Tag: interview

Michael Carroll and Joe Currie’s Silver: Book One: Unearthed has been running in 2000 AD since Prog 2390, up to part 8 in the latest Prog. A supernatural thing, an alien invasion thing, an Earth’s last resistance thing – it’s all of these. But most of all, it’s another stunning new strip for The Galaxy’s Greatest.

So, time to talk to writer Mike Carroll all about it. We would have talked to Joe as well, but Tharg’s always a little reluctant to let the art droids have any free time away from the drawing board!

Silver began in the middle of the night, somewhere north-east of Bristol, England, 2001, with a group of armed survivors arriving at the ruins of a burned-out house, obviously looking for something. They’ve got a cage on the back of their truck, and they’ve broken out the shovels to begin to dig down into the earth. What they were told was under the soil, what they were hunting for, could be the key to saving the human race.

Since then, we’ve learned a little more – we know that Earth’s been invaded and conquered by the alien Sepsis, and we know a little of Baroness DeSilva, the thing the resistance fighters were digging up. Let’s just say she’s somewhere around five hundred years old, one of the old creatures, something classically supernatural… if you catch my drift.

Silver is one of those strips that’s hit the ground running, incredibly fast-paced, full of so much mystery, asking so many questions, and with some incredible artwork from Joe Currie. This is one you really should all be reading.

So, without further ado… over to Mike Caroll to tell us a little more about Silver: Book One: Unearthed…

The best place to start with an interview for a new strip is to simply ask you this question- what’s Silver all about? We’re seven episodes in now so I think we can get into the meat and bones of it…

It all started off very mysteriously with Tharg himself not giving anything away. Instead we were told to go into it without spoilers. It’s refreshing to have that in a world where we seem to know everything in advance… what’s your take on that?

MIKE CARROLL: Yeah, I really appreciated the spoiler-free approach for the launch of Silver – it showed that The Mighty One had faith in the story!

The main reason I didn’t want the basic premise revealed in advance is to avoid the instinctive first reaction people often have when they learn what a story is about.

They go, “Oh, it’s the same as such-and-such” or “it’s X meets Y” and then they sometimes find it hard to move on from that idea. You know the old thing about the trailers giving away too much of the movie, or giving the wrong impression?

By not telling anyone what Silver was about, we were able to avoid a lot of the readers’ preconceptions. Plus of course, if they know in advance that it’s about an alien occupation then there’s no surprise when the aliens turn up at the end of the first episode. We want the readers’ reaction to be “Oooh, wait, what’s this?” and not “Oh, okay, there they are.”

Luckily, since 2000AD is an anthology we have the advantage that the readers are going to buy the comic anyway – we don’t need to reveal all our cards in order to entice them in!

Now, several episodes into things we have the core conflict of the strip. It’s the human resistance versus the alien Sepsis conquerors, with the small human resistance literally unearthing a superpower in the shape of Baroness DeSilva, someone or something that the resistance leaders appear to know more about than we first thought.

In so many ways this one seems very simple – aliens invade, earth resistance fights back with the aid of something supernatural they’ve uncovered. In fact, something they’ve literally dug up.

But I get the impression that there’s a lot more to Silver than that? Right?

MC: Tentatively, let’s say that yes, there is more to her than it might at first appear… Or is there?

Joe and I have bounced a lot of ideas back and forth – he has a fantastic imagination and is very receptive to ideas – before we settled on the story for the first book, and we deliberately decided to reveal very little about the Baroness.

Partly that’s to create a sense of mystery, but also it’s because just about all of Book 1 takes place during the course of a single day: there’s not a lot of time or opportunity for the characters to trot out their back-stories.

On the face of it, though, Book 1 is a rather simple story, and again that’s deliberate. We want readers to be able to jump in and hit the ground running without having to figure out who the bad guys are, what their motives are, and all that.

As the story progresses – I’m writing Book 2 at the moment – we’ll start to peel back some of the layers and hopefully show that there’s some depth and complexity to it all.

But of course, we’ll never forget the true message of the tale, which is that all the best comics feature at least two of the essential “M.A.R.S.” elements: Monsters, Aliens, Robots, Superheroes.

How did Silver come about? Was it something you pitched or did Tharg specifically request something from you? And did Tharg expressly pair you up for this one?

MC: It was indeed Tharg who paired us up! I’d finished the last book of Proteus Vex and was keen to create another series, something very different.

The Mighty One suggested “something post-apocalyptic/Euro-weird/Heavy Metal-ish with Joe Currie.” I was already familiar with Joe’s work and I knew instinctively that I could ask him to draw just about anything and he’d do an excellent job.

And Mike, did you have the idea for Silver in mind already or did working with Joe change the very idea of it?

MC: No, initially I started developing something much, much different, but I quickly realised that not only would it be practically impossible to draw – even for someone with Joe’s skills – it would have been quite opaque for the readers. I won’t go into any more details on that idea in case I ever decide to go back to it, but I ditched it completely and eventually landed on the basic idea behind Silver.

Mike, this seems distinctly different to the just finished Proteus Vex? Where that was all big themes, grande sci-fi space opera across time and space, huge galaxy-spanning empires at war and all that, Silver seems more contained and constrained. A deliberate choice on your part?

MC: Absolutely, yes! But also, no! Y’see, the manner in which a story is told is always hugely important and often more resonant than the story itself. With Vex, I deliberately chose to tell it as though the unseen narrator has spent many years sifting through an awful lot of ancient legends and myths, and has pieced together what they believe is the “true” story from all the disparate and often contradictory parts. The narrator, in such a case, almost becomes a character themselves. That approach gives the story a sense of distance and scale, and (I hope) an almost mythical feeling.

With Silver, there are no non-dialogue captions at all except for a couple on the very first panel to establish the location and date, which lends the story a stronger sense of immediacy and urgency – it’s more visceral and impactful if we’re given an intense action scene and it hasn’t already been implied by the narrative that the characters involved will survive! (OK, yes, the title does strongly suggest that the Baroness is going to be there through to the end!)

But if we were to swap the story-telling methods of Proteus Vex and Silver, then the former might come across as a simple, straight-forward, action-packed space opera, whereas Silver might be read by some readers as a complex, layered, meaningful allegory of something or other. It’s all in the delivery.

It’s also very much more in your face as regards the action and the violence. Again, was this almost a reaction to what you’ve previously done with Proteus Vex?

MC: Yeah, that goes back to the immediacy and visceral nature of the action. Plus the Baroness isn’t necessarily a hero as we would judge things… She comes from a time when nobility perhaps didn’t quite have the same meaning that it does now.

In Vex all the alien races – no matter how disparate they are, or how odd they might seem by our standards – are generally reading from the same page, communication-wise. They pretty much all have some fundamental understanding of each other.

I wanted the aliens in Silver to be very different to humans… A lot more unfathomable. There’s a quite simple trick we’ve used to bring us closer to that goal but I don’t know whether anyone has twigged it yet, so I’m not going to say what it is! And the Baroness herself is quite alien to the ordinary people, albeit in very different ways.

Why set it in 2001? Any specific reason or just one of those great sci-fi years?

MC: I wanted the human survivors to be comparatively primitive compared with the Sepsis, so to make sure they were really out-classed, I stripped away all the modern conveniences: no cellphones, no internet, no microchips! The easiest way to do that was to set it in the past… The aliens invade at the end of the 1960s, so human technology stops advancing at that point.

I also wanted the aliens to be very much entrenched when the Baroness enters the tale, so I figured we’d skip ahead a few decades… So even though the series is set in 2001, the most advanced tech available to the resistance is stuff left over from WWII. And many of the human characters can’t remember a time before the invasion anyway: life under the Sepsis occupation is all they understand.

You’ve already mentioned that you’re busy with Silver Book Two – any hints on what we can expect from book two?

MC: I won’t tell you what’s coming up, but I can tell you that when we were working on the first book Joe and I quite quickly developed a very definite path for the future of the series… Then a few weeks ago when I delivered the synopsis for Book 2, Tharg was less than utterly overjoyed with it. I might be projecting here a little, but I’m fairly sure that the other editorial droids in the Nerve Centre had to talk him down from the roof where he was shaking his fists at the cosmos and screaming, “Noooo! Why, gods, why!?”

Tharg felt that our plans for Book 2 would take the story in the wrong direction, one that didn’t quite ring true. So we had to do a re-think, and take a different approach. That happens, sometimes… And even though it stings – it really, really stings, like a mad bee that’s been cross-bred with a nettle and dipped in scorpion venom and then set on fire – it’s usually going to be for the best: it’s easy for the creators to fall in love with certain aspects of the story, and as a result they can lose sight of – forgive the apparent cliché – the Big Picture.  So now and then the editor has to step up, put their foot down, and say, “No, not good enough, you wretched worms! Go back to the drawing board and do it again!” (An editor who doesn’t know when to intervene, or who lacks the courage to do so when it’s necessary, is not a good editor!)

Luckily, Tharg liked the second synopsis so much he gave it a great big cheery thumbs-up, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he sends each of us a huge bag of pick’n’mix as a reward for our thoroughly excellent work.

As I said, right now I’m actually writing book 2 – subtitled ‘Perfidious‘ – and it’s going pretty well.

Mike, pick’n’mix really isn’t Tharg’s style. Threats, Rigellian hot-shots, and restricting oil changes for the droids, yes. Pick’n’mix… maybe not!

One of the main human protagonists here is Fraser. He’s our ‘in’ on the miracle solution to humanity’s dealings with the Sepsis. Will he be simply that, a means to tell the backstory to the Baroness, or has he a more important role to play?

MC: Well, Fraser is the Baroness’s conduit to the changed world in which she finds herself – and thus he’s also the reader’s conduit. He’s an everyman, which is one of the reasons Joe and I like him so much. He’s not a hero, he just drives the trucks for the heroes.

Were it not for the Sepsis occupation, the closest Fraser would get to fighting action would be the aftermath of an accidental pint-spilling in the  pub, and even that would end with the antagonists black-eyed and drunkenly slumped at the bar and declaring that the other is his best mate in the world.

And any significance to the name Fraser – there’s always that sense that writers drop in every name for some reason, not simply because it sounds right for the character!

MC: Yep! The character came about from a half-serious comment I made when Joe and I were throwing ideas back and forth. I said, “Oh, and if this was a movie then the leader of the British crew would ideally be played by Lemmy from Motörhead. :)”

Oh yes, absolutely he would! I can picture it in my mind right now!

MC: Well, we both loved Lemmy – I mean, who didn’t love Lemmy? He was a 2000 AD fan! Even people who had no time for Motörhead loved Lemmy!– so that idea got lodged in our brains and just refused to be budged. We couldn’t really use his name, though, so instead we used his middle name: Lemmy Fraser Kilmister. Bloody legend, that lad! He died at the end of 2015 and everything started to go downhill almost immediately. (Also: I have a friend nick-named Lemmy who’s almost as awesome as the original.)

And he was a fan… even going so far as to pose for this bit of 80s Prog advertising…

Going higher up the chain of command, there’s the mysterious Bishop. He’s the resistance leader who put in place the plan to dig up the Baroness in the first place. And, as we see at the end of episode 4, he’s well aware of who and what she is.

Fancy giving us a few teasers about who Bishop is and just how he knows who/what the Baroness is, and how he’s known her name for decades?

MC: I don’t want to say much, but you could think of Bishop as sort of our take on the Brigadier from Doctor Who… He’s the power behind the British cells of the human resistance, except the Brigadier was a nice guy and Bishop is very much not really all that nice at all.

Of course, for horror fans, silver has all sorts of lycanthrope connotations – but you cut across that assumption with the Baroness being more of the, shall we say, vampiric bent, and then go on to make a point of having the series title explained by Fraser as a mishearing on the Baroness’s name as Silver instead of DaSilva. Mere wordplay or something more?

MC: Sorry, I was going through a tunnel just then and I completely missed that question.

Tunnels? Oh, those sneaky script droids!

The Baroness so far has been something of a cipher, all we know is that she’s old, supernatural, incredibly powerful. But there’s so many questions unanswered with her.

Why would she collaborate with the humans? What’s her backstory? Just what exactly is she? And many, many more. Will you be getting into all these in time?

MC: Oh dear. Another tunnel!

They really are a particular pain!

Mike, let’s talk art now. You’ve seen what Joe’s produced for the first few episodes at least. What is he bringing to Silver?

MC: Joe’s art has a wonderful looseness at times, a frenetic energy combined with otherworldliness. His work kinda makes me think of someone like Geof Darrow trying to do his own version of Moebius, except Joe’s combined the two and then gone off in a direction that until now no one even knew existed.

I honestly can’t picture anyone else bringing what Joe does to Silver. This is classic stuff! I don’t imagine that he actually draws with a solid-gold, diamond-nibbed pen, but it sure feels like he does…

Finally, what else do we have to look forward to from you both? Either for Tharg or elsewhere?

MC: I’ve got a Dredd multi-parter and a few one-offs on the way, and I’ll soon start work on Book Four of Dreadnoughts. Then, after that, I’ll spend the rest of the year working one of those Top Secret Projects that I’m not allowed to talk about. Beyond that… no idea what I’m doing next year!

There’s a cabinet for the workshop that I want to build, and you never know, I might finally write that synth-pop album I’ve been toying with on and off for the past forty years.

Thanks to Mike Carroll for taking the time out of his damn busy writing day and putting you, dear readers, above both workshop cabinet-making duties or global synth-pop stardom!

As for more from Mike, there’s plenty of interviews to get your teeth into. We chatted Dreadnoughts with Mike and John Higgins here in 2020, Judge Dredd: Desperadlands from 2021, Action Pact with Mike and Luke Horsman from 2021, two Mayflies interviews – here with Simon Coleby, and here solo, both from 2021. Then there’s Matt Smith, Maura McHugh, and Mike talking about putting together the 2021 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special here. And finally, he’s appeared a couple of times recently on the Thrill-Cast – here talking space opera and dystopian cops, and here with Matt Smith and Al Ewing on the Thrill-Cast Lockdown Tapes.

Now, a quick look at a little bit of extra art for you – the two fabulous Silver covers that we’ve seen so far…

Prog 2390 – cover by Dave Kendall – you can see Dave’s great Covers Uncovered piece for this one here.

And then for Prog 2395, a portrait of the Baroness, blood red dripping from the cover by Frazer Irving. Again, his covers uncovered piece about putting this together is here.

When the dimensional barriers break down and the nasties and the weirdos come through, there’s only one team strange enough in all of Mega-City One to deal with them – yes, it’s the return of Department K!

We’ve seen them deal with multiversal madness, put the interdimensional invaders in their place, and generally keep the big Meg safe from everything that breaks through the fabric of reality on a semi-regular basis in the pages of the Prog. But now they’ve landed in the pages of Judge Dredd Megazine with the brand-new creative team of Ned Hartley and Mike Walters for the three-parter, Mecha-City One…

Created by Rory McConville and PJ Holden, the team of intrepid Tek-Div specialists of Department K have been busily bouncing across the dimensions for the last couple of years now, with artists Dan Cornwell and Nick Dyer joining in the fun. 

Department K return for Mecha-City One, taking them out to another big Meg, where it’s mechs, mechs, and nothing but Mechs. How will Judge Kirby, Mechanisno Judge Estabon, alien Judge Blackcurrant, and Judge Intern Afua cope in a strange new world?

Only one way to find out and that’s to talk to that new creative team of Ned Hartley and Mike Walters…

Hello Ned, hello Mike! In the pages of the new Megazine we’re getting the second episode of a whole new Department K adventure with the pair of you as the brand-new creative team.

I suppose the first thing we should do is to ask you just what Department K is all about and what to expect from Mecha City One?

NED HARTLEY: Department K is such a fun idea – Mega City One has been attacked from different dimensions, most notably from Judge Death and his mates. The Justice Department created Department K, and their job is to protect Mega City One from invasion from different dimensions. They’re quite a proactive department, so they spend a lot of time travelling to other realities to put things right.

