THE CURRENT IMAGE: SIMON AND FRAZER ON GUTSVILLE

[MattBrady]

by Benjamin Ong Pang Kean

Gutsville, a new six-issue limited series from Image created by UK Comics Award-winning artist Frazier Irving (Seven Soldiers: Klarion the Witch Boy, Iron Man: Inevitable, Silent War) and fellow UK Comics Award writer Simon Spurrier, billed as the hottest young thing in British comics, will hit stores at the end of this month.

According to the solicits, Gutsville is set "150 years after the HMS Daphne was swallowed at sea by a monster of unimaginable proportions, its passengers' descendents cling to life in Gutsville. But all is not well on the slippery streets. Revolutionaries, sadistic priests and frothing psychos clash in the psychedelic intestines of an impossible being, and it's left to a scared young Rat Catcher named Albert to consider escape."

Newsarama.com explored the city located within the beast’s belly with the creators to find out what else lurks within.

Newsarama: Simon and Frazer, the both of you are familiar names in the UK comics and had previously worked together in 2000AD, Judge Dredd Megazine, and The Telegraph Magazine. What is it about your collaboration and partnership that makes the whole creative process work well between the both of you?

Frazer Irving: Well, Si has talent and enthusiasm above all else, plus he's reliable with delivering his scripts. He's also really, really weird (just like me) so I feel happy doing my crazy stuff knowing that he will understand it. All of that plus he understands that he has to respect his elders. Isn't that right, boy?

Simon Spurrier: Yes! That’s right. Now have your soup, there’s a good chap – whoops, in the mouth, remember, in the mouth – and tell the nice readers about the war.

Just nod and grin at him. Eventually he’ll fall asleep.

Seriously – we both started-out in the same place at the same time – trying to get into 2000AD – so we were mutual whiners on Usenet back before we ever dreamed of getting real work. We’re both into a lot of the same stuff, which helps. Psychedelic sequences, big freaky monsters, pretty girls and experimental storytelling gimmicks – that pretty much covers it. I think we’ve just collaborated enough over the years to know that our shared projects tend to turn-out well. It’s that simple. And Frazer rolls cigarettes better than I do, so he was a useful resource during my penniless student days.

NRAMA: All righty then. At what point in time did the upcoming six-issue mini-series end up being an Image Comics publication?

SS: I think we talked about pitching something creator-owned for quite a while, but we were both so busy with other stuff it took us an age to get off our arses and get on with it. When Gutsville first popped-up in my brain Fraze was tied-up with… what? Klarion? Or Iron Man: Inevitable?

FI: Both, probably.

SS: Right, exactly. Anyway, I’m still a relative nobody on the expensive side of the Atlantic, so I was getting exactly nowhere approaching publishers on my own. When His Nibs here finally found the time to come on board it turned all the right heads. We went straight to Image because our good pal Jamie McKelvie had done so well with Phonogram.

NRAMA: Simon, you're new to American comic book readers. How about introducing yourself to our readers? In other words, convince us that you're not just a writer of 2000AD comics and Warhammer 40K books?

SS: Hey, I yam what I yam. I started writing for 2000AD at a very early age and… you’ll have to excuse the pretentiousness of what I’m about to say… quickly became a student of the comics medium. My theory is that we’ve barely begun to scrape the surface of what comics can actually do, and that’s got a lot to do with the fact that they tend to be looked down upon as “low art”, always playing it safe, worthy only of stories about guys in spandex hitting each other. Bullshit! Comics are a unique, wonderful, versatile medium. (One of the only ones, by the way, which uses both hemispheres of a reader’s brain at the same time. There’s a reason they print those little safety cards in airplanes with sequential pictures. You read it, and it goes in.)

Anyway. 2000AD has given me the opportunity to chuck about every mad idea under the sun, and to build the sort of discipline that comes with story episodes being 6 pages long instead of 22. British writers have this reputation for showing-up in US comics with crazy, bold, madcap ideas which are crammed full of plot rather than decompressed all to hell. A lot of that’s down to 2000AD. So I like to think I’ve had the best possible schooling in telling original, dense, wildly inventive stories, that don’t play by the same rules.

The point I’m making is: I’m Stateside now, baby, and I’m not intending to play it safe.

NRAMA: What are your thoughts on the current comic book industry? And how confident are you that a project like Gutsville would appeal to the mainstream?

SS: I dunno, maybe things are rosier in the US, but certainly in the UK’s case the industry can seem a little grim. I worry that unless comics are accepted into everyday culture as another viable medium – on a par with novels or movies or TV or whatever – then they’ll continue to spiral away into this sleazy little “cult” industry. I suspect there’d be a lot more people getting into comics if they were aware of all the non-superhero stuff out there: the wealth of great horrors, comedies, romances, etc, etc, waiting to be discovered, if only they’d venture into a comics shop. I love superheroes, for the record, but there’s more than just that out there. That’s the message to spread.

