In the late nineties there emerged a small press title by the name of Flying Monkey. Along with a self-deprecating cover it had killer koalas, university student slackers, role-playing, Star-Wars obsessions and prog rock all for a bargain price. Who could resist? Well, I couldn't resist and promptly bought the first two issues of Flying Monkey and its spin off, The Man from Uncool.

These were great comics by two creators who seemed to have a similar slant on life to myself. So, I did what most comic fans do when they find something so good - I couldn't be bothered writing and just bitched and moaned when nothing else seemed to be coming from the two creators, Simon Perrins and Andrew Livesey.

Flash forward a couple of years and I managed to get access to the internet. A quick search and wouldn't you know, Flying Monkey was still going only now it was called Hope for the Future and it was one long strip rather than an anthology. So I dutifully parted with my money, a little apprehensive that maybe such anticipation would result in inevitable disappointment. Fortunately there was no need to worry. Hope for the Future was different, but in some ways an improvement on Flying Monkey, albeit missing Andrew's contribution.

When Gavin started running interviews with small press creators, I thought I'd see if Simon and Andrew, who always seemed overlooked in any of the small press articles I'd read, would be willing to participate. Much to my surprise they kindly took up this offer. So please find below the Flying Monkey interview.

Marcus Nyahoe: Ok, the usual first lines - when and where were you both born?

Simon Perrins: 33 years ago in Gloucester. Nope can't think of a way to make that sound any more exciting.

Andrew Livesey: I was born in Leeds in 1977 and apart from a 3 year absence at university have lived here all my life.

MN: Where you always interested in comics? What sort of comics did you read as kids?

SP: I used to get Whizzer & Chips every week from quite a young age (I was a Whizz Kid, since you ask). Also used to get Beano and Dandy annuals at Christmas with the occasional Beezer, Buster or Topper. The Fleetway stuff seemed a hell of a lot more contemporary than the DC Thompson stuff - I mean what kid can relate to Desperate Dan? Mind you, Whizzer & Chips had a strip called "Store Wars" which appears to have been modelled on "Open All Hours", which is hardly the target audience is it? Even then, though, The Beano seemed to be from a different age.

In addition I used to read the Marvel Star Wars comic regularly, which I was into because it was Star Wars, rather than a comic, but this probably formed my idea of adventure comics more than superheroes or 2000AD, which I saw very rarely if at all. Star Wars always had interesting backup strips though, like Tales of the Watcher, which I think were mostly reprints of old, pre superhero Marvel comics (many by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, and were clearly influenced by The Twilight Zone, particularly the one where the guy dreams about being chased by a monster, and it turns out he's the ruler of another dimension who's lost his memory and the monster's been sent to get him back, and at the end of the story the guy's doctor looks out at the stars and says "who knows, maybe to some, we're just a dream", really hitting the nail on the head).

AL: I used to read the Beano every week (and kept getting it until I was 18 I think my parents forgot to cancel the subscription) and the Eagle until it folded. I started collecting properly after a friend gave me a copy of a Justice League special (the Giffen and DeMatteis era) and it all went downhill from there.

MN: I gather from the address and email addresses for the two of you in the Flying Monkey comics that you both attended the University of Central Lancashire (or Preston Poly as I still think of it)? What did you think of the area (careful now - I live just down the road outside Blackpool)? What did you study there? Was this were the two of you met?

SP: Yeah we were both on the BA illustration course there. Preston's alright. I think your feeling about a town is down to the people you know there. I made some really good friends in Preston, so I had a good time there. Whereas I lived in Sheffield for two years and it was shit, but only because I was unemployed and barely met anyone while I was there. Preston was good for dirt cheap clubs as well, particularly Quincy's. I bet Andrew mentions this.

AL: I really liked Preston - one of Britain's newest cities (now we've left), everything was in walking distance and enough good nights out to keep us amused. We were both studying Illustration and met after one of the first critiques on the course.

MN: How did the idea for Flying Monkey come about? I'm assuming you didn't both just meet and then the next day put out a comic?

