Mega-City Max Interviews: Taking comedy to the MAX with Roger Langridge and Walter the Wobot
21st July 2023
It’s our future – and their reality! Welcome to Mega-City Max, the latest one-shot special from 2000 AD, bringing familiar characters to a whole new audience.
It’s five tales of Dredd’s dystopian future from the hottest breaking talent in comics in a stand-alone, no continuity sci-fi comic aimed at teenagers. Join us and them in taking the Mega-Cities to the MAX!
Inside Mega City Max the thrills come fast and furious, action-packed, and hilarious, whether that’s Hannah Templer showing you a young Demarco P.I. just starting out, a fresh take on Harlem Heroes from Ramzee & Korinna Mei Veropoulou taking us to the Aeroball Mega-City Cup, see just how fabulous Oliver Gerlach & VV Glass‘s teen Devlin Waugh can be whilst officiating at an influencer’s wedding where there’s the dsitinct whiff of brimstone in the air, and see what the brilliant Lucie Ebrey comes up with to show us the latest, and daftest, fad to hit MC-1!
With Mega-City Max released on 19 July, we’re taking the time to talk to the creators behind some of the strips inside – all of them fabulous, forward-thinking, fresh takes on the world of the Mega-Cities in the future.
Today, we’re talking to Roger Langridge, whose tale of Walter the Wobot, Don’t Be Cwuel, sees Dredd’s old house droid trying his hand at stand-up comedy with a little help from the dapper gent Max Normal.
Roger, hello there and welcome to Mega-City Max! What’s it like being on the ground floor of the latest 2000 AD comic?
ROGER LANGRIDGE: I’m happy to be included! For the first time in my 2000 AD career I’m writing long-established characters, so I just hope I don’t break anything.
When it comes to Mega-City Max, the whole idea behind it is to broaden the readership. We’ve had Regened issues already, which has seen work from yourself with Pandora Perfect. But MCM aims to appeal to a slightly older age range and audience.
RL: I’m not entirely sure I knew it was for a different audience? (It may have been mentioned and I may have forgotten because I’m old and daft.) I wrote for a general readership, anyway – I like to make my 2000 AD work accessible to all, as that’s the 2000 AD I grew up with and it’s kind of what I default to when I write for them.
Absolutely right Roger!
RL: And of course, of course there should be entry-level stuff available constantly, to keep refreshing the readership. It’s good business sense, obviously, but it’s also good creative sense – it creates an opportunity to shift the tone, give new voices a shot, add variety to the 2000 AD palette.
MCM is, of course, something very different whilst also something familiar, in much the same as a lot of Regened was when it was introduced. What would you say to the criticisms that are always thrown up when something new comes along that this isn’t the sort of 2000 AD that a lot of readers grew up with?
RL: It… doesn’t have to be? As long as I live, I will never understand why some people seem to think that everything has to be for them and nobody else. Not reading things is always an option if the idea of their existence is that upsetting to you.
Although I would like to think – and in my experience meeting fans at conventions and so forth, this is largely the case – that the people writing it off in advance are a (disproportionately vocal!) minority, and most readers seem to have broader taste and a willingness – indeed, an enthusiasm – to experience new voices, styles and approaches.
Have you seen the finished comic yet?
RL: No, sir, I have not. I’ve seen my story all coloured up by Pippa Bowland, which I was very happy with.
And you absolutely should be, Pippa is a colourist’s colourist.
What are your hopes for the future of Mega-City Max?
RL: I love the idea of a 2000 AD empire of titles, all serving different audiences. I would love it even more if everything didn’t have to be a variation on an existing IP, but I get that that’s the world we live in now.
And would you be willing to return?
RL: I’d be delighted to be asked.
You’re described on the contents page for MCM as ‘industry veteran’ Roger Langridge, which is so true. But how did you get involved in MCM alongside a good handful of these bright young things?
RL: I was invited to come up with something for it, I suppose because I’ve written for younger audiences successfully in the past.
