Rob Williams

The first episode of the Dirty Frank-starring eight parter will be appearing in this week’s 2000AD and I’m currently feeling very positive about this series. The main reason being that it’s drawn by D’Isreali, who I’ve been a fan of for some time and, now having worked with him, I’m even more appreciative of his abilities. I’ve often said that an artist can make a script much better than it actually is or a lot worse than it actually is. D’Isreali is, fortunately, one of the former models. The amount of detail he puts in the background of panels – wondrous depictions of Mega City 1 architecture here – is just amazing. What’s even more impressive though is the fact that the detail doesn’t come at the expense of the storytelling. His narrative sense is spot on. Great ‘performances’ from his characters too, which is an absolute godsend for a comedy script, which is what a Dirty Frank story is…

Well, mainly a comedy strip anyway. There’s got to be a dramatic spine to the silliness. As much fun as Frank is I’d been thinking for a while that there would have to come a cut-off point for Justice Department, where his eccentricity become too much for them to deal with. He’s Wally Squad (an undercover Judge), so some cookiness is expected. But, at what point would Frank’s ‘madness’ push them to pull the plug on him? Also, while wanting to tell a funny Frank tale, I wanted to give some kind of idea of what makes him tick, so that this wasn’t just another ‘whacky’ Frank caper. So, silly and heavy and action packed all at the same time. Hmmm…

And the thing about writing for D’Isreali was, I had complete confidence that he could depict my scripts no matter how surreal and big I made them, and this pushed me to keep thinking ‘how can I make this more spectacular?’ He was, no doubt, cursing me as my scripts would arrive asking him to draw the increasingly bizarre, although I suspect, knowing his work, that he probably thrives on this (if he attempts to beat me next time I see him at a con, or just blows hateful, disdainful rasberries at me from across the hall, I will have been proved incorrect) . But I think that’s possibly a healthy thing for a writer, to keep thinking throughout the process “just how far can I push this?” (or just how much work can I get an artist to do? Heh. It’s all for the good of the story, you know.) And this being Frank’s world, he doesn’t really have many limitations when it comes to his imagination, which is also kind of what the story’s about.