In this episode we talk about our experiences with Tomb Raider after both of us finishing the game. We also talk about our early impressions of Gears of War : Judgement and Bioshock Infinite and we finish up with our gaming plans for the next couple of weeks.

Hosts:
Tony
Graham

Segments:
Tomb Raider (00:25 – 19:03)
Gears of War : Judgement (19:03-29:19)
Bioshock Infinite (29:19-40:02)
Gaming plans and wrap up (40:02 – 47:16)

Can’t See Player?

As we mentioned during the video and in our latest podcast, the death/fail cut scenes are brutal

In this episode we cover Tomb Raider, the dismal release of Sim City, the PS4 announcement and the large pile of games still to be released in March.

Hosts:
Tony
Graham

Segments:
Tomb Raider (00:53 – 11:35)
Sim City (11:35-23:15)
PS4 (23:15-35:05)
March Games and Wrap up (35:05 – 39:05)

Can’t See Player?

To this end here is the first (we hope) in a series of podcasts centred around gaming. This is Alphanerd’s Game of the Year for 2012. Tony and myself sit down and discuss what we played
in 2012.

We each name a winner in several categories plus talk about what we hope to achieve in 2012. Below is a list of our winners for a more detailed discussion check at the podcast below.

Can’t See Player?

Game of 2012 not released in 2012:
Graham – Mass Effect 2
Tony – Uncharted 3

Game of 2012 that you wanted to play but never started:
Graham – Hotline Miami
Tony – Gotham City Imposters

Game of 2012 that you finished:
Graham – Far Cry 3
Tony – Dishonoured

Game of 2012 that you didn’t finish:
Graham – Borderlands 2
Tony – Max Payne 3

Game of 2012 that you said you’d never play:
Graham – Far Cry 3
Tony – X-Com : Enemy Unknown

Game of 2012 that surprised you the most:
Graham – X-Com : Enemy Unknown
Tony – Spec Ops : The Line

Game of 2012 that disappointed you the most:
Graham – Diablo III
Tony – Mass Effect 3

Favourite Character:
Graham – Vass (Far Cry 3)
Tony – Vass (Far Cry 3)
Series Achievement Award : Garrus (Mass Effect)

Most memorable gameplay scene:
Graham – Kick the Hornets Nest (Far Cry 3)

Tony – The masquerade ball, kidnapping the duchess (Dishonoured)

Most memorable cut-scene:
Graham – Vass Introduction (Far Cry 3)
Tony – Final Scene (Spec Ops : The Line)

Most memorable song in game or soundtrack for a game:
Graham – Make it Bun Dem by Skrillex & Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley (Far Cry 3)
Tony – Spec Ops : The Line

Now looking forward to 2013:
Most anticipated games of 2013
Graham:
Tomb Raider
Sim City
Splinter Cell : Conviction
Double Fine Adventure
Watchdogs

Tony:
Crysis 3
Metal Gear Rising : Revengeance
Tomb Raider
BioShock Infinite
Injustice : Gods Among Us
The Last of Us

Gaming Resolution for 2013:
Graham:
Play more games made by indie as I believe that is where a lot of innovation and risk taking in taking place. To play more games that I would normally steer clear off.

Tony:
Not buy as many games this year to get my ‘pile of shame’ down before the release of Next Gen consoles from Microsoft and Sony.

Dave Dorman at San Diego Comic Con 2011

One of the hardest working commercial artists in the business, synonymous with cover art for Star Wars and Indiana Jones, amongst many other subjects and known for more than 20 years for his photo-realistic style of oil painting, we talk to Dave Dorman. Join us in a time twisting journey of his life and work, where we discover who the man is behind some of the most iconic pieces of popular culture artwork that spans Movies, TV shows, Comic Books and Roleplaying games today. We found him very generous with his time and his answers so please listen to this amazing interview.

Captain Nemo by Dave Dorman

Can’t See Player?

Check out Dave Dormans Blog here

Alphanerd interview  with Dave Dorman transcript below

Alphanerd Hosts: Tony
and Joe

Tony:

Our guest today is one of the most popular cover artists in
the world and that is not an exaggeration. This self-taught illustrator got his
big break back in 1983 when his art work first appeared on the cover of Heavy
Metal Magazine. Reeling off some of the properties that he has created illustrations
for is like a check list of everything that’s cool in nerd culture. Indiana
Jones, Batman, Superman, Aliens, Predator and more Star Wars related paintings
then you can shake a proverbial stick at. In fact, Star Wars creator George
Lucas is such a fan of his work, he’s purchased more than 80 original oil
paintings, many of which are displayed on site at Sky Walker Ranch. Gaming wise
he is freelance for TSR producing cover art for Dungeons and Dragons books such
as Gargoyle and the original Draconomicon amongst others. He has produced art
work for the role playing games such as Shadow Run, Torg, Champions, Rifts,
along with some of the Star Wars role playing games supplements in the 1990s.
Also Harry Potter, Trading Towns and Magic : The Gathering. Today’s interviewee
is also renowned for his toy design work for GI Joe, Micronauts and the action
figures for Alien and as if he wasn’t busy enough, last year he launched the
Podcast ‘Wednesday is Comic Book Day’ with his wife Denise. In 2010, he won the
prestigious Inkpot Award at San Diego Comic Con where he was a featured guest
that year. During that show he also launched his new career retrospective book
Rolling Thunder: The Art of Dave Dorman. Pretty much as you guessed it, he is
of course surprise, surprise Dave Dorman. Welcome to Alpha Nerd Dave.

Dave:

Thank you very much I am happy to be here and boy somebody
did there research on that list.

Tony:

You are a prolific man, like I said it’s an amazing
list.  The work that you have produced
over the years it’s just phenomenal.

Dave:

Well I’ve been very lucky to have been involved in such fun
projects over the course of my career and it certainly keeps me feeling young
and invigorated and wanting to continue to create this beautiful art for
everybody.

Tony:

We are very happy that you are doing just that.

Joe:

Very appreciative.

Tony:

Look Dave I will just fire a few nerdy questions at you first
just to break the ice.

Dave:

OK.

Tony:

What’s your first nerdy memory?

Dave:

Jeez, you know it’s probably just reading comics with my
brother. We were children of a military family. My Dad was in the Airforce so
we travelled around quite a bit when I was younger and one of the things about
that is you don’t really get to keep a whole lot of personal effects because
the military is moving you and they don’t like to have giant moving trucks,
they like to keep the weight limits low, and so for personal effects some of
the strong memories are collecting comics with other kids at the military bases
that we were stationed at and so reading comics that was very early in my life
and that has continued to this day.

Tony:

More you more a Marvel or DC fan, which took your fancy?

Dave:

Actually I was a Marvelite. Back in those days they called
them, Marvel zombies now, but I was a Marvelite. I was actually a member of the
Merry Marvel Marching Society back in the 60sand a member of FOOM (Friends Of ‘Ol Marvel), if people remember that in the late 70s. I was reading all the great Ditko
Spider Man and Kirby Fantastic Four, Avengers and.Tales to Astonish and you
know those books from the mid 60s to early 70s and then once we started trading
some DC books I started reading Batman and such but probably for the first 5 or
6 years of my comic reading career it was just strictly Marvel.

Tony:

Yeah I was very much the same way, with Marvel at least in
the early days, the art was just so ahead of DC’s work, but then as you get
older the story lines become more appealing and I drifted to DC. You may of
well have been the same.

Dave:

Yeah you know basically broadening the perspective I was
still reading Marvel books but I introduced myself to some of the DC books, but
I did find the Marvel books more exciting. I think that the art was much more
dynamic, you know Kirby was just doing some wonderful work back in those days. Jim
Steranko really opened my eyes to design in comics and John B Summer was doing
some first rate comics back in those days and for Marvel really had it going
for about 15 years and beautiful books.

Tony:

Absolutely. When you were growing up Dave did you have a
favourite toy or TV show?

Dave:

Well there was a couple of things back in the late 60s.
There was a little sort of action figure if you could call it that, it was a
wire rubber figure. A guy called Major Matt Mason. I just thought that was the
coolest thing, even cooler than my 12” GI Joe. I just thought that the Major Matt
Mason stuff was very cool and that was something that I remember distinctly,
really enjoying and playing with and wanting to pick up the new figures and the
new toys to go with it and the little space walker thing that rolled around on
the floor and there was a like set up space station. That was very cool and
yeah it’s unfortunate that doesn’t make a resurgence because I would love to do
some Major Matt Mason paintings right now. Like a lot of kids you know from my
generation I had a whole bunch of 12” GI Joes, I liked to go to the store and
like get a new package uniforms that they were coming out with so that I could
pick something up and you know re-uniform my figure and you know I was a big
game player so I remember playing like Risk and Stratego and Chess obviously, a
good strategy game, so I was a big table game player too back when I was
younger. Not so much now that we are older unfortunately, but I really love
that. One of my favourite game companies, let me walk down stairs real quick
because I’ve got one on the shelf I brought on EBay a couple of years back
because I remembered it so distinctly. Just a second.

Tony:

Actually Dave, just while you are on the move, I know
you’re a fan of board games  and earlier
you said you illustrated a lot for Role-Playing Games, were you ever tempted to
play Role-Playing Games in the past?

Dave:

Oh well you know my gaming interest never really translated
to the fantasy role playing games because I was more board oriented and I am
down here, I’m looking at the games now. It was Milton Bradley put out a series
of American Heritage games, one of them was called Dog Fight a World War I
board game, they also did a couple of Seafaring games, and those were just
really fun because you know there was some history involved and they had these
really cool small airplanes stuff that you could put on the board. So as a kid
that was really fun. But you know as I grew up my interest turned to my art and
my craft and I drifted out of my social group that we use to play games with. I
sort of just stopped playing games for a while, board games, and when the
opportunity came to work with Dungeons and Dragons, I wasn’t really familiar with
the role playing game, because I never had done any role playing, but you know
the art was what they were looking for and so I was doing Science Fiction
fantasy art work at the time and I had that in my portfolio and they liked what
they saw. So they hired me to work on some of the modules and such back in I
guess the mid to late 80s but I never really got into the role playing gaming,
it was just something that really didn’t tweak me at all, but you know it’s
certainly a part of the business that I’ve done a lot of work for and you know
I appreciate the people who play it because it’s very complicated certainly and
I’ve tried to learn how to play Magic: The Gathering at 2 or 3 tournaments that
I was invited to as an artist guest, but you know I guess that my enjoyment
comes out of seeing the players on the board being able to look at like a
battle field and just be able to anticipate moves that the other player would
make rather than you know put the card down and try to read it and figure out
powers and strengths and weaknesses and such from that, so you know it’s an
avenue of gaming that I just didn’t enjoy that much so I’ve never really
followed it, but I love doing the art work, I really do, it opens my
imagination which is what every job should be.

Tony:

Absolutely. Now days Dave do you have a favourite gadget
around home or with the things you are working with?

Dave:

Oh a gadget. Well if you call an IPhone a gadget. You know
I really don’t have gadgets per se I paint very traditionally so you know I use
materials that people have been using for hundreds of years. I do use the
computer in my work I have a computer station right by my drawing table so I
can pull up reference on the computer screen rather than having to print out
photographs or such, so that’s sort of a green deal that I’m saving some trees
that way, but I don’t use the computer to create work I just use it as a tool
to help me along with reference material. You know yeah I’m not really that
gadget oriented.The IPhone I use I get a lot of apps on it so I can play
around, and it’s really playing I don’t use it for anything serious other than
answering the phone and telling people I’m busy.

Tony:

Well that’s not a bad thing in itself at all. Joe appears
to have dropped off a bit. I’ll continue questions and we will throw to Joe
when he gets back onboard.

Dave:

OK.

Tony:

Dave you describe yourself as a self taught illustrator.
What have you learn’t that can only be learn’t from experience and not from a
course, in your mind?

Dave:

Well it’s not so much what can be learn’t. Let me see how
to phrase this. It’s what somebody whose teaching you can’t teach you. A
teacher, a mentor, someone of that nature will usually sort of guide you into
areas they are comfortable with to show you how to work and how to paint or how
to draw a certain way, but because I am pretty much self taught, I didn’t have
somebody looking over my shoulder saying you can do it that way but you can’t
do it this way, so I was able to do things by myself that if someone was
looking over my shoulder they would say no no no that’s not the way you do it,
this is the way you do it. So I would do it the wrong way and through the
obvious trial and error, I’d be able to work through what I was trying to get
and be able to achieve that technique or that part of my style in a very
unusual way because I wasn’t being taught I was working it through myself.

Tony:

There is a lot to be said for doing that, for being a trail
blazer for discovering things for yourself, absolutely.

Dave:

Well it is and I think that most good artists usually do
that even if they’ve gone through schooling and have had teachers in classes
teaching them those are normal techniques, you know a good artist will reach
beyond that and try to find the unusual things that makes the style their own
and those that don’t usually you are able to tell that they sort of aped
somebody else’s style.