Bringing Walter and Max together in one strip works wonderfully of course, a perfect bit of comedy with Max trying to get Walter a comedy gig in the big Meg. But why these two for MCM?
RL: I initially pitched a different idea with a more recent character. That character’s creators requested that I not use them, which seemed totally fair, but it did mean that I had to come up with something else in a hurry, and I liked Walter and Max, so I thought I could use them in such a way that it didn’t matter if you were familiar with them or not. I think the story stands on its own if you don’t know the characters’ history – and, for the naysayers who claim this isn’t ‘their’ 2000 AD, it gives them something familiar as well. Everybody wins!
Obviously it’s two classic characters here for existing Dredd fans but what steps did you take to make it new reader friendly? Or is it simply a case of you just doing the great things you do on the comics page with the knowledge that readers, whatever their ages, will see and get great comedy when they read it?
RL: Well, ‘great’ is in the eye of the beholder, but I didn’t throw in any callbacks to old stories or anything – there’s enough context that even if you weren’t familiar with the characters, you get enough information that you sort of know what they’re about. It’s a bit like an episode of a sitcom – two figures with strong, recognisable traits bouncing off one another, which I think is all you need. They’re quite broad characters to begin with – you don’t really need a manual to get up to speed.
Of course, what you do bring to MCM with Walter in Don’t Be Cwuel is your humour, and a lot of it, something that’s been your calling card in your comics since you began in the biz back in the late 80s and 90s with the likes of Art d’Ecco, Zoot!, and Knuckles the Malevolent Nun.
Shortly after that came your first 2000 AD work, The Straitjacket Fits with David Bishop. I don’t know how you remember that one but the prevailing view, I think it’s safe to say, is that it wasn’t then Asst. Editor Bishop’s finest hour. In fact, a lot of the write-ups about it, even our own Mike Molcher on his ABC of 2000 AD series, pointed out that the only redeeming feature of it was your magnificent artwork.
What do you remember about that particular series and would you agree with the reviews?
RL: I’m fond of it as a marker of where both David and I were at the time as creators – neither of us really knowing what we were doing, both learning on the job. I’m flattered that people remember the artwork fondly (if they do) [Oh they do, Roger, they do], because when I look at it I see every bodge and ‘this’ll do’ I resorted to to cover up my lack of skill and experience, and I cringe more than a little. That said, there’s a kind of punk-rock energy to it that I don’t entirely hate, and I remain eternally grateful for the opportunity, which was the result of Steve MacManus taking a massive punt on a couple of relatively untried talents.
Of course, there’s also been work for DC Comics, Marvel, Dark Horse, IDW, Dynamite, and many more over the years. And like your website says, you’re maybe best known for the rather brilliant Thor: The Mighty Avenger (with Chris Samnee), your self-published and web comic Fred The Clown, your great Muppet Show comic from Boom! and the Eisner winning Snarked!.
So you’re definitely a writer and artist capable of doing so many different characters, styles. But there’s always the return to comedy – what is it that keeps bringing you back to the laughs?
RL: It makes me happy! It’s literally that.
And you know what reader, I reckon that is perhaps the absolute greatest answer I’ve ever read.
RL: I consume a lot of comedy, in all mediums. I turn to it when I feel low, I enjoy it when I’m feeling good already. I fundamentally mistrust art of any kind that makes no room for comedy whatsoever. It seems like it’s such an essential part of the human experience.
The late, great Clive James wrote, ‘Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing.’ That’s kind of how I feel about it.
One of my personal favourites of your work has come recently, where your Hotel Fred webcomic, home to Fred The Clown as well as the family Langridge, took on the pandemic – most recently collected in The Plague’s The Thing and Infections, Injections & Insurrections. It was a perfect antidote to the horrors of the time, taking the record of life during the pandemic seriously but spinning it with your own style.
RL: I was having a slow patch professionally, so I decided to set up a Patreon page in the hope of bring in a few pennies and, to entice people to sign up for it, I decided to draw a strip every day – a quick, knocked-off thing, before I did whatever paid work I might have lined up for the day – and to share the best of them on social media to encourage people to sign up for the full experience. This was at the very end of 2019. So the strip was already up and running when the pandemic hit in 2020, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to record it. It seemed to land with a lot of people and bring them some comfort, which was very gratifying.
