HMS Hood.

I once read a book detailing the exploits of the royal navy published in the interwar period, it was an earnest but entertaining read aimed at young adults. One ship that featured extensively in that book was HMS Hood. They call it dramatic irony, that sense you get when you, as a reader or member of an audience have knowledge of something the participants of a drama are unaware of. That’s what you get when you read something like this account of the Hood’s prewar travels around the world but I also gained something else from that read. That was a perspective on just how much of a calamity the loss of the Hood was and the impact it must’ve had on the public consciousness.

Battleships are not just weapons of war, they’re a locus for national prestige and since for much of the Hood’s career, she was the largest and most powerfully destructive engine of war ever constructed by man, the prestige and pride gathered around her was prodigious. Alas the cause of the Hood’s undoing was with her from the very moment her hull was laid down in 1916. She was constructed as a battlecruiser, ie a lightly armoured battleship built for speed. When Admiral Fisher first envisioned the concept of the dreadnought, he conceived it as two closely related types, one being fully armoured ships, the other being a more lightly armoured version. The lighter ships would use their speed to evade fire, rather than sit and take the punishment that smaller and faster ships, like destroyers, could deliver to slower vessels.

Since it’s impossible to armour vessels to be immune from attack, the concept of the battlecruiser seemed to be a pretty good idea and you know, it might’ve been if they’d been used in their intended context. Battlecruisers were built to harass and destroy enemy shipping, then speed away before enemy vessels could deliver a reprisal. They could outpace submarines, destroyers and deliver a salvo over the horizon before anyone even knew they’d been targeted. What they were not built to do was take on more heavily armoured and armed vessels in direct confrontation. Of course the Royal Navy knew this but fear not, they had a cunning strategy to overcome this shortcoming. When faced with an enemy whose guns outdistanced your own a battlecruiser would turn beam on and head towards the opponent at full speed, thereby using her speed to evade fire and close the distance so she could deploy her own armament. Yeah only, there’s a slight problem with this strategy…

...it’s complete bollocks. You see what happens when a ship turns beam on to an opponent is that she presents a much bigger target to the enemy. When ships are broadside to the opponent, that opponent has the width of the deck to aim at, beam on that opponent has the entire length of the ship to aim at, but it gets worse. The enemy ship now has the option of bracketing the range of their shots. Broadside to broadside, it took a ship around three salvos before she would be on range to the enemy, even when the range was accurate, they could still miss, something called straddling in gunnery parlance. With a ship beam on heading towards you, all you have to do is fire short and that ship will sail into your shot, you are practically guaranteed to hit it.

And that’s what happened, with ship after ship at the battle of Jutland. The battle of Jutland is a huge landmark in, not just naval history, but the history of the world because it’s when Germany lost WWI. With all the attention that land war attracts it might come a surprise to some that the war was lost in 1916 at sea but it’s my belief that the battle of Jutland is the decisive engagement of the war. Even so it was no walk in the park for the Royal Navy, in fact it was a veritable disaster, one that resonated through the public consciousness, probably even more than the sinking of the Hood. The battle highlighted a number of problems with, not just the thoroughly useless strategy mentioned above but problems with the very fabric of the Royal Navy’s ships of the line.

It seems the placement and construction of the ship’s magazine made the Royal Navy’s battleships and cruisers especially vulnerable to fire at range, where shells would penetrate the deck rather than side of the ship. The battle took place in May, Hood’s hull was laid down in September -- oops, can you see the problem here? Indeed, Hood was built to a design that predated the battle of Jutland. Hood was intended as the first of a new class of battleship but once the shortcomings of her design were realised, that plan was abandoned and she was completed as the sole example of the Hood class.

When the subject of the Battle of the Denmark Strait and the sinking of the Hood comes up in some TV documentary, it’s usually aired as some mystery, oh why did the Hood sink? There’s no mystery, the Hood was inadequately armoured and took a stray hit at extreme distance from the enemy. That hit turned out to be catastrophic because of the Hoods inherent design flaws but the battle wasn’t by any means a foregone conclusion. Mistakes were made on both sides, The Prince of Wales was misidentified as the King George V by the Germans and Admiral Holland ordered his battle formation to open fire upon the Prinz Eugen believing her to be the Bismarck. The pairing up of the Prince of Wales, a ship just out of the builder’s yard with the inadequately armoured Hood is a blunder that doesn’t seem to get the attention it deserves either.

In the end it wasn’t flawed design or strategy that sunk the Hood, it was luck, she turned at the wrong moment just as Bismarck was testing her range.

A horror story.

Page 1 if I recall correctly, a mysterious window -- ooh er Mrs. I wonder what could this portent foretell...