Tony:

Oh yeah absolutely, the fantasy genre is almost like a rite
of passage. There have been so many people influenced from guys like Frazetta
and yourself now days.

Dave:

Oh sure you know I started my painting learning through
copying Frazetta’s work. I mean I have literally had his art book up in front
of me on my drawing table and I would try to capture the colour and the
lighting and the opacity and transparency of his painting myself as I was
painting on my canvas and so once again it was trial and error trying to
reproduce what he was doing, and then as my perspective broadened in art I was
able to incorporate more and more artists into my teaching and so once I was
able to learn how to manipulate the paint as I wanted as I was comfortable,
then I would use the techniques that I learnt to start working on my own
drawings and adding that and building my own way of working. So there is
nothing wrong with copying other artists or having someone teach you, it’s you
take that next step and incorporate that into your own direction and your
style.

Tony:

As I said right off the top you have produced some amazing
amount of work. Do you keep a count of how many paintings you have actually
done and so forth, even a rough estimate?

Dave:

Well, no I have never taken a count of how many I’ve done,
I could probably do that because I have a record of almost everything that I’ve
done, but in putting the Rolling Thunder book together it just really never hit
me how much work that I have done in the 30 years that I’ve been working
professionally. Next year 2012 will be my 30^th year as a
professional. I look back on it and think wow, that’s really something. But you
know I was putting the Rolling Thunder book together and my wife and I were sitting
here in the basement and we were going through this and I recognised, wow. You
know this book may represent only ¼ or 1/5 of the art work that I have done and
I mean there is probably 800 pieces in the book.

Rolling Thunder The Art of Dave Dorman Cover

It’s a massive volume and it’s a great looking book. I was
lucky enough, Joe was over at San Diego Comic Con this year and this is where
he met you and he got you do a little sketch for me, mate its gorgeous, great
book.

Dave:

Thank you.

Joe:

Absolutely beautiful.

Tony:

And Dave it’s a big book it over 300 pages or so, yeah?

Dave:

Yeah it’s 300, I’ve got a copy of it here. It weighs 5
pounds. I know that for a fact. Yeah I don’t bring a whole lot of them to the
show with me because I don’t want to hurt my back. Yeah, 326 pages and 5 pounds
of art and a good chunk of my life.

Tony:

Obviously over the years you have produced art based on a
lot of characters, there is Indiana Jones, Batman, Superman, but you are most
well known for your work in Star Wars. What attracts you to the Star Wars
universe? What keeps you coming back?

Star Wars The Art of Dave Dorman Book Cover

Dave:

Well you know I have been a Star Wars fan even before the
movie came out. If I’m a geek at anything I’m a movie geek and so when I was
much younger I had subscriptions to movie magazines and obviously Starlog and
you know I would buy the magazines of that nature and so in a magazine called
Cinefantastique that was published here in America and they did some really
good in-depth articles on various types of horror, fantasy and science fiction
films, and about a year and a half before Star Wars came out they did this
blurb in the back pages about this film that George Lucas was making that was a
space opera and it had a whole bunch of special effects guys that I was
familiar with because of being a fan of films and stuff, I thought this sounds
really interesting and they would occasionally put you know more blurbs in the
magazine talking about actors that were in it and talking a little more about
what it is. Then about I guess 6 or 8 months before the movie came out the
novelisation of the film was released here in the States and so immediately I
knew what it was when I saw it on the stands and so I picked it up and read it
through and when I got done with the book I said to myself you know if they can
capture ½ of what the excitement of this book is then they will have an amazing
film and so you know come May of 1977, I was in college at the time, and I took
the day off, I believe it was a Thursday if I’m not mistaken, and I drove 2 ½
hours to the middle of Washington DC where it was the only theatre that was
opening the movie that day and stood in line and saw the first showing of the
original Star Wars and I was just blown away, it was amazing. And that was a
really life changing thing for me because it not only affected the way that I
looked at movies it really affected the way that I looked at my art as well and
I started incorporating certain elements, and it’s really hard to describe what
I was doing within my art at this time, but I could see the Star Wars influence
in just the adventure and the visual aspects of the film and you know I did
some paintings for myself, some character pieces and some things, I was still
young at my craft at that time, but it did come into my studio. So I did some
things over the years. I did some samples, I tried to get some cover work with
Marvel because they were doing the Star Wars comic book, but you know I wasn’t
really an established artist at the time and you know my career moved on and I
got to be doing some other stuff and then I started working with Dark Horse
about 1987 or 88 I guess when they were just doing Independent Comics they were
doing Mr Monster, Trekker and you know they were still a very young company and
I had a lot of friends working with them. So I got involved with them and come
1989 I hear that they are doing Indiana Jones and I thought that would be real
fun, so I did actually have a sample of an Indiana Jones piece in my portfolio
and I showed it to them and they liked it, and so they sent it on to Lucasfilm
and so they approved me as the cover artist for Indiana Jones and the Fate of
Atlantis mini series.

Dave Dorman's Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis Cover

That actually got very good critical reviews and the fans
loved my art and I was really happy about that because Indiana Jones is very
exciting for me because, you know Star Wars is a really big universal, galaxy
full of characters and you have a lot of heroes and a lot of villains and there
fun to do, but Indiana Jones is the icon of adventure and for me to be able to
do the Indiana Jones covers, being such a big fan of those movies, is very
exciting, so the fan reaction was very wonderful, very invigorating for me.
Then I hear the Dark Horse is negotiating for the Star Wars license to reboot
Star Wars into comics and I thought, you know I really love Star Wars, I will
see if I can throw my hat into the ring on this one and Cam Kennedy, who did
the art work for the Interiors, was scheduled to do the covers but when I sort
of tossed my hat into the ring, Cam basically said that I could do a better
painting on the cover than he could, which made me feel sort of weird because I
love his stuff and I think he could of done some great stuff, but he basically
stepped aside and said, you know Dave can do the covers, and so Dark Horse was
happy with that and obviously Lucasfilm who had approved all of the Indiana
Jones stuff, was happy to have me on board as well for the covers for what
eventually was the Dark Empire series. And you know I just sort of was at the
right place at the right time and in my career had the style that they were
looking for to launch the relaunch of the Star Wars comics and so you know at
that point I was just stunned that something that had influenced my life very early
on in my career, I was now contributing to reinvigorating and rebuilding for a
whole new generation of kids and readers and I was amazed then in 1989 that I
was doing it, and I’m still amazed more than 20 years later that I’ve continued
to do it and produce more than 200 or 300 pieces of art work for Lucasfilm and
Star Wars.

Joe:

That is fantastic.

Dave:

So you know it’s a kids dream and you know I’m still a kid
and I’m still dreaming and I’m very happy.

Tony:

We should make a point of welcoming Joe back.

Joe:

Hi, hi.

Dave:

Yeah welcome back.

Joe:

Thank you, thank you.Yeah I’ve got a question. Dave you are synonymous with your
work in photo realistic painting of fantasy icons for example Star Wars, is
there a painting that you are completely happy with and is there one that you
just can’t get no matter how many times you have tried your hand at it?

Dave:

You know I have done a number of paintings that I am very,
very happy with and I try to do my best with every single piece that comes
through the studio, but there are some that really touch me a little bit more
because of personal reasons or something that I was able to achieve technically
that I’ve never been able to do before and one of recent memory would be a piece
that I did for a Star Wars Celebration IV which is called Lord Vaders
Persuasion of the Bla Bla Bla, I can’t remember the whole title, anyway it’s
this big panoramic shot of Darth Vader in a battle field setting and he is
surrounded by Imperial Guards and outside of that he is surrounded by Sand
Troopers, Storm Troopers, Scout Troopers, Walkers, just a whole big sort of
blasting battle field scene and for me I had never painted something that vast
in scope and my excitement of Star Wars and my wanting to show Darth Vader in
all his glory leading the troops in battle, just carried me through a very
complicated piece and it just turned out beautiful, I was very happy with it
and everyone who has seen the piece has just been really amazed by the piece
and you know I dedicated it to the 501st group which is the costuming group
that dresses up like the Storm Troopers, Imperial people. I’m an honorary
member and I am very proud of, with them, and you know that particular piece
that is something that is very close to my heart and to me is a pinnacle in my
career.

Lord Vader's Persuasion of the Outer Rim Worlds to Join the Empire By Dave Dorman

Joe:

It is a masterful piece. I’ve got it in front of me, it’s
so vast in scope and it really does invoke another aspect of the Star Wars
mythology that you know doesn’t always come across in movies but you know
exists.

Dave:

Right and that’s one of the things that I wanted to do and
I am sure it was very hard for George Lucas not to do that is show Darth Vader
commanding the troops because he is such an imposing figure, but I think that
budgetary reasons probably prohibited him from doing that in the films and
there was probably just wasn’t a proper time within the scope of the films for
him to insert a thing like that, but you know I wanted to do it because I had a
lot of people ask if I could and you know I said ‘Yes I can’, and I just put
all my energy into it and I think that it really shows in the final piece.

Joe:

Sure does, sure does.

Tony:

Oh mate just a striking, striking image and Dave as you
said that was produced for the Star Wars Celebration IV. It was a limited run, yeah?

Dave:

That’s correct. It was limited to 250 copies. It did sell
out at the show and as most of the rest of my celebration prints because of the
limited numbers that’s available, they do sell out at the shows and
unfortunately for fans who aren’t able to go to the celebration shows there is
not much I can do about that, but I am able to reproduce them in the books and
so that’s one of the reasons why I did go ahead and add that to the Rolling
Thunder book.

Tony:

Dave do you think there will be an opportunity in the
future to reproduce that print as a larger print run?

Dave:

You know I have been thinking about the possibility of
approaching Lucas Film in doing a portfolio of the Celebration pieces, because
we are coming up with Celebration 6 next summer, you know I’ll have 5 Celebration
prints that were limited in production for the shows and I have had a lot of
people ask me if they would be available in a different format. So it’s
something I am thinking about but I don’t have any real news about that. If I
get something, I just direct people to the blog and they can get the news from
the internet on that.

Tony:

That would be fantastic. One of my fondest possessions from
Star Wars is the Ralph McQuarrie portfolios of the original trilogy and I mean your
pieces  for Star Wars Celebration presented
that way would be fantastic.

Dave:

Yeah, Ralph is definitely the grandfather of Star Wars and
he did some beautiful work and that established the direction that you know
most of us artists that have worked on Star Wars strive to meet. He is a great
artist.

Tony:

Absolutely. Just staying on Star Wars, how does it feel to
have your Star Wars art so well liked by George Lucas, have you been to Skywalker
Ranch?

Skywalker Ranch Main House by Mike McCune from Wikipedia

Dave:

Yeah I have met George a couple of times and we have
spoken. I tried to gear the direction of the conversation to movies but I
relegate to him the direction that we go in and it’s always art. You know he is
just a really knowledgeable kind of fella, he is very shy but he is very
interesting to talk with and a couple of times that we have had chances to take
some time and talk, we have talked art work and I feel very grateful that he
has such an interest in my work because he is almost a scholar in illustrators
and illustration, he knows and owns art work from the early 20s, N.C Wyeth and J.
C. Leyendecker and Dean Cornwell and these guys who I think are some of the
greatest artists in history, he owns those artworks from those artists and yet
he still has an interest in what’s being done in today’s illustration system
and so you know for him to have an interest personally in the work that I’m
doing, I think it not only shows that obviously if Star Wars, a property that
he created, but you know it’s an interest in the art itself as well and for me
it’s very gratifying to know that the work that I’m doing for his property is
something that he finds enough pleasure from that he’s interested in having to
add it to his collection at Sky Walker Ranch.
So you know I continue to do Star Wars art work, he doesn’t buy
everything, but the pieces that he does buy are usually top notch pieces that
are directly related to the original films rather than some of the secondary
expanded universe stuff.

Tony:

Dave is there a piece that you have sold to George that you
sort of regretted and wish you had held on to?

Dave:

Yeah, the Lord Vaders persuasion piece, the Celebration
piece, he brought that right away, so that’s hanging up there. A couple of
pieces, a Boba Fett piece that I did for Dark Empire the first series, I did
the second series I believe it’s sort of a portrait of Boba Fett shooting his
gun, yeah that’s pretty iconic, that was one of the pieces that was hanging in
the ranch when I went there, I was visiting so that was pretty cool to see.
Yeah you know I have done a lot of really cool stuff for Star Wars and
certainly I would love to still have them but the reality of life is you need
to put food on the table and clothes on your back and so I know that the pieces
are in a good home and I know that they’ll be pulled out for gallery showings
and whatever else that Lucasfilm needs them. It’s better for them to have the
art work and have access to it and bring it out to the people who want to see
it and so I continue to create more and I’m very happy with that.

