Comics

2000 AD Creator Files – Honor Vincent

9th August 2023

2000 AD brings you the galaxy’s greatest stories and art in thrill-powered tales every single week – but who are the droids behind these tales? Well, each month, we’ll sit down with one of the creators who’ve been responsible for keeping the thrill-power set to maximum to get those answers – this is the 2000 AD Creator Files!

Here’s where we’ll tell you more about the artists and writers who keep the Prog and the Judge Dredd Megazine a Thrill-full read! For over 45 years, 2000 AD has been bringing you the best new talent out there and here’s another one of the many talented newer names you’ll have seen in the Prog & the Meg recently – Honor Vincent.

Honor Vincent first came to Tharg’s attention when she won the 2000 AD & Thought Bubble Script Contest in 2021 with her pitch for a Future Shock, Relict, her tale of an immortal time-travelling mouse looking to save humanity, only to find that we’re really not worth the effort.

Since then, she’s seen her winning entry published, followed by another two Future Shocks,Smart Home and Echo, a Terror Tale, Rites, and the Anderson, Psi Division: Allied Forces episode in the recent zombie takeover of the 2000 AD Universe, The Darkest Judge!

Honor, hello and welcome to Creator Files! First of all, you’re New Yorker born and bred right?

HONOR VINCENT: I am indeed! I was born in Queens, raised on Long Island, went to college in the city, and moved back there a few years after college. I recently moved out west to Colorado, though, so I had to sheepishly hand in my New Yorker card when I picked up my Stetson.

So how did you first get into comics and, particularly as you live Stateside, how did you become aware of 2000 AD? Where were you getting your comics reading from at this point?

HV: My dad has been a comic fan since he was a kid, and has a massive collection of comics – not as massive as it could have been, had my grandpa not tossed a trunkload of them in the 70s (he swears there were some early Supermans in there).

Usually, it’s Mum that throws out the comics!

HV: When I was learning to read he saw them as a good bridge between picture books and chapter books, and he was right! So I’ve been a comic reader for a long time.

In terms of 2000 AD: I think I found it a few different oblique ways. I don’t remember when I first heard about Dredd, but I certainly knew of him before I started reading 2000 AD – saying “Y’know, Judge Dredd?” to people over here almost always garners an “Oh yeah!”, even if they haven’t heard of 2000 AD.

I’ve long admired Grant Morrison and Alan Moore’s work, and when I was hunting down more from them I happened on some of the early-2000 compendiums of Future Shocks, and loved them.

What was school/college/university like for you? Were you a voracious reader through those years and what authors and comics did you gravitate towards?

HV: I was! I come from a family of readers – my grandmother and I would routinely go to the movies and then the bookstore together, and I’d always go home with something. My dad’s favorite haunt is Barnes and Noble, and my mother is probably my hometown library’s biggest customer. She reads at an insane pace; I feel like she can read a book a day.

I did an ad-hoc degree (I wrote my own major so I could study abroad and take weird classes), and took a lot of writing workshop classes, which included lots of reading. My favorite was a science fiction writing class, which was wonderful, and led me to be a regular reader of sci-fi mags (I collect vintage ones now, and they’re a lot of fun to read). Around that time I also discovered George Saunders, Karen Russell, Daphne du Maurier, Edith Wharton, and Jorge Luis Borges, who remain some of my favorite authors. I also went through a doorstopper-classics phase, where I read and loved Anna Karenina and Les Miserables.

In terms of comics, I really started my own collection in earnest around my freshman year of college – there was a great local shop a few blocks from my school on the second floor of a nondescript office building, with tables and tables of long boxes. It was wonderful (and has since closed, unfortunately). The first series I bought every trade of was Bill Willingham’s Fables. I also loved the Green Lantern storylines of that time (2007-2011), Y: The Last Man, The Walking Dead, and anything by Moore and Morrison.

Another fairly formative experience in terms of my appreciation for books was a two-year internship at the Morgan Library and Museum’s Reading room (I actually turned down an internship at Marvel because the Morgan one paid). There’s a beautiful reading room where scholars work, and then a labyrinth of underground stacks that I got to wheel a cart through and pull stuff from for them, with a special elevator and everything. It was, and is, a wonderful place. They have things like a Gutenberg Bible, original Dickens and William Blake books, medieval manuscripts, papyri, reams of letters… I was not allowed to touch all of that, of course! For me that time solidified how important physical books are as artifacts. And that is how I justify having a giant book collection to my very patient husband.

Were you always going to be a writer from a young age or did the calling come later in life – although having said that, later in life for you isn’t necessarily the same as later in life for me – how long ago did you finish your schooling?