Department K is made up of Afua who is the new recruit, leader Kirby, Mechanismo unit Estabon and Blackcurrant who is some sort of alien. 

How many parts do we have to look forward to?

NH: Mecha City One is a three-parter and then we’ve got some really fun one-shots coming up. There are so many different dimensions for this team to visit and adventures for them to have, we’re sending them to lots of very, very strange places.

That first episode from last month really had it all – a great reintroduction to this quartet of Tek-Division Judges – but it also rather put the cat amongst the pigeons with it’s ending and with Estabon making a difficult decision.

NH: One thing that I could possibly tease is that everything in Mecha City One is not quite what it seems to be. Something that we wanted to explore in this story is the idea of home and belonging, and I think that maybe Estabon wants to fit in a little too hard.

It’s obviously not easy for Estabon in Mega City One, he’s a really smart guy and Mechanismo units are still treated with suspicion in the Justice Department. Maybe with some reason because of the history of Mech Judges, but that’s another matter.

Department K are a very close-knit team, so it’s not a decision that he would take lightly. I think the question for him is – What is your family? Is it the people who look like you and think like you, or is it the people who understand you?

MIKE WALTERS: Estabon certainly remains very central to the story (I could probably draw him in my sleep at this point) but of course it wouldn’t be Department K without Kirby, Afua and Blackcurrant. The story goes from one crazy scenario to the next, I don’t think I’ve ever done anything that’s made me say, “How am I gonna do this?!” quite as much as this strip has.

The basic setup of Department K is a great one, playing in the Dreddverse but also, by their very nature, able to go outside of it and explore pretty much whatever you want them to.

And it’s also definitely at the lighter end of the Dreddverse, with something more cosmic, adventurous, and comical – was all this part of the thinking when you put together this first storyline?

NH: I love the range of stories that you can tell in the Dreddverse, but also how we are at the fun, brighter end of the Dreddverse, which suits me perfectly.

I think there are so many incredible creative teams telling wonderfully dark, gritty and unsettling stories in the Dreddverse so I wanted to plant our flag somewhere else. My feeling is that Department K stories should be colourful and action-packed, and that they should be able to be enjoyed by everyone. I love telling big, silly, cosmic stories that have a heart.

I’m really lucky that I get to work with Mike, who is so brilliant and thoughtful and talented in the way that he approaches these absolutely wild ideas that I put in the scripts! 

In all the Dreddworld stories, I think this one, by its very concept, has the potential to go really wild. The shorthand from Matt was ‘Doom Patrol in the Judge Dredd Universe’, wasn’t it? But Marvel kids could also just as easily make if work as the Dreddverse Fantastic 4 – that whole group of beings challenging society, being outside the norm, doing all manner of fantastical things, yet always gelling as a family unit of sorts.

Is that something you’re planning on leaning into?

And just as an aside – Grant Morrison & Richard Case’s Doom Patrol was a very special series, wasn’t it? I absolutely loved it when it was first released and it holds up so very well.

NH: I love Rory, Dan, PJ, and Nick’s Department K stories because they really lean into the Fantastic Four elements and it’s so big and cosmic. I’ve tried to keep those elements and steer in towards the Morrison/Case Doom Patrol vibe, which means being a bit playful with form and structure while also not being afraid of being weird and slightly unsettling!

I really like the idea of seeing Department K as a dysfunctional family of sorts, which is why the Fantastic Four works so well – we can all understand what it’s like to fight with family members, which is why those comics are so universal. That was the reason that I wanted the first comic to be about Estabon leaving the team, I wanted to raise the stakes as much as possible. The most devastating thing that a family member can do is decide that they don’t want to be part of the family any more, this is a cosmic version of that!

But yeah, those era Morrision stories are amazing, I love his Animal Man stuff, too. There’s an idea of playing with what comics (and fiction) is capable of, just pushing the boundaries because you can. There’s an electricity in that work that you don’t see anywhere else. 

MW: The entire time working on this strip that’s exactly how I’ve viewed it, well, more leaning toward Fantastic Four than Doom Patrol personally as I’m afraid to say I haven’t read it! But this strip really allows me to lean into the more American-style comic, with artists like Jack Kirby being very influential to the overall feel of this rather cosmic story (Eternals and Fantastic Four in particular spring to mind).

Now, taking over a strip this way – is it a difficult thing? Or is it more something that excites you, getting the chance to take on what Rory, PJ, Dan, and Nick have done and stamp your own mark on it?

NH: I love it, it’s like being handed the keys to a race car that’s in top condition. Rory, Dan, PJ, and Nick have set up this team so well that all the heavy lifting has been done for me! This setup is just a factory for creating great stories. I’m really looking forward to delving into the backstories of these characters and finding out a bit more about what makes them tick. 

MW: Upon being offered this strip I was very excited by it, having read some of the previous stories before I was already aware of the characters and style of what I was getting into. PJ, Dan, and Nick all draw how I wish I could draw, so it was a case of just trying to keep up with what they had previously done without aping their styles completely.

And how did it come about that you got to be the new creative team?

NH: I’d written a Cadet Dredd and a Future Shock for Matt, and he asked me if I wanted to try out for Department K, so I jumped at the chance. Getting partnered with Mike was such a lucky break!

MW: As for how it came to me being the artist, I just got an email out of the blue, I’d just bought a stack of comics, journeyed home to read them, and opened my phone to find an email from Matt with the offer to work on Department K. Needless to say, the stack of comics I bought went unread for a few days while I did layouts and preliminary stuff for the strip.

And what’s the etiquette for this sort of thing – did you get in touch with the strip’s creators to see if you had their blessing and that sort of thing?

MW: Not sure if there’s a specific etiquette but I spoke to both Dan and PJ in person at Lawless in Bristol, both of whom gave their blessing and said they were looking forward to seeing what I’d done with it (no pressure at all haha). I spoke to Rory over Twitter (sorry, Elon, but I’ll never call it X) and he too gave his blessing, comic people are very nice I have learned haha.

NH: I did drop Rory a line to let him know that I was going to be writing Department K. He was incredibly gracious about the whole thing and said that he looked forward to reading it. I’m a huge fan of his work, so that was very cool indeed.

We’ve seen a fair few Department K stories now from Rory/PJ/Dan/Nick and they really took us into all manner of cosmic adventuring, rather playing with a whole Jack Kirby vibe. Are you going to keep going with that or take things in some other direction?

MW: This story is certainly less cosmic than the previous ones, particularly the one Dan did before me which was very reminiscent of Marvel’s Eternals. But I’m still trying to incorporate some of it where I can, being a big Marvel fan, I just can’t help myself! I have drawn some wacky stuff in this story though, for the second episode I don’t think I’ve ever looked at mushrooms so much in my life.

And of course, there’s the one thing that was left hanging when last we ventured into the strange world of Department K – the small matter of Cadet Afua managing to get herself rather entangled with those interdimensional cosmic beings – are you going to be picking up those threads here at some point?

NH: Not at first. I definitely want to be respectful of the established continuity and continue any plotlines that Rory has set up, but I wanted to start with a few cleaner stories that don’t involve much knowledge of backstory.

I wanted to establish Department K in the Megazine as something readers could enjoy without any prior knowledge, then build from there. Afua will definitely have her own plots and we’ll be expanding the multiverse, but I think the most important thing is to keep the stories nice and contained at first.

MW: Being that Estabon is the more central figure in this story, it really is his tale so that thread is left hanging for the time being.

After Mecha-City One, have you plans afoot for more Department K tales?

NH: Absolutely! We’ve got some more shorter stories coming up after this one. I love writing Department K, there’s so much scope, I could write these stories until the end of the multiverse! 

MW: I’m currently working on another Department K story at the moment, it’s a great deal of fun and again, a lot of things I’ve never really drawn before.

Department K has had an interesting publishing history – and all the way through, it’s managed to be a really great sci-fi adventure all-ages in the best way – universally accessible, full of huge concepts, never talking down.

You’re not going to suddenly take it to dark places, go large on the grim and gritty now that you’re doing it in the Meg are you?

NH: We’re very, very committed to keeping it fun and accessible to absolutely everyone. I see it as being All Ages in the the broadest possible meaning of the term, I think that young and older readers should be able to pick up these stories and enjoy them.

We’ve worked hard to make sure that this isn’t exclusive, it’s not just for kids, it’s not just for adults, we want to make sure there’s something for everyone. 

MW: I think the important thing when doing all-ages comics is to not dumb it down, but conversely it’s not necessary to go grim and gritty either. Regardless of the intended audience I think good story will always shine through, whether you’re tackling something extremely heavy and/or grim, or something very lighthearted. I think the reason Department K resonated so much is because it’s just a fun story with well-written and likeable characters.

In fact, would you say it’s actually harder to plot out stories like this, retaining that all-ages appeal, than it is to go dark?

NH: My background is in writing all-ages material, so I really feel at home here. I mean, I’ve worked on Simpsons Comics, Monster Fun, WWE, the Beano, loads of all-ages comics, I’m always trying to make the appeal as broad as possible. Department K naturally lends itself to fun, dimension-hopping stories so it works really well.

Both of you have been involved in the Rebellion all-ages projects – Mike came onboard for the second half of the 2000 AD series Lowborn High and Ned’s been involved in the Monster Fun comic, not to mention the Beano.

Talk to me about how you think all-ages material can be all things to all readers, how it shouldn’t mean dumbing down and how you can do all manner of interesting stories while still being accessible to all.

NH: That’s a really good question. I think there’s the obvious things that you can’t be too violent or sexual or sweary, but also you have to be a little cleaner in your storytelling.

You’ve got to be very careful about things like flashbacks or parallel narratives because younger readers might not be as aware of storytelling conventions. I think it’s important not to confuse the reader, so you have to be clear about what you’re doing. That’s not to say that you can’t use clever ways of telling the story, you just have to do it in a way that you don’t lose the reader.  

MW: Again, I feel that all-ages doesn’t necessarily mean that you turn something into essentially the Teletubbies, there’s no need to dumb things down to a point where the average reader can’t enjoy it due to being “childish”. As I said before good story shines through. At the end of the day much of the older classic comics were written and created for young boys, such is the case for the likes of Marvel in the 1960s, however the stories are well told, so young or old, anyone can enjoy them for their own reasons.

In Department K certainly there’s a real fine element of comedy running through it, something that was there right from the start but something you’ve perhaps brought more to the fore?

MW: Whenever something humorous comes up in the script I immediately think of the best way to portray it visually, without flat out looking at the reader and saying “this is the funny part”. So in my case it is very much about body language and expression. That panel of a robot judge patting Afua on the head in episode one came in an instant, in both the expression and posing involved. So in many cases it’s easy to play off what Ned has written and (hopefully) emphasise that with the art.

Although the second episode goes rather more serious and brings us into the adventure in exploring Estabon’s new world, there’s gag after gag in the first episode – Blackcurrant checking the poison gas levels a little too late, the very idea of a very different ‘Block War’ & the whole ‘where do I get a replacement arm?’ ‘A second hand store of course!’ gag that’s just got classic sit-com written all over it.

MW: Reading that I’d be drawing the actual blocks themselves fighting as giant robots certainly took me by surprise and made me say “how the *REDACTED*” out loud haha. It was certainly a challenge to say the least.

NH: I wasn’t sure about the “second hand store” gag at first. I liked it, but I worried that it was a bit too broad. I think it works in context and it sets out the stall that the tone one of this comic is going to be a bit silly and fun.

When you’re in the Meg with a lot of other brilliant and dark comics, sometimes you have to signpost that the tone of this strip is going to be a little different.

In fact, in addition to the obvious comic comparisons, it’s also got that classic small team book vibe of every character having a very different personality, allowing them all to bounce off each other – which of course is exactly the perfect set-up for a sitcom – maybe a sci-fi Young Ones, or a fantastical Friends.

Again, was this something that immediately came to mind when you’re thinking of the characters and how they fit together in classic sit-com fashion?

NH: I was reading an interview with Mitchell Hurwitz (the creator of Arrested Development) and he said that the stock characters that every sitcom needs a patriarch, a matriarch and clown and a craftsman.

The Simpsons are the best example of that because you have Homer the patriarch who sets plots going, Marge the matriarch who consoles and gives advice, Bart the clown who is an agent of chaos and Lisa the craftsman who is always plotting to improve her life. It’s a great way to look at sitcoms.

Each member of Department K takes on different roles at different times, Kirby can be the patriarch and the matriarch in different times in the story, while Estabon is often either the patriarch or the craftsman. Afua and Blackcurrant swap the roles of clown and craftsman as needed, but Blackcurrant tends to be the clown more and Afua tends to be the craftsman more. It’s not scientific, but it helps me think about dialogue and plot.

What difficulties are there in making comedy this way as part of a comic double act of writer and artist?

NH: It’s a bit of a comedy triple bill because we’ve got fantastic letterer Jim Campbell onboard. It’s so hard to get comedy right on the page and I think that Jim ties it all together so well.

Of course, full credit to Jim as well!

NH: It’s a cliche that you don’t appreciate letterers because when they are good at their job you don’t notice what they are doing, but Jim clearly understands comedy and just makes the page sing.

I love Mike’s art, it’s so funny and Jim makes sure that the jokes flow properly. I’m in awe of both of them, it’s such a hard thing to get right and they make it look so effortless. I love working with them both and I want to keep making comics with them for as long as possible!

MW: From the art perspective it’s tricky getting across what the panel entails, the focus of what’s needed to tell the story, but doing it in such a way that you not only tell the story, but in a way that amplifies the humour or the particular joke. In the case of the aforementioned scene with Blackcurrant checking the poison gas levels, Kirby and Afua both have a look of horror on their faces, with Afua specifically covering her mouth. So in this instance it was important to show the three characters, but perhaps more important were the expressions to (hopefully) amplify the joke.

And speaking of great comedy stips – Ned, one of your Monster Fun strips, the reinvention of Steel Commando with Dan Boultwood is out this week (17 July) – I know this is about Department K but feel free to wax lyrical about Steel Commando and what your thinking behind it was and the things Dan has brought to it.

NH: Steel Commando is a robot soldier from World War II who has a best mate called Ernie, and in our story he gets thrown around through time so he meets superheroes and spacemen and dragons.

It’s been brilliant fun to work with Dan Boultwood. I love Dan. He’s brilliant. We’ve been friends and drinking buddies for decades and I’ve always wanted to work with him, so I was so happy that Keith Richardson from Monster Fun teamed us up together. Dan’s one of those artists who has such a brilliant style and he’s always, always working to develop his art. He’s one of a kind and I think he’s so good.

I’m so proud of the work we did on Steel Commando, the graphic novel is out this week and it looks amazing. We’re doing a comic strip called Peaches’ Creatures for Monster Fun at the moment and it’s just a joy seeing Dan’s pages come in. 

How’s it been working together on Department K?

MW: An absolute blast from start to finish, fun scripts joined with great characters and an amazing setting. What more could a guy ask for?

NH: An absolute joy. Working with Mike has really made me up my game, he’s working at such a high level that I don’t want to let him down with my scripts! We’ve been messaging each other and he’s such a welcoming, thoughtful collaborator. 

It was something that Tharg put together rather than both of you chatting and pitching it to Tharg. Once he brought the pair of you onboard, was it one where you were always talking about things from the get go or was it more of a traditional thing – Ned does script, hands over to Mike for the art?

MW: If memory serves I had finished drawing the first episode when Ned and I initially got talking over Twitter, from that point there was definitely a back and forth about the story and so forth, although I tried to not interfere too much with the story itself. I’m not a writer, that’s why I draw haha.

NH: I did the first script and once I knew that Mike was involved I dropped in a line on Twitter and we got chatting. It’s been amazing working with him, he’s such a generous and fun collaborator.

