We caught up with writer Robbie Morrison for the latest on his ever-popular creation - Nikolai Dante...

Firstly - how would you describe Nikolai Dante to someone unfamiliar with the character?

Nikolai Dante is a thief, lover & adventurer in a 27th Century Russian Empire ruled by Tsar Vladimir the Conqueror. He discovers that he is the illegitimate son of Dmitri Romanov - head of the powerful Romanov Dynasty and the Tsar’s mortal enemy - and is reluctantly accepted into the ranks of the nobility, which he immediately brings into disrepute.

As part of his Romanov birthright, he bonds with a Weapons Crest, a symbiotic battle-computer that gives him a healing factor (enabling him to recover from wounds about three times faster than a normal human being), allows him to form cyborganic swords from his hands, and constantly berates him for his drinking, womanising and reckless behaviour.

Over the course of the series, he’s been a Gentleman Thief (in contrast to the bog-standard thief he was before becoming an aristocrat), fought and lost an war against the Tsar, been an outlaw on the run, sailed the seas as a pirate, been forced into becoming the Tsar’s enforcer and romanced countless women, many of whom have then tried to kill him, though to be honest he probably deserved it. He’s currently leading a rebellion against the Empire alongside Jena Makarov, the Tsar’s daughter, with whom he’s had a star-crossed love affair since she arrested him at the very start of the series.

Dante is one among few 2000AD characters who have lasted over a decade and remained incredibly popular with 2000AD readers. To what do you think the character and the strip owe their longevity?

I prefer to go with my gut instinct and don’t usually like analysing the mechanics of these things, but probably what I‘ve always tried to do was write something that I’d like to read myself. Luckily that also seems to have been something that a few other people have enjoyed too.

Also, the science fiction swashbuckler, to my memory at least, hadn’t ever really been done in 2000AD, so Dante maybe seemed a little different to whatever else was running at the time. I’ve also been lucky in that fact that the series has mainly been drawn by the same two artists – Simon Fraser and John Burns - which maybe adds a greater consistency. And any fill-in artists we’ve had – Henry Flint, Charlie Adlard, Steve Yeowell and Andy Clarke – haven’t exactly been bad either.

One thing that Dante arguably benefits from is that he's a semi-regular feature in the comic.  However, for a couple of years - during the "Dante at sea" saga - his appearances were much fewer.  What made you bring him back on a more regular basis?

A combination of good timing for everyone concerned and the fact that I missed the character and the greater freedom you have working on something that you’d created. The series maybe lost a little momentum during that time, as a storyline that would normally have taken only about a year or 18 months was stretched out over the course of about three years due to the infrequency of the appearances. People probably forgot what was going on and what all the various subplots were and I can’t blame them for that. After over 10 years writing what has in many ways become one big story, I sometimes lose track myself…

What's your working relationship between your two artists, John Burns and Simon Fraser?  Do you write the strip with either of them in mind as artist?

Simon and I have been friends since we worked on Shimura – probably longer ago than either of us care to remember. And before I could even read John was one of my favourite artists from when my Grandad used to buy me Countdown & TV Action & John was drawing the likes of UFO & Mission: Impossible - which might be longer ago than John cares to remember. Simon’s in NYC, so we email each other fairly regularly, and John and I speak on the phone every two or three months or so.

I’ve been working with both of them for long enough that I often kind of know how they’ll interpret the scripts, so it’s all a fairly smooth process in terms of the storytelling. I come up with the storylines, work which arc is going to which artist, write the scripts and they draw them. I don’t really go out of my way to tailor the scripts to their particular styles, beyond maybe increasing the SF elements in stories that are going to Simon and keeping things in more of a ‘classic UK adventure strip’ vein for John. Nobody does that sort of thing better than him.

The Captain John Hart character in Torchwood bore certain similarities to Dante - if you saw this, what were your thoughts?  Could you see a screen version of Dante taking place?

I haven’t seen the episode in question, so can’t really comment one way or another. I did get a few emails the day after it was broadcast and, judging by the one image I saw, the Torchwood guy did seem to have similar taste in jackets to Dante. These things happen sometimes, though. It’s probably more than likely that the character was just influenced by similar stuff to whatever influenced me when I was developing Dante.

It's been said that Nikolai Dante is entering its final act.  Is that the case and how close are we to the finishing line? Do you have a particular end in mind?  Would you consider a spin-off?

I’ve had an ending in mind since the very early days of the series and – beyond a couple of small tweaks – that’s the one we’re definitely heading towards. I’m not going to say how many series or episodes there are to go before we reach that point, though. I like to try and pull the rug out from under everyone’s feet every now and again by doing something unexpected - like having Dante try to stab the Tsar at the end of Amerika – and think it’ll be more exciting if no one has any idea what’s going to happen. There are another two series already written after Army of Thieves and Whores, but after that, anything can happen…

The possibility of spin-offs has actually never crossed my mind until you asked about it, so, no, there’s no plans for anything like that at the moment, although there is going to be a 4-episode story coming up that focuses on one of the more interesting characters in the series.

What can we expect from Dante in the future?

Not a lot for the rest of the year, unfortunately. Simon needed some time out to work on a project for a US publisher, which meant Army of Thieves and Whores had to be cut a little short. The knock-on effect was that Hero of the Revolution had to be extended to pick up some crucial plotlines, which obviously increased John’s workload, meaning it won’t appear until Christmas, instead of the summer, when it was originally meant to see print. Ironically, Simon’s US project has since hit unforeseen delays, which was out of everyone’s control.

Heroes Be Damned, the series after that is - apart from a double-length epilogue - already written, and will, I assume, see print shortly after Hero, so there should be a lot of material ready for the early part of next year. We hopefully won’t lose too much momentum and, as mentioned, we will also be doing a short series starring one of the more popular members of Dante’s supporting cast between now and then, which should be good fun. You’ll have to take my word for that, though, as I haven’t actually sussed out the story yet.

In terms of what actually takes place in the next couple of series, again I don’t want to say too much, as I think there are probably quite a few shocks in store for both Dante and the readers.

Other than Dante, I’ve got some more Dredd lined up, though I don’t know when they’re likely to appear, and Henry Flint is currently drawing Book 4 of Shakara. I’ve only seen the first page so far, but the art’s as crazy as ever. Speaking of fantastic artwork, another project that might be of interest to 2000AD readers is Drowntown, a graphic novel that Jim Murray and I are doing for Random House, which will be published in a similar format to Bryan Talbot’s Alice in Sunderland. It won’t be out until sometime in 2010, but, fingers crossed, will be worth the wait.