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Questions from John Higgins:

John Higgins is a world-famous and astonishingly accomplished artist. He's perhaps best known as the colourist on the ground-breaking books Watchmen and Batman: The Killing Joke, though he's also received huge acclaim for his work on works such as Judge Dredd, Thunderbolt Jaxon, Pride and Joy, The Hills Have Eyes, the Before Watchmen back-up feature The Curse of the Crimson Corsair (which he also co-wrote!), and of course his own creation Razorjack. Explore John's website for some great examples of his work: www.turmoilcolour.com

 

Q. Apart from the length, is there a huge difference between writing novels and writing comics?

A. Well, there's the length of the work itself and the amount of time it takes to create it! That's a huge difference. A novel the size of Hunter will take me about six months to plan, another month to write, and a month to polish. Then it goes off to the editor for his or her comments, and that generally means another month or two for the second draft. On the other hand, a twenty-two page comic will take me no more than two or three days to write!

But even setting that aside, there are significant difference! For a start, a comic script is mostly aimed at the editor, artist, letter and colourist: I tell the story to them, and it's their job to tell the story to the readers. So my part in the whole process is quite a bit smaller than it would be for a novel.

Also, there are other differences that might not be obvious at first... Each issue of a comic has a fixed, predefined number of pages in which the story must be told. Such as twenty-two pages for most American comics, six pages for a Judge Dredd episode in 2000 AD. The finished story must fit that page-count and only that page-count! If something has to be added to or removed from a comic-book story, the page-count still applies! With a novel, I just keep writing until the story is done. If for some reason it ends up being 130,000 words instead of 90,000, then that's usually acceptable.

Another difference is with the pacing: with Judge Dredd, for example, I know that the first page of the story will be a right-hand page, as will pages three and five. This means that the last panel on each odd-numbered page should ideally have something intriguing enough for the reader to want to keep going. And, connected to that, any shocks, twists or surprises should be revealed on the even-numbered pages, so that they can't be spoiled by reader accidentally glancing at the wrong page!

Extending that idea: most Judge Dredd stories have multiple episodes, so each episode should have a strong enough cliff-hanger to keep the reader coming back for more. With novels, I put the cliff-hangers at the end of the chapters... but the chapters can be any length I choose!

 

Q. You've mentioned before that Hunter wasn't originally planned as one of the novels... So how did it come about?

A. The seventh novel was going to be Crossfire: that one returns to the time of the New Heroes, and follows on from the ending of the third book of the original trilogy. I don't want to give away too much about the plot, so all I'll say is that Crossfire features certain elements that hark back to the prequels. As I was finishing Crossfire I had the idea for Hunter. I realised that if I wrote it as a standalone novel, it would allow me to relate certain scenes in a much more interesting and entertaining way than the series of flashbacks that appear in Crossfire (and were planned for the next novels after that).

But for Hunter to work, it had to be published before Crossfire... otherwise all of Hunter's twists and secrets would be spoiled by Crossfire!

So, I ran a poll on the website to see whether the readers wanted to see Crossfire or Hunter as the seventh novel. If Crossfire had won, the Hunter would have been scrapped. As it happens, out of 2341 votes cast, 1373 were for Hunter... so Hunter won!

It's definitely better this way, I think. I'm pleased with how Hunter has turned out and I feel it adds a lot to the series as a whole.

 

Q. You've created dozens of superhuman characters for this series, so why focus on Lance for this book? He doesn't even have any powers!

A. Ah, but that's precisely why I chose Lance! I could have focused on Abby or Thunder or Roz Dalton, but because Lance doesn't have any real powers he's much more fun to write. He can get into trouble and has to use his ingenuity to get out of it, rather than rely on some convenient superhuman ability.

Of all characters in the series, Lance is probably closest to the way I liked to imagine I was at his age. Smart, funny, ingenious, likeable, quick-witted. Of course, looking back it's very clear that I wasn't really like that at all! I was shy and awkward (still am!), but Lance is the kind of person I wanted to be.

On top of that, one of the main reasons I chose Lance is because this is his story. I can't explain what I mean about that without giving too much away, but when you read Hunter, you'll understand!

 

Q. Top five favourite comic-book characters you'd like to write?

A. Nova - Now, while the new incarnation of Nova is great fun, I'm still drawn to the original Richard Rider version of the character. Sure, in the early days he was basically just a copy of Spider-Man, but when he was dusted off to join the initial line-up of the New Warriors in 1990 he became breath-takingly brilliant. I absolutely adored that comic: it's still my favourite ongoing superhero comic of all time!

Batman - No question that Batman is an awesome character! There's something very enticing about his dark, brooding personality and his extreme methods that just makes him utterly cool! I have some pretty solid Batman stories inside me just bursting to get out. One day, maybe...!

