Harker Issue 9 - annotations

Cover
They used to say that corpses on the cover sell comics, so Vince has given us two here. Harker, of course, hates the sight of dead bodies, which is why he's looking from behind his hand.

Page One
"It's blue, have you seen it" - just in case this isn't clear, they're discovering the corpse here - the very same corpse we saw drifting in on the tide the previous evening, in issue #8.
We've done a lot of location photography around Whitby for this story, to get the setting as authentic as we can - Vince got this unusual overhead shot of the bridge here by asking very nicely at a solicitor's office, explaining why he needed it. They very kindly let him into an upstairs room, so that he could get the best angle for the establishing shot I'd requested.
You'll note the 'Whitby Gazette' sign on the sign of the white building - that's actually there, and also provides a neat link to something fun that we have planned for issue #11...
For those wanting to accurately place Harker's hotel, it's the building at the top right of the panel (which is in reality a Tourist Information Centre for the Abbey).

Page three
And there's the Whitby Gazette sign again in the first panel, just to make sure it's noticed. Fishboy (panel two) was the Denizen of the Deep in Buster comic in the late 60's and early 70's. He had webbed fingers and toes, could breathe underwater and talk to sea creatures.

Page four
This is intended to deliberately echo page seven of issue #1 - the arrival of our heroes on the case. You'll note that the conversation about sandwiches is similar to the one in issue #1 too. There's also another quick appearance of the Whitby Gazette, and Vince's ongoing visual gag about the local football team's woes.

Page six
Contrast Harker's method for getting the local police out of his hair, in comparison to Critchley's more reasonable approach in issue #8.

Page eight
Marine Boy (panel one) was an early Japanese anime cartoon shown here in the UK in the 1960s. He worked for Ocean Patrol, could breathe underwater using his 'oxy-gum' and had boomerangs as his main weapon.

Page seventeen
Here's the iconic Whitby Abbey again. In our version of Whitby, the wild grassed area alongside the Abbey continues straight to the moors - a little artistic licence there, as anyone who knows Whitby will tell you, but we needed to mess with the geography just a wee bit for the story, as you'll discover in issue #12.

Page nineteen
As acknowleged by Harker, this is a reference to the Grimpen Mire, into which the villain Jack Stapleton meets his fate in Conan Doyle's famous Sherlock Holmes story 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'.

Page twenty
And there's the black dog again - a further Holmes reference, as well as being a local Whitby legend (the folklore tale of the Barghest, a spectral black dog that preys on lonely travellers). Dracula takes the form of a black dog in the Bram Stoker novel 'Dracula', though the local legend predates Stoker's incorporation of it into the novel.

Cover of issue 10

Here's the cover of the next issue, due out on 15th December (just in time for Christmas!)
And for all those who ask me about the Harker novel 'The Murder Club', I'm working heavily on rewrites as we speak, and am hoping to have that out in time for Christmas too - watch this space!

And don't forget to follow DCI Harker on Twitter: http://twitter.com/DCIharker/

Harker on Twitter

Harker now has his own Twitter account, in which he'll be making grumpy tweets on a daily basis. Please feel very free to add him, and feel equally free to annoy him as you please. Expect random abuse and thinly veiled accusations if you attempt to engage him in conversation, enjoy him, and please tell your friends. Retweeting of his more outrageous statements very much encouraged!
Yes, it's sneaky viral marketing of the Harker comic - but I think it might also be lots of fun ;)

You'll find him here: http://twitter.com/DCIharker

Harker - Strange Deaths

And I've just finished my second novel (fourth novel in total): "Harker - Strange Deaths". Check out the Nanowrimo winners badge, right here - I rock!
I've been asked repeatedly when the first Harker novel 'The Murder Club' will be available from Ariel Press - tomorrow I'm going straight back to work on the second draft, and I'm still very hopeful of having it ready in time for Christmas. I'm also hoping to get a small selection of illustrations from Vince in it too, but we'll see how busy he is with the comic (he's hard at work as we speak on issue #10 so I don't want to interrupt him).
If there are any publishers out there interested in publishing either (or both) of the Harker novels, do get in touch, as we'll only be releasing a limited edition through our own shop.
Oh, and in other news - in a couple of days I'm going to be launching Harker's Twitter account... fun should ensue...

Roger

Harker Issue 8 - annotations

Okay, hang onto your hats (if you're wearing hats) and away we go...

Cover
Last issue we gave Harker the solo spot (given that it was pretty much a solo Harker issue) and this time we give Critchley the cover, for the same reasons. I especially like Harker on the bumper car, ramming his car into the other one and frightening the small child. Completely Vince's idea, he has a dark side too, clearly!

