Getting The 411: Simon Spurrier

Simon Spurrier is the hottest young thing in British comics at the moment with a quickly growing reputation based on such excellent and diverse work as Lobster Random, From Grace, The Scrap and his new series in Judge Dredd Megazine The Simping Detective. He agreed to take some time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions for us.

411: Thanks for agreeing to an interview with us Simon. Could you in one phrase introduce yourself to those unfamiliar with you and your work?

Simon: Erk. That’s a horrible thing to ask a guy to do. I don’t know whether to be self-assured and smug or ingratiatingly humble. First choice would probably be “Young, talented and successful”, but the bitter reality is more like “Young, ludicrously-lucky-so-far, still learning.”

By way of introduction: I’ve written various comic series for 2000AD, the Judge Dredd Megazine and Warhammer Monthly Magazine, as well as a couple of novels for BL Publishing. It all seems to be going okay so far.

411: This year has so far seen you primarily work in Judge Dredd Megazine with your Megazine debut in a “Whatever Happen To…?” story. How did you find the experience of writing a comedy one-off?

Simon: The “Whatever Happened to Cookie?” story was great fun, to my enormous surprise. Up until that point I’d always been a bit against using other people’s characters for my own devious means, but when the editor sends out an email inviting pitches for a new series it’s every hack’s duty to respond, goddammit, moral qualms (ha!) or not. I think what Barnesy never realised was going to happen was that the majority of the writers latched onto totally obscure characters – randy alien vermin, aging actors, block-mania participants and so-on: in other words their personal favourites, which weren’t necessarily ones that every fan could recall. That’s certainly what I did, anyway, with the insane nautical robochef from the Oz saga. In my mind it was a chance to pay a little tribute to John and Alan’s inventiveness without stomping all over their major characters – like borrowing an older brother’s least valuable toy for a show-and-tell session at school. I think some readers have been left a little bemused by the obscurity of the characters chosen, but on the whole the series has been great fun.

411: Hot of the heels of that came your Mega City Noir story that featured the debut of Jack Point. Did you have more Mega City Noir stories planned or was Gumshoe going to be your sole contribution to the series?

Simon: Mega City Noir very nearly didn’t happen. The concept has been knocking about in my head for literally years; I wrote the first one when I was about 19 (that’s… [thinks]… four years ago) as an exercise in writing and – back before I realised I was rubbish – in drawing. I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of writing Dredd comics – that would be like borrowing your older brother’s Harley Davidson for a show-and-tell session at school – but Mega City One is a great place to tell stories, and no one had really done the noir thing yet. It just seemed like one of those ideas that seemed destined to work. Cut forward a couple of years to when I was just starting out as a professional (har har), and actually got around to sending the proposal to Alan Barnes – the (then) new editor of the Megazine. It’s an indication of how manic a period it was for the guy that it wasn’t until he was clearing out his email inbox eighteen months later that he saw it, and liked it. I wrote two one-offs to start with, of which Gumshoe was the second. The first one – Goons, Goons, Goons – is very different in tone and subject, and will probably see the light of day at some point. As it happens I was so taken with Jack Point that I concentrated on pushing him instead of doing more one-offs, but I’ll probably get around to pitching more at some point.

411: Whatever Megazine editorial’s original plans for the series, Jack Point was deemed deserving of his own series, The Simping (to dress like a clown) Detective. Your artist on the series Frazer Irving says you took the lead role in getting the solo series. What was it about Jack Point that made you so keen to explore him further?

Simon: It’s something that Frazer and Barnesy have both said before me, but it’s true: he just seemed to step fully-formed off the page. It felt a bit like inventing something really simple, so simple and elegant that you can’t believe no one’s ever come up with it before: a hardboiled detective whose noir-stylee moroseness is constantly undermined by the fact that he dresses like a pillock – it’s gold! Don’t ask me why, but there’s just something about a guy glaring out from beneath the shadows of his trilby, lighting a carrot-shaped cigar and sporting a novelty red nose that screams “COOL” to me. I’m not sure how well I communicated that fact when I pitched the idea, but Alan and Fraze were good enough to humour me and now hopefully feel like it paid-off.

