Mike Collins & Ali Cook

Comic book and storyboard artist Mike Collins and magician and film director Ali cook bring in a surprising bit of self parody and a chop-socky obscurity.

See the images from the episode here (they're also in the podcast artwork).

Every episode, the guests reveal a panel from a comic, we try and guess where it's from, then we chat about it. Half an hour later hopefully we've learned something, or just shown off and had fun along the way.

If you've enjoyed this, why not buy us a virtual coffee at Kev F's Ko-Fi page.

Your host, and series creator, is Kev F Sutherland, writer and artist for Beano, Marvel, Oink, The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, and most recently author and artist of graphic novels based on Shakespeare. kevfcomicartist.com

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Transcript

Kev F Sutherland 0:03

Hello and welcome to Comic Cuts the Panel Show. My guests today from the worlds of comics and TV and magic and movies are Mike Collins and Allie Cook. Hello! Hello? Comic Cuts. We're looking at a panel, and we comprise a panel, there's a few of us. So the panel sees a panel and we talk about the comics from the panel we discuss. We call it Comic Cuts. Hello, and welcome to Comic Cuts. I'm Kev F. Sutherland, the bloke who writes and draws comics for Beano and Marvel, and now adapts Shakespeare into graphic novels for kids, and also has a hand in the Scottish falsetto sock puppet theatre. And this is your favourite podcast, which has an occasionally remote connection to comics. Don't worry if you don't know or care anything about comics. Half the time, neither do my guests, and it doesn't hurt. My guests have brought with them a panel from a comic or something close, and we're going to see if we can identify it and talk about it, and maybe we and you will learn something about comics we didn't already know. Or maybe we'll just show off a bit and have an enjoyable chat. Let's see. Hello, Allie. Hello, Mike. Hello, hello. Now, Mike Collins must just establish you're not the Michael Collins who was the third person to land on the moon in 1969.

Mike Collins 1:15

Uh no, he's he's long gone.

Kev F Sutherland 1:17

And I was only eight at the time, so well, you know, they're lowering the age all the time. And Allie Cook, you definitely didn't present Letter from America on BBC Radio from 1946 to 2008.

Ali Cook 1:30

You know what? I I definitely didn't, but what is tragic is when he passed away, I got a lot of fan mail from his followers and I didn't know what to do with it. All these letters were sent to me, and I was like, I don't I don't know what to do with it. So I tried to send them to his agent.

Kev F Sutherland 1:46

Yeah. Letters. Oh, try and tell the kids today about letters. Uh Mike, you you and I started way back in the day of letters. We started uh about the same time getting artwork into fanzine, didn't we?

Mike Collins 2:02

And uh also into Marvel UK because I remember being at the Marvel UK offices one day and some of your stuff came in. It was a comic strip you'd done called The Vomitarium.

Kev F Sutherland 2:12

Yes, that was one of the first things I ever had published. I'd forgotten about that. There you go. And now, uh, for listeners at home who don't know my two guests, Mike, you will you build yourself on your website a storyboard artist on Doctor Who Rivals? Rivals, you storyboard the rivals. Here's dark materials, good omens, and I know you from your long-term work on comics. How did you make that transition?

Mike Collins 2:38

I always fancied storyboarding actually, and um to be honest, about half my career has been storyboarding for animation. So for several years, I mean from the mid-90s onwards, I was a regular storyboard artist for a lot of preschool shows, mainly Welsh preschool shows. And I spent three years in the trenches storyboarding Horrid Henry.

Kev F Sutherland 3:00

Oh, interesting. And storyboards in the whole world of film is another thing that Ali, you've transitioned into. I knew you when we worked together some years ago as a magician. I knew you from the comedy circuit, and suddenly Oscar shortlisted film director for the Pearl Coomb. I can't I keep saying the Pearl Coomb, even though I know it's the Pearl Comb. I've seen the film The Pearl Comb. The Pearl Comb by Ali Cook, Oscar shortlisted film. How did you get into that?

Ali Cook 3:35

Oh, that is a good question. Well, basically, I used to, as you know, Kev, I used to do magic shows on TV and I used to do them for objective productions. And Andrew O'Connor there and one of the DOPs who used to shoot me, they both said, um, I think you'd be a good villain, even though I was presenting. They both said you've got a good face for a villain. And uh and they said you should go and do acting classes, and that was it. That was the sort of well, I when they first said it, I wasn't, I was like, Yeah, I wasn't really that bothered. Uh, you know, I was happy being a magician. And then also just because we've both been on the comedy circuit and you do a lot of writing, uh, I just started writing scripts as well. And that and it kind of one thing evolved into another, and then before you know it, here we are.

Kev F Sutherland 4:23

Well, yes, that's the thing with you, Mike, as well. You have written as well as drawing. Does every creative person you think have writing in? I think so.

Mike Collins 4:29

I mean, I I I'm probably the same as you growing up reading comics. I assumed that it was one person doing everything because we didn't have credits back in those days. So I just sort of uh had ideas for stories and I drew ideas for stories. So I filled exercise books when I was a kid at school, some of which I still have.

Kev F Sutherland 4:46

Wow, that's cool. Have you found have you found a market for old childhood art? No, I'm afraid not because I've still got shelves of the damn stuff. Starting young actually, I think, runs through through all of our veins, because Ali, you you would have started being a magician very young.