Joe:

That’s fair enough. Dave you have won many awards for your art work and if I
say there would be one you could consider most prestigious, which one would
that be and why?

Dave:

Well you know in the course of my career there is probably
2 really. One would be the Eisner award that I won for the Aliens: Tribes
Illustrated Novel that Steve Bissette wrote. I did 25 paintings for that and
it’s a project that was close to my heart because I tried to make it as close
to the old like Scribners book publishers that they did the N.C.Wyeth books and
you know the beautiful King Arthur and Treasure Island and such, and I wanted
to do that but with a modern project and so Dark Horse gave the green light on
it so I was very excited about it, I designed the book, I did the 25 paintings,
Steve wrote a great story for me to work with and Dark Horse Publishing
packaged it. It’s just a beautiful book and you know when I won the Eisner
award for that, that was judged by my peers in the business, people who I had
admired their work and they said that this was the best graphic novel of the
year so.

The wraparound cover to the illustrated novel Aliens: Tribes by Dave Dorman for Dark Horse

Joe:

It must be a fantastic feeling to know that all your
colleagues..

Dave:

Yeah, it was very cool and I know that my fans loved it
because they still bring it up to me today you know at conventions to have me
sign the books and do little drawings and such, but yeah I still see those
books regularly and I’m glad to know that it made such a mark and especially
for me winning the award it was something that I was very proud of, and then
last year when I was awarded the Inkpot for a lifetime achievement in the comics
field. That was something that was very unexpected and you know once again it’s
given out of love of the craft by people who are in the business and I love
what I do, to be honoured that way certainly is the greatest award that I could
of gotten in this business and it shows that my artistic life wasn’t wasted.

Inkpot Award from Comic Con

Joe:

It absolutely wasn’t, no way.

Dave:

Yeah so it’s sitting on the fire place mantle and I look at
it and I’m very grateful that I have been gifted with this talent and able to
express it so that so many people can enjoy it.

Joe:

Fantastic, fantastic. You certainly mix up your mediums in
your art from acrylic to oil and digital and I refer to the cover art for the
King Kong No. 3. What medium do you get most satisfaction from in your art work?

King Kong cover for Dark Horse Comics Issue #3 By Dave Dorman

Dave:

Well you know I taught myself how to paint in oils which
everybody said oh that’s really hard you shouldn’t do that and I just well you
know that’s what I did. That comes from teaching myself. I am much more
comfortable in oils than in anything else and I think that leads to one of the
biggest and most odd things about my technique is that for about 20 years I
painted primarily in oils and that was it and then about 10 years ago I started
experimenting with acrylics and some other mediums within the art to sort of
amplify or accentuate the imagery that I was painting and so I started painting
in acrylic but I started using acrylic as more of a highlight and a definer so
to speak on the paintings and I was doing that on top of the oils because I found
that I couldn’t control large areas of acrylic paint like I could control large
areas of oil, so what I started to do was adapt my oil technique so that I
could paint very thin but keep the image and the textures like I wanted and
that way there would be some tooth coming through the board, coming through the
oil paint and enough tooth there that the acrylic could hold on to. There
wasn’t that sort of barrier  or waterproofed
area that most people think of when you paint heavily in oils, there is nothing
for an acrylic that is water based to adhere to, but because I’ve always
painted thin in oils so when I started painting acrylics on top of that, I was
able to achieve the looks that I wanted to and be able to move very quickly
because the acrylics dry faster than oils and so that’s an unusual technique
because traditionally illustrators paint the acrylic first as the underpainting
and then come on with the oils on top. And so when people hear that I do it the
reverse way they say well you can’t do that and then I say well here is the
painting that proves it that you love so much.

Joe:

These are some of the things that you being self taught
that you experiment and try different things and you learn things along the way
that you know may not be taught as gospel in school, in art school, or whatever
but you learn this works for me and it obviously shows.

Dave:

Yeah that’s right, I mean in the end as an artist and
specially as a commercial artist, it’s the end product that counts, it doesn’t
matter how you got there and so you know I can do whatever I want on the
painting as long as the image comes up as I want them as my client expected. So
yeah I started painting acrylic on top of the oils and it’s helped me define
some imagery a little bit more vibrantly than I could if I was just dealing in
oils and so my style has changed a little bit from what it was when I was doing
just completely oil painting to this sort of combination of oils and acrylic
and then I add some colour pencil on top of it and you know some magic marker
and there are things that I have learnt from other illustrators like Drew
Struzan who has a very distinct illustration style and I have sort of adapted a
little bit of that technique to my painting style to add a little bit of flair
to it and so yeah a piece like the King Kong, that’s probably you know maybe
60% oil as the under painting and then the detail is acrylic on top and then
the digital part is the search lights that are in the back. I was going to put
those in by painting them in but I wanted something a little bit more fluid and
transparent than I could get quick. I mean I could of done it if I had had
enough time but you know deadlines are what they are and so I scanned the
artwork without the search lights and just brought it into Photoshop and did
sort of some bands of white transparent light and finished up the piece that
way.

Joe:

It’s very effective too, very effective, very impressed,
that’s all I’ve got to say.

Dave:

You know the original doesn’t have the search lights on it
and I keep looking at and saying you know I really need to finish this piece,
to me it looks unfinished.

Tony:

I guess it’s like Lucas going back to Star Wars, tinkering
and even Frazetta, Frazetta went back to a lot of his earlier pieces and
touched those up to fix things that just bugged him.

Dave:

Sure, I mean I’ve looked at some of the older pieces that
I’ve done and say that I would love to get in there and change it and play with
it a little bit, but you know as a commercial artist I look at my schedule and
say, no I don’t have time for that, I’ve got this other painting that I have to
do so maybe when I retire or something I will have time to play with it. But I
love to paint, so I love to create and even though I look at something, you
know I did it at the time and at the time it was OK and do I need to change it,
no, could I change it, yes, but will I change it, probably not, I’ll probably
prefer to spend the time painting a new piece rather than going back to my old
stuff.

Tony:

How much time on average are you given to work on a piece?

Dave:

On average it takes about 5-7 days for a normal say comic
book cover or paperback cover. For a trading card we would probably be looking
at 2 days worth of work because I paint those smaller because they are going to
be reproduced so small, they don’t need to be large. So you know 5-7 days on
average. The celebration pieces which are much larger because of the widescreen
format, they take about 10 days to paint. So you know I usually schedule
between 4 and 6 paintings a month if I have the time.

Tony:

Are many commissioned pieces done?

Dave:

I did some commissoned work lately. Over my career I’ve
really haven’t because I’ve been very busy commercially, but the past 3 or 4
years I’ve really wanted to sort of move away from the commercial work and do
something a little bit more fun for myself and so I’ve opened myself up to
commission work and doing some private pieces for various fans and clients. And
those are real fun because there is not a lot of very heavy editorial hand that
I’m needing to deal with like I do with editors and art directors at publishing
companies, it’s very strict in certain ways whereas doing your commission for
something that’s not going to be reproduced, I have a little bit more freedom
with composition and colour and size and such. So the commission work gives me
a little bit more creative freedom which considering how long I’ve been doing
license stuff for everybody else, I will do a little bit more stuff for me and
that sort of gives me a break now between doing the Star Wars, I just finished
a Crimson Empire covers for Dark Horse Crimson Empire#3, so I am working on
that. I’m doing some gaming stuff now and I’m getting ready to do a Godzilla
project for IDW, so I’m still involved in doing some of the licensed stuff, but
I’ve been squeezing in some private commission stuff in between those and that
sort of re-rejuvenated my creative juices so to speak.

Crimson Empire Cover for Dark Horse Comics isuue #1 by Dave Dorman

Tony:

Speaking of commissions, I’m a massive fan of Mr Monster,
he’s one of my all-time favourites characters and you’ve obviously worked on
the character a bit with covers and such, but in Rolling Thunder there’s one
sketch in particular, a Mr Monster picture you did for a friend which is done
in water colours and ink. And man it looks fantastic, so I’d love to have a
chat with you after the interview about working out a commission if you’re
interested?

Michael T. Gilbert's Mr. Monster cover for Dark Horse issue #1 by Dave Dorman

Dave:

OK, yeah that would be fine. Mr. Monster that was a really
fun project, I think I did end up doing about 6 or 7 different paintings for
Michael Gilbert and various publishers that he was working with and that was a
really fun character and I would love to see that come back because he was just
a really goofy fun guy. Who knows, maybe this interview will spur someone on to
say hey Michael let’s do some work on Mr. Monster.

Tony:

Seriously if anyone is listening out there and you haven’t
read Mr. Monster, it is one of the most wonderfully mad capped comics ever,
delightful. The other passion that Joe and I share is that we are both massive
fans of Buckaroo Banzai and you’ve been working in the Banzai universe for a
long time. What attracts you to it Dave? Do you get any feedback from the
original creators Earl Mac Rauch or W.D.Richter?

Buckaroo Banzai and his Hong Kong Cavaliers from the 1984 movie "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!"

Dave:

OK we will take that one at a time. What attracts me to Buckaroo
Banzai, it was just a really fun movie. I’ve been a fan of Doc Savage since the
mid 60s when Bantam started to re-release the pulp novels in paperback and so
having Doc Savage and his band of 5 cohorts travelling around having adventure
and saving the world was just really fun reading for me and for James Bama

Doc Savage Cover by James Bama for Bantam Books

covers were just amazing and certainly a great influence on me artistically as
well. And so when Buckaroo Banzai came out, you know once again I had seen the
novelisation of the film in the bookstore prior to the film coming out and so I
picked up the book and read it and it was just a really fun sort of modern Doc
Savage adventure and I really enjoyed it. And then the movie came out and I
think the cast of the movie beautifully and it was just really sort of odd sort
of strange mixture of your science fiction and adventure and just goofy B movieness
and it was a lot of fun.  And I tried to
keep tabs on..I joined the, what was it?, the Banzai group, Blue Blazer Irregulars,
yeah, so I was keeping up with them for a while and then eventually the sequel
got tied up legally with all sorts of stuff and that sort of ruined having any
more real adventures for a while, and then I just recently over the past couple
of years, Moonstone got the rights to do the comic and of course me keeping my
ear to the rail heard that they were doing it, so I gave them a call and ended
up doing the first one with the red octopus coming up to grab them.I did the second one which is the Show Poster piece which is a little bit more subdued.

Buckaroo Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers limited edition fine art print for Moonstone Comics by Dave Dorman

That was for a limited edition print that Moonstone
did and eventually there is a gaming company that’s doing a role playing game
that contacted me to use that piece as the cover for the game, so I haven’t
heard if the games come out yet or not, but that will be pretty fun.  You know it’s just something that I know
they’ll never make another movie because Peter Weller is definitely too old,
well most of the characters are too old now although I’m sure they enjoyed
doing it very much and would of liked to have done another one. You know it’s
still a good, fun set of characters and my rendition of Buckaroo is from the
first movie, you know it’s Peter Weller with the red glasses and the grey suit
and the funky tie and the white guitar and go on out and having adventures and
that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to do some more covers for them at some
point, I just need to put them into my schedule. They have an open invitation
for me to send them what ever I get done.

Joe:

Fantastic, have you had much feedback from Earl Mac Rauch
and WD Richter at all?

Dave:

I haven’t had direct contact with them but I know from
Moonstone’s dealing with them that they really like what I’m doing with the
covers and the art and they were really happy that I remembered the red
glasses, because none of the artists had done that, and I pride myself in doing
my research and making sure that when I’m hired to do a licensed product that
I’m doing it within the context of whatever character or set of characters that
is there. So when I did my referencing, there he was, he had the red glasses. I
didn’t even remember that from watching the movie years ago, but that was it
and so I just picked up on little things like that and I do that for every
project. That was the one that really caught their eye and they said this guy
Dave, he knows what he is doing. Yeah I do because it is close to my heart and
I want the fans to say yes this is Buckaroo Banzai.

Joe:

Fantastic, fantastic. The table top board game, you say you
haven’t heard much back from them but the cover art was going to be the poster
with the sword on his shoulder.

Dave:

Correct.

Joe:

Where you going to modify it at all to any extent or was it
going to be basically that painting?

Dave:

No they liked that particular art and they felt that it
gave them the image that they wanted to have on the box covers, so no I haven’t
had to change the art. I’m sure they are going to slap a logo on it and all
sorts of type, but that happens in this business, I have no control over that.

Joe:

The painting itself will remain unchanged?

Dave:

That is correct. Like I said, I have got a couple of other ideas that I just
need to get time to put on the board and get off to Moonstone. There is
certainly more Buckaroo left in me to get out to the public.

Tony:

Oh look that is very good news. Now Dave the name Rolling
Thunder, is obviously the name of your book, Rolling Thunder: The Art of Dave
Dorman, it’s also the name of your company name, where does it come from?

