Alex de Campi: Gojira!

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FILM & TV

COMICS & BOOKS

28.4.06 Punctum

I love this photo.

Taken by Lindsay Duff, during the filming of the teaser trailer for my film. It feels like Velasquez on the back lot.

( 6:20 PM ) (0) comments

23.4.06 No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn!

Very brief update: video finished! Streaming version online soon, once I have time to sort it out. Meanwhile, if you have a video iPod, make with the clicky on the image below and get your own special top secret, mates only preview of Ryan Parker and my video for Flipron's "Raindrops Keep Falling on the Dead".

The file will not stream online, so do the "download linked file" thing rather than actually clicking through. Dump the downloaded video into your iTunes music folder and voilà, Robert is your mother's brother. I have to say, the video looks GREAT in iPod format. All credit to Ryan, who was a genius on the animation. We want to do more of these, so if you know good indie bands looking to have videos made, point them in our direction.

( 8:13 PM ) (0) comments

13.4.06 Signs and Portents

She waltzed back into my life again on Tuesday, all nonchalant and "did ya miss me". It's her you have to blame for this rain - she loves a storm. So, later on, you will know how it began again: I found her at lunchtime, face down in the doorway of the Café of Crossed Destinies, wearing a familiar blue coat.

That's what made me stop and pick her up. Was it one of my cards? There's a pack on my dresser with the same blue pattern on their backs. It couldn't be mine; I hadn't been to the café in weeks. But, in the way that sometimes you feel like the universe is talking directly to you, I knew it was. I turned her over: The Queen of Spades.

Of course I took her home. You can't just leave her lying on the pavement, can you? That's asking for trouble. (But then, so is picking her up). Since that day, everything has been an omen, a harbinger of further messages. A gardener at my friend's door in Peckham, two lead-blue teardrops tattooed beneath his left eye. The Hanged Man? The loss of an old silk scarf, emblazoned with sailboats, like an ice floe breaking free from the glacier of my past and heading south to endanger the shipping. The Tower - that's not lightning, it's a square of ice-blue silk, fluttering in the breeze. And that breeze is cold with anticipation, of something taking form, something straining to pass through the tracing-paper walls of reality. Something that must be said or done, buzzing at the corners of my mind like a forgotten warning.

Or perhaps it is already here, has been done, the oil already spilt. I'm not sure. I feel lately - not quite as Billy Pilgrim, unstuck in time - but certainly out of sync, as if sound has slipped three frames in advance of image. Sometimes, when the city noise falls quiet, I can hear tomorrow. "My, what a dull girl you've become..." What does she reach for, in her coat, the Queen of Spades? A change in the psychic weather.

I must escape this toxic town.

( 10:30 AM ) (1) comments

10.4.06 Ruling passions

"I was loafing in Aleister Crowley's chair in the Atlantis Bookshop (London's occult bookshop) and chatting to its owner - whose mother never let her read comics because they were 'A Bad Influence'. To repeat, the family that owns the UK's oldest and best occult shop, and were mates with Crowley, banned their children from reading comics for fear of the effect it would have on their morals. I described Hino to her, and the idea that had chilled me. She was so freaked out that she sat down, and we both just sat there for about five minutes in silence..." [More].

I make a brief return to Ninth Art to list the nine comics/graphic novels that most inspire me. If you know me from other things and don't quite have a handle on these funny picturebooks I insist on writing, well, here are nine good places to begin. I also review a couple new Tokyopop books here.

In other matters, Greatest Thing Ever, Week of 10 April Edition:

Singularily combining two of my greatest loves, Buster Keaton and Russian Constructivist poster design. Ah, how good it is to begin the week with a beautiful and unexpected coincidence.

( 4:17 AM ) (0) comments

5.4.06 Demigod, demigod, demigod, some chick

Smoke, my first published comics work, has been nominated for Best Limited Series in the 2006 Eisner nominations. The Eisners are America's most prestigious awards for comics and graphic novels, named after the late Will Eisner, industry pioneer and general all-around Top Banana. I'm rather stunned, as here's the full list in my category:

Best Limited Series

Nat Turner, by Kyle Baker (Kyle Baker Publishing)
Ocean, by Warren Ellis, Chris Sprouse, and Karl Story (WildStorm/DC)
Seven Soldiers, by Grant Morrison and various artists (DC)
Smoke, by Alex de Campi and Igor Kordey (IDW)

So, like the post title says, on the writer side of the team it goes demigod, demigod, demigod, some chick. On the artist side, of course, I had the magnificent Igor Kordey and superb colourist Len O'Grady aiding and abetting, so maybe it should really be Some Chick & Her Secret Weapons. Given the competition I don't think we stand a chance of winning, but it's lovely to have been nominated and I hope in some small way this pushes mainstream comic editors to take more risks on other new comic creators' original series.

Full list of nominations here.

( 7:02 PM ) (0) comments

4.4.06 "There's something about watching half a dozen Robert Smiths running away from pirate monkeys..."

I love my job. It doesn't pay me enough to quit my part time night work, but I don't mind. I think it will, soon. And every day when I check my emails and watch my films and comics come to life, I get this big stupid grin on my face because it's so much fun, and me and my artists really are having just as much of a laugh as you think we are. I mean, hello, LOOK WHAT WE GET TO DO:

The Fall From Heaven, as reimagined by Ryan Parker and myself, for Flipron. (I always thought Paradise Lost needed more saucy ladies, personally.)

Alem Cúrin and I put our own unique spin on Luna Moth from The Escapist.

Agent Boo and Pumpkin ready for action, by Edo Fuijkschot. And last but not least...

Half a dozen Robert Smiths running away from Pirate Monkeys. (Roughs, also by Edo, also from Agent Boo.)

Hell, it beats growing up.

Soon, I'll post a colour panel from Messiah Complex and some of the new Adam inks, because they're so pretty it's criminal.