Interviews

LWW: I bumped into Bryan Talbot yesterday while out and about in Birmingham, and nodded to him in recognition. I suddenly realised that while you can live most of your life in relative anonymity, when you come to a convention you suddenly transform into a bit of a celebrity, recognised whilst out in public. How does that feel? Is it a bit of a shock to the system?

Mike Carey: No, it's actually very pleasant.  It's not like real celebrity because it doesn't spill over into your life and make things complicated.  It can be a huge morale booster.  And of course over time you get to know some of the people who come to the cons very well.  You forge friendships.  There isn't the same distance between fans and creators in the comics scene as there is in, say, TV or movies.  Maybe because most creators got into it by being fans in the first place...

How do you cope with fandom? Some of the internet fans can be hardcore and aggressive online - have you ever had any problems in person?

MC: I've been very lucky.  Ever since the old Vertigo message board days, when we had the Morningstar High posse going, I've only ever had positive experiences with internet fans.  You don't have to look very far to see how bad it can be when it goes wrong, but so far - barring a couple of threatening letters right at the start of my Lucifer run - it's all been good.

You received threatening letters at the start of Lucifer? How did they affect you?

These were online, so the guys writing them didn't have my real, physical address or anything.  It was very perfunctory hate mail along the lines of "you're glorifying the devil and his works and you should die."  Then they disappeared.  Much later, the Vertigo Lucifer board was colonised by trolls who I think had a religious agenda, but by then successive remodellings had kicked the stuffing out of the boards in any case and I wasn't posting there any more.

It never really bothered me, but that's not because I'm too brave and tough to be scared by hate mail - it's just because there was no real conviction or heat behind this particular hate mail.  It was like - - you know - - being savaged by a couple of dead sheep

Has fan response - positive or negative - ever influenced your storytelling?

Do fan responses influence my writing?  Not in any direct way, but sometimes when you're working on a book like X-Men, which has such a fantastically rich backstory, online discussion can wake you up to certain possibilities that you might not have seen for yourself or might have come at from a different angle.  For example, there's a beat in Supernovas where the brainwashed Northstar meets Anole - and that relationship was in my mind because of a discussion I'd been reading on a message board a few weeks before.  I thought "yeah, that would be a really cool beat to put in there".

We’ll come to Voodoo Child shortly, but your other book for Virgin is The Stranded, a co-production with the Sci-Fi Channel, the first issue of which ships in December. I haven’t found it easy to find information on this. What’s the premise?

The Stranded is about a group of humanoid aliens living on Earth under deep cover - so deep that they themselves think they're human.  It's kind of like a trans-dimensional witness protection programme, although perhaps the pre-world-war-two kinderluft from Nazi Germany would be a better analogy.  They're refugees, and they're also something else, and someone is killing them one by one for reasons unknown.  But there's one - a woman named Tamree - who knows what she is and where she's from and it's her duty to protect the others.  So she steps in to head this unpleasantness off, and things go to hell in a handbasket right around the end of issue one.  It's a very cool story, I think: the initial set-up seems familiar, but it twists and turns into some very fun and unexpected places.

Given the involvement of the Sci-Fi Channel with The Stranded, is the plan to eventually develop this into a TV series? If so did they have any specific input into the writing of the comic?

That is certainly an aspiration, and yeah, the Sci-Fi channel are very interested in the shape of the story and are offering their own insights and suggestions as we proceed - which is very cool.  Inevitably, as with Voodoo Child, there are some things that work in the comic book medium that would necessarily play differently in an audio-visual narrative, but we're making all the big creative decisions together and it's working out really well so far.

You did a Malibu comic early on in your career which cast Ozzy Osbourne as an unlikely hero. What would a follow-up to that be like with Ozzy as is in 2007?

A lot more picaresque, I'm thinking...

God Save The Queen was a fascinating graphic novel - miserably dark and gripping and in ways I hadn't expected. The faerie aspect has completely passed me by in solicitations and publicity material, so that all came as a pleasant surprise. Do you see Linda and Ava's story as fulfilled now, or do you have ideas for a sequel?

