The inherited the Earth
SUPERSTAR ARTIST AND COMIC BOOK LEGEND JOCK SPEAKS TO TEDDY JAMIESON ABOUT WORKING ON BLOCKBUSTER FILMS LIKE THE NEW STAR WARS MOVIE AND LEAVING AN INDELIBLE MARK ON HIS FANS
FROM Judge Dredd to Ex Machina, and from Batman and Daredevil to the next Star Wars movie, Mark Simpson, or Jock as everyone calls him, is the number one Scottish artist shaping pop culture today. This morning cosplayers and comic fans will descend on Glasgow for the last day of the MCM Scotland Comic Con and plenty of them will be wearing a T-shirt bearing one of the iconic images the artist created: the surreal image of the Joker’s face made up of tiny bats perhaps, one that has been copied onto T-shirts and even Converse trainers. “I could dress myself head to toe in that Joker image,” he laughs. “It’s a funny thing. When I did it I didn’t realise it would have quite the reaction that it got. I thought it was OK, but I didn’t think it was anything massively special. It’s been reprinted on everything. I’ve seen maybe 50 tattoos, two full back pieces with that face, one on someone’s stomach, from the nipples down to their waist.” Only his family call him Mark. Everyone else, even his wife, calls him Jock. It’s a childhood nickname that’s stuck. He got it as a kid when everyone in Dorset and Devon, where his family moved from East Kilbride, made fun of his Scottish accent. “I had a Scottish accent until I was maybe 10 or 11,” Simpson says. “One of my biggest regrets is I can’t even put one on any more. It’s just disappeared. At school I used to have the mickey taken out of me and when you’re growing up you try to fit in. But now I wish I had a wee bit of a twang.” The name survived and now it’s a brand, one celebrated in a new book entitled The Art Of Jock, a collection of images from his comic book work and concept design for some of the biggest films of the last few years. The artist is taking a break from working on a new Batman comic and a new series of his horror comic Wytches to come to Glasgow to sign copies.
The book features more than 20 years of his work, which mixes up painterly realism with fantasy surrealism. He is a favourite of Buffy creator Joss Whedon, while director Guillermo del Toro collects his work. (It’s a mutual admiration society. Among the work Simpson created for the company Mondo is a poster art for del Toro’s film Pan’s Labyrinwth.)
Surprisingly, Simpson was not a great comic fan as a child. “I had a couple of Superman annuals and I used to read Buster and Whizzer & Chips. But it wasn’t until I was 14 when I saw my first issue of 2000AD that I realised it was something that could be your job. 2000AD felt very pure and very exciting...As a kid it blew the back of my head off. It was massively exciting and inspiring.”
That was in 1986. Less than 10 years later, in 1995, he hitch-hiked from Devon to Glasgow in one day to attend the Glasgow Comic Con. There he met 2000AD artist Glenn Fabry who told him to “f*** off and make some money.” Soon, though, 2000AD got in touch and he was commissioned to draw a Judge Dredd poster. By the turn of the century he was a regular contributor to the comic.
His crisp, dramatic style lent itself to cover images and soon DC Comics came calling. Simpson worked on Batman and Catwoman and created the strip The Losers with writer Andy Diggle. When that was commissioned as a film he found himself drawn into the world of cinema concept design.
“I met Peter Berg who was going to be the writer-director of The Losers. He didn’t end up directing it but we stayed in touch and whenever he was working on a new film I’d tend to do some artwork.”
“I heard he was working on an adap- tation of Frank Herbert’s Dune and I emailed him and said: ‘If you need anything …’ And he said: ‘ Do you want to do some concept work?’ I did six weeks on that, and right after that the Dredd film happened.”
For Dredd, Simpson was asked to create a storyboard in comic book form. “It’s my bread and butter,” he says. “It’s fairly easy for me to translate a script into imagery. But the way [the Dredd scriptwriter] Alex Garland and the production company responded took me by surprise. They were so impressed and it made me realise that in those years of drawing comics you have to be a cinematographer, a lighting man, an actor, a director. A whole visual language comes into play drawing a comic well.”
He worked with Garland again on the writer’s directorial debut Ex Machina. His were the original concept designs for the humanoid robot Ava (played by Alicia Vikander). To see Ava “come to life,” he says, was thrilling. When I worked on it, it was just Alex and I. Nothing was greenlit, it wasn’t in production. To go from that to then walking into the editing room probably a year and a half later I was just blown away. Double Negative the effects company brought so much to her design as well but clearly the work Alex and I had done was there.”
It can be intimidating to find himself involved in these big-budget projects, he admits. “I’ve just finished nine months on Star Wars episode eight doing costume design up at Pinewood and I’d be lying if the first few weeks weren’t slightly intimidating and nerve- wracking.”