Tag: interview

Tharg’s 3Riller’s – three episodes, one complete, self-contained story, giving you that condensed hit of super-charged Thrill-power.  

The latest dose of three-part Thrill-power comes from David Barnett and Lee Milmore with Maxwell’s Demon, a series that began in 2000 AD Prog 2343. The second episode, under a Milmore Infomancy Engine cover, comes out on 9 August.

For Maxwell’s Demon, Barnett and Milmore return to the world they created for their previous 3Riller, The Crawly Man (Progs 2297-2299).  In The Crawly Man, we met itinerant magician Herne and his (black) dog Shuck. Hired by the village of Cudd to find a missing girl, Caris, they soon switched sides and rescued her when the village’s Wicker Man-ish intentions became clear. Caris turned out to be a powerful summoner and let loose a demon upon the village elders (they had it coming.)

Now, as we move into Maxwell’s Demon, Herne & Shuck are looking for a safe haven for Caris. Their first stop, the infomancer Darius Maxwell. But Maxwell’s got a problem of his own he wants them to sort out – his Infomancy Engine. And on top of all that, the village of Cudd hasn’t forgotten, or forgiven them.

So, over to David Barnett and Lee Milmore to tell us all about Maxwell’s Demon, The Crawly Man, and all things folk horror…

David, Lee, the Tharg’s 3Riller Maxwell’s Demon started in Prog 2343, continuing the tale of Herne, Shuck, and young Caris that you began in The Crawly Man (Progs 2297-2299).

How would you describe what you’re doing with the adventures of Herne and Shuck?

DB: Obviously each adventure has to be self-contained while making reference to what has gone before. But there’s definitely an over-arching story arc that we want to tell, which explores the origins of Herne and how he came to be with Shuck, and hopefully, we’ll get to do that, depending on how popular this latest instalment is.

LM: I think David has expanded the world, and at rapid pace. It’s less indebted to folk horror tropes and is more its own beast.

And can you both give us some idea of what to expect with the new three-part Maxwell’s Demon?

DB: When we did the first part, The Crawly Man, I’d written the script before an artist was assigned. Once I saw Lee’s work on it, it distilled with me exactly how the look of the strip was going to be, and I tried to play into Lee’s strengths with this second script. We’re going a little deeper here into the magical community that exists alongside our normal world, and also playing with a few tropes of folk horror, and the general diversity within that.

LM: I love this latest instalment. When I read the script I didn’t know where to start, there is so much fun stuff to draw. David is an exceptional writer and he just makes the job such fun. Demons, ghosts, and a possessed machine called an Infomancy Engine.

It was pure folk horror in The Crawly Man but Maxwell’s Demon walks a slightly different path with a mix of ancient magical ideas meeting modern tech in the Infomancy Engine. What was the thinking of this particular melding of tech & magic – and were there any sources of info and reference you mined for the Infomancy Engine?

DB: I think, having got a handle on Lee’s style and work, I knew I could trust him to come up with the look of the Infomancy Engine — and he did not disappoint. When I saw his preliminary work I thought, OK, well, there’s nothing can faze him here, we can really go balls out on this.

I think we’re still beating a folk horror path because folk horror is such a broad church… we’re talking anything magical related to things that are specifically British, in this case, and that doesn’t just mean ancient ways, but how modern technology feeds into magic.

LM: Specifically, David mentioned HR Gieger and the idea of it being a meat machine, I quickly got the image that the machine was industrial (the engine) and like a furnace powering a supercomputer, but the possession has warped it into a metal and bone skull containing an exposed brain.

Then, thinking about corruption of the machine I added tumours and veins, the veins reflecting the big waste pipes that deal with all the runoff of infomancy. I drew it thinking “Idiot, don’t design such intricate things for sequential art”…but it was too late – I loved it too much.

One clever thing that’s been obvious with Crawly Man and Maxwell’s Demon is how you’ve very consciously enclosed the story to allow you to tell what you wanted to tell in the 3 episodes. In Crawly Man it was all enclosed by the village and a simple mission for Herne and Shuck. In Maxwell’s Demon, it’s the next stage of Herne and Shuck, finding that sanctuary for Caris. But instead of taking us on a giant quest, you’ve merely confined yourselves to one stop off on their search.

DB: The 3Rillers format makes for a necessarily tight storytelling system. Three episodes of six pages, essentially a very tight three-act play. There are challenges in telling a complete story that also references what’s gone before and sets up potential future episodes, but I think Lee and I have sort of hit our stride on that.

But the structure of the series, if we look at it as one continuing series, however, it may come about, is presumably going to be that search for sanctuary, with

Herne and Shuck taking on, in whatever strange way they’ve gone about it, parental roles – if I’m right?

In this little family, Herne’s the boring, straight-laced one, the gets-it-done parent. Whereas Shuck’s that little bit of chaos, the cool parent undermining the sensible Herne.

DB: Herne and Shuck have a complex relationship, as we’ll hopefully get the chance to explore more. Herne is a little… impulsive. Shuck is a bit more level-headed. But that’s a simplistic way of looking at it.

In one way, they’re equal partners in this commercial magical business they’re running. In another, they both have very different levels of power, which complement each other.

LM: I see it a little different. Herne for me is a clumsy sort of character, prone to getting them into scrapes. Shuck I see as kind of long suffering. I think you can see this in the way Shuck and Chris start this story taking the piss out of Herne. Shuck is keeping a closer eye on Caris, and you often see them closer together whilst the mayhem unfolds.

So, looking ahead – and presuming that all make it out alive this time – what can you tease us about where you’re taking the series?

LM: Yes David, what can you tease us with? I have one idea that I’m going to try and get David to write. He suggested that “possibly we’ll see it at the end of the saga, many years from now with a bit of luck.”

DB: Lee gave me a steer on Herne’s past and origins that made me go, yeah, of course, that should be set. We have a story arc here, in that Herne and Shuck are trying to get Caris to a safe haven.

But there are also a lot of unanswered questions about who Herne is, why he’s with Shuck, and what their place is in the magical landscape of Britain, and I think we could all have a lot of fun exploring that and answering those questions.

Again, as we saw in The Crawly Man, there’s so much going on here. But principally it’s a very simple tale of old English magic – if I’m right – that you’ve added your own touches to.

Is it something you’re particularly interested in – all the folk mythology of Great Britain, the Cunning Men and all that? And of course Black Shuck himself!

DB: Folk horror is very popular right now, and if we think it’s 50 years since The Wicker Man was released, it’s been having “a moment” for a long time. Magic is always more potent when related to time and place and the specific magic that Herne and Shuck employ is very much a product of their environment and the folklore and magical history of these isles.

We’ve got plans to align a lot of existing folklore with the story, as well as adding our own touches and taking it off in different directions that reflect the modern world.

LM: Yeah for me it’s a big interest. I’ve toyed with folkloric ideas before but it didn’t get out of concept phase. I was looking at adapting The Broon Man and Red cap folk tales that are disturbing and, in the case of the Broon man, local to me.

There’s an authenticity to it, like a part of our DNA whether or not you’re aware of it. It peels back modernity and reveals the bones of our place in the world. I’ll return to it one day.

The fact that Tharg put me together with David on this shows his frightening insight, I never mentioned it to anyone in the Nerve Center.

As an aside, have you both been following Julian Simpson’s Lovecraft Investigations and Pleasant Green Universe radio stuff? It feeds into the same sort of things you’re getting into here.

LM: No but I will look that up. Lovecraft is a significant influence on me in one way or another.

DB: Similarly, it’s something that I’ll look up. I’ve read Lovecraft from being very young, and I think that it’s an important part of the whole horror landscape. I’d like to think that Herne and Shuck are a bit less po-faced than any of Lovecraft’s creations, though.

Definitely worth a listen. His Pleasant Green Universe stuff is here at his soundcloud, whilst the Lovecraft Investigations can be found here at the BBC Sounds site.

And of course, this strand of folk horror is something that’s been part of the DNA of 2000 AD from the very earliest days, with Sláine introducing so many comic readers to the ideas of British/Celtish magic. And latterly, as we mentioned already, we’ve seen it again in Thistlebone.

Both of you, I assume, are fans of both?

DB: Again, yes. Sláine is part of my DNA. Thistlebone led the way with folk horror in 2000 AD. I think, with 2000 AD being an essentially British product, we cannot deny any part of the British magical experience in its pages. We are a folklorish nation and it’s natural that our myths and legends of yore will inform our comic strips of now.

LM: Sláine, absolutely. I would have loved to have done a Sláine strip. Thistlebone, I have to confess I haven’t read it…sorry.

Well, there’s plenty of chance for the Milmore droid to rectify that mistake – and you if you haven’t read the brilliant slice of recent folk horror, 2000 AD style, that is Thistlebone by TC Eglinton and Simon Davis – it’s available here from the 2000 AD Shop!

Obviously, with these Tharg’s 3Rillers, it’s a chance to do more (three times more in fact) than a Future Shock or Terror Tale, but more than anything else it’s a great opportunity to set up a series or a continuation. And that’s exactly what happened here. The Crawly Man was popular enough or well received enough or simply that Tharg liked it enough to give you another three parts to carry the story on.

DB: I pitched The Crawly Man as part of an ongoing series, and Tharg quite wisely decided to run it first as a 3Riller to gauge reaction. Response to that strip was incredibly positive, and we got Maxwell’s Demon on the back of it.

Would I like to be able to tell Herne and Shuck’s story in longer instalments? Of course. But I’m grateful for any format we can get to unspool this story.

Who’s idea was it in the first place? I’m presuming it was David’s idea and then brought to you Lee. But we’ve seen things like Void Runners with David Hine and Boo Cook recently where it was Boo who came up with the concept first.

DB: I pitched the idea and wrote the first script, and then Tharg brought Lee on board, and that was that. He absolutely nailed the look of every character and the general feel of the whole strip and I knew we had a good collaboration going from word go.

LM: It was all Tharg the Mighty. It was the first time David and I had worked together, as I’ve mentioned it’s great getting his scripts, just bursting with energy. With some luck we’ll continue to work together for some time to come.

Lee, just as the story is way different in setting and tone than The Crawly Man series, taking place for the most part in Maxwell’s basement it seems, the artwork here is radically different – you’ve swapped the bright blue skies of Cudd and are now in electronic/electric blues and greens it seems?

What was the idea with that, and were there particular stylistic shifts you had to adopt to cope with the action taking place inside for much of the time?

For example, there’s already been a couple of wonderful scenes so far where you’ve taken a top down viewpoint to allow us to take in the room – difficult to pull off, but you did it with style!

LM: Thank you, nice of you to say so. Yeah that’s really what it’s about, trying to keep the reader engaged with changes of angle and perspective, but also to reveal the scenario. Colours wise, I can’t take any credit for that, it’s all down to Quinton Winter. Thanks for making me look good Quinton.

Indeed, thank you Quinton, and thank you to all those sometimes overlooked colouring droids – essential for making the art pop from the page!

Going further into the art Lee, what’s your process been for Maxwell’s Demon?

LM: I’m pretty painstaking about putting pages together. I thumbnail, and really I tend to get down the page dynamics fairly instantly. Though the next part of the process can change it up a bit.

After thumbnails, I set up a page in Photoshop, draw in the panel borders, and take the time to do the lettering (temporary for my own purposes) which allows me to see how much space I have and the order I place the characters. In order of speaking.

Next up I do a few hours finding my reference. I do things like making collages, like this Infomancy Engine one…

I probably put too much time into it but I find it both helps me drawing authentic things, even fantastical things, and often provides a perspective I haven’t planned on. My favourite art isn’t really full of realism but it seems to be the direction I’ve wandered down.

Then I’ll do some drawings based on the collage I’ve made and it becomes a mash up between those drawings and the collages that I ink over. I drop the layer down so it’s very light and it gives me the freedom to work on my inking. 

I wish I could just sit down and draw it all from my mind’s eye…but I’m not there just yet.

And David, what do you think of the work Lee’s put in to make the world of Herne & Shuck come alive?

DB: I had a very vague idea as to the look of the strip when I put the first script together, but when I saw Lee’s pages I was blown away. He absolutely nailed the characters and the tone, and that in turn meant it was much easier for me to write the next script because I knew exactly what Lee was capable of.

Comics are a collaborative medium and once you find that perfect team — which I think we have — things tend to gel very quickly and writer and artist feed off each other, and instinctively know what is required of them.

Oh, one thing David, completely tangential (I expect) to it all but… Episode 2 has a mention of ‘Info Freako’. Now, the only thing that immediately brings to mind is the debut single by Jesus Jones from 1989. Coincidence or a nod to a rather underrated band? [Personally, I remember having both Info Freako and Info Psycho on a mix tape I made that year – oh, the good old days of taping it off the radio!]

DB: Yeah, that’s one of those little Easter eggs that you wonder if anyone will notice. Jesus Jones were one of my big late 80s bands, just before I discovered hard techno and left my brain in a field somewhere in the West Country.

And another nod to the 90s there – Pulp’s Sorted For E’s & Wizz – although that important part of Jarvis’s brain was left ‘Somewhere in a field in Hampshire.’

So, we’ve now had The Crawly Man and Maxwell’s Demon. I assume that there’s plans and plots afoot to continue the story after Maxwell’s Demon ends?

How do you go about planning a future for a strip like this? You obviously can’t know what Tharg has in mind – another 3Riller, maybe a longer length strip. So is it merely a case of putting down future story ideas, ways you can take the narrative if and when you get the green light for more?

DB: We have a full arc planned, that would (by incredible co-incidence) fit in with a trade paperback collection. There’s so much to explore, though, that we could go on forever with Herne and Shuck.

Imagine if John Constantine was a bit less clever and a bit more of a piss-head, and had a smart-arse dog, and that’s what you could be in for.

So far, both of you are pretty much starting out at 2000 AD. David, I know you’ve written extensively at Black Crown and some at DC – interestingly enough, magic again with Tim Hunter. But here at 2000 AD it’s really only been Chopper and Lowborn High for Regened and Herne & Shuck in the Prog.

Similarly, Lee, you won the 2000 AD talent search at Thought Bubble in 2021 and have seen your work in your winning prize Future Shock with Honor Vincent and an excellent Terror Tale by John Tomlinson, and then Herne & Shuck. Are you enjoying your time at 2000 AD?

LM: I mean….hell yeah.

DB: As someone who bought the very first issue of 2000 AD (and lost my Space Spinner over the wall of next door’s yard where their American Pitbull chewed it up) it’s obviously a dream come true to write for 2000 AD.

What memories does the comic hold for you both and what does it mean to be script and art droids now?

LM: My first Prog was the one from The Apocalypse War with Dredd’s badge with a bullet hole and trickle of blood. I got that as it was accidentally delivered to my Grandma in her Sunday Post. I loved it….it changed everything for me. I didn’t start collecting though until around the League of fatties, and then I was lost to it.

I was already a keen artist but in those few weeks I decided that I WOULD work for 2000 AD, with the certainty only a little kid can have. I had no idea how this would be done and I don’t recall sending anything in by way of submissions, I just imagined it would somehow happen.

When I was at art college I went on a trip to London to visit the galleries. I took a portfolio, which essentially was every scrap of paper I’d ever scribbled on stuffed into it and sloped off to the Nerve Centre. I walked into Kings Reach Tower and got in the lift with a load of business types (journalist I guess) and went to reception. I asked to see someone at 2000 AD and perhaps because I was so naive the receptionist didn’t tell me to bugger off and called down to Steve MacManus’ office. He passed back a message that without an appointment I couldn’t get seen.

I think I rolled on my belly and begged or something (I don’t recall) but he reconsidered and told me to ring him in an hour. When we spoke I laid it on thick about coming down from Durham to see him, which was true but I didn’t mention the college trip. So I emotionally manipulated him to come and see my work. He and Clint Langley came and met me in a pub (the main reason I got the meeting I think, they wanted beer) and for the next couple of years I sent Steve work.

I guess I thought it was a matter of time for me at this point. But again being very green, I just didn’t grab the bull buy the horns. I’d send work very infrequently and spent the majority of my time, wasting my time doing fine art painting at University. It fizzled. 20-odd years passed. I won the 2000 AD talent search at Thought Bubble and then I actually got to do what I always wanted to do.

What does it mean to me…a whole lot!

DB: 2000 AD was a part of my landscape growing up and I never thought I’d be a script droid. I didn’t think robots like me grew up to be script droids. I thought we just got jobs in factories making bits for machines. So it’s amazing that I did make it.

And just one for fun – you have carte blanche over the entire history of 2000 AD. Who do you write/draw if you could and what story would you do?

DB: Zenith. Without a doubt. Either the adventures of Young Zenith, OR the story of Zenith as an old fart and his granddaughter taking over his mantle, a real Gen X vs Gen Z thing. Yes, I have thought about this very hard. I just need Grant Morrison to give me their blessing.

LM: I won’t say Judge Dredd (it’s Judge Dredd – The Satanus episode of The Cursed Earth)

Instead… Strontium Dog:Rage, Sláine: Shoggy Beast, Nemesis: The Gothic Empire, Rogue Trooper: To the Ends of NuEarth, and maybe – Bad Company.

All of those but actually none of them as they were all so fantastically well done by all involved the imposter syndrome might go nuclear.

To end, as always, what’s coming up from the pair of you in the future, whether it’s for Tharg or elsewhere?

LM: David and I are working on a strip for the Megazine. My first time in Mega-City One. Another dream come true moment for me, so thank you David – and of course his Thargness.

DB: Yep, we’ve done a deep dive into MC1 lore. A much-loved character from Judge Dredd’s past. Reinvented as a noirish private eye. But we’ve said too much, and we’re probably going to end up inside supports for a flyover somewhere in Mega City One.