I think it's done.  You could certainly follow Linda and Ava as they explore the other realms adjacent to Faerie, but in a sense Linda's character arc as I wanted to explore it is now complete.  It's not that she hasn't got more to learn about life, and about her own nature: it's more that at this point the story becomes infinitely open-ended, so any sequel would be arbitrary.  Unless it was about her relationship with her father - I think there could be something more to explore there.

I just finished reading Re-Gifters, which I really enjoyed. How did you come to be so involved with the minx imprint? What was it like to work with Sonny and Marc again?

Minx is very much Shelly Bond's baby, and we've been working together since the year dot.  Since before Lucifer, even, because she edited my short story, The Wedding Breakfast, for Flinch.  So I knew all about the Minx plans and I was in a good position to pitch for the imprint very early.  I was already sold on the idea of doing a Minx book because it had been such a blast doing My Faith in Frankie.  So yeah, bringing the Frankie crew together again for another outing was a big part of the appeal, as was flexing that set of creative muscles again - writing for a YA audience.  It's something that I find hugely rewarding to do.

To what degree was My Faith In Frankie a trial run for the minx line?

When I wrote it, I didn't have any idea that Minx was in the works.  In fact I'm pretty sure it wasn't, back then - but I think it was one of many things that fed into Shelly's burgeoning desire to create a new line and to have it address a certain core market.

With Re-Gifters, which was harder for you to write - the voice of the teenage girls, the Korean family dynamic and culture, or the hapkido training and fight scenes? How much research did you have to do to feel you could accurately and comfortably write these aspects of the book?

I'm pretty brazened to admitting this now: my research process is NOT thorough.  I research enough (I hope) to give my books an authentic feel, so I did read up extensively on the experiences and reminiscences of Korean immigrants to West-Coast USA.  The hapkido stuff... well, I had some fighting guides open in front of me, and I described sequences that seemed to make sense from the pictures in those guides.  I also told Sonny that he didn't have to follow those art directions for the fight scenes if he came up with something that was more striking visually.  So long as the moves described in caps matched what we saw, I was happy.

For teenaged girls... well, I have a daughter who is one of that noble tribe, so I don't need to stir very far for that research.  I really enjoy writing teenaged girls, for some reason.  Especially really confident, in-your-face teenaged girls.  There's something curiously liberating about it.

What were you like as a teenager?

I was the exact opposite of my own teenaged protagonists.  I was very quiet, very disengaged socially, and very conformist at school.  You would have beaten me up and stolen my lunch money, just on general principle.

Not me personally, no … The move that Tomas teaches Dixie - is that a real hapkido move or one you invented? 

Oh, that's totally invented - and I doubt it would really work.  If it did, someone else would have come up with it...

Why do you think you're the only big name to write for minx thus far? 

I'm far from the only big name to write for Minx.  Cecil Castelluci is a stellar name in YA fiction, and I think Aaron's rep as a writer artist is about to explode.

I loved The Plain Janes, and the concept of high school art terrorism. Which is your favourite minx line book that you didn't write?

Ooh, hard question.  I have to say Kimmie 66, which is Aaron's solo book.  The same gorgeous art style as in Blabbermouth, and a very cool cyber-gothic mystery plot.  The Plain Janes would be my second favourite, I think, and I'm very much looking forward to the sequel.

What was it like to work with your daughter in writing Confessions of a Blabbermouth for minx? Were you surprised by how matter of factly Louise approached the whole high school scene? Do you have any plans to work together again?

It was very tough, objectively speaking, but very worthwhile.  We clashed early on about working methods and how much autonomy Lou was going to have (clue: all of it), but then we worked it out and got on with the actual writing - which was a lot of fun.  I'd do it again like a shot, even given the fact that co-writing is always twice the work for half the money.  We do have a couple of pitches in, although I'm also encouraging Lou to peel off and do her own thing.  She's not going to want to be part of a novelty double act forever.

