 By Simon Spurrier
What to Expect: An original “post-pulp crime” novel from one of 2000AD’s brightest stars…
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Review by Adam Crabtree
This is Michael Point. Mike is a killer-for-hire. This doesn’t have to be A Big Deal. Mike is the creation of Simon Spurrier, the prolific and mentally suspect scribe behind some of 2000AD’s most memorable creations; Lobster Random, The Simping Detective, and now we have Contract, a book being distributed online for free and in a smattering of libraries (one wonders if the author will see a penny from this!) before it’s made available in dead-tree-retail form.
The story concerns our man Point’s descent into seeming madness as his “clients” keep rising from the grave/living room floor/easy-chair; this just shouldn’t be, “I have very strong feelings about this,” he insists drolly. The story is very much a natural progression from Spurrier’s comic work, favouring a vivid first-person narrative full of dextrous word-plays and breathtaking metaphor (only in the world of Contract is “sonic leprosy” shorthand for dance music). This story-within-a-story-within-a-story is framed both by Point’s narration to the reader, and by his narration during an (apparent) interrogation. The lasting effect is of viewing the story’s events through some multi-faceted jewel, hindsight to the power of two colouring Point’s dealings with shady (possibly supernatural) employers, an old school friend who provides him with his sole release from loneliness (a role that grows more troublesome as the novel goes on), and a merry-go-round of contacts and “clients” (the typical fate of the latter being gruesome enough without the Romero style comebacks). Symbolism and theology collide destructively with hallucination and paranoia, leaving a surprising number of unanswered questions and more ambiguity than 2000AD’s seat-of-the-pants approach, it has to be said, could necessarily accommodate…
The tricks used to draw you into Point’s mindscape are multitudinous and really quite insidious; you’ll hear those brutally clipped sentences in your head (it’s remarkable, flipping through, how many pages end on a full stop), a style that makes stopping mid-chapter feel rather like walking away from someone while they’re in the middle of a sentence (this’d mostly happen with dudes in agriculture; don’t even start me off). The slew of catchphrases and buzzwords coined by the protagonist can occasionally be wearing, a plethora of J.W.As (Just Walk Away) and J.I.Cs (Just In Case) characterizing his wholly unglamourous and aggressively un-“Hollywood” approach to his work, and you’ll scratch your head at most of the seemingly random Capitalizations of Words and Phrases.
But for all that the over-exuberance of the prose can sometimes grate, Contract is never less than involving, and never a slouch in fleshing out its central character; if Michael Point is occasionally a pedant, occasionally a vicious little bugger, and doesn’t necessarily give the reader’s memory a lot of credit, you’re never thinking of these things as the oversight of an author, but as the genuine flaws of an intensely realised character. The line between Spurrier and his “hero” is generally quite blurred and you’re given to wonder who’s speaking and when; the prickly, pre-emptive strikes on Tinseltown mythologizing on Last Stands and bullet ridden melees, could just as easily be the work of a defensive artist as a professional killer staving off self-delusion. It is this unique back-and-forth between the two that gives the novel its heart, a disarmingly raw and vulnerable quality that de-claws the callousness that would otherwise engulf the book, allowing the reader to truly engage with the characters.
The religious overtones are spliced cunningly with the “borrowed wisdom” used by Point in his everyday dealings, the internet derived facts and figures that allow him to customize weapons and launder money in an audacious “DIY” manner. Where other writers may allow the storytelling to get bogged down in exposition (and there are a lot of them thrown in there), Spurrier breaks it up and stirs it in the narrative, and you may find yourself something of an armchair scholar yourself upon finishing it!
The layers of credibility and detail are formidable, confounding expectation at every turn; even when the book is long finished you’ll be at a loss as to exactly what kind of story it is. Contract is a bracingly original and articulate work, confident without being too smart-arsed, obsessively researched and often thrilling. With the author taking jobs from Marvel (his take on the Silver Surfer is one I’m looking forward to immensely), this work increases the sense that we’re only witnessing the formative years of a lasting talent in the industry…
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Adam caught up with Simon Spurrier to find out more about Contract...