That’s something that happens quite a lot, actually – I get really excited about an idea because I can see it so clearly in my mind, in a way that goes beyond any ability to express in a script. Often, as Frazer said in his own interview with you, it’s not until the artist starts doodling, committing things to paper, that the writer’s initial spark of deranged enthusiasm infects them too. It’s like there’s something incommunicable about the process, which even the most articulate script can’t transfer, which the artist has to discover for themselves. Quite often it never happens, and you get a situation where the artist simply isn’t bothered about what they’re drawing, or maybe when the writer’s faith in their idea was completely unfounded in the first place. With Jack Point I’d like to think Fraze and I are now both equally as attached to the guy, and not just because one of us had to struggle to convince the other.

411: The series starts with the explosive return of Raptar and Point coming up against corrupt Judges, what else do you have in store for the Simping Detective?

Simon: Well, Crystal Blue – that’s the Raptaur story – lasts three episodes, and after that there’s another three-parter called Innocence (A Broad). I won’t give too much away but it’s full of surprises, and the return of a couple of old faces. It’s great being able to populate an essentially noirish story with typical Mega City One madness – muties, fatties, slabwalkers, crazies, etc. There’s even a cameo by a Klegg, which should be cool. That’s what sold the initial Gumshoe story in the first place, incidentally: the unexpected mixture of two different types of story. The real clincher was the scene in which the obligatory femme fatale steps into the hardboiled P.I’s office and turns out to be a lace-wearing fattie. When Genres Collide!

411: You’ve been working a lot in the Dredd-World recently, would you be interested in tackling old Joe himself?

Simon: No.

Well. Not really… Not at the moment… Ish.

Part of that is that I have too much respect for the great work John has done with Dredd: the character he’s become in recent times is so much more complex than “fascist cop in crazy city”, which is how he’s still summarised far too often. I think if I had a go at writing the big man I’d be terrified of screwing it up. He’s very, very easy to get wrong.

The other half of it is that Dredd isn’t the part of his universe I’m most interested in at the moment.

Having said all that, I’ve recently written a prose text piece for the Megazine which stars Dredd, though he’s very much a “presence” rather than a character whose head I feel welcome inside. I harbour suspicions that anyone who tried writing an internal monologue for the guy would end up sounding really hokey – except John, of course. Gordon’s been doing some superb stuff recently as well, so maybe he’s channelling Old Stony Face too. Maybe when I’m as old and embittered as Gordon “Nice idea for a series, Si, but I beat you to it again” Rennie I’ll harbour ambitions in that direction too. (smiley face icon)

411: This is your second collaboration with Frazer Irving after last year’s From Grace. As he usually does he’s adopted a new variant on his trademark style for this new series to a universally positive response. How pleased are you with his treatment of your script?

Simon: Enormously. Fraze is good to work with because he naturally walks the fine line between mindless subservience and wilful disobedience. It’s a funny relationship between the artist and the script – some of them see it as a series of commandments that MUST NOT BE BROKEN, and get themselves into a complete tizzy when the writer has neglected to mention what colour shoes MAN IN CROWD #2 is wearing, or how tall the buildings in the background are. Others regard scripts as a very vague guide, in which some jumped-up keyboard-chimp has DARED to try imposing restrictions upon the purity of their imagination. Most can find the middle ground, and Fraze is one of them. It helps that he and I are mates because it means I can write the scripts in a very informal tone: he doesn’t get arsey when I try and impose my arteestic vision upon him, dahling, and I don’t get arsey when he completely ignores it. Which he doesn’t often do… Well, not if he knows what’s good for him, the scruffy little pencil monkey.

In the case of From Grace, we both approached the same stylistic experimentation from different directions. The story was essentially a mixed-up biopic of a mixed-up character, which jumped back and forth in time like a temporal grasshopper. It occurred to me that it might be neat to assign some sort of defining look to each different part of the character’s life, so readers could tell when we were jumping forwards, or back, or whatever. I mentioned it to Fraze and he said “Well, it’s funny you should mention that …” He’d been thinking along exactly the same lines, and the red-orange-yellow-green-blue-red spectrum thingamyjigger going-on is the result.

411: From Grace was an extremely unusual story for 2000AD with a lack of an empathetic protagonist and an oblique storytelling structure. What was your motivation when approaching writing the story?

Simon: My motivation…? Well, to tell an interesting and original story, primarily, but I wasn’t setting out to change the world or subvert the status quo or anything like that. Sometimes peculiar ideas just occur, which it’s healthy to give a little bit of headspace to. This one started out with the idea of a monster: What makes a character monstrous? What happens when they’re aware of their own monstrosity? Can they escape it? Do they want to? And so on. It was a can of worms which burst-open all over my consciousness and wouldn’t go away until I’d thought it through. Clearly it couldn’t be a typical narrative, because it told an entire life-story rather than just a slice of action. That meant a lot of narrative leaps, which in turn led to a lot of chronological jumping about. I couldn’t see why a story should be restricted to only flashbacks, or only “ten years later…” type time-jumps, and I though I’d see what happened when I mixed it up. Frankly I didn’t seriously expect anyone would touch something so experimental with a barge pole, so it was a real boost when Matt Smith decided to run with it. On the whole I think it went down incredibly well, though if it had been any longer it probably would have eaten itself whole.