And that’s when we had to leave it, wondering just who the ‘much-loved’ Dredd character is. That one you’ll have to wait for!

But if you want to find out if Herne, Shuck, and Caris do get out of it – well you can (and should) find David and Lee’s Maxwell’s Demon, in Prog 2343 and continuing in this week’s Prog 2344 – just look for Lee Milmore’s terrifyingly good cover of the Infomancy Engine on the shelves or in the 2000 AD web shop from 9 August!

We’ve interviewed both Lee and David before here at 2000 AD.com – Lee was interviewed here with Honor Vincent about their Thought Bubble winning Future Shock, the excellent Relict. And as for David, we’ve interviewed him twice about his Regened work, first there’s this on Chopper, and here (with Anna Morozova) about Lowborn High.

And now, the full-size images of Lee’s art for page 1, episode 1 of Maxwell’s Demon – roughs, inks, and then final page with those wonderful colours from Quinton Winter. and always incredible letters from the legendary Annie Parkhouse…

And finally, here’s Lee’s inks for page 4, part 1 of Maxwell’s Demon, followed by the full page with colours by Quinton Winter and letters by Annie Parkhouse…

Judge Dredd Megazine issue 458, which came out on 19 July and should still be on the stands everywhere Thrill Power is sold, features not just a typically magnificently nightmare-inducing Nick Percival cover but also the very last David Hine and Nick Percival Dark Judges episode in Death Metal Planet.

So, after six years of drawing the Dark Judges, first with John Wagner writing and then with David Hine, it’s time to draw the veil over things and take our leave – or is it? Only Nick can tell us that!

Over the last few years it’s been a pleasure chatting to Nick Percival for Covers Uncovered every time we have a new Dark Judges cover on the Judge Dredd Megazine – dark, grotesque things that have a fascinating beauty about them.

We’d already done the last Dark Judges Covers Uncovered for Megazine 458, but Nick had obviously got the Judges deep in his head (dangerous Nick, very dangerous, just ask Anderson!). He sent over a folder of his completed Dark Judges covers, all 12 of them and this little note about his time on the strip.

And when Nick gets in touch, you just don’t say no! Not unless you want a visit from his deathly palsssss…

NICK PERCIVAL: I just realised that the whole Dark Judges saga began for me when Part 1 of Dominion was released on July 19^th 2017 and now it all ends on the same date, July 19^th 2023 with the finale of Death Metal Planet – 6 years of grisly, dark fun.

So, since this is my farewell to the Dark Judges… (or not)…

And that’s where he left it, with that teasing little phrase. The possibility of more perhaps? So, suitably intrigued, we came up with a plan. Ask him a few questions about the work he’s done on The Dark Judges and then get the lowdown on what might be happening next.

So, one and all, here’s the man who’s been worryingly close to the quartet of alien fiends for the last six years, Nick Percival…  

Nick, how did Dark Judges come come about – was it all editorial or did John ask for you when you started on the strip?

NP: I’d wanted to work with John for a while and we went back and forth over a few ideas when he then asked if I’d be interested in continuing the saga of the Dark Judges. I’m a big horror fan and I  always liked the characters and concept, especially when they were genuinely dark and scary.

I remember seeing the first Judge Death story when it was originally published and it certainly left a lasting impression on me. I did a teaser painting of how I’d approach the characters which John loved, saying it was the most terrifying version of Judge Death he’d ever seen which was a great compliment. I even heard on the grapevine that Brian Bolland really liked the painting as well – you can’t get any better than that!

What’s it been like working with John and then David on The Dark Judges saga?

NP: I’m so pleased that Dominion – the first series I illustrated, was written by John, since he knows the characters better than anybody and he really defined the tone of the series. I’d wanted to do something like John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’ – a dark horror tale, set in the snow – and of course we added zombies into the mix! – the perfect story for me.

Working with Dave on the following three epics was also good fun. He has such a twisted imagination with some amazing visual ideas that really took Judge Death and the other Dark Judges into different territory, exploring wild new themes and scenarios.

My favourite series I did with Dave, was The Torture Garden – It was great to design a whole new world for the Dark Judges and have the opportunity to incorporate my own ideas and designs into their look.

What was the real draw for you for getting to play with the Dark Judges for this length of time?

NP: Visually, it’s been a dream job for me. So many different characters and a chance to work in the genre I love.

I’ve done nearly 400 fully painted pages on these series and along the way, I feel we’ve both developed the character of Judge Death, even getting him to question his motives at some point,  putting him in situations we’ve never seen before. It all usually ends with a lot of killing, or course…

Did you and David have a long-term plan for where it was all going or did it really go from series to series?

NP: A lot of it has been the saga of Rosco and how she’s gone from being a young, security guard in Dominion, through to Judge Death’s main nemesis as a powerful Light Judge over four series of storytelling – that’s a pretty big deal to fully evolve a character in that way, so we did have some sort of game plan for her and Judge Death but we still kept things open enough to have room to tweak things along the way, to keep things fluid and interesting for us both.

>

What do you think you’ve given to the whole Dark Judges saga and the history of Judge Death et al over the course of your time on the series?

I put a hell of a lot of work into the art for all four storylines, so I hope that shows and I tried to keep things consistent throughout.

I wanted to keep it horrific and very dark in tone and while we’ve strayed a little from that in the later parts, I think we’ve still kept Death as a dangerous threat and a character that you don’t want to f**k with.

It was great to be able to tweak the designs and introduce alien Dark Judges, so hopefully that’s seen as something new whilst still respecting the original amazing Bolland designs we all know and love.

It’s been a blast and I’ll miss the characters. I still keep thinking of what can be done with them and have a story idea that keeps nagging at me which would be something truly terrifying but that’s between me and Mr. Judge Death…for now.

See Nick, you keep telling us that it’s the end of things, that this is your farewell, that you have a story idea that involves Judge Death – so go on, spill the beans!

Nick? Nick? Nick?

And that was it. No more contact. No answered emails, phone calls left to ring out. Days and days of radio silence. Except for a weird crackling laugh that you could occasionally hear down the phone line.

And then we received this…

Hopefully all this contact with the Dark Judges hasn’t done something worryingly nasty to one of Tharg’s finest art droids!

All we can do is watch and wait – although we do know that Nick’s back on Judge Dredd for the Megazine, as he said this in the Covers Uncovered for Megazine 458 – ‘I’m back on Judge Dredd now with a little peek at something cool coming in the September Megazine and then a top secret, very dark Dredd epic for 2000AD that makes ‘Se7en’ look like Play School  –  say no more.

But right now, we’ll cross our fingers and hope there’s no lasting damage from six years of way too close contact with the alien fiends!

The Dark Judges Saga –
Dominion – written by John Wagner (Megazine 386-391)
The Torture Garden – written by David Hine (Megazine 400-409)
Deliverance – written by David Hine (Megazine 424-433)
Death Metal Planet – written by David Hine (Megazine 449-458)

Six years of nightmares right there for you, all thanks to the gruesome, grotesque, and somewhat gorgeous artwork of Nick Percival there.

Thank you to him for six years of magnificently nightmarish cover work and six years of storytelling brilliance that’s reinvigorated the Dark Judges. And thank you as well to Nick for all the times he’s taken time out of making art.

You can get hold of Judge Dredd Megazine 458 wherever the Galaxy’s Greatest are sold, including the 2000 AD web shop, from 19 July.

There’s two previous interviews to take a look at with Nick and David Hine, the first one here taking a look at Dark Judges: Deliverance and a second here on Death Metal Planet. There’s also both fine gents on the 2000 AD Thrill-Cast here.

And if you’re in the mood for more of Nick’s Covers Uncovered work, be sure to have a look at these – Prog 2247, Megazine 427, Megazine 430, Megazine 443, Megazine 449, Megazine 453, and of course Megazine 458, his final Dark Judges cover. Or maybe not. After all… it never endssss.

>

As is our want with Nick’s fabulously nightmarish imagery, I didn’t want to leave before putting up that teaser image he sent to John Wagner on getting the Dark Judges gig – let’s get closer and closer to Judge Death, shall we? Try not to have nightmares…

>

And for our ending, I can think of no better way to say farewell (for now?) to both Nick and the Dark Judges than a run through of the spectacular set of covers that we’ve seen over the past six years, from Dominion through to Death Metal Planet.

It’s our future – and their reality! Welcome to Mega-City Max, the latest one-shot special from 2000 AD, bringing familiar characters to a whole new audience.

Mega-City Max has five tales of Dredd’s dystopian future from the hottest breaking talent in comics in a stand-alone, no continuity sci-fi comic aimed at teenagers. Join us and them in taking the Mega-Cities to the MAX!

Inside Mega-City Max you get all the intense thrill-power of 2000 AD, just catered to a new teen audience. There’s five strips by the hottest young talent around bringing you a fresh look at some familiar characters, including Hannah Templer’s take on a young Demarco P.I., Oliver Gerlach & VV Glass bring you a teen Devlin Waugh at a devilishly different wedding, Roger Langridge takes Walter the Wobot onto the comedy circuit, and Lucie Ebrey shows us the latest, and daftest, fad to hit MC-1 in Cranium Chaos!

But now, in the last of our interviews for Mega-City Max, we’re talking to the brilliant writer/artist partnership of RAMZEE (Ramsey Hassan)& Korinna Mei Veropoulou who bring us the latest installment of Harlem Heroes, led by ex-Judge Cadet Gem Giant, as they take on the Venetian Vipers in the Aeroball Mega-City Cup.

RAMZEE & Korinna have already revamped Harlem Heroes with two thrillers appearing in Regened Collections Vols 3 & 4 and a third in the 2023 2000 AD Free Comic Book Day Comic. (We talked to them about the new strip back in 2022 here at 2000 AD.com). But now, they’re taking them to the next level, taking them to the MAX!

When it comes to Mega-City Max, you’re right at the beginning of a new 2000 AD comic? What does that mean to you and what do you think of the whole Mega-City Max idea of taking 2000 AD to teens?

RAMZEE: It’s kinda exciting to be on the ground floor of something new. And I think it’s really cool to have a comic that’s smack dab in the middle of Regened Kid Friendly 2000 AD capers and the 2000 AD comic that is for more sophisticated readership.

Mega-City Max being a comic for young adults shares the same youthful energy as Regened but fuses that with that rebellious, sardonic and energetic brand of entertainment known as ‘Thrill Power’. What makes YA unique is that they’re stories typically focused on how characters fit into the grown-up world. The journey of understanding themselves and the world they’re coming into. Mega City Max does that but adds lots of shooting, fighting and explosions.

With MCM, same as with Regened, some are wary of the comics as they’re not ‘their 2000 AD‘, what do you say to that?

RAMZEE: Well, it isn’t their 2000 AD. It’s for an audience that loves sci-fi and wants to read stories with a completely new, contemporary tone that takes a fresh look at established 2000 AD tropes.  

I think the shift of character perspective can make a huge impact on a story. Someone could say “Clone Immortal Soldier? I’ve seen that before” but not through the eye of a young character who will have a completely different attitude to the situation and one more in line with the target reader.

KORINNA MEI VEROPOULOU:  It’s not for you, it’s for your kids! Last year Ramzee and I did a signing for Regened. We had a dad come to the booth, he was so excited there was something for his 5yo son to read. It was adorable!

Oh, that is adorable! And exactly what we want – comics for future readers!

What do you think of the talent and the strips in it?

RAMZEE: Brilliant. I’ve worked with Lucie Ebrey before and I was super excited and curious to see what she does in the 2000 AD sandbox.

KMV: Super excited to see what everyone’s made! Especially excited to see Lucie’s strip!

Well, I don’t think you (or anyone) is going to be disappointed with what’s Lucie’s done here with her Cranium Chaos strip!

What are your hopes for the future of Mega-City Max?

RAMZEE: I hope that Mega-City Max takes on the fearless, rule-breaking, testing-the-waters attitude of an actual teenager.

2000 AD itself is for a readership that want to read fun new stories about the awesome characters that they grew up with delivered in a recognisable 2000 AD fashion. Mega-City Max should be about redefining what Thrill Power means for a modern audience.

Some of the old ideas of being subversive and satirical will carry over because people will always love that, but how that’s delivered will be different like how The Rolling Stones, Sex Pistols, and Arctic Monkeys all play the guitar but in completely different ways.

KMV: I’ve gotten quite attached to the Heroes, it would be great to continue to bring out their personalities more. Plus I’ve got a lot of cool villain ideas!

Okay then, in MCM you’re back to Harlem Heroes, a strip you’ve already done two Regened episodes of in Regened Volume 3 & 4. And one you’ve already talked about how you brought them back in our previous interview.

This time you’ve taken the Harlem Heroes to the World Cup equivalent for Aeroball, The Mega-Cities Cup, where they’re facing off against the Venetian Vipers, not a nice team at all who’re not afraid to use whatever they can to get the win...

Ollie Hicks has described what you’re doing with Harlem Heroes as ‘classic sports Manga stuff’ and I can totally see that. Is that what you were going for here? And, if so, what sports Manga are you referencing, what are your favourites, what should we all be reading?

RAMZEE: When Ollie approached us about doing an all-new Harlem Heroes – I had read and loved the old Tully & Gibbons strip which fused the gritty violence and social satire of Rollerball with a traditional British football comic strip format like Roy of the Rovers and the wild interplay between both was why it was so fun.

Today’s kids won’t be as versed with the classic British football comic to appreciate that but they do know the visual language of sports video games and I don’t know if you’ve been to a Forbidden Planet store or a local library recently but Manga is HUGELY popular with one of the most popular books being Haikyu! – a 55 million-selling manga about volleyball.

What I love about sports Manga besides the kinetic layouts is their emphasis on personal growth, humour, and team dynamics. Other sports manga I referenced were Slam Dunk, Eyeshield 21, and Blue Lock.

KMV: ‘Classic sports manga stuff’ is pretty spot on! I love sports manga but otherwise I wouldn’t describe myself as a sports fan. So my first priority with the Heroes was to get people who aren’t interested in sports hooked.

Eyeshield 21 was my blueprint, it’s a manga that combines comedy, an incredible ensemble cast and some of the coolest action shots I’ve ever seen! 

Did Ollie or Olivia get in touch with you to do this or did you pitch it to them?

RAMZEE: Ollie Hicks contacted me to pitch for this. It was around the time the brouhaha about the Football Super League was exploding on the sports pages so I decided to do the Aeroball spin on that.

KMV: It was actually Ramzee who approached me about doing the art for Harlem Heroes in the first instance! We had been itching to collaborate on something for ages. Ollie asked Ramzee to recommend an artist and that’s how I got involved!

Was there a change in the storytelling or the art here to cater to the Mega-City Max audience?

KMV: Pretty much no change other than I could add a bit of blood when Gem gets punched in the jaw 

RAMZEE: We could be a little more explicit with the violence and have saltier one liners lol!

With Gem Giant you have a great nonbinary hero for the modern age – it was never specifically referenced but how important was it to make something for readers not typically represented in comics?

KMV: I love that Gem is nonbinary, coming up with their character design was one of my favourite parts of the whole project! As a reader it’s a breath of fresh air to have a main character who’s unapologetically androgynous. As an artist I’m happy I finally got to use all the photos of Grace Jones I’ve been hoarding as inspiration.

RAMZEE: Well, I didn’t want to make a deal out of Gem’s gender identity because I thought that in this future world it wouldn’t be a big issue.

I did use gender-neutral language whenever Gem is mentioned, but in a lot of the reviews of the comic Gem was referred to as male so in this story Gem mentions their nonbinary in a humorous bit of smack talk between them and the rival team’s captain. 

That would be this bit of smack talk…

For both of you – for those who haven’t seen or read any of your work before – describe yourselves and what it is you do…

RAMZEE: I’m a writer who loves telling fun and thought-provoking genre stories starring characters of colour.

KMV: I’m a Greek/Singaporean comic artist and illustrator that specialises in anything bold, colourful and fun!

Korinna, we talked a lot about your art when we chatted previously but let’s do it all again. How do you make comics? What’s your process?

KMV: My process is pretty straightforward, I use my sketchbook for drawing up concepts and thumbnails then I do the rest (pencils, inks, colours) using Procreate on an iPad Pro.

Korinna was good enough to send through her roughs and inks for this Harlem Heroes episode… here’s page 1…

>

How did you approach Harlem Heroes in terms of style – as a big fan of sports Manga is that a big influence on your art – getting that kinetic motion in there that we can see in Harlem Heroes? 

KMV: Eyeshield 21 and Ron Wimberly’s Prince of Cats are my biggest inspirations for HH, I wanted it to look dynamic, colourful and fun while also being easy to “read”. Generally I take lot of pointers from Manga, they helped me figure out ways to use page layouts more effectively and help guide the eye through the action. 

And of course, you’ve been responsible for the look of this new Harlem Heroes from the start – what was your thinking with the design process?

KMV: Our first priority was to create a likeable cast of characters that looked easily distinguishable from each other but also worked within a group. It was important for both Ramzee and I to make them as diverse as we could so we spent a lot of time deciding on the skin tone, bodyshape, hair and personal style of each character.

We pulled inspiration from many sources, especially artists of colour that we both admire, a few examples are Grace Jones for Gem, Lizzo for Kym, Bootsy Collins for Bernie Foxx and (my favourite) Prince & Cat from Red Dwarf for Jazz Razzmatazz.

And here are Korinna’s initial designs for her new Harlem Heroes…

Korinna, you started in comics rather late in your art career, is that right? You’ve worked in webcomics (including the great Adventuree of Croblin) and traditional print comics since beginning in comics. What was it about comics that so excites you to keep doing them?

