Mike Chinn Interview

MIKE CHINN has scripted comics in the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres, as well as short fiction in the same genres (plus a recent foray into crime for the anthology BIRMINGHAM NOIR from Tindal Street Press). He has edited an award-nominated Sword & Sorcery anthology SWORDS AGAINST THE MILLENNIUM and had six of his 30s Pulp-style Damian Paladin stories collected in THE PALADIN MANDATES, both from The Alchemy Press. He is currently editor of the comics review column for the British Fantasy Society newsletter, PRISM, and is working on a book, HOW TO WRITE AND ILLUSTRATE GRAPHIC NOVELS.

Below, STU YOUNG talks to veteran Brit writer MIKE CHINN:

1. How did you get into writing comics?

I've been writing and drawing comics since I was around eight. Back in Junior School, the class had an English project to write a book each, but me and a friend - who was just as drawing mad - were told to do comics instead. Mine was a superhero comic - Greenhawk, I think it was called - and the hero was basically DC's Adam Strange without the helmet and a green costume instead of red (hence the name). There were dinosaurs in there too. Obviously.
        Then in my late teens, I got into fanzines. With another friend I produced two issues of something called Mistique (sic). It was full A4, offset lithoed, took all of my savings - and didn't sell a copy. There were four strips in each issue, ranging from SF, superheroes, sword & sorcery to horror and Ray and I wrote and drew 99% of the thing. So we had no one else to blame. I don't know how many are still in existence - I've got a copy of each issue, and the British Fantasy Society's fanzine library certainly had copies. Maybe one day they'll come back to haunt me.
       I got into grown up comics several years later. The author Adrian Cole rang one day and told me about a new title from DC Thomson: Starblazer. It was obviously coming in on the wake of the Star Wars phenomenon, and for some time it would be purely science fiction - of a sort. I contacted the editor, Bill McLoughlin, with no real expectations - after all, a company like DC Thomson has lots of real writers working for it, right? Wrong again. Half the stuff ended up been written by staff, the rest by fresh-faced newcomers like me and hacks (I don't mean that in a pejorative sense) who've been at the business for years and know how to churn it out. I didn't. Not at first.
       The first script they bought - after many rejected synopses - was so over-written it would have made Stan Lee blush. But it was mercilessly trimmed by the editors, given to the Argentinean artist Enrique Alcatena to draw and became Starblazer #64 - The Exterminator in 1982. Now I'd called it The Quest for Vanderdecken, so I take no responsibility for the title.
       It took a while for me to sell them another - my then future wife was convinced I'd never manage it - but 1985 saw Spaceroamer and Nightraider in '86. Alcatena also drew Spaceroamer, and the whole thing was a camp, over-the-top romp - years before Besson's The Fifth Element.
       From 1987 I was writing Sword & Sorcery (four issues about the d'Annemarc dynasty plus a couple of unrelated epics) and comedy (the Robot Kid issues - well, they made me laugh). When Starblazer was finally cancelled there were a couple of Robot Kid stories unpublished and another S&S epic. Naturally, I think they were the best I've ever done - and no one is likely to get the chance to say I'm wrong.

2. When writing do you prefer the plot first method or full script?

I've never done plot first - I don't think I ever could. Full script seems to be a very British way of doing things - I was amazed when I learned how Marvel did it … seems a totally backward way of writing to me.
       My biggest problem with plot first is I prefer some fluidity. You can work out your initial plot and storyline, sure; use it for a pitch or synopsis … but you can bet your life when you come to actually writing, there'll be a point when you think: "Hey, this works better if I do it this way instead." Or "It makes more sense if Jim's actually Freda's brother…" You get the idea. If you've already submitted the plot and an artist's drawn it, your options are limited. All the stuff I did for DC Thomson changed at some point; on a couple of occasions I had to re-write great chunks of script because the editors decided they wanted me to go another way.
        Plot first was devised for speed, I think - a minimum of writers churning out the maximum number of titles quickly. But it seems to show little regard for them - pretty much saying, "Who cares what you put in Spidey's speech balloons? We've got the pretty pictures…"
        Of course, I'm a writer, so I'm bound to think that…

