by Kim Newman
‘There’s been flak,’ Timmy said. ‘The fan press have crucified us.’
This had started with an accountant pondering sales graphs. Comics were like soap operas: weddings or deaths were always boosts. Noticing a projected long-term decline, even if it didn’t hit red for fifteen years, a canny bean counter calculated that an ultimate series of weddings and deaths would trigger a burst of sales (taking into account bagged variant collector’s editions, trading cards, hardback reprints and attendant mechandising) which would replace long-term decline with a massive gulp of earnings followed by a clean slate.
‘For the next-but-one book, I’m bringing back Sergeant Grit and the Gorilla Guerillas. They’ve not been seen since ’Nam, so they’re probably lazing on a beach in Mexico, whiskery old apes with huge beerguts, enormous mental problems and big Harley-Davidsons. Grit was indicted for a Zippo raid. The Nevergone Crisis is a big enough shake-up to get them back in action...’
He wanted to include every character in the ZC Universe, no matter how discontinued or ridiculous, in The Nevergone Void. Not just majors like Amazon Queen and the Streak, but all the heroes from all the decades: Teensy Teen, the Shrinking Cheerleader; Lance Lake P.I.; Captain Tomorrow, the Time Tornado; Lynxman; Blubber Boy; Morakk the Barbarian Champion; the Vindicator. And all the villains: Max Multiple, Circe, the Creech, Dead Thing, Mr Bones, Atomic Woman, Boss Bozworth, Headhunter. By the last page of Book Ten, Coastal City would be littered with costumed corpses. The hero of The Nevergone Void was Cary Trenton, the Streak’s secret identity. Stripped of his powers and his memory, he would end up as the nebbish the world always thought he was. But he’d be alive, defiantly ordinary while all the superendowed show-offs went down in flames.
Timmy liked the Grit idea. He always liked it when a character nobody else remembered came out of retirement.
‘Today, Grit would be picketed by animal rights bores,’ Mickey said, thinking aloud. ‘Tinkering with gorilla brains to make supersoldiers ain’t eco-amicable.’
The bean counter had written a memo, and the memo had passed up the corporate pyramid. Ultimately, Mickey assumed, it had been brought to the desk of Derek Leech. Maybe this was the first time Leech realised he owned ZC, having picked the company up as pocket change during a corporate ceasefire agreement. Weighing the memo, Leech would make an instant decision and, discovering who Timmy Chin was, communicate his wish that a course of action be implemented. It was probable that Leech himself suggested Mickey Yeo as Hit Man.
It was hard not to think of The Nevergone Void as hack stuff, though he was aware of its historical importance. After this, Mickey wanted to do something serious. He had outlined a graphic novel about a rock singer’s mental collapse. That was the project he was saving his arm for.
At the end of the meeting, Timmy tidied the proofs and scripts into a neat package and returned them.
* * *
Heather and Timmy took Mickey up to the fourteenth floor, where a luncheon reception was held in his honour. Comics creators bobbed between the canapes and wine, tongue-tied in his presence. Cardboard tombstones marked ‘Amy McQueen’ decorated the walls; at $5.99 apiece, the souvenirs had netted nearly $20,000 additional profit. Everyone in the room admired his work, but Mickey sensed a certain suspicion floating around.
After The Nevergone Void, all bets were off. The bread-and-butter heroes would be out of business and their titles wound up. ZC would have to start again. Exciting projects were in the offing but Mickey guessed a lot of these time-servers, men in early middle-age who’d devoted whole lives to the Vindicator or Dead Thing, would be scrabbling for jobs as commercial artists.
Heather stood close by, making introductions, asking questions. She was expert at keeping him well-stroked. Often, as she steered someone his way, she would touch his shoulder as he stuck out his hand to be shaken.
An inker, slightly drunk, told him he’d had to break the news to his daughter that his employers were killing off her favourite, Amazon Queen. The kid cried for a week and had nightmares.
‘It’s not like she was fuckin’ real,’ Mickey protested. ‘Buy your brat a life.’