KMV: Even though comics have been my goal since I was a teen I started seriously making comics in my mid-twenties after graduating from university.  I love the creative problem-solving. you have to do a bit of worldbuilding, you can’t just rely on dialogue and talking heads to do the storytelling by themselves. You have to take into account your colour schemes, your page layout, your character designs, et cetera to add depth to your narrative.

And again, more from Korinna, this time page 2 of this latest Harlem Heroes strip, roughs, inks, colours…

>

The pair of you are babies compared to the 45+ years of 2000 AD, so it would be great to know what you remember of 2000 AD, how you first discovered the comic, what strips you specifically remember from the time you first discovered it, that sort of thing.

KMV:  I unfortunately missed out on 2000 AD because i didn’t grow up in the UK! got introduced in my early 20s When I first moved to London to study. It’s a shame because the punky sci-fi aesthetic would’ve gone down really well with kid me! The first volumes I remember picking up were Alan Moore & Alan Davis’ DR and Quinch and Sinister Dexter.

RAMZEE: I knew of 2000 AD as a kid from Judge Dredd but it looked too grim and gritty for me. I was an X-Men kid growing up, but as I grew up and started to get into comics more I heard about The Cursed Earth spoken about with hushed, reverent tones and saw those Brian Bolland Eagle Comics covers and got into Mike McMahon’s cartoony aesthetic.

Finally, what sort of things have we got to look forward to from you in the future? Whether that’s for 2000 AD or elsewhere? 

KMV: Well I’m taking a bit of time off – life! – but I’m hoping to start a self-published project later in the year 

RAMZEE: I have a completely bonkers, boundary-pushing, horror-action comic serial that’s dropping in Monster Fun. I’m also developing a TV show with the BBC as well as writing and illustrating a middle-grade series that’s coming out next year.

Ramzee, I’ve known you and your work as a writer/artist since the very beginning and it’s so good to see your career in writing taking off. Although hopefully, you’ll keep in with making comics when you’ve made your name elsewhere?

RAMZEE: I’d love to do more comics. My career is moving me away towards TV and literature but I love comics to death and any editor who contacts me about a comic project, I’ll be into it, especially if it’s Cat Girl related *looks suggestively at Rebellion editorial*

Oh, go on Rebellion, go on!

Thank you so much to both Ramzee and Korinna for taking the time to share with us.

You can find their Harlem Heroes vs The Venetian Vipers strip in Mega-City Max, which you can get hold of from comic shops and 2000 AD’s web shop.

We’ve already talked to Ramzee about his work with Elkys Nova on Cat Girl for the Tammy & Jinty Special 2020 here. And we talked Harlem Heroes with Ramzee & Korinna here when they brought the team back for Regened Volume 3.

Ramzee’s a London-based creative who immigrated to the UK from Somalia as a child. He’s been making comics since 2015, including self-publishing his work, reinventing Cat Girl with Elkys Nova in the Tammy & Jinty Special 2020, Harlem Heroes in Regened Vol 3 & 4, work in Monster Fun, and creating a new Spider-UK for Marvel Comics in 2022.

He’s also, as we mentioned, moving away from comics, with work in TV, as a playwright, writing screenplays, and designing and runing comics and illustration workshops for schools. His first middle-grade children’s book, The Cheat Book, was recently acquired by Hachette Children’s Group in a three-book deal. The series will follow 11-year-old Kamal Noor, a shy kid who finds ‘the Cheat Book’ to getting popular in the library and sees his chance to stand out at last!

Korinna Mei Veropoulou has been working in comics since 2015, with self-published titles including SAPRO, work in LDN2050, and the webcomic Adventures of Croblin. She’s also worked on anthologies including Comic Book Slumber Party’s Escape from Bitch Mountain and Smutcomic, a collection of smutty stories by female-identifying and non-binary artists from Greece.

Go look them both up online – There’s Ramzee’s website, Twitter, and his shop for his early works, Junk Food, Zorse, and Triangle (you can also read a selection from Junk Food and all of Triangle at his site.) Korinna’s website is here, you can also follow her on Twitter.

We’ll end with a look at some more of Korinna’s fabulous artwork, with full size versions of all we’ve shown you above.

First, those incredible character designs…

And now Korinna’s roughs, inks, colours, and the final page 1 of this MCM Harlem Heroes episode…

And the same for page 2…

Mega-City Max is a brand-new comic special set deep in the world of Dredd, but coming at you with a distinctly different look at the world with the stories featuring teen- and post-teen versions of classic 2000 AD characters.

Aimed at teenagers, this stand-alone special is fast-paced and action-packed, and features the hottest breaking talent in comics. It’s Mega-City to the Max – it’s Mega-City Max!

Inside Mega City Max you’ll find strips that rejuvenate and reinvent familiar characters from the world of Dredd, with stunning creative teams bringing you all the thrill-power. Inside, there’s Hannah Templer’s take on a young Galen DeMarco taking her first steps as a P.I., Oliver Gerlach & VV Glass give you a frankly fabulous young Devlin Waugh at a devilishly different wedding, Ramzee & Korinna Mei Veropoulou have tickets for the Mega-Cities Aeroball Cup in Harlem Heroes vs the Venetian Vipers, and Roger Langridge brings all the laughs as Walter the Wobot tries his hand at stand-up.

But today, we’re talking to the incredibly talented Lucie Ebrey, who brings us a tale of Mega-City Fads called Cranium Chaos – looking in on two young Mega-City One cits and the lengths they’ll go to to stand out in the big Meg! It’s ridiculous and clever, one of Britain’s brightest comic makers bringing the laughs to Mega-City Max!

Lucie, hi there! We’ll get to Cranium Chaos shortly, but first of all I wanted to ask what it feels like to be in on the ground floor of a new 2000 AD comic?

LUCIE EBREY: I’m really excited to be a part of it! As someone who was new to 2000 AD and the whole universe/characters upon being asked to submit a comic, I was excited to see something I was familiar with be presented as a jumping off point with a new approach and vibe. 

MCM is designed for teen readers, a change from the weekly Prog and a step-up in age from Regened – and presumably you’re on board with the idea of comics changing to reflect the time and gather new readers, all to keep the medium we all love alive and healthy?

LE: Hell yeah. Comics should change. They’re already such a flexible and expressive medium.

MCM is something that’s both very different for 2000 AD whilst also grounded in the familiar. But what would you say to those wary of change in something they love so much?

LE: I mean, I super get it. I’m really wary of changes to things I love. In the past I’ve definitely written things off loudly and enthusiastically. Even now, with properties near and dear to my heart, it’s hard to not feel myself resenting anything that I worry might tarnish their image even slightly. But I’m realising sooner and sooner these days that new stuff doesn’t mean that the old stuff I love is taken away from me. 

Have you seen the finished comic yet and what do you think of the line-up that’s involved?

LE: Not yet! I like to wait until it’s in my hands like everyone else until I read things I’m part of. Guess I like the surprise and to encounter it like anyone else would in the wild. But I have seen the list of folks contributing and I’m excited by the lineup! I know there’s gonna be stuff in there that I’m gonna love! (And that I’m gonna think makes my entry look second-rate haha!)

Here we go again, imposter syndrome and insecurity always creeps in with the art droids! But trust us Lucie, Cranium Chaos is a great strip, perfect for MCM!

What are your hopes for Mega-City Max and would you return for more?

LE: It would be absolutely wonderful to see more! More comics! More artists! More! And I’d return for sure!

Now, let’s talk Cranium Chaos, a different strip to the other four in MCM as it’s a brand-new idea with brand-new characters – two of MC-1’s younger citizens getting caught up in another daft craze to sweep the City.

What’s Cranium Chaos all about and how did it all come about?

LE: When I was first approached to submit, I was told the vibe of the book would be more light-hearted and silly than the usual 2000AD fair, so I went back to my more comedic Beano roots.

From the taster strips I was provided to get into the swing of things and get a feel for the series, I was noticing a lot of satire on trends and fads and with the sci-fi backdrop and potential for bonkers body modification, I kind of just started from there.

I love stuff like The Twilight Zone and seeing characters being punished for simple human foibles. It always seems so mean-spirited but there’s a lot of comedy in it.

I wasn’t sure if we were allowed to take the reins with any pre-existing characters and so built my strip around two newbies.

Talking to Ollie Hicks [along with Oliver Pickles, one of the editors of MCM], they had this to say about you –

‘I wanted Lucie Ebrey in the comic from the beginning because she’s a star. She’s an absolutely brilliant cartoonist and a jewel of the British comics scene. I’ve been a fan of hers for years. Her chaotic humour seemed like a perfect fit for a teen 2000 AD project. We brought her the initial idea, I wanted like a Bill and Ted style duo and Oliver I think suggested the set-up of a different fad each episode. And then she fleshed out the specifics of the characters and came back with the utterly brilliant and unhinged story idea.’

Now, I’ll echo that ‘jewel of the Brit comics scene’ comment – I can remember being so impressed with your work on your diary strip Muggy Ebes and in Jules Scheele’s Double Dare Ya! Riot Grrrl Zine back in 2015. I think I checked it out because Clark Burscough, now at The Comics Journal, included Muggy Ebes in a best of 2014 list. Since then, of course, it’s been a great pleasure to see you develop and grow, yet still have that same great relaxed style.

LE: Aw! Thanks for the kind words. I feel…very old haha!

But anyway, back to Cranium Chaos – Ollie and Oliver went to you with the concept for the strip, the Bill & Ted style leads and a different fad for each strip and you developed it from there?

LE: Yeah! I gave Ollie & Oliver a few fun concepts of fads that the characters could get suckered into and then the inevitable ways said fad could blow up in their faces. It was fun cooking up such ridiculous crazes and such embarrassing end results.

Your style here in MCM is wonderfully still very much you, immediately recognisable for all who’ve followed your work and hopefully something that will garner you a legion of new fans!

LE: Shucks!

Of course, the way both you and Ollie & Oliver are talking, you’re in this not for just this one strip but for future MCM issues with more Mega-City Fads?

LE: Of course! 

We can but hope there’s going to be more. But have you already started thinking about what you’re going to be showing us with the next Mega-City Fads?

LE: Definitely haha. I’m a pessimist by nature and catch myself thinking of ways things can go wrong, which works great for a series where things are blowing up in people’s faces. Maybe even literally.

Now, a little more general stuff about you – can you tell us a little about yourself and your work?

LE: I’m a cartoonist and illustrator living in Bristol. I primarily make a living drawing comics, both for publication or just for myself to sell at comics shows. With the cost of living being what it is, I also have to work two part-time jobs now, which has slowed me down a bit. But I’m still charging ahead as best as I can! I love comics too much! 

And I’ve just realised, seeing your website, that you’re a fellow Brummie! (Well, I was born in Dudley, but definitely raised in Birmingham.)

LE: HECK YEAH! BIRMINGHAM! I really miss that lovely city.

Did we ever cross paths in Nostalgia & Comics there at all? [Nostalgia & Comics was one of the earliest comic shops in the country and I had the pleasure of working there for many years at various points from 1986 to 2006]

LE: Oh man, we may very well have! That was my favourite place to get my Ultimate Spider-Man comics when I was a kid and I still remember the sheer awe and excitement of going in for the first time and seeing that huge wall-sized Batman Returns poster. Used to make a bee-line for it the second I pulled in at New St.

Yep, although Nostalgia & Comics is now Worlds Apart Birmingham, there’s so many who remember what it was – and so many who remember the HUGE posters on the walls!

>

Okay, enough Brummie chat, what was the thinking way back when with starting Muggy Ebes?

LE: I was 19 years old and just really desperate to make something. I could never finish a strip and frankly didn’t really have the skills, tools or confidence yet to get much done. But my daily diary comics were a concentrated and regular way to stretch that muscle. I look back on the strip with a bit of embarrassment now to be honest haha. I’m just a different person. But I’m forever grateful that I stuck with it. It got my name out there and I started to feel more confident about my work.

And since then, how’s life in comics treating you?

LE: It’s been pretty good! Working on my first graphic novel has been a very, very long process and I’ve learned so much about the industry and my own limitations through it. It’s been invaluable and I for sure feel like I’ve “levelled up” as an artist. In between that simmering in the background for so long, I also have done a few strips with Boom! and made a few zines. 

After wrapping the aforementioned webcomic up in 2017, you’ve been doing short comics for yourself and publishers. But, as you say, your first graphic novel, Cowgirls & Dinosaurs: Big Trouble In Little Spittle is out from Razorbill in Sept 2023. What’s this one all about and how big a deal is it for you?

LE: It’s an adventure book set in a world where dinosaurs, cowboys and magik coexist and follows child-vigilante Abigail and her rival, the deputy Clementine, as they try to stop the nefarious Bandit Queen after she kidnaps the town of Little Spittle.

It’s a huge deal to me! It still doesn’t feel real that I have a book coming out – something that I’ve been dreaming of since I was a kid! I put a lot of heart into it. And that’s not just because a giant calcified heart is one of the main focuses of the story haha.

Finally, what sort of things have we got to look forward to from you in the future? Whether that’s for 2000 AD or elsewhere?

LE: At the moment I’m ramping up promotion for Cowgirls & Dinosaurs: Big Trouble in Little Spittle, as well as balancing the start of production for the sequel book and a few other smaller comics projects.

I have some zines I need to get started on for Thought Bubble and there’s also my entry for this year’s ShortBox online art fair that I’m (hopefully) going to be wrapping up by the time this interview is done!

Thank you to Lucie for talking to us – you can find Cranium Chaos in the Mega-City Max special, out now from comic shops and 2000 AD’s web shop.

Be sure to have a good look at Lucie Ebrey’s website, follow her on Twitter, and buy all the things from her shop! She really is one of the great young British comic makers with such a wonderful style to her work!

As for her debut graphic novel, Cowgirls & Dinosaurs: Big Trouble in Little Spittle, that’s out on 6 September 2023 (more information here & here). It’s part of a two-book deal with the Razorbill imprint at Penguin Young Readers Group and it should be a huge success!

And do check out the Shortbox Comics Fair running through October, for more from Lucie and so many more fabulous artists. It’s an all-digital comics fair arranged by Shortbox’s Zainab Akhtar with more than 100 artists debuting new comics.

Now, to end with, a little more of Lucie Ebrey’s wonderful work… starting with more from Cowgirls & Dinosaurs: Big Trouble in Little Spittle…

May 2023 – Hit On, ‘A comic about being a modern lesbian.’

2023 – Haircut

2020 – Sniffy – ‘A short comic about my relationship to my oldest friend. Drawn at the start of the Coronavirus quarantine.’

2019 – Blobby Zine – ‘organised by artist Honey Parast. The zine was a celebration of every UK child of the 90’s favourite nightmare creature: Mr Blobby!’

From 2016 – Guilt, Ebrey’s contribution to Sweaty Palms, an anthology collecting autobiographical stories focusing on anxiety and depression.

And finally, from Ebrey’s brilliant Muggy Ebes – her daily diary comic from May 2012 to May 2017…

Mega-City Max is a brand-new comic special set deep in the world of Dredd, but coming at you with a distinctly different look at the world with the stories featuring teen- and post-teen versions of classic 2000 AD characters.

Inside Mega City Max, the hottest talents take a fresh look at the world of Dredd, including the brilliant Hannah Templer (Cosmoknights) who talks to us here about the lead-off strip in Mega-City Max, DeMarco P.I.: Snake Oil.

In Mega-City Max, a continuity-free new beginning for 2000 AD aimed at teen readers, you’ll meet characters reinvigorated and reimagined, including Devlin Waugh, Walter the Wobot, and Harlem Heroes, plus a brand-new tale of Mega-City madness from Lucie Ebrey, not to mention Hannah Templer’s take on a young DeMarco.

After being unfairly expelled from the Academy, DeMarco’s set herself up as a private investigator. She wants to help people and if she can’t do it as a Judge, she’ll do it on her own. She’s there to tackle the sort of cases that the Justice Department can’t or won’t touch, standing up for those desperate citizens of Mega-City One looking for help.

But she’s not in this completely alone, she’s still in touch with two good friends from the Academy, the straight-edged Barbara Hershey and the psychic Cassandra Anderson. In 2000 AD, DeMarco, Hershey, and Anderson have a long, long history of highs and lows. Here, we’re right back to the beginning – that’s the Mega-City Max way!

Hello Hannah, first of all – what’s it like to be here on the ground floor as 2000 AD launches a new comic?

HANNAH TEMPLER: I’m excited to revisit these characters for a modern audience! I wasn’t super familiar with many 2000 AD characters outside of passing recognition (and of course, both Judge Dredd films), so to be working with them for a new comic is pretty cool.

When it comes to Mega-City Max, the whole idea behind it is to broaden the readership, with MCM aimed at a teen readership, something you’re well accustomed to in your work.

HT: I usually write for teens and young adults, so I really enjoyed this approach– especially revisiting female characters who have been through it, so to speak. It’s refreshing to think about these characters in a more personal and youthful light.

The story I wrote for DeMarco is set up sort of like a pilot episode, so I would love to return and see the story continue! There are a lot of fun things to explore in her world.

How did the gig for DeMarco come about?

HT: I first got connected with Rebellion via the 45 Years of 2000 AD: Anniversary Art Book – I was honored to do a Halo Jones illustration for the book, and was subsequently contacted about doing a story for Mega-City Max! To be honest, I was unfamiliar with Dredd and only had a passing recognition of the characters, but after reading some of the comics, I was instantly hooked.

Originally, I was asked to write a story for a different character, but I inquired if there were any female characters I could write for instead, since this better fits my body of work. My editor suggested DeMarco, and after I learned a little more about her, I was in!

I was really fascinated by her personality and original storylines; the fact that she struggled with navigating Justice Department resonated with me, and I was excited to revisit some aspects of her older storylines with an updated feel. Some of the stories felt like they dismissed her emotions and empathy as weaknesses, but I was really excited to examine them as strengths.

