Comics

Interview: ‘We’re all a bit like Armitage right now’ – Liam Johnson & Warren Pleece on everyone’s favourite grumpy Brit-Cit cop

11th July 2024

In Brit-Cit, there’s few Detective Judges with the reputation of Detective Inspector Armitage. But things always move on – it’s inevitable. So what happens when the veteran finds that he’s surplus to requirements? Is there one last case in the old ‘tec yet?

And that’s what Liam Johnson & Warren Pleece have come up with for Armitage: Bullets for an Old Man, currently up to part 3 in the latest Judge Dredd Megazine. Is this really the end for Armitage?

Liam Johnson and Warren Pleece’s latest series for 2000 AD is Armitage: Bullets for an Old Man, up to its third part in the brand-new Megazine. I’s a very different Armitage tale, one that finds the normally in-control Detective Judge on the outs at Brit-Cit’s Justice Department – too old, too difficult, and easy (so they think) to replace with a new generation of Mechanismo Detective Judges.

Or at least that’s how it is until a case turns up that has the new guard stumped. Time to bring in Armitage – but will it be Armitage’s last case? Over to Liam and Warren for that. Warren joins us later, so let’s say hello to Liam first…

Liam, hello again and nice to talk to you once more! You’re currently deep into the new series of Armitage: Bullets For An Old Man that started in Megazine issue 467. I suppose the best way to start is by asking you just what Bullets for an Old Man is about. Tell us all you can!

LIAM JOHNSON: Bullets for an Old Man catches us up with Armitage, who has been, besides a few guest appearances here and there, including one written me, off the table for quite a while.

It serves as a bit of a re-introduction to Armitage and his world, telling you absolutely everything you need to know about them, but doing it amidst a high-pressure and very unusual murder case. Armitage is on the back foot and we don’t often see him like that.

Despite all the nods to continuity and the past the story contains, it’s actually really new-reader-friendly by design. If you like the sound of robots and time bullets and a grumpy but highly effective plain-clothes copper trying to unravel it all, then this is the story for you!

So we’re with Armitage the old man, washed up and redundant, just coming into the office as a consultant to have his memories sucked out to make his robo-replacements a little bit more effective. Previously we’ve seen Armitage as the be-all and end-all of Brit-Cit detecting. What made you switch it up and change the tone of the strip?

LJ: Honestly, it just felt like the next evolution of the character. I don’t know if this was by design or just happened naturally when Armitage was created by Dave Stone, David Bishop, and Sean Philips, and by that I mean the series rather than just the character, but change has always been baked into its DNA. Steel came in as a trainee Judge Detective but very quickly she progressed. She became Armitage’s equal. She got married. Had a child.

One of my favourite things about 2000 AD is that the characters age. And we can’t just ignore that. Armitage is old. Though exactly how old, and I’ve done the math, I’ll sit on for now. Ha!

So with all that in mind, and with Armitage largely being off-panel for ten or so years, I asked myself “Where would he be now?”

And yes, Armitage has always been kind of the man-in-charge and the smartest guy in the room but he never rubbed along well with his superiors. He was never shy about the fact he knew better and we saw him disobey orders quite frequently. And policing, there’s a lot of politics to it. It’s a bit naive to think the best copper gets bumped up. I think it would defy the logic of corruption and class injustice the long list of creators before us established to not imagine that Armitage would be edged out at some point.

And there’s a bittersweetness to it all as well. The fact Steel is now essentially his superior means Armitage did his job of training her well. Just like he’s done everything else well in his career. So by making these changes, it felt like we were dropped into a particular fraught time in Armitage’s life. Instantly we had story. You don’t even need a killer and there’s conflict to be had.

Is it fair to say it’s something that comes from a logical moving on of things? – after all, Armitage himself always came across as that classic British TV detective trope – a Morse equivalent thrown into a strange future world who retained all the cleverness, and the grumpiness, as he solved future crime. So this far into Armitage’s history, it’s only right to see that he’d be ageing out of a police force that increasingly sees him as a dinosuar.

LJ: It’s exactly that. I didn’t set out to break any toys, all the types of Armitage stories we’ve seen before are all still playable, but now we see Armitage facing arguably a battle he can’t win. His own mortality.

Those TV inspirations were definitely on my mind. Taking a page from my TV writing work, if they asked me to reboot a live-action show of similar ilk, you can’t just ignore a character ageing.  Actors age. And while theoretically you can in comics, it takes away from the idea that Dredd-verse is a living, breathing thing its own right. That feels like a disservice to the character and the reader to just ignore it.

