Interview: David Baillie and VV Glass talk Middenface McNulty for the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special
12th 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!
He’s the Scots ex-Stront and he’s back in the freelance business and ready to rock – it’s Middenface McNulty in Opening Night at the Omegabowl, with David Baillie and VV Glass telling a tale suggested by Neil Young’s Rockin’ In The Free World.
Out right now, the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special is a musical extravaganza with six tales suggested by six songs, all of it inspired by Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill’s Comic Rock idea that first appeared in Prog 167’s Terror Tube. Inside the Sci-Fi Special, there’s a thrill-power overload with Judge Dredd, Sinister Dexter, Psi-Judge Anderson, Judge Death, Fiends of West Berlin, and Middenface McNulty.
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Now, to tell us all about just what the hell McNulty is doing in Milton Keynes, here’s David Baillie and VV Glass…
David, VV, hi there! In this years’ Sci-Fi Special, you’re bringing back the finest Scots ex-Stront, Middenface McNulty, in a tale suggested by Neil Young’s Rockin’ In The Free World. First of all, can you tell us just a little of what to expect with Opening Night in the Omegabowl?
DAVID BAILLIE: The British government has built an enormous floating ‘supervenue’ over the site of what they’re now calling the ‘former mutant ghetto of Milton Keynes’. It’s a blatant attempt to distract public attention from a string of recent scandals – the biggest of which is the horrific mutant sterilisation programme they were running in secret (see The Life and Death of Johnny Alpha!) The opening concert at this new Omegabowl features an all-mutant line-up, which has caused outrage among outlawed anti-mutant groups. A potentially explosive situation that requires the best security money can buy – who will also accept the job: ex-Strontium Dogs. Enter Middenface McNulty.
It’s a far more comedic take on things than the rest of the Sci-Fi Special – is that one of those inevitable things when it involves Middenface?
DB: Although this was the only one I pitched to Tharg, I sketched out a few ideas for Middenface stories based on other rock songs. The story I had for Bullet with Butterfly Wings was full-on horror, which I thought might be a good subversion of that expectation of humour whenever Middenface shows up.
I also had stories for Heart Shaped Box, Black Hole Sun, Cannonball, Sabotage, Killing in the Name… You know – all the dad grunge classics!
Hey, nothing wrong with a bit of dad grunge!
DB: I love stories that mix humour and more serious moments, and when you have a character like Middenface, whose stories often appear at the more comedic end of the spectrum, it really opens up an opportunity for landing those big emotional beats.
I think this is chronologically the latest we’ve seen Middenface, it’s after he lost his arm in the Second Mutant Uprising, and I’m hoping that we get to see where his life goes, and have some really poignant storytelling moments.
Now, David, given it’s the writer’s choice of track, what is it about Neil Young’s classic that made you pick it to soundtrack and suggest this Middenface story?
DB: The first time I heard the song it absolutely blew me away. I was neck deep in my teenage grunge years when I saw Neil Young play it live with Pearl Jam on TV. It had a deceptively simple riff, great lyrical imagery and a bold political message. I immediately learned how to play it (it’s only three chords!) and bored everyone in my immediate vicinity with my attempts.
Tharg was typically stoney faced when I suggested that all the creators in the SF Special should record cover versions of their chosen songs for a free flexi-disc… Which I think is a real shame.
As I said I had a few options, but this song just instantly suggested the set-up for the story and gave me a great lyric to incorporate into an action beat near the end of the story. (Which VV absolutely knocked out of the park!)
VV GLASS: Who doesn’t like Neil Young! Canada’s premier rock artist (contested)? Creator of the soundtrack to the third-best Jim Jarmusch film? That said I did have to make a playlist that had the same level of energetic cynicism as Keep on Rockin instead of mainlining Young in the end, you can’t live on bread alone.
When it came to drawing the story, how did the song influence your art?
VV: It definitely informed the energy levels of the art, short wind-up and then 100% escalation straight through to the end. Young’s very dark, understated lyrics combined with high-tempo music works great for a Middenface story, and the communication of defiantly anti-authoritarian, anti-conservative, sentiment makes a lot of sense of the strip in the context of the song as well.
