Stickleback: London's Burning Parts Eleven and Twelve References to be Delayed

Episode 11 contains such a dramatic twist, it was difficult to find a single panel that didn't contain a spoiler.

Stickleback © 2010 Rebellion Developments/2000AD

Stickleback created by Ian Edginton & Me.

Given the dramatic nature of events in parts eleven and twelve, I'll not be posting references for either episode until after both have been published, to avoid any possibility of spoilers.

Stickleback: London's Burning Part Ten References

Page One: Sanderson's Department Store and The Burleigh Theatre

Both major landmarks of "Everytown," the fictional city seen bombed to ruins in an air raid in William Cameron Menzies' 1936 film Things To Come, which was based on H.G. Wells' 1933 novel The Shape Of Things To Come.

The air raid scene is compellingly realistic, which is all the more impressive because the first saturation bombing of civilians from the air did not occur until a year later in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, when the Basque town of Guernica was bombed by the German Luftwaffe and Italian Fascist Aviazione Legionaria on behalf of the forces of Generalísimo Francisco Franco .

Page One: "War Tubas"

These strange-looking devices (which can also be seen attached to the telescope on page one of this episode) are based on now-obsolete but nevertheless real devices called acoustic detectors, essentially giant ear trumpets which were designed to give advance warning of hostile aircraft in the years before radar was invented.

Page Three: Gatling Guns

Invented in 1861 by Dr. Richard J. Gatling, the Gatling Gun is probably the most famous precursor of the modern machine gun, and is instantly recognizable by its characteristic rotating cylindrical barrel.

The ones on the Mistral are very large scale, firing small-bore artillery shells instead of bullets.

Stickleback: London's Burning Part Nine References

Page One : The Mistral's Engine Room

Inspired by childhood visits to the two-storey River Don Engine at Kelham Island Industrial Museum in my native Sheffield.

Page Two: Maintenance Robots

Hands up; we're riffing on the spider-style machines from Scarlet Traces with some of this stuff.

Page Three: Sic Transit Gloria Swanson

Ian's instructions regarding the Countess's body language in this sequence was "I see her as going a bit Gloria Swanson, all silent movie arm movements and the like!" It made sense to make her body language big and bold, in the style of the more expressive silent film actors, since her masked face couldn't show expression.

Stickleback: London's Burning Part Eight References

Page Two: Breeches Buoy

Potts's emergency device is based on an old piece of marine rescue kit called a breeches buoy. The device was essentially a pair of trousers stitched into a lifesaver, with ropes running up to a pulley. It was used to extract personnel from ships wrecked near shore by allowing them to be hauled over the water using a line fired from a short-barrelled cannon called a Lyle Gun.

Page Three: The Mimsie Ascends

When I drew this I had in mind the magnificent night-time above-the-clouds scenes from Hiyao Myazaki's 1986 animated film Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta (Laputa the Flying Island/Castle in the Clouds).

Page Four: Black Bob's Arms

I case you've forgotten, Black Bob's arms were both severed in combat with the false Buffalo Bill during the last episode of Stickleback: England's Glory, and we saw Miss Scarlet stitching them back on in the final page of that episode.

Stickleback: London's Burning Part Seven References

Page One: Stickleback's London

This view is accurate in terms of the locations of landmarks and the positioning of the river bends in perspective; however, at the altitude necessary to take in this sweeping view, the individual landmarks would be vanishingly small, so I bumped their sizes up by a factor of five or so to make them visible.

As well as real landmarks such as Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgare Square, The Houses of Parliament, The Tower of London and Tower Bridge, we included the following planned or imaginary buildings:

1) The London Eye - a giant Victorian Ferris wheel, placed, like its 21st Century counterpart, opposite the palace of Westminster.

2) The Crystal Palace - here still occupying its original site in Hyde Park.

3) William Thomas's proposed giant pyramidal cemetery - designed to hold up to five million dead Londoners!

