an original prequel to the tempest

In a previous post, I mentioned that I once tried to write a graphic novel prequel to The Tempest. Sycorax Waning, as I called it, ground to a sad halt when my artist moved on to other things… but I still have lots of materials left on file – like concept drawings, back-stories and character profiles.

Concept art for Ariel, the androgynous spirit from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

It took me a long time to create a believable story that could precede the action of The Tempest. Many nights were spent poring over the play, working backwards in time to build a consistent “origin” tale for Sycorax the witch. I also read a great deal of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as Sycorax (many will argue) shares a lot in common with Medea, the ancient Greek sorceress.

Concept art for Bruin, an original character I created for a prequel to The Tempest.

I was pleased with the story that eventually took shape. I’m not going to post the full plot here, as I still hope to do something with it in the future. But I am going to publish the character profiles I wrote for the project. These contain detailed breakdowns of every single character in the prequel… and give a better idea of the kind of tale I was hoping to tell.

Read all of my Character Profiles right here: Sycorax Waning_Character Profiles

Concept art for Augusto, a 16th century Spaniard I created for Sycorax Waning.

Let me know your thoughts on the cast of this fantasy Shakespearean prequel! Some day soon, I’ll publish the first chapter of the final script.

A short story about silverfish

Here’s a short comic-book script that never found a home, written several years ago on some idle afternoon. I originally sent this off to the editor at Orang Utan Comics, who agreed to supply an artist and add it to his yearly anthology. Neither happened, in the end, for reasons I can’t really remember.

I wanted to write something humorous, at the time. A short sketch with some bathos in it… a sudden switch from the exalted to the commonplace. I had just returned from visiting my parents, who live in an old Edwardian house with a ground-floor toilet that’s particularly dark and damp. Inside that chilly bathroom, I’d switched on the light and watched as dozens of small, shiny silverfish scuttled in terror back to the shadows. Another light had suddenly switched itself on inside my head: I’d been given an idea.

This silly story is called “The Charge of the Silverfish” and will probably take you about two minutes to read. I envisioned the silverfish as tubular little creatures with gnashing teeth – kind of like a cross between the Hattifatteners (from The Moomins) and a snarling Domo-kun doll.

The script can be found here: The Charge of the Silverfish_Script_R Norris

All coments are welcome…

A tale of Arabian survival

Wilfred Thesiger on his five-year journey through the desert.

Here’s the very first comic script I ever wrote. It was originally commissioned by Insomnia Publications, a small UK press going to big places back in 2009 – or so I thought, until they went dramatically bankrupt before I got paired up with an artist. This story was supposed to appear in their annual “Layer Zero” anthology… and the theme for the 2010 volume would have been “survival” (an ironic choice, really, given the publisher’s subsequent demise).

Anyway: at the time, I’d been reading “Arabian Sands” by Wilfred Thesiger (1959) – and I was mildly obsessed with the Bedouin people and the ancient deserts of The Empty Quarter. I wrote a story of survival set in the 19^th century, told by an English sailor shipwrecked in the Arabian Peninsula. It’s a tale of culture clash, based on a true event that Thesiger briefly mentions in his book:

“During the days that I was at Mughshin my companions often asked me for medicines. Bedu suffer much from headaches and stomach trouble. Sometimes my aspirin worked, but if not the sufferer would get someone to brand him, usually on his heels, and would announce a little later that his headache was now gone, and that the old Bedu remedies were better than the Christian’s pills.

Bedu cauterize themselves and their camels for nearly every ill. Their bellies, chests, and backs are often criss-crossed with the ensuing scars. I had heard that many years ago a British cargo steamer was ship-wrecked on the southern coast of Arabia. A few survivors were picked up by some Junuba who, hoping no doubt for a reward, took them eventually to Muscat. Camel’s milk and dates had given the Englishmen acute diarrhoea, and the Bedu, despite their protests, forcibly cauterized them. They eventually arrived at Muscat nearly killed by dysentery and this primitive treatment.” (Arabian Sands, Penguin Classics)

I called my story “Baptism of Fire”. You can read it here: Baptism of Fire_Script_R Norris

This script has never been illustrated; if there’s an eager artist out there willing to give it a go, please drop me a line. It will help if you’re familiar with Bedu dress and the Arabian landscape – or have some kind of connection with Middle Eastern culture. A tall order, perhaps!

Enjoy the story, everyone… and let me know if you liked it.

an abstract comic strip

At the end of this post is a simple comic strip I created, one day, after reading through a book called “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity”. The book offers up a collection of tips from David Lynch – yes, that’s the same David Lynch who brought us the likes of Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Lost Highway… a man who, it would seem, owes much of his success to the daily practice of Transcendental Meditation.

