front and honest in all dealings, realistic in your expections, and save the raging passion for the work not for negotiations.

And waht the hey.  Check out some of Mike's work... Panthea Obscura, Red Hot and Lady Fight: Escalation.

As for how to find artists, writer Liz Argall has  afew suggestionsover at her blog post, How to find a comics artist part 1.

Beavers Up! 

Art Inaction Comics - And lo, there came a Supervisor!

I thought I'd post a comic I did years ago for your enjoyment.

I put out a mini-comic called Art Inaction under my pen name Pinc to give away at my birthday party.  It featured pastiches of original old comic characters (based on familiar archetypes) spouting philosophical/artistic discourse uniquely suited to their art styles as a counterpoint to the action.  Smashed together in a week it was one of the most satisfying things I've ever done.

I enjoyed it so much  I did a few more (learning to check my spelling somewhere along the way) and eventually printed this story below in "Your Comic Here", a sample comic I put together for Ricter Web Printing, who were eager to help comic artists print their wares.

Presenting the inaugural adventure of... Supervisor!

Beavers Up! 

Bendis' Daredevil teaches us to remember the comic reader

I vacillate between enjoying Comic Book Resources When Worlds Collide column and giving it a pass.  Timothy Callahan’s terrific two-part chat on comic book archetypes with author Steven Withrow really sheds intriguing new light on a much discussed, yet much-misunderstood topic. But I’ll have more on that later.  The whole discussion was a decidedly worthy follow-up to Tim’s article on why characters fail to “stick” in comics and stay forever on the sidelines.

Check out Part One here and Part Two here.

But for every interesting discussion at When Worlds Collide about say, Jacques Tardi, I find there are many more chats about the usual suspects we hear about constantly; your Warren Ellis’, your Geoff Johns’, your Frank Millers, your Alan Moores, et al. I’m overloaded with information about the heavy hitters.

Case in point. This week, Tim begins a multi-part look back at Bendis' Daredevil, Part 1: Back to the boards.

Now, I have no stake in this other than as a pure craft issue. As a writer I strive to make what I write effective and enjoyable. But I have to keep the basic form and structure of its presentation in mind at all times. Tim's article raises an interesting point in that regard.

Tim writes of not enjoying Bendis and Alex Maleev’s Daredevil run not so much for the individual stories but “mostly for their contrast to other mainstream comics.” He then summarizes his overall memory of the series thusly.

“In retrospect, it was a series in which nothing happened, except Daredevil hiding out from the paparazzi and then finally getting sent to jail, or so it seemed. And it felt like about 100 issues of that. Dragged out. Not so much bloated, as static. Or incremental.”

With Bendis is now a leading light at the new Marvel Tim has decided to reread the collected run and has found himself re-evaluating it. It’s decompressed brilliance apparently sparkles in collected form. I think it’s terrific that Tim has changed had his mind changed. I delight when I find new things to appreciate in something years after the fact. Bendis is a talented writer.

The interesting thing here is why Tim has changed his mind and now considers Daredevil to be brilliant.

"I was wrong to dismiss Bendis and Maleev's "Daredevil." I was wrong to consider it an interesting failure, or a series that never lived up to its potential. Because reading it on a monthly basis, serialized amidst dozens of other releases, that wasn't really reading "Daredevil." That was experiencing it in tiny doses. That was catching it out of the corner of my eye as the crushing oppressive force of more traditional superhero comics began taking more and more of my attention."

There’s one tiny sticking point where the above statement loses me. I was bothered enough to post the following on the CBR Forum.

Despite how much better Bendis' run may read as a collected work, the fact that it can only be appreciated this way means it was a failure as a serialized release, the way it was originally intended to be read.

if I'm buying a monthly comic that can only be enjoyed once it's collected then it should have been released as a graphic novel because I'm being ripped off.

Please don't label a Bendis hater. I am not dissing Bendis, Alex Maleev or their Daredevil run. I think they are both talented artists.  And as for that particular set of Daredevil stories... I haven’t read it so I’m only going by Tim’s description of the series.

I simply see this as an excellent opportunity to discuss how important it is to give your readers a well-written, well-drawn, well-executed tale at every stage and not use excuses like “Oh, you have to read it all together for it to make sense.”

Now, obviously many people did enjoy Bendis’ run on Daredevil issue by issue. It sold well and is still one of the preeminent runs for the series. For those readers it’s not a failure. But Tim readily admits he wasn’t that into the run as a monthly. It didn’t work for him. The fact that it works as a collected set for Tim is wonderful... even revelatory from a personal standpoint.

