Tag: interview

Out now in the pages of 2000 AD, the vampire Constanta returns to his fiendish ways in Fiends of the Eastern Front: 1963!

Fiends of the Eastern Front is the saga of the Vampire Constanta, cutting a bloody swath across battlefields across Europe for centuries. Created in 1980 by Gerry Finley-Day and Carlos Ezquerra for 2000 AD Progs 152-161, it brought classic horror in a chilling wartime tale to the pages of the Galaxy’s Greatest, hitting hard and fast, just 10 episodes long but going on to become one of those tales everyone remembers. Constanta next appeared some 26 years later in Stalingrad by David Bishop and Colin MacNeil (Judge Dredd Megazine #245-252, 2006).

But it’s Ian Edginton who’s recently rather taken the Vampire Constanta to his heart. He’s now written three Fiends series and has his fourth, Fiends of the Eastern Front: 1963, coming to you in 2000 AD Prog 2273, out 16 March!

First, Edginton ventured back in time to the wintery Russian wastelands of the Napoleonic War in Fiends of the Eastern Front: 1812, drawn by Dave Taylor (2000 AD Progs 2100-2105.) Then he was joined by artist Tiernen Trevallion on Fiends of the Western Front (Progs 2111-2115), with Constanta turning up in France of 1916. And finally, we had the epic telling of this war-loving vampire’s origin in the acclaimed 2020 series, Constanta (Progs 2201-2211), again with Edginton joined by Trevallion.

And now… it’s time for Fiends of the Eastern Front: 1963. Cold war, warm blood.

Unfortunately, Tiernen’s tied up with things right now – specifically getting all that gorgeous artwork finished for this very strip, so we’re talking with a solo script-droid extraordinaire, Ian Edginton.

So, first things first… am I right in thinking we’re in Cold War territory here, a completely different kind of conflict to get involved in?

Ian Edginton: Definitely, it leans heavily into that 1960’s spy film genre, The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, The Quiller Memorandum, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, also the 2011 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy remake and  Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies. We’re not taking anything story-wise but more for mood and atmosphere. Grim, grey, monotone, lots of slushy snow and mistrust, even of your own side. That sort of thing.

Oh yes, having just seen the first episode, some of which is illustrating this interview, it’s definitely got that mood and atmosphere just right.

What delights have you got in store for us this time around, what can we expect from 1963?

IE: I don’t want to give too much away obviously but we do expand on Constanta’s history as he meets old enemies and makes a new friend, or rather an ally – friend might be a bit too much for him. The story builds on the Fiends universe, we establish that the worlds’ great nations, primarily the British, Russians, and the Americans have their own occult intelligence divisions.

In the closing days of World War Two, just as the Americans and the Russians made a mad dash to acquire the Nazi’s rocket scientists, the British and the Russians also scooped up the Nazi’s occultists. The Americans, being good God-fearing Christians were a bit late to the game.

Are we effectively doing a John Le Carre with vampires?

IE: With a dash of Len Deighton, yes.

And will we be getting more into the fascinating through-story that we’ve been getting glimpses of? The connections of Baba Yaga, Legion, and Lt (later Colonel) Wilson?

IE: Absolutely! I want to spin a mythology around those characters, with more to come. We’re gradually building a world around Constanta.

Ian, we’ve talked before about Fiends (right here) being a very different kind of strip when it first appeared, way back in the early days of 2000 AD. Back then, the Progs were primarily full of sci-fi strips so to get a historical fantasy horror strip was something of a radical shift.

IE: I think the fact that it stood out from the rest, that it was so different, is what makes it so memorable. Even before I became a writer that first story by Carlos Ezquerra and Gerry Finley-Day really struck a chord with me. At its heart, it’s just such a cool idea! Then there was the excellent follow-up by David Bishop and Colin MacNeil – Stalingrad.

One thing that’s interesting is that the origin tale, Constanta, unlike all the others, was left undated, although we can make certain guesses from the setting. Was this a deliberate thing to allow a little wriggle room for any reason?

IE: Yes and no, how vague is that! Keeping the date of his origin ambiguous lends a kind of mythic edge to him and from a practical point of view it allows for some flexibility regarding future stories.

At the end of the Constanta series, there’s a deliciously teasing moment of Constanta going from being a creature of warfare and conflict to a creature who causes war and conflict. Along with the idea of Wilson being a pawn of the monsters of the world raging against Constanta.

IE: He was born in bloodshed, so it’s all he knows. He creates an environment in which he knows he can thrive.

It’s a fascinatingly huge world you’ve built in a surprisingly short number of episodes and from what was originally a very simple character, one that hid the who, where, and why of his existence. It’s also something that works well both as simple individual serials, with the latest exploits all telling a self-contained tale, but also, more importantly, when put together, it creates a rich sense of something extravagantly large and far-reaching.

Am I right in that thought that Baba Yaga’s influence, whether through Legion or not, is going to be felt throughout this series?

IE: She’s going to make her presence felt, yes, in this series and beyond. The Russians and Romanians (Constanta’s people) have a long history of invasion and animosity (not just Romania either as currents events in the Ukraine have shown), so she was a natural contender to be Constanta’s nemesis but there’s more to it than that. She presents a pre-revolutionary Russia, a much older country in its hierarchies and beliefs but as the stories move into the 20th century, the country changes (Communism for a start) the old ways are dying out and she finds herself becoming an anachronism. Ultimately she may have more in common with the eternal Constanta than her own people.

Presumably, you have this big flowchart somewhere with all the events in chronological order?

IE: Yep, I have it mapped out so I don’t have to try and keep it straight in my head.

There are the stories told so far, the ones that I have ready to go next, and then the ideas for the series after that. There’s also a sidebar of ideas that don’t fit into the timeline just yet.

Now, at this point, I’d normally sing the praises of Tiernen, but he’s busy, busy, busy with the rather important job of actually finishing off the series – so, Ian, time to dish the dirt on your co-conspirator in all things Fiendish…

IE: It goes without saying but I’m going to say it anyway, Tiernen is a phenomenal artist, an extraordinary talent and lovely chap to boot! The texture, the tones, the composition! His artwork is sumptuous! We were throwing some ideas around for one of the Fiends 1963 covers and then a few days later he sends me a ‘rough’ which was anything but! It was amazing! You’ll know which cover I mean when you see it.

The nature of Constanta and the way in which you’ve developed the character certainly allows both of you plenty of scope to imagine a Constanta in so many different time periods.

IE: He’s a survivor, that’s what’s kept him going down the centuries but as time rolls on he starts to question what is he surviving for?  There must be more to eternal life than this? It’s this gradual, growing awareness which sends him down an interesting path.

I’m assuming there’s some idea of an endpoint for the tale, especially with the fascinating idea of a growing group of agents working to bring Constanta down, but I’d also imagine that the nature of this tale, with the possibility of jumping back and forth in time, really does give you a world of possible storylines?

IE: Indeed, we’re not done yet!

I suppose WWII Constanta is a must at some point? English Civil War? But how about Constanta in full-on turn-on, tune-in, drop-out mode, Haight Ashbury, late 60s? Or maybe more from the Napoleonic Wars, possibly negotiate some sort of Constanta/Sharpe crossover?

IE: We’re not in a big rush to get back to WW2 but he’ll certainly be cropping up at various key points in history, some major, some minor. I also want him to cross paths with the rest of the vampire community at some point. Constanta is unique as vampires go in that he was made by magic not by a bite, so it’ll be interesting to see how the rest of them treat him.

And as far as crossovers go, we’ve already seen the Black Max appear here, any other surprise appearances in store?

IE: I’ve got a few in mind but they’ll all be subject to approval by Tharg.

Finally Ian, what can we look forward to from you in the future?

IE: The maestro who is Disraeli and I are finally embarking on the next series of Helium! It’s true, don’t faint! There’s more Kingmaker in the works with that young rapscallion Leigh Gallagher and some Dredds which are alway fun!

Thank you to Ian for taking the time to chat to us about the new Fiends of the Eastern Front: 1963 – you can see the blood running red in a very cold war starting in the pages of 2000 AD Prog 2273, out 16 March.

If you want to read more from Ian on writing Fiends, there’s this interview from 2018 with Ian and Dave Taylor talking Fiends of the Eastern Front: 1812.

And at some point in the future, most likely 2023, you’ll be able to get hold of the Fiends of the Eastern Front collection containing not just the original classic from Gerry Finley-Day and Carlos Ezquerra, not just the Stalingrad follow-up from Bishop and MacNeil, but also recent brilliant Fiends of the Eastern Front from Edginton, Taylor, and Trevallion.

With the release of 2000 AD Regened Volume 3, the gloriously exciting all-ages version of the Galaxy’s Greatest, on 15 March, we’re not only getting a collection containing all the usual greatness of all the Regened strips we’ve seen in the quarterly 2000 AD Regened Progs, but we’re also getting something absolutely, completely new and never before seen, a Regened collection exclusive that brings back one of the earliest 2000 AD strips in a new, bold and bright reimagining.

Yes, it’s Harlem Heroes! But it ‘aint the Harlem Heroes your grandma’s going to remember!

Harlem Heroes is a stone-cold 2000 AD classic – debuting in Prog 1 and running through the first 27 Progs. Created by Pat Mills, Tom Tully, Carlos Trigo, and Dave Gibbons, the simple concept of an all-black team playing the brutal 21st Century sport Aeroball was both trail-blazing and mould-breaking.

But that was then and this is now – which is why it’s perfect to get a couple of exciting new creators reinventing and reinvigorating the classic, Ramzee and Korinna Mei Veropoulou.

This new Harlem Heroes – just 6 pages long – manages to be true to the old whilst being something all-new, perfect for all-ages, just the same as classic 2000 AD always was, challenging those kids who wanted something cutting-edge and different. It’s packed with all the action of the original but gives you so much more, focusing on a brand-new Harlem Heroes team, led by Justice Academy drop-out Gem Giant, who’s got just one thing on their mind – Aeroball! It’s bold, it’s bright, it looks fantastic and there’s plenty of scope to see this one run and run.

So, we figured it was time to sit down and chat with the writer and artist on these new Harlem Heroes, Ramzee and Korinna.

Ramzee, Korinna, nice to talk to you. Hope you’re both doing well in these weird times.

I suppose the best way to begin is to ask you to give us your take on Harlem Heroes – the return!

