The first issue of
GoodCopBadCop the comic came out in 2012.
I came up with the idea a year earlier.
I was looking for an idea – a high concept even – for my next indie
comics venture and I remember seeing an ad on a double-decker bus and suddenly
it came to me. It popped into my head more
or less fully formed. I have absolutely
no recollection what the ad on the bus was.
I always assumed one day it would come back to me. Now I’m not so sure.
GoodCopBadCop is a modern crime take on Jekyll and Hyde where the ‘good
cop’ and ‘bad cop’ are the same person.
The same night I put together
the pitch, everything came together beautifully, seamlessly. On a wall in Sauchiehall Lane, I saw a piece
of street art in the shape of a human-shaped chalk mark and I thought, that
gives me an idea, and the opening story began to form.
It was a Wednesday. It had to be because I was attending Weegie
Wednesday, a monthly networking event for Glasgow-based writers and all types
of creative, held at Universal (as it was called at the time). That was the night I bumped into artist Garry
McLaughlin, who himself was catching a quick drink, having been to the cinema previously
to watch Terence Malick’s ‘The Tree of Life’.
I knew of Garry, rather than actually knowing him, so I approached his
table, introduced myself and sneaked in a quick pitch. Garry was up for it and there it was.
Funny that, I can remember so
much about that night, but not the ad on the side of a bus which in my mind sparked
the whole thing off.
The comic featured three
stand-alone stories. It was a sort of ‘proof
of concept’ issue. I wanted to show I
could take the idea and play it out. Put
some flesh on the bones. Garry’s version
of DI Brian Fisher remains the definitive one.
His version of BadCop is a brutish one, the character bulking up in
front of your eyes. His rendering of Mrs
MacPhellimey with her ‘mushroom cloud’ hair (whose name I took from ‘At
Swim-Two-Birds’ by Flann O’Brien) is just superb. The cover he did for this issue remains one
of my favourites. It's a beauty...