Dave:

Well it is sort of goofy, but it’s a phrase that stuck in
my mind since the late 60s or early 70s I guess, and it’s just one of those
phrases that to me has a lot of visual dynamic to it, even though it’s just two
words to it, there is a lot underneath it. My father was in the military during
the late 60s Vietnam
war, so Rolling Thunder was attached to that as far as the name of one of the
actions happening there. There was also a famous motorcycle group here in the
States called Rolling Thunder, and Bob Dylan had one of his tours during the
late 1960s was Bob Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue. So it’s sort of been
there sort of rolling, no pun intended, in my head and then in I think like
1972 or 1973 there was a movie called Rolling Thunder with William Devane, of
Vietnam veteran coming back and some thugs killed his family so he decided to
go and exact revenge on them. That was a pretty cool film and so that sort of
solidified the name in my head and I kept it dormant over the years until I
started doing my Star Wars prints in the mid 1990s. I got a license from Lucasfilm
to present my art in print form and sell it to the public, so I did that for
about 4 or 5 years using the name Rolling Thunder Graphics. So that sort of
started to link my name to that title. I’ve used Rolling Thunder Graphics and
Rolling Thunder Press as sort of my moniker in the printing field and so I naturally
decided to grab that and use it as the title for the book.

Joe:

Fantastic, fantastic. I saw your concept painting for Young
Rockets in the Rolling Thunder book and I wonder if there has been any interest
in developing this past, future, retro, 1950s surfing and hot rods that fly
into a film. Has there been any interest because I am attracted to this piece
so much. It’s just an amazing piece.

Young Rockets by Dave Dorman

Dave:

Well you know no it sort of stalled along the way because
the script that was written for it has gone through a couple of different
changes and we are trying to balance the sort of 1950s, hot rodding style of B
film to sort of a futuristic racing thing, so it’s still very viable it’s just
getting the right script and once the right script is done, we will probably be
able to sell it fairly easily. I’ve got a couple of other paintings for that
project that are just really, really fun. It could be very fun if we actually
get it going. I can’t really say more about it than that, but that presentation
piece should pretty well give you a feel for what we are chipping for.

Joe:

It certainly does, I mean the imagery is fantastic, it just
reeks of this sort of the 1950s surf culture but then you have got these
rockets, one man rockets flying across the surf. You said you are using Frank Frazetta’s
famous ‘Don’t smoke’ comic strip ad for inspiration. I haven’t actually seen
the ad but I can see that it could be, you know.

Dave:

Well one of the panels had the girl up front with the
really nicely rounded posterior. My pose isn’t the same as Frazetta’s but the
feeling is there in that character and that sort of funky ad that he did back
in the 50s was just really sort of fun and Frazetta like, but it was all
surfing guys and girls, nothing that you would expect from knowing Frazetta now
with all the monsters and Edgar Rice Burroughs stuff and Conan stuff, this is
just a fun line drawing and dress thing that he did. That certainly was an
influence.

Joe:

It’s a lovely painting.

Dave:

Thank you.

Tony:

Dave, you’ve got a few IP’s on the go at the moment; Wasted
Lands and such, anything you are working on in particular at the moment?

Dave:

Yeah actually there is. The Wasted Lands project which
encompassed my first graphic novel called Rail which was published I think in
2001.

The cover for the graphic novel RAIL by Dave Dorman

It’s something that I wanted to sort of re-start because it’s been so
long. I ended up with some problems with IMAGE and contractually I just wanted
the license to run out so that I could get all the product back so that I could
control it again and so it’s just sort of laid dormant for a while and now I’m
talking to a couple of publishers about repackaging some things, adding some
new things and then re-starting the graphic novels so that I can complete the
story line I have. It’s a series of five graphic novels that I want to do to
tell the complete story and I was only able to do that one, so yes there will
be more Wasted Lands material coming up, hopefully as early as this coming
summer, so I just tell everyone to watch the blog and we will put information
on when we get it going. One of the other things is I have always been
fascinated since I was a kid with Captain Nemo, just like a lot of kids are.

Captain Nemo by Dave Dorman

The Captain of the Undersea Nautilus, and having adventure in the ocean and fantastic islands and all of that. I started to do a series of paintings based
on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Captain Nemo. This is a personal project for me so once again I don’t have any real editorial overlook of what I’m doing
and just creating it for myself. And initially creating three paintings as a triptych, featuring Captain Nemo, The Nautilus and The Undersea Forest that they investigate
at one point in the story and we’ll see where it goes from there. I have been
talking to a publisher about the possibility of reprinting Vern’s original text
with the illustrations that I would produce.

Joe:

That would be fantastic, wow.

Dave:

Yeah, so we will see what happens with that. This is
something that I am very excited about right now in my career, because it’s
allowing me to sort of create this world and character, even though I’m trying
to stay true to Vern’s descriptive passages in the book, I still want to add my
flavour to it as well without degrading what he’s written. It’s certainly a
challenge but the first piece is done, the portrait of Captain Nemo, and it’s
on the blog somewhere so that if people want to go look they can probably find
it on the net. I’d like to say my website is up and running, but it’s not, it’s
still under construction, so I just direct everyone to my blog and that’s
usually updated with current stuff.

Joe:

I can wholeheartedly recommend having a look at your blog
especially for that piece, Captain Nemo, it’s just, there is something haunting
about that piece, it’s just an unbelievably fantastic painting, so I can’t wait
to see the complete triptych.

Dave:

Well thank you, I’m excited about it. I’ve got the other
two pieces drawn and one is on the canvas right now, so it’s just a matter of
time before they get done and I’m also talking to a manufacturer about doing a
possible bust of that painting, so we’ll have a three dimensional figure of
Captain Nemo, and that’s really exciting for me to see the piece translated
into three dimensions, so we’ll see how that works out and if that does, it
will probably be some time in the spring, but that’s available. So hopefully I
can turn this into a whole big Captain Nemo project. We will see. Well you know
I always dream of having something that I’ve worked on turn into film and you
know someone may see this and say wow that’s some pretty cool production stuff,
let’s see what we can do with it. I know they’ve been a couple of false starts
in the past couple of years on ‘20,000 Leagues’ and I just want to get it out
of the way, so who knows.

Joe:

Maybe we should talk to WetaWorks Tony and ask them if
they’d be interested into taking up this project as well.

Dave:

There you go. There you go, I won’t argue with you on that.

Joe:

Dave, you’ve been to San Diego Comic Con. Have you been
there since day dot, how many times have you been there and how have you seen
it change from the first time you went to now, what it’s become now?

Dave:

Yeah San Diego when I started making my breaks in the
business in 1982, 1983, I knew that San Diego was a very big gathering point
for, not only fans of comics, but the creators in the business and publishers
and I was living on the East Coast, I was in Florida, at the time so my budget
was limited as far as travel goes and you got to remember this was before
computers, before the internet, before faxes got popular, so when I wanted to
show my work I would either have to send photographs through the mail or I
would go and take my paintings to conventions. So I would go to Atlanta for
some shows, and occasional I would make a trip to New York and visit publishers
and go to a New York show at that time, so I’d made the decision at one point
that San Diego, actually being the biggest and still is the biggest convention
in the States, and may be in the world, I thought you know I would make that
trip out, so I think it was 1984 or 85 I think is the first trip that I made
out there and you know I was a nobody, I was a guy still trying to break in. I
had done some professional work but nothing major, I was making a living but
not making a name so to speak, so I went and at that time the convention was in
the San Diego Civic Centre which is sort of right in the middle of town

Joe:

The Horton Plaza?

Dave:

No, no, it’s like two blocks away from Horton Plaza. You
know where the Westgate Hotel is?

Joe:

I think so, yeah.

Dave:

Dark Horse and Lucasfilm always have their parties there
and it’s a pretty fancy hotel but it’s right across the street from the Civic
Centre, literally right across the street, and so the convention used to be
there cause they had some very large meeting rooms that are well suited for
that type of thing, and at that time it was strictly a comic book show, there
was no media stuff, there was no gaming, it was strictly comics and the
convention hotel was the Holiday Inn like but nine blocks away and it used to
be just one of those deals, you know, it use to be at the Holiday Inn and then
they outgrew that so they moved to the Civic Centre. I started going there in
like 84 and 85 and I just went ever year and so I was able to work on my craft,
I was able to get some more published stuff, I was able to bring my art work,
and eventually I started getting a table in Artist Alley and setting up and
making my name and my face more well known within the professional industry. And
so the convention outgrew the Civic Centre down town so they moved to the
Convention Centre that was brand new at the time and about half the size, the
Convention Centre was literally only half of what it was, what it is now. Over
the years I’ve seen them build the Convention Centre larger just because the
Comic Con has grown that big, that’s one of the only reasons that they’ve expanded
the Convention Centre that much is because we fill it to the brim when we go.
I’ve seen the convention go from strictly a sort of fan comic book show with
professionals attending to this sort of great multi media extravaganza that
brings in over 150,000 people a day, so it’s been an experience to see that. But
you know also I have to give the convention the credit in that if it wasn’t for
the convention, I wouldn’t of been able to meet as many people in the business
as I have and get as much exposure as I did to be able to build my career, so
it is a convention that I’m very proud to have been part of for more than 25
years. I wasn’t there at the beginning, not like William Stout and Dave Stevens,
those guys who are right there.

Joe:

Could you have imagined, even 25 years ago, how big it’s
become today? Could you have imagined back then when you first started?

Dave:

Never.

Joe:

No, no.

Dave:

There was no way that I could of even imagined that it
would grow to this size. I certainly knew that they wanted to expand because
the whole concept of the convention was to expand interest in comics and the
related fields, so that when they moved over to the Convention Centre, I
thought that would be it, but little did I know that year after year they would
add on another room and another section and another section, and we’d just keep
expanding. Yeah I mean if you’d ask me today can the convention grow any
bigger, I’d say I don’t see how it could but in five years ask me that again,
and I’ll say wow I didn’t expect that to happen. So yeah but it’s good to know
that what we are doing in this business in the comics and fantasy business is
being accepted to a much greater advantage than we had expected 20 years ago,
and that it’s been embraced by so many other different fields of gaming and
animation and film, it’s just all sort of bundled together and it certainly is
a multi media convention and there is something for everybody there.

Joe:

Fantastic.

Dave:

Although I do miss having just the smaller room with only
comics. There still are a couple of shows like that here in the States, so I
get my fix by going to one or two of those other ones.

Joe:

What other ones are you referring to?

Dave:

There is a show in North Carolina called Heroes Convention,
it’s in Charlotte and that’s in May or June I think of every year and Shelton
Drum who started that show and keeps it organised, keeps it strictly a comic
show so that’s a really good place to go if you are strictly a comics fan and
don’t want to have to fight the crowds watching videos and playing video games
at San Diego. And then, I have never been to this show but I hear it’s pretty much
the same is the Baltimore Convention, that’s in October and they have a
strictly comic book guest list and deal with strictly comics, so I’ll
eventually make it to that show but I’ve known Shelton for just a million years
and that’s a show that I tried to go to on a regular basis but I usually hit
and miss every other year. But both of those are good straight comic shows.
Most of the other shows that I go to have some type of media orientation,
whether it’s Star Wars or just gaming and movies or whatever. They’re still fun
but I am still a comic book geek at heart. I still love the comic format, the
traditional stuff and I still love to look in my books from the 60s and 70s
that I have in boxes sitting in the closet and I love the smell of the paper
and how simplistic the printing seems compared to what it is today. You know
that’s part of my childhood, it’s something that I have grown to love.

Tony:

You are obviously really passionate about comics, what are
you reading now days Dave, what stands out from the pack for you?

Dave:

You know, I still have a soft place for the super hero
stuff but I just don’t read it any more because I think that the companies have
made the characters in the back stories too complicated and if you miss an
issue or two or three or twelve or twenty, you can never get it back, and so I
stopped reading those. I read stuff that is more self-contained. I buy a lot of
graphic novels. If I see a mini series that looks really interesting on the
stands I will take a look at it and make a note that when the graphic novel
comes out, I’ll read that. It may tend to be more adventure, science fictiony,
horror, Lock and Key, I read Hellboy regularly because Mike’s just a genius at
what he does. I tend to buy a lot of European graphic novels because I love the
art in them, even though I can’t read the books, I still buy the Lieutenant
Blueberry stuff that Moebius does. A lot of the Alejandro Jodorowsky stuff that
he writes tends to have some really good artists attached to it.

Joe:

Fantastic work.

Dave:

Yeah, and so usually it’s the art that attracts me. I don’t
know why. I’ll scan the racks, I still go to the comic book store every week
you know when the new books come out and I scan the racks, but I only buy two
or three books a week now just because I’ll wait for the graphic novels, the
collection stuff that comes out and just read them all in one sitting and then,
like I say, I’ll cruise around Amazon.com France looking at the graphic novels
they have and I’ll just buy them directly from France what I want.

