If the coin had come up tails...

If you did a double take there, it means you are awake and sober. No, indeed that is not a page of Leo's and Nikos's art, but a true curiosity, pencilled by Russ Nicholson and inked and colored by Martin. It came about like this...

Years before Mirabilis appeared in Random House's DFC comic, we had been invited to contribute a try-out version of the first episode for their dummy issue. The artwork in that 6-page episode was all by Leo, including the coloring, and it was very different from Mirabilis as you will have seen it. For one thing, the army uniforms looked more WW1 than the dashing dragoon outfits we eventually (at Martin's urging, and quite right too) clothed Jack and Gerard in.

That was mid-2006, a long time before we actually got our very brief run in the comic. Sometime in autumn 2007, the excellent Ben Sharpe, editor of the DFC, asked us to come up with a bunch of Mirabilis stories to appear in The Guardian, a UK newspaper with a very shaky grasp of both epigenetics and spelling. David Fickling, the comic's publisher, didn't want these to be stories that would later appear in the comic. So I quickly cooked up half a dozen standalone stories, of which one became "A Wrong Turning" and Ben must have like them because he wrote back:

"I think they’re really great. Fantastic, actually. It’s not that we didn’t know that you were an accomplished writer, but to have conjured up all these little perfectly formed scenarios in one sitting certainly deserves the doffing of hats. I think these would be great for the paper – and also for the comic and the graphic novels, and etc, etc."

(Btw I've quoted that, not to fan the fires of my own ego, but to show what good taste and discernment Ben has.)

Now, Leo was still hard at work at a couple of books he was contracted to illustrate - and that was even before he could get going on the regular strip. So there was no way he was going to be able to fit in six 5-page stories on top of his other work. Oh, and did I mention these had to be done gratis? So we turned to Russ Nicholson, an old hand at the comics game and one of the many artists who did try-outs for the John Blake strip.

The only problem: I was still tinkering with the scripts and layouts, so I couldn't ask Russ to try out for our Grauniad strips using those. The only finished script to hand was the one from the dummy issue of The DFC, so we sent a couple of pages of that over to Russ and there's the result above.

It looks odd because the original plan for the DFC was to publish in Berliner format (31cm x 47cm) so the pages ended up having way too many panels. Fortunately that plan was abandoned. Much as I dislike the A4 format, it's certainly better for comics than Berliner! Unfortunately, another notion that got abandoned was the whole plan to put the standalone strips in the newspaper, because instead of appearing in the first issues of the comic it had now been decided to start Mirabilis in the Christmas 2008 issue. In the event, those DFC strips that did appear in The Guardian were, I think, then reprinted in the comic anyway, so it would have been a right waste of Russ's time to get him to do 30 pages of comic strips for nowt but a thank you.

Readers of the Fabled Lands blog will know that I'm a big fan of Russ's work. However, I don't think the style he went for there would have fitted alongside the uniquely atmospheric and warm style that Leo and Nikos created between them. In theory, the standalone strips didn't have to mesh with the main Mirabilis story, but there needed to be some sense of them belonging to the same tradition. As I've said elsewhere, Leo and Nikos remind me of the work of Guy Davis and Dave Stewart on B.P.R.D. - or maybe, if we're going back further into the great age of comics, of luminaries like Herb Trimpe, George Tuska and Marie Severin. The style Russ used is more of a traditional British comic look - Steel Claw, say, in Valiant. (Hmm, okay, the art on the Steel Claw was by Jesús Blasco, who was Spanish, but you know what I mean...)

Meanwhile, you may be wondering about that original 6-page episode in the DFC dummy issue. That should remain locked away in the vaults, I think. Like the original Buffy pilot, it served its purpose as a step in the development process. But here are a few frames for comparison with how the characters ended up - and, below that, the real deal as Jack and Gerard find the Kind Gentleman's coin. Leo's and Nikos's work never fails to thrill me. Accept no substitutes.

Greater than the sum of the parts

Every comic artist who has commented on the finished Mirabilis pages has noticed the incredible alchemy that takes place between Leo's drawing and Nikos's coloring. Flattery is all too easy, but I can say with absolute sincerity that I don't think there is a more talented art team working in comics today, and it is my incredible luck to have these gentlemen illustrating the scenarios I come up with. Add to that the truly phenomenal covers that Martin has produced and I could want for almost nothing else. Oh, except for publication, obviously.

Final destination

We like locomotives. And we like things that are a bit unsettling. So check out this brilliant animation, Madame Tutli-Putli, by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski - interviewed here - and a whole talented team with too many consonants in their names to list here.