SP: That's pretty much what did happen. I had done an HND some years previously at Wrexham and a friend had shown me Simon Bisley's Judgment on Gotham which blew me away. I hadn't seen anything like it before because I hadn't really followed comics at all, so that is what got me into them in my adult life. From there I read a lot of Batman comics, as well as Vertigo stuff which was just getting going around that time. I became enamoured by the idea of pretentious painted comics, and tried to do one myself for my final coursework project at college. It was an adaptation of the short story "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" by Philip K Dick, not the best choice for a visual medium, and I never even finished it.

I tried a few more comic ideas after that but never really got anything to work until (while in Sheffield) someone asked me to do a few comic strips for a departmental magazine for work. By this time I'd come into contact with stuff by so called "alternative" comic artists like Evan Dorkin and Terry Laban, and I loved those, so I did a few sarky one and two page gag strips, which were basically my version of the sort of thing you'd find in Dork, Cud or Instant Piano. Soon after that I started uni in Preston, met Andrew, and showed him the strips I'd done. He showed me some of his, and we took some time to do a few more, and then bunged out Flying Monkey issue 1.

AL: From what I remember It came about pretty quickly, I'd originally talked to Simon because his work seemed very interesting and comic orientated. We both thought it would be good to put out a small press comic so we sat down thought of a name and went away and drew a bunch of strips.

MN: Ok, let's talk about Flying Monkey. I've got my copies of issue 1 and 2 in front of me. I can't remember how I became aware of it. It must have been a Comics International advert or something. How many copies of number one did you shift at the time? Presumably this was enough to give you the encouragement to go on and do another issue?

SP: Well first of all we had thirty printed I think. They went quite quickly so we did another fifty. And I think we did another 50 after that, and I've only got a couple left, so somebody out there owns all of them. With regards to what gave us the impetus to do another issue, we probably would have done it anyway because I had loads of strips left over.

AL: I think we got a couple of good reviews and decided to press ahead with issue 2. That or we got some really bad reviews and did it out of spite. Simon has a little book stashed somewhere that has a tally of everything we sold (it's quite a small book).

MN: I was really blown away by Flying Monkey. Of course I didn't write or anything. I didn't have access to the internet at the time and I'm way too lazy to put something in an envelope and post it! I suppose it just felt like it was coming from the people with a similar outlook to myself. Did you get any reader feedback at all?

SP: I don't recall much mail - this is going back a few years so its hard to remember. People don't seem to write much, certainly not in the droves we originally hoped for. I think people just register their approval by buying later issues, which many people have done but it would be nice to get a bit more feedback (I say this fully aware that I have read and liked other people's stuff and not bothered to contact them to let them know).

AL: We got bits of feedback but most of the stuff I saw was in Comics International or SFX. It was always cool to flick through these magazines after we sent out the review copies and see what someone had written about us. We got a bit a reader feedback but most of the mail was from other small press creators.

MN: Did you know how to put a comic together with the first issue, or was it very much a question of "let's just do this"?

SP: The latter. It didn't seem particularly hard to put it together (although its a lot easier using computers like we do now). Lots of photocopying and pritt stick was involved.

AL: I'd read one book on putting together a fanzine but I don't recall any structure the whole process, when we'd drawn up enough strips to fill an even number of pages we shrunk the pages on a photocopier and glued then to layout sheets before passing them to a printer (well a man with a larger photocopier and industrial stapler)

MN: Valinor and Killer Koalas feel like they could have made for good ongoing strips. Was this the idea at the time? What plans did you have for these characters?

SP: I just thought that if you spend a bit of time establishing some characters you might as well use them again, rather than start with brand new ones. In the kinds of comics we do you don't have that much space to develop characters, especially if you want to tell a story, and have jokes, and draw interesting stuff. But obviously those characters had a bit more potential beyond just a one off gag.

AL: I always wanted Team Koala to keep going and after issue 1 thought it would make a great stand alone comic. After issue 2 I'd decided this would be a better way to go and there's been two or three attempts to give them their own comic including a version that's carved from about 20 A4 pieces of MDF wood (it's best not to ask). I really like the idea and the characters and want make sure that when they do see the light of day again it's something really special, unfortunately these high standards and my extreme laziness will probably hinder this endeavour for years to come.

