SCREAM! & MISTY SPECIAL: The Thirteenth Floor
25th October 2018
Well, the most spooktacular time of the year is nearly upon us again, which means it’s time for the Halloween Horrors of two of Britain’s best-loved comics of the ’80s to return to haunt us – it’s the SCREAM! & MISTY SPECIAL 2018!
Featuring a petrifyingly perfect cover by Kyle Hotz and a 2000 AD webshop exclusive creeptacular cover by Lenka Šimecková, the comic is out now in print and digital!
Inside you’ll find tales to terrify and stories to scare you stiff, including the return of undead WWI pilot Black Max by Kek-W and Simon Coleby, Black Beth by Alec Worley and DaNi, Best Friends Forever by Lizzie Boyle and Yishan Li, and Decomposition Jones, a brand-new horrific mash-up of zombie/vampire DNA by Richard McAuliffe and Steve Mannion.
Today, Richard Bruton talks to two-thirds of the amazing team behind the return of the computer who cares far too much as we journey back to Maxwell Tower with The Thirteenth Floor, somewhere you really don’t want to end up…!
The Thirteenth Floor led 2017’s Scream! & Misty Special with a new tale of the tower block controlled by Max the computer, sending vile visitors and repugnant residents off to the nightmarish thirteenth floor, where they’ll find their comeuppance waiting for them. We’ve also seen the publication of the classic The Thirteenth Floor series written by John Wagner and Alan Grant, drawn by Jose Ortiz.
In the revamp, we saw a damaged Maxwell Tower with a dormant Max just waiting for the right moment to bring back his thirteenth floor judgment. That came when a young resident seeks sanctuary, running from a local gang of nasties, and accidentally reactivates Max, who does the thing he does so well and sends the gang off to the thirteenth floor to learn the error of their ways!
What do we have to look forward to on The Thirteenth Floor this year?
GUY ADAMS: The story continues, though hopefully in a manner that won’t completely throw any new readers. We introduce someone who may get in the way of Sam and Max, because it’s actually rather hard to pick people off and not have the law notice.
(COUGHS AWKWARDLY)
Or so I’m lead to believe.
FRAZER IRVING: Cops and choppers!
You could say that the premise for The Thirteenth Floor, like so many of the strips of the time, is incredibly limited but would you like the chance to run The Thirteenth Floor for longer, maybe reintroducing it in the pages of the Megazine, or, who knows, some future new comic featuring these classic strips? And, if so, have you already thought of the way forward for yourselves, for Max, and for the residents of Maxwell Tower?
GA: Thirteenth Floor is the story of an affable serial killer, really. Dress it up as a morality play all you like, have the reader egg the psychotic nightmares on, but it’s still a nuts computer and — in our, modern version — a disturbed kid breaking people they don’t like (because, yes, fine, they don’t necessarily KILL their victims but that’s not always a blessing if you break someone viciously enough). That grey area of storytelling interests me and I think it’s what would give the story legs as a longer whole.
Honestly? From the word go I came at this assuming it could be something longer. I enjoy playing with form and what I’ve done so far is write two capsule stories that could be read independently, or as one longer piece, or… and this is the really fun bit… as a set up for a continuing story. To do that and still deliver a satisfying experience is the trick and hopefully we’ve pulled that off.
FI: There should be a regular The Thirteenth Floor strip, it’s got way more legs now than it did back in the day.
Artistically, with both John and Frazer on board once more, we’re assuming you’re going for the same brilliant artistic look of the first tale last year. Having John cover the ‘normal’ events in the tower block in b&w, harking back to the look of the original, and then having Frazer go full-colour and over the top, full-blown nightmare vision, of the vistas on the The Thirteenth Floor, was a brilliant touch, something that definitely improves upon the original. Who first came up with the idea to get two very different looks for the strip?
GA: It was the editor of the special, Keith Richardson. When I was commissioned, John was already on board — and I couldn’t have been more thrilled — and Keith asked if I had any preferences for the other artist. I mentioned Frazer as being a depraved genius, Keith agreed. The dance between them is just so beautiful; it’s such a great pleasure to write for both of them in one strip. This artistic polyamory is a delight.
FI: Blame Keith. Leigh Gallagher is still mad that I got the gig instead of him!
Guy, do you find yourself deliberately writing for the two artists to really play to their strengths, or is it simply a case of trusting them to deliver the goods?
GA: A bit of both. I have complete and utter trust in them, of course I do, they’re John Stokes and Frazer Irving! At the same time I’d hardly be doing my job if I didn’t try and offer them things I thought they might like to work with. If only so they don’t hate working on my scripts! John’s character work is always wonderful, his pencils could act Jacobi off the stage, so I try and throw those moments his way as I know he’ll make it look exactly as effortless as it really isn’t. Frazer’s a beast, so I throw him bones. Bones few would easily imagine the flavour of.
What do you remember of both Scream and Misty the first time around?
FI: Scream!: free vampire teeth. Misty: girls!
GA: I don’t remember Misty but Scream! pleased me immensely. A joy of fleshy, Eric Bradbury tombstones and dusty Jose Ortiz cobwebs. It felt, as all good comics should to a kid, illicit.
What is it about both comics that fills both readers and creators with both nostalgia and a desire to see both new versions of the classic strips from the comics and new strips with a Misty/Scream! vibe?
GA: Like any great art it’s about storytelling. Most of us are very visual creatures, certainly when it comes to memory. The comics we read when we were young loom large for a lot of us don’t they? I’m certainly haunted by images held between childhood thumbs. To tap back into that, to live it again, that’s always going to be appealing. Of course, the creators’ job is to ensure it’s not just a familiar dance, that there are a few fresh new moves in there too.
Have you got any strips from Scream! or Misty that you’d absolutely love to have a go at in future if we get another special? Or more generally, given that Rebellion have access to the entire Egmont and IPC archive, If you could bring back something (strip, character, comic) what would it be and why?
GA: I’d love to play with The Steel Claw. The Leopard of Lime Street (what did Billy become when he grew up?), so many characters from Battle… D-Day Dawson, the soldier who fights like he’ll be dead any second, thanks to a bullet lodged near his heart. Lofty’s One-Man Luftwaffe! A British air pilot infiltrates the Luftwaffe and ruins missions from the inside!