RAMZEE: Aeroball has become an elite sport for the world’s most richest clubs, who can only be seen by expensive pay-per-view. Gem Giant, the great grandchild of Harlem Heroes legendary captain John Giant, drops out of the Academy of Judges to reform the Harlem Heroes and bring Aeroball back to the people.

You’re only working with a small page count, but the strip has to do a lot of things – introduce the characters, the world, the Aeroball set-up, create a dynamic, establish the tension – AND acknowledge all that had gone before.

RAMZEE: Having a vague familiarity with it – I only knew that it was a sports comic that Dave Gibbons once drew – I got my hands on the old Harlem Heroes collection and my process is scientific – read the stories then reverse engineer them to learn how they worked and used my findings as a template for how to tell a Harlem Heroes story.

And Korinna, the art here is something completely different from anything we’ve seen with Harlem Heroes in the past, vibrant, bright, and so colourful. It’s very much the fresh reboot that brings the series and the characters into the now.

What was the thinking with the direction you went with it?

Korinna Veropoulou: My immediate thought after receiving the brief was “oh my god finally I get to do an Eyeshield 21!”. I don’t follow sports but I’m a sucker for a well-written sports manga and Eyeshield is by far my favourite! The characters, the art, the incredible pacing and dynamism helped familiarise me and actually get me invested in a sport I never had any previous interest with (American football). 

Since we were working with a made-up sport, my main mission for Harlem Heroes was to make it exciting to readers like me who normally don’t consume much sports media.  Creating a fun cast of characters was what I spent the majority of my time doing in the planning stages. It was important to me that they all looked diverse enough design-wise so that they’d be easily distinguishable when “in uniform” and they have chemistry with each other because who doesn’t love a good wholesome story about camaraderie and friendship?

Korinna was good enough to send along her quite beautiful character designs and her process images for the strip. We’ll give you small images to get the idea here, but stick around till the end of the article to see them in their full-sized glory!

How did it all come about? Was it something you pitched first or did Joko-Jargo get in touch about working on it?

RAMZEE: I got a telepathic mail from Joko-Jargo (AKA Olivia Hicks) about pitching a new Harlem Heroes story – which I was obvs totally down for and I put forward Korinna in the discussion about the artist for the book – I sent over some art Korinna drew for a project that we worked on that didn’t get off the ground, and wonderfully, Korinna was given the green light to illustrate it and then I knew that the comic was gonna be awesome – I just had to make sure to create a story that will fire her up to draw and write lines that readers would find exciting and funny to read.

KV: I feel so lucky because I was approached directly by Ramzee before getting in contact with our editor Olivia, I felt like I didn’t have to do anything and it just kinda fell into my lap! I’m so thankful to be involved, this project came during a time where I was feeling quite low about myself and my career, it definitely felt like a culmination of all the work I had put in up to that point.

I met Ramsey during either MCM comic on or Thought Bubble when I first started doing comics. I’d previously heard of his work from our comics buddies Shane Melisse and Sajan Rai, they always spoke very highly of him so I remember being very excited when we finally met irl!

It’s unusual in that it’s an exclusive brand-new story in Regened Volume 3, the first one to be included in a collection that hasn’t been in the Regened Progs.

RAMZEE: The comic debuting as a collected edition exclusive is really smart because not only does it act like an incentive to buy for magazine readers but it’s something extra for book readers who don’t read magazines/comics.

KV: I didn’t think about it too much, when I get a cool script to work off of I get tunnel vision and pool all my focus into making the most kickass art I can within the limitations I’m given. 

Of course, Harlem Heroes is one of those iconic legacy 2000 AD strips, part of the early DNA of the comic – but the pair of you are WAY too young to be aware of any of that!

So, given that you definitely weren’t reading it when it started, how did you approach doing this reboot/reinvention?

RAMZEE: My approach to writing this project was two-tiered. I wanted to write a story that delivered on the madcap future sports action of the original iteration – staying true to the absurdity, ultra-violence and social commentary (sports commercialism and Roman Empire-like brutality of television).

But I also wanted to reflect today’s vision of the future and not that of the 1970s. One that reaches beyond race to include other genders and leans into black sci-fi traditions such as Afrofuturism in the look of the characters.

Olivia, Korinna and I were all keen to have a nonbinary team leader and that’s how Gem Giant as born. We didn’t explicitly point to it but we had it expressed through Gem’s gender presentation and pronouns whenever they are referred to.

And what did you think of the original Harlem Heroes?

RAMZEE: I thought that the original Harlem Heroes comic was a very brash and exciting sci-fi sports comic that had the very British sensibility of not taking itself too seriously and being absurd and tongue-in-cheek. There are even deep moments like when the Heroes visited the Museum of Sport and learned about their opponents, the Flying Scotsmen, fictitious working class history of the oil men of Scotland. Oh, and the cliffhangers were bonkers amazing!

KV: I’m gonna be honest, I had never heard of or read Harlem Heroes before Ramzee approached me to work with him on it. It came as a surprise because the premise of the story felt quite ahead of its time as there mustn’t be many comics from the 70s featuring an all-black cast. What I think worked in our favour is the amazing source material we had to draw from, Dave Gibbons is one of the GOATs so it made it much easier for me to draw inspiration and visual reference from his work.

Unsurprisingly it’s a bit dated by today’s standards, eg I found it a bit difficult to distinguish between the characters as they didn’t have as much variation between them as I’d like. This made it easier to choose what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to do differently.

The main challenge working with an all-black cast not being black myself was to create characters that felt “real” and not just slap on a darker skin tone and call it a day. Unfortunately, this highlighted there was a big gap in my art education that I didn’t realise I lacked until the last minute. It is very important to me that I do my best to depict diversity as realistically and respectfully as I can. I’ve still got a long way to go but I’ve been lucky enough to meet some of the most talented (and in my humble opinion) most groundbreaking artists of colour working in the industry today. In particular I remember meeting Ghanaian artist Gyimah Gariba at TCAF a few years ago. He talked about his mission to create new shorthand for black features, which is evident both in his animation and comics work (Shortbox’s Navel Gazer is a beautiful example of just that) . So I thought hell yeah, that sounds awesome I’m gonna try my best to my make it my mission too!

It’s a gloriously self-contained short, but one that also opens things up for the future. I’m presuming you’re hard at work planning the glorious future for the Harlem Heroes and their ascent into Aeroball stardom?

KV: Maybe we’re working on some new stuff… hehe!

RAMZEE: Our lips are sealed lol!

I certainly think it’s got the potential to not only go for an extended run in Regened, but it’s also the sort of Regened strip that could easily make the transition through to 2000 AD itself.

Now, for those who aren’t aware of you – let’s do a little ‘who the heck are you?’ here!

Ramzee, readers might know you from the reboot of Cat Girl in the Tammy & Jinty Special. And Korinna, you’re the creator of The Adventures Of Croblin. But how did you get your start? And what have you worked on so far?

RAMZEE: I got my start making small press comics. I was nominated for a British Comic Award, and one of my comics caught the attention of an editor at Rebellion who asked me to pitch for Tammy and Jinty and that was my first shot at the Big Time lol!

KV: I started doing comics quite late in my art career despite the fact that it’s been my “dream job” since I was a child. I made my first comic in 2015, a tiny little 6 page horror story called SAPRO and eventually worked my way up to longer stories. I’ve done a few self-published titles like SAPRO 1 & 2, sci-fi story LDN2050 and of course my webcomic Adventures of Croblin. I also worked on anthology projects as part of a collective such as Comic Book Slumber Party’s Escape from Bitch Mountain as well as more recently Smutcomic, a collection of smutty stories by female-identifying and non-binary artists from Greece.

Korinna, let’s talk about your art a little more here. How do you work? Digital? Old-school, a combination of both?

KV: I work exclusively digitally these days, 7 years of living and working in tiny flats in London doesn’t make it easy to work traditionally! I use sketchbooks to sketch and plan everything out before moving onto my trusty iPad Pro to do the rest.

Can you give us an idea of the process of putting together a page?

KV: My process is pretty straightforward. I start by studying the script, I like to rewrite it by hand on a piece of paper highlighting bits I want emphasise or tweak. It really helps to visualise how the story is gonna flow which makes creating the panel layout a bit less daunting. I try to condense as much as I can into as few panels possible to ensure everything is readable and dynamic, this usually happens in the thumbnail phase. Then I put down the layout and the text on my “canvas” to see how much space I have to work with before moving on to pencils, inks and finally colours. Inking is my favourite part of the process, it’s what I look forward to the most!

We’ve touched on this above, but what was the thinking on making it so dazzling and different?

KV: Because it’s fun! I love colour and I love action so I just wanted to have as much fun as possible every step of the way.

In terms of Regened in particular and kids comics in general, what are your thoughts on where we’re at and where we might be going?

RAMZEE: Kids comics – middle grade and YA, are flying off the shelves and are on the top seller lists. Libraries are keen on them too. It’s not all superhero stuff like Ms Marvel but also fantasy like Hilda and Witch Boy and also a lot of coming-of-age queer content which is very close to my heart.

KV: I really struggle to keep up with the latest releases so I’m definitely no expert at predicting what the industry is gonna look like in the future. I will say that I definitely think kids should read more comics and the industry should cater to that. As a European who was raised on a steady diet of Asterix it came as a huge surprise to me that a large majority of people in the UK didn’t read comics as kids.

With Harlem Heroes, plus your other all-ages work, how do you go about constructing something that’s perfectly all-ages?

KV: Whenever I create work for a particular age group I always start by asking myself “what would I have LOVED to see at that age?” and go from there. 

One of the things I try to keep in mind as I work on stories for a younger audience is to make them age-appropriate without patronising the audience, kids are smart and will know when something isn’t up to par!

RAMZEE: I go into Toonami Mode! Lol! I watched a lot of cartoons growing up and still watch a lot of anime and animated shows like The Owl House and Final Space – and on top of that reading stuff like Squirrel Girl and Miles Morales: Spider-Man and so can very easily slip into the All-Ages creative headspace. But I think what set 2000 AD apart from its inception, even Regened, is that it’s an edgier kind of all-ages book. They stuck out from the other comics in the market because they recognised that young readers like a little transgression, a drop of punk in their stories that kept them being too squeaky clean.

Okay, a few old standards… Ramzee, I know we did a bit of this with the Cat Girl interview, but always good to do it all over again!

