Wisdom Issue 1 Commentary
Topic: Features|Wisdom Issue One Commentary
By Paul Cornell
I’m not sure how to do this. I’m not someone who enjoys pointing out ‘in-jokes’ in my work. Mainly because these days I rarely indulge in them. The thing about in-jokes is that they’re not funny. They do not raise a laugh unless they’re very deliberately and rarely placed. They’ve become, in fan texts, almost expected now. Which is as good a reason as any not to do them.
But, for some reason, I did go back to using hidden references in Wisdom. I think perhaps because when I think of Marvel comics, I think of a sense of fun, a shared tradition, a family. Even so, I prefer to think of these allusions as layering, as something that won’t make anyone smile when they find them, but instead give them something to uncover themselves, and, once uncovered, something that’ll sit there in their brain, adding a couple of different meanings to what was on the surface of the script.
So, no pressure. I’m about to spoil all the fun. There is, by the way, no Father Christmas. Here we go.
Page 1: Being someone who pays attention to what Gail Simone has to say about almost everything, I was rather concerned that I had a dead woman on page one. And on page one of issue two! I specified in the script that her plight wasn’t there for our enjoyment. But I needn’t have worried, Trev seems to share my aims. I love the way the forest canopy fades into the distance in a very English way, and I want to write more forests in this book now.
Page 2: Here’s an example of Trev doing something slightly different to the script, in a wonderful way. I’d had just Grimsdale’s narration, which meant that the events went without explanation. But I think the list of places and events makes sense. I kept saying ‘modern’ over and over in the script, for scenes like that bedroom, thinking of all the 1970s, 1980s, okay and 1990s… depictions of Marvel Britain as still basically medieval. Needn’t have worried, again. Trev lives in my modern Britain too.
Page 3: Now, as followers of ancient British comedy will know, Mr. Grimsdale is the fellow that the comedian Norman Wisdom archetypally has as a boss, in every impersonation of this grand physical comedian. ‘Mr. Grimsdale, I’ve got it wrong again!’ is what our hapless hero cries. I like to think that might add something to what the reader feels about the chaos that will come to surround Pete. That Grimsdale was originally played by Edward Chapman in The Square Peg (1958). Ours is playing a real part, that of the Joint Intelligence Committee Chair, the official who convenes meetings of officers from MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the Defence Intelligence Staff. He’s basically the big picture coordinator of what all British intelligence is doing. In the real world, that’s currently Sir Richard Mottram. Brian Braddock, or Captain Britain, was at one point the ruler of Otherworld, but that status is now in some doubt. ‘That would be an ecumenical matter’ is, according to the sitcom Father Ted, a safe reply from a worried cleric to any intelligent question asked by a bishop. ‘Sodding’ is an affectation on Grimsdale’s part. He wouldn’t use any more serious a swearword in the presence of a junior. ‘England’s dreaming’ is something the Sex Pistols gave us in the song ‘God Save the Queen’ (and, erm, with the theme of the book in mind, I’d like to point out that there is, according to them, ‘no future’ in it, you see, I don’t just do this stuff randomly). You could equally see it as ‘England’s Dreamtime’. Grimsdale has, it seems, reorganised MI-13 so that he has his own instrument for dealing with the weird stuff, a whole new division of military intelligence, that, like all the others, answers to him, but that is small enough so that it doesn’t make the mistakes all the previous versions have made, and has put Pete in charge of it. The Red Book is more properly known as The Weekly Survey of Intelligence, the minutes of every Thursday’s Joint Intelligence Committee meeting, distributed to the Cabinet Office. (We’ll see an example of such ‘staining’ in issue four.)
Phew, this stuff is dense. You don’t realise until you look into it. I bet Alan Moore put down his pen at the end of writing The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and thought ‘glad I don’t have to list all the references, someone could get a book out of that’.
Page 4: I love the details Trev’s put in here, like the Space Invaders machine, and John’s Beatles mug. He’s also made Tink look genuinely hardcore, and not prettified, which I like. Especially the apt pixie boots. ‘Rambling Sid Rumpo’ was Kenneth Williams’ folk singer character in the radio show Round the Horne, a man very much out of his time, and Arnold Ridley was the very old soldier Private Godfrey in the sitcom Dad’s Army.
Page 5: That is Emma Frost that Pete’s on the phone to. And everyone got the allusion to him leaving drunken answerphone messages for Kitty Pryde. She’s the absence at the heart of this miniseries, and at the heart of Pete’s life, which I’m pleased to play with. Round about the time of writing this, Mark Millar distributed a questionnaire to a whole bunch of his comic writer mates, Joss Whedon included, inviting us to share some jokes and personal experiences. So I spoke of the occasion on which I well… came over a guide dog… and hit Reply To All. And never heard anything back. I’m not sure how I feel about having shared that moment with the greatest screenwriter of our age. I’m not sure that would help any future negotiations about prying Kitty from him. I specified red hair for Maureen and her son to our lovely colourist, because of my arc plan. Don’t know why she seems to be wearing one silver glove, I think that’s a lighting effect. I originally asked if we could make ‘phwoar, she’s a bit of all right!’ into a manga-style subtext sentence, words just floating in the air by a character’s face, in order to indicate another level of meaning beside what they’ve said, but in a coloured American comic, as opposed to a black and white manga, that’s very hard to do. So instead, I celebrate the return of the thoughts balloon! Wa-hey! I missed this essential dimension of what comics can do that film and TV can’t.
