Just Another Hard Day's Night

I’ve been asked why my comic stories are set in black and white. Cost is the main factor, but there are other reasons. The line art stands out with the absence of color (no coloring over mistakes in my book) and black and white can give an unusual tone to a comic, be it Walking Dead, Sin City or my upcoming Pretty Vacant: London Calling 2. You can learn a lot when you’re forced to improvise. I learn something new every hard day’s night!

Norm: The place is surging with girls.
John: Please, sir, sir, can I have one to surge me, sir, please, sir?
Norm: No, you can’t!

For those of you living under a rock, A Hard Day’s Night covers a fictional day in the career of The Beatles: being chased by girls at a train station, putting up with their manager Norm and Paul’s grandfather, being chased by girls at a car park, putting up with snobby reporters and a television crew, escaping to enjoy a brief moment to themselves without restrictions before deftly performing a concert in front of screaming girls, ending with the four musicians whisked away by helicopter.

With A Hard Day’s Night recently added in The Criterion Collection, the 1964 movie rightfully is regarded as a cinema classic. To call it the best rock-n-roll musical ever made is still understating its influence. The film’s innovations (cut scenes, irreverent humor and surrealism) seem commonplace until you realize that this was the first time it was ever done!

Perhaps the most written about sequence (It’s my favorite) in A Hard Day’s Night incorporates The Beatles song Can’t Buy Me Love. Director Richard Lester kept the action up close for the first half of the film. Scenes give a hemmed-in feeling, prisoners of fame being a price for The Beatles’ success. Yet as Norm herds them into another room, Ringo finds an exit, and the greatest montage of silly fun is unleashed:


In another part of London, set in a slightly futuristic present, Gigi Gutierrez is on the run from her petrifying pursuers. She has to keep moving or mad scientists will immobilize her permanently. The scenes are tight as Gigi’s on the run…

… but when she seizes the advantage in an upscale department store, Gigi strikes back in a big way with a splash page:

Despite filming in black and white to save costs, Lester took what he learned about movies (French novelle wave, chase scenes in silent motion pictures, documentary camera work) and used it to create something that is still enjoyed today. I’ve learned a lot over 20 years of being a comic professional, and I know that lack of funds doesn’t have to stop you from making a good product or having fun doing it.

Over 50 years after filming A Hard Day’s Night Paul is still making videos for his music. You have to keep moving. Not to avoid being plastinated like Gigi, but to not get left behind!