4) The proposed mausoleum for Sir Isaac Newton (the smaller pyramid with the sphere on top). We used this building as the new Greenwich Observatory (where Spry's office was located) in Scarlet Traces, but here it's been moved off Greenwich hill, to make way for:

5) John Flaxman's 200-foot-high statue of Britannia, proposed circa 1800 but never built.

Page One: The Mimsie

Though balloons using actual boats as gondolas is a common steampunk trope, the design of the Mimsie is meant to echo certain characteristics of that fine four-fendered friend, Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang, for reasons that will become apparent in the next item.

Personally, I couldn't help but think of Noah and Nelly.

Page Two: Potts

Inspired by the inventor hero of Ian Fleming's 1964 novel (and subsequently 1968 film) Chitty-chitty Bang-bang. Our Potts has been having a hard time of it, and is indebted to Stickleback to boot.

Stickleback: London's Burning Part 5 References

Colour and black & white versions of my 9th cover for 2000AD, complete with a little tribute to my late friend Steve Whitaker (click on image to see larger version). Can’t believe I missed putting in a "fishpaste" reference, though.
Stickleback © 2010 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
Stickleback created by Ian Edginton & Me.

I did a trial version of this cover in colour, exploiting the colour masking technique I use for setting up the texture effects, but Tharg-in-Residence Matt Smith decided that a migraine-inducing cover might be a bit much for the Squaxx dek Thargo. Lucky for you, but a pity for me: colour covers pay better :-)


Page One: Carfax Abbey

A key location in Bram Stoker's seminal vampire novel Dracula, Carfax Abbey is one of the London properties purchased by the Count from Jonathan Harker. Ian and I have "borrowed" Carfax abbey a couple of times now - the first being for our steampunk graphic novel Scarlet Traces - and this version is based on the abbey at Whitby, the seaside town which also features in Dracula.




Page One: Effigy of Steve Whitaker

This effigy is a little tribute to my late friend and teacher Steve Whitaker, who was, among many things, an extremely gifted comic artist and colourist. He's probably best remembered for his colouring on Alan Moore and David Lloyd's dystopian tour-de-force V for Vendetta, though Steve also played a minor role in 2000AD history; he contributed colouring to a number of Brendan McCarthy's Judge Dredd stories, including The Judda from the Oz storyline.

The effigy shows Steve with his trademark long coat and umbrella. Thanks to Ian Edginton for suggesting the tribute.

Page Two: The Picnic

Supplied by two of the great London department stores; Fortnum & Mason was founded in 1707 and built its reputation on supplying high quality foods, and is world-famous for its luxury picnic hampers and branded loose-leaf tea. One of the founders, Hugh Mason, was a servant of King George III and helped to nurse him during his famous period of madness (as described in the play by Alan Bennett). When George recovered, Mason was paid off, and he used the money to go into trade.

Harrods started in a small way in 1834, as a wholesale grocery store in London's East End. In 1851, the owner, Charles Henry Harrod, moved the store to Knightsbridge, to take advantage of trade from the Great Exhibition. His son Charles Digby Harrod took the one-room shop and by 1898 had built it into a business employing more than one hundred people and sporting the UK's first escalator. Harrods Food Hall is world-famous. The store is currently owned by Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al Fayed, whose fifth son Dodi died alongside Diana, Princess of Wales in a car crash in Paris in 1997. The Harrods brand now extends to a bank, an estate agents and an aviation company.


Page Three: The Countess's Mask

Greek theatre dates back as early as 550 BCE, evolving, it's believed, out of fertility rites for the god Dionysis. Masks were used in Greek plays to define the different characters; as few as 2-3 actors might be involved in a play, but more characters could be introduced by having the actors change masks.

The masks had exaggerated features and facial expressions, and this led, by Roman times, to the idea of the "Tragic" and the "Comic" mask (a pairing which symbolizes theatre in the West to this day). The Countess's mask is a "Tragic" type.


Page Four: Philo Thynne's House

Revisiting the setting of the fake seance from the first-ever episode of Stickleback: Mother London, drawn back in September 2006 and published in December that year.







