Brian Bolland & Rianne Rowlands

Batman Killing Joke & legendary Judge Dredd artist Brian Bolland, and Beano artist Rianne Rowlands, bring in panels from a Silver Age DC title and a modern day comedy horror, and talk comics with Kev F the comic artist.

See the images from all shows here on the blog (they're also in the podcast artwork).

Every episode, the guests reveal a panel from a comic, we try and guess where it's from, then we chat about it. Half an hour later hopefully we've learned something, or just shown off and had fun along the way.

If you've enjoyed this, why not buy us a virtual coffee at Kev F's Ko-Fi page.

Your host, and series creator, is Kev F Sutherland, writer and artist for Beano, Marvel, Oink, The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, and most recently author and artist of graphic novels based on Shakespeare. kevfcomicartist.com

Join the Official Comic Cuts Facebook Page, aka Youtoobling, and comment on the show there too, why not?

Transcript

Kev F: 0:00

Today's recording may include adult themes and strong language. You never know if you're lucky, fingers crossed. Hello and welcome to Comic Cuts, the panel show. My name's Kev F. Sutherland. You might know me as a writer and artist for Beano, Marvel Comics, Oink, Doctor Who, the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, and my graphic novel adaptations of Shakespeare. Although chances are you probably don't. My guests today, talking comics, are Brian Bolland and Rihanne Rowland.

Brian Bolland: 0:29

Hello.

Kev F: 0:30

Comic Cut. We're looking at a panel, and we comprise a panel. There's a few of us. So the panel sees a panel, then we talk about the comics from the panel we discussed. We call it Comic Cuts.

Rianne Rowlands: 0:40

Wow! I can't believe you do that live. I thought it was recorded.

Kev F: 0:45

I have two guests with me today who've brought with them a panel from a comic or something close. We're going to see if we can identify it and talk about it. Maybe we and you will learn something about comics we didn't already know. Or maybe we'll just show off a bit and have an enjoyable chat. Let us see. Brian, are you somewhere in East Anglia?

Brian Bolland: 1:03

I'm somewhere in East Anglia, yes. I'm somewhere near Barris and Edmunds in Suffolk and somewhere near Cambridge.

Kev F: 1:10

And this is the part of the world you originated in as well, wasn't it?

Brian Bolland: 1:14

I originate from Boston in Lincolnshire, and I always have to say that because there is another annoying Boston, a later Boston, in America somewhere.

Kev F: 1:23

Let's face it, the two are not directly comparable, are they?

Brian Bolland: 1:26

Not really. There are some sort of historical overlaps, but nothing very much.

Kev F: 1:31

Unless there's a cheers bar that there's much in common between Boston Mass and Boston Lynx.

Brian Bolland: 1:37

I think the Mayflower stopped off in that's the boat stopped off in Boston on the way to Plymouth and then to Boston or somewhere in America, but there is a connection there. But you're right.

Kev F: 1:47

Have you ever been to the top of the Boston stump?

Brian Bolland: 1:50

God, yes. Yes. Oh yes, yeah. Um, although it has been closed for many years, because the last time I went, which was decades ago. There are stages. There's once, this is not a visual thing. I'm doing a kind of a mime here. You can go halfway up it now. Um, you used to be able to go almost to the top, but the last time I tried that, it was full of uh pigeon shit. So you you couldn't really and no lights, so you're walking up there in the dark, but it would have been a great view.

Kev F: 2:15

Yeah. Do you take uh unkindly to people suggesting that much of East Anglia is very flat?

Brian Bolland: 2:21

No, no, it is. Oh god, I mean, where I come from, it's like a sort of billiard table. It's it's you could, you know, it's just one straight line for the for a horizon. It's very flat. I live currently live in Suffolk, which they call flat, but it's quite roly where I live. But no, I don't mind at all. Big skies.

Kev F: 2:40

To what extent does the place that someone grows up inform their visual sensibilities, do you think?

Brian Bolland: 2:45

Well, I'll tell you a little story. I was once at a convention in comic convention in Edinburgh, and I was travelling back by train with Kevin O'Neill and Mick McMahon, some of the others from that era, and we were going through Lincolnshire, and um Kevin looked at the landscape of Lincolnshire and said, No, I can understand why you don't draw backgrounds, Brian.