Page 6: Mob-handed, that is, armed. Red Bull, an energy drink. That’s not a painting of the Red Skull on the wall, or at least I don’t think it is. I love the humour inherent in the silhouettes of all the different races of Otherworld. Frank Tieri’s recent run on Excalibur has given Pete’s words here rather a fun subtext, I think.
Page 7: That’s Charles Hawtrey, the beloved comedy actor from so many Carry On movies playing O, the Quartermaster, whose title is a bit of a take on a scene from Carry On Spying, where his code number is ‘Double Oh… Oh.’ His catchphrase was ‘oh, hello’. Which doesn’t sound great on paper, but which he did with great style. Comfy cardigan for the Captain there. Love the shield design.
Page 8: I love how the helicopter looks like it shouldn’t be inside this typical Whitehall Georgian office space. The Bull and Whistle is, I think, a pub. Editor Nick Lowe made one of his many useful interventions here, adding a sound effect to indicate better what just happened. He’s very good at the craft of storytelling in comics, I’m learning off him all the time.
Page 9: Trev has a genuine love of helicopters. And I have a genuine love of double entendres. He wanted a big splash with an enormous chopper. So I gave him one.
Page 10: The theme of our miniseries, Pete trying to get on with the future, and how much he’s going to be hamstrung by the past, personally, mythically, and historically. I share his desire to get on with the future, and his frustration about Britain wallowing in its past and lamenting about how much better things were in the old days. Sid is there to annoy Pete on that basis. I decided that Maureen should be an Ulster Loyalist because you never see them in comics, and I thought it’d be good to have one, and a nice one, though personally I disagree with her politics.
Page 11: The Crown Pub in Soho is from Pete’s continuity, a place where British intelligence officers meet socially on neutral ground. I think it’s more media Soho than tourist Soho, a place with people on the door, like the Groucho Club. And here are my two old favourites from Master of Kung Fu! I’ve awarded Clive Reston the KCBE, making him a Knight Commander of the British Empire, the apt award for someone who has quietly gone out into the world and affected change that benefits our country. I think ‘Black’ Jack Tarr is probably what MI6 would sometimes call ‘a hound’, someone employed by them unofficially to do the illegal stuff. STRIKE, RCX and Black Air are all previous British intelligence outfits in the Marvel universe that have messed up the business of dealing with the weird stuff. The Weird Happenings Organisation, the last one to do so, evolved into MI-13 under Alistaire Stuart, until he was poached away by MI6, who may well feel that weird events inevitably lead ‘overseas’, that is to other dimensions, space, etc., and are thus within their mandate. The JIC Chair probably wouldn’t have to buy his own drinks in The Crown, but still would.
Page 12: I think Pete’s line was originally a Jack Regan line from The Sweeney.
Page 13: Personally, I’m all for Marvel’s smoking ban. It’ll save a few lives. This is the first scene that came into my head when I started to think about plotting the book. And it kind of sums up my approach to continuity: all that stuff happened, and has an effect on what we’re doing, but these are stories of our own, and we’re going to be going to new places now.
Page 14: Like John as Merlyn’s boots. Trev’s got a thing about little boots. And here’s a line I’m going to have to tippex out before I give the issue to Mum and Dad. When told it was going to be a mature readers comic, I made sure I’d use the licence to swear sparingly, realistically, and when it was funny.
Page 15: Trev, bless him, did a couple of different versions of this page, and a couple of others, until he felt he’d got the building right. I was usually happy with the first one, but his perfectionism pays dividends. Nick, a classical scholar, wanted a reference to Titania. I think maybe he just liked the name.
Page 16: I love Trev’s Oberon. He looks just like he should do, a mixture of civilisation, nature and brute force. The eyes under the helmet add that little touch of history and society.
Page 17: Originally, this was scripted and drawn as our heroes having located Oberon through Maureen’s link with him, and then just hunted him on foot. But Nick pointed out that Maureen’s expression could take us to the more dynamic moment of him having teleported our heroes. So I re-scripted the dialogue on that basis, it was inked on that basis, and now it looks like it could never be anything else. A great learning experience for me.
Page 18: ‘Yer can’t stop Captain Midlands’ is Sid’s catchphrase, appropriate to a hero of World War 2. I hope everyone realised that’s John in panel two. I’d originally asked if Pete could have lost his mutant powers on M Day, but he immediately used them in Excalibur, so I was happy to go with them here.
Page 19: I love how Sid is offhandedly squeezing the head off one last fairy in that panel. ‘This is a young country’ is one of my favourite declarations from Prime Minister Tony Blair’s speeches.
Page 20: I love that we’ve got a male cheesecake shot in our first issue. I assume offhandedly, by the way, that Tink can be big, little, winged or not winged at will, and that her weapons change size too. Pete’s line was originally uttered by Roger Moore, in a not so different context, in one of his James Bond movies, I forget which.
Page 21: MI-13 obviously pay Maureen quite well for her to keep a flat in Kew. I love Trev’s real world detail of everyday clothing and domestic appliances.
Page 22: Little Jonathan Raven is a previously seen Marvel comics character, and he’s the right age for when his appearances take place. He probably would enjoy Captain Scarlet. And I love next issue captions!
Hey, I enjoyed that. Easier to do than a DVD commentary, you don’t have to think on your feet or share headphones with Billie Piper and therefore, you know, stammer. I hope you like issue two. But I won’t be there when you cross the road on that one. Cheerio.
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