Eels at the Royal Festival Hall

Recently a friend of mine had a spare ticket to see Eels at the Royal Festival Hall. I have to admit, apart from hearing Novocain For The Soul and Susan’s House which came out in 1992, I had somehow managed to miss this excellent American band.

Fronted by Mark Oliver Everett, or simply ‘E’, the Eels appeared as a multi-instrumentalist two piece, swapping between guitars, piano, drums, pedal steel guitar and some other instrument I’ve not seen before.

The Eels tunes can hardly be described as upbeat, Everett’s sister went through a long period of depression before killing herself with an overdose. His father, a famous quantum theorist, was an alcoholic and died when Everett was just a teenager. As you can imagine, these life events have bled through into the lyrics and even command whole songs, such as Elisabeth.

Despite this gloomy backstory, Everett managed to inject some sly humour in to the stage show by inviting a Queen look-alike – he did invite her Royal highness, but she has failed to come to any of his four gigs at the Royal Festival Hall. He also took breaks from songs to send himself up reading fan mail and reviews of his own shows. His band mate, referred to simply as ‘The Chet’ also read a couple of passage from his book Things To Tell The Grandchildren.

Frequently bleak, often raw but showing great virtuosity with which ever instrument they took up, Eels put on a stately, touching and eccentric show. Everett’s has a great and unique voice, ideally suited for his wry observations on American life and the human condition.

All in all, a great show.

Things I've Learned

Having nothing of any great consequence to write about at the moment (the Joe Abercrombie review will appear soon), I thought I’d show you around the grimy contents of dimly lit mind… things I have learned -

Writing comic scripts for manga style artwork is completely different to writing for more western, sci-fi/ 2000 AD style stuff.
With hindsight this is painfully obvious – but it has shown me that I have to adapt to my writing style in future, based on the style of the art. I also seem to be a little enthusiastic about how many panels I can fit on a page, and how much of the story I want to squeeze in.

I seem to spend a lot of time writing role playing games (adventures or settings) that I’ll mostly likely never play, or be able to persuade other people to play. I’m currently hankering after some corporate espionage, science fiction, and action/ adventure… with large guns and cool gadgets. Maybe I should just learn to draw.

Going to the Doctor to talk about depression isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Far from being laughed out of the surgery, or turned into some kind of Prozac zombie, it was quite a relief to get it out of the way. Whilst I appreciate it’s difficult not to put things off when you are down – if you do feel low (and things are getting bad) then go and see your GP! Chances are nothing will happen immediately – you’ll just be asked to go back in four weeks or so.

I look like Russell Brand according to some of my friends. I am distraught as you can imagine. I don’t sound like him, dress like him, have ridiculous back combed hair or take vast quantities of drugs… and yet. Why couldn’t I be compared to the God-like Trent Reznor? No. The achingly hip (in the 90s anyway) John Cusack? No… Russell f*cking brand… urgh. I might cry.

Hanworth Crematorium has a small chapel – my Great Uncle Wally’s funeral was very well attended, and I spent the service standing, along with a lot of other people. The priest read out part of my blog post called ‘Heroes’ at the funeral itself as part of the eulogy, and it was strange hearing material I’d written read out in public.

I’ve still no idea why they have hymns at funerals.

I love my job. Sure, there is stuff I can’t stand about Titan, but for the most part my job rocks. My team are a bunch of bon oeufs – The Simpsons, SpongeBob Squarepants and Transformers continue to do well – and as if that wasn’t enough, we have Indiana Jones comic hitting the shelves in May.
Transformers Comic UK #9 is on the shelves any day now!

Despite being quite rubbish at the tabletop war game called Warmachine, produced by Privateer Press – I can’t seem to want to stop playing it. Most women would agree that men never really grow up, and in my case this is especially true. Currently I’m hankering after a small army led by the religious nut job called High Executioner Servath Rezink

Geek? Me? You damn straight.

Trashed - New Comic Project

A few weeks ago I was asked by a colleague and friend, Sarah Langton, to write a three page comic script. You can see some of Sarah’s work in the header of this very blog as well as the accompanying pictures in this post.

For more of her digital prowess check out:

www.secretarcticbase.com

As you can imagine, this was rather flattering, and eventually I turned something in that I hoped would appeal to Sarah’s sci-fi sensibilities and let her show off her manga influences. The comic strip, which currently has the working title of Trashed, is just three pages long, and intended to be part of a larger collection of environmentally themed comics.

The project is headed up by comic aficionado (and Forbidden Planet staff member) Lou Ryrie and Ian Arrowsmith (also Forbidden Planet minion). The project has garnered a lot of interest and boasts some impressive names from the sequential art community.
Good luck Lou and Ian!

Look up 'Do You Want To Kiss It Better?' on Facebook or MySpace if you'd like to find out more.

Since writing the three pager the idea has grown legs and developed a life of it’s own. Sarah and I are talking about potentially seeing how far we can take the project. Secondary characters are emerging, relationships occurring, technology, well, being plagiarised from any and all the sci-fi films I’ve loved since I was a kid. In short, I’m having a whale of a time and it gives me something to do whilst I wait from progress on Eidolon - my other, more ‘Fantasy’ project.

All images © Sarah Langton - don't steal her sh*t, she'll mess you up.

Eidolon

Copyright Den Patrick/ Barry Spiers 2008

A while ago on this Blog I mentioned I had enlisted the talents of Barry Spiers, a designer by trade and a fledgling illustrator. Here you can see page 2 of a comic script I have written called 'Eidolon' - which follows the fortunes of a society of fallen angels and their eternal struggle against their previous master (and his new minions!). Unfortunately for the angels (called the Corvidae or Disavowed), not only have they fallen out with their maker, but they are also persecuted by the Church, a sinister human theocracy!

Barry is currently drawing a cover for Transfomers Comic: UK, but he assures me he has other pages drawn up in rough for Eidolon. Watch this space for more developments!