Interview: Heading to Hondo City for the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special with Karl Stock & Neil Googe
12th July 2021
With this year’s 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special, a global threat means a global response for all of Dreddworld in an epic adventure taking in The Cursed Earth, Mega-City One, Brit Cit, Oz, and Hondo City.
And handling the Hondo City leg of this summetime spectacular are Karl Stock and Neil Googe with Hondo City Justice: Daughters of Uranium, featuring Judge Inaba.
You can get hold of the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special anywhere Thrill-Power is sold from 7 July. But now, read on as we chat to Karl Stock and Neil Googe…
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So, first things first I suppose… what’s it all about Karl?
KARL STOCK: I’d best be careful, because all of the stories are interlinked and one slip might set the spoiler dominoes in motion! But essentially, bad things with an environmental link are happening, and they have repercussions across Dredd’s world. Neil and I’s end of the story takes place in Hondo-City, as Inaba investigates a series of mass radiation poisonings.
Of course, it was all a little different from your usual scripting gig, with your tale feeding into the larger overarching storyline for the Special. What sort of instructions came down from on high from your three overlords here – Matt (Smith), Maura, and Mike?
KS: My only contact with Matt on this was when he very kindly asked if I wanted to do it, otherwise Mike and Maura are well-programmed surrogate editorial droids! They had the overarching story worked out, and a brief paragraph of vague suggested directions for David, Liam and I to go in with our own stories.
These were a good starting point, and there were certain beats to hit in order to line up with the overall story, but really we were encouraged to do our own thing as much as possible. All the script droids had an introductory chat on Zoom, and we shared our scripts with one another for feedback – mainly, in my case, with Mike.
Was there plenty of space in the brief to tell the story you wanted, whilst still contributing to the overall storyline?
KS: Only insofar as my original idea had about three episodes’ worth of plot in it, with all kinds of direct and indirect references to Japan’s difficult nuclear history, from Hiroshima to Fukushima, and additional scenes and characters. What happened was the kind of paring-down you normally do with redrafts anyway, but because of the unique situation Mike helped talk me through it – which was good because it hurried the process up, I got the benefit of his extensive experience, and he’s a good guy to spend time on a call with anyway.
What is it they say about good leadership (or editorship)… if you want someone to do a specific thing, make them feel like they had the idea to do it in the first place? Yeah, he’s good at that!
It strikes me that Hondo City (and Inaba et al) are all ripe for storylines and have been, thus far, rather underused in Dreddworld. Any thoughts on more storylines from this most mysterious of the Mega Cities?
KS: No plans for a Hondo-City Justice comeback as far as I know, but there are (see above) plenty of ideas which I discarded from this story alone, and there’s a nugget of a new direction for Inaba and Asahara‘s relationship in there as well. Seeing Neil’s frankly mighty work on this episode (alongside colourist Chris Blythe) is helping fill my mind with visions of where Hondo-City Justice could go in future, though – although I’d only want to pick it up if Robbie Morrison was done with it.
NEIL GOOGE: For me personally, Hondo City is my favourite location in the Dredd-Verse with Inaba (and Shimura) being my favourite characters.
I would absolutely love to do more work inside that little pocket of the universe as there’s so much that could be explored to separate it from all the other locations.
Lovely to see your art on this one – strikes me it’s a slightly different style to normal, or at least what we’ve become used to on Survival Geeks and the Regened work of recent years?
Well to be honest it’s the Survival Geeks/Regened work that’s a little different from my regular work. I’ve done a few bits in Hondo City previously and the style there is much the same as this one.
There’s plenty of great visual opportunities for artists with Hondo City I’d imagine?
With comics like Akira, Appleseed, Ghost in the Shell and Battle Angel Alita being my all time favourites (you can keep your Watchmen, it’s got nothing on Akira ;), and by far the biggest influences on my art and career, Hondo City just fits with me, and what I enjoy drawing so much better.
As I mentioned above, would love to do more work in the Hondo neck of the woods. Like Survival Geeks, it’s one of those projects I could just work on over and over. Which is rare for me as I do have a tendency to get bored doing the same characters too much.
Any change in your process this time?
NG: No, no real changes in process. The process stays the same, it’s just the style that’s I have to adjust depending on the project.
But each time I work in the Dredd-Verse, I just add more to my 3D model library for that universe. So I got to add the Hondo Justice bikes to my list, and a few things like food carts…even though we didn’t see them.
I’ve included some screen shots out of Sketchup, which is where I build all my 3D work for the comics.
The process is to thumbnail the story, so I know what’s needed. As you can see here, I basically build out models of what’s needed, and then reposition the camera around them to get the various shots I need to match the thumbnails for the pages.
I use a process called kitbashing. Which basically means I use a whole heap of parts from existing models and then model my own bits to add when needed.
A good example is the buggy. If you look closely, the main body is an edited chunk of the off road vehicle from the opening of the movie Serenity.
While this is a convenient way of getting great backgrounds and maintaining consistency in design, you can run in to one small problem, or at least I do. Building these models isn’t quick, that food cart took about a day to build, as did the off road buggy… neither of which actually ended up in the comic when I did the finished pages. Let’s say they went to the cutting room floor.
Still, the good thing is, I’ll likely find a use for them in the future. Which is the plus side over unused drawings, they can really find a use later!
Thank you to both Karl and Neil for all of that… you can find the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special at your local newsagent, local comic shop, and, of course, at the 2000 AD web shop from 7 July.
For even more on the 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special, you’ll be able to see more interviews over the coming week, including this one with Matt Smith, Michael Carroll, and Maura McHugh, the architects of the Special, plus we chat to Neil Roberts about putting together that great cover in this Covers Uncovered feature.