Page Five: Discarded Robots, Three Years in the Making

In the script for the first part of Stickleback: Mother London, Ian Edginton asked for various classic robots from old British comics to appear in Thynne's lair. At the time, the demands of layout prevented me from showing this, but three years later, the discerning reader might just possibly be able to recognize Robot Archie and Togo from The House of Dollmann in this pile of old robot parts.




Page Five: The Futurists

If this seems a little League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, it's worth remembering, dear reader, that all of us who play this kind of tune are riffing off Philip José Farmer.

From left to right:

Phylo Thynne
Our own invention, the creator of malign automata from Stickleback: Mother London.

Rotwang
Mad scientist C.A. Rotwang will be best remembered as the creator of the Art Deco "Maria robot" in Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou's silent movie SF-classic Metropolis. The character was played by actor Rudolf Klein-Rogge, upon whom my version of Rotwang is loosely based. Despite the apparent "oo-err vicar" double-entendre for English speakers, the name Rotwang is actually pronounced "roat-vang" and probably means "red cheek." ("oo-err vicar")

Captain Mors
Also known as the "Air Pirate," Captain Mors was the hero of the snappily-titled Der Luftpirat und sein Lenkbares Luftschiff (The Air Pirate and His Steerable Airship), a German dime novel that ran for 165 issues from 1908-1911. Captain Mors' adventures took him out into the Solar System, so that in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993), Frank Rottensteiner wrote that "There is a case for calling this the first sf magazine." The author(s) of the series are unknown, though writer Oskar Hoffmann is cited as a likely possibility both by ESF and Heinz J Galle in his 2005 POD reprint of selected Mors stories.

Robur
Aeronaut and anti-hero of the Jules Verne novels Robur the Conqueror and Master of the World (Published 1886 and 1904 respectively).
For more information, see the entry Page Ten: The Mistral from Part One References.

The Countess
Since revelations about the Countess are an integral part of the plot, I'll avoid giving any spoilers. Suffice to say, if she spent her youth hanging around experts in robotics and aviation, it's no surprise we find her now living on a dirigible manned by automata!

Stickleback: London's Burning Part Three References

Page One: The Alley Containing The Silver Ring Club

Hardcore fans of Gerry Anderson's 1967 puppet series Captain Scarlet might just recognize this as the alley that features in the show's title sequence. It's the first shot in each show, where the camera tracks down the alley to Ed Bishop's honeyed tones ("The Mysterons - swworrn enemies of Earth!") just before someone steps on a cat and the camera whip-pans round to show the good captain himself getting machine-gunned to no ill effect.

The sign for the Silver Ring Club is based on the painting Portrait présumé de Gabrielle d'Estrées et de sa soeur la duchesse de Villars ("Portrait presumed to be of Gabrielle d'Estrées and her sister the Duchess of Villars"), dated about 1594, artist unknown, which hangs in The Louvre.


Page One: The Silver Ring Club

The interior of the club contains various tips of the hat to Andrew Davies' violently-throbbing 2002 television series Tipping the Velvet*, in particular, the names of the performers Kitty and King.

*Tipping the Velvet is an adaptation of the novel by Sarah Waters, but I've only seen the TV series.






Page One: Kitty and King

Ian's script describes this panel as follows: "Kitty is swooning in King’s arm and he’s using the cane he’s holding in his other hand to lift Kitty’s skirts to get a glimpse on her front bottom."
Although Simon B. Davies had successfully slipped a huge purple willy (ooh, missus) into the last episode of Stone Island back in 2008, I thought it best to check with Tharg-in-Residence Matt Smith as to whether Furry Front Bottoms would be acceptable (see pencil image, right) - word came back that 2000AD really wasn't That Kind of Comic so I fitted Kitty out with a pair of bloomers with a picture of a pussy on them (oo-err vicar).


"Rache"

Stickleback's use of the German word "Rache" ("revenge") is a reference to the Sherlock Holmes story A Study in Scarlet (which Ian has been busy adapting as a graphic novel with our good mate Ian Culbard.)
I believe the reference to Holmes may hint at a possible origin for Stickleback... perhaps more will be revealed in time.