HV:I graduated from college in 2011, but I don’t see that as the end of my schooling – I think that will be when I die. I was sure I loved to write by the time I got to high school, and I knew writing was going to be a major part of my life by freshman year of college, which was when I realized I couldn’t prevent myself from doing it. I had a roughly two-hour long (and blessedly smart phone-free) commute to college, walking and on the train, which meant a lot of time to think and read! I’d listen to music and ideas would come from that, or when I was staring glazedly out of the train window.

As far as the writing was concerned, you began with poetry and prose, with your first published work coming out in 2018. But how did the transition into comics come about? And was it something you’d always thought about doing or simply one of those happy accidents?

HV: It’s funny – I read comics for as long as I’ve read anything else, but I didn’t think of making them myself. The main barrier was not being remotely able to produce a page of comic art, and not having the money to pay someone to do it. Breaking in really felt like a black box until I realized that people were able to successfully fund work online.

Not too long after that I had an idea for a book that I couldn’t imagine in any other format, I found a wonderful artist to collaborate with in a Facebook group (who knew!).

Also, because you mentioned poetry I will mention a pet opinion: I think poetry and comics are extremely similar, and I love them for a lot of the same reasons. They’re both mediums with interesting constraints, and doing them well requires pulling out the most evocative bits of action or detail out.

As with so many writers, you didn’t go from education to professionally writing immediately did you? There was a period where you went into the fashion industry, right? It’s one of those dream jobs for so many people, but what took you in that direction and what was it like to actually get one of those ‘dream’ jobs?

HV: Well, it wasn’t a dream! It also wasn’t the worst stereotype of those types of jobs. I worked with a lot of lovely, dedicated, creative people and I got to do things that were in retrospect very cool, and very much what I dreamt of when I thought I wanted to make fashion a career. I started off with magazine internships in college, and then I bounced between a lot of different functions, trying to find something I liked (I started out in retail and ended up doing a digital strategy/marketing/event production work by the end).

The issue was there was a disconnect between the level of stress and military precision required and what we were doing – I found myself getting worked up about things that weren’t deeply important to me. I still love fashion as an art form, and watch the shows online.

I was kvetching about this to a good friend one day, and he mentioned a programming retreat he was going to that summer was hiring. I applied, was very surprised to be hired, and have been working there happily for almost 9 years now. Every year I get to meet hundreds of really thoughtful, creative people from all over the map and watch them do ambitious work that really lights them up. Being in that environment is catching, and it’s had a big effect on my own ability to focus on what I want to do (write!).

And right now, you’ve moved out of New York and are in Colorado for work. What took you out to the mid-west?

HV: Mid-west! Them’s fightin’ words.

Ooops!

HV: I’m lucky to be able to work remotely, so I’m at the same job at the programming retreat. We essentially got priced out – our rent went up by over 20% last year and we got a $700 power bill out of nowhere, which made me untenably angry, lots of stomping around and shaking my fist in the real estate industry’s general direction.

My husband is from the real Midwest – rural Iowa – and the city was also starting to grate on him. We’d always talked about Colorado wistfully as a place we’d retire to, but then I checked the rent prices, and we had soon after booked a UHaul. It was quite a drive – we had three cats with us in the cab and all of our earthly possessions in the back. I hope to never touch Nebraska again.

Like so many modern writers, particularly in comics, you haven’t yet made the jump into full-time writing. The economics of comics, particularly for newer writers, are punishing of course. But is the eventual plan to push on and go full-time with the writing?

HV: Punishing is a very good word for it! I’m grateful to have a steady job I love that can support what is currently a very expensive hobby; otherwise I wouldn’t be able to produce my own books, or take classes, or work with freelance editor to refine things.

Writing is the main thing I do outside of work time, and frankly I feel lucky that anyone pays me to do it at all. But yes, down the road it’d be wonderful if I could do that all day. I have no idea when that will be – I’m having my first kid in August, so I don’t think it’ll be soon!

Congratulations!

Now, seeing as you went from poetry and prose to comics, how did you manage that? Did you study comics scripting at all, consult things like Eisner or McCloud’s works, talk to some comics making friends or acquaintances, or was it simply a case of jumping into it, fingers crossed?

HV: I did indeed read McCloud’s Understanding Comics, which was extremely helpful! I’ve accumulated a bunch of books about writing and craft; I also love Framed Ink, How to Write Comics the DC Way, What It Is, The From Hell Companion, and (of course!) The 2000 AD Script Book.

