Talking Department K In 2000 AD Regened Prog 2196 with Rory McConville & PJ Holden
30th August 2020
Time for another fabulous all-ages 2000 AD Regened with Prog 2196, out on 26 August! 48-pages of all-ages action and adventure with some old favourites and some all-new features! Yes young Earthlets – It’s time to get Regened!
Alongside Cadet Dredd, Finder & Keeper, a new Future Shock, you’ll find the all-new strips Pandora Perfect and Department K, where Rory McConville and PJ Holden take us for a look inside the Justice Department’s Tek-Division.
We caught up with McConville and Holden to talk all-ages Tek-Div shenanigans happening in Department K!
2000 AD Regened Prog 2196 – out on 26 August – grab it from the 2000 AD store.
In the Regened Prog 2196, you have an all-new strip, Department K. And all I know of it is the title. That’s it. So we’re a little in the dark here!
So, first things first – what the heck is Department K and what can we expect from this debut strip?
PJ Holden: Well, I think Department K sprung out of a fun little strip Rory and I did where we introduced Tech Judge Kirby, dealing with a poor Mega-City One cit whose body was popping out weird little golems until Dredd turns up. She’s only in that one strip, but seemed like a fun character with maybe a slightly different angle on the Tech Judges than we’re used to (a much more pop/bombastic tech judge ) and we’d chatted a little about doing something more with her.
So Rory and I chatted about the sort of thing we’d like to do, I did some character designs, Rory sent the pitch. And… Tharg liked it.
But the original pitch was for a Judge Dredd Megazine series. Matt asked us if we could rejig it for the 2000AD Regened, slanting the age downwards a bit. The thing is, I – as I’m sure you know – LOVE doing comics for kids, so I was definitely up for it.
Rory McConville: Department K is a special branch of Tek Div that deals with inter-dimensional problems, operating on a slightly more cosmic scale than your average Mega City One tale. I’ve wanted to do a story with a Tek Div team of mad scientists for a while and, after talking to PJ, it made sense to bring Kirby in as the lead.
As to what you can expect in this story, we’re following Afua, a new intern, on her first day in Dept K. There’ll be robots, inter-dimensional rifts and cosmic parasites the size of skyscrapers.
Rory, you’ve already done one of the Cadet Dredd Regened strips, in Prog 2170, and PJ, your previous Regened experience comes from pitch-hitting for Babs Tarr on the Anderson tale in Regened Prog 2170, stepping in when Babs couldn’t, unfortunately, get the strip done.
What are the differences and similarities in shifting from 2000 AD to Regened?
PJH: Well, I try and approach each job in the most tonally appropriate way I can think of – so it’s less a shift from 2000 AD to Regened as it is a shift from say a horror story to rollicking adventure story. I lean a bit more into my cartoony aspects (arguably they’re never far away) and a try to make the rendering a little more open (so no grey-washes, no horror aesthetic, really). If a script calls for character to die, in 2000 AD I can make that messy (but again, I’m not a viscera guy anyway, so my messy is usually a bit less visceral than someone else’s).
That said, I also in my head think “YES! this is the sort of comics I want to draw! KIDS COMICS!” I’m drawing them for me, for me when I was 12 or so. (And a bit for my 12-year-old son).
But, I like to shift gears, so the moment I’ve done some kids comics I’m straight onto, “Now, how can I convinced someone to let me draw some exploding heads?”
RMc: For the most part, it’s pretty much the same – there’s just a few more restrictions around violence and swearing (understandably!)
So far in Regened we’ve seen multiple approaches to strips. Primarily, we’ve seen established 2000 AD characters such as Dredd, Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper etc., given an all-ages treatment. But there have also been those new strips – Finder & Keeper by Moore, Reppion, and Tinto, which has its fourth outing in this latest Regened. And then we have Full Tilt Boogie, by Alec de Campi and Eduardo Ocana, which debuted in 2019’s Regened Prog 2130 and then moved to 2000 AD proper with its recently concluded first series.
So, I suppose, when you debut a strip such as Department K, I’m sure the primary goal is to make a great strip for the one-off. But is there also an element of planning for the future?
PJH: Oh yeah, Rory can speak to that more than me, I think.
RMc: Definitely. It’s a bit of a balancing act. The ultimate goal is to give the reader an entertaining story that works on its own, but we’re definitely approaching this as a ‘pilot’ episode and laying groundwork for a longer story.
In which case, how much work has gone into the development of the series and the inevitable world-building that comes in?
RMc: There’s been a bit – I’ve got a few ideas for where we’d go from here but it’s still very broad strokes for now as we’ve no idea if we’ll get to continue and, even if we do, what form it would be (one-offs or a full series etc).
PJH: I’m trying to design characters that you’ll want to see again – shapes that make them visually interesting, worlds that we can explore and have fun in. There’s a LOT of world-building baked in to any story set in Dredd’s world, though sometimes that can tie you down too much – I wanted the characters to be recognisably Judges, but also for them to be recognisably Tech Judges and then we can get to pour them into all sorts of new and unexplored regions of Dredd’s world/multiverses.
Are there any plans for the pair of you to pitch more Department K strips at all?