Thanks for taking the time on this one El Spurioso (said as if I can engineer any familiarity between us, worm that I am...) Now, from Lobster Random to Points Jack and Michael, it seems fair to say you have a particular fondness for first person narration; is there one particular "voice" that is your favourite to write in?
No, I don’t think so… Different styles just tend to suggest themselves according to the needs of the story or (more often) the character. With Random it’s a very confrontational sort of narration: I have this weird vision at the back of my head of Lob sat in a circle of wide-eyed children while he talks; getting off on patronising and terrifying the little shits in equal measure. He’s a natural raconteur, bless him. With Jack Point it’s a more considered sort of voice: like he’s mentally composing his memoirs. Plus of course there’s a big dollop of Chandleresque pastiche in there.
I set myself the challenge of avoiding any caption narration at all in Gutsville, which I think gives it a bit of extra atmosphere. Then again, I did exactly the same with Harry Kipling and people still think of that as classically “Spurrier” in its wordiness. I guess the problem is that I’m so fond of the characters I’m writing about that I want to let them shine: mentally as well as vocally. I probably indulge the vainglorious fuckers too much – they’re pushy like that.
With Contract it was a whole different kettle of fish. The greatest problem I had was how to make a seemingly unpleasant human being seem engaging and empathetic. I like to think that as the book goes on the subtleties and contradictions of Michael Point’s psyche drag the readers along too, but in the short term the best solution was to shove the audience – whether they liked it or not – into his head. Writing a novel in the first person is the single most exhausting thing there is, but it gives the act of reading a sort of crackling energy you just can’t beat.
There's a lot in Contract that is open to interpretation; do you think prose lend itself more easily to ambiguity than comics?
Yeah, probably. If only because there’s no collaborative process to fudge or skew the ambiguity. Remember that comics are unique in that they keep your brain busy with “received” information at the same time as making demands on your perception. As soon as you start getting too ambiguous it creates a paradox: your eyes are expecting to deal in clearly defined images while your perception is creaking-away at something uncertain. That can fuck about with your suspension of disbelief in all sort of horrible ways.
Novels rely 100% on “perceived” information: every letter of every word must be decoded, strung-together, extrapolated, interpreted and – as part of a scene or description – imagined. It’s easier to leave a few question marks floating about because the reader’s brain is already dealing with concepts they’ve had to mentally conjure-up.
Which is the pompous and tedious fucking way of saying “Yes.”
With the level of background and intricacy lavished on Michael Point I've gotta ask, where is the line drawn between you and him (inasmuch as he shoots people for a living and you do jokes about robot lovin')?
There’s a line, of course. But it’s hazy and moves around a lot. Michael’s got bits of me in him – that’s natural enough – as well as hints of other people I know.
This sounds really pretentious and unlikely, but it’s deadly true: About ¾ of the way through the first draft I started getting really depressed. My mates noticed me getting more sullen and snappy, and I kept catching myself having all sorts of gloomy thoughts. It gradually occurred to me that I’d spent so long pretending to think like Mike Point, that when he reached a bleak and forlorn place in his story it started jiggering about with mine. There were certain points in the book where, in spite of how carefully I’d plotted it, I had to go “off piste” because that part of me that was thinking like him refused to go down the paths I wanted it to.
Very disturbing.
Was Contract written with your own personal views on theology in mind, and if so, how did you communicate this
Yeah, I guess it was. For the record I’d describe myself as a “militant agnostic” (it’s not as crazy as it sounds), and I’ll quite happily debate religion with willing parties ‘til the cows come home. Note the word “willing”. But when I first wrote Contract I realised I’d subconsciously included a sort of agenda of my own – I was in the insane position of getting evangelical about Uncertainty – and that shocked me.
See, regardless of what faith I or anyone else belongs to, it’s my firm belief that the only time religion ever becomes a problem is when people try to impose theirs on others. And by harping-on about – as I see it – the irrationality of blind faith or blind denial, that’s exactly what I was doing. So I censored myself quite a bit during the first rewrite, because there’s nothing worse than a preachy writer.