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HV: The most useful exercise I did when I was getting started was to reverse engineer some of my favorite comics: I’d read through them and map out how many pages and panels the team used for the different story beats. And I read and reread more comics and tried to push myself to check out new stuff, which is the best way keep learning.

How have you refined your comics-making process over the last few years as you’ve been getting more work at different places – and can you give us an idea of how that process goes?

HV: I’ve been meeting with a writing group for the last 4 or so years, and this is a running joke that after I try something as a short story, maybe a novella, suddenly the story becomes a comic. I’ll usually get an idea I can’t shake, and those usually come from happening on an article or video or talking to someone about something fun and terrifying like immortal mice. I’ll then write a short story to work out the kinks in the idea.

After I do that it’s easier to see if it’s something I can, say, pitch for a Future Shock or if it’s something I’d want to make longer, and once I know that I’ll do a page-by-page outline and then a very bad panel-by-panel sketch to see how things roughly work. After I’m happy with that I finish up the script. Every project varies, but if I’m able to see the art before it goes to the letterer, I’ll do a last pass on the dialogue and captions to refine them a bit.

Moving onto your comics work and your first published comic, Andraste. How did that one begin – I believe it was originally poetry? What was it that caused you to shift medium and develop it as a comic instead of publishing it as poetry?

HV: I couldn’t get it to work any other way! I thought about how to come at that story for a really long time, and I couldn’t figure out another way to write it that felt right. Whenever I thought about the characters and the story I saw them so clearly. So I did what everyone highly recommends* when you’re just starting out – I planned a 12-issue historical fantasy series.

[*No one recommends this.]

Unusually perhaps, you found your artist on Facebook – Was that Unai Ortiz de Zarate? It’s an interesting way to do it – what was the reasoning for that?

HV: It was Unai! That was one of the more fortunate things that’s happened to me in comics, and certainly the most fortunate thing to ever happen to me on Facebook. I didn’t know anyone in the industry at that point, so I poked around on Reddit a bit, and then joined a Facebook group called Connecting Comic Writers and Artists, and that’s its sole purpose – I trawled it quietly and when Unai posted that he was looking for work I reached out to him. His good friend is DC Alonso, who does the colors on Andraste and New Rat City, my other creator-owned book.

Other artists involved include Abel Cicero, George Quadros, and Carlos Nieto on art, with DC Alonso on colours, Micah Myers on letters.

Andraste is a series about the Boudican rebellion in first century Britannia. As you put it on the PR, ‘It’s also about what war does to families, the Roman propaganda machine, Druidic rituals, interdimensional mastiffs, and mouthless death goddesses. You heard me.’

So, why choose this subject? Was it something you’d always been fascinated by?

HV: I’ve always been very drawn to war stories. I saw Boudicca’s statue in London when I visited in 2010 and proceeded to read whatever I could find about her – it was really her daughters, who are riding on the back of her chariot, who grabbed me, though, and they’re who the book centers on.

I imagine this, more than most projects, meant a deep dive into the history books for research?

HV: It certainly did! I actually did a tier for the Kickstarter where I sent a few folks a history book I used during the process. It’s a lot of guesswork, though. The Romans wrote about her many years after she died as a kind of allegory, so you can’t really trust that as the truth. And a lot of the Roman writing about Britannia was sensationalism – an island of giants at the edge of the world! There are Roman historians in the book who struggle with writing what’s true, what’s exciting, and what the emperor wants put down for posterity.

It’s a full colour piece, with some lush artwork. Was it published just as a webcomic or did you make print comics of the series?

HV: Both! I have single issues I bring to conventions, and I printed a run of trade paperbacks of issues #1-3 for a Kickstarter campaign. It’s also available on Zestworld and GlobalComix.

Yes, I’ve read them and so should everyone else, it’s really a good first comic from yourself and your artists. Are there plans to do more?

HV: Thank you, I appreciate that! There are – I want to finish the story. Unai is back on the book after recovering pretty heroically from an illness, and he’s just wrapped up the inks on Issue #5. I’m hoping we’ll have #6 done before the end of the summer, but that ball’s in my court now.

What sort of pitfalls came with self-publishing your work? I’ve spoken to many writers and creatives over here in the UK who admit that their very first self-published things are a steep learning curve, and often things that they don’t revisit too often, far too many things they’d alter if they did. But it’s also a perfect training ground for a writer and artist, getting the kinks out, honing what you do, making your mistakes and improving, improving.

How did you approach this, your first ever comics work?