Heather repelled the inker and he drifted away. If she sensed Mickey was bored, she’d manipulate a change, dismissing a dull person and hauling over a more interesting one. ZC’s letters editor told him more readers of both sexes wrote in unprintable communications about him than any other writer-artist, either making athletic sexual propositions or suggesting unhealthy and probably impossible courses of obscene action.
* * *
On the nineteenth floor, Heather left him with Dick Karsch, East Coast VP of Real Records. The tape Mickey had made of his Choke Hold score had been market-tested and Dick gave the go-ahead to devote serious resources to his rock opera. A cantata about the Boston Strangler, it would be performed by an all-star cast on the video album. Real was talking with Tom Waits’ people about the role of Albert DeSalvo. If the product received the predicted positive reception, it would be readied as an off-Broadway show. Mickey promised to design the stage production and at least take a hand in the direction, but he was really holding out to direct the video album, itself a dry-run for an eventual megabudget movie. City Hammer - which he’d directed bits of - was fine as far as it went (a video store near you), but he wanted a summer picture next time out, something that would play in Peoria.
‘I have a money feeling about this,’ said Dick.
On the thirty-second floor, Mickey and Dick met with Eivol Manoogian, a development exec with Pyramid. The Choke Hold project had been a movie idea from the outset and Manoogian was its sponsor on the West Coast. Dick made his report and the exec nodded benignly, eyes never leaving Mickey’s. Heather stood decoratively in the corner, hugging the spreadsheets.
‘I saw Tamsin in London and she didn’t say no,’ Mickey revealed.
Dick and Eivol became as excited as little boys.
* * *
On the forty-seventh floor, Mickey had supper in the revolving restaurant. Still unhappy with anything that wasn’t egg and chips, he allowed Heather to select his fare, which was unidentifiable but exciting. She talked to the waiter in French. After a glass and a half of wine, he had heard her autobiography, which was as concise and linear as a studio hand-out. She was twenty-three, a college graduate in physics, had had five serious lovers, was currently in a ‘just broken-up’ phase, made $45,000 a year as an all-purpose minion, and was preparing for publication a slim book of poems on the subject of ‘what it means to be human’.
He told her hed be interested in reading her poetry. For a microsecond, her poise cracked and she was almost embarrassed. At that very moment, he was interested in reading her poetry, if only because it seemed so very unlikely. Then the diamond chips were back in her eyes, and she began to ask subtly flattering questions, drawing him out about his work. As he explained for the quadrillionth time that graphic novels really needed to get rid of their childish image, he knew that it was impossible, given the amount of research she had obviously done on him, that she wasn’t as fed up with his line as he was. Her little nods of interest and encouraging smiles suggested shed taken a course in professional flirting. Impossible as it might seem, this woman was real.
* * *
As they emerged from the elevator in the lobby, the WoFBReIGN squaws hissed at Mickey like angry cats. Someone had told them who he was, or else ZC’s publicity department had finally done their job and made his face famous. He gave a friendly wave and was aware Heather had taken a position between him and the protesters. She’d mentioned that she had some martial arts training, and he realised she was, among all other things, his bodyguard.
One of the women scooped up a handful of dirt from a plantpot and flung it at him. He blinked, expecting to be struck in the face, but Heather reached out like an expert and made a fist around the clod. She dropped the squeezed missile and had a tissue in her palm in an instant. As they left the building, he whistled.
‘Nice catch,’ h
e said.
‘I grew up in the Little League,’ she said.
* * *
‘What are you fuckin’ looking at, pissbrain?’
The waiter was shocked out of his deference. Mickey, scenting blood, stood up, fists made.
‘I said what are you looking at?’
‘Sir, I...’
Heather sat quietly, tinkering with her last lychee, Bitch Goddess of Pudenda. She wore an evening number that had been a distraction throughout three courses. Timmy Chin, having brought them to a restaurant where he was known, flushed scarlet. The Incredible Reddening Editor: in a second, he turns into an embarrassed nerd.