Contract is “about” religion in the same way that Eastenders is “about” London.
To what do you owe your fondness for simile? Were you telling girlfriends back in the small days that they were hotter than lesbian lava?
Hah. No, I’m afraid not. Though now I come to think of it, I did get burnt more than once… (B-dum tsh)
I think I love the simile thang because you don’t often get to use it in the Real World: it’s either too smarmy to roll off the tongue, too daft to insert into polite conversation, or too brain-fuckingly brilliant to be passed-off as spontaneous. The hands can type what the mouth can’t utter – it’s that simple.
Is any kind of follow-up to Contract, spiritual or otherwise, planned?
Ish. There is indeed a second novel en route (I should be typing-up the finished first draft right now, in fact). It’s not a direct sequel as such, though a couple of characters appear in both.
Would you have any interest in adapting Contract as a comic? Frazer Irving should be all up in that...
Interest? Maybe. I haven’t really had a chance to give it much thought. I wrote it as a novel because that’s how it worked in my head. I’d have to be convinced that an adaptation was adding or changing something significant before I’d feel it was justified.
And Frazer hasn’t got time to be thinking about that sort of thing anyway, because he’s too busy working furiously on Gutsville. Right Fraze?
Besides, he’d need to get someone to read it to him first.
How do you feel about the unique distriubtion methods employed for Contract? How much input did you have on that score?
Initially I was pretty cynical about it, but the logic was unfaultable from the beginning. In a nutshell it goes like this:
The biggest problem a debut author has is not whether his book is any good, but the utter apathy of the retailers and the public. Why should anyone care that there’s some snotty new writer clogging-up the shelves? Why should anyone want to stock it in the first place? So poster campaigns and all that toss don’t do a spot of good unless people already recognise the name of the author.
Hodder Headline’s idea was simply to allow people the chance to read Contract online – free of charge – for a limited period. No one-chapter-samples, no annoying unresolved cliffhangers: the whole damn thing. Sounds counterintuitive, right? Give something away for free in order to make it sell better – mental!
But it works. Three main reasons:
First, because people don’t much like reading books off a screen: they’re not portable, they hurt your eyes, and you can’t read them while taking your morning shit. So a lot of people start reading, like what they see, but tell themselves they’ll wait for the paperback rather than suffer a corneal catastrophe.
Second: collectability. People these days define themselves according to the stuff they own. If they’ve read a good book they’ll want it on their shelves – not just so they can read it again but because it’s like a way of flashing their True Colours at visitors. This is why libraries aren’t at their healthiest
And lastly and most obviously: good old fashioned Word of Mouth. Get people talking, get bloggers blogging, get readers telling their mates and their mates’ mates about it, and when it finally gets released the retailers might just give enough of a damn to stock it.
It’s a big, risky, flashy manoeuvre, but it looks – so far – like it’s working.
Don't meant to be a bore or nothin', but do you have an ETA on new Harry Kipling? Maybe a London Falling sequel? Further Simping Detective? Hell, ANYTHING you can tell us about your forthcoming 2000AD output?
Nothing much to say, I’m afraid. I’ve been so snowed-under recently I haven’t had much of a chance to do anything for Tharg. I’ve been getting some comics work over the pond too, but I’m not about to walk out on 2000 AD.
There’s a Fink Angel strip running in the Meg pretty now, but nothing else on the cards. Plenty of ideas and plans, mind. I’ll get onto it soon!
Finally, and I'm sure you were hoping we'd avoid this particular line of enquiry but which robot would YOU most like to put your affair in?
I dunno, man. Up until a couple of weeks ago I would’ve said R2-D2, but that bitch has been off my list since the thing with the crocodile clip and the parrot. There’s only so many times you can tell the doctors “I slipped” before they start raising eyebrows, you know what I mean? I guess it’d be kind of cool to slip-it to that little vacuum thing off the Teletubbies. Any ‘bot which spends that much time round four guys in androgynous gimpsuits has got to have a thing for getting freaky. Tubby-Custard bukkake is the next big thing, I swear to god.
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