But artists... when approaching comics as a craft, the first viewers -- the ones who buy your book month in and month out -- deserve to read something that works right now.

Just something to think to think about when we creators put fingers to keyboard and pen to paper.

Beavers Up! 

Ty Templeton - The Life and Times

Ty at a Paradise Comics signing.

I have been thinking of a career spanning interview with comic creator Ty Templeton for a while now. Ty's mastery of the comic form have been criminally underrated for years. And while I support whole-heartedly efforts to tease Ty, just to keep his head small enough to avoid a painful neck injury, the plain truth is the man lives and breathes comics. He also is one of the most approachable, supportive dudes in the industry and is always ready to share his knowledge. Heck, sometimes he'll even wait till you ask!

And you thought Ty drawing himself as a bunny was creatiive licence, didn't you?




Thankfully, Micheal Fiffe and the new online version of the Comics Journal have saved me the work. While there still needs to be a more in-depth discussion or Ty's contributions to the form, this is a terrific overview of the various eras of Ty Templeton's comic book life.

Here are links to part one, part two, part three, part four and part five.

For more on what's up with Ty, check out Ty Templeton's Art Land, your one-stop resource for all things Ty, hosted by the most awesome Keiron Smith.

Beavers Up!

Top 10 Comic Book Top Ten Lists of 2009!

We all know that year-end top ten lists are the last bastion of the lazy and desperate. An attempt to create content out of previous writings and get some time away from the damn computer to hoist some nog.

And a top ten list to start the new year off? Holy crap, that is even worse.

Any writer who tries that is too big a hack to even do his lazy top ten list when the season calls for it. Talk about deadline issues. They couldn't even come up with the creativity for a list of resolutions? A pox on their houses.

This then, is my start of the year Top Ten List for your enjoyment.

Now that everyone else has done my work for me creating their own lists over the holidays while I was in several countries... er, holidayizing, I can simply cherry pick a selection that I think may brighten your day and illuminate your mind. I also get to show off some writers who have brought me some enjoyment. It's win/win, right? So here's your chance to catch up on what other people think the cool kids should be reading.

TOP TEN TOP TEN LISTS of the DECADE

1 - Let's start with the National Post, who printed their Best Books of the Decade list. Indie comic artist turned literary darling Chester Brown's Louis Riel made the list and they mention the ascent of the graphic novel as well.

But scroll down and you'll find the more interesting "Top Ten": the Top Publishing Stories of the Decade. It's an excellent compendium of the storms that have rocked the publishing world for this first decade of the new millenium.


2 - Inkstuds. I wanted a podcast in here and this is one of the best and longest running, if you count its life on Vancouver radio. For the Inkstuds Best of 2009 comic book wrap-up, host Robin McConnell was joined by a "bevy of comics bloggers": Timothy Hodler from Comicscomics, Sean T. Collins of, wait for it, Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat, and Chris Mautner of Comic Book Resources Robot 6.


3 - Speaking of Robot 6, Chris Mautner and the gang went the extra-mile and have begun posting their list of the 30 Most Important Comics of the Decade. the reasons are varied but good arguments are made for all the ones I've seen so far.


4 - We move onto the A.V. club, the real-news other half of satirical newspaper The Onion's weekly print edition. These guys put the "pop" in pop culture with the AV Club's Best Comics of the Decade.


5. - The Architect's Journal. You might be interested in this list of the Top 10 Comic Book Cities as voted by the men who design real cities!


6 - Cardboard Monocle. After all this serious discussion of comics as an artform we're ready for something fun. This Art and Design Blog has put together a list of the Top 20 Comic Book Weapons. Some are cool, several are disgusting though you may be more shocked by what isn't included in favour of a few surprises. No utility belt (not a weapon, persay) nor a batarang to be found.

7 - Pop Culture Addict provides some laughs with their list of the Top 10 Lamest Superheroes of All Time. It's a bold declaration but they've hit the nail on the head with some of these suckers, though I think they favour heroes whose ridiculousness makes them at least entertainingly lame, as opposed to truly unreadable. The original list proved popular enough to spawn a sequel, Top Ten Lamest Superheroes of All Time II: the Next Ten. These guys would make the most awesome super team ever.

I think Arm Fall Off Boy has a real future.

8 - Comics212. The manager of The Beguiling, one of the best comic shops ever isn't afraid to share his opinions culled from extensive knowledge. Chris has begun posting Manga Milestones 2000-2009: 10 Manga that Changed the World. It really is a short history of manga in North America and a fascinating read.