Ali Cook 5:02

Yeah, well, I mean, in the magic world, older. I was about 15. Um, is that old for magic? It's old for magic, yeah. And but I entered the all the big competitions when I was about 16, 17. So I kind of threw myself right in it, basically.

Kev F Sutherland 5:18

Yeah. Um, Mike, what's the difference between comic strips work and storyboarding? I do classes in schools, and quite often people refer to one as the other.

Mike Collins 5:29

Actually, confusingly, if you work in French comics, it is the same thing because uh if you lay out uh um uh Bon dessine, uh a graphic novel, that's called a storyboard in French comics. Which is just frustrating because we want the distinction. Uh what you do in storyboarding for films and TV and for animation is you are doing artwork that doesn't actually see the light of day. You are doing artwork that is used by other artists to produce work, whether it's animators in the case of animation, or whether it's um actors in the case of live action stuff. So you are telling a story in pictures in both jobs, but in comics, that drawing is the final piece of work, but in uh say film and animation it isn't. It's you're just a coggin machine.

Kev F Sutherland 6:13

Do you think some people struggle with being anonymous again when they do storyboarding? Or is the money enough to make up for it?

Mike Collins 6:19

The money's better, I will say that for up front. Absolutely. Uh, when I started working doing live action storyboarding about uh about a decade ago now, when I started working on Doctor Who on the TV show, um yes, I did notice a certain bump in my income. To be perfectly frank about it, um, ego. It's a tricky one. Um I think in comics, because you are doing the the finished piece of work, so that everything on that page is you, and because with the American system now, where American artists are big names, literally, um, you know, they they can command all sorts of prices. I mean, there was a period uh shortly after our sort of big Marvel time in the the 90s, where you were getting a few of the artists that were getting um a Mercedes or something as a six-month bonus for staying on contract with Marvel because they contributed the sales so much.

Kev F Sutherland 7:09

So yes, very different to my relationship with my Marvel where I got I got told I got told they'd overpaid me royalty, so the next job I'd do for them, I owe them $250. There you go. Ali, uh the thing is, you're a director, and you're a director, as as we say, of an Oscar shortlisted film. And BAFTA. BAFTA. I find out on Tuesday. Oh wow, fingers crossed, yes. And this is the thing that so many people aspire to. Actors frequently say, What I really want to do is direct. Very few people who are directors say what I really want to do is be a bit part actor.

Ali Cook 7:49

I I think it's all about creativity. You know, what we were saying before, I think all three of us are very creative people, and it's just different outlets. Like, I was on holiday with my daughters two years ago, and I uh we we we went around um uh with this storyteller who does shows for kids, and one of the ancient myths that he talked about were the mermaids of Penzance, and when I heard that, I was like, oh, that sounds like I feel like I can turn this into a movie. And then about six months later, I heard another story about the Edinburgh Seven, and I mixed the two together. I wasn't, you know, I just kind of came up with it in my head, and then I thought, oh man, I want to try and make this. I I for me, I think it's always you know, certain things just spark off in me, and I feel like, can I do it? That that's it, and I think it's the same, you know. I I definitely can't draw, but I can definitely uh write and and I I can definitely perform, and I think we all have these things, and there's just different outlets, and whether you get the chance to express it basically.

Kev F Sutherland 8:52

Uh but how do we make the transition from I've got this great idea and I'm gonna make this thing, which is all singing, all dancing, so impressive with great CGI in it.

Ali Cook 9:00

Uh well, I mean, interestingly, uh one of the absolute fundamentals is the storyboarding. I mean, uh, you were talking about it, Mike. I think what people don't realize with a film is you you have all of these departments, and it's very hard to communicate to all of them what the vision is, and it's really the storyboard that does it. You know, if you've literally got a shot of this 18th century kitchen of how it should look, well, you've then told, you know, the the production design, and then you've got the actors in there in their costumes, you've now told the costume designer, you shoot it from certain angles, you've now told the DOP, and then you show where the windows are, you've now shown the lighting guys. So in one image, you cover off about 10 departments. So that that really is it's absolutely essential, and then the other thing for us is we had to storyboard heavily because we did have a lot of VFX for a short film. We had 96 VFX shots. And uh cut a long story short. Um, if you're filming something like this and it's a CGI, but you change the angle to that, you've either upped your fee by three grand or lowered it by two grand. But the point is, any change is gonna cost you, so you have to meticulously storyboard. Um so that that's it from a nuts and bolts perspective, that's a really uh big thing. But from a um getting it made uh perspective, I uh I'm friends with a few producers, and I contacted one guy and he he just agreed to do it and he did a he did a great job. Uh and and that's the hard bit is is trying to get that team on board.

Kev F Sutherland 10:51

And in the run-up to the big awards that uh frankly are the ones that we've heard of, the BAFTA and the Oscars, you've won a few.

Ali Cook 10:59

Uh yeah, so we're at 75 at the moment. So we've had a good We've had a very good run. My favourite one we won was uh Women Over 50 in Film. We won that award. That was actually in phase one. Um because uh the the film is about uh female empowerment, and our lead actress, Beattie's, she's in her 60s, so she was absolutely thrilled that we won that. But it's brilliant that we've won that, and then we've also won like really dark horror awards at the same time.

Kev F Sutherland 11:33

Did you have to go to all these awards ceremonies? That's an awful lot of rubber chicken to get through.