Page One
"aaaroooooo" is officially our first sound effect in the series so far. I decided right at the start that I wouldn't be using any captions or sound effects, but I think I can get away with this one, since it's almost a speech balloon (okay, so it's the black dog's speech balloon, but give me a break here!). It's often the little details in Vince's art that I enjoy, and here in panel one you'll notice he's added a sign saying that Agatha Fletcher's murder mystery event is cancelled - obviously, of course, as we killed her last issue.
DI Barnett is the typical local copper who doesn't want those poncey Southern coppers on his patch - it's always fun playing with the archetypes, and I make no apology for it, as in many ways it's what the series is all about.

Page Three
And here we see the difference between Harker and Critchley. Harker would have simply told Barnett to naff off, in no uncertain terms. Critchley is way too polite to do that, and instead smoothes things over pretty well.

Page Five
Griffin arrives, as sour as ever. Making her a regular part of the team was something we came up with whilst writing the previous book. It had never been part of the plan, but I enjoyed writing her so much in Book One that I decided to keep her. Her approach is again at odds with Critchley - like him, she also left a scenario in which three members of the opposite sex were showing an active interest in her. Critchley wasn't bothered, for him his job is everything. Griffin has an entirely different response, of course.

Page Ten
This first panel is the ruins of the abbey, looking towards the hotel, which we can see in the middle of the panel in the background. You'll note the fog drifting in at the bottom of the panel.

Page Twelve
Anyone who lives in or knows Whitby will know that, like the hotel, this little fairground is a complete invention. A fairground there would actually be washed away every time the tide comes in, but hey, we needed a fairground, and I liked the location. We did dabble with the idea that the fairground could be up on the clifftops, but this suited what I wanted better. I love the slightly sombre mood Vince establishes here, fully in keeping with a quiet little seaside resort in the early evening. No tthe sort of thing that Critchley likes, but perfect for Harker.

Page Thirteen
Gaah! I've just seen a typo! That's so very annoying. I'll pick it up for the collected edition, but of course Harker should be saying "discount".

Page Fourteen
The bizarre building on the bottom right panel does indeed exist - walking up the steps next to it from the beach leads towards the pier, where we next see our detectives. I don't know for certain what the building is, and haven't been able to find a guide that mentions it, but considering it's position and the portholes circling it, my guess would be that it's an old coastguard's hut of some kind. It appears unused and derelict now.

Page Fifteen
We're on the West Pier here. I don't believe the lighthouse is in use these days, but we decided it would be, especially with the fog rolling in.
Harker here is giving my own view on such shows as Rosemary and Thyme, Murder she Wrote and many others - the kind where the sleuth stumbles across the crime and feels compelled to solve it. We'll be coming back to Harker's love of The French Connection at a later date, when we reach Book Five.

Page Sixteen
Okay, admit it - did you spot the body floating in the water in that first panel, the first time you were reading?

Page Eighteen
Fish and chips, for the benefit of our American readers, are a typical English seaside delicacy. The fish comes covered in gorgeous crispy golden batter, the chips are what you might know as fries (but much bigger), and they taste best eaten out of old newspaper with lashings of salt and vinegar. Yum!

Page Twenty
This is the one hundred year old Whitby swing bridge, which splits in two and opens up every half hour, usually attracting lots of onlookers and queues of traffic waiting to get across. The bridge swings horizontally, hence the circular look to the ramps here, and the large gears to the left.

Cover of issue 9

Here it is, hot off Vince's work desk - the cover of issue #9 (which'll be released on 1st November) - click to embiggen as usual. They used to say that corpses sell comics - well, we've got two of them, so it should be double sales on this one ;)

Birmingham International Comics Show (BICS) 2009

Hi to those of you whom we met in Birmingham, both old and new fans alike! We had the best weekend we'd ever had at a convention, with huge sales of the new trade paperback collection of issues 1-6. If you were there but weren't able to buy it at the time, go take a look in the Harker online store, where you can buy every issue of Harker to date, and the new collected edition too.

You can buy new issues of Harker from us on the first of every month in the store (issue 9 will be out on 1st November), and we're also available in a number of stores around the country - check here to see where you can buy Harker, and I'll be adding two more stores to that list this week (one of which is Gosh in London).

If you take a look down the menu at the side here, you'll find annotations to the first seven issues, with number eight to follow next week.

As for the convention itself, we had a lovely time! So many of you came up to us and said such lovely things about the comic, and it's always wonderful for us to get some real feedback from you - hopefully you all like issue eight, literally hot off the presses as we only got it from the printers ourselves on Friday.