On a bit of a side note to that, Killer Koalas have turned up (very briefly) in one episode of the Simpsons, I doubt my story had anything to do with it but I can always dream......

Of course, after the first printing of FM1 I went back and corrected all Andrew's spelling mistakes, but that was just my control freak side coming to the fore.

AL: I'd had the basic idea for Team Koala knocking around for a few years after getting drunk in the peak district with some friends. Once we decided to do Flying Monkey the whole idea shaped up quite easily.

MN: You've said before that you didn't think issue number 2 was particularly good. Any reason for this? Looking at it now I think it shows a nice progression. There's a particularly nice panel transition at the start of Sick Again were the image of the girl turns into the lamp. The Low-Fi Kid as well was just hilarious.

SP: I read them the other night and still think its a bit crap. I had some stuff left over but Andrew didn't, so he kind of rushed his. And I was rushing all of my stuff at the time. The Valinor strip's alright though.

AL: I felt my work on issue 2 suffered a lot as I was trying out quite a few new ways of drawing that didn't always come out as I would have liked. That and I drew all of it while sat in from of the TV.

MN: There's a lot of stabbings in Andrew's strips in issue 2. Should we be worried??

SP: He's calmed down a bit now.

AL: Not anymore I'm fully re-habilitated now.

MN: OK, can't hold back on this - is it both of you with the prog rock passion, or just Simon? You can admit it here (I speak as someone who has just been to see Fish at Bolton Albert Halls - first half a selection of his solo stuff, second half the entire Misplaced Childhood album).

SP: That's me dude. I still have all my notes that I made going through a bunch of rock books in Gloucester Music Library (one was "rock created its own aesthetic based on The Beatles, The Who and The Moody Blues" - this was serious research for me!). As I was into that music, Genesis, Yes, Led Zep, Jethro Tull etc it seemed natural for me to do. There were also a lot of stories about the idiotic things those bands got up to, like Emerson Lake and Palmer releasing a thousand white doves into the air at a festival in Spain, and it being so hot that the birds just slowly ambled about the stage, so Greg Lake ran about shouting "Fly you fuckers"! You know that bit in This Is Spinal Tap where Nigel Tufnel says "There's such a thin line between stupid and clever", well progressive rock bands regularly crossed that line, which is what makes them brilliant.

The charm of that period is partly to do with the fact that the music industry wasn't fully formed then, so record companies would regularly let bands like Yes do stuff like release a double album with four songs on it. I mean Coldplay are the biggest band in the world right now but they couldn't get away with that (thank god). Mind you, nowadays we do have The Mars Volta, who sound exactly like mid seventies King Crimson, so its not all bad.

Fish's solo stuff passed me by a bit. However I did go and see him once in Cheltenham and the first ten minutes or so was just him talking. The guy's so charming, intelligent and funny I reckon he should ditch his band and do a few Henry Rollins style spoken word gigs.

AL: I'm afraid to say it's only Simon who loves the prog. I used to play Bis and other lo-fi stuff quite loudly before going out around Preston just to annoy him.

MN: Did you ever influence each others strips or were they very much done in isolation? Could one person suggest changes to another strip?

SP: See previous answer. If either of us suggested anything, the other would usually ignore it.

AL: Since we lived in the same house it was easy to see what was going on in each others work. I always appreciated any suggestions Simon had about my work unless it was that I should have been doing more of it and playing less Final Fantasy VII.

MN: Apparently you gave away issue 3 free (although I've never seen it - any copies left???). Why give it away?

SP: We spent a lot longer on ish 3, and as a result it was miles better. We'd got good reviews for the first two so we thought this would get more people to try it out, and then order the old stuff. Of course it that brilliant idea blew up in our faces cos it was only the people who's already bought 1 & 2 who wrote to us asking for 3.

No there's no copies left. But I keep meaning to scan it and put it up on the website, just to show people it was good, honest.

