Catching Up with
the
Fastest Man Alive (Part 3)
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Part 6 | Part 7
Cary
Bates,
wherever you are,
we love you.
[Laughs.] What sort of
influences are you tapping for your work on The Flash?
You know, I came into
comics in the early ‘90s, and like anyone else from that period, my
influences [include] Grant—who’s also my friend, but [he’s] a
writer as well. Grant massively influenced me. Alan Moore. Just people
of that period, you know.
But I think, for the new
take on super-heroes, Grant and I probably draw an inspiration more from
what made you like these guys when you were a kid. And really what got
me into super-heroes was the stuff that pre-dated Alan Moore and these
guys who were such a gigantic influence towards the end of the ‘80s.
And now you’re influenced by the Elliot Maggins, the Cary Bates—the
guys I grew up reading in the ‘70s. And Grant is very much influenced
by the John Broomes and the Gardner Foxes from the ‘60s because he’s
a little older.
But for me, now that
I’m writing The Flash, I have a lot of things scattered around the
floor ... like, you know, all the Infantino covers—all the pre-Crisis
stuff, but mainly the Cary Bates stuff, which I have an enormous
affection for. Cary Bates, wherever you are, we love you.
So obviously you read Captain
Atom—
Well, I read it, but to
me ... I liked having Cary Bates on the big guys. I mean, I enjoyed Captain
Atom, but he does such a great Superman, you know? I was the
only person who wasn’t looking forward to [Superman] being revamped,
post-Crisis. I really loved what he was doing with it anyway.
Did you read the Elliot
Maggin Superman novels? You were—
Oh! Well, actually,
it’s really funny you say that because one of my favorite books of all
time is Last Son of Krypton; I really love it. But you could not
anywhere in the United Kingdom—in the whole of Great Britain, you could
not find Miracle Monday, [the sequel to Last Son of Krypton].
Really? [Laughs.]
Oh, yeah, I mean nowhere.
I would have paid any money for this. And Mark Waid—I was
talking to Mark on the phone a few months ago, and Mark says, "Really?
You, you had trouble getting it?!?" And he actually Fed-Exed his
copy to me.
I was about to say, if
you need a copy, we could try to set you up.
Oh, if you could set me
up with one, that’d be great, ‘cause I gave Mark’s back to him in
San Diego. If you could set me up with one, I would dearly love you for
it.
I’ll see if we can find
one. I know I’ve got one personally; I don’t know if I’d be
willing to part with it, but I might be able to track one down for you.
If you’ve got a
spare—you know, if there’s any one around, that’d be really
brilliant. I’d really appreciate that.
Sure!
‘Cause Mark Fed-Exed me
his copy, and I must’ve been late with a dozen scripts or something
every day, ‘cause I’m always behind. And what I did was I took the
day off and just sat and read that cover to cover. [Both laugh.] I love
Elliot’s stuff. It was actually a real hit meeting Elliot. I met him
in San Diego, you know.
I’ve never had a chance
to meet or talk with Elliot. I’d love to sometime.
He’s a very interesting
guy, you know. I come from a political background as well, and, you
know, he’s written speeches for governors and all sorts of senators
and things. He’s pretty big in the Democratic party as a political
speech writer.
Tell us a little bit
about your background before comics.
Well, actually, what
I’ve done is I’ve kind of kept a lot of hobbies. I kind of went
professional in comics right about 1990, but most people probably
wouldn’t have read anything until Swamp Thing. And there wasn’t even
that many then, you know? [Laughs.]
Though in 1990, I did my
first-ever comic, I think, called The Saviour. It was by a small
independent company called Trident Comics and actually sold very well
for a— It was just at the time of the boom. I sold 12,000 copies of
this little black-and-white thing, and it won me a couple of awards, and
it got me to write Judge Dredd—
Wow.
—for 2000 A.D. And
that’s when I met Grant. We became good friends, and we did quite a
few things for 2000 A.D.—a lot of your kind of characters that most
Americans wouldn’t have heard of, like Rogue Trooper and Robo-Hunter
and all sorts of crazy stuff for kids over here.
But what they did in the
end was they said to us, "Would you guys like to revamp 2000 A.D.
and actually become editors on it for a while?"
And we said,
"That’d be great."
So we did it for 12
weeks. We actually took over 2000 A.D. for 12 weeks and created a whole
bunch of all-new characters.
Was this around the time
Grant was working on Zenith?
Ah, it was shortly after
that. Because that had been such a huge hit, they really wanted to have
some kind of repeat success, you know?
So what we did was we
created five new stories for 2000 A.D. and took over the book for 12
weeks, and we got all the artists we liked to draw them and everything.
It actually ended up a really good book for about 12 weeks. I was really
pleased with it. And from there, that’s what got me into DC: DC liked
what we’d done with 2000 A.D., and I got Swamp Thing.
But before that I was
actually training— My background’s in politics and economics. I was
going to be— I wasn’t sure. I was probably going to come in as some
kind of university lecturer or something—probably lecture politics and
from there go into politics, ‘cause that’s always been my ambition.
I’ve always been fairly
active in my local Labor Party and everything. I don’t know how
familiar you are with British politics, but they’re kind of like the
Democrats. So they’re the good guys, you know. [Both laugh.]
And I’ve always been
obsessed. And as my family’s a hugely political family and everything,
that’s kind of what I’ve always wanted to be involved in too. All my
brothers have actually got very real jobs: One of them’s a politician;
another one’s a scientist, but he’s involved in the Labor Party and
everything as well. They’ve all got some degree of politics in their
blood, you know, and I think I’m just next.
After all, our family’s
like the Kennedys or something: There’s like a million of us, and
we’ve all ended up going into politics.
[Both laugh.]
That’s interesting.
That’s a very unusual background for someone coming into comics.
[Laughs.]
No mysterious literature
degree hidden in your past or high-school teaching or anything like
that?
No, no, it’s ... just
straight from university.
Actually, I dropped out
of university six months before I graduated, because I forced myself to
actually go work in comics. [Laughs.] I mean, it’s the most ludicrous
thing. It’s good in hindsight, because it all worked out nicely, but
at the time my family said to me, "Are you crazy? Don’t work in
comics; comics are for kids."
And I would say,
"No, no, this is what I want to be, and if I get my degree I’ll
just go and work in any other job. But if I drop out now, after three
years of a degree—" I said, "If I drop out now, then it’ll
be great because I’ll be forced to do comics, you know?"
[Laughs.] And luckily I managed to make a living out of it.
Yeah, it seems to have
worked out quite well.
Yeah.
Still, the secret origin
of Mark Millar has a few turns and twists I hadn’t anticipated.
[Laughs.] Well, I trained
to be a priest before that, actually, but only for a year.
Oh, really?
Yeah. When I was 13 I
went off to a seminary college in Aberdeen and then also Scotland. But
only—I did a year there. And I was really going for it, you know? [But]
I was only going because my friends were there, and we thought it would
be a real hoot, you know? We thought it would be a real hoot being
priests.
[Laughs.]
And then we— [Laughs.]
And then, after about a year of getting up for mass at 5:00 in the
morning, I just kind of decided it wasn’t for me. [Laughs.] And there
was no checks, you know? I mean, that was the worst thing about it.
Other than the masses. [Laughs.]
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