David Lynch is something of an enigma, as everybody knows. I love his work but at the same time I find it frustrating. His path to creative greatness was a truly unique one and as such, very difficult to follow. Abstraction and surrealism will more often kill a career than make one – and while Lynch has proved it’s perfectly possible to put a dancing midget in a TV sitcom or a psychological Kabuki demon in a feature film, if almost anyone else tried to do it… they’d probably get laughed away as self-indulgent navel-gazers. This makes me slightly wary of Lynch’s artistic advice, therefore, although “Catching the Big Fish” still makes for an inspirational read. Pick it up if you can find a copy.

One thing in the book that caught my attention was The Angriest Dog In The World, an absurdist comic strip created by Lynch between 1983 and 1992. I’d never heard of this strip before (published in the LA Reader and the Village Voice, it never appeared in the UK press) but it struck a chord with me nonetheless. What intrigued me most about it was this: Lynch only ever drew the strip once – four self-repeating images of a dog straining on a leash – but he kept it fresh for nine years, simply by updating the dialogue. His visual framework was flexible enough to allow for an almost endless stream of scenarios… but when you look at the strip itself, it seems anything but flexible; all of the hand-drawn panels are virtually identical. As a concept it’s a total paradox and yet somehow, it just works.

Something about this minimalism appealed to me, so I decided to give it a go myself. I drew a crude sequence of panels in Microsoft Paint that I felt, given the right dialogue, would always be able to tell a different story. The visuals include two floating spheres (gods? planets?), some speech bubbles… and absolutely nothing else. I called it “The Music of the Spheres”, an attempt to introduce some bathos i.e. what if the stars/constellations/heavenly bodies that hold us all in awe are, in fact, just brainless entities making stupid comments? The four-panel sequence runs like this and, in theory, would never change:

FIRST PANEL: Sphere 1 makes a comment to which Sphere 2 responds.

SECOND PANEL: both spheres stare blankly for a moment.

THIRD PANEL: Sphere 1 makes a comment that negates their conversation.

FOURTH PANEL: both spheres turn away in irritation.

My childish artwork appears below. All comments are welcome!

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THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES: High above the Earth, the celestial bodies weave our fate in perfect harmony… by Russell Norris

A Choctaw story

My mother is American. She was born and raised in Oklahoma, before she met an Englishman and emigrated to the UK in the 1970s. Her family, originally from a small town called Spiro, has given me some Native American roots: my mum is 1/8 Native American, which makes me 1/16… a tiny fraction, you might think, but it’s enough to make me eligible for membership in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

More specifically, then, this family heritage is Choctaw, the Native American tribe that gave “Oklahoma” its name (literally translated, a word meaning “red people”). The Choctaw people have a fascinating history that stretches from antiquity right up to the modern day. In one interesting episode from 1918, the Choctaw language was used as an Allied code in the First World War… because only a handful of people in the world could understand it.

I’ve always felt far removed from this strain of my DNA. Living in England, in the Old World that’s so very different to the New World, it’s easy to lose sight of my American roots – specifically the Native American side, which can feel distant and dislocated from the British culture I’ve grown up in.

In an effort to get back in touch with this Native American heritage, I did some research on Choctaw mythology and wrote a short comic script called “The Heart of Thunder”. It deals with a few figures from Choctaw legend and it’s quite sentimental in tone – borderline soppy, in fact… which is uncharacteristic for me. It felt somehow right for the story, though, so I decided to keep things that way. You can read the final script here: The Heart of Thunder_Script_R Norris

This story still needs an illustrator to truly come to life, so if anyone’s interested in lending their artistic skills – please get in touch!

a theatre review

In February 2009, I went to the Questors Studio Theatre in Ealing (West London) to see a play called Lazarus Lost & Found. It was written by Chris Dicken, a friend of my father’s who’s a web designer by day and a playwright in his spare time. Coincidentally, I happened to know one of the editors on the local Ealing Gazette – so I asked him if he might be interested in a freelance review of the play. He said yes… and I ended up writing two pieces for the Gazette’s arts pages.

The first was a preview article, promoting the play and giving the story some background (which didn’t get published but is pasted below). The second piece was a review of the play, which did get published and can be read in the clipping at the end of this post. Ignore the – distressingly larger – feature about that annoying Scouse mystic from Most Haunted. My review is the bit underneath!

“FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE TO THE EALING STAGE” By Russell Norris

What would you do if you had it on good authority that a dead man would shortly come back to life? Laugh outright? Take offence? Or wait nervously to see what happens? Back in 2004, the remote farming community of Hertzogville in South Africa found itself facing this ghoulish question. When a family prophet predicted that a local man, recently deceased, would rise again, rumours began to spread like rampant bushfire. Before long, a crowd of townsfolk had descended on the village funeral home, desperate for a glimpse of the promised resurrection.

This true story was the inspiration for Lazarus Lost & Found, a new play written by Chris Dicken premiering at the Questors Studio Theatre on February 10th. Set in contemporary London, Dicken’s black comedy takes a hard look at our secular culture and asks if such a prophecy could ever cause a similar furore on home soil. “British people are always portrayed as cynics, suspicious of anyone promising miracles,” says Chris. “But I think, if we’re all honest, we’d love to see living proof that there’s something more to life.”