9 - Comic Book Resources editor and writer Brian Cronin has almost finished (for some reason he's skipped #50-45) notating the Top 100 Comic Book Storylines Master List as voted on by their readers. Despite a Marvel and DC focus, they do cover some pretty terrific storylines and their impact. It's a pretty staggering read that you can chip away at oveer the next month.

10 - i09.com. Just to cleanse the palette, sci-fi site io9.com presents 10 of the Decade's Best SF Comics.

There you have it; a varied dance through the top ten list clutter form the last month.

If you truly can't get enough you can check out comic book blog, I Love Rob Liefeld (evening typing that gives me shivers), which has posted a Meta-List of the Best 130 Comics of 2009, combining the results of over 130 Best Comics of 2009 lists from reviewers and bloggers across the net. They are also kind enough to discuss the trends discovered once all the results were tabulated.

And for those with a lot of time to kill, Largeheartedboy has posted a one-stop resource for Best of the Decade (2000-2009) Online Book Lists, including comic lists.

I must confess, I am reeling after all this Top 10 Listing business. I think I may take asome time together to gather my thoughts or I may end up like this poor woman from one of io9.com's top ten sci-fi comics, Y-The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughn and Canada's own Pia Guerra.

Beavers Up!

Dingle Bell Rock - Merry Christmas, Nelvana Creator John Adrian Darling Dingle! (68 years late)

Merry Christmas, Mr. Dingle.

The Toronto Star's online archive are a treasure trove of nuggets from the past -- if you're willing to spend hour after hour slogging through their labour intensive and slooooow search engine. But for every dozen wrong turns, you also find things both surprising and inspiring.

1941 was a banner year for Adrian Dingle, one of the leading lights of the Golden Age of Canadian comics as the founder of Hillborough Studios, the collective behind Triumph-Adventure Comics and birthplace of Nelvana of the Northern and the classiest comics of the Canadian Golden Age.

It was a different time for painters in the late 1930's. One could still make a living with portrait commissions and gallery showings. Young Dingle was very much a part of his local art scene. One can find numerous mentions of his portraits for various school officials and appearances at local art shows advertised in the Star as the forties approached.

Most people with any knowledge of Canadian Comics are aware that in the early forties, restrictions were placed on the import of US paper products like magazines, books and comics due to foreign exchange issues. Several publishers rushed to fill the void, with Maple Leaf Publications' Better Comics and Anglo American Comics' Robin Hood And Company virtually tying as the first to hit the newsstands.

Ever mindful of an opportunity to make money from their artistic chops, Dingle and several Toronto-area, artist friends formed Hillborough Studios and began to create their own comics. The Hillborough comics are some of the most intrinsically Canadian comics of the era and it's hardly surprising. In the early twentieth century Canada began to explore a more nationalistic approach to painting in an effort to define the country and provide its art scene with an independent identity. The most famous examples of this are painters like Emily Carr and the Group of Seven. The success of this approach encouraged the Group of Seven to expand in the thirties, renaming themselves The Canadian Group of Painters to reflect their enlarged roster of artists.

The fact that the public so embraced the Group of Seven as a national institution gave rise to the Eastern Group of Painters, founded in Montreal, Quebec in 1938. This group felt the Group's limited focus was too limiting and fought to restore more variety of subject, substance and geography to Canadian Art. Thus, by resisting a national approach to art, the EGoP, actually helped bring Canadian to a new, mature level of variety.

All this could not have been lost on the young artists who joined Dingle in his desire to create their own comic book. Since they were Canadian artists they were going to create decidedly Canadian comics. The pages were peopled with canuck characters through and through: Dingle's own Nelvana of the Northern Lights (easily the most famous character to emerge from the period along with Johnny Canuck) and Clue Catchers, co-written with his fiancee and later bride, Pat), H.B. Ohrt and Leon James' Spannner Preston", Canadian pilot and squadron leader, Rene Kulbach's Tang and Out of the Woods, a sweeping western epic and the misadventures of a hapless Canadian bear in the deep woods, A. L Alexander and Glen Guest's Derek of Bras d'Or, based on the life of Angus MacAskill, the Cape Breton giant and Jon Darian's amusing one-pager the Mums, featuring the fueding couple Maxie and Minny Mum.

Dingle's Nelvana of the Northern Lights and her brother,
Tanero. She's a native Goddess and he's... oddly blonde.
Perhaps he's an albino Inuit?

