Interview: Bang Bang Shoot Shoot… Dan Abnett talks Sinister Dexter: Killer Serial for the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special
12th July 2022
Marking 2000 AD‘s 45th birthday, 2022’s summer sci-fi special is out this week with a musical theme celebrating 45 Revolutions Per Minute with Comic Rock!
First on the set-list and beginning with a classic banger: Dan Abnett on his Sinister Dexter story Killer Serial, suggested by Happiness is a Warm Gun by The Beatles.
Out on 13 July, the 48-page special is all about the music, with six stories inspired by each writers’ favourite song – including Sinister Dexter, Judge Dredd, Psi-Judge Anderson, Judge Death, Fiends of the Eastern Front, and Middenface McNulty – six Ghafflebette thrills with a musical twist!
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The concept of the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special as a musical extravaganza goes all the way back to the earliest days of Tharg’s assault on your senses, when Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill introduced the notion of Comic Rock with Terror Tube in Prog 167, the very first instalment of Nemesis the Warlock, taking their inspiration from Going Underground by The Jam.
First up in a series of interviews for the Sci-Fi Special, we have Dan Abnett, one of Tharg’s finest and the writer of the Sinister Dexter story here, Killer Serial, art by Antonio Fuso, a tale inspired by The Beatles’ Happiness is a Warm Gun.
Dan, hi there, in the Sci-Fi Special, you’re bringing back Downlode’s finest gun sharks from a time before they parted ways in Bulletopia to tell the story of Killer Serial.
First of all, can you tell us just a little of what to expect with Sinister Dexter: Killer Serial?
Dan Abnett: It’s a typical one-shot (no pun intended) Sinister Dexter story, a self-contained anecdote told over five pages. I always think of these as reminiscences of the sharking biz – the sort of thing Sinister and Dexter would recount over a drink. “You remember that time when…”
This one has a particularly creepy overtone – or undertone – and there’s a sense that neither Sinister nor Dexter really grasped the significance of the event.
The track chosen by you infuses the whole story with its meaning. What was the reasoning for one of the stranger Beatles songs to act as your inspiration here?
DA: The Beatles “Happiness is a Warm Gun” is certainly one of their stranger songs, and the ‘warm gun’ is a particularly arresting and disturbing phrase.
The gun shark culture of Downlode in Sinister Dexter seems to have its own ‘mystic mythology’, laden with superstitions and an almost ritualistic attitude to murder and guns. Weapons are regularly fetishised as being more than just objects. So I wanted to push that idea with the sense the gun was both warm (recently fired) and warm (alive), and that in the messed-up logic of this world, guns really do kill people. What happens when a ‘cursed’ object that’s been empowered by that ritualistic culture encounters people who are also talismans of death, that murder has ‘charged up’ both people and their weapons as embodiments of death.
And just in case you’ve never heard the song…
DA: Oddly, years ago, on a visit to New York, I was shown the gun that had been used to murder John Lennon. This was during a tour of an NYPD evidence area. It was a surreal experience, and I didn’t even want to touch the gun. Even more oddly, I didn’t remember the incident until after I’d written the story and sent it in. I don’t know how I feel about it now, but that mix of distress and fascination has clearly haunted me. This is meant to be an uncomfortable and nasty story, and it is.
Yes, uncomfortable and nasty is exactly the vibe going on here.
It comes across as something not necessarily explicitly trying to make a point on the futility of gun culture (and by association, the desperate need for gun control) but I definitely got that sense of it as I read it. Was this something you were thinking of as you wrote it or merely a welcome accident?
DA: No, that was there from the start, but any conclusions are deliberately ambiguous. The moral compass of the series has always been wildly out of whack (again, no pun intended), as we are asked to sympathise with, root for, and even like two people who are – at the very least – sociopathic mass murderers.
This story certainly suggests that guns have a murderous hunger all of their own, which triggers (these puns are inadvertent, swear to god) people into violence, both enabling and persuading. But Sinister and Dexter are even more greatly possessed by that urge, to such an extent that they are almost immune to it, and can cancel it out.
So, on the one hand, I suppose the song inspired me to write a story about the allure and fascination of firearms, and pose the question ‘where does the power lie’? Is it the weapon or the person? On the other hand, that’s all a bit pretentious and wanky, so it’s also just a story about a cursed gun.
Is it just this track in particular that you love or are you a huge Beatles fan as well? Or are you, as many are, a fan of a particular Beatles era?
DA: When Matt (Tharg) asked me to contribute a story, it was the song I immediately thought of. In fact, I think he may have even suggested it. I have immensely fond memories of the original Comic Rock story by Pat and Kev, so it was an honour to follow in those footsteps. Big difference, of course, is that Pat and Kev had a blank slate and could build a (brilliant and long-lasting) world on their song’s premise, where we’re all attempting to work a track thematically into pre-existing strips.
This track has such a Sinister Dexter vibe to it, I couldn’t think of anything else once it had popped into my mind. I am a Beatles fan, and a fan of all Beatles eras, though my fave would be Revolver (seriously, this is not intentional). But this track was the right one, no matter who had written and recorded it.
One particular thing about Sinister Dexter I enjoy is seeing how your various artists coming to the strip have fitted in, something that’s meant we have several iconic SinDex artists at this point, all the way up to the great work Tazio Bettin is doing right now on Bulletopia.
DA: We certainly have. It’s a such a long-running and regularly appearing strip that, like Dredd, no one artist could do it all. Matt also often commissions stories at short notice to help with his schedule, and Sinister Dexter is often used as a ‘try out’ strip.