Visually, I ended up going for glam and shock rock, but I think the point of the song is still evoked even if everyone on the page looks more Alice Cooper and Till Lindemann than Crosby Stills and/or Nash.
And just for the record – which track would you have picked as a fave to illustrate?
VV: Black Me Out by Against Me? Pink Floyd’s In The Flesh? Barry McGuire’s Eve of Destruction? Don’t make me choose.
David, given that you’ve shared one late 80s classic, where else would you take us on a sonic adventure?
DB: Now I’m going to sound like a real philistine – I only have a couple of Neil Young albums. I think my favourite is Harvest – it’s really great – and Rockin’ in the Free World isn’t even on it! The album of his Unplugged concert is also brilliant. I recorded it off the telly back in the day and watched it until the tape wore thin.
I’ve got to chip in here and say that I reckon the live album, Weld, from 1991 is a stunning introduction to Neil Young – well, it was to me at least!
DB: If you’re looking for other musical recommendations – I’m currently into a Baltimore hardcore band called End It, funk metal cover band Brass Against, jazz supergroup Dinosaur and I also frequently listen to the theme tunes of my favourite TV shows on repeat (Better Call Saul, Twin Peaks and Only Connect, since you ask.)
Oh lord, we’re back to the Victoria Coren-Mitchell thing again aren’t we? (See this interview with David for a little more on that – suffice it to say that, yet again, he’s failed to get VCM into a strip, probably something to do with the restraining order, eh David?)
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Okay, swiftly moving on from that – VV, can you take us through some of your process and how you went about making these Middenface pages?
VV: First I looked up concert footage from the showier eras/areas of music so I could make the setting and characters as out-there as possible. I thought about putting an 18-inch Stonehenge somewhere on the stage but there just wasn’t room.
Once I had a load of references and some idea of how everything should look I started with roughs, concentrating on flow across the page, expression, and emphasis on ‘intense’ moments. Then a thumbnail colour rough to work out the look of the pages as individual objects, and to make sure the colours shifted properly from start to end – so in this strip the palette transitions from green to blue to red as things ramp up, for example. Then the standard process of pencils and inks, painting backgrounds straight over pencils, and painting colours for the figures under their lineart so they’re still readable. Finally I did a layer & setting colour pass so everything cohered visually.
Unusually I also got to design a new piece of kit, since McNulty has a spiffy new robot arm in this strip, so I did a few iterations of that beforehand until it felt right for the character to have. If anyone has to draw it in future I hope it isn’t too much of a ballache.
(Again, full-sized images down the page)
Now, to end with, let’s hear what sort of things you’ve got coming up in the future – both here at 2000 AD and elsewhere. And no need to worry about TMO by now, he’s well into yet another bizarre cocktail (black and bubbling this time) and has the headphones blasting out Jazz fusion where the percussion is screaming droids being bludgeoned in new and interesting ways.
DB: Oh – it sounds like Tharg and I have similar tastes in music!
I’ve just finished up a couple of TV projects that have soaked up a lot of my last year, and I’m looking forward to taking a break over the summer before launching into a few new comics projects. So far none of those are for the House of Tharg, but Green Bonce knows where I am if he needs me!
VV: I’m going to be working on something new(ish) with you lot at the end of the year. I can’t talk about it for obvious reasons, but it’s the exact intersection of the two things I like drawing and so I’m very excited for it to be winter if you can imagine that. In the meantime I’m working on the second volume of Conor McCreery’s The Last Witch, which is an unpleasant fairytale for largely children, the intersection of the other two things I like drawing.
A massive thank you to both David and VV for taking the time to talk comics and music with us.
You can see their Middenface McNulty in the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 2022 – out right now 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, as promised, the full-sized versions of VV Glass’ Middenface process…
Now, the final part of our look back bonus at Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill’s Comic Rock originals – the second and final part of Killer Watt from Prog 179…