The first issue of Triumph-Adventure Comics is dated August, 1941. Since magazines were cover dated ahead to allow for more newsstand time, it is likely Dingle and crew had been working on the book since early 1941 and it was released in July. But in the mean, time, the young artists still had rent to paid and profile to keep up.

According to this Star article, (amusingly placed next to an announcement that Adolph Hitler would the target of choice at a coming archery tournament) Dingle and fellow Hillborogh artist, Rene Kulbach (creator of the western saga, Tang) still found time to contribute to the war effort. The Peel Kennel Club hosted a garden party in which artists Dingle, Kulbach and artist Andre Lapine would sketch your pet for free in exchange for a contribution to the Red Cross Bomb Victim Fund.

The Estonian-Canadian Kulbach, was already an acknowledged "expert" on the fine art of rendering animals and Tang still resonates today due to his fine draughtsmanship. Dingle is referred to as "a portrait painter of note" known for his "fine oils of familiar scenes along the Lakeshore" while Lapine was considered an "A-1 animal painter". The article further enhances the value of the experience by declaring, "The work of these artists is well known and is prized by those who possess sketches." Seeing Dingle and Kulbach's work in Triumph-Adventure Comics, it is apparent that the Star article was a masterpiece of understatement.

The first two pages of Rene Kulbach and Frank Brookwood's Tang from

Triumph-Adventure Comics #1. I wonder if Brookwood is a pen name for Rene,
who took on sole credit for Tang soon after its debut, save for his brother, Andre?

That Triumph-Adventure Comics hit the stands in August is impressive. What is more impressive is the fact that for the next six issues, Dingle and his compatriots kept up a remarkably high level of quality throughout the run. For the rest of the year , Dingle was putting out a top quality comic and prepping a second title for the Hillborough line.

Top-Flight Comics, billed as a "new Canadian magazine of illustrated stories". For the new book, Dingle secured the aid of more artist friends: Hugh Caulfield, Clayton Dexter, Dingle himself and "well-known Canadian artist" Hunter Barker.

Top Flight Comics was well-named indeed, with its
top line-up of young, Canadian artists.

Caulfied contributed the strip Happy Holden, featuring a pilot who gets lost in a prehistoric world beneath the Arctic with his passengers, a scientist and his lovely (naturally) daughter. The strip insists the tale was written by Jack London but I have not found anything in London's works that matches up. I sent copies of the tale to a Jack London expert (whose actual response, sadly seems lost in alaptop crash earlier this year) who did not think the tale corresponded to anything London wrote either. Perhaps, "inspired by" would have been a more apt description. Or perhaps Caulfield truly did know Jack and persuaded him to contribute a tale. At this point, I am more inclined to believe the former and yet, the credit is there, bold as you please.

Hugh Caulfield's Happy Holden splash page from
Top Flight Comics #1. Is the Jack London story credit
a caseof wishful thinking or a tremendous coup
for Hillborough Studios?

Clayton Dexter contributed an extremely, well-drawn tale of The Rapier, the swashbuckling adversary of pirates along the Spanish Main, who are led by the dark-hearted Captain Sinister. Barker, apprently a keener, drew two strips for the book, The Searunners, a tale of two boys adventures on the high seas, and Trigger Dunston, a two-fisted mountie who always gets his... well, you know the drill. For his part, Dingle turned to the classics for inspiration and created The Sword of Destiny, about a young who is transformed into a hero by the sword Excalibur and transported to wherever evil needs a thumping.

Dingle's Sword of Destiny from Top Flight Comics #1.

Like I said, 1941 was a good year for Dingle. And he capped it off sixty-eight years ago today, December 13, by marrying Patrica Neville Symmes in St. James cathedral with a reception at Maloney's Art Gallery. The wedding was described in a lengthy Toronto Star article dated the same day. Descriptions of the gowns and wedding party take up a good paragraphs, making the ceremony as lush as the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana and give one a sense of actually having been there. The gown, worn by Patricia's mother on her wedding day, is sumptuously described:

"...the bride wore a gown of heavy ivory duchess satin. the draped bodice of chiffon had a low V-neckline; the long ruffled sleeves were designed with a banding of satin from the shoulder to the wrist. The full skirt, finished with a wide ruching of double box pleating fell into a train over the long court train, lined with gold and silver metallic fell and a panel of heirloom lace belonging to the bride's grandmother. Her veil of Brussel's lace, belonging to the groom's mother, was arranged from a Russian coronet or orange blossoms.