I do think BICS need to sort out a much better venue for the launch party, preferably with no disco, as networking was impossible in a room with such loud music. Just a nice pub with some food would be ideal, I'm sure. It was also a shame that there was no official bar for the saturday night, as again networking was impossible (no-one knew where everyone else was) - I think if those two issues could be solved, next year would be hugely improved. We were certainly very happy with the venue and the organisation, and will definitely be attending again next year!

Thanks to the organisers for offering us a chance to talk to all of you, and I hope you all enjoy your new Harker comics! Keep coming back every month - we've been monthly for eight issues and we never miss a deadline, so stick with us, there's loads more to come!

For those of you more interested in the trade paperbacks, Book Two will be out in March 2010, and also look out for the Harker novel 'The Murder Club', which will be available on 1st November.

Right, back to the scripting for me...

Harker Issue 7 - annotations

And away we go with annotations for the first of six issues making up Book Two: Murder By The Book...

Cover
Vince didn't tell me what he was doing for the cover of this issue (I simply asked for some kind of scene setter featuring Harker) and I was bowled over by this gorgeous shot, which feels very Cerebus to me. Harker here is halfway up the famous 199 Steps (known by some as Caedmon's Trod) in Whitby, which leads from the old town up to the ruined abbey on the cliff tops (and also up to where we've situated the hotel where Harker is staying). He's trying to light a fag whilst ducking from the gulls, just in case you were wondering, though I like the ambiguity of the image a lot. This also serves as the first panel of the book because...

Page One
...because here in panel one, you can see he's arrived at the top of the steps and is approaching St Mary's Church, which lies right at the top of the stairs.
Harker is singing to himself here a song called 'Mary', which you'll find on the Exposure album by Robert Fripp (which also features Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Tony Levin, Phil Collins and Daryl Hall). The lyrics were written by Fripp's girlfriend of the time, Joanna Walton, who later died in the Lockerbie tragedy of 1988.
He's singing it as the lyrics describe his relationship to his great grandmother, whom is clearly Mina Harker, from Bram Stoker's Dracula book, and also, of course, from Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Our Inspector Harker doesn't live in Moore's wonderful League universe, so this Mina is no more or less than the character from the novel. Though his great grandfather might interest you, and it's not going to be who you think it is. I've said too much already...
Harker is clearly a regular visitor to the grave.
Those familiar with Whitby might note that Vince has pulled the abbey closer to the church in that shot in the last panel, just so that you can see it.

Pages Two to Three
Right in the middle of this gorgeous shot by Vince of Whitby harbour, you can see the 199 steps, leading up to the church and the abbey. Vince and I know Whitby very well, and we went on location just prior to starting the story to get the flavour of the town (just as we did with the British Museum environs for Book One). I'm rather looking forward to our trip to Portmeirion in four months as we begin Book Three...

Page Four
The Grand Hotel here is (in real life) the Abbey Tourist Information Centre and youth hostel.
Agatha Fletcher's name derives, of course, from Agatha Christie (writer of the Poirot novels, amongst many others, and a central influence on Book Two) and Jessica Fletcher, the heroine of the truly dreadful Murder She Wrote. I can't begin to tell you how much I loathe that series, for all the reasons that Harker talks about in issue eight. In this issue we very deliberately use a typical Murder She Wrote set-up (murder takes place whilst detective just happens to be there, investigation ensues), but you'll see this typical set-up come crashing down in tatters in issue eight, as we discover that Harker is not going to play that particular game willingly. This very much encapsulates our approach with the Harker series - take the standard television and fictional detective's formulas, and mess them up good. Hopefully this issue should really have the feel of an opening 20 minutes to a typical Poirot or Murder She Wrote episode, but watch as we subvert it all, beginning in issue eight...

Page Seven
Harker here is singing again: 'Perfect Day' by Lou Reed. Fortune's kipper shop really does exist, not far from the foot of the 199 Steps (and in fact, once you get there on some days you can smell it from there). I urge you to go visit, they sell the most wonderful kippers, and the interior of the shop is like stepping back into the past.
The shopkeeper says 'Be seeing you', an intentional quote from The Prisoner.

Page Eleven
This is actually the interior of The Station Hotel in York, which had just the sort of cheesy, nasty interior we needed. Here we've transported it to Whitby, just to irritate Harker. We're cruel like that.

Page Twelve
Harker does indeed read Conan Doyle - we saw him (possibly) steal a first edition copy of 'A Study In Scarlet' from the British Museum Reading Room way back in issue one.

