No… not the Mercy Tube!

I’m blogging today to mark the arrival of an advance copy of the UK Candle Man, with a cool and very different cover from the US version.

http://www.glenndakin.com/candle_man.html

About a year ago I went into the offices of Egmont UK with a pile of photocopies of the covers of old sixties comic ‘The Witching Hour’. I was trying to suggest ideas for the feel of the book cover, and these creepy old comics kept coming to mind. These are the kind of mags that have a shadowy figure on the front screaming: “MY FACE — WHAT’S HAPPENED TO MY FACE?!” or some such to lure you into peeking inside.

You can see such wonders on this brilliant site:

http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/witching-hour

It was the imagery of these comics that partly inspired me on the road to inventing Candle Man, rich as they are in artworks where tall candles drip and stream wax across the floor of some cobwebbed mansion while two lost children tread innocently up the stairs, to meet… well you can imagine the rest.

The UK cover pleases me because it links Candle Man to its roots in the world of comics – especially the American comics of the sixties. The glowing device trapping our hero on the cover image is the Mercy Tube – and this kind of contraption is straight out of the realm that comics greats Stan Lee and Jack Kirby dreamt up for us in the sixties.

Together and apart, Stan and Jack created such mindblowing notions as the Negative Zone. the Ultimate Nullifier, Ego the Living Planet, The Silver Surfer, the Boom Tube and the Cosmic Cube.

Not to mention the Fantastic Four, the X-Men and Fin Fang Foom!

Oh to be walking in such footsteps.

It’s fun that the designer at Egmont UK, Lee Bruce, after being shown the more old-school horror stuff, took a lateral jump through the comics vortex and brought the Mercy Tube to life in a more Kirby-mungous way.

Anyway, how can you argue with man whose name is such an easy anagram of Bruce Lee?

I don’t suppose it even counts as an anagram.

If you haven’t done so, check out the Candle Man page on this site for the image, and I hope you’ll check out the UK Candle Man when it hits the shops in March. It contains a sneaky extract from book two, in which two innocent kids creep into a graveyard and … well, you’ll find out.

Chilling laughter fades upon the air…

I foresee… a hole in the plot

I’ve never been that fond of fortune tellers in fantasy tales – joyless, smug creeps the lot of ‘em.  But recently I’ve been pondering on their eternal popularity with writers.

Lately there have been a lot a lot of seers in Dr Who. We had the Ood telling the Doctor that his song was ending (Planet of the Ood) and then the lady bus passenger saying ‘he will knock four times’ (Planet of the Dead), likewise predicting the end of the tenth doctor .

This was followed by Dalek Caan foretelling the future (The Stolen Earth): onto this a major storyline was hung. Now, in the latest tale, (The End of Time) even the Time Lords were relying on the ramblings of a wibbling semi-articulate hag.

You’ve seen it coming: I think this fortune-teller gag can be overdone. In Planet of the Dead it seemed the psychic was used to add phony suspense to a story that mainly involved a 20-minute bus delay in a desert. In The End of Time, the mad soothsayer was there to lead us blindfold through some of the larger holes in the plot.

Why are soothsayers always mad? Aha – because if they were sane they could give us boringly clear answers about exactly what is going to happen. No – the gifted seer must give a riddle, a glimpse, something vague enough to drive the plot, without spoilering it.

Prophecies are irresistible to fantasy authors, and barely a trilogy goes by without one.

Much of Phillip Pullman’s classic ‘His Dark Materials’ hangs on the prediction device.  It is foretold that the heroine Lyra’s actions will change the universe, so this leads the forces of good and evil to zero in on her. In fact, without the heroine having to do anything to earn their attention (yet), she can be visited by a panoply of weird beings, lining themselves up for and against her.

It’s a bit like getting married. Without doing anything to deserve it, you – the hero – are suddenly caught up in the eye of ancient enmities that defy comprehension. In fact I would bet the whole of His Dark Materials was based on one wedding reception Philip Pullman attended.