Ali Cook 11:38

I've been to a lot of them, yeah, because that you you can't help but feel that if you're even if you're nominated, that the more surely if you turn up, the more likely to give you the awards. So um, I mean, some of them I can't go to, but I've been to I've probably been to 30% of them, I think. Uh here they're everywhere from like Finland to um um uh uh Canada, Los Angeles, and even like Sitges, which is one of the big horror festivals. So you literally they're all over the place, and most of them have been running for years. They've been running for years and years and years, and uh it's like its own little subculture. It's a it's a fascinating world.

Mike Collins 12:25

I I mean I I've always known that where where I am in the comics industry, I'm definitely in in the middle, so I um I'm never gonna win any kind of awards. I mean, I still think my greatest award is my cycling proficiency test in 1973. So uh do they acknowledge storyboard artists for TV? No, I'm not sure if they do or not. Um we're a weird little group because we don't tend to know each other very much because obviously, if you work on a TV production, you get called in for two or three days, um, you do the work, you disappear again, and somebody in production remembers your name and calls you up the next time they're on a project. So that there is no um there's no superstructure of it at all. No. The thing is, once you once you can do it, you can do it. I mean, I I got the work on Doctor Who because I've been working for um an advertising company a few weeks earlier doing an advert for uh Life Boy Soap for Indian television. Well, they they got in touch with me, and up to that point I've been doing like the Welsh language preschool shows and I've been doing uh Horrid Henry, and they said, Can you bring in some of your boards to show us what you can do? And I was thinking, well, I can't bring those in, so I'll take the Life Boy soap ads in. So I did that and they liked it, so I got hired on Who, and then I've sort of carried on working non-stop ever since, which is wonderful.

Kev F Sutherland 13:37

Do you take credit for big creative moments that uh we all now remember?

Mike Collins 13:42

There's uh one director I work with on a couple of shows said to me, If you've got any ideas, Mike, put them in the board. If I don't like them, I'm gonna rip you a new one. If I do like them, they're mine. I thought that's fair enough. I get paid other either way, so that's good. Um funnily enough, uh when I was trying to get some credits to sort of go and do live action boarding, I did some stuff for um small Welsh because I live in Cardiff, and there was a competition doing short films in Wales, and there was that basically the budget was your lunch money, and that was about it. But it meant that I got credits in IMDB, so I could actually go and say, you know, I I've done storyboarding. And one of the short films that I actually ended up getting up after. And um I'd had an argument with the director because there was a scene that I'd worked out where um the the the setup of the film was uh it was the Normandy Beach invasion, but one of the guys that steps off the boat suddenly finds himself in Normandy today. So you've got this soldier wandering around Normandy Beach, but to him the explosions are still going off, he's been blasted everywhere, but nobody on the beach can see him. And there was one scene towards the end where there was like a uh some kids had built a sandcastle and a flag in the sandcastle. I said, Oh, wouldn't it be great if we could set this shot up so we pull back from sandcastle and we see this a certain aspect of the story from the um the soldier, and that would make a really nice shot. And the director went, Um, you're just a storyboard artist, I'm the director, I'll decide what happens. I mean, oh, that's fine, that's absolutely fine. Anyway, we had this big presentation of the story of the uh the little films, so there's like eight or ten films in this competition, and we're all there, you know, sort of all be suited, and we're we're sitting in the cinema, and this film comes on, gets this scene, and it is exactly how I storyboarded it. I just shouted out, yes! And everybody looked at me and I did not care because that was my shot and it was on screen.

Kev F Sutherland 15:37

Fantastic. Well, we're gonna get some more shots on screen now because I've asked everyone on the panel to bring a panel to the panel. Uh, you can see these images at home. Uh, you can see it on the holding page on the artwork for the podcast episode, depending where you get your podcast. But, listener at home, you shouldn't need to see these pictures because we're gonna be able to describe them. And we're gonna begin by looking at the picture that has been brought in by Mike. Now, Ali, I'm gonna ask you to describe for the listener at home what you see before you.

Ali Cook 16:14

Well, it's definitely an older comic, and it's the image of a man uh with ginger hair, and he's trapped inside a cosmic beanie cap, and it looks like his neck has been stretched till breaking point, and his ears have been pulled left and right. Um above him is a um the title page, which is a red background and something burp, maybe?

Kev F Sutherland 16:48

I don't know. We're cropped in very close, and for the benefit of the listener at home, the panologists who study line and print and that sort of thing, I can tell you this is from a comic that looks like it's printed sometime between the 1940s and the 1970s because of the dot screening that we see and the slight bleed of the colours going over the lines. It's been done in old-fashioned pen and ink and brush and line, and it's slightly faded, which suggests it's an American comic with that American printing technique. And uh yes, the line drawing is a very active style, slightly cartoony, slightly superhero-ish, and in fact, there's some metallic equipment which has a certain distinctive style about it. Um, I'm going to pull back and show us more of the full page. And now, Ali, what do you see?

Ali Cook 17:43

Okay, it says the silver burper, and it says featuring the far-out fiendish fiendishness of Dr. Bloom. Oh, and then what you see below, it's like a uh a green kind of robot man with his neck stretched out, and then you can see his his face is hidden in some sort of helmet, which must be the beanie cap. And on the left it says, Oh, it's by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Oh, and then on the on the left is a Marvel character, and then on the right, which is the the Stony Man, but I don't know his name. And then on the right, there's a burning man being pinned down.

Kev F Sutherland 18:29

Before I reveal who it is entirely we're looking at, I'll just tell for the listener at home that we're looking at an entire splash page, one picture filling the page, which would be the first page of a comic strip story. It is, as we say, credited to Stanley and more significantly, Jack Kirby. And uh Ali, would you like to have a guess at what we're looking at before I reveal?

