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.

Pages and Screens

By Regie Rigby

Christmas is, as they say, coming. Presumably this means that old men are wandering around with penny hungry hats and geese are seriously adding to the national obesity problem.

That really is an odd song you know…

Anyway. For me it came a little early. You already know about the Christmas Card from Tharg and the gang at the 2000AD Nerve Centre which came complete with copies of the collected Bad Company and Droid Life. Well, halfway through last week a copy of the latest epic from Ablaze Media - Rob Dunlop and Peter Lumby’s Peckerwood.

Like it’s illustrious predecessors Peckerwood details the hilarious misadventures of Tozzer and his showbiz friends. This time they’re up against a master assassin and a top secret US agent who takes his job a little too seriously but is determined to get the job done in 24 minutes…

I’d read the book online already, and have even mentioned it in the column before, but there is something rather solid and pleasing about getting a story in a more permanent paper package. And what a package it is! Bright and vivid colour on heavy paper in a glossy square bound package. Absolute joy. You might want to trot yourselves on over to the Tozzer website and take a look. It’d be a perfect stocking filler – although if you’re going to buy a copy for somebody else, probably best to order two because you’re going to want one for yourself…

But this isn’t the only festive treat that has found its way to me a little early.

Readers of the message board will know that as a result of my day job I’ve made a belated discovery of Joss Whedon’s Sci-Fi Western Firefly. Started with the movie Serenity, then got hold of the DVD Box Set of the original series. All fourteen episodes.

And those of you of a non-browncoat persuasion* may now be thinking: “Only fourteen? That’s a bit short for a successful US TV series isn’t it?”

And of course you’re right.

I’ve watched them all now, and I have to say that Firefly is a televisual masterpiece. I think I probably love it more than Babylon 5** - the dialogue is better for a start.***

You know, I might even love it as much as I love Doctor Who.

The TV**** suits at Fox clearly don’t share my opinion though. Not one little bit. They showed the episodes in slightly the wrong order, and then killed the project stone dead. Only fourteen episodes had been completed, and now there won’t be any more.

The entirely predictable fan campaign that followed (because Sci-Fi fans are very loyal and very determined) yielded the movie – rather pointedly sub-titled “You can’t stop the Signal” – which left the characters and the story begun in the series with a clear resolution, but also left me (and hundreds of thousands of other Browncoats) wanting more.

So why am I telling you this?

Because this is where comics come in.

There has already been a Serenity Comic mini series called “Serenity: Those left behind, which filled in the gap between the final TV episode “Objects in Space” and the beginning of the movie. And you know what?

Taken together the fourteen TV episodes, the comic and the movie seem to make up a complete series. Whedon has found a way to get his story out there. By hook or by crook he finished the story he wanted to tell despite the obstacles thrown in his way. And the really good news? Well, there’ll be a new Firefly/Serenity comic in March, which I can only really see as “Firefly: Season Two”. Sod the networks, you can get your story told and in front of the fans without much difficulty******.

I might be wrong, but I think we have something of a new phenomenon here. Comics Spin-offs from TV and movie franchises are of course nothing new. There have been Star Wars comics, Star Trek Comics, Doctor Who Comics, you name it. Hell, there was even a comics spin-off of the Dredd Movie! Actual comics, based on the actual movie, bearing no relation to the existing comics that already existed and that the movie was supposed to be based on in the first place!

What makes that last one worse is that these comics were even published in the UK.

And aimed at kids who were too young to have been allowed to see the movie in any case.

Seriously. I’m not joking.

What we have had in the past though are comics intended as extras. Mere cash in add ons, largely ignored by the people behind the movie and TV source material. Not any more. What we have now are comics series that are an integral part of the canon. Genuine continuations and extentions of the stories on the screen. Whedon of course is doing this not only with Firefly, but also with his other, perhaps better known and certainly more successful series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. He’s not the first either.

J. Michael Straczynski, creator of, amongst other things, the aforementioned Babylon 5 did something similar, using the short lived comics series based on the show to fill in some of the labyrinthine back story. One incident in particular, when the comic showed Michael Garibaldi witnessing the discovery of an alien ship on Mars was referred to explicitly in the show, and an object he found in the comic was the “cliffhanger reveal” moment at the end of the TV episode.

Given the trouble that Whedon has had with TV companies (and come to think about it, Babylon 5 wasn’t particularly well served by the networks either, the pacing of the story being badly affected by the fact that the axe of cancellation was hanging over the series for most if it’s five year run) you might wonder why they don’t just go “straight to comics” and avoid all that faffing about.

Well, if you can get yourself a hit, there’s more money on the screen than there is on the page, which would be a pretty good reason for a creator to try their luck. We all have bills to pay after all. As discussed in earlier columns, Screen based work gives you a bigger audience too. For all their devotion to the cause, I suspect a lot of Browncoats won’t be picking up the forthcoming Serenity comics series, just as a lot of allegedly fanatical Buffy and Angel fans aren’t picking up those comics either.

But there’s more than that. By definition, working on screen with actors and directors and other writers makes the work a more collaborative piece. How much of the character and personality of Serenity’s Capt Mal Reynolds came from Whedon, and how much from Nathan Fillion, the actor who played the character on the screen? How much of the look of the ship came from Whedon, how much from the set designers, the SFX guys, the costumiers and all the rest of the creative people you need when you put a project on the screen?

When you make comics it’s you and the artist. (Or you and the writer, depending whether you’re bent is to the keyboard or the brush.) Hell, for some, it’s an entirely solo operation. Having started on the comics creating road myself, I am beginning to understand what a lonely trek that can be. The advantages of TV aren’t hard to appreciate.

Now if we could only hook TV’s audience…












*See, I’ve got all the lingo down and everything…

**That’s the only US TV show I’ve ever really obsessed over until now. I enjoyed Star Trek and stuff, but was never the sort of person that’d go out and buy a Starfleet Uniform or anything.

***Not that this would be difficult. B5 was wonderful in many ways, but the dialogue was awful!

****Note to litigious types at Fox*****. By “TV” I really do mean “Television” and not “Transvestite”.

*****…and there are people at Fox who once threatened to sue the makers of The Simpsons over comments Bart and Homer made about Fox News…

******”Not much” in this context is obviously relative. It would be reasonably hard for me to get Dark Horse to make a comic out of my TV ideas. But you know what I mean.