HV: There are absolutely things I’d do differently if I was starting that book now. But one thing I’ve learned is that you have to find the balance between giving something your best shot and being so precious about putting something out in the world that you never do. If I hadn’t started putting Andraste out there when I did, I wouldn’t have gotten valuable feedback on it, or gained some of the confidence to keep going. Like you said, you have to hone your skills, and you need some external friction to hone anything.

Those three issues of Andraste then made up the first collection that you raised funds for on Kickstarter. There are both wonderful tales of creatives being able to connect with a whole new audience out there and also various horror stories of delays and disappointments involved.

Is it a method you’d use again, either to continue with Andraste or to fund more collected editions of your future works?

HV: Kickstarter is wonderful, and I’ve used it for three campaigns so far – Andraste and my two New Rat City campaigns. I’ll absolutely be back when I’m ready with another book. There’s a great community of creators on Kickstarter, and I met some great friends there. Their comic audience is also much bigger than the group I’d be able to reach on my own, which is a huge benefit when you’re just starting out.

There’s one big caveat to my opinion: for some sick reason I enjoy the repetitive manual labor of shipping hundreds of books, and the numbing work of putting in print orders and making spreadsheets of rewards and addresses. If you do not like to do those kinds of things, and can’t afford to pay someone else to do them, consider another route!

When there’s a campaign that doesn’t deliver, it makes things harder for everyone (which is terrible, but understandable – people want the books they pay for!), and likely impossible for you to crowdfund later on (as it should – get people their books!).

You first came to prominence, at least as far as 2000 AD was concerned, with your win at the 2000 AD & Thought Bubble talent search in 2021.

HV: I would definitely agree with the unqualified ‘first’ there!

Well, I say ‘at’ the talent search, but given that this was in peak plague times, it was a zoom thing with the contest moving online for a couple of years. For you, this was a fortunate turn of events as you hadn’t been able to make it across to Thought Bubble.

What was it that caught your eye about the 2000 AD & Thought Bubble contest? Had you seen it before then but hadn’t entered for whatever reasons or was this the first time you’d come across it?

HV: I’d heard of the contest in 2020 – Twitter, I think? – and thought about entering, but I didn’t feel like I had something that was worthy of a Future Shock. I stewed on it for about a year, in which I also happened to learn about mouse experiments from some friends, and was selfishly glad I could still enter online when the time came!

As far as the contest itself was concerned, I know we’ve spoken about it before but I wanted to ask you about it again as it’s such a big part of what’s put you where you are today. (We spoke before about it in April 2022 – you can read that interview with Honor and the winning artist, Lee Milmore, here.)

The writer’s pitch was allowed to be pre-recorded that year, wasn’t it? So no endless practising to get it absolutely right? Although I imagine the process of pre-recording it was one of endless retakes?

HV: I am… not very video-adept, so it took quite a while to get to an angle that worked, where I didn’t sound like a dope, where a cat didn’t march in and scream, and so on. I wrote out the pitch and then a shorter script for myself to read.

Would you have preferred to have done the pitch in person or did the virtual, pre-recorded pitching process suit you better?

HV: Oh, probably video, though it would have been very cool to be able to go to Thought Bubble! My voice sometimes does a fun surprise wobble when I talk in front of a lot of people, which compounds and makes me feel great, so it was preferable to be able to sit in my office and essentially talk to myself.

That Thought Bubble win meant you and winning artist Lee Millmore were assigned your Future Shock pitch, Relict, as a job for the Prog, which eventually saw print in 2000 AD Prog 2279 (April 2022).

Let’s talk for a moment about what that moment of winning meant to you. How did you find out?

HV: I saw the an email from Michael Molcher letting me know I’d won first thing in the morning, and I ran around my apartment excitedly before figuring out that the videos of the judging panels were going live very soon (3 pm GMT was 9 am for me!), so I somehow sat down and my husband and I watched them with our coffee.

And was it more of a thrill to win or to finally see your work in print in 2000 AD the following April?

HV: It was all pretty thrilling, but I do think holding the Prog in my hands was the more exciting thing – it was when I got to see the absolutely incredible work that Lee did to bring that whole world to life, and that mushroom cloud in the last panel was all him, and was killer.

What sort of feedback did you get from the TB judges about Relict? Were there lots of changes necessary to get it to publication or was it pretty much print ready?

HV: I sent a script to Matt a few days after the contest, and he got back to me with some helpful notes about clarifying and amping up Stephen’s narration, and on the big stabby scene on page 3, which made the whole thing stronger. After I made those changes it was sent on to Lee.

And how did you find the whole experience of Relict – presumably this would be the first time you’d had a comics script edited?

