“A Dozen Superheroes And A Clown Walk Into A Bar..."

By Tony Lee

Good Morning, kiddies. And how are we today? Excellent. Me? Oh I’m just peachy, you know. Couldn’t be better. I’m away for a weekend in St Davids in Wales, a picturesque little village right in the bottom left corner of the map, where yesterday we had high winds but sunny skies. Today we have no winds, but it’s absolutely shitting it down outside. I feel like I’m in the eye of a storm and that at any minute the cottage that we’ve booked is about to be whisked off to Oz in a tornado.

Tony, Ant, Rob—Caerfai Bay in a hurricane...

But high winds and rain are fine by me, as I intended to spend pretty much most of the weekend writing anyway. I have about four projects that all need various stages of completion this weekend, so I’ve brought my laptop and currently? I’m sitting on a sofa in one of the lounges with Mozart’s Requiem, the 2004 recording on my iPod. Yes, that’s right children, Uncle Tony does like a little bit of the classics.

So why am I behind on my projects? Well as I explained in previous weeks, I got caught with some kind of bug which knocked me back a week, and pretty much all of this week has been catch up. And I would have done it, would have been up to date, maybe even ahead of the curve and out playing with all my friends if it wasn’t for one thing.

Iron Man.

Oh dear Christ if that wasn’t a slice of cybernetic cinema goodness right there. I went to the first screening that I could on the Thursday, sometime around noon and from about three p.m.? There was no way that you were going to get anything out of me work wise for the rest of day, unless it involved me running around the room on imaginary jets and firing repulsor rays out of my hand.

As a kid I always had my favourite superheroes—Spider Man, Batman, Blue Beetle in later life, but Iron Man was the first superhero comic I ever read. When I was about six, maybe seven years old I had a bout of illness which kept me bedridden for a couple of weeks. Now, my brothers, Kevin and Chris are both twelve, thirteen years older than me and at this point were late teens. And, because I was ill, thy brought down from the attic a load of old, worn and well read copies of comics they read when they were kids. And this point in the story it’s the mid seventies, so the comics? They were late sixties Marvel comics, the first Iron Mans, Fantastic Four, Thor, the Hulk. Thinking back, there were surprisingly little Spider Man comics, but it meant that at six years old I started learning who Doctor Donald Blake was, why Bruce Banner had an attitude problem, and more importantly why I wanted to be Tony Stark
when I grew up. I mean, hell, we even had the same name, right? I mean, if that wasn’t destiny—I don’t know what was. But for some reason as I grew up, Iron Man wasn’t high on my list of must by comics—I think that mainly at the time I went for comparatives to my own life, and even though Spider Man might be older, he wasn’t as grown up as Stark. After all, Tony Stark had a moustache. And, as things went on Stark seemed to become woefully misused, becoming at one point the person they had in the Avengers who seemed purely there to argue the toss on things. In a discussion on this very subject last night, my friend Rich said similar, that Tony Stark was only in the Avengers so that he could be the person that the Hulk said shut up to.

He became an alcoholic, a brave storyline but to a kid who hadn’t even touched a drop? Bored now. Didn’t care. Not while Batman had loads of cool toys and this cool sidekick called Richard Grayson. When I grew up? I wanted to be Batman. But first I wanted to be Robin.

But when I got back into comics, I started to enjoy Iron Man again. Even the awful Heroes Reborn stories, where Tony Stark suddenly became a teenager, were still well thought out tales. And then when the most recent revamp came out, I was on board from the very beginning. Even through Civil War, when Tony became a grade A douchebag, I still believed in him (although Cap was right). And now in Secret Invasion I hope to god he’s not a Skrull—because that will just invalidate my love for him in a variety of sad and forlorn ways.

And then this comes out. Robert Downey Jr is Tony Stark. End of. This was the part he was born to play. And he takes over every scene that he’s in. The story is standard Marvel movie fare, but at the same time there are no major gaping plot holes to take you out of the action, there are no moments when you stand up screaming ‘That’s crap! He wouldn’t act like that!’ like I may have on previous attendances of prior superhero movies... It’s just two hours of superhero gold. I loved it. You might be able to see the nuances of my love in this column. Go and see it. If you don’t I will hunt you down and kill you. Oh, and stay past the end credits. Trust me. You’ll want to stay past the end credits.