Her only ornament was her mother's gift, a tiny rose diamond cross that had been given to her great grandmother on her wedding day. From her mother's prayer book, which she carried, fell gold streamers, knotted with tiny cream rose buds."

But you don't have to imagine it. You can see it this admittedly poor quality photo published in the Star the following Monday, Dec. 15th!


Have you ever seen such a happy, dapper groom outside of a Fred Astaire movie? Dingle's matrimonial style is second only to that of his disguised detective character, the Penguin! (No relation, of course.)

The following year would see Dingle abandon Top Flight and continue Triumph Comics under Cyril Bell's Bell Features imprint. I suspect the decision stemmed from the difficulty of juggling the publishing and sales of two comics with drawing the books, coupled with the likelihood that Dingle may have lost artists to the war effort and perhaps, simply appreciated the security of being Bell's art director.

But that in no way diminishes the tremendous accomplishments of 1941. What a year!

And thus, to mark the holidays and the anniversary of the Dingle's wedding, we wish Nelvana's creator and one of the torchbearer's of Canada's golden age of Canadian Whites a very happy holidays.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Dingle.

Beavers Up!

By Hook or By Crook - The Prisoner's roots in Henrik Ibsen and the tyranny of blogging

"Where am I?"
"In the Village."
"What do you want?"
"Information."
"Whose side are you on?"
"That would be telling."
"We want information... Information... Information..."
"You won't get it."
"By hook or by crook, we will."
"Who are you?"
"The new number Two."
"Who is Number One?"
"You are Number Six."
"I am not a number. I am a free man!"
(Mocking laughter)

-Weekly opening of "the Prisoner"

AMC’s six-hour miniseries remake of the Prisoner begins tonight starring Jim Caviezel (Frequency, The Count of Monte Cristo) and Ian McKellen, (Richard III, Gods and Monsters, The Scarlet Pimpernel); an ocurrence which provides me with a unique opportunity to demonstrate one of the reasons I have don’t blog as regularly as I should.

Several factors have conspired to keep me from my online duties. A great challenge is the constant juggling of television scripts in my day job. As a modern, freelance writer working mainly in animation, I’m not paying rent if I’m not writing on several shows at once. You’d be surprised how much energy and brain power it sucks out of your creative well to switch completely gears every few hours. Add to that the fact that I often work into the night when I desperately want to spend time with my new wife. The last thing I usually want to do is take more time away from her to post a blog. So that lowers the online priority for me.

And November is more or less a bust for posting because this year because, as I did last year, I am attempting to spit out a novel in celebration of National Novel Writing Month. Last year I reached the word count but never ended the story, realizing I had very specific character and theme questions to solve first. This year, I am determined to avoid that but so far other story issues are conspiring to screw me up again.

The second challenge is that I actually write three blogs (with contributions ot a fourth coming soon): Rebel Alert, Comicanuck and Stark Raving Adventure. I began rebelalert.com to post humorous Star Wars items and comics for a fake Star Wars online newspaper I created to go along with a friend’s fan film. (The film is Death Star Repairmen and the newspaper is Empire’s paper of record, The Imperial News – “All the news that’s fit to censor”.) The blog soon became a vehicle to talk about all kinds of things from a sci-fi bent. So I branched out to better cover my interests and maintain each blog’s identity.

The math on this is pretty simple. Even if I do manage a post a week, it goes to one site or the other. My personal blog on life, Stark Raving Adventure and writing often gets the short end of the stick after a comic or sci-fi. But the biggest challenge for me is my inability to write a short blog post.

I have some success on this front with recent Rebel Alert posts but in general my posts tend to be much more thorough than most. I ‘m not big on just linking to an item posted somewhere. I want my blogs to be more than just a link fest. Other sites dedicated to that do it far better than I ever could. When I discover an intriguing story I usually want to more about what I’ve read or seen. I want to uncover the “story behind the story”. Inevitably I discover intriguing connections and fun questions that other sites haven’t. That is no knock on them. The connections I find are often quite idiosyncractic to my own experience and sense of humour. But it takes me a while for my brain to work through all this and then write a post that takes you on the same journey.

Case in point… I have been meaning to write about the Prisoner for some time but the ideas I wanted to explore are better suited for an MBA thesis than a blog. The sheer magnitude of what I wanted to write about kept me away.

Let me run you through it and watch how the simple summary I planned to give you can bloom into a full essay.

For those of you who don’t know, American born Irish actor Patrick McGoohan was up and coming actor in the late 1950’s, eventually being named Best TV actor of the year in Britain. He rose to prominence starring as secret agent John Drake in the UK’s Danger Man series (titled Secret Agent in the US) for four seasons before growing bored with the role. Setting up his own production company, McGoohan and mystery novelist and script editor George Markstein pitched The Prisoner, about an important government figure with a sensitive post who quits his job, only to wake up the next morning in the mysterious Village: a fanciful Big Brothereque resort cut off from the world where people who know too much are under psychologically and physically manipulated to break down their sense of identity.

Markstein, who devised the setting, background and wrote “Arrival”, the pilot for the series, maintains the character is John Drake and the series is a literal and allegorical sequel to Danger Man. McGoohan denied this all the way to his death, insisting the character of Number 6 was a scientist and had no relation to his previous character. Markstein is glimpsed in the opening credits as the man McGoohan hands in his resignation to.

The series ran with its bizarre concept, taking it to heights of surrealism and allegory not previously seen on television before. McGoohan served as the series star, director, producer and taking over an increasingly large portion of the scripting duties. Markstein clashed with McGoohan over the direction the series was taking and eventually left the series around episode thirteen or so. The remaining episodes became even more wild and hallucinogenic. In fact, the psychedelic finale caused such a stir in England and continues to baffle and fascinate audiences to this day.

And the legend grew.

Henrik Ibsen is tired of explaining his plays to you.

To me, the Prisoner series, and the behind the scenes circumstances of the production, is pure Ibsen. (some Peer Gynt and a whole lot of Brand and therefore, pure Kierkegaard, but I’ll get to that.) McGoohan himself once played Brand before The Prisoner started, likely to great effect with his commanding presence, precise diction and booming voice. The play follows the life of a priest dedicated to dong the right thing no matter what the consequences are. His Old Testament view of God allows no compromise but the cost to him is great. He loses his wife and ministers to a village “flock” that increasingly fail at the moral tests Brand (and life) confronts them with. Brand’s goal is to save the world and the soul’s of man but his inability to compromise and accept human weakness eventually leave him alone with his moral fortitude.

In the end, Brand suffers from the harsh judgment he subjected others to when he is stoned by his flock, banished to the glacier where he grew up and buried in an avalanche. Brand’s dying words express profound doubt. “Does not salvation consider the will of man?” It is open to interpretation whether or not Brand is abandoned by God with the play’s final words, uttered by an unseen voice, “He is the God of love.” Does that mean he left no room for love in his life or that God accepts him?

Apparently, we modern readers tend to take an unsympathetic view of Brand’s harsh moral code, which bears more than a passing resemblance to Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, although Rand’s philosophy eschews religion and good works and places mankind as it’s own God, with individual self-interest and achievement as the noblest of activities.

Ibsen’s Peer Gynt stars a man-child who spends his entire life avoiding accepting any kind of responsibility for his actions and yet, somehow comes through unscathed, with others bearing the damage of his choices. Finally, after a lifetime of adopting and abandoning many roles, old man Peer discovers his soul is forfeit because he has never been “himself”. Peer is defenseless, having no idea who he really is and finding no one he knows can vouch for him. He is finally granted a reprieve thanks only to the pure love of his long abandoned sweetheart, Solveig (who really needs to get more).

The key to the philosophy of Peer Gynt can be found in Act Two. While in the Mountain Hall of the Troll King, the monarch asks Peer Gynt, “What is the difference between troll and man?” When Peer Gynt is understandably at a loss for an answer one is provided by The Old Man of the Mountain, "Out there, where sky shines, humans say: To thyself be true. In here, trolls say: Be true to yourself-ish.” Peer adopts his own version of the troll motto from then on, declaring to all that he is himself, whatever that is. Peer spends the rest of his days avoiding facing himself or facing truth in general. You might say, Peer Gynt was Ibsen’s version of the Nick Hornby book, About A Boy, with Will (played by Hugh Grant in the film) as a modern Peer.

Peer Gynt and Brand are flip sides of the same question for Ibsen. Both seem to be based on Soren Kierkegaard’s book, Fear and Trembling, a lengthy consideration of the bible story of Isaac, who was asked to sacrifice of his beloved son in Genesis. Kierkegaard interprets the tale, wrestling with the nature of faith, God, morality and faith’s relationship with ethics and morality. To do this Kierkegaard introduces us to the Knight of Faith and the Knight of Infinite Resignation.

The Knight of Faith, in this case Abraham, gives up everything that is important to him in the world save his faith in of, sure that he will regain everything through divine possibility. When God asks him to sacrifice his son, Abraham does so, secure in the knowledge that somehow God will someone keep he and his son together. He exists in paradox. Likewise, Peer Gynt easily gives up on what’s important in this world, assuming he will gain it all back through divine providence or simply due to the “strength of the absurd.”

The Knight of Infinite Resignation gives up everything in the hopes of regaining it in the next life, but spends their life suffering the pain of their loss. Just as Brand is governed by his faith, he also suffers through it and is punished for it. McGoohan’s Number 6 is totally Brand. Single-minded and indomitable. Heidi MacDonald sums it quite nicely over at The Beat.

McGoohan radiated angry determination to escape, fierce intelligence, and sharp efficiency when physical action was required. He was sexy but remote - unlike some other super spies, Number Six didn't jump into bed with every hot lady he met. Number Six was not a person for whom giving in or internal struggle was natural - no wonder he broke ever Number Two who showed up. In the role, McGoohan was dead fucking cool. His acting was knife sharp. No matter what he did later, McGoohan was dead fucking cool. His acting was knife sharp. No matter what he did later - from ICE STATION ZEBRA to several turns as Det. Columbo's most cunning foe - you could never stop watching Mcgoohan, because he wasnt' just so good he was scary; he WAS scary. He was as enigmatic as he was charismatic.

Exactly! And after years of my Brand/Peer Gynt theory percolating in my head, imagine my surprise to discover that my long-held belief was delightfully accurate! In an interview at www.the-prisoner-6 , George Markstein confirms the Brand influence on the development of the Prisoner.

…my feeling is that McGoohan wasn't really very keen on doing any other series. What he really wanted to do I think was to play Brand. He'd had an enormous success some years previously on the stage with Ibsen's 'Brand' and Brand personifies everything I think McGoohan would like to be: God! He was very good as God, so he wanted to play Brand ... again. He was very keen to set up 'Brand' as a film and I think that was really what he wanted to do. What a lot of the people in the studio wanted was to keep their jobs! They hoped he'd go on doing a series and so I sat down at the typewriter one day - you know, any port in a storm - and typed a couple of pages. They were about a secret agent - and after all Drake had been a secret agent - who suddenly quits without any apparent reason, as McGoohan had quit without any apparent reason, and who is put away!

McGoohan as Brand at the Lyric Theatre,

Hammersmith in the late 1950's.

McGoohan also carried the Brand image off-screen, overdosing on multi-hyphenates as he micromanaged production of the Prisoner. At this point, Markstein hit the eject button and bailed on the show when:

“…egomania took over! You know, when McGoohan was everything! When McGoohan was writing, was conceiving, was directing ... and didn't know where he was going. My presence was superfluous - and we've seen the result after my departure… the non-conclusion. I think it was an absurd pantomime. You tell me what it means. I think it was a bit of gross self-indulgence by someone who was fed up with the whole thing and wanted to get out of it and wanted to go out in a blaze of ... something or other… I was surprised because I thought something much better would emerge. After all, when one has conceived something one wants it to die a reasonable death, not some horrific joke!

Like Brand, Markstein feels McGoohan was a Prisoner of his creation.

I think that in many ways THE PRISONER is a tragedy ... because McGoohan became a prisoner of the series and it's never nice to see that happen to a human being, the combination of ambition, frustration, wanting to be writer, director, actor - you name it. It was sad, it was very sad I think. It did something to him that wasn't very good and it was reflected in the series and that's why the series ended like that and that's why people have said "I don't understand the end". Of course they don't understand the end, because there is no end ... I don't think even McGoohan understood the end, or if he does, well, perhaps he does, but that is the biggest tragedy of THE PRISONER that Patrick McGoohan became a Prisoner himself. 


Over at Glenn Kenny’s Some Came Running blog, we find a remembrance of McGoohan’s other genre contributions, most notably the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh and his intense work in David Cronenberg’s Scanners. Kenny quotes the book Cronenberg on Cronenberg, wherein the director recalls with discomfort the disorganized first shooting day and how it foreshadowed a difficult shot.