I tend to try to stuff as much stuff in a script as possible, and he’s risen to the occasion every single time. It’s a little easier writing now because I know his style and the kind of things that he likes to draw. He’s fantastic at big action set pieces so I want to give him as much fun stuff to draw as possible.

After working together on this, have you chatted about the possibility of working on more things – both Department K and others?

MW: If Ned has more Department K stories I’ll draw every one of them, I’m having so much fun with the characters and I feel like I know them at this point. How they move how they act and so forth.

Beyond that we have discussed pitching to Tharg in the future and a few story ideas have been passed around, but at least on my end, nothing much beyond that.

NH: Watch this space! We’ve been chatting and I’m working on something now. I’d love to keep working with Mike, he’s a superstar! 

Ned, always good to get the writer’s view on how the artist’s hard work has paid off (after all, you writers have it oh so easy and it’s the artists who do all the heavy lifting – right Mike?).

You’ve seen the finished strip now – what do you think of what Mike’s brought to it?

NH: He’s amazing, isn’t he! I love how Mike is able to do the big fight scenes, but also get the emotional scenes brilliantly, too. It’s really hard to get comedy and drama right and he does both so well.

I feel sorry about putting in so many scenes that require such complicated backgrounds, but I know he’s going to make them look so good. Mike brings such a love of the medium, he really knows his comics and he really knows 2000 AD. He knows just the right angles to make a scene work. 

Mike, Department K is merely the latest of your art being in 2000 AD, all coming from your winning of the 2020 Thought Bubble & 2000 AD Art Droid contest.

Now, you’re here in the Megazine with the delights of Department K. Is it still something that rather surprises you or has it finally sunk in that you’re pretty darned good at all this?

MW: You’ll never convince me I’m any good at this, that’s one thing I’ll make clear from the get-go. And it’s not this bullshit false modesty people sometimes have I just genuinely can’t stand most of the work I do. It’s not because of the content or anything that way, but because it’s so far removed from the world-changing amazing work that I initially see in my head. Unfortunately, by the time it reaches my hands, it’s mine.

That being said, I am eternally grateful to Tharg and to everyone I have worked with during my time at 2000 AD, it honestly is a dream come true and I still smile broadly upon seeing my work online, in WHSmiths or any shop where 2000 AD/the Megazine are sold. It brings me so much happiness and I know that isn’t gonna go away anytime soon. I’ve shared pages with some of my favourite artists and honestly, I can die a happy man just knowing that.

With your art on Department K Mike, have there been any modifications made now that you’re playing in Dreddworld?

MW: The biggest modification (if you can call it that) is that I’m colouring myself, which I haven’t done for 2000 AD prior, it’s always been either black and white or has been coloured by Pippa Bowland in Lowborn High’s case. So, there is definitely some consideration that needs to go into that side of things, but beyond that I just draw and hope it’s good!

It’s the second time now that you’ve come onboard a strip where the style and characters have already been established – it was Anna Morozova on Lowborn High and the trio of PJ, Dan, and Nick here on Department K.

What additional problems does it cause for you as an artist to do this?

Do you find yourself slightly adapting your art to, for want of a better phrase, ‘fit in’ with what’s gone before with previous artists? Or is it more a case of looking at prior strips to get a feel for things and then going your own way?

MW: Well in the case of Lowborn High and following Anna there was a huge amount of trepidation, I was terrified. It’s the main reason I can’t stand my first episode that I did; the deadline was fairly tight, and I just didn’t know how to approach it, whether to attempt to ape Anna’s style or to do my own thing.

By the second episode, I’d realised I just wasn’t going to do it any justice by trying to ape Anna’s style because, well, she’s just a better artist for a start, but the style itself clearly has much different inspirations than mine does.

In the case of Department K, I’d say PJ and Dan, but particularly Dan, draw how I wish I could draw. So it was fairly easy to go into Department K, I just had to say, “Okay, draw it real good and you’ll be fine”.  

Can you go through the process of this one with us, from basic concepts and sketch ideas through to the finished colour pages we see?

MW: In terms of concepts there aren’t any – everything is completely on the page! But as you’ll see from the imagery, my so called “pencils” can be pretty horrific, in that I think I’d be a bastard for someone else to ink.

As I’m inking myself and working digitally on top of that, I see no point in prolonging the process there. So much of the actual final drawing tends to be in the inking stage. Before that, there’s just lots of scribbles that loosely resemble characters.

Ned, Mike, how did you first get into comics and at what point did you decide that it was going to be something that could be a career?

MW: I got into comics when I was around 17, so I haven’t been into them as long as some others may have been. I’d always drawn but had no real motivation of where to go with it or anything beyond that, but I was obsessed with movies and videogames – in particular the stories they could tell visually.

I had no idea at the time why certain things spoke to me more than others, but it turns out I was attracted to the idea of visual storytelling. Years later, I realised that comics could be the same thing and I could possibly do them myself.

All of a sudden, it became very interesting. Add to that I grew up with the likes of the X-Men movies and such, they were always gonna creep in some way or another. Beyond that it just became a process of trial and error, lots of free time, and many, many hours of drawing essentially anything I thought was cool. Somehow that works out as a job in comic books. Figure that one out haha.

NH: I’ll let you know when I manage to make this my career! But seriously, I first started working in a comic shop when I left university, which was Forbidden Planet in London. I then moved to the head office and started working for Titan, so I went from selling comics to making comics. The rest is history!

What were the earliest comics and characters that you got into?

NH: Probably the Beano and the Dandy. I remember reading my brother’s X-Men comics and thinking they were pretty special.

MW: My first comic that I bought was Jim Lee’s X-Men #1 from 1991, having grown up with the movies it was an instant draw (no pun intended) and Lee’s art was just spellbinding. Beyond that I got into Batman in a big way, both for the art but also the detective side of things, something that most of the movies seem to ignore in favour of “Man dressed as bat punches baddies”.

At what point did 2000 AD rear it’s head?

MW: The first prog I ever bought was Prog 2001 (a little late, I know). At that point I honestly didn’t get anthologies for some reason, it just didn’t click at that time. Beyond that time I would pick up the odd Prog here and there but then at a certain point something just clicked, and so now, like some kind of junkie, I just can’t wait for my next hit of Thrill Power each week. The stacks are growing and growing, and I don’t think they’ll stop anytime soon.

NH: I loved those big black-and-white collections of early Dredd stories when I was quite young, they were so cool. There was something so exciting about how 2000 AD just didn’t look or read like any other comic that I’d ever seen before. It was just so funny and violent and exciting. I was absolutely hooked. I remember taking that issue into school and excitedly showing all my friends. There’s nothing quite like it and I’m so proud to be part of this world!

How about influences along the way?

MW: Many of my artistic influences are from American comics I have to say, biggest guy for me being Greg Capullo, his art style and storytelling chops are just second to none.

In 2000 AD it’s all the obvious guys, Bolland, McMahon, Gibbons. But I try not to look like any of them, just to borrow little bits here and there.

NH: I think I’ve always been influenced by writers who can use humour to undercut drama at the right time, people like Garth Ennis or Alan Moore do that really well. I love Pat Mills’ work. I’ve just been rereading Nemesis the Warlock and it’s amazing isn’t it? I think that level of fearless storytelling is quite breathtaking.

I love it when you see a writer and an artist both willing to have fun and be experimental. It’s just brilliant.

One I always like to ask – if you could have carte blanche over 2000 AD and all its characters and history, what’s the one story, one character, one strip you’d love to get your hands on? And what’s the story you’d tell?

NH: ABC Warriors, but I would make them ABCD Warriors: Atomic, Bacterial, Chemical and Digital! 

MW: It would have to be out of continuity or something, but I’d love to do a sort of Old Man Logan with Dredd. Kind of his final days and so forth, make him really beaten up and on his last legs. Kind of how Hershey recently died in the prog but with Dredd. I know he’s far too valuable a character to kill off so yeah, would have to be out of continuity.

And finally, what sort of things do we have to look forward to from both of you for the future?

MW: More Department K! Beyond that I’m doing work for the fabulous folks over at The77 Publishing where I’m practically in everything they put out, so go buy their stuff cause it’s awesome.

NH: More Department K for a start! Then the collection of the Steel Commando comics that I wrote comes out in July, then hopefully next year we’ll see the collection of the Peaches’ Creatures stories that I’ve been doing in Monster Fun with Dan Boultwood.

I wrote a book about how to make comics which is out in 2025, I’m really excited about that. I’ve also been working on some books that are younger versions of classic sci fi stories, and the first one of those “The War of the Worlds” and that’s out in August.

Oh, and the US edition of the prose Spider-Man book that I wrote is out in August, it’s called Spider-Man: The Bug Bite That Changed Everything. I’m sure there’s more coming out that I’m forgetting, too.

Thank you so much both Ned and Mike for taking the time to chat to us – you can find the second episode of their Department K right now in Megazine 479, and you can find that in the 2000 AD web shop and everywhere Tharg’s monthly thrills are sold!

As Ned says, you can get hold of his and Dan Boultwood’s Steel Commando right now, and Mike Walters, Anna Morozova, and David Barnett’s Lowborn High has been out since April – do yourselves a favour and get both!

And for even more Department K delights and to see the earliest adventures of this fabulous team of geeks, robots, and misfits, be sure to pick up the first volume, Interdimensional Investigators, containing the stories Department K, Stranded, and Cosmic Chaos, by Rory McConville, PJ Holden, Dan Cornwell, Len O’Grady, Jim Campbell, and Simon Bowland.

And if you want to know where to find ALL the Department K tales, we’re here for you as well…

Department K – 2000 AD Regened Prog 2196 – Rory McConville and PJ Holden
Stranded – 2000 AD Regened Prog 2233 – Rory McConville and PJ Holden
Cosmic Chaos – 2000 AD Prog 2234 – 2243 – Rory McConville and Dan Cornwell
Crisis of Infinite Estabons – 2000 AD Regened Prog 2296 – Rory McConville and Nick Dyer
Mecha-City One – Judge Dredd Megazine 469-471 – Ned Hartley and Mike Walters

We’ve run a couple of Department K interviews already that you’ll be wanting to cast your eyes over – first with Rory, PJ, and Dan in 2021 here about two tales, Stranded and Cosmic Chaos, and then we talked to Rory and Nick Dyer about Crisis of Infinite Estabons here.

In Brit-Cit, there’s few Detective Judges with the reputation of Detective Inspector Armitage. But things always move on – it’s inevitable. So what happens when the veteran finds that he’s surplus to requirements? Is there one last case in the old ‘tec yet?

And that’s what Liam Johnson & Warren Pleece have come up with for Armitage: Bullets for an Old Man, currently up to part 3 in the latest Judge Dredd Megazine. Is this really the end for Armitage?

Liam Johnson and Warren Pleece’s latest series for 2000 AD is Armitage: Bullets for an Old Man, up to its third part in the brand-new Megazine. I’s a very different Armitage tale, one that finds the normally in-control Detective Judge on the outs at Brit-Cit’s Justice Department – too old, too difficult, and easy (so they think) to replace with a new generation of Mechanismo Detective Judges.

Or at least that’s how it is until a case turns up that has the new guard stumped. Time to bring in Armitage – but will it be Armitage’s last case? Over to Liam and Warren for that. Warren joins us later, so let’s say hello to Liam first…

Liam, hello again and nice to talk to you once more! You’re currently deep into the new series of Armitage: Bullets For An Old Man that started in Megazine issue 467. I suppose the best way to start is by asking you just what Bullets for an Old Man is about. Tell us all you can!

LIAM JOHNSON: Bullets for an Old Man catches us up with Armitage, who has been, besides a few guest appearances here and there, including one written me, off the table for quite a while.

It serves as a bit of a re-introduction to Armitage and his world, telling you absolutely everything you need to know about them, but doing it amidst a high-pressure and very unusual murder case. Armitage is on the back foot and we don’t often see him like that.

Despite all the nods to continuity and the past the story contains, it’s actually really new-reader-friendly by design. If you like the sound of robots and time bullets and a grumpy but highly effective plain-clothes copper trying to unravel it all, then this is the story for you!

So we’re with Armitage the old man, washed up and redundant, just coming into the office as a consultant to have his memories sucked out to make his robo-replacements a little bit more effective. Previously we’ve seen Armitage as the be-all and end-all of Brit-Cit detecting. What made you switch it up and change the tone of the strip?

LJ: Honestly, it just felt like the next evolution of the character. I don’t know if this was by design or just happened naturally when Armitage was created by Dave Stone, David Bishop, and Sean Philips, and by that I mean the series rather than just the character, but change has always been baked into its DNA. Steel came in as a trainee Judge Detective but very quickly she progressed. She became Armitage’s equal. She got married. Had a child.

One of my favourite things about 2000 AD is that the characters age. And we can’t just ignore that. Armitage is old. Though exactly how old, and I’ve done the math, I’ll sit on for now. Ha!

So with all that in mind, and with Armitage largely being off-panel for ten or so years, I asked myself “Where would he be now?”

And yes, Armitage has always been kind of the man-in-charge and the smartest guy in the room but he never rubbed along well with his superiors. He was never shy about the fact he knew better and we saw him disobey orders quite frequently. And policing, there’s a lot of politics to it. It’s a bit naive to think the best copper gets bumped up. I think it would defy the logic of corruption and class injustice the long list of creators before us established to not imagine that Armitage would be edged out at some point.

And there’s a bittersweetness to it all as well. The fact Steel is now essentially his superior means Armitage did his job of training her well. Just like he’s done everything else well in his career. So by making these changes, it felt like we were dropped into a particular fraught time in Armitage’s life. Instantly we had story. You don’t even need a killer and there’s conflict to be had.

Is it fair to say it’s something that comes from a logical moving on of things? – after all, Armitage himself always came across as that classic British TV detective trope – a Morse equivalent thrown into a strange future world who retained all the cleverness, and the grumpiness, as he solved future crime. So this far into Armitage’s history, it’s only right to see that he’d be ageing out of a police force that increasingly sees him as a dinosuar.

LJ: It’s exactly that. I didn’t set out to break any toys, all the types of Armitage stories we’ve seen before are all still playable, but now we see Armitage facing arguably a battle he can’t win. His own mortality.

Those TV inspirations were definitely on my mind. Taking a page from my TV writing work, if they asked me to reboot a live-action show of similar ilk, you can’t just ignore a character ageing.  Actors age. And while theoretically you can in comics, it takes away from the idea that Dredd-verse is a living, breathing thing its own right. That feels like a disservice to the character and the reader to just ignore it.

It all starts off in episode one as a standard Armitage series, albeit with the radical shift of Armitage as the washed-out copper that the Justice Department don’t need or want any more. We get Armitage the belligerent cop, all piss and vinegar, totally hating where he’s at and what he’s doing, having to work with the Mechanismo-detectives who’ve replaced him.

Liam, how much fun is Armitage to write this way? It feels like you’re really enjoying it all, really playing into the classic sarcastic grumpy old cop trope.

LJ: Honestly, I’ve been having the time of my life writing Armitage. I’m such a big fan of the crime genre and particularly this type of archetypical character. Where doing the right thing is just ingrained in them, it’s literally in their bones, but they’ve done it a thousand and one times now. And they know they’ll do it a thousand more, but it doesn’t make it any less frustration the world is no better than when they started. People should be learning and picking up the slack but arguably that’s the one thing that would piss off Armitage most. He’s a contradiction and those are the best characters to write.

And what was the idea behind bringing in the Mechanismo units as replacements? There’s a thread going through Bullets for an Old Man that opens part 1 – ‘Some things are just inevitable… young will become old and we all will die,’ and comes up again in part 3 with the interrogation of the jailed old psychopath serial killer – the mention of inevitability. Are we looking at Armitage’s last stand here or just the old man accepting that his time might have come after all?