‘Are you looking at my sister’s tits?’
Of course, the gook had been leaning over Heather’s cleavage to pour the wine. And, of course, his glance had been drawn into the deep, speckled valley. Just because he had a white jacket and a dicky-bow didn’t mean he’d had his bollocks disconnected.
There was no programmed response in his professional vocabulary. This had never come up before. The waiter was six inches taller than Mickey, which meant nothing.
Waving a misleading fist at the gook’s face, Mickey kneed him in the goolies, biting down on a satisfying squelch. The old magic was still there. It was the move that had put Keith Lanier on the floor in 1977.
A managerial figure hurried over. Big Eyes was bent double, coughing.
‘Maurice,’ Mickey shouted, having no idea what the newcomer’s name was, ‘have this dirty beggar dismissed instantly.’
The manager - who looked like a Maurice - skidded to a halt and looked cold into Mickey’s eyes, understanding at once.
‘Certainly, sir. My profound apologies.’
‘Just make sure it don’t fuckin’ happen again.’
‘Of course, sir.’
Maurice helped the waiter away, doubtless totting up the wages owed.
Mickey felt at peak condition. Heather was unfazed, and even Timmy was losing his glow.
‘I could do with another helping of pud,’ Mickey announced.
8 JANUARY, 1993
The next morning, sunlight pouring through the glass ceiling, Mickey dived under the silk sheets of the circular waterbed, rooting around extensively.
‘What are you looking for?’ she asked.
‘My brains,’ he said.
She was poised, head up on one hand, an arm resting to emphasise the long curve from her shoulder to her hip to her ankle.
‘Why?’
‘You fucked them out last night, Heth.’
Not laughing, she reached and pulled him close, her fingers climbing the ladders of his ribs. She rolled him over on his back and pressed him to the bed. Taking a fresh complimentary condom from the bedside stand, she expertly fitted it.
He looked up as she settled comfortably. She bit her underlip as she engulfed his sheathed erection. Her hair fell perfectly in place as if it were a nylon wig. A golden penumbra haloed her head. When he reached and touched fingertips to her unsupported breasts, she shivered musically. She stroked his braids gently, and made a fist around them, holding his head against a pillow. She pulled enough to give him the delicate beginnings of pain.
‘Go ahead, Heth,’ he said. ‘I’m in your power.’
11
1978-82
Sutton Mallet sat in their memories, unstirring under settling snows. They made no conscious effort to ignore the Deal for ten and a half months of the year but were busy with increasingly challenging, complicated lives.
Mark completed a BA in English and American Studies in 1981, having spent 1979-80 at the University of California in Santa Cruz. In his first year, he started selling pieces to The New Statesman, the New Musical Express and the Guardian. Editors did not realise he was still a student. He directed a student production of Antigone, which was a hot ticket at the 1978 Edinburgh Festival. At UCSC (Uncle Charlie’s Summer Camp) he wrote a draft of The Shape of the Now, a cross-disciplinary study extrapolating from culture and fashion to politics and philosophy. By the time he got his first, he had sold the book to Real Press, where Pippa was now a junior editorial assistant. He learned his way around TV and radio. He drew praise from A.N. and Colin Wilson, and would not have been surprised to be commended by Harold, Jackie and Woodrow. Articles about him were no longer obliged to mention in the first paragraph that he was twenty-one. His parents were proud and puzzled.
Michael did not retake his Cambridge Entrance Examination. Abandoning Julie Bee, he wrote ‘Sutton Mallet, a story which took first prize in a Sunday Argus competition. On the strength of that, he secured a commission for a book of short stories and left the Backwater for London. The BBC broadcast Paddy’s Will, his first TV play, in a New Writers’ slot in 1980. He combined the half-hour script with two other one-acters for a stage version that was a modest success at the Theatre Upstairs. That year, ITV hired him to do a regular editorial rant on I Scream, a late-night freeform programme hailed as an epochal disaster. Singled out from whipped-cream fights and nude rock groups as a redeeming aspect, Michael pinballed from show to show, guesting on celebrity quiz programmes, filling in for older presenters. Officially alternative, one of a generation of angry comics willing to break taste barriers, he was the first man to call a serving cabinet minister a ‘snivelling coprophile’ to his face on British TV.
