Ireland's Comic Book Heroes

Ever heard of the Green Lantern? Yeah, me neither. But by this summer, the D.C. Comics character will be a household name. So says artist Declan Shalvey.

“Comics are bigger than ever in popular culture because of the movies,” says Shalvey (29). “Green Lantern is going to be big because there’s a movie coming out.
“When I was in school, only two people I knew read comics. It’s different now because if you’re interested in something small you can go to the internet and find out about it – it’s becoming more mainstream because it’s more accessible.”
Shalvey is one of a wave of Irish artists and writers now making comics for the biggest publishers in America and Britain. He drew most of the 28 Days Later series for BOOM! Studios (a spin-off from the movie: the comics/movies crossover goes both ways). He’s also drawing issues of Thunderbolts for the biggest and most iconic comics studio of them all, Marvel. Meawhile, his Captain America and Crossbones, also for Marvel, is out next week
“This is all I wanted to do since I was a kid. I pick up a Marvel comic with my name on it and it’s really weird – I had the first issue of Thunderbolts from 1994,” he says.
For PJ Holden, a Belfast-based artist who draws for the British anthologies Judge Dredd and 2000 AD, drawing comics was also a childhood obsession.
“I have a vague memory of the first Judge Dredd magazine coming out in 1977. It was a lifelong ambition for me to draw Judge Dredd,” says Holden.
It’s a sign of the changing perception of comics that the last interview Holden did was with Northern Women (‘Northern Ireland’s premier fashion, beauty and lifestyle glossy’); he was one of the interviewees for a piece about ‘why geeks are chic’. Holden finds this hysterically funny, but is nevertheless enthusiastic about comics going mainstream – a fundamentally positive development both for the industry and for your common or garden comic-book nerd.
“When I was a kid – and I’m as old as the Troubles – the North was grim and comics seemed to be light and fluffy. You just kept your head down and did your work. I wouldn’t even have countenanced telling anyone I liked comics. There was this comic called Captain Britain, by Alan Moore. Going to an all-Catholic boys’ school, you didn’t go around saying, ‘I think Captain Britain is awesome’,” says Holden.
“Comics died on the vine for a while. But everything goes in cycles. It’s like how in Australia, they deliberately raze the ground for new shoots to grow: we’re seeing the first shoots of a new idea of what comics is, with the big movies and things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was popular with what you would consider normal people. Or things aimed at the teenage market like The O.C., where there was a guy who wanted to do comics, and then Smallville.
“And Belfast is different now – if you’re into reading comic books now, that would be ok. People are not totally dismissive of comics.”
Comics may be light and fluffy, but making them is anything but. The industry is “incredibly competitive”, according to Shalvey, who studied art for four years and spent another four practicing his drawing before he was good enough to turn pro. He works a gruelling 10 hours a day, in the course of which he might produce just one page.
For Holden, the biggest challenge is striking a balance between professional fulfilment and paying the bills. An artist on 2000 AD or working for Marvel works is paid a page rate, usually to draw pre-existing characters. The alternative is to make original, ‘creator-owned’ work – but nine times out of ten, creator-owned comics will make less than zero.
“I think it’s very easy to get bitter in comics. I know a lot of guys in the latter end of their careers and what they’ve done primarily is work for hire. I’m not saying they’re all bitter – but they do it because they have to.
“If you work for hire, at the end of the day, you have nothing you own. Most people got into comics because they wanted to create things. But if all you’ve ever drawn is X Men, it doesn’t touch you. But if it’s creator-owned, you can do stuff that does touch you emotionally – although in my case that will be about monsters. It’s not necessarily deep, but at least it’s your own!”
A couple of years ago, Holden drew Battlefields, written by another norn iron comics man, Garth Ennis. Ennis is possibly best known for his series Preacher – the main character, was named 11th greatest comics character ever by Empire magazine.
“Battlefields was a three-issue mini series about bombers in the Ruhr in 1942. If it was a film it would be a blockbuster, but because it doesn’t feature a superhero, even though Garth is a massive name, it’s a weird little indie thing in comics.”
Both Shalvey and Holden say that, for a long time, they both thought they were the only ones drawing comics in Ireland. They didn’t know, for example, about Tim Booth, based in Cork and drawing Dan Dare.
“When a girl told me her boyfriend drew a comic and I was indignant!” says Shalvey. “For years, I thought I was the only one.”
The internet has been a game-changer, enabling the people who make comics to find out about one another and meet up. Collaborative blogs are now a big feature of the scene, and people who have been making comics on their own for years are coming out of the woodwork. Holden says that at one recent meet-up of comics creators in Belfast, a guy turned up with sixteen fairly decent 22-page comics that he had made at home by himself (“and he was a normal guy – not mad or anything!”)
Writer Stephen Walsh, who has been longlisted for this year’s Eagle Awards (the British comics industry gongs) for London Calling, points out that Irish success in the world of comics has come in spite of the fact that there was no indigenous comics scene for a long time. London Calling itself is an unlikely success story, a strange, surrealist tale set in a futuristic version of 1950s London, with cameos from everyone from Brendan Behan to Tony Hancock.
Walsh believes that although, until recently, there was “no sense of any Irish comics world and no sense of any Irish comics writers and artists”, that is beginning to change – which can only auger well for the future of the embryonic home-grown industry.
“Not so long ago, it seemed everything was happening some distance from Ireland. Now with the internet, you can do anything. I’m pleasantly surprised at the level of Irish success. There has always been a well of creativity here but it was lacking a channel – well, we’re finding it now.”