Speaking of novelty double acts ... I finally got the chance to read Voodoo Child. What kind of input have Nicholas and Weston Cage had on Voodoo Child, beyond the overall concept?

Their input was most evident at the early stages.  It was Weston's idea, and their pitch to Virgin, which I then came onboard to turn into a miniseries outline and script.  Since then they've been involved as consultants and have also been promoting the book very actively.

Were you concerned that the collaboration might be dismissed as a gimmick?

I don't think it's a gimmick - it's just a new formula for this kind of multi-media creation.  And it seems to work well.  I'd point to Gamekeeper as well as Voodoo Child in that respect.  They're not just generating headlines, they're good books. 

How easy a project has this been for you?

It was a challenge in one respect, in that I didn't know New Orleans or Louisiana at all, and I was therefore writing far outside my comfort zone.  But in this one instance I did the research very diligently, not just through written and online sources but by visiting New Orleans and interviewing residents about Katrina and its aftermath.  By the time I came to write, I was very happy with the way the project was coming together - and I'm very proud of the finished book.

You packed an awful lot into the first few issues of Voodoo Child! How much did you know about Voodoo and related faiths before writing this book? 

I did some reading up on voodoo for Lucifer a few years back, and I was fascinated then by what a unique palimpsest it is - African polytheism with the trappings and rituals of high church Catholicism.  Again, though, it's superficial knowledge acquired mostly from secondary sources.  I did talk to some voodoo practitioners in New Orleans, and went both to the voodoo museum and one of the churches, but I wouldn't want to hold myself up as any kind of an expert.  I put in enough authentic touches to avoid jolting readers out of the story with glaring inconsistencies.  Anything else is incidental to that goal.

I understand that there are long-term plans to develop the comic into a movie, which would star Nicholas Cage. Is that correct? If so, does that have any influence on the way you write the book?

That's correct, but it hasn't influenced the storytelling in any way.  The movie is bound to work very differently from the comic in any case because that's just the nature of the beast: different media demand different approaches and different kinds of story.  I did my own thing, and hopefully if the movie happens then the comic will be a useful starting point in terms of defining the main characters and the central problematic.  But I haven't tried to second-guess the film-makers because they're not in any way bound or limited by what I do. 

Gabe makes a different kind of monster for a monster book, and is the more scary for that. How would you describe him? 

He's driven - an avenger with a very personal axe to grind.  But crucially, he's also a boy into whose hands enormous supernatural power has been placed.  A lot of the focus of the book is on his character arc and the extent to which his mission subsumes his humanity and his own better nature.  I like Gabe a lot for exactly that reason.  He's sort of my attempt to do a dark fantasy take on Hamlet.

Detectives always seem to come with a quirk these days. What's Detective Robert Julien's? What sets him apart?

Julien is pretty straight down the line, really.  He doesn't take bribes but he's sleeping with a colleague.  He loves his job, and he has a huge - usually justified - faith in his own instincts and resources.  He's an arrogant SOB, in effect, but his arrogance is founded on actual competence.

I like the way the murder mystery plot has quickly moved to the forefront now the key characters and alliances have been established. Is that the kind of story we'll see after the first arc concludes?

I think the conceptual heart of the book is the relationship that gets established between Gabe and Julien - almost but not quite a father-son dynamic.  So crime noir elements will always be in the mix.

I know nothing about artist Dean Hyrapiet, except that his work is stunning! The first depiction of Baron Samedi has all the passion and the horror that's missing from, for example, recent Ghost Rider comics. How excited were you to see the first pages of completed artwork?

The first pages I saw were the ones that were produced for the ashcan, and which ended up being the opening scenes of issue one - in Mason Moore's library, with Mason talking to his fellow abolitionists about the coming war.  As soon as I saw how beautifully and authentically Dean had rendered that period setting, and how solid and believable these nineteenth century American men were, I knew the book was going to have a unique and powerful visual identity.  And I've been really happy with everything he's done since.  He's taken everything I've thrown at him and turned it into gold.