Kev F: 3:08

That's grossly unfair, the suggestion that Brian Volland doesn't do backgrounds.

Brian Bolland: 3:13

Well, I very rarely draw backgrounds.

Kev F: 3:16

Do you really think that's the case? I honestly had never that's the thought that had never occurred to me. Maybe you distract me from the lack of backgrounds by what's in the you should never reveal your weaknesses.

Brian Bolland: 3:25

Um I mean, I can see them all the time, but uh I've I've just given away a big one there. But you know, you you should never draw attention to your to the things you can't do.

Kev F: 3:34

Now, certainly when you were breaking into comics, London was the magnet. You had to go to London, really, didn't you?

Brian Bolland: 3:40

Well, I suppose so, yeah.

Kev F: 3:41

Unless you're in um where where was DC Thompson? Was that Dundee or something? Dundee. You know, very few artists seem to have come from Dundee.

Brian Bolland: 3:50

No, but I mean there was a lot of comic art going on up there. I mean, DC Thompson was uh they was that the Beano and all those?

Kev F: 3:58

Oh yeah. Well, surely you did your very first work for DC Thompson, didn't you?

Brian Bolland: 4:03

No. Well, actually, if you want to get really down to the nitty gritty, I did my very first work for Oz magazine. That's no, no, that's not true. I did my very first work for Time Out magazine. Time Out together with Oz and friends, and some of those sort of 60s, underground, 70s, I suppose, underground magazines, um were all very similar. Time Out was a sort of a an underground rag, and I did a little drawing in there, and then I moved on to uh Oz.

Kev F: 4:31

You started, you meant to go on then, working with the cool kids.

Brian Bolland: 4:33

Yeah, no, I never drew for the funnies really. I I mean the first professional work I did was for a thing called Powerman, which was published by an upstart little company from Suffolk, I believe. And they did this um uh African superhero comic that was sold in Nigeria, and I did that for two years, 300 pages of that.

Kev F: 4:55

You and Dave Gibbons worked on that.

Brian Bolland: 4:57

Me and Dave, Dave Gibbons and and I alternated issues on that. Yeah. So that's that was my first mainstream stuff. So I and I did a few things for DC Thompson as well, because I had an agent, the same agent as Dave, and he got us a bit of work at DC Thompson, and I really can't remember the names of the titles I was in, but they were like two-page war stories or sort of gothic horror stories, and that was before 2008 came along.

Kev F: 5:23

And then, of course, 2008 was the was the big break. I mean, did you realize 2008 was going to be what it became when you started?

Brian Bolland: 5:30

No, not really, no. Uh I think they were just trying it out because the Eagle had contained science fiction uh through the 50s. Science fiction was a sort of big thing in the 50s, but it fizzled out in the in the 60s. So the when I first started, there wasn't really a science fiction comic, and there were certainly no superhero comics. So when it came along, because Star Wars was the popular thing in 1977, they thought maybe we ought to try a bit of sci-fi. And that's how uh 200 AD came along, and it was just a try-out, really. I don't think they I mean, how could they look into the future? They they they didn't know it was going to be a big deal, did they?

Kev F: 6:10

Well, if they're going to look into the future, they would have probably given it a title that was set fewer years ago than 2000 AD.

Brian Bolland: 6:17

It would have been 3000 AD, really, wouldn't it? And you started just by doing covers. Yes, I suppose. So I did well, you see, I was still working on Powerman. I was still having to crank out 17 or 15 pages a month or something, so I didn't really have a lot of spare time. And so I was able to do a few covers for 2000 AD. They didn't really know what was going to be the main theme or the pulling point of 2000, so they got us to come up with random covers, and they would sometimes write a little narrative story to go behind the cover. Then Judge Dredd became the strong character in the in the comic, and uh more of us got drawn into that.

Kev F: 6:58

It was very interesting that uh the main artists had their own version of Dredd. When you went from uh Mick McMahon to you, uh everything about him to an extent would change.

Brian Bolland: 7:08

Well, Mick started out when he first did uh when he started out, he was required to. Oh, I could tell you this in great detail, I won't bore you with it, but um I think at the beginning he was a fairly untried young artist, and they uh I think you'll have to ask him, but I think they asked him to draw like uh Carlos Asquera, who created Judge Straight. Carlos created him but then stepped aside for some reason, and Mick was required to be a Carlos impersonator, but his own very interesting and distinct style evolved out of that, and they were open enough for all of us artists to draw in a slightly different style, and it continues today. It's a it's full of all kinds of styles from all sorts of influences, isn't it?