Incidentally, Stickleback must mis-pronounce the word, since the door(wo)man hears it with a long "a" and an English "ch"as in "Rachael," but in fact it has a short "a" and the guttural "ch" of "loch" - to an untutored ear it would sound more like "racker."

The Crais

Named (in a fashion) after Ronnie and Reggie, the infamous Kray twins who ruled London's underworld during the 1960's. Ronnie Kray was rumoured to have had sexual relationships with both Labour MP Tom Driberg and Conservative Lord Boothby, which may have led to a lack of political will in stamping out their criminal activities.

Our Ronnie is based on the famous image of a young Marlene Dietrich in a tuxedo.



Gene Colan Tribute

The composition and lighting in the panel are a bit of a tip of the hat to veteran comic artist Gene Colan (whom I remember fondly for his runs on Marvel Comics' Daredevil, Iron Man, Captain Marvel and Howard The Duck).







The Centurion

When I was drawing this panel, I couldn't help but think of the puzzled ape-men regarding the alien monolith in Stanley Kubrick's trippy 1968 tour-de-force 2001: A Space Odyssey (even if the proportions of the block are wrong).







The Centurion Unfolds

Naturally enough, a reference to 80's-toys-become-2000's-movie-stars Transformers. What it folds out into, you'll see next episode.

Stickleback: London's Burning Part Two References

Page One: Mister Peepers and Mister Lug Suddenly Appear

In my previous post I described how I'd forgotten to include Peepers and Lug with the rest of the gang - this episode they suddenly appear in the pit with everyone else. But what Tharg doesn't notice won't hurt him.






Page Two: Hardenbrook The Notary

Is named after the character played by veteran British actor Michael Gough in Tim Burton's 1999 film Sleepy Hollow. Ian asked me to make the character look like Michael Gough, but I'm not very good at likenesses, and luckily the demands of page layout meant the panel he appeared in was so small you couldn't make out his face anyway.






Page Three: "Hargreave"

Mr. Tickle's Christian name is a nod to Roger Hargreaves, creator of the Mister Men and Little Miss books.








Stickleback's Revolver

This unlikely-looking weapon is a LeMat revolver, an American Civil War side-arm that features a standard .42 or .36 revolver mechanism with a secondary 16 gauge barrel capable of firing buckshot (in other words, it's a big pistol with a small shotgun built into it).






The Countess's Boudoir

Since we wanted it to look futuristic (for the 19th century) the Countess's boudoir borrows from the design aesthetic of German Expressionist movies such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

The skull-shaped stand for her masks was inspired by the work of early 2000AD stalwart and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen artist Kev O'Neill.




The Countess's Mask

Surprisingly (since it appears more beautiful than monstrous) the Countess's mask here is based on the Medusa Rondanini, a famous marble sculpture of the Medusa's head. It is probably a Roman copy of a Greek work dating from the 5th Century BCE .

Stickleback: London's Burning Part 1 References

Meet the gang 'cause the boys are here - Stickleback: London's Burning
Stickleback © 2009 Rebellion Developments/2000AD
Stickleback created by Ian Edginton & Me

Well, what goes around comes around, and after nearly two years, here comes the third series of Stickleback. As long-term readers of this blog will know, I put up a blog post for each episode of Stickleback, listing references and in-jokes that Ian and I pop into the backgrounds.

For anyone joining us for the first time, it's worth checking out my posts on Alberto Breccia, whose collage work inspired much of the unique look of Stickleback.

Page One: H Shand Butcher & Meat Packer

Harold Shand was the character played by Bobo Skins in John Mackenzie's epic 1982 gangster flick The Long Good Friday. In response to attacks on his business interests, Shand kidnaps a number of likely suspects and strings them up in an abattoir.

Page One: Damien Hirst Cow

The half-cow in the background of panel 4 is a tip of the hat to that most prominent of the Young British Artists, Damien Hirst, who is probably best known for his series of dead animals preserved in formaldehyde. As well as a cow, Hirst also created work using a sheep, and, most famously, a 14ft tiger shark.

