Interview: Welcome to the Death Metal Planet – talking with David Hine and Nick Percival
11th December 2022
The Dark Judges are back… and so are David Hine and Nick Percival, ready to thrill and scare you with their latest adventure. Welcome to the Death Metal Planet.
The new Dark Judges series, Death Metal Planet began in Judge Dredd Megazine issue 449 and continues through into the new year. It’s a direct continuation of the events of the last series, Deliverance, albeit 25 years on. While The Dark Judges, in their new alien bodies, are held imprisoned in stasis by Um and Whisper, the planet of Thanatopia blossoms and the few people left alive has flourished, including an older Rosco.
But the relative paradise is about to be shattered – as a Death Metal Band, The Lizard Lords, and a hundred private ships from Earth are headed to the planet to stage Deathfest… have a wild guess who the guest of honour is going to be!
So, what’s in store for a grown-up Roscoe, could this be the end of Thanatopia, will the Dark Judges be getting back to Earth, and most importantly is Judge Death really a death metal fan? Some of these questions might just be answered in our chat with series writer and artist, David Hine and Nick Percival…
David, Nick, welcome to you both – I hope you’re both keeping safe and well. Now, the latest Dark Judges story, Death Metal Planet, began recently in Judge Dredd Megazine issue 449. I suppose the first thing to ask you is just what’s Death Metal Planet all about?
DAVID HINE: Firstly it’s about bringing some kind of closure to Rosco’s story. It also reveals how the Wild Kids survived and grew into adulthood. Most importantly I wanted to explore Judge Death’s relationship to Heavy Metal music.
NICK PERCIVAL: Yeah, I hope Rosco gets more attention in the future of 2000 AD Universe Lore- Apart from Dredd and Anderson, she’s become Judge Death‘s main nemesis, having faced off against him and the Dark Judges four times now, which is a big deal when you think about it. Death Metal Planet kind of concludes her journey but certainly not in the way you might expect – some very cool things are going to happen to her. Oh, and there’s some Death Metal stuff too…
All of the signs up until the point of the opening of Death Metal Planet were that we (and the Dark Judges) were headed slowly and surely back to Earth for them to wreak their havoc once more.
DH: They’ll get back to Earth eventually. The Dark Judges go on forever and forever is a long time.
NP: I still have enough drive in me to finish with an epic Dark Judges story set back on Earth, so who knows?
But it hasn’t quite worked out like that at all, with the reveal that it’s been somewhere in the region of 25 Earth years that have passed with the Dark Judges held in the perpetual cycle of hate and mutual destruction, kept there by Um and Whisper remaining in their trance state and ‘maintaining the illusion that holds the Dark Judges in its spell.’
One thing that this does establish is that the Dark Judges are, as things stand right now, completely off limits for the next 25 years – as they’ve been trapped on Thanatopia all this time. Although I suppose nothing is inescapable and there are time twists and the like that Tharg can use to get them back if they’re needed.
DH: Or there’s the Metaverse solution. The idea of alternative timelines has been around in science fiction for decades, but we seem to be living in a period where Metaversions are everywhere. I was always amused by those DC Superman stories where Lois Lane marries an ape or whatever. “Not a dream! Not an imaginary story!” They weren’t fooling me.
What I’m trying to say is that you’re right, Tharg the Mighty calls the shots and if he wants to mess with alternative time streams then he undoubtedly will.
NP: It’s comics, so obviously anything is possible and we’ll come up with a suitable solution to that if needed. It would be cool to see variants of Death and the gang clashing together or maybe Dredd getting thrown forward in time to sort them all out.
Anyway, the other aspect of the whole 25 years on thing is that Nick gets to imagine just what the Judges will be like in a quarter of a Century.
DH: I’m not even sure what year is current for 2000 AD these days. Whatever the year Judges are still pretty hardcore.
[2144 AD Dave, but yes they are ALWAYS hardcore!]
NP: Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I didn’t want to stray too far from what the Judges look like in the current timeline, hence keeping the colour of the uniforms pretty much the same and so on. They’re a bit less bulky but much more durable, coated in tight-fitting armour with some cybernetic elements and enhancements. Of course, the first thing to get ditched in the re-design was that bloody eagle!
Was all of this carefully coordinated with Tharg or was it simply a case of TMO letting you do as you please, knowing he can always retroactively write it off as a fever dream of two older droids?
DH: Hey! Less of the “older droids”!
