By
Paul Barnett, Creative Director, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning



Disclaimer: I don't hit
Comic-Con until late Thursday so this is written on the plane journey
as an attempt to give you something to read that has a vague 'comic'
relevance.



I had a strange dream last night as I danced with Morpheus one last
time prior to my journey to Comic-Con. It was about the English city of
Norwich and fire. My family live in England in Norwich; it’s
a fine city. Clean, quiet, charming and cozy. It’s also the
city where I have seen more buildings burning than anywhere else.

style="margin: 10px; border-collapse: collapse; float: right; width: 148px; height: 185px;"
border="1">

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/38990"> src="/image/view/38990/preview"
width="200">

Paul Barnett,
Creative Director for WAR

I watched an empty house burn down on a hill. It was an epic movie
moment, like the back lot burning they did for style="font-style: italic;">Gone with the Wind,
all licks of fire and vibrant colours, nature and the elements at their
finest, chewing into the internal human instinct, the same one that
makes you all look out of a window when a big storm hits.  I
came across a lumber yard that also went up in pungent aromatic smoke.
You smelt it before you saw it and it lingered in the air, the clothes
and - I swear - in the tarmac roads. And I did my best to offer support
when the Norwich Library burnt to the ground taking with it countless,
priceless books. They fought that fire for days before it finally
gorged itself on so many words and phrases that the fire developed pan
dimensional awareness and flew to the stars as cosmic steam, leaving
behind the carcass of the old library, picked clean, bare and naked for
all too see.



I was a little confused about dreaming about Norwich and fire, but all
was well back home so it had to be something else, something bothering
me.



So a thought hit me this morning as a tried to poke my eye out with my
breakfast spoon. Somehow it feels wrong and bad that I am flying out on
Thursday. After all surely the true believers go on Wednesday. Perhaps
my commitment is not as strong as it once was or maybe I am trying to
help make the game back at Mythic HQ.



I was troubled enough with this idea that I had to go back to memory
lane to see what I cold recall about my comic past. I discovered a few
things...



I have a disproportionate love for the style="font-style: italic;">2000AD magazine. A
weekly that ran multiple stories, all about seven pages in length and
all in black and white (well apart from the centre splash page which
was in colour and belonged to the mighty Judge Dredd. I read that comic
with a vengeance, drinking in the
bold/subversive/challenging/philosophical and crazy ideas of Mills,
Wagner and Grant and enjoying the drawing clarity / comedy / challenge
and craziness of the likes of Bolland, Gibbons, Esquerra, Kennedy,
Smith, Belardinelli, O’Neil and McMahon.



It’s where I encountered such cool thinking as Strontim Dog,
a tale about a social set of human mutant outcasts that became galaxy
wide bounty hunters; Judge Dredd with his facist/hero/social
commentary/future sight and comedy; Nemensis the Warlock, a mind
bending tale about a well, a space warlock and unbelievably cool, (if
you want to better understand Warhammer 40K you will take no harm in
reading Nemesis the Warlock); Flesh, the cleverest time travel story
about men and dinosaurs I ever encountered; and Slaine, a story that
reinvented barbarians and gave you a different look to the archetype
dominated by Conan.



From 2000AD
I sprang to a monthly called Warrior.
It was short lived, crazy, experimental, bonkers and rock and roll. style="font-style: italic;">Warrior was a love
child mega comic put together by Dez Skin and featured all you would
ever need. Young writers like Alan Moore and passionate artists like
Steve Dillon featured, European strips ran introducing me to new ways
of telling stories, new stories arrived (hello style="font-style: italic;">V for Vendetta!)
and old stories where reinvented (hello style="font-style: italic;">Miracle Man!). Gary
Leech drew the most beautiful artwork and nothing every really hit home
like the covers. Warrior
was a folly, a madness; it was travelling at the speed of light,
breaking boundaries and then crashed and burned. The fall of style="font-style: italic;">Warrior ended up
being played out in public, the letters page became riveting reading,
as first the editor and later the writers and artists started to chime
in. Warrior
was a moment, a movement, an experience, one that got better with age.
Warrior was any rock and roll super group. It was Creme. It was
glorious.



For the faithful that followed Warrior
it is was a great loss when it folded up, taking with it the half
finished stories and putting us in limbo. I mean imagine following style="font-style: italic;">V for Vendetta,
seven pages a month and then the story just stopping. No ending, no
wrap up. Nothing. Same with Miracle
Man; we got a strange, killer dimensional dog appearing
and then POOF, nothing.



