Who's Who in the CBU 2008

Name: Regie Rigby

Regie is a strange, almost ethereal creature. Who can plumb the hidden mysteries of his dark and murky past - a past which contains a terrible secret. A secret that taught him that with great power comes great responsibility, that criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot and just who exactly knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

By day, he assumes the appearance of a mild mannered teacher, bringing the joy of literature and the English Language to classes of enthralled and enthusiastic students. But by night?

By night he goes home and writes lesson plans. Sorry. That's as interesting as he gets. Really.

The rumours about rooftop struggles with underworld uberfiends, the gossip about the hidden cave filled with hi-tec equipment and the suggestion that his car might be fitted with turbo lasers are all nonsense.

When he's not teaching he reads comics. Sometimes he combines the two activities. When he's not doing that he's either playing computer games or asleep.

Small... Small Is Good

By Regie Rigby

Oh boy – I’m so sorry! If you’d had my week you’d know why I’m late, but I’m not going to bore you with excuses, I’m here now so lets just get on with it.

Well, last week’s column put the cat among the pigeons and no mistake!

Since suggesting I might be interested in promoting the work of previously unpublished comics creators last week I’ve had two flavours of response. There are the people who say “Pick me” pick ME!” a lot, and the people who say “Who do you think you are? Like we need you to plug our stuff!

Fair play to both camps really. I can’t blame anyone for trying, and I can only respect people who want to get where they’re going without any input from people like me. But then there’s the guy I’ll be talking about over the next few weeks, who falls into neither camp, and who might end up being something rather special. More on him later. For now, lets just say that I’m very very excited.

If you have stuff to show me, I’m still interested but please, for copyright reasons, no story ideas or original characters! Anything like that will, at the moment, be deleted unread – I don’t want to be accused of nicking your ideas later! I do want to see your stuff though – I think I may have stumbled onto somebody who is going to be genuinely great, and I think I’m developing a taste for it.

Still, all that is for later. It’s immensely frustrating, but the things I couldn’t talk about last week? I stiull can’t talk about them. Trust me though – you’re going to love both of them. For now we have other fish to fry.

You see, I’m beginning to be aware of a trend in my comics buying habits, and I’m wondering if I’m alone or whether this is part of a more widespread phenomenon. Not all that long ago well over 95% of the comics I bought each month came from either Marvel, DC (or DC subsidiaries), Dark Horse or Image. I had Batbooks, Spidey-books, various Vertigo titles, some Dark Horse Lisneced properties and Spawn. That was it.

These days things are very different. Marvel and DC still figure amongst my regular buys – mostly to be honest because they own Batman and Spider-Man. Image and Dark Horse are almost nowhere to be seen. The last thing I bought from Image was Spawn #51. I don’t know how long ago that was published unless I check, but I’m prepared to rank it as “some time ago”. There is still one Dark Horse book I still buy regularly, but if Stan Saki ever moves the exquisite Usagi Yojimbo to another publisher (and it’s worth remembering that the Rabbit Ronin didn’t actually start with Dark Horse) they’ll have nothing left to offer me.

And yet I’m buying more new comics now that I ever have.

Looking through my ever expanding “to read” and “to file” stacks the other night I realised that the vast vast majority of comics I buy these days are from smaller publishers – or at the very least from the more independent imprints that their larger owners like to pretend aren’t quite attached. There is some Vertigo and some Wildstorm in there, but actually the vast bulk of the stuff I’m picking up is from publishers that are not just much smaller than Marvel and DC, but who are also much much newer. Hell, five years ago they didn’t even exist.

So yes, they’re new. But damn they’re good.

Connected in some way to Richard Branson’s Virgin empire, so I admit not exactly a couple of blokes with a laser printer in their back room, Virgin Comics are still only moving towards their second summer, but they have already given us some fine comics largely rooted in mythologies and cultures that the Western Comics Industry seldom touches while not doing anything to scare away the mainstream western comics buyer.

It’s a delicate balance that involves magic, gods, mysterious powers and some absolutely thumping good reads. The earliest titles were all very firmly set into the folklore of India, and I have to say it would have been good to see the ethnically diverse characters they brought to what is still a relatively monochrome and monocultural industry even if the stories had been rubbish. Variety is, after all, always a good thing.

But the books weren’t rubbish.

Personal favourites have been the reincarnation and vengeance of Snake Woman, and the dark mysticism of The Sadhu, both of which have proved to be dark, slickly plotted and deeply satisfying reads. Later titles have built on this firm foundation and Dave Stewart’s (yes, the bloke out of the Eurythmics*) Walk In is rapidly becoming one of my favourite comics.

On this side of the pond, a rather similar feat is being pulled off by Markosia (although I suspect with a little less money). Both publishers have built their lines on innovation and diversity, and both have brought increasingly big names to the party.

Markosia of course has the advantage of having the living legend that is Tony Lee working on staff now, but perhaps their biggest coup was getting G.P. Taylor on board, first with the comics version of his acclaimed Shadowmancer novel, and later with the direct to comics “comics novella” Tizzle Sisters and Eric. The latter blended Taylor’s prose with comics adapted from Taylor’s prose by Tony Lee (him again – and yes, he did the adapting on Shadowmancer too) and Dan Boultwood.

But then there’s also Wizard’s “best newcomer”, the deeply exciting BOOM! Studios, who I won’t go on about now because I went on at length about how good they are not so very long ago. I’m even buying comics from Avatar now – something I never thought I’d do even with Warren Ellis on writing duties. Wormwood is inspired though. Wry, knowing and thoroughly good – or at least as good as something can be when it’s telling the story of the son of Satan.

But the son of Satan has quit the whole anti-christ gig, and now lives in New York with a girlfriend and a talking rabbit. Sometimes he goes to a bar to meet his friend J (guess who) and sometimes he cheats on his girlfriend with Joan of Arc.

I love it.

I love small. Small is where the future is. Huge corporations are increasingly finding it tough to fight off competition from hundreds of smaller, more agile competitors. Comics seem to be going the same way and if what we’ve seen so far is anything to go by, the results are going to be amazing!





*Readers under thirty may not remember the Eurythmics. This serves them right for being young.