Martha, the show’s heroine, isn’t coping well with the loss of her father. As the funeral arrangements draw near, an inexplicable message arrives from a famous religious leader, proclaiming that her father will soon return from the dead. The fallout from this incredible prediction – and Martha’s blind faith in it – has tough repercussions that friends, family and the local neighbourhood won’t forget in a hurry.

The true case of the Hertzogville prophecy ended less spectacularly than it began; the dead man remained dead, was sent to the mortuary and quietly buried a few days later. But will the departed rise again to walk among us at the Questors Theatre? Get your ticket for Lazarus Lost & Found to find out…

[Click the image below to see my review at full-size.]

An article on local “Ghost Signs”

Have you ever seen a Ghost Sign? You can spot them all over London, if you look closely enough. “Ghost Signs” or “Brickads” are hand-painted adverts, usually from the 1920s/30s/40s, left behind on ageing walls and buildings. Typically, they’re worn-out and faded and they advertise old-fashioned products that don’t exist anymore. I used to see them all the time when I lived in Clapham and Battersea – and they intrigued me to the point that I wrote an article on the most prominent examples in my neighbourhood.

The article was originally commissioned by Time & Leisure, the freebie magazine that most south-Londoners get through their letterbox every month. I submitted the piece with supporting photographs – and the T&L editor happily accepted it – but for some reason it never saw the light of day. The editor said she never had enough room in her shrinking page count… and after a few months, I got tired of bugging her about it.

So here’s the unpublished article, complete with pictures.

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“VINTAGE ADVERTS THAT STILL LEAVE THEIR MARK” By Russell Norris

In an age of floodlit billboards and scrolling posters, it’s easy to forget that advertising was once hand-painted directly onto buildings to capture the public’s attention. Raise your eyes 10ft higher as you walk around Clapham or Battersea and you might just spot one of south-west London’s best-kept secrets. Faded brickwork adverts or “Ghost Signs” can date back to 1900 and were popular right up until the 1950s. Most of these ads were scrubbed out or demolished after 1960 but many can still be seen on older structures across the city. Washed-out and spectral, these forgotten messages from London’s past have survived largely at the whim of developers – and many of the best remaining examples today can be found south of the river. A historic Ghost Sign is probably hiding on a wall in your own neighbourhood, just waiting for you to notice it.

Take, for example, the grimy old advert at the junction of Cedars Road and Lavender Hill. Stencilled onto the bricked-up archways of an old stable are the statements “Horses Bought or Sold” and “Broughams Supplied”. A brougham (pronounced “broom”) was a closed horse-drawn carriage designed in the 19th century, evidently still in demand at a time when motorcars were scarce in Clapham. As local transport evolved, so too did this sign: “Cars for Hire” was later painted on top of the original writing, repurposing it for the changing pace of the early 20th century.

Among the chimneypots of The Pavement in Clapham Old Town sits a remarkably well-preserved sign for “Deane & Co. Chemists”. Its enduring sky-blue backdrop and lemon lettering suggests a later date from the 1940s or 1950s. Halfway up Clapham High Street, above a pet shop, is part of a battered old ad for Gillette and opposite Clapham Common tube station, high on the exposed side of The Alexandra pub, some discoloured wording is all that remains of a vanished insurance society.

Where Lambourn Road meets Wandsworth Road, you’ll find a curious advert for “Redfern’s Rubber” partially obscured by a modern hoarding. South of Clapham Junction, at Hafer Road on Battersea Rise, there’s a pre-1920s sign for two newspapers that are no longer in print: the National News and the Sunday Evening Telegram. In 2007, Wandsworth Council successfully prosecuted an advertiser for covering up this piece of painted history. In this regard, however, the law is murkier than the ageing signs in question. Technically, there’s nothing to stop an interested party from whitewashing a Ghost Sign out of existence, making it all the more worthwhile to discover these urban relics while you still can.

Past Clapham Junction and up St. John’s Hill, at the end of Plough Road, is a cropped design for an indecipherable “Electrical Wholesale Distributor”. A stone’s throw away, facing out from the corner of Sangora Road, is arguably south London’s most impressive Ghost Sign. The words “Peterkin’s Custard, Self-Raising Flour & Corn Flour” have been in situ here since the early 1930s. Above this text, strolling along with his hands in his pockets, is the Peterkin’s cartoon mascot: a smirking boy dressed as a corn-yellow Cossack. This long-gone franchise of cooking flour was a failed business venture of Joseph Arthur Rank, a man later famed for his triumphs in the British film industry. Remember those movies that open with a golden muscleman banging on a giant gong? Funny to think that Rank’s global success began with English custard, the only surviving memory of which sits on a weather-beaten wall just off Wandsworth Common.

For more information on Ghost Signs from London and beyond, visit these excellent sites: www.ghostsigns.co.uk, www.facebook.com/ghostsigns, www.hatads.org.uk/ads/ghostsigns.aspx