It’s all very well me rattling on every month passing on my opinion on this that and the other. But I suppose that’s the nature of column writing and the reason you are reading this now. However being able to present a story direct from the people involved always feels so much more rewarding. When those people are involved in the SF Gateway and the SF Encyclopedia, both game changing new initiatives in digital science fiction, it is quite a thrill for me to be able to present their words.

Graham Sleight has been writing about science fiction and fantasy since 2000. As well as writing his own books he edits the prestigious journal Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, writes a regular column for Locus and pens introductions for Gollancz’s SF Masterworks series. In addition he talks at conferences and conventions, appears in the media and has judged the Clarke Award. However his most recent challenge has been as an editor of the third edition of the SF Gateway where he has been part of the team who already have 3.2 million words live.

Let’s start by asking how you became involved in the SF Encyclopedia?

I’ve been writing about science fiction and fantasy since about 2000, and John Clute (SFE editor) has been very encouraging to me almost from the beginning. John, David Langford, and Peter Nicholls announced the new edition at the 2005 Worldcon in Glasgow, and I was pretty quickly drawn into writing the Doctor Who entries. But as things went on, my role ended up getting bigger. I started doing some author entries that John passed on and then, when we got the contract offer from Gollancz early this year, I found myself helping on that side too. Together with the SFE’s agent, Robert Kirby, we hammered out a contract, and I then worked with Darren Nash of Gollancz on specifying the website – which we put together in just three months or so. So my job is now to get the website doing everything that users need, and to help John and David complete the content.

That obviously includes the approximate 3.2 million words that are live on your beta launch. How many do you think you are responsible for and how has the work been carved up? Have you been given any specialist areas?

I keep meaning to count up the number of words I’ve written, but it’s not as straightforward as a word-count. Lots of entries are jointly written – for instance, I updated the Doctor Who entry but didn’t do much to what three other contributors had written about the classic series. My best guess is that I’ve written tens of thousands of words, mostly in the author and tv entry sections.

Graham Sleight praying for science fiction respite.

So how difficult has it been planning the format, ensuring everything is covered and establishing house style? With the amount of content you are working with the scope appears enormous.

Well, we inherited a lot of good practice from the previous edition about attributions for books, films, and the like. The biggest single change this edition is that all author entries carry a full bibliographic checklist. Most of those have been done by John, who maintains his own bibliographic database of sf and fantasy, and who established the house style there. David has done an enormous amount of backroom work establishing and maintaining the HTML file that’s the root version of the whole thing. So that aspect has gone pretty smoothly.

Starburst Magazine moves across genres and it is hard to define the points where one ends and another starts. In your opinion where does the line between science fiction, fantasy and horror cross and was it hard to keep within your science fiction boundary?

It’s impossible to answer this definitively – academics can spend their entire careers arguing about definitions of science fiction. The Encyclopedia tries to take a pretty broad view of the genre – if a case can be made that a given work is science fiction, we’ll probably cover it. But my personal view, though, is that what distinguishes it is some kind of extrapolation – either from the present day or (if it’s alternate history) from some point in the past. But it’s impossible to deny that genre boundaries are getting more and more blurred – look at the careers of people like China Mieville, Michael Chabon, or Kelly Link.

There has been criticism from some quarters of the decision to go completely digital with this edition. What are your thoughts on this and as a respected writer, editor and critic do you consider the printed page a dying form?

Partly, this is a question of practicality. The 1993 edition was about as big as you could physically make a single-volume book; this is about 3 or 4 times the size. We’d have to charge – at a guess – £200-300 for a book version. More than that, though, the cross reference links have always been central to how the SFE works. We try to make the links as much a part of the meaning of an entry as the words themselves. So, in a sense, a version of the SFE where each entry is a separate webpage and each link is a hyperlink – that version, which we have now, is the version we’ve been heading towards since 1979. About the future of print: well, everyone in publishing is trying to figure this out, and a lot of them are a lot smarter than me. My bet, for what it’s worth, is that print books will become a smaller niche but will still remain a form that people want to use. And if people want to pay us for print versions of the SFE, we’re more than happy to talk about that…

The original Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

With that in mind how can we expect to see the SF Encyclopedia evolve over time?

Well, the first change – as we’ve said in various places – is that the partial text we’ve got online at the moment will be slowly completed. Right now, we’re at about 3.3m words; we’re guessing we’ll have a final text of about 4 – 4.5m. That’ll be by the end of 2012. After that, we’ll continue updating entries as new books, films and so on come out. Also, because as I said earlier we did the website in a bit of a rush, we want to spend some time refining it so it’s as responsive to users’ needs as possible. I’m incredibly conscious that we have a very wide range of users – fans, academics, editors, publishers, reviewers, people trying to settle arguments about pub quizzes. Ideally, we want to provide a site that addresses all their needs. Right now, the biggest priority is making sure that the search function returns results that are as refined as possible.

Considering the range of evolotion and the opportunity a digital model allows what is the business model of the SF Encyclopedia? Clearly many people have worked hard on the project and just the server costs to host the site will be substantial, will the site eventually be subscription based?

Gollancz are paying us a fixed license fee, and have covered the development of the website. Their rationale is that the SFE should draw people to their linked e-book site, the SF Gateway. From our point of view, Gollancz’s support is very generous but probably not enough to sustain us in the longer term. So once we get the content of the SFE complete, we’re going to start looking at various ways to boost that income – iPhone/Android apps, donations if people would like, maybe discreet advertising or some premium features you have to subscribe to see. But our core principle is that the text of the SFE should remain free – certainly for as long as we’re with Gollancz, and hopefully in any other possible futures.

What next for you, this must have taken a considerable amount of your time, do you have any upcoming projects that we can look forward to?

Getting the SFE finished – and finished well – is a big project, as you can imagine. (And I have a day-job as well, and one that I enjoy.) So I haven’t written as much other stuff as I’d like recently. But I have just delivered a book on monsters in Doctor Who, which should be published in 2012 by I B Tauris; and I’m hoping to collect the reviews and essays I’ve been writing over the last decade into a couple of books. After that, I plan to sleep for five years, or possibly start thinking about an online Encyclopedia of Fantasy. It could go either way.

Graham, many thanks for your time and I’m sure I speak for Starburst readers when I congratulate you on the SFE and wish you all the very best for the future.

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The SF Gateway was conceived by Orion’s Group Publisher and Deputy CEO, Malcolm Edwards. It was conceived as a way to make available again, the huge number of classic SF & Fantasy books that had drifted out of print over the decades. Imagine the ideal specialist bookshop; it stocks not just the highlights from your favourite authors’ careers, but every book they’ve ever written – and the people who run the shop have an encyclopaedic knowledge of SF (thanks to the relationship with the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction).

The Science Fiction Gateway logo.

Darren Nash is Australian, but having lived here since 1998, has never tended bar in Shepherd’s Bush or Earl’s Court. He is a long-time science fiction fan who spent much his entire working life in publishing. Before joining Gollancz he was editorial director of Orbit (the UK’s second oldest SF & Fantasy imprint) and before that editor of Simon & Schuster’s Earthlight SF & Fantasy imprint. He has kindly agreed to an interview for Starburst Magazine to tell us a little more about the SF Gateway.

Darren Nash waits for the inquisition to start.

Where are you right now with the SF Gateway, how many books do you have live and what type of timescale and numbers are you looking at over time?

The SF Gateway launched with about 800 eBooks and we’ve published another 75 or so since. There are another 80 in the system, which will publish a couple of weeks before Xmas, and we anticipate ending 2011 with in excess of 1,000 eBooks. The goal is to get to 5,000 titles by 2015.

That is a huge amount of books and you’ve only been live for a short while now, how are sales?

So far, sales have been very encouraging. Given that the USP of the project is breadth more than the traditional publishing model of concentrating on a small number of high profile titles, we’ve been pleased with the sales at this very early stage.

But how difficult has it been negotiating the rights for this number of digital books or are all of the books you are selling free of copyright?

Almost all of our books are still in copyright, so we’re negotiating rights with authors or the estates and/or agents, and paying an advance and royalty. The degree of difficulty has run the gamut from “This is wonderful, we can’t believe no one’s thought of this before” to “we’re deeply suspicious of the whole eBook thing, so no thank you”. I’m very pleased to say, though, that the vast majority of responses have been much closer to the former than the latter.

    

Tea From An Empty Cup, available from SF Gateway.

Some would say that this is a cynical way of Orion dipping their toe in the digital water without actually taking a risk on an author or much money. Is this the case are you simply testing the water for things to come?

How dare you, sir?! I demand satisfaction. Pistols at dawn! Or – to take a more sedate approach – no one who had seen our P&Ls would make the mistake of saying this is a cheap way of testing the water! A great deal of time, effort and money has gone into the SF Gateway – and will continue to be invested; believe me, the risk is very “actual”. So no, we’re not testing the waters. If anything, I guess we’re staking a claim. Gollancz has long been the SF imprint most concerned with the heritage of science fiction – in the UK at least – and many of the SF Gateway authors were first published by Gollancz, so in many ways, we’re correcting for the economics of print publishing that allowed some very, very good books and authors to go out of print. Our SF and Fantasy Masterworks series  are an attempt to keep the major works of the genre in print, and we see the SF Gateway as being the logical extension of that – we want to keep *everything* available. If we can return the great works of SF and Fantasy to availability and introduce them to a generation of new readers, while at the same time making ourselves synonymous with classic SF and have the whole project generate enough income to be a viable business proposition, that seems to me to be a situation that benefits everybody.

That is very good to here and comes as positive news for the science fiction reader. Speaking of opportunities, with the alleged tipping coming in 2020 when digital sales could outweigh physical book sales (see recent Bookseller report) would you agree that the paper book is dead and if not what does the future hold for paper?

Too early to tell. It’s hard enough anticipating the next 12 months, let alone the next 9 years. If somebody tells me they know what the publishing industry is going to look like in 2020, I’m inclined to walk quickly away before they try to sell me some cheap real estate on the Moon!

The Masterworks series of books.

How does the purchase link on your site work and are there plans for you to sell books directly?

The purchase link directs you to retailers depending on what country the site detects your IP address as coming from. UK readers should have a choice of links to Amazon.co.uk, Apple’s iBooks store, Kobo, The Hive (a network of independent booksellers), Waterstones and WHSmith. So the site is already country specific, and as we roll out future updates and improvements, we will improve the browsing experience for all countries. There are, however, no plans to sell directly at the moment.

What is your relationship with SF Encyclopedia and how does each brand benefit from the link?

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (SFE) is the ultimate authority on all aspects of Science Fiction. The current online iteration is the third edition of the work; the previous two editions both won Hugo Awards in the Non-Fiction category. Gollancz has facilitated and financed the development of the SFE website and in return the SFE provides links to the SF Gateway site whenever SF Gateway titles are referenced in SFE entries. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction remains editorially independent and neither SF Gateway nor Gollancz exert any influence over how authors or books are covered in the SFE.

Do you have any particular recommendations from your current SF Gateway list and do you have a burning desire to see a book added to the list (perhaps your favourite)?

What excites me more than anything is the scope of the list. It’s not particular favourites, but the opportunity to discover books I would previously have had to scour dozens of second-hand bookshops to find. Of course, I do have a few favourites, but if you don’t mind I’ll keep them to myself.

But what shaped the chap who now brings us SF Gateway?

I cut my teeth on what I like to call good old-fashioned SF – Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, John Wyndham, the sorts of stand-alone big idea books that we used to get a lot more of before the market started to demand series fiction – and disdained Fantasy completely until I read The Lord of the Rings, which blew me away with its epic sweep and history. From then on I read both SF and Fantasy, but very quickly moved away from generic post-Tolkien Fantasy, reading a lot of Michael Moorcock, some Ursula Le Guin, Robert Holdstock. That’s far from an exhaustive list, of course. You could add the likes of Stand on Zanzibar, Dune, Neuromancer, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vor books, Burroughs’ Martian Tales, The Mists of Avalon – the list goes on.

I’d say my tastes from there have progressed evolutionarily rather revolutionary: I still prefer my fantasy at the high end – not necessarily or solely “literary” but certainly I want more than a simple Good vs Evil quest fantasy; SF-wise I have a taste for space opera that won’t go away (I’m happy to say) and I still like High Concept SF and wish there was more of it. I dabble in urban fantasy but much more at the supernatural noir end than the paranormal romance end. In fact 100% at the noir end!

Dune, one of Darren’s favourite books.

I’m sure the readers of Starburst Magazine will be taking full advantage of the SF Gateway. It could certainly change the landscape of science fiction literature, encouraging classic reads and getting more people into the genre. Hearty congratulations.

Useful websites and Twitter accounts:

Darren Nash – @thenashmeister

SF Encyclopedia – @SFEncyclopedia

The SF Gateway – @SFGateway

Gollancz – @Gollancz

SF Gateway

SF Encyclopedia

In my opinion both the SF Gateway and the SFE are game-changers in the science fiction genre. This new digital age affords us great innovation and both offers take a very contemporary process and updates them. I feel the slight criticism levelled at them is unfounded and rather ridiculous. If we don’t innovate we stand still. With ambitious people like Darren and Graham pushing boundaries and working hard to bring us range, service, information, diversity and creativity we have much to be thankful for.

Until next time.

FONASHEK!

@kristhescript

[email protected]

Kris Griffin finds himself in the realm of Kidderminster, UK. He writes, shoots and scores (on occasion). He loves Doctor Who, his Kindle, intelligent movies, Twitter, and Richard Burton. He can normally be found dancing the night away, with The Mavericks no less, or working the day job that pays the bills.

Starburst and Star Wars share a lot of DNA. We were the first magazine in the UK to cover the film way back in 1977 and with our passion for George Lucas’ creation as strong as ever all these years on, it was with great excitement that we accepted an invite from leading game developers BioWare and EA to preview their much-anticipated MMO The Old Republic.

We’ll be featuring a full review of the game very soon (if we ever hear from our reviewer again!), but until then here’s our interview with some of the wonderful team behind Star Wars: The Old Republic – Writing Director Aniel Erickson, Lead Technical Designer Georg Zoeller and Associate Lead Designer Emmanuel Lusinchi…

Starburst: For those not familiar with the ‘Extended Universe’ mythology, where does the game take place in terms of the movie saga?

Aniel Erickson: SWTOR takes place 3000 years before the events of the movies and 300 years or so after the original Knights of the Old Republic games.

SB: Is there a specific reason you decided to set it in this particular time period as opposed to, say, the ‘New Hope’ era?

AE: Setting the game in The Old Republic gives us the freedom to tell new stories, do crazy things and really change the galaxy. Most importantly it makes the players into the stars and heroes of the time period. We can’t all be Luke Skywalker if we’re in the New Hope time period and anything less is going to feel like a letdown.

SB: Could future expansions lead onto, or up to that era?

AE: Doubtful. We want people to be able to keep characters for a long time, but 3000 years of content would really start to age people! 

SB: How much involvement did LucasFilm have with the project? Did you have freedom to do as you pleased or did everything have to be vetted?

AE: Everything is vetted through LucasFilm but there were few issues and I can’t remember a single veto. We’re creating a love letter to Star Wars with SWTOR so it’s pretty easy to stay within the boundaries LucasFilm wants products in. 

SB: So there weren’t any aspects of the Star Wars universe that were off limits?

AE: There was very little that was out of bounds. I remember we explored the idea of having Dagobah in the game and we learned you can’t explain the tree or most of the interesting parts of the planet so we decided to leave it out for now. LucasFilm is keeping a few things back for itself.

SB: Has there been any reaction from George Lucas himself?

AE: George has seen the game and given positive feedback. He obviously has final say on all the Star Wars products.

SB: Crafting – what is the system like? Could you run down how it works, are player made items on par loot drops?

Emmanuel Lusinchi: Crafting relies heavily on the player’s companions. While the player is able to collect crafting material from the world he can also have his companions perform a number of crafting-related tasks for him using the player’s personal spaceship as a kind of factory or base of operation. For example, the player might be salvaging metal from a droid he just destroyed while also instructing one of his companions to start the production of a number of blasters… and also sending another of his companions on a mission to locate rare materials. As a result, the player can enjoy a deep and extensive crafting system without breaking the pace of his adventuring or being stuck in one place. Now, in term of how valuable crafted items are in the game, it depends on how dedicated the player is to crafting. Any player can craft decent items on par with loot that typically would be found during solo questing… but that’s only the starting point. A crafter can improve on each crafting recipe and discover higher quality variations. Through this process, many crafters can produce items comparable to (and sometimes better than) any other items in the game.

SB: Can you expand a bit on PVE? Specifically the smaller dungeons first. How many players are they designed for and do they use the ‘Holy Trinity’ of tank, healer, DPS?

Georg Zoeller: Flashpoints are our form of instanced group content. They feature a strong narrative, often with branching choices and usually take between 30 and 45 minutes to complete. Flashpoints are designed for a group of four players but groups that find themselves short a player may substitute the empty slot with one of their character’s companions, autonomous AI followers that are an integral part of Star Wars: The Old Republic’s gameplay.

Starting at level 10, we have one of these Flashpoints available roughly every five levels. The earlier ones don’t require a specific party makeup or roles, but as the game progresses, the presence of healer or tank roles becomes more important to succeed.

At maximum level, players can revisit every flashpoint in the game in ‘Hard Mode’, a level 50 version of the Flashpoint designed to challenge groups of seasoned players.

SB: Much has been made of the storytelling in KotOR – how is one player’s story advanced in a group scenario such as a dungeon?

GZ: SWTOR features a multiplayer dialog system which puts all group members into cinematic conversation with the NPC and offers everyone the option to choose a response or action. The system then utilizes dice rolls to determine who gets to act.

For those not fond of words, we offer the option to skip through the conversation using the spacebar key, just like any other BioWare game.

Some Flashpoints offer a different kind of player choice: Crafting skills, such as Slicing or BioChem can be used to unlock secret corridors or even hack droids to change the course of the action or provide situational benefits to the group.

SB: Moving onto endgame PvE. What are your raids shaping up like?

GZ: Operations, our version of Raids, are designed for two group sizes: 8 and 16 people. We also have three distinct difficulty modes for the operations: Normal, Hard and Nightmare mode.

SB: Are the encounters tank and spank or can we expect a few surprises?

GZ: At launch, the game has two Operations available to players and we will be expanding this type of content as part of ongoing updates post launch.

In terms of encounter design, just like in Flashpoints, you can expect to see a wide variety of combat mechanics on Bosses, along with other interesting contraptions to keep the players on their toes.

SB: Staying with PvE – solo wise we know that the story arc in the game is a huge driving force behind a player’s progress, how rigidly will we have to stick to the narrative? Is there freedom for players to ‘do their own thing’?

GZ: Following the unique story for your class is definitely encouraged. Important milestones such as assembling your first lightsaber, getting your ship and unlocking new companions happen through the course of that story.

That said, the game doesn’t force you stick to the story all the time. There’s a lot of room for progress through other means (including participation in our PvP Warzones, flying missions in our space combat minigame or running flashpoints with your friends).

And for those that really don’t like to play solo, we allow your group members to join your unique story instances, act as spectators in your cutscenes and dialogs and support you in the combat.

SB: What are the player’s motivation to PvP both in a group and solo sense? Are there any incentives for world PvP?

GZ: You’re going to be more successful in a group, period. Playing as a lone wolf is possible, but requires evading groups of enemies and certain class combinations, such as healer/tank combos will be very hard to crack alone.

In addition to our instanced Warzones and the free form Open World PvP possible on all the contested planets, SWTOR launches with two special Open World PvP areas: 

Outlaws Den – a free-for-all PvP area on the planet Tatooine where everyone is able to attack any player who is not part of their group – regardless of faction. The area contains a number of special vendors…

The Battle of Illum – a massive battlefield on the planet Ilum where the two factions fight for supremacy by destroying enemy walkers, gun batteries and bases. Completing objectives grants PvP commendation tokens that can be turned in for powerful rewards.

SB: How will you avoid the age-old issue of balance, in terms of PvE vs PvP?

GZ: Striking PvE vs. PvP balance is challenging but not impossible to achieve if you plan for it from the beginning rather than designing one of the systems as an afterthought.

You address it through hard work and constant iteration. You can’t really ‘avoid’ balance when making a game like this, you have to tackle it head on and deal with it. At this point, we’ve already had more than full a year of testing on the game, with hundreds of thousands of testers over the course of that period. We’re also heavily invested into analytics, which gives us a great bird’s eye view of the game balance in general.

SB: What transport can we expect – both mounts and from flightpaths etc?

GZ: For flight path, the mode of transportation really depends on the planet you are visiting. While short distances are often bridged by traditional speeder bikes or landspeeder type vehicles, you can also find shuttle connections.

On special areas such as the Republic and Imperial Fleet hubs, you are usually transported via shuttle between the different capital ships on the fleet.

For player controlled vehicles, the game offers several different STAPs (Single Trooper Aerial Platform), a large variety of speeder bikes and a good number of landspeeders.

SB: How is grouping encouraged?

GZ: From a game systems perspective, grouping offers a more efficient way of leveling as players will accumulate experience points more quickly while in a group. In addition to the fully soloable class missions and planet arcs, SWTOR contains a large amount of content designed for groups: Heroic Missions are repeatable quests designed for 2-4 players and offer harder but also more rewarding objectives, and Flashpoints, as mentioned before, are designed for 4 players, feature their own story arcs and offer some of the most iconic rewards in the game.

SB: Finally, should we also mention World Bosses?

GZ: Participating in multiplayer missions has more benefits being more efficient at defeating enemies. Your character accumulates ‘Social Points’ with each multiplayer dialog they are involved in, which grant the player access to special rewards in the game such as the famous Star Wars ‘slave girl Leia bikini’ or an imperial trooper uniform.

‘Star Wars: The Old Republic’ is out on general release for PC on December 20th. 

For more info on the game, head over to the official site www.swtor.com

Following on from my interview with John Ridgway about his contribution to STRIP Magazine this month I had the opportunity to speak to editor John Freeman about his role in the creation of the UK’s new adventure comic anthology. Subscriptions to STRIP are now available through the Print Media website online and the first issue should be hitting comic shops by the time this article is published. It would be difficult to measure the contribution that John Freeman has made the publishing landscape of British comics in the past decade but it is not an exaggeration to say that he might be the person best situated to make a new venture like this a success.

Starburst: For anybody that hasn’t heard about STRIP yet could you please tell us what to expect from STRIP Magazine?

John Freeman: STRIP is a monthly, all-out action adventure anthology title. It’s aimed at an “all ages” audience, so Hookjaw aside, don’t expect the same levels of in your face violence you may find in other comics. (I’ve always found the suggestion of violence and its effects has more impact than showing it full on – let the readers’ imaginations work a bit).

It has the kind of mix of strips older comic fans will recall from British comic titles like Valiant, Lion and Eagle but done in a modern style, with the emphasis, I hope, on delivering good art and story.

We also have a number of features in the magazine, all devoted to British comics and upcoming book titles.

In term of creators involved, it’s also a mix of creator-owned and Print Media-owned or licensed material. So among other strips, we have Warpaint, a modern take on Native American mythology, from Phil Hester and John McCrea and sword and sorcery adventure in Age of Heroes from James Hudnall and John Ridgway; Black Ops Xtreme, which I was asked to write, drawn by PJ Holden; and Hookjaw, from Action – and we’re looking at other “British classics” for that spot, too.

We also have a ‘Strip Spotlight’ section, highlighting the work of up and coming creators. The first story, by David and Graham Stiddart is simply knock out, reminding me of the work of Keith Watson, who drew a number of Dan Dare stories for Eagle.

What level of involvement have you had personally with the creation of STRIP Magazine?

I’ve been in on this since Day One, back in February 2010 when I got in contact with Bosnian publisher Ivo Milicevic about his plans to reprint Dan Dare in his SF magazine, Plavi. Things sort of spiralled from there. (Mostly upwards).

The UK has been particularly unforgiving of late for homegrown comics, how did this factor into the inception of STRIP?

There’s no point in pretending there’s an easy way to make a comic a success, especially in a market place where digital publishing is on the rise and there is plenty of competition for comics. You have to focus on publishing what you feel is the best title you can produce. We’ve set a fairly low price point, there are some great creators involved. There have been hiccups along the way getting to point of publication – most of them are beyond our control but part of the learning curve for a very small company with big ambition. Interest has been huge – and we’ve had offers of help from many different people and companies.

Readers will inevitably compare STRIP Magazine with 2000AD, CLiNT and Judge Dredd Megazine but in terms of promotion and trying to make it a success, I’ve been watching what DC Thomson have been doing with Commando over the past two years, building its subscription base and developing an e-edition of the title. The editorial team have done their utmost to promote the title to the “core audience”, making sure their fan base know new issues are on sale, and seen subscriptions rise as a result.

2000AD are now taking the same approach and really pushing the brand as much as possible via social media, PR to comics web sites etc. As editor, I’m fully expecting that it will be down to me to help push the title as well as get the next edition out, and our graphic album range, too.

What sort of a story will Crucible be, your first contribution to STRIP?

Crucible is a strip that’s been in development for a very long time. Smuzz, who’s drawing it, is a creator I’ve known since the 1980s, back when we sold fanzines at the Westminster Comic Marts and got our initial breaks into comics publishing as a result. It’s going to seem like a traditional fantasy adventure, with characters engaged to recover a missing artefact, to start with. But I can assure you it is science fiction. Smuzz’s art is simply stunning, in my opinion, and we’ve got the resourceful Kris Carter doing the colouring.

What inspired the decision to include Hookjaw in the anthology?

It’s one of those strips from Action, a 1970s comic that caused no end of controversy, that British fans of a certain age remember fondly, along with the likes of Dredger (which also featured in Action), Steel Claw, Robot Archie… I think Ivo wanted to launch with a ‘classic’ that not only had great art, mostly from Ramon Sola, but an engaging story of corrupt oilmen and other bad guys getting their comeuppance that’s still relevant today.

Moose Harris has written a great piece about Action for the first issue, by the way, which firmly gives Action its place in the spotlight. I think what happened to the title had an impact on British comics as a whole, which we’re still feeling today.

Am I right in thinking that STRIP will be associated with the launch of a number of original graphic novels, not limited to collections of work first published in STRIP Magazine?

Yes, and we’ve already published Iron Moon by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page, plus the first volume of Mirabilis by Dave Morris and Leo Hartas, with the second volume in production. Coming soon is a “weird western’, Frontier, by Jason Cobley and Andrew Wildman. We initially plan to publish probably six hardback collections/albums per year.

Is there one particular contributor to STRIP whose work you’d recommend or perhaps that you feel deserves wider recognition?

I can’t really single any one creator out – they’re all good! – but I will say that John Ridgway is an inspiration in terms of his continued energy and drive, and fervent love of comics. I’ve really enjoyed working with PJ Holden on BOX.

Your website Downthetubes is noteworthy for being an incredible advocate for comic creators in the UK both new and established. What is it that drives you to put in so much effort celebrating the work of your peers?

I started DTT back in 1999 because I felt there wasn’t much coverage of British comics out there. There still isn’t, although the main comics web sites such as Broken Frontier and Comic Book Resources do interview and report on the work of British creators. After that, you’ve got Lew Stringer’s blog, Steve Holland’s Bear Alley, Terry Hooper’s Comic Bits Online, but then we’re into forums like ComicsUK and 26Pigs, and blogs devoted to single British comics. So I hope DTT will continue to be a bit of a ‘melting pot’ covering what’s out there on British news stand, although given how busy I am with STRIP and ROK Comics, I don’t get as much time as I’d like to work on it!

Downthetubes remains one of the nation’s most valuable resources for keeping abreast of developments at every level of the comic industry in the UK, with an emphasis on providing a platform for creators to promote their work on a level playing-field. We recommend that you take the time to familiarise yourself with John Freeman’s good work there and wish him all the best with STRIP Magazine, which will hopefully find a whole new audience yet to experience the most imaginative and ambitious medium in the world!

Thought Bubble Festival is an annual celebration of sequential art that formed in 2007 as a one-day comic festival alongside the Leeds International Festival and has since grown to a weeklong non-profit festival that promotes comics, graphic novels and animation as an important cultural art form.  With past guests including Becky Cloonan, John Romita Jr, Ben Templesmith and Frank Quitely and this year’s guests including Tim Sale and Adam Hughes this is a place where the mainstream and the underground meet alongside academic debate and hands-on workshops with an emphasis on creating a warm and inviting atmosphere to further the cause of this most vital medium.  The fifth Thought Bubble will take place from the 14th – 20th November 2011 at venues around Leeds and Bradford, with a centre-piece two day convention on 19th – 20th November at Saviles and Royal Armouries Halls – Leeds’ largest conference venues.  Thought Bubble director Lisa Wood took time out of her busy schedule to talk to Starburst about her journey to create the festival that has met with international acclaim and is now one of the shining lights in our convention circuit.

Starburst: What can you tell me about the inception of Thought Bubble?  At what point did it become apparent that Thought Bubble would become a reality?

Lisa Wood: I’ve always loved comics and have been around them all my life, through reading and collecting as a child and working in several comic stores from the age of 18. I was lucky with Thought Bubble. The original idea I had of a sequential art based festival attracted attention from the Leeds International Film Festival and Travelling Man (a chain of comic stores), so that gave me momentum to make it happen. The event started very small (only 500 attendees in a small room at Leeds Town Hall) and so was easily manageable.  With the marketing of the film festival behind it, it gained an audience almost immediately. With help from major partners, guests, volunteers and sponsors along the way, Thought Bubble has gone from strength to strength every year.

What sort of changes have you seen in the growth of Thought Bubble since it began in 2007?

I would say the philosophy of the festival hasn’t changed at all. We are still non-profit, and dedicated to promoting education through sequential art. The majority of our workshops are free for everyone, and all events are free for children. The thing that has changed is the scale. With the support of Arts Council England and Travelling Man, the event has now become the biggest comics festival in the UK. We have developed the event from our initial one day convention to become a week long festival taking place across two cities.

What approach do you take when selecting which Guests to invite to the festival?

Because I read so many comics I have a good idea of which guests will attract an audience year on year. To make sure the festival is successful we need to invite current popular guests, in some respects these guests help bring audiences in to raise funds and awareness for smaller creators whose work is well respected among certain circles, but maybe not as well know. Year on year the guest list has comprised the top established and up and coming talent. I always sneak some of my favourites in there, too. We also keep our ear to the ground; if professionals have expressed an interest in visiting the UK we may approach them. Usually we draw up a wish list of the guests that will bring the most to our event. We have some incredible names lined up for this year — a few I can’t announce yet. The ones we are very excited to confirm are Tim Sale and Adam Hughes. Our line up is bigger than ever this year. I simply don’t have space for the list here but there are some real gems. Check thoughtbubblefestival.com.

How would you describe the atmosphere at Thought Bubble?

As immensely welcoming, friendly, inclusive, and – most of all – fun. Everyone seems to come away with such a positive attitude towards comics and the comics community, an infectious feeling that’s due in large part to the wonderful audience that Thought Bubble is lucky enough to attract. Everybody who attends helps to add to the special feel of the events, be it our amazing cosplayers who brighten up the convention with their brilliant outfits, our wonderful guests who show that comics attract some of the friendliest creators of any medium, or our excellent volunteers – without whom none of this would be possible.

Events like these often meet with scepticism from local communities.  What sort of a response have you had from the city of Leeds? 

We have had massive support from organisations which are funded by Leeds City Council such as Leeds International Film Festival and Leeds Central Library, without the help of these bodies I don’t think Thought Bubble could have happened. We have also had support letters sent to our main funder Arts Council England from Leeds City Council so they have really helped establish the festival.  It is true that when you strip away the support of individuals and the film festival and have to deal with council red tape it can be very frustrating. For a few years we have struggled with costs such as tax, trading licences and insurance. I know it is the responsibility of all organisations to cover these costs however when you are a small arts organisation trying to provide a service for the community through free workshops and education it can be demotivating to have to deal with this.  Working a full time job to fund Thought Bubble means that for around half of each year I end up working 15 hour days, but whenever exhaustion kicked in the support that I’ve received from our amazing guests, exhibitors and volunteers has helped me to keep the festival going.  We have also managed to secure Arts Council funding for the next two years and as the festival grows more private sponsors are coming on-board so things are looking very bright for the future.

Are there any new comics that you’re hoping to pick up at Thought Bubble yourself?

There are so many, I buy way too many comics! The new Nicola Streeton book Billy, Me and You is receiving amazing reviews. SelfMadeHero and Nobrow’s new publications are always wonderful. Nelson, the new book from Blank Slate has many great names in it, the art looks incredible! Kristyna Bacynski’s new book Lunch Date looks great too! Mostly I look forward to finding those hidden independently published gems that you never get to see elsewhere. There are so many creative people self publishing and comic conventions happen to be the place where they all congregate.

The full line-up of events has been announced now, are there any activities that you would particularly like to draw our attention to?

This year’s programme is our biggest yet and we’ve tried to pack as many cool things into it as we can, so it’s a Herculean task trying to pick out highlights. However, if I was forced to choose, I’d flag up our programme of film screenings (in association with Leeds International Film Festival), as there’s some great stuff in there that you won’t see anywhere else in this country. I’d also highly recommend our day of talks on Saturday 19th with the We Are Words + Pictures collective, as it’ll be invaluable for anyone thinking of creating their own comic – from coming up with a killer idea, through to marketing the finished product. Really, because the programme is so big and varied this year, I’d recommend everyone take a look at what we’re putting on and try to pick out their own favourites – there should be something for everyone!