In a universe that esteems Justice and stoicism, a woman that questions absolute authority in the face of unpredictable and complicated humanity is intriguing.

I think I know the answer to this one – but what was it that you found attractive about one of the very strong female characters in the 2000 AD universe? Not to mention Cass and Babs!

HT: I love strong female characters, and when I was reading some of the older comics, it immediately struck me that DeMarco seemed very misunderstood. DeMarco was famously dismissed from Justice Department because of her feelings for Dredd, but she was also labeled as a “bleeding heart” on several occasions for constantly questioning the way things were done.

As a female reader, I connected with the prejudice and apparent sexism surrounding her dismissal – was it really about being “too emotional”, or did she overstep and question authority one too many times?

I immediately wondered if the romance angle was really just a convenient excuse to get rid of her, and my reimagined DeMarco really sprouted from that interpretation.

I love exploring female friendship and was really excited to explore the tensions that arise among young friends as they grow older and grow apart as adults– Cass and Babs are really interesting companions for DeMarco in this setting as they struggle with their own challenges and guilt while trying to do right by the city.

Your art here is, not surprisingly for anyone who’s seen Cosmoknights (and frankly, if anyone reading this hasn’t seen Cosmoknights, they really need to rectify that right now – it’s an amazing thing!), a rather great thing.

You succeeded, certainly from my point of view, in capturing not just the essence of DeMarco but also the essence of the strange world she exists in. But you do it in a very different fashion from what we’re used to. The look comes through in your use of tonal colours, giving everything a specific look, perhaps a lighter look to Mega-City One than we’re used to but still recognisably MC-1.

And then there’s the storytelling used, all very formal panel structures at first as we’re exploring DeMarco PI but then, towards the end, exploding into kinetic action and very different panel structures when it’s the climactic meeting of DeMarco and the villain of the piece.

HT: Yes! Thank you! I tend to gravitate towards moments of joy and friendship against dystopian backdrops, and I think I bring a little bit of that flavor to Mega City Max as well, especially spending time with Cass, Babs, and DeMarco more casually, outside of the workplace.

Obviously, it’s all part of the storytellers craft to vary the pace and the style to get the maximum effect but I do think it’s rather perfectly done here.

What sort of process do you go through when putting together something like DeMarco? I’d imagine it’s a rather different process than with Cosmoknights?

So as I mentioned I wrote this script as sort of a pilot episode, with the idea that while it would be self-contained but could end with a spark.

I spent a lot of time reading older Judge Dredd comics and familiarizing with the world and its themes before diving in, but otherwise the process was actually not-so-different from how I work on Cosmoknights (albeit more condensed).

Even when writing for myself, I like to write fairly detailed scripts so that I can nail down intention and not revise too much during artwork, so generally I go from outline to script to thumbnails to lettered layouts to inks to colors– nothing too unusual!

Now, as far as you’re concerned, you’re most well-known for Cosmoknights, something that, as far as I’m aware, began as a webcomic and has now seen two volumes published by Top Shelf. Feel free here to explain to everyone reading just what Cosmoknights is and why they should be reading it!

HT: Cosmoknights is my sci-fi graphic novel series about lesbian gladiators fighting the patriarchy… in space!

It follows the story of Pandora Leverett, a young woman from a small planet at the edge of the galaxy who gets swept up in an epic adventure. After helping her best friend Tara (a space princess) run away from home to escape an arranged marriage, Pan finds herself an outcast, blamed for her home-planet’s economic downturn. But when a pair of charismatic Cosmoknights show up on her doorstep years later, Pan is intrigued– these women compete in jousting matches not for the hands of princesses, but for their freedom. On an impulse, Pan sneaks onto their spaceship to join their cause.

Cosmoknights is full of strong women and fast-paced fight scenes, but it is truly about female friendship and surviving in a world that was built without you.

As far as DeMarco’s concerned, would you like to return for more Mega-City Max adventures?

HT: Certainly! As I mentioned, I would love to work with this iteration of DeMarco some more, there are many more adventures to be had! I love writing strong female characters, and this was a lot of fun.

Finally, what sort of things have we got to look forward to from you in the future? Whether that’s for 2000 AD or elsewhere?

I’m working on the third Cosmoknights book (wrapping up the trilogy) and am also adapting a series of middle-grade graphic novels for Scholastic!

Thanks so much to Hannah for taking the time to answer a few questions from us.

You can find her DeMarco P.I. tale, Snake Oil, in Mega-City Max – the brand new special from 2000 AD that came out on 19 July from comic shops and 2000 AD’s web shop.

You can, and should, find out lots more about Hannah at her portfolio site and Twitter, she’s one of the hottest, greatest talents coming up in comics and has already made a huge impact. A queer cartoonist and graphic designer, she’s written and drawn Cosmoknights and was the artist for IDW Publishing’s GLOW, as well as putting her glorious artwork on covers and interiors on plenty of comics, always making them so much better!

As for the incredible Cosmoknights, you absolutely HAVE to go look at the webcomic site cosmoknights.space – once you do that, you’ll definitely want to be buying the books that were published by Top Shelf, two volumes so far but a third and final volume coming soon.

>

And here’s that quite wonderful Halo Jones piece that Hannah did for the 45 Years of 2000 AD Anniversary Art Book – Halo Jones gets the Templer treatment. This is what she had to say at the time about that –

For the anniversary art book, I illustrated Halo Jones! I was super excited to take this character on because I draw a lot of women and sci-fi, so her character was right up my alley. For this piece, I explored a couple of different concepts (including sketches of alien planets), but really wanted to focus on a sense of wonder, excitement and exploration. I was inspired to draw Halo Jones flying through space (literally), surrounded by a surreal background full of brilliant hues and colors. You can also see elements from the comic in the background – I love the retro-futurist designs for the spaceships and cities, and had a lot of fun creating a sense of scale for this piece.

>

And finally, a moment to just show you the absolute brilliance of Hannah Templer‘s Cosmoknigthts comic, a brief introduction to your next favorite comics…. this is the first few pages to volume 1. 10 pages of set-up, magnificently done, perfectly rendered, Hannah Templer really starting something wonderful…

It’s our future – and their reality! Welcome to Mega-City Max, the latest one-shot special from 2000 AD, bringing familiar characters to a whole new audience.

It’s five tales of Dredd’s dystopian future from the hottest breaking talent in comics in a stand-alone, no continuity sci-fi comic aimed at teenagers. Join us and them in taking the Mega-Cities to the MAX!

Inside Mega City Max the thrills come fast and furious, action-packed, and hilarious, whether that’s Hannah Templer showing you a young Demarco P.I. just starting out, a fresh take on Harlem Heroes from Ramzee & Korinna Mei Veropoulou taking us to the Aeroball Mega-City Cup, see just how fabulous Oliver Gerlach & VV Glass‘s teen Devlin Waugh can be whilst officiating at an influencer’s wedding where there’s the dsitinct whiff of brimstone in the air, and see what the brilliant Lucie Ebrey comes up with to show us the latest, and daftest, fad to hit MC-1!

With Mega-City Max released on 19 July, we’re taking the time to talk to the creators behind some of the strips inside – all of them fabulous, forward-thinking, fresh takes on the world of the Mega-Cities in the future.

Today, we’re talking to Roger Langridge, whose tale of Walter the Wobot, Don’t Be Cwuel, sees Dredd’s old house droid trying his hand at stand-up comedy with a little help from the dapper gent Max Normal.

Roger, hello there and welcome to Mega-City Max! What’s it like being on the ground floor of the latest 2000 AD comic?

ROGER LANGRIDGE: I’m happy to be included! For the first time in my 2000 AD career I’m writing long-established characters, so I just hope I don’t break anything.

When it comes to Mega-City Max, the whole idea behind it is to broaden the readership. We’ve had Regened issues already, which has seen work from yourself with Pandora Perfect. But MCM aims to appeal to a slightly older age range and audience.

RL: I’m not entirely sure I knew it was for a different audience? (It may have been mentioned and I may have forgotten because I’m old and daft.) I wrote for a general readership, anyway – I like to make my 2000 AD work accessible to all, as that’s the 2000 AD I grew up with and it’s kind of what I default to when I write for them. 

Absolutely right Roger!

RL: And of course, of course there should be entry-level stuff available constantly, to keep refreshing the readership. It’s good business sense, obviously, but it’s also good creative sense – it creates an opportunity to shift the tone, give new voices a shot, add variety to the 2000 AD palette.

MCM is, of course, something very different whilst also something familiar, in much the same as a lot of Regened was when it was introduced. What would you say to the criticisms that are always thrown up when something new comes along that this isn’t the sort of 2000 AD that a lot of readers grew up with?

RL: It… doesn’t have to be? As long as I live, I will never understand why some people seem to think that everything has to be for them and nobody else. Not reading things is always an option if the idea of their existence is that upsetting to you.

Although I would like to think – and in my experience meeting fans at conventions and so forth, this is largely the case – that the people writing it off in advance are a (disproportionately vocal!) minority, and most readers seem to have broader taste and a willingness – indeed, an enthusiasm – to experience new voices, styles and approaches.

Have you seen the finished comic yet?

RL: No, sir, I have not. I’ve seen my story all coloured up by Pippa Bowland, which I was very happy with.

And you absolutely should be, Pippa is a colourist’s colourist.

What are your hopes for the future of Mega-City Max?

RL: I love the idea of a 2000 AD empire of titles, all serving different audiences. I would love it even more if everything didn’t have to be a variation on an existing IP, but I get that that’s the world we live in now. 

And would you be willing to return?

RL: I’d be delighted to be asked.

You’re described on the contents page for MCM as ‘industry veteran’ Roger Langridge, which is so true. But how did you get involved in MCM alongside a good handful of these bright young things?

RL: I was invited to come up with something for it, I suppose because I’ve written for younger audiences successfully in the past.

Bringing Walter and Max together in one strip works wonderfully of course, a perfect bit of comedy with Max trying to get Walter a comedy gig in the big Meg. But why these two for MCM?

RL: I initially pitched a different idea with a more recent character. That character’s creators requested that I not use them, which seemed totally fair, but it did mean that I had to come up with something else in a hurry, and I liked Walter and Max, so I thought I could use them in such a way that it didn’t matter if you were familiar with them or not. I think the story stands on its own if you don’t know the characters’ history – and, for the naysayers who claim this isn’t ‘their’ 2000 AD, it gives them something familiar as well. Everybody wins!

Obviously it’s two classic characters here for existing Dredd fans but what steps did you take to make it new reader friendly? Or is it simply a case of you just doing the great things you do on the comics page with the knowledge that readers, whatever their ages, will see and get great comedy when they read it?

RL: Well, ‘great’ is in the eye of the beholder, but I didn’t throw in any callbacks to old stories or anything – there’s enough context that even if you weren’t familiar with the characters, you get enough information that you sort of know what they’re about. It’s a bit like an episode of a sitcom – two figures with strong, recognisable traits bouncing off one another, which I think is all you need. They’re quite broad characters to begin with – you don’t really need a manual to get up to speed.

Of course, what you do bring to MCM with Walter in Don’t Be Cwuel is your humour, and a lot of it, something that’s been your calling card in your comics since you began in the biz back in the late 80s and 90s with the likes of Art d’Ecco, Zoot!, and Knuckles the Malevolent Nun.

Shortly after that came your first 2000 AD work, The Straitjacket Fits with David Bishop. I don’t know how you remember that one but the prevailing view, I think it’s safe to say, is that it wasn’t then Asst. Editor Bishop’s finest hour. In fact, a lot of the write-ups about it, even our own Mike Molcher on his ABC of 2000 AD series, pointed out that the only redeeming feature of it was your magnificent artwork.

What do you remember about that particular series and would you agree with the reviews?

RL: I’m fond of it as a marker of where both David and I were at the time as creators – neither of us really knowing what we were doing, both learning on the job. I’m flattered that people remember the artwork fondly (if they do) [Oh they do, Roger, they do], because when I look at it I see every bodge and ‘this’ll do’ I resorted to to cover up my lack of skill and experience, and I cringe more than a little. That said, there’s a kind of punk-rock energy to it that I don’t entirely hate, and I remain eternally grateful for the opportunity, which was the result of Steve MacManus taking a massive punt on a couple of relatively untried talents.

Of course, there’s also been work for DC Comics, Marvel, Dark Horse, IDW, Dynamite, and many more over the years. And like your website says, you’re maybe best known for the rather brilliant Thor: The Mighty Avenger (with Chris Samnee), your self-published and web comic Fred The Clown, your great Muppet Show comic from Boom! and the Eisner winning Snarked!.

So you’re definitely a writer and artist capable of doing so many different characters, styles. But there’s always the return to comedy – what is it that keeps bringing you back to the laughs?

RL: It makes me happy! It’s literally that.

And you know what reader, I reckon that is perhaps the absolute greatest answer I’ve ever read.

RL: I consume a lot of comedy, in all mediums. I turn to it when I feel low, I enjoy it when I’m feeling good already. I fundamentally mistrust art of any kind that makes no room for comedy whatsoever. It seems like it’s such an essential part of the human experience. 

The late, great Clive James wrote, ‘Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing.’ That’s kind of how I feel about it.

One of my personal favourites of your work has come recently, where your Hotel Fred webcomic, home to Fred The Clown as well as the family Langridge, took on the pandemic – most recently collected in The Plague’s The Thing and Infections, Injections & Insurrections. It was a perfect antidote to the horrors of the time, taking the record of life during the pandemic seriously but spinning it with your own style.

RL: I was having a slow patch professionally, so I decided to set up a Patreon page in the hope of bring in a few pennies and, to entice people to sign up for it, I decided to draw a strip every day – a quick, knocked-off thing, before I did whatever paid work I might have lined up for the day – and to share the best of them on social media to encourage people to sign up for the full experience. This was at the very end of 2019. So the strip was already up and running when the pandemic hit in 2020, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to record it. It seemed to land with a lot of people and bring them some comfort, which was very gratifying. 

And, three and a half years in, I feel like doing a daily strip has been a good experience for me purely on a creative level (if occasionally knackering!) – it’s a kind of daily practice, getting in touch with the fundamentals of my craft as a cartoonist at the same time every day, at 5 am, before the rest of the world is awake. It’s almost like meditation. I don’t know if I’ll keep doing it forever – I expect it’ll eventually wear me out – but, for now, it’s very much What I Do.

And then of course, there’s been the magnificently silly Pandora Perfect with Brett Parson. Again, that was a Regened thing that moved into the pages of regular 2000 AD. So you’ve certainly got a great history of bringing the laughs to 2000 AD!

Will we be seeing any more Pandora Perfect at 2000 AD any time soon?

RL: Right now I’ve got two, maybe three, other big-ish projects on the boil, any one of which could be green-lit tomorrow, so I’ve been reluctant to commit to anything else substantial in the immediate future in case they all happen at once – I’ll be in enough trouble if that happens as it is! But I would love to return to the character at some point in the future.

When it comes to 2000 AD, when did you first discover the comic?

RL: I started reading it around Prog 250 or thereabouts, I think – I remember it was Apocalypse War-era Dredd, and Robo-Hunter by Alan Grant and Ian Gibson was in there, which I loved – it remains an all-time favourite. It was still possible to find a lot of back issues in second-hand book shops for cover price (or less!) at the time, so I was able to get (almost) a full run.

I stopped picking it up regularly in the early 90s when I moved from New Zealand to the UK – maintaining a complete collection wasn’t really feasible under the circumstances (ironically, that’s about when I started working for the Megazine in 1991!). I dipped in and out for several years, not really sticking with it – although that didn’t seem to stop me doing the (very) occasional job for them (a couple of Time Flies fill-in chapters, Whatever Happened to Cookie in the Megazine). I think I dropped off Tharg’s radar entirely for a few years when Rebellion became the owners.

But I started picking 2000 AD up regularly again when digital subscriptions became an option, and still get it that way every week – so was somewhat up to speed when a couple of years ago they asked me to write for them.

Finally, what sort of things have we got to look forward to from you in the future? Whether that’s for 2000 AD or elsewhere?

RL: I’ve got a graphic novel coming out from First Second Books next year – Prohibition, part of their ‘History Comics’ line, script by Jason Viola, art by me. I do a daily autobiographical strip for my Patreon subscribers, the best of which I share on social media.

That’s Hotel Fred readers and it is absolutely bloody brilliant stuff!

RL: I’ve got a serial called Taniwha appearing in each issue of Soaring Penguin’s anthology Meanwhile. And I’m currently in talks about doing a new series with some old characters, although that’s too early to talk about right now. I’d be writing and drawing that if/when it comes together. Lots of plates in the air, like most of us!

Thank you so much to Roger for taking time out of making comics that make him and us happy! Seriously, I love that answer and it’s something we should all be aiming for in life I reckon.

Walter the Wobot: Don’t Be Cwuel is a wonderfully funny part of Mega-City Max, out on 19 July from comic shops and 2000 AD’s web shop.

Now, do yourself a favour and head for Roger’s Hotel Fred, go buy funny things from his store, including his brilliant diary comics collections, The Plague’s The Thing and Infections, Injections & Insurrections. You can find his comic Taniwha appearing in each issue of Soaring Penguin‘s Meanwhile anthology. And support him on Patreon. And of course, follow him on all of the socials – he’s here on Twitter.

.

Oh, and you’ll definitely want to read his most recent 2000 AD work, the Supercalifragilis-Twisted-and-Explosive Pandora Perfect, with Brett Parsons, available from comic shops, book shops, and the 2000 AD web shop.

And finally, a little selection from Roger’s wonderful Hotel Fred…

Mega-City Max is a brand-new comic special set deep in the world of Dredd, but coming at you with a distinctly different look at the world with the stories featuring teen- and post-teen versions of classic 2000 AD characters.