It all starts off in episode one as a standard Armitage series, albeit with the radical shift of Armitage as the washed-out copper that the Justice Department don’t need or want any more. We get Armitage the belligerent cop, all piss and vinegar, totally hating where he’s at and what he’s doing, having to work with the Mechanismo-detectives who’ve replaced him.

Liam, how much fun is Armitage to write this way? It feels like you’re really enjoying it all, really playing into the classic sarcastic grumpy old cop trope.

LJ: Honestly, I’ve been having the time of my life writing Armitage. I’m such a big fan of the crime genre and particularly this type of archetypical character. Where doing the right thing is just ingrained in them, it’s literally in their bones, but they’ve done it a thousand and one times now. And they know they’ll do it a thousand more, but it doesn’t make it any less frustration the world is no better than when they started. People should be learning and picking up the slack but arguably that’s the one thing that would piss off Armitage most. He’s a contradiction and those are the best characters to write.

And what was the idea behind bringing in the Mechanismo units as replacements? There’s a thread going through Bullets for an Old Man that opens part 1 – ‘Some things are just inevitable… young will become old and we all will die,’ and comes up again in part 3 with the interrogation of the jailed old psychopath serial killer – the mention of inevitability. Are we looking at Armitage’s last stand here or just the old man accepting that his time might have come after all?

LJ: Inevitability is the key word for the entire book for me. That’s the theme. It’s the word I’ve got scrawled on a little post-it note stuck to my computer whenever I’m writing Armitage. Death is inevitable. Aging is inevitable. Us being replaced is inevitable. It just usually happens much later in life.

But now we find ourselves in a unique moment in time when people in their twenties, thirties, forties, are already having their own purpose in life, at least when it comes to work, being called into question. It’s impossible not to have come across the discussion of A.I. We’re all a bit like Armitage right now.

So let’s explore that topic with a character who is already staring down the barrel of that metaphorical gun. And, while I want to try avoid spoilers here, Part 4 ends on a cliffhanger that I’m pretty damn proud of.

We should fear for Armitage. He’s nearing the end of a very long road… Will that be in this story? Or the next?

You’ll have to wait and see, but it is probably good news for the Department they’ve got some replacements on standby. I would love to write this series for a good long while, I’ve got loads of ideas that continue on the threads we’ve set up here, but nothing says Armitage has to be the lead…

Now that’s just being scary Liam!

There’s also those personal issues that Armitage is dealing with, not least that he’s seen Treasure rise up the ranks to now be Chief Judge Detective and the problems that’s entailed. It might not have been her idea to bring in the plainclothes Mechanismo detectives but she’s also, as Armitage says over a rather tense pint with he, ‘still enforcing it.’ She’s also got to do the difficult job of getting Armitage in for those memory delves, effectively him providing the memories and experience to train up the mechanismos. It’s really no wonder he’s so pissed off with it all, isn’t it?

LJ: Their relationship is really the backbone of the entire series since its inception. And like I said, the fact Treasure has risen to such ranks just shows Armitage has done his job well. But now she’s entangled with all the politics that Armitage hates so much.

I still think both would take a bullet for the other but the rather more complicated question is, can they still work together? And that’s actually much more interesting thing to unpack in the long run.

Of course, all Treasure really has to do is dangle a new case, the one the mechanismo detectives can’t solve and he’s up like a young ‘un and back on the case.

All of which means you get to do the great thing of having him waltz in and take over, the perfect detective who can walk into a crime scene and absolutely nail it, solve the case within a couple of minutes. Doing episode 1 as a classic sort of Sherlock Holmes (other great detectives are available) thing – bit of background, impossible mystery of a crime, solved in the very moment the detective walks into the room – was that one of those tick box moments for you?

LJ: Absolutely. As much as I love my modern-day gritty crime dramas, I love my classics just as much. In fact I only just ticked off a longstanding item on my bucket-list a month or so ago when I finally got to watch the Mouse Trap. Fantastic stuff.

That being said, and a few people have picked up on this, we should remember that Bill, the main plainclothes Mechanismo we’ve got to know, probably would have solved the case if Armitage had handed over his memories… As much as I’m anti-A.I. when it comes to anything other than aiding medical diagnosis etc. etc., there’s a much better story to be had by muddying the waters. We know A.I. is advanced in the Dredd-Verse, so again we can’t just ignore that to serve the purpose of our story. We play with the toys we’ve got.

