Magic Ink

by Steve Cole

  Lib looked worried. “Pigs?”

  “Yeah, Lib. Right,” I said. “A nest of pigs.”

  “Pigs could make a den,” Lib persisted.

  “Nah,” I told her, “a den isn’t stylish enough for pigs. Sty-lish – geddit?”

  Lib just sighed, in perfect unison with Mum, who was sorting through the nearest boxes now. “I suppose we’ll have to call a pest controller.”

  “I’ll check it out first.” Dad looked thoughtful. “I have to admit, I’m dying to know why the old boy locked the attic up – and why he stopped drawing comics at the same time. . .” Now, if Dad was dying to know, I was long-since dead and buried with curiosity. That question – Why did Garry Penders suddenly turn his back on comics? – is one of the big, burning mysteries of the strip-cartooning world. There have been all kinds of weird theories. Up till now, no one has ever known the truth.

  But they will.

  Once they’ve read this book.

  GARY PENDERS – A LIFE IN COMICS

  ( And out of comics too, for reasons unknown)

  I should warn you up front, the following history-mystery isn’t funny. It’s serious. Dead serious. Very dead serious. In fact, imagine the deadest thing ever in the world getting shot, blown up, stamped on, squashed by a steamroller, electrocuted and then stuffed into a blender and eaten raw.

  That’s how dead it is. That’s how serious.

  Garry Penders – Dad’s dad and my granddad – was a TOTALLY ROCKING COMIC BOOK ARTIST. He started off illustrating a fanzine about superhero characters. Then he drew a few pages for Pow and Fantastic, these really old UK comics. He sent the artwork off to comic book firms in the USA, and that got him some work there too.

  His stuff went down well. Better than well. The ACADEMY OF COMIC BOOK ARTS gave him three awards and he won a ton of other stuff too. But he got kind of fed up, working for all the big companies. He wanted to strike out on his own.

  It was around that time that he broke up with my gran and left Dad with her while he travelled the world working on small-time comics in Spain and France and South America – only trouble was, Granddad was so good that the small-time comics didn’t stay small-time for long. They became HUGE, MASSIVE, WHOPPING BIG-TIME COMICS and made him a fortune. But Granddad never stood still, he kept moving on. . .

  Until Gran died, when my dad was twenty-one, and Granddad had to come back to his homeland. A bit like the Mighty Thor returning to Asgard after his exile to Earth.

  A bit.

  It was around then, maybe two decades ago, that Gary Penders turned his back on superhero comics. Personally, I don’t see how anyone could EVER do that. But anyway, a writer he knew had set up a funny comic in this country, The Belly-Larf!, kind of like The Beano, and for some reason Granddad agreed to work on it.

  But he hadn’t been doing it for long when SOMETHING happened. No one knows quite what. But whatever it was, it made Granddad stop drawing there and then. He officially retired. Stopped. End of. Finito.

  As Stan ‘The Man’ Lee would say, NUFF SAID.

  You know Stan Lee of course - genius co-creator of Spider- Man, Hulk, Iron Man and so many other Marvel superheroes. You DO know him. . . right?!!

  Told you it was a burning mystery. Thinking about it used to drive me nutty. Until I found out the truth.

  Which very nearly drove me completely round the bend and out of sight. . .

  (And by the way - who IS Chap Six?)

  YEP, WE’RE STILL IN THE KITCHEN

  (Can this be possible? Yeah, because it’s not so much breakfast as keep breaking-off-to-tellyou- bits-of-back-story-fast. Sorry!)

  “If Stew thinks he heard noises up in the attic,” said Dad, “I definitely think I should take a look.”

  “Can I come with you?” I gave Dad my most beseeching look. “All Granddad’s work will be up there. Please, please, please, please, please—”

  “Please, Stew,” Mum interrupted. “You already have a room overflowing with silly comics, I don’t want you bringing any more down into the house. . .”

  “We’ve got a lot more space here,” said Dad tentatively. “It doesn’t harm that he takes an interest.”

  “He should be taking an interest in proper reading!” Mum snapped back.

  Obviously, this wasn’t the first time Mum had bad-mouthed comic books. As I mentioned a while back, my mother Does Not Approve of comics. Particularly in times of stress. For her, my priceless collection is just a jumble sale waiting to happen.