Aimed at teenagers, this stand-alone special is fast-paced and action-packed, and features the hottest breaking talent in comics. It’s Mega-City to the Max – it’s Mega-City Max!

Today we’re chatting with Oliver Gerlach & VV Glass, two exciting creators who’ve brought a young Devlin Waugh to life, Mega-City Max style!

Mega City Max is packed with five brand-new strips featuring some familiar names but rejuvenated and made fresh and new by some of the best new talent in comics. You’ll see a just kicked out of the Justice Department Galen DeMarco starting off as a P.I., Walter the Wobot getting into stand-up comedy, the Harlem Heroes taking on the Venetian Vipers in the Aeroball Mega-City Cup, and take a look at the dumbest fads hitting MC-1 in Cranium Chaos.

But here we’re going to chat to Oliver Gerlach and VV Glass about bringing us Brit-Cit’s most notorious man, Devlin Waugh, in Wedding Hells!

Oliver, V, welcome! So good to read your Devlin Waugh strip in Mega-City Max! We’ll get to him in just a moment, but first – what does it mean to you to be here at the launch of a new 2000 AD comic? (Okay, okay, it’s only a Special right now, but we have hope, right?)

OLIVER GERLACH: This is the first time I’ve written for 2000 AD and being in on the launch of a new comic, with the characters and universe that I’ve grown up loving, feels like a really special opportunity. It’s a chance to help shape something fresh and exciting, while still being an opportunity to play with the old toys.

And let me tell you, getting to write the classic 2000 AD fake swears into a script made me grin like a complete idiot.

VV GLASS: I worked on a few Rebellion anthologies before – a bit of the regular issues, a bit of the Tammy & Jinty and the Misty specials, but this is the first that’s its own distinct property, and the first to be a reimagining of existing concepts rather than a continuation of them.

It’s weird (good) being at the origin point of something without knowing where it’s going to go – you never know, in another 45 years people might be looking back at this issue as the start of something big.

Oh, absolutely V – and following on from that, what are your hopes for the future of Mega-City Max and would you return?

VVG: I really hope it carries on, it’s got a lot of potential as something playing with & speaking back to the years of material we have. And I’d like to see this and Regened keep going as a general thing; not just reimagining existing characters, but giving us storylines about Mega-City teenagers/kids, even if that needs to be separate from the usual output. Dredd (etc.) strips stick to adult casts for obvious reasons, but there’s a lot you can do with everyone else who exists in that world. Youth culture in the technofash future must be absolutely off the wall.

And returning? Of course! Wild horses etc.

OG: I really hope this has a future – as a reader, I want to see other characters reimagined like this. 2000 AD has such a huge stable of characters who could be great fun in this context. Give me a teen Nikolai Dante!

I’d return in a heartbeat. Honestly, it’s only the fact that I don’t live anywhere near the 2000 AD offices that’s stopping me from camping outside the door until they let me back in. I’ve had so much fun working on this, and I’d kill to do it again.

When it comes to Mega-City Max, the whole idea behind it is to broaden the readership, aiming for a slightly older readership than Regened, the troublesome teen market. What are your general thoughts on the idea and the concept?

OG: Generally, I think it’s a great idea. Comics need to draw in new readers and change with the times, or the audience only ever gets smaller as people gradually lose interest, and that’s bad for everyone.

In this particular case, though, I think it’s more actively exciting than a ‘do this or die’ situation. Mega-City Max is proving that the worlds of 2000 AD don’t have to be one thing – that it can be anything, as long as it’s got the right fire and energy behind it.

If you look at the history of 2000 AD, it’s been so many things, there have been so many series with so many tones over the last 40 years, and so many of the best of them have been the ones that try to tread new ground and be fresh and exciting. Even just within Dredd, Ezquerra’s Dredd isn’t McMahon’s Dredd, which isn’t Flint’s Dredd. And isn’t that more exciting? 40 years of trying new things is how you get new hits and new favourites.

VVG: The style and tone of 2000 AD has been so varied over the years that something like MCM fits pretty naturally in the pantheon. We have 2000 AD for the established adult fanbase, and 2000 AD Regened for younger people, so why not try reaching out to teenagers with a 2000 AD that speaks to them too? 

It’s good to test new ground when the opportunity comes up – it’s the thing that’s kept 2000 AD going for as long as it has. Diversification doesn’t mean dilution, it means adding an extra branch to a massive already well-branched tree. And there’s that possibility that MCM will be a gateway read for people who would normally never touch this material, who can then follow up by getting into the main Prog too.

OG: This is more 2000 AD stuff, for more people, not replacing anything. And that’s something everyone should be excited about.

How can more 2000 AD ever be a bad thing?

Have you seen the finished comic yet and what do you think of the talent and the strips in it?

OG: I’ve read the PDF of our Devlin Waugh story, but I’ve not actually seen the rest of the issue yet. I’m eagerly waiting by my letterbox every morning in the hopes that it’ll arrive! But we’ve got an amazing line-up here – Roger [Langridge] is always an absolute treat to read, of course, and what I’ve seen from everyone else looks really fun. I’m very excited to get my hands on the whole thing as a reader!

VVG: I’ve seen it about 75% done, but not lettered & graphicked. I’m always surprised by how much more of a ‘real thing’ that step makes it all look, the design/layout people really are the unsung miners in the shaft. So to speak. Judging from the preview pages of the other strips I’ve seen, it’s going to be a great comic!

Okay then, let’s talk Devlin!

Your Devlin Waugh strip, Wedding Hells has a young Devlin as a Brit-Cit born Olympian fallen on hard times. He’s, to use his own words ‘Olympic hero, wedding officiant, part-time occultist, dashing rogue.’ But it all opens with a very miserable Devlin, surrounded by luxury and wonder – not to mention dressed in dress shirt, smoking jacket, and Y-fronts – such a great opening image.

So, what’s Wedding Hells all about?

OG: At heart, Wedding Hells is about looking at your life and wondering if you’ve peaked too young. It’s about hitting a massive slump relatively early on, and trying to work out how to dig yourself out of that hole. It’s also about demons, yelling, and camp.

VVG: Oliver would know since he, you know, wrote it, but as a reader (technically) I’d say it’s also about celebrity, what people in that world will do to maintain the spotlight, and in that vein the kinds of personalities that want to stay in said spotlight.

Devlin, of course, is one hugely popular character in the Megazine. But your brief was to write and draw a teen Devlin, bringing him to a new, possibly unfamiliar audience. How did you even begin?

VVG: The main thing was keeping the core appeal of the character while showing what he’d be like as a youngo, without straying too much from the existing blueprint.

He’s the same guy, but with a less evolved version of the style he has in the original stories, to go with his less evolved sense of himself. I think his major charm points click with readers regardless of age, so it was a case of boiling everything down to those. The Waughdrobe was perfect so we kept that, but made his aesthetic slightly the worse for wear, since Devlin’s more down on his luck and less put together than he is in his moustache era. I kind of wish I’d kept the Terry-Thomas tooth gap now, though.

OG: For me, the start point was in working out how to thread that needle of ‘fresh new introduction’ and ’old favourite character’. It’s an intimidating brief, being handed a popular character and asked to do a new take on him that’s accessible to a new audience, without losing sight of what makes Devlin Devlin.

So that meant looking at how he’s been presented before, and working out what’s a completely immutable fact about him and what’s maybe something he might not have properly developed until later life.

We’ve seen a lot of Devlin’s life over the years, from his childhood to his current adventures in the Megazine. But there’s a big gap from around the age of 14 to when we first meet the original Smith/Phillips version. So that gave us a few years in which to play with him, and specifically a few years that are a life stage when people are trying to work out who they are. So how does Devlin Waugh work out who he is?

Finding an insecurity to build the story around gave a great starting point, and from there the character just kind of took over and wrote his own story.

There’s no moustache there (yet) but all the elements of Devlin are in your tale, flamboyantly gay and absolutely in love with himself, ego personified. Sure, a bit less sure of himself and, when we meet him, feeling all washed-up.

There’s a lush look to it all – V has done an amazing thing here. The backgrounds are beautiful, but the figure work seems really fresh, popping from the page. And when it’s called for there’s a great sense of movement to it all. Very much of the now, manga-influenced it seems, but with a fabulous style all its own.

Oliver – what do you think of what VV’s done with your script?

OG: V’s astonishing. Just, absolutely mind blowing stuff. There’s so much elegance and charm to their work, but their facial expressions are so constantly funny. When I saw the unlettered version of the art I was laughing out loud at all of the panels that would eventually have my favourite bits of dialogue on, which is generally a good sign.

And just look at the backgrounds! VV’s drawn in so much detail with all the background posters and details, and there are incredible jokes hidden in there that were a complete surprise to me. The whole experience has been a joy, and they’ve done genuinely amazing work with the story. I’m delighted.

And VV, what sort of look were you going for here with Devlin? What sort of influences were you bringing to it? I understand Oliver Pickles [the MCM editor] suggested that you use the illustrations of Antonio Lopez, the fabulous queer fashion designer, as a springboard for your Devlin?

VVG: Fashion illustration of the 80s mostly – yes, Antonio Lopez, who has a very specific look for his male models that seemed perfect for a younger Devlin. It really captures the combo of henchness and elegance that Devlin’s always had, without being as focussed on beef as the Tom of Finland original.

He’s sort of a mishmash of period models and 20th century dandies, and a bit of Hirohiko Araki, which is pretty much the same as saying ‘fashion illustrations of the 80s’.

Were you both familiar with Devlin before the strip or was there a lot of required (and enjoyable) reading to be done for this one?

VVG: I wasn’t! Devlin hasn’t penetrated the zeitgeist in the same way as his Megapeers for whatever reason. I didn’t have as much background reading to do as Oliver, since Devlin looks pretty much the same in all his stories, give or take a few Schwarzeneggers.

I looked at a lot of Charlie Adlard’s work on Armitage though, to get an idea of the Brit-Cit Devlin exists in, so the setting could reflect the character and vice-versa. And Adlard’s painted work on that series had a lot of influence on the palettes I ended up using as well.

OG: I wasn’t familiar with Devlin before being offered this story. I was vaguely aware of the name, but that was about it. So when I was told the rough brief for the character, I jumped at the opportunity and then had to ask for recommended reading.

I was sent – I think most of the major John Smith stories? And I read them all in one sitting and asked for more. So then I read all of Ales Kot’s current work. And then I went and bought the collected versions of all the other stories, because I was having so much fun. So now I think I’ve read every single Devlin Waugh story up until pretty recently, and I’ve got a new favourite character. Sometimes, doing research can be fun.

What is it, do you think, about the character for you that just really seems to stick with so many creators and readers?

OG: I think Devlin’s stuck with people because Smith and Phillips introduced him with such a strong sense of character. That design, that voice, that face – they’re all immediately engaging, and for readers, there’s pretty much limitless potential. I mean, he’s essentially a comedy protagonist in a horror story, and that’s a combination that everyone loves.

As a writer, I found Devlin an absolute joy to write. He’s got such a strong voice, and once you get into it, the dialogue just flows. I’ve written licensed characters before – I wrote a Red Sonja story a couple of years ago – and Devlin just walked into my head in a way that I’ve never experienced before. He’s a real force of nature, and a constantly enjoyable character to write.

VVG: I think there’s a disjunction between Devlin as a character and the stories & worlds he moves through that’s inherently appealing.

He’s a comedy exorcist who looks like a fireman calendar and behaves like Noel Coward, but who exists in a dystopian future full of occult horrors and also some more mundane horrors. He should be a grizzled cynical Constantine type, but he’s out there having fun with it, which in turn is fun to produce and to read.

Wedding Hells really is a great intro to the character, a different but familiar Devlin, and one that I know I want to read more of.

For a start, you dangled that Olympic failure and national embarrassment in front of us but never elaborated! But he really does seem to work as Young Devlin, a great intro to the whole body of work, not to mention a fascinating (and fabulous, of course) character in his own right.

OG: Oh, I know exactly what that particular embarrassment was – if you look at his previous appearances, you should hopefully be able to join the dots on that one. It’s there in the earlier stories.

Have you both already got plans for the next episode of this particular dandy?

OG: I have a lot of stories I want to tell with Devlin. There are so many questions to explore, and so many areas of his life I want to touch on. How did he end up working for the Vatican? How did he manage to pull himself out of the slump he’s in in our story here?

I don’t want to write an origin story for the moustache, but other than that, pretty much every question you might have is something I want to touch on.

One of the things I love the most about John Smith’s writing is the way that he constantly implies the existence of previous adventures that he has no intent of ever actually explaining. I don’t want to step on his toes there – that vague texture is a great feature of Devlin’s life – but I would very much like to add to the long list of bizarre adventures and old dead friends.

So yes, that’s all a very long way of saying: I’ve got a notes file on my phone that’s been slowly filling up with one-line pitches for more Devlin stories for about a year now. If 2000 AD will have me back, I’d love to tell some of those stories.

VVG: I’m hoping Devlin is moving towards his date with the Pope, I’d love to design whatever Vatican City’s become in this reality.

Oh, that we would love to see!

Okay then, let’s get a little bit about your good selves in here.

Oliver, you’ve been writing comics for a while now, mostly short-form works, with a specialism in queer comics for the young adult market. What sort of things should we be looking at?

OG: If you’ve not read the GLAAD award winning Young Men in Love, from A Wave Blue World, I think that’s the piece I’m proudest of. That was an anthology of queer male romance stories, all from creative teams of queer men and non-binary people. The vast majority of successful queer M/M romance is written by non-male writers, and it was an amazing experience to be part of a project to let us tell our own stories a little. Editors Joe Glass and Matt Miner put together something really special there, and brought out the best in all of our work.

There’s also first full-length graphic novel, Soup, with Kelsi Jo Silva, coming out in 2024. What’s that all about?

OG: Soup is a book born from my experiences working in restaurant kitchens. It’s a fantasy graphic novel about a girl raised in a kitchen, who starts to realise that maybe the industry that’s raised her might be a bit corrupt and abusive. She sets out to take down her boss and bring back the fun in cooking. It’s warm, fun, and deals with some serious real world issues, in a setting where Kelsi gets to draw the most delightful goblins I’ve ever seen.

How did you get into writing comics?

OG: I think I’ve always written, but it took a long time for me to start taking that seriously. I fell into academia pretty hard – I have a doctorate in Ancient Greek epic poetry, for my sins – and needed something to distract myself from that. So I started writing more fiction for fun, and then things started to snowball a bit. It turns out that when you spend all your time thinking about storytelling for academic purposes, that translates into writing getting rapidly out of hand.

And then a few friends in comics took me seriously and gave me the support and guidance I needed. Shelly Bond took me under her wing a bit and taught me a frankly intimidating amount in the time it took to make a one-page comic for her Hey, Amateur! Anthology from Black Crown. And now here I am, having a great time and making a mess, with no plans to stop any time soon.

And the same for you V, can you give us a little background to you and your comic and illustration work?

VVG: I pretty much did comics-intensive illustration straight out of university up to now, since it turns out one of the things you can do with a BA in English is work in an unrelated field immediately. I think the first thing I ever illustrated was a story with Owen Johnson and Lizzie Boyle with Disconnected Press (at the time), and I’m still working with both of them now!

Since most of my art background is in oil painting, I’m primarily a cover artist, and when I’ve done interior art it’s had to have been standard pen & ink format for time reasons. Since it takes about 20-60 hours per page in fully-painted mode, you can imagine the timescale on a full issue of that isn’t something that works for most publishers.

VV, we’ve talked before about how you make your art in a slightly unusual fashion – creating roughs in a notebook and scanning them in, but then, with the roughs as a guide to where figures will be, you paint the backgrounds for every page and only finish the figure work once all the backgrounds are done.

Is that still the case or is it in a more traditional fashion now? What are the benefits for you? And is that why we have such lush and grandiose backdrops for the characters at times here?

VVG: That’s still pretty much the case! It’s easier to change a figure to fit a background than vice versa, and the backgrounds define the palette and lightsources for the figures, so it works out better in the long run if I finish those first. Although I do pencils for everything at the same time, so ideally there isn’t too much to change once the backgrounds are painted.

In terms of the so-called lushness, it’s easier for me to know how to render things in paint than in your normal pen & ink format, my brain doesn’t work the right way for two-tone art. I think as well since I can paint this stuff, and Rebellion gives me time in their production schedule to paint it, I should! Making work that’s nice to look at as much as it’s a narrative tool is important to me – since I’m not contributing to the writing part, the least I can do is go hard on the other half.

And as far as Devlin was concerned, what was the process of putting together Wedding Hells?

VVG: I started with a load of reference images for the characters and setting, so in this case a Pinterest’s worth of brutalist and art deco buildings, fashion illustrations, and copies of old issues. Then a little bit of concept work to see how the designs I had in mind looked in reality.

Once I had a vaguely cohesive look for everything I went to roughs, concentrating on flow across the page, use of space for effect (comedy and normal) and expression. Then a thumbnail colour rough to work out the pages as individual objects, and have them shift reactively over the story – so in this, we go from greens & blues in the introduction, to increasingly bright orange and pink as the action happens, then back down to a calmer blue and gold for the end.

Pencils after that, fairly roughly, painting the backgrounds straight over their pencils, and once they’re completed finalising the figure lineart. Figure colours get painted underneath those, to keep legibility, and finally I did a big layer-colour-detail pass to cohere all the visuals and add in extra bits that got missed out earlier in the process. 

Sadly, all my concept & reference stuff was lost in a quote-unquote catastrophic motherboard incident, so page process is all I have, sorry about that!

Oh we’ve all been there V, thanks for sending over what you could!

>

Now, as we move to finish, what do you know or remember of 2000 AD, how did you first discover the comic, and what strips you specifically remember from the time you first discovered it?