3. Which writers have influenced your writing style?

You mean comics writers? I'm not really sure. As far as comics go, I'm not at all certain I have a style. Depends entirely what you're doing - comics have a style all their own. You might want to do a comic with absolutely no narrative input - as Alan Davis did for the JLA special The Nail - or the complete opposite, no dialogue. (C'mon - someone must have done it!).
        I suppose I have to mention the great Alan Moore. Apart from his tremendous erudition - which few of us could hope to equal - I admire his technique of introducing plot threads in long-running storylines that seem to have absolutely no relevance, but reappear issues later and turn out to be really, really important. That's the kind of writing I admire: you're constantly ten steps ahead of the reader.
        Howard Chaykin also has a shed load of stylistic devices I love. The identical talking heads on TV he used so much in American Flagg (now much-imitated), as well as the silhouetted characters in long shot that provided a running commentary at the top of every page of Time2 (if I remember correctly). They ally comics to movies and TV - media with which they have so much in common. (Is it a coincidence that Chaykin is involved in TV these days?).
        As for straightforward fiction, my greatest influence is Michael Moorcock. Any time I stray back to any sword & sorcery fiction - there he is, for all to see. I suppose the S&S stories I wrote for Starblazer were heavily Moorcock-influenced with regard to plot and concept, but the writing less so.

4. What are the advantages of comics over prose and vice versa?

I'm not sure you can say one has the advantage over the other. Both are different ways of telling a story. It's much harder to get inside characters' heads in comic format - the narrative can only say so much; same goes for the dialogue. Prose is better at conveying introspection, and character reactions that build up a characterisation. The best artist in the world can't illustrate the minutiae that a writer can draw on (sorry - pun not intended). And prose relies on the reader's imagination - there's a tacit contract between reader and writer which says the author will describe his world so far, and the reader takes it from there. This is why comic and movie adaptations of novels and stories can be such disappointments. Everyone knows what a given character looks like - but what everyone knows is different for each person.
Comics are essentially a visual medium. They can go for greater impact. It's no accident superheroes evolved alongside comic strips - they were made for each other, quite literally. Early pulp heroes - The Shadow, The Spider, etc. - were dark, sinister creations that worked on the written page (and the radio - another medium requiring imagination). But the later, more colourful heroes - Batman, Superman, Captain America - needed the garish comic book to survive. How many superhero prose novels have really worked? Denny O'Neil's Knightfall does - quite well, actually - but The Death of Superman was terrible.

5. How much collaboration do you like to have with your artists?

In the past I've had barely any. You send in the script, it's edited and passed on to whichever artist the powers that be have selected. Like I said, I was very lucky to have all the d'Annemarc stories illustrated by Alcatena; that man has an imagination and ability to get it down on paper that is awesome. Most of the d'Annemarc stories had a dream sequence or voyage to another realm that I tried to make as unearthly as I could - then Quique topped it. I actually started to describe scenes that I thought couldn't be drawn - but he did. I guess there was some form of collaboration there, even if it was unspoken - and vaguely competitive.
I did get involved with another DC Thomson project a couple of years back in which there was a little collaboration. The company wanted to start a series of horror comics for adolescents, and I was approached. I scripted two stories - one sub Lovecraft and the other more like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and as far as I know, they're the only scripts ever written for the project). They selected Alan Burrows to illustrate the first story (we'd had some contact before, when he'd been trying to interest a few publishers in a strip of his own creation - The Funguys - and wanted a writer), and we did have a couple of long phone conversations about how I imagined a few aspects. The one thing about all the stories for this comic - apart from being aimed at pre- and early teens, so not too scary - was they had to be set in America. I've been over there many times - Alan hadn't; he wanted to be sure he was getting it right. I didn't think it mattered all that much: most of the projected audience would only know the States from TV and the movies anyway, so go with the cliché.
Last year, quite out of the blue, Quique Alcatena e-mailed me. He's keen that we recreate our old collaboration so we've been bouncing ideas around.