Spider-Man - who doesn't love Spider-Man? Ever since I first discovered him, Spidey's been a favourite. He's always tremendous fun and I love his constant optimism, his quick wit, and his vast gallery of villains. Every comic-book superhero is effectively immortal and invincible, of course, but one of the things that makes Spider-Man so interesting is that he can and does take a huge amount of punishment and he always gets back up. He never quits! (Well, not for long!)

Hawkeye - Hawkeye joined The Avengers in issue 16 of their comic, and that was the first issue of The Avengers that I ever read. I loved him because he didn't quite fit in with the rest of the team, plus he was an archer and archery is extremely cool. (Leonia and I took up archery a few years ago: I was staggeringly disappointed to discover that I didn't have latent archery powers... I wasn't bad at it, but Leonia was way better! I was jealous of her and proud of her at the same time!)

Dan Dare - I'd be happy to write either the original version from the old Eagle comic, or the updated version from 2000 AD. That one ended on a cliff-hanger in issue 126... So readers of my books who've been waiting for the resolution to the ending of the third book please note: I've been waiting for Dan Dare to return to 2000 AD for thirty-five years!

 

Q. How much do you feel your novel-writing experience has influenced the way you write comics, and vice versa?

A. Writing novels is a very free, open-ended sort of thing. As I mentioned earlier, I can make the book as big as I want. I can put chapters of any length in there. I have complete control over everything that happens to the characters.

With comics, especially when I'm writing other people's characters like Jennifer Blood or Judge Dredd, there are restrictions. I can't just decide to kill them off, for example! That means I have to be more creative to make the stories interesting for the readers. That's certainly something I've brought from the comics to the novels!

Also, there's the dialogue... The freedom a novel gives allows my characters to waffle on forever about whatever they feel like, but the space restrictions in comics don't allow that: comic-book writers are forced to be brief. Judge Dredd, in particular, says almost nothing - at least, not when I'm writing him! Writing less is always harder than writing more... It's a challenge (and tremendous fun) to find a way for Dredd to get his point across in as few words as possible.

Because of what I've learned from that, there are certain scenes in Hunter where the dialogue is kept to a minimum: if I'd not learned brevity by writing for 2000 AD, I'm sure those scenes would be a lot longer!

It goes the other way, too... My experience with writing novels - particularly the Quantum Prophecy / New Heroes series - has taught me how to plant plot-seeds years in advance! I won't spoil anything for Dredd readers, except to say that there might be stories in the future that'll have them flipping through their back-issues looking for things that, at the time, seemed to be rather trivial or even pointless!

 

Q. Which five artists - excluding me, because I know I am the first choice :) - past and present would you like to work with and why?

A. I'm lucky enough to have already worked with some of my favourite artists (yourself included, John!), but even so, narrowing down the list to just five has been pretty tricky... But here we go anyway, in no particular order...

Carlos Ezquerra - Carlos co-created Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog, among many, many other great characters! He's been a professional for many decades now and his work is still head-and-shoulders above most other artists! Seriously, no one can touch this guy for sheer story-telling skill! Check out his epic Judge Dredd tale The Apocalypse War (reprinted in its entirety in Judge Dredd Casefiles #5) for a hefty slice of sheer comic-book bliss!

Steve Dillon - An artist of such natural talent that he received his first professional job when he was only a teenager! Seriously, that's impressive! Mister Dillon's work, when he's on top form, is mind-blowingly good. And when he's not on top form, he's still streets ahead of most comic-book artists. Even though it's been over twenty years since Steve last drew a Judge Dredd story, he's still regarded as one of the series' key artists by a huge number of fans.

Esteban Maroto - I first discovered Esteban Maroto's work in a Conan novel he illustrated, back in 1979. I have no memories of the story, but the illustrations are absolutely gorgeous. There's a sublime fluidity to his style that just grabs me every time. In 1990 he drew a seven-issue mini-series for DC, The Atlantis Chronicles (written by comics legend Peter David) and it's absolutely stunning throughout. Unbelievably, The Atlantis Chronicles has never been reprinted! Shame!

Jesus Redondo - An artist who did a lot of work on 2000 AD in the early days, including a fantastic stint on the second book of Nemesis and the soon-to-be-reprinted Return to Armageddon. His panels are always dynamic, his characters are beautifully rendered, his story-telling is second-to-none. Definitely one of my all-time favourite artists!

Frank Hampson - The creator of Dan Dare... A phenomenally gifted and imaginative artist whose work was decades ahead of his time. Seriously, check out the original Dan Dare stories from 1950... Sure, certain aspects of the stories themselves have dated (especially in their attitude to women!), but the artwork is amazing.

 

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