OG: I got into 2000 AD through a friend lending me paperback collections, which continued as I was growing up (and we still lend each other books in much the same way), so my reading never actually lined up with what was currently available until very recently. My first experiences were mostly the really early Dredd classics – The Cursed Earth, Judge Cal, all the early epics. I don’t think I ever read any that were even in colour until I was about 17!

But the stuff that really got me – again, before my time, but I read it all in paperback with no sense of actual chronology – was Nemesis the Warlock. That weird spiky hostile energy drew me in completely, and I’ve never been the same since.

VVG: I think the first comic I ever bought was the Brian Bolland Dredd/Death collection (the one with the very understated ‘featuring Judge Death‘ subscript on the cover – sitcom guest star Death!) I was 12 and I read it on a 17-hour bus ride. I’ve pretty much collected any Dark Judges stuff that came out after that, the last one I remember buying was Wagner & Staples’ Dark Justice story. So in light of that I obviously remember the Grover-Bolland ‘Gaze into the fist of Dredd‘ strip.

Finally, what sort of things have we got to look forward to from you in the future? Whether that’s for 2000 AD or elsewhere?

VVG: I’ve almost finished work on the second volume of The Last Witch, an ‘unpleasant fairytale for younger readers’, the first volume of that came out in 2021 with Boom!. I’m also part of the backer rewards team for Early Bird, a far-future queer romance graphic novel that just went up for pre-order on Kickstarter. Other than that, the usual business continues, i.e. series covers with Titan and Black Market Narrative.

OG: My first graphic novel, Soup, comes out from Little Bee Books in the US next year, and also in some other places that I can’t talk about yet. That’s been taking a lot of my time and attention lately, but I’m starting to pitch other things around at the moment. So you can expect to see increasingly weird YA material coming out from me over the next few years, along with whatever short-form nonsense I can convince people to publish. (That one’s going pretty well so far. Keep an eye out for my name on anthology contributor lists.)

Thank you so much to both Oliver and V for what was a fascinating set of answers to those questions.

Their Devlin Waugh: Wedding Hells strip is a fabulous part of Mega-City Max, out on 19 July from comic shops and 2000 AD’s web shop. And of course, you can find everything Devlin Waugh, as created by John Smith and Sean Phillips, here.

You can find both Oliver and V online in plenty of places, here are just a few – Oliver’s website & Twitter, VV Glass’ website & Twitter.

Oliver’s first graphic novel, Soup, with Kelsi Jo Silva, comes out in 2024 from Little Bee Books. And you should definitely look out for Young Men in Love, the GLAAD award winning anthology from A Wave Blue World.

As for V’s work, you should be looking at all of it frankly (there’s a helpful list here), but take a particular look at the work on The Last Witch from Boom! Studios, written by Conor McCreery, that she’s been working on from 2019.

We shall leave you this time with the gorgeous full-size details to be found in VV Glass’ process work on Devlin Waugh: Wedding Hells, page 1, from first roughs to finished page, beginning with those roughs…

Full backgrounds added in, pencils scaled to backgrounds…

Figures and figure colours added…

V’s final pass at the art…

And the final printed page…

Mega-City Max is a brand-new comic special set deep in the world of Dredd, but coming at you with a distinctly different look at the world with the stories featuring teen- and post-teen versions of classic 2000 AD characters.

Five strips, all with a fresh, forward-thinking, fast-paced, action-packed attitude, this is the world of Mega-City Max!

Inside Mega City Max, a continuity-free new beginning for 2000 AD, we’ve got the hottest new talent in comics reimagining the best of the world of 2000 AD, completely stand-alone and aimed squarely at the teenage reader.

You’ll meet a young Galen DeMarco as she sets out as a P.I. after being kicked out of the Justice Department, you’ll see a young Devlin Waugh officiating at an influencer’s wedding where the smell of brimstone is in the air, you’ll laugh as Dredd’s old man-servent droid, Walter the Wobot, takes on his first stand-up gig, follow every violent play as the Harlem Heroes head for the Mega-City Aeroball Cup, and catch up with the latest fad to hit Mega-City One in Cranium Chaos.

Bringing you these five forward-thinking strips are some of the hottest breaking talent in comics today – Hannah Templer (Cosmoknights), Ramzee (Edge of Spider-Verse), Oliver Gerlach (Young Men in Love), VV Glass (The Last Witch), Lucie Ebrey (Amazing World of Gumball), Korinna Mei Veropoulou (Adventures of Croblin), and industry veteran Roger Langridge (Muppets, Hotel Fred).

Beginning a series of interviews with the talent behind Mega-City Max, we’re speaking with the two people tasked with putting it all and assembling all this talent – Oliver Pickles and Ollie Hicks. They’re the ones with the why, what, and how it all happened and just what to expect from this exciting new 2000 AD comic.

Ollie & Oliver, it’s you we have to thank for Mega-City Max if I’m right?

OLIVER PICKLES: Well, the initial pitch was co-written with Ollie Hicks, they had been working on the Regened collections, and were aware of the readership age-gap between Regened and 2000 AD.

Mega-City Max aims to bridge that gap in some ways. Another idea behind Mega-City Max is to refresh characters in various ways, removing potential obstacles for readers who are new to the world of Mega-City One.

I would say that it is ALWAYS the right time for more new comics, but Regened has proven that there is an appetite for alternate takes on characters, and Mega-City Max is branching out of that.

OLLIE HICKS: Well,I don’t remember where the initial spark came from, but this has been Oliver and I’s baby from the beginning.

What was the idea behind Mega-City Max and why is now the right time for it?

OH: I think with Regened going for a few years, if you were 9 when it first started you’d now be 13 and starting to look for different material. So why not have something for the readers who are growing up whilst also providing a new jumping on point for the huge audience of teens reading comics right now.

Now, unusually for a 2000 AD comic, there’s no Judge Dredd? What was the thinking there?

OH: I just felt there were more characters who would be more relevant for the new teen demographic we wanted to capture. 2000 AD has a huge stable of characters, it makes sense to play with all of them.

OP: ‘No Dredd’ was absolutely a rule. There has been a shift in recent years, and I was editing Mike Mocher’s I am the Law, with his constant refrain of ‘Dredd is supposed to be a warning, not a manual’ – I think that Dredd and what he represents to people not necessarily familiar with 2000 AD would have unbalanced the tone of the comic.

Just breaking in for a moment, Mike Molcher’s I Am The Law is quite rightly being lauded as essential reading for all and any who look at the world today and wonder where it’s all going so wrong. It’s an essential text for the ages.

MCM has definitely got a look and a feel to it as something that’s fresh and new. Obviously, that was editorially led, but what else were you looking for with the strips you commissioned?

OH: I just wanted art that felt cool and relevant and spoke to me. Mega-City Max is a city, right? So I wanted art and stories that focused on and reflected the excitement of a big city. Mostly I just wanted to work with really cool people, and the project delivered that in spades – people who we felt had a strong, youthful voice, that felt relevant, interesting and cool.

What was your thinking behind who you reached out to for Mega-City Max?

OP: One of the main aims of approaching creators was that we wanted a strong group of writers and artists who hadn’t necessarily worked for 2000 AD before, or at least not beyond a few bits here and there, but who were versed in teen/YA comics.

I think all the editors here read all kinds of comics, whether it is graphic novels from American publishers, webcomics, small press, self-published – we don’t exist in a vacuum, and we do pass other publishers comics around the office to each other too.

OH: I mean, who wouldn’t want to work with these people? These are people who make us in editorial laugh out loud, jump up in our seats, make us feel electric you know?

I’m extremely proud that this was my third outing with Ramzee, Korinna and Pris. All of those creators really get me as an editor, and I really get them as creators, and it’s a joyful process working with them. The entire team however were creators I’m greedy for more from, always.

Was it a deliberate decision on your part to look far and wide for the talent here and to go to voices not traditionally represented in 2000 AD? (Although saying that, the representation at 2000 AD has been more reflective of society in the last few years.)

OH: My personal editorial vision has always been to expand the roster of artists who we had on our books. I think Mega-City Max was building on the work of the 45 Years of 2000 AD artbook, which gave editorial an excuse to reach out to people we’d never otherwise talk to. That’s how Hannah [Templer] first worked with us, for example.

I gravitate in my personal art tastes towards queer, POC and/or marginalised gender storytellers, as well as local comics creators because I love British comics publishing, and I always like to reflect that in who I commission, because that’s my unique editorial viewpoint. That’s something new that I can bring to the comics I edit.   

OP: The representation question is a bit awkward for me to answer – on the one hand it wasn’t overly intentional, though I do believe we said we wanted a gay writer to write Devlin Waugh, but I also think it speaks of just how diverse the people who make comics are once you step away from the main stable to 2000 AD creators.

A few years ago someone said to me that the answer ‘I just want the right person for the job’ doesn’t really challenge my own biases towards art, it is my job to actually look at who is out there, scout talent and not gatekeep.

Absolutely, we all need to look outside of our current view of comics and find out that there’s so much going on beyond what we usually see and embrace all of that.

Okay then, moving inside Mega-City Max now – how did you decide on the line-up of strips in MCM?

OH: Harlem Heroes were obviously a shoe-in, but other than that I think it was just… who did we like? Who interested us?

OP: The initial line up of strips was a little different, but we definitely wanted a sports strip, a detective strip, and a supernatural strip, (and some humorous short comics). We had a pool of characters who might fit into those categories but, for instance, Hannah Templer didn’t take to our initial idea for the story she would be involved in, she had some ideas of what she wanted to write and draw, mainly that there had to be multiple female characters involved, and so we pitched her on the idea of DeMarco as a private investigator, with Hershey and Anderson as her friends.

Walter may seem like an odd fit – and while I would disagree that it shouldn’t be there I would admit that it is the most 2000 AD of the strips, I will take the hit on that as I had to nix Roger’s initial idea. Roger’s story fits, I think, but perhaps we should have gone with a non-2000 AD character.

For me the distinction is the characters, and at what point they are at in their lives, what decisions are they making to guide their life. The three main strips feature characters who had had a bit of a set-back in their lives, and they have to restart their momentum. I feel that teens can relate to things not entirely going their way, and having to make adjustments as they move towards becoming adults.

Was it a case of getting the creators involved first and seeing what ideas they all had or was it more editorially guided? Did you have a list of strips and characters that you thought would and wouldn’t work?

OH: It was very editorially guided. We reached out to everyone with very specific ideas of the characters, or if it was brand new strip, of the general story set up we wanted them to work with.

What’s the distinction between Mega-City Max strips and Regened strips in your opinion?

OH: For me, Mega-City Max strips are little older, can be a little naughtier, a little grittier too. This is only the first issue, so I’d guess you’d have to see how the strips develop. It’s also in the age of the characters too- with the exception of Walter and Max Normal, everyone is clearly teen in this.

The Harlem Heroes strip is one that’s moved complete from Regened, with Ramzee and Korinna’s story of these new Harlem Heroes switching to MCM quite perfectly here.

So what was your thinking with that, to actually bring a Regened strip across to MCM? Was it a strip that was already completed and planned for Regened or was it your decision to let Ramzee and Korinna  take it up to the teen level?  

OP: Harlem Heroes came before Mega-City Max, yes, but the idea of getting a new creative team who would revamp the characters/setting came from Ollie and the available space they had for that was in the Regened collections. Yes, it maybe does blur the boundaries between Regened and Mega-City Max, but I would say they fit far more into a teen category than an all-ages category – certainly with this new story.

OH: This story was always planned for MCM. I think Harlem Heroes has the ability to jump up a gear – if you see what Ramzee’s ideas are for this strip, they’re always very teen, very sports manga, because he’s really engaging with the history of the strip. It felt like putting Harlem Heroes in a teen setting would allow him to run the full gamut of his ideas.

Another great creator you’ve included here is the wonderful Lucie Ebrey, whose webcomic Muggy Ebes was essential reading all through its long run from 2012-2017. But she’s in MCM on a completely new strip, Cranium Chaos, something set in Mega-City One but with new characters. Was it you wanting Lucie in the comic and letting her have carte blanche?

OH: I wanted Lucie Ebrey in the comic from the beginning because she’s a star!

She’s an absolutely brilliant cartoonist and a jewel of the British comics scene. I’ve been a fan of hers for years. Her chaotic humour seemed like a perfect fit for a teen 2000 AD project.

We brought her the initial idea, I wanted like a Bill and Ted style duo and Oliver, I think, suggested the set-up of a different fad each episode. Then Lucie fleshed out the specifics of the characters and came back with the utterly brilliant and unhinged story idea.

OP: We wanted Lucie Ebrey in the comic. And Ollie and I had an idea for a Future Shock style format strip. Each episode would be about a fad that mega-citizens get swept up in. It would kind of help people understand just how wild Mega-City One could be. Lucie wrote a pitch that was a couple of paragraphs long, with a second option that was a paragraph long, and a third idea that was about two lines. Ollie and I both jumped on the two-line pitch as the one with the most comedic value, and then Lucie really delivered the goods with a story that is just on the right side of ridiculous.

What would you say to those who are already writing this one off as not ‘Proper 2000 AD’? – Although of course it IS proper 2000 AD, it absolutely is, it’s just 2000 AD doing more, trying more, being inventive and innovative, and not resting on its laurels… just as it always has!

OH: Well, in one way it’s not proper 2000 AD! It’s a separate continuity. In superhero comics you often have various books involving the same characters aimed at different groups – think of the DC Graphic Novels for Younger Readers line and the Black Label Line.

MCM is designed to be stand-alone, for people who are either brand new to 2000 AD, or are interested in new things to be done with the world. If you’re not interested in either of those things, the regular comic is still continuing on as usual.

But comics are already for kids. It’s kids comics that are making this medium so profitable. I believe passionately in comics for everyone: adults and kids – but 2000 AD is, at the end of the day, an ongoing comic. And ongoing comics can only exist if they continue to be relevant. So it’s gonna have to try new things.

Comics have already changed! Look at the Graphic Novel charts! It’s literally only a certain small demographic of comic readers who are struggling with this.

Absolutely spot on – hallelujah!

OP: Well…I can understand that people who like something don’t want it to be replaced, but that isn’t what Mega-City Max, or Regened, is doing. I think they are additive, bringing new ways of looking at the characters into existence.

It used to be that comic’s didn’t last too long before being folded into another, and 2000 AD broke that by aging along with its audience, sometime around the 10th anniversary milestone, or the introduction of Bisley’s painted art. And that ‘reader retention’ is absolutely not being taken for granted, but solely focusing on that has its own problems which everyone is trying to avoid with new variations on the characters. Artistically, 2000 AD has been quite varied, you cannot confuse a McMahon Dredd with a Bolland Dredd, and while people will have their favourite styles of art, I think that 2000 AD readers are quite receptive to new things. But the thing is that Mega-City Max isn’t directly aimed at those people. I hope those people like it, no scared cows have been killed. But the idea with Regened or Mega-City Max is to try and find new readers. And you cannot always do that by putting a replica of Prog 520 (I just plucked that number out of thin air) in front of new readers.

Asking what 2000 AD, and comics in general, has to do to survive is a big question, but it will always involve young people reinventing the medium. Don’t shackle yourself to nostalgia (I say that as someone who happily printed the 2000 AD Art of Kevin O’Neill: Apex Edition, I am not here to burn everything down)

No, the great thing about 2000 AD is surely that it’s there for EVERYONE, whether they’re a fan of McMahon, O’Neill, Bolland, McCarthy, Hicklenton, Gibson, Ewins, Talbot, Kennedy, Ezquerra, or any number of artists that have come after them – the brilliance of 2000 AD is in finding the next big thing, the next hot artist, usually before the rest of the comics world cotton on to them.   

Once this first MCM special is out, what’s a win for you – what are the things that will mean it’s a success?

OP: A win would be that we get to continue with Mega-City Max, taking it beyond a one-shot and into a mini-series or even an ongoing. The plans for the next Mega-City Max would be to keep the creative teams on board, developing the stories that they want to tell.

OH: I don’t really think of MCM in terms of ‘wins’, since I’m not at Rebellion anymore. I would be pleased if it became an ongoing, but I don’t have any stake in it.

Yes Ollie, I saw that you’d moved on to go freelance as a writer and editor – and good luck from everyone here with your continued success with that! – but whilst you were there, were there already plans for the next MCM and how it’s going to develop going forwards?

OH: I couldn’t possibly comment on this one. You’ll need to see if Oliver will crack and spill the beans!

OP: Well, future strips include a whole list of characters that we didn’t get the chance to use this time around, from Chopper’s teenage rebellion to a Hershey and Anderson Cursed Earth road-trip.

Well, I’m not sure that’s really a plan or a wish list from Oliver. Let’s see where we are in a year’s time, eh?

Ollie, now that you’ve left Rebellion/2000 AD, in terms of your freelancing, what’s happening with you now?

OH: Yes, I’ve moved on from Rebellion and I’m now focusing mostly on my writing. My debut, Grand Slam Romance, a queer softball magical girl comic (co-created with and drawn by Emma Oosterhous) was published by Mariko Tamaki’s imprint Surely Books this year, and there’s two more books in the series so I’ve been working on those. In terms of editing, I’m co-editing an 18 plus sapphic anthology with Tab Kimpton and Niki Smith called Succulent. Both Grand Slam and Succulent are dream projects and I couldn’t be happier to be working on them.

Thank you to both Ollie and Oliver for taking the time to chat – they’re both incredibly busy people and it’s particularly bad for Oliver because he’s also busy sorting out the 2000 AD presence at San Diego Comic Con – he’s been writing the answers to our questions whilst sitting in the departure lounge at Detroit en route to San Diego!