It was years before those stories reappeared, years before we found out
how they ended.



And yet I look back on it and realize that Dickens was right, it was
the best and worse of times. Comics are my rock and roll, those
magazines my bands and the periods I recall fondly are the classic
albums that my rock and roll bands recorded.



I am as passionate, dedicated and vocal about them as my dad has ever
been about his Pink Floyd albums.



I also got swept up in the graphic novel thing, I mean, it started well
and at first I didn't even know it was happening. I was buying monthly
one shot comics, the musical equivalent of singles. And then along came
a concept album. Watchmen
and The style="font-style: italic;">Dark Knight Returns
are as important as Sergeant
Pepper. Concept comics, ones that would challenge and
change everything. In my small world style="font-style: italic;">The Dark Knight Returns
is the greatest comic of all time about a standard series character,
and The Watchmen is
the greatest stand alone comic ever written.



These were great. And then I got crazy, just like the sixties and the
music scene. A 'movement' happened and… you know what? It
didn't live up to the billing. Oh sure we got some great work, style="font-style: italic;">Year One, Born Again, Swamp Thing
and our own acid house period with Arkum Asylum. But between all those
greats we got a boat load of dross. I know, I ended up having shelves
of it at home. Thousands of so called graphic novels just like my dad
got fooled into buying a shed load of so called 'prog rock'.



And just like him I came to a moment. A critical moment. I had too many
comics, not enough room and needed to move on.



My solution was as follows, I decided I would create a 'time box', one
cardboard box that I would fill with things for my boy Callum. He was 3
at the time and I wanted to have a box he could open when he was 15. I
wanted the box to be full of the best, the cream of my collection. The
things that would matter. And by setting a limit of one small box I
forced my hand. I threw in the obvious, my individual issues of style="font-style: italic;">Watchmen, style="font-style: italic;">Dark Knight, my style="font-style: italic;">Elekra Lives Again.
I threw in the challenges and then I put in my curious. It's where my style="font-style: italic;">Warrior comics
ended up, though I also included the complete style="font-style: italic;"> V for Vendetta. No
need to torture him for years like I was. I bought collected stories
from 2000AD
and then sealed it up and put it in the attic. It’s still
there, waiting for him to turn 15.



The rest, the countless rest, was more of a problem. Comics were going
through this slump, the crazy times had arrived, style="font-style: italic;">Wildcats and its
ilk was clogging the channels, cover variants were destroying retail,
the speculation bubble had well and truly burst and the market was
having the hangover that the previous ten year rock and roll frenzy had
fuelled.



But I still had a kick ass collection. It was still mighty, yes some
dross was in there but I had thousands of graphic novels. So I did the
only thing I cold think of. I went for a walk. And blow me down in the
answer didn't find me.



A friend of mine had run a comics shop, he started it at the height of
the 1980's comic boom and tried hard until it imploded. He ended up
without a shop, without comics and getting a dull job. I bumped into
him in town and after talking about life and where he worked I found my
answer. I went home and bundled all my graphic novels into the back of
my red car and took three trips to drop them for him. He had talked to
his boss and got the go ahead to take my graphic novels and add them to
the new library they were about to open. The new library, sprung form
the steaming carcass of the old one was to be progressive. It would
offer DVD's, internet access and all manner of more niche books.



And as of that day it would have a section of graphic novels. All my
old ones. My books were donated to the library and thus started the
graphic novel collection. Soon after, the books were on shelves and
blow me down if they didn't prove popular. It seemed fitting to me that
they got a new lease on life, got to be recycled and re-read. 
Letting them go, allowing the removal of dust covers, not worrying
about the edges getting scuffed, being ok with a big library sticker on
the cover, watching people just drink them up. Over time the graphic
novel section swelled, new ones arrived and my collection was dwarfed
by the additions. It may not have replaced the books that got burnt, it
may not have been the stuff I sealed in my box, but that’s
ok. You see like any addict… I had duplicates. They still
got all the good stuff.



So as I recalled these memories I thought to myself, it will be okay.
Thursday is fine. I already walked a while on the road, and my boy has
a box of joy to look forward to. You just need to be tolerant that
you’re getting another blog post that’s not
actually from Comicon...yet.



(Editor's
Note: You can read all of Paul's Comic Con blogs by href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/comic-con08/war">clicking
here!)