Kev F: 7:53

It is. Would it be right in saying that the amount of detail you put into your drawings means they take a long time to do?

Brian Bolland: 8:01

Well, when I first started, I was was drawing like a page a day for Powerman and things of that sort. And I knew that if I had to crack a day uh a page out every day, it I'd have to keep it fairly crude. And I knew I could draw better than that given the time. And by the time I was doing um, you know, things like Judge Death and whatnot, I knew that I could draw it well-ish, you know, to the best of my ability, providing I had more. So I gave I gave way to my weakness in terms of speed and put in as much time as it required to do the job I knew I could do, even though that meant I couldn't keep up the speed of Mick or Carlos. Carlos was very fast.

Kev F: 8:46

Were you ever frustrated by how that printing came out? Because I remember there was a short period when 2018, about 1979, was printed in LIFO because another comic had been cancelled, I think. And then it went back to the letterpress version again, which uh made lines a lot less clear.

Brian Bolland: 9:03

Oh, well, I mean it was it was printed on bog paper, wasn't it? I mean, I think yeah, I mean, I think all of those comics from up till that period were printed. Is it are you calling it letterpress? I'm not very well up on the printing process, but it's very crude, very rough paper. I'm sure it had been recycled and toilet paper or something like that. But if you look at them today, they're very they've gone very yellow. I was frustrated by a lot of things. I mean, my own inability to draw quickly, but also the business about, you know, not returning the artwork, that was a big frustration for all of us art artists. Signing, signing away all the right, you know. When you got paid, you had to sign a document to give up all rights to everything in return for the payment. And that was one of the annoying frustrations of the whole thing.

Kev F: 9:51

Yes, I mean that had been their ancient practice, hadn't they? Work for hire until uh 2000 AD, everybody was anonymous, of course. You never got your artwork back, and you got no royalties and no rights.

Brian Bolland: 10:02

And I think Kevin, Kevin O'Neill was one of the pioneers of getting us to. I mean, he called us all droids, didn't he? They called us all, we were all robots, and he got away with crediting us by calling us art droid Holland or McMahon or Gibbons or whatever.

Kev F: 10:19

This must have made the temptation of America all the greater, because you and uh Dave spearheaded the American or the British invasion of America about 1980, wasn't it?

Brian Bolland: 10:31

79. Well, yes, I I mean I first did my I did my first few covers for uh DC comics in 79, and then I suppose 80, yeah. And then we had a group called the SSI Society of Strip Illustrators, and some people from DC came over scouting for talents that they'd seen in 2000 AD. And so gradually a sort of a rash, I suppose, of British talent started working at uh in America. Yeah, I suppose you call it the British Invasion.

Kev F: 11:04

Well, Wikipedia calls it the British invasion. Who am I to argue? It must be true. And then this led to uh the high watermark of killing joke. Well, it is killing joke a high watermark for you, as it is for readers?

Brian Bolland: 11:16

Well, it is a high watermark for me because it did mark a time when I was able to do the very thing I wanted with the very best writer at the time, who was my friend, Alan. Moore may have heard of him. Um so I knew I had to put my best work into it. I've done stuff since then, which I think is a little bit better. Uh but after that I became, because of my speed, I I'm mainly a cover artist.

Kev F: 11:46

I could talk covers for ages, but Rihanne, you're in the room. Forgive me. Okay. I have Rihanna Rowlands here, and we were talking about credits on artwork. Uh, you're working in the Beano now, and it's only in like the last few years that you've lots of been credited, isn't it?

Rianne Rowlands: 12:02

Because before that we had to hide our signatures in the artwork somewhere, so now it's nice to see our name on the side. But Brian, I'm just like, I mean, or you're my hero anyway, you're amazing, and it's so fascinating to hear you talk.

Brian Bolland: 12:17

Well, it's so lovely to lovely to meet you. Well, tell me more, tell us more.

Kev F: 12:21

Well, you both you both have a connection with covers because Ariane, you did covers for funeral for a friend albums.