Ali Cook 18:49

Well, is it the Fantastic Four?

Kev F Sutherland 18:51

It is the Fantastic Four, but in a particular sort of guise. Um, I'm gonna say that this is from a comic called Not Brand Ech, which did parodies of Marvel Superhero comics, but was published by Marvel Superhero and done by the people who done the original comics. But Mike, please, please tell us more.

Mike Collins 19:13

Yeah, well, it's from Not Brand Eck, and it's the first and I think the most indelible image of the Fantastic Fool for me. I love the fact that Jack Kirby started out as uh an animation in-between drawer. Uh he worked on the original Popeye cartoons back in the 40s. And uh he always had a sort of humorous bent to his stuff. So even when he was doing the the big cosmic serious stuff with Stan Lee, he still wanted to get a bit of humour in there. And I imagine Stan had very little to do with this. I think it's pretty much all Jack.

Kev F Sutherland 19:46

For the for the listener at home who might not be familiar with Stan Lee or Jack Kirby, they are more likely, in my experience, to know the name Stan Lee because of his self publicising. But Jack Kirby, Mike, a quick rundown of

Mike Collins 20:00

Jack Kirby is the man that invented Captain America in the 1940s. He worked through the 50s doing a lot of horror stuff. He did uh strips like Challenge of the Unknown for DC comics. Then when Marvel Comics started in the early 60s, Jack was the guy that basically designed everything. I mean, uh The Fantastic IV was him, the X-Men was him. Spider-Man was him to start with, but they didn't like the way he drew Spider-Man, so Steve Ditko drew that. But basically, everything we know about Marvel Comics and everything the Marvel cinematic universe is beholden to is down to the brain and the pencil of Jack Kirby.

Kev F Sutherland 20:39

And he really becomes an artist whose work is now so collectible.

Mike Collins 20:44

Yeah. And and a writer as well, as we're saying earlier about writer-artist. I mean, a lot of the stories that uh attributed to Stan, what would happen was an issue of Fantastic Four, Stan would sort of say, I think in this issue, Doctor Doom turns up and takes over the Baxter building where the Fantastic Four live. And uh we need 20 pages of that, we need it by Friday. And Jack would then go off and put the story together uh with little margin notes on the pencils, which Jack, which um Stanley would then convert into dialogue. And this is what we called the Marvel method.

Kev F Sutherland 21:17

The Marvel method, yes. Ali, you you were really quite unfamiliar with this. So the Fantastic Four uh had not really crossed your path.

Ali Cook 21:24

I've actually well I've I've seen the latest movie, so that that was the only recollection of the the stony man on the left, but I don't know. Ben Grim. But that that's it. I don't I don't I didn't follow um Marvel comics as a kid. I was I was basically just uh a bean o man, really good man. Yeah.

Kev F Sutherland 21:46

I'm really aware of this when I'm discussing the Marvel movies with what I'd call civilians, and they have no prior uh knowledge of any of these characters, and so you get a different experience if you're watching what the film knowing that sort of thing and not knowing that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah.

Ali Cook 22:02

Well, my it's interesting because my uh my girlfriend's obsessed with Marvel, so she knows everything about them, and it and it's kind of a following, isn't it? Because when we go and watch the movies, all of the audience, they're all massive fans and they're all going, Oh, oh, you know, like when you're watching Endgame, and they're all they're all connecting these dots from like three movies ago, you know. But I am basically a layman just watching, really. Yeah.

Mike Collins 22:26

Oh, so she probably reacted when um you found out the thing's girlfriend in that film was called Roz, which is the name of Jack Kirby's wife.

Ali Cook 22:33

Oh, wow, wow, I didn't get that. Well, I mean, she's just reacting at twice as many things as me.

Mike Collins 22:40

I'm just watching a movie. I I wind my wife up with this as well. She'll just sit there going, Oh, that meant something, didn't it?

Kev F Sutherland 22:47

I go, Yes, it did. That's a big problem with cult entertainment. Doctor Who has this as well. Fan service is what they call it. Where you're doing something for one group of people, but I'm always aware when I'm the group that's left out.

Ali Cook 23:02

Oh, I don't I don't get that feeling. I I because I always feel like in um in movies, it they're like bonuses, aren't they? You know, like Marvel films are so well crafted, they know that they can add in all of these Easter eggs, but simultaneously, if you're new to it, you you can still really enjoy it as well.

Kev F Sutherland 23:19

Because of course, in this day, and we're looking at a comic here from the 1960s, aren't we? Yeah, this was the only place you could do this kind of imagination on the page. You couldn't do it on the screen because we hadn't invented the technology.

Ali Cook 23:30

Yeah, I bet they had no idea that they were going to end up doing those films at that level.

Mike Collins 23:34

Oh, inconceivable. Yeah, yeah, absolutely inconceivable. Yeah.

Ali Cook 23:38

Because all the effects were real time, weren't they? It's yeah.

Mike Collins 23:41

Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons I picked this page as well, and and this this story is because it was probably one of the first American comics I bought, and I think it connected for me the world of American superheroes, which I wasn't that au fay with at the time, sort of being a little kid, but with British humour stuff. You're saying about the Beano. So I used to read the Beano and the Dandy and Wizard and Chips and all these different comics. So to see an American comic that was as goofy as the stuff we read actually gave me this link that I didn't previously have.