Image are publishing a Thought Bubble comic anthology in October, how did that come about?

In 2010, as part of our ongoing expansion, and with help from Arts Council England, we held the first ever Northern Sequential Art Competition (NSAC) – a new platform to help and encourage UK artists and writers of all ages to engage with the medium of illustrated storytelling. Entrants were given the brief of producing a self-contained, single page story, told in six panels or more, on the theme of ‘November in the North of England.’ We received many fantastic entries from all age groups, in a variety of different styles, and six overall winners from two age categories were picked by a judging panel comprising luminaries from the world of comics editing and journalism.  Parallel to this we developed the idea of producing an anthology comic to showcase the winning entries to the NSAC, and also feature some work of creators who have previously attended the festival. This plan quickly blossomed from envisioning a small-scale limited print-run, to one that would be globally distributed, with all profits going to the Barnardos charity. The end result is a publication featuring a variety of original tales by incredible industry talent from around the world, plus some shining new stars of the UK comics community. Our first anthology has been curated with the ultimate aim of showcasing the very best that sequential art has to offer and will feature new work by Mike Carey, Duncan Fegredo, Charlie Adlard, Andy Diggle, D’Israeli, Antony Johnston, Robin Furth, Becky Cloonan and film director Stuart Gordon. Issue #1 will also feature all the winning entries from 2010′s Northern Sequential Art Competition with stories from Gavin Ross, Sally Jane Thompson, Will Morris, Alice Summerscales, Sophie Kamlish, and Raymond Mak.  This special inaugural issue is due to be released in comic and book stores in November, just in time to be brought along to the festival to get signed by the contributors. This is the first time a comic produced in this context has been picked up by a major publisher, so hopefully it will help spread Thought Bubble’s message to all corners of the globe. The anthology serves as a microcosm of Thought Bubble, showcasing the variety of styles that sequential art can embody, and the almost limitless possibilities that the medium of comics afford to creators.

All profits from the anthology will go to the charity Barnardos, can you tell me why you chose Barnados particularly?

I owe a great deal of gratitude to Barnardos as they took care of me as a child and placed me with foster parents and then adoptive parents. They’re an incredible organisation who dedicate their time to helping children in need. Thought Bubble’s main essence is to provide and educate through the medium of comic books so our main charities year on year have always been children’s charities.

For anybody still debating whether to attend or not what does Thought Bubble offer that they can’t get from other festivals?

Thought Bubble is unique amongst UK comic shows and events in that we combine an extended festival of programmes with a “traditional” comic convention. We’re the largest festival of this type in the UK now, and we’d like to think that you won’t find anything else like it on the comics event calendar. We’ve tried to make the programme as varied as possible in order to cater to everyone’s tastes, and we think we’ve succeeded.  More than anything Thought Bubble brings an overwhelmingly friendly atmosphere to proceedings.  We’ve tabled the events to appeal to both the hardcore comics devotee, someone who’s never picked up a comic before and everyone else in-between.  We hope that everyone who attends, or is considering attending, will appreciate just how much fun it is being here, in amongst the action.  The only way to find out for sure is to come along and join in the experience! 

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P M Buchan will be at Thought Bubble on the 19th and 20th of November 2011 reporting for Starburst, buying an obscene amount of comics and hopefully not shaming himself too much at the party on Saturday night. Contact him on Twitter @FrancisSobriety if you’re in attendance and want to wax lyrical about the small press gems that you’ve uncovered.

Josh Keaton is a bright young man with handsome looks that, based on this reporter’s opinion, should take over Shia LaBeouf’s role in the next Transformers movie. Michael Bay take note. An actor who has heart and soul who clearly loves what he does, here’s what he has to say…

Starburst: How did you get your start and what interested you in doing voiceover work?

Josh Keaton: I fell into it by accident. My agent started sending me out on auditions where I got to do voiceovers on Back To the Future the animated series, Peter Pan and The Pirates which starred Tim Curry as Captain Hook. It wasn’t until I got the role voicing young Hercules in the Disney movie that I was sought out by a dedicated voice over agent and at that point my eyes were opened up to the rest of the world of voiceover which is huge. There’s the people that do the intros and outros to television programmes and promos, commercials, trailers that you see at the theatres.

I met Nick Tate who played Alan Carter the Eagle One pilot from Gerry Anderson’s Space:1999 series and he mostly does voiceover work, especially for coming attraction trailers.

Those guys can make a pretty good living at it.

Tell us about the Spiderman series.

I had a lot of fun doing the role of Spiderman/Peter Parker. There’s so much depth to that character that everyone can identify with. A teