Blythe and Parkhouse: Angel Fire
Some comics are optioned for movies, yet most rarely remain true to their original spirit. Some comics are designed specifically to be optioned for movies, and aren't really successful as comics. And some are undeniably quality comics, yet give you the movie vibe, that they would - and should - convert with ease. Angel Fire is one such comic. A ninety page Original Graphic Novel, from the UK's Daedalus Studio, the creative team of Chris Blythe (2000AD) and Steve Parkhouse (The Milkman Murders, The BoJeffries Saga) have come up with winner first time out of the starting gate.
"Angel Fire" is not only the name of a new designer drug, but can also be said to allude to what happens to our protagonist John later in the story. It starts off with a pair of corporate asset strippers - John and Zee - celebrating the completion of their latest conquest: they've taken over and driven a small business into the ground, reaping huge financial benefits for themselves and their employer - the mysterious Mr Belial. That the company's former MD commits suicide seems to be merely an unfortunate side effect, and it's not going to hamper their party, involving wine, women and Angel Fire.
(As an aside, the book twists and turns throughout, making you suspicious of almost every character who appears - for example, Belial, doesn't that mean Devil, is their employer really an evil sob?) 
John's life begins to fall apart on his return home from the party - he's forgotten his wedding anniversary in all the excitement, his wife leaves him, and taking time off to pull himself together just makes matters worse. It's a study of how a life can disintegrate before your eyes, kicking off from one minor (or so we think) event, escalating into a major disaster affecting everyone John knows. Tragedy follows, and even escaping to a remote isle in Scotland doesn't mean John is safe - at least one shadow is following him (along with one supposed ally), and once again the form is subverted as our suspicions are immediately raised by a certain character turning up out of the blue yet - alien to most suspense stories - John has the same suspicions we have, and acts on them. Not for this book the typical horror staple of ignoring common sense - and, my goodness, you can see four or five sequences which would translate to celluloid without changing a single panel. Is this a comic or a movie storyboard?
I've been waiting for a genuinely frightening comic for years - it seems like it's finally arrived. Angel Fire will be released on 31st October from new publisher Shattered Frames, available exclusively online at the moment from their website: http://www.shatteredframes.com/angelfire
SBC’s Craig Johnson was fortunate enough to grab some time with writer Chris Blythe and artist Steve Parkhouse to find out more about Daedalus and Angel Fire:
Daedalus And Chris, 2000AD And CrossGen
Craig Johnson: Who are Daedalus Studios and what do you do? 
Chris Blythe: I started off as a cartoonist about 10 years ago, working for a publisher in London. Slowly different types of illustration jobs came in, and I started farming work out to people who I thought would do a better job than me. Daedalus grew from that, it provides illustrations for mainly educational titles in the UK.
Craig: Such as? What sort of requests are typically made, or is every project unique? Is there a Daedalus permanent staff roster, or more a list of associated freelancers? In theory, can someone join that list?
Chris: We've handled everything from business management books, to a downloadable Shakespeare. Daedalus is just me, and freelancers - no permanent staff, and I still look at portfolios now and again, although it's taken a bit of a back seat with Angel Fire and comic work at Shattered Frames (my other studio, which is morphing to become the publisher of AF) - the Daedalus website is http://www.daedalus-uk.com/ for those who'd like to check us out.
Craig: Tell us about Chris Blythe, how you fell into comics, which you enjoy reading and what has influenced you the most in your career so far.
Chris: Comics wasn't meant to be a career. I started colouring to make some extra cash in the early days - it soon became my main source of work, and it's a hell of a lot easier than illustration!
Craig: Can you remember your first piece of colouring work? How did it come about?
Chris: It was a short story for 2000AD, which I got after doing some test pages for them. I wasn't calibrated properly and it came out very dark...
Craig: Is there a particular 2000AD strip that you enjoy colouring? Which one makes you groan when it turns up in your inbox?
Chris: I enjoy colouring artists rather than strips. Cam Kennedy (who's working on the next Shattered Frames book, Human Clay), Henry Flint, Jock (currently working on The Losers), Steve Yeowell, Colin Wilson. Anyone with skill and style.
Craig: What's your particular preference for colouring? Photoshop seems increasingly common...