LJ: Inevitability is the key word for the entire book for me. That’s the theme. It’s the word I’ve got scrawled on a little post-it note stuck to my computer whenever I’m writing Armitage. Death is inevitable. Aging is inevitable. Us being replaced is inevitable. It just usually happens much later in life.

But now we find ourselves in a unique moment in time when people in their twenties, thirties, forties, are already having their own purpose in life, at least when it comes to work, being called into question. It’s impossible not to have come across the discussion of A.I. We’re all a bit like Armitage right now.

So let’s explore that topic with a character who is already staring down the barrel of that metaphorical gun. And, while I want to try avoid spoilers here, Part 4 ends on a cliffhanger that I’m pretty damn proud of.

We should fear for Armitage. He’s nearing the end of a very long road… Will that be in this story? Or the next?

You’ll have to wait and see, but it is probably good news for the Department they’ve got some replacements on standby. I would love to write this series for a good long while, I’ve got loads of ideas that continue on the threads we’ve set up here, but nothing says Armitage has to be the lead…

Now that’s just being scary Liam!

There’s also those personal issues that Armitage is dealing with, not least that he’s seen Treasure rise up the ranks to now be Chief Judge Detective and the problems that’s entailed. It might not have been her idea to bring in the plainclothes Mechanismo detectives but she’s also, as Armitage says over a rather tense pint with he, ‘still enforcing it.’ She’s also got to do the difficult job of getting Armitage in for those memory delves, effectively him providing the memories and experience to train up the mechanismos. It’s really no wonder he’s so pissed off with it all, isn’t it?

LJ: Their relationship is really the backbone of the entire series since its inception. And like I said, the fact Treasure has risen to such ranks just shows Armitage has done his job well. But now she’s entangled with all the politics that Armitage hates so much.

I still think both would take a bullet for the other but the rather more complicated question is, can they still work together? And that’s actually much more interesting thing to unpack in the long run.

Of course, all Treasure really has to do is dangle a new case, the one the mechanismo detectives can’t solve and he’s up like a young ‘un and back on the case.

All of which means you get to do the great thing of having him waltz in and take over, the perfect detective who can walk into a crime scene and absolutely nail it, solve the case within a couple of minutes. Doing episode 1 as a classic sort of Sherlock Holmes (other great detectives are available) thing – bit of background, impossible mystery of a crime, solved in the very moment the detective walks into the room – was that one of those tick box moments for you?

LJ: Absolutely. As much as I love my modern-day gritty crime dramas, I love my classics just as much. In fact I only just ticked off a longstanding item on my bucket-list a month or so ago when I finally got to watch the Mouse Trap. Fantastic stuff.

That being said, and a few people have picked up on this, we should remember that Bill, the main plainclothes Mechanismo we’ve got to know, probably would have solved the case if Armitage had handed over his memories… As much as I’m anti-A.I. when it comes to anything other than aiding medical diagnosis etc. etc., there’s a much better story to be had by muddying the waters. We know A.I. is advanced in the Dredd-Verse, so again we can’t just ignore that to serve the purpose of our story. We play with the toys we’ve got.

Thing is, with episode 2 you rather switch it around and introduce elements into the Armitage story that we haven’t really had before. Or have we?

LJ: For the case itself, everything Armitage details is new, but it all fits within the continuity of what we’ve seen before. It’s a case from the past come back to haunt him.

From a writing point-of-view, it just makes it easier for the audience to invest in something when the detective cares about it too. And given the somewhat random nature of the crime, from the readers perspective anyway, it needed that hook.

Normally, as far as my terrible memory remembers, Armitage tales are all classic detectives from popular culture transposed into Dreddworld. But here you’ve definitely switched that up, bringing in the psycho killer with the time bullets – suddenly it’s a whole different sort of Armitage tale, a time-travelling mystery for Armitage to solve.

So Liam, why the switch up?  Why change the Armitage we’ve come to expect? Or is it just a case of playing into things, introducing the time-bullets as just another element of the mystery for Armitage to gnaw at?

LJ: When I first got talking to Tharg The Mighty about my interest in pitching for the book, the one steer he gave me was to avoid some grand corruption story. We’d seen that in Armitage a couple of times before and I don’t think we could’ve topped it. To me, it would’ve just been playing the greatest hits. He wanted something from science-fiction based crimes. Something we could only get in the Dreddworld.

So it got me thinking and I came up with a question; can you prevent a murder that’s already happened? And how is that not a brilliant prompt for a story? I knew right away that was the case we had to investigate. And given we’ve seen quite extension flashbacks in Armitage before, again it just felt like actually, though it is surprising, it’s all in the DNA of the book.

And I have to add, though they are called ‘Time Bullets’, Armitage does make it clear that was only a nickname and the science is that these bullets phase out between atoms until the moment they’re required to phase back into reality and carry on their trajectory. There’s no time travel involved. They’re always there. If they were real, there might be one just an inch from your forehead right now. Again, there’s an inevitably to them.

Finally for now, part 3 has a return of another classic Armitage trait, as the Psi-Judge interrogation of the aged jailed psi-active serial killer reveals another five potential victims. Armitage doesn’t have the benefit of the flashback where we saw what did happen with the time-gun in part 2, so we’re one step ahead of him here. But he can certainly see the risk that the serial killer might merely be manipulating things to his own ends. And here’s where that classic Armitage trait comes in – do what Treasure orders or do it his way. Again, it’s a classic set-up for things and I’m sure one you enjoyed writing.

We’re a few episodes in now – what can you tease us for what we can expect for the rest of the series, including how many episodes we can expect here?

LJ: It’s interesting you think we’re one step ahead of Armitage there. I won’t say much more on that but all will be come clearer.

Hmmmmmm.

LJ: In terms of other teases, I think it’s fair to say there’s more discussion to be had about Lucius Garrett, of if he’s just a very messed up predictive genius or perhaps there’s some real pre-cognitive abilities there.

And Armitage and Steel do feel like they’re on an inevitable collision course, despite the deep-rooted love and respect between them. But who is right? Are either of them wrong? And again, can Armitage stop a murder that’s already taken please?

And again, inevitability is the theme… And we close this story out with five-episodes. This could be where the story ends but, truthfully, I’d like this to be the beginnings of a much longer story. But by saying that out loud I’ve now risked jinxing the whole thing and looking rather foolish. But that’s writing in a nutshell really.

You’ve written Armitage once before – for the Sci-Fi Special 2021. But that was a different kind of thing, something very much driven by the overarching story there. So this would be your first proper Armitage in many ways. What did you want to bring to it?

LJ: I loved writing Armitage back in that Special. I think we did an interview where I gushed about how much fun I had writing his dialogue.

Oh we did! You said this at the time… ‘Honestly, the hardest part of writing this strip was getting Devlin and Armitage to shut up. I could’ve easily written a whole epic-length tale of them just locked in a room. The characters couldn’t be more opposite and that’s why their chemistry is so perfect.’

LJ: And all that still holds true. I think what I bring to the table, and this comes from my TV writing, is a sense of continuity. I don’t just mean in terms of “This happened in X issue” but more “Because this happened to this character in this way, it’s going to colour his reaction to Y in this story.”

I know 2000 AD isn’t a soap opera but there’s a load of similarities. Long, ongoing stories, with a cast of hundreds all interacting and affecting one another. I’m not writing a character who has been in thirty stories, that’s me plucking a number from thin air there, I’m writing a character who has been alive for decades. I actually kicked off a phrase in that special, of ‘Joining the Queue’, which was a thread I’d hope to get to pick up again one day. We do that a little here and maybe we’ll get to explore it further down the line.

Now, as far as Armitage the character is concerned, what do you both think had made him so popular to readers? Is it that obvious difference to Dredd – the more thoughtful, considered take on cops when compared to Dredd – the Morse/Columbo/Holmes aspect as compared to the Dirty Harry of Dredd?

LJ: I think Armitage speaks for all us. It’s that frustration that doing the right thing doesn’t seem to make the world a better place. But we all, or most of us, continue to try. And we can’t pick up a gun like Dredd and, in reality, we wouldn’t want to mow down someone or lock them up in isolation for forty years. And it taps in that need for answers. We all love a good mystery.

Liam, did you know it was going to be Warren drawing this? Was it a collaboration at the creation stage or did Warren come on once you’d started writing it?

LJ: I didn’t know it would be Warren until quite late in the scripting stage. That being said, I couldn’t have been more thrilled! I’ve told Warren what a big fan of his work I am, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to be working with him.

As it was quite late in the day for me finding out, it was more the passing of a baton type collaboration. But Matt, Tharg, really is fantastic at teaming up the right writer/artist combo so I was never in any doubt he’d pick someone that would make me look infinitely better than I am.

So in my script I lay out how I see the page and take care to label the important bits, often saying things like “I’m asking for this because it’s important for Part 4, Page 5” for example. But then say “Knowing all this, feel free to mix it up and change anything you want.” I can’t draw for toffee. I wish I could. Whenever I get art back it’s always infinitely better than I imagine and Warren was no different.

WARREN PLEECE: He’s being modest here, but Liam’s script had everything already there for me. Right from the start I was hooked, which is always a good sign. Nice to have all the essential descriptive goods laid out for me, but with the occasional room to improvise. And, like Liam says, the skill of pairing up a ‘team’ is crucial. Thank you, oh Mighty One.

Warren, you’ve got a nice history of wandering around the Dreddverse now – I might be wrong (I so often am), but is this your first time drawing Armitage? Is he one of those characters you always had a hankering to do take a stab at?

WP: I drew Armitage as a side character in James’ Diamond Dogs, where he enlists Nia Jones to break up some Brit Cit gangs, so I was very much onboard for this series when it was mooted. And another opportunity for me to delve further into his character. Grumpy, scowly and flawed. Yes please.

Yes, you certainly aren’t new to drawing Brit-Cit though – as you say, you showed us the seedier side of things with the James Peaty written Diamond Dogs. When we talked about that one back in 2019 (right here!) you described your approach there as ‘I’ve played up a ’70s brutalist feel for the background architecture in the Nu East End, just occasionally glimpsing a slightly shinier Brit-Cit, faded in the background’.

If that was 1970s brutalism, what’s the vibe for this Armitage tale? And what sort of artistic decisions were there in drawing this new series with Armitage and a bit more of Brit-Cit?

WP: There’s still a bit of that down at heel, back end of the shiny façade feel to my take on Brit-Cit this time around, maybe because I love drawing all that stuff. This time though, I’ve mixed it more with the impersonal city centre, all dissected road ways and cut-off neighbourhoods dominated by ridiculously high buildings. Maybe a visual metaphor for Armitage’s situation?

Your art really does suit the sort of kitchen sink drama of Brit Cit I think, as opposed to the glitz and big city lights of MC1 – or at least that’s my take on it. What would you say?

WP: Thanks. Praise indeed. I love kitchen sink drama and I think it really fits the tone and mood of Liam’s story here. All of that stuff echoed the 50s and 60s it came from, but I don’t think we’ve ever really moved too far away from it, no matter how many luxury penthouse apartments go up or how many neighbourhoods become gentrified. I think the Dreddverse future has always been very much a projection of the weird, unequal times we currently live in.

And it’s always fascinating to hear an artist describe their own style and how it’s developed through the years – how would you describe your own style?

WP: Kitchen sink, film noir; they’re both terms and influences on my comics. They were when I started in the late 80s and still are today. There’s more going on and in them today, I’d say. I’m a culture sponge, soaking up visual media from all over the shop, albeit with a nod to the past and classic cinematic storytelling.

Liam, you’ve seen Warren’s art on Armitage by now – feel free to heap praise on what he’s brought to Armitage here?

LJ: I just love it. I think Brit-Ct should have that more ‘kitchen sink drama’ feel you described. This isn’t Mega-City One and at no point reading our book could you confuse it for such. It’s more grounded and dare I say grittier and Warren sprinkles in just the right amount of sci-fi so we can still maintain that noir feel. And he’s doing some fantastically subtle character acting too. So yeah, I couldn’t be happier. I hope to meet him in person at con one day so I can shake his hand.

Warren, talk to us about the making of this Armitage strip? What’s the process you use these days?

WP: The nuts and bolts after reading the script are to scrawl thumbnail breakdowns on printed copies of each page for composition, sketch out characters and interesting tech stuff, then pencil on good old fashioned cartridge paper. I’ll ink onto Bristol board using a lightbox, pens, brush pens, markers and loads and loads of black ink, then scan those into photoshop to colour.

I’ve found spending too long staring at a screen does my head in after a while. Working this way keeps me sane (ish).

Warren was good enough to send along a great sketch of ‘Bill’, our new favourite Mechanismo unit, plus process work from the first part of Bullets for an Old Man – it’s absolutely wonderful seeing how it’s all put together…

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Now, any plans for more Armitage once Bullets for an Old Man has finished? And what else do you have for us to look forward to, whether for The Mighty One or elsewhere?

LJ: My only slight-regret with Bullets for an Old Man is that I had loads of people get in touch to express how excited they were to see an Armitage locked-room mystery and I felt a tad guilty knowing the story became something else, something much grander, very quickly.

I don’t regret that choice, I’m very proud of the story we’ve told, but it did leave me with an itch to scratch. So I can say that Matt has commissioned a two-part whodunnit story from me that provides the reader with all the clues they need to solve the crime.

I’m also currently scripting a story set within the Regened world and also a brand-new Tales From the Black Museum that I’m very excited to see come together. Besides that, that’s me on the comics front for the time being.

But in terms of Armitage, I can’t stress how much I have loved this experience and people’s reaction to our story. As I mentioned before, in that Sci-Fi Special back in 2021, I laid out some breadcrumbs for potential future stories. Bullets for An Old Man is no different. There are lines of dialogue and character choices and images that could, theoretically, lay the ground work for a lot of future stories. Or they won’t. Though Matt and I know why these things are there, they could equally work with no further exploration. We spent a lot of time here reestablishing Armitage’s status-quo here and fleshing out this cast of supporting characters. Will I be around to see that happen? Will Armitage even still be alive? Who’s to say at this point. But, if you have enjoyed what we’ve done so far, make sure to spread the word. I’ll be around as long as Tharg and the readers of 2000 AD and the Megazine want me.

WP: Like Liam, I’d love to explore more murky avenues with Armitage. I think he’s a perfect foil to the pumped up anti-heroics of Dredd. I guess we just can’t get enough grump from our favourite characters and this series has definitely whetted my appetite. As well as all of that, I’d love to draw more of ‘Bill’, our favourite plain clothes Judge Mechanismo, come Armitage punch bag side-kick.

In other work, I have a graphic novel coming out this August with Berger Books/ Dark Horse Comics called The Sunny Luna Travelling Oracle. It’s an eco-noir thriller set in a near future dust bowl version of the US. Lots of weird, dark (of course) and wonderful stuff ensues because of some very underground and sought-after books. I think you’ll like it.

Well, I can’t speak for Tharg, but from what I’ve read of Armitage, this one’s doing great things and I can’t wait for more.

Thanks so much to Liam and Warren for taking the time to answer those questions – you can see just what he’s been talking about in Armitage: Bullets for an Old Man that started in Megazine issue 467 and reaches part 3 in the new issue of the Megazine on the stands of all the finest comics emporiums the Galaxy has to offer, including the 2000 AD web shop!

You can read more from Liam in the interview we did about that classic meet-up of two Brit-Cit legends, Armitage and Devlin Waugh in the 2021 Sci-Fi Special here. And we’ve talked to Warren about Diamond Dogs here. and about Fiends of West Berlin here.

Finally, because we only showed them to you small above, here’s the full-sized process pieces from Warren, just so you can see all that detail that goes into his pages…

Time to head north of Brit-Cit again, as we’re back on patrol with CalHab’s Harrower Squad who’ve returned for a second series and find themselves on Urban Rotation – running right now in Judge Dredd Megazine – out now!