"It kept on being that difficult. Patrick McGoohan was part of the reason. He's a brilliant actor; the voice, the charisma, the presence, the face. Phenomenal. And he was aging so well; he looked so great in that beard. But he was so angry. His self-hatred came out as anger against everybody and everything. He said to me, 'If I didn't drink I'd be afraid I'd kill someone.' He looks at you that way and you just say, 'Keep drinking.' It's all self-destructive, because it's all self-hating. That's my theory. He was also terrified. The second before we went to shoot he said, 'I'm scared.' I wasn't shocked; Olivier said that he was terrified each time he had to go on stage. With Patrick, though, it was just so raw and so scary—full of anger and potent. But he was sensing the disorganization; the script wasn't there, so he was right to worry about it. He didn't know me. He didn't know whether I could bring it off or not. We parted from the film not on very good terms ultimately."

In the finale of the original series, Number 6 at last confronts Number 1, yanking off a false face to reveal his own countenance staring back at himself. Apparently McGoohan told close friends this revelation was meant to imply that Number 6, who pictured himself as the ultimate rebel, had imprisoned himself by thinking like a prisoner, thereby always limiting his options. That gives us a reasonable and very clever explanation for the answer Number 6 receives in every episode to the question, “Who is number 1?” The response is always, “You are Number 6.” But could it also he heard as, “You are, Number 6”? This fits into Markstein’s original approach to the series. Number 6’s has faith in his own self-image and ultimately, that faith is the one thing that defeats him.

So where does Peer Gynt fit into the Prisoner? Well, the other residents of the Village appear to be much like Peer; changeable as the wind and whims of the various Number 2’s and generally getting by quite well. That attitude alone makes them anathema to Number 6 and more dangerous to his mindset than any plan of Number 2’s.

But however much Number 6’s defiance and self-image make him an exemplary Brand, he is also very much Peer Gynt himself. He readily accepts and even embraces the routine of the Village and his constant struggle for identity. Intentionally or not, he seems go along with each new attempt to break his will with increasingly practised ease, always on the lookout for a chance to escape –to find something better in life. The Village has given Number 6’s life meaning his previous life lacked, as evidenced by his defiant resignation featured every week in the opening credits. Number 6 accepts that he is a Prisoner and redefines himself in those terms. Like Peer Gynt McGoohan declares himself to be a free man yet why would a free men constantly need to escape? “I am myself, whatever that is.”

Whew…

You can see why it's taken some time to tackle this post. It’s a lot to consider even though I’m trying to keep things simple (More for my own poor, overloaded brain’s sake than your sprightly minds, gentle readers). I avoided the temptation to go into specific examples from the series and compare dialogue and scenes to passages from Fear and Trembling and Ibsen. But it still took ths long to reach the page.

Sigh... Weeks between posts. I try to make them worth the wait.

So what does this have to do with comics? Well, the Prisoner inspired lots of comics related homages and ideas. Jack Kirby attempted a direct adaptation of the series. Pages from his story are at Bleeding Cool and a nice summary of his attempt is at the Twomorrow's website.

Kirby's creation Darkseid's search for the anti-life equation forced the New Gods into a struggle for life and identity very similar to that of Number 6.

In the late eighties, Canadian creators Mark Askwith (Prisoners of Gravity, Space: The Imagination Station) and Dean Motter (Mr. X) put out a comic book sequel to the series entitled Shattered Visage for DC Comics. According to this interview with Motter at GraphicNovelReporter.com, McGoohan was not entirely displeased.

My favorite anecdote remains this: Patrick McGoohan was contractually obligated to approve the work via a contract with ITC. So pages were run over to his apartment near the UN building, on the East River, with each issue for signature. Never heard a word until the whole series was completed and the message came back to me that “He didn’t hate it.” Anyone knowing the curmudgeonly McGoohan (and how solicitous he was about The Prisoner) knew that was high praise indeed. Later I was shown a note from Leo McKern [an actor who had played Number Two in the series], who had likeness approval, stating that he had never been a comic book villain before and thoroughly enjoyed it—especially in that it involved no effort on his part.

This year, Shattered Visage was adapted into a radio play over at Brokensea.com. And the good folks at Comic Book Resources have recently provided a handy, if selective, Prisoner timeline of comics and stuff inspired by or homaging the show to go along with an interview with Jericho's Lennie James, who co-stars in the remake of The Prisoner as Number 147.

Want more Prisoner? AMC has the original Prisoner episodes available for free viewing at their remake's website. Something I definitely plan to take advantage of.

There is also an awesome posting of Gold Key Comics' Secret Agent #1 at mister8.com.

Click over to Youtube for a fascinating four-part interview with Mcgoohan several years after the Prisoner phenomenon.

Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. And Part 4 is here.

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Beavers Up!