#something something john being drawn to danger and thus mary

[ebaeschnbliah]

SCANDINAVIAN  REFERENCES

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In Sherlock BBC - and also a little bit outside of it 

While writing on DISTRACTION & CONSEQUENCES and CABIN ON THE MEADOW, involving Phil with his ‘explosive’ car and the Hiker with the bashed-in head, I couldn’t fail to notice that Phil’s unmoving car is a SAAB … which is a Swedish brand. 

According to the informations given during the promotion campaingn for the Escapre Room, TheGameIsNow, Sherlock lives currently in Sweden. Since these aren’t the only occasions where Scandinavian regions are mentioned in Sherlock BBC, the suspicion inevitably arose that those references could be of some importance. Reason enough to make another little list. :)

TBC below the cut ….

Short definition of Scandinavia

The term Scandinavia in local usage covers the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. 

In English usage, Scandinavia also sometimes refers to the Scandinavian Peninsula, or to the broader region including Finland and Iceland.  x

A Scandal in Belgravia

As mentioned above, Phil’s immobile car, which ‘explodes’ and thus distracts the Hiker who, as a consequence, is killed by his own boomerang, is of the Swedish brand SAAB. 

The Empty Hearse

Mr. Howard Shilcott, the ‘train guy (and mirror for Sherlock), possesses important informations about the Underground station at Sumatra Road, which once was built but then closed before it ever opened. He wears a ‘funny hat with earflaps’ made of Islandic sheep wool. That hat becomes an object of significance when Sherlock invites his brother to play deductions with him, just like in the old days.

MYCROFT: The earlier patches are extensively sun-bleached, so he’s worn it abroad – in Peru. SHERLOCK: Peru? MYCROFT: This is a chullo – the classic headgear of the Andes. It’s made of alpaca. SHERLOCK: No. MYCROFT: No? SHERLOCK: Icelandic sheep wool. Similar, but very distinctive if you know what you’re looking for. I’ve written a blog on the varying tensile strengths of different natural fibres.

His Last Vow

The main villain of this episode is designed after Doyle’s British character Charles Augustus Milverton. For some reason, in this adaptation, name and origin of the man have been changed into Charles Augustus Magnussen, who is now from Denmark. The fact that he is ‘foreign’ is driven home explicitly right at the beginning of the episode by the dialogue as well as the accent of the man, who is played by Danish actor Lars Mikkelsen.

GARVIE: Do you think it right that a newspaper proprietor, a private individual and, in fact, a foreign national should have such regular access to our Prime Minister? MAGNUSSEN: I don’t think it’s wrong that a private individual should accept an invitation. However, you have my sincere apologies for being foreign.

The Six Thatchers

Mr. Kingsley, a client, thinks that Sherlock’s deductions, once explained, are actually dead simple. Highly annoyed, Sherlock spontaneously invents a ludicrous story and tells the shocked man that his wife is actually Greta Bengtsdotter, Swedish by birth and the most dangerous spy in the world. She secretly works for none other than James Moriarty and uses her unsuspecting husband as cover to hide her true intentions which will finally precipitate in World War III. 

The first location Mary visits on her hiatus is Norddal in Norway. That’s a small place (ca. 1660 inhabitants) deep inside the Storfjord. Here she picks up a fake passport hidden inside the stonewall of a coastal watchtower. Her new name, Gabrielle Ashdown, is taken from TPLOSH, where Holmes chooses the pseudonym ‘Mr. and Mrs. Ashdown’ for himself and Gabrielle Valladon, the woman who consulted him in the case of her missing husband but is actually Ilse von Hofmannsthal, a German spy who pretends to be Mrs. Valladon. 

The Final Problem

One of the very last scenes of this episode shows a man dressed as Viking, including the (cliched) horned helmet. He lies motionless on the floor in the livingroom of 221b Baker Street (played by Paul Weller). John bends over him and examines his left eye. 

Vikings were highly skilled Norse seafarers who raided and pillaged (like pirates) with their infamous longboats (also well known as dragonboats). They acted as mercenaries but also as merchants, who traded goods across wide areas of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, European Russia and the North Atlantic islands. Some of them even reached the North-Eastern coast of North America. (X)

That Viking is not the only character in this story who ‘wears horns’. Furthermore, cow horns are also connected to the eye-goddess Hathor, whose other, dangerous side is represented by lioness goddess Sekhmet.

The way this Viking lays there … one leg sharply angled at the knee, the foot shoved beneath the other, outstretched leg and both arms straight beside his torso … it’s a bit odd and strangely reminds me of the ‘dancing men’ drawn on the blackboard in the shot displayed immediately before this one. It almost looks like the way this man lies there could have some meaning. 

And something else comes to mind: the way John bends over the Viking stunningly resembles the scene from Magnussen’s office in HLV, when Sherlock got shot by Mary. One could even say, there are three potential ‘pirates’ gathered in Magnusson’s bedroom in that scene ... Sherlock, John and ‘Viking descendent’ Magnussen. Interesting ...

The Game is Now - Escape Room Promotion

With the cliffhanger of The Final Problem in mind and still no official announcement regarding a fifth series on the horizon, one could come to the assumption that the ‘TheGameIsNow- EscapeRoom’ event serves as a sort of interlude and somehow resembles a ‘SherlockBBC-Hiatus’ (hopefully). Isn’t it interesting that here too, Scandinavia seems to play a role?

During the conversation with Mycroft, in the intercepted message Nr 1, Sherlock mentions that he currently is in Sweden. 

During the intercepted message Nr 2 a map of Scandinavia is shown in the background with informations regarding its natural recources: iron ore, copper, zinc, gold, IKEA and uranium. 

Additionally Mycroft confirms a second time where his brother might be found at the moment: ‘Missing, rumoured to be in Sweden’ is written below a picture of Sherlock, kept in black and white, but temporarily overlaid with pink and green  (Study in Pink and Green)

Scandinavian canon reference regarding the ‘hiatus’

In Doyle’s original story The Empty House, Sherlock Holmes tells Dr. Watson after their reunion that, for some time during his hiatus, he had stayed in Norway under a fake identity. 

“You may have read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it never occurred to you that you were receiving news of your friend.” (ACD, The Empty House)

Using Sherlock’s own words from The Great Game, one could say that, by now, the story told in Sherlock BBC as well as the EscapeRoom event have a …  ‘distinctly Scandinavian feeling about it’.  :)

Some Scandinavian side notes outside Sherlock BBC

Not Sherlock related. Should be taken with caution and humor: 

Radio Times, November 2018:  Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss reveale that Danish actor Claes Bang will be playing Dracula in their new series. ‘Hell has a new boss’ says the headline. Strictly speaking, the boss in Hell is generally considered to be the Devil (maybe also his grandma :) but surely not Dracula, who is after all just a human who desired immortal strength to protect and revenge the ones whom he loved. At least, that’s the story told in ….

Dracula Untold  (2014) -  some quotes:

"One day I will call on you to serve me in an immortal game of revenge … to unleash my wrath against the one who betrayed me."

“This is not a game!”

"Oh, what better way to endure eternity. For this, is the ultimate game. Light versus dark, hope versus despair. And all the world's fate hangs into the balance." 

Vlad Dracula meets his creator         Let the games begin

“You want me to shake hands with you in Hell? I shall not disappoint you.“  (Sherlock at Jim Moriarty, TRF)

How Dracula BBC came into being

“It came about several years ago,” Gatiss said. “We were filming  — we’d just started the third series of Sherlock, where he comes back from the dead, and we had to break off after two days to go to the RTS Awards (March, 2013) and I had a picture on my phone of Benedict silhouetted against the door of Mrs Hudson’s room. I showed it to Ben Stephenson, who was then the Head of Drama [at the BBC], and I said, ‘Looks like Dracula’. And he said, ‘Do you want to do it?'”  (RadioTimes, April 2019)

“We’re gonna go all Dane“

The same article from RadioTimes, contains an interview with Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. When asked about their upcomming mini-series ‘Dracula’, if there will be more ‘homegrown talents’ among the cast, the producers answered the question in their most familiar way - with lots of laughter and giggling - obviously taking much pleasure in the announcement of their new ‘informations’.

“No, no ..., it’s strictly Dane from now on. We're only casting over Denmark. I don’t think Denmark’s being sufficiently represented and so we’re gonna go all Dane.”  

Strictly Danes …. well, well …. I’m more curious than ever ... and extremely exited!  :))))  

On Scandinavian name-giving tradition

It is a well known custom in Scandinavian regions to create personal names based on the given name of one’s father, grandfather or male ancestor by adding the ending -son/-sen/-søn or -dotter/-dottir/-dattir. This is called a patronymic (while the same method based on the mother’s name is called matronymic). A good example for this in Sherlock BBC is the character Charles Augustus Magnussen …. Magnus-sen = son of Magnus. 

This kind of Scandinavian name-giving tradition is based entirely on first names. Just assuming though, this method would also be applied to last names, then ... a female descendent of someone with the family name ‘Bang’ could be named ... ‘Bangsdotter’. :)))

A last funny detail:  the subtitles for Sherlock BBC, Series 4 (British Edition), display the name of the famous Swedish spy, Sherlock invents in TST, as Greta Bengsdotter. The correct spelling of the first name of Greta’s father (used here as patronymic) isn’t Beng though …. but Bengt.