Thing is, with episode 2 you rather switch it around and introduce elements into the Armitage story that we haven’t really had before. Or have we?

LJ: For the case itself, everything Armitage details is new, but it all fits within the continuity of what we’ve seen before. It’s a case from the past come back to haunt him.

From a writing point-of-view, it just makes it easier for the audience to invest in something when the detective cares about it too. And given the somewhat random nature of the crime, from the readers perspective anyway, it needed that hook.

Normally, as far as my terrible memory remembers, Armitage tales are all classic detectives from popular culture transposed into Dreddworld. But here you’ve definitely switched that up, bringing in the psycho killer with the time bullets – suddenly it’s a whole different sort of Armitage tale, a time-travelling mystery for Armitage to solve.

So Liam, why the switch up?  Why change the Armitage we’ve come to expect? Or is it just a case of playing into things, introducing the time-bullets as just another element of the mystery for Armitage to gnaw at?

LJ: When I first got talking to Tharg The Mighty about my interest in pitching for the book, the one steer he gave me was to avoid some grand corruption story. We’d seen that in Armitage a couple of times before and I don’t think we could’ve topped it. To me, it would’ve just been playing the greatest hits. He wanted something from science-fiction based crimes. Something we could only get in the Dreddworld.

So it got me thinking and I came up with a question; can you prevent a murder that’s already happened? And how is that not a brilliant prompt for a story? I knew right away that was the case we had to investigate. And given we’ve seen quite extension flashbacks in Armitage before, again it just felt like actually, though it is surprising, it’s all in the DNA of the book.

And I have to add, though they are called ‘Time Bullets’, Armitage does make it clear that was only a nickname and the science is that these bullets phase out between atoms until the moment they’re required to phase back into reality and carry on their trajectory. There’s no time travel involved. They’re always there. If they were real, there might be one just an inch from your forehead right now. Again, there’s an inevitably to them.

Finally for now, part 3 has a return of another classic Armitage trait, as the Psi-Judge interrogation of the aged jailed psi-active serial killer reveals another five potential victims. Armitage doesn’t have the benefit of the flashback where we saw what did happen with the time-gun in part 2, so we’re one step ahead of him here. But he can certainly see the risk that the serial killer might merely be manipulating things to his own ends. And here’s where that classic Armitage trait comes in – do what Treasure orders or do it his way. Again, it’s a classic set-up for things and I’m sure one you enjoyed writing.

We’re a few episodes in now – what can you tease us for what we can expect for the rest of the series, including how many episodes we can expect here?

LJ: It’s interesting you think we’re one step ahead of Armitage there. I won’t say much more on that but all will be come clearer.

Hmmmmmm.

LJ: In terms of other teases, I think it’s fair to say there’s more discussion to be had about Lucius Garrett, of if he’s just a very messed up predictive genius or perhaps there’s some real pre-cognitive abilities there.

And Armitage and Steel do feel like they’re on an inevitable collision course, despite the deep-rooted love and respect between them. But who is right? Are either of them wrong? And again, can Armitage stop a murder that’s already taken please?

And again, inevitability is the theme… And we close this story out with five-episodes. This could be where the story ends but, truthfully, I’d like this to be the beginnings of a much longer story. But by saying that out loud I’ve now risked jinxing the whole thing and looking rather foolish. But that’s writing in a nutshell really.

You’ve written Armitage once before – for the Sci-Fi Special 2021. But that was a different kind of thing, something very much driven by the overarching story there. So this would be your first proper Armitage in many ways. What did you want to bring to it?

LJ: I loved writing Armitage back in that Special. I think we did an interview where I gushed about how much fun I had writing his dialogue.

Oh we did! You said this at the time… ‘Honestly, the hardest part of writing this strip was getting Devlin and Armitage to shut up. I could’ve easily written a whole epic-length tale of them just locked in a room. The characters couldn’t be more opposite and that’s why their chemistry is so perfect.’

LJ: And all that still holds true. I think what I bring to the table, and this comes from my TV writing, is a sense of continuity. I don’t just mean in terms of “This happened in X issue” but more “Because this happened to this character in this way, it’s going to colour his reaction to Y in this story.”

