Who's Who in the CBU 2008

Name: Regie Rigby

Regie is a strange, almost ethereal creature. Who can plumb the hidden mysteries of his dark and murky past - a past which contains a terrible secret. A secret that taught him that with great power comes great responsibility, that criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot and just who exactly knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

By day, he assumes the appearance of a mild mannered teacher, bringing the joy of literature and the English Language to classes of enthralled and enthusiastic students. But by night?

By night he goes home and writes lesson plans. Sorry. That's as interesting as he gets. Really.

The rumours about rooftop struggles with underworld uberfiends, the gossip about the hidden cave filled with hi-tec equipment and the suggestion that his car might be fitted with turbo lasers are all nonsense.

When he's not teaching he reads comics. Sometimes he combines the two activities. When he's not doing that he's either playing computer games or asleep.

For Folk's Sake

By Regie Rigby

Well, I suppose I’ve managed to get back onto a seven-day schedule, which is something. I promise we’ll be back on Wednesdays with immediate effect.

In the meantime, I’m busier than I expected to be at work and so my “to read” pile is in fact growing rather than shrinking so I’m going to stop trying to review every book I picked up at Bristol – an event which is, after all, rather old news now. There are some more books I really really want to push, and you’ll be hearing about them over the next few weeks. For now though, I want to stop reviewing things for a bit and get back to this column’s prime remit – the discussion of the philosophy, history and motivation of graphic narrative.

Or, “Talking bollocks about comics” as others would have it.

I’ve been thinking about Folk Heroes. Every culture has them, from Robin Hood to William Tell, from Zorro to Kirikou and so on and so on. In a way, I wonder why they aren’t exploited in comics much more than they are. They’re all familiar “brand names” within the culture they spring from – and often beyond which means they have built in reader recognition. As a rule they tend to be popular, and perhaps best of all in this harsh commercial world, they’re public domain.

That’s right! A whole bank of popular, well known characters, complete with their own well known back stories for writers to plunder with complete impunity. How on Earth can publishers resist? There are a few examples of course. Neil Gaiman has played around with many folk characters over the years – most notably in Sandman, but elsewhere too. Bill Willingham’s consistently enthralling Fables embraces a whole bunch of folk archetypes too – but both writers take a very broad brush and ensemble casts. I can think of very few examples where a lone traditional folk hero headlines their own book, and I wonder why this is.

Who can say? For the most part, I have to say I’m glad they do. For example, I have a massive soft spot for Robin Hood. As a kid, comics were banned from my house and Robin Hood was one of the few available fantasy adventure characters I had (him, King Arthur, Ivanhoe and – bizarrely now I come to think about it, considering that the man was actually a murderous thug – Dick Turpin) and so when people mess with him they mess with my childhood.

I was somewhat concerned therefore, when I discovered that writer Tony “The Gloom, Shadowmancer, Starship Troopers” Lee is planning to bring the Lord of Sherwood back to the page. I mean, Tony’s a great writer – I assume you all know this, because I assume you’re all buying his books – if you aren’t, check out Starship Troopers, and the Eagle Award nominated Midnight Kiss, which will be out in Trade Paperback shortly, and you’ll see what I mean.

But this is Robin Hood. Will he care about him as much as I do? What if he does something wacky with him? As it happens, I needn’t have worried. I’ve seen the script for the first few pages, and it seems that Lee feels as strongly about the Hooded Man as I do. There’s some neat research in there too with references to place names that are refreshingly nowhere near Nottingham but are mentioned in the earliest ballads. Having also seen some of the character concepts produced by Lee’s collaborator on the project, the insanely talented Brazilian artist Sam Hart, I reckon it’ll look pretty good too.

So, basically, A Good Thing. More info on that project as I get it, but I think perhaps my initial unease on hearing that a writer and artist team that I admire were taking the character on goes some way to explaining why people don’t tackle Folk Heroes more often. The potential for alienating your audience is huge.

Perversely, given the previous point, the other reason for avoiding folk heroes might just be that while half the population has a very clear idea of how a particular character should be portrayed, the other half regards them as old hat and completely uninteresting. A potential lose/lose situation in a culture (at least in the West) that is obsessed with modernity.

But this perhaps is why mass-market comics characters remain in the public consciousness long after the sales of their books have fallen to levels that would’ve got them cancelled twenty years ago. We are a world that seems to need common reference points. As we increasingly forget the Robin Hoods of this world, we need other characters to take their place.

So we need Batman, and Superman, and Wonder Woman and Spider-Man, and all the rest. In many ways of course, they occupy the same niches as the older, almost forgotten characters they are beginning to replace. Look at them. Protectors, role models, inspirations, bringers of excitement and bravery. The super powered spandex clad hordes are doing exactly the same cultural job as the folk heroes of old. Even the costumes are conforming to the pattern – after all, there’s a long tradition of such characters wearing tights…

Where am I going with this? In truth I don’t really know, it was just a train of thought I wanted to work through. Ultimately I think that the point is that the heroes who sprang from the comics of the forties, fifties and sixties have answered a real need in Western Culture. They are the folk heroes of modernity, and they are as important to us as Beowulf, Arthur and even Robin Hood.

Given that, it seems clear that comics are missing a trick somewhere. We created these characters and gifted them to the world, but the world doesn’t find them through our pages much anymore. Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, all live in the popular mind as movies and cartoons. The general populous is no more interested in sitting down to read a Batman comic that it is in listening to a twelfth centuary ballad about Robin Hood.

Perhaps this is just the way of things. Perhaps there is nothing we can do.

Then again, perhaps there is. Making a big fat fuss about good comics is a place to start, and next time (hopefully on Wednesday) I’ll be doing just that.

See you then.