Tony:

Yeah, I guess popping  into the local comic shop on a weekly basis,
it must be a nice little thrill to go in there and to see your work on the cover
Star Wars Crimson Empire III, so you were saying earlier that you just finished
work on the third cover, is this six-issue limited?

Dave:

No I finished work on the sixth cover, so all the covers
are done and they have been approved by Lucasfim. The sixth one we had a
problem with, the imagery because it’s basically the last cover of the series.
It was originally planned as a three set series so this is the last set of
books, and we had some problems in imagery that we wanted on that sort of to complete
the eighteen book series, and so we got it, we nailed it on the head and sent
it in and everybody is happy with it now. So it was a real fun series to work
on. I look back on the eighteen covers that I have done for Crimson Empire and
I think there is some really high points to the series and I think that I
missed the boat on one or two of them along the way, but I think this series,
series three, I think all six covers are real sharp and real dynamic. Hopefully
the readers will like them.

Tony:

Oh man, that goes without saying the imagery on the front
cover of issue one is such a striking visual.

Dave:

Well thanks, also just sort of as a side-line to this
Crimson Empire covers, there is a book came out last year called The Star Wars
Visions.

Book Cover for Star Wars Visions

Joe:

Yes, yes, yes.

Dave:

Yeah and it’s a whole bunch of artists doing their
interpretation of Lucas’s Star Wars Universe. Just came out last month. They
did a sequel called Star Wars Comics and that’s available now if people want to
go on Amazon.

Dave Dormans Cover for Star Wars Comics

Joe:

It’s a beautiful book, I’m looking at it right now. I’ve
actually got myself a copy.

Tony:

Did you grab that yesterday.

Joe:

Yeah I grabbed that the other day. It had Dave Dorman’s picture on the front, and I thought I’ve got to get that.

Dave:

Yeah it’s got one of the Crimson Empire pieces in it and
that particular cover, that particular piece of art work was one that Lucas
brought years ago when Crimson Empire first series came out and I had a call
specifically from his office asking for them to purchase that particular piece.
And so that’s sitting in Lucas’s archives right now and when Abrams called and
said that they were having me involved in the book, they also let me know that
Lucasfilm had specifically chosen this piece to be the cover of the book and it
really touched me quite a bit because I like that piece quite a bit, and it
certainly was a tribute to the Frazetta influence in my career and I mean people
who look at it who obviously know Frazetta can see where that came from and for
me to have that on such a prestigious book, it just really blew me away and I’m
real grateful that they made that choice and once again that just makes me so
proud to be part of the Lucasfilm family and part of Star Wars history.

Joe:

I mean, it’s such a striking piece, you know it’s the red
from the crimson on the main character and the white storm troopers being
crushed almost by this character, it’s a very striking piece. Definitely
primal.

Dave:

Yeah and that’s what I was trying to achieve with it and I
was very happy when the piece was done because I felt that I got exactly what I
wanted out of it. It certainly has touched a lot of people who have seen the
piece because it does have that sort of primal feel to it and I’m happy that
the viewer can see that as well.

Tony:

Dave obviously through the movies, with the Imperial Guards,
we only catch sight of the helmet and the red robes. Were you involved in the
design of the armour beneath the robes?

Dave:

I was involved a little bit, Paul Gulacy, who did the art
work for this series had done some design work with Lucasfilm approval for what
kind of armour was underneath the cloaks because obviously you didn’t see that
in the films and to be honest with you, I don’t think that the designers had
ever thought that they would need to put anything underneath the cloaks because
they were just background characters, so when Paul was designing them I saw
some of the details and I sort of tweaked it a little bit for my paintings, to
be a little bit more realistic. In general, comic artists don’t tend to take a
realism in design when it comes to drawing their images because that’s not what
they do, they draw comics and so for me I am translating that sort of two
dimension into a three dimensional image so to speak, so there are things that you
can do in a drawing that would just not look realistic at all when it’s
translated into something that looks three dimensional. So I tweaked it a
little bit to be able to make it palatable for the realism that I was painting
for the covers.

Tony:

Sure, now Dave yourself and your wife, Denise, haven’t made
it out here to these shores as yet. If you did get the chance to come out to
Australia, where would you like to visit first?

Dave:

Where would we go first? I have no idea. It’s a big country
down there.

Joe:

Sure is.

Dave:

Certainly I’d have to do my research, but you know it would
just depend on the reasons that we go. Certainly if we come down for a
convention or signings or something, that would be to some very specific
places, but you know the country is larger than the United States and the States
here have such a diverse nature within the country, we have forest, we have
desert we’ve got rainy coasts, we’ve got dry coasts and I’m sure you guys have
the same and so you know there is a lot more to see than you would expect I’m
sure. We would have to do our research.

Joe:

Can we suggest Hobart, Tasmania maybe?

Dave:

OK.

Tony:

Not biased at all really. Look If you are in the
neighbourhood we would love to catch up for a drink with you.

Dave:

I’m sure that we could do that if we ever get a chance to
come down. I had an opportunity at one point a couple of years ago, but it just
didn’t work out for personal reasons and I sort of regret that, but at the time
it just wasn’t able to happen, but hopefully maybe for Nemo or for the relaunch
of Wasted Lands, we could come down and do a couple of conventions and meet the
fans down there, because you guys from down under when I see you in San Diego,
is always fun. The guys, oh I don’t know, I’m drawing a brain fart here. The
buddies I was booth buddies with………

(Note: found out later that it was Gestalt Comics located in Perth, Western Australia)

Joe:

Go on.

 Dave:

I can’t remember their names. They are going to kill me
when they hear this.

Joe:

I can’t remember to be honest.

Dave:

Anyway, one of the publishers from Australia was sharing a
booth with me, great guys, great stories and everybody that has just come up
from down under that’s come by the tables have been really fun fans and so I
would love to come down to that part of the world at some point and meet
everybody else.

Joe:

We would look forward to it. Can you tell us other projects that we can look forward to
from you.

Dave:

Oh, let’s see I have another project that is sort of zombie
related. Now I know everybody is getting tired of zombies, but this is a twist
on it  that I think people will, you know,
it will catch them by surprise a little bit.

Joe:

OK.

Dave:

It’s a different twist. So I don’t want to say too much
about it right now but I’m hoping to have some material ready for next summer’s
convention season on that and I’m actually thinking about doing some prose
writing in translating some of my Wasted Land material that I’d done in comics
and laid out for comics into a prose novel, so it’s just going to be text and
no art other than maybe a cover. I am going to try and stretch my literary nerve
and see if I can actually do it, but you know, people said you should just give
it a try.

Joe:

That’s right.

Dave:

I have all these stories in my head that I know that I will
never be able to create continuous panel work with but I’d like to get them out
there for the fans so I can tie in what I’m doing with the comics and tie it in
with some prose work. I do have some other prose work that my writing partner Del
Stone Jr. has done in relation to Wasted Lands and we’ll probably be publishing
that in eBooks within the next six to eight months. So that’s something my fans
might want to take a look at on the Blog as well when we make that announcement
but I think I have four text novels that have already been written that tie in
with the Wasted Lands characters and I have just been sitting on them because I
wanted to publish them, but with eBooks doing so well and finally panning out
to the way that the developers wanted, we can now do them as eBooks very
inexpensively and get them out to the public now.

Joe:

Great. Looking forward to that.

Dave:

That’s part of something new that we are going to be
expanding into next year, not only that, but we are looking at possibly some
art collections of the work that was not in Rolling Thunder as part of some
eBook apps as well.

Tony:

Very cool

Dave:

Yeah so instead of having to put out all that money to do
it, you know a second volume of the book, we just make it available as an
eBook. Although I love books, just like I like comics, I would like to see
Rolling Thunder Part II sitting on the shelf, but it’s just the economy and the
way the eBooks are formatted now, with colour readers and such, we are
investigating it. We will see.

Joe:

You sort of have to move in that direction, I mean that’s
how people are consuming our art I guess in a way, a lot of iPads and eReaders,
it just becomes, it’s coming as common as.

Dave:

Well for this generation, this new generation of geeks,
yeah, it’s taking the place of paper unfortunately. From my generation, paper
is the thing, books, comics, posters and such, but for this generation that’s
grown up, you know having electronic imagery thrown at them since they’ve been
born, you know it’s common place, just like paper was for my generation, so why
not take advantage of it.

Joe:

Fair enough.

Dave:

As an old man I would like to see paper books continue but
as a realist, go with what’s selling. So eBooks are something that we will look
forward to next year and see where that goes, and then, like I say, I’m
reworking some of the printed Wasted Land stuff so we will hopefully have some
announcement about that in the coming months and this Godzilla project that I’m
doing for IDW is going to be the summer special for next summer and it will be
a fully painted 30 page comic book.

Joe:

Wow.

Dave:

Yeah, so that will be fun.

Joe:

Looking forward to that.

Dave:

The next three months of my life looking at Godzilla every
day. That will be fun, a lot of fans want to see me do a little bit more comic
work and I’ve been a Godzilla fan since I was a kid too, just like the rest of
us. So, the opportunity, I just couldn’t let go. I will be starting on that in
about two weeks.

Tony:

Speaking of Godzilla, I have a three year old son. From the
age of one, a game that we share, I build elaborate cities out of Lego and
populate them with action figures, and he would play Godzilla, Gojira and he
would wreak havoc apoun these tiny metropolises

Dave:

Yep, it’s cool. I have a seven year old son and we play
Star Wars all the time, whether it’s Legos or action figures or whatever, it’s
just Star Wars, he loves it. I’m glad Lucas kept it going for each generation
over the years. Not only am I allowed to still be a kid by producing the Star
Wars stuff, but my son just loves the stuff too and a lot of kids do and I’m
real happy about that.

Tony:

Yeah that’s great, any chance of him taking after dad?

Dave:

You know he is very imaginative and he likes to draw and
he’ll pick up paints or pencils by himself. I don’t encourage him by the way of
saying, ‘Hey why don’t you draw something right now?’ I don’t want to do that
right now because I want him to make his own choices in life about what he
wants to pursue and what he wants to get good at, but he had sort of followed
in my footsteps so far as doing some really funky looking drawings and being
very imaginative in what he does, and if he asks me for help, certainly I’ll
look over his shoulder and help him, but you know for the most part, I’m
letting him do what he wants to do right from his imagination and he’s got some
stuff going on there so if he wants to pursue it I will be happy to give him
all the help that I can.

Joe:

Fantastic.

Dave:

I think Denise has put a couple of his things on my blog
too. So we’ll see what happens in the next couple of years, when he gets old
enough to discover girls, I think that’s going to be the big turning point.

Tony:

Dave, you’ve been incredibly generous with your time, we
really should wrap things up and let you go. For all the latest news about Dave
Dorman’s work and the projects he is working on, go to www.davedorman.wordpress.com and
tell you what Christmas is just around the corner, its sneaking up rapidly and
if you have got yourself a copy of Rolling Thunder; The Art of Dave Dorman, do
yourself a favour and grab it pronto. It is published by IDW Publishing and
Desperado Publishing, it’s an absolutely gorgeous book, full of iconic illustrations,
328 pages, it’s a mammoth tome and is available on Amazon.com as of last night for
just $48.00 and that is an absolute steal, it really is. Dave, thank you so, so much for your time today, you’ve
been an absolute pleasure to interview, hopefully we can catch up some time
soon and have another good chat.

Dave:

O.k, yeah, that would be great. I would love it.  Maybe when I finish with the Godzilla and
start working on some of the other stuff I’ll have some new published work out
in the spring and that might be a good time to revisit some of the things we’ve
talked about. The blog is really the best place for people to come to for news
and also for artists who are up and coming. I also do progressives of my
paintings on the blog too, so people can see how I progress through my drawing
stage into the painting stage, to the finished painting. So that should be
helpful for young artists who are learning to paint or want to learn how I do
the artwork as well. I think we do like one a month on my blog, so feel free to
come and check out how I actually create a painting. Well thanks for having me
I really appreciate all your talk and hopefully nobody has fallen asleep and let
the podcast run too long but it’s been really fun so thanks for having me on
the show.

Tony:

Oh Dave, seriously our pleasure and it’s been an honour and
a privilege talking to you today. Thank you so, so much I’ve loved your work
for years, it’s a thrill for myself and Joe to talk to you today, thankyou once
again so much

Dave:

Oh great, well thanks. I feel honoured that it’s been an
influence. Thank you. Take care, bye.

This many time Eisner and Harvey award winner tells us about himself, his work and hints about future projects. He was a lot of fun to interview and very generous with his time. So join Tony, Nick and Joe in this insightful and fun chat with one of the greatest living cartoonists in the industry.