What are your formative comics? How did you get into the medium?

RAMZEE: I discovered Tintin comics when I came to live in the UK as a 5-year-old. I loved them. Herge – a Belgian! – taught me English! lol I was then big into 90s X-Men and The Flash as well as early Image but when I discovered Manga it was game over and its been my major comics diet but I still read a bunch of American comics – Brian K Vaughan is my favourite comics writer ever.

KV: Oh god where do I begin? One of the best things about growing up in Greece is that comics are sold LITERALLY on every street corner, so I’ve been reading them since infancy. The bedrock of my practice is the franco-Belgian masters (Asterix, Lucky Luke, Tintin, etc), the Italian teen comic W.I.T.C.H., and Donald Duck Comics, Don Rosa’s work in particular. After that, I discovered Manga at the age of 13, read anything and everything I could get my hands on! 

My top 10 changes depending on the day but some of my all-time favs include Akira, Dorohedoro, Ron Wimberly’s Prince of Cats and anything touched by Moebius! Oh, and Tank Girl, I read a lot of Tank Girl…

And what about 2000 AD?

LV: I got into western comics late and only started reading UK comics when I moved to London in 2010. The first 2000 AD title I bought was Alan Moore And Alan Davis’ DR & Quinch and I’m slowly growing my collection from there. I’ve always loved 2000 AD’s vibes, aside from including some of the most talented UK artist there’s a unique humour and edginess you don’t see from our American colleagues.

Also – Dredd is the best superhero film ever made and I will die on this hill 

RAMZEE: I got into 2000 AD in my early 20s when I started to venture out of my comics bubble. Unlike the grim and serious sci-fi comics of that era, 2000 AD had a sense of humour and a twist in every tale.

What about influences on your creative work- who or what lit the creative fire under you to get you doing what you’re doing now?

LV: God there’s too many to list, but as cheesy as it sounds it’s all my fellow artists that keep the flames going! I’m so lucky to be part of such a vibrant and supportive community in the UK, Greece as well as globally. Comics is a solitary, demanding, and, frankly, thankless medium but it’s so comforting that we all root for each other and cheer each other on!

RAMZEE: My biggest influence was going to my first small press show in 2011. It both blew my mind and lit a fire under my arse to make comics. I didn’t come out of my creative cave with my first comic efforts until 2015. Still, the UK small comics scene is very inspiring to me and such a lovely, awkward community.

Finally, as always, feel free to go deep on whatever you have on the cards for the future – new projects? More Harlem Heroes?

RAMZEE: Fingers crossed, more Harlem Heroes. I’m writing and in talks about a few projects that I’m too chicken to talk about in case they evaporate for whatever reason, so I’ll say the safe thing: Watch!

LV: The current state of the world keeps forcing me to change my priorities every two weeks so I tend to go with the flow these days. What I want for the future is to work on as many fun and exciting projects as I can while preserving my sanity and wellbeing. Oh and more convention after-parties, I love those!

Y’know, that’s a damn fine way to end right there – we could all do with following Korinna’s example and doing our best to preserve sanity and wellbeing! And yes, it will be great to get back to convention after-parties!

Thank you so much to both Ramzee and Korinna for talking to us. If you want more from Ramzee, he talked to us here about the recent reinvention of Cat Girl and you can find out more from both of them at their websites and socials – Ramzee’s website, Twitter. Korinna’s website, Twitter.

You can find this brand-new, action-packed, and all exciting Harlem Heroes in 2000 AD Regened Volume 3, which comes out on 15 March. And if you want to catch up with the original Aeroball action, you can find the Complete Harlem Heroes at the 2000 AD web shop.

And finally, be sure to scroll down to see full-sized versions of all of Korinna’s process art and character designs!

And now the process pages from Korinna – Page 1, roughs, inks, colours and finished page…

And from Page 2 – roughs, inks, colours…

With Saphir, Kek-W, David Roach, along with the talents of colourist Peter Doherty and letterer Simon Bowland, gave us a lush, rich, fantastical slice of period sci-fi fantasy, the sort of thing 2000 AD does so well!

The first three-parts, Saphir: Un Roman Fantastique, appeared as a Tharg’s 3Riller in 2000 AD Progs Progs 2197-2199 with the 3-part Tharg’s 3Riller. And now, beginning in 2000 AD Prog 2265, out 19 January, they’re returning with the new series, Saphir: Liaisons Dangereuses!

.

Set initially in Paris, 1899, that first Saphir introduced us to Inspector Alphonse Mucha, investigating the reported murder of Lady Sofia Corundum – but Mucha soon discovered that all is not as it seems… and that, in turn, led us on a spectacular adventure and into Saphir, one of the 128 universal æssences, bridging the void between worlds.

Now, with the new series about to begin, it was my great pleasure to sit down with Saphir‘s Kek-W and David Roach to talk all things fantastical and fabulous, Saphir and sleazy politicians, and so much more… welcome to the world of Saphir and Liaisons Dangereuses!

>

Kek, David, pleasure to speak to you, hope that you’re doing well, keeping safe, and haven’t gone especially mad during the last couple of years of chaotic times. 

DAVID ROACH: That’s certainly open to debate….!

Your Saphir strip ran last year as one of Tharg’s 3Rillers, a delicious mix of 19th Century Parisian decadence, particularly extreme murders, and strange worlds… sort of Art Nouveau meets Lovecraft with a Tory knob as the enemy.

DR: Allegedly.

That was Un Roman Fantastique, but we now have a new series, Liaisons Dangereuses, starting soon.

The best place to begin then… can you give us a rundown of what the strip’s about, what’s gone before, and what to expect from Liaisons Dangereuses?

KEK-W: Maybe a good place to start might be this extract from the email I sent Matt Smith in July, 2019. It’s a pretty good thumbnail synopsis of what David and I were thinking at the time. We were looking for somewhere to land Saphir and thought we’d see if there was any interest from Rebellion:

“David Roach and I are creating a new fantasy series together and have been playing around with some ideas. We now have a setting, a set-up and a rough framework for something. Two or three of the central characters are taking shape nicely. It feels like something that would sit well in 2000 AD, but it also feels unique – different to other fantasy strips you’ve run in recent years. Our working title is Saphir – French for “Sapphire.”

“It opens in Paris, 1900, and taps into that decadent fin de siècle / La Belle Époque vibe, but the action quickly / dramatically shifts to a strange, exotic world: a place like no other. Our intention is to create a lush/luxuriant fantasy ‘romance’ –  something opulent and hallucinatory, but also action-packed and fun. David and I are channeling an Art Nouveau meets P. Craig Russell / BWS feel for this series. Think: Moebius meets J K Huysmans, with David creating fabulous alien landscapes and gorgeous otherworldly magicians and warrior-women as only he can.”    

In the end, we settled on 1899 as it was just on the cusp of a new century: the world was changing, becoming more mechanised, moving towards Modernism and that fitted the sorts of themes I wanted to play with, but it was also rich with Parisian decadence, Art Nouveau, Symbolism, occultism, etc. To our jaded 21^st century eyes, late 19^th century Paris seems a strange place filled with bizarre, beautiful locations and eccentric characters – almost as alien and fabulous as the otherworldly lands we travel to in Saphir.

.

KW: A quick recap for newcomers: in the first series, we meet Inspector Alphonse Mucha, who is called to a house in the  14th arrondissement to investigate the mysterious death of Lady Sofia Corundum, an “Englishwoman living in exile.” To the staid, uptight, conservative public servant, Mucha, the house – inhabited, much to his horror, entirely by women! – appears to be a den of iniquity and decadence. Mucha quickly falls foul of Sofia’s belligerent, strikingly amazonian chauffeur, “Jorges” who, unknown to him, is actually Jorg, a woman warrior from another world. In a deliberate inversion of Fantasy writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lin Carter, Mucha is a beta-male and it is Jorg who is the alpha. The pair are transported to the fabulous world of Saphir, using an exotic perfume to jump between worlds. Here, they have to team up and form an unlikely double-act in order to rescue magician Sofia who is not dead, but is the prisoner of a rival evil sorcerer who just happens to look like Jacob Rees-Mogg (laughs).

.

DR: From my point of view, I think I’m honing what the characters look like, how they act, and the Fin de Siecle setting of their world.

KW: Yeah, definitely, David! Same here. In the second series of Saphir, Liaisons Dangereuses, we start delving further into our characters and exploring their relationships. We also meet other members of Sofia’s women-only household, open up the universe they inhabit and deal with an unexpected consequence of their first adventure together. It’s a deranged but heart-warming fantasy ‘romance’ that features an unexpected guest character. It’s about unlikely friendships and the notion of ‘family’. We’re living through terrible, divisive times right now and I wanted to write something that was inclusive and positive as well as a fun, fantastical romp.

Is this one another Tharg’s 3Riller or a longer strip?

DR: It’s a 5-parter this time around, the 3Rillers outing was something of a trial run to see if the readers would take to a fantasy strip in an SF comic… So far I think it’s looked positive so we’re back for another story.

.

In Un Roman Fantastique, you were in the difficult situation of having to create not just one, but two fully-formed worlds – the Paris of Inspector Mucha and the fantastical world they venture to, complete with those enticing references to the Cobalt Horde, Carrion Men, The Bloated Lands, and a lot more.

Strikes me that there would be a hell of a lot of work involved in all of this world-building? Something of a gamble in many ways, putting in all the work for just 15 pages of story in the hope that it will return for more, paying off the time and energy invested in the work.

DR: The minute Kek and I started discussing the concept of the strip I knew it was something I desperately wanted to take off so I put everything I could into the artwork. The scenes in Paris were very carefully researched (from the comfort of my computer!) so that all the action took part in the right parts of the city, looking exactly as they would have at the turn of the previous century. 

I wonder if anyone noticed?

The fantasy scenes were harder in a way, creating everything from scratch and I think I’m maybe getting deeper into the world creating side of things in this second storyline. But essentially, I’m just trying to make an impact in the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic, fully aware of the amazing artists that appear in it every week- it’s a tough gig!

KW: “I wonder if anyone noticed?” – I did, David! You put so much into this project. I’m in awe, sir.

From my side, I usually tend to approach a project with far more ideas than I probably need. It’s just how my brain works; it generates stuff whether I need it or not (laughs). Anything that doesn’t make it into a story ends up in the sock-drawer and gets recycled into another project – sometimes years later – or else feeds into a second series if the strip get renewed.