Elderly? Later middle-aged? Whatever makes you happy young Mr Hine!
DH: Tharg has been very hands-off. It’s just been a case of figuring out how to keep bringing Death and Co. back in a relatively credible way. It occurs to me that the most likely solution to the 25-year gap problem would be that Rosco went totally mad in the middle of Deliverance and is imagining everything, while the real Judge Death is back on Earth slaughtering the masses. But you didn’t hear that from me.
Nope, didn’t hear a thing.
NP: Ha! – Sounds like a plan, Dave. Tharg, as always, has been great throughout our relationship with the Dark Judges. He gives me a great deal of freedom with the art which always means you can keep your enthusiasm high (which you really need on big series’ like this).
Because you know you’re being trusted, it means you deliver the best work possible (within the time limits of course!) He also chips in with cool ideas and keeps everything on track.
Anyway, Nick, what were the particular restraints, difficulties, and enjoyable bits of getting to define a look for the Judges and MC-1?
NP: As I mentioned, earlier, I still wanted everything to make sense and look like a natural progression from current street Judges. I would imagine Mega-City One has only gotten more dangerous over those twenty-five years, so body armour was more appropriate to reflect those conditions and I did a bit of upgrading to some of the tech.
We don’t spend too much time on Earth, so you don’t really get to see how other elements would have evolved – I didn’t get an opportunity to do a revamped Lawmaster, for instance (unless Dave has sneaked one in for later)
It does mean that we finally, if only for a few pages, get to see and experience a calm, relaxed, almost beautiful world where Whisper’s roots have extended everywhere. We also get to imagine the last 25 years for Rosco, who’s more than deserved whatever peace she can find amongst the darkness of her life and history. You’ve certainly put her through a hell of a lot.
DH: Exactly. Rosco has now starred in three series with the Dark Judges, beginning with John Wagner’s Dominion, then Torture Garden and Deliverance. Those three stories ran into one another with barely a break for Rosco to catch a breath, so I figured she needed some downtime. She has had 25 years of peace where she could grow old gracefully and now she has to jump back into the fray to save us all yet again, like Old Man Logan or Batman in The Dark Knight Returns.
NP: When we pick up, it does feel like she’s finally found some inner peace and is happy with her current situation. Then the shit hits the fan with the arrival of the Lizard Lord and she’s reluctantly thrown back in to having to deal with the Dark Judges again. At least she had a pleasant 25 years…
Your version of the Dark Judges manages something important, it’s something really dark, yet also has a vein of richly black humour running through it, a balancing act that many have tried (and failed) to get right in the past.
Gone are the days of the Dark Judges being the comedy relief. You manage to give us Dark Judges that are suitably terrifying – and look rather wonderfully monstrous in their new duds of course Nick! – but you’ve also taken every opportunity to fill each series with comedy characters in the supporting cast.
DH: The humour has always been the key to what makes 2000 AD so entertaining. It is a tricky one because there’s a lot of horror and tragedy there too.
NP: I think there has to be dark humour in there. I’m not a fan of the ‘comedy’ Dark Judges but you can have elements of comedy around them. I think what we’ve done with Judge Death is make him so driven by his desire for killing, that sometimes he will end up in these absurd situations but he’s never really aware of it, since for him the final result will always be mass killing and death. In the series, you’ll see him do a few wacky things but he’s deadly serious when doing it. It may look bizarre in some scenes but most of the weird stuff is always going on around him – he’s just getting ready for the next massacre.
David (or Nick talking about David!) – the writing is both lyrical and tight, a touch of action, a hefty bit of tension, and then there’s the completely over-the-top ridiculousness, those comedy moments that are so enjoyable – but it’s all done with a delicate balance that makes the laughter a nervous laughter, the sort that happens just before you know you’re getting ready to scream.
DH: Thanks! That’s what I’m aiming for. For me the touchstone for getting the balance right between horror and humour is the movie “Mandy” with Nicolas Cage. I just watched it for the fourth time and it still makes me laugh like a hyena, even while people are being burned alive, impaled, chainsawed, or having their head squashed until their eyes pop out.
NP: Exactly. Dave’s writing is so intense and over the top in some places but it’s great because as a reader, you’re constantly on edge never really quite knowing who’s safe and who may be next on Death’s list. He does some savage things in this series – really brutal stuff but I love that Death is so blasé about it all.
I think it’s obvious that both of you really are enjoying what you’re doing here, enjoying the characters, and that means you’re never overplaying the comedy, getting things just right.
