Ireland's Comic Book Heroes
Film adaptations and a new fashion for ‘geek chic’ are pushing comics into the mainstream in a way they never were before – and Irish artists and writers are at the top of the game.
Valerie Flynn, 16 Mar 2011
Ever heard of the Green Lantern? Yeah, me neither. But by this summer, the D.C. Comics character will be a household name. So says artist Declan Shalvey.
“Comics are bigger than ever in popular culture because of the movies,” says Shalvey (29). “Green Lantern is going to be big because there’s a movie coming out.
“When I was in school, only two people I knew read comics. It’s different now because if you’re interested in something small you can go to the internet and find out about it – it’s becoming more mainstream because it’s more accessible.”
Shalvey is one of a wave of Irish artists and writers now making comics for the biggest publishers in America and Britain. He drew most of the 28 Days Later series for BOOM! Studios (a spin-off from the movie: the comics/movies crossover goes both ways). He’s also drawing issues of Thunderbolts for the biggest and most iconic comics studio of them all, Marvel. Meawhile, his Captain America and Crossbones, also for Marvel, is out next week
“This is all I wanted to do since I was a kid. I pick up a Marvel comic with my name on it and it’s really weird – I had the first issue of Thunderbolts from 1994,” he says.
For PJ Holden, a Belfast-based artist who draws for the British anthologies Judge Dredd and 2000 AD, drawing comics was also a childhood obsession.
“I have a vague memory of the first Judge Dredd magazine coming out in 1977. It was a lifelong ambition for me to draw Judge Dredd,” says Holden.
It’s a sign of the changing perception of comics that the last interview Holden did was with Northern Women (‘Northern Ireland’s premier fashion, beauty and lifestyle glossy’); he was one of the interviewees for a piece about ‘why geeks are chic’. Holden finds this hysterically funny, but is nevertheless enthusiastic about comics going mainstream – a fundamentally positive development both for the industry and for your common or garden comic-book nerd.
“When I was a kid – and I’m as old as the Troubles – the North was grim and comics seemed to be light and fluffy. You just kept your head down and did your work. I wouldn’t even have countenanced telling anyone I liked comics. There was this comic called Captain Britain, by Alan Moore. Going to an all-Catholic boys’ school, you didn’t go around saying, ‘I think Captain Britain is awesome’,” says Holden.
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