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¦ Features ¦ Arthur
Ranson Interview Part 2
Apart
from a couple of early Future Shocks, all your 2000AD work has been with the “founding
fathers”, John Wagner and more particularly Alan Grant. Is this your choice,
and why do you think your art fits so well with Alan’s scripts? Would you
ever want to work with any other writers?
The universe has
been kind to me: Angus Allen, John Wagner and Alan Grant. 99.99% of the work has
been with these writers. Inventive, professional, prolific, original, idiosyncratic
and inventive writers who know how comic strip works. I once had a script that
started ‘Frame 1: He comes into the room, takes off his coat, kisses his
wife and sits down at the table where he opens a newspaper’. But these guys
understand frame by frame narrative.
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Button
Man |
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Other great advantages
are that all of them are economical with words with no long descriptive passages,
all are receptive to suggestions, and all allow me to make changes in the panel
content and order. Initially, this would be by me talking to them and saying “I
have this idea for this part, do you mind if I…” In time either they
would weary of my phonecalls and say “Yeah, whatever, leave me alone”,
or learn to trust me. I have made suggestions when the script is in process but
mostly my input is in the presentation for the sake of narrative. Art is art but
the story is the thing (there are talented artists drawing stories that I can’t
be bothered to read and vice versa). I will add frames, for example, if I think
it will flow better or explain more. I did make a small change to the end of Button
Man I which I won’t tell you because it will spoil the ending for new readers
(out now in hardback). However, when the writers are right they are right and
I do as I am told. Which is most of the time. Probably.
Literary criticism:
My experience
of John’s stories is that they are self-contained. Complete in themselves,
neat, compact and satisfying, solid. Alan’s stories are soft edged, suggestive
of things outside themselves, making overt or implied connections to other stories,
times and places, other ways of viewing existence and are
often open-ended. Being interested in philosophy, religion, consciousness, psychology,
mythology, all that open-ended stuff (“fey”
as Angus described it in his piece) and its literary expression in SF
and fantasy, I guess I find Alan’s stories more tempting. And it is interesting
to try to draw the unknown, otherworldly, fantastic mind stuff for which Cass
Anderson is the ideal vehicle. The variety of subject matter to draw also suits
my novelty-seeking streak. John’s Button Man I really got into but was conscious
of making an effort to make it more earthbound. It was a good story and I did
not want it to be just another piece of comic book casual violence.
My comic reading
is too limited to know much about the work of writers and my designated brain
cells for name recall are under-developed. There are stories, or their premises
rather, that I have been attracted to. At different times I have rather fancied
myself for Silver Surfer, Red Seas or Dr Strange, for example.
You’re
listed as the co-creator of Mazeworld. Could you tell us a bit about the genesis
of the story, and where the symbolism you employed in it came from?
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Mazeworld |
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Having a rubbish
memory myself it might be as well to check with Alan Grant on this. I think initially
Alan just wrote an opening chapter with a man being hanged and finding himself
in a world of mazes. That was all he had, no idea then of what came next. Excited
by this I wrote reams of ideas to Alan which I do not know now if he used or not.
(Alan Grant
adds: Arthur's memory serves him well. All I had was the first six pages and the
urge to use mazes. Arthur did indeed write reams of ideas, many of which were
used for the characters and scenarios. We compete for the title of "Comics
Person With Most Rubbish Memory", but I think he even produced a complete
back-history for Mazeworld. I'm pretty sure I still have it someplace--Arthur
doesn't type, so everything is written longhand with beautiful little doodles
and ideas sketched in the margins. I probably have all of his initial character
and world sketches, too.
When I drove
down to Arthur's for a face-to-face discussion about the story and where it might
go, I found that he'd already drawn a "map" of MazeWorld. It was so
good, so right, that it basically became the template for everything that followed.
MazeWorld ran
for for 3 series, and as it was creator-owned we had hopes of selling it for syndication,
or perhaps as a computer game. The only company to pick it up was the US Caliber
Comics, which promptly printed the books in black and white, lost much of Arthur's
artwork, failed to pay us a bean, then went bust.
It was turned
down for option by a Hollywood studio because "it bears
too much resemblance to an episode of a 60s US TV show, where a man got
hanged.")
Editor's note:Just
after this interview went live, James Pruett - one of the brothers who ran Caliber
Comics in the US - phoned Arthur to say he had, by coincidence, just discovered
he had the Mazeworld artwork and is returning it.
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Mazeworld |
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Arthur Ranson:
As for symbolism, what symbolism do you mean? The literary symbolism – life
is a maze in which one makes choices not knowing where they may lead, a life is
not worth living if it is totally self-centred – would have come from Alan.
The visuals were mine but there was no conscious symbolism in that, only an attempt
to make up a place where these things could happen. I did a big painting of the
entire island city which helped me keep the geography in mind. There was some
Inca, Aztec influence on some of that. If I drew the strip again I would want
the place to look grubbier. There was a slum quarter in the painting but we never
went there. And distant mountains where I suspected lived another kind of folk
altogether.
Judge
Anderson’s the character you’ve been most associated with, from your
very first work in the comic. How do you feel about the story, and how do you
feel Cassandra’s changed in the fifteen years you’ve been drawing
her?
I have not thought
about this before but I imagine Cass has changed, and not just her hairstyle,
which has altered at least four times just in my drawing. Women, eh? It seems
to me she is not less idealistic so much as less hopeful, she expects less. Is
this me projecting? I had thought that Cassandra had become less cheeky, less
likely to make jokes, but that was probably lack of opportunity since in the story
I am currently drawing she is doing that again.
Her character and
personality are down to Alan, of course. I just try to understand his take and
make it visible where possible through body language, expression and lighting
sometimes. Alan specifies the mood of a scene or sequence sometimes, so lighting
can matter. Alan has never had Cass do something I don’t think she would
do. I feel quite possessive of her, wonder about her childhood, but she is really
Alan’s. Cass is the most human of any comic hero I am aware of, and deals
with some of the knottier problems of being human – morality, mortality,
meaning.
The new Anderson
story has her aware of being between forty and fifty years old. I like that. I
hope she appears it and still retains the likeness and any glamour. In fact, I
want her looking more sexy. When I first drew Cass, I changed the high heels Brian
Bolland had given her to those clunky boots. This because I can be very literal
for a comic book fan and thought high heels unlikely and impractical police footwear.
Presently, I am wishing I had kept the high heels but cannot think of a good excuse
to change the female Judges’ footwear. Chief Judge getting pervy and ordering
it?
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