We chatted to writer David Baillie about CalHab Country and Urban Rotation last week and now we’re sitting down with 2000 AD legend and artist on Harrower Squad – Steve Yeowell.

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CalHab’s the wild area north of Brit-Cit where the world dumps its radioactive waste, turning everything outside the major conurbations such as Glascal into an inhospitable wasteland populated by mutant tribes. Responsible for patrolling the Radlands are the heavy-weapons Judge teams like the Harrower Squad. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.

We’re now into the second Harrower Squad series, Urban Rotation, which hits its second part in the new Megazine 469 and has followed straight on from CalHab Country (Megazine issues 464-467). We’ve seen the nightmare of the Radlands, found out that the CalHab Justice Department is far from perfect, and seen CalHab Judge Brontide barely make it out alive, unlike the rest of her squad. Now, Brontide, leading her new Harrower Squad, is on Urban Rotation, patrolling the mean streets of Glascal and finding out just how high up the corruption goes.

So, time to speak to a genuine legend of 2000 AD about what it’s like in the wilds of CalHab with Harrower Squad… Steve Yeowell…

Hi Steve, welcome! How the devil are you?

STEVE YEOWELL: Doing as well as can be expected, thanks for asking.

How did you get involved in Harrower Squad?

SY: I got an email from Tharg which said, quote: “…are you interested in drawing a Dreddworld series for the Meg? It’s about a Heavy Weapons team that deal with the mutants in the Calhab radlands…” I read through the first script and jumped at the opportunity.

This is the first time I’ve worked with David and the experience is a real pleasure. I’m thoroughly enjoying the screenplay quality of his scripts.

Steve, we’ve already chatted with David about the strip itself, so I’d love to talk about art with you, both on Harrower Squad and in general. Are you still working the same way, that combination of physical and digital? And can you give us some idea of what your process is these days and what you use to make your art?

SY: At the moment my process seems, apart from the digital delivery, to have drifted back to being entirely analogue. I’m drawing on heavyweight cartridge paper using blue pencil for the preliminary stages and breakdowns, then graphite to tighten everything up. When inking I use rapidographs and markers of various sizes for technical stuff, dip pen and brush for figures and the organic. 

As far as your art on Harrower Squad is concerned, what was your thinking when approaching it?

SY: Harrower Squad themselves came over to me as a single multi-faceted character, so on as many occasions as I could I tried to get all of them (or whoever remained of them…) into a panel.

At this point, let’s share with you some of the art for the development of Harrower Squad that Steve sent over, just three of the character studies of the squad…

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The colours here on both Harrower Squad stories have come from Chris Blythe. I said it to David, and I’ll repeat it here, I think he’s brought a real richness and depth to your art that really elevates the whole thing. What do you both think of his work?

SY: I’ve worked with Chris on and off for years and love what he does. What you’ve said sums his contribution to Harrower Squad up perfectly.

Over on your Wikipedia page, your artistic style is described as ‘Yeowell’s work is noted for delicate penmanship and lifelike facial expressions, with a notable economy of style.’

Fair? Or would you take issue with that? Personally, I think that’s pretty good, although with this work on Harrower Squad I’d question the economy of style bit – seems to me you’ve put a hell of a lot into this, expressive characters, a lot of work going into both foreground character stuff and backgrounds to set the scene.

SY: I’m flattered by that description. I started working harder on the character’s acting when I was drawing Three Little Wishes (written by Paul Cornell) and I’ve tried to continue that working with David on Harrower Squad.

How would you describe your particular artistic style? Personally, I’d go so far as to say it’s something immediately recognizable, unlike anything else we’ve ever seen in 2000 AD, simple lines, strong storytelling, confident and bold and at home equally in colour or in black and white.

Again, how does that sound and how would you say it’s changed over the years?

SY: Thanks for the kind words.

I guess my style is rooted in tradition in so far as I’m influenced by the creators whose work I grew up looking at, so anybody who was anybody in the sixties and seventies. My particular favourites way back then were Ian Kennedy and Jack Kirby; I’ve added many others since then, way too many to list.

I now prefer formal page layouts for storytelling and if anything they’re getting more formal – I find I’m using the six panel grid, two across by three down, repeatedly. 

And now, just as an example of what Steve’s talking about with his process, he sent across several pages of pencils and inks from Harrower Squad: CalHab Country Part 2… (and don’t worry, we’ll post full-size versions of these beauties at the end!)

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You’ve been in 2000 AD now for some 27 years – unbelievably Zenith was back in 1987!

Despite having worked all over (and can I personally say thank you for two of my faves, The Invisibles and 67 Seconds?) is 2000 AD something of a spiritual home for you now?

SY: You’re very welcome; The Invisibles and 67 Seconds were both great projects to work on. Mighty Tharg has been particularly kind to me over the years with both the stories he’s asked me to work on and the creators he’s given me the opportunity to work with.

Just for fun, you’ve been responsible for work on so many iconic 2000 AD characters and strips – Zenith, Sinister Dexter, Dredd – but what’s the one strip/character you’ve always had a hankering to write/draw?

SY: Anything with apes and/or tigers.

Finally, what can we look forward to from you both? Either for Tharg or elsewhere?

SY: More of the same I hope!

So that’s where we left it, imagining just how we could find someone to write Steve a script packed with loads of apes and tigers – you just know it would be so good!

We shall leave you with just a little sneak peek at the troubles Judge Brontide’s facing in Harrower Squad: Urban Rotation Part 2, out right now in the new Megazine…

Thank you so much to Steve for sending along both answers and art here. You can find Harrower Squad: Urban Rotation right now in the latest Judge Dredd Megazine, available everywhere the Galaxy’s Greatest is sold, including the 2000 AD web shop!

And as promised, here’s the full-sized pages of Steve’s art process that he sent along… all from Harrower Squad: CalHab Country Part 2 in Megazine 465. First there’s Steve’s pencils, then inks, and then the finished version with all those great colours from Chris Blythe…

Time to head north of the border now to the wilds of what’s left of Scotland, an irradiated wilderness of extreme violence, pagan worship, and corruption at the highest levels – yes, we’re off to CalHab to see what David Baillie and Steve Yeowell have done with the place in the Judge Dredd Megazine strip Harrower Squad.

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North of Brit-Cit, the Caledonian Habitation Zone, CalHab for short, hasn’t exactly had the best reputation in the world of Dredd, mostly being the dumping ground for radioactive waste that makes everywhere bar the few cities like Glascal a radland inhabited by mutant tribes. But writer David Baillie and artist Steve Yeowell are setting about changing all that in their new Dreddworld strip, Harrower Squad.

The first four-parter, CalHab Country, ran in Judge Dredd Megazine (issues 464-467), where we followed one of CalHab’s heavy weapons Judges teams into the radlands for a bit of ‘clearance’ work that didn’t exactly go to plan. That was all radland muties, ancient pagan rituals, Glascal mobsters, secret plans, officially sanctioned psychopath Judges, all leading to a thriller with a hell of a lot of casualties.

That was followed by second series, Urban Rotation (beginning in Megazine 468 and continuing this month) with Judge Brontide and her new squad heading into Glascal for some crowd control as the cits are getting restless amidst the festering political corruption at the heart of CalHab’s Justice Department.

So, time to put on our finest tartan and head into CalHab to chat to both David and Steve about their new series. Today it’s David talking all things Harrower Squad, with Steve joining in next week.

Hi David,how are you? Doing well in this ridiculous, crazy world?

DAVID BAILLIE: Doing well, thanks! And all the better for chatting to you guys.

We’re now into series 2 of Harrower Squad in the Megazine, although it’s been one of those that’s run straight from series 1, CalHab Country, to series 2, Urban Rotation, in the last six months. Can you catch people up with what’s the deal with Harrower Squad and what they can expect from Urban Rotation?

DB: Yeah, I thought we might have a bit of a gap between the seasons, so I took care to remind the reader of everything that they needed to know from series one… Not realising that they wouldn’t have the opportunity to forget anything! 

Calhab Country is a soft reboot of the Calhab/Cal Hab territories for the modern-day Dreddverse – although I’m taking care not to contradict anything that went before.

Calhab, The Caledonian Habitation Zone, is what Scotland is called in the year of our Dredd 2146. We’re seeing this world through the eyes of Harrower Squad, a team of heavy weapons Judges who take orders from Calhab Judge Control, working between the twin metropolises of Glascal and Megaburgh (known colloquially by citizens as M’burgh, because sometimes nothing changes!)

These Heavy Weapons teams are highly trained specialists, who operate both in the Radlands (the desolate wasteland between Glascal and M’burgh) and ‘urban rotation’ in the cities themselves. Each judge within the unit has their own hi-tech, hi-calibre offensive weapon with a nifty holo-sight, and sometimes (often) one member of the squad is completely insane. In the first story, we discovered that this is actually by design, as they’re often required to do things which are incredibly unsavoury. One such onerous task is to clear the Radlands of the mutants who live there (because otherwise how can the Corps develop and exploit that land?!)

DB: Don’t worry if you missed the first season – everyone died, except Judge Brontide, who now leads an entirely new team, which we just met in Megazine 468 as they start Urban Rotation!

And it’s been great seeing Steve and Chris shift gears into this new setting – instantly giving both stories a very different feel!

How did Harrower Squad come about? What was the genesis of the strip?

DB: Back in February 2023, about seven Prime Ministers ago, I asked Tharg if there was anything in particular he was looking for and he suggested working up an idea for a Calhab story, with fewer kilts and claymores and something a bit more like the old TV show Taggart.

As luck would have it, I’d already worked up a Taggart-like Calhab idea a few years ago that I’d never figured out an ending for, so I dusted off the idea and updated it – gruff older Judge, young apprentice and all. Tharg said he liked it, but that it was basically an Armitage story! (Armitage, of course, is currently being aced by my good friends Liam Johnson, Warren Pleece and Jim Campbell!)

Anyway, in the background of that discarded Future Taggart tale were some Heavy Weapons Judges, guarding a crime scene. ‘How about a story with those guys?’ asked Tharg, and my cerebral cortex lit up!

Was it something you collaborated on from the start or was it a case of David pitching and Tharg bringing in Steve?

DB: I was on the train back from Portsmouth Comic Con last year, just hours after raving about Steve’s work on strips like Zenith and Maniac 5 to Anna Morozova, when I got the call from Tharg to say that Steve was taking on the mantle of Calhab. To say I was overjoyed might go some way to explaining my yelps of delight to my unnerved fellow passengers.

I can’t remember how far through the scripts I was, but when I got home I sat down with a hundred pages of Steve’s most recent work to study, and see what I could lean into to make the work even more Yeowelly.

And how’s the collaboration working between the pair of you?

DB: I’m in awe of Steve and his work. We met for the first time at last year’s Thought Bubble, and I just hope I didn’t fanboy too much at him. Every page of this series has been scorching, and I couldn’t be happier!

If I know who’s drawing a script I try to lean into their strengths, but Steve is honestly good at everything. I can’t imagine him being stumped by any panel description or storytelling ask. He also draws robot hands better than anyone else in the business. Go check out those robot hands!

CalHab is one of those Dreddworld places that doesn’t get all that much love. Why set it there? Did you just fancy doing something from the homeland David?

DB: I always did, but there were a few things about previous Calhab stories that I didn’t click with. When Tharg suggested a soft reboot I was over the moon. Apart from a couple of one-offs in the main Dredd slot, we haven’t spent any time there in 30 years, so if something from the old stories isn’t mentioned, it hasn’t necessarily been retconned – it’s just been a while! 

We’ve been given carte blanche to give the territory a bit more gravitas… by which I mean massive guns.

Massive Guns have been part of Dreddworld since the beginning – and Steve does draw a damn fine massive gun!

We’ve seen the Harrower Squad in action and plenty of it in CalHab Country and now in Urban Rotation but there’s definitely two very distinct tones to the two series. So if CalHab Country was Scottish folk horror through a Dreddverse filter, how would you describe Urban Rotation? And what, if anything apart from just being a writer, made you want to switch settings?

DB: I really wanted to start outside of the city to instantly give this Calhab series a different feel from other Dreddverse stories. I even set the first couple of episodes in the ruined remnants of my hometown back in Whitburn, West Lothian, including my favourite sweet shop and cinema! Narratively, some important stuff happens there that couldn’t happen elsewhere – and we get to see firsthand how corrupt Judge Control is. 

I knew that after that I wanted to show the cities, and really look at how different they both are to Mega-City One. I also liked the idea of an abrupt transition from the Avenging Angel Brontide at the end of book one to Commander Brontide leading a new squad in a gleaming Glascal!

Like I said – Steve and Chris have done a really, really incredible job giving the two locales a totally different aesthetic.

Urban Rotation starts off as Maniac 5 in future Scotland, and boils up into a political thriller with missile launchers, a mysterious artefact, and a battle at a hilltop laboratory.

Quite unusual to have the two series run back to back in the Meg – did you plot and pitch both together or was it simply one of those coincidences of producing so far in advance that Tharg got CalHab Country and liked it so much he immediately commissioned Urban Rotation?

DB: I’d written the first series in such a way that if we didn’t get a sequel it would still, hopefully, stand on its own – but Tharg asked for a follow up as soon as I’d handed in the final page. I think that was completely down to having a legend like Steve drawing the pages!

One thing that’s coming to the fore in Urban Rotation is the political motivation behind the heavy-weapons Judge squads – although it was briefly mentioned in the first story, you really introduce it at the start of part 2, the notion that there’s a hidden agenda behind the various squads and it’s all tied into the politics of getting the international corporations interested in coming into Calhab and that’s a lot easier to do when they know that the country’s clear of the undesirable sorts.

Then you’ve got the involvement of the mob boss, not to mention Chief Judge Haggan looking pretty damn shifty right now. Is there a chance that you’re really setting up some very high-stakes political intrigue serial that’s a hell of a long way from how Harrower Squad began?

DB: Yeah, I alluded to a conspiracy in the first story and I really wanted to explore it more as soon as we got to the cities and met other figures from Judge Control. Writing this in a country that’s been swimming in corruption for the last few years, it didn’t take much imagination to conjure up a government happy to commit genocide and asset strip its own country for personal gain!

When I was figuring out the hidden nature of Judge Control, the BBC was repeating the classic 80s serial Edge of Darkness, which I’d never seen before. I loved it, and even though it was about fictional political machinations, it fed my fury when creating Judge Control and Chief Haggan.

As for Capaldi, the Glascal Mob boss, he was a joy to write! I grew up around the corner from one famous Capaldi (Lewis) and met another (Peter) at New York Comic Con a few years ago, so the name’s a little nod to both of them. I don’t want to give away too much, but yeah he’s tied into everything that’s going on.

By chapter four of Urban Rotation, a lot will have changed, but we’ll still have some unanswered questions – including one from book one that at least one eagle-eyed reader has contacted me about. Hopefully we’ll have set the stakes teeteringly-high for our third story.

What are your plans for more CalHab? I always presume with something new there’s a lot of world-building to do and the natural outcome of this for a writer is that it triggers a lot of thinking about possible future stories?

DB: I have a notebook full of ideas sitting on my desk, and a list of all the threads that need to be tied up, in case my ageing brain can’t remember where we left everything when Tharg calls and asks for Season Three.

Unfortunately even hinting at any of these ideas would spoil the end of Urban Rotation – as it changes the power balance in Calhab quite dramatically, and sets us up for the next explosive conflict.

Well, we won’t push too much then!

David, we’re going to talk to Steve about the art for Harrower Squad a bit later, but do feel free to tell us what you think he’s brought to the strip.

DB: As I think I said already – Steve’s an actual living legend! Getting to work with a maestro is something special, and one of the best things about working for The House of Tharg. I was re-reading the start of The Invisibles the other day – and I almost forgot it’s Steve, weaving Vertigo’s first creator-owned series!