Rianne Rowlands: 12:28

I did. I did their rock band from Wales, which is where I live now, um from England originally, and I went to university in Cambridge. Oh far from you, and I love Cambridge, I miss it. Um, but I moved up here to be close to my family, and yeah, funeral for a friend, there are bands, they were very, very big, they're not quite as big now. Um, but I did their album artwork, and that was crazy to walk into like you know, HMB and see something that you've made on the shelves. And I've worked for loads of magazines, um, download festival, and I've done lots of children's TV work. I love that.

Kev F: 13:06

The children's TV work was interesting for me because you started doing uh character design for animation. So, how how different is that from comics work? Do you need to know more?

Rianne Rowlands: 13:17

Yeah, you've got to be more structured because you have to make sure that they can be animated. So you kind of have to simplify them as much as possible without taking away their character, and you have to know what they look like from every angle, you kind of have to imagine every emotion. So, but then it's not that different from when you're drawing comics because you have to know what your character looks like from every angle, and when you're drawing your comics, you almost pretend you're a camera, you know, like if it's a movie and you're filming the scene, it's very similar.

Kev F: 13:49

Well, you were storyboarding for uh a TV show, which I'll have to pretend I've heard of Chloe's Closet. Uh, was Chloe's Closet uh really big amongst the kids? It's actually kids' TV, wasn't it?

Rianne Rowlands: 13:58

It was huge amongst the like two three-year-olds demographic.

Kev F: 14:02

What's the discipline of storyboarding like? I mean, are you very heavily dictated to, or do you have much of a free hand?

Rianne Rowlands: 14:07

My um, the guy who ran our studio was very, very strict. So he would give you thumbnails and say, this is what it's gonna look like. Um, but sometimes you got you in other studios I've worked and you have total freedom. So it just depends really on what studio and and what script you get. It's really heavy, heavy workload. Storyboarding was very heavy. Um, I much prefer comic books to storyboarding.

Kev F: 14:30

What's the chicken and egg situation? Did your work start off being colourful and fun? And so you chose the places to work in, or uh quit is there also a really dark side of you that we just don't get to see at the moment?

Rianne Rowlands: 14:42

Well, funny enough, when you see my panel, um you'll see that little dark side come out. Um, because I work with I all my work is family friendly, um, children, um, and I teach workshops for children. Um, and obviously I draw Ruby for the Beano, and she's amazing, she's my hero. So, yeah, everything I do is completely family friendly, but there is this side of me, like Brian's artwork, I absolutely love because I love horror, and horror is my thing. So I love horror movies. I read all I've got all Stephen King's collection behind me, and there's that side of me that I never get to explore. Um, but I'm hoping to with my own projects now. Um, so you'll see a little bit of that in my in my choice of panel.

Kev F: 15:26

Well, that's to look forward to, and so are a couple of comic panels. I've asked everyone on the panel to bring a panel to the panel. You can see those images on my website at kefcomicartist.com, and they should be on the artwork for this episode of the podcast, depending where you get your podcasts from. But don't worry, you shouldn't need to see the images because we are about to describe them. And I think we're gonna first look at the image that's been brought to the table by Brian. So we are now looking at the image that Brian's brought. Uh, you shouldn't need to see this because Rihanne is about to describe it. What are we looking at?

Rianne Rowlands: 16:03

So we're looking at some kind of sci-fi scene. It looks like we may be on another planet. The colours are amazing. We've got blues and purples and yellows and bright, bright red, really contrasting colours. We've got free guys who look like they're in spacesuits. And then we've got an awesome big red lava fire monster coming out of the ground. And it says, a great glowing thing, a living lava creature, head for the mole machine. Oh, I I I love it. I'm hooked already. I want to know more. And there is, I see in the bottom corner, there's a spaceship as well. Maybe that's the mole machine. We could be digging underground, maybe.

Kev F: 16:40

For the benefit of the panologists at home who study line colour technique and the like, I can tell you that we're looking at something that's printed with the flat colour of an American comic book. And in fact, it looks like the flat cover of an American comic book cover from the 1950s, 60s, maybe the 70s. Um, the large voice bubble has got very large lettering on it. And the only time you'd usually get lettering as large as that would be if you were looking at a cover. The three people in space suits are not in distinctive spacesuits. They're not in a costume that certainly I recognize, like, say, the challenges of the unknown or the fantastic four. And the line work is not of an artist that I recognize either. The big glowing lava creature from this period. I'm very familiar with the designs of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko's monsters on the Marvel comics of the time, but this is an unfamiliar style. Rian, would you like to have a guess at what comic or type of comic or even name of comic we could be looking at?