PJH: Well, certainly this first episode sets us off on a journey that could be enormous fun if the readers want to see more.
RMc: Yeah, I think we’d both love to do more – all dependent on whether the interest is there.
PJ, I could bang on about the art plenty, but talking to readers about things, one aspect they’re always interested in is the conceptual design nature of what you’ve done, plus that good old-fashioned process of putting a strip and a page together.
PJH: Well, it’s pretty simple, and my process has become streamlined over the years. I’ll get a script and design some characters (though they frequently change as sometimes I’ll draw them in such a way that might contradict something in the script, in that case I’ll have to change it!)
Here’s my rough pencils – pencilled on a A3 photocopy piece of paper with a 2000 AD layout printed on it. I just pencil as fast as I can on the paper, knowing any small things I can correct in ink or I can fix proportions, etc., in clip studio.
PJH: I scan those pencils in to clip studio – add panel borders, correct anything that needs correcting then print them out on A3 Bristol board, pencils in blue-line and with panel borders added digitally. Doing this can save me needless hours and hassle with cleaning pens (I used to use a Rapidograph for drawing panel borders, it was great, but it took AGES – maybe 10-15 minutes of measuring, cleaning the pen, drawing the lines, real dull stuff. Now I do the same lines in seconds digitally.)
PJH: Pencils with newly added digital border and more backgrounds… lots of Kirby Tech. I’ll be honest; we’re wearing our heart on our sleeve here. Big Kirby tech in Dredd’s world. That’s the mandate!
Once inked up I scan it back in and start adding some digital effects (actually I say digitally, really what I’m doing is adding some analogue texture like ink splatter, but doing it digitally, so it feels much more real)
PJH: OH, and the brilliant Len O’Grady has coloured it and it looks SMASHING!
As far as Regened is concerned – it’s certainly developed pretty quickly – from that first FCBD issue, then the once a year Prog, now to the quarterly Progs. What do you think about Regened as a whole?
PJH: I love it, several years ago, I pitched the idea (by pitched I mean ‘posted on a newsgroup’) that 2000 AD really needed a title like Regened (I suggested calling it ‘Zarjaz’) something that would pick up readers who fell between the Beano and 2000 AD proper. I toyed with lots of ideas, having The Megazine feature a free kids comic (using coloured reprints of things like Robohunter), or making 2000 AD the adult title and The Megazine the younger title. But, of course, posts on a newsgroup don’t really have the weight of research and money you’d need to make that happen.
So I love Regened, I love that it exists, I wish/hope we can get a Regened that is more regular and can sit beside 2000 AD on shelves.
RMc: I think it’s great and glad to see it’s been going from strength to strength. I particularly like the idea of it being a testing ground for new ideas which helps it carve out its own identity.
And where would you like to see it going in the future – let’s go nuts here – in an ideal world what would things look like for Regened?
PJH: Weekly title, Regened, on the shelves (though, my God, the dream of going into a newsagents seems like such an out of reach wish now too…).
Anyway, ideal world, newsagents open, Regened is there every week, readers from that move on to 2000 AD when they get older. Regened stories collected into graphic novels on shelves in bookshops (you remember going to books shops? *sob*) sitting beside Dogman.
Obviously, it’s all about getting new readers on board for 2000 AD, but it’s also part of the bigger picture of getting kids into comics. What do you think?
PJH: Well, it’s never a bad thing, right?
RMc: It’s vital.
PJH: But I think our biggest challenge is, always has been and always will be, distribution. How do we get great material into people’s hands? Young kids are just eating up Dogman, and Raina Telgemeier (and books! books by the hundreds!) and distribution options are shrinking, who knows what will be left post-Covid?
I think some Regened collections in bookshops could be incredibly successful, when there’s enough material for some collections!
RMc: I Agree on the collections in bookshops – would be very interested to see how those do.
Okay then, classic 2000 AD characters who you’d love to see in a Regened Prog?
RMc: ABC Warriors maybe? I’d be more interested in seeing more new stuff to be honest.
PJH: I realise this is sacrilegious, but… Halo. Put someone who understands the character and YA stuff on there, and I think you could have something that could attract a different audience. (Alan Moore is never coming back, let’s face it, Halo will forever remain unfinished, but a new, different Halo?)
Anyway, now I’ve made everyone hate me…
Finally, with the whole concept of Regened being all about getting younger readers into comics and into 2000 AD… How did you first come to read comics? What was the thing that really made you think, ‘Wow, I love this…’?
PJH: Caravan, when I was about 8? Bored, it was raining the entire summer, I didn’t read much at the time – actually I was in a remedial reading class in school, just had zero interest in reading. Then my mum bought some comics and I was hooked – I think by summer’s end I was reading everything I could get my hands on.
RMc: It was probably The Beano when I was very young, followed by some of those Marvel Panini Collections when I was about 7/8
And if that wasn’t 2000 AD, when did you first experience the Prog?
RMc: Think the Prog would’ve followed shortly after so again about eight. I was reading anything I could get my hands on at that stage.
PJH: I think 2000 AD was in the mix, but I was reading everything! (including some PG Wodehouse books I found under the caravan chair, that had that glorious book smell to them)