FI: I'm not half as pessimistic as that. I think all that "New Metal" music that young Simon listens to has made him a dark and serious person. Personally I think I can see the industry growing, reaching out towards new people all the time and even though it's a slow change I think it's natural for it to happen at this pace. I don't know what effect Gutsville will have on the mainstream, but if I thought about that when I was drawing it then by the end of each issue there would be several Wolverines scattered amidst the crowds and a lot, lot more naked breasts. Sometimes you just gotta let it go and focus on doing the job in hand I reckon, which in our case is to be storytellers.

SS: S’right. If people want to take a risk and check it out, they won’t be disappointed. If not – hey: their loss. They can go envy their more enlightened friends in bitter silence. Or listening to their New Metal. Which I hate. Just for the record. Leave me alone.

NRAMA: What inspired the creation of this particular story that promises to be “unlike anything else on the rack”?

SS: No conscious inspiration at all, sorry. The best ideas are like that. I mean – afterwards you start to think about some of the random tropes that maybe strayed into your consciousness and contributed, but it was really just a case of: “Hey… heeeyy… that’d be coooool.”

NRAMA: The premise kind of reminds me of the Jonah and the "great fish" story in the Bible. Throw in the revolutionaries, sadistic priests, frothing psychos and sea monsters, and you have Gutsville. Or is there more to it than what's on the surface of things?

SS: The Jonah thing is kind of interesting, because the story was largely plotted before that particular connection was made. Fortuitously we needed an aristocratic class in absolute control of the city, so it wasn’t too far of a leap to turn them into zealous priests who believe the citizens of Gutsville are doomed unless they – like Jonah – repent of their sins and are set free. So in answer to your question: yes – there’s much, much, much more to it than what’s on the surface. Everything you’ve read in the solicitation text is common knowledge to all the citizens of Gutsville – the priests, the psychos, the revolutionaries, all that stuff... The story is all about digging deeper; questioning this mad, dribbly, psychedelic world. Ultimately what it comes down to is: exactly what have they been swallowed by?

NRAMA: What do you guys hope to achieve with Gutsville?

SS: On a high-falutin’ level, Gutsville should make people question their reality, their religion, their expectations, and their own potential. On a medium-falutin’ level, Gutsville should revolutionize the entire comics industry, win every award there is, elevate our names to Godlike status and be studied in schools. On a crass-falutin’ level, we hope it earns us lots and lots and lots of money.

On a realistic level, we hope it stands out as an exciting, intelligent, thoughtful, and most of all enjoyable example of what comics can do.

FI: "Crass falutin'”? Well I obviously have dreams where Gutsville changes the shape of the universe, but realistically I'd be happy with global domination of the entertainment industry plus reworking the way stories are told for the next billion years. If we break even and have a nice set of comics and a good solid trade which didn't lose us any money at the end of it, I'd still be happy. As you can see, Simon and I seem to share the same ambitions.

NRAMA: Can you tell us more about Albert, and the other characters such as Emelia, Mary… and NoSunMan, "serial killer, psychedelic horror-merchant and all-out freak"?

SS: Weeell, it’s an ensemble story, so I don’t want to give too much away: getting to know all the twists and turns in the characters’ personalities is half the fun. Suffice to say we’ve got all kinds of different folks in the mix, and all of them – I hope – are believable, no matter how eccentric or extreme or just-plain-nasty. The “main” character, if you want to think of him like that, is an average sort of bloke whose hopes and dreams have been frustrated by the horrible circumstances of his life, and who simply decides one day that enough is enough. I like to think he’s a standard-bearer for what normal people can achieve: he’s not ultra-smart or ultra-strong or ultra-brave… he’s just pissed-off and broken-hearted and hungry for change.

NRAMA: Frazer, you've recently drawn a number of projects for the comics industry's Big Two, DC and Marvel, respectively. How much have you grown as an artist?

FI: About an extra 3 inches.

NRAMA: Okay, let’s try this again. How personal is a creator-owned project like Gutsville at the current point of your artistic career?

FI: I think the time is just right, to be honest. I seem to have sailed my merry way through the comics field over the past 12 years with no map or guidance, yet all my projects have been just right for the next stage of development. I started out doing creator owned stuff in the small press of the UK, so I know how different it is compared to the dog-eat-dog world of work-for-hire, and doing something like Gutsville any earlier would have been a bad mistake I think. Since I started drawing for the Americans I've been able to develop a whole bunch of new visual styles and tricks which I need to work with the more complex beast that is Gutsville. I want it to stand up there with all my other works yet it'll need something extra all of its own mainly because it doesn't have a famous Stan Lee character riding at the front dragging in the readers. This really is the first test of my skills as an artist in a completely new context. So if it gets super-bad reviews, it's all down to the creators and not the characters.

