Gamekeeper’s adventures to continue
From Friday’s The Oklahoman:
By Matthew Price
Assistant Features Editor
The antihero of “Guy Ritchie’s Gamekeeper” returns for a second comic-book series from Virgin Comics, this time with a new creative team.
Warner Bros. has acquired the film rights to “Gamekeeper,” with Joel Silver (“The Matrix”) attached to produce, and Guy Ritchie on board to direct. Now, Virgin Comics and Ritchie are back with a brand new story arc.
Writer Jeff Parker joins artists Ron Randall and Ron Chan for this second storyline starring Brock, the gamekeeper.
A formula that contains the means to produce cold fusion drags Brock back into the world of espionage and black ops.
Randall explained his role in the process in a recent conference call:
“I do the breakdowns, or the laying out of the story,” Randall said. “Where I see my major role in this thing is try to follow through on two things: One is the intention of Jeff in the story that he’s written, which of course goes back to following through with the original intentions in the first series and creating a cinematically paced and visually arresting adventure story.”
Chan takes those breakdowns and provides finished art, which is colored in-house by artists working for Virgin Comics.
Parker said the stoic Brock is a different character than those that often populate Ritchie’s films.
“What’s interesting about the first arc is that it’s so 180 degrees from what you’d think of as a Guy Ritchie project, because it introduces this extremely stoic character who’s all action and no talk,” Parker said. “What I was thinking would be fun with the second one, once that was really thoroughly established, how Brock worked, was to then slam him back into what you think of as a more conventional Guy Ritchie, London-underground crime movie.”
Parker created a London-based group of gangsters, called “The Soccer Club,” to populate the second series.
“That’s because they tend to use soccer terminology in reference to what they’re talking about, whether that’s stealing something or killing someone,” Parker said.
The sharpshooter known as The Raven heads the Soccer Club, and he’s been tasked with eliminating Brock.
Randall said it’s been stimulating to work with Parker, with whom he and Chan share a studio.
“We both want to tell a story that moves with velocity, and establish compelling characters, just the basic principles of doing a good comic book,” Randall said.
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