Now, in Death Metal Planet, that comedy comes in with the second episode and the return of Akan and newfound friends – the magnificently insane Lizard Lords.
So, are you big fans of Death Metal yourselves? Is this a tongue-in-cheek yet affectionate thing here?
DH: I’m ambivalent about Metal. Alice Cooper was my rock hero when I was a teenager and I adored Motorhead. When metal music went in the Death Metal direction it became increasingly parodic, Grindcore, DeathPornTechnoDoomCore, or whatever the latest iteration is. I prefer Drone or Minimalist Techno. It helps me meditate.
NP: There is a very strong element of parody with the Lizard Lords (I’ve recently seen a couple of comments where some readers seem to have missed that! I thought we were being fairly obvious with it but there you go).
The problem with parody – no matter how obvious you make it, sadly someone’s always going to not get it!
NP: Like Dave, I’m ambivalent about Metal but can’t deny it’s always has some fantastic dark visual elements attached to it and perfect for exploiting and poking fun at. It’s a little bit of a love letter to Judgement On Gotham in places too, which was fun to explore and a perfect fit to surround Judge Death with.
I can’t help but have a little Hitchhikers Guide in mind with seeing Lizard Lords – shades of Disaster Area and their loudest sound in the universe best listened from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles away from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves played their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stayed in orbit around the planet – or more frequently around a completely different planet. They have that sort of wonderfully ridiculous nature about them.
DH: You’re right. I had forgotten Disaster Area. Mind you, Lizard Lords have better songs.
But of course, all it takes is an idiot or two with guns, guitars, and a plan to free Judge Death and then the joke becomes deadly serious!
DH: One of the guitars is an actual rocket launcher. Inspired by Mad Max Fury Road.
NP: The Lizard Lords are obsessed with Judge Death and I can’t believe they really thought this was going to end well for them…
Well, you know what it’s like… a few drinks with your mates, one thing leads to another and next thing you know you’re hatching a plan to free Judge Death.
Nick, in a recent Covers Uncovered, you had this little snippet to tease us with… ‘we even have a throwback to the classic, Judgement On Gotham – If I say any more, I will be sealed in a block of Boing for the rest of my days.’ We’re a couple of episodes into Death Metal Planet here and now, so I’m sure you can share with us exactly what you meant there – right? Right?
NP: Well, we have a flashback scene coming up from Judgement On Gotham where Death was on stage, killing a few of the Heavy Metal band members from that crossover – As a fan of that comic, that was cool to do but more broadly speaking, Death Metal Planet does have some moments that feel similar in tone to Judgement On Gotham and it’s not a spoiler to say that in our series, Judge Death does get a chance to strut his stuff again on stage, albeit on a larger scale with a much more gruesome and darker outcome…
You were also talking last time about what might be your ultimate Dark Judges storyline – the eliminate all life through the universe and get a well-earned rest. I can understand why Tharg might not be too keen to okay that right now and thus ending Judge Dredd and all the Dreddworld tales
But how about pitching it as a special – we had the recent Zombie Judgment Day redo, maybe the next Sci-FI Special could be the Final Dark Judges tale?
DH: Sounds like a good idea to me. We do touch on that a little in this series. I love the idea of pushing the story of Judge Death all the way to the end. He’s immortal and he can’t stop killing. He can only stop when all living things throughout the universe are exterminated. Imagine the state of him in a billion years from now, hunting down that last living soul so he can finally find some peace.
NP: That would be a cool scenario – Death’s final quest to end all life in the Universe.
We’ve talked about this before but Dark Judges really does seem like such a wonderful fit for Nick’s artwork. Sure Bolland’s art in black and white would be the ultimate version of the Dark Judges. But with the colour era and to really get the evil of the quartet of nightmares, I don’t think anyone gets it more right than Nick.
DH: Nick is exceptionally good at bringing dead matter to life. Rotting entrails never looked so good. It has been a lot of fun seeing him re-imagine the Dark Judges in a different guise for each of the series. We don’t see any totally new versions of the core group of Fire, Death, Mortis and Fear in this one but there are some neat twists on the concept of the Dark Judges. The Dead Juices will flow again.
NP: That’s nice to hear – thanks. Obviously, the inspiration comes from Dave’s writing and since we’re now on our third series together, we pretty much know how the other person thinks regarding these characters, so it’s a great fit. I’m still having a blast illustrating them and we’ve got some very cool imagery coming up.
For this series, I’ve gone for more of a funkier colour palette, lots of neon glows, hard lighting and so on -it works for the storyline and you’ll see what I mean as the series progresses. It’s always a challenge to keep things fresh and I like to give each Dark Judge their own colour scheme. Sometimes artists can be a bit afraid of colour and images can be quite muted but I always remind myself that this is comics and you can pretty much do whatever you want, so I like using bold colours to create mood and tone – it doesn’t need to be realistic, so to speak.
Just to add a little more to that, here’s what Nick had to say about his process last time we talked…
NP: ‘I’m a stickler for detail, so painted art gives me a style to add all the decay, texture and gnarly bits that look so cool on the characters.’
‘I still draw out the pages traditionally – pencil on board – and I work quite large, about A1 in size. My pencils are extremely loose though. I’ll scan those pencil pages in and then paint digitally using Photoshop and Painter. I still use the same painting techniques as when I used ‘real’ paints but now I also have access to things that digital excels at – textures, lighting and FX touches. For me, it’s all about the final image and I don’t care how the art was produced. There’s some snobbery about painted digital art but that’s Grandad talk – use whatever tools you like to get the job done and produce a strong final image.’
‘I think you can see from those examples of my rough page layouts that I do them really quickly and it’s just to get the flow of the page worked out and where the focus will be. Things can change quite a lot between this stage and final paints but all the information I need is there for me to tell the story and get working on the final pages.’
Oh, one thing about the Death Metal – we recently saw Dan Abnett and his talented relatives and friends come together and give us the complete Lawless the Musical.
Surely it would be churlish of you to do anything less here – whether it’s yourselves or any talented death metallers? Or maybe Tharg could be convinced to commission someone to create the Death Metal Planet soundtrack?
DH: I don’t know about Nick but I am definitely not musical. You could put together a very motley bunch of musicians among the comics fraternity. I’ve seen Liam Sharp on vocals, Charlie Adlard on Drums and Phil Winslade on guitar. Boo Cook makes some interesting noises as Owlmask. Not sure if any of those are heavy or death-y enough though. I did work on a comic with Emily Lazar of September Mourning. They’re kind of melodic hard rock but there’s a lot of death in the lyrics.
NP: I’m not musical at all. I’ll have a go when AI takes over music creation, as it’s currently trying to do with art…(sad face)
No, no, no… AI is just the worst.
I was about to suggest Napalm Death could step in for the soundtrack – but it seems they’re grindcore and not death metal…. hmmm, what do I know eh? Sign of getting old when you’re way, way behind on modern music.
NP: Side note – Drawing ‘Napalm Death’ gig posters was actually my first paid, professional work.
Oh wow… now that’s a great gig!
And finally, What are your plans after this, both with the Dark Judges and other work?
DH: There’s a setup at the end of this series for another possible Dark Judges story, though it is hard coming up with new twists for the characters.
Other work includes a secret project coming up for 2000 AD, as well as another music comic project, which is totally secret, and a semi-secret graphic novel with Mark Stafford, called Beastly. Also a collaboration that has been bubbling under for far too long. I need to focus on that one in the New Year. It’s secret.
NP: Well, Dave and Tharg know that I’m always up to continue the Dark Judges (any other artist will have to arm wrestle me to take over) and where we leave them with this series, it does feel that there’s at least one more epic needed to see our vision through – I have some ideas. I can also hear Dredd knocking at the door, so it’d be cool to revisit old stoneyface for some meaty, dark epic storyline – Again, I have ideas and speaking with writers and so on.
Non-comics work is all film-related and fingers crossed, should have some very interesting announcements in the New Year.
Thanks so much to both David and Nick for talking Death Metal Planet with us. You can find episode three of the series in the new Megazine, issue 451, the first of the new format Megazines with even more pages for your festive fun!
You can get hold of the Christmas Megazine from 14 December wherever the Galaxy’s Greatest is sold, including the 2000 AD web shop.
And finally, for more things Dark and Judgy… be sure to have a read of the previous interview we did together about the last Dark Judges series, Deliverance, back in 2020, and then there’s plenty of great art on display when Nick talks to us for Covers Uncovered where he discusses the making of the covers for 2000 AD Prog 2247, Megazine 425, Megazine 427, Megazine 430, Megazine 433, and Megazine 448.
And finally, as Nick sends his art over at high resolution, it’s always fun to show you the incredible details of his artwork by getting in close to the art!
