Rob Williams

Just back from a week’s break that involved riding bikes through a forest, swimming, fresh air and NO internet. What a wonderful thing. Felt quite liberating. A fog was lifted. Strange thoughts swirled through my mind like “do I really need to be checking my emails every four-point-eight nanoseconds?” Maybe, just maybe, there is a life and a sense of validation beyond this. Mental images emerged of me living the outdoor life, buying lots of lumberjack shirts, befriending an otter. Then, upon returning, I virtually knocked my girlfriend and son over - like George Costanza trying to escape from a fire in a children’s party - in my haste to get back to the the computer to check emails/websites etc.

As Sean Ryder’s Black Grape so wisely and eruditely stated: “It’s great to be straight, yeah”. He was, no doubt, back honking on the crack pipe four minutes after writing said lyric.

Anyway, I see that Dark Horse’s myspace site has a preview of the upcoming Star Wars Rebellion 15, which is the first of the two-part Vector storyline I’ve written. A Travis Charest cover and Dustin Weaver’s bowel-movingly lovely interior pages. It’s out July 30th:

Rebellion #15 Myspace Preview

Complete with gorgeous Tony Harris cover, INDIANA JONES AND THE TOMB OF THE GODS 1 is out in the States today and in the UK tomorrow, no doubt.

I received a copy through Fed-Ex this week, ripped open the package and must admit to having a big old fanboy thrill seeing a story I wrote spelled out in THAT logo across the top of the cover (it’s amazing to think that a font can have that effect). If you’re working in comics, you’re almost certainly a nostalgist with an unhealthy inner child buried not very deep below the surface. I’ve written dialogue for Darth Vader, Judge Dredd, Wolverine and, now, Indy, and every time you get the finished comic in your hands you briefly get this experience where you realise that, while you may be in your mid-to-late-thirties, with all the responsibilities that adulthood entails - mortgage, parenthood etc - the ten-year-old you is still there and can, occasionally, be blurrily glimpsed, loch ness monster photo-style. It’s quite liberating to realise this, actually, before the feeling disappears and you have to fill in the latest tax return or whatever. Pah, being a grown up blows big baby chunks (a line from Two-And-A-Half Men, which seems to be the only thing I watch on TV these days as it’s on Paramount when I sit down to eat in the evenings. It may not exactly be Evelyn Waugh in terms of comic sophistication, but it’s surprisingly funny. Anyway, I digress).

I’ve talked enough about TOMB so won’t bang on about it again… too much. But it looks absolutely great thanks to Steve Scott, and features all the things you’d want from an Indy story - an archeological mystery, a quest, Nazis, international locations, Indy getting the crap beaten out of him. Indy getting the crap beaten out of him… a lot. What more do you want? And he’s not in his mid-sixties in this one! Buy two in case something happens to the first one.

Free comics. Can’t be a bad thing. The opening five pages of INDIANA JONES AND THE TOMB OF THE GODS 1 are now available to read at Newsarama, with issue one being in the shops next week (July 2nd). Take a look:

http://www.newsarama.com/php/multimedia/album.php?gid=521

Don’t you just hate blogs that don’t get updated? I do. Bastards. I click on them day after day, desperately hoping to inject a milli-second flicker of interest into my thoroughly mundane existence (I’m sitting in front of a computer, for God’s sake, what do you expect) and do they momentarily give my brain an excuse to wake up and actually think shiny thoughts? Just for a brief moment before I wander off desperately in the vague direction of Facebook trying to find something else I can shallowly substitute for joy? No, they do not. Because they have not been updated. Bastards.

Anyway, LOW LIFE is currently running in the JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE (Not shouting, just upper caps, calm down). It’s a four-parter called War Without Bloodshed and after Henry Flint and Si Coleby had previously made my undercover Judge in Mega City 1 scripts looks all pretty, Rufus Dayglo takes over here. It’s the first time we’ve worked together and I’ve loved it so far. Rufus is currently drawing the new incarnations of Tank Girl for both IDW and the Dredd Megazine, I think - no, I don’t quite get that either. He’s got a real abrasive energy about his pages, something that suits Aimee Nixon and the thoroughly nasty Low Life down to the ground.

Here’s a page from part 3, featuring everyone’s favourite fascist bastard lawman Judge Dredd in a cameo. Very nice, this. The script called for us not to get a good establishing shot of Dredd, rather to build the man’s charisma and mystery by only seeing parts of him and the reaction of those around him. The script has a line I love, too, about how Dredd’s like the church, he offers nothing and people project themselves onto him as a result.

I’ve been posting a lot about the upcoming Indiana Jones mini and raving about Steve Scott’s artwork there, but I’m in a very happy place with the pages coming through from Dustin Weaver too from our two-issue Star Wars: Rebellion arc of the Vector crossover, which starts in July. Dustin’s not been in the comics biz that long but he’s a future star, I’m convinced. For me an artist needs to have a strong storytelling sensibility, first and foremost (everything on the page has to be clear to the reader), they have to have some innate grasp of dramatic imagery, and then they have to make it all look good. Dustin has all that and more - he’s also able to put insane amounts of detail in the background of panels while not sacrificing the panel’s main storytelling point (that’s the key there - it’s too easy for an artist to go overboard on detail while missing the main point of the panel).