For more from Ollie Hicks, you really should go check out their website, Hickscomics,  follow them on Twitter, and do all the other socials stuff. As for Grand Slam Romance, it really does look fantastic, please do yourself a favour and give it a shot!

As for Oliver Pickles, Tharg doesn’t really let him do much else beyond work, work, work on projects like Mega-City Max and in his role as graphic novels editor. But he does have a Twitter you should follow. Tharg tends to let things like this slide as long as the Pickles droid does his tweeting in the couple of hours off every week that he’s given for sleeping.

You can, and really should look out for the Mega-City Max special from out now from comic shops and 2000 AD’s web shop.

Out now in 2000 AD Prog 2340, brand-new horror-comedy Portals & Black Goo follows the travails of Devouroo delivery drone Kroy Plemons as he serves the creatures of the night that live amongst regular Londoners.

Created by John Tomlinson and Eoin Coveney, this one’s a satirical look at modern working, the plight of zero-hours contract work, the never-ending drive for everything to be faster, and the prejudice faced by any and all marginalised groups in our society. But it does it through a lens of a world where the old monsters are living amongst us.

And when we have vampires, demons, werewolves, and all manner of old evils living alongside Londoners, just what the hell are they meant to do for food – seeing as the native population is off the menu.

Well, the answer is Devouroo – ‘We Deliver… You Devour.’ Whether it’s bags of fresh plasma for vampires, bloody bones for djinn, or steaming viscera for werewolves, the put-upon scooter riders of Devouroo will bring it to you. But of course, in a cutthroat world of food delivery where the customers are hungry for blood, it’s always going to be a nightmare getting the job done.

John, or Automatom-Linson as he was known around these parts, is an integral part of the history of 2000 AD, not only as a writer and creator (of Armoured Gideon, Mercy Heights, and Tor Cyan) but also serving as Tharg’s Earthly representative as editorial assistant droid (Progs 828-914) and editor (Progs 915-977) of 2000 AD, editor of Judge Dredd: Lawman of the Future (issues  13-23) and editor of the Judge Dredd Megazine (issues 3.13-3.21). At some point, we’ll pin him down to talk in more depth about those illustrious positions, but right here, right now, it’s all about Portals & Black Goo!

We’ve already talked to Eoin Coveney about it and seen of the fabulous artwork, but now it’s time to chat to John Tomlinson about Portals & Black Goo!

Hello John, the new series Portals & Black Goo begins this week in 2000 AD Prog 2340, a brand-new seven-parter looking at a world where the monsters live amongst us. But it’s not your normal horror tale at all. Instead, you’ve taken a sideways look at what this world might be like, wondering just what it is that these traditional monsters do for food.

Tharg’s already described it as ‘combining comedy-horror with social satire of the zero-contract culture and the prejudice a section of the populace can face.’

So, John, what’s Portals & Black Goo all about?

JOHN TOMLINSON: On the surface, it’s about a food delivery service for monsters. These creatures of legend have been with us since the dawn of time (or at least the dawn of storytelling), but are still frequently depicted as lurking in the shadows, loitering around ancient buildings or on blasted heaths. If they hoped to survive, they’d surely have to move with the times like everyone else.

In Portals & Black Goo (hereafter P&BG), werewolves still feast on steaming viscera, but now they’re just as likely to order via an app as to prowl the hills or the nearest zoo.

Most of the monsters in P&BG live in Battle Hill, a crumbling sink estate where cash-strapped and/or terrified local authorities marooned them decades earlier. It’s a grim and lawless locale, a no-go zone where few humans dare to venture – except for Devouroo riders.

Without crashing headlong into a subtext, Brexit and all that followed with it have unearthed an unpleasant seam of bigotry in the British psyche. Not long ago there was a spate of viral YouTube videos of white people (often middle-aged women, for some weird reason) going absolutely bat-shit on public transport at some hapless fellow passenger, invariably of a different ethnicity. In P&BG the monsters are the focus of this spittle-flecked fury, and I’ve just tried to show the sheer ugliness of it all. Why all the bile? Was it always lying dormant, awaiting the rise of the Right? ‘Why can’t we all just get along’?

John, how did it all come about – according to what you said here it’s something that came to you one night – ‘a confused Deliveroo rider stopped me for directions after his phone conked out. Walking home after, it struck me that they must have to deliver to some pretty scary places and people.’

After that you came up with the line ‘Hungry Horrors: food delivery for children of the night. Charnel@£1.99!’ And that’s as good an elevator pitch as any I’ve heard, completely summarising the concept perfectly.

But of course, there’s a lot of work in between elevator pitch popping into your head one night and finally seeing the strip in the Prog! What sort of development did Portals & Black Goo go through to get it to the finished product?

JT: When writing for 2000 AD, Terror Tales come more naturally to me than Future Shocks, and P&BG was no exception. 2000 AD does sprawling galactic epics exceptionally well, but it doesn’t need another one from me – I wanted to combine SF and horror in a familiar urban setting.

As I said, it all began to coalesce (or congeal!) when a Deliveroo rider stopped me for directions. I’m a pretty slow and methodical writer, and sometimes plotting can be a slog. Every so often though, I get an idea from which a bunch of others cascade, and I know I’m onto something.

The initial outline I sent to Matt Smith was all about Kroy Plemons’ perilous quest to deliver dinner to a terrifying supernatural entity. But it was soon clear that this wouldn’t be enough to sustain the whole series, so I began to flesh out the supporting cast and their various backstories. Matt also asked me to develop the feud between Kroy and his arch nemesis, Dwayne Shedd of rival delivery service DaHunga. For anyone who remembers Ace Trucking Co., there’s more than a hint of Ace and Kain about their relationship.

Another big influence was Cursitor Doom, the old IPC wizard who was my favourite character in SMASH! as a kid. Years later I got to write a Doom story for a 2000 AD Action Special, drawn by Jim Baikie, where the brief was to reinvent and/or subvert legacy IPC characters for the 90s. But when it came to the crunch I found I didn’t want to graffiti all over my childhood hero, and so I ended up writing a very recognisable Doom.

You can find the whole of John’s Cursitor Doom: The Man Who Died Every Day strip right here at Back From The Depths. Here’s a couple of those beautiful Jim Baikie pages…

>

JT: The wizard in P&BG isn’t Doom, but is perhaps what the Action Special version could have been, had I followed the brief.

A once powerful sorcerer, he lives in a squalid Council flat, wears baggy sports gear and has a gammy leg. Possibly centuries old, he claims to live on air but is surrounded by Pot Noodle empties. He’s still a powerful wizard, but is hopelessly out of touch with the modern age, plagued by ill health and nurses a grudge against his richer, smoother, more famous brother.

Obviously, we’re not just going to be having seven episodes of a Devouroo driver making deliveries – although to be honest, that would actually work, a new weird setup for a delivery every episode.

JT: I’d actually like to do that too… there was no room for it this series, but I had a fun idea for a scenario in which Kroy gets trapped in a ‘Dark Store’ – one of the eerie collection points from which Devouroo riders pick up their food orders. And it’s more hideous and terrifying than he ever imagined. At this point though I’ve no idea how the series will be received, so whether or not I get to write more is (as ever), a matter for Tharg and the readers.

We’re introduced to the world of Portals & Black Goo in the two episodes I’ve seen through the life of poor old Kroy Plemons, Devouroo delivery bloke, delivering all sorts of food to the monsters of this world through a series of ‘eldritch resonances that generate temporary portals large enough for a bike’. 

JT: This was inspired by YouTube videos of a guy who claimed to have opened a portal to Sedona in his bedroom, by generating resonant harmonics on a Bluetooth speaker. He hadn’t – if only! But it was ingeniously done, both SPFX-wise and in his laid back, convincing approach and it stayed with me.

Kroy has to deal with all the usual crap delivery drivers have to put up with, but with an added element of danger thanks to just who he’s delivering to and who he’s working for. 

And it’s from this that you’ve crafted the seven-part series. What sort of nightmares are going to be bothering Kroy in the rest of the series?

JT: The catalyst for this series is Kroy’s relegation to Devouroo’s ‘Night Shift’, from which few riders return. Whilst running this potentially lethal gauntlet he gets stranded between dimensions, a predicament for which the only escape is to complete the delivery – and for reasons of spoilerage I won’t reveal, that’s no longer possible.

It’s a test of his wits and courage and he still might die. In the meantime his friends are all in danger and he can’t save them. He has to play the ‘elevator game’ too, for which you’ll also find much intriguing spooky nonsense on YouTube. Some of the videos are so well produced – almost Paranormal Activity quality creepiness – that I’m actually too freaked out to try it myself.

Oh yes, the Elevator Game – you can find more out about that at YouTube, but it was also in an episode of the rather overlooked and rather bloody good US series Evil – S2, Episode 4, E is for Elevator, with a good summary here at Vulture.

John, you’ve taken a great fantasy idea and rooted it firmly in the now, the sort of thing 2000 AD has always done through its history. It’s sci-fi horror with a twist of comedy through it.

JT: Thanks – although I’m always a bit wary of a series that’s billed up front as a comedy, because 2000 AD readers are famously resistant.

There has always been a rich seam of black humour in 2000 AD (stemming from the strange and twisted wit of Mills, Wagner, Grant et al), but it seems to work best as a side dish rather than the main. If you read P&BG expecting a laff riot you may be disappointed, because it’s more about the story and characters. There’s some nasty humour too though.

And the cast of characters, even just two episodes in, are all so wonderfully diverse and interesting, whether it’s creatures of the night or the poor bastards out on their night shifts.

Of course, a lot of that characterisation and style comes from Eoin Coveney interpreting your script. You’ve already been fulsome in your praise of Eoin’s artwork when the series was announced here at 2000 AD.com, saying this… ‘I’ve always thought that the best comics artists are also actors, and Eoin has really brought the characters to life. Enhanced by Jim Boswell’s suitably creepy colours he’s done an amazing job – the characters and settings are very ‘real’, thus making the fantastical elements more convincing. I couldn’t be happier with the finished result.’

JT: I should add that I first saw Eoin’s art when he drew the title page of one of my Terror Tales [Wunza, Prog 2285], the original artist having become unavailable after turning in the rest. It was by far the best page of the six: clear storytelling and composition; consummate drawing skills and a real knack for body language and facial expressions. The characters really seemed to live and breathe.

I suggested him to Matt Smith for P&BG – luckily he agreed and Eoin was available. Colourist Jim Boswell was another inspired choice but I wasn’t involved in that one. Not forgetting Simon Bowland, one of Comics’ busiest and best letterers.

And yes, the finished product looks excellent – Eoin and Jim have definitely got a darkness to the whole thing that works really well, and we all know how good Simon’s work is.

Now, as we’ve not interviewed you before, let’s get a bit of background from you.

John, you’ve been making comics since the very end of the 80s – what’s your background and why did you get into comics writing?

JT: I started at Marvel UK fresh from Art College, a B.A. course in Graphic Design. But I’d always loved comics and, in the second year of the three-year course was a placement scheme whereby students could do two weeks work experience at a Design or Ad agency. For me, this was my big break and I ended up at Marvel. I was put to work editing and laying out the Spider-Man letters page, answering readers’ letters in cod Stan Lee-speak. I also drew small pieces of artwork for feature pages and free gifts. The two weeks turned into a month (they were busy) and after getting my degree I contacted Marvel again offering my services. I was on staff within weeks.

I’d always wanted to get into Comics – initially as an artist. That ambition lasted until my work experience stint at Marvel UK, where I saw Steve Dillon’s gorgeous brushwork for Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer. Still a teenager at the time, he was already drawing like a seasoned pro and my scratchy Rotring pen etchings couldn’t compare. As Clint said, ‘a man’s got to know his limitations.’ I’d always written stories for fun, but it wasn’t until Captain Britain, Zoids etc. that the penny dropped and I started writing for actual Creds.

The first thing I wrote was a text story for Captain Britain monthly, since (editor) Ian Rimmer didn’t have the budget to commission a professional writer. Later, after seeing how much fun Simon Furman was having writing Transformers, I wrote a few stories for another toy tie-in title, Zoids. Various Thundercats and Doctor Who stories followed, all under the pseudonym Steve Alan. At the time I claimed that this was because everyone of any note in Comics at the time seemed to be called either Steve or Alan. The terrible truth was, I still lacked confidence and wasn’t ready to go out in public under my own name. I couldn’t even type – I wrote everything longhand and bribed Marvel’s receptionist Wendy to type the scripts for me, a process that worked beautifully (Wendy certainly didn’t mind) until Managing Editor Jenny O’Connor got wind and decreed that I learn to type myself. Bleedin’ outrage! I’m grateful now of course.

The first thing I wrote as me was a Future Shock, Fat Chance, (Prog 609, 1989) drawn by Simon Jacob. Richard Burton and Alan McKenzie (joint-Thargs at the time) liked it and tasked me with devising a series for Simon. The result was Armoured Gideon, a story about a dimension-hopping, demon-slaying robot. Enraged villagers with flaming torches failed to appear so I’ve been writing as me ever since.

Am I right in thinking you were away from comics for quite some time before coming back into 2000 AD relatively recently?

JT: But for a few Judge Dredd stories, there were fifteen years between my last 2000 AD series, Tor Cyan [the last episode of which was in Prog 1299, 2002] and my recent stuff. I spent most of that time at the part-work Publisher Eaglemoss, editing Lords of the Rings part-works and Comics-related titles like Marvel Fact Files. That was great fun and I got to commission some of my personal heroes, including a Doctor Strange cover from Dave Gibbons and some Captain Britain features written and illustrated by Alan Davis. My favourite was one in which Alan revisited his cover of Captain Britain monthly #1 for a Marvel UK-themed issue. But I’d always wanted to get back to actually writing comics, rather than just writing about them.

>

When I quit Eaglemoss I approached Matt Smith about the possibility of writing more Dredd. But things change in fifteen years, and Tharg now has a healthy roster of talented Dredd Script Droids. What he didn’t have enough of was Future Shocks or Terror Tales. Stephen King once defined the process of short story writing as ‘five-finger exercises’, and for me it’s the same with one-off strips for 2000 AD. To set up a premise, get a cast of characters on and offstage and end with an (ideally) unexpected twist, all in five or six pages, is harder than it looks. I think every comics writer should be made to do it occasionally (you know, like an M.O.T.), and I’ve had such a blast writing Terror Tales in particular. It’s great to be writing a full series again though.

What is it about 2000 AD that keeps dragging you back?

JT: When I started reading comics as a kid there was a full shelf of them in every Newsagent, every week. 2000 AD is the sole survivor, and it’s endured because it was the best and most original. For a writer (and I can’t emphasise this enough) there’s nothing like it, anywhere in comics.

Where else can you conceive a whole universe of original characters, developed, written, and realised pretty much as you envisioned them, and see the whole thing in print within months, if not weeks? I’ll tell you – nowhere! 2000 AD is unique in that regard. We’ll miss it when it goes – but of course, I hope it never does.

When I was Tharg, the readers’ most commonly asked question was ‘what will 2000 AD be called in the year 2000?’ The future has long since become the past but the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic endures, as quirky, innovative and brilliant as ever.

And on 2000 AD and comics in general, when did you first get into comics as a reader? What comics were you reading as children, teens, and when was it that you first noticed 2000 AD?

JT: The first comic I remember reading as a kid was SMASH!, to which I remained obstinately committed despite my parents’ attempts to move me onto the likes of Look and Learn. The standout strip for me was Cursitor Doom, with its beautifully eerie Eric Bradbury artwork. Later came The Mighty World of Marvel, Spider-Man Comics Weekly, Dracula Lives, and other reprint titles. Some idols loom like Mount Rushmore in your personal pantheon, and I now can’t imagine my childhood without Lee, Kirby, Ditko et al.

I continued to read British comics too, and was totally captivated by Action. In an era when the BBC were being castigated for some pretty tame violence in Starsky & Hutch, Action had divers being eaten alive by baby sharks in Hookjaw, and Dredger gleefully running over heads with artic lorries. The same creative and editorial team gave us people being scoffed whole by giant salivating dinosaurs in 2000 AD, which I read avidly for the first 100+ issues. Why I stopped, I’ve no idea – but when I joined Marvel UK, Simon Furman and Richard Starkings were big fans so I’d read their copies.

Going to the interviewer’s book of 101 obvious questions… what/who are particular influences on your work?

JT: I grew up with the stories of Stephen King and Richard Matheson, writers who brought horror fiction into the modern world. For about three years I read nothing but Harlan Ellison, so inevitably he’s seeped in. Comics-wise, the biggest influences are still Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Alan Moore. Al Ewing continues to confound and inspire too, not just with his twisted imagination and use of language but also his sheer output – he’s obviously cloned himself. And writing with Dan Abnett and Steve White on The Knights of Pendragon and The Lords of Misrule was undoubtedly a big influence – we had such a laugh on those and I’m still proud that I got Dan into 2000 AD (and commissioned Sinister Dexter) during my stint as Tharg.

And finally, before we end, given carte blanche at 2000 AD, what strip/story idea would you love to get into the pages of the Prog? Maybe a reboot of something old, maybe a bizarre team-up you thought of one day in the bath, maybe something completely different.

JT: I had a grand notion for a Judge Dredd Megazine epic, Shield of Winter, in which a Rookie female Judge has to bring in a veteran Long Walk Judge who’s blasted his way back into the Big Meg on a revenge mission. It was a kind of True Grit scenario – I could ‘see’ it so clearly, was itching to write it, and I’m still crushed that Tharg didn’t go for it! So there’s that.

But rejection is the risk every writer faces, and you can’t let it discourage you – as Judge Winter himself says at one point (or would have!), nothing worthwhile comes easy.

