Monthly Archives: July 2013

PARALLEL OOOH-NIVERSE!!

How’s it goin’ Hellcats and Junkyard Dogs?

It’s time for a muthaflippin’ history lesson! I’ve been upfront and loaded about the fact that I’ve been kicking out the canoes as a hyper-fictional entity since day one. Here’s my bullet-to-the-temple biographer Owen Michael Johnson with some insider fruit on the origins of my tall existence. OJ’s been on the road with me since the beginning, gunning down the squares and typing the tales. Let her rip, slim jim.

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Although it was written and set in rural Cumbria (at least the real-world stuff), the initial creative impetus for Raygun Roads was born in Staines, Surrey in 2011. Below are a few pages from a five page strip that ran in my personal sketchbook around that time.

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As with any creative project, some elements remained (snow, Kirby-esque architechture, malignant newsreaders, anti-establishment sentiment) but much got chewed up and spat out in a different guise. In this incarnation, Raygun is male, and goes by the name Asteroid Elvis. As will be revealed in later portions of the book, a part of that name was re-constituted for a different character. 

This idea of Raygun’s gender see-sawed for a while (the phrase as a forename is not gender specific). I’ll be talking at length about gender in a later blog post — how it matters, or doesn’t matter, that Raygun is female, and what that says,or doesn’t say, about her in relation to the book and the other characters.

Fast-forward 2 years. Notebook sketches and possible dialogue for the agents of D-Void, made during the writing of the script. DVOID

 “D-VOID of Pashun is a stick-figure in a gimp suit. He has black visor goggles and the focal point of his outfit is a six-foot sentient strap-on with razor-blade centipede legs and a skull face. 
D-VOID of Pryde is a twisted Venus Demilo wearing a long wedding dress of tissue paper. There is a massive hole punched through her chest  and there’s a veil over her head.

D-VOID of Punch is a life-sized Judy puppet from the Punch & Judy show, complete with little baker’s outfit and petticoat, maid’s hat, and cracked porcelain face (see reference drawings). The creepy thing about her is the legs – the hairy legs of an adult male. On the feet, Dutch clogs.”

 

These guys were tremendous fun to pass onto Indio, who just nailed my vision for the characters whilst elevating them far beyond the limitations of my artistic abilities. Under his pen they are truly grotesque. Like a lot of Raygun Roads, these villains are intended to function as metaphorical or allegorical figures; their appearance tethered to their narrative purpose.

Plus one of them is a hairy man in Dutch clogs, a giant Judy mask (or is it his head?) and no pants. Terrifying.

TRACK ONE UNLOCKED!

TRACK ONE: EVERYONE’S LOOKING FOR RAYGUN ROADS, ALRIGHT!

Wrap your brain-sensors around that!

Previously only available to owners of the limited edition ashcan EP, a digital version of Track 1 of our comic is now available for everyone, all democratic like.

It includes animations, an original score and RETINA-SHAGGING colour that is even brighter than the already frankly ridiculous print version. Here’s a comparison, in case you think we’re bloody well lying to you.

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Digital (left) Vs. Print (right)

Just look at those putrid pinks and gang greens!

And thus the crowd moans,

“Well if this looks so blinkin’ good digitally, why in christ would I buy a print version?”

A) Because the print version is going to contain extra shit you can’t get anywhere else – and it’s a beautiful object to own.

B) You wouldn’t want to shaft hard-working creators (me, not Indio: he doesn’t do nuthin’) out of making money from creating, now would you?

The Kittelbach Pirates glare in judgement at YOU!

So there you have it. Swig, spark up, and generally injest any intoxicants you have have a penchant for (I’m partaking in a Walls Arctic Roll) – sit back, relax, and join us, for the first track of RAYGUN ROADS!

 

 

 

TESTING! TESTING! TESTY! TESTES!

The Suicide Machine was totalled but the band needed to get on the road. The savage city, that Northern beast, the savage city called to us.

The EP got mastered in 3 days, despite everything, and dropped like a neutron bomb in the heart of suburban Wokingham, killing two.

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We strapped on the gun-belt, fuelled down on Irn Bru – all necron orange – and fled the screaming mass of London. Scuzzy bus station, all nighthawks and dangermice. Cold burrito, weighty and pliant as an internal organ.

We caught the night pods and slept in submarine bunks. On the road, in the night, amongst the car cries and cat’s eyes.

Stumble off the cruiser into the sun.

There are locations in this ugly world where the ink runs and the music blares and you can feel echoes of my tall existence. Underground punk gigs. Drag shows. Dilapidated theme parks. Glasgow Comic Con is one of those rifts. A place where the costumed tribes of my ancestors, of poets and addicts meet to chew the fat, tear the script, run wild in the concrete caves and jump the fences of reason.

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Getting the word out these days is more difficult. It’s hell for leather, what with the pigs and the NSA and the Administration of Fictional Immigrants.

Keeping us undercover, The Black Hearted Press. These cats are solid like the granite granny. There were other allies to attend, headbutt and grease with love: The Hope Street Irregulars are always a riot – Rob, Adam, Barry and Jamie Amsterdam. The Standard and Exploding Ghost of the Metrodome kids, Simon The Dane Insane. All were newly minted. In they go. Part of the brat pack, the great collection. We’ll be friends.

AND THEN EMILY WAS GONE.

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We were on the bill with Team Girl Comics, GLOW, Cosplay Killers & Cosmic Designs – all great acts slicing up the underground and mailing the pieces to your mama.

And then the EP dropped.

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The convention hall was a killing floor and we packed the punch. The limited edition pressing sold out, and the word was out on the airwaves.

The doors opened. My favourites arrived. The Readers were in.

Together we held back the hoardes of D-VOID.

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At the after-show in a whiskey joint haunted by Charles Bukowski, we slugged under a terrace of vines and talked of the questionable safety measures involved in European water-parks.

 

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Special shout-out to my backstage brothers – the heroes of the show: The Sharply-Dressed Space-Cat and The Amateur Astronomer.

 

 

 

 

Glasgow is a ruin. Kaiju attack ebbing.

Raygun Roads has blasted off.

The Infinity Loop Death-Trap is under construction…