For those of my country who just happen to be reading this, you might want to nip out to Tesco’s to find Bryan Hitch providing the cover artwork to this month’s edition of movie magazine Empire, which just happens to be a special edition devoted to comic book movies. Over at Millarworld, Mark Millar sings the praises of his Ultimates collaborator’s new gig and finds himself lost down memory lane:

I walked into WH Smith’s last night on my way out to Coatbridge to meet family and pals and saw rows and rows of what’s essentially the Ultimates looking back from the cover of Europe’s biggest movie mag. This thing is onsale everywhere and Hitchy even gets TWO cover credits, which was brilliant.

I picked it up and flicked through it where the editorial team seemed genuinely excited to have snared The Hitchster for this assignment, saw both Bry and I getting name-checked in a DVD review and saw some movie news regarding James McAvoy and Wanted beside Sin City 2 and 300. And that’s when it struck me… maybe for the first time… that we had casually entered the mainstream now. It was a nice moment because it happened so subtly, but they’re talking about our wee book like it’s something people are AWARE of as opposed to a niche interest put together by two guys working from their spare bedrooms.

Another thing that seemed exciting to me was seeing Ultimate Cap, Iron Man, etc, smiling back from the cover of a mag I faced a dilemma buying in 1989. I remember my parents had died, I was living on my own, had just left high school, had no money whatsoever, not even a telephone or a KITCHEN FLOOR in the tiny Peter Parker-style apartment I was renting… and I wanted to buy Empire because it had Keaton’s Batman on the cover. It cost a couple of quid back then and I literally just HAD a couple of quid to last me for the next two days. No food, no milk, no beer money, no nuthin’… and I remember I just HAD to buy this and lived off two Mars Bars for the next two days and a dinner sneaked from my girlfriend’s house. Anyway, seeing our guys on the cover of THAT MAGAZINE was very exciting and weirdly nostlagic.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 9th, 2006 at 7:50 am and is filed under Creators, Movies, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.