Bengt (female, Bengta) is the Swedish equivalent of … Benedict.   :)))

As I said above ... to be taken with caution and humor.  :)))))

Thanks @callie-ariane for the scripts.    Related post by @tendergingergirl

Mai 2019

[colorofmymindposts]

The Deviance of Two English Gentlemen Chapter Four

Chapter Title: One Confession of Dr. John H. Watson

Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (Ritchie films)/Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Mary Morstan/John Watson Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mary Morstan Rating: Teen and Up Status: Incomplete, chapters are posted weekly Word Count: 1892 for this chapter, 6189 for the entire work thus far Summary: Set post Game of Shadows. When Sherlock Holmes is given a case by none other than Mrs. Watson, he has no idea that he cannot fix the unsolvable for the couple. Intimate truths are exposed in the process, leaving all three irrevocably changed. Tags: Case Fic, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Secrets, Bickering Notes: The entire work can be read here on ao3. You can also read chapter one here and chapter two here and chapter three here. Sorry this is a day late! 

Story:

The wet starchiness on his forehead was the first thing he registered, though his mind felt hazy still. Only from his neck up was he exposed from a cocoon of sheets and soft, wool blankets. Although the curtains were drawn and the darkness in the room seemed to envelop him and all his senses, something of the surroundings told him he was at Baker Street.

Placing the rag on the nightstand next to the bed, Watson pulled the sheets off of himself and shuffled to a sitting position. It was then he felt his feet bare against the wood floor, and he was wearing only his trousers and shirtsleeves; someone must have divested him of his jacket and vest in his sleep.

He didn’t remember falling asleep, however. In fact, he could have sworn he was in Hyde Park with Holmes...and so he had been, he could recall clearer now as his mind caught up with him. Before he had panicked, thoughts racing, and all color and movement blurred before his eyes. He’d been so out of sorts these past weeks; he wasn’t sure what to expect of himself anymore.

But Holmes didn’t need to know the reason for his fainting spell, couldn’t really. The man would never let him live it down if he ever found out.

He would claim he was right all along about everything, how Watson’s union to Mary was always ill-fated and that leaving Baker Street was the worst mistake he’d ever made in his life. Watson would call Holmes a bastard, argue he still loved Mary when he wasn’t even certain if he truly could anymore, and perhaps lose not only his wife but his greatest friend again, by his own choice. No, Watson couldn’t allow that. He would have to sneak out while Holmes slept, explain at some later point that what happened in the park was a symptom of overwork and exhaustion, and they could all carry on as ever.  

Just as he made for the door, it was opened by none other than the man he wanted so desperately to avoid in that moment. Poised in the doorway, Holmes was dressed just the same as when Watson had last seen him, the only change being that he was adorning his tattered, hideous dressing robe.

“I heard your footfall from below,” Holmes offered as a clever explanation, meaning to impress as ever.

Watson rolled his eyes as he deadpanned, “You’ve been outside my door waiting for me to wake up.”

His friend’s twisted in a peculiar expression that looked as though it was crossed between irritation and pride, and he had to blink several times to assume his intelligent facade once more. “A matter of semantics. May I come in?”

There was not a second that passed before Holmes marched through the doorway, grasping Watson’s arm along the way, pulling him back towards the bed. The man had the tact enough to release him before seating himself cross-legged on the mattress.

“Why don’t you sit?”

“I should be going, Holmes.”

“No, I don’t think you should,” muttered Holmes darkly. His eyes snapped to Watson’s face with deliberate and accusing focus. “You’ve been running from me ever since this began, and you must admit that nothing of your situation has improved from it.”

His breath caught in his chest. “How much do you know of it?”

“Practically nothing. I am a genius, but you know my methods, Watson. As such, you’ve given me precious little data,” the detective admitted with a curious smirk. “Much as it pains me, I understand your hesitance to come to me about this...problem. You fear the weight of my judgment.”

“I fear nothing from you,” Watson snapped back, though there was not as much bite in it as he intended.

Holmes spoke with renewed insistence. “Then tell me everything, and I shall help you in whatever way I can.”

Something about the man was hypnotic. There was an irresistible draw to him, an appeal after all these years Watson could not precisely define except that it was dangerous just as it was powerful. His figure, draped in that infernal faded red robe, resembled Mephistopheles offering Faustus the key to his happiness and ultimate destruction. He was damnable. He was wonderful too. Watson had a choice, even though he well knew which he would choose.  

As he seated himself next to Holmes, it was as if a stone plunged in his stomach with the weight of this decision.

“You’re going to regret you ever asked,” he intoned, casting out a final attempt to extract himself from this conversation.

“Watson, you know a warning like that only serves to intrigue me more.”

He took a deep breath and began to tell his story.

“Everything was fine between Mary and me before all this happened,” he started as a disclaimer, expecting Holmes to huff indignantly or debate that point. To his surprise, his friend was silent and listening. He took that as a sign to continue.

“One day, Mary was telling me about her friend from church, Elizabeth. She and her husband had just had a boy. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I told her to pass along our congratulations to the family since she prefers to do that. The week after, she...asked me how I felt about family. Our family.”

Next to him, Holmes made a sort of tutting noise. “I see.”

“Yes, well...that’s it then. You know everything,” Watson sighed, whether out of relief or anxiety he wasn’t sure.

Perhaps telling Holmes was the right option.

“I’m afraid we’ve barely yet begun to probe this case.”

Or his instincts not to tell his friend were, of course, absolutely founded.

“It’s not a case! This is my life!” He practically shouted, flustered and peeved all at once.

“Why can’t this be a case about your life?!”

His anger slightly simmered solely in spite of Holmes’ own, and he walked over to the dresser where his vest, jacket and overcoat were hung.

“I knew I couldn’t expect you to understand,” he muttered bitterly as he thoughtlessly shrugged into his jacket.

And then Holmes was there, faster than an antelope, standing behind the ajar dresser door.

“How am I supposed to understand when you refuse to let me examine this?”

“I don’t want you to examine this,” he said, enunciating his words with the firm slam of the dresser door. He turned to face Holmes. “I don’t need a detective. I need a friend.”

“What does a friend do that’s so different from a detective?”

“A friend listens. He gives advice. He cares,” Watson listed off the top of his head.

His friend blinked for several seconds, processing this. “That’s exactly what I do on any case. However,” he continued even as Watson scoffed, “I can see we will simply have to disagree on that particular detail. If you seek my counsel as a friend, I shall give it.”

Any man would see this as a pitiable attempt, but, knowing Holmes as long as he had, he knew that the man was genuinely trying his best to appease.

“I’m just not sure what to do,” he confessed. It was probably the most honest he’d been about the situation.

“Neither am I,” Holmes replied. “I don’t say this very often, old boy, but I don’t think I fully understand your predicament.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s start with the facts. You love your wife.”

“Yes.”

“And she desires children.”

“I think I’ve made that much obvious.”

“Yes, you have, but your feelings on the matter have yet to be illuminated to me. What makes you so scared of your wife’s wishes for a family?”  

The question, so direct, threw Watson. Ever since Mary brought up the idea of having children, an uneasiness had stewed uncomfortably in his gut; it was almost indefinable, so he had chosen not to interpret it. He didn’t like the idea, and that was that. What more was to be gained for finding the reason why? If the way Holmes was staring at him and the unpleasant tension that had brewed in his marriage suggested anything, it meant that he’d only been sparing his pride by avoiding this.

“I just...never imagined that for myself. I’ve always thought of children in regards to other people. I knew when I was in Afghanistan that many of the men there had children waiting for them back home, and I was doing my best to send them in one piece to their loved ones. In those mo—,” his voice became choked and he didn’t sound like himself.

He coughed to clear his throat and push the well of emotions that had risen up down back where they belonged. “Excuse me. In those moments I thought I was about to die, I didn’t think of how I would possibly never have to chance to raise children of my own. I only mourned the fact I was so young and hadn’t found love.

I considered myself so lucky when I survived and eventually found Mary. She was so kind and was everything I could love in a woman. She never mentioned wanting children when I courted her, so I never thought of it. I know the rules I have to abide by as a man, what’s expected, and I have no real reason not to do this or want this, for her, to make her happy. But will we still be...happy, after it’s all said and done? A child requires so much. I’ve heard and seen so many die in others’ practices; there’s no telling what could happen to our own child. With how much that can go wrong, how can anyone want it? Why can’t any two people just love each other and live off of that for the rest of their days?”

At the end of his ramble, Watson gazed at Holmes who reciprocated with a bright, burning look. It was almost as if he seemed to understand what Watson had just said, even though Watson could barely make any sense of it himself.

“Why indeed?” his friend mused quietly, almost as if he hadn’t noticed he spoken aloud. With a tilt of his head and a cheshire grin, the transparency once bled into his features was gone, replaced with a mask. “You look like you could use something strong. Come join me downstairs for some brandy.”

He left the room without time for a reply, and Watson stood there, still dumbstruck about what had just transpired. Watson just articulated everything, all the intrusive thoughts that had gnawed at him over the weeks in the backs of carriages, on sofas, occasionally while lying on his back wide awake next to a sleeping Mary. In previous conversations, mostly with his wife, he’d only been able to discuss Mary’s desires openly. How rational were his own? Did he really expect them to be able to live in perpetual honeymoon bliss? Family was the next natural step for any English couple. While there was no law requiring it, the backlash he and Mary would receive from the community should they not bear any children would be enormous.

There was no point deliberating it right now. Holmes was downstairs, and he’d given little away during Watson’s tirade. He had to know what he thought.

[anneboleynresearch]

Sources

“To the Roman Catholics, it was not just that in order to satisfy his lust Henry had displaced his rightful wife in favour of Anne Boleyn, and broken with the true Church. Anne herself was soon being blamed for what had happened. Reginald Pole claimed that she had never loved Henry and described her as ‘the cause of all evil’ and ‘the person who caused all this’. George Cavendish, in the confidence that God, through the accession of Mary, had restored right to rule to England, produced a series of Metricial Visions in which over forty victims of political disaster, from Wolsey onwards, lament their ill-fortune...