HV: I’d run scripts by friends for feedback, but this was the first time I’d had a finished script edited in this kind of context, absolutely. I was nervous! But it was only helpful, both on the level of that particular story and in improving my writing in general.  

So, looking at Relict, what was the inspiration for this particular first Future Shock?

HV: The seed of it came from a talk someone gave at work about experiments on senescent cells in mice, and how it’s technically possible that the first immortal mouse had been created. And then I started thinking about what that mouse would be doing a thousand years from now, and what it would think of us – would it become intelligent enough to introspect and build, given so much time? I hoped so, because that would be adorable.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought that he wouldn’t be very happy with us, if he knew the whole story of how he was made. He’d come to that slowly, as he woke up out of mousey ignorance over the course of a thousand or so years.

How long did it take you from first imaginings to finished pitch?

HV: I heard of this immortal mouse situation in early September of 2021 and wrote a short story version of Relict shortly after that. I thought it would make a pretty neat Future Shock, so I got a pitch together in October, so it was pretty quick!

There’s a focus on animal experimentation in Relict as one particular test subject, Stephen, finds himself a relict in a far future time, long-lived and self-educated, able to travel back in time to warn of the impending doom – only to find that the ‘makers’, us, just aren’t worth saving.  

One issue that seemed far-fetched on first reading it is the idea of senescence (the biological process of ageing) resulting in an extremely long-lived mouse, the immortal mouse you mentioned. However, after a fascinating deep dive into it all, I see that making DNA repairs on mice has meant that scientists have been able to manipulate the ageing process. Which is one of those things that just makes you realise how incredible biology can be.

HV: It is! That’s my favorite kind of science fiction, where you go “No way, that’s ridiculous…wait. OH SH*T.” As I was working on this story a friend who is a neuroscientist and has done a bunch of mouse experiments and is also in my writing group sent me a bunch of papers – people have done lots of interesting things (most of them brutal) to mice.

Was it a case of you and Lee working together to develop the finished FS or did he pretty much work off the finished script?

HV: He worked off the finished script! I didn’t see the final artwork until publication, which made it all extra exciting.

And looking back, how did you think Relict ended up? Were you happy with it on publication?

HV: I really was, and still am! I can’t say enough good things about Lee’s artwork and the tone – grim, sad, but also fantastical – and the deep understanding of 2000 AD history he brought to the story. And having that Future Shock tag on the first page was a trip.

Your second published tale in 2000 AD was another Future Shock, in Prog 2280 (May 2022) – just one short week from your debut. That was Smart Home with art by VV Glass, appearing in one of the regular Regened Progs.

So how did that second one come about – although they appeared in short order, did you get commissioned for that second FS immediately after the win or was it some time later?

HV: Matt emailed me about that story in February 2022, so it was a few months after I’d sent in the Relict script and a few months before it was published. He asked if I could write something for the Regened issue, and I pitched him a couple of ideas, including Smart Home.

Smart Home was something set in pretty much present day, with a present day fear, that of all those AI powered household devices gaining sentience and taking over. Here it’s another experiment, this time a boy genius working on a Roomba and creating Rosie, something very special that eventually may just end up saving the world.

As it was a Regened FS was there any change to the way you wrote the tale or is it more a case of enjoying giving the kids a scare but toning it down just a touch?

HV: Matt said ‘minimal violence, fairly light in tone’ for the Regened issue, and I like a blood spatter here and there, so I did have to do a little self-editing before I sent in any pitches!

It strikes me that it’s an example of how Regened tales rarely seem to talk down to the kids they’re designed for. The storytelling is complex, requiring the reader to understand the concepts of AI, the position that Rosie finds itself in, and the impact its sentience has. Then you throw in a jump forward in time and Rosie MkII, complete with an ending that requires the reader to grasp just what Rosie MkI has averted.

I think it’s obvious from that that you’re a writer who appreciates just how knowledgable and visually literate children are.

HV: Well again, thank you! I agree that Regened stories don’t talk down to kids, and I don’t think literature or comics should do that in general – kids are smart, and they’re ambitious readers, and just like anyone else I don’t think the ones reading science fiction comics would take kindly to being pandered to!

I also have to remember sometimes that kids now have a relationship to technology that’s way more intuitive and natural than mine. My friends’ kids are generally polite to their Alexas and Google Homes, and will not be at the top of the bad list come the singularity.

Your third 2000 AD work came in September 2022 with another Future Shock, Echo with Liana Kangas (2000 AD Prog 2301).

This one was a play on Vegas in space, with one unlucky punter getting in far deeper than he ever imagined. Was that one based on your own experiences of falling foul of Vegas?