And, three and a half years in, I feel like doing a daily strip has been a good experience for me purely on a creative level (if occasionally knackering!) – it’s a kind of daily practice, getting in touch with the fundamentals of my craft as a cartoonist at the same time every day, at 5 am, before the rest of the world is awake. It’s almost like meditation. I don’t know if I’ll keep doing it forever – I expect it’ll eventually wear me out – but, for now, it’s very much What I Do.
written by Roger, art by Brett Parson
And then of course, there’s been the magnificently silly Pandora Perfect with Brett Parson. Again, that was a Regened thing that moved into the pages of regular 2000 AD. So you’ve certainly got a great history of bringing the laughs to 2000 AD!
Will we be seeing any more Pandora Perfect at 2000 AD any time soon?
RL: Right now I’ve got two, maybe three, other big-ish projects on the boil, any one of which could be green-lit tomorrow, so I’ve been reluctant to commit to anything else substantial in the immediate future in case they all happen at once – I’ll be in enough trouble if that happens as it is! But I would love to return to the character at some point in the future.
When it comes to 2000 AD, when did you first discover the comic?
RL: I started reading it around Prog 250 or thereabouts, I think – I remember it was Apocalypse War-era Dredd, and Robo-Hunter by Alan Grant and Ian Gibson was in there, which I loved – it remains an all-time favourite. It was still possible to find a lot of back issues in second-hand book shops for cover price (or less!) at the time, so I was able to get (almost) a full run.
I stopped picking it up regularly in the early 90s when I moved from New Zealand to the UK – maintaining a complete collection wasn’t really feasible under the circumstances (ironically, that’s about when I started working for the Megazine in 1991!). I dipped in and out for several years, not really sticking with it – although that didn’t seem to stop me doing the (very) occasional job for them (a couple of Time Flies fill-in chapters, Whatever Happened to Cookie in the Megazine). I think I dropped off Tharg’s radar entirely for a few years when Rebellion became the owners.
But I started picking 2000 AD up regularly again when digital subscriptions became an option, and still get it that way every week – so was somewhat up to speed when a couple of years ago they asked me to write for them.
Finally, what sort of things have we got to look forward to from you in the future? Whether that’s for 2000 AD or elsewhere?
RL: I’ve got a graphic novel coming out from First Second Books next year – Prohibition, part of their ‘History Comics’ line, script by Jason Viola, art by me. I do a daily autobiographical strip for my Patreon subscribers, the best of which I share on social media.
That’s Hotel Fred readers and it is absolutely bloody brilliant stuff!
RL: I’ve got a serial called Taniwha appearing in each issue of Soaring Penguin’s anthology Meanwhile. And I’m currently in talks about doing a new series with some old characters, although that’s too early to talk about right now. I’d be writing and drawing that if/when it comes together. Lots of plates in the air, like most of us!
Thank you so much to Roger for taking time out of making comics that make him and us happy! Seriously, I love that answer and it’s something we should all be aiming for in life I reckon.
Walter the Wobot: Don’t Be Cwuel is a wonderfully funny part of Mega-City Max, out on 19 July from comic shops and 2000 AD’s web shop.
Now, do yourself a favour and head for Roger’s Hotel Fred, go buy funny things from his store, including his brilliant diary comics collections, The Plague’s The Thing and Infections, Injections & Insurrections. You can find his comic Taniwha appearing in each issue of Soaring Penguin‘s Meanwhile anthology. And support him on Patreon. And of course, follow him on all of the socials – he’s here on Twitter.
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Oh, and you’ll definitely want to read his most recent 2000 AD work, the Supercalifragilis-Twisted-and-Explosive Pandora Perfect, with Brett Parsons, available from comic shops, book shops, and the 2000 AD web shop.
And finally, a little selection from Roger’s wonderful Hotel Fred…