411: From Grace, like your debut series The Scrap, was a self-contained story. How does this form of storytelling compare to the more common writing a character that stars in returning adventures?

Simon: It’s just…. Different, really. If I was going to generalise I’d say that it’s all about context: some stories are nothing but vehicles for strong characters, some characters are nothing but weak component pieces of interesting stories. If I’m writing a Lobster Random story I’ll start with a sense of who he is, what he’s capable of, what would challenge him, etc. If, on the other hand, I have an idea that seems to be self contained, it’s all about creating interesting and credible characters to fit into that situation. It all sounds pretty obvious, but it’s very easy to get lazy and write recurring stories that use the most tenuous plots as lame excuses to romp about with pet characters, or to come up with a good idea then not bother to populate it with decent personalities.

The first series of Lobster Random, for example, seemed to go down really well, but if I’m being self-critical I’d suggest I let myself get carried away by how incredibly cool Lob seemed, and ended up indulging him too much. The cranky old bastard just sort of hijacked the plot and the world, so it was all about him, and things like dramatic interaction, universe credibility and secondary characters were crammed into what little space remained. Fingers crossed I’ve learned from that, and Book 2, Tooth and Claw (which I think is in 2000AD in the winter, kids, in all good thrill-merchant stores!) is populated with all manner of weird characters who don’t just show-up then die, and all sorts of odd goings-on.

As to whether I prefer character stories or standalone tales, for me a healthy mix is the best policy. That way I can continue to “grow” the characters I love – which are all different versions of my subconscious, to one degree or another – whilst still being able to exercise my imagination and come up with other, off-the-wall stuff.

411: Also this year has seen the return of the devious duo Bec & Kawl with was in most people’s eyes their best story yet. Why do you think they got such a better reaction this time round?

Simon: Well, there are two answers to that. The first is that it probably was the best story yet – certainly Steve and I have noted a lot of changes, and improvements, in each other’s work. We’ve ironed out things we didn’t like, we’ve included things we thought were funky… We have a lot of fun creating these stories, and it certainly seems that the more we enjoy it, the better the fan reaction.

The second answer is that “the fans” – and by that I mean those individuals to whom the comic is an important enough part of their lives to warrant the writing of feedback to let us know what they’re thinking, gawdblessem – are slowly getting used to them. I think there’s a lot of cynicism from certain vocal elements of the fanbase when something a bit different comes along – particularly comedy stories, which are notorious for dividing the readership down the love/hate line – and a lot of people just took one look at Bec and Kawl and hated it. A lot of them still do, and fair play to them, but a lot of others are slowly growing fond of them, going back and rereading stories with a different set of expectations and perceptions, and discovering to their surprise that they enjoy it. My personal feeling is that the story seems (SEEMS) to appeal to the casual reader, the lapsed reader, the non-obsessives, the first-timers and – ye gods, dare I go so far? – the women, but I’ve had positive and negative feedback from all different types, so serious generalisations are pretty moot. At the end of the day there will always be people who don’t like Bec and Kawl – just as there will always be people who don’t like Sinister Dexter, or Ace Trucking, or Slaine, or whatever – and that’s just part of the benefit of an anthology title: it’s rare that you enjoy reading every story, but I bet different people would disagree on which ones were good or bad. It’s just my hope that people who don’t enjoy it have enjoyed other stuff I’ve done nonetheless, because I’d hate to be a one trick pony.

411: Bec & Kawl are one of the most controversial series in recent 2000AD history with its alternative comedy tone, forthright female lead and near total lack of sci-fi. How does this controversy affect you and your approach to these characters?

Simon: B&K were the first non-one-part stories I ever wrote (I wrote them before I wrote the Scrap, which I think was printed first?), and I was totally unprepared for the feedback process at the time. I never noticed the praise, I read every review and every comment with morbid fascination, and I let the criticism really get to me. I know now that the reaction was mainly positive, but at the time I only had ears for a handful of articulate responses which absolutely slated it. The harshest critics are always the loudest – that’s something I’ve been told over and over again by far more experienced professionals than me since then – but when you’re watching your firstborn baby being mauled in public, and nobody seems to be standing up for it, you start to believe that everyone must feel the same. It got to the point that I was asking Tharg for his thoughts – was it really that big a stinker? Did he really want more? What he made clear, of course, is that he’s an omnipotent alien supereditor, dammit – and if he says it’s going down okay, it damn well is.