HV: It was not! I’ve only been to Vegas once, and that’s using ‘been’ generously: my husband and I passed through the airport and quickly drove out of the city on the way to Zion National Park in Utah, because we’re no fun.

I did go to Atlantic City in New Jersey once – that’s Vegas’ sad old uncle, for the uninitiated. It was terrifying in its own way, and there’s a little splinter of that experience here: the star’s actual form is the Atlantic City to the Vegas of the hologram form her fans see.

Again, as another short FS, it’s all about getting the idea over in such a short number of pages. Is there a particular mindset you have to get into to pare down the story and get to the essence of what it’s all about to deliver a full tale, beginning, middle, end in just 5 pages?

HV: I often think of the saying “If I had more time I would have written you a shorter letter,” when I’m working on something short. It takes more time, because I have to figure out the ‘bulkier’ version of the story, then cut it down to the absolute minimum of words and images to get what I’ve got to get across. And as that’s happening, there’s always the little voice asking if the story will hold up over 4 or 5 pages that way – not everything does. Some stories need more air, or room to get into backstory or a longer conversation, and then they go in the Not Quite a Future Shock folder. When you have twenty-odd pages or more you can wander a little, and be less strict with yourself.

I like both forms – Future Shocks are a little like deciding to write a sestina. You can’t be as freewheeling, but that form or length constraint forces  you to do really interesting things, and find different words and images you wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Again, a bit like buses, just after that third Future Shock you had your first strip in the Megazine, Anderson, Psi: Allied Forces. It was part of the Prog/Megazine alternative Judgement Day storyline – The Darkest Judge – for the 30th anniversary of the original story. It appeared in Judge Dredd Megazine 448 and featured two classic characters – Anderson and Johnny Alpha – as drawn by Boo Cook.

How did that come about?

HV: In April 2022 I got an email from Matt asking about doing a 5-page Judge Anderson story for a special that was coming out later that year.

At this point, you’re a new writer to 2000 AD with just three Future Shocks to your name – so when you got the call, what was going through your mind, getting to play with the great characters here?

HV: It put me in a very similar mental state to when I got the call about the Thought Bubble contest! I was so overly excited I sent an Anderson story idea over before he had a chance to send me the spec for the actual issue…

Then there was also the added pressure of writing a beloved, awesome character – I really didn’t want to screw that up. I’d read a bunch of Judge Anderson’s stories at that point, and loved her, and shortly after I got that email I read Alec Worley’s Year One novel and got my hands on all of the stories I hadn’t read yet.

Now, because it was part of the overarching story of Johnny Alpha coming back to destroy all those zombies, did you get given pointers with that one as to where you needed to take it or was it more structured than that?

HV: I got a brief on the larger event, and what needed to happen in the 5-pager. Since it was such a big event with so many stories, there was some back and forth about what the state of things had to be at that moment – how Anderson had gotten to the Radlands, what Johnny knew and didn’t, and so on. I imagine Matt had one of those red string maps detectives use.

So it’s Judge Anderson and Johnny Alpha fighting zombies – it’s a bit of a whoah moment I’d imagine?

HV: There is no horror genre I like better than zombies, so that was definitely a cherry on top of everything. The image that came first was of Anderson sitting on top of a high rock spire to stay out of their clutches, overheated and getting a little frustrated.

Did you find yourself going through lots of old Anderson/Stront tales to get a feel for the characters?

HV: I did! When I learned that it wasn’t just Anderson, but Anderson and Johnny Alpha, I then went and read the Search/Destroy Agency Files and got to shed a tear for Wulf several decades late.

Finally, for 2000 AD for now, your fifth published piece came in Prog 2316, Terror Tales: Rites, published in January 2023 with art by Steve Yeowell.

It’s one that shows just how impressive these short tales can be – this one was just four pages long – with the storyline doing a wonderful switch to put the reader off balance.

It all pivots on one fascinating idea again, that of a society where mass hauntings started. You don’t go into the whys of it, no time for that, but the outcome you develop, of ghostbusters ridding houses of the ghostly presences for cash – one up from babysitting if you will – it’s a great concept. And then, just when we think we know where it’s going you do that great switch, completely throwing the reader and giving the story a real sense of terror when you realise just what it all means.

Again, was this something that came out of an interest you had in the supernatural or just from a random thought that developed into an idea and then into the story?

HV: This one came from apartment-watching for a friend a few years ago – I would go and check his mailboxes, and make sure everything was in order when he was out of town. When I went in one day, a few of the shelves on one of his bookshelves had collapsed and thrown books everywhere, and I got embarrassingly, primordially scared for a few minutes. Before she died, it was his mother’s apartment, and I apologized for bothering her out of instinct, without really knowing why.