Rianne Rowlands: 17:46

Oh, it's definitely, definitely sci-fi related. And I'm guessing it's probably from maybe the 60s or 70s.

Brian Bolland: 17:54

1961.

Rianne Rowlands: 17:56

Oh, perfect. And what publisher do you think, Rian? I'm I'm figuring American publisher rather than British.

Kev F: 18:02

And I've got a slightly unfair advantage because this is a picture cropped in from a front cover. I've seen that front cover, and so now I'm going to show the whole front cover to all of us.

Rianne Rowlands: 18:15

Oh, wow. Oh, I love it. And it's DC.

Kev F: 18:17

Brave and the Bold presents Cave Carson's Adventures Inside Earth, a comic I have not heard of, and an artist I still don't recognise. Brian, tell us more.

Brian Bolland: 18:29

It's Bruno Primiani. He was an Italian. He was born in 1907, and he had to leave Italy because of the, I think Mussolini, I think, actually. And uh he ended up in Argentina, and I think he worked, did a quite a bit of work in Argentina. And when he was in his 50s, he I don't know whether he actually went and lived in America, but he started a DC Comics drawing Tomahawk, which was a sort of, well, it sounds like, doesn't it, like a Western? And he did a wonderful classics illustrated called The Conquest of Mexico. He was an extremely talented artist. He was very good at horses. He actually produced a book all about horses called Cabal. Is that Spanish for horse? But he settled in with DC Comics in uh in the mid in the sort of early to mid-60s, doing Doom Patrol. Oh, yes. Well, the TV series, of course. The TV series. Yes, that's right. Well, Doom Patrol started off, it was written by Arnold Drake and drawn by Bruno Primiani, who was this guy. And he didn't have an inka. He he drew, uh, he penciled and inked the whole thing himself. It was all colored by other people. Uh, and he did the whole of the Doom Patrol series, the original Doom Patrol series from the mid 60s onwards, with uh Elastig Girl and Negative Man and Cliff the Robot Man, and various other characters, all of whom are now in a TV series. But the TV series is partly based on um Grant Morrison's later versions of Doom Patrol, which is Very bonkers.

Kev F: 20:01

Did the writers get credited at the time that Runo Prignani was drawing stuff like this in Brave and the Bold?

Brian Bolland: 20:07

Well, actually, the artists weren't really. It was very difficult to know. Most of the time, you couldn't see who the artist was. There were some exceptions. You could occasionally you'd see Carmine Infant Fantino signing his name, Alex Toth, who is I was very tempted to include one of his, you know, put up one of his pictures because he's my favourite artist. But we we somehow always knew who all the artists were, even I think probably through fanzines, even though they didn't get their names put on there. But this guy, Bruno Primiani, if you knew his style, the the running figures in the foreground, those two uh running towards the mole machine, it was a very, very Bruno Primiani-esque um pose there in there. Very underrated, not very many people have heard of it.

Kev F: 20:54

No, well, that's it. A fascinating part of comics history that has allowed his name to slip through the net as far as getting to me is concerned. The Marvel artists, of course, were immediately credited, right, from 1961 from the start of the Marvel Comics. And so uh there were so many names like Don Heck and Chick Stone, who are possibly minor players compared to Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko. And yet uh readers like myself grew up automatically knowing their names and being reminded week after week after week.

Brian Bolland: 21:19

Well, yes, yes, please take note of the man. He was very good. Uh find the original Doom Patrols. They're, you know, some people um there was a certain kind of whiz-bang and gloss to the people who did the best, um, the the most popular superheroes, to Jack Kirby and Gil Kane and people like that, they had a kind of gloss about them. Uh Bruno Primiani's work wasn't quite uh as flash as some of those people who are very, very popular, but technically he was really, really good.

Kev F: 21:50

Uh Rihanna, this uh front cover is a marvelous piece, isn't it?

Rianne Rowlands: 21:54

Absolutely beautiful. I've never heard of this artist before, but that's why I love this podcast because you learn about new artists that you might have never heard of before. And like you said, their work is so amazing, but they're getting forgotten. So now me and the younger artists that are coming up can be influenced by these incredible artists, and then their work won't get forgotten. Um this is stunning. I'm so glad you chose to share this.