AL: We wanted to reach more people and get our work out there a bit more, it seemed like a good idea at the time although I'm not sure where we got all the money for printing.

MN: The Man from Uncool was a solo effort. Was there any reason for this (no "creative differences" or anything)?

SP: Nah I just worked faster, so had a surplus of stuff (partly this is due to the fact that when Andrew went back to Leeds for half terms and summer holidays he actually had a life and went out and stuff, whereas I went back to Gloucester where I didn't know anybody anymore).

AL: It comes down to the fact I'm a very lazy individual, Simon had all these ideas he wanted to get down and I was comfy in front of the TV. Flying Monkey was always a joint project and so it seemed right that Simon came up with a new title for his solo work.

MN: What lead to the demise of Flying Monkey and the rise of Hope for the Future?

SP: The first HFTF story was done for Flying Monkey 4, but we never really got enough stuff together (my other FM4 strips were dire so I decided not to put them out), so I just did another HFTF story and put that out, and then got into the idea of making that into a series, seeing as I was able to do most of the stuff I wanted to do in the context of an ongoing story (stupid gags, drawing weird stuff, and a bit of autobiographical stuff), rather than just doing more short gag strips. I think I'd run out of ideas for them to be honest, and doing a longer story was more satisfying anyway.

AL: Flying Monkey never really went away, it's just been taking a really long break. We've recently been talking about trying it out as a web comic, fingers crossed you should be able to see some new work very soon.

MN: Do you see web comics as the way to go with small press, or are you still committed to the printed form too?

SP: Well, web comics are a brilliant idea and there's plenty of really talented people doing them. Web pages are really well suited to the format of one short 3-4 panel strip every day. However, its tricky to come up with a worthwhile gag that regularly, and working it into the context of a larger story is even harder. Bill Watterson was particularly good at it.

I think doing longer stories online is a bit more problematic. Scrolling through endless pages isn't a lot of fun, and reading comics off a computer screen just feels different from reading off a printed page.

AL: I think web comics are a great way to get your stuff out into the big bad world without worrying about print costs and whether the printer will ruin your artwork. We've not really done anything specifically for the web yet and anything that has been posted up on the website was always designed to see the printed page. We're working on a new Flying Monkey Comics website to try out the whole web comic thing but I wouldn't like to go completely digital as it's still great to flick through a newly printed comic.

MN: On the web site you've got back issues of Hope for the Future on CD-ROM. For myself this was invaluable as I'd lost track of what the two of you were doing, and it allowed me to catch up with the series without shelling out a whole load of money all at once. How have you found the take-up on these CD collections? Do you think they have had a positive effect on sales?

SP: It's useful to have them as another option, but they don't sell well. I'm always thinking that I never want to get another comic printed because it's so frustrating (and expensive) trying to get it done well. Doing comics digitally is so much easier because you control absolutely every aspect of how it looks (you can even have them in -gasp- colour!!), but if no one wants to read them there's no point.

MN: Ok, we've mentioned Hope for the Future without introducing it? Fancy giving the readers a quick overview of what it's about?

SP: In general terms, it's a combination of my two favourite comics genres, Vertigo style mystical gubbins (Sandman, Shade, Preacher, Books of Magic) and sarcastic, biographical indie comics (Dork, Cud, Hate, Ghost World).

The plot, such as it is, is centred around these three students, Lee, Hannah and Greg, who keep running into demons, robots, ghosts, secret societies and all that kind of stuff. Hannah's a bit of a scholar of the occult, so a lot of the time she actively seeks this stuff out. Lee is not so secretly infatuated with her, and Greg generally has nothing better to do than hang out with them, but will generally complain about everything. I didn't want them to get themselves out of things by using superpowers, or pulling out big guns every five minutes, so they tend to deal with this stuff the way normal people would, which is usually to run away.

MN: There's a lot of extremely accurate observation of life and behaviour running through HFTF, which was also present in the Daz and Dave strips (incidentally, every ex-student I know, including me, behaved in pretty much exactly the same way as those two). Is this something you consciously do, or is it just the way you naturally write?