With the first series of Saphir, it wasn’t really a gamble in terms of world-building. I had a big bag of ideas (some my own, others drawn from conversations with David), a setting, an opening and set-up, a reasonable idea of where it was going. David and I knew the sort of thing we wanted to do – we’d spent some time talking about the things we liked, our artistic and creative reference points, the areas where our individual interests overlapped – so I had the flavour of it all – the vibe – in my head quite quickly. And sometimes that’s about 60% of the battle.

I was at a comic convention in Gdansk, Poland, in Spring, 2019, and remember writing in a notebook most what became the first couple pages of the first Saphir script, along with notes and names and thoughts about stuff.

.

Again, it’s very much a Kek-W story, with a LOT going on, and much of it veering into the very strange!

DR: That’s what I wanted from Kek- and he hasn’t disappointed!

KW: Hahaha! You know, I always chuckle to myself when people say my work is weird or strange. We’re living in a bizarre postmodern world where Lynch, Cronenberg, Jodorowsky, etc, etc – people who were once considered oddballs or pioneers – have now been co-opted by the mainstream. I’m no longer sure what actually constitutes strange these days (laughs). At the end of the day, I just write stories about people – people who are looking for love, redemption, validation, hope… who are grieving, angry, broken, hurting, lost. The settings might be extraordinary – it’s genre fiction, after all – but, really, they’re just stories about people with recognisable, all-too-human failings and traits. And Saphir is no exception.

I absolutely love how David has brought Mucha, Sofia, Jorg and the gang to life! They felt very real to me when they were wandering around inside my head and now they feel so very, very real on the page too. David sent me a page of art recently from Liaisons Dangereuses – it was beautiful, of course, but there was a brief reflective sequence where it just focuses on Inspector Mucha… I was just amazed how David showed all the layers that sit within the character: the quiet sadness inside him, that he was unfulfilled and incomplete, but he hid all that under a mask of dignity and duty. For a moment the facade slips. David caught all that in a couple of panels. It was quite remarkable.

Moments like that remind me why I love writing comics and how blessed I am in terms of collaborators.

Obviously, the ending to Un Roman Fantastique was set up for further storylines, with Lady Sofia’s promise to be in touch with Mucha.

.

So how far in advance have you plotted, just how many storylines are there in your head/notebooks right now?

DR: We have thrown ideas back and forth quite a bit and the 2 strips have gone in completely different directions to where I thought they were going… so there’s certainly a lot of concepts still floating around in the ether waiting to coalesce into further storylines.

KW: Yeah, totally. I’ve not hard-plotted anything. I always assume that every series or story I do could potentially be the last – though you always hope for longevity with a character or series, that you can take the readers and (especially) the commissioning editor along with you!

Usually, the bag of ideas is big enough that I can hopefully reach into my brain – metaphorically, not physically! (laughs) – and pull out the next set of episodes.

I usually plant ‘seeds’ in strips as I go along that could be grown into new stories – and that’s certainly true of Saphir too – seemingly throw-away lines that could lead into new adventures or expand the universe they’re set in. It might sound odd, but if you make your characters rich enough, they will usually tell you where they want to go next. Other writers will probably know what I mean when I say that. 

In the first Tharg’s 3Riller 3-parter, Un Roman Fantastique, we had appearances from the 19th Century artist Alphonse Mucha, repurposed as Inspector Mucha of the Sûreté Nationale, and, quite wonderfully, a certain character from the front benches, lounging in his nonchalant, egregious, and loathsome fashion as the main villain, named in Un Roman Fantastique as Sebastian Ensor, complete with his nanny as well.

.

So – why the playing with real-life characters, names, likenesses?

KW: Why not? (laughs). Like I said: we’re living in a postmodern world – a Real-Time Mash-Up where the amount of information is now doubling every few minutes. A meme-based digital attention-economy where fiction and reality constantly rub up against and bleed into one another, where public domain characters get to hang out with the historical. It seems daft not to plug into all that (laughs). Even better: it provides endless scope for satire and humour.

Was it something in there at the script process, or something David added in during the art?  

DR: The Inspector’s name certainly came from Kek as I recall

KW: But very much inspired by you, David! – and the various topics covered in our email chats. You’ll mention something or someone or a place in an email that would send me off down a rabbit hole and get my synapses firing (a dangerous thing!) which then fed back into Saphir in all sorts of different and unexpected ways.

And they really are such wonderful likenesses, especially that certain loathsome lounging MP. [Although with Mucha, wasn’t he more of a light brown, red-head?]

DR: I wish I could remember whose idea it was to use “JRM” as the villain of the piece, but I do remember reading the script soon after he was so notoriously shown lounging in the house of commons, and saving a screen grab to be sure that I could use that pose in the strip. It was just too good a chance to pass up!

But actually, Inspector Mucha is based on my friend Anthony Reynolds -the singer, writer and 90s Indie legend whose band Jack toured with Suede and the Divine Comedy. Anthony is a massive 2000 AD fan and has completely thrown himself into the role as Inspector Mucha, so really any resemblance to the artist is entirely coincidental.

I’m also horrified to admit that since I’m equally tall and skeletal I used myself as the model for JRM in a couple of panels… oh the shame of it! The strip came out in the first wave of Covid and I was terrified that he might catch it and die… and then have Kek and I pilloried as heartless swines poking fun at the recently deceased, but luckily he appears to have avoided it.

.

KW: I think we settled on having a Mogg analogue as the villain reasonably early in the process. Fairly sure we batted the idea around in emails, David – possibly it was initiated by something that Real-World Mogg did or said – so we can both take the credit-blame for the genesis of that (laughs).  It was certainly there on the table by the time I started to script it.

Here’s an excerpt from my script:

‘It’s our Mogg-analogue villain, the posh, aristocratic, English magician: The Honourable Sebastian Ensor. Another character, like Sofia, with a foot in two worlds. He’s accompanied by ‘Nanny’: a hideous fly-headed thing with clicking insectoid mouth-parts dressed like an Edwardian governess in a blouse and long skirt.’

ENSOR:              A MIRACLE, GIVEN THE WOEFUL STATE OF THE FRENCH EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM, eh, NANNY?
NANNY:             Zzb-zb!

David, you did such a wonderful job nailing his look and his character! The lounging pose was all over my timeline as a meme at the time, people photo-shopping him into ridiculous scenes, so it was a laugh-out-loud brilliant moment when I saw how David had illustrated him. He also mentioned the artist, James Ensor, to me in an email, then Ensor coincidentally popped up a couple weeks later in a book I was reading on Symbolist artists, so that got folded into the character’s name. Making comics is always that strange, weird mixture of planning and improvising!

Are we going to be seeing any new parodies this time around? A Boris perhaps? Priti Patel is surely ripe for the authoritarian fascist dictatorial type?

DR: Both extremely good ideas!

KW: Don’t get me started on those two (laughs). No spoilers, but – yes! – we do have a new nemesis in the latest series who is based on a well-known real-world character. A prize to the first Squazz dek Thargo who spots the clues.

.

Now, whilst touching on the whole relationship between writer and artist – how did you work together here?

Is it the case of Kek doing the writer thing of ‘Page 1, huge alien scene, all distinctly different, in a massive vista of figures, backed with distinctive and original fantastical features’ – you know, the sort of thing every artist likes to see!

Or the alternative – writer leaves it vague, artist goes crazy with the details? Or is it more of a collaboration, ideas bouncing back and forth?

DR: We had exchanged ideas quite a bit before the writing of both storylines- often with me saying how much there were certain things I’d like to draw, and perhaps more importantly, a long list of things I’m keen to avoid! But in both cases, Kek has veered off into his own completely bizarre directions… which is exactly what I’d hoped for in working the West Country Wizard himself.

The scripts are very tightly plotted and precisely dialogued (of course), but within that, I get a fair bit of leeway in how things look and how the fight scenes are choreographed. Kek likes to throw quite a lot of visual ideas into the script as a way of sparking off ideas in me, rather than tying me down too much.

I think it’s a great balance and if I want to add the odd extra panel here or there, or bring in a left-field influence for the visuals he’s always open to my suggestions. I think it all works really well.

KW: “West Country Wizard” – hahaha! Brilliant! Thanks, David. I know my scripts give you a few headaches now and then, but you are an utter delight to work with and I’m super appreciative of the extra ten miles you go to when illustrating these tales. You constantly spark new story and character ideas in my head, nudge me into taking things somewhere bigger, bolder, and better.

David, your art has always been highly rendered, veering into portraiture at times on the faces, but there’s also that sense of it all being very realistic, even whilst portraying all of these wonderfully out-there ideas that Kek is throwing into the storyline.

DR: Thank you- I do try to draw everything with the same degree of realism if I can, so that everything is completely believable.

Perhaps the best example of it in that first Saphir would be when Jorges removes her hat, revealing her shock of blue hair, all beautifully rendered in your extreme realist style. This one, in fact…

.

DR: I do have a couple more panels drawn I pencil this time round too.  It might be a sort of character flaw but for some reason I just like mixing up techniques if I can. The pencil panels are a way of standing out from the other artists I guess since nobody else at 2000 AD does it.. possibly with good reason!

You’re also an artist whose art has a sensuality, for want of a better word, to it – your figures, no matter how fantastical, always have a litheness, a reality about them.

And then there’s the detailing you put into nearly every panel – you’re certainly not an artist who ignores the backgrounds or simply gives us a generic backdrop to the important figure work.

.

But the thing I noticed so much here in Saphir? That would be the drapery – clothes hang just right, fabrics, curtains, everything just has a wonderfully stylised feel to it – very much in keeping to the Parisian times and the Art Nouveau stylings of Mucha (the other one, not your Inspector).

DR: Well I do adore the work of Mucha (the artist) who certainly was a master of drapery, along with everything else. Again I think it comes down to wanting to create something that looks believable and in some cases I’ve taken photos to create that realistic feel that I’m looking for. The sort of artists I’ve been looking at for inspiration – Paul Gillon, Leonard Starr, Al Williamson, Lou Fine, Stan Drake, Jesus Blasco, Garcia Lopez, and Nestor Redondo all had that ability to create art that’s completely credible no matter what the subject matter and that’s very much what I was going for.