Oh yes, loved that first Invisibles arc, Steve’s art really brought it to life.

DB: I was walking through MCM a couple of weeks ago and picked up Book Four of Zenith (which started in one of my first ever progs!) and I was starstruck all over again.

(Right next to that stall, actually, was a bunch of old arcade machines, one of which was Xybots – an old coin-op game that inspired the holographic sights on the heavy weapons in the story. It was like the universe was talking to me!)

Yes, of course the universe was talking to you David. It’s when the more mundane stuff, the chair, the pens, start chatting with you that you need to worry!

DB: Every page Steve does is a work of art, He just knows how to draw – and draw anything. He’s injected life into a world that was just my annoying words and I couldn’t be more grateful. 

There’s a panel near the end of Urban Rotation‘s first episode that’s perfect. At the start of the page, Brontide orders Harrower Squad to fire at will, and they take down a couple of the mechs – and the final panel is Brontide and two other Harrower Squad members looking on – she’s shouting, one of them is almost smiling. It’s such a perfect moment. Everything about it sings – the composition, the facial expressions, the line weight on the armour… Absolute comicbook perfection!

Ladies and gentlemen… he’s not wrong…

Colours on both Harrower Squad stories have come from Chris Blythe and I think he’s brought a real richness and depth to Steve’s art that elevates the whole thing. What do you think of his work here?

DB: I don’t think I saw Chris’ work on Harrower until it saw print, and I remember being completely overjoyed. Chris and Steve work so well together! 

Chris is using a really soft gradient on the uniforms that almost gives them an inner glow. There are a hundred small touches in every episode that make me pause – there was a particularly good shadow/highlight combination on Brontide’s face in the last episode that led into the next panel (a big Demon Forvus reveal) perfectly. Maestros – both of them!

Ah yes, Forvus, the original Harrower Squad psychopath who’s not let a little thing like death in CalHab Country stop him from cropping up in Urban Rotation!

DB: Some of what’s going on with The Demon Forvus will be explained in episode 2, and some I’ve left for Season Three. I will say that there’s a nice revisitation of the folk horror sensibility coming up that Steve and Chris absolutely nailed – and Forvus is at the centre of that scene.

And speaking of Forvus and his new role here… a little sneak peek into what’s happening in Harrower Squad: Urban Rotation Part 2…

Just for fun, you’ve written several iconic 2000 AD characters and strips over the years, but what’s the one strip/character you’ve always had a hankering to write/draw?

Go wild, anyone, anything, feel free to think of this as a begging letter to Tharg, our lord and master who art in charge of commissioning things.

DB: Maniac 5. Come on, Tharg – you know it makes sense!

Finally, what can we look forward to from you both? Either for Tharg or elsewhere?

DB: I bumped into an old agent friend of mine at a party last week, and she told me werewolf erotica is where it’s at these days. She said that no one can believe how well it sells and the publishing world is trying to analyse the trend and figure out what they can learn from it. So… Werewolf erotica, I guess?

And that’s where we left it, with David going scuttling off to make his werewolf erotica. Although whether that’s erotica about werewolves or erotica for werewolves we didn’t ask. But we did discover that there’s a disturbing number of websites devoted to it and there’s certain things you really can’t unsee.

Thanks so much to David for chatting to us about Harrower Squad – you can read more about it from Steve Yeowell (and see much more of that zarzaz artwork) later this week. And Harrower Squad: Urban Rotation continues this very week with the release of Judge Dredd: Megazine issue 469.

Every year at the Thought Bubble comic festival a hopeful group of prospective writers and artists assemble for the 2000 AD script and art contest, where only the very best will secure the ultimate prize and see their work grace the pages of the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic – 2000 AD.

Join us now in chatting to the very latest droids to be manufactured from the halls of Thought Bubble… the 2023 winners – writer Ed Whiting and artist Senu Senan, who bring their very first work for Tharg to the pages of Prog 2388 with the Terror Tale, The Essence of the Piece…

Over the years the 2000 AD/Thought Bubble script and art droid search has given us plenty of incredibly talented comic makers who’ve won and gone on to great things in the pages of the Prog, the Judge Dredd Megazine and beyond, including Rory McConville, Tom Watts, Laura Bailey, Mike Walters, Lee Milmore, Honor Vincent, James Newell, Robin Henley, Paul Williams, Tom Foster, Daniel Dwyer, Will Morris, and Tilen Javornik.

And now we can add the names of Ed Whiting and Sinu Senan to that esteemed list. This week you’re going to see just why the judging panels thought their work had what it takes to make it into the pages of the Prog as they unveil the Tharg’s Terror Tale: The Essence of the Piece. The story here is Ed’s winning pitch, worked up to publication and given to Senu to bring to life in the latest Prog. It’s a great four-pages of absolute horror, very contemporary gothic, and  heralds another two new talents who are only just beginning their 2000 AD journey.

So, without further ado, let’s chat to them…

Ed, Sinu, great to chat with you – how are you doing? 

SINU SENAN: I’m doing fine and much thanks for doing this interview with me. 

ED WHITING: I’m good thanks.

In Prog 2388 we have the very first 2000 AD work from you, the Tharg’s Terror Tale called The Essence of the Piece.

First things first, what does it mean to see your work in print this way and just what does it mean to you both to have your work in the Prog? 

EW: It’s amazing and a massive honour.

SS: I’m honoured to see my first international comic being published from 2000AD. It’s a great opportunity to be working with some amazing talents, and get to know people from within the comics community.

The Terror Tale came about following your triumphant storming of the Thought Bubble/2000 AD writer and artist talent search back in November 2023 – and you join an illustrious list of script and art droids who got their first work for Tharg this way.

Going back to last November, can you talk us through the emotions of the day and what it meant to you then to win? 

EW: It’s always nerve racking to have to get up in front of a crowd and pitch, especially as my first two times at the contest didn’t go well. Although assigning everyone a number and then calling at random, I actually found quite calming as it was in a way out of my hands if I would get to pitch or not, where as in previous years seeing your number approach brough a sense of rising dread in me.

SS: I randomly came across the 2000 AD Artist Talent Hunt page while browsing through the official TB website to book tickets for the convention. I wasn’t aware of this before and had mixed feelings about whether to participate until about two weeks before the event. It’s been decades since I ever participated in any kind of competition. I took it up as a challenge to myself and worked hard on the pages every day after that and I am glad the effort paid off. 

The experience at TB 2023 was great. I remember my first TB visit, the previous year, to be a memorable one as it was my first ever attending an international comic con. So, there was no doubt about visiting for the consecutive year too. But also, I wanted to make use of my talent in some way. I was excited to hear that I got short-listed because now I would get to know genuine feedback from the judges. All three judges were great in giving me their feedback. For me, any kind of feedback from these professionals was all I wanted to hear. Winning wasn’t on my mind, to be honest. 

And has it sunk in yet? 

EW: Just about. Holding a copy of the Prog with the finished story in it is a fantastic feeling and kind of brings it home.

SS: It is gradually getting there.

For those who don’t know, talk us through the process you both went through to get to the talent search and what the day involved. 

SS: This was my first attempt at participating in the 2000AD Artist Talent Search. As mentioned earlier, I initially had no intention to participate until about two weeks from the con date. I had to race against time and get everything done at least a day before the con. I reached the con in the morning and was kinda relieved to see that the queue for the art submission at the 2000 AD stall was less than I imagined, until when things changed and it started to get busy. There were many traditional artists with their big folders and files while I was just carrying my iPad. When my turn came, I showed it to the gentleman reviewing it and as soon as he went through my work, I felt I might stand a chance. Later that evening, I got a message confirming that I was one of the shortlisted candidates and that I needed to be there the next day for the panel. 

I reached the next day on time and sat in the front row as I was waiting my turn to get my comic reviewed. I didn’t know who was on the judges’ panel beforehand, so was excited to see Jock being one of them I’ve been a fan of his work for years. I was the last one to be called to the stage and reviewed. Anna Morozova and Tom Foster, the other two judges, shared more insight into my work and it was a great learning process too. I felt relieved to be finally getting my work professionally reviewed. Moments later, they announced the winner and the rest is history!

My favourite take on it is still Laura Bailey’s – she practised her writers pitch by getting drunk and pitching her friends beforehand – the thinking was, if you can do it drunk, you can nail it sober.

EW: I tried Laura’s method, but just ended up babbling incoherently.

Yep, a very specialist and niche method that we wouldn’t recommend for everyone!

What was the feeling you both had going into the judging process? All the judges suitably scary and hyper critical? 

SS: The judges imparted their reviews professionally, yet were so relaxed and friendly. No one seemed intimidating to be honest. They were awesome!

EW: They were all lovely. Andy Diggle said I’d given him an idea for something else, so even if I hadn’t won that would have been amazing.

Was this the first time you entered or have you had to suffer the terrible pain of rejection before? 

EW: This was my third time. No one likes rejection, but I know that I didn’t deserve to win in previous years. It went so badly.

SS: I don’t think I participated in any competition since my 7th grade. I am not a guy who demands attention generally and I tend to just go with the flow of life – keep learning and trying to outdo my own last work. It’s like being in a competition with myself rather than with others. Having said that, I entered this process just because I am serious about comics and I needed professional review/advice for my work and I felt this was the right occasion for it to happen.

Any advice to those who are thinking of entering the contests this year? 

SS: Don’t overthink, just go for it! You’ll never know what’s in store for you.

EW: I’d say the same as Sinu. Go for it. Plus it never hurts to get feedback on your work

Now, getting on to The Essence of the Piece, it’s a four page Terror Tale, beginning, middle, end in a total of just 32 panels. First of all, what’s it all about?

EW: It’s about an unscrupulous art broker called Jacob De Pheffel, who makes the mistake of taking advantage of the wrong person, an enigmatic Banksy style artist called Anagram.

Interestingly, it’s usually a Future Shock for TB contest winners, why was this a Terror Tale?

EW: I had been working on two stories, this one as well as a Future Shock. The week before the contest I was actually going with the Future Shock. The original twist in the Terror Tale was actually Panel 2 on Page 4, then as happens with stories something else pops in your head and I though that new idea made for a better ending, although even that ended up being tweaked. I did have a moment during the contest, when everyone else was pitching Future Shocks that there might have been a rule change. Paul Starkey won with a Terror Tale, so I was hoping that was still allowed.

Looking at it now, how do you both think it came out? 

EW: I think Sinu has done a fantastic job. It looks better than I imagined and could have hoped for. I hope the readers enjoy it.

SS: I think it came out pretty well but then I leave it to the readers to decide.

What are the particular storytelling difficulties with creating something so short and self-contained?

EW: It’s that difficult juggling act of stripping the story down to the bone, but making sure there is still something there for people to care about.

Of course, this isn’t just a problem for the writer but to pack all the required story elements into so few pages requires real work. And although the writers will always tell us that they do all the heavy lifting, it’s always the artists who have to really get their sleeves rolled up and get into it. 

SS: It’s challenging to establish the main characters and draw a whole tale in just four pages. Being a horror-style comic, it is critical to have the panels flowing in a particular rhythm, not overdoing anything, to get the right impact. But Ed’s script helped me follow the beats and I let it naturally flow through the panels.

I took a few liberties to make the visuals more interesting that wouldn’t affect the story, for example, replacing a skull with a candle instead of a flower vase to give it a sinister vibe. Another one was adding an abstract sculpture of hands that Anagram falls onto and then those same hands appear as shadows crawling onto Jacob on the later pages. I didn’t want to explain those aspects but I thought it told well in the thumbnail stage and confirmed it once I got the rough pencils approved from our editor. 

And here’s a little compare and contrast for you… the abstract sculptural vase and, later on, the shadows creep in…

Obviously, the pitch for Essence was done in advance of Thought Bubble, Ed. But did you have the full script nailed down as well?

EW: No, just the outline.

Once the win had sunk in, was it a case of plenty of back and forth with Matt to hammer the final script into place?

EW: Not really. Matt wasn’t there this year, so I sent him the outline first so he could actually see what the story was about. He had a few notes, but he has a skill of getting right down to the nub of the story in just a few sentences. There were a couple of minor changes, I worked really hard on my first draft, making it as tight as it could be, revising constantly and when I submitted it, Matt signed off on it (although it still needed a bit of a dialogue polish).

And did you get together to discuss Essence and how it would be? 

SS: I contacted Ed, via his socials, when I received the script from Matt. Ed and I have been in touch from time to time to inform him of the art progress. I didn’t need to discuss a lot since it was pretty straightforward and there was clarity in his script already. So I had to just dive in and draw.

EW: I was happy for Sinu to do his thing!

Sinu, a perfect place to talk art here – how did you approach Essence?

SS: Initially, when the editor told me that it’s gonna be in black and white, I was immediately intrigued. I love the rawness and fluidity of brushwork, whether traditional or digital and also playing with light and shadows. So, naturally, this script allowed me to experiment with layouts that complement the genre. I try to grasp the requirements of the script and then leave it to my instincts. The style must come naturally. I don’t force too much into it.

To me, there’s a very cultured line in what you do. It’s very fluid, an elongation and exaggeration of forms that’s effective but not excessive. And there’s a real ability to get the story beats just right, hitting all the tense moments with art that lingers nicely on the eye. 

SS: Yes, the main focus is on the beats you noticed and I am careful of bringing clarity with artistry into my work.

When it comes to your art, how do you work? Nowadays I always presume most artists are working mostly in digital. 

SS: Yes, mostly digital for now. But I would love to ink traditionally in the future and will need more practice before I commit to it. Let’s see!

Can you talk us through the process of getting Essence to the finished page?

SS: I read the script 3-4 times until I had the complete visuals in my head. I did some rough sketches of the overall page layouts along with character poses and expressions. Then I collected inspiration from multiple sources – the purpose was to enhance these visuals in my brain and search for better ideas.

I cleaned up these layouts a bit and sent them to the editor for approval, after which I moved on to the final rendering. 

I enjoy working on dark-themed stories. Also, I adore black-and-white art where you can see the strokes doing their job.

And Senu was kind enough to send along some lovely examples of the process his art goes through…

What are your backgrounds and how did you get into comics – both reading and writing?

SS: As an Indian who grew up in Bahrain for most of my childhood, I was exposed to comics at a very young age. I remember my father buying me a local comic magazine every week at a grocery store near school. It contained different stories and comic strips amalgamated into a single magazine.

I used to draw anything and everything around me as a kid. I moved to Kerala, India around the eighth grade where I got introduced to some Indian comics like Amar Chitra Katha, Phantom, Mandrake, and a few comics in my regional language – Malayalam. Internet was almost non-existent, so I lost touch with international comics for over a decade. However, I never stopped drawing and filling up my sketchbooks.

I don’t remember much of those childhood titles now, but what I do remember clearly is discovering an Incredible Hulk issue from one of my friends in my neighbourhood. It had crazy detailed inks and the panels were exploding with energy. I kept drawing as a hobby, copying and drawing all kinds of pop-culture content which was hot in the late 80s to 90s era.

Life took turns and I got re-introduced to comics after my University programme in engineering. I think it was a Spider-Man comic drawn by Humberto Ramos, a Superman comic by the late Carlos Meglia and another one from Jim Lee. Since then I never stopped digging deeper into comics, irrespective of region and language, and getting inspired by many more artists’ works who may influence my current art style.

Fast forward to 2011, I co-created an indie comic series named Autopilot – A Traffic Novel with my colleagues which was self-published and launched at the 2012 Comic Con India. It was an urban fantasy story with a humorous core and was received very well at that time. Unfortunately, the project did not make it past the first issue. Anyway, it was a nice learning experience.

I didn’t have any formal education in the Arts and I’m mostly self-taught. I moved to India from Bahrain where I completed my higher education and University degree in Electronics engineering. I left my engineering career much earlier than I thought as I had no passion for it and took a nose dive into trying something in the entertainment arts. The animation and game industry was exploding at that time and after doing a short course on animation and watching tutorials online, I worked for several companies as a Concept Artist. But in the back of my mind, I aimed to work on comics full-time someday. 