Fortunately for me, Steve was on hand to tell me to stop being so bloody oversensitive and to be proud of what we’d created. Which, I am immensely smug to say, I am.

411: Later this year we will see the return of Lobster Random, a character last seen having (off-stage) sex with a robot. What do you have in store for us this time round?

Simon: Oh, the usual… Twisted and cruel torturing, insane characters, promiscuous robots, galactic bounty hunters, monkeys in hats, psuedopodic butlers, messianic rock musicians, and other by-the-by goings on. The story starts about a year after No Gain, No Pain ended, and Lob has recently parted company with his long-term robotic partner Klick under acrimonious circumstances. He’s found steady employment as the chief torturer of an insane evil dictator, as you do, but he’s rapidly growing bored of the whole shebang. Fortunately, it’s not long before yet another shady element of his highly complex and unfeasibly weird past catches up with him…

411: This will be only the second of your stories to return for another run. How difficult do you find reintroducing a series and trying to capture what made it so good first time around as opposed to introducing a new series? Which do you prefer?

Simon: As I said above, for me the recurring stories are all about the character – whether it be an existentially grumpy man with lobster claws, a megalomaniacal adolescent with dreams of world domination, a good natured stoner with a penchant for film geekery or an undercover judge posing as a clown-based Private Eye – and all those characters are quite easy to write, because they’re all little parts of me. Even the judge. The challenge there is to weave a worthy story around the character, to keep them busy, to look credible, to provide twists and surprises, and to keep the action going. If I write a story about any of these characters, it’s because I’ve sat down to consciously work out what’s going to happen, what it’s going to be about, etc, scribbling notes as I go.

The alternative is that the seed of an idea occurs to me whilst daydreaming, or driving, or in the shower, or whatever – and then I’ll let it grow (and keep me awake all night, usually) until it’s fully formed. Those are the ideas that become standalone stories, because they’re completely uninvited and don’t require the presence of Character X or Character Y to work.

411: Lobster Random is a great character with to me a hint of Transmetropolitan’s Spider Jerusalem in him. What influences did you take into his creation?

Simon: He’s just me, really. He’s me after I haven’t slept for three days in a row because my brain won’t shut down properly, with all my crippling good manners removed, and without the ability to feel pain. It’s the same with all the characters I write, really, and I imagine with most characters that any writer writes: you start with something you’re familiar with – in this case that feeling of the whole fragging world pissing you off – and you just twist it around in weird but credible ways.

411: With him, Bec & Kawl and Jack Point you’ve created a trio of very strong characters with potential to be in the pages of 2000AD for years to come. Are such characters the starting point for their (first) stories or are they created in the process of you developing the story?

Simon: They were all starting points, really. Certainly Lobster Random and Bec and Kawl existed as character concepts before they existed as components in a particular story, and Jack Point was the natural product of the Gumshoe one-off, who quickly became strong enough to support more stories in his own right.

At the other end of the scale, characters like Kaith (From Grace) or Soma (The Scrap) arise as a natural requirement of the plot being constructed around them.

411: Carl Critchlow is the artist on Lobster Random and drew rave reviews for his work on the story, a remarkable turnaround for an artist sometimes dismissed as a relic of the “attack of the Bisley-clones” in the nineties. What was your reaction when you began to see where he had taken your character and story?

Simon: I was chuffed, of course. When I first pitched Lob to Matt, and he picked it up as a completely unsubtle balls-out mental-a-thon, I’d been reading Carl’s new Thrud the Barbarian books. He self-publishes them, and for anyone who hasn’t seen them they’re absolutely brilliant – well worth a read. Up until that point the only stuff of Carl’s I’d seen was the Dredd/Batman crossover he did – which was pretty cool, but nothing standout in a time when every man and his dog was using paint. The new Thrud stuff blew my socks off, and I figured it was worth being a bit cheeky and asking Tharg if he’d considered Carl for Lobster Random. I can’t remember the exact reply, but as it turned out Carl had just been doing some Dredds after a long, long time away from 2000AD, so he was in the perfect position to tackle Lob.