Sometimes it does work beautifully. The great CBBC serial ‘Shoebox Zoo’ had heroine Marnie becoming the ‘Chosen One’ (yes, I know, but it sounds good when you watch it, honest), and so immediately she is on the visiting list of the local forces of good and evil. This formula is a great time-saver. It rushes us straight into a deep-seeming plot without any tortuous build-up. In the right hands it is magical. In the wrong hands it is a lazy mish-mash of phony motives and hollow, high-sounding bilge.

Getting back to that overdone phrase: ‘The One, or ‘The Chosen one’. It’s an effective method of hyping up the importance of your hero (without them actually having done anything, remember). Also, it works for the reader, since many of us secretly feel that we are ‘the one’, so we can devour the book, thinking it’s about us.

I think my favourite prediction malarkey comes in Asterix and the Soothsayer. Here Goscinny and Uderzo give this ragged tribe the nose-tweaking they deserve – if you have never seen it, I’m sure it will put a smile on your face. In fact, (portentous look, starts scribbling symbols on his own face in biro) I… KNOW IT!

But back on the Time Lord planet , Ithoughtithadbeenburntalready, here comes the Great Seeing One.

Time Lord: Tell us, oh mad one, what actually IS happening in this diabolical storyline we are caught up in?’

Great Seeing One: “I see a man in a blue box, fighting another man… wait, it’s… it’s his ENEMY! And they are on a planet – wait – one word approacheth my gaze… one word – rhymes with “mirth”! Starts with ‘ear’ – oh come on, surely even you non-seers can guess it now…! “

Happy new year

One More Thing Ma’am… Stendek!

My comic collection, The Rockpool Files – beautifully drawn by Phil Elliott, is out now, and I hope all mystery lovers will dive in.

http://www.slgcomic.com/The-Rockpool-Files-Volume-One_p_1263.html

It is a belief in the publishing world that people love mysteries, but actually this isn’t true.  People hate mysteries and want to see them get solved.

What people really love is investigation. This is proved by my favourite detective show, Columbo, where the audience is clearly shown whodunnit at the start of the show – usually at great length and in exhaustive detail. No room for mystery there at all.

What people love is the process of investigation, as Columbo gnaws away at the truth, and the trouser leg of his vain, smarmy and usually famous suspect – until they are caught out in a magnificent pay-off.

I think my favourite one is where they use the blind man as an eye-witness.

Suspect: His evidence can’t convict me – he’s blind!

Columbo: Ah, but howja know he was blind – unless you were there, at the scene of the crime, to see him?

And then there’s the one where Columbo lures the suspect into teaming up with him to crack his own crime. Or was that in all of them?

The Rockpool Files is like the opposite to Columbo. Explanations come last – if at all.  It is mystery for the sake of mystery, the lovely magical blur around the edge of reality that accompanies a truly baffling event.

In Rockpool we detect the location of a planet by recording the sigh of its ocean trapped ina giant shell. We take the force of gravity to court for the murder of a man who fell to his death. We order two drinks and insist on having the second one first.

Because here’s the thing. In the realm of fiction, people love investigation. But in the real world – now that’s where people do love a mystery. Check out the history channel – it might as well be called the mystery channel (dies laughing at his own remark), as the great unfathomables get wheeled out every week: The Pyramids, Atlantis, Area 51, the Carpenters.

My personal favourite is Stendek. But, if that word means nothing to you now, don’t google it. You will only end up like me, waking up every day wondering what stendek means.

Christmas is looming, and that is certainly a great mystery – one of my favourites, where bizarre events in a faraway time and place have led to grown men in the 21st century standing hand-in-hand with their children and scanning the very skies for flying reindeer.

The biggest mystery for my son, is since Ghristmas is so great – why don’t we have it every day?

EVERY DAY??? Ah, my son, you have to grow up a bit before you know the answer to that one.

PS… The Rockpool files, even more beautifully drawn by Phil Elliott, has been examined by scientists at the Atlantis Detective Agency, and proven, scientifically, to be exactly the right size to fit into a Christmas stocking!

Nothing mysterious about that.

Stendek.