Mickey stayed at Art School for a year but was unable to complete his course due to professional commitments. His first sales were album covers, but his name became known when Krazy Glue, a fanzine strip, was repackaged by an alternative press. Described as ‘a punk Andy Capp’, Krazy spun off a merchandising blitz of T-shirts, badges and tattoo transfers. In 1979, Mickey designed and co-directed one of the first rock promos, for a band, The Wankers, who broke up even before their single came out. The next year he self-published a one-shot British Comic, interleaving panels of ‘Violent War’ and ‘Mindless Football’. Noticed and well-reviewed in the mainstream, British Comic led to offers from overground comics. Turning down an open contract to create a strip for 2000 AD, he freelanced for ZC, inking an unsuccessful but critically-acclaimed run of Blubber Boy. Though he gave interviews condemning the London-centred media and upholding the gritty roughness of life in the provinces, he used money from a never-never film option on British Comic to buy a subterranean flat in Camden Town.
All three were listed in a 1981 Argus article as Faces of the eighties. They appeared together on television, interviewed by Melvyn Bragg about the coming decade. Even Bragg noticed how pleased the Quorum seemed to be with themselves.
* * *
The Pyramid rose in Docklands in an eerie silence, an efficient workforce trooping through pickets every morning to render Constant Drache’s radical designs in steel and glass. Derek Leech’s face became familiar but few people were interested in him. As the Empire grew, people instinctively flinched from looking too closely into his business. Other magnates were exposed by unauthorised biographies, lampooned by comedians, traduced by ex-wives, investigated by parliamentary committees - but Leech was untouchable. In 1981, with no disrespect to the Queen, he turned down a knighthood. Having consolidated UK interests, he went international. By signing cheques, he had become the publisher of prize-winning books, a backer of box-office hits, proprietor of papers read by 22 per cent of the world’s literate population, confidant of heads of state, owner of famous sporting events and teams, mastermind of the most-watched soaps. He supported British foreign policy with thundering headlines and gave ostentatiously to famine charities. He opened union negotiations by offering unprecedented wage increases, claiming to be interested ‘in making money not keeping it’. If the eighties were going to be the wild party, Mark Amphlett predicted in The Shape of the Now, Derek Leech was the host.
* * *
In early 1979, Neil was estranged from his parents: through a never-fathomed misunderstanding, it was thought he had forged cheques in his father’s name. In early 1980, while Neil was living with hippies in a cottage in Achelzoy, the onl
y copy of The Seventies, his nearly finished novel, was accidentally burned. He abandoned the project and never really tried to write anything again. In early 1981, Neil lost a job at the Arts Centre after a Valentine’s rock gig he organised turned into an all-night riot. In early 1982, a reconciliation with his family collapsed when his mother discovered enough heroin in his room to suggest he was dealing. Refused entry to his home, he was told by a friend of his father’s that it would be best if he left the Backwater for pastures new.
* * *
In 1983, Mickey was the Ring. Michael turned up in Camden Town on New Year’s Day for the Meet. Mark, away in Scotland with Pippa, sent wine and apologies. There was no Quorum. Uneasily, Michael and Mickey talked small, edging around the Deal. They had all achieved so much. It was hard to believe they were successful solely because Neil was not. Mark obviously was not going to play any more. Without even discussing it, they agreed there would be no moves this year.
‘He’s on his own,’ Michael said of Neil.
‘And so are we,’ Mickey added.
12
8 JANUARY, 1993
‘I had a bad time at university,’ Neil admitted. ‘Didn’t last two terms. It wasn’t the work, I just wasn’t ready to be on my own. There was weirdness too. It was a crazy spell, the start of the crazy spells. The girl in the next room had an episode. She developed a fixation on me.’