I also do a lot of life drawing along with larger, more finished “fine art” drawings (often taking a week or more to do) working with models and drapery and I think that underpins my comic work.

Of course, when there’s a panel like Jorge piling into a mass of alien creatures with a large spear that has to come entirely from my imagination.

Oh yes… and that would be this one!

Your art’s certainly developed and evolved over the years since I first saw it – I believe that was with the classic Nemesis storyline, Purity’s Story. Do you see that development through your work as well? How would you describe that?

DR: Oh very much so, and since that was 35 years ago (gulp!) I hope I have grown a lot as an artist over all that time! Nemesis was my first professional strip anywhere and I was only 21 when I started it so I was very much learning as I went along.

Some artists- Steve Dillon being the classic example- burst onto the scene fully formed but I’ve grown very gradually over the years, I think.  I guess I’m continually pushing myself and I still have the drive that every strip should be my best, if possible.

Along with my Anderson strip in Prog 2000, I think Saphir is my best strip artwork… that’s what I’m hoping for anyway.

How are you working now, what’s your process entail?

DR: There’s no real mystery to it- I read through the strip, roughly sketch it out on a small scale, draw it up more tightly on the original pages (I work at A2 size- the typical original art size for British comic artwork up until the ‘90s), then go hunting for reference if I need any. For this strip, there’s been a mountain of reference for settings and things like cars, prams, clothes, plants, guns and so on… in fact anything Victorian and French.

For figures, I don’t usually use reference but from time to time it’s useful to work from photos to capture the specificity of a pose. For episode 3 for instance, I had Lady Sofia pick up a cup and saucer, then kneel down and place it on the ground, and it’s such a precise, specific action that I thought it would be easier to get someone (my daughter Belle in this case) to act it out for me. A vast Alien Battle isn’t something we’re ever likely to see so it’s easy to just make it up – but exactly how someone would place a cup and Saucer on the ground has to look believable. It’s possible that I overthink these things!

A quick word on Peter Doherty and his colour work on the original 3-parter. Will he be returning this time to add colour to your art David?

DR: Absolutely! Peter did such a fabulous job the first time round that I was really keen to have him back again. The fans appreciated his work and he made me look good, so I’m relieved he’s coming back for Liaisons Dangereuses.

KW: Yeah, me too. I’m just going to jump in here and echo what David said: Peter did an amazing job on the first series! The colouring was so subtle and sympathetic. I’d also like to mention the great lettering job Simon Bowland did. Peter and Simon, like David, are masters of their respective trades. I was blown away by their work.

He’s definitely a great choice for a colourist for your work here, giving the whole thing that lush feel – going from the dark, earthy tones of Mucha’s Paris, all those blacks, greys, browns (all the better to emphasise the fantastical elements of the story, such as that aforementioned moment of Jorge’s blue hair) and on to the vivid oranges, greens, blues of the fantasy world. An absolute masterclass of colour use and one that, I think at least, really suits your artwork.

Is there not the temptation to colour your own work at all?

DR: Since I’m colour-blind I can safely say the answer is no!

Ah, yes, that would definitely be a problem!

.

Finally, as always, what sort of things have we got to look forward from you in the future, both 2000 AD-related and elsewhere?

DR: As many of you will know I’ve been compiling the Brian Bolland Apex edition for Rebellion, and simultaneously putting together one devoted to Mick McMahon as well and both are out this year.

I’m also compiling a book collecting the best Fleetway Romance strips, also for Rebellion which will be a Valentine’s Day 2023 release (Hey, we plan ahead!) It’s a book that I think everyone will love, even if they think they won’t.  Hey, trust me, it will be great!

Strip wise I think I’m doing something top secret for Germany as soon as I finish Saphir and I’ll try and get through my commission list if I can. I have an art book ready to go if we can find the time to publish it and you can take it as read that I’m always overjoyed to appear in 2000 AD, it still feels like a honour to be an Art Droid. If the readers enjoy this second Saphir strip I’d absolutely love to draw more, believe me, we have so many ideas for future storylines. I’ve never enjoyed myself more.

KW: Me too, David! Here’s to many more adventures in the worlds of Saphir and Fin de Siecle Paris!

Everyone, say thanks to both Kek-W and to David for that beast of an interview! You can get hold of Saphir: Liasons Dangereuses in the new 2000 AD Prog 2265, available from all comic shops, newsagents, and the 2000 AD web shop from 19 January.

As for the very special Brian Bolland Apex Edition that David has been working on – that’s released on 16 February 2022 – and you can get that here!

And since we were mentioning it – some of David’s earlier work on Nemesis Book 8 – Purity’s Story, from 1988’s Prog 558…

If you’ve seen inside the latest Judge Dredd Megazine, issue 439, with its seasonal cover from Lee Carter, you can’t have missed the brilliant new strip in there from the creators of Blunt – Death Cap.  

It’s all fungal threats, Cursed Earth nightmares, and a disgraced Judge with revenge in mind… so, isn’t it about time that we learned more with a chat to TC Eglington and Boo Cook?

.

Tom, Boo, the first we saw of Death Cap was is the single panel trail in that Thrills of the Future teaser… the vibe I got from that, which I mentioned to you at the time, was something very Wild West – a run-down town, someone who may or may not be a Judge – she’s got part of the Judge’s uniform on at least – riding in on a mutie horse… so I had a guess that it was something set in the Cursed Earth with a Judge, possibly on the run, certainly not the most conventional of Judges. 

So, now that the series is out, can you let us all know a little bit more – what’s Death Cap all about? 

BOO COOK: Death Cap is primarily about disgraced ex-(Texas City) Judge Anita Goya, who, after a bad judgement call takes the long walk into the Cursed Earth sometime before our tale begins and is now raising a small family in a windblown typical wild-west rad-back town. Cue mutant marauders!

These aren’t just any muties though – they have been infected by a further mutated variant of the old Grubbs Disease from back in the post Apocalypse War story Fungus by Wagner/Grant and Ezquerra. The marauders, led by the hideously infected Wayde are on the search for something specific and burn Goya’s town to the ground while she is away.

She returns to find her family murdered and goes on an angst fuelled warpath to track the muties down but in the process…

[At this point Tharg stepped in, wagging fingers and muttering darkly about SPOILERS.]  

.

TC EGLINGTON: Yep, that’s pretty much it! Like Boo says, Death Cap follows the fate of disgraced ex-judge, Anita Goya. Having taken the Long Walk many years ago, Goya has made a life for herself in the rad-back, raising a family and making a home. But her life is upended when Wayde, a deranged mutie transformed by a fungal infection, ransacks the town with his gang of muties in a search for a prized relic. Goya’s family is murdered. She is left for dead. Old instincts stir, however, and she retrieves her lawgiver to carry out one last act of justice.

Bloody revenge and fungal horror collide, as Judge Goya tries to hold onto her last scraps of humanity amid the brutal acts gradually turning her into a monster. 

And of course, all of that explains why it’s called Death Cap as well! 

BC: Yes, the connection between the fungal peril involved and the mighty Death Cap toadstool – when we were trying to think of a title for the strip Tom threw that one up and it was obviously a no-brainer to use it… perfect! 

TCE: We wanted to revisit a classic Judge Dredd story and Fungus was a big favourite for both of us. We wanted to expand on the original short strip, but have the feel of a gritty, western-era revenge story, where the protagonist loses their humanity in their thirst for blood. Death Cap had the perfect ring to it: fungal and deathy. 

.

So, I wasn’t too far off with the little breakdown of the Thrills of the Future panel then? 

TCE: The teaser panel didn’t show a lot, for obvious reasons. There is a lot we want to unfold naturally for the reader. if anything, the Thrills of the Future panel is one of the nicer, calm-before-the-storm moments. But you definitely hit the nail on the head with the Western theme. And Goya is unconventional. She’s someone that made a mistake for being too human in a situation where she needed to be cold and practical. She is haunted by that blurred line of when to have the killer instincts and when to be human. That said, we take her on a bizarre and bloody journey that pushes her character to the limits.

BC: Well, Goya definitely has a mutant horse. After I’d drawn the horse with a human hand at the end of its snout and firmly cemented it into the strip, it suddenly dawned on me that this could only have been the result of some unspeakable DNA mixing. That, thankfully, does not make it into the story although I’ve only read the script for parts 1-3 so far, so zoophiles could still be in for a treat! 

As for the rest of your conjecture about the story, yes, Goya was indeed a Judge. a very good one by all accounts but at the time of her big error of judgement she was quite young and hesitated in a moment of moral decision making with deadly consequences. She takes her guilt in this matter very seriously and it goes a long way to shaping who she becomes in maturity… you wouldn’t want to mess with her that’s for sure.

Although the strip begins in her small town it quickly becomes a classic Cursed Earth quest featuring many crazed scenarios and characters along the way with some lovely set pieces and inventive psychedelic mayhem courtesy of Tom’s warped mind. 

.

How many parts are we looking at for Death Cap? 

BC: it’s 8 episodes, 10 pages in length each, which makes some room for some nice big panels for me to get stuck into, and some more experimental story telling techniques.

TCE: Yes, since we’re in the Megazine we have more pages than in the prog. This has allowed us to have a bit more space to play with and we’ve used that to convey some of the atmosphere and vastness of the Cursed Earth. 

What is it about Dredd’s world that means it’s just so open to exploration? After all, it’s been four decades plus… and we still haven’t explored much of the world and its stories yet! 

BC: I’ve been a massive fan of Dredd and his world for over forty years so it’s always an immense pleasure to dive into it and create some new stuff – there are so many areas to explore and twist and add new directions to.

Drawing the elements of familiarity with that world always gives me a thrill and I especially like subverting them a bit – in Goya’s case for example she still retains some useful elements of her old uniform but her judge gloves have become fingerless over time, she’s lost a kneepad somewhere in the rad-back, and wears a respirator prised from an MC-1 Judge’s helmet round her neck in case of emergency. That kind of stuff is always fun and hopefully serves to flesh out her background non-verbally.

With some of the Judge tech in the strip there’s a vibe of repurposing and even revitalising the old ways in which things are used and done which also filters nicely into some of the fungal consciousness aspects of the story and how such changes could assist humanity. There are theories that as we roamed the ancient plains in early primal hominid form we ate fungi found growing on the dung of prairie‑dwelling animals and that injection of boosted awareness from the mushrooms helped evolve our brains. You could say that Arthur C. Clarke’s famous monolith in 2001 is a great metaphor for psychedelic fungus in our evolution. 