Pants

I was in the children’s section of the bookshop yesterday and noticed  some words that kept popping up. Take the words: vampire, zombie, alien or space – then combine them with the words: pirate, mummy, dino and pants – in almost any combination you like: eg: Mr vampire zombie pants and the egyptian dino space pirates  -and you could have a hit book on your hands!

Well what are you waiting for???

Or am I the last author to have realised this?

There is one book with the word ‘pants’ in the title, however, I would like to recommend – for older comics fans. Not so much a graphic novel, as a graphic life story. If you haven’t caught up with the work of Eddie Campbell yet, I strongly suggest you get a copy of ‘ALEC: The Years Have Pants.’ (Top Shelf)

You will not find muscular heroes and villains carving each other to shivering bits within – but instead, tales of everyday life. In his early years ALEC conveys the magic of discovering friendships and where you belong among them. Later, in one of my favourite eras, Eddie explores the bitter-sweet pangs of leaving your homeland to live in another – in this case tropical Australia – a place where a whole herd of cattle crowd under the shade of a single billboard in the outback.

The great French film director Jean-Luc Godard once said of Jacques Tati, that he was the one person working in cinema who gave the impression he could have invented it.  Similarly, i’d say of my Mr Campbell, that he has such a magical gift for comics, that if they weren’t there he could surely have made them up.

So, if you must buy a book with pants in the title (and you’re an adult)  this is the one!

Why pants? Why are they funny? I’ve paused the world (sorry all alien invaders poised to attack out there) to contemplate this.

Pants are something only those close to us get to see. In just our pants we are half-naked, not really ready to face the world. We are not in a position to answer the door to the Queen or with true dignity fight off a burglar.

Pants are half-way to being rude – and half-way to being rude is what kids like.

To grown-ups the word destroys formality and gets to the smelly and often shambolic truth of things.

I have just told my wife I am writing about pants an she texted back ‘I am living it’.

Finally, while I’m recommending adult comics, I point any horror fans out there to the darkly intelligent Lords of Misrule (Radical publishing) from John Tomlinson and a host of other horrible people. If you know that wicker is not just for making shopping baskets and that old ladies are not always sweet knitters of shredded wheat then this is for you. Don’t be callow, have  a good wallow.

Exits pursued by a bear (in pants)

Read THIS bad boy…

Urgh…

A couple of years back there was an orange phone ad, where an executive twangs a pair of skimpy swimming trunks at a movie star and says: ‘wear these bad boys!’

This smart dialogue obviously impressed the TV writers of the world, because since then any random object can be referred to as a ‘bad boy’, in an attempt to recreate the magic of the original remark. The phrase stumbled to its tragic end (perhaps) in CBBC’s ‘My Almost Famous Family,’ when an injured schoolboy hobbled into a room on crutches and said ‘now I have to use these bad boys.’

At which point we can see the apple has fallen quite a long way from the tree.

Kids TV is full of these remarks that seem to take over and have to be repeated everywhere. At one point it was, ‘which part of (insert random element here) don’t you understand?’ For example, ‘which part of BACK OFF don’t you understand?’ then, humorously, ‘which part of NO don’t you understand?’ Or, (slapstick) ‘Which part of (POW! Our hero smashes the baddie in the face) – don’t you understand?’

For a while the universal phrase was ‘That went well!’ Spoken ironically, when something has gone badly, like the hero trying to bury the monster in rocks, only to find out the monster eats rocks. (They make him more powerful. That went well – now he’s like, going to be even more monstery than before. )

But, on Sarah Jane Adventures, when failing to negotiate with the Bane, Sarah Jane reflects sadly: ‘That DIDN’T go well.’ I was shocked to the core – but I will bet you anything that the script requested her to say ‘That went well!’ and Lis Sladen insisted on removing the irony – because, as a good actress, she knows it becomes tiresome.

One of the current beauties, is the hero says something like, ‘The aliens are attacking us!’ and the cheeky sidekick says (cheekily) ‘Ya think??!’ Because it is all so obvious and doesn’t need explaining. Ya think??! There, now I’m doing it too.

