The penultimate installment of the Here Be Dragons miniseries is now on sale, published by Titan Comics and set in the world of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London – part urban fantasy, part modern-day police procedural.
Written by me, with guidance from Ben, script editor Andrew Cartmel (Doctor Who, The Vinyl Detective series) and senior editor David Leach (Death’s Head, Warhide), the story features interior art by José María Beroy (Deadman, Star Trek, Heavy Metal) and covers by Abigail Harding (Ask For Mercy, Bloodborne) and Gyula Nemeth (Zorro, Criminal Macabre).
In the previous issue, London copper and magic-user Peter Grant was investigating a series of apparently motiveless attacks across the city by a dragon-like creature; now he finds himself face-to-face with a group of Fey offering to help… But at what price?
With each issue in the Here Be Dragons series I’m posting an “author commentary” piece to highlight and annotate some of the concepts that appear in the comics.
Spoiler Warning! These notes give away story points from issue #3 of Rivers of London: Here Be Dragons and other stories from the Rivers series!
The title of issue #3 is “Up from the Skies”, once more referencing a song by Jimi Hendrix.
P.2 – Peter mentions pioneering British hip-hop and grime rapper Dizzee Rascal when criticizing the Fey’s attempts to blend in to the urban London landscape. He also mentions Anne McCaffery, author of the landmark fantasy series Dragonriders of Pern. The flashback on this page references the events of the Rivers of London comic series The Fey and the Furious.
P.4 – The art style shift here is toward neo-art-nouveau, mod-psychedelic, as popularized by the work of Peter Max in the animated film Yellow Submarine. For our non-UK readers, Peter references ‘shandy’ (a drink where beer is diluted with lemonade) and a ‘flat-roofed pub’ (traditionally, a pub built after the 1960s, typically thought of as a rough joint). On this page, the Fey meet the legendary rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix for the first time.
P.5 – The Bag O’ Nails is a London club where many of rock music’s most famous performers played, including Hendrix.
P.6 – Sites of note here are the King’s Road (where much of Sixties counter-culture and fashion had their origins), and the flat on Brook Street, Mayfair, where Hendrix lived (and which is now a museum).
Sidebar: this part of the Here Be Dragons story was inspired by a London urban legend about the parakeet population in the city; so the story goes, Jimi Hendrix kept a pair of the birds in his flat, and one day decided to release them into the wild – where they bred and thrived in London’s parkland. These comics take that story and give it a supernatural spin!
P.8 – The Fey princess Silinea refers to Hendrix as “the troubadour with the burning guitar”, a nod to his real-life performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, where he set fire to his instrument at the end of his set.
P.9 – “Refs” is British police slang for “refreshments”.
P.10 – “Builder’s Tea” is typically a big mug of very strong, very sweet tea favoured by British manual workers.
P.11 – Busker Mick Spooner establishes the bona fides of his friend and ex-roadie Plugs; across the decades. Plugs worked with acts like The Jimi Hendrix Experience, David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Journey, and The Spice Girls.
P.15 – The tune Peter sings to himself is the theme from The Sweeney, an iconic, hard-edged British cop show from the 1970s.
P.16 – The Centre Point tower is one of London’s most contentious landmarks; built in the 1960’s, it stood empty for years and became emblematic of the housing crisis. It’s since been refurbished into a series of multi-million-pound apartments.
P.17 – Centre Point’s elevators really do have a confusingly large number of buttons.
P.19 – For everyone following along, the fate of Chardonnay’s pet dog Yappy (as seen in Here Be Dragons #2) is finally confirmed. Peter references the dinosaurs-on-the-loose movie Jurassic Park.
P.21 – Peter refers to Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt’s record for the 100 meters (8.7 seconds).
P.22 – Peter’s pose and framing on the last page are deliberately meant to invoke the classic, Batman-eque image of a comic-book superhero looking out over his city. He refers to Softly, Softly, another popular British cop show from the 60’s and 70s, and his last line in this issue is a salute to the movie Hot Fuzz.
Issue #4, the final part of Rivers of London: Here Be Dragons arrives on October 4th; more details here at Titan Comics.
