As a kid my exposure to comics mainly
involved being scared by copies of Dan Dare Annuals belonging
to my uncles and copies of 2000 AD that I picked up at a fair
in my home town. I didn't discover that American comics were being
sold in Ireland until my best friend discovered comic shops in Dublin
around 1999. One of these shops was Sub City Comics which is owned by
Rob Curley who, I didn't know this at the time, was a comic book
creator. Sub City became my weekly comic shop and I would spend many
a weekday, and the odd Saturday, browsing the racks and getting
caught on what I had been missing all my life. On one of these days,
I spotted an issue of a comic called Freak Show. (I remember
it was issue three as it had the villain called the Director on it).
I decided to pick up the other issues and give it a go.
The book was set in the 1950s and
centred around detective Jack Nixon, actress Susan White, Elizabeth
Grange and blue blood Miles Weishaupt. In the first issue, Jack
investigates the murder of a famous film director. Suspicion is cast
on Susan as there are photographs of someone who looks like her with
him. Susan and Jack have a history and she is none too pleased to
have him back in her life especially since she's under investigation.
The killer is eventually revealed to be a lover of Jack's who is
obsessed with Susan. They manage to stop him but Jack being outed
leads to his leaving the police. The next story introduces us to
Elizabeth and Miles. Miles gives Elizabeth a lift to an acting
audition where she ends up getting used in the machinations of the
villain known as the Director. He attacks the Oscars using her image
which causes them to cross paths with Jack and Susan, who have
decided to investigate the events after they read about them in the
newspaper. Together they foil his plans and end up as a sort of
Supernatural Detective Agency. Each issue they run into a strange
villain in a series that is a mixture of Ed Wood and LA Confidential.
I followed the adventures of Jack, Susan and co for the rest of the
books run. Reading the first few issues, I noticed the name Robert
Curley on the credits. I finally knew someone who actually creates
these things! Along the way, I was also introduced to artists who
would go on to make names for themselves in the US: Stephen Thompson,
Stephen Mooney, Declan Shalvey and Will Sliney (on another Atomic
Diner title called Atomic Rocket Group) and discovered
that more Irish people were making comics. This led me to discover
books by people like Bob Byrne (Mister Amperduke), Alan Nolan
(Sancho) and Gerry Hunt (In Dublin City), who had been
making them for many years.
After ending his run on Freak Show,
and taking a break from producing books, Rob came back with a
vengeance. Something had changed though. The new books had moved to
an Irish focus. He started by introducing an Irish super-team called
The League of Volunteers. Set in the 1940s, the group includes
journalist The Glimmerman, ex soldier The Archer,
vampire hunter Blood Rose and, from Ireland's ancient past,
The Druid. The group
comes together to foil a Nazi resurrection of an ancient evil called
Bocanah. The series introduces dozens of characters including
Fianna members, secret agents, scientists and hints of past leagues
that included prominent figures from Irish history. The series has
also spun a variety of mini-series and one shots including The
Black Scorpion, The Crimson Blade (a member of The 1795
League) and the upcoming Glimmerman. He has also added some
non-super hero titles (although I think a lot of the League
books don't strictly fall into the super hero genre). First, he
brought us an Irish demon hunter from 1899 called Róisín Dubh.
He then added a personal
favourite called Jennifer Wilde. It
is an intriguing story about a girl name Jennifer who is trying to
find out about her father's past while being accompanied by the ghost
of Oscar Wilde.
Recently, he added Noe: The Savage Boy which
is about a village in Cork in 1631 that gets kidnapped by pirates.
As with Freak Show and his other
earlier books, Rob has introduced us to some terrific artists
including Barry Keegan, Stephen Byrne and Stephen Downey. One thing
has changed this time though, Rob has taken on other writers to work
on these series. Maura McHugh co-plots and scripts Jennifer Wilde
and writes Róisín Dubh and Alan Nolan is doing some upcoming
issues of the League and there are hints of more to come. I'm
enjoying watching this universe as it seems to be a metaphor for
Irish comics as it has grown in leaps and bounds over the past couple
of years.
*****
Follow Rob Curley
Website: http://www.atomicdiner.com/
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