Q&A 19: attack the classics (Patreon)

Chris Brogan asks:

"We have seen you do The Bat, Snikt man and Kitten, and now the Barbarian, are there any other comic characters you would like to use in a story or do a story about?"

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Before I answer this question, I ask a rhetorical one of my own: why did I draw those excursions into others' characters? In all three cases, just because I fancied a change from what I was doing.

I thought perhaps these diversions into alien territory would draw in a few new readers. To the best of my knowledge, they did not. Thank goodness for you, my pre-existing readers. Please do not die.

The pleasure of working on someone else's character, absent them having any recourse to tell me that I am "doing it wrong", is that I can impose my customary comic rules upon them. Though rule number 1 in any such case is that when approaching such a property, I must maintain the essence of the original. So Batman, even when drawn into snooker halls, must be Batman. Fortunately, he contains multitudes. The X-Men had to act like the X-Men, Conan must be a proper Conan. Maybe he is a little bit Groo The Wanderer at times but I've tried hard to be true to the original Robert E Howard texts (minus the weird racial slurs and absent most of the nudity so as not to get anyone fired from work.)

I can't draw as good a Wolverine as Jason Latour, but it's inherently funny to me to see him filtered through my untutored approach. And I'm forced to draw things I wouldn't normally, because these stories call for things that fall outside my well-trodden path.

One of the strengths of the scattergun approach of the original Scary Go Round series was that once in a while I'd say: we're going to Romania/an evil island base/a smuggler's cove/etc and force myself to try something new. It didn't always work! I lost that outlet with the more grounded stories that followed, and GDxB/Kit + The Wolf/Conan all feel like a manifestation of similar urges as I cast about for a new, longer term project that continues to elude me.

Conan is a bit of a wild card, as these were ideas that I initially came up with for Warwick Johnson Cadwell, that I selfishly kept back for myself.

So, here are some famous comics I think I could draw at least 22 pages of in a similar spirit. None of these will surprise you.

SHE HULKEveryone knows that a She Hulk written and drawn by me would be A1. This is the top of the shop. Perhaps she would have to defend Stiltman in court. Stiltman is a superhero whose power is that he is on very very tall stilts. Do not confuse him with the great film director (Barcelona, Last Days of Disco etc) Whit Stillman.

DEATH'S HEAD IIDeath's Head II is a big blue Marvel UK cyborg whose head is a gold cow skull, with red dreadlocks made of wires. He doesn't really have much of a personality (unlike Deaths Head I) but I can fix that, yes? He is preposterous looking. My idea is that he has a Clark Kent-style ability to evade detection when wearing a shirt and tie and spectacles. Ah you say, very choice.

SUPERMANIf there's one thing I know about, it's newspapers. I have a DEGREE in newspapers. And Superman aka Clark Kent works at a newspaper, "The Daily Planet", or he did, I imagine now he works at a thinly disguised Tiktok. Anyway, I love Superman and Lois Lane and would deliver on every level. I would draw Clark Kent as he was imagined by Nicholas Cage in his ill-fated casting. I think about his ideas for the character all the time.

SPITFIRE AND THE TROUBLESHOOTERSSpitfire and The Troubleshooters was a mid 80s New Universe comic about a lady scientist who has a big robot suit, like Iron Man. She also has a team of sparky assistants in the style of, say, NCIS: New Orleans. The original series was very confused and soon became clogged with spy intrigue. I hate spy intrigue and could unclog it in five minutes flat.

MACHINE MANAlthough he has been despoiled by the touch of W*rren Ellis, I would bring the sentient robot man back to his roots so that he could truly enjoy the 2020s he had such a rotten time in during (personal favourite series) Machine Man 2020.