One of the nice things about writing Candle Man, is that it is not for TV, or comics. I am allowed to set my own tone, be individual and I do not have to tick all the trendy boxes when writing the dialogue.

It’s a curious thing, this cloning of styles, dialogue and catch phrases, which make so many TV shows sound like they have all been written by the same guy. Curious, because, I was brought up to value originality, but in so many writing jobs out there, it is more important to be slickly the same as the next guy.

Go figure! (As they say on TV)

Oh well, back into the network…

Naming names on the planet Skreem

Yesterday I got into an argument with two writer chums about the validity of endless Dr Who spin-off tales. I think my wariness of them derives from my own attempts to write Dr Who stories myself as a child.

‘The Tardis landed on a barren planet.’

That was how I used to write – the planet was always barren because I hadn’t thought up what was there yet.

‘Where are we, Doctor?’ asked Jo.

‘The planet Manbrad,’ replied the Doctor.

Or maybe Bropar, or Gorron or Banthranditch… as soon as I had to make up the name of the alien world my heart would sink. How did you invent such things?

I knew my names were made up, so they never sounded right. Whereas the names already in Dr Who – the planet Skaro, or Mondas, seemed believable – because they had been on TV.

‘We are on the planet Not-very-real, where the aliens are suffering from being made up by Glenn. Only I can save them.’

Just moments into my tale it already carried a sense of failure.

As I got older I noticed that writers would sometimes invent a name by borrowing from a word that already exists. For example Darth Vader. Darth is a bit like death, and Vader is a sawn-off bit of the word invader – another slightly worrying word.

In Marvel Comics the Skrulls had obviously just taken the word Skull and stuck an ‘r’ in it. Then there was the Romulans in Star Trek. That was a bit like Romans. Already, without any added back-story, their name carried a sense of formidable history.

The next time I wrote a story I called my aliens the Terrons. becasue it sounded like ‘terror’. I stared at the word on the page. It worked! My crazy theory had worked!  Then I called the story ‘The Terror of the Terrons’. Ha ha! Quite laughable, but at the time, my school friends were impressed. ‘It’s like a real Dr Who title’, one said.

I should have been pleased but I felt a bit sorry. I had started to step behind the theatre curtain – was learning how to put on a show, not just sit in the audience.

Recently I had a couple of TV companies vaguely interested in a TV show I had made up with a pal of mine, Alan Cowsill, the show being called ‘Wereforce One’.

In our research we discovered that in the word ‘werewolf’, the ‘were’ part actually means ‘man’. Man-wolf – see, it makes sense. This didn’t stop us calling our werewolf superheroes Wereforce One, because we liked the name.

Occasionally know-it-alls would delight in pointing out our blunder. But it was no longer a real blunder – but a choice.

Writing my book Candle Man I invented the smoglodytes. Creatures of the unholy fog, denizens of the murk on London streets, I enjoyed the wordplay with the exisiting word ‘troglodyte’.

This time I have pretty much got away with it. Apparently in troglodyte, the ‘trog’means hole and the rest means someone that goes into it. So maybe smoglodyte could mean creatures that go around in smog.

Well I had to get one right sooner or later.

All for now – Glenn – or is it Geln? or Gleen?

An October Night

It rains half the night and

The blocked gutter keeps me awake

Water running through my head

Will people understand my book?

Why do things you write with a serious heart

Seem to turn into jokes later?

The world wants to laugh at you

Most particularly when you are being earnest

On a night like this I wonder

Will the smoglodytes catch Theo?

In fact the smogs have escaped from me

From the stereotype I wanted to give them

I wanted them to be a creeping mass,

A murk like tonight where there is no escape

From the running of the rain

But I came to see them closer -

See their faces and their hopes

It made you realise that every enemy

We have ever been told to fight

Has lovely children

And dads that smile when they get home

Today I’m back to work in London

Ready to lose myself in the city’s gloom

Like Skun

More later…

Keeper of the Flame

After being mocked for blogging I pause to wonder where the idea of the blog comes from.

I think  Stan Lee  invented blogging back in the 70s. In the 60s he created Spider-Man, The Hulk etc, then in the 70s his comics began to contain a weird outburst of several paragraphs just telling the world what he was thinking.