NRAMA: Artwise, can you tell us more about the "Three Vertical Stripes" motif that you're using for the covers?

FI: That was an idea that grew out of arguments that Si and I had when we were looking to find a unifying gimmick to apply to the covers. I feel strongly that comic covers should utilize tricks and gimmicks from the art world as a whole, and be more than just redundant echoes of interior panels, and composition is one of those things that I think is easiest to work with. I'd used a similar trick on the Iron Man: Inevitable covers where the central action was framed by a circular motif in the background. It was tricky making it work over 6 issues, and some worked better than others, but when we were deliberating Gutsville I thought we should just try something similar like that and plan it out a bit more. I think the genesis of the stripes came from a sketch I drew where we saw the first guy getting lowered into the gut, and I wanted poster art on either side of him to show the readers that this was a political execution... this swiftly turned into the "looking down and seeing the planks" image that we stayed with. It looked quite bold and so Simon and I brainstormed enough ideas that could work with this idea and that was that.

NRAMA: In this age of digital comics, are there plans to put Gutsville, especially original strips, online at www.gutsville.com?

FI: I have no plans to put actual original strips online, because I simply don't think I can afford the time to make pages that won't make it into a printed volume. We may well put episodes that have been published in print already onto the website for the benefit of future readers, but webcomics aren't my thing.

NRAMA: What else can we expect to see from the both of you, either collectively or individually, in the coming months?

FI: I'm still bashing away at Silent War from Marvel, and once that's over I'll have a series running in UK mag 2000AD called “Buttonman”, which is the fourth part of a series that's been running since the early 90's.

SS: I’ve been pretty busy with my first prose novel – titled Contract, published by Headline Review, available soon, pluggity-plug-plug – so that’s occupied most of my time. But I’ve been keeping my comicky hand in too: lots of fun Angel Gang stuff for 2000AD’s sister title the Megazine, and an issue of JLU (don’t knock it – it’s brilliant fun: I got to write the Question, geekgasm!). And I landed my first significant gig with one of the Biggies, which is a joy to work on.

NRAMA: Simon, I hear that a certain writer with a first name like yours is writing a new Silver Surfer comic for Marvel. Would you happen to be the one that I'm referring to?

SS: Heh – good digging, man. Yeah. That’s me. Can’t really say much, and as far as I know it’s not out ‘til November, but just to get the drool flowing: it’s drawn by the utterly brain-buggeringly awesome Tan Eng Huat, it’s not a tie-in to the film, it’s set out and about amongst the stars, and it’s more fun than putting a greased-up ferret down your trousers. A cosmic ferret.

NRAMA: Finally, last chance for you to "sell" the book – sell it lads.

FI: You must get issue #1. Buy it, board it, bag it, slab it. It will be very collectable. It'll be like that day that Captain America #25 came out and you only bought one copy, only to find out later that people in countries you had never heard of were going mental trying to find a copy. Buy an extra one so you can read it too.

NRAMA: And Simon says…?

SS: Sod all the gimmicky reasons to buy this book. What matters, really, is this: As an Englishman, I’m genetically incapable of false arrogance. Even so: Gutsville’s ____ing great. It really is.

[remender73]

Looks gorgeous. The concept is as original as I've ever heard. Great hook.

[Blackbeard]

I can't wait to pick this up!
Original story, fantastic art and wonderful colors. What's not to like?

[NICKD]

This book looks really well done. Can't wait.

[joe!geek]

this is looking good-yet another add on the pull list....warren ellis has made me very curios about spurrier, and frazer irving is pumping out some gorgeous, gorgeous stuff.

[TurdFerguson]

This actually looks really good and interesting. I'll have to pick it up when it comes out

ive always liked british comics. they're great. i rememeber old kiddy stuff like Beano and Dandy. Oor Willie. that stuff made me laugh

[ShinAkuma666]

Very original idea for this project, when I saw the add in the Previews, a put it on my to get list, its great to see some art, it just look gorgeous.

[Jim Connick]

Ah, I remember the old days, when Si would regale us with tales of getting yet another rejection letter from Andy Diggle, and Frazer would try to convince us he hadn't recently murdered a legendary British artist, now look at them, all grown up!

[CoreyB]

Huh, looks cool. Just added it to my list.

Good to hear about it.

[Royal Nonesuch]

These guys are hilarious. Great interview, and I'll be picking up the comic.

[Egg]

Already ordered issue 1! I am looking forward to it!

[carriertone]

Aside from being a Brit, Frazer Irving can do no wrong in my book. I'll definitely be picking this up. This simply looks brilliant!

- Carl

[Kolimar]

Really cool and freakish idea. I love it. Irving's art is a great fit for this.

[Charlie Hustle]

Whoa cool concept and nice art. Fun interview too. I'm running out of space on my list of comics tho.