Comics

Interview: Paul Cornell & Emma Vieceli on bringing two female icons together in the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special – Judge Anderson & Kate Bush

13th July 2022

Marking 2000 AD‘s 45th birthday, 2022’s summer special has a musical theme as the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic continues to celebrate 45 Revolutions Per Minute with Comic Rock!

Two incredible female icons come together with Anderson: Psi Division: Half Of A Heaven from Paul Cornell and Emma Vieceli, as 2000 AD’s premier psi-Judge stars in a strip inspired by Kate Bush’s Suspended in Gaffa.

***Luke Preece brings you Stars on 45 on the cover!***

Out now, the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special is one for your eyes and your ears, bringing back the Comics Rock concept introduced by Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill’s Terror Tube in Prog 167, a strip inspired by The Jam’s Going Underground and one that introduced Nemesis the Warlock. rocking out to the tune of six tales inspired by six pieces of music. Inside this years’ Sci-Fi Special there’s six thrill-powered tales all inspired by the writer’s favourite tracks, so expect to see Judge Dredd, Sinister Dexter, Fiends of West Berlin, Psi-Judge Anderson, Judge Death, and Middenface McNulty all soundtracked to music including Alphaville, The Beatles, Stealer’s Wheels and more!

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Today, we’re talking to Paul Cornwell and Emma Vieceli about their Judge Anderson story, Half Of A Heaven, inspired by the wonderful Kate Bush and her track Suspended in Gaffa!

Paul, Emma, in the Sci-Fi Special, your story is Anderson, Psi-Division: Half Of A Heaven, suggested by Suspended in Gaffa by Kate Bush.

First of all, Paul, can you tell us a little of what we can expect from Half Of A Heaven and what was it that made you choose this track and how did it suggest this Judge Anderson story?

PAUL CORNELL: I picked Kate Bush’s ‘Suspended in Gaffa’, one of her most abstract songs, which I sometimes think is about any artist’s struggle to overcome imposter syndrome. I’m a huge fan of Kate, who once sent me a fan letter (!) after my Doctor Who episodes aired.

I chose it because I wanted to use a Kate track, but a lot of her work is very narrative, and I didn’t want to put one story on top of another. And in a handful of pages it’s hard to have an adventure, so I just did a little look into Anderson’s awareness that her life, anyone’s life, in the Mega-City is not all it could be.

Emma helped me pack the story with visual references to the rest of Kate’s work. Her art was amazing as always, great colour art too by Barbara Nosenzo.

What would you recommend for someone coming to Kate’s catalogue if they’ve not heard anything before, or maybe if they’ve only heard of her from Stranger Things and the resurgence of Running Up That Hill?

PC: I’d recommend, from the rest of Kate’s catalogue, starting with something easy like Never For Ever, and then maybe something modern like the second side of Aerial, which is one, long, very beautiful piece, and then the hard core stuff is The Dreaming. I love The Red Shoes, because it’s got Kate/Prince collaborations and wonderful stuff about magic, but it’s not widely loved, maybe because it ends with something heart-rending. You can tell I’m into this!

Emma, seeing as it was Paul who picked the track this time, which track would you have picked as a fave to illustrate?

EMMA VIECELI: Thankfully Paul has great taste and picked an icon of a performer who is visual art herself 🙂 If I’d had a choice, maybe Paranoid Android by Radiohead?

Emma, were you already a Kate Bush fan when you got the story from Paul?

EV: I don’t think I qualify as a fan as my knowledge is fairly limited, but I do like her a lot. And oddly this is the second time I’ve illustrated a comic based on one of her tracks!

[If you’re wondering, it was Wuthering Heights as part of Phonogram: The Singles Club, Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s epic tale of music and magic.]

And when getting the story, was it a case of settling down with the script and Suspended in Gaffa on repeat to get the right feel for the artwork?

EV: I watched the Suspended in Gaffa music video a fair bit… partly because it’s just mesmerising, but also for reference on that outfit and hair, haha! Beyond that I just trusted in Paul’s script.

I think you’ve absolutely nailed the imagery, both in the elysian beauty of the psychic landscape inside the girl’s head and those great shots of Anderson realising that it’s a beauty she won’t be able to experience.

EV: Well that makes me very happy to read, thank you ^_^ And of course Barbara Nosenzo made the pages super special with her colours!

That she definitely did!

**Emma’s pencils and inks for page two of Half Of A Heaven**
***(You can see the full-size versions below)***

Emma, can you take us through some of your process and how you went about making these Anderson pages?

EV: It’s all digital these days and there’s not much to say beyond the obvious, really, but I took Paul’s script, sketched out layouts and made sure he and Matt were happy with those before I moved onto inks.

We had a little back and forth trying to work out just how much BushRef (c) we could fit into the pages, especially the mindscape garden. I’d love to know how many readers can spot 🙂

Emma – given that Paul’s told us of his favourite Kate Bush song, what else would you suggest?

EV: This Woman’s work, for me. Shivers every time. But beware watching the music video if you’re a Blackadder fan. It may…distract from the song’s power. Trust me on that XD

**More of Emma’s pencils and inks – page three of Half Of A Heaven**
***(Again, see the full-size versions below)***

And finally, what have you both got coming up in the future that we’ll want to be looking for? (Feel free to mention anything, old Tharg has just finished yet another concoction he calls a Betelgeusian Brain Blaster and has something very loud and very screamy pouring from his headphones right now.)

PC: Out right now from Legendary is my fantasy rom-com graphic novel Three Little Wishes, with Steve Yeowell, Pippa Bowland, and Simon Bowland, about a tricksy wish-granting fairy who meets his match in a finicky contract lawyer.

EV: Oooh, well. I recently came to the end of writing Life is Strange for Titan Comics. That’s been an amazing few years and I’m so proud of what we achieved with the title.

Because of that I’ve been a bit careful with what I pick up right now as I want to keep my schedule relatively open to work on some very patient projects; not least of all finishing BREAKS! I’m drawing the final scenes of it at the moment and Malin and I can’t believe we’re finally close to telling the end of this tale. It launched back in 2013.

For those of you who don’t know, BREAKS, co-written by Malin Ryden & Vieceli, with art by Vieceli. is a wonderful comic saga best described as ‘A love story…but a little broken’ and ‘the story of two young adults coming to terms with who they were, who they are and who they’ll become.’ – you can read some of it here, absolutely recommended.

EV: That said…I do have a few bits coming up for other publishers. I wrote a small two-parter backup strip for DC; an origin story for Nightwing as he appears in DC vs Vampires, nyohoho! I’m on art and letters for an eight-pager to be included in an upcoming anthology, and I’m excited to be working with a new studio on something quite large as overall projects go, but which starts for me as a four-parter that I’m writing and drawing. More on that when we can share!

A massive thank you for Paul and Emma for talking comics and Kate Bush with us. Seriously, if you’re a fan, go re-listen right now. But if you’re not a fan (yet!), do yourself a favour and head to wherever you get your music and immerse yourself into her work – it’s just an amazing body of music she’s made over the years.

You can see Judge, Psi Division: Half Of A Heaven in the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 2022 – it’s out on 13 July 2022 and available from wherever Thrill Power is sold, including the 2000 AD web shop. And you can listen to the whole Sci-Fi Special playlist here on Spotify.

Now, we promised you full-size versions of Emma’s amazing artwork, and here it is… enjoy!