Anyway, Dustin Weaver = groovy. Here’s a few Star Wars: Rebellion pages from the forthcoming Vector arc:

Some new pages came through from Steve Scott and I just thought I’d share…

Opened the latest 2000AD on Saturday morning (Prog 1587) to discover the first part of JUDGE DREDD: OWNERSHIP is in there. This is a fun two-parter I’ve done with Richard Elson. I thought it read really well. It’s still a huge thrill and enormously intimidating to think that I’m writing dialogue for Dredd. I’ve done it a few times now - he cameos in the latest LOW LIFE in the Megazine too - and I kind of take a strong inward breath before I start typing his lines. I think this is part of the reason so many top British writers have struggled with Dredd. We all have such respect for the character and his history that we maybe overthink it and try a little too hard. As with most things in life, if you’re relaxed and at ease the end result tends to be better. Maybe it’s only Wagner who doesn’t feel that weight of history and expectation when he’s writing the big chinned one. Hmmm…

Ten pages of THE TEN-SECONDERS follows the Dredd in Prog 1587, which I discussed in the previous post, so won’t bore you with it again. But that means the first 16 pages of 2000AD this week are by myself. If only I was this prolific all the time, I’d be rich. And less bald. Or maybe not.

The solicits for August have just come out and that includes STAR WARS: REBELLION #16 (the second part of my segment of the VECTOR crossover) and INDIANA JONES AND THE TOMB OF THE GODS #3. No cover for that from Tony Harris yet, but the Rebellion one is up, drawn by Dan Scott:

Thought I’d also plug a few friends’ comics that are out at the moment that you should be buying.

There’s Paul Cornell’s Captain Britain and MI:13 (lucky sod, I’d have killed to have written this. I did kill, but they still wouldn’t let me write it). Paul, as well as being a lovely guy, is rapidly turning into one of my favourite writers, and this is loads of fun:

http://www.marvel.com/catalog/?id=8698

Trev Hairsine has a one-off out at the moment - X-Men: Origins: Colossus. Trev and I did Cla$$war back in the stone age, of course. He’s ludicrusly talented and he draws some of the best military tech around. Check out Colossus vs. a Russian Hind helicopter in this. Lovely:

http://www.marvel.com/catalog/?id=8730

Chris Weston’s The Twelve is still running along nicely, and I’m enjoying it each month. Chris draws the most absurd amount of detail in his pages. You get your money’s worth with a Chris Weston comic.

http://www.marvel.com/catalog/?id=8730

Seems to me that the majority of the comics world pretty much ignores what’s printed each week in 2000AD (the British weekly sci-fi anthology, in case you’re unaware). And, considering the fact that such notables as Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Brian Bolland, Sean Phillips, Frank Quitely etc etc all have worked for 2000AD over the years, that strikes me as strange.

So, I thought I’d sing up a little about Ben Oliver’s current work on THE TEN-SECONDERS: MAKE. BELIEVE, currently running in 2000AD and written by myself. Ben’s worked on high-profile gigs like Ultimate X-Men and The Authority in the past, and is one of the best around. But still, knowing all that, I’m still taken aback by how much I’m enjoying his pages on this every week. We started Make. Believe with Dom Reardon on art and, as much as I love Dom’s work on Caballistics Inc (which is wonderful, he’s a great artist and hopefully we can work on something different together), I think, in retrospect, he didn’t really suit the style of my scripts for Ten-Seconders, which is much more real-world, Ultimates-style. Ben’s come on board mid-series and the whole feel of the story has shifted into another gear.

Here’s a few of Ben’s pages:

It’s beautiful work.

Another Bristol con over, another sense of post-enjoyment blues to deal with. It’s such a weird experience. For an entire weekend you walk two feet, bump into someone you know and haven’t seen for six months and have a chat, turn a corner, meet someone else, do the same. Repeat four hundred times. I find, on the Monday following conventions, I’m checking my emails every 30 seconds or so trying to somehow maintain the same level of social interaction. This is stupid behavior, I know.

As ever, I really enjoyed myself over the weekend. Great to spend time with friends. Fun to be able to pretty much spend the entire weekend in a hotel bar drinking far too much to be healthy surrounded by people whose company you thoroughly enjoy and share a passionate interest with.

Highlights? Al Ewing’s method-acting turn as The Mighty Tharg on the best 2000AD panel ever. A really cool meal spent in a rather swish (does anyone say that any more?) restaurant - The River Station in Bristol, highly recommended - with Trev Hairsine, Laurence Campbell and Eddie Berganza, who I met for the first time and who was good company. As much as I enjoy hanging out in the con bar it’s good to occasionally escape.

As for the con hall itself, I spent remarkably little time there. Too crowded for me. I missed my signing on the Saturday due to unforeseen circumstances, so if you came looking for me, apologies for that. I also had to duck out of my Sunday slot because of a mini-family emergency, so again, sorry if I missed you.

And as for the Dark Horse panel on the Sunday? Lord knows what happened there. I was looking forward to it but apparently others on the panel requested that it be cancelled. So blame others.

On the INDIANA JONES AND THE TOMB OF THE GODS front, I saw a load of new Steve Scott pages this morning. This book’s going to look great.

And, finally, here’s me taking some minor script notes from 2000AD’s The Mighty Tharg at Bristol.

Another Indy interview with me about INDIANA JONES AND THE TOMB OF THE GODS at CBR:

www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=16274

Also, I’ll be at the Bristol Comics Expo next weekend - May 10th and 11th. It’s always fun, although after attending New York just a few weeks back I suspect it may feel a little like a village fete this year. Here’s where I’ll be:

Saturday

11am-12 - 2000AD Panel, Park Room, Ramada

4-5pm - Signing

Sunday

1-2pm - Signing

3-4pm - Dark Horse Comics Panel, Park Room, Ramada