SP: I think it's more interesting to put in real life observations, even if you're doing a story about giant oysters taking over the earth. When I was at university we used to have a book in which we wrote anything funny and/or stupid that anyone said, mostly because we were bored a lot of the time and couldn't face doing any actual work. A lot of the stuff from that book has made its way into the comics.

MN: Has Hope for the Future open ended or do you have a planned climax for the stories of the three characters?

SP: The first story was a one off, but it seemed like a good format in which to tell any story, so I started putting bits and pieces of ideas together, and somehow have come up with this ongoing plot, which although it's not immediately apparent, there are clues throughout all the issues if you look for them. In the last few issues it'll all come together in a big climax which will have a lot of people running around and stuff blowing up. I'm talking about what happens in the story, not people's response to the comics.

MN: Andrew came on board to do the art on issue 7. How did this come about? Are there any plans to collaborate again?

AL: I think Simon has small backup strip for me to draw in issue 10, but nothing else beyond that yet......

MN: There appears to be a change in the art styles as we progress through the issues. Is this Simon trying out different ideas to communicate the story, or is it just your style's natural evolution (with the exception of issue 9 which has an obviously experimental sketch-like style)?

SP: Issue 9 was basically just about our three characters going out and getting drunk, so I knew if I drew it as painstakingly detailed as I'd done issue 8, I would go nuts, so I just kind of scribbled it as quickly as possible. As luck would have it, some of those pages are quite good! The idea was that the art style would reflect the story, which makes things a bit more interesting to draw, so I do it whenever I can.

I'd like to think I've got better at drawing, though. I've also completely abandoned inking, so there's a big difference there. It's all just pencils and Photoshop now.

MN: When can we expect the next issue (#10)? Do you have any sort of loose schedule for putting issues out (twice a year etc.)?

SP: I'm working on it now, honest. I'd like to say I'm sticking to a schedule, but the fact that there's usually been a couple of issues in a year has just been luck.

MN: Andrew, when can we expect some more comics from yourself?

AL: I'm working on a new Flying Monkey website at the moment so after I've bent some HTML code to my will I'll be sitting down to do some strips for it (along with Simon obviously). I'd like to get a longer Team Koala strip at some point done but that's on the backburner for the moment while the web project gets going.

MN: Are there any comics you're reading now? If so, which are the ones you rate highly? Why do you rate them so highly?

SP: Alan Moore's Promethea was the best thing I've seen in recent years, completely mind bogglingly good, but that's finished now. Black Hole by Charles Burns was great but that's just finished too. Anything by Mike Mignola is worth getting - he's probably my favourite comics artist. Likewise I'll buy anything drawn by Philip Bond. I like Scary Go Round a lot, that's a web comic which has lots of really cute girls in it.

I haven't really kept up with what's going on in comics. I'm waiting for something new to come along, completely bowl me over and make me get obsessed with it.

AL: I tend to wait for trade paperbacks nowadays but always pick up 'The Walking Dead' and 'Y the last man' both have consistently good writing and art. I've not picked up any superhero stuff in a while and after trying out DC's Countdown to Infinite Crisis launch where they killed off the Blue Beetle (my favourite spandex clad hero) I don't think I'll be going back anytime soon.

MN: Are you planning to attend any conventions?

SP: Well we've been to all the Bristol conventions, and I was personally getting a bit bored with it, but at the last one we had a table for the first time and it was great fun. We sold a fair few comics, drew sketches for people and generally had a really good laugh so I'm definitely up for doing that again. We need to do more preparation next time though - loads of people had posters and big displays and all we had were some bits of A4 paper with "Buy Hope For The Future, its f****** brilliant!" scribbled on them.

AL: We go down to the Bristol con every year and had our first table there this year. I hope we get to go next year as well as it's become a traditional road trip for me and Simon.

May I just take this chance to say thank you very much to Simon and Andrew for taking the time out to answer my inane questions. Keep up the good work lads and best of luck with your future endeavours.

To finish off I'd just like to reiterate, "Buy Hope For The Future, it's f****** brilliant!"

Oh, and for any children reading this, despite what Andrew says, it is never ok to play Bis at any volume.