Kev F Sutherland 24:11

So it's it's interesting seeing them parodying themselves. Oh, yeah, and laughing at themselves and it being done by the people who did it. So Jack Kirby has done this parody of the slight ridiculousness in the picture we're looking at. Um, Reed Richards is handling uh Johnny Storm with an asbestos glove. I don't know, and he's wearing a thing called a molecular twangulator. Yep. Again, but possibly parodying the nonsense words that uh Stan Lee would add on top of his pictures. Yep, I think so, yes. It's good fun. It is, um, and the ability to laugh at themselves, I think they've they've retained that largely, haven't they? For a long time they used to have parody things like Fred Hembeck used to do parodies of the movie.

Mike Collins 24:53

Wonderful stuff, yeah. We were saying earlier about not cultish, but that sort of inclusive thing about comics is uh probably the same as you, Kev. Reading those comics and having like the Stanley soapbox in there, sort of stand talking to you about stuff that was going on in the world at the time, just made you part of this club. Yeah. And you actually sort of felt involved in a world that, you know, growing in West Bromwich and not having very much to sort of entertain me locally, certainly not the football team. Um, uh, you know, I I sort of had something outside my experience, which just thrilled me.

Kev F Sutherland 25:23

Yeah, they were a minority interest as well. I am still friends with the one person in my school year who read Marvel Comics. There was me and my mate Steve, and loathies many years later, uh, we're we're still in touch because of that. So, in you know, in in the country, probably all the people who ever read Marvel Comics at the time, we're all in the same Facebook group. Yeah, it could well be, yes. I wouldn't be surprised to find that half of us went on to write and draw comics professionally.

Mike Collins 25:50

Certainly around the Midlands, you know, yeah, uh Ian Gibson and Mark Farmer and you know, Lou Stringer.

Kev F Sutherland 25:55

Yes, the the Midlands quite a melting pot, that's not the word, boiling pot, a font. Uh it's a place where creators come from. Yes. Right. We have been looking at not Brand Eksh's uh parody of the Fantastic Four by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, or Jack Kirby and possibly Stan Lee. Now we're gonna have a look at what Allie has brought in. Um this is gonna be an interesting one. Mike, it falls to you first to try and describe what we're looking at.

Mike Collins 26:25

Right, so we have a full page of comics and artwork here, and rather than broken up into the usual uh square panels, the artwork is divided into four distinct images by two crossed samurai blades. Uh, top panel has somebody looking towards uh a forest and mountains with it's either a sort of a bedroll on his back or an arrow. I'm not quite sure. It might be a quiver of arrows. It's quiver of arrows, yeah. It's a quiver of arrows, right? Okay. And then the next panel has a couple of people talking with a very large word balloon, which I can't quite read because it's a bit blurry. Um, with people working in a rice paddy field in the background.

Kev F Sutherland 27:06

Yeah, Mike has referred to the image being quite blurry. Uh, readers at home, you'll be able to find this on the holding page, blah, blah, blah. Um, Ali, having gone from directing a movie, The Pearl Comb, which is a million-dollar movie, and it's just so good. The clarity of your images, the cinematography is just mind-blowing. You have found the poorest quality image of your comic strip page today.

Ali Cook 27:29

Well, not only that. This is possibly the only image I could find of this comic strip. I I that I wanted to um this is something I genuinely used to read, but it's also very niche, but it's also very particular to someone growing up in the late 80s, 90s.

Kev F Sutherland 27:49

That's a bit of the before Ali tells us, Mike, would you like to have a guess? Um, I'll just give my description of it as well. It's got a title at the top, Born the Spirit Warrior. Unfamiliar to me. It's laid out on a painted page, a watercolored page, possibly. The voice bubbles are a very unfamiliar shape, they're rectangular shape. The lettering inside, although we can't read it very well, but we can tell it's possibly hand lettered, and again in an unfamiliar style with this with a shaped letter. So it's an unfamiliar style of comic uh drawing to me. I would suggest possibly even an unfamiliar nationality. The characters are supposed to be Japanese, they're samurai warriors, those are samurai swords. I don't know whether this is actually from Japan or what. Mike, do you want to guess? That's a very good question because if you're looking at the Shall I give you a clue as to the location?

Ali Cook 28:41

Go on. Please. It is American.

Kev F Sutherland 28:43

Ali, spill the tea. What are we looking at?

Ali Cook 28:47

Well, growing up, I wanted to be a ninja. Um as you do. As you do. Which possibly led to the uh there was all these movies um called uh there was a collection of movies that came out, and they was it started with Revenge of the Ninja, American Ninja, Ninja 3 the Domination, and then uh Ninjas became so big in American pop culture that it ended up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. However, for those of us who really were a serious ninja, there was of course Ninja Magazine. Wow! And now Ninja Magazine, if you if you bring up some of the cover artwork, it was just beautifully um hand-painted artwork, basically, e each month. And the magazine, it would have interviews with famous ninja instructors, instructors. And see, that's the clue there on the bottom of the page, is the samurai's being attacked by a ninja.

Kev F Sutherland 29:48

Um I've just put up a second page on the screen now. Which has ninjas a Bushido guy, yeah.

Ali Cook 29:54

But the other thing is, is each each month it would have the uh comic strip in it, which is the adventures of Tamashi, who was you know a ninja in feudal feudal Japan. And I used to love um uh firstly, I just loved the artwork because it was so cool, and it and it and and you can see it's just very unconventional. Like I growing up, I'd only ever seen things like the dandy and the beano, you know, where it goes like in little boxes. But here's this thing like the separating the images with two samurai swords, yeah. Almost like it's a poster rather than a comic. Yeah, and um that's why I thought I would pull this one out, but I wasn't really expecting that either of you would have seen it.

