Matt Smith: The idea to give an opportunity to new writers and artists came first, and then it was decided to publish it under the banner of a 2000 AD Winter Special. The old specials used to be a chance to publish new talent - Jock and Dom Reardon's first work both appeared in one of the Sci-Fi Specials. Unfortunately the market has shrunk to the point where there's little room for newcomers to shine. Nowadays, you've got to compete with professionals if you want your work to be seen.

How did you come to choose the creators involved?

I wasn't going to used entirely untested writers, so I picked those that had a least one Future Shock under their belt. Some I knew had done work outside of 2000 AD - Ben Counter, for example, has written novels for Games Workshop, so I thought he would be good to script the fantasy story "Blade Warrior".

Artists, again, was a mixture. Russell Hossain I gave work to on the strength of the samples he sent in to the office, and the same with Kev Crossley. Obviously, Inaki Miranda and Eva De La Cruz will be familiar to 2000 AD readers, but I asked them amp up the Manga-ness of their style for "Road Warrior", Eva putting a greywash over Inaki's pencils.

On a similar note - would you ever consider bringing back the "readers' art" section of the Nerve Centre?

Hmm... Don't know, it feels a bit anachronistic these days. I like publishing readers? photos of some mural they might've done, or their pet cat with its S/D badge or whatever, but after twenty-odd years of "Judge Fred Flintstone" it looks a bit old hat.

What kind of stories/art are you looking for from new contributors? Is there any particular genre that you'd like to exploit in 2000AD more than it has been in the past?

Exactly what it says in the guidelines (which have been published again in the Winter Special). For writers, come up with an exciting, original five-page tale that has a plot and intriguing characters. For artists, black and white sequential pencil and inkwork, preferably using 2000 AD characters, that show you can tell a story clearly and that's visually interesting.

As for a genre, could do with a bit more horror, maybe. If a new writer is struggling with a Future Shock, try your hand at a Terror Tale.

Will the Winter Special be a regular event? What potential do you think there is for other themed specials?

Don't know yet, we'll have to see how well it sells. I think these themed specials have potential, but there's only so much time we have as it is, putting out 2000 AD, the Megazine, Extreme and the graphic novels, and whether the specials would prove cost effective.

Do you have anything lined up for the launch of the Rogue Trooper game? Is there any further news on Rennie's the 86ers?

The Rogue game is scheduled for release in March 2006, so I'll be running another Legends... story (New Model Army by Ian Edginton and Steve Pugh) at the same time, followed straight after by the first 86ers story "Touchdown" by Gordon and Karl Richardson, which is a lot of fun - lots of spaceships and dog-fights. [See left.]

Does Rebellion have anything planned for the Brighton comic fair?

We'll have a table selling merchandise and graphic novels, and I believe new GN and Abaddon novels editor Jonathan Oliver will be there.

Onto more general 2000AD questions - with regards to the recent crossover between the comic and the Megazine - how did that come about? What's been your impression of reader reaction?

Alan [Barnes] came up with the idea. Meg 238 had an all-new line-up, plus a bit of a redesign, so it was thought it would be an opportunity to get readers who hadn't picked up the Meg recently to see what they were missing. And by showing what had happened to Guthrie, it gave us the chance to have a big cliffhanger. The reader reaction seems to have been fairly positive, seeing that it was just a two-parter - it's unlikely that we'll ever do a crossover on the scale of Judgement Day again.

Occasionally I feel it dwells too much on negativity, and I won't stand for a writer or artist being slated personally. If you don't like their work, fine, but I don?t care for creators being insulted, certainly not by someone hiding behind a username. And it's a bit galling to be sometimes told how to do my job, and self-important assumptions made about how things are done in the Nerve Centre.

But for the most part the reviews and opinions are fair enough. I take it all with a pinch of salt anyway - my favourite description of the Internet is by Thomas Harris in "Hannibal", who describes it as a damp cellar floor - where rumours spring up like mushrooms...

Leatherjack, with its 18 parts, seems to herald the welcome return of much longer sagas in 2000AD and has (in my opinion) given the strip the necessary room to develop well. There has been criticism of tales that could have benefited from a longer run (American Gothic seems a reasonable example of this) - will you be attempting more lengthy sagas like this in the future?

The length of a story usually depends on the writer. I don't usually fix a limit on it. I asked Ian for a breakdown on American Gothic and he came back with a series in nine parts, because that was the length of the story he wanted to tell. Leatherjack was different in that almost everything John writes tends to sprawl, and I gave him the room to plot it out by not scheduling it immediately.

It gets to a point, though, where you have to know where the finish is going to be rather than it rumbling on and outstaying its welcome. So there may be longer stories in the future, but it will depend solely on whether the material demands it... And of course you have to factor in art deadlines and availability, etc.

Do you have any plans to write any more Black Flame novels?

I sent a pitch for another Dredd novel to Black Flame about ten months ago and have never heard anything back. There's a strong chance I will be writing a horror novel for Abaddon, though.

Right... Well, the current line-up will continue right up to the end of the year - SinDex, Red Seas, Leatherjack.

Then it's Prog 2006, with Dredd, Stront, The Ten-Seconders, Slaine, Nikolai Dante, Caballistics, Inc., and Low Life.

Then into January, there's a gruesome Dredd serial killer thriller "Your Beating Heart" by John Wagner and Patrick Goddard, a new Caballistics series "Changelings" by Gordon and Dom...

In Feb, Synnamon returns in "Arc of Light" by Colin Clayton, Chris Dows and David Roach, and the ABC Warriors are back for the third and final book of The Shadow Warriors by Pat and Henry... All zarjaz stuff!

The Winter Special arrives in store on November 2nd.