How to make a ’40s pulp heroine who looks a bit like Catwoman not seem like… well.. a Catwoman comic. That was the first challenge for writing the new ongoing Miss Fury series for Dynamite (which launches this Wednesday).
I pitched it with the controlling idea of ‘What have you got to be angry about?’ and used John Lydon’s ‘Anger Is An Energy’ as a loose theme to hang the narrative on. She’s called Miss Fury, after all. That name should mean something. All this came with a determination for this not to be a T&A comic and for the main character – Manhattan socialite Marla Drake – to be a three-dimensional action hero by the end of all this.
With the punching. Superhero comics need the punching. We talked about the series being a La Femme Nikita of sorts. Soderbergh’s Haywire being a more contemporary tag. Miss Fury could handle herself in a fight. And there’s shapeshifting time travelling Nazi armoured agents too, of course. And a couple of cracking Hollywood set pieces.
And then there was the setting. ’40s pulp heroine appealed. I don’t think I’ve written in that era and I used to love comics like Jerry Ordway’s All Star Squadron when I was young. But I figured that had been done to death. So, time travel her to the present? Ditto. All very Captain America. So, let’s have Miss Fury exist in both times… constantly. She falls into a time machine and suddenly the past, the present, the future, are all happening concurrently. She slips between each without control, seeing hints of who she is, was and will be. I kind of saw this as a way of undercutting expectation and cliche (hopefully) and also a means of making the initial arc a jigsaw puzzle into this woman’s psyche. Initially she’s a bored nihilistic cat burglar and not particularly likeable for it. But, as we progress, we see why she is the way she is and she starts to grow and change in our view.
I’m a sucker for a redemption tale. Saw Michael Clayton again the other week. Terrific movie with a great script by Tony Gilroy. Reminded me of one of my favourites, Sidney Lumet and David Mamet’s The Verdict (you seen that? Paul Newman’s bloody great in it. Buy or rent immediately).
Anyway, I digress. The point here, for Marla Drake, was to discover what she cares about enough to fight for, and to die for. That’s her journey. By the end of her journey she’ll have lots of reasons to be very angry that far outweight looking good in a tight catsuit.
What makes you angry?
Something not to get angry about was Jack Herbert’s art and the colours on the both, both of which turned out way, way better than I could’ve hoped. It’s a challenging script, to veer between eras with plenty of reference, but Jack has made it look terrific. He’s great on the faces too. The cast feel like real actors, if that makes sense. And Miss Fury looks amazing in the book. Take a look.
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