Huh?? Thinking??? What the heck was Stan up to? (As it happens, he was usually up to plugging his comics!) But while Stan wasn’t scripting any titles, ‘Stan’s Soapbox’ gave the wacky wordophile a new way to vent his vivacious verbosity on the cosmos.

Why am I suddenly using the awful agonies of alliteration? Well, that’s the way Stan always wrote his soapbox. He not only had a genius for inventing characters, he also invented a whole new advertising language – and then he invented the blog. It just took technology another thirty years to catch up with him!

Stan is close to my heart, as his super-hero comics are a great inspiration for my Candle Man series of books. Keeper of the Flame was one of Stan’s phrases, for anyone who bought and recommended his comics to others. At one point I suggested ‘Keeper of the Flame’ as the title for Candle Man 1. It’s relevant to my hero, and also to the whole kind of story genre I am keeping alive.

My book ended up as The Society of Unrelenting Vigilance. I’ve been a bit worried about the title, as it seemed rather a mouthful, for the book to achieve word-of-mouth success. But everyone has ended up just calling it ‘Candle Man’, anyway.

Stan Lee was once told by his publisher than his comics were only a success because of their short snappy titles. So Stan sat down and wrote ‘Sergeant Fury and His Howling Commandos’ – which was also a success, of course.

Stan left an answerphone message for me once. Probably my proudest moment at Marvel UK. Half the office came over to hear it.

Back to work… you can have fun following Stan on twitter, btw… check out:

smilinstanlee

Liquid fairies

Dear Reader,

My old pal, Lomond Banks, (really the all-time great comic creator Eddie Campbell) tells me that people who blog because they have a book coming out are viewed with deep suspicion!  I would like to complain about this here and now. (I mean complain about this deep-held suspicion you all have – not the excellent Mr Banks). After all, what am I supposed to do, bury my book in the garden at midnight, change my name and run away to Zanzibar?

For Pete’s sake. I mean, who better than me to recommend a book I believe worthy of attention? It’s like saying that ‘Fairy Liquid’ should not tell you that their product is mild and green.

These people, obviously experts in liquidising fairies (or, perhaps a rogue group of fairies who use their magic power to make an unfairly supernatural-based cleaning product, thereby beating all human-made opposition) are in a better position to ascertain its strength (mild) and its colour (all right, all right), than anyone else. I am on their side, shoulder to shoulder (depending on their elfin size).

Be loud, be proud, and blog your book, me hearties. There’s a way out of this storm of suspicion yet – I’ve seen it in old maps, glimpsed in the writings of marooned mariners once a long ago.

By the way ‘mild’ is cool, but when is someone going to make a washing up liquid that is ‘possessed of a terrifying destructive power’? That might work.

Just a thought.

You take the high road, and I’ll take the low till next we meet….

Saintly Behaviour

Gentle Reader,

Sitting here, gazing across the spires and chimney pots of Cambridge on a misty autumn morning, I am glad to be away from the gothic terrors of that mysterious metropolis – London.

I am especially glad to be far away from Dr Saint, a bald, bespectacled, smiling gentleman, who can be found in my book ‘Candle Man 1: The Society of Unrelenting Vigilance.’

I picture him now, seated at a vast walnut desk, in his office at Empire Hall, a splendid mansion in Kensington Gore. He sits in his shirt sleeves and a smart waistcoat, nibbling at celery stalks as he looks through some papers.

What is he studying? Read-outs from the Mercy Tube, a radioactive chamber he puts his teenage ward, Theo, in every day!

What is the purpose of the Mercy Tube? Dr Saint will say it is to cure his ward of a rare illness. And we really ought to believe him, as he is the head of a charity – the Society of Good Works, and every day performs an Act of Kindness.

And yet, and yet, there is something about Dr Saint that makes us uneasy… even the gargoyles in the graveyard seem to stare suspiciously as he passes.

Someone should keep an eye on this man. Perhaps you ought to join the unrelenting vigilance and buy my book Candle Man before it’s too late!

More later.