Polls Who should star as Old Stoney Face in the new Judge Dredd film? Ray Stevenson Ron Perlman Vin Diesel Jason Statham Gerard Butler Sylvester Stallone A complete unknown

RSS Feed   Small Press   Links   About 2000AD Review   Email us

Home ¦ Features ¦ PJ Holden Interview Part 2

PART 1

9th March 04 Back to part 1

Detail from Realpolitik Ep 2 (click to enlarge)

The history of this is a bit odd. I'd said to Simon Spurrier a couple of years ago that I wanted to do a Rogue sample. I thought I could do it, but I needed the editors to see that I could. (With editors, sometimes it helps if you can show them that you can draw exactly what they want you to draw.) So I said to Simon, if you want to write a script for Zarjaz, I'll illustrate it. I did the first page or two, and a page turned up on the 2000AD website, with the caption "Artwork by the next Rogue Trooper artist", and I went "No no no!"

But we ended up not finishing it, so Simon ask if it was alright if he re-appropriated it for a Warhammer story, which he pushed to Games Workshop. There are elements of all sorts of things in the Warhammer universe, elements of Rogue Trooper, elements of everything.

I was bored with what I was drawing at the time and the style I was using. If I do six pages of one particular style, I want to change it to something slightly different, even if that is using a brush instead of a pen, so I did it in a grey wash. So that was published, and at Bristol I showed it to Matt and he said "That might look good on Rogue Trooper."

So that was the genesis of that art style, I didn't have to change, because it was a slow progression doing that. The problem is now, I've done six months drawing in that style, and I'm going mental. I want to draw something different.

Autocrats Anonymous

The Future Shock you drew recently, Autocrats Anonymous, the art style was very Kirby?

Deliberately so. I read it and thought, this villain is obviously a Kirbyesque villain, so why not draw him like that. There where no explicit instructions in the script, but I thought, why not? The problem that I have always had is that there are guys who are outstanding, you either love or loathe them. Guys like me are always trying to be terribly safe, and I want to break out from that, but it’s difficult to know how. I could do something, but what if they all hate it?

I’d like to do more cartoony stuff, but Steve Roberts has got that sewn up… the bastard!

Do you think there is still mileage in older characters, like Rogue or The VCs?

You know what's weird? I can't remember the VC's. The next extreme edition is Bill Savage, which I'm really looking forward to because I can't really remember any of that. I have vague memories, but the VC's I really can't remember. But it's lovely, that Gary Leach stuff and Cam Kennedy. That's why Rogue was my favourite when I was younger, Cam Kennedy and Gibbons were doing such a brilliant job that I was looking at the pictures and not reading the strip. The whole issue of Gunnar being psychic passed me by!

It really is beautiful stuff, I look at it and thing, "Jesus, they’re letting me draw that!"
I think that because it's greyscale, people are going to be looking at that and think "That's different." People notice the greyscale, and it can hide a lot, but I think I've been getting better with the drawing.

With Rogue, it's difficult for me to say (if there's mileage), because I'm drawing it. Even if I hated the character, and I'm not saying I do, but even if I did, I'm working for the company and drawing their character, so I'm not likely to say, "Don’t do that, it's rubbish."

There is mileage in lots of characters, but the big question is, would you rather see more new stuff or lots of old stuff? That's half the difficulty. People don't want to read anything new, they want to read what they read when they were twelve, and how do you capture that? If you publish the comic as it appeared when you were twelve… some of that stuff was rubbish!

Rogue was easily my favourite character, above Dredd, but when you go back and re-read that stuff…

More Dredd

And now it's the same audience, only now they're thirty. And people complain when the material is too adult, or too childish, so being "The Mighty Tharg" has got to be a difficult job. I personally would love to see a comic aimed at twelve year olds, where Rogue as he was would probably still work. Rogue Trooper to a thirty year old, it's more difficult with the talking hat. And why are they called things like Helm, or…

Buttplug?

Rogue's other bio-chip buddy that nobody talks about. That came out of a conversation with me and Gordon, and this was long before I'd even done the Warhammer thing, and I said, "If you write that, I'll draw it." So he wrote it up, because Gordon loves anything that takes him away from work, and I drew it.

My thinking was, and I sound more conniving than I am, that the editors might put it on their wall, because it will always be amusing, the idea of Buttplug being Rogues other bio-chip buddy. So I'm thinking, "That’ll get under the nose of the editors." It meant in some way that I came to their attention, without me actually bringing myself to their attention…

Foreshadowing PJ style... Click to view the full strip

Which is why I always say, draw as much as you can. There was a guy asking on a newsgroup: If I turn up at the Bristol convention, who's going to be hiring? Unless you’re Michelangelo, that's not going to happen. You have to show that you can work, and that you’ve done work.

When Andy Diggle first said he would give me work, it was because I'd met him at the Bristol before that, and he'd said, "Hello PJ." I’d never met him, but he knew me through people, and he’d seen enough to know my name. And that instantly puts you at an advantage over somebody else in the queue. He's knows you’ve got a history, and you’ll not disappear after doing two comics. Showing your work at Bristol, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon; you've got to play the long game.

People always say, "I wish I could draw like you". Well if you spent most of your childhood, locked in a room with no friends, sitting drawing, then you too could draw like me.

You make it sound very attractive!

And then, when you can draw like me, you’re going to be wishing you could draw like Glenn Fabry. And if you're Glenn, and I know this because he told me, you'll be wishing you can draw like somebody else.

Go to part 3