Art of the superhero: Meet the Glaswegian who draws Superman, Batman and The X-Men

It also works as a form of visual shorthand. Because the link between Glasgow and some of the world’s most familiar superheroes may be closer than you think.

The story of the superhero may have started as American Jewish wish fulfilment back in the 1930; Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster created Superman as a corrective to Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of the Übermensch, as co-opted by the Third Reich. But in the last couple of decades Superman and his fellow supermen have started developing a distinctly Scottish twang.

“Show people Superman and they’ll recognise him,” argues Martin Craig, the exhibition’s curator, and something of a Weegie fanboy himself these days. “Tell him that two Glaswegians have created one of the biggest Superman comics in the last decade [All Star Superman] and they’d never know it.”

One of them is in the building today. Clark Kent can’t be here, but Frank Quitely’s alter ego, Vincent Deighan, can. The artist is sitting in the downstairs café of the Kelvingrove, talking – with some incredulity – about an exhibition of his work in the museum that was his favourite building in the world when he was a kid. “It’s not like a dream come true,” he says. “I never dreamed that someday I would have work in here.”

But soon he will. The walls of Kelvingrove will be covered in his work. Original pages and illustration, as well as images blown up to the size of the walls that contain it. Larger than life, you might say. But then that’s what Deighan has always dealt in.

Frank Quitely – the pen name is a play on Quite Frankly, if you were wondering – the comic book artist has, in his time, drawn Judge Dredd, the X Men, Batman and Superman, and Neil Gaiman's cult favourite Sandman. And algon with Gaiman he has worked with many of the most successful comic book writers, including Scots Mark Millar, Alan Grant and Grant Morrison (with whom he worked on the aforementioned All Star Superman). His alter ego is a 49-year-old Dudley D Watkins fan who went to Glasgow School of Art and fell into comic strips after falling out with Glasgow School of Art.

Quitely is a comic book superstar. His super-realist superhero art is the preferred option for comic book editors, fans and writers alike. Deighan is the guy who works in a studio all day drawing two pages a week (in a good week) while listening to Radio 4, who then goes home to his wife and nearly-grown kids (one’s at the school of art, one’s at university, one’s just started secondary school).

He’s also living proof that Glasgow and comic books are joined at the hip. A notion that is, essentially, the message of this exhibition which has been two years in the making. “When I was younger I think I had the idea that most of the big things that were happening were happening somewhere else and it’s always been nice as I’ve got older to find out how much has come out of Scotland,” Deighan says.

“We’ve always punched above our weight in terms of literature and film. We’re at the forefront in genetics, we’re at the forefront in the gaming industry.” And for some time at the forefront of the comics industry too.

It was not ever thus for Deighan though. His first comic book work, The Greens, a spoof of The Broons published in the indie comic Electric Soup, was produced for love not money. “I started working for Electric Soup in 1989 for no money at all and after 17 issues we got to the stage where we could pay our printing bill and go for a curry.”

Things change, although, as he points out, comic books aren’t the most well rewarded creative industry. Plus, he works quite slowly.

And yet over the years he has contributed to some of best-selling comics of all time. Understandably then Quitely’s story is the spine of the exhibition. But the show also hopes to tell the story of Scotland’s contributions to the form (it will include a copy of what's claimed to be the world’s first comic book, The Glasgow Looking Glass, and examples of Dudley D Watkins’s Oor Wullie and Broons original artwork) as well as offer an examination of quite what is possible in comics.

For Deighan, though, it’s a bit like flicking through his own family photo album. Some of the images he hadn’t seen for a while. “We essentially had to go back and archive all of Vincent’s work,” explains Craig. “He had literally poly bags filled with sketches. We were going through these and he was going: ‘Yeah, yeah.’ And pushing them to the side. And I was grabbing them. ‘That’s a picture of Superman. What are you doing?’

“We had to essentially go through your entire studio,” Craig says to Deighan. Were there coffee rings on the paper and the like then? “Yeah,” says Deighan. “Phone numbers in the margins.”

Time for an origin story. Vincent Deighan was never a dedicated comic book fan. He liked Dudley D Watkins as a kid, read Mad Magazine and black-and-white reprints of Weird Science and Creepy Tales as a teenager. But he was not a fanboy.

What he was, though, was a slightly confused student at Glasgow School of Art. “What the drawing and painting department were looking for was for me to find my voice and say something and I was 17, 18, 19 and I wasn’t particularly political so I didn’t really feel I I had anything to say. I just wanted to get better at my craft.

“I didn’t really want to specialise. And also in fairness to them I was concentrating more on socialising than working at the time, so I didn’t really have enough work at the end of term to justify a pass anyway.”

Electric Soup would prove his gateway to the future. The polished perfectionism of his work stood out even then. Soon he was working for the Judge Dredd Megazine and then for Marvel and DC. The progression wasn’t as smooth as that sentence might imply. On his first big job for DC he got a phone call from an editor which wasn’t quite what he’d hoped for. “He said: ‘Dude I don’t know how to tell you this …’ Which wasn’t the start to the conversation I had hoped for … ‘Your drawings are great, but your storytelling really sucks’.

“Since that point onwards storytelling became more important to me than the draughtsmanship.”

Of course it helps if you work with the best writers in the business. And many of them happen to be Scottish. As well as Grant. Deighan has had long and productive collaborations with Glasgow writers Mark Millar and Grant Morrison.

“I do actually feel when I’m working with Scottish writers there seems to be slightly more of a chemistry and it may just be if you share some cultural ground, maybe it’s easier to build on. It might be the humour thing as well. We are actually friends too.”

Millar, the creator of Kick Ass, brought a Hollywood sheen to his storytelling (perfect for Deighan’s glossy visuals), while Morrison was always the comic book bad boy, the writer who – with apologies to Alan Moore – would push artists furthest to capture the psychedelic energy of his scripts. What’s the maddest thing Morrison has asked you to draw, Vince?

“In a comic called Flex Mentallo, Grant asked me to draw a scene where two characters were shrinking down to the micro infinite. The background he described was: ‘Primordial chaos manifesting itself around unseen protein cores.’

“I did some circles and squiggles.”

We live in a world in which comic books are now mainstream. The new Avengers movie is filming just over the road (or in Edinburgh as it’s better known). The question is why? Why do characters created between the 1930s and 1960s still have such a hold over the public imagination?

Deighan thinks the answer is obvious. “The ones that are still relevant are relevant because they’re archetypal. I think that’s it. Batman’s the self-made man, Superman’s the Godlike guy, the ultimate dad, the Jesus guy who came from somewhere else.

“Batman’s got no superpowers at all other than his bank account and his determination and superman’s virtually invulnerable. Those two types of heroes appeal to different types of people or appeal to different aspects of ourselves. And they’re not that different to Hercules or Achilles.”

What does that make his art form? A form of myth-making perhaps. Myths made in Scotland. See you, Jimmy Olsen.

Frank Quitely: The Art Of Comics opens at Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow on Saturday 1st April and runs until 1st October 2017. Tickets cost £7 per adult/ £5 per concession, children under 16 £3, with under 3s free. A family ticket is £15. www.glasgowmuseums.com