“By the accession of James I, an analysis preserved in the papers of those incorrigible recusants, the Treshams of Rushton, could attribute all the sufferings of Roman Catholics under Elizabeth I’s penal laws to the fact that Anne ‘did beget a settled hatred of them against her and hers’...

“Anne had been of ‘bad parentage, of bad fame afore her marriage, and afterwards executed for adultery.

“Very understandably, the descendants of Thomas More had a particularly nice line in insult...William Roper, the chancellor’s son-in-law, claimed that it was Anne’s personal vendetta against More which encouraged Henry to demand that he conform. It was More’s nephew, William Rastell, a religious exile and (briefly) judge of the court of Queen’s Bench, who gave currency in his lost Life of his uncle to the lie that Henry VIII was Anne Boleyn’s father. He also alleged -- with obvious echoes of Herodias, Salome, and Herod -- that Anne put on a great banquet for Henry at Hanworth where she ‘allured there the king with her dalliance and pastime to grant unto her request, to put the bishop [Fisher] and Sir Thomas More to death’. In this edition of More’s English works, Rastell even edited out remarks by Sir Thomas More which were favorable to the Queen...”

“That more should have recognized Anne as ‘really anointed queen’ was unthinkable; worse still, it must not be admitted that a saint had described a whore as ‘noble’. To Catholics, the deaths of Anne and those accused with her and, later, of Cromwell, ‘and most of all those who procured his death’ were blood sacrifices to expiate More’s murder...”

“Protestants told the opposite story. John Foxe staunchly defended both the queen’s morals and her religious commitment. He hints at the involvement of the papists in her fall and cannot resist assigning responsibility to his bete noire, the conservative champion, Stephen Gardiner...”

“Bishop John Aylmer...hailed Anne as ‘the crop and root’ of the Reformation whom ‘God had endued with wisdom that she could, and given her the mind that she would, do it’; John Bridges, writing in 1573, elevated Anne to the status of ‘a most holy martyr’. 

“Protestant writers were not, however, always unanimous in praise of Anne Boleyn. William Thomas...who was to be Northumberland’s clerk of the privy council, and who was executed later for plotting Mary’s assassination, firmly maintained the official version of Anne’s guilt, even after Henry VIII’s death: 

“[Anne’s] liberal life were so shameful to rehearse. Once she was a wise woman endued with as many outward good qualities in playing on instruments, singing and other courtly graces as few woman of her time, with such an outward profession of gravity as was to be marvelled at. But inward she was all another dame than she seemed to be; for in satisfying of her carnal appetite she fled not so much as the company of her own natural brother besides the company of three or four others of the gallantest gentlemen that were near about the king’s proper person -- drawn by her own devilish devices that it should seem she was always well occupied.

“A school of puritan opinion was prepared to imply that Henry’s second marriage was as much a matter of lust as principle: 

“Whether he did it of an upright conscience or to serve his lusts I will not judge for in the burrows of man’s heart be many secret corners and it cannot be denied but that he was a very fleshy man, and no marvel for albeit his father brought him up in good learning yet after...he fell into all riot and overmuch love of women.

“As for Anne herself:

“This gentlewoman in proportion of body might compare with the rest of the ladies and gentlewomen of the court, albeit in beauty she was to many inferior, but for behavior, manners, attire, and tongue she excelled them all...But howsoever she outwardly appeared, she was indeed a very wilfull woman which perhaps might seem no fault because seldom women do lack it, but yet that and other things cost her dear.

“It is indeed noticeable that a number of writers seem almost reluctant to write about Anne Boleyn in any detail. Thus Holinshed remarked:

“Because I might rather say much than sufficiently enough in praise of this noble queen as well for her singular wit and other excellent qualities of mind as also for her favouring of learned men, zeal of religion and liberality in distributing alms in relief of the poor, I will refer the reader unto that which Mr. Foxe says.

“Foxe, however, had already referred to better-informed reports still to appear: 

“...because touching the memorable virtues of this worthy queen, partly we have something before, partly because more also is promised to be declared of her virtuous life (the Lord permitting) by others who were then about her, I will cease in this matter further to proceed.

“No vindication of Anne Boleyn was ever published. Her chaplain, William Latymer, presented to her daughter an encomium on her religious activities, and the Scottish Lutheran, Alexander Ales, wrote an account of her fall, placing all blame on the enemies of the Reformation, but both men evidently had patronage in mind. Ales, indeed, included an address for any financial contributions Elizabeth would like to send. The reason for silence elsewhere is not far to seek. Few defenses of Anne Boleyn have been entirely happy. Any vindication of the wife was an implicit criticism of the husband; if Anne was ‘noble’, ‘virtuous’, and ‘worthy’, Henry had either been a monster or a gull.

“One of those who may have been concerned with a project for an official Elizabethan account of ‘the mother of our blessed Queen’ was George Wyatt of Boxley Abbey in Kent. One of the most assiduous of Anne’s defenders, Wyatt claimed that he had begun work at the request of an official biographer who asked him to set down what he knew of Anne Boleyn’s early years, and had continued it under the encouragement of the archbishop of Canterbury. With the accession of James, interest...had waned, leaving him to carry on alone. George had a strong person interest in vindicating the English Reformation in general and Anne Boleyn in particular; he was the youngest son (but also the heir) of Thomas Wyatt, the leader of the 1554 rebellion against Katherine of Aragon’s daughter, Mary I, and grandson of Thomas Wyatt, the poet who had been imprisoned in the Tower in 1536 as one of those suspected of involvement with the queen. 

“George Wyatt devoted the latter part of his life not only to her biography but, as we have seen over the business of Anne’s alleged deformity, to an effort to reply specifically to the Catholic propagandist, Nicholas Sander. Sander was no original authority, but his Origins and Progress of the English Schism...had broadcast very effectively the scandalous stories about Anne which circulated in recusant circles. A typical example...is the story that after her miscarriage in January 1536, Anne committed incest with her brother in order to beget a son and so set up the Boleyn dynasty. In the end Wyatt was no more successful than others who had been publishing a defence of a queen, but more because of the grandiose nature of his plans than want of effort. Two, or possibly three, of his attempts have survive: the earliest a brief but completed ‘Life of Anne Boleigne’, the second a vindication of the relations between Anne and Thomas Wyatt the elder, which may not be by, but is certainly after, George Wyatt, and finally...the opening section of a massive ‘History of the English Reformation’. 

“The purpose of what George does have to say about Anne is naively obvious. ‘Elect of God’, ‘heroical spirit’, ‘princely lady’ -- the adjectives abound. 

“The fact that writers have agendas according to their religious alignments does not, however, make them valueless to the historian. The test is, did they have access to real sources of information? The line from Sander back to William Rastell is direct, but if we are to believe Sir Thomas More, he never discussed Anne with Rastell or anyone else, and the personal recollections of the members of his family were confined to his life outside the council and the court. They certainly breathe no word of More’s dangerous and sometimes highly secret encouragement of the opposition to the king’s divorce. On the other hand, even as the author of a Catholic account as full of picaresque invention as the mid-century Cronica del Rey Enrico Otavo de Inglaterra had from time to time access to genuine recollections -- for example, his report that Thomas Wyatt watched the execution of Anne’s alleged lovers in 1536, which was only confirmed in 1959 when a manuscript containing hitherto unknown Wyatt material was identified in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. As for George Wyatt, he had three particular sources to augment the material he collected about Anne: ‘some helps’ left by his grandfather, the poet, the recollections of his mother Jane, who had married in 1537 and lived to the end of the century, and the memories of Anne Gainsford, later the wife of George Zouche, gentleman pensioner and a target for Catholic investigation in Mary’s reign. Given such links, the volume of material Wyatt recorded is disappointing, but at least one important episode has independent warranty in other sources.

“The importance of persisting with material from partisan sources is well illuminated in the little which John Foxe does record about Anne. Undoubtedly Foxe wished to present Anne in a positive light, but he was equally aware that factual inaccuracy would lay him open to ridicule -- and so too the Protestantism he espoused. In consequence, he regularly revised his account of the queen as his data improved. In his first work, the Rerum in ecclesia gestarum...Commentarii written while he was still abroad, he was little more than hagiographical: 

“There was at this time in the king’s court a  young woman not of ignoble family, but much more ennobled by beauty, as well as being the most beautiful of all in true piety and character, Anne Boleyn, whom the king greatly loved, as she well merited, and took as his wife and queen. 

“’The entire British nation’ he went on, was indebted to Anne, not only for her own contribution to the commencement of the Reformation but as the mother of Queen Elizabeth, who has revived it...

“Anne’s fate he refused to discuss, but he did include her scaffold speech as evidence of her ‘singular faith and complete modesty towards her king’. In 1563 Foxe, now back in England, was able to be more specific in the first edition of his great work, The Acts and Monuments, better known as The Book of Martyrs. He gave details of Anne’s charitable activity, her support of named scholars, the discipline she kept in her household, and her feeding of the reformist ideas of Simon Fish to the king. What is more, he cited sources, for example, Anne’s silk woman, Joan Wilkinson. Seven years later, a second edition added other stories and identified the material about Fish as having come from his widow. Foxe also included a rebuttal of Anne’s alleged offenses, along with the barbed comment that Henry’s immediate remarriage was ‘to such as wisely can judge upon cases occurrant, a great clearing of her’ -- as near to the knuckle as he dared to go. In the last edition (the fourth of 1583), he was able to tell of Anne’s support for Thomas Pastmore, the unorthodox parson of Much Hadham, almost certainly based on the text of a surviving petition. We also have an amount of material which Foxe assembled but did not use, or else abridged. Foxe’s overall purpose was to present Anne as a Protestant role model, but that is no reason ex hypothesi to discard material carefully collected, much of which can, in fact, be verified. 

The problem of potential distortion is equally or more pressing with the one source that approaches anything like a regular commentary on English affairs. This is provided by the reports of resident foreign ambassadors, for, as well as regular domestic news reporting being unknown, Tudor monarchs were convinced that it was best for subjects to be told only what was good for them. The resident ambassador was a new breed in northern Europe. Only in the sixteenth century was it becoming generally recognized that a country needed to keep a representative at the court of an important neighbour, to watch over its own interests and to send back a steady flow of news. Older-style envoys continued to be sent to handle special negotiations, but there were now men stationed abroad and, according to the advice manuals, reporting back every few days, with monthly situation reports and, on their return, a relation or written debriefing. Theory did not turn out quite like that in practice, but a series of letters to the home government updating the situation every ten or twelve days -- which is what survives from the best-organized embassies -- is an outside commentary on affairs of unique value to the historian.

“The three principal embassies to England during Anne Boleyn’s career were from Venice, from France, and from the Holy Roman Empire. Venetian ambassadors were primarily concerned with trade questions and international relations...The French had a far greater interest in English domestic affairs, and for much of the time they might hope to keep Henry VIII from allying with Charles V. Anne, indeed, was sometimes wholly identified with French interests, almost another ambassador in residence. Yet the reports of Francis I’s representatives in London are frequently disappointing. Various reasons can be put foward for this. The French diplomat service...was...still in its infancy, and it has not received the editorial attention from modern historians which its reports need and deserve. What is more, the relative ease and greater safety of communication between the French and English courts may have encouraged the use of messengers for more difficult matters, rather than lengthy coded letters. 

“Relations between London and Paris may...have been mainly at an official level, with the French ambassadors, representatives of the traditional enemy, finding it difficult to penetrate to non-government sources. In February 1535, when English suspicions of French treachery were running high, apparently even Anne Boleyn herself felt it was unwise to talk freely with Francis’ envoy, Gontier. There was also a sense in which the French took Anne Boleyn for granted. She was there by Henry’s will and they would use her, but policy was not determined by the need to support her position. Even more important, perhaps, was the brevity of French ambassadorial tours -- the 1533 resident was complaining after six months! This did not impede the ambassador’s representative duties, but it did limit his usefulness as a news-gatherer. Ambassadors tended to get better the longer they stayed. As a result in...1532, the year most critical for the English Reformation and for Anne herself, we have very little first-hand evidence from French sources. The ambassador, Giles de la Pommeraye, was new to the job but was gone within a year, and from 5 May to 17 June he was away in Brittany ‘consulting with his government’. He was a strong supporter of Henry’s wish for a divorce; he worked hand in glove with the king and his ministers, even helping them put out the official explanation for the anti-papal statute conditionally ending the payment of annates to Rome; above all, he was close to Anne. Yet none of this do we know from La Pommeraye himself.

“No contrast would be more marked than with the third of the principal foreign embassies resident in England. The Burgundian-Habsburg diplomat service was the oldest in northern Europe and the best organized -- essential in view of the far-flung territories in which Emperor Charles V had inherited and the issues he had to cope with. Furthermore, Charles was simply not interested in affairs in England because of their possible impact on his chronic rivalry with Francis I. He had a family interest in the treatment of his aunt, Katherine of Aragon, and the legitimacy of his cousin Mary. Thus, when it was suggested that the reports he received might contain too much about Henry’s marital problems, the emperor requested even more information. Not that Charles was allowing himself to be governed by sentiment; the traditional alliance with the Burgundian Low Countries would have powerful backing in England so long as Katherine could be supported as queen and Mary as the acknowledged heir. 

“The sophistication of diplomatic technique and depth of interest goes some way to explaining the fullness and utility to historians of reports from the imperial embassy in England. Yet what really makes the difference is the identity of the ambassador. Eustace Chapuys, a lawyer from Annecy in Savoy, was not merely a highly efficient and assiduous envoy, writing between thirty and forty reports a year to the emperor, plus letters to his officers. Far more important was the length of time he spent in England; he arrived in 1529 and remained until almost the end of Henry VIII’s life, retiring only in 1545 at the age of 56. This continuous residence enabled Chapuys to overcome many of the obstacles in the way of an ambassador seeking news...It took time to discover sensitively placed individuals who would supply information, or servants who could go out freely enough to be able to verify reports. Moreover, funds did not stretch to the employment of many agents and...the real secrets were at court...The answer Chapuys adopted was the answer of the diplomatic manuals: speak French, make yourself persona grata  with the elite, and news and contacts will come to you. And this is where his training and experience came in, and especially his standing as a humanist and a friend of Erasmus. A man of address, he was worth conversing with and soon passed everywhere. Even in times of Anglo-imperial tension when another envoy might expect to be cold-shouldered, Chapuys continued to be welcomed as an individual. Henry VIII clearly enjoyed sparring with this shrewd, brilliant, cynical cosmopolitan. And Chapuys soon discovered something else as he worked tirelessly for the cause of Katherine and Mary. He became the focus for all those who disliked what was going on, who believed as he did. Here was a ready-made set of contacts as anxious to give him news as he was to collect it. His ear became almost the confessional for the king’s critics, and Chapuys dabbled a good deal more deeply in English politics than the emperor either knew or would have sanctioned.

“The professionalism of Charles V’s envoys, and especially the personality of Eustace Chapuys, come to us clearly over the centuries, and it is easy to succumb to their authority. Friedmann went as far as to write that...’...they never gave an essentially false idea of the events they had to report.’ We must remember...there were pitfalls awaiting even the ablest ambassador, and disadvantages as well as advantages in Chapuys’ ready acceptance by English society, and especially by Anne’s opponents...his reporting on the court tends to derive from individuals who share a single point of view...and pass news with the gloss which that view gave. Thus, when Chapuys reports bad feelings between Anne and Henry he is relying on informants who wanted to believe that Anne was falling out of royal favour and were ready to see hopeful signs...many of those who spoke to him were out to serve their own agenda...An instance of this which is specially relevant to Anne is the series of conversations Cromwell had with Chapuys during the crises of 1536...the envoy was well aware that Henry and his ministers would be trying to ‘feed’ him...but evaluating private individuals was far more difficult...An ambassador could also let his own feelings mislead him...Ambassadors with Chapuys’ level of commitment can easily find themselves in the business of self-fulfilling prophecy. It is also true that however long he remained in England, Chapuys continued to see things through Habsburg eyes...thus his continual description of Anne Boleyn as ‘the concubine’ completely missed the point that to appreciate the situation in England as it actually was, it was vital to recognize that to Henry his marriage with Katherine had been, and would always be, a nullity. The ambassador’s failure to see this cost Katherine’s daughter dear in the summer of 1536. 

“The inherent dangers in ambassadorial reports have led some scholars to play down their utility...The diplomatic reports of Eustace Chapuys...provide the only relatively continuous commentary on English politics and the royal court during the lifetime of Queen Anne; on particular episodes they are often the only evidence. Thus to dismiss them as inherently unreliable is to accept that we shall never know...The professionalism of the historian lies in reading such partisan material critically. 

“The danger of distortion is much less acute with administrative records, always assuming these were not prepared for public consumption. They are...uninformative. Anne only became important in her mid-twenties and until then such material tells us no more about her than about other women of her age and class...Even when she did become prominent, even when she was queen, we continue to know almost as little of her day to day as we do of the other women in Henry VIII’s life. The first is the account of Henry’s private expenses which survives for just over three years from November 1529 to December 1532. This gives us a lively picture of the king’s disbursements on Anne’s behalf in the crucial period during which she was moving from being a recognized rival to Queen Katherine being queen herself in all but name...From the autumn of 1532, Anne was in receipt of a regular direct income -- first as lady marquis of Pembroke and then as queen -- and many of the costs previously borne by Henry would now have gone through her own accounts...The second important official source is...the inventory drawn up after Henry’s death. Despite the decade and more since Anne’s execution...it provides substantial evidence of her lifestyle, vivid details found nowhere else. 

“Where significant information about Anne Boleyn is to be found, as so often for her contemporaries, is in judicial records. The most important is the material covering her trials and that of her alleged accomplices. This includes commissions, writs, lengthy indictments detailing the supposed offences, jury lists, and verdicts. After the trials these were all put in the Baga de Secretis -- the Tudor equivalent of the file marked “Top Secret” -- and they survive virtually intact. Other judicial material of value is the evidence which the Crown assiduously collected with a view to possible prosecution of Anne’s critics, evidence which provides a clear indication of her general lack of popularity and the gossip which circulated about her. Even post-mortem material can be of use...In the autumn of 1539 the reformer, George Constantine...set down his first-hand memories of the execution of Anne’s supposed lovers three years earlier. In all such evidence, it must be remembered that the deponent has an ulterior motive...

“Another obvious resource for the biographer might appear to be correspondence. Anne’s own letters are disappointing. Few have survived and most are strictly concerned with practicalities...There is...a letter she is supposed to have written to Henry VIII on 6 May 1536, after her committal to the Tower. It exists in many copies but none is contemporary, and although the tradition is that it was originally discovered among the papers of Thomas Cromwell, its ‘elegance’...has always inspired suspicion. It would appear to be wholly improbable for Anne to write that her marriage was built on nothing but the king’s fancy and that her incarceration was the consequence of Henry’s affection for Jane. Equally it would have been totally counterproductive for a Tudor prisoner in the Tower to warn the king...that he is in imminent danger of the judgement of God! There are practical objections, too. The ladies who watched Anne night and day in the Tower were charged with reporting all she said and did, but they made no mention of any such missive and it certainly could not have been smuggled out. Similar improbabilities must also rule Anne out as the author of the lament O Death, O Death, rock me on sleep, even though it existed at least by the start of Elizabeth’s reign...

“The scarcity of genuine letters from Anne is nothing to wonder at. Except in diplomacy or matters of exceptional importance, people at this period did not normally keep copies of letters they sent. Correspondence is generally known only if the original has survived in the papers of the recipient. Letters to the queen are...more plentiful and more revealing...the seventeen love-letters from Henry himself, ten in French and the rest in English, which have ended up...in the Vatican. These letters have no dates; although some belong to the summer and autumn of 1528, there is...no firm agreement about the order in which they were written. Letters between third parties are also valuable, particularly to and from correspondents within court circles such as Lord Lisle, the governor of Calais, and his wife, but with one proviso: communicating political information or gossip could get people into serious trouble, so that sensitive material was normally conveyed by word of mouth. 

“...a number of eyewitness accounts have survived of several episodes in Anne Boleyn’s career...These are...confined to the more public events, from her creation as marchioness of Pembroke in September 1532 to her execution in the Tower three years and nine months later...they are the subject to the prejudices of the various eyewitnesses...

“An additional complication arises when first-hand reports have been worked into consciously produced pieces of literature. One example...is the poetry of George Cavendish. From about 1522 until the cardinal’s death in 1530, Cavendish was one of his gentlemen ushers...but he wrote in Mary’s reign, long after the event...there are some nuggets of value, but the 365 lines covering Anne and her alleged lovers, one after another, contain fewer than twenty points of substance...Furthermore, given that theme is again the fickleness of Fortune, it casts Anne Boleyn as the agent of ‘Venus the insatiate goddess’, called in by Fortune to ‘bate’ Wolsey’s ‘high port’ and humble him to dust. 

“Another notable literary source is Edward Hall’s The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of York and Lancaster...better known as Hall’s Chronicle...who did see much of what he described and tried to investigate more...the finished narrative (to 1532) has only three isolated sentences about Anne, and a short paragraph about her dancing with Francis I at Calais. The rest of the book...has two sentences about Anne’s marriage, another about her pregnancy, a long description of her coronation (in which Hall was involved), details of the birth and christening of Elizabeth, terse reports of Anne’s reaction to Katherine of Aragon’s death, and of her own subsequent miscarriage, six final sentences on her condemnation and a brief version of her speech on the scaffold. Perhaps if Hall had lived to write the material in final form himself we would have had more, but a hint in one passage suggests that he intended to gloss over Anne’s marriage as something on which ‘the king was not well counselled’. A ‘Chronicle’ which is truer to the style of London chronicles...is that of Charles Wriothesley, Windsor Herald...It is immediate -- items were recorded as or soon after they occurred -- and also well-informed since the author was close to government and took part in some of the events he describes. 

“The literary account which is closest in time to the events described is the Histoire de Anne Boleyn Jadis Royne d’Angleterre, the French metrical account of Anne’s trial and execution by Lancelot de Carles which we have already encountered. It was completed 2 June 1536, a bare fortnight after her death...although de Carles did not himself witness the trial of Anne and her brother, he was in London at the time; he could have attended the trial of the commoners accused, and undoubtedly had contact with well-informed eyewitnesses...de Carles’ account has been assumed to have original authority...The true source of his information was made clear when research revealed that a presentation copy of his poem, sent to Henry VIII, was listed as a ‘French book written in form of a tragedy by one Carle being attendant and near the ambassador’...in other words, de Carles wrote on the basis of what was known by the French embassy, and the principal source for this would have been the English government. It is therefore no surprise that de Carles’ account agrees with the information Cromwell had sent to Henry’s ambassadors in Paris on 14 May...The Histoire is...the government line in translation...De Carles’ imaginatively elaborated the queen’s response to being found guilty in fifty lines of verse. Her scaffold speech, too, is enhanced and distorted...

“Paul Friedmann closed his magisterial two-volume study, Anne Boleyn: A Chapter of English History, 1527-1536, with the depressing comment: ‘my object has been to show that very little is known of the events of those times, and that the history of Henry’s first divorce and of the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn has still to be written.’ The sources available today...suggest that we no longer need to be as pessimistic. True, there have been no block discoveries since Friedmann’s day, but...valuable new evidence has come to light piecemeal, and despite their distortions and irregularities, the bits and pieces do add up...historical research has transformed our reading of the period; the context into which evidence, old and new, has to be placed is far better understood...we can now see Anne as an active, three-dimensional, proactive participant. 

“...The sources for the life of Anne Boleyn stop short of that level of inner documentation which biography ideally requires. Only at a handful of points in the story do we know anything of what Anne thought. Only in Henry’s love letters and in remarks scrawled in the Book of Hours do we know for certain what they said to each other...The limitations are galling, given the fascination Anne Boleyn and her story have continued to exercise over the intervening centuries, and many have concluded that only artistic imagination will bring us to the truth...”

[aion-rsa]

Daredevil: Who is Bullseye?

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The big Daredevil season 3 villain has a crazy Marvel history. Here's everything you need to know about Bullseye.

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Feature Marc Buxton

Marvel

Oct 18, 2018

Netflix

Daredevil

Daredevil Season 3

Things are about to get deadly on the mean streets of Marvel because Bullseye is coming to Netflix’s Daredevil season 3. Fans have been awaiting Bullseye’s arrival since the first season, and with good reason. Over the years, many writers and artists have done their creative best to make Bullseye one of the most fearsome foes in the Marvel Universe. So let us go back in time and discover the deadly secrets of Bullseye, the man who never misses. Be warned though, as we travel back and find these greatest Bullseye stories, the journey is littered with the corpses of men and women (and thus, potential spoilers) who crossed Bullseye. Victims punctured with playing cards, pierced with paper clips, and penetrated by ninja weapons. 

The first character known as Bulls-Eye (not Bullseye) appeared in Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD #15 (1969) by Gary Friedrich and artist Herb Trimpe. This Bulls-Eye attempted to kill Nick Fury but was taken out by Dum Dum Dugan. Bulls-Eye was packed away into Marvel obscurity and seemingly has no connection with the Daredevil baddie, but when a villain possessing the moniker returned, the Marvel Universe would become a much more dangerous place.

It’s hard to imagine that Bullseye has become such a major force of evil in the Marvel Universe considering the assassin has no powers. He is highly trained in martial arts and has perfect aim. Bullseye used to be a pitcher in the major leagues but was banned and prosecuted for killing a batter with a bean ball. From there, Bullseye trained himself to kill with any object from office supplies, to peanuts, to playing cards. 

With all that being said, let’s get to our reading list/history...

The Bullseye we all love to hate first appeared in Daredevil #131 (1976) and was created by Marv Wolfman and John Romita Sr. Now, you guys have to understand one thing about Daredevil’s rogues gallery circa 1976: it was not very good. It was fun and some characters like Kilgrave the Purple Man (you know, from Jessica Jones), Gladiator (good ol' Melvin Potter, who keeps popping up on the Daredevil Netflix series), and, of course, Wilson Fisk, have all gone on to star in some phenomenal tales, but this era of DD villains was before the days of Typhoid Mary and Elektra, so when Wolfman and company first introduced Bullseye, he seemed like another one-and-done DD baddie.

Admittedly, in this first appearance of Bullseye, the villain had a bit more of an edge to him compared to, let’s say, Matador or Stilt-Man (but let’s face it, a potato has more of an edge than Matador). In Bullseye’s first battle with Daredevil, he sets up a series of exhortation and murder plots and even publicizes himself in an interview with the Daily Bugle. Bullseye actually defeats Daredevil but soon, Matt pulls himself together, and for the first time, lays the smack down on Bullseye. Wolfman told a tight yarn and Bullseye was daringly different, but the master assassin could have just been another forgettable entry in the Daredevil rogues gallery...if it wasn’t for Frank Miller.

Frank Miller

When Bullseye would next appear, it was an issue drawn by the creator that would fully unleash Bullseye on the Marvel Universe: Frank Miller. Don't forget about writer Roger McKenzie who penned the story that first unleashed the full brunt of Bullseye on Marvel. In Daredevil #160-161 (1979), Bullseye desperately wants revenge on DD for his previous defeat, so he kidnaps Daredevil’s than true love the Black Widow and forces Matt Murdock into a brutal confrontation. McKenzie writes a tight, brutal tale while Miller finds frenetic visual language to bring Bullseye to life. The master assassin must have struck a chord in Miller, because when the iconic creator had full creative control of the book, he put Bullseye front and center.

In Daredevil #169 (1981), both written and drawn by Miller, the full horror of Bullseye is unleashed. In this issue, Bullseye finds himself with a brain tumor. The villain is so obsessed with Daredevil, that now everyone he sees resembles the Man Without Fear. So Bullseye goes on an epic killing spree. By issue’s end, Daredevil stops Bullseye’s reign of terror, but with this single issue, Bullseye basically became Marvel’s Joker, an unstoppable force of insanity.

Read Daredevil by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson on Amazon

In Daredevil #171-172 (1981) by Miller, Bullseye becomes the hired assassin of Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin. This is Kingpin at his most driven and violent because he just had to bury his beloved wife Vanessa. Kingpin wanted to burn the world and Bullseye would be his match. This unholy alliance would define both villains for decades to come. Which brings us to a moment that would solidify Bullseye as one of Marvel’s most heinous villains forevermore...

The Death of Elektra

“…You’re pretty good. But me…I’m magic.” With those words in Miller’s Daredevil #181 (1982), Bullseye slits Elektra’s throat with a playing card and plunges her own Sai into her chest. You see, at that point, Kingpin had replaced Bullseye with Elektra and the psycho killer that never misses had something to prove. Of course, Elektra was also Matt Murdock’s lover so her death sent shockwaves through the world of comics. It was a watershed moment as the seemingly unstoppable Elektra was systematically dismantled and murdered by Bullseye and became one of the first truly unforgettable Marvel moment of the 1980s.

Bullseye paid for his actions when Daredevil tossed the killer off a rooftop, shattering his spine. Bullseye was paralyzed and things took an even darker turn when Daredevil visits Bullseye in the hospital in Daredevil #191(1983). As Bullseye lay immobile, Daredevil plays a faux game of Russian roulette with the prone killer. It was the darkest moment of Miller’s run on Daredevil and may have been the darkest moment in the history of Marvel. A hero pressing a gun to the temple of a killer that robbed him of his great love. Damn.

Read Daredevil by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson Vol. 2 on Amazon

Elektra was not the last love Bullseye would take from Matt Murdock...

The Death of Karen Page

The coming of Bullseye to Netflix could mean horrible things for one Karen Page. Because in the famed Guardian Devil (1999) storyline by writer Kevin Smith (snootches) and artist Joe Quesada, Bullseye is hired by the Spider-Man villain Mysterio to kidnap an infant. During the case, Bullseye uses Daredevil’s own billy club to kill Daredevil’s other great love Karen Page. Page had been Matt Murdock’s constant since Daredevil #1 and now, like Elektra, she was dead because of Bullseye. 

Read Daredevil: Guardian Devil on Amazon

Hardcore

When Brian Michael Bendis took over Daredevil in the late 90s, fans knew the writer had a killer Bullseye story ready and waiting. After all, Bendis is and was a master of hardcore crime sagas and dark noir. Fans were not disappointed when Bendis presented the storylines “Lowlife” and “Hardcore” in which Matt Murdock’s identity as Daredevil is revealed to the world.

Bullseye uses this new revelation to attack Murdock’s life and attempts to murder DD”s current lover Milla Donovan. Murdock is having none of it and confronts Bullseye. With the rage of the loss of Elektra and Karen, Daredevil beats Bullseye almost to death and carves a bullseye symbol into the killer’s head. Yeah, it was a response to the best-forgotten Daredevil movie of the late 90s, but it was a moment of pure vengeance as Daredevil finally made Bullseye pay for all the pain he caused.

Read Daredevil: Hardcore on Amazon

Thunderbolts

The next time Bullseye would appear would finally be separate from the world of Daredevil. Bullseye joined the Thunderbolts team led by Norman Osborn. Bullseye operated as Osborn’s most secret of weapons and was only unleashed on the most dangerous of missions. So let that sink in, Bullseye is so deadly, even Norman Osborn was wary of the master killer. As a member of the Thunderbolts, Bullseye helped fight Spider-Man, the Skrulls, and was even paralyzed again by the Native American hero known as American Eagle. Bullseye’s time with the Thunderbolts hit like a bolt of lightning in 2007 and was presented by Warren Ellis and Mike Deodoto.

Read Thunderbolts: Ultimate Collection on Amazon

Things got even sicker when Osborn transformed his Thunderbolts into the Dark Avengers. Bullseye adopted the identity of Hawkeye and seeing the man who had killed Elektra and Karen Page profaning the iconic heroic identity of Clint Barton was truly twisted. Dark Hawkeye marked Bendis’ return to the character in the 2009 Dark Avengers series. Bullseye/Hawkeye also starred in a bloody and twisted mini-series in 2009 by Andy Diggle and Tom Raney.

The Magic Returns

After his time as Hawkeye, Bullseye was killed in the Shadowland crossover. At this time, a new assassin named Lady Bullseye became a major player in the New York underworld. Lady Bullseye brought Bullseye’s corpse to the Hand and had the killer resurrected. Sicker than ever, Bullseye was confined to an iron lung and did what he does best: make Matt Murdock’s life a living hell. Bullseye sends many adversaries to weaken Daredevil during Mark Waid and Chris Samnee’s superb 2013 run on Daredevil until he was once again defeated by the Man Without Fear.

Daredevil season 3 arrives on Netflix on October 19.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2018 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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[sleepy-ki-blog]

Final Submission

Storyboards

Storyboards are a series of images usually composed from a script to tell a story in order, in a visual way. It is part of the pre-production stage of any visual media – be it games, films, animations, comics etc. – and is a helpful guide to discovering issues with composition in shot angles, timing, and dialogue. This essay will cover the history of the development of storyboards, reasons why it is a necessary component in pre-production, what they do and how they help in this, and how producers may use them differently to most.  

Dating back to the silent film era, Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès is known to be one of the first filmmakers to use storyboards in pre-production for planning out his effects (Gress, Jon, 2015). He worked with special effects and used the method to visualize them beforehand. Many large companies in the silent film industry used them too, but due to a reduction in studio archives in the 1970’s and 1980’s, this material has been lost. The storyboard we now know and use today was developed in the 1930’s by Walt Disney studios (Whitehead, Mark, 2004), they brought about the form and function and order of the sequence and description. Diane Disney Miller wrote a biography of her father, The Story of Walt Disney, (Henry Holt, 1956) in which she explains that the first completed storyboards in the modern style were created for the Disney short, Three Little Pigs (1933). Before Disney developed the storyboard, they were dubbed as ‘story sketches’, created in the 1920’s to visualize concepts for animated cartoon shorts such as Plane Crazy and Steamboat Willie (Canemaker, John 1999). Christopher Finch in The Art of Walt Disney (Abrams, 1974), mentions that Webb Smith was credited by Disney with creating the idea of drawing scenes on separate pieces of paper and pinning them up onto a board, thus telling a story in sequence; creating the first modern storyboard. Studios caught on to this method of pre-production, and the second studio to utilize the storyboard over ‘story sketches' was Walter Lantz Productions in 1935. Harman- Ising and Leon Schlesinger Productions followed this example by 1936. And by either 1937 or 1938, all American animation studios were using them. 1939 saw one of the first live action films to be completely storyboarded, Gone with the Wind. David O. Selznick was the producer of the film and hired William Cameron Menzies to design every shot of the film as the production designer. This then lead to a boom in the use of storyboarding for live action films in the early 1940’s and it soon became the norm. They are now an essential part of pre-production.

Essential because of what they do, and what they allow. Storyboards are usually used after the script has been written, they are there as a means to plan out the visual aspect of a film/animation/game/etc, in a sketchy enough way that it is still comprehensible – detail isn't required too much as storyboards are there to plan camera angles, timing, and movement, style and appeal isn't really important at this stage; animatics are more often than not, much nicer to look at.  A storyboard allows the producer to work out the kinks in the timing of scenes, to see how it would look and work on screen regarding characters movements (is the pacing right? Does the camera angle capture this motion correctly, would the audience be able to see their expression, or would it be better if the camera was positioned elsewhere to catch something in the background?) Timings regarding scenes, how long shots should last, how transitions would work, if it matches with the tempo of the dialogue. It also looks at pacing with the dialogue, matching it correctly so it doesn’t feel too mechanical, and instead, smooths in with the visual aspect so everything works together well; that punch lines would land. This whole planning stage with storyboards allows producers to see if anything needs to be changed, rearranged or scrapped and rewritten early enough in production that it shouldn’t affect anything other than (at most) the script. Previously mentioned was the fact that storyboards are usually sketchy, but for animations, sometimes they can be drawn in the style of the final animation. This is because 2D or 3D animations can be stylized and therefore, some things that might look good with real actors, may flop or not look as appealing when drawn out. Animation allows for more exaggeration, movements and characters can be styled to an appealing silhouette and these things would only work from specific camera angles. An example being the famous eyes bulging out (a good example is in Who Framed Roger Rabbit) which is only ever done on a three-quarter to side view. Doing it facing the camera never really works and the whole ‘bulging out’ effect of the eyes couldn’t be seen by an audience, so, a storyboard would allow for this experimentalism in camera angles, to see which way something like this would look best. Storyboards make way for experimenting with all aspects of the visual side, as well as tweaking timing for the dialogue and Foley work.

Despite this idea of doing them after the script, some producers are unconventional in their methods. Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter, animator, author, and manga artist who works for Studio Ghibli. He tackles animation differently to most producers; using the storyboard to build the narrative (drawing it first) and creating a script around it. In a press conference in Paris in late December 2001, Miyazaki was asked "Is it true that all your films are made without a script?" to which he responded with "That's true. I don't have the story finished and ready when we start work on a film. I usually don't have the time. So the story develops when I start drawing storyboards. The production starts very soon thereafter, while the storyboards are still developing.” He mentions how it’s a “dangerous way to make an animation film" but that's how he works best as a producer, and so the rest of the teamwork that way alongside him. What is taken from this is that the method is unorthodox and can cause issues along the line if the schedule isn’t kept on track during production. Storyboards take longer to create than writing a script, and editing them if they don’t work (especially because he works completely on paper) can eat up a good chunk of production time, meaning falling behind can happen quite easily. And nothing else can get done until that section of the storyboard is complete; a setback in creation can essentially cause a halt to production, causing not only time, but money loss too. Storyboards are still important in pre-production, regardless of where they are in the process though. The method Miyazaki uses may be ‘dangerous’ but it does have some good qualities and outcomes to it too. It utilizes the unique way storyboards create visual development, allowing the scenes to essentially write themselves without audible aid. It’s proof that animations can be created without dialogue and still be comprehensible, a script being written around the storyboard, means the visuals tell the tale rather than the words. It produces a means for full flexibility in the animation, means the camera angles, the movements, the timing, all get worked out first and smoothed out properly before they even touch on dialogue. The drawings set the pace of the whole movie, he’s mention in the same interview that in Spirited Away he had originally envisioned 1200 shots, but as he drew it out and paced it accordingly, it ended up being 1415. This goes to show how a storyboard can properly time a story out and allow for a piece to flow according to its own story. Dialogue fits in around the pauses and the moments. Every scene is pivotal because it is drawn out as such, and from experiencing the films, the pacing is smooth and doesn’t ever feel rushed.

To conclude, storyboards are a key part of pre-production, they are diverse and can be adapted to fit how a producer works. They come in forms ranging from stick-figures to detailed drawings, on paper or digitized. They time the production, help catch mistakes early on in the process, they are the fundamental base of any visual production, sometimes writing it before the script does.

Storyboards are versatile and important and necessary. You can’t make an animation without one. Freelance animators use them. Larger conglomerate businesses can have a multitude of storyboard artists. Others (like Miyazaki) have a skeleton team of around 30 or so. They are necessary and a good skill to have in the industry; there’s usually not enough.

Storyboards are utilized to check for risks, to make sure the production in smooth and paces well, that punch lines hit, and backgrounds and characters are seen from the best angles possible. They allow for mistakes to be made, changed to be done and sometimes even scripts to be rewritten. A production without a storyboard would flop, it would have no proper planning and the timings would be off because there would be no room for trial and error.

[erraticprojectjunkie]

Top Ten Tuesday: Fall Covers

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, created due to a fondness for lists. Each week they post a new Top Ten topic. After that, it's bloggers UNITE! Participate with your own Top Ten post, have fun, and get to know your fellow bloggers. This Week's Topic: Ten Books with Fall/Autumn Covers/Themes. (If the cover screams fall to you, or the books give off a feeling of being fallish.) Well...it seems that I'm not much of a "fall" reader. Either that, or authors just aren't really drawn to that type of theme. I have soooo many books that obviously feel like summer or winter. And, very often, their covers reflect that. But seriously...fall feeling covers are few and far between. It took me quite a while to find ten appropriate covers in my lists. Only one book came from the read file...the remaining nine currently reside in the TBR. However, doing this exercise has refreshed my memory as to why I added them, thus potentially increasing the speed with which I work to read them. Maybe some the synopses will inspire you as well...besides there are a few super pretty covers in here. I always have been a sucker for cover love. 1. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire We have all heard the story of Cinderella, the beautiful child cast out to slave among the ashes. But what of her stepsisters, the homely pair exiled into ignominy by the fame of their lovely sibling? What fate befell those untouched by beauty...and what curses accompanied Cinderella's looks? Set against the backdrop of seventeenth-century Holland, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister tells the story of Iris, an unlikely heroine who finds herself swept from the lowly streets of Haarlem to a strange world of wealth, artifice, and ambition. Iris's path quickly becomes intertwined with that of Clara, the mysterious and unnaturally beautiful girl destined to become her sister. While Clara retreats to the cinders of the family hearth, Iris seeks out the shadowy secrets of her new household -- and the treacherous truth of her former life. The only one in this list that I have actually read. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is a retelling of Cinderella written by the same author who penned Wicked.  2. A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks Every April, when the wind blows from the sea and mingles with the scent of lilacs, Landon Carter remembers his last year at Beaufort High. It was 1958, and Landon had already dated a girl or two. He even swore that he had once been in love. Certainly the last person he thought he'd fall for was Jamie Sullivan, the daughter of the town's Baptist minister. A quiet girl who always carried a Bible with her schoolbooks, Jamie seemed content living in a world apart from the other teens. She took care of her widowed father, rescued hurt animals, and helped out at the local orphanage. No boy had ever asked her out. Landon would never have dreamed of it. Then a twist of fate made Jamie his partner for the homecoming dance, and Landon Carter's life would never be the same. Being with Jamie would show him the depths of the human heart and lead him to a decision so stunning it would send him irrevocably on the road to manhood... Beautiful fall leaves I'm familiar with both the book and the movie versions of Nicholas Sparks' novels. However, I've never been familiar with both versions of the same story. I have seen the movie A Walk to Remember with Mandy Moore. Despite typically hating reading books after I've seen the movies (ugh...they're always just wrecked), I still want to tackle this one. 3. Watership Down by Richard Adams Set in England's Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage, and survival follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of friends, the journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing trials posed by predators and adversaries, to a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society. I have actually read this one before. I think I tackled it sometime in high school. But...I don't remember it. Like, at all. I know...horrible. So it's back on the TBR for a fresh start. 4. Sycamore Row by John Grisham Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten, will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his black maid, and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as the murder trial that made Brigance one of Ford County's most notorious citizens, just three years earlier. The second will raises far more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to the maid? Had chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly? And what does it all have to do with a piece of land once known as Sycamore Row? I used to be a huge John Grisham fan. I read everything he wrote. A Time to Kill still ranks in my top favorite reads. I still think his writing is fantastic, I just shifted my genre preferences. But there isn't any reason I can't widen my horizons back up. So...Sycamore Row is on the list. 5. The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth When Cameron Post's parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief they'll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl. But that relief doesn't last, and Cam is soon forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone (as her grandmother might say), and Cam becomes an expert at both. Then Coley Taylor moves to town. Beautiful, pickup-driving Coley is a perfect cowgirl with the perfect boyfriend to match. She and Cam forge an unexpected and intense friendship -- one that seems to leave room for something more to emerge. But just as that starts to seem like a real possibility, ultrareligious Aunt Ruth takes drastic action to 'fix' her niece, bringing Cam face-to-face with the cost of denying her true self--even if she's not exactly sure who that is. I'm a sucker for a good coming-of-age story. I will admit, I initially was drawn to this book because of the cover. It's just so pretty. And...hey...(hay...haha, get it?), it's a harvest scene. 6. Season of Storms by Susanna Kearsley In 1921, infamous Italian poet Galeazzo D'Ascanio wrote his last and greatest play, inspired by his muse and mistress, actress Celia Sands. On the eve of opening night, Celia vanished, and the play was never performed. Now, two generations later, Alessando D'Ascanio plan to stage his grandfather's masterpiece and has offered the lead to a promising young English actress, also named Celia Sands - at the whim of her actress mother, or so she has always thought. When Celia arrives at D'Ascanio's magnificent, isolated Italian villa, she is drawn to the mystery of her namesake's disappearance-and to the compelling, enigmatic Alessandro. But the closer Celia gets to learning the first Celia's fate, the more she is drawn into a web of murder, passion, and the obsession of genius. Though she knows she should let go of the past, in the dark, in her dreams, it comes back... I've read a few of Susanna Kearsley's novels and really enjoy her writing. Apparently more than I realized, as Kearsley has two novels on this list. A bit overly coincidental. 7. A Desperate Fortune by Susanna Kearsley For nearly 300 years, the mysterious journal of Jacobite exile Mary Dundas has lain unread -- its secrets safe from prying eyes. Now, amateur codebreaker Sara Thomas has been hired by a once-famous historian to crack the journal's cipher. But when she arrives in Paris, Sara finds herself besieged by complications from all sides: the journal's reclusive owner, her charming Parisian neighbor, and Mary, whose journal doesn't hold the secrets Sara expects. It turns out that Mary Dundas wasn't keeping a record of everyday life, but a first-hand account of her part in a dangerous intrigue. In the first wintry months of 1732, with a scandal gaining steam in London, driving many into bankruptcy and ruin, the man accused of being at its center is concealed among the Jacobites in Paris, with Mary posing as his sister to aid in his disguise. When their location is betrayed, they're forced to put a desperate plan in action, heading south along the road to Rome, protected by the enigmatic Highlander Hugh MacPherson. As Mary's tale grows more and more dire, Sara, too, must carefully choose which turning to take...to find the road that will lead her safely home. See...two in a row! Historical fiction is well represented in this list by Kearsley. Apparently I really need to get a jump on her novels. 8. Grounded by Kate Klise After her brother, sister, and father die in a plane crash, Daralynn Oakland receives 237 dolls from well-wishers, resulting in her nickname: Dolly. But dolls are little comfort to a twelve-year-old girl whose world is rocked by the dramatic changes in her life, including her angry, grieving mother's new job as a hairstylist at the local funeral home. Dolly gets a job, too, where she accidentally invents a fashionable new haircut. But in Grounded by Kate Klise, her real work begins when a crematorium comes to town, and someone has to save a dying business, solve a burning mystery, and resuscitate the broken hearts in Digginsville, Missouri, population 402. Maybe I've been watching too much Jane the Virgin, but the premise of this one sound like a bit of a crazy telenovela. Nonetheless, it's on the TBR. I'll be honest...this was yet another cover pick. I'm a fan of the drawing style. But hey...why not give it a try, right? It has decent ratings and the worst that could happen is that I shuffle it into a DNF pile. No harm, no foul. Broaden my horizons and all that. 9. The Sparrow Sisters by Ellen Herrick The Sparrow sisters are as tightly woven into the seaside New England town of Granite Point as the wild sweet peas that climb the stone walls along the harbor. Sorrel, Nettie and Patience are as colorful as the beach plums on the dunes and as mysterious as the fog that rolls into town at dusk. Patience is the town healer and when a new doctor settles into Granite Point he brings with him a mystery so compelling that Patience is drawn to love him, even as she struggles to mend him. But when Patience Sparrow's herbs and tinctures are believed to be implicated in a local tragedy, Granite point is consumed by a long-buried fear--and its three hundred year old history resurfaces as a modern day witch-hunt threatens. The plants and flowers, fruit trees and high hedges begin to wither and die, and the entire town begins to fail; fishermen return to the harbor empty-handed, and blight descends on the old elms that line the lanes. It seems as if Patience and her town are lost until the women of Granite Point band together to save the Sparrow. As they gather, drawing strength from each other, will they be able to turn the tide and return life to Granite Point? Not only does this one have a fall cover, it has a synopsis that totally fits the season. It has pieces reminiscent of Practical Magic. I'll admit that could be a good thing or bad, depending on how it is taken on. I'm willing to give it a try. 10. When We Fall by Emily Liebert Ready for a fresh start, Allison Parker moves back to her hometown in the suburbs of New York. While she'd once savored the dynamic pace of city life, sadly, it lost its allure after her husband's untimely death. Now, ready to focus on her art career accompanied by her ten-year-old son, Logan, Allison doesn't anticipate that her past will resurface. When the wife of her husband's best friend from summer camp takes her under her wing, things begin to spin out of control. At one time, Charlotte Crane thought she had it all--a devoted husband, a beautiful little girl, and enough financial security to never have worry. But behind her perfect facade lie a strained marriage and a fractured relationship with her sister. When new girl Allison arrives in Wincourt, Charlotte welcomes the chance to build a friendship. Before long, Charlotte begins to see life through Allison's eyes, and the cracks in her seemingly flawless existence become impossible to ignore. As Allison heals from the loss of her husband--even wondering if she might be ready to date again--Charlotte feels more distant from her loved ones than ever before. The emerging friendship between the two women appears to be just the antidote both of them so desperately need...until everything falls apart. I saved the prettiest cover for last. Seriously, how gorgeous is that? And yes, I get the play on the title with the word "fall", but it could be appropriate...not just corny. I'm going to look the other way on that one for right now.  And there you have it...a pretty diverse list (kind of). Some chick lit, some YA fiction, some mystery, some historical fiction, and a classic. Not too bad for having a hard time finding appropriately qualifying books.  What "fall" reads are on your list? Did you find any new items for your own TBR? This post originally appeared on Erratic Project Junkie and is copyrighted by Elle. Find EPJ on Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Goodreads

[sleepy-ki-blog]

First Draft

Storyboards

Storyboards are a series of images usually composed from a script to tell a story in order, in a visual way. It is part of the pre-production stage of any visual media – be it games, films, animations, comics etc. – and is a helpful guide to discovering issues with composition in shot angles, timing and dialogue. This essay will cover the history of the development of storyboards, reasons why it is a necessary component in pre-production, what they do and how they help in this, and how producers may use them differently to most.

Dating back to the silent film era, Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès is known to be one of the first film makers to use storyboards in pre-production for planning out his effects (Gress, Jon, 2015). He worked with special effects and used the method to visualize them beforehand. Many large companies in the silent film industry used them too, but due to a reduction in studio archives in the 1970’s and 1980’s, this material has been lost. The storyboard we now know and use today was developed in the 1930’s by Walt Disney studios (Whitehead, Mark, 2004), they brought about the form and function and order of the sequence and description. Diane Disney Miller wrote a biography of her father, The Story of Walt Disney, (Henry Holt, 1956) in which she explains that the first completed storyboards in the modern style were created for the Disney short, Three Little Pigs (1933). Before Disney developed the storyboard, they were dubbed as ‘story sketches’, created in the 1920’s to visualize concepts for animated cartoon shorts such as Plane Crazy and Steamboat Willie (Canemaker, John 1999). Christopher Finch in The Art of Walt Disney (Abrams, 1974), mentions that Webb Smith was credited by Disney with creating the idea of drawing scenes on separate pieces of paper and pinning them up onto a board, thus telling a story in sequence; creating the first modern storyboard. Studios caught on to this method of pe-production, and the second studio to utilize the storyboard over ‘story sketches’ was Walter Lantz Productions in 1935. Harman-Ising and Leon Schlesinger Productions followed this example by 1936. And by either 1937 or 1938, all American animation studios were using them. 1939 saw one of the first live action films to be completely storyboarded, Gone with the Wind. David O. Selznick was the producer of the film, and hired William Cameron Menzies to design every shot of the film as the production designer. This then lead to a boom in the use of storyboarding for live action films in the early 1940’s and it soon became the norm. They are now an essential part of pre-production.

Essential because of what they do, and what they allow. Storyboards are usually used after the script has been written, they are there as a means to plan out the visual aspect of a film/animation/game/etc, in a sketchy enough way that it is still comprehensible – detail isn’t required too much as storyboards are there to plan camera angles, timing and movement, style and appeal isn’t really important at this stage; animatics are more often than not, much nicer to look at. A storyboard allows producer to work out the kinks in timing of scenes, to see how it would look and work on screen regarding characters movements (is the pacing right? Does the camera angle capture this motion correctly, would the audience be able to see their expression, or would it be better if the camera was positioned elsewhere to catch something in the background?) Timings regarding scenes, how long shots should last, how transitions would work, if it matches with the tempo of the dialogue. It also looks at pacing with the dialogue, matching it correctly so it doesn’t feel too mechanical, and instead, smooths in with the visual aspect so everything works together well; that punch lines would land. This whole planning stage with storyboards allows producers to see if anything needs to be changed, rearranged or scrapped and rewritten early enough in production that it shouldn’t affect anything other than (at most) the script. Previously mentioned was the fact that storyboards are usually sketchy, but for animations, sometimes they can be drawn in the style of the final animation. This is because 2D or 3D animations can be stylized and therefore, some things that might look good with real actors, may flop or not look as appealing when drawn out. Animation allows for more exaggeration, movements and characters can be styled to an appealing silhouette and these things would only work from specific camera angles. An example being the famous eyes bulging out (a good example s in Who Framed Roger Rabbit) which is only ever done on a three-quarter to side view. Doing it facing the camera never really works and the whole ‘bulging out’ effect of the eyes couldn’t be seen by an audience, so, a storyboard would allow for this experimentalism in camera angles, to see which way something like this would look best. Storyboards make way for experimenting with all aspects of the visual side, as well as tweaking timing for the dialogue and Foley work.

Despite this idea of doing them after the script, some producers are unconventional in their methods. Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter, animator, author, and manga artist who works for Studio Ghibli. He tackles animation differently to most producers; using the storyboard to build the narrative (drawing it first) and creating a script around it. In a press conference in Paris in late December 2001, Miyazaki was asked “Is it true that all your films are mad without a script?” to which he responded with “That's true. I don't have the story finished and ready when we start work on a film. I usually don't have the time. So the story develops when I start drawing storyboards. The production starts very soon thereafter, while the storyboards are still developing.” He mentions how it’s a “dangerous way to make an animation film” but that’s how he works best as a producer, and so the rest of the team work that way alongside him. What is taken from this is that the method is unorthodox and can cause issues along the line if the schedule isn’t kept on track during production. Storyboards take longer to create than writing a script, and editing them if they don’t work (especially because he works completely on paper) can eat up a good chunk of production time, meaning falling behind can happen quite easily. And nothing else can get done until that section of the storyboard is complete; a setback in creation can essentially cause a halt to production, causing not only time, but money loss too. Storyboards are still important in pre-production, regardless of where they are in the process though. The method Miyazaki uses may be ‘dangerous’ but it does have some good qualities and outcomes to it too. It utilizes the unique way storyboards create visual development, allowing the scenes to essentially write themselves without audible aid. It’s proof that animations can be created without dialogue and still be comprehensible, a script being written around the storyboard, means the visuals tell the tale rather than the words. It produces a means for full flexibility in the animation, means the camera angles, the movements, the timing, all get worked out first and smoothed out properly before they even touch on dialogue. The drawings set the pace of the whole movie, he’s mention in the same interview that in Spirited Away he had originally envisioned 1200 shots, but as he drew it out and paced it accordingly, it ended up being 1415. This goes to show how a storyboard can properly time a story out and allow for a piece to flow according to its own story. Dialogue fits in around the pauses and the moments. Every scene is pivotal because it is drawn out as such, and from experiencing the films, the pacing is smooth and doesn’t ever feel rushed.

To conclude, storyboards are a key part of pre-production, they are diverse and can be adapted to fit how a producer works. They come in forms ranging from stick-figures to detailed drawings, on paper or digitized. They time the production, help catch mistakes early on in the process, they are the fundamental base of any visual production, sometimes writing it before the script does.

Storyboards are versatile and important and necessary. You can’t make an animation without one. Freelance animators use them. Larger conglomerate businesses can have a multitude of storyboard artists. Others (like Miyazaki) have a skeleton team of around 30 or so. They are necessary and a good skill to have in the industry; there’s usually not enough.

Storyboards are utilized to check for risks, to make sure the production in smooth and paces well, that punch lines hit, and backgrounds and characters are seen from the best angles possible. They allow for mistakes to be made, changed to be done and sometimes even scripts to be rewritten. A production without a storyboard would flop, it would have no proper planning and the timings would be off because there would be no room for trial and error.