6. You used to draw your own comic strips. Did any of them get published? Do you still keep your hand in?

Only what I published myself. I became more of a writer than artist (I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing) and the drawing gradually dwindled. I hardly do any these days - which means I'm badly out of practise.
But at least I can bring something of the artist to the writing process. Normally I can see each frame in my head - exactly where everyone's standing, what they're doing, how the lighting should be for effect. The whole thing's like a mini-movie.
Which might mean that it's good I haven't had much collaboration with artists - I wouldn't want to get all prima-donna-ish and precious about "my creation"…

7. Who are your favourite artists?

Well, I have to say Quique Alcatena, don't I? Howard Chaykin and Neal Adams were great influences (the time I've wasted trying to draw like Chaykin). When I was small my favourite heroes were the Flash, Green Lantern and Adam Strange - so I have a very soft spot for Gil Kane and Carmine Infantano. I love just about anything Steve Dikto drew - he does weird so easily. Alan Davis has a wonderful style - blending realism with just the right amount of stylisation - plus he draws great women…

8. You pitched a comic story to Vertigo. What was the story and how did the pitch come about?

I've pitched several. The first thing I did after Quique got in contact was write a full script for a 22 page comic plus a synopsis for another three parts, based on the idea that a few of the gods had grown tired of immortality. They were coming to Earth, taking on flesh and blood, and killing each other. I'd wanted to do it with a contemporary setting, but Quique said he much preferred drawing period stuff. So the lead female became Mary Shelley; Percy Shelley, Byron and Dr Polidori were support; and Dr John Dee with Francis Drake and a few others popped in from the 17th century. I sent the first few pages of script, along with synopsis, to Karen Berger at DC/Vertigo and waited.
Well, it got turned down. But I got to meet Karen Berger in Bristol last year and she said what I needed to do was come up with Vertigo takes on some old DC characters. Quique and I bashed a few ideas around - I wanted to do an X-Files take on Challengers Of The Unknown, he was keen to do something with Tomahawk, and I also thought about a Mark Merlin/Cave Carson link-up (there are a few similarities between Mark Merlin and my own Damian Paladin character which I thought I'd could play up).
Of course, they got the boot too. After months of waiting, I finally got hold of Karen Berger who said: "Oh - I thought I'd got back to you." Which is right up there with "Your cheque's in the post" in the Top 10 thinnest excuses list. Or maybe I'm just being bitter and twisted.

9. What's it like dealing with Vertigo?How does it compare with DC Thomson?

They couldn't be more different. DC/Vertigo is a big New York business - and it feels like it. Impersonal and cold. They've got the typical New Yorker rush - they just have to be somewhere else ten minutes ago, so make it good, buddy. And there's no real passion there - comics are just a business.
DC Thomson is a big business too, of course - the biggest publisher in Britain, I believe - but the attitude is a polar opposite. Although the powers that be have ideas about comics that seem to have been set in concrete about the time that The Beano was first published, the editorial staff is more open to ideas. Starblazer was killed off due to poor sales (in turn due to lousy circulation, in my opinion), and the horror project died stillborn because the PTB dithered - uncertain whether to publish as a stand-alone title, in comics or prose format (I ended up writing versions of both), or as a serial in an established title. There were also Starblazer spin-offs planned that I know of - the private eye Mykal R Kayn was to get his own mag, Red Eye (how's that for serendipity?), and a more adult orientated fantasy comic. Both full colour, large format, and aimed at the specialist retail market (Forbidden Planet, et al). Nether got off the planning board because the PTB didn't understand how the world of comics has changed in the past thirty years. An error DC would never make.
You make your choice, I guess. Forward-looking but big and cold; parochial but friendly.

10. You enjoyed great success editing Swords Against the Millennium. Have you ever considered editing a comic book?

I did - for all of an afternoon. I'd been thinking about publishing a graphic novel under the Saladoth Productions imprint (co-publishers of Swords), but Stan Nicholls (who adapted David Gemmell's novels for Random House/Legend's brief foray into graphic novels) soon explained the facts of life. Apparently they got their fingers seriously burned with the Gemmell titles - spent a fortune and didn't see a penny back. Knowing how difficult it is to sell small press anthologies and collections, it looks to me that - unless you've already got a decent distribution deal set up (and consider the Random House/Legend distribution network already in place) - trying it with comic books is very dangerous.

11. You're the graphic novel/comics editor for the British Fantasy Society, do you notice any trends in the type of graphic novels you are sent for review purposes?