On my way home I thought: what if it was someone’s job not to watch an apartment and get mail, but to stop a ghost from making trouble until it had moved on? What if that was as common a job as being a cleaner or an exterminator? And it went from there. I (again) wrote it as a little short story I was never quite happy with, and then I wrote it as Rites and it worked.

Now, away from 2000 AD, you’ve also written for Zenescope in the US – ‘fun, pulpy horror and takes on fairy tales and stuff,’ as you put it.

That includes work in Zenescope’s Grimm Tales of Terror Quarterly: Back To School (June 2022), Grimm Tales of Terror Holiday Special (December 2022), Grimm Tales of Terror Valentine’s Special (February 2023), Myths and Legends: Black Knight (March 2023), and Grimm Tales of Terror Heart’s Desire (April 2023). There’s also been a piece, Lost & Found, in Scott Snyder Presents: Tales From the Cloakroom anthology (August 2022).

What were those like? Again, it’s you flexing the writing muscles on short stories, a real training ground for any new writer to hone their skills.

HV: Writing the Tales of Terror is a lot of fun – each story in those books is about 17 pages, with a thread narrated by Keres, Goddess of Death, knitting it all together. For these books I get outlines from Zenescope’s editors and run from there, so it’s a very different process – constrained and generative in a different way. And they are blood-y, which I enjoy writing – the most recent Tales of Terror has my top two favorite deaths I’ve written so far.

I also got to do a 72-page book in their main Grimm Fairy Tale Universe, about the Black Knight and Morgan Le Faye fighting their way through Camelot and Wonderland and downtown New York City. The Johnny Alpha/Anderson story trained me well for that, because it involved a lot of research and mental-model building for a set of characters and parallel worlds.

The Tales from the Cloakroom Anthology was put together in a heroic effort by some fellow students (not me! I only wrote the short) in Scott Snyder’s Comics Writing class Discord – the prompt there was to write something involving a jacket, and the stories have a great range.

You’re also writing New Rat City for Scout Comics in the US , although this is another that you first released through Kickstarter – what’s that one all about? ‘Rats, roaches, and ecological mayhem,’ is how the web site describes it.

HV: It’s another tale of a future world and animals, with pest controllers attempting to keep the world livable for the few remaining humans in New York City after the disaster and the abandonment of the city.

Where did the idea for this one come from?

HV: That one is a deep cut! I’m from New York, and my dad was an exterminator for years when I was a kid. He also very sincerely loves animals (he’d trap and release when he could), and I always found that interesting. And I’m not only saying this because of my dad, but despite the goofy way they’re often portrayed, exterminators are really curious, thoughtful people. They do work most people don’t want to do, they have to do a lot of detective work, and if they do their jobs well they bring a pretty immense amount of psychological and practical relief to people.  

So one day I was thinking: what if exterminators were the most important people in the city, and they all loved animals? What point would the city have to get to for that to be the case: how abandoned, how screwed up? It all spun out from there: it’d have to be a little ways in the future, but at that point wouldn’t our regard for and understanding of animals be reflected in our laws? What if exterminators—ahem, pest controllers!—couldn’t kill anything? Where would they put all the rats?! It’s basically my worst-case scenario for NYC. And, I say stridently, it happened before the mayor started his anti-rat campaign (maybe he should read the series to see how well that’ll go).

So, that brings us up to date with your published work.

What else have you got in the fire right now? I hear there’s a longer collaboration with Lee Milmore in the offing? Any clues on what that one entails?

HV: I’m expecting my first kid in August, so he’s quickly becoming my main project, physically and mentally! It’s also (no offense meant to him) giving me ideas for some fun body horror stories…

But yes, by the time this is published I will have a script in (goddammit!) for a longer story about Stephen and the mice of Relict get up to after the Future Shock. I’m still working on Andraste as well – I’m hoping to finish the script for #7 of that series before the end of the summer.

Will you keep pitching to 2000 AD? And will that be for more one-offs or have you some ideas for new series you fancy?

HV: I will keep pitching until Tharg blocks my email address. I have a little folder of potential Future Shock and Terror Tales pitches I need to revisit soon and cull, and a few stories I want to polish up for longer pitches, but I think I’ll hold on to those until the fall, when I’m surer of the shape I’ll be in to write! Depends on how this impending kid sleeps.

And when it comes to pitching, are you a writer who finds it relatively easy to come up with concepts?