  Weirdly, Dad’s never really been a fan of comics either. As a boy he was apparently always the opposite of my granddad, into facts and physics, science and maths, more like Gran and Mum. Sensible, real-life stuff.

  No wonder Granddad used to joke, “You’re no son of mine!”

  And no wonder Mum breathed a little sigh of relief every time she heard him say that. . .

  Anyway, the fact of the matter is, Mum is physically incapable of saying the word ‘comics’ on its own; she always has to qualify it with something sniffy – “ridiculous comics”, “awful comics”, “dreadful comics”, “unpleasant comics”. . .

  Or – my personal favourite – “far-fetched comics”.

  Of COURSE they’re far-fetched! They’re fetched from about a billion miles away from the normal, boring old world. That’s why they’re so brilliant. They’re fetched from some exotic, epic, exciting land of wonder, action, greatness and lots and lots of skintight lycra.

  I always had the feeling that Granddad was kind of pleased I came to have my own major-league lurrrrve for superheroes and all things comic book, since Dad had never really given a radioactive fig-leaf. And yes, Mum was definitely right about one thing – it was ALL his fault.

  “How come?” I hear you ask. Well, I wound up becoming a comics nerd precisely because my granddad turned his back on comics. He decided to sell off a whole chunk of his super-rare, mega-valuable collection. Today I feel kind of sick to think of him flogging his copy of Sensation Comics #1 from January 1942, featuring Wonder Woman’s first appearance on a front cover. . . And I STILL can’t believe that he sold his mint-condition copy of Amazing Fantasy #15, with the first appearance of Spider-Man from 1962—

  Hey. You’d better not be zoning out right now.

  OK, I’ll skip some details, but I’m just saying, you could live pretty well for a good few weeks on the kind of cash that each of those comics brought in at auction. And I guess Granddad probably did.

  He didn’t get shot of everything, though. Seven years ago, when I was a little kid learning how to read, he gave me, like, a couple of tons of old Marvel comic books as a birthday present. Hundreds of them from the 1960s and 70s, decades before I was even born! The Amazing Spider-Mans and Mighty Thors and Daredevils and Incredible Hulks and Conan the Barbarians and Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELDs and Captain Americas and Tomb of Draculas and Marvel Team-Ups. . . Each one mint or near-mint and bagged and boarded (to keep it in top condition).

  To say Mum was not pleased with my instant comic book collection is like saying Doctor Doom was mildly irritated by the Fantastic Four. Because, even though I suddenly had so many comics, I knew – with a wondrous, pulse-pounding certainty – that I HAD TO HAVE MORE.

  And so, through the past, I got into the present. I got Blu-Rays or DVDs or downloads of all the Marvel movies that have come out (Spider-Man 2! Is there any film in the world better than Spider-Man 2? Well, maybe Marvel Avengers Assemble). I trawled car boot sales for cheap Marvel videogames, and ransacked the web for fan sites and Wiki guides to learn what I’d missed. My weekly allowance went exclusively on grabbing mail-order back copies of my fave titles. . .

  ANYWAY. . . I guess the real story I’m here to tell you began properly later that morning.

  In the next chapter.

  ARCTIC EXPLORERS

  (Well, ‘ATTIC’ explorers really. But ‘Arctic’ sounds cooler. Extremely cold, in fact. Whereas the attic was fairly warm.)

  After the Bacon Sandwich That Never
Was and the Cereal That Couldn’t Be Found (meaning we all ended up with burnt toast moistened with butter and Mum’s despairing tears), Dad decided that right now was the perfect time for him to force open that long-ago locked attic door. . .

  WHAM! CLANK! Ka-CRUNCH! With hammer and chisel Dad set about the heavy chain and padlock that secured the attic door handle to the huge steel hooks in the wall either side. CLINK! KWUNK! CHANK! CLONK! BAMP! CLUNKLE! Ker-PLING! WHOMP! BANG! CHONKK! PLANG! KLUNNG! (Yes, he kept on hitting it.) SMANK! BWUMP! KLONG! THUMPCH! CRANG! SCLUNCH! (“Oww! My thumb!” cried Dad, trying not to swear in front of me. “Owww! Arrrrgh!”) PANG-PRANG-PRING-PLUNG! CRUNNG! KLANNGLE!