If this appeals, you may want to pop over to Wrong - the modern magazine in the tradition of Weird Tales, EC Comics and Warren - and Coven 13, of course. The idea of the magazine is that it is wholly owned by the creators themselves. Come and give it your support; dictatorships aren't toppled by people saying, "I might show my face next week."

Saints alive

He has only the briefest of cameo appearances in Mirabilis, but today is St George's Day so here's his take on the whole Year of Wonders phenomenon. The "tail of a dragon" - well, that's a locomotive, of course, a theme we'll be returning to on Sunday.

Mirabilis: l'année des merveilles

My wife Roz, better known in blogging circles as Dirty White Candy, was at the London Book Fair today. It's actually her second LBF this year, and the last time round she was chatting to Clint Eastwood, but that's another story. Today she came home with some bits 'n' bobs of interest to me, including a nicely produced little booklet that comprises a taster menu for the best of French graphic novels. And the best of French, of course, is the best in the world. So here's a reprise of an earlier post for our cousins from across the Channel - excuse me, La Manche - and especially the ladies and gentlemen of Casterman, Gallimard, Delcourt, Soleil, Dargaud, Dupuis, Le Lombard, Futuropolis, Quæ Éditions, and the rest. We could do with you guys over here in the UK. Anyway, here is the first-ever episode of Mirabilis, entitled La Piqûre! - enjoy, and we hope you have a great time in London.

Pistols at dusk

Another sneak peek into the eventful life of Jack Ember - or possibly I mean John Spark. Keep collecting these and eventually you'll have the whole of the Winter book. Incidentally, notice the Doc Strange influence?

Cloud 109 and the lunch that lasted till breakfast

Like a stack of dominoes tumbling over, or a single fissile atom setting off a chain reaction, a whole bunch of blogs were late this weekend because of a long lunch chez Morris with the incredibly talented Peter Richardson and David Orme, artist and writer respectively of Cloud 109.

I say a long lunch - it was very long, and turned into rather more than just lunch. After chicken satay sandwiches, a delicious banoffi pie that Peter brought from Cook in Battle, hours of interesting conversation, and many cups of tea in the glorious spring sunshine, David had to run to catch his train, but Peter was almost out the door when we managed to drag him back, ply him with beer and wine and lasagne, set the creative world to rights - and the next thing we knew, a phone was buzzing like a trapped insect. Well, it couldn't be mine or Roz's because we never switch them on. It was in fact Peter's wife, just calling to tell him that he'd missed his train home. Undeniably true - it was one of those evenings where we all thought it was about 9:30 but the clock insisted it was nearly midnight.

In the course of the evening, we cooked up the germ of a master plan to free comic creators from their shackles. Let the Empire tremble and the Sith scatter in fear, the rebels are about to commandeer their own Death Star and get thermonuclear on their asses! Well, maybe not anything quite so belligerent, that's the Lussac-Saint-Émilion talking (thanks, David) - but it is an exciting and slightly Marxist idea for pooling a mass of scintillating creative talent in a way that allows the writers and artists to reap the rewards of their own labours. Oh, and that incidentally will give birth to the new Creepy and Eerie. I'll be getting touch with some of you offline to talk about that.

Apart from the opportunity to get together with two fellow authors whose work I hugely admire, I also got my mitts on a copy of the Cloud 109 teaser book from Lulu. The art continues a little further with the story than we've so far seen on the blog, but the book also includes the script right to the end of book one. Well, my resolve not to look at that lasted all of ten seconds. Obviously I wouldn't dream of putting up any spoilers here, but I will say that the ending is everything you'd hope for - not only tying up the first part of the story, but planting the seeds that will take it on in the next two books. And I am in awe of David's deft control in telling a story at cinematic speed without ever seeming like it's rushed or missing anything. One to watch out for. Even Roz, who is not usually a comics reader, has lately been intrigued by both Mezolith and Cloud 109, and if I can drag her away from Nail Your Novel long enough, she's promised to do us a review.

Here by the way is the original image of Goth Gina in the Cloud 109 chatroom. Peter explains on the blog why he changed this by giving her spooky contact lenses, and for the sake of the story I think he was right to do so. But he did mention on Sunday that he liked the sad beauty of the simpler version. And just to show that every comics heroine needs a Goth outfit in their wardrobe, here's Estelle (as drawn by Martin and by Leo) freeing that inner sexy darkness. Down, boys.