TCE: We both love the Dreddverse, particularly the aspects of it that allow you to elaborate or expand on what has already gone before. I always loved the Cursed Earth as a location, as it has that nightmare quality of apocalyptic landscapes but peppered with the remains of America.

We wanted to explore that with Death Cap, that feeling of a journey through the heartlands of the Cursed Earth, where locations become a character all of their own. instead of the Bible Belt, there is the Trash Belt, where entire sub-cultures of muties have developed.

Boo’s artwork for this strip is stunning. He’s managed to create new, original visions that feel in step with the traditions of the Cursed Earth we know and love.  

.

You were last together with Blunt, three series way, way out in the boondocks of the universe, telling a fascinating tale of genetics, Gaia theory, planet-wide ecosystems, and all pulled together with a backdrop of Mega-City colonisation. 

Here, in terms of proximity to MC-1, it sure looks like you’re a lot closer to home. Does that limit the sorts of flights of fancy you can deliver at all? 

BC: Well the Dreddverse is so full of crazy shit already that it sets the bar pretty high in terms of flights of fancy, but Tom and myself are always up for the challenge of trying to crank things just a bit further and Death Cap hopefully won’t disappoint! 

TCE: This is definitely more rooted in the Dreddverse, both with the location and the Grubb variant. That said, we have found a way to work in some of our obsessions in a way that gives the strip its own distinct flavour.

Part of the attraction to the idea of referencing the original Fungus storyline was some of the knowledge that has been gathered about fungi since John Wagner first wrote it – and a huge shout-out to his genius for getting to that idea long before anyone else.

The advances in science surrounding fungi are incredible and have been a great source for inspiration. To some degree, it allows us to briefly touch on ecosystems and genetics once again, although of the mycelium-inspired variety.  

If you ever want to give yourself nightmares just look up cordyceps zombie infections, where fungi have evolved to manipulate insects, hijacking their brains and making them superspreaders.

Oh yes, the zombie ant fungus – truly the stuff of nightmares.

But don’t take our word for it – go read and watch here and here – but don’t blame us for the images that are going to take root in your head!

.

It’s perhaps slightly different to the work involved with Blunt, in that there’s a lot more of the structure, the worldbuilding, done for this sort of setting already – does this mean the prep work for Death Cap was in any way easier? 

TCE: Yes, definitely. I think this felt a lot more familiar territory for us. We had a lot of ideas about aspects of the Cursed Earth that we wanted to explore. And it has been a genuine joy to be inspired by one of our favourite Dredd strips. So much of the world and its mechanics are there, and for my part that helped things a lot. 

BC: Yeah, I think it actually took several years and many incarnations to come up with Blunt and his world but in the case of Death Cap, once we knew the setting and the character it was just a case of feeling out who the lead needed to be physically. I do like my heavy hitters but Goya is more understated than Blunt – she would kick your head clean off if she needed to but she isn’t rippling with muscles – just a solid block of a woman with a soul that matches her physicality perfectly. then I just had to add the Texas City judge elements and figure out her look as she…

[Nope Boo, Tharg’s wagging his SPOILERS finger again, sorry!]

And in terms of Death Cap, I’m assuming you’re working here with the intent/hope that you’ll be able to develop this past the first series? Any hints of where we may be going that far into the future? 

TCE: There is definitely a direction for future storylines. Goya is a great character to develop, as well as the landscape she inhabits. We’ve approached it by having a definitive arc for the first series but there are lots of characters and details that fit to a larger story. it is also a great topic to explore. 

BC: Obviously it’s always great to keep a strip rolling, especially if you’re enjoying it as much as I am, and I think the usual intent with stories these days is to craft the arcs with a solid end but with scope for more.

As of now I don’t actually know the exact ending of this 8 episode arc – Goya certainly won’t be the person she was at the start of the strip! But there’s certainly a lot of scope for continuing the story.

.

Boo, your artwork on Blunt was a wonderfully organic style. What sort of shifts in the art will we see this time round for Death Cap? Has a change of locale meant a change in style at all? 

BC: If my style on Blunt was ‘organic’ then Death Cap is ultra-organic in as much as I’ve opted for a much grittier vibe by eschewing the inked style of Blunt for some very heavy/dirty pencils which I’m painting over in Photoshop.

As such, it’s a bit more realistic than Blunt and I feel I’m able to bring a lot more nuances to the world and characters, plus I enjoy it a lot more – it feels more like it’s my natural style of art. Sure, it takes about twice as long to do, but ultimately if I’m more satisfied with the end results then I’m happy to take the hit time-wise. 

.

Tom, Boo, you’ve got a few series of work behind you now. Let’s talk a little about the collaboration between the pair of you – how it works, the details, the arguments and fights! 

BC: Tom is a big raging Scotsman so I don’t do too well in the fights, thankfully we don’t have too many! We have quite a nice loose working vibe these days where Tom will come up with the big idea then we’ll get together and have a good old brainstorming session to see how we could flesh it out. 

As the process rolls along scenes or vehicles that might be cool to include will occur to me and I’ll run them by Tom and he’s usually gracious enough to whack them in if they fit his framework. I think we started out with Death Cap being a straight-up Fungal zombie skit but we wanted to distance it from ‘The Last Of Us’ game so the Grubb’s Disease idea was a perfect way of framing it.

With first Blunt and now the fungal delights found in Death Cap, there’s an enormous amount of exploring the idea of genetics, ecosystems, ethnobotany and the nature of symbiosis up to and including planetary level, something of the Gaia theory. Where did the interest come from? Is there a science background in there at all? Or is it just a healthy obsession with the unknown for you?

TCE: I feel that the science fiction genre is about imagining the future, and it is impossible to do that nowadays without considering ecological issues, be they climate catastrophe, ethnobotany, or evolutionary theory. With both Blunt and Death Cap, we didn’t want to do just do a doom and gloom aspect of that, but something a bit more dynamic and leftfield.

There’s definitely a big influence from developments in the ecological sciences from the last few decades. I’ve been an environmentalist since my teens and it spills into my work. James Lovelock’s Revenge of Gaia sits on my shelf, as does Merlin Sheldrake’s excellent Entangled Lives – an in-depth look into the world of fungi – and Suzanne Simard’s brilliant Finding the Mother Tree – charting the discovery of the complex mycelium networks that help trees communicate in what is dubbed ‘the wood wide web’. We play around with some of these ideas, always in a way that is more about fictional concepts and less about hard science, but it seems good to at least approach some of these subjects. Partly, it’s also to add something new into the mix. 

BC: Yes, Tom and I are quite obsessed with the world of Fungi and the mycelium network that connects entire forests of trees together in that ‘wood wide web’ Tom’s already mentioned.

In fact, without fungus on this planet, life would never exist as we know it – for a start there would be nothing to break down dead matter and return it’s nutrients to the Earth.

Mushrooms and toadstools are basically the magick ingredient or key to life on this planet and have been long overlooked by science as they neither fitted into the animal or vegetable Kingdoms. They can absorb toxic waste, heal us physically and mentally and I think the time is ripe for a mycological renaissance, which could just be the key we need to survive many of the threats currently facing us as humans, so to do a strip that helped to put mushrooms on the map was something we really felt passionate about. I’ve done lots of research about them to the point where I’ve now ended up dreaming about wolfing down massive handfuls of toadstools. They are in us, on us and have been with us from the start…  

.

TCE: I’ve worked with Boo longer than I’ve worked with anyone, so we’re definitely doing something right. We go back and forth with ideas. Sometimes Boo has an idea that I run with, sometimes I work from a sketch – Gunheadz was a drawing in his sketch pad that he challenged me to work into a story – and sometimes I come up with an idea and we brainstorm the details. With Death Cap, it has been a nice mix, partly because the inspiration was something we’re both obsessed about. if there is a key to good collaboration I think it is definitely mutual interest.

We work best together when it is a subject we’re both really into. it helps that Boo’s instincts are great. He’s put me on the right track with a few things, which has helped. I also try to work in the stuff I know he’ll love to draw. His range and skills as an artist are incredible and I feel that Death Cap is some of his best artwork to date. it seems to encapsulate all the best things we’ve been exploring in our strips over the years.  

Also, in a fight, he has a low centre of gravity and he has been known to use a giant caterpillar as a weapon, so I know when to back off.     

.

Let’s finish up with a standard – what sort of things do we have to look forward to you post Death Cap? Feel free to push anything you’re involved in! 

TCE: I’ve been busy with a range of projects. Me and Simon Davis are currently putting together ideas for Thistlebone 3, and I have a few other writing projects in development. I’ve also been keeping my hand in with some art, mixing between illustration/comic art type stuff – www.instagram.com/tomtheeggeglington – and folk horror woodcuts/lasercuts – www.instagram.com/wyrdewoods

BC: I still have quite a massive chunk of work to do on Death Cap so beyond that I’ve only just started putting the mycelium feelers out, but if they bear fruit it’ll be a real psychedelic blast working with someone whose writing I’ve loved for years.

I always have painting projects going on the side which tend to get aired on www.instagram.com/boocook plus there’s the music angle with bands Motherbox and Forktail with Si Davis, plus my solo stuff under the name of Owlmask – funnily enough Tom drew the cover to the last Owlmask album! All of this can be found on the Menk Records label on Bandcamp if anyone’s interested… Menk Records 

.

Thank you so much for Tom and Boo for chatting to us here. Death Cap already has that feel of a modern-day Dreddworld classic – you can (and dammit, you should) catch it in Megazine issue 439 and for most of 2022! And having seen the sneak peeks of what’s coming in Boo’s concept art that we just couldn’t show you (spoilers!), you’re all in for a nightmarish treat!

If you’re after that little bit more from TC and Boo, there’s more on ecosystems and infections in this interview on Blunt from 2018.

Now, we’ve already shown you some small versions of all those incredible Death Cap concept images, but they’re just too good not to show you the full set in full size… so here’s your chance to luxuriate in them and wonder exactly where these characters are coming into it all…

A little bit Hamilton, a little bit Chuck-D, a lot weird… it’s time for the start of Judge Dredd: The Musical in 2000 AD Prog 2259 – out now! Sensitive Klegg returns to put on a musical based on the life of his hero – Joseph Dredd.