Chris: I think everyone uses Photoshop, don't they? Steve encouraged me to 'throw away my airbrush' for Angel Fire. Digital colouring doesn't suit his work at all, and I found that I was lazily relying on old techniques when I started working on the inked pages. It was a waste of an opportunity to do something new, and to make the book really stand out from the crowd. So, I played with Painter (which I use for drawing anyway) until i found the right brushes and techniques for this book. That's why some of the sample pictures on the site will differ from the finished book. I went back and re-did them.
Craig: Some people seem to think that colouring is just painting by numbers. Can you run us through a typical page to show what actually goes on?
Chris: To an extent, it's very much painting by numbers. When you do it as a career, it becomes a production line process. The files are sent to a guy in the States to block in with basic flat colours which I use as active masks. I then fill the areas with hues that convey the right mood for the page, and start to work on the modelling. I didn't do any of that with Angel Fire. It was painted more traditionally, and I rarely used masks. I wanted to give a looser, more energetic feel. I wasn't concerned about modelling every last detail, I kept it simple. It was all about mood and atmosphere, not flashy gimmicks, lighting effects and lens flares. Yuk.Craig: Angel Fire excepted, which piece of work are you most proud of, and why?
Chris: Difficult to pin point colour work - there's such a back catalogue that I wouldn't know where to start - so I'll say one of my short stories, Rating War. It's notoriously difficult to write a 6 page script and get a sense of any real pathos, but I think I did with that story.
Craig: Was that a 2000AD piece? Where can people view it?
Chris: Yes, it was a 'Future Shock' for 2000AD. Don't know what issue, though...
Craig: Your website mentions some problems in receiving payment from CrossGen, do you ever hope to receive any money from them now?
Chris: Hope? Sure. Expect? Nope. They are busy selling their assets, it won't even cover what they owe the printers. Although I'm owed a heck of a lot of money, I'm way down the list.
Craig: What has the CG experience taught you?
Chris: Not to let invoices slide! Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I should have stopped work as soon as they missed a payment. But they were a big player, I was in the UK and had no idea there was any problems. CG's fall simultaneously questioned and galvanised what Steve and I were doing with Angel Fire. At the same time as thinking, 'If the big boys can crash, what chance do we have?' I was saying, 'The old ways ain't working, it's time for change - we're doing the right thing.'
Angel Fire
Craig: Angel Fire was started in 2001, what initially kicked it off?
Chris: Both Steve and I wanted to do something different. Something with a bit of weight to it. We saw mainstream comics becoming a tide of candy-coloured, airbrushed, glitzy bits of nothing. They were so slick, your eyes slipped of the page. The art of story telling was being lost, and the basic artistic skills were being replaced by computer sparkle. This is a crass generalisation, there are exceptions of course! Sequential art is such a powerful form of story-telling, and yet in the UK comics are seen purely for kids, even though the one and only UK comic hasn't been written for children for years. I mentioned to Steve an idea for a supernatural thriller, and we agreed that it would be a good opening gambit. So, I went about writing Angel Fire in my spare time. Three months later I showed it to Steve and he was turning out pages before we knew what we were going to do with it. We thought we'd approach a European publisher, but as time went on I suggested that we tried marketing, selling and distributing it ourselves.
Craig: How long did it take to polish the Angel Fire script to your satisfaction? Did the whole story come to you over the three months initially spent writing it, or did it emerge during the writing process?
Chris: I have no idea! The first draft was done in 3 (ish) months. Bits and bobs have been changed over the course of the production. Some things were introduced at a later stage to allow me to set the stage for Angel Fire 2 . We'll see...
Craig: Angel Fire is being released via Shattered Frames, your own publishers - is there an intention to have it stocked by comics or book shops? Chris: Maybe. We'll see how it goes. To begin with, we were only thinking in terms of the UK, and there are very few comic shops here. The industry is all but dead. We've had such an amazing response from the critics in the US, and people are visiting the site from Europe and Australia, so we now have to consider foreign sales and how to handle that smoothly and efficiently. Lots of people are using the Net and buying through Amazon etc., it seems a natural progression to cut out the middle men and let readers buy direct from the creators. Of course, that's thrown up its own challenges - secure payment servers, marketing, distribution etc. Angel Fire is about experimenting, not just in story telling and art, but in how we get the book out there. If it doesn't work, we may re-release it through Diamond or similar, but it's important to try. The industry isn't healthy, and it has to diversify to survive.
Craig: Some small UK publishers have said that Paypal has been a boom to them for international buyers, have you been tempted that route?