It’s just a totally original and refreshing style, so I haven’t got a single complaint. Lob looks as grumpy and surly as intended, his world looks as weird – or weirder – than it was supposed to, and Carl’s grasp of character design is just spot-on. I’ve seen a lot of artwork for Book 2 already, and if anything it’s even better than the first.

411: Lobster Random was in many ways a showcase for many interesting sci-fi concepts yet you’re not a writer that writes sci-fi often even in 2000AD with all your other stories aside from The Scrap failing to fall into that category. What’s your opinion on sci-fi and does its dominance of the comics in this country and America (if you count superheroes) annoy you?

Simon: Does it annoy me? No, not especially. I think it’s important to draw a distinction between the majority of 2000AD material and “true” science fiction. I’d define sci-fi as a genre which uses established and/or credible scientific concepts to create plausible speculative fiction. Sounds a bit pompous, right? Well, that’s because it is. Science fiction, to me, is all about making the science the star, and in my personal opinion that sort of thing is usually quite dull. What you tend to get in 2000AD, an indeed in most supposedly “sci-fi” comics, films and novels, is future fantasy. There have been one or two notable exceptions – the Iain Banks Culture novels spring to mind, though they really do take the scientific speculation to near breaking-point – but on the whole that’s the score. Lobster Random isn’t a science fiction: it’s a crime caper set in the far future, in which insane (but poorly researched and scientifically non-credible) ideas can be added to the mix. That keeps my imagination happy, seems to gratify the majority of the readers, and gives Lob a fun universe in which to romp about. It also means he doesn’t stop every five minutes and proclaim “wait! A quantum paradox! The sub-ether paradigm has fractured! The biomorpphihc resonance crystals are gathering negative ions! And – by the ghost of Einstein – a binary dwarf star is collapsing on the starboard bow!” – which is technobollocks for “it’s all going tits-up, kids!”

So, to answer your original question – does the predominance of sci-fi in comics bother me – no, not at all. Because it’s more about a predominance of the-land-where-anything-goes, which is just funky. What does annoy me is when someone – usually a superhero writer – comes up with a really cool idea and then feels obliged to justify it with a load of really hokey quasi-science, which just cheapens the whole thing. Have you seen Spiderman 2? The baddie’s got f*cking massive metal arms! He rocks! We don’t care about all the “I’m going to harnass the power of the sun itself, bwahahaha….er…. for which I just happen to need these radioactive-proof arms which…. er…. require a neural inhibitor to prevent them from taking over my living braaaaain!” I mean – tenuous or what?

411: Speaking of America; Andy Diggle told me recently over at ADF that you’re the one to watch when it comes to British creators breaking into the American market as you’ve got the “hunger” for it. Fair comment?

Simon: Fair comment. In fact, and without wishing to name drop, I just got back from having some beers with Andy, Fraze and Jock: they’re all off to the San Diego festival, so I have major yankee envy. The hunger part – and this is going to sound like bullshit, but bear with me – comes not from a desire for loadsamoney (though that wouldn’t hurt, of course), but from what I’d call mental constipation. I love 2000AD and the Megazine, and as long as they continue to ask me to work for them I’ll never say no, but it all comes down to very simple mathematics. The weekly publishes four or five stories every week, right? Well there are about ten full time writers, as well as a plethora of half timers, first timers, old timers and guests, each desperate to get their work published. It stands to reason that we can’t all be in print all the time. So I end up with dozens of ideas – which, to go back to the ‘incommunicable enthusiasm’ thing, I find myself getting all excited about – for which there simply isn’t room, need or desire, and they get all clogged-up in my brain.

There’s something refreshingly honest about those few writers who are completely honest about which publishers they’d like to work for: any of them. That’s what it comes down to: as long as I get to exercise my imagination, and as long as I’m able to pay the mortgage by doing-so, I don’t care whose address goes on the invoice. The greater the exposure the better, and the bigger the page rate the even better, but as long as I’m working, and not feeling like I have some sort of gross mental cloggage, I’m happy.

Now if I could just get someone in the US to sit up and notice me – without getting naked at the superbowl or painting the statue of liberty magenta – that’d be a good start.

411: What American comics or indeed comics in general do you read?

Simon: I tend to buy trades rather than read separate books: I haven’t the time or inclination to go poking around in those “let’s see how dingy and porn-shop-esque” places where I might be able to actually get them month by month, and I prefer to sit down with something substantial anyway. I get 2000AD every week, and the Megazine, and all the Games Workshop line: it pays to know what your employers are up to.