Well, I don't get all the TV and movie tie-ins that I used to. But that might be because I don't ask for them because nobody will review them!
One thing I have noticed is the growth in what I call the soft porn output - Fathom, Witchblade, Tomb Raider, all that stuff. It's not hard to spot who these titles are aimed at, with impossibly proportioned women, all either scantily clad or into weird fetish outfits, falling out of every other page. Hell - they even have two-page spreads of these babes (how long before there's a fold out?). It's just as well they're poorly written since the lettering is so small it's obvious no one's meant to actually read them.
I've also been getting quite a haul of stuff from DC's Wildstorm imprint. I enjoy the way the superhero team concept gets subverted in this stuff. And that the titles seem to come with built-in finite lives. Maybe it's not the way forward for all comics, but it makes a change from the usual stories about weight lifters in tights.

12. What do you think of the current wave of comics related films and TV programmes?

Mixed feelings. I loved X-Men and I'm looking forward to the sequel in May. Daredevil was a bit of a disappointment - everyone seemed to be able to run up walls like Spider-Man, even Bullseye, and the effects got less special as the movie went on.
There's a terrible series on Sky TV called Mutant X which my wife loves - but it's awful. Howard Chaykin's involved as Executive Producer - and he should be thoroughly ashamed of himself. The so-called actors all have two expressions: smile and no smile. And there's never any sense of tension - except for the soundtrack freaking out, so we know it's a tense scene - and no one can run, not even the guys, no matter how urgently they have to be elsewhere ASAP.
On the other hand, in the States, Fox has aired just over a dozen episodes of Birds of Prey - a series based on the DC Birds of a Feather title. Set in New Gotham it features Oracle, Huntress and a young Dinah (daughter of Black Canary - but we're not supposed to know that). This Huntress is a Helena Kyle - Selina's daughter - and Bruce Wayne her father. Catwoman is dead - murdered by the Joker - and Batman vanished. So it's up to the girls. I know it's only eye candy, but at least the cast are better actors than the Mutant X crowd, and the series has the same brooding darkness as Tim Burton's two Batman movies - and very similar music. How it got cancelled whilst Mutant X made it into two series I'll never know.

13. Is there any chance of your Damian Paladin stories being adapted to a comic strip?

I'd love it to happen. I've mentioned the idea to Quique - but he's remained diplomatically silent on the subject. Maybe 1930s New York isn't far back enough in time for him.
And I also run the risk of getting sued, since Howard Chaykin's Scorpion and Dominic Fortune heavily influence the character. I can get away with it in text - but once you see Damy, in costume, swinging off a plane above the Chrysler Building, it gets a bit obvious.
Of course, I'd insist on adapting the stories myself…

14. If you could work on any comic (either an established title or your own original idea) what would it be?

Anybody who knows me will know what that answer will be: Batman. But everyone in the civilised world wants to write or draw the Bat, so…
        I'd like to do a Green Lantern comic - the one and only, real Lantern, that is: Hal Jordan. That was the stuff I grew up with, and it would be cool to try and recreate a '60s-type story - but with a 21st century sensibility. The same goes for Adam Strange - though I think Richard Bruning and the Kuberts pretty well said all that could be in the Man of Two Worlds trilogy back in 1990.
        Another crazy idea that popped into my head a few weeks ago - I think this comes under so-obvious-why-didn't-someone-think-of-it-before? - was a Batman/Dr Strange team-up. In fact it's so obvious I'm sure it must have been done - but I haven't seen it.
        And just think how Steve Ditko would draw Batman…

15. Any plans for the future?

Outside world domination and sending Blair and George Dubya to the moon? Comic-wise there's not a lot, other than continue trying with Quique to get something together that somebody out there will like. Maybe somewhere in Europe.
I've just been approached about the possibility of producing a book on how to write graphic novels. It's all very exciting - and to be honest, very scary - and it's early days yet; but we'll see how that goes.
And maybe I'll get another letter from the guys at DC Thomson someday soon, about another project for which they need someone quick (and cheap). See - I'll go for parochial and friendly any day.

COPYRIGHT CREDITS:
THE PALADIN MANDATES: This copyright 1999 The Alchemy Press and Bob Covington
Starblazer NO64 © DC Thomson & Co. Ltd 1982.
Starblazer 204© DC Thomson & Co. Ltd 1987.
Starblazer TRIUNE WARRIOR© DC Thomson & Co. Ltd 1990.