Ben Aaronovitch's Blog, page 15

So What's Going To Be In This Comic Anyway?

I'm glad you asked....

For a start there are three varient covers.


Inside each issue there will be 22 pages of hot Peter Grant action...


And 5 pages of special features...



Which in future issues will include Professor Postmartin's History of Magic, Cooking with Molly, Tales from the Folly strips and much more.

But I've never bought a comic before....

That's okay, I'm planning a blog that will help but in the meantime there are a couple of helpful links below...

Mary Sue's How To Buy Comics a Beginners Guide
Kotaku's How To Get Into Comics
Forbidden Planet: Rivers of London #1

Les Disparues De Rushpool

A Good Read

Rivers of London is a Good Read!It must be true because Tom Robinson says so!
Tom Robinson, DJ, poet, writer, broadcaster and, most importantly to me, singer and composer of such anthems as Sing if you're Glad to be Gay and the Winter of 79 has appeared on BBC Radio Four's A Good Read on Tuesday 9th of June. For his book he chose Rivers of London .

You can listen to it on BBC iPlayer here.


Miranda chose The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion while the presenter Harriett Gilbert chose The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst.

Writing Comics Is Easy.....well sort of.

Writing Comics Is Easy

Quick let me qualify that before the other comic book writers come round my house and have words. 

Writing comics is just as hard as any other form of literary endeavour but with one caveat - your only really talking to one person - the artist. You see when you're writing prose you've got to think about how every damn word will impact your entire readership. Every damn word! This means that if you're of a nervous disposition you can find yourselves agonising for hours about the placement of every comma.

You'd think film scripts would be better. After all a script is not aimed at the general audience - in many ways it is a technical document like a blueprint or a recipei it exists to provide a framework for other, hopefully talented, crafts people to build around. Alas a script has also to excite people with money or at least people who know people with money so you've always got to write with them in mind. This wouldn't be so bad if so many in the industry didn't combine ignorance with an innate sense of certainty(1).
But comic scripts are beautiful - you write them essentially for one person only(2) - the artist. Since they're a fellow professional you don't have to entice them with your prose or come up with six new ways to say the hero runs past the camera in an exciting fashion. In fact once you've established a working relartiionship you can use short hand, or offer the artist different approaches in the same document and, if your imagination has totally failed you, ask the artist to make something up.
In this way writing comics is easy.

In all the others ways, character, plot etc, it's just as hard as all the other ways to write.

(1) There's a famous case of a writer pitching the true story of how Elliot Ness's, famous for bringing down Capone,  next case was the torso killer - generally considered to be America's 1st genuine serial killer. The movie executive rejected the pitch because Elliot Ness was clearly under copyright to Paramount (who'd made The Untouchables). The writers tried in vain to explain that as a real historical figure it was, in fact, impossible to copyright his name and his adventures. The movie executive was unmoved - Elliot Ness was a fictional character and under copyright and that was an end to it.
(2) Well alright there's your editor and your colourist and the letterer but in the first instance you're writing for the artist.

Comic Countdown

The beautifully drawn and coloured pages of Issue #2 are beginning to emerge so I thought I'd take this opportunity to share some Jaguar porn.

BODY WORK ISSUE#1 B COVER

Want an alternative cover? Here it is. Based on the Wayne Reynolds' painting.

Wayne ReynoldsTitan Comics

Gospel Oak's Finest Crime Fighter

 Guleed Tease!

 Rivers of London: Body WorkIssue #1 July 15

Day 30: Islington

ISLINGTON


Islington Central Library6.30 pm4.3 km from Covent Garden
I completely forgot to take a picture of the front so here is an image of the cake I was given instead.

This was a triumph.
I apologise for the fact that that as the month has worn on my blogs have become somewhat, shall we say, abbreviated. I'd also like to say that the many librarians, library assistants, DACSOs(1), archivists and people that wandered into the library and never left I met were all wonderfully welcoming and generous.

The whole thing started at Islington Central when I foolishly mooted the idea that I should visit every borough and it was fitting that this was the last audience...


 That's actually Sophie Calder on the far left of the front row - she's a publicist for Orion Books and mostly to blame for all this.

(1) Direct Access Customer Service Officers

NEXT: um.... sleep, lots and lots of sleep!

Day 29: Wanstead

REDBRIDGE



Wanstead Library7.00 pm12.6 km from Covent Garden

Windows? We don't need no stinking windows!Redbridge came as a bit of a surprise because with a name like that I expected it to be up North - as in Yorkshire or Lancashire - and to have played a vital role in the industrial revolution and/or trade union history.
There was a huge coffee and walnut cake available and despite my best efforts to give it away I ended up eating half of it. V.Bad.
What it is, it turns out, is a leafy suburb or at least the bits I saw were. Once more the spiritual successors to Albert Speer had been let loose on a library as evinced by the Leni Riefenstahl windows you can see below.

NEXT: The last library in London!

Day 28: Bopping in Bexley and Barking in Bromley

BEXLEY

Bexleyheath Central Library3.15 pm19.6 km from Covent Garden

Bexleyheath Library was built during the closing stages of the Cold War and is now designated a Human Rallying Point and Shelter in the event of the Zombie Apocalypse.

Here me and the audience could shelter while the dead walk the earth and the rush hour traffic clogged up the roads.


BROMLEY


Bromley Central Library7.15 pm15.4 km from Covent Garden

So far we've had libraries with gardens, cafes and even a sauna but Bromley Central is attached to a full sized repertory theatre. Currently showing The History Boys by Allen Bennett.

It's also nine stories high, giving in unparallelled views over South London, with its own secondary auditorium which, amazingly, was full of people when I arrived.

Here I was told by a guy in the audience that while teaching Policing and Crime at college he used my books as a lazy way to introduce his students to police culture.

I was tempted to ask whether I could get a fee for that but managed to restrain myself.



NEXT: Wanstead in Redbridge, Yorkshire North East London!