Check out the transcribed interview below
Alpha Nerd Interview with Jeff Smith

Alpha Nerd Hosts: Tony, Nick and Joe

Tony:
Our guest today on Alpha Nerd is a truly unique voice in the comic medium. At the age of nine he discovered his biggest influence in writing comics, when a classmate brought a collection of comics to school which included Walt Kelly’s Pogo. By the age of ten he was already creating his own comics, using some of the characters he would become famous for in later years. After high school he attended the Ohio State University, and while there, he created a comic strip called ‘Thorn’ for the student newspaper ‘The Lantern’. In 1986 he co-founded an animation studio in Columbus. Five years later he launched his own company, Cartoon Books. In order to publish his creator owned black and white series ‘Bone’, which blended elements from Carl Barts, Walt Kelly and J.R.R. Tolkien, and was named as one of Time Magazine’s top ten graphic novels of all time, he has worked on Captain Marvel for DC and is currently in the home straight of his creator own series ‘RASL’, which has been described as a stark science fiction series about a dimension jumping art thief with personal problems. He is of course Multi Eisner and Harvey Award winning American cartoonist, Jeff Smith.

Welcome to Alpha Nerd Jeff.

Jeff:
Thanks, great to be here.

Tony:
Look our pleasure mate, it is an absolute honour. Before we get into the questions proper, just a few nerdy questions to sort of break the ice.
What was your first nerdy memory?

Jeff:
First nerdy memory, you know I think I would have to go back to 1965 when I was five years old. The Batman show came on TV, the one with Adam West, and I went nuts. The kid with the bat mobile, Cat Woman, I won’t even say what Cat Woman started to do to my body. My first crush. How’s that for a nerdy memory.

Tony:
And how about when you were growing up, what about a favourite toy?

Jeff:
I’m trying to remember, I think when I was a kid, action figures were pretty popular, GI Joe, Major Matt Mason cause of space age. Stuff like that I have fond memories of.

Tony:
Do you have a favourite gadget now days?

Jeff:
Gadget, that would have to be the iPad. I mean these pads that our coming out. Speaking about being a kid, I mean I wanted more than anything to be able to hold in my hand a device that would let me watch cartoons, like … or Jungle Book or something. It was just was impossible, the closest you could get was like a flip book or something right. It just blows my mind that here we could have this device that looks exactly like the one that they put on the table as seen in ‘2001: Space Odyssey’ to watch movies from the earth and it’s an incredible device, I love that.

Tony:
And comic wise, it’s absolutely game changing.

Jeff:
Could be, definitely could be.

Tony:
Look I should stop hogging you; I’ll throw to the rest of the Alpha Nerd team here. Nick I think you’re first cab off the rank.

Nick:
Yes Jeff, look you ran a successful animation studio prior to working on Bone as an independent comic book. Do you think the skills and knowledge from that working environment was an important factor in helping making your comic book career a success?

Jeff:
I think it probably was. I was interested in printed comics before animation but there’s no doubt that eight years I spent animating, just drawing thousands and thousands of pictures is going to make you better and you just have to get better doing that much actual work. In terms of construction where you start really making your characters consistent and solid and you learn how to show emotion just through the body position, things like that. How to turn a character around in 3D in your mind. All that really came into play pretty much when I started, you know actually working in comics. I brought a lot of that with me.

Joe:
I’m going to ask a bit of question about Bone itself. I was going to ask about the process of colourisation. Was it a difficult task in choosing colours and shading to reflect the intent of the scene that was previously drawn in black and white?

Jeff:
It was actually an incredibly difficult task. It took me five years to colour Bone. Five years, I mean I can’t actually believe it, just to colour it, but once we committed to it, once I actually thought OK this might a good idea, when we launch it in colour it will make it a new book, it’s going to a new audience. Steve Hamaker who works with me at Cartoon Books and worked with me at previous to that, he use to design our toys and helped me with logos or anything, any art related job at Cartoon Books that wasn’t drawing the comics, Steve would do it. Steve wanted to take a crack of doing the colour, so we sat down and really you know page by page, panel by panel, looked at everything and discuss it. He’d go in and work on it, I’d come back and I signed off on every panel. At first it was a little bit of a struggle because neither of us really knew what we were doing, but as we did it we figured out how to not overwhelm the line or how to use the colour to make you look in the right place in the panel, or not overwhelm. I am very very pleased with what Steve has done.

Joe:
Yes, it looks fantastic of what I’ve seen. Are you thinking about doing the same with RASL, or is that completely off the books?

Jeff:
No, ah well, it’s still in the decision stage. I still have probably another eight months of RASL before the stories done and once we get there then I will worry about where I am going with this one.

Joe:
Yeah, sure, fair enough.

Tony:
Just back to Bone quickly. I read that the Scholastic Collected Editions of Bone have had some changes in dialogue and some variations in story from the original series. Can you provide us any insight as to why these changes were made?

Jeff:
Well they were only if they were made by me. I mean Scholastics never changed any of the dialogue or even suggested it. But I’ve done that since the beginning, who am I talking to is this Tony or ?

Tony:
Yeah, that’s right, Tony.

Jeff:
Yeah I’ve done that since the beginning, I’ve always taken the comic books and started collecting them in 1993 with trade paperbacks, graphic novels, but even then if there was a drawing that was really bugging me or if there was a story point that I thought didn’t quite fly when it came out in the comics, you know I could go back and re-emphasise it. I’ve done that for twenty years, and I’m doing it again with RASL. If you read RASL in comic book format and then you buy it in the collected book, oversize collections, there is quite a bit of difference in them. Maybe sometimes I won’t do anything with them, but sometimes I add like two or three pages, which if I think that would like sell the story better.

Tony:
It’s great having that opportunity to revise a project after the fact.

Jeff:
That’s self publishing.

Nick:
Jeff the Bone 20th anniversary full colour one volume hard cover was released this month and to me that would be the best Christmas present I could get for under $150.00, but here’s my problem. I own Bone in single comics and I also have a one volume black and white edition, any advice on what I can do with my old copies of Bone now that they are, dare I say it, just a little bit redundant.

Jeff:
A little bit, yeah. You know what man I have no idea. EBay or keep your fire place going all winter, I don’t know. The only thing I can say is that I probably can’t think of another way to get you to buy the series again.

Nick:
I think I might share it with my son and I know it took you five years to colour it, I might give him my one volume and ask him to colour it in page by page.

Tony:
Do you think he would do it a bit quicker?

Nick:
Overnight I think, it would be one colour though.

Jeff:
If he can, give me his phone number.

Joe:
Jeff, I was blown away when I realised that the fabled city of Atheia in Bone, which looked so familiar to me was actually based on your trip to Kathmandu in Nepal. What made you decide on Kathmandu?

Jeff:
Well when I started back in 1991 the fantasy genre had really fallen out of favour. When I was in high school, ‘Lord of the Rings’ was everything and there were tons of fantasy novels but by the time I was doing ‘Bone’ nobody could remember ‘The Lord of the Rings’, but then as I got near the end of the book, right in the last few issues, The ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies started coming out, and I was like, oh no, I mean everybody is going to see where I got all my ideas and stuff, so in order to make it different I decided that instead, because a fantasy has to have this big battle between good and evil, that’s just part of the genre, but I thought I would try to avoid the western style, you know King Arthur or Cinderella type castle, try to make it look like something different, and so I was trying to come up with some way to make it look different, I struck on the idea of Kathmandu. My wife Vijaya is from India and we have been over there quite a few times and I just though you know what, let’s just go spend a couple of weeks, go to Kathmandu and see what we see, and I did a little travel in India and other places closer to where Vijaya’s family is from, took a lot of pictures and I basically just felt like this is even better than my original idea, cause Atheia has to be a place where it once was great and powerful, fallen on hard times and I also wanted it to be a mystical place, or a place where you get a sense of mystical, an aura in the air sometime. When I got to Kathmandu I was actually surprised, I don’t now if you have ever been there.

Joe:
Yeah I have, I have.

Jeff:
So you know there is like prayer flags everywhere and like temples on every corner, statues, shrines, I mean the gods are alive and standing on the street corners in Kathmandu and they are all living. I hadn’t thought of that so that was the kind of thing that I was able to bring back home with me, and in fact the dragon stone, the little prayer stone, were taken from the prayer flowers, you know the idea, its Buddhist but the ideas of all those flags and you print your prayer on the flag and then the flag is hung out on these lines and the wind would blow your prayer to the four corners of the earth, so I mutated that idea to these prayers stones that you write your prayer to the dragon and then you bury it in the earth, and that way your message goes to the dragons.

Joe:
It’s fantastic, I mean the imagery, I’m thinking about Kathmandu right now and I can see the parallels and because of the place itself being a magical, mystical place, it’s the perfect setting. Like I said I was blown away.

Jeff:
What will stick with me, it’s still in the Middle Ages, I mean I didn’t have to change anything. Show people in butcher shops and you know carrying bails over on these giant medieval-like harnesses with baskets hanging around the neck, it’s crazy.

Joe:
It’s absolutely amazing.

Tony:
Jeff, Tony here again. Look I read earlier an article in the LA Times which indicated that Bone was likely to yield three separate computer animated 3D movies. You have also indicated yourself that you have spent over a decade trying to get Bone up on the big screen. Now look I’ve got a sneaking feeling that an awful lot of Alpha Nerd fans would like to see a Bone movie. How important is it for you to see Bone up on the silver screen.

Jeff:
On a personal level it’s not important at all. I mean it’s something I think people want to see a lot, it’s getting a lot of announcements that that are being made come out. I get asked about it all the time, so I talk about it, but honestly I have no desire or care, actually that’s not quite true. I would love to do a movie, but I’m not going to knock myself out or spend a lot of time wishing on it or anything. I’m a comic book guy, I feel very good with Bone. Bone is pretty much known all around the world and I can go to India you know and kids will line up to get their Indian copies of Bone signed. It’s in thirty languages and that’s all been done without a movie, so I couldn’t be happier about that and if a movie happens, great, then maybe I’ll sell some more books, but other than that artistically it’s not important to me, the comic book is.

Nick:
Is it alright if we talk about RASL now Jeff? RASL is just one of the most original and interesting comics I have ever read and I think that everyone that reads it seems to agree. I’m just wondering if you have any expectations on how broad an audience it will find, it’s obviously going to be difficult to replicate the success that Bone has been.

Jeff:
Yeah there is no doubt, I will definitely be the Bone man, Bone guy for a long time. I don’t mind that. I’m very proud of Bone, so that’s cool. Yeah I don’t know I kind of just follow my muse, I was finishing Bone and I was watching a lot of science fiction and a lot of war movies while I was inking, you know at 2 o’clock in the morning whatever, and I just kind of thought I wanted to do that. I also watch a lot of Nova Discovery Channel type documentaries of string theory and I’m fascinated by that stuff and I just guess I found my muse, I just really wanted to tell a story, a science fiction story with hard science in it you know that was real science based on stuff physicists really believe, but then also make it a hard boiled like murder mystery and throw in these characters that you know basically fuck up all the time and drink whisky, sleep with women. I just thought that would be a very fun thing to sink my teeth into. And I had no expectations of what the audience would be and in fact I pretty much have gotten no audience at all, so that’s great.

Tony:
Well man you’ve got three loyal fans right here. I love RASL. I mean the lead character is such a wonderfully flawed original character.

Jeff:
Just this last year it has begun to get a bit of traction but in fact the very last issue, number 12, just yesterday here in America. I don’t know if you guys have the same street date we do.

Tony:
Pretty much, we are Thursdays here in Australia, a day behind, although this week we are another day behind, it’s Friday. Fingers crossed

Jeff:
Keep your fingers crossed because it should be a new issue of RASL in there and that issue is the first one that the numbers went up and I really noticed a lot of the news and write ups. When I was in Italy a couple of weeks ago where RASL is not even published, I did like a junket thing, like you almost see the movie stars do in Cannes, well I just sat in a room for eleven hours and I have like journalists coming in, it’s all about Bone, cause it’s the 20th Anniversary of Bone, every single one of them, newspapers, TV and magazines and also comics and websites and stuff like that, every single one of them that asked about RASL, had read it and liked it and that was new. So keep your fingers crossed.

Tony:
Now I know you have recently started releasing the pocket books of RASL, do you think there is a correlation there?

Jeff:
Maybe, I have definitely seen some reviews on line over the pocket book and basically they said this, that the big ones were just too big for them, they didn’t like the oversized thing and that’s who I made those for, but me I like the big large, black and white ones cause the art work, the ink is so black, it’s very near the size I originally draw them, just down about 10%, I just love looking at them that way.

Tony:
Look, sometimes bigger is better. Now look, back to the science of RASL, we are lucky enough to have our own mad scientist in the voice of Joe. You had a couple of questions for Jeff in that regard?