I know 2000 AD isn’t a soap opera but there’s a load of similarities. Long, ongoing stories, with a cast of hundreds all interacting and affecting one another. I’m not writing a character who has been in thirty stories, that’s me plucking a number from thin air there, I’m writing a character who has been alive for decades. I actually kicked off a phrase in that special, of ‘Joining the Queue’, which was a thread I’d hope to get to pick up again one day. We do that a little here and maybe we’ll get to explore it further down the line.

Now, as far as Armitage the character is concerned, what do you both think had made him so popular to readers? Is it that obvious difference to Dredd – the more thoughtful, considered take on cops when compared to Dredd – the Morse/Columbo/Holmes aspect as compared to the Dirty Harry of Dredd?

LJ: I think Armitage speaks for all us. It’s that frustration that doing the right thing doesn’t seem to make the world a better place. But we all, or most of us, continue to try. And we can’t pick up a gun like Dredd and, in reality, we wouldn’t want to mow down someone or lock them up in isolation for forty years. And it taps in that need for answers. We all love a good mystery.

Liam, did you know it was going to be Warren drawing this? Was it a collaboration at the creation stage or did Warren come on once you’d started writing it?

LJ: I didn’t know it would be Warren until quite late in the scripting stage. That being said, I couldn’t have been more thrilled! I’ve told Warren what a big fan of his work I am, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to be working with him.

As it was quite late in the day for me finding out, it was more the passing of a baton type collaboration. But Matt, Tharg, really is fantastic at teaming up the right writer/artist combo so I was never in any doubt he’d pick someone that would make me look infinitely better than I am.

So in my script I lay out how I see the page and take care to label the important bits, often saying things like “I’m asking for this because it’s important for Part 4, Page 5” for example. But then say “Knowing all this, feel free to mix it up and change anything you want.” I can’t draw for toffee. I wish I could. Whenever I get art back it’s always infinitely better than I imagine and Warren was no different.

WARREN PLEECE: He’s being modest here, but Liam’s script had everything already there for me. Right from the start I was hooked, which is always a good sign. Nice to have all the essential descriptive goods laid out for me, but with the occasional room to improvise. And, like Liam says, the skill of pairing up a ‘team’ is crucial. Thank you, oh Mighty One.

Warren, you’ve got a nice history of wandering around the Dreddverse now – I might be wrong (I so often am), but is this your first time drawing Armitage? Is he one of those characters you always had a hankering to do take a stab at?

WP: I drew Armitage as a side character in James’ Diamond Dogs, where he enlists Nia Jones to break up some Brit Cit gangs, so I was very much onboard for this series when it was mooted. And another opportunity for me to delve further into his character. Grumpy, scowly and flawed. Yes please.

Yes, you certainly aren’t new to drawing Brit-Cit though – as you say, you showed us the seedier side of things with the James Peaty written Diamond Dogs. When we talked about that one back in 2019 (right here!) you described your approach there as ‘I’ve played up a ’70s brutalist feel for the background architecture in the Nu East End, just occasionally glimpsing a slightly shinier Brit-Cit, faded in the background’.

If that was 1970s brutalism, what’s the vibe for this Armitage tale? And what sort of artistic decisions were there in drawing this new series with Armitage and a bit more of Brit-Cit?

WP: There’s still a bit of that down at heel, back end of the shiny façade feel to my take on Brit-Cit this time around, maybe because I love drawing all that stuff. This time though, I’ve mixed it more with the impersonal city centre, all dissected road ways and cut-off neighbourhoods dominated by ridiculously high buildings. Maybe a visual metaphor for Armitage’s situation?

Your art really does suit the sort of kitchen sink drama of Brit Cit I think, as opposed to the glitz and big city lights of MC1 – or at least that’s my take on it. What would you say?

WP: Thanks. Praise indeed. I love kitchen sink drama and I think it really fits the tone and mood of Liam’s story here. All of that stuff echoed the 50s and 60s it came from, but I don’t think we’ve ever really moved too far away from it, no matter how many luxury penthouse apartments go up or how many neighbourhoods become gentrified. I think the Dreddverse future has always been very much a projection of the weird, unequal times we currently live in.

And it’s always fascinating to hear an artist describe their own style and how it’s developed through the years – how would you describe your own style?

WP: Kitchen sink, film noir; they’re both terms and influences on my comics. They were when I started in the late 80s and still are today. There’s more going on and in them today, I’d say. I’m a culture sponge, soaking up visual media from all over the shop, albeit with a nod to the past and classic cinematic storytelling.