I’ve since read the autobiography of Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, who wrote all the best TV sitcoms when I was a kid. For every Porridge, Likely Lads or Auf Wiedersehen, Pet there were shelves of unproduced sitcoms and screenplays, but it didn’t put them off. I highly recommend Otley and Villain btw, two of their early movies. You won’t regret it.

Now, to end these we always like to end with a chance for you to tell us what you’re working on and what we can expect to see from you in the near (and maybe not so near) future?

First of all, are there plans for more Portals & Black Goo?

JT: I have plenty of ideas for a second, even a third series of P&BG. Whether or not it happens depends on how well the first lands with readers, and if Matt thinks the concept still has legs after Night Shift. Needless to say I’d love to write more, and if so I hope Eoin will be available to draw it.

And what’s lined up from your good self for the rest of 2023 and into 2024? More for 2000 AD? Elsewhere?

JT: I’ve been working on a horror limited series idea that’s probably about ready to start submitting to Editors. In my spare time I’m also co-writing a SF detective novel with a comics writer mate.

As a kind of experiment, I wrote a pilot episode for an audiobook sitcom and hired a superb actor to record it – I saved money by producing the music and FX myself and it sounds surprisingly professional! Where it’ll lead, who knows…

Otherwise, I’m keeping the wolf from the door with freelance editorial jobs, ministering to my incredibly busy wife, walking the dog, and forcing myself to go to the gym. I also had time to design a few Devouroo ads for a P&BG teaser campaign on LinkedIn, presented here for your consideration. If you find yourself salivating though, you’re in big trouble…

>

Well, thank you so much to John for chatting to us about Portals & Black Goo, especially as he was busy packing for a holiday when we rudely interrupted him to get some answers!

You can find the first episode of Portals & Black Goo: Night Shift in the pages of 2000 AD Prog 2340, available right now from everywhere that stocks Tharg’s zarjaz weekly offering, including the 2000 AD web shop. Just look for the stunning cover by SK Moore.

For more from John, Mike Molcher pinned him down for a 200 AD Thrill-Cast a while back that’s essential listening.

>

Starting in the pages of the latest issue of 2000 AD, Portals & Black Goo is a chance to visit a London where the monsters are real and REALLY hungry.

What’s the solution? Whether it’s brains, bugs, entrails, or blood, Devouroo will deliver to you – it’s ‘Delicious prey, a click away!’

Created by John Tomlinson and Eoin Coveney, Portals & Black Goo is a new seven-part series taking a look at a world where the monsters have moved in alongside ordinary Londoners. But what are the vampires, the werewolves, and the demons meant to do for food when they can’t take a bite out of their neighbours?

That’s where Devouroo comes in, the delivery service for monsters. ‘They deliver, you devour!’ And the poor mugs charged with getting the plasma to the vampires and the viscera to the werewolves? Well that would be a load of zero-hours contract delivery riders, taking their lives in their hands every time they hop on their mopeds and head on through Devouroo’s very own temporary portals generated by eldritch resonances.

So, without further ado, over to the artist on Portals & Black Goo – Eoin Coveney…

>

So, Eoin, we’re talking to John tomorrow, but what’s Portals & Black Goo all about from your point of view?

EOIN COVENEY: On the face of it, it’s about a generation Z guy trying to make his way in a modern big city, which happens to be filled with monsters and demonic spirits. It’s also seems to me to be about prejudice and societal factions, which, for whatever reason feel in conflict with each other.

How did you come to be on art for the series? John had the basic idea and developed it from there – but did he get in touch with you or was it Tharg?

EC: Tharg got in touch. I understand that John was thinking of me as a possible artist on the series, after seeing this one page I drew for a Terror Tale he’d written. [That would be Wunza in Prog 2285, June 2022]

EC: He apparently liked my work sufficiently to think I might be a good fit for this. Of course, the Mighty One makes the ultimate decision and called me to the mountain once again. I was excited to get the email!

So what sort of thing did you want to bring to Portals & Black Goo? What particular elements came out in the development stage?

EC: As always, when a new script arrives with a new world and atmosphere, I’m just open to whatever my mind conjures up while reading it. In this case, I found myself thinking of the film Attack the Block. The night-time aesthetic in that film works so well and I felt the urban setting and gritty sense of danger really suited the story. I guess something about the way that film was shot and lit made the urban reality/ fantastical atmosphere very convincing.

So, once I felt that was right, I started visualising the panels in my head, as I read, with that kind of look. On the characters: I paid close attention to the John’s descriptions, when given- of course, but their dialogue and obvious outlooks inferred by that, gave me clear ideas on their appearances and body language.

John’s already been fulsome in his praise of you in the PR I’ve seen – “I’ve always thought that the best comics artists are also actors, and Eoin has really brought the characters to life. Enhanced by Jim Boswell’s suitably creepy colours he’s done an amazing job – the characters and settings are very ‘real’, thus making the fantastical elements more convincing. I couldn’t be happier with the finished result.”

And yes, the finished product looks excellent – you and Jim have definitely got a darkness to the whole thing that works really well.

EC: Well, I was delighted to hear John was impressed with my work on this! It was only later, while reading Johns thoughts, that I realised he was also thinking of the same filmic influences and aesthetics as I was.

I also like to surprise the writer and maybe confound some expectations and I know that some of the characters appearances were not exactly what he was envisaging, which John was totally open to and enjoyed, I think!

Jim allowed the line art to still really sing while making really bold colour statements. When I saw the first frame he sent, I remember thinking: This is how I’d try to colour it- but this is better than I’d do it!

You’ve captured the urban environment perfectly, all the detritus of modern life lending a spooky quality to it all.

Having something set at night must lead an artist to making a lot of difficult decisions to get the clarity of the storytelling through yet also keeping the darkness, the moody setting, the creepy horrors to be found, especially in a tale that deals with the creatures of the night – even if they are just getting a takeaway!

EC: Yes, completely correct! I find depicting night time a tricky thing to get right in a comic- especially if it’s in colour. The story has to be crystal clear but it also has to feel dark! As I knew this would be in colour, I tried to find a balance between areas of pure black and leaving enough expanses blank, hoping the colourist wouldn’t use murky colours.

That’s why I was so happy when I saw Jim’s colouring. He very kindly reached out to me on Instagram and fed me a few details of the coloured pages he’d done by that stage. I was immediately impressed and excited with how he handled the colours.

Finally on your art for Portals & Black Goo, it’s always great to get an artist to talk process with us. Can you take us through the creation of a page here? Any particular adaptations to your art to fit the tale?

EC: I lived in enough big cities to know what kind of atmosphere I was looking for. Buildings, all crammed in together, piles of rubbish with old shopping trolleys etc. Narrow cobbled alleyways with squid- like drainpipes and aircon units filling brick walls felt like the kind of setting that Kroy and Nona would move in. That was the sensibility which led my intent.

Page 2 of episode 1 features a lot of the themes which will become familiar: Dark alleyways and run- down council estates inhabited by Monsters both familiar and seemingly everyday.

Kroy’s on his moped here too, as he covers a lot of ground in this series on the back of it. On the Portals themselves, I made it an upright oval shape with distinctive lines and energy trails as I felt I could show just parts of portals later, even if it was just a sliver of one visible.

>

EC: When I read ‘middle aged werewolf with cardigan, his little boy werewolf in a superhero costume’ (I’m paraphrasing), in John’s description, I thought – how the hell am I going to show that so it doesn’t look completely silly?

Truth is, when I’m solving the Storytelling and Staging problems, the rest sort of takes care of itself. Sometimes I don’t know how I’m going to depict something until I start drawing, That was sort of the case here. Definite nods to Steve Dillon’s werewolves – they were burned indelibly into my consciousness after I read Cry of The Werewolf as a kid!

Also, we meet one of Kroy’s nemeses on his chopper, so this page had a nice mix of atmosphere, exposition and action and I think I ticked the boxes pretty successfully.

I went digital a few years ago and have found it very liberating, as I no longer have to worry about preserving paper grain, which degrades the more you work on it and erase pencil marks. I was always little precious with inking on board. I still love it, but the tension of making possible mistakes/ smudges/ spills on paper does loom over it somewhat. So, not having that to worry about means I can focus on the results rather than having these minor frets in the back of my mind.

In digital, I’m able to use some dry and textured brushes, too as that grittiness just suited the setting and the slightly pock-marked feel to most big cities.

I don’t send pencils per se any more. I now send Tharg loose but fully worked out inked roughs, which when approved, change only in terms of rendering when finished.

Are there plans right now for more Portals & Black Goo?

EC: No idea- it’s completely out of my hands! The readers are the ultimate arbiters. I know I would like to do more, having developed the look of the world and the characters. John would need to feel the desire to write more, too. It will rest with The Mighty One, as it should.

It always rests in the hands of TMO, bow down before him!

>

You’ve been an illustrator now for the best part of 30 years, pretty much getting into it about the same time as John. For 2000 AD, you created The Alienist with Gordon Rennie and Emma Beeby.

Am I right in thinking that you mostly work in commercial illustration but that comics is something of an itch you have to scratch every so often?

EC: That’s about right, Richard. I’d say about 60- 70% of my year’s work is commercial illustration. Quite often, its overtly graphic novel art and sometimes it’s strip work but for non-traditional clients. I’ve drawn comics for Legal Firms and last year, The RAF!

But 2000 AD and European comics have informed my style from my start as a pro, so I do scratch that creative itch fairly regularly. That said, there is nothing like doing a series for 2000 AD. The level of commitment and the creative rewards to be reaped are top-drawer.

Sometimes it feels like certain pages are never going to end, while I’m doing them! But of course, when it’s completed and I get to read and hold it in my hands- the hard work pays back big time. The feeling is very special.

So what is it about 2000 AD that keeps dragging you back?

EC: For me, it’s a few things. Firstly, it’s not hyperbole to call 2000 AD the repository of the best British comic art of the last 45 years or so. The standard of talent to have bloomed there is second to none. To be a very tiny part of that tradition and is a big honour!

It’s also the crazy energy and attitude- black humour doesn’t get much blacker. And I’ve always loved that. When I was a kid, the violence was pretty mind blowing, too. I’ll never forget the cover of Prog 3 with the guy being eaten by a T- Rex!

One thing that’s mentioned in the ‘about’ section of your website is that you worked with Will Eisner on the graphic novel Ireland: A Graphic History, written by Michael Scott and Morgan Llewellyn. Now that’s not something many artists can put on their resume! How was it working with a great such as Eisner?

EC: It was like being intravenously fed pure knowledge! Well, ok that’s a bit over the top, but I was 26 and very in awe of his abilities and energy. I learned so much that I had never thought about before.

My predominant memory of Will is his smile. He was always smiling and even in his (at the time) early 80’s, was mentally sharp as a tack. I don’t think I’ve met many people more giving than he was.

One clear memory stands out. One time, during a critique of some pages, he put his hands on my shoulders and said ‘You know, you just really need to loosen up!’ I remember being so bewildered and upset that I couldn’t click with what he was saying. I know now. That’s what matters! He made the medium much more understandable to me.

Another thing I kept coming across whilst researching you and your work for this was the graphic novel American Caesar. It looked mighty impressive. But hunting around the Internet, I can’t find much mention of it beyond a number of years back. What happened to that one?

EC: Gosh, that’s probably about 10 years ago I last worked on that. I and the writer had a royalty-only deal with a US publisher and I (rather naively) thought I would be able to do it over a couple of years. I pencilled about 22 pages over the course of a year, when it dawned on me that I’d be years doing it, with no guarantee of any significant earnings. I may be many things, but I am not that idealistic. So, it petered out and I refocused my energies elsewhere.

I did learn a hell of a lot while doing it, though. Most of the story was guys in suits talking, so I found new ways to frame situations from a psychological point of view. Simple things like showing the bad guys casting big shadows, showing key props in extreme foreground with figures dwarfed by them. Villains with lightning flashing behind them through windows. I found ways of making a conversation more interesting by enhancing the power struggle going in between 2 characters with framing and juxtaposition.

When did you first get into comics and 2000 AD as a reader?

EC: Comics weren’t all that interesting to me as a kid. Most of my friends read a Warlord or Tiger, but they didn’t interest me greatly as the themes of war and sport were not for me. Dinosaurs was what I was obsessed with. Flesh, debuting in this new comic I’d heard of in school – and there was quite a buzz I remember! – got me to buy issue 2. I was hooked from that point on. The violence and danger of Flesh was deeply impressive to me. I also found it very compelling that sci-fi and dinosaurs could exist together in a credible story. That concept of Trans Time harvesting dinosaurs for meat… that was really new to me.

Also, Belardinelli’s colour double centre pages for Dan Dare were like some amazing drug I’d never conceived possible before. It was only around then that I became aware that people drew these… and I wanted to do that.

And what about making comics – did that start at an early age as well?

EC: I drew my first comic at the age of 10. It was as faithful an adaptation of The Incredible Hulk TV pilot as I could manage. I still have some of it, ragged and fragile but still intact. It’s funny, but even then, I had a burning desire to make comics. I think in a way, I was more ambitious as a kid than I am now! I guess I saw all of the opportunities and none of the potential obstacles. But as a kid, you don’t see that and so the prospect of drawing comics for a living seemed like heaven.

I kept on drawing comics and wrote the ‘plots’… if you could call them that. Most of them were rip- offs of stories I’d read in 2000 AD.

Eoin, another interview I read with you had you saying this about getting into 2000 AD… ‘I owe Steve McManus of 2000 AD for giving me a meeting many years ago even though it was against their policy.’ Tell us more!

EC: Wow- the innocence! I was 22, just out of Art School. I was in London and basically I bought the latest Prog, looked at the fine print at the bottom of the Nerve Centre and found the business address. Got the tube to Mornington Crescent, where they were based at the time and walked straight into the offices with my giant A2 portfolio and asked if I could see someone! I reckon the receptionist must have been bemused… or sympathetic.

Either way, she called someone and got waved in. Steve McManus met me inside and led me to his office, where I presented him with my work. Somehow, he saw some potential there and gave me a 6- page one off script to try out. It’s so long ago, now that I can’t remember if it was just a try-out, or it ended up being commissioned for the then- fledgling Megazine.

It was never published, as the whole Maxwell thing was going down at the time and 2000 AD was sold. In the whirlwind of activity, my artwork was lost – thus sparing me the embarrassment of seeing it now! But it was my first paid comics gig.

Of course, I thought that regular work and fame would soon follow. Reality soon bit hard and I realised this wasn’t going to be as easy as all that.

You’ve already mentioned some of your influences, Steve Dillon’s Cry of the Werewolf, Belardinelli’s Dan Dare, and your young self was entranced by Joan Solà-Segalés’ art on Flesh in the earliest days of 2000 AD. But what other influences have there been on your artwork?

EC: My first big comics artistic influence was, like so many others, Brian Bolland. This is going back to The Day The Law Died Era, when I would have been around 8 or 9. I lapsed reading it regularly at around prog 120 and didn’t come back until Cry of the Werewolf, so I was bit older.

Everything changed then, when I saw Cam Kennedy‘s work on Rogue Trooper. I was struck by how gritty the world, the hardware and the atmosphere felt. Cam’s work kind of opened my eyes to more visceral and expressive work. To this day, he is till my number 1 of all the Golden Age 2000 AD artists. I started to notice the work of Jose Ortiz, and also Steve Dillon. As I matured, I realised I prefer to see the bumps and scratches in comic art.

European comic art is a much bigger influence on my work than American. I mean – I’m in awe of what golden age Marvel and DC artists did! Even now, the best of U.S. comics impress me profoundly. But I just have a natural visceral reaction to work that is more roughly drawn, like Kennedy, Redondo, Ortiz or Toppi. I say roughly, but they are all master craftsmen. There was just some kinda scratchiness to the work that they all shared.

Another favourite interviewers question now – if you could do anything, any story, any character, what strip/story idea would you love to get into the pages of the Prog?

EC: Wow, I’m not sure I’d know where to start. It would definitely be something horror-related and with OTT violence. Maybe Mean Machine loses his memory and crash lands on a planet of pacifists. Either something fun like that or straight up horror.

Now, to end these we always like to end with a chance for you to tell us what you’re working on and what we can expect to see from you in the near (and maybe not so near) future?

EC: Right now, I’m working on a poster for a short film and have a book cover on the go for a Dublin Publisher. I’ve also agreed in principle to do a crowdfunded comic, but I can’t say anything more about that just now. I have many ideas percolating in my head- some pitches and covers. It never ends!

And what’s lined up from your good self for the rest of 2023 and into 2024? More for 2000 AD?

EC: I would love to do more work for 2000 AD, of course. The creative freedom I enjoy while working for Tharg is unmatched. It’s very hands-off and that sense of freedom does feed into the work, no doubt.

I had my first ever Prog Cover a few months ago, too. I’d definitely like to pitch more of those. A cover feels like a real event and I was fortunate to have the Blythe Droid on colours! I also have a script from a major writer that I want to give a really hard hard swing at.

EC: I often don’t know what’s coming down the river, really. I took up digital painting last year, which I’m having so much fun with. That has already gotten me a few painted commissions, so I see plenty of potential growth there.

Really, I just want to keep on learning and improving. It never ends!

Well, the learning might never end – just as it shouldn’t – but this is where our chat had to come to an end!

A huge thank you to Eoin for taking the time away from the drawing board (don’t worry, Tharg made a note of the time he owes) to answer our questions and send over some fabulous artwork for you.

You can find the first episode of Portals & Black Goo: Night Shift in the pages of 2000 AD Prog 2340, available right now from comic shops, newsagents, and the 2000 AD web shop. It’s going to be easy to spot, just keep an eye out for SK Moore’s magnificent Portals & Black Goo wrapround cover…

And now, those Eoin Coveney roughs, inks, and finished pages (colours by Jim Boswell) in their rightful full size…