| Home
¦ Features ¦ Charlie
Adlard interview part 4
EB: You worked
for Marvel UK and Frontier on...
[Both together]:
Dances With Demons!
CA: You have done
your research!
[Both laugh]
EB: So how did
you find them to work with? I think that’s 1993?
CA: Bloody hell.
It was a fun time. I remember it as a kind of innocent time because when I first
started, I don’t think I ever worried about being out of work, which is
kind of a weird thing. By that time I’d bought my own house, so I had financial
responsibilities. And Marvel UK were doing so well at the time, you just felt
like that it was almost like working ‘down t’pit’ – it
was job for life. You always felt that if you did okay, they’d give you
something else straight after, and you’d just keep working like that.
I actually did
a four issue miniseries after Frontier Comics that wasn’t even published.
In fact I was told that they weren’t going to publish it after issue two,
but the editor told me that “You might as well carry on doing it, no-one’s
going to tell you to stop, they’re just not going to publish it”.
So I did two more issues and got paid for them. They didn’t give me any
other work, so I might as well just carry on drawing that. And it’s never
been published! Crazy!
There was a lot
of money going around, so they could do that. That was near the end, obviously,
so the reason it wasn’t published was because they realised it wasn’t
going to be successful. It might’ve only sold 40,000, or something like
that. But at the time, it was like “We can’t just have those low figures”!
Everyone would love 40,000 now.
But, yeah, it was
great. I met Simon Jowett, who wrote Dances With Demons, who became a good friend.
So I met him, I got to know a couple of Marvel UK editors who I’ve known
since – we’ve followed each other through the various stages of our
respective careers. It was fun times. It seemed that for about eight months, a
year or whatever, it all just seemed so easy. Derivative but easy!
[Both laugh]
 |
Rogue
"Friday" Trooper
|
|
EB: Now, your
first published work in 2000AD was Rogue Trooper.
CA: Was that my
first published work for 2000AD?
EB: A story
called Angels.
CA: Yeah, that’s
right. Three parts, wasn’t it?
EB: Yeah, three
parts. This was the unpopular version of the character, the sort of ‘Friday’
reinvention.
CA: Oh right, bloody
hell. You know more than I do. To be honest, I wasn’t reading 2000AD at
that point. I only read it now by default. Because I’ve worked for them
I still get comps, so I get it every week and I’m aware of what’s
in it. And I wasn’t really aware of what was in it then, so I wasn’t
really aware that I was doing an unpopular version or a popular version, I just
though it was Rogue Trooper.
EB: Did you
get that job following on from the Megazine stuff?
CA: No. Why did
I get that job? I can’t really remember…what year was it?
EB: ’95.
CA: So it was about
X-Files time.
EB: I think
it might have been just before.
CA: I am so foggy
on why I got that job…that would have been David Bishop’s editorship.
Obviously I knew David from the Megazine days, and he was at 2000AD then. He must
have just rung me up and asked me. When people bring it up, it’s one of
those strips where I go “God, yes I did do some Rogue Trooper!” Because
it was only three parts, and I was probably at my fastest then, I was literally
knocking out two issues at a time.
I could do two
issues of The X-Files in a month. So imagine doing a three part, eighteen pages,
is like less than two weeks worth of work to me. So, in the grand scheme of things,
two weeks worth of work sort of gets pushed to the back of my mind after ten years
since. I just remember that he does fly a jet a lot in it.
 |
Armitage
|
|
EB: It was the
David Bishop period at the Megazine when you took over on Armitage from Sean Phillips.
CA: That’s
right. Pheww, yeah!
EB: Because
originally you were the suggested original artist for Devlin Waugh.
CA: I was. I did
a two page tryout for Devlin Waugh. Sean and I are good friends now, but Sean
at the time was someone to aspire to. Actually he still is! I tried out for that.
Sean, I presume, didn’t have to tryout for it. I presume that he was just
offered it, which is fair enough, as I was just starting out.
EB: So you were
given a script sample for that?
CA: It was just
from the first episode. So Sean would’ve drawn the same two pages. I assume
he never saw my two pages.
How did you find
that out?
EB: I think
it’s mentioned in the new Devlin Waugh book from DC.
CA: Oh really?
DC have brought it out? How weird is that, eh? And they said that I tried out?
“Wasn’t good enough”!
EB: I think
the story was that it was offered to Sean Phillips, and then he couldn’t
do it, so they offered it to you, but apparently John Smith took so long writing
the script…
CA: …that
Sean could do it again. I must have done that in between The Hand of Fate and
Armitage. I don’t think I could say I wasn’t ready – I must
have been, because I did Armitage. Sean did a much better job than I could ever,
ever, have done at the time. I was no way as good as Sean, not at fully painted
artwork. Sean had his chops down, I was just flailing around. I still am when
it comes to painting.
I enjoy painting,
because I do it so rarely, so it’s kind of a nice different discipline.
Going back to the blank page, it’s one of the only times where I do look
at a blank page and feel a bit scared, a bit frightened about it. “How the
hell do I start this”? It’s very hard to work on a painting for a
long time as well, which is something I’ve always tried to do because I
think it’d probably be better if I did work on it a lot longer. But I just
get bored, and that’s why black and white is so good, because you get to
a stage where you think “That is finished”. I could work on it, I
could refine the pencilling, I could put a bit more detail, I could put a background
in there or whatever, but as a whole the storytelling is there, it’s finished.