And so Iron Man killed my Thursday, but why didn’t I get all my work done Friday? Well, I did do a ton of it, but I also had to make some steampunk goggles out of some cheap gas welding ones. And dear god was that a nightmare. This was the first time I had done such a thing, so of course I had to screw it up. Point one—I didn’t realise you could actually remove the lenses - until I’d already painted over them. Point two? I painted them up, had them looking sweet and then dropped them on the kitchen floor where the flip up part snapped off, and because they’re held up by a form of pressure, they wouldn’t glue back on. Still, the goggles looked suitably good enough, and so that evening I went to Liam Sharp’s 40th Birthday bash in Derby—an ‘alter ego/superhero’ themed bash. I went as a Steampunk(ish) adventurer mixed with pretty much every Jules Verne character ever...

Tony Lee in Journey To The Centre Of The Kitchen...

As for the party? I don’t kiss and tell, but I’ll just say that it was a full blown costumefest with pretty much everyone making an effort—some incredibly so. Liam and Chrissie were Mr and Mrs Incredible (of course) and from the done up house to the marquee in the back we had wall to wall Batmen, Zorros, Red Sonjas, Grim Reapers, Transvestites, Shadows, Pirates, Fat Slags", Powerpuff Girls, Wonder Women and Zombies. It was a spot on event and I even met the clown Tommy Tickle who, some of you in the UK will remember was one of the main characters in the recent BBC TV documentary Clowns&mdashand who before this career change used to be a card carrying member of the comic community. It was good to speak to him as many years ago I used to be a street entertainer and we knew many of the same haunts—and then suddenly he pauses, looks at me and goes ‘You’re Tony Lee! ’ I was taken aback because as far as I was concerned, this was the celebrity. But then Tommy smiles and goes ‘I’ve heard of you. Never read your stuff. You must be quite gobby.’

Yeah. That’s about right.

But Liam’s party was an absolute blast and I’m very much looking forwards to catching up with him again this weekend coming in Bristol. Liam’s one of the most underrated guys in comics. This guy pretty much saved Marvel UK single-handedly, has the biggest selling UK superhero comic ever, even hitting the Diamond top ten - and it’s barely ever mentioned. He’s one of the superstar artists that I have always followed, and one of my ‘to kill for’ list of collaborators. He’s a damned good man, a solid bloke and why he isn’t on a monthly Superman or Batman book I have no fucking idea. Hell, I’d kill to see him do Captain America or even Iron Man. Editors reading this, make it so. I command you. Liam Sharp is an art God. Don’t treat him like a fallen idol, I beseech you. Besides, he’s built like a brick shithouse and I wouldn’t want to see him when he’s angry...

*Fat Slags are characters from the UK comic Viz. I’m not insulting two girls...

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And so in a few short days it’s the Bristol Comic Con and man, am I pumped. May is a good month for me, event wise. This week? Bristol. Next Week? It’s the launch party of The DFC, in which Dan and I have a comic scheduled for July called "The Prince Of Baghdad". The week after? It’s the MCM London Expo with comic chums David Hine, Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, Andie Tong, Dan Boultwood, Ian Sharman, lee Townsend, Dom Reardon—oh and some guy called Steve Niles. And that’s not including the TV and Movie guests that include Edward James ‘Adama’ Olmos...

All I have to do is ensure I’ve done my workload...

Talking of Jamie and Kieron—this week in the UK the latest ImagineFX comes out, I believe number #31—it has a picture of Iron Man on the front and inside not only has a complete step-by-step guide by Jamie on his excellent and years in the making story Suburban Glamour, but also has interviews with both me and Dan, complete with pictures, apparently. So go buy it, write in and demand more of that erudite Brit writer. No, I’m not kidding. Go right now and find a copy...

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Anyway, the rain has stopped and the sky is clearing. And one of my friends has made me a bacon sandwich. I’ll have to end this column now as I also have some scripting to do. And then, if I still have time? I might even have a day off.

I’m sorry—I’m laughing too much to type now...

Next week—a Bristol Report, live from the Ramada Plaza!

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© 2008, Tony Lee

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