Kev F Sutherland 30:37

Well, no, you you're you're bang on, and it's very interesting that you were so admiring of the artwork from being familiar with things like the dandy and the beano, because from my my point of view, by this time we're so familiar with the best of the American art, and by this time I would have started to see some Japanese art as well, that this is actually quality-wise, um, quite low down the draftsmanship scale, and from the tastes of someone like myself who was raised on master of Kung Fu, drawn by a wonderful artist called Paul Gillacy. This um is very much in its shadow.

Ali Cook 31:13

Right, right.

Mike Collins 31:14

I still I still think that I'm impressed with the design sense, though. I quite like that. And I like that the giant head in the middle. I think it's sort of it's an interesting page. I would definitely have stopped and looked at it if I'd seen it in the comic.

Ali Cook 31:24

It's it it feels it's inventive, yeah. But obviously, it's only one part of the magazine, you know. Um you know, the other the other things would be uh how to get there'll be our genuine articles on how to get out of a stranglehold in four easy steps. Excellent. And uh the most hilarious one was there was an advert to buy a blowgun, a proper blowgun, and I ordered one, it arrived, and I'm not joking, you put a dart in it, and you went and it just shot across the room, and it was absolutely deadly. And then a a week later they were outlawed in the UK. Wow. I was like 12 at the time, it was quite a thing.

Kev F Sutherland 32:09

Magazines like that were the 1980s dark web, weren't they?

Ali Cook 32:14

Yeah, they were in a way, yeah. There was a there was a it was these sort of niche interests, it was a thing, wasn't it? Yeah, they were there would be uh uh you would find your thing that you're into, your hobby. Um, but ninja was you know, for anyone who liked the dark side of martial arts, I guess.

Kev F Sutherland 32:32

Yeah. And Ali, had you realised that the teenage mutant ninja turtle started as a comic?

Ali Cook 32:37

I did, yes, I did know that. Yeah. And um, I and I did know that it was it was actually quite constructed because ninjas were already so popular from these, let's face it, B movies that had come out. And uh me and my friends, we used to watch all of these really cheap martial art films, you know, where the acting is terrible, but the fighting was incredible. Yeah, and we just basically used to watch them and then dress up in black jogging kit, go outside and try to be a ninja all night.

Kev F Sutherland 33:10

It's a wonderful world, the pre-CGI world, because action had to be done in real life, and in Hong Kong and Japan and Korea was where they mastered this chop socky uh school of movies. So people like Jackie Chan is the big crossover, yeah, and and certain the directors and actors who we know, but they made this stuff genuinely exciting on film, which contemporary stuff. I mean, James Bond was about as action as action got in those days, the 70s and the 80s, just because it was so hard to do. You needed to do real stunts, you needed to blow real things up, and they mastered making fighting look exciting.

Ali Cook 33:48

They actually did, yeah. And and I think one of the other things actually, when it was interesting you say that, I remember there was uh a Sean Connery film that had ninjas in it, and I can't remember which one it was, it was in the 70s, and when you compare compared the fight scenes in that to these real martial artists, it didn't even compare. Uh obviously the movies were terrible, but when it came to the fighting, it was just incredible. And they developed all these camera techniques that now everybody uses, but at that time, it's because yeah, they've they've got no way of getting around it. They would use very clever cutting, you know, cutting to the legs and cutting to a wide and then swinging the camera around just to give that to make the action seem faster than it really was. I do know it was the film American Ninja was the one that they did loads of very bad ones, and then American Ninja came out with some half-decent actors, and uh that was the one that really took off.

Kev F Sutherland 34:46

In comics, there was a sort of um timeline which goes from Lone Wolf and Cub, which is uh not quite ninja, but martial arts influence series, and that was an influence on Frank Miller, who did a ninja called Ronin, and then he put ninjas into his Daredevil comic. His Daredevil comic was then parodied as uh Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yes, that's it. And there, then the the guru who teaches the ninja turtles is ripped off entirely or parodying entirely, the guy who teaches Daredevil Japanese martial art skills. Um, and then he then he fights ninjas in the Frank Miller Daredevil comics in the 1980s.

Ali Cook 35:29

Yeah, I I've just found out it was Canon Films.

Mike Collins 35:32

Oh, of course it was, of course.

Ali Cook 35:34

Canon films, and they they were the master of these sort of they probably shot him in 20 days or something, and there was this there was a genuine martial artist called Shokasugi who had a brilliant face, and I think he actually was a world champion karate uh martial artist, and he was in all of their films, and he he was absolutely stunning, but it they did start this craze basically, and uh hence my love of ninjas, right?

Kev F Sutherland 36:00

Have you drawn a lot of ninjas, Mike? Not really, um no, I can't cannot say I've drawn a lot, no occasional ninjas, yeah. And this sort of thing would be quite a challenge for storyboarding because you can't say to in the storyboard, and at this point he will do a triple spin and then back slap someone around the head with his ankle, the choreographer's gonna come back to you and say, draw something else.