Joe:
It was pretty much already discussed, but you said you studied the hard science behind parallel dimensions for example M and String Theory. How deep did you go? Did you go down to the mathematics of it all? Did you discover new theories? How far did you go down that rabbit hole?

Jeff:
I went pretty far down. I amazed even myself because as an artist I was pretty much a math drop out in high school, but again the ideas behind science and physics are so good, why didn’t any of my teachers tell me what the hell math was, what it really was? It’s the universe. I spent about eight years working on RASL studying the genre of noir, hard boiled stuff and reading Dashiel Hammett and all that stuff. But then I spent two years, while I was working on Shazam!: The Monster Society of Evil, really going down this rabbit hole you are talking about and I didn’t actually get out any of the text books but I was reading Brian Greene, Carl Sagan and all those guys, and I was also reading tons of this kind of fringy science books, like books on the Philadelphia Experiment, and Secrets of the Unified Field Theory, Tesla, HAARP. So I got into all this stuff and I was following science closely enough that I could see the connections between them all. Einstein’s unified field theory of 1928 had that one place holder in there, that one little tensor that represented a little spatial dimension that represents an invisible curled up dimension, that’s when I said, wait a minute, hold it that’s exactly what String Theory says.
So I went pretty far down the hole, I don’t want to bore the rest of your audience about it.

Joe:
No that’s fantastic.

Jeff:

Maybe we can talk about Moby Dick!!

Joe:
Also with that, you said you sort of looked at the fringe side of science as well, like the Philadelphia Experiment. Do you get many people, sort of from that kind of arena that contact you or try to find out if you have got any links to some information that they don’t have, sort of thing?

Jeff:
Oh yeah definitely. Once Tesla entered the comic proper in issue 6, that was really when I felt it connecting to not only the comic world but the scientific world too and I started hearing through a friend of mine, this physicist contacted me from up in Cleveland, and I have actually been talking to him a lot and he’s actually become a kind of consultant for the book and I will run stuff by him. The issue is coming out tomorrow I kind of wrap up the Tesla story and in the first half its Tesla vs. Edison and in the second half it’s kind of Tesla vs. Einstein and against himself really and I had to understand the different between Tesla’s Unified Field Theory and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, cause Tesla hated it. He thought it was a waste of time to look for energy inside of atoms, he thought the energy existed in the spaces between the protons and the neutrons and all that stuff. So that was crazy stuff, I had to run all that by this guy, who has now become a buddy of mine. He loves the fringe stuff.

Nick:
I’m intrigued by the strange little girl that keeps popping up in RASL. I’m interested in knowing what you used as a reference for this character as I don’t mind admitting to you I find her absolutely terrifying.

Jeff:
That’s perfect. I don’t know. I didn’t have, like a model or anything like that. In fact the spooky little girl is not in my original idea or the plan. Sometimes when I sit down and I get writing, my scripts don’t look like screen plays, they look like little fast drawn comics where I jot down the words and I scribble to indicate the pose and is it a one shot or two shot or wide shot or whatever. I think I was in Issue 4 and I had just done the bit about the Philadelphia Experiment where I actually had to draw the World War II destroyer escorts and all that kind of stuff, and there was a hell of a lot of research, cause what do I know about what a war ship looked like then and what did the deck look like, what did the officers and the sailors outfits look like and it really ate up a ton of time I had allotted to do the book, so it was really like four or five pages at the beginning of the whole book, so I just had to blow through the rest of it, almost faster than I can think about it, you know, and I knew there was this big brawl with the lizard faced guy Sal and with RASL on this little street in the Tucson neighbourhood and I was just going through it as fast as I could, the fight came to an end and RASL is laying there going ‘what the F am I going to do now?’ I mean I just went, it would really fuck with his head, if there was just this little girl, this little girl just there, and she just kind of started doing the weird mouth, head, yawning thing or whatever she’s doing, I don’t know.

Nick:
I remember turning to that page and I actually had one of those really big goose bump moments which seem so rare for me when reading comics these days, but yeah that exact scene which you have described, that page where the girl appears was really a jump out of my seat moment.

Jeff:
Now that she’s in the comic she has sort of taken her place, without saying too much cause I’m not quite sure I know exactly what the little girl there is, but I recognise her as playing a similar role to the dragon in Bone. It’s a character that kind of represents what we can’t see, you know what I mean. Like the dragon, he represents the fantastic. You know, not what we know in our normal world. I think this little girl is something like that too or she is just a real little window licker, I don’t know what’s going on.

Joe:
It sort of reminds me of the… have you ever watched the TV series Fringe at all?

Jeff:
I have not, no.

Joe:
Well there are these characters called Observers which are kind of like inter-dimensional police of some sort, they sort of control different aspects of each dimension in this story and they sort of appear and disappear and they are pretty much a mystery but they represent a bit of the mystery of the show and I sort of feel like the girl has a similar kind of function in this story as well.

Jeff:
I would say she does. She seems to be, you know you put these things into words some times, and not always a good idea. I think she represents the Multi-verse as opposed to like this street guy, the President, the President of the Street who walks with her and kind of speaks for her. He is just a street person who probably exists on each universe and the reasons on the street is because he is messed up, he is connected to all the universe somehow and his brain just hears voices, so he’s kind of like, appears to be, like a schizophrenic or something. But I think she’s different, I think she’s something like that but I think that she’s probably more representative of the multi-verse itself. Who knows? Even I don’t know. We’ll find out.

Joe:
She seems a bit Trans-dimensional that’s for sure. She seems to straddle all the dimensions that our main protagonist goes through.

Tony:
Nick you had another question for Jeff about the main protagonist of RASL.

Nick:
Yes I just found the art thief aspect of his career really intriguing. Do you have any, I guess, background as to why you chose this profession?

Jeff:
You know I don’t know. I like heist movies. It came about because, I don’t know, it all fell together so strangely but all very quickly that this idea that there was this ex military scientist who would use stolen equipment to go on an inter-dimensional heist, steal paintings and then bring them back, fence them in Vegas to like really bad men, that just struck me as a really very noirish kind of a situation and of course if I could have the thief himself have his past littered with mistakes that would be great.

Joe:
I was going to explore the mythology behind RASL. You sort of explore American Indian mythology in the beginning of RASL, have you thought about exploring other mythologies, such as the ancient Hindu myths, à la Grant Morrison and the Mahabharata, that kind of thing?

Jeff:
Yeah I have actually. There is Mahabharata in Bone.

Joe:
That’s true, that’s true.

Jeff:
The whole idea of the Queen of the Dragons being the Lord of the Locusts and the Queen of the Dragons being the creator and the destroyer, that’s very much the concept and let’s not forget the aboriginal dreaming which I nicked.

Tony:
Now look Jeff, you mentioned earlier about the massive world wide convention tour you did in conjunction with the 20th anniversary release of Bone, man you must be absolutely exhausted. Can you see yourself doing this again for the end of RASL?

Jeff:
I’m definitely staying put for at least the next eight months. I’ve definitely had an exhausting couple of years, but it’s worth it, I mean it’s like this 11 hour press junket I was telling you about, that’s followed like a five day festival in Italy. There is a festival in Northern Italy in this town called Lucca, which is near Florence and Pisa. It’s an old medieval town that’s got a wall around it, it’s really beautiful, 150,000 comics’ fans and cos-players descend on this thing and they worked me like a dog. I must of signed thousands and thousands of Bone books and then I went to this junket and even though it was exhausting, I’m still a little bit amazed and shocked almost, that for 20 years people still want to talk to me about Bone and still want to line up and get little sketches and I have to say you know it’s exhausting, in some ways it gives you a lot of energy back too, so I do need to take a break but it’s more from airports than from just getting out there and seeing people. Flying just isn’t fun anymore.

Joe:
Understandable.
I love that you have come out with children’s books in comic form and I love The Little Mouse Gets Ready and I want my 2 year old daughter to love comics as much as I do and it’s hard to find stuff that they can relate to. What motivated you to create for children and do you plan to continue this?

Jeff:
I don’t know. It was a phone call I got from Françoise Mouly, you know Art Spiegelmans wife. The two of them started up this graphic novel imprint for emerging readers for exactly the reason you are stating. They wanted to say kids can read this from that day one, well maybe not from day one, but it is really aimed at like between 3 and 7 or something like that and she asked me if I would like to do one and an idea just popped into my head. It was a character I had drawn, and it was one of the characters I had made up when I was very young was this little mouse this little rip mouse with a red vest and it didn’t take me very long to come up with well why don’t I just have him try and get dressed and do a comic about that and then make a joke at the end that mice don’t get dressed.

Joe:
It was really good, my daughter loved it and she’s 2 and she laughs at the punch line every time.

Jeff:
That’s awesome, does she like the tail or the tail hole?
Anytime you are doing underwear for kids you got a winner.

Joe:
She is just learning to put her underwear on now; going from nappy to underwear you can sort of see the parallels.

Jeff:
Just say, put the tag in the back.

Joe:
I have been saying put the tag in the back and it’s like oh no no, yes yes yes.

Nick:
Now Jeff I know in finishing up, RASL must be taking up a lot of your time but are there any other projects that you have on the go after RASL and anything you might be able to share with us?

Jeff:
Well I am working on a project, I’ve been working on it for about 2 years now, but just percolating it, taking notes and doing all the research but it’s a little too early to say anything about it cause I don’t have a name for it or anything yet I just know where it’s going to be, who the main character is and it’s still a little too early, but like I said I won’t be done with RASL till next summer so hopefully by then I will be able to say something.

Nick:
That’s still in comic book form right Jeff because I think a lot of comic book people are just afraid of perhaps losing you to the bright lights and attraction of perhaps Hollywood or other media.

Jeff:
Oh no, no, no I’m a comic book guy. I like making comics. Earlier on I was more enthusiastic about doing movies and stuff, I was much more gung-ho, I was younger and I had a lot less experience with it but it’s a very, I don’t want to say unfriendly, but it’s a tough place and it’s not fun, whereas comics are fun, I mean all over the world, comics fans, of which I am myself am one, we are all the same, in fact that’s what all comics is, all the people like you, readers, journalists, people who run the distribution channel, people who run stores, we’re all kind of comic book fans and we can reach each other and I like that. The art form itself is very specific; it’s something that gets me off creatively so I like that. Hollywood is a very large art form, there is a lot of money involved and a lot of people have to co-operate, there are a lot of people involved, so finally I decided I’m just going to back off and let people do their job and so it seems to be the better way to do it. Warner Bros. has picked up the gauntlet and is working on Bone movie now. I don’t know if it will be three movies, that was 3 years ago when they were first talking about it, although I think it will be. I just read a new script, just like last weekend, and I will tell you it was pretty good, it was Bone, I mean we still have to do more work on it, but this stuff goes so slow, you just can’t count on it and RASL got optioned last year, it’s going very quickly, it’s Wigram and Warner Bros. Wigram is the guy who did the Harry Potter movies and the new Sherlock Holmes movies with Robert Downey Jnr. And they are doing some good stuff. So to me if it’s not fun then I just don’t want to do it. With the new group of people at Warner Brothers I am having a lot of fun, fine, just call me up on the phone, fly me out once every six months or something and the same with the RASL people, I’m having a blast so if I don’t want to do it, I don’t want a movie.

Tony:
Jeff, just going back to being a comic book fan, what are you reading at the moment? What are you grabbing off the stands and enjoying?

Jeff:
Let’s see, Habibi I have just started. I have seen a lot of that already when I visited Craig and saw a bunch of the original art work. There was 400 pages done at the time. I was just flipping through all this stuff and my mind was exploding and it’s ‘What am I even looking at, this is insane’.

Joe:
Beautiful art work.

Jeff:
A lot of what I read is like Fantagraphics Collections like Mickey Mouse, that Floyd Gottfredson thing is just beautiful and something I have wanted for a long time. Just gotten a copy of the Complete Pogo, I am very excited to read that.

Tony:
Now correct me if I’m wrong but you were involved in the production of that one a while back, yeah?

Jeff:
I was, I was involved in it for about a year and a half, but there was just a lot of problems with finding the original art work and it was really just starting to drag out and I saw no end in sight. That was like three years ago, let me see three or four years ago, and I had in fact finally I decided I just had to back out of the project because RASL was starting up and I had a lot on my plate. I think the new book looks really good and a lot of my ideas ended up in the final product, it looks pretty good.

Tony:
Fantastic, look Jeff we really shouldn’t hold you up any longer you have been very generous with your time and we know how busy you are so we really appreciate it. Thank you so much for being part of the Alpha Nerd Podcast today. Little bit of a plug for you, with Christmas just around the corner, Jeff’s site Boneville.com has some absolutely amazing gift ideas for comic book fans including the Bone 20th anniversary full colour one volume hard cover and I’ll get my own plug in, if the wife’s listening I would love a copy for Christmas, see what you can do.

Joe:
I’m definitely getting my copy.

