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.

Ideas, Ideas, Ideas...

By Regie Rigby

OK, before I get into this week’s main issues, there are a couple of things I want to draw your attention to. The first is the arrival of Bryan Talbot’s latest opus Alice in Sunderland on the shelves. It’s been out for a couple of weeks in fact, but I’ve been away from FoolCentral and so missed a couple of visits to the Comics Shop.

I talked about Alice in Sunderland back in January and I was pretty excited about it then. Now I have this doorstep of a graphic novel in my hands, I’m almost beside myself – it’s an astonishing piece of work.

Talbot presents us with the most unselfconsciously post modern writing I have ever seen. As you might expect when the creator of Luther Arkwright’s multi dimensional universe interacts with the place that inspired Lewis Carrol, the lines between fantasy and reality are not so much blurred as erased completely. Through anecdote, legend and municipal history we follow Talbot from the stage of the Empire Theatre around the City of Sunderland, past, present and perhaps future in search of, well, in search of something.

It’s a love song to Carroll, to the City itself, to “ordinary” people, and I think to storytelling itself. The narrative is deliciously stream of conciousness in appearance, but the structuring of the tale must have been meticulous for it to flow so effortlessly from one subject to another. The art too is eclectic but a constant delight as Talbot intermingles line work, digital imaging, photography, water colour and pencil sketches. It’s a wonder to behold and I’m utterly entranced by every single page.

Don’t walk - run down to your comics emporium and get yourself this book. It’s like nothing you’ve ever read before – and if you have to skip a few superhero floppies so’s you can afford this 300 page hard bound masterpiece believe me when I tell you it’s a sacrifice worth making.

Obviously next to work like this my own comics ideas seem very simple, but developments in my own little project are continuing. My lovely artist sent me his first concept sketches for Sunset, and although I’m not going to show them to you yet (because I want the first image of him you see to be the final version) I can tell you that they blew me away.

And that brings me to this week’s actual subject.

In fact it seems to be the topic of the week here at SBC. Over in the bar Tony Lee is musing on the need to write, while The Panel is considering how you can get a break as a writer. And me? I’m thinking about process, and the strange ways that ideas develop.

As regular readers may remember, the idea for Sunset has been in my head for about fifteen years. Inspired by the now iconic image of the young Bruce Wayne kneeling in the blood of his parents as seen in Batman: Year One. What, I wondered, would happen if the survivor of such a trauma had Bruce Wayne’s desire to wreak vigilante revenge on the world of crime, but was unable to do so themselves? How likely is it anyway that one individual would posess such altheltic talent, such intellectual prowess, such loyal friends and perhaps most unlikely of all, such a huge bank balance.

The name changed over the years too. My initial intention to call him “Knightfall” (playing on the Knight Errant image I was thinking of at the time and the idea that I wanted quite a dark hero) was squashed when the Batman epic of that name was released. (Yes, he’s been in my head that long…) I toyed with the name “Street Lion”, bud dismissed it as being rubbish. A chance remark I heard on the News a couple of years ago led me to call him Sunset. It just seemed apt – a nice image that recalled the original Knightfall idea of so long ago.

But then I got to thinking again – why would anyone call themselves that? I understand why Batman calls himself the Batman. I understand why Spider-Man calls himself Spider-Man. Their names make sense. They reference the abilities of the character. The Hulk is a great big hulking thing. Come to that, The Thing really is best described as, well, as a thing.

But Sunset? I liked the name, but I couldn’t see why the kind of black clad hardcore vigilante I had in mind would choose it.

Then, one wet Sunday afternoon, I watched Christopher Reeves in Superman. And there’s a bit early on in the movie where he first spends some time with Lois Lane. And as he flies off leaving her gazing adoringly after him she mutters dreamily, “What a super man…”

The next thing we see is the front page of the Daily Planet with the banner headline “I spent the night with Superman!” Suddenly the strange flying man in the blue bodyglove has a name. And a lightbulb went on in my head. These days, whatever somebody wanted to call themselves, it’s the Media that gets to pick the names. That’s where the name Sunset is coming from.

So that was all sorted out, and I had a plausible way to give my character the name I wanted. But the lightbulb stayed on. Ideas developed. As I worked on plotlines it became necessary to involve a media angle I hadn’t previously considered to justify the media interest which leads to the character getting the name. Slowly the whole concept began a subtle shift, because the more I thought about the media the more I wanted to use the character as a way of exploring media power so that now it’s a major theme.

And all because I wanted to justify a name.

Even smaller things have led to big changes too.

Hair length, for instance.

The concept sketches that my artist sent me show the character with long hair. It looks fantastic – and the way it’s been drawn adds huge drama to the image. But as I sat at my laptop enjoying my first sight of a character that’s been stuck in my head for so long, I began to worry. He’s an old style non-powered, head cracking vigilante. The long hair might well look cool, but it’s rather impractical for the kind of street fighting I have in mind for the character.

That somebody might deliberately grow impractical hair isn’t all that unlikely of course. History is full of people who like a good scrap but also like to keep their hair on the long side. When, for example, was the last time you saw a Viking with a buzz cut? My point exactly.

But Sunset has a mentor. In order for that mentor to be even slightly realistic, they have to be the sort of person that would insist on a military style “do” for their solider in the war on crime. It would have to be short – at least at the start.

I really liked that long hair though.

As I saw it, there was only one way to keep the long hair and the credibility of the mentor. So I did that. (You’ll see what it was when you read it.) And it’s changed the character, and the character’s situation in all sorts of ways I hadn’t thought of – and the end result is a whole lot more interesting than it was.

Such a tiny thing. Such a huge impact on the creative process.

And to be honest, that’s the biggest joy in this project for me. I’m learning so much about telling stories by just doing it. I’m finding that I’m fascinated just sitting back and watching myself work. I'm beginning to understand why the old "where do your ideas come from?" question is so hard to answer. The creative process is turning out to be a lot more unpredictable than I though – and as a result it’s a hell of a lot more fun!




I still can’t escape the feeling that doing this makes me a bit of a pretentious tosser, but nevertheless, this column and the character Sunset described within is © Copyright Regie Rigby. All rights reserved.