Page One: Where's Mister Peepers & Mister Lug?

In the group shot on page one, I forgot to include Mister Peepers and Mister Lug. Watch them spring out of nowhere next episode!

Page Two: Wide Duchesses

Stickleback's cheery "Front and centre with the Wide Duchesses!" refers to the magical world of British roof slate sizing. Different sizes of slate (still measured in inches!) are given different titles; Duchesses, Marchionesses, Viscountesses and Ladies, often available in "wide" and "small." Check out this list for the full range.

Page Four: "Grouty"

Doubtless an ancestor of "Genial" Harry Grout, who by 1975 was running H. M. Prison Slade in Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais' classic BBC sitcom Porridge.
Played in fine menacing style by actor Peter Vaughan, "Genial" Harry Grout remains one of the best-remembered characters in the series, despite appearing in only three episodes.

Page Six: Mister Tickle Lives!

In the original plot outline for the previous series (Stickleback: England's Glory), Mister Tickle was slated to die horribly at the hands of the false Buffalo Bill during the final battle in Hyde Park. He survived only because both Ian and I forgot about him entirely, and by the time he was due to peg out it was a bit late to drag him in out of left field. We settled for cutting Black Bob's arms off instead.

Page Seven: "A Tug and a Tuck"

Although Ian does own dictionaries of archaic slang, he tells me that many of the fruitier turns of phrase (including this one) come off the top of his head.

Page Eight: Robo-Doxy

Anyone remember the exploding Robo-Cow, created by the late Professor Philo Thynne, in the second-ever episode of Stickleback: Mother London? Any similarities between that explosive ambush and this one are, shall we say, far from coincidental...

Page Ten: The Mistral

A slightly complicated one, this; our dirigible The Mistral is loosely based upon Robur's "rotorcraft" The Albatross from Jules Verne's 1886 novel Robur the Conqueror. That story follows much the same pattern as the better-known 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, except that Robur is an aeronaut rather than a submariner. In the book, The Albatross is a heavier-than-air craft supported by multiple propellers (a sort of early helicopter) with two large propellers front and back for propulsion. Early illustrations show it looking like a clipper ship with propellers on its masts instead of sails.

In 1961, the story was filmed as Master of the World, starring Vincent Price. Here The Albatross looks more like a standard dirigible, but with banks of rotors on the top side (and it is still described as being heavier than air). And just to complicate matters, Master of the World was also the title of Verne's 1904 sequel to Robur the Conqueror, in which The Albatross does not appear at all.

A curious aside: Wikipedia also records the supposed 19th-Century phenomenon of "mystery airship" sightings, similar in tone to the various waves of UFO sightings from the 1950's onwards.

Our Mistral is a dirigible which uses additional rotors for manoeuvrability and to support the weight of the huge mirror panels which can be rotated to make the ship virtually invisible from a distance. The notion of invisibility via mirrors is a lovely poetic conceit, but in practice, covering a dirigible in mirrors would turn it from a Big Obvious Thing into a Big Shiny Obvious Thing - assuming it could fly at all with the additional weight.
The wonderfully erudite Jess Nevins informs me that the concept of rendering things invisible through mirrors goes right back to the early pulp magazines:

"R. & C. Winthrop’s At War With The Invisible (Electrical Experimenter, Mar-Apr 1918) was set in the future–vicious Martians, sexy Venusians. The human narrator’s Venusian girlfriend has a bracelet whose tiny mirrors reflect light & create invisibility.
Frank Paul’s The Secret of Invisibility (Science and Invention, May 1922), featured wacky elderly inventor Dr. Hackensaw, who creates invisibility with mirrors.

Electrical Experimenter was widely read among sf fans and writers during that era, but Dr. Hackensaw was hugely popular (43 stories spread over four years), so it’s a toss-up as to which created the trope."

My guess is that Ian and I picked up the trope third- or fourth-hand from comics or TV series made in the 1960's - though specific examples escape me.