Mike Collins 36:24

Well, sometimes you do work with choreography. Um, I was doing uh a science fiction show for BBC, not Doctor Who, but um where we had a big fight scene, and I actually sort of was brought in on the day to work with a choreographer and the actors to try and work out with the director how we could set the whole thing up, what angles we could use, and what have you. I think it was at one point where I was saying that oh, that you know, pointing to one of the actors said, Well, she hasn't got a lot to do at the moment, maybe she could do this, and she'd go, Yeah, yeah, tell him tell him to do more so he can draw it and so I can do it.

Ali Cook 36:55

Yeah, there's nothing worse as an actor when you haven't got anything to do. Yeah, that's the that's the absolute curse, is you're in the background of a scene. And I actually always see that as slightly bad on the director's side when uh I remember doing I was in this low budget sci-fi movie where there was eight of us in a computer game. Uh, but half it but each scene there was only one player involved, so the rest of them just sat around and it just always looked bad. And I was like, You've got to give us something, we've got to be on a computer doing something or taking notes or something, you know.

Mike Collins 37:28

Yeah, and one of the weird things about doing storyboarding for films as well is that you are in there with a director all the time. Yes, yeah. So you are sort of close at hand, and I was on a show that was filming out in Prague, and uh there's a big studio in Prague, which is the old communist studios, but it's it's the most like a Hollywood studio, as you see, that you know, you can imagine. So, like when I turned up at the end of the morning, you'd be wandering through the set, and there'd be a bunch of Nazis going in one direction, a bunch of knights going in the other direction, and you get ladies in waiting standing there having a fag on their phones. So it was just so bizarre. But um, I was out and we were doing this big big fight scene that was out in the woods behind, so that the big studios up in the hills, big woods outside where they filmed loads of this medieval stuff. And I was chatting with the director and one of the producers, and the actors were there sort of waiting around, and the the the big people from Amazon wandered off, and one of the actors came up to me and said, Oh, were you one of the Amazon executives? I went, No, I'm the storyboard artist. He went, Oh, okay, then and just thought middle-aged man in a parker, obviously somebody important. No, no, I wasn't.

Ali Cook 38:29

I think the storyboarding is really important. Uh I think one one of the things that um people don't when when you're doing these huge shows, say for Amazon, they've got huge budgets. But when you're making like a short film like mine where the the time is time and money is everything, really the storyboarding uh and and the and the redoing of it is you're you're actually finding ways to eliminate shots. Oh, absolutely, yeah. And and that that's really the the the joy of it is so when you go in, you're like, I've you know, I've got an hour and a half to shoot three pages. Yeah. I can actually do it with three with three setups, just three. Or is there a clever way to do it in one setup, you know, and and that that's really the the fun of it, I think, actually, is trying to find those elegant ways to basically get your coverage.

Mike Collins 39:19

Yeah, I mean one example of that, perfect example of that, is uh when they did the regeneration from Peter Capaldi into Jody Whitka, they only had Jody for an afternoon. Yeah. So they had to get everything. So I sat down with Rachel Talely and we we blocked out the whole thing. So for what was maybe 90 seconds on screen, I did 17 pages of storyboards. Yeah. Because what that meant was that uh Rachel could go in there and talk to the s the three camera setups and go, you know, this shot, this shot, this shot, there it is. They could shoot the whole thing straight off from my boards.

Ali Cook 39:50

Yeah.

Mike Collins 39:51

And and turn out what could have spent in days in, you know, five hours.

Ali Cook 39:55

So I actually um I went to a I I was at one of the film festivals earlier this year. Uh in York, there's a film festival called Aesthetica. And my film was playing there, and they had um the lead v FX guy from Andor. Oh wow, okay. Uh in the the second series of Andor, I don't know if you've watched it.

Mike Collins 40:12

Oh yeah, I love it.

Ali Cook 40:13

There's a there's a scene where uh the main bad guy he walks up a set of stairs when he's entering that new town called Gorman. Yeah. And and he he walks up a set of stairs and he looks across the town and it looks almost like a Roman amphitheatre. Well, this whole that one shot is about eight seconds. It took them nine months to prep it. It was a combination of obviously a real-time set, uh lots of CGIs and a lot, a lot, a lot of CGI and a lot of uh extras. But one once they'd storyboarded it, they then 3D modeled it all from the storyboards, and then from there they played around, they could play around with the best camera shot to cover it. It was absolutely incredible. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you and and again, to the casual casual viewer, you're watching, you're like, oh, looks pretty good. I mean, you have no idea. It's almost a year's worth of work for like eight years. Oh, yeah.

Mike Collins 41:09

Oh, I I I worked on The Witcher, and there's a sequence towards the end of um I think it's season two of The Witcher, where you've got in the script, it's like four lines of text by the writer saying, you know, they look across and they see the hordes coming over the hill towards them. And um, I spent a month storyboarding that. Yeah. Because you've got to get the these skeletal creatures on skeletal horses coming over this hill, and you've got the the central characters looking back at this and interacting and everything, and it just like what was let you say four lines on a bit of paper.

Ali Cook 41:38

Yeah, it's it's a real skill, and um particularly with the the VFX as well. Um my first short film, um uh there's a there's a pile of dead farm animals, and we need to bring them back to life. Right. And um, you know, in my mind, I'd written it, oh, a pile of animals comes back to life. I got a quote, 15,000 to do that. And then I was like, Well, I'm not gonna do that. And then uh I went to a storyboard guy, and we came up with that you saw the pile, we then cut in, and it was a sheep who's obviously dead, and then you see that his eye blink and then his eye opens.

Mike Collins 42:18

Yeah.