It’s full-on ridiculousness set to music, brought to you by the great Dredd team of Rob Williams and Chris Weston…

.

So, a while ago, we saw the Thrills of the Future ad for Judge Dredd: The Musical…

Sensitive Klegg on the mic, one rapper seemingly scared out of his wits. Although, given the ginger goatee maybe he deserved it? This one looks like it’s going to be a LOT of fun! So, guys, what can you tell us?

ROB WILLIAMS: Judge Dredd: the Musical is a three-part – well, four-part, really, we have a longer final part thanks to the grace of Tharg The Mighty – storyline that is the career comeback of Sensitive Klegg.

He’s back in Mega_City One, he’s lost his royalties from his hugely successful tenure as a rapper in Sino-City. They loved him because he looked like a dragon and he rapped. So now he’s going to create his magnum opus. A hip-hop musical, not a million miles away from a Hamilton. And it’s about the life of his hero: Judge Dredd.

CHRIS WESTON: After Rob and I finished Dredd: Control we both agreed that our next Dredd strip should be a bit more humorous. Control was pretty grim in tone and imagery so it felt like a good idea to lean into more comedic material. Some of the best and most memorable episodes of Judge Dredd have been laugh-out-loud funny, especially during Grant & Wagner’s run, and Dredd: The Musical was a deliberate throwback to those.

.

Yes, we’ve had plenty of musical-themed strips in both the Prog and the Judge Dredd Megazine over the years, but it seems to me that things have escalated a little with Dan Abnett and Phil Winslade’s 50th installment of their Dredd-world frontier series, Lawless, in the Megazine issue 424. They not only did the whole thing in song but also employed an entire team to bring Lawless the Musical into existence as a musical work as well. (Read more on that here.)

So… are we going to be seeing you pulling in your own team of musical greats to assist?

RW: I think there’s a great history of musicals in Dredd and 2000 AD, which is probably vaguely Alan Grant-related. It feels that way. I’m thinking of The Last American too. I wrote a song and dance number into my creator-owned comic with D’israeli from a few years back, Ordinary, and the musical number from The Last American was a bit of an influence. It feels like it works in the madness of MC1, certainly. We were thinking of what would annoy Judge Dredd more than anything else on Earth – and a hip-hop musical performed by Sensitive Klegg would be high up there.

.

And will you be (as I believe the hip kids say) laying down a few tracks off the back of this?

CW: I genuinely had plans to record one of the songs from “Dredd:The Musical” with my son, to promote the story. I even hoped to make a short and primitively-animated video to go with it. Fortunately, for everyone concerned, Hollywood and fate intervened and I was dragged off to work on The Continental, the John Wick spin-off TV show, which didn’t leave me enough to create my potentially Grammy-nominated Klegg rap anthem. I wasn’t entirely sure what a Klegg’s voice would sound like, anyway.

Well, I suppose we can forgive you this one time Chris – especially as you’re busy on what looks like it might be a damn fine TV show.

RW: I’ve just remembered seeing a video of Chris Weston rapping onstage to a rabid crowd at a French comic convention. I don’t know if footage of that still exists. But I didn’t dream it.

CW: That clip is now available to buy as an exclusive NFT, for those interested.

One of the better uses for an NFT right there!

.

Although it has to be said, Chris, you missed a trick not pulling in Anthrax and using their connections with Public Enemy to get some top talent on the musical version!

After all, you did recently do a rather fabulous Judge Dredd strip based on the I Am The Law track from Anthrax on the recent Anthrax graphic novel from Z2 Comics!

CW: I don’t know why it never crossed my mind to ask Anthrax to lay down a dirty death-metal backtrack behind Klegg’s vocal rhapsodies. It all seems like a horribly missed opportunity. Damn you, John Wick!

Now, we’ve had musical references littered through the history of 2000 AD for many years, and there’s a huge number of fans of 2000 AD out there in music…Human League, Motorhead, Portishead, Anthrax… etc, etc. – have those fed into this new Judge Dredd: The Musical?

RW: Not really. There’s a certain Ice T and Public Enemy influence in Klegg‘s last two albums: Judge Kisser and Fear Of A Klegg Planet. There’s a bit of a Hamilton influence in the musical too. I will say this though, pitching a story featuring a Judge Dredd Musical is one thing, but writing the lyrics for the songs is way more challenging than I thought. It is extremely silly though. It made me laugh a lot.

Well, you’ve no-one to blame but yerself for that one, Rob!

Given that the Thrills of the Future ad gives off this sort of Hip Hop and Rap vibe, I’m assuming at least one of you is a bit of an old-skool fan?

CW: I must confess, I’m not the biggest hip-hop fan in the universe. I’m more into Prog at the moment, which is an appropriately titled musical genre for a fan of The Galaxy’s Greatest Comic. I do have one Ice-T album, though: Home Invasion, which I really love. Me and the Missus used to play it a lot while we were doing the cooking. We’d be this white, middle-class couple, in our nice kitchen, pausing in our consumption of red wine to rap along with his angry lyrical diatribes (such as Race War and G-style)… and I remember asking my wife: “Do you think this is what Ice-T would have wanted?”

Yes. Absolutely yes. Middle-class rebellion is the new counter-culture!

.

Chris, seeing as we’re doing music here, how much fun was it to get to take part in that Anthrax book from Z2 Comics? You had 13 incredibly detailed pages there, written by Scott Ian from Anthrax, all inspired by Anthrax’s I Am the Law, one of those great occasions where 2000 AD and Dredd gets to appear outside the pages of the Prog or the Meg.

You also happened to manage to sneak in a possible demise for old Joe in there? How did that one come about – both the storyline and the gig itself?

CW: I have got Grant Morrison to thank for that. Grant has been living a glamorous, celebrity-packed lifestyle in Los Angeles and at some point they crossed paths with Scott Ian. Scott was on the lookout for an artist to draw his Dredd strip, and Grant generously put my name forward.

Yep, it’s always who you know!

CW: Scott then sent me a Marvel-style synopsis, and I converted that into a traditional 2000 AD-style script, with panel breakdowns and place-holder dialogue. I roughed up the whole story and sent it to Scott. He approved it and polished the dialogue and I went straight to finished inks. It all happened quite quickly, by my standards. I poured so much detail into the crowd scenes; fragments of Mick McMahon interviews would drift into my head where he lamented about how drawing Block Mania nearly killed him. I thought, “I know what you mean, Mick, mate.”

Again, just as with Rob bemoaning the musical nightmare he’d written himself into, I think that’s all your own fault Chris – although the result was pretty damn great.

.

Now, this is but the latest collaboration between the two of you – plans for more down the line at some point?

RW: Oh, It’s always a treat to work with Chris for a number of reasons. His art’s wonderful, of course, but I always enjoy how we knock ideas back and forth. This one came out of a phone conversation and I think Chris said something about how Klegg should write a Judge Dredd musical. But also, the older and grumpier I get, I just enjoy working with friends. Chris and Laurence Campbell and a few others. It’s just fun. 

I’m sure we’ll probably do more Dredd at some point. I hope so anyway.

We all hope so too!

Although, of course, Rob might want to keep his cards close to his chest here, after all, Chris does seem to be having a fine time recently writing and drawing his own stuff for the Prog! Most recent of which was that ridiculously funny 3-page Future Shock – The Guardian and the God-child in Prog 2250!

So, Chris – planning on ditching Rob for good?

RW: He’s quite reasonably worked out that he can do this writing stuff himself and get twice the money.

CW: I wish I could say there was some sort of plan or design to my career. I’d probably be a lot richer if there was. I tend to just drift along, never looking further ahead than the story I’m working on. A fortunate side-effect of that is my being available for the odd film job that comes along. Dredd stories, which aren’t a great commitment, time-wise, fit that pattern nicely. So I doubt this will be my last trip to Mega-City One, although I would be happier if Rob and I could cook up something new and creator-owned for ourselves. We keep talking about it, but the timing has never worked out.

.

Okay gents, as usual, to finish up – what’s coming up next for you both?

RW: For 2000 AD I’m working on a new series of Hershey at the moment. We have a finite end in sight there and a definite story we’re telling. Simon Fraser’s back on art there.

Elsewhere a couple of comic things on a very famous franchise that isn’t announced yet, so I can’t say anything there. And I have a couple of TV projects I’m developing for Production Companies, but again, no announcements just yet.

CW: Nothing concrete yet. I’m just mulling over some offers and ideas, and doing a few private commissions while I make my mind up.

Thank you to both Chris and Rob for taking the time to get a few words down to us – always appreciated.

And you, dear reader, can experience the wonders of Sensitive Klegg’s musical extravaganza in Judge Dredd: The Musical, beginning in 2000 AD Prog 2259, available from all good comic shops and newsagents, as well as the 2000 AD web shop and on subscription – out on 24 November.

You can also grab the Chris Weston Dredd strip in the Anthrax anthology Among The Living from Z2 Comics. Here’s the artist with the book and a couple of pages of the Dredd strip…

And a couple of vids to end with – Anthrax’s I Am The Law and the Anthrax & Public Enemy classic – Bring The Noise – enjoy!

The Future Shock has been the classic entry point for new writers and artists throughout the long history of 2000 AD, cautionary tales from the infinite worlds of the universe that have become the things of legend, their shocking ends a salutory lesson in hubris.

And in 2000 AD Prog 2257, out now, we get a Prog debutant on art duties on the Future Shock tale, Keyboard Warriors, written by Karl Stock. The artist is Rob Richardson who gets to draw his first Future Shock that takes us to a distant world, mineral-rich, with a mining company busy resettling the native people… with force if necessary. But, in Keyboard Warriors, the resettlement gets done remotely, drone invaders sitting comfortably many miles away in their little cubicles. Of course, as this is a Future Shock, what do you reckon happens when the natives on the next planet go on the offensive?

Now, let’s chat to Rob Richardson…

.

First of all, Rob, introductions are in order! So, who are you, what have you done, and how the devil are you?

RR: I’m good, thanks! I’m an illustrator living in Sheffield and working on a variety of stuff – storyboarding, video games, T-shirt designs, film production art and whatever comes my way.

In 2000 AD Prog 2257, you’ve got your debut work for the Prog, with the Karl Stack scripted Future Shocks: Keyboard Warriors.

What does it mean to you getting that first Prog credit?

RR: A credit in 2000 AD is an absolute highlight and, genuinely, something I’ve aspired to since I was a kid. I still can’t believe it.