Whereas with painting, you could just keep working on it, because you’re
building it up. And this is why my stuff doesn’t look like Glenn [Fabry]’s.
I aspire more to
what Sean paints, because I do prefer the more expressionistic, more sketchier
sort of thing. As much as I admire Glenn, for instance, he’s just not how
I’d like to paint: the more slicker stuff. I prefer stuff more like Sean
or Duncan Fegredo paints. That more sketchy, more immediate stuff. And that’s
how I am with art in general; even at a really young age the slick stuff leaves
me cold. As my tastes have refined, even at a young age I was always more attracted
to the more modern artists rather than the Classical artists. I was never into
the idea of realism, ever. There’s a place for it; I know there is incredible
talent in doing stuff like that.
EB: So was it daunting
then, when you were taking over the Armitage strip, which was a fully painted
strip?
CA: Oh very, because
I also knew that Sean had also gone before me on that. Sean and I are the same
age, but Sean had been in the industry for a lot longer. I think he started when
he was about sixteen, and I was like 24/25/26…I can’t even remember…about
26.
Sean had a lot
more experience of it by far, almost ten years, so it was very daunting.
And I knew Sean
by reputation, from things like all that stuff in Crisis that he’d done.
It was kind of daunting, so I just sort of did the best I could. I look at it
now and think “This is horrendous”! How on earth did editors think
to employ me at this level? I like to think they had the foresight of thought
to think I’d get better!
EB: How did
you find working with Dave Stone, who was the writer?
CA: Good old Dave!
Erm…no comment!
[Both laugh]
His writing was
okay; he had a penchant for always heading the story into some sort of strange
perversion which, if you knew the guy and knew his lifestyle, you could certainly
understand. Though Dave Stone the character and Dave Stone the man: there might
be a big difference between the two. He wanted to always shock you as a person.
Whether his lifestyle was actually like that was a different point – I never
knew. Bit of a sad man, really!
[Both laugh]
I remember at
conventions he always used to get outrageously drunk, so he would just pass out
somewhere in the hotel bar. And someone like Garth Ennis would write rude words
on his forehead, backwards so he’d read them in the mirror, all this sort
of stuff. He was always abused. And fair enough, because he was a really annoying
man.
I just remember
one morning, it was in this hotel where they have the London convention now but
the layout of the hotel was different then. Where you had breakfast was next door
to the bar. And I remember after one evening, staying up late, coming down for
breakfast, sitting at the table with some friends looking into the bar, and there
was Dave Stone, asleep, still at the bar at nine o’clock in the morning!
I just remember that he had his hand on his cheek, and he suddenly woke up, realised
where he was, and walked off. And I just thought that really sums up what a sad
little fucker he was!
[Both laugh]
I mean, if you
see him at conventions now, everyone’s like “Warrgh”! A true
feeling of fear! You just don’t want to talk to him.
EB: You also
did two stories for the spin-off comic Judge Dredd: Lawman of the Future.
CA: Oh blimey,
yes I did, didn’t I? That was John Wagner, wasn’t it?
EB: Yeah, on
‘Monster’.
CA: That’s
right. Doing the movie version of Judge Dredd.
EB: How did
you find that compared to doing the normal version?
CA: There wasn’t
that much difference, apart from drawing a slightly different costume. I mean,
obviously you weren’t drawing Sylvester Stallone, which was a godsend.
EB: So you didn’t
have to do it from photo reference?
CA: No, I think
it was just getting the different costumes. I mean the good thing about Judge
Dredd is that he’s a comic icon, so you don’t have to suddenly draw
him like Stallone. The only difference was in the story: it was bizarrely geared
towards younger children, even though I seem to remember the movie was a 15. “Let’s
gear a comic towards twelve year-olds who can’t actually see the movie”!
But it was written on a much simpler level, I seem to remember that. And Monster
was very, shall we say…
EB: Kid friendly?
CA: Kid friendly,
rather than teenage friendly or adult friendly. I don’t remember there being
any of the usual ‘adult ref’ that you get with the normal stuff.
EB: But you
didn’t have any idea when you were doing it that it was going to be so ‘doomed
to failure’?
CA: No, I think
we’d seen the movie already. The movie had come out. That was a funny experience
actually, because I went to see it at the ‘special’ 2000AD screening
in Leicester Square a couple of weeks before the film actually came out. It was
virtually like a Who’s Who of the British industry in the audience. And
I remember coming out of the cinema, and I turned to my friend Paul and we both
sort of went “It was okay, wasn’t it?” “Yeah, it was alright”.
It was one of those films that, when you’ve walked about fifty yards, goes
from “That was alright” to “Actually that was really crap”!
By the time we got home, it was one of the worst films we’d ever seen!
I didn’t
actually talk to Alan, but I remember seeing Alan outside the cinema just ranting
about how crap it was! I suppose you knew you were off to a bad start when it
begins with the James Earl-Jones voiceover, but the words come up as well. It’s
like “What age level are you actually appealing to? We can actually read
the words”! But they feel like they’ve got to read them as well –
choose one or the other!
|