Page Fifteen
Check the woman stood at the bar in the top panel on this page: Angela Lansbury, who played Jessica Fletcher, with a brief cameo. She's probably appalled at the hatchet job we're about to do on her series, which seems rather unfair given that she stopped making it about fifteen years ago.

Page Seventeen
'Fog Warning' in the newspaper - something that will play a major role towards the end of this particular six-parter in issue 12.

Page Eighteen
Harker here is already showing his reluctance to being drawn into this scenario, something we expand upon in issue eight.

Page Nineteen
Amusingly, Critchley here is claiming not to have been taken in by the whole Satanist thing in issues 1-6. Clearly he's got loads of charm to go with it, though, as had he not been called by Harker he looks almost certainly on for some fun with these three girls here. It's to Critchley's credit that he doesn't think twice about answering Harker's summons - his dedication to the job is absolute.

Page Twenty
Vince drew a gorgeous shot of the abbey here, and in the first print of the comic version it came out all black. Below is what the page should have looked like (click to embiggen)...

Harker Issue 6 - annotations

Here we go with annotations for issue six, hold onto your hats...

Page One
Harker uses a Zippo, which makes him something of a smoking enthusiast as far as I'm concerned.
You'll notice here his habit of talking to himself - partly a plot convenience for those moments when he's alone, but also an interesting view of his odd, scattered mental condition. He speaks to Critchley as though he's there with him, to calm his own nerves, but there's clearly more to it, and we'll be exploring this as the series moves on.
Harker is not a man of action, incidentally, and is making a rather stupid move here, one which almost leads to his death.

Page Five
If there's a theme to Book One, surely it has to be tea and coffee. It's clearly something of an obsession for Vince, who seems to have our characters constantly indulging in caffeine. No wonder Harker is always so wired...

Page Seven
Vince spent some time researching abandoned tube stations and the like for this issue. The poster is authentic, and there is indeed an abandoned British Museum tube station, now completely sealed and inaccessible from the surface. The mummy haunting story is also authentic.
The comics that Harker is referring to here are probably the adaptations of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere TV series, which depict a society living in the labyrinths under the surface of London.

Page Eight
The Phantom of the Opera is of course the classic novel by Gaston Leroux, since adapted into any number of movies, shows etc. Issue six borrows a lot from that story, which featured as the title character the tragic, disfigured Erik, who built a home for himself in the cellars underneath the Paris Opera.

Page Ten
A ladder that leads up from the underground labyrinths straight into the British Museum? Ridiculous, I know, but it's a conceit I pretty much borrowed from Neverwhere, and helps to bring our plot back to the place it began.

Page Twelve
I especially like Vince's little visual gag here, on the sign in front of the vase that Harker grabs. I told Vince I wanted him to smash up as many of the exhibits as he wanted to in the Museum, but he ended up being remarkably restrained - he probably likes it in there too much.

Page Fifteen
This is the Grenville Library, which is just off the Great Court. Usually it's not quite so messy, of course...

Page Sixteen
And we return here to the Reading Room in the Great Court of the museum - pretty much the first thing you see as you enter the museum, so I'm sure most of you will be familiar with it. The murderer drags Harker up to the spot where he was talking to Critchley in issue four, precisely where he had the premonition of his own death.

Pages Seventeen - Eighteen
I'd say it's pretty much completely impossible to smash a car through the rather heavy doors at the entrance to the museum, let alone fit a car through them, but I felt that John Woo absolutely wouldn't care about such a piffling detail, and consequently neither do we.

Page Twenty
I strongly suspect Vince has been spending all the profits from Harker on helicopter trips... I really must have words with him...

Harker Issue 5 - annotations

And here we go with annotations to issue five...

Cover
They used to say that corpses on the covers of comics sell more issues. This being just a dead hand, we can't really consider it a serious attempt to test the hypothesis.
You'll notice that Harker is looking at the books on the floor - this is a lovely bit of subtlety from Vince, who knows only too well that Harker really dislikes the sight of blood and dead bodies.

Page One
Hopefully it's obvious from the script, but this takes place early the following morning from the previous issue. In the bottom panel they're passing the Russell Hotel again, just opposite Russell Square and a stone's throw from Russell Street tube station.

Page Two
'Feel free to take the first look, Critchley' - again here we have Harker's reluctance to look at dead bodies, something of a disadvantage for a homicide detective.

Page Three
...which of course is why Harker is holding his hand to his own mouth, to stop himself being sick.

Page Eight
And here we discover the copy of The Book of Solomon, stolen from the bookseller after his murder and planted there by... well, I won't spoil it.

Not much this time I know, since it's mostly resolution of the plot, so I'll keep going on issue six in the next post...