Monday, March 26, 2007

First among sequels

I'm seriously considering writing sequels to both Hero Killers and Blood Psi. That said, there are three major problems with me doing so.

First, I'd made it clear that both stories were standalones - "no cliffhangers, no continuing characters, no complicated continuity" was my mantra on both books. Second, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to call upon either of the original artists to work on them. Declan Shalvey (Hero Killers) is living the life of a starving artist in Aberdeen and only draws for cold hard cash these days, while Keith Burns (Blood Psi) is about to leave the country to work as an illustrator in Hong Kong. Third, I'm not going to have time to write either sequel this year and next year is already filling up with projects (a second helping of Jacob Marley for a start).

And yet I feel there was something just a little dissatisfying about the way in which both stories were left, and that the characters and situations themselves have a great deal of potential to carry on in some way.

Clearly, I need to think about this a bit more before committing myself one way or the other...

* The interview with Alan Moore last Thursday evening went very well. As expected, it was a marathon chat with me finally wishing him good night and hanging up the phone after an hour and 50 minutes.

Subjects covered included his latest bust-up with DC (not pretty!), Jerusalem (the 1,500-page novel he's currently working on), the magic book he's writing with Steve Moore, his appearance on The Simpsons, and the fact there's finally going to be a Watchmen film (he's far from impressed).

By far the biggest section of the interview concerned the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The Black Dossier is finally seeing the light of day in September (it's Alan's final work for DC/Wildstorm) with the three-issue Century following in the new year from Top Shelf. Century sounds like it's going to be great fun but I suspect it's The Black Dossier that's going to really knock people's socks off – especially if the book's 16-page 3D section turns out as mind-bogglingly brilliant as Alan and artist Kev O'Neill hope it will.

All I have to do now is transcribe it and file a 4,000 word feature based on it by the end of April. Piece of piss...

1 comment:

atrium said...

As an obssesive Alan Moore fan It's great to hear the black dossier is coming out in september. Also, is there anyway u could at least tell us about some interesting tidbits on black dossier from the interview cause its a long time until Tripwire comes out. Like, what the 3-D section is going to be about? I would really appreciate it