To me, the ‘default’ setting of the strip is short, self-contained one-off stories, so it lends itself to multiple artists. However, as right now, there are much longer stories arcs from time to time, and that’s often where an artist becomes an iconic SinDex artist, like Simon Davis on Gunshark Vacation and Murder 101, Andy Clarke (great to see him back on that recent “Austin Allegro” cover, by the way) on Shrink Rap and now Tazio on Bulletopia.
Tazio is doing an amazing job, and he and I work very happily together. I brought Tazio in – we’d worked togther for another publisher – and I’m delighted he’s found such an enthusiastic reception from the readers. He deserves it.
Your artist for Killer Serial, Antonio Fuso, has only done the covers for the IDW SinDex reprints to date, but Killer Serial does show us he’d be a perfect fit for the strip in the future – what do you think of what he’s done with it?
DA: He’s done a fine job – there’s a moody, creepy vibe to what he’s done that suits the story perfectly.
Going away from Killer Serial, we’re currently on the penultimate story in the Bulletopia saga in the Prog, Malice In Plunderland. We’ve got Dexter out on his own (well, with Carrie, Billie et al) and a resurrected Sinister in the thrall of the Downlode AI. What’s the plan for more from the boys? Will we be seeing them reunite at some point… and will it be good or bad for them both if/when they do?
DA: Bulletopia ends soon (as you say, one more story after Malice in Plunderland), at which point we have big plans for the next big era. There will be reunions of all sorts… and few of them will be pleasant.
With a strip as long-running as SinDex, no matter how solid the default setting is (i.e. the short, one-off stories), I think you need to keep it fresh by re-inventing it on a regular basis, and shake things up – at least temporarily. I’ve done that before with ‘eras’ like Downlode Tales and Malone. There’s always a way to re-set again.
What we have coming is a major re-invention which will be the biggest departure from the ‘norm’ so far, with a very different tone… yet will also capture the original spirit of the series in a distilled form. It’s an exciting prospect.
It’s also one of the longest running strips in 2000 AD and, since starting in 1995, has shown no signs of slowing down at all. What is it about SinDex that really makes you want to return to it over and over again?
DA: It’s the puns. No, I don’t know, really. Like everything I write (for 2000 AD and elsewhere) I’ll stop doing something when I run out of ideas. With SinDex, that’s just never happened (“Oh yes it has!” chorus a section of the readership). The strips inevitably had high points and low points over the years, and I’ve ‘rested’ it from time to time. But the potential of the milieu keeps drawing me back, and the characters have become very solid and real to me. I hope, to the readers too.
Bulletopia’s been great fun – it’s ostensibly the 25th anniversary story, and it draws on loads of old continuity. When I started writing it I seriously thought it might be the last story, a last hurrah, featuring some of their greatest hits (I can’t help myself) by revisiting old continuity. But as I started to do that, I discovered – or re-discovered – so much potential. So rather than being a grand finale, it allowed me to work out what I could do to invent a brand new era. We’ll see how that goes down.
That’s the problem with planning an ending, something else always crops up! But of course, all things must end – so do you still have that final SinDex storyline in your head or has it all changed now?
DA: I thought I had, but darn it…
Given that you’ve shown us your favourite Beatles song, what else would you suggest? Where would you point someone (and I’m sure there’s some out there somewhere) who hasn’t really got into them before?
DA: I could be really clever-clever about it and cite all sorts of obscure songs, but this is the Beatles we’re talking about. If you’ve seriously never got into them, go buy a greatest hits or the collection of their number one’s. If that doesn’t get you, nothing will. (Hint – it will).
Now, to finish, feel free to go large in telling us what you’ve both got coming up, and I know Tharg will let you both talk about stuff outside 2000 AD (he’s had his late night Betelgeusian cocktail full of unspeakable things and has the headphones on right now listening to some very interesting stuff that’s somewhere between Miles Davis and droids being electrocuted in weird time signatures)
DA: I’m a busy as ever. In 2000 AD we have more Feral and Foe on the horizon, more of The Out, a new series of Brink, and Lawless continues in the Megazine. These are all strips I love working on, and artists (Rich Elson, Mark Harrison, INJ Culbard and Phil Winslade) that it’s a massive privilege to work with. Plus, SinDex of course, and the stuff Tazio and I are planning for it.
Outside of 2K, I’m doing some work for DC, and some game work (particularly the forthcoming Warhammer 40K game Darktide), not to mention my ‘other hat’ as a novelist. Oh, go on, I’ll mention it, then. I’m just delivering the biggest (both in word-count and in terms of lore) Warhammer novel I’ve ever written (and, boy, I’ve written a few), so that’s keeping me at my desk in a creative trance (fugue?). It’s called The End and the Death, and it’s the final book of the Horus Heresy series (after 15 plus bestselling years). Horus finally faces the Emperor, and there are tears before bedtime. I’ve been working on it for eighteen months, and it’s a beast. So there’s that.
Plus, some other things I’m not at liberty to mention yet. But that’s quite enough to be getting on with, right? “I’m writing the end of the Horus Heresy” … that’s ending with a bang (funt, I did it again).
And huge thanks to Dan here for turning this around at lightning speed – he’s a gentleman and a star (and those puns just creep into things to do with Sinister Dexter even when he’s not trying)!
You can see Killer Serial, a great Sinister Dexter story by Dan and Antonio Fuso 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 the penultimate Sinister Dexter: Bulletopia series, Malice in Plunderland, is running right now in the Prog!
And you can (and should) listen to the whole Sci-Fi Special playlist here on Spotify.
But before we leave you… that original Comic Rock cover by Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill, Terror Tube…