Page 2 ...well nothing good that's for sure.

Page 3 The plot thickens--then evaporates in to thin air.

What do we have here then--well it a few pages from an aborted comic strip that I found recently while digging through some old work. I only found the photocopies I'm afraid because the artwork was handed over to someone else around the time I left the project. The story concerns a vampire, the woman or old bag you see in the panels but her misdeeds and malfeasance are not the horror story I'm refereeing to by naming this post, a horror story. No the horror story referrers to the tribulations concerning the generation of this artwork together with a few other pages and some character sketches.

You see, it's not my creation, rather it was a collaboration with an author. This guy was/is pretty literate and intelligent, the trouble was he couldn't get his head round the idea that something had to happen on the page for an illustrated narrative to work. Instead he would provide a script that consisted of a page of foolscap that translated to around sixteen illustrated pages. You see the second page of this sample of artwork, where there is no dialogue, well the version presented here very much represents a précis from the original. Needless to say there was a lot of too and froing, arguing the toss and such, none of which I won and since I didn't care for idea of slogging out all the pages need to accommodate a disproportionately concise script, I exited the endeavour.

Only that's not the last of it, you see these reproduction might be of the original artwork or they might be from the redrawn artwork that I created when the originals were accidentally destroyed. I admit that I somewhat foolishly decided to use Higgins ink instead of the normal Windsor and Newton waterproof Indian ink and wouldn't you know, the artwork got wet...

...ugh.

Oh yeah and just don't ask about the spelling for the speech bubbles...

The two faces of January

Patricia Highsmith is an author who has become rather more highly regarded since they started making her Ripley books into films, before which she did have a culty following but was generally regarded as the bint who wrote Strangers on Train. She did of course write the novel the film was based on but there is some distance between Hitchcock's thriller and Highsmith's work. A key difference is the character of Bruno, Bruno Antony in the film is a charming urbane, even effete character rendered sublimely in a tense script and portrayed in a subtle understated performance from Robert Walker. A far cry from the novel's Charles Anthony Bruno who is merely an oafish brute with some stereotyped character flaws. After Hitchcock's film of her book, Highsmith's characters display more of the attributes embodied by the film's Bruno Antony character. The moral ambiguity was always there but now it's accompanied by the veneer of civility that was one of the Hitchcock trademarks. Ripley is the culmination of this trend in Highsmith's work but it's also present in The Two Faces of January.

The two faces of January concerns a meeting between Chester MacFarland and Rydal Keener, a meeting occurring under extreme circumstances while MacFarland is holidaying with his wife, Colette, in Greece. Chester MacFarland is a conman whose schemes in America have netted a sizable fortune, with which he is able to travel through Europe at ease with his younger wife. Rydal Keener is something of a nascent drifter, he being estranged from his father who is also recently deceased, he feels somewhat embittered and maligned by circumstance. A teenage romance with his cousin terminating in, as he sees it, a case of post coital regret and subsequent allegation of rape has garnered the disapproval of his father and one might assume, coloured the light in which his father regarded his son. It's this unresolved relationship with his father that brings Chester and Rydal together and acts as the catalyst between them. Chester happens to look like Rydal's father and this resemblance causes Rydal to seek out an association with Chester. The unfortunate conclusion of his romance with Agnes, his cousin, also impinges sharply on Rydal's relations with women. He's finds himself unable to reciprocate when they show romantic interest in him, even though he is attracted by them.

Highsmith uses a third person narrative that relates both Rydal and Chester's perspective by alternating its focus between them. Their inner monologues are rendered in this discrete way consistently, there's no switching about between them or interference from other characters; although Rydal is a highly empathic character who frequently references his observations concerning the emotional state of the other characters. There are some conveniences plotwise that really don't make sense, a fake passport might get you across the boarder but generally they wont stand up to any leisurely scrutiny by the police because all their numbers are registered. Chester also makes a few unwise decisions that are really quite unfathomable, although he is suffering a deal of stress and anxiety at these moments as well as being under the influence most of the time.

You might think that the alternating of the third person focus might incur some dramatic irony, which it does but thankfully it's kept reasonably subtle, there's no tedious: character X thinks A but character Y mistakenly believes B kinda stuff going on, which I'm grateful for, thank you Patricia. It's also quite a compelling read although Highsmith's prose is a bit lumpy for me to read comfortably, it relies heavily on punctuation with too many needless interjections. She does get a bit poetic at times and I'm sure a lot of it went completely over my head but she's also occasionally very prosaic and I really do mean very, some of the narrative being rendered as an unadorned list of events.