  Sorry, but it took him a long time. . .

  Finally – Pa-KLANKK! – the chain gave way and – TOMP! – the padlock fell to the floorboards. The attic door was freed.

  Dad and I gazed at it in uneasy wonder. Then we shared a Significant Look. We knew that this was a big deal for us both in different ways; suddenly we had access to a part of Granddad’s life on which he had literally closed the door, never to be spoken of again.

  I felt sad for a few moments and wished Granddad was still here, with us. Except, of course, he’d be shouting and yelling and going mental at us for breaking into his attic – so maybe it was better that Dad and me were doing this alone.

  I’d asked Granddad so often if I could see inside that attic where he used to work, and every time his eyes would kind of cloud over and his lips would press tight into a sharp little line and he’d shake his head and go quiet, and that was the end of the conversation.

  Now, finally, we were about to learn the reason why. . .

  Dad led the way inside the gloomy, musty room. He tried the light switch – nothing doing – but my wide eyes could see well enough. The room was long and thin with exposed beams. The curtains were half-open, and there was a skylight in the sloping roof, but the glass was caked with decades’ worth of dirt and let little light through.

  I saw Granddad’s drawing board, just as he must’ve left it – well, aside from a coating of dust – and a rickety, ink-stained stool beside it. A comfy armchair sat at the far end of the room behind a coffee table scattered with papers and magazines.

  But my attention was seized by the framed pieces of comic book art hanging on the wall – originals, by the look of them. Some had been drawn by Granddad, others by amazing artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. (Never heard of them? Go and look them up!) There were certificates and honours and awards on the mantelpiece and photos of Granddad looking way younger and lots happier than I’d ever seen him.

  As I gazed around, my eyes must’ve been out on stalks, because Dad looked over and gave me a little smile. “No obvious signs that anything’s got in here,” he said. “The windows are closed and I can’t see any droppings. . .”

  I suddenly took in the yellowed paper taped to Granddad’s desk. On it was a cartoonish figure picked out in lines of deep, easy-flowing indigo. . .

  A figure that held me transfixed.

  A figure that sent my heart heaving up into my throat, that unlatched my jaw and dropped it open, that whumped me in the tum and left me boggling, that took my butt-cheeks and made them tremble—

  All right, all right. I’ll get on with it.

  It was the figure of a cheeky-looking, moustachioed pig in a top hat and cape. Winking.

  Hmm. Where-oh-where had I seen that figure before?

  Oh, yeah, that’s right: RUNNING AROUND MY HOUSE LAST NIGHT, SCARING EVERYONE TO DEATH – AND WINKING AT ME.

  “Aha!” Dad cried, and I jumped like I’d just taken 20,000 volts. “Look here, Stew.” He’d picked up some comics from the coffee table. “Last night’s fun and games was definitely linked to your old granddad. Here’s the proof.”

  No, HERE’S the proof, I was about to say, pointing to the drawing board. But as Dad crossed to join me he held out an old copy of The Belly-Larf! – that humour title Granddad had taken on to help out a friend. It wasn’t a comic I knew well, and right now I didn’t want to know it at all. Because there, pride of place on the front cover, was an all-too familiar winking, top-hatted, curly-tailed character. . .

  LARFS WITH POSHO PIG! screamed the cover line. See page 7! “He’s got the same pig on his drawing board too. . .” Recognising Granddad’s style at once, I turned to page seven of the comic. There was a well-drawn, nine-frame strip about a cheeky, upper-crust pig having a noisy party on his farm and outwitting his posh human neighbours when they tried to complain. “Posho ‘swill’ be here again for more fun and pranks next issue,” promised a line at the bottom of the page.

  “He probably drew that pig’s cartoon every week,” said Dad, checking through some of the other mint-condition Belly-Larfs!. “You know, I do vaguely remember Posho, now I’ve seen this again. I’ll bet a neighbour always liked that strip, and that’s why they dressed up the pig last night in the same way – for a practical joke, as I said.” He put down the comics on the drawing board. “Or maybe the pig got loose without its owner knowing. Tests have shown that pigs are the sixth cleverest animal in the world.”