411: You’ve had a whirlwind year and are talked about by many including the legendary Alan Grant in such a way as to almost give you the mantle of the “Great Young Hope” of British Comics. How does this make you feel?

Simon: Absolutely freaking terrified. And more than a little overhyped. Er. But very flattered.

Alan’s a tip-top guy and it’s a real boost (to me) for him to have said something like that, but it would be very unhealthy for me to actually start believing it. My ‘successes’ have been pretty low key in the grand scheme of things, and I still feel as though every time I write something it’s a major improvement upon whatever came before. I’m still quite young, is what I’m getting at, and for now the real struggle is to improve more every day, rather than to set myself up as some sort of Prodigal Son. Which, let’s be honest, there are quite a lot of about: seems like you can’t turn around without “The Next Alan Moore!” or “The New Hot Property!” being publicly announced. Given that the majority of them end up crashing into obscurity shortly thereafter, I’m thinking the path to notoriety should be travelled slowly and steadily.
Having said that, I wouldn’t be in the creative business if I wasn’t essentially an egotistical creature, and it is of course an amazing boost to the confidence when your idols even know your name, let alone have pleasant things to say about you.

411: You’ve yet to see any of your 2000AD Group work published in trade form. If you could pick one story or set of stories to fill a TPB what would it be?

Simon: Erk. We-ell… That would totally depend on where said TPBs were being released. Different types of humour work very differently, y’see… I was told a short while ago that there were plans underfoot to have Bec and Kawl trades released in Europe, which could be cool. I guess Lobster Random would be the other obvious choice, though if (IF) I ever get around to writing a sequel/follow on to From Grace, a collected edition of that would be gorgeous.
I don’t know, is the simple answer.

411: It’s been nearly two years since the publication of your debut series The Scrap. Looking back on it how do you feel you’ve grown as a writer?

Simon: Well, my voice has started going all funny and deep, and strange bits of hair have be–… oh… oh, I see.

Well, this might sound a bit weird, but The Scrap is still one of the things I’m most proud of. That’s not to say I don’t feel like I’ve improved since – I’m learning a lot more about the dynamic processes involved in this curious little collaborative medium we call comics – but The Scrap was a real labour of love for me. I plotted that baby with almost religious meticulousness: it’s full of sneaky little Alan Moore stylee gimmicks, segues, panel bleeds and etc etc. I was showing off to myself, really, seeing exactly what I could do, and it always sort of depresses me – in a really weird way – that people don’t enthuse about it as much as they do Lob, or From Grace. Hey, that’s life, but it’s certainly one of my favourites.

At the end of the day, in my mind I feel like I’ve definitely improved since the early days, but I still have a long, long way to go. I’m young enough to still feel a bit immortal, like the world owes me some sort of favour, but at the same time I’m a professional cynic, a hopeless neurotic and an insecure moron; so I’m more than aware that in the eyes of the proverbial “big picture”: sorry Si, you ain’t that hot. Yet.
I’ve never written something I’m completely happy with – which is probably healthy, thinking about it – and at this point I can’t imagine ever stopping struggling to be a better writer.

411: What do you have planned for the rest of the year?

Simon: Finishing this interview before Christmas would be good. Jeeee-zus… if I wasn’t typing I’d have a sore throat by now. Sorry all. Nearly done! This is keeping me away from real work, y’see, and must therefore be seized upon and milked for every last iota of its distracting goodness.

More Lobster Random, more Bec and Kawl, more Jack Point. There’s a Strontium Dog novel out in the Winter called Prophet Margin, which was great fun to write. I’m currently writing another novel for the Games Workshop bods, on which front, by the way, I’m working on a couple of ongoing comics in Warhammer Monthly – one called Daemonifuge (with the outrageously talented Tiernen Trevallion) and one called Plaguebringer (with the outrageously scruffy-looking Frazer Irving). What else?… I’ve got looooads of pitches and ‘secret projects’ on the boil, I’ve just done some bits for the new BBC “Cult” website with Steve Roberts, and at some point I may actually rediscover What It Is To Sleep.

411: Before we finish is there anything else you’d like to say to your fans?

Simon: Hi mum!

Oh, wait, you said fanS? Er…

Hi dad!

411: Thank you for sharing your time with us Simon.

Simon: My pleasure.

You can catch the Simping Detective in Judge Dredd Megazine Issue 222 out July 28th, which is available in all good British Newsagents and worldwide through airmail subscription. Check Previews for American Direct Market Listings.