This novel is in the crime section in the library and the blurb states it's a psychological thriller and to be fair, yes there is plenty of crime and some tepid thrills but it's not really a genre work unless you want to cite the plot conveniences I mentioned earlier. It has been made into a film and the edition I read had a foreword by the film's director, which I only skimmed after I read the book. It's generally not a good idea to read a foreword that's been added to a novel before you've read the book and this is this was my first reading of the novel. The bits of the foreword I took in were the usual hagiography that gets churned out by showbiz types but one interesting aspect was the mention of homo-eroticism. It's interesting to me because it illustrates a void in the way many American's perceive the effete and urbane character traits, they can't reconcile them unless they indicate homosexuality, which is often true of course but it's not a defining association. In England we're more class aware and we recognise them as indicative of some form of social ascension.

Anyway those are my thoughts on The Two Faces of January my official rating is: yeah well worth a gander, although Highsmith is a decent but rather over rated writer.

Page Four

So there I was fiddling with the radio dial, when I happened to pause it on Radio 4 for a second. Now this was something of an accident because I drink beer, I do not drink Vodka Martinis so I don't have anything in common Radio 4 listeners or its programme producers. In fact  there's no common cultural experience beyond the fact the presenters are speaking something like English. Anyway it was Woman's Hour, of course it is because it's always Woman's Hour on Radio 4 only it's worse than you think because this was Woman's Hour Late, yep there's actually more than one Woman's Hour on a station that is pretty much dedicated to a female audience. How do people involved in Radio 4 get through the day without thinking that this is more than a little odd?

Anyway, I was glad to have encountered the programme on this occasion because they had an interview with a leading anti page three campaigner. Oh right you're thinking, she must be a real Gladys Tin Knickers, well she might be in reality but on this occasion in her version of reality, she was coming out as a nymphomaniac, with a particular preference for group sex. You know I can hear the tea cups falling to the floor at this very moment only get this it gets worse (or better) these -- encounters (I think we'll call 'em  that for the moment, gang bang is a term that I think needs some rehabilitation before it can be dropped in to polite discourse) were apt to take place at 'Festivals'. What does that mean I thought, I've never seen a tent bigger than a wardrobe at Glastonbury, is she having sex exclusively with midgets? No though, it seems I was labouring under a misapprehension, these festivals were sex festivals, events, apparently, staged for the sole purpose of engaging in group sex...

...ulp.

Holy fucking shit, are you telling me these things actually exist? Well as yet, I'm not totally convinced, reality is a somewhat elastic concepts for most people of Lucy Anne Holmes's ideological disposition. Yes that's the er -- lady in question, Lucy Anne Holmes -- valiant campaigner against page three because we can't have lorry drivers wanking at truck stops can we, cluster fucks for the metropolitan elite and their Viagra dosed priapi, they're ok. Now before you get all het up about the hypocrisy of it all, I do see a certain consistency in Mz. Holme's stance on page three, after all wouldn't the thought of all those hod carriers spilling their loads be offensive to a person of her -- disposition, she must consider it a frightful waste of talent.

Wait a second, how do you get a spot on Woman's Hour detailing your sexual exploits, it seem a mite incongruous even if it is Woman's Hour Late and what on earth could prompt a person with such proclivities to take such opportunity to tell everyone about them? Well my friend the answer is simple, in this the epoch of hypocrisy the motive is money of course, you see Mz Holmes, is an author promoting her book. Wait there's more -- she turns out to be a rather accomplished author in fact with at least two pornographic novels already published and one of 'em a winner of a not so prestigious prize. Yep that's right, Lucy Anne Holmes, the  Jeanne D'Arc of the war on the public display of chesticles, makes a living from porn. I wonder how that news will go down with those model agency starlets forced to take less salubrious assignments now the opportunities afforded by The Sun are no more?

J. Jonah Jameson -- portrait of malice

In the minds of most comic enthusiasts Ditko and Spiderman are bonded together as tight as her thighs on the night of your first ever date. It’s odd though that so few of us have actually ever read them, even I’ve not read ‘em for ages. They still resonate though, even for those who haven’t read them ever, that is certainly something remarkable. Why is this, well there’s a enormous effort expended perpetuating the Spiderman mythos through the media to support the truly staggering budgets the film industry requires to turn out their superhero related films but in the case of Spiderman, there is a little more to it. Reading those stories in my formative years I recall them being a unique experience. I was a bit too young to understand Peter Parker’s predicament at first, it took some advancement through my teens before the spider and I really connected. It’s a little odd that doing something so obvious like relating the drama of a comic book fantasy to your reader’s reality, should seem so remarkable but there’s never been anything to match those Ditko Spidermans.