EW: Like most kids on a certain age in Britain, I got into comics through The Beano and then stuff like Eagle and Battle. I was massively into the Marvel UK stuff like Dragon’s Claws and Death’s Head. I got into 2000 AD when I was about 13, my local library had a bunch of Titan reprints and some Best of 2000 AD collections.

I’m not sure I ever thought of writing comics as a career when I was a kid. I thought all comics were made in London or New York. Both of those places seemed a million miles away from where I lived.

I did English and Film Studies at school and college, so I wrote stories and scripts for them. I kind of lost the thread in my twenties, it wasn’t until after I had a couple of bouts of Hodgkins Lymphoma in my thirties that I started writing again. You really re-evaluate your life when there’s a chance it might be over sooner than you expected.

I started submitting stuff to the slush pile, but the big thing was meeting Dave Evans at Thought Bubble one year. I started submitting stuff to him and I had half a dozen stories accepted in Futurequake, Something Wicked, and Zarjaz. Seeing you stuff in print really does help. I owe Dave a lot. I really wish he was still with us. Peter Duncan at Sector 13 has also been a massive help to me

Oh yes, Dave (Bolt-01) Evans is, and always will be, sadly missed by us all.

Ed, you already said you discovered 2000 AD in your teens – Sinu, were you aware of the Prog?

SS: I was aware of 2000 AD as a sci-fi comic a long while back and drooled over some of the artists’ works, but took a closer look after I moved to the UK in 2022.

I am stunned by the legendary works of Brian Bolland, Simon Bisley, and Cam Kennedy on Judge Dredd, Dave Gibbons and Colin Wilson on Rogue Trooper. I am still discovering more talents along the way.

As for influences on your writing/art, who are the creators that you credit with really making you sit up and realise how good comics could be and made you want to be a part of it?

EW: There’s so many. If I start listing people I’ll miss someone out, so I’ll say that my favourite comics writer and for me the greatest is John Wagner.

SS: I can’t have enough of the works of creators like Katsuhiro Otomo, Takehiko Inoue, Kentaro Miura, Daniel Warren Johnson, Wes Craig, Stan Sakai, Mike Mignola, Sean Gordon Murphy, Jeff Lemire, Frank Millar, Craig Thompson, Jeff Smith, Bill Watterson, Sergio Toppi, Naomi Urasawa, Makoto Yukimura, Junji ito, and Alex Toth to name a few.

Finally, imagine you have carte blanche over any character in 2000 AD history – who’s the one you’d pick to do a story/art on? And what would the story be?

SS: Judge Dredd is a character I would love to draw if I get the chance.

EW: Dredd. He’s an iconic character.

Two votes for Dredd there – hey, Tharg? You listening here?

Thank you so much Ed and Sinu for speaking to us. You can find The Essence of the Piece in 2000 AD Prog 2388, out right now wherever you get your Thrill Power, including the 2000 AD webshop.

We’re sure you’ll agree that both Ed and Sinu are both worthy winners of the contest and two names to keep an eye on for the future. We can’t wait to see what they deliver next.

You can find Ed Whiting online at Twitter. You can see more of Sinu Senan’s art over at Instagram and Cara.

And if reading about their pathway into the Prog and imagining your own route into making comics, there’s no better way to make that happen than to try out yourselves at the 2024 2000 AD/Thought Bubble search for the next script and art droids. Thought Bubble takes place on 16/17 November 2024.

You can find everything you need to enter here. And who knows, this time next year, it could be you not believing your work is appearing in the Prog!!

Now, we’ll end with the full-sized versions of Sinu’s rough, pencil, and inks that he so kindly showed us…

And as an extra treat, the complete four-page Gifts of the Magi that Sinu entered to the TB/2000 AD contest in 2023 and got him the win…

2000 AD Prog 2387 has the finale of the six-part Intestinauts: Busted Flush series, taking our micro marvels of the alimentary canal to greater heights than ever before as Arthur Wyatt and Pye Parr bring their latest adventure to an end.

Will the Intestinauts manage to thwart the dastardly plans of the Omega Genocide Four-infected Dr Globulon? Will Intestolabs ever recover? Will the Intestinauts survive? And will your future tummy troubles ever be the same again? There’s only one way to find out and that’s by reading Intestinauts: Busted Flush, the finale!

We’ve already chatted to Arthur Wyatt in part 1 of this mega interview (you can find that here), so now it’s time to talk to artist, colourist, letterer, designer, and creative genius of Intestinauts – Pye Parr! [Okay, okay, he asked me to put in the ‘creative genius’ – there’s always that creative clash between writers and artists!]

So far in Busted Flush, We’ve seen the Intestinauts go into battle with the experimental Instestolabs-modified bowel-bot, Omega Genocide Four – it didn’t go well. We’ve watched as OG4 escaped the lab experiment and ventured out into the nutrient pipes of Instestolabs – that didn’t go well either. And we’ve seen OG4 infect the (literal) brains behind Intestolabs, Dr Globulon – and that REALLY didn’t go well, especially for the poor Intestinauts! Now, in Part 6 in the new 2000 AD Prog, it’s all coming to an epic conclusion!

So, let’s talk to Pye Parr about what it means to be the artistic genius behind the smallest heroes… although, I should warn you that Arthur, being the writer that he is, couldn’t stop himself from butting in with a few answers of his own here! [Writers eh? What can you do?]

Hi Pye, you know we’ve already chatted to Arthur, so now it’s your turn to put the record straight!

Busted Flush has taken us behind the scenes at Intestolabs and introduced us to the (quite literal) brains behind it all, Dr Globulon. Arthur was saying that Dr Globulon turned up first in one of your sketches and appeared in the FCBD one-pager?

PYE PARR: Yeah we snuck him in pretty early, but he’s not really been a plot point until now. Looking back through my hard drive and I’ve just found a load of stuff I dont even remember drawing, including a film poster from 10+ years ago, so he’s been kicking around for a while.

I asked Arthur, I’ll ask you – seems like you’re having an absolute blast with every Intestinauts adventure?

PP: Oh man, absolutely. The scripts always make me smile. “It comes in peace!” …. “DESTROY IT!”

You’ve kept up a tradition of visual invention here in Busted Flush and Arthur’s already been singing your praises about what you bring to every page. What was that visual trigger that brought the Intestinauts to life and how did it all come together?

PP: I think the first designs were based on a pretty simple idea – they’re a form of medicine you swallow, so let’s make ’em pill shaped (and also gave me a simple design shape to use for graphics (see next question)… but then that’d make them too big, so they became pill-shaped robots within a dropship that’s an actual pill. And then we put in little transponders that are even smaller pill shaped things. It’s like a very boring fractal. Other stuff we added afterwards.

To start with I drew some with monowheels and that kind of silliness, but pretty quickly realised that’d be useless in the gut, so they got fans and scuba gear etc. Apart from the two main characters I made them up as I went along to start with, but over time they have coalesced into a regular cast of about 10 guys, each with their own job/personality. None of this ever really comes out in the story but it’s nice to have that extra stuff going on below the surface 

And here’s just some of the design work from Pye…

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In Busted Flush, you’ve really rather thrown everything at the page here. We’ve had schematics, plans, cutaway drawings, a choose-your-own-adventure strip, one-off in story flashbacks in faux-historical style, even a puzzle maze in the final episode.

Is this Arthur forcing you into doing all this or is it your own twisted sense of nostalgia and humour that made you want to get these elements in?

AW: (leaving this to Pye but I will drop this in) LOL!

PP: Think of it as me being a fully willing participant in some BDSM.

And if that isn’t the most perfect illustration of the writer-artist dynamic, I don’t know what is! Writer chuckles, artist compares it to BDSM.

PP: It kind of grew out of a slightly over-the-top level of design I did for advertising the first future shock, and a mutual love of clever infographics that Arthur and I share. Each story we seem to add more and more of it in.

And speaking of those early designs and ads that Pye has done over the years for Intestinauts…

PP: One of the benefits of doing a strip that isn’t entirely serious is you can throw in this random stuff without spoiling the story (the opposite hopefully).

I absolutely loathe advertising being thrust in your face every second of the day, so some of the leaflets and wording and in-world artefacts we throw in the mix are a kind of reaction to that, indicative of some awful corporate nonsense ruining everyone’s lives… And we’ve wanted to do a choose-your-own-adventure thing for YEARS!

And here are just a few of those incredible visual delights that we’ve seen throughout Busted Flush… including just a little of that fantastic choose-your-own-adventure sequence in part 2…

In fact, when it comes to Intestinauts, how does the collaboration work?

Is this another case of writer throwing out that simple few lines of text describing something that he knows the artist is going to have to spend days, weeks even, meticulously planning and then executing? Or do you get together and plan it all?

PP: We just text each other shit we find or think about and go from there. Arthur will say “I’m thinking about adding in X at some point” and like any good improv partner the answer is always “yes, AND….”  

It’s a bit of both as far as description goes. Sometimes Arthur will have to plan something meticulously, and other times will describe a fairly simple leaflet or whatever and I’ll spend a whole afternoon making it look ridiculous. I think we each know what the other one likes!

AW: (leaving this to Pye but I will drop this in) The numbers with the Bowelbots dropping (above) is actually something I borrowed from a Shang-Chi page. Thank Douglas Wolk’s book All of the Marvels for pointing me at that – In fact if you like seeing the comics form being messed around with there’s a bunch of cool and innovative stuff that happened in that run of Shang-Chi. Who knew?

I probably mentioned it to Pye as a cool thing and then wrote up a bit in the script that was like the Shang Chi thing. 

Yep, there we go, the writer jumping in with ‘That was me! That was me!’ They’re not jealous of the artist’s talent at all, are they?

And this was the Shang Chi page that Arthur’s talking about – art by the legendary Gene Day…

PP: Leaning into the design of the world is very fun though. You can’t really see it in the final image (the angle to show it would have made the art boring) but the top of the Intestolabs building in the cutaway from the first page is supposed to look like an open mouth swallowing a (surprise surprise) pill.

Arthur’s description was detailed in that it gave me a lot of bits to fit into the building, but the actual look of it was left fairly open. 

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What about the plans for the future of everyone’s favourite stomach saviours? Arthur did mention something about taking it large – ‘Intestinauts versus the poop meteor that’s going to destroy the planet’

PP: Oh please god lets do the Excremeteor! That sounds GREAT!! Scatasteroid? Effluencomet? Crapteroid?

Finally, what can we look forward to from the pair of you next?

PP: I’ve got a bit of cover work coming up (hopefully) for the US, and a summer working with Alec Worley on a webcomic I can’t say much about yet… and after that the passion projects: more Petrol Head and Intestinauts!

And that’s where we left it, with Pye heading off into the sunset still chuckling to himself as he came up with more space-related ideas… ‘Poopteor’ [giggle], ‘Shiteroid’ [heh heh], ‘Planetary Turdinator’ [guffaw], ‘The Intestinaut’s biggest jobby yet’ [bwah hah hah]… Artists, they’re easily pleased.

Thank you so much to Pye for chatting to us. Remember to have a look at part 1 of this interview with Arthur Wyatt as well!

The final episode of the six-part Intestinauts: Bowel Bots is in 2000 AD Prog 2387, out on 19 June and available everywhere the Galaxy’s Greatest is sold, including the 2000 AD web shop.

If you’re looking for more from Arthur and Pye talking all things bowel bothering, we’ve interviewed them here at 2000AD.com for Intestinauts: Symbiotic Love Triangle here in 2021 and Molch-R talks with them over at the Thrill-Cast here. And there’s plenty more of Pye’s incredible artwork in our Covers Uncovered feature… Megazine 443, Prog 2230, Prog 2275, and his most recent, Prog 2385 with PJ Holden.

And of course, if you haven’t already experience the hi-octane, pedal to the metal, Iron Giant meets Mad Max spectacular that is Petrol Head from Rob Williams and Pye, you’ve missed one of the best things published all year! It’s available right now in a collection from Image Comics that looks very much like this…

And finally, a few design elements that Pye sent along that we just couldn’t fit in above (and are too good to leave out!) plus the full-sized versions of some we have to crunch down to fit!

Over the past five weeks we’ve thrilled to the micro-scale misadventures of those Intestinauts once more with Busted Flush, possibly the biggest adventure these tiny tummy trouble teammates have had to date. But now, in 2000 AD Prog 2387, it all comes to a head as the six-parter reaches its finale and Arthur Wyatt and Pye Parr bring the toilet lid down on our alimentary allies once more.

How are the Intestinauts going to stop the Bowelbot-infected Dr Globulon flushing them all down the u-bend of existence? Will Intestolabs be saved? And will you ever be able to go to the toilet with confidence again? All these may well be answered in Intestinauts: Busted Flush, the finale!

Over the course of several adventures, whether that’s in Regened, Tharg’s 3Rillers, or FCBD Progs, those micro miracles of gastric goodness, the Intestinauts, have battled for all of us. But this latest and longest adventure by Arthur Wyatt and Pye Parr has taken us to truly epic levels of tiny adventures.

Over six parts, we’ve seen the Intestinauts launched into battle with an experimental Instestolabs-modified bowelbot, Omega Genocide Four. We’ve watched as that same OG4 infiltrated the very lifeblood of Instestolabs. We’ve gasped in the sort of horror that can send you into the toilet in need of a good dose of Intestinauts as the (literal) brains behind Intestolabs, Dr Globulon, is infected by the bowel-bot programming. And we’ve all said our silent prayers as we’ve watched the Intestinauts launch their last-ditch, desperate rescue mission.

How’s it all going to end in Prog 2387? Well, you’re going to have to read Intestinauts: Busted Flush Part 6 in the new 2000 AD Prog to find out! And perhaps creators Arthur Wyatt and Pye Parr can shed some light on the whole thing. We asked them the questions and they came back with so much that we’ve split this exit interview into two. We’ll talk to Arthur first and then see if, Mr & Mrs style, writer and artist are singing from the same hymn book when we talk to Pye later! [You can find that interview here]

Arthur, just to start, can you give readers something of a potted (or even potty) history of the Intestinauts and what Busted Flush is all about?

ARTHUR WYATT: We all know the situation – you’re at a spaceport, you want to enjoy a tasty Venusian goat curry, but while you’re at the nexus of a thousand different cuisines and cultures you’re also at the nexus of a thousand different diseases and intestinal parasites, and you are pretty sure that street vendor didn’t prepare your dish at the required temperature and pressure to kill them all. Obviously that’s when you are going to reach for Intestinauts – the cure-all wonder pills, packed full of tough-hitting nano-robots who will sweep through your system taking out any unwanted bugs, viruses, amoebas or parasites before leaving next time you go to the loo in what they call “the big flush”.

The telemetry from these Intestinauts then gets uploaded and placed in the next batch of pills, with an increased level of experience dealing with bodily ills. Somewhere along the way, they may have developed a degree of self-awareness and personality, so for them it’s going on a grand adventure…

We’re back to the ages-old story of Intestinauts vs Bowelbots here, albeit in a dangerous and experimental form. And we’ve rather moved past the poop gags of prior tales where we were never that far from a mention of Venusian Vindaloo, tapeworms, or amoebic dysentery and just how the Intestinauts were involved in them all.

Was this always the plan? Lure us in with the gastrointestinal guffaws and then get into the hardcore adventuring?

AW: I’ve always taken the Intestinauts very seriously. They may be small, they may have a job that’s literally shit, and they may be trapped in a hellish satire of capitalism but the whole thing revolves around being a very straight story in a hyper-ridiculous setting.

Busted Flush just scales that up significantly – they basically meet their god in this one. Also, I think what you might be noticing is just having a bit more room to breathe in the six episodes versus three – I don’t know if future Intestinauts will all be this long but it’s nice to think we’ll have one of these mini-epics amongst the smaller chunks once in a while. 