Voodoo, Legion of Monsters, manga, mutants, sci-fi, theological fantasy, teen drama - there's no one common theme running through your work despite the range of genres you work in …

There *are* themes that cut across the different kinds of material I deal with.  I always seem to come back to parent/child relationships, in different ways and from different angles. 

What is it about parent/child relationships that is so attractive to you as a theme for you to write about? Is this interest what encouraged you to include Mystique in your X-Men line-up?

I'm not sure I'm able to answer that.  My guess is that it's integral to how I see the world.  The moment when my first child was born was such a powerful experience for me it was almost like a rebirth, and my kids are right at the centre of my life.  But even before that I was fascinated by the extent to which your parents inscribe themselves on you, in all sorts of unexpected ways. 

My mother had serious health problems for most of her life, and I always thought of her, when I was younger, as kind of a passenger in her relationship with my father - carried, protected, nurtured by him as we all were.  Then when he was in his terminal illness mum had to be the strong one and we suddenly saw another side of her.  Belatedly, after her death, I realised how much of my personality I get from her rather than from dad.  That thought would have appalled me once, because I underestimated her so much - gave her so much less than her due. 

So these are issues that are, you know, running in background for me all the time.  Even when I'm not consciously thinking about them, they're there.  So inevitably they come through in my writing.  And yeah, I'm sure that's why I put Mystique and Rogue on the same team.

Is there any subject or genre you're currently afraid to put your hand to?

Is there any genre I'm afraid of?  Well I've never told a war story, and I sort of feel like there are lots of ways of messing war stories up.  You know Chris de Burgh?  Passable tunesmith, good live performer, but he has a tendency to pick on subject matter that's too big for his songs (the third crusade, for example) and make himself look silly.  A war story would be a challenge.

It can feel like some writers and artists are submitting what's essentially the same story month after month - what keeps you fresh? What makes you different?

Fear, maybe.  I obsess about exactly that - retreading ideas and becoming a pastiche of myself.  I don't know if that keeps me fresh, but it keeps me *trying* to be fresh.  To find new ways into stories and new twists on old formulas.  Having said that, I suspect that when you do start recycling your own old ideas, you're probably the last one to realise the fact.

Comics, novels, screenplays, short stories, you seem like a master of all ... what's your poetry like?

Find out at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/xconnect/v6/i2/g/carey1.html.  That's my only published poem...

What poetry do you like to read?

I enjoyed the Helen Kitson book [Love Among The Guilty, published by Bloodaxe Books] very much . I really loved Wolves on the Beach: it reminded me powerfully of a Louis MacNiece poem - one of my favourites - that used similar imagery.  Southern Belle is splendid and barbed.  I liked both Blue Movies and The Lightning Struck Tower a lot, as well as the one about white women dancing, which I can't now find.  She's very good - brilliant, even - at evoking the way in which sex and sexual desire lie athwart everything else in our lives, at awkward and unworkable angles... I have to admit, I don't read very much poetry these days, and mostly when I do I read stuff that I already know.  Wallace Stevens is a great favourite of mine, and I also like Gerard Manley Hopkins (which I know is a strange admission for an atheist).  Mark Strand is very cool.  Some of Wilfred Owen's poems move me powerfully. 

With novels, screenplays and multiple monthly comics - that actually ship monthly - on the go ... interviews, conventions and your personal blog ... what drives you to work so hard?

Insecurity, mostly - that freelancer mind-set where you drive yourself forward in a frothing frenzy because the work could dry up at any moment, leaving you with bills to pay but no dosh to pay them with.  I ought to be past that, but I still keep belting on like a bat out of Hell.  I'm probably going to die in harness, because slowing down seems to be something I'm incapable of achieving.  Mind you, it helps that I love what I'm doing...

What's your favourite thing about your job? 

Seeing the finished art come in for a new issue - seeing what a given script looks like when it's been filtered through the artist's mind.  That never stops being an enormous thrill.

Coming in Part 2 (of 2) – Mike Carey discusses his work for Marvel, including lots of X-related chat

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