  “Cleverer than the guy who thought intelligence tests for pigs were worth bothering with, anyway,” I said, looking back at the drawing board and studying the Posho there with a critical eye. The paper was weird, discoloured. More like parchment.

  There was a brush on the built-in shelf beneath the drawing board, its fine head stained dark; Granddad must’ve used it to ink the Posho pic. Reverently, I picked up the brush – and frowned.

  The brush had been left covered in Indian ink, so the bristles should’ve been crusty and stiff. But instead they were soft and fine, good to go, as if the brush had been used twenty seconds ago, not twenty years. I pinched the bristles between the finger and thumb of my left hand. Both finger and thumb came away stained with ink. How come?

  “Hey, Stew!” Dad’s voice jarred me from my thoughts. “Did you ever see anything like these comics? They must be seriously old. . .”

  He came over with a pile of paper the colour of old wee in a toilet that someone had forgotten to flush. Like the stuff on the drawing-board, it was stiff and rough. The cover showed an impressive-looking knight swinging a huge, shining sword, with a kind of logo above it in a weird-looking language: DUX BELLORUM, it read.

  The pages were folded over in the middle like a comic book except they were bound together with a thin purple ribbon rather than staples. And each page was busy with heroic knights grappling with unknown warriors, all inked in that same rich, dark purple-blue.

  “It’s like a comic from a thousand years ago.” I peered at the ornate script in the speech balloons; it looked like the sort of thing an old monk from the Middle Ages would come up with. “What language is that?”

  “Maybe Latin?” Dad flicked through another of the comics, then smiled. “But this bit’s in English.”

  He pointed to a small box on the cover.

  “MAGIC, INC.?” I breathed.

  “As in, ‘incorporated’,” Dad explained. “It must be the name of the company who published it. P’raps Granddad put these strips together for Magic, Inc. as a marketing gimmick? You know, for a comic about knights.”

  “The art in these things isn’t Granddad’s,” I told him. “It’s a completely different style.”

  Dad shrugged and leafed through another of the stiff, yellowed bundles. “If you say so.”

  After a while you come to recognise an artist’s style – you know, from the way he presents and frames his characters. And the characters in this strip were all knights and kings and stuff; they looked powerful and dynamic, perfectly proportioned, with a real sense of movement from panel to panel. As the characters fought, their battle built up like a storm, growing more intense and energetic with every turn of the yellowed paper until finally, in a full-page splash of double-fab drama, the king-dude smashed the last armoured warrior with a killer right-hook, right off the edge of a cliff.

  I looked again at
the cover and felt a shiver crawl snail-slow down my backbone. Where had these old comics come from? How could ink so old stay wet all this time? What had gone on here twenty years ago to make Granddad shut this room off from the rest of the house. . .?

  And was it over?

  I was just about to show Dad the ink smeared on my fingers when suddenly—

  “OINK!”

  Dad’s bundle of parchment comics exploded in all directions as he jumped, and I yelled out too, whirling round in shock – to find the attic door had been shoved open as a small, hideous figure burst inside. . .

  BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD

  (LITERALLY)

  It was my little sister, Lib – and she was laughing her head off. “Got you!” she giggled. “Made you jump!”

  Dad humoured her with a smile.

  I didn’t.

  “I’ll make you jump!” I roared. “Right down the toilet!” And I chased Lib out of the attic. She squealed and hared back down the stairs towards her bedroom. Just as I was about to catch her on the landing, Mum stepped out of her room with a pile of boxes and got between us. Lib, being small, ducked down and made it past. Me, being bigger, went THUMPCH! straight into Mum before I could stop and we both went down in a hail of boxes.

  Well, you can imagine the ruckus.

  I had to keep a low profile for the rest of that day. Sulking on my bed, mainly. It was less effort than starting to unpack the boxes piled up all around me. To take things out of those boxes was to accept that I would be staying here in Granddad’s strange old house, and I wasn’t quite up to facing that.

  The stain on my fingers refused to wash out. However much I scrubbed at it, however much liquid soap I squooged onto it, however hard I tried, it just wouldn’t shift. I wouldn’t normally have minded, but later that night, after lights out, as I carefully unwrapped and pulled out issue 143 of The Mighty Thor, I somehow left behind an indigo smear on the front cover, ruining the comic completely – or downgrading it from Near Mint to Good condition at the very least.