A potted history of GCBC#1

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...