Being a comic book collector is kind of like being an alcoholic. I was one myself. I've been on the wagon for about three years now. It started in the 1970 with horror comics such as Psycho and Eerie. I remember my mother being worried that the violence in them would ‘affect my mind’. She was kind of relieved when I moved onto Marvel and characters such as Spider-man, Hulk and Dr Strange. But this was just a dalliance. My true collecting started in my teens with Batman.
Over the years I must have spent thousands of pounds on
collecting the various Batman titles. Rooting through back issues at comic book
fairs and seedy second hand shops. It wasn't the Dark Knight himself that
appealed to me but the pantheon of villains. Mad Hatter, Riddler, Scarecrow,
Two-Face, Penguin and of course The Joker, the most genuinely scary bad guy in
comic book history who made Hannibal Lecter look like one of the Care Bears.
When you are an uber-fan of something (with me it was
Batman and was and still is Dr Who) you get possessive of the characters. I
hated all of the Hollywood film versions of
Batman because they strayed too far from the comics. The 1990s Warner Brothers Batman the Animated Series with is dark,
mature plots and stellar voice artist cast (Mark Hamill as The Joker, Roddy
McDowell as The Mad Hatter, Paul Williams as the Penguin) was a bench mark in
animation and storytelling. But subsequent series such as the recent The Batman have been marked out by lazy
animation, stupid scripts and infantile character redesigns.
I became so much of a Batman purist that I stopped reading
the comics when the quality of righting on them nosed dived. My beloved comics
were being mutilated by hacks who had no knowledge of the characters. The straw
that broke the camel’s back was Kevin Smith’s odious Cacophony. Written so badly this single comic made me decide to go
cold turkey. I gave up comics. All those years of collecting gone in a flash. I
wrote a letter to DC comics that was sad rather than angry in its tone,
explaining why I would never read another Batman comic on account of them
treating both their readers and the characters and their creators with such disdain. I sold my massive collection (with the exception of Alan Moore and
Brian Bolland’s peerless The killing Joke)
and used the cash to finance an expedition to Sumatra
in search of the orang-pendek, an unknown, upright walking ape (but that’s
another story).
You see what I mean about the obsession of comic book
collectors. I’m supposed to be reviewing a film and I've not even mentioned it
yet! It’s turned into a lecture on comics!
But as a recovering comics addict Electric Man struck a chord with me. Jazz (Toby Manley) and Wolf Mark
McKirdy) are two shambolic comic geeks who run Dead Head Comics in Edinburgh . They owe their
landlord £5000 and if they don't get it by the end of the month they are out on
their ear and the landlord is turning the shop into a fast food joint called
Kebabylon.
Unbeknown to them local criminal Uncle Jimmy (Fish) has just
murdered his comic book collecting brother and made it look like suicide. Jimmy
will inherit his brother’s vast comic collection including the jewel in the
crown, a mint copy of Electric Man issue one from 1937 worth £100,000. Jimmy’s
plot is to flog the comic to an American collector (Mark Mc Donnell) so obsessed
with Electric Man that he dresses as the character and even had his name
changed to Edison Bolt, Electric Man’s alter ego.
The pair are due to make the sale at a comic book fair in Edinburgh were Jazz and
Wolf are trying to sell their wares on a stall. Electric Man Issue one is
swiped by a kid and in the ensuing chaos ends up in the Dead Head Comic stall.
Wolf’s estranged girlfriend Victoria (Emily Lockwood) has
returned after a year of separation to see if she can steer her former partner
onto a more stable career as a chemist (girls have never understood comics).
Left alone in the shop Jazz finds the holy grail of comics in among his own
stock and realizes that if he can sell it their problems are over. He equally
realizes that the comic does not belong to them.
Enter the lovely Lauren (Jennifer Ewing), niece of the
violent Jimmy. She claims that a will bequeathing all the comics to her is hidden
in EM1. In the meantime Uncle Jimmy and Edison (dressed as his hero and wielding
a taser) have realized were the comic has gone and are on the hunt for it (and
quite willing to use extreme violence). Our comic geek heroes have to save
their skins and preserve the priceless print. Swaps, double dealings and
chicanery are the order of the day.
Electric Man is
the antidote for painting by number, cookie cutter Hollywood junk. It is
sharply written and wonderfully acted. Fish of
Marillion fame stars as the hulking Uncle Jimmy showing himself to be
a fine actor as well as a musician.
All in all Electric Man comes across as a kind of wonderful
hybrid of an Ealing comedy and an episode of The Comic Book Presents. Its cast are relative unknowns and the
film is all the better for it being a breath of fresh air all round. This film
shows what can be done on a tight budget with a good script, actors and
imagination. I only hope it isn't lost in the sea of grey, bland big budget pap
like so many other independent films are.
Buy the movie
Check out Fish at Gonzo
Buy the movie
Check out Fish at Gonzo
