From: [R J Johnston] at [newcastle.ac.uk] (Rich Johnston) Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc Subject: Rich's Revelations about the UKCAC... some revelations! Date: 9 Oct 1994 06:14:09 -0500 Firstly, before I get to the bits you all really want to read, I'll do a bit of Dirtbag plugging. The covers of Dirtbag 6-8 will include work by Kurt Busiek, Warren Ellis, Steve Pugh, Glenn Fabry, Al Davison, Jamie Delano, Dick Foreman, Roberta Gregory, Bob Lynch, Phil Elliot and Garth Ennis. Among others... Dirtbag is now distributed from Slab-O-Concrete. Cheers guys! Gossipy, bitchy-bits. After Steve Pugh drew the Hellstorm cover, Vertigo faxed a copy back to him with the words "You Slut" scrawled across it. Warren Ellis is of the opinion that Karen Berger doesn't like him much, but Karen doesn't agree, but objected to my comparisons of Warren and Alan Moore. Warren will be drawing a painted 2 part series called Ashes, What If story where Phil Shenton from Marvels travels the world looking for paranormal events only to find the didnt happen, a cannibal Nick Fury taught to eat human flesh by Captain America during WW2, a carnival Ghost Rider who kills himself by dousing his head in petrol and striking a light, a Dr Strange easting cockroaches, who never found his Tibetan master because he was killed during the Chinese occupation, an embittered Ben Grimm who never took the space flight, Doc Doom piloted it, was a worse pilot and the FF all died from radiation poisoning. He sits in his room with blown up photos of their corpses. Bruce Banner died from radiation poisoning... etc etc, you get the picture. Kurt Busiek knows about Ashes but his reaction to it was... interesting. Dirtbag went down well at the UKCAC and I may have got a few useful contacts for republishing it. A Dirtbag page may appear in Naughty Bits sometime, as well as a crossover with Brit comic Vogarth. First official pro fan of Dirtbag, a sales spokeperson from DC called Patti, who greeted me with "Hey, you're Richard Johnston, the Dirtbag guy". Joy! Warren Ellis also recognised me from my Comics International reviews. Okay okay, its only a little fame, but boy my ego needed raising at the time! Actually, I'm starting to get a "regular face" look at the UKCACs... All you Image fans, you'll love this one.... a friend of Todd McFarlane, who has a helping credit on Spawn 1 was invited over to Todd's to look at the pages of issue 1 he'd drawn and to "help him out". When this guy turned up, Todd showed him the pages, to his praise but then requested help to put them in the right order and to write dialogue to link them together... he tried and then found 1/3 of his dialogue in Spawn 1! He also designed the characters and names of Twitch and Sam. The original design for Violator was a 7 foot muscle man in spandex with an M on his head. When flicking through some pages, this guy saw a spindly nasty creature. On inquiring further, Todd told him that he was called "Chicken-Man", named by Wanda, from a failed experiment for a Batman/Aliens crossover. He told Todd that this was Violator and that there should be another form., a stumpy man, who would threaten a lot and turn into this "Chicken Man". BTW, this guy has not received any payment for his help on Spawn (including dealing with a phone call from Todd when doing issue 4 saying "Tell me again, why is Spawn a good guy?" and may be pursuing such matters later. Other contributions include the link between Chapel killing Spawn, but Todd made it more obvious. He also recommended the teleportation scene to Africa rather than let Spawn fight Youngblood and provided motivation for Spawn using guns... Todd wanted Spawn to use guns but couldn't justify it. This guy also picked up on Spawn being homeless without justification, emphasised the pain of teleportation and claims that Todd McFarlane had a much greater part in scripting Spawn 11 and Spawn/Batman than in the credits... is anyone surprised by this last claim? Battle of Lexington by McCloud and Busiek was a great performance, especially with contributions by wife and child.... they had the entire theatre in laughter and engrossed until the end, leaving many people missing their train back home. It was a fun weekend... I'll post more when I remember it.... the alcohol helped obliterate a lot. Oh yeah! Adam Ant turned up! He just likes comics I guess... ................................. From: [R J Johnston] at [newcastle.ac.uk] (Rich Johnston) Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc Subject: Rich's More UKCAC bits as I remember them. Date: 9 Oct 1994 06:14:11 -0500 Oh, yeah, I was talking to Dez Skinn, the Comics International guy, and am proposing a monthly column, entitled "Comics on the Net" unless I can think of anything better, filling half a page with the shennanigans of you lot, a kinda rec.arts.comics.digest. I will not use anyone's words without their permission, although under certain circumstances I may describe their actions. I will post this article first to the net so that you may view and criticise first. Anyone with an interest, please email me... Looks like Fabian's attempt at a coup at Marvel failed and backfired after slagging off Bob Harass... look for any cognitive dissonance when/if Fabe leaves the X-Books. More rumours abound with Lobdell, Kubert and JrJr on the chopping board, but I really dunno. The alternative mutantverse is basically a reason for the x-writers to fuck about with their characters without affecting the X-Continuity (read X-Men cartoon series and the toyline) There are possibilities that all these X-books will be kept on once the regular X-books return, but Warren Ellis has said that he will resign if Marvel do that. I might have something lined up for an issue of Vertigo's The Dreaming. Tell you more if anything happens. Ditto for "Focus" for Antarctic. More later. Warren Ellis believes Marvel are giving him rope to hang himself. he keeps doing stuff and they keep saying "okay". Like Doom 2099 conquering America. He's turning Doom into a purely political book. His Ashes series was welcomed by his editors but they kept referring it to their top guys saying "can we do this?" and Tom DeFalco said yes! He has constantly been attacked by the Comics Code for Hellstorm but has constantly fought them off. The one change has been on the last page of the last issue, where a statue of a man with an enormous penis has had to be amended... A Hellstorm Graphic Novel will follow, and then we get Druid! ................................. Rich Johnston,[r j johnston] at [ncl.ac.uk] Dirtbag #1 has now shipped from Brenners. "I think your "Rich's Reviews" are little more than drool... But it's the little snippets of inside information you have to share that keep you out of my killfile. Keep it up." -Slippery Jim. "Will you please stop posting articles which make sense? I really hat it when I have to agree with you."- Scowling Jim Cowling. Dirtbag #3 can now be ordered under Twist and Shout Comics. ................................. Rich Johnston,[r j johnston] at [ncl.ac.uk] Dirtbag #1 has now shipped from Brenners. Dirtbag #2 will be shipping sometime. Hopefully this month. Dirtbag #4 can now be ordered under Twist and Shout Comics.