Kev F: 22:18

Well, do you know a thing that gets reclaimed and reprinted more often than the interiors are the covers. Uh, I've seen a hundred years of DC front covers also made into postcards and certainly seen widely online. Um, as a result of that, I think Bruno Primiani might be seen by more people uh in the years to come than for a long time.

Brian Bolland: 22:38

Good.

Rianne Rowlands: 22:38

Yeah, that's great.

Kev F: 22:39

Now we've just been looking at a bit of flat colouring with yellow doing the job of a rainbow of fire effects. This is a very different second picture that we're about to look at. We're looking at the panel that's been brought in by Rihanna Rowlands. Uh now, listener at home, you can find this on the website or you should find it on the uh artwork for this episode of the podcast, but you don't need to because we're about to describe it, aren't we, Brian?

Brian Bolland: 23:05

Yes, I've never seen this before. I have no idea who it's by.

Kev F: 23:10

Can I just say Brian has got his work cut out right now? This is one of the hardest panels to try and describe.

Rianne Rowlands: 23:17

It is, it is.

Brian Bolland: 23:18

Go for it. Oh God. I mean, I usually with when it comes to this work, I tend to think that uh art speaks for itself. You don't need words when you can draw the picture. Okay, I'll tell you what it looks like. It's um there's a mad scuffle of beasts all thrashing about in all directions. And I'm describing this quite slowly because I'm discovering bits of it as I look. There's something at the top that looks like a crazy chipmunk. There's a sort of a moose, there's another moose with what appears to have a great gash in its neck with its tongue hanging out. It's difficult to tell whether it's supposed to be horror or comedy, this, because there is a sort of comedic. There's a sort of a, there are two, there are three human beings at the bottom. One of them is a sort of philotypically sort of heroic, handsome type guy, although he's got white eyes with no pupils in them, and he seems to be trying to strangle an old guy who's smoking a cigar, who is going ho ho ho. Behind him, there is another fellow who could be a sort of troll or kind of um elf, and he's he's got a white mustache, but all around them are these thrashing beasts that are quite hard to make out whether they are based on real animals or whether they are just animated bits of animals.

Kev F: 24:45

For the benefit of panologists, people who study line technique and the like, I would say that this is drawn in a very modern animation style, although it's clearly a comic strip. Uh, you will recognize some of the shapes and proportions from uh the line work used in Disney and Pixar and other modern animations, especially on the face of our central character. We have in the middle of the composition, we have a uh heroic figure, as described by Brian. He's wielding a chainsaw.

Brian Bolland: 25:09

Oh, so he is. I I've just noticed the chainsaw, it's got blood on it.

Kev F: 25:13

We have descending from the top of the pictures and from all sides, we have what appear to be zombie forest creatures.

Brian Bolland: 25:19

They're zombie creatures, aren't they? Yes. Yeah.

Kev F: 25:21

So I think I'm ready to guess what comic this might be from. But Brian, would you like to have a guess first?

Brian Bolland: 25:27

Well, I don't I don't know anything about comics, Kev.

Kev F: 25:33

I'm going to guess that this could be from something connected to Sam Raimi's um Dead films, Army of the Dead. Yes.

Rianne Rowlands: 25:42

Yes, you got it. It is, you got it, you got it.

Kev F: 25:45

So, uh Rihanna, tell us what exactly this is we're looking at.

Rianne Rowlands: 25:48

This is from Army of Darkness, you're right. Um, and Ash is our hero in the middle. He's a bit of a a doofus, really. He's kind of the anti-hero, but you you you root for him anyway. Um, his hand got infected by the dead. It's like a a book, uh, a book of the dead that kind of brings zombies and it brings things things back to life, but in like an evil way. And when you said about the humor, that's exactly what it is. It's like slack core, humor, silliness, and Ash's hand uh got infected by the dead, so you have to chop it off. And now he's got the chainsaw instead of the hand. That's why it looks a little bit off because it is actually his hand.

Brian Bolland: 26:30

I hadn't realized that. I can see that now, yeah.