HV: I’ll usually have a lot of ideas rolling around at once, and I keep them on post-it notes and text documents until I’m ready to work them out. It then takes me a while to knead them into something sensical, and I usually have to write them a few different ways so I can move them out of primordial lizard-brain soup mode and understand what they are.

The more I pitch, the easier and less heartburn-inducing that gets, though I am always frankly a tiny bit scared and think I always will be.

One for fun now… if you could cherry-pick a dream project to write for 2000 AD, from any point in the comic’s history, what would you pick? And have you already got an idea for the direction you’d take it?

HV: PRESSURE! If I’m being bold and presumptuous in throwing ideas out there, a dream would be a Slàine/Wulf Sternhammer time-hopping crossover where they have to fight snake aliens and a big old Fenris wolf. I’d also love to write a Western where the Texas City Judges deal with the disastrous return of Ratty, my favorite hatted rat.

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We always like to end with a quick look at whatever you have coming out, either in the coming months or planned in the far-flung future. What sort of comics can we expect from you in the next year(s)?

HV: The remainder of Andraste will be coming out in a trickle from me over the next couple of years! I’m planning to publish it digitally on GlobalComix and Zestworld, and to crowdfund print campaigns.

The trade paperback of New Rat City will be out in November 2023 from Scout Comics.

Beyond that, we’ll see! I have some plans for horror one-shots, and a much bigger science fiction book that has been chewing on me for a couple of years now, that I hope to get rolling in 2024.

Thank you so much to Honor for taking part in the Creator Profiles, it’s a big, big interview and we’re always grateful for creators to take part.

Be sure to have a good read of her interview with Lee Milmore about her win at the 2000 AD & Thought Bubble new talent search contest and her first published 2000 AD work, Relict, here.

You can find Honor online at her website and Twitter, and be sure to subscribe to her newsletter. 

HONOR VINCENT – COMIC BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adraste (Mar 2021), self-published through Kickstarter – art by Unai Ortiz de Zarate, Abel Cicero, George Quadros, Carlos Nieto, colours by DC Alonso, letters by Micah Myers.
New Rat City part 1 – issues 1&2 (Jan 2022), self-published through Kickstarter, art by George Quadros.
Future Shocks: Relict (April 2022), 2000 AD Prog 2279 – art by Lee Milmore.
Future Shocks: Smart Home (May 2022), 2000 AD Prog 2280 – art by VV Glass.
The Flayer – in Zenoscope’s Grimm Tales of Terror Quarterly: Back To School (June 2022) – art by Dario Tallarico, Massimiliano La Manno, Leonardo Paciarotti.
Lost & Found, in Scott Snyder Presents: Tales From the Cloakroom (August 2022) – art by Mustafa Karasu.
Future Shocks: Echo (Sept 2022), 2000 AD Prog 2301 – art by Liana Kangas.
New Rat City issue 1 (Sept 2022), Scout Comics, art by George Quadros.
Anderson, Psi Division: Allied Forces (Oct 2022), Judge Dredd Megazine 448 – art by Boo Cook.
New Rat City part 2 – issues 3&4 (Oct 2022), self-published through Kickstarter, art by George Quadros.
Zenoscope’s Grimm Tales of Terror Holiday Special (December 2022), art by Dario Tallarico, Massimiliano La Manno, Alessandro Uezu, Juan Franciso Mota.
Terror Tale: Rites (Jan 2023), 2000 AD Prog 2316, art by Steve Yeowell.
Zenoscope’s Grimm Tales of Terror Valentine’s Special (February 2023), story by David Wohl, Dave Franchini, and Honor Vincent. Art by Juan Francisco Mota, Alessandro Uezu, Dario Tallarico, Ricardo Osnaya, Massimiliano La Manno, Leonardo Paciarotti, Jorge Cortes, Maxflan Araujo, Walter Pereyra.
Zenoscope’s Myths and Legends Quarterly: The Black Knight Fate Of Legends (March 2023), story by David Wohl, Dave Franchini, and Honor Vincent, written by Honor Vincent. Art by Ricardo Osnaya, Juan Francsico Mota, Dario Tallarico, Maxflan Araujo, Leonardo Paciarotti.
Zenoscope’s Grimm Tales of Terror Heart’s Desire (April 2023), story by Honor Vincent, David Wohl, Dave Franchini, written by Honor Vincent. Art by Massimiliano La Manno, Eduardo Garcia, Dario Carrasco, Alessandro Uezu, Eduardo Garcia, Maxflan Araujo.
New Rat City collected edition (Nov 2023), Scout Comics, art by George Quadros.