Ali Cook 42:19

And that was and then you see a hint of breath, and that that's how you know. And then we cut to her wide and they're all waking up.

Mike Collins 42:24

Yeah, that's you you you you cut through the information, so you you get the the viewer to be part of the story.

Ali Cook 42:30

Yes, you're getting them to make the assumptions, basically. Yeah, that's that's a trick, yeah.

Mike Collins 42:34

Yeah, I I did one scene in uh one of the one of the Doctor Who's where there was a they had this biplane going over a uh a battlefield and they're saying, Oh, it's going to cost this much to do this and this much to do this. And I sort of did a couple of sketches and say, Well, what if we did it like this? And they went, Oh my god, you've saved us 20 grand. And I went, Yeah. I went, No, it's not for you.

Kev F Sutherland 42:54

Uh the panels that we've been looking at today, Ali, can you remind us where yours came from?

Ali Cook 42:59

Yeah, so the adventure adventures of Tamashi is from the 80s collectible magazine Ninja.

Mike Collins 43:06

And Mike, where did yours come from? Mine came from a magazine called Not Brand Eck that Marvel bought out in the late 1960s, which parodied all their comics trip stuff, and I loved it.

Kev F Sutherland 43:19

Yeah, I don't know if you can find that in a collection these days. Maybe I think there's a Marvel Treasury, uh Marvel um Masterworks of it. So yes. Splendid. And where or what should we look for from you both next? Ali, I can urge everybody to look for the Pearl Comb. It's on Disney Plus in this country and probably around the world. Uh, but where should we look for the rest of what you do, Ali?

Ali Cook 43:42

Well, um, I mean, obviously, you know, most of this year and then into next year, it is going to be the Pearl Comb. Uh, I post everything on my Instagram, which is Ali underscore cook, basically.

Mike Collins 43:53

And Mike, what's coming from you? Uh, there's two graphic novels coming out for me this year, one of which is uh the third volume of a series I've been doing for an American publisher, which isn't regular comics. It's based on uh um an information technology handbook. So IT departments around the world use this as their Bible, it's thing called the Phoenix Project. And Gene Kim that wrote it, his big thing was he'd seen so many handbooks on how you should run an IT department and how systems should work, where it's basically you do this, you do this, you do this, you do this. Anyway, and nobody's gonna be engaged in that. So he wrote it as a novel. So you've got these characters interacting, working for a company, and doing things and then going through all the things that you should do in a company, and so they they did it as a novel, it sold millions over these, it's been out about 15 years, and but he wanted to do it as a graphic novel because he thought we'd grab more people that way, and they divide into three volumes, and the third volume is coming out. Um, I think it's March or April, so that'll be but the other thing I'm doing, which is more proper comic stuff, is uh a graphic novel called Salvation's Child, which is written by uh um Adrian Tchaikovsky, science fiction writer. Oh, you don't know Adrian Tchaikovsky, he is basically the the modern Arthur C. Clarke. He is an astonishing writer of science fiction, he's won so many awards for his books and they they sell like mad. And uh there's actually a Doctor Who connection with it because one of the central characters in it, or central characters, are uh a race of warriors who are all cloned. And these warriors are all cloned are based on Sophie Aldred, eight from Doctor Who, because she narrates the uh the audiobooks. Splendid. Yeah, so that was great fun. So I managed to get Doctor Who connections everywhere.

Kev F Sutherland 45:36

It all goes full circle. And where do we find you on the socials, Mike?

Mike Collins 45:40

Uh I'm available on Facebook and Blue Sky and occasionally Instagram, but I think my Facebook stuff gets posted to Instagram all the time, so it's it's on there. So then my Blue Sky tends to be sort of political rants, but my stuff on Facebook and Instagram tends to be uh silly stuff and comics and science fiction.

Kev F Sutherland 45:59

So and remember, listener at home, you're not looking for Michael Collins, who was involved in the 1916 Irish Revolution in the post office, and you're not looking for Alistair Cook, who is the captain of the English cricket team. Just as long as you don't make those mistakes, uh then your research will be a lot easier than mine was. Thank you for coming in, Ali Cook and Mike Collins. Thanks for having me.

Mike Collins 46:21

My pleasure. Thank you.

Kev F Sutherland 46:53

Podcasters like Adam Roach, legendary singer-songwriter Dean Friedman, Jessica Martin. The list of comedians includes Ashley Story, Bethany Black, Will Hodgson, Paul Karenz, Izzy Lawrence, Doug Siegel. There is too many to list. And they've brought in comics from Marvel and DC to The Bunty and the Eagle, from Robert Crumb to Viz, Webcomics, Obscure Manga, all points in between. And sometimes we don't talk about comics at all. Don't forget to click and subscribe, leave a review, and tell a friend. For example, what could these two be talking about?

Hannah Berry 47:22

With a swastika on his shirt, uh, he's got his trousers down, his bum out, and he's he's standing with his feet in a bucket of pig shit on a stage. Um, there's lots of people looking behind him, and he's saying, uh-uh-uh, ah yes, I can feel it coming out now. Come on, fuck off out of it, you blasted queen.

Kev F Sutherland 47:40

And don't forget, the Queen is visible. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is visible in the top left hand corner. As the curtains part, the queen is in the royal box. So this is a royal variety performance. Comic cuts. We're looking at a panel, and we comprise a panel, there's a few of us. So the panel sees a panel and we talk about the comics from the panel we discuss, and we call it Comic Cuts.