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WAITING
FOR TOMMY: MIKE CAREY
By
Richard Johnston
That
makes me sort of self-consciously experimental. With the monthlies,
I approach each story looking for an unexpected angle to tell
it from - which is why the two interlocking arcs in Lucifer
#46-49 have such a bizarre structure, and why Children and
Monsters was narrated from the POV of a guy who dies in the
course of the story, and so on.
I'm not
feeling any strain in terms of getting the work in. I'm very
fast. I've worked out this two-stage writing process, which
I think other guys use too, where I block out all the pages
in very crude cartoon strip form, making decisions about page
breaks and dialoguing as I go. Then I write the script, using
these little rough and ready cartoons as a guide. I can comfortably
get an entire issue scripted in a week if I do it this way,
and it allows time to do a page breakdown or some kind of
planning work on the side. So each week I'm finishing a script
and setting something else up. It seems to work.
But I
*do* think you have to be looking over your shoulder all the
time if you want to avoid falling into self-pastiche. You
have to make yourself do new stuff - extend your range. Otherwise
you become a sort of creative sausage machine, which pumps
out the same kind of stories no matter what the input is.
RICHARD:
Well, that seems to be evident in your upcoming work. My Faith
In Frankie -- out now -- is the tale of a woman with a dead
boy and a god on each shoulder, both in love with her. Wacky
screwball Hollywood comedy? Who sits on your shoulder? And
are there some great themes involved about personal choice,
in life, in creativity, in direction, or is this like one
of Steven Niles' movie-in-a-comic-get-me-optioned-please-in-out-leave-them-wanting-more
deals?
MIKE: My Faith in Frankie is a self-contained story,
with no real possibility of a sequel - and it's very much
a romantic comedy first and foremost, with Vertigo-ish themes
about belief and the relationship between imagination and
reality running along underneath. It's not profound, but it
is a lot of fun. Shelly [Bond - editor on the book] says that
it "skews young" in terms of the audience: Frankie is seventeen
when we first meet her, and the concerns of the book are very
much the ones that are at the centre of a teenager's life.
Leaving out the fact that Frankie's got her own god, it's
basically the age-old clash between the demands that your
friends make on you and the demands that your lover makes.
I'm very,
very happy about how the book came out. Sonny's pencils are
stupendous, and Marc Hempel's inks bring out and enhance every
gorgeous detail: it really is a perfect partnership. I think
Marc's covers are little masterpieces, too - and the lovely,
vibrant coloring and lettering-on-the-block are the icing
on the cake. The whole thing was a very positive experience,
and it's made me want to write more for a younger age group.
Who sits
on my shoulder? Certainly not any kind of a god. Probably
a twisted little gremlin who looks something like Gaudium,
and contributes all the punchlines in the dialogue in exchange
for my soul and my left kidney.
RICHARD:
I think you got the better part of the deal. And let's leave
with an oldie, but goody. Do you believe in magic?
MIKE: I believe that every time I miss a deadline,
a fairy dies.
Apart
from that, I keep an open mind. I'm damn sure there are more
things in heaven and earth than ever make it into the stuff
I write.
Mike
Carey writes Hellblazer, Lucifer, My Faith In Frankie, Wetworks
and soon, everything else. Rich Johnston writes Lying In the
Gutters and he's already knackered.
Pages:
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