Rianne Rowlands: 26:33

Yeah, and his infected hand still kind of chases him and harasses him, and it has a mind of its own. And the comics are just silly, funny, kind of they're just really nice. I and the reason that I love horror is because of all of the types of horror, you get books, you get movies, you get comics, you always get the same thing of being able to face your fears. So when at the end of a horror movie, when it's finished, and you're like, Oh, okay, I survived. What have I learned about myself? That kind of feeling. Um, but this artist is Nick Bradshaw, the Canadian artist.

Brian Bolland: 27:05

Nick Bradshaw. Nick Bradshaw, Canadian.

Rianne Rowlands: 27:09

Yes, now he now does his style now is very different. He does he works for Marvel now, he does Fantastic Four, Spider Ham, Avengers, Black Panther, Venom. He's been doing that for about 10 years now, I think. Um, but this comic came out in 2004. So his style has really evolved.

Brian Bolland: 27:28

Is that the whole picture or is there a logo at the top of this?

Rianne Rowlands: 27:32

It's a panel, yep. And the reason I chose it is because, like your artwork, Brian, it it is so detailed. And like you said, as you're looking around it, you you just see different things each time. It kind of appears in front of you. And sometimes these panels are so chaotic that you can't work out what's going on. It takes you a while, you have to go back and look at them again.

Brian Bolland: 27:51

But I well, yes, so I was I was having that trouble too. I as you were asking me to describe it. I was thinking, oh my god, there's a there's another creature in the top left-hand corner. I hadn't seen that.

Rianne Rowlands: 28:01

That's it. Yeah, I like that.

Kev F: 28:02

If all of these creatures were on the same plane, it wouldn't work. If all the creatures were the same size, if they were coming from the same direction, it wouldn't work, or it would work differently. But we see with the lighting that he's used in his colouring, but as well as the position of Ash's body, his arm is up, raising his chainsaw, then his shoulders slope down, leading his down his arm towards the dead prospector lying on the ground.

Brian Bolland: 28:26

Um can I can I just ask one question? Is this uh art on in ink on paper? Is it is it is there actual artwork involved in this before the colour goes on, do you think?

Rianne Rowlands: 28:38

Yes, he he pencils everything and then he scans in his pencils and someone else does the colour in. Um, but it's all pencil and he does very much like that Disney Pixar feel. It's all very pencil-y, and then he scans in his pencils, so he doesn't even ink them. But I think now on his newer stuff, he does ink. And I think he's digital rather than traditional. But I think a lot of us have gone digital now, haven't we?

Kev F: 29:02

Actually, Brian, have you gone digital?

Brian Bolland: 29:04

I've been digital for 22, 23 years. What?

Kev F: 29:08

Every stage of the artwork?

Brian Bolland: 29:10

Much to the yes, much to the horror of artwork collectors.

Kev F: 29:13

Well, is it to your disservice that you haven't got original artwork to sell?

Brian Bolland: 29:16

Oh, it is, yeah. It's it's great having, I mean, it's great having original artwork to sell, but um I love the the things you can do in. I mean, I do everything in Photoshop. There are so many other uh bits of software, but I mean, uh manga studio and all kinds of other things that I I can't be asked to learn them, actually. I know how to like I know how to use Photoshop. It's uh it's even a 10-year-old copy of Photoshop. You know, you're supposed to keep um updating them, but this is a this is a really old version I use.

Rianne Rowlands: 29:48

Yeah, you can't go wrong with Photoshop. Um the colourist is Etienne Saint Laurent, so I assume because that's um Nick Bradford is from Ottawa, which is French Canadian, Canadian Canada, French Canada. Um so I think that may be a French Canadian artist who does the colouring as well. Um, but yeah, it's stunning. As a piece of art, I think that is just incredible. I call it ordered chaos.

Brian Bolland: 30:13

Here's another question Is this just one panel out of like six or something on the whole page?

Rianne Rowlands: 30:18

Yes, so he does an average of about six to eight on a page, and that is one panel, and most of them are as detailed as that.

Brian Bolland: 30:25

Wow, yeah.

Rianne Rowlands: 30:26

Now it is incredible.

Brian Bolland: 30:29

I will say that um too much detail can give you a bit of a headache. I think you've got to pace it a bit, haven't you? You've got to have a bit of detail next to uh you know something that's a little easy on the eye that you can scan very quickly and then move on.