Chris: I was going to use PayPal. I've paid freelancers and received money via PayPal with no problems, but its reputation is patchy. When I was looking for payment options, PayPal crashed for 5 days. That, plus we did a test run with them, and people were put off by the cumbersome form-filling. No one wants to have to join a service to buy a product. I think it’s more acceptable in the US, but not so well established in the UK. It's useless for countries like Australia. We can't afford to put people off at the last hurdle, so we're using a more traditional credit and debit card system, even though it costs us a little more.
Craig: How are you finding the actual business of publication? Has it opened a whole vista of problems or been relatively trouble-free?
Chris: It's not difficult to publish something, it's difficult to market, sell and distribute it! Between us, Steve and I have all the necessary tools and experience to handle everything, but it's still been a challenge. I've really enjoyed the promotion side of things, especially the trailers that you can download from the site. They give another dimension to the story. Handling it on top of day-to-day work though, that's been stressful.
Craig: Tell us something about the story of Angel Fire.
Chris: Angel Fire is a morality play. I don't see it as a horror story, there's more to it than trying to give the reader a few frights. Horror these days is a pretty crass affair (see House of 1000 corpses...). Horror is about gore, and that isn't frightening. Unsettling and unpleasant - sure. But it isn't frightening. I guess you'd call this a chiller. It's low-key, but it stays with you. There's lots of things to think about afterwards, lots of visual metaphor. It's intended to be read more than once. I just heard from a reviewer who read it 4 times, back to back and got something new each time. That's gratifying and encouraging. The story's about an asset-stripper working in London, and his self-consuming goal of being the best at what he does. He obsesses over the trappings that success brings to the detriment of his marriage, and when that starts to crumble - his life does too. John quickly discovers how transient success is, and how quickly the mighty fall. It's not particularly a sermon about drugs either. The drug is merely a catalyst to spark some soul-searching from the main character, John Dury. It's a story about recognising the good things in your life and cherishing them. When he tries to escape the city, something dark follows him. It's up to him to distinguish what threats are real, and what are imaginary, and how to tackle them. Easier said than done, this book will mislead you every step of the way. What frustrates me most about 'horror' stories, is the inexcusable stupidity of the characters; 'Let's look in the cupboard where the growling's coming from...'. John acts as a rational, intelligent man.
Craig: What does the story mean to you personally?
Chris: John is really the antithesis of me. I'm happily married, I love and cherish my family, I live a quiet coastal life, and loathe big cities. I like my space! I can't think of anything worse that living in a ridiculously expensive, cramped town apartment, worrying about whether someone has keyed my equally ridiculously expensive cramped sports car. It's insane. People place importance on the strangest of things. A couple of key scenes are based on real events. Tragically that includes the hanging scene. I think it turned up in this story as a form of therapy for me. When Steve found out, he redrew the scene, saying that it had taken on a whole new perspective. That's the kind of artist he is. No half measures.Craig: How did Steve [Parkhouse] come onboard for the project?
Chris: We worked together a lot. I knew of Steve's work mainly from a book called 'How to draw and sell comics' which he illustrated. It was my bible when I was starting out. I approached him about five years ago to work on a series of school books, and we've produced work for a pile of titles since then. We also teamed up in comics now and then, Steve drew the aforementioned Ratings War. He was the only choice for Angel Fire.
Movies And The Future
Craig: If the book does get optioned (presuming it hasn't already), how much creative control would you insist on? Take the money and run, or full rights needed?
Chris: Wow - you're optimistic. It would make a great movie, it would make a very scary movie, but it would have to be handled gently - look what happened when Jan De Bont got hold of The Haunting. Angel Fire is about what's in the shadows, as opposed to what the CGI-monkeys can crank out with a few million dollars in their pockets. Being scared is about expectation and imagination. If the Shadow Man became a Krueger-like special effect, it wouldn't work. He (it?) has to stay in our peripheral vision. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it!
Craig: You are perhaps known best for your colouring (your Eagle nomination this year is testament to that), do you harbour other writing desires beyond Angel Fire?