The Comic Code was ascendant at the time, so portraying any corruption or malfeasance of authority was absolutely verboten, so how could any narrative media portray the petty tyrannies that plague that lives of their readers. The answer, J. Jonah Jameson and his malicious vendetta waged on Spiderman, teachers, politics and the police may have been off limits but it was open season on the press. Has there ever been any comic book villain to match Jameson for his malice and the misery he perpetrated. The thing about Jonah was, his evil might seem paltry, he didn’t have plans for world domination or ambitions to circumcise the entire male population, he just wanted to destroy one person’s life. That’s brilliant because it’s what the majority of young adult males face every day and what Ditko did, was put in a comic book in a form that resonated with that readership.

As far as I’m concerned no one did it before and it’s never been accomplished convincingly since. Like I mentioned, doing the obvious, it seems so simple but there is so much allied against you when you try it. Of course Ditko’s Spiderman isn’t perfect there’s a few too many wordy soliloquies expressing inner torment, when just the a picture would do but there’s always the option of skipping over the pap when you’re reading a comic.

New year resolution

Try not to get stabbed in the hand in 2019... or any other year for that matter.

Robert McGinness, the classic Bond illustrator.

I’m sure the illustrator Robert McGinness was at one time the most successful American illustrator, he seems to have been everywhere and done everything for everyone. His catalogue is replete with prestige clients, magazines, film productions as well as the bread and butter work, which is as what we all know, is what really pays the bills. He was at the top of his game, to my mind, in the sixties and seventies producing work in the painterly style that had been the look for illustration since about the fifties. McGinness’s work though, is stylistically rather more versatile, he seems to be able to wander across the line between stylisation and realism at will. It’s generally possible to put one’s finger on a particular talent an artist has and say I like this or that about their work, the way they paint flesh or pose figures. It’s harder to do that with McGinness because he doesn’t rely on style to sell the picture.

McGinness had quite a prominent association with the James Bond film franchise doing poster work and it seems from these examples, pre-production visualisations. In case you’re not familiar with the concept of pre-production visuals, they’re often used to sell a prospective idea to would be investors but they’re also passed around, shared between a creative team to get them working in the same direction. I have my doubts about these examples, especially the one with Bond perched on coral, it seems a little too after the fact to be pre-production but that’s just conjecture. It’s also a slightly odd painting though, it’s odd because it’s rendered like a studio photograph. The figures look as though they’re standing in front of a photographer’s wall, even so far as the seamless junction between floor and wall. Illustrators are or were used for visuals because they don’t suffer the limitations of photography, they can make pictures up and draw or paint them. Oh look let’s give the Pharaoh lots of gold ornamentation, let’s make King Kong reach out at the plane, that kind of thing, so what purpose is there to painting a dreary studio wall, you might as well take a snap. I suppose though, Connery being a star, wouldn’t be available for photo shoots without some stiff financial incentive.

There is also some eroticism here, Domino in the midst of hoiking her knickers off, or on but she has a strange and asymmetric face that reminds me of a kipper. She stares perpendicular to the picture plane with a vacant gaze. Bond though is attentive and alert, what’s that a would be assassin amid the palms – no it’s just a mouse peeking through the photographers skirting board. He definitely looks as though he’s finished but she’s caressing that phallus as though business still needs attending. What is that thing anyway, don’t tell me that it’s a spear gun harpoon, since when did they come gold plated. It seems like I’m being critical doesn’t it, which is odd because I’m a McGinnis fan and fans are supposed to regard the object of their fanishness with uncritical fascination, oh well – bill me.

Although a somewhat less finished effort, the other picture, the one with the couple cavorting in the ocean, is more satisfactory. It doesn’t seem to me to be realistic, I would expect more angular and contorted tangle of limbs for a pair sinking in the ocean. Then there’s the myopia of the aquatic environment that would make staring into your lover’s eyes or even in their general direction – quite difficult. It’s a fantasy though, so these things don’t matter, the water is there just to give context. The foam and spray evoke a sense of motion as well as a lend a suggestion of passion, while foreshadowing the culmination of their union.

McGinnis gives great extremity, hands feet, legs arms there’s always some elegance and poise about them, sometimes his figures remind me of birds, the structure of their limbs being delineated so finely. Here he’s opted to use the background colour in Domino’s legs giving them a feel of translucence or iridescence. Of course, she’s a fish in her element not the cold kipper served up on a slab in the other picture. Interestingly, although Bond’s figure is more solid, more in water than of it, this translucency is also present in his torso.

There you go I hope you enjoyed the pictures, I know it seemed like I hated the one with Bond seated but I don’t really, I actually quite like it and I think it’s a fine piece of technique, it’s just that my thoughts on it tend towards the critical.