Mister 8

Welcome to my new comic blog, Mister 8. What’s that you say? There’s no comic here? You’re right — there isn’t yet. This page is currently up for two reasons: (1) I’m testing the infrastructure of WordPress as a comic publishing platform (with the help of the theme/plugin ComicPress), and (2) I’m eager to start making blog posts soon.

My goal with Mister 8 is the following:

• Publish a weekly comic detailing the adventures of agent Martin Queen, aka the titular Mister 8. Still in the planning stages, Mister 8 will combine the feel (though, sorry to say, not the artistic majesty) of traditional adventure comics by Caniff, Raymond and Sickles with a touch of contemporary humor. That’s the plan, leastwise.
• Discuss spy-fi music — the themes of John Barry, Lalo Schiffrin, Jerry Goldstein, Henry Mancini, Ron Grainer, Laurie Johnson, etc. — and provide tablature for the songs that I’m capable of picking out.
• Talk about the genre on film and television — from the camp of Derek Flint to the cutting edge of the Prisoner and the Avengers to the serious takes of John Le Carre. Also, yes, inevitably, James Bond.
• Spotlight the genre as represented in comics — Nick Fury, Sarge Steel, Tara Chase, King Faraday, Super Spy…the list of secret agents working in a world normally reserved for superheroes is extensive.
• Analyze random aspects of spy-fiction — Gadgets, tropes, cars, and whatever else comes to mind. In fact, I think I’ll start things off soon with a posting about fonts used in spy fiction.

So, to the “you” whom I doubt exists at this point except in my mirror, this is what I plan to do with the site. Keep your fingers crossed, and perhaps everything will come out OK in the end. If someone is actually out there reading this, please excuse the mess!

If you’re working on a secret agent themed design project and want a genuine retro feel without resorting to overstated curly serifs and slants, why not turn to the fonts used by the originals? We’ll start with a bit of James Bond:

From Russia With Love Poster

The second James Bond movie asked you to “Meet James Bond” in what I believe is a variation of Cooper Black. Note the single tiered ‘a’ in the poster, however, compared to the double-tiered ‘a’ in the sample below:

Cooper Black

(more…)

Poster for the film Beat Girl

Rhythm riff:

e|--------------------------|
B|--------------------------|
G|--------------------------|
D|--------------------------|
A|----------------3h4--3----|
E|-1-1-1-1--1-1----------4--|

Check out the full tablature.

While not a movie about secret agents, 1959′s Beat Girl is an important film in the history of the spy genre because of its composer, John Barry. Barry was then the leader of the John Barry Seven, a group put together in reaction to the growing popularity of early rock n’ roll. As Barry told Royal S. Brown in the latter’s Overtones and Undertones:

…So I formed what became The John Barry Seven, which in its final form had an alto sax, two guitars, bass guitar, piano, drums, and me on trumpet. We were all either classically or jazz trained, but we were desperate to start a professional life in music, and so we started off by just mimicking people like Bill Haley. We bought ourselves three or four amplifiers, and I think I bought the first bass guitar in England, a Hoffman, made in Germany. And so we were a seven-piece group that made more noise than anybody! (p. 325)

Barry hooked up with a young singer named Adam Faith, who scored a role in Beat Girl, the story of a young woman hanging out in dance halls and strip clubs, using her stepmother’s sordid past to break up her father’s marriage. Barry’s connections with Faith led him to being hired as the film’s composer. Again, from the interview with Brown:

The producer asked me whether I would consider writing the music, not knowing that that’s exactly what I wanted to do! It was all twangy guitars and saxes, a cross between rock-and-roll and jazz. I used my group and augmented it to about sixteen, seventeen musicians. But there were two or three moments in the movie where I could show off that I probably had an understanding of dramatic music. (p. 326)

Barry’s theme from Beat Girl was later played during the infamous lawsuit against the Sunday Times by Monty Norman, who claimed authorship of the James Bond Theme. Regardless of the outcome of that lawsuit, one can’t deny the influence that Barry had on the James Bond franchise, and the genre of spy music in general. One can hear the future of secret agent themes in this 1958 composition.

Here are the opening credits to Beat Girl, featuring Barry’s theme. Note a very young Oliver Reed flopping around in his plaid shirt and nodding his scary noggin to the rhythm: