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A panel from 'Growing out of It' from the AARGH anthology, written
by Jamie Dealno, drawn by Shane |
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Shane Oakley's Captain Hurricane.
Click here for
a larger image.
Captain Hurricane © IPC Media |
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Shane Oakley's morphing
"Fred". Click here for
a larger image. © IPC Media |
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Shane Oakley's "Gorga" design.
Click here for
a larger image. © IPC Media |
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Shane Oakley's "Snodgrass
and Oliver 'Oily' Swott" design.
Click here for
a larger image. © IPC Media |
DOWNTHETUBES: Could you tell us a bit about yourself and
your past work prior to Albion?
Shane Oakley: I started doing
fanzines/small press stuff in the early 1980's, but well before that, at
junior school, I was drawing comic strips, copying them with carbon paper
and selling them to the teachers for 2p (Back
when I were a lad, that would buy you a BIG fistful of chews). They had
full coloured pencil covers and at least six pages of comics and puzzles
- bargain!
I soon decided that carbon paper
wasn't the most efficient method of mass production, so getting together
with a kindred soul at college, we had our first fanzine photocopied
in the campus library and pre-sold over 50 copies, which is pretty
feeble but
at the time we felt like rockstars." [Actually
Shane, fanzine editors still count themseleves
lucky to sell 50 copies! - Ed]
We only managed a second issue and after
that I lost touch with my co-creator mate Chris, and got into playing in
a band instead, and trying to make low budget horror movies.
A year or so later, I hadn't set the charts on fire
or got into the 'Fangoria Horror hall of fame',
so I drifted back into the comics, just for something to do.
Through a poster I saw, I met up with a bunch of misfit
virgins, who had a passion for all thing comics, and gathered once a week
at a community centre, to chinwag and to put together fanzines. Over two
or three years, we did a load of small press comics; one-off 'mini-novels',
artist spotlight specials, and at least 10 issues of Andy Yoxall's 'Hardware' and Hardware
Presents, which had early works by Mark
Buckingham, D'israeli, Mike
Mathews and the dearly missed, unsung talent, Art
Wetherell. We did
the marts, and sold other peoples stuff, too. met a lot of folk, made some
good friends (and a couple of enemies).
It's one of my favourite times, I have many good memories,
and I'm always trying to channel some of that spirit in my work.
Somewhere along the way I joined the SSI (nothing more sinister
than 'The Society of Strip Illustrators', now the the Comic
Creators Guild) which helped encourage me to have a go at doing-funny-drawings-in-little-boxes
for a living. I was rubbing shoulders and quaffing beer with the likes of
David Lloyd, Neil
Gaiman and Bryan
Talbot, who all offered a lot of useful
advice and encouraging words. Through the SSI I heard about the AARGH! benefit
book and I ended up doing a four-pager with Jamie
Delano. The strip, 'Growing
out of it', led to Neil putting me forward for Mr.
X (an ongoing retro-futurist
detective series from the now defunct Vortex Comics). I got the job, did
six issues, messed up, and took an early retirement and since then I've
bounced back and forth, retiring at least every two years. I'm always trying
to do something more '9-to-5 normal', always getting bored, and always sitting
back down at me drawing board and wishing I'd never left it.
DOWNTHETUBES: Have you always been a British comics fan?
Shane: I was reading/collecting
British comics from about age three or four, a looooooooooong time before
I was into Marvel and DC. titles like Pippin, Twinkle and Playhour,
and a lot of Watch
With Mother tie-ins [a BBC children's programme stream which included
Bill and Ben, The Woodentops and Andy
Pandy] --
gorgeously illustrated work, with a charm and style you don't see anymore.
and that led to titles like Topper, The
Beano, Sparky etc. On the rare
occasion I vist a comic fair, that's the kinda stuff I'm sniffing after.
DOWNTHETUBES: Who are your favourite British characters and why?
Shane: Most of the characters that have stayed with me, resonating
widly in my memory banks are more or less the cast of Albion,
most especially The
Spider, Faceache -- erm,
sorry, Fred Akeley -- Grimly Feendish and House
of Dollman. But they're
part of a huge list -- you can add Brassneck, I-Spy, Babyface
Finlayson,
Red Star Robinson, almost anything by Leo Baxendale, Solano Lopez, Eric
Bradbury and Ken Reid.
I find this huge back catalougue of
characters and the artists who drew em far more evocative/potent than
US superhero books. There's a dreamy quality to them, something odd
and otherworldy. Yeah, at their worst they could be lame and corny,
but they could also be wildly imaginative and beautifully strange and
it's that weird magnetic force that keeps pulling me in. a Also, I suppose
it's because it zooms me right back to when I was a snotty-nosed nipper,
reading em on the back seat of my grandad's car, on the way to Blackpool.
and what school kid wouldn't want his own radio-controlled army or a
pirate ghost as a pal? (I still do, for that matter!)
DOWNTHETUBES: (from Lew Stringer) How familiar were you with those old
Odhams and IPC characters? I'm presuming you're too young to remember them
at the time, so how did you discover Bad Penny, The
Legend Testers, Grimly
Feendish etc?
Shane: I remember some. I was an avid collector at a very early
age, and I had parents/grandparents that indulged my passion. Back then,
there was always plenty of cheap old comics on market stalls and second
hand bookstores. I first got my hands on a load of ealry Odhams and Fleetway
stuff at a school jumble sale -- we're talking a rolled-up bunch of comics
(at least 5-7 per, including summer/winter specials) tied up with string
for a penny. My gran was always spoiling me and paid for enough to fill
two carrier bags. I spent the whole weekend with my eyes on stalks - Valiant,
Lion, TV21, The
Hornet, Wizard, Smash!, Pow!, Wham!...
DOWNTHETUBES: (from Lew Stringer) I seem to recall
Alan Moore talking about the basics of what became Albion 20 years
ago in a pub so I was pleased to see it finally evolve into a comic.
However I understand you brought a lot of ideas to the concept too?
What was your initial input -- apart from your striking artwork?
|
Janus Stark as he appeared
in a two page 'flashback' by Shane Oakley in Albion #1 |
Mostly a persistent, manic enthusiasm to crowbar as
many characters (or at least a referance) into the mix as possibble. Alan,
Leah and John may see it more like a terrorist campaign, a constant bombardment
of letter boxes/ phones/ computers with old comics, p/copies of old comics,
requests, suggestions and crazed demands. But it got Jason
Hyde in there, and Adam Eterno (ssshhh!)
and I threw in a coupla new dolls for Penny.
I was also mad enough to suggest the Janus
Stark comic-within-a-comic, which was a pain to
draw, but a rewarding pain. and Cursitor Doom as
'ringleader' was something I put in a pipe-dream pitch I'd written myself
(when I was convinced I could buy the rights up to the Fleetway/IPC characters)
which I sent to Alan, so maybe that was the one good idea that got used.
DOWNTHETUBES: How did you approach so many famous characters
for a new audience?
I was very nervous about drawing Albion at first, because I knew we'd be playing with precious toys, y'know -- powerful iconic characters which were sacred to many (including myself), but I decided to stick with the motto, 'If it ain't broke...'. Obviously, I was gonna upset some folk with the way I actually draw (other than the 'flashback' scenes I did in an imitation old style), but I tried my damnedest to capture the humour and general anarchic energy that English comics used to have. and if you look at it, other than the characters getting older and battered, they're still the same classic achetypes.
DOWNTHETUBES: Of the major characters, were there any you particularly
enjoyed bringing back to comics life?
Shane: Fred, Captain Hurricane and Feendish, hands down, gave me the most pleasure to draw, and later on, I grew especially fond of the grizzled features of Charlie
Peace. Drawing pretty isn't much fun.
DOWNTHETUBES: My apologies for asking this, but it's something several have
wondered: what caused the delays on the Albion schedule?
Shane: Bad planning and bad luck. No sooner had I sat down to draw the first issue than I got a call to tell me to stop, until the DC legal department had sorted out 'copyright issues'. I didn't wanna starve, so I took on some other work. Then i got the green light again, but I was still busy. Albion was scheduled -- but I was drawing something else. I was behind before I even began.
add to that ongoing health problems, increasingly difficult working relations, bad morale, obsessive re-drawing, and the fact I'm just not the quickest artist around, well, you've got a late book.
Partly my fault, partly not.
If Wildstorm had waited until they had two or three issues
complete, before scheduling, it would've been a different story. but the
ironic thing is, #3 was the first late issue, yet it sold out of its complete
print run -- something that [Comics International editor]
Dez Skinn didn't report.
|
A sample of Shane's stunning
pencils for Albion. Click here for a larger image |
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An inked page from
Albion #6. Click here for
a larger image |
DOWNTHETUBES: Were there any characters you slipped into the background
that you'd have liked to have seen in the main storyline, but copyright
issues prevented this?
Shane: Not really, although
we did have a great scene with Werewilf (the
schoolkid who turns into a wolfman when he stares into a mirror) which
got cut, and I would've loved to have drawn a wrestling match between
Galaxus and Mytek
the Mighty. But even if we could've, we didn't have
the room -- it was tight!
DOWNTHETUBES: If there was one character you could draw in a solo series
from the IPC library, who would it be and why?
Shane: I'd really love to do a House
of Dolmann comic, not with Penny, but her father, set back in the early 1960's with the original dolls/puppets. No post-modernist posing, no swearing or 'adult themes', just a rip-snortin absurdist romp.
DOWNTHETUBES: You added a wealth of detail and wonderful
background 'visual gags' to Albion. How
much was your input and how much was in the script?
Some of it was in the script, but a lot came out of talking over the phones or e-mails. The rest I just put in anyway to keep my 'joy-level' topped up. John and Leah aren't as black-belt nerdy about English comics, so I wanted to put my mispent youth to some use... I'm a also a sucker for comics/movies that are chocful of 'in-jokes' and referances, and Albion was a golden oppurtunity for nods and winks-a-go-go!
DOWNTHETUBES: Are you pleased with the way Albion turned out and the critical
praise it received?
Shane: Overall, I'm pretty chuffed and proud of what we did. Albion had its problems, and for John, Leah and myself it was a huge task to take on, and we all suffered from a bit of 'stage-fright'. But we did the best we could do, and I know it's cliche, but Albion was a real labour of love, and a lot of people picked up on that, and loved it right back.It wasn't another comic churned outta the sausage machine, it wasn't just fights and spandex, or bad asses in leather blowing things to shit. And for most who hated Albion, that's probably the reason why.
Neither was it Watchmen or Marvelman or some massive multi-layered, complex, dark and deconstructivist alan moore superhero epic. Nobody said it would be and for critics to base a review solely based on that comparison is totally missing the point.
Although partly a loving tribute to a bygone age and a criminally-ignored heritage, Albion has a unique agenda and character, and stands on its own.
DOWNTHETUBES: What are you working on next?
Shane: At this very moment I'm working on an updated version of The
House of Usher for the Edgar Allan Poe anthology book, Nevermore. It's 16 black and white pages, with a script adaption by Dan Whitehead, and I'm loving it!
Then I'm hoping to start on a 6-issue horror series, written by the ever-so-brilliant Robert
Tinnel.
Having said that, I am due another 'retirement'...
DOWNTHETUBES: Thanks Shane!
• Read our interview with Leah Moore and John Reppion
• Read
our interview with Andrew
Sumner
• Buy Albion from
Amazon.co.uk (Titan edition)
• Buy Albion from
Amazon.com (Wildstorm edition)
• Shane Oakley's web site: shaneoakley.blogspot.com
Shane is now selling off some of his original Albion pages
as well as some of his concept artwork for the series. E-mail Shane at essoakley@hotmail.co.uk for
a full list of items for sale and prices.
• Read
John Freeman's 2005 interview with Andrew Sumner about the Albion project on Comic World News
• In The Fifty-Pee Box
Link: http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/Albion
An Albion fan site which
includes detailed annotations of every issue,
offering background information on both script and art by Damian Gordon and
others, identifying some of the many visual references inserted into the
story for the sheer fun of it by Shane Oakley. (And not just comic references.
Look out for Jack Jones – Butcher, straight
from Dad's Army, in the TPB for example)
• Comics Should be Good offers a quick Albion primer
called " An
Unnecessary Guide to Albion"
• International Hero
A terrific guide to British comic characters
He worked as a penciller on 