.

Now, I’m hoping I’m not insulting you too much by saying you’re no spring chicken, having been working for 20+ years in advertising, film, TV, and games with storyboards and illustration. But am I right in saying you haven’t had all that much to do with comics over your career?

RR: As a teenager, I constantly drew my own stories (printed in Nick Percival’s first self-published comic in the 80s!), and got a job at Sheffield’s Nostalgia and Comics shop where I would meet and get advice from many established artists and writers.

I’d lug my portfolio to UKCAC and GlasCAC every year, and was courted by a few publishers but ended up taking a job in video games and focusing on that instead.

Well, it’s a small world indeed! You were at N&C Sheffield whilst I was working at N&C Birmingham (Now World’s Apart Birmingham).

RR: Ah, cool – was that with Phil Clarke at N&C?

That’s right. An absolute pioneer of comics retail here in the UK and my very first boss as a 16-year-old!

RR: It seemed like all the local artists either worked in or shopped at our branch- Nick Percival of course, Dean Ormston, Greg Staples, Si Spencer, Matt Brooker, Pete Doherty et al. Great times!

Great shops to work at! There was a real comics buzz in the air when I was at N&C. Must’ve been there as assistant manager for four or five years. I’m really pleased to be in the prog alongside Matt/ D’Israeli, he gave me my first brush pen back in the 90s when we traveled down to UKCAC.

That is definitely a who’s who of 2000 AD art droids coming from one store!

.

So, having moved away from comics, how did this debut in 2000 AD come about now?

RR: With the initial Covid lockdown most film production got halted and I had time to work on some sample comics pages. Drinking tea and talking comics with Nick Percival led to Nick kindly sending my pages to Tharg, who offered me the Future Shock.

Hah, that’s sort of how we got Dermot Power back to the Prog as well! Well, we’re glad to have you, film production’s loss is comics gain again!

.

So, you’ve been an artist since young and you’ve told us that getting into the Prog is something you wanted since you were a kid. I’m assuming you were with 2000 AD as a reader from early on?

RR: Oh yes, I read 2000 AD from Prog 1 (my Space Spinner’s stored in the loft) and picked it up every week from the newsagent, who wrote ‘Richardson’ on the cover in biro! I’ve always loved sci-fi and would read each issue over and over. It remains a fantastic comic and I’m always blown away by the quality of writing and art.

Okay then, while we’re talking quality art, what artists have influenced you over the years?

RR: In comics, I tend to look at old stuff such as Alex Raymond and Milton Caniff. I especially love EC comics, and many Marvel and DC silver and bronze age artists.

With 2000 AD, I leaned toward Mick McMahon and Ian Gibson as a child, copying their art and trying to understand how it was done.

.

And while we’re talking about art, how do you make yours?

RR: Process wise, I do fairly detailed thumbnails in pencil, around 13cm high, then these get scanned and enlarged to full-page size. I work over the thumbnails for digital pencils, then digital inks, and last I add grey tones.

Now, seeing as you’ve got your first gig a bit later in life, is there any advice you’d give to up-and-coming artists about getting into comics in general, and into 2000 AD in particular?

RR: In my experience, stick at it for about thirty-five years and doors will open! Seriously, though, it all comes down to storytelling, everything springs from that.

In the future, when you get the call to draw your dream 2000 AD strip, what would it be?

RR: I’ve actually had that call already, and I’m working on it now, but I imagine my goalposts will shift once I’ve finished it. I’d love to get to a point where I can write and draw my own strip.

Hey, congratulations on that dream strip, we’ll look forward to it!

Finally, what’s coming up for you in the near, or not so near future?

RR: Hopefully more 2000AD work, it really is a dream come true!

And finally, finally, I understand you might have a connection with a certain Sheffield zombie punk band? The wonderfully named Iron Sphincter-The Zombie Band.

RR: Well, I may or may not be the Archdeacon Of Gruyère for Iron Sphincter – I mean, it’s all for fun, but they’re totally anonymous, and the Archdeacon wears a full balaclava, bloodied lab coat, and has four arms! Iron Sphincter are trying out a new drummer next Tuesday, hopefully in time to rehearse our infamous Xmas carol service!

Now that sounds like a very cool Christmas gig!

.

That’s it for now from Rob Richardson, although you’ll be able to see more from him in 2022 with that dream 2000 AD job he was talking about. In the meantime, his first work at 2000 AD comes in Prog 2257, out from 10 November from all the best comic shops, newsagents, and the 2000 AD web shop.

You can catch up with Rob and his FatRobot Illustration at fatrobot.crevado.com, robrichardson.crevado.com, instagram.com/fatrobotillustration, and Twitter at @FatRobotDraws.

And of course, should you want to check out Iron Sphincter – The Zombie Band, here’s there Twitter, and here’s just a hint of what they’re all about…

And finally, Rob was kind enough to send over his process pages – thumbnails, pencils, and inks, for the first couple of pages of what proves to be a damn fine debut and a great Future Shock, Keyboard Warriors.

It’s jumping-on Prog time for 2000 AD, as the new Prog 2250 sees the debut of five new series, along with a couple of very special, very thrill-powered one-off tales. And one of these new series is another of those wonderful all-ages Regened strips making the jump from Regened to a full 2000 AD series – with Roger Langridge and Brett Parson’s Pandora Perfect starring in the new series, Mystery Moon.

First seen in 2000 AD Regened Prog 2196, with a second appearance in Prog 2233, Pandora Perez is Pandora Perfect… burglar, safe-cracker, armed bandit, all-round career criminal, and someone who just happens to look like some famous nanny you might have heard of… Mary something?

.

Now, with a new, full-length series, Mystery Moon, Pandora and loyal robot assistant Gort are out of jail and up to their usual tricks, heading off to the Moonsausage Factory and a meet-up with an old friend (of sorts) before heading off on another adventure, full of criminal capers as she heads off in search of a dazzling jewel to pilfer!

.

Roger, we’ve previously chatted about Pandora Perfect for her debut in 2000 AD Prog 2196, and she made a second appearance in Prog 2233. You described the strip this way – ‘Pandora Perfect is pretty much what you guessed – a sort of Mary Poppins Gone Wrong, a con-artist with a bag of tricks.’ And you also described how it was an idea you had of bringing something Harvey Kurtzman-esque to the pages of Regened, subverting ideas and creating something very much in the ethos of 2000 AD, but with that all-ages twist.

And now it’s time for Pandora to make the perfect jump to a full series, as the most practically perfect in every way lead gets a full series in Mystery Moon. So, what can we expect?

ROGER LANGRIDGE: More of the same, to some extent – Pandora and Gort get into a pickle while pursuing their nefarious lifestyle and have to get out of it. We get to meet an old associate of Pandora’s who’s gone legit (though, as it turns out, not as legit as all that), there’s a bit of light jewel robbery, and we find out where sausages really come from. With the extra pages we’re able to explore the relationship between Pandora and Gort a little more deeply, which gives the strip a bit of heart it might have been lacking up until now. And, of course, Brett Parson gets more room to shine, which can only be a good thing.

How many episodes will there be in Mystery Moon?

RL: It’s a six-parter. We get to do some good old-fashioned 2000 AD cliffhangers, hooray!

With something like Pandora Perfect, something that’s very much a gag-based strip, what sort of change in the writing is there with the change from the done-in-one Regened episodes to the multi-parter of Mystery Moon?

RL: As I mentioned, there’s a bit of room to flesh out Pandora and Gort’s friendship. And we can build up to things a bit more rather than having to get in and get out of a story quickly, so the pacing is a bit less frenetic. That said, I hope it’s still funny; I went for more humorous/bizarre scenarios and concepts rather than pure gags for this one, but humour is part of the flavour of the strip, so it really has to be there. (Brett’s style helps enormously in this regard – he really knows how to sell a funny idea.)

Does the switch to a full series mean a move away from the gag-heavy style to something more narrative based?

RL: There’s a more complex plot in Mystery Moon, certainly – a benefit of having the luxury of space to do that. And the stakes are a bit higher. A longer story seems to require a shift of gears.

Again, we’re getting to see more of Brett Parson on art for Pandora Perfect. No question here… just feel free to lavish effusive praise on the art!

RL: I’ve been a fan of Brett’s work since I first saw it – probably in Tank Girl, although I’ve seen some earlier work since then. His style is naturally funny and appealing, his storytelling is terrific, and it’s all got this wonderful kinetic feel to it – his energetic line and off-kilter compositions drag you through the page. Really couldn’t be happier about working with him.

Now, with something like Pandora, we’re playing up to the comedy stylings, something that doesn’t necessarily feature that often in 2000 AD. You’re also part of the triumvirate (now) of strips that have moved from Regened to 2000 AD proper, from one-offs to a full series, following Full Tilt Boogie and Department K.

What are your thoughts on how broad the scope of work in 2000 AD can and should be?

RL: Honestly, I think the variety of styles, approaches and tones is 2000 AD‘s secret sauce, the reason for its success and longevity. With most comics you’re getting a single course; 2000 AD gives you a full meal. I think it would be a lesser magazine if all the strips were trying to hit the same notes. There’s enough cohesion running through the variety that I think it still holds together as an anthology – most of the stories share the common ancestry of either being made by people who grew up on 2000 AD or who were actually there at the beginning, so that sort of makes it all gel together. But yeah, fully on board with having as much variety as possible.

And of course, it all comes together under that fabulous Mike McMahon cover!

RL: The thing about McMahon, the reason he’s the artist all the other artists admire so much, is that he’s so fearless about trying new things. It’s what makes him the artist he is. He’s utterly unafraid to push himself to try new things and experiment, and if you take that away you’re not getting the full McMahon experience. I think a single, stand-alone image is exactly the right place to push things stylistically. If it doesn’t 100% work, it’s cost you very little, compared to drawing a full story. (As it happens, I think that cover does 100% work. I think he achieved everything he set out to do with that one.)

And that’s it, thank you to the wonderful Roger Langridge for chatting about Pandora Perfect with us. You can follow along with her fabulous (and felonious) adventuring when Pandora Perfect: Mystery Moon begins in 2000 AD Prog 2250, coming to you from 22 September, wherever Thrill-Power is sold, newsagents, comic shops, and the 2000 AD web shop! Just look for the stunning Mike McMahon cover!