Tony:
And obviously as you have already mentioned Jeff the latest issue of RASL, Issue 12, is out now on the newsstands. Man, thank you, thank you once again for spending time with us here on Alpha Nerd. Hopefully we can catch up again some time soon, perhaps after RASL has come to it’s close and we can have a chat about the closure of RASL and what’s coming up next for Jeff Smith.

Jeff:
My pleasure guys, yes of course, look forward to do this again.

Tony:
Thanks Jeff, have a fantastic day mate, we’ll talk soon.

Jeff:
Alright, cheers guys.

Nick:
Thanks so much Jeff really appreciate it.

Joe:
Thanks mate

Jeff:
All right guys, see you later.

Host:
Tony

Co-Hosts:
Joe
Nick
Graham

Guests: Jeff Lemire

Segments:
Intro (00:00 – 10:10)
Gaming (10:10 – 34:40)
Comics (34:40 – 1:01:05)
Interview (1:01:05 – 1:34:10)
TV/Movies (1:34:10 – 1:59:13)
Wrap-up (1:59:13 – 2:11:56)

Show Notes:
Digital Australia Study

File Details:
Download Latest Episode: Download
Duration : 02:11:56
File Size : 60.04 MB
Format : MP3

Subscribe:
Subscribe directly using your preferred podcasting tool:
Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes

Or, copy and paste this URL into a podcasting tool:

http://alphanerd.libsyn.com/rss

It’s often thought that Dr. No established the formula that all Bond films would later follow, but a more accurate description is that having accidentally struck gold the first time, thereafter producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli tried very, very hard not to fuck it up.

Dr. No enjoys a reputation as one of Bond’s best for good reason, although many elements have aged poorly: the fight choreography, the visual effects, Sean Connery’s singing voice and the racism that remorselessly marginalizes any non-white with the kind of unspoken, assumptive, good-natured bigotry Hollywood still excels at.

Every single Jamaican or Chinese encountered by Bond in Dr. No is either a criminal or at best a servant. There are no exceptions: the henchmen, the photographer tailing him, the driver at the airport (not actually black, but clearly not white) and the many people who cook Bond’s meals and carry his bags. Even his ally Quarrel is mercilessly depicted first as extortionate fisherman with an uppity attitude and then as a drunken, superstitious lout.

The first instantly recognizable Bond ingredient arrives with the iconic title sequence, courtesy of Maurice Binder, a graphic designer with a penchant for photographing naked women who, having found a way to be paid for it, stayed with the series until he died. Filmed through an actual gun barrel and initially featuring a stuntman in place of Connery, his opening credits are among the most recognized images in all of cinema.

The facts of the Saltzman-Broccoli partnership are well known but worth reviewing here purely for their comedic value. For the better part of a decade after 1953, the Bond character gave Ian Fleming (far left) best sellers and everyone automatically began talking about movies. When Hollywood did come knocking, Fleming knew to just sit back and watch the offers grow larger. He made his own attempt at a Bond script with Kevin McClory, an Irish dyslexic with little of his own screen success, and Fleming subsequently stole McClory’s ideas for his novel Thunderball, but more on this later. Meanwhile, former circus performer and inveterate idiot Herschel Saltzman (centre) was producing a series of critically acclaimed social realist dramas in Hollywood. Tiring of credibility, he began looking for populist trash that would enable him to make some actual money. Saltzman was lured into Fleming’s honey trap and optioned the rights to James Bond for $50,000…for just six months. This meant that if Saltzman couldn’t put a deal together in that time, he was screwed. Coincidentally, Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli (far right) , who had worked his way up from film set bitch to highly successful Hollywood producer, was specifically looking to launch a Bond series, but had already failed to secure the film rights once. Smelling desperation, Broccoli tied to buy Saltzman out, but Harry was just canny enough to hold onto the rights, for now. Their newly formed company, Eon Productions, found a willing partner in studio United Artists, which stumped up a paltry $1 million budget – not much even then – to launch what they always imagined would be ongoing series. Dr. No was thought to be the cheapest to film of the existing books at that time.

Deals like this are completely typical of the sharks and bottom feeders that inhabit Hollywood, but honestly, that Dr. No ever came together at all is remarkable in itself. We would do well to remember that for every successful story like this, there are a hundred failures, and that the winners write their own history.

Dr. No opens on a group of British men at a country club, playing cards in the middle of what we can only assume is a weekday, like true colonials. These men are clearly not in Jamaica to work and actually complain when Strangways, the intelligence-operative-marked-for-an early-death, must leave to make a phone call. Strangways is promptly shot and killed, so there you go. The assassins are the Three Blind Mice, men who pretend to be disabled before killing you. They are the first of the Bond series’ endless array of novelty-packing henchmen.

Strangways was supposedly investigating some kind of interference with American missile launches at Cape Canaveral. At least, it’s missiles at first, then it suddenly becomes a rocket called Mercury 5. This was probably a last minute change, as the real US Mercury program was experiencing some difficulties at the time, but it’s not a small point. Bond’s backdrop is determinedly Cold War and the fear of atomic power looms throughout Dr. No. Yet Saltzman and Broccoli are also at pains to distinguish Bond as fantasy. They actually replaced SMERSH from the novel and introduced SPECTRE, although the organisation hadn’t actually appeared in a Fleming book until he stole the idea for Thunderball. Appropriately enough, it was stolen again for this film. Alas, the Dr. No novel’s fight scene between Bond and a giant squid was also omitted from the screenplay.

Bond’s iconic introduction sees him dragged out of a highbrow London Club, where he is busy smoking, drinking, gambling and arranging fornication with the sort of female dilettantes who enjoys playing chemin de fer at three in the morning. Her name is Sylvia Trench, and when she turns up later in Bond’s apartment wearing naught but one of his shirts, she becomes the first of many. Cast as Trench, Eunice Gayson was to have been an ongoing girlfriend for Bond, but she was dropped after just two appearances.

Chemin de fer, by the way, is a kind of purists’ baccarat played in French and this immediately brands Bond as the kind of detestable, pretentious ass most of us love to hate. Among Ian Fleming’s many faults was the belief that casinos are places for gentlemanly behavior, as opposed to falling over pot plants and spilling coins into a pool of your own vomit.

The following scene is Bond’s first encounter with Moneypenny and M and it is just wonderful. All the ingredients are present: the hat on the hook, Moneypenny gagging for it and a glowering Bernard Lee. Bond’s licence to kill is established and his signature Walther PPK is delivered by gadget man Major Boothroyd, who is in fact Q but not identified as such, nor is he played by Desmond Llewelyn, who only arrived after the original Boothroyd declared himself unavailable for From Russia With Love, shortly before branding himself the unluckiest bit part player in Hollywood.

Embodied by Connery, Bond seems to arrive fully formed, effortlessly sexy, dangerous and spectacular. But when he first met the producers, the experienced but unknown Connery was a diamond in the rough (with fully visible tattoos on his arms). Fleming himself was not impressed, calling Connery, “a snorting lorry driver”, a comment that also betrays Fleming as the sort of detestable, pretentious ass most of us love to hate. That Fleming changed his tune and the world fell under Bond’s spell can really be accredited to director Terence Young, who was quite the dapper bon vivant himself. He wasn’t Saltzman and Broccoli’s first choice, but in another case of Hollywood happenstance producing success, it was Young who gave Bond his panache, glamour and dry wit, much of it from his own persona.

Incredibly, both Roger Moore and David Niven were early contenders for the part. It seems obvious now that Bond should be British, but actually Broccoli’s first choice was his friend Cary Grant, who refused to sign any multi-picture deal. That an American should play Bond is almost unthinkable now, but this was not the last time the producers considered this option.

Terence Young had to quickly cast actors for what he knew would be a recurring ensemble, but despite the pressure he obviously had a good eye. Such was his desperation that he even cast a young girl from a car rental counter at Jamaica airport, to play the girl known only as “the photographer”. She turned out to be the reigning Ms. Jamaica beauty queen. One of the Three Blind Mice was a local dentist. The dastardly Professor Dent was played by Anthony Dawson, a friend of Young’s who ran a crop dusting business in Jamaica, and later became Blofeld’s body double.

Dr. No also marks the first appearance of Bond’s longtime CIA associate Felix Leiter, who has traditionally been played by different actors in every single movie until very recently. He’s played by Hawaii Five-O’s Jack Lord here, who wanted to return and asked for more money to do so. As quickly became traditional with Cubby Broccoli every time he was asked for money, he sacked Lord.

There are plenty of great Bond moments throughout the movie: the vodka martinis and liberal Smirnoff product placements (drunk straight, no ice…in the tropics), Saville Row is name dropped, a tarantula crawls over a sheet of glass pressed against Connery’s chest (an effect that was cleaned up considerably for the DVD release) and a car chase that uses the same short stretch of road in three separate shots. There is even some actual spy work – not always a given in a Bond film – with Bond memorizing the routines and blood types of all involved.

Joseph Wiseman is Dr. No himself, the original evil genius with barely explained plans of world domination on the part of SPECTRE, who is – make no bones about it – played by a white man wearing make up to appear Chinese. The casting of whites to play various ethnicities in theatre and on screen is a big subject in itself, but suffice to say it was not done for a lack of ethnic actors. Connery muttering to Wiseman about working for “the East” is cringe worthy, although to modern audiences, Wiseman’s make up appears so bad that you spend the first few moments wondering if Dr. No’s deformities go beyond his metal hands.

Bond’s second tryst also suffers the same problem. She offers to cook him a Chinese meal shortly after he forces himself on her, saying, “I’m sorry, I thought I was invited up here to admire the view”.

Dr. No first appears as a disembodied voice in an empty cell beneath an enormous circular window. It is the first of the big circular/dome motifs used in many of the Bond films, courtesy of production designer Ken Adam (right), a fascinating character in his own right. A German born Jew whose family fled to England on the eve of World War 2, Adam became an RAF pilot and designed bomb shelters, before he went to Hollywood. As a production designer, his style set a tone for Bond that arguably reached its zenith in You Only Live Twice and endures even now. This set is all the more remarkable when you consider it cost a mere 745 pounds, thanks to Broccoli’s cost cutting. Adam is also responsible for the fabulous atomic laboratory set, constructed at England’s Pinewood Studios, complete with a giant globe that does nothing but flash in alarm when Dr. No’s reactor overheats.

When Dr. No is finally seen, wearing the trademark high collared Mao or zhongshan suit, his first words are, “One million dollars, Mr. Bond.” This comes after Dr. No has drugged Bond for no apparent reason other than to ogle him while he sleeps.

Of course, Dr. No features the what many consider to be the ultimate Bond moment…

We eventually learn that the woman’s name is Honey Ryder and she is a self educated professional shell collector (!) who volunteers the fact that she was raped in Kingston and avenged herself by killing her attacker with a black widow spider. Clearly, we are meant to think that this is a girl who can look after herself, so we shouldn’t mind when she is thrown to Dr. No’s guards for their amusement and Bond hesitates to break a bottle of Dom Perignon in her defense.

In fact, it’s only after his mission is complete that Bond goes looking for Honey, presumably after the guards have had their way with her. The original script has Honey being attacked by giant crabs (steady), but when the aforementioned crustaceans were shipped to Pinewood Studios, they arrived either dead or still frozen. So Young decided to drown her instead.

Andress (pictured above with gratuitous camel toe) only secured the role at the last minute, through connections with her husband, John Derek, the actor/director/producer who was also married to Bo Derek and Linda Evans (separately), and who photographed all three of them for Playboy (separately).

Saltzman and Broccoli offered Andress the role without ever meeting her. That a Swiss woman with the name “Ursula” might speak with an accent obviously never occurred to them, which is why they paid German voice actress Nikki Van der Zyl (right) to rerecord her dialogue…in an accent. Nikki is the voice over artist who infamously dubbed female dialogue in Bond films up to and including Moonraker. This sleight of hand is standard in Hollywood and frankly, Nikki deserves congratulations rather than scorn, not only for securing ongoing employment, but for giving pathos to dialogue like, “Have you ever see a mongoose dance?”

If watching Dr. No now is a guilty pleasure, then it is no different to most Bond films and probably far better than the few which seek to take themselves seriously. And it is clear from the outset that under Terence Young’s guidance, Dr. No is not to be taken seriously. The plot is simplicity itself and has to be, because the script clearly peters out halfway through the final act. Bond films have never been known to tax their audience too much and Dr. No sets the bar very low indeed.

Glaring plot holes, huge leaps of logic and horrendous racism aside, Dr. No was an immediate hit in 1962 and on its initial release took more than 20 times its $1 million budget. Not that Saltzman and Broccoli were necessarily that confident on release – despite signing Connery to a five picture deal, the absence of the familiar “James Bond will return” from the end credits is notable. It would not be the last time Saltzman and Broccoli failed to predict the future…