Rob Williams

Christmas is done then and so we hurtle into the nihilistic nothingness of that weird week between Boxing Day and New Year where no one has a bloody clue what the hell’s going on and society crumbles as a result. Alien invaders take note, if you want to attack, this is the time to do it, when we’re all stuffed on Chrimbo dinners, port and single malt and Morecombe And Wise repeats. You will be greeted with only a disinterested, half drunk, vaguely overweight ‘whu?’. Open fire. You’ll be doing us a favour.

With such joviality in mind, it seems that the CLA$$WAR collected hardback edition will be in January’s Previews and is set for a March/April release. Extremely lovely cover with funky logo below.

What else happened? INDIANA JONES AND THE TOMB OF THE GODS #3 came out on Christmas Eve. You know, that day when everyone’s solely concerned with new comic releases above all else? Comics Bulletin noticed, however, and gave us a 5 out of 5 review, which is extremely nice. I don’t think I’ve had a 5 out of 5 before. My self-loathing even receded for a second and I felt oddly good about myself… briefly. It didn’t last of course. Like a giant tortoise poking its head out of its shell to have a look around to see if hibernation time has finished only to find that global warming has gone haywire and he’s in the middle of a blizzard, it quickly thought ‘bugger this’ and tucked its way back in the warm.

I’ve just compared my level of self loathing to a blizzard. That can’t be good. Anyway, Comics Bulletin review of Indy here:

http://www.comicsbulletin.com/reviews/123040784792655.htm

Paul Cornell, writer of TV’s Doctor Who and the enormously enjoyable Captain Britain And MI:13 for Marvel, also picked out Indy and The Big Tomb Of The Doodah as one of his ‘Obscure Best Of The Year’ picks. That was very kind of him:

http://paulcornell.blogspot.com/2008/12/12-blogs-5-best-of-year.html

Which partly inspired me to think that I should pick out my own Top Ten of 2008. Completely random things that I saw/read/heard/experienced in the past 12 months that were completely wonderful. That’ll follow after I do some work on the latest DIRTY FRANK script. Honest.

It took Lucas, Spielberg and Ford 18 years to come up with Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. Now, it may appear that we at INDIANA JONES AND THE TOMB OF THE GODS are attempting to break that record and go for the big 19, such are the delays between issues, but I’m happy to report that this is not the case. Issue three should, I believe, be in comic shops next week – December 17th – and nothing says Christmas like a whip-wielding archeologist being near-eaten by a plethora of ravenous sharks, I think we can all agree.

Issue Four should (keep it all crossed) be following close behind in January. We’ll see. What has recently emerged though, like dusty artefacts from a long forgotten crypt – which, incidentally, is where Indiana Jones comics are produced, of course, such is Dark Horse’s desire for authenticity. The artists get thrown in there with some Bristol board, a few pens and 2000 snakes and they have to finish the pages before the torches go out (future note to editors, if this had actually happened maybe the book may have shipped on time) – are these images from issue four. The cover is by Steve Scott and the double page internal spread is by our new artist for issue four, Bart Sears. I used to read Bart’s work on Justice League Europe back in the ’80s so it’s both odd and cool to have him drawing one of my scripts.

Apologies for the delay since my last post. After regular updates I’ve fallen back into bad habits due to workload. And, for those I promised I’d somehow put a script of mine up on the site, double apologies. Still got to work out how to do that one. An I.T. expert I am not.

So, what’s happened since last time I was on here? Obama won, for which we sing praises. An abundance of good will and common sense seemed to float around the globe and in an instant – poof – Bush was gone to be replaced by someone who, it seems, can restore a little faith and maybe not play to the lowest common denominator every time (we’ll see). Taking that into consideration, it seems a little odd to be putting two brand new CLA$$WAR pages up here. The Obama win has, temporarily at least, done away with the whole neocon movement of Cheney, Wolfowitz and the rest of their New American Century hateful cohorts, and that was pretty much at the heart of what Cla$$war was clumsily railing against back in 2001, I suppose. An Obama Presidency probably makes Cla$$war seem very ‘of its time’ – issue one was written prior to the 9/11 attacks, for instance. It would be difficult to write something so cynical about the American political system now, certainly, as I, along with many others, currently feel very positive about what they’ve just done. Very strange.

Not that any of this takes away from how gorgeous these NEW Trev Hairsine Cla$$war pages are. Trev’s actually inked these himself, unlike his Marvel work of recent years, and I think it’s obvious the difference that makes. It’s very nice indeed to have him back drawing one of my scripts. It may be seven years or so since he last drew Cla$$war but, weirdly, when these pages were dropping in my inbox, it felt like not much had changed. And thanks to Len O’Grady too for coming back onboard as colourist.

These will be appearing in the hardcover Cla$$war collected edition, coming from Com.X some time in the not-too-distant. It’s a new eight page story that I actually wrote back in ’01 for a planned Issue Zero Wizard Magazine giveaway that never came off. Eddie at Com.X suggested digging it out for the new collection. I hadn’t looked at it for years and suspected it would read horribly but I was pleased to find it worked really well. I did a few tiny edits and thought we’d be including it as a ‘script only’ extra. Eddie then suggested getting Trev to draw it and, fortunately, he agreed. Deleted scenes, these. All very DVD extras. There should be a bundle of other cool stuff on the hardcover edition including poster images by the likes of Mick McMahon and Ben Oliver, my original script for issue one (I think) – my first ever comic script, read it and laugh at my blundering niavity – and retrospective introductions by all concerned. And a new intro kindly given to us by Andy Diggle (Thunderbolts).

Anyway, I’ll be back soon to show off some of the amazing new artwork from the latest LOW LIFE story, CREATION, appearing soon in 2000AD, and I’ll be talking about who the new artist is.