Liam, you’ve seen Warren’s art on Armitage by now – feel free to heap praise on what he’s brought to Armitage here?

LJ: I just love it. I think Brit-Ct should have that more ‘kitchen sink drama’ feel you described. This isn’t Mega-City One and at no point reading our book could you confuse it for such. It’s more grounded and dare I say grittier and Warren sprinkles in just the right amount of sci-fi so we can still maintain that noir feel. And he’s doing some fantastically subtle character acting too. So yeah, I couldn’t be happier. I hope to meet him in person at con one day so I can shake his hand.

Warren, talk to us about the making of this Armitage strip? What’s the process you use these days?

WP: The nuts and bolts after reading the script are to scrawl thumbnail breakdowns on printed copies of each page for composition, sketch out characters and interesting tech stuff, then pencil on good old fashioned cartridge paper. I’ll ink onto Bristol board using a lightbox, pens, brush pens, markers and loads and loads of black ink, then scan those into photoshop to colour.

I’ve found spending too long staring at a screen does my head in after a while. Working this way keeps me sane (ish).

Warren was good enough to send along a great sketch of ‘Bill’, our new favourite Mechanismo unit, plus process work from the first part of Bullets for an Old Man – it’s absolutely wonderful seeing how it’s all put together…

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Now, any plans for more Armitage once Bullets for an Old Man has finished? And what else do you have for us to look forward to, whether for The Mighty One or elsewhere?

LJ: My only slight-regret with Bullets for an Old Man is that I had loads of people get in touch to express how excited they were to see an Armitage locked-room mystery and I felt a tad guilty knowing the story became something else, something much grander, very quickly.

I don’t regret that choice, I’m very proud of the story we’ve told, but it did leave me with an itch to scratch. So I can say that Matt has commissioned a two-part whodunnit story from me that provides the reader with all the clues they need to solve the crime.

I’m also currently scripting a story set within the Regened world and also a brand-new Tales From the Black Museum that I’m very excited to see come together. Besides that, that’s me on the comics front for the time being.

But in terms of Armitage, I can’t stress how much I have loved this experience and people’s reaction to our story. As I mentioned before, in that Sci-Fi Special back in 2021, I laid out some breadcrumbs for potential future stories. Bullets for An Old Man is no different. There are lines of dialogue and character choices and images that could, theoretically, lay the ground work for a lot of future stories. Or they won’t. Though Matt and I know why these things are there, they could equally work with no further exploration. We spent a lot of time here reestablishing Armitage’s status-quo here and fleshing out this cast of supporting characters. Will I be around to see that happen? Will Armitage even still be alive? Who’s to say at this point. But, if you have enjoyed what we’ve done so far, make sure to spread the word. I’ll be around as long as Tharg and the readers of 2000 AD and the Megazine want me.

WP: Like Liam, I’d love to explore more murky avenues with Armitage. I think he’s a perfect foil to the pumped up anti-heroics of Dredd. I guess we just can’t get enough grump from our favourite characters and this series has definitely whetted my appetite. As well as all of that, I’d love to draw more of ‘Bill’, our favourite plain clothes Judge Mechanismo, come Armitage punch bag side-kick.

In other work, I have a graphic novel coming out this August with Berger Books/ Dark Horse Comics called The Sunny Luna Travelling Oracle. It’s an eco-noir thriller set in a near future dust bowl version of the US. Lots of weird, dark (of course) and wonderful stuff ensues because of some very underground and sought-after books. I think you’ll like it.

Well, I can’t speak for Tharg, but from what I’ve read of Armitage, this one’s doing great things and I can’t wait for more.

Thanks so much to Liam and Warren for taking the time to answer those questions – you can see just what he’s been talking about in Armitage: Bullets for an Old Man that started in Megazine issue 467 and reaches part 3 in the new issue of the Megazine on the stands of all the finest comics emporiums the Galaxy has to offer, including the 2000 AD web shop!

You can read more from Liam in the interview we did about that classic meet-up of two Brit-Cit legends, Armitage and Devlin Waugh in the 2021 Sci-Fi Special here. And we’ve talked to Warren about Diamond Dogs here. and about Fiends of West Berlin here.

Finally, because we only showed them to you small above, here’s the full-sized process pieces from Warren, just so you can see all that detail that goes into his pages…