Rianne Rowlands: 30:44

Definitely. And when you read his stories, they do flow like that. When the deadites come out and attack, it becomes very chaotic. And then when he's it's calm again, the panels do reflect that, and the colours reflect it too. You'll have to look at them, you'll you'll love it.

Kev F: 30:58

So we're right that uh guessing that this is actually a splash panel bigger than most of the panels in the strip.

Rianne Rowlands: 31:04

Actually, no, this is on on the page, it's about average, yeah.

Brian Bolland: 31:07

Oh my god, I'm I'm getting a headache already just looking at it.

Rianne Rowlands: 31:10

Yeah.

Kev F: 31:11

Wow, it's it's a blur of detail. That's very, very challenging for the for the reader. Army of Darkness comes from the Sam Raimi Dead films, which were the original video nasties. Uh, 40 years ago, when Brian was introducing Judge Death, another zombie of sorts, uh, Judge Death was sort of the safe end of zombies, and Sam Raimi, video nasties, was getting banned and discussed in in parliament. And now this is almost child-friendly.

Brian Bolland: 31:38

I mean, are there any Disney zombie Disney animated zombie films these days? I mean, I haven't seen any.

Kev F: 31:44

They've they've done the Day of the Dead in um Coco. Yeah.

Rianne Rowlands: 31:47

Coco. They did the Mexican Day of the Dead. So skeletons and ghosts and all that kind of stuff, but it was done in such a lovely way that it wasn't it wasn't done for scares, it was done for more remembering your family members, and it was it's such a beautiful film. Definitely watch that.

Kev F: 32:04

And slightly darker was Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, uh, which again is a zombie story. And actually, the Hotel Transylvania films have have taken the stuff, which again, when they were in Universal movies, were X-rated films, and this was the subject matter. Actually, within a decade, they become Abbott and Costello films. So maybe it doesn't take long before horror loses its edge.

Rianne Rowlands: 32:26

My three-year-old absolutely loves the Hotel Transylvania movies, so that that tells you everything.

Kev F: 32:31

And 50 years ago, I was dancing to the Monster Mash.

Brian Bolland: 32:34

You weren't around 50 years ago, Kev, were you?

Kev F: 32:37

Oh, whatever happened to my Transylvania twist. Well, thank you, Rihanne. Thank you, Brian, for those two amazing suggestions. We have been looking at the cover of Cave Carson from The Brave and the Bold Presents, drawn by Bruno Primiani, selected by Brian. And we've been looking at Nick Bradshaw's artwork from Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness. And if you have any questions about this, you could always try and contact us on our social media. Rihanna, where will we find you?

Rianne Rowlands: 33:06

I'm on Instagram at Rianne Rollins, and it's R-I-A-N-N-E Rollins. It's a funny spelling. Blame my mum for that. And I'm in the Vino every week with Ruby.

Kev F: 33:15

Don't forget Rihanna in the Vino. Can I friend you?

Rianne Rowlands: 33:17

Oh my god, yes, please. Yes, and funny enough, um, I wanted to send you some pictures because my partner is a tattooist and he's actually tattooed your artwork on people.

Brian Bolland: 33:28

Oh, right.

Rianne Rowlands: 33:29

Have you seen have you seen tattoos of your artwork before?

Kev F: 33:32

Yes, and Brian wants his pound of flesh.

Brian Bolland: 33:35

Actually, yes, I demand those pieces of flesh be cut off and delivered to my house immediately. Um, yes, I have actually, yes. I I've seen Joker uh faces on people's legs, mainly on their legs for some reason.

Kev F: 33:49

Brian, where do we find you on the socials?

Brian Bolland: 33:51

Well, I'm um very bad at it at the moment. I'm just on Facebook. Uh I don't have a website or uh Instagram or any of the others, uh, or even a blog. I had one of those, but that became defunct. So I'm gonna have to rectify that. But you can find me on Facebook, but all of the stuff I put on there is available for people to download and spread about as as they wish.

Kev F: 34:12

Or, of course, Judge Dread fans can contact Judge Anderson, as created by Brian, and uh reach him telepathically. That was Comic Cuts. Please click subscribe to be sure of hearing every episode when it comes out, and leave us a review. Why don't you? Thanks again to Brian Bolland and Rihanne Rollins, and to you at home for listening. I've been Kev F, and this has been Comic Cuts, the panel show.