So far in Busted Flush, we’ve seen the Intestinauts battle strange new adversaries and been introduced to (quite literally) the brains behind Intestolabs, Dr Globulon.

Had the pair of you always had this in mind when you introduced the little scamps with a mission to ease all intestinal ickiness way back when? Or is it one of those things that’s expanded as each series rolled by?

AW: I think Dr Globulon first turned up in one of Pye’s sketches… Sometime after the first Future Shock… then got a roll in the FCBD one pager and was an established part of Intestinauts lore after that… the same one-pager also introduced Bowelbots in the legal disclaimer, so war between the two was inevitable…

As for bringing the Intestinauts before Dr Globulon in a scene that is almost cosmic scale for them… yeah, I’ve wanted to do that for a bit.

One thing that seems apparent to me is that you’re both having a blast on this. There’s moments when I’m reading it that I can actually hear the pair of you chuckling at what you’re being allowed to do here. Am I right? Is it as much fun to write and draw as it is to read?

AW: It is both enormously fun to write and very challenging, as it constantly has to one up itself. Both in terms to the stories going from bigger and weirder settings to even bigger and weirder settings and in terms of the storytelling – it always has to be doing something new. 

You’ve kept up a tradition of visual invention here in Busted Flush – Arthur, can we get your take on what Pye’s brought to the Intestinauts?

AW: Well, I checked in with him on the bowelbot’s nightmare set of pages where you get to choose your path through a flowchart and his response was an enthusiastic yes, which says a lot. It is not a thing I would drop on an artist who wasn’t up for it. Also, I was able to draw it up and throw a diagram into the script which I just wouldn’t for most artists.

And here’s Arthur’s early diagram and script notes for Pye, followed by the brilliant execution on the page that we saw in Busted Flush part 2…

AW: We actually run a bunch of stuff like that back and forth on a chat thread, along with any interesting new disgusting medical things either of us have found, snippets of script or designs to see if they work, that sort of thing. 

And Pye being from a graphic design background has of course heavily informed what we have been doing with in-world literature and diagrams. That’s always been a very fun part of writing it and Pye always does a beyond amazing job of them.

Then there’s the design work for the world in general, as well as the sense of dynamism and fun they bring to everything. Look at I-R-747s face in that panel where they’re rushing down the fluidic panels. They’re having the time of their lives! Pye totally makes that radiate from the page. 

They are you know…

As far as going forwards to the next series is concerned, you’ve definitely set things up for plenty of intrigue and peril at the end of Busted Flush. Have you already got plans for where you’re taking the micro-heroes next?

AW: There’s been an escalation of scale in every story so I think we either need to go really big – Intestinauts versus the poop meteor that’s going to destroy the planet – or go sideways and have some stories set in the macroverse that Dr. Drexler inhabits and  I-R-404 got to explore for bit. Or maybe go back to the story’s roots, and have an actual gut-based mission, but approach it in some new style or format…

Could we finally be getting the full-blown love story of I-R-101 and I-R-102? The first Intestinauts wedding? Oh, go on!!

AW: “INTESTO-LABS SECRET DESIGN DOCUMENT: I-R-101-102 “TWINBODY” INTESTINAUT: For enhanced teamwork and co-operation fuse the cores of the I-R-101 an I-R-102 units into a single twin barrel “mono-core” giving full tactical interchange and 360 visual coverage, with four legs and four arms for maximum mobility and weapons operation.”

Actually, I just read part 6. No spoilers but all I can say is that, Arthur, you better make good on that idea. Otherwise… [weeping].

Finally, what can we look forward to from the pair of you next?

More Dredd with Rob Williams is on the way! And a secret Intestinauts project probably coming to one of the special progs. 

Thank you so much to Arthur for chatting to us. Look out for more Intestinauts chat with Pye Parr in a few days! [Here in fact!] The final episode of the six-part Intestinauts: Bowel Bots is in 2000 AD Prog 2387, out on 19 June and available everywhere Tharg’s fine organ is sold, including the 2000 AD web shop.

If you’re looking for more from Arthur and Pye talking all things bowel bothering, we’ve interviewed them here at 2000AD.com for Intestinauts: Symbiotic Love Triangle here in 2021 and Molch-R talks with them over at the Thrill-Cast here.

Three episodes, one complete, self-contained stories – a condensed hit of super-charged Thrill-power beamed to you directly from the Nerve Centre! That’s what a Tharg’s 3Riller is all about!

The latest 3Riller, Blue Skies Over Deadwick by David Baillie and Nick Brokenshire, wraps up with it’s third and final part in this week’s Prog 2385 – a humans vs Mechs tale that ends with a perfect twist. But before that finale, time for a chat with script droid Baillie about Deadwick and the thrills of a short story…

David’s been a script droid since his first Prog credit with a Future Shock, The Lie, with art by Nick Dyer, in Prog 1611.

Since then, he’s written thrills for both the Prog and the Judge Dredd Megazine, including plenty of Future Shocks, Tales From The Black Museum, and Tharg’s 3Rillers. He was also responsible for the recent series of Chopper with Brendan McCarthy, Wandering Spirit, a psychedelic delight of a tale of the now retired legendary skysurfer. But his latest 3Riller takes us into a very different world of humans and mechs at war… so, over to David to tell us more!

David, hello and welcome once again to the 2000ad site. How’s life treating you?

DAVID BAILLIE: Things are going great, thanks – I’m currently recovering from Portsmouth Comic Con and MCM London here in the UK, and taking a week off to catch up with non-comics stuff, like swimming, drinking cocktails and looking out of the window.

Oh, the life of a comics writer eh?

Blue Skies Over Deadwick opened in Prog 2383, the latest of Tharg’s 3Rillers. We’ve now seen parts 1 and 2 and eagerly await the third and final part in Prog 2385. Okay, first things first, for those new to it, what’s it about? And as we’re now well into it, feel free to give us some spoilers!

DB: As you say, how I’d describe it now is obviously slightly different to how I would have before part one came out! 

Deadwick is the last human outpost, the final surviving settlement after AI rose up, commandeered a bunch of robots and stomped us all into oblivion. The residents of that small town have been fighting back, climbing up the mega-mechs as they march across the radwastes, from their own gleaming city to obliterate Deadwick. And when the humans get to the head they break in and smash up the robot’s brain. With a big hammer.

This has been going on for a couple of hundred years now, and one of Deadwick’s residents, Dilemma Jones, discovers that his psychic abilities seem to extend to these robot brains!

The finale takes place shortly after the end of episode two. Dilemma has rounded up an army of dusty and dated mechs and intends to take the fight to Automota City!

And weirdly if you Google “Dilemma Jones” right now you get People also ask: What is the existential threat of AI?

The 3Riller format is one of those things 2000 AD’s done for so long, whether it’s one-off Future Shocks or Time Twisters or these longer three-parters. And of course, when we’re talking longer here, we’re still only talking about something that’s 18 pages long – and you’ve still got to deliver everything in there – start, middle, end, the whole world building thing, character development, the works.

What’s the unique challenge of the 3Riller and is it something that you enjoy? If so, what is it about something so short that requires so much work to make it work?

DB: I really love 3Rillers – reading and writing them! I was an immediate fan when Tharg first introduced the format.

I’m a Future Shock nerd, and quietly shake my head whenever I hear someone moaning about how ‘all the good twists have been done.’ Well, here comes the 3-part Future Shock – there’ve only been 30 of them so far, get in there before you have an excuse!

In saying that, I think the 3Riller might be an easier task than a 4-page story with a twist (Future Shock, Terror Tale, Time Twister etc.) as you have so much extra space, and a lot more leeway with the structure. It’s a lovely canvas actually, fifteen to eighteen pages. Long enough to deliver some nice worldbuilding and narrative surprises, but usually not long enough to risk outstaying your welcome. 

We’ll see if I’ve managed that with the third episode this week!

How did Nick come onboard? Were you paired up early on or was it a case of the finished script passed to him?

DB: Nick emailed me in the New Year saying he had a bit of free time coming up, as whenever we see each other at conventions we always say how we’d like to work together again (we did a Future Shock a few years ago).

I was already talking to Tharg about the Harrower Squad story currently running in the Megazine, so it seemed obvious to try and pull the two email strands together – if for no other reason than potentially halving that particular chunk of email workload.

I asked Tharg if he’d like a giant robot story, written by myself, drawn by Nick and he said yes. After an initial idea that was probably too structurally ambitious, we settled on this one – with its episode one visual reveal, and the epic robo-battles currently landing on subscribers’ doormats.

By this stage, you’ll have seen the first couple of parts in print – what do you think of Nick’s work here? Everything you hoped for in bringing your script to life?

I’ve seen all the art, but only lettered versions of the first two episodes so far – and I couldn’t be happier. It’s always great to work with someone like Nick who has tremendous experience, a great visual library and the storytelling ability to carry off anything my feeble brain can come up with!

It’s honestly been a joy having these pages drop in my email inbox!

It’s such an interesting premise, a nightmare world, a long-running war, and you’ve taken a very different way to tell a three-part 3Riller with it.

Episode 1 told the tale from the human perspective, particularly Dilemma’s tale, the first ‘eavesdropper of thought’ to ever go out on a climb. And what a climb – three humans out on the limits of human endeavour, climbing for weeks to reach the summit. But of course it was the reveal of what they were climbing that was the wow factor here.

How difficult is it to do this sort of mystery, building up the questions and the tension in something with such a limited page count?

DB: Episode one was all about that reveal, that it wasn’t a mountain – it was a giant snowy mech. All the other beats had to work around that.

There are other reveals later in the story that, again – I knew where they would land so I had to seed the ground around them. After that, it’s mostly about trying to control the pace – both narrative drive and plot clues, so that it hopefully reads well and doesn’t end up requiring an expository splurge. 

That’s one of the dangers with this size story, or at least that’s what I find – occasionally you write yourself into a corner and to avoid a character dropping lots of plot in one or two panels, you have to go back and unpick some of your crochet.

So, was this one of those things in your head that’s been knocking around for a while – the what if Transformers and humans were in a war thing?

DB: Ha – I started with that first big reveal, which I found in a notebook of ideas I’d written a few years ago – and built the world around that. I decided that it couldn’t be the only robot they’d climbed, so there had to be an army of them.

Then I had to figure out who was sending them? And why? And by the time I’d answered those questions I’d filled ten pages, and Nick had drawn a whole bunch of giant robots!

I did actually have a weird quasi-Transformers vs humanity pitch that an American publisher was interested in a few years ago, but the usual stuff happened: the editor left, another took over but was less into the idea and then the publisher went bust. The fate of many a good comics pitch, unfortunately!

You’ve rather subverted the idea of the 3Riller somewhat – by jumping us who knows how long into the future after part 1, one where Dilemma has been working on a plan for a long time, way different from the usual 3Riller.

So, presumably the switching things round and stretching things out this way was all part of the reason Blue Skies Over Deadwick got picked up, the way you’ve done it differently?

DB: That’s a good question! I often say that it’s not for man to know the mind of Tharg – and I think that’s as true about this story as it is any!

Of all the editors I’ve worked with in my bullet-riddled career, I’d say Matt is one of the toughest but fairest. If he says something doesn’t work, when you inspect it yourself you can be sure it really doesn’t work. It’s easy as a writer to become story-blind, where a pitch looks good because you’ve been building it and tinkering with it for weeks – and that’s when a good editor is worth their weight in Galactic Groats!

I really just needed that first big jump, to take us from the young Dilemma discovering the repercussions of his newfound abilities, to having put a plan in motion. Revealing that plan to the reader is what part two is all about.

Speaking of the time jump – I did it before in a previous 3Riller called The Ghostship Mathematica (Progs 1827-1829 [2013] and reprinted in Megazine 371, fact fans!) and found it a really good use of the format. You can tell complex stories in short time frames if you’re bold enough to fast forward and rewind. 

And at this point I’d like to recommend the stories of the wonderful, and recently departed, Alice Munro – who did this like no other human who ever lived.

Now, as always, I’d imagine there’s so much gone into putting this together?

DB: Deadwick was a relatively painless birth actually – I really, really enjoyed writing it! I’d just come off the second book of Harrower (with the incredible Steve Yeowell!) and had a quiet week or so before I had to start a ten pager for an American publisher. This was the perfect length for that gap, and scratched a very specific sci-fi itch I’d just become aware of! 

And knowing that Nick was going to knock it out of the park made the whole process even easier, of course. I hope that at least some of that joy is apparent when you read the story!

It’s the thing that makes short stories so difficult – you have to do huge world building things here, map out everything about the place, the people, the Mecha, the whole thing. I always imagine writers thinking of tales beyond the short debut where they can make use of all that worldbuilding they’ve worked on. But this one has a definite ending – is there scope for continuing Blue Skies Over Deadwick for another series?

DB: Never say never, but I think this one might be a one and done! Perhaps Nick and I could work on a thematic sequel?

Now, as for the future, what else have you got lined up for us, whether it’s for Tharg or elsewhere?

DB: I recently had an American project fall through, actually, so I have a couple of weeks to work on personal projects. I have a long list of artists I’ve promised to write something for and never seem to find the time – so I intend to get started on that roster as soon as I’ve finished this cocktail and swam forty more laps. (Last month I got an underwater mp3 player to go with my Bath Kindle! They’re both getting a lot of use.)

I wrote quite a 2000AD/Future Shock-esque take on the Valiant character Bloodshot recently, and I’m hoping that sees the light of day soon. I also have a number of other projects, comics and TV, that I’ve written and are sitting in vaults around the world, waiting for release slates to open up or something to do with numerology…

And I’m hoping to write the next book of Harrower for the Megazine soon. I always love working for the House of Tharg, so here’s hoping he spins that Rosette of Sirius and gives me a call soon.

And one final, fun one – you can do anything you want at 2000 AD, any character, any story. What/who would it be and why?

DB: If you mean impossible characters – I’d have loved to have written a Khronicles of Khaos era ABC Warriors story, with Kev Walker in full paint mode. I mean – there would be nothing cooler, right?

I think Chopper was at the top of my character list, and I got to write him twice – which I’m still slightly giddy to think back on.

Oh yes – and here they are, from Chopper: Wandering Spirit (art by Brendan McCarthy) & the Chopper tale from the 2021 Sci-Fi Special (art by Tom Foster)…

DB: I also loved writing the Gronk and Middenface McNulty. I’d really like to take a stab at Johnny Alpha, actually – as a kid I read Slavers of Drule a million times, memorising every line on the page. And I bet as soon as I hit SEND on this I’ll think of a dozen more.

And again, here’s all of David’s ventures into the world of Strontium Dog – no Johnny Alpha yet though!

Thank you so much to David for taking the time from the cocktails and the pool to answer a few questions!

You can find the third and final part of the Tharg’s 3Riller: Blue Skies Over Deadwick in the latest 2000 AD – Prog 2385 – out right now wherever Thrill Power is sold, including the 2000 AD web shop.

We’ve talked to David a few times here at 2000AD.com and it’s always a great experience. So why not head back and read his thoughts on getting to write some of his fave characters?

There’s the time he and Colin MacNeil put together Middenface McNulty and Dougal the dog in Strontium Dug in Prog 2256 [interview with David and Colin], more Middenface McNulty getting musical in the 2022 Sci-Fi Special [interview with David and VV Glass]. Sticking with the Stront theme, there was the great Gronk tale in Prog 2020 [interview with David and Rob Davis]. Then there’s the two times he got to write the iconic Chopper, first with Brendan McCarthy on Chopper: Wandering Spirit [interview with David and Brendan] and then again in the 2021 Sci-Fi Special [interview with David and Tom Foster]. And finally, David and Anna Morozova talk about their creation, Viva Forever from Prog 2020 [interview with David and Anna].