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.

Weapons... What Should The Thinking Vigilante Carry?

By Regie Rigby

And so we find ourselves late again, and in a moment of creative crisis.

You see, I’ve reached a point in the scripting of Sunset where I have to script a big fight. This is no surprise - Sunset is an action comic and fight scenes are not exactly unusual in such stories. I have a lot of fight scenes to choreograph – and that’s okay. I can see how they go down in my head, and I can describe them to Paul, the strip’s artist without much difficulty. That’s not the problem.

I have now reached the point though, where I must finally decide exactly what sort of armour and weapons Sunset will have available to him. This is a harder question than you’d think.

Seriously.

Weapons in comic books are, frankly, often a bit unrealistic. Obviously, since I made the decision a while ago that my character wouldn’t carry a gun I don’t have to worry about realistic firearms*. This is a good thing, because frankly the state of guns in comics has, over the years, gotten a little bit silly. It’s calmed down a little bit now, but some of the stuff that was being toted around by characters in the nineties - wow! I swear there are pictures of Cable out there where he’s carrying guns bigger than he is! What the hell were these things supposed to be made of?

I mean, I’m no firearms expert (although I do know enough to know that you shouldn’t call them guns – a gun is an article of field artillery) but I’ve done a little bit of shooting in my time with rifles and shotguns. These are things that are basically thin metal tubes maybe a meter long – which is teeny tiny in comic book weapon terms. I can report that they’re actually pretty heavy, and when you fire them the recoil can be like having a donkey kick you in the shoulder. In my scouting days I got to use a twelve bore shotgun, and I carried the bruise for nearly a month.

And yet there are comic book characters wandering around with side arms the size of a small cow, blowing chunks off’ve buildings without so much as a wince.

It’s utter cobblers. I mean, I know that we’re talking superheroes here, so they can do things we mere mortals can’t, but seriously, what’s the point? Given the damage you can do with regular sized weapons, what the hell are you going to do with a blaster the size of a family saloon car?

Even if Sunset wasn’t British, and so from a relatively gun free culture, and even if I wasn’t so anti gun myself, I reckon my characters are better off out of that particular arms race.

Besides, guns are dull in fight sequences. There’s only so much “ratatat-tat” action you can do before everyone on the page is either dead or hiding behind a wall, and in either case they’ve stopped being interesting. If I’m going to have violence in my book (and I can’t see any way of avoiding it given the nature of the story I want to tell) I want some good old fashioned fisticuffs. So much better for maintaining a long action sequence – you don’t have to worry about running out of ammunition for a start!

It was the desire to have my hero feeding the bad guys a chucky helping of knuckle sandwich that led to my first weapon decision. Sunset will be wearing gloves anyway, so I might as well have hardened strike points across the knuckles and a bit of padding in them so that he’s not constantly breaking his fists. After all, he’s a volatile young man, and when he’s not punching out evil doers and the occasional innocent bystander he’s been known to punch the odd wall in frustration too. If I’m going to have him do that, rather his hands need a bit of protection or I’m going to be writing a lot of scenes set in A&E.

Sunset isn’t a martial arts comic though, and whatever my horror of guns might be, I don’t want him running around unarmed. From the very beginning I knew he’d be carrying a staff. I like staves. They’re good visually, and you can do a lot with them, and after a bit of internet research at the start of this project I decided that Sunset’s would be electrified. “Shock Stick” technology is hardly new, after all, and although such weapons are illegal in Britain it would seem that anyone with a credit card of Pay pal account can order one off the ‘net.** The electrified staff has turned out to be something of a winner really. Like I said, I think staves are great visually anyway, but having seen the way Paul draws electricity, well, it’s going to look amazing.

Fists and staves are both a bit close quarters though. The “no guns” rule means that Sunset isn’t going to be shooting anybody, but there will be times when I want him to be able to hit things that aren’t standing next to him.

My problem here, if I’m honest, is that I really want him to have a bow and arrow. I know, I know. A bow would be awkward and cumbersome to carry around, as would a quiver full of arrows. Neither are really suited to stowing in pockets, and a Robin Hood / Green Arrow style quiver across his back would spoil the lines of the rather fetching long coat we’ve put him in.

It’s just that archery is so cool.

It’s not a goer though. I’ve been thinking about this for years on and off, and giving Sunset any kind of bow would just be silly. If I want to write an archer I’ll either have to create a new character, or get around to pitching the Green Arrow script I’ve been kicking around in my head. Sunset needs something else.

What though?

I quite like boomerangs, but in these circumstances any boomerang use would be a little too reminiscent of Batarangs – not a comparison I’m eager to encourage – and in any case, while boomerangs are brilliant in open spaces, I can’t really see them being all that useful in the narrow streets of London. Basically, unless he’s going to spend a lot of time hanging out on Hampstead Heath, Sunset’s not going to have much use for bent sticks.

Which leaves me with things like knives, shuriken, and other sundry throwing implements. Since I’m very keen that Sunset will be a sort of “do it yourself” vigilante, I want to make sure that everything he uses is available to anyone anything really exotic is out – although it’s truly remarkable*** what you can get online. I’m not telling you what I eventually came up with (don’t want to spoil the surprise), but I think it’s suitably off-beat.

And then, there are the explosives…

I’ll tall you about them some other time.











*The refusal to let my character carry a gun is partly in homage to Batman, partly a reflection of my own anti gun sentiments, and partly a recognition that since Sunset is set in London, guns really aren’t that easy to get hold of unless you’re going to mix in criminal circles that aren’t accessible to your average vigilante crime-fighter.

**I haven’t actually gone so far as to try ordering one – it’s dodgy enough that a mild mannered teacher like myself is checking out offensive weapons online, without risking a conviction for illegally importing them!

***And genuinely scary.