Chris: Oh sure. I wrote another feature length script while Angel Fire was being produced. I'm teaming up with legendary Star Wars artist Cam Kennedy for that one. It's called HUMAN CLAY, and we're hoping to release it through Shattered Frames this time next year. We may make Halloween our launch date for each book! We'll be posting news about that throughout its production on http://www.shatteredframes.com/ so keep coming back and showing us you care! HUMAN CLAY is intended to be a series, at least three books, Cam's doing the pre-production at the moment - you know it's going to look incredible! Steve and I are also talking about Angel Fire 2. That may seem a little odd, as it's such an enclosed tale, but you haven't seen the last twist yet, it gets a lot more scary! First things first - we'll see if Angel Fire sells.
Craig: What other projects do you have coming up that you can tell us about?
Chris: LEGION for DC, Du Plomb for CASTERMAN (French graphic novel), and various 2000AD strips.
Steve Parkhouse
Craig: Steve, you've done virtually everything in the industry, from "The Spiral Path" in the first issue of Warrior and some well-loved Doctor Who strips, through to The Milkman Murders and maybe some new BoJeffries with Alan Moore. What was it about Angel Fire that grabbed your interest?
Steve Parkhouse: Having worked with Chris on several jobs, we came to the conclusion that the only way to get any kind of career fulfilment was to self-publish. Publishers are a hide-bound bunch; they rarely venture beyond the boundaries they know. Because they're run by accountants, they tend to be frightened of anything creative or different. I knew that Chris was determined to write; and he'd been working on some short stories. My initial interest was in encouraging him to break out of his own boundaries. Writing is the toughest task in the process of creating comics, so when Chris came up with the first draft of Angel Fire I was impressed that somebody of relatively little experience could achieve such a degree of sophistication. I was heartily sick of the infantile nonsense that gluts the market - so I jumped at the chance to be involved. It just kind of unfolded before us; and has carried on doing so.
Chris' approach was very different from the writers I had worked with before. He wasn't coming from a fan base. He was more of a "studio man" than a comics man. I think we gelled from the start because I'm not much of a comics man either. It's what I do for a living, but that's all. I don't haunt conventions or seek out esoteric publications in small-town comics shops. That's why Angel Fire is what I would call a "real-world" story It owes nothing to any previous genre. It had a clean and complete feel to it that I found refreshing. You could enter its world and still breathe, without referring to a model sheet or some list of do's and dont's from a faceless editor. Having said that; the Bojeffries Saga and the Milkman Murders were total one-offs as well. I obviously seek them out.Craig: How much input did you have to the story, or was Chris a control freak over his story?
Steve: Chris is a total control freak about absolutely everything! Luckily, it doesn't bother me because I'm exactly the opposite, so we work quite well as a team. I see myself as a jobbing illustrator with nothing much to prove any more. I find the big egos extremely tiresome - which is why I don't go to conventions. Chris is also a perfectionist - and has applied many of his awesome talents to marketing this book; something I would have struggled with. I had a few suggestions to make, but I wasn't about to pull rank or play the professional writer. This was Chris' baby and I think he did an amazing job.
Craig: How does it feel to have your Dr Who strips coming back into print [via Panini Books in 2005]?
Steve: I haven't been informed about any of this at all. Thanks for the tip
Craig: If Dez [Skinn] resurrected Warrior tomorrow, would you return to it?
Steve: If Dez resurrected Warrior it would be a miracle. I would have to think long and hard about returning to that format. There were lots of unresolved issues and conflicts around the whole Warrior setup. Many people thought that Dez didn't have contributors' interests at heart. He always treated me fairly - but others had real problems. I'm beginning to think that some people attract those kind of problems. Something karmic, maybe.
Craig: What do you have in the pipeline for us to look forwards to?Steve: I can't honestly see beyond this point. I've put everything on hold until Angel Fire becomes a reality. I might be working with Grant Morrison again - a writer I admire enormously. I've asked Joe Casey if we could do something else together. I feel Joe and I have a real rapport and I'd like to continue an excellent working relationship. Various promises have been made concerning reprinted material, but as usual it's all in the lap of the gods.
Ideally, of course, I would like self-publishing to become the mainstay of my working life. Whatever happens, I think Chris and I will continue plugging away. Between us we can cover all the necessary angles to get things done. It might not be comics - it might be something completely different. I'm optimistic in general. I'm convinced that we don't have to depend on the big companies to sustain a worthwhile career.
Our thanks to Chris and Steve for taking the time to talk to us in such depth: Angel Fire is available right now to order from their website (along with preview art and information on upcoming projects) at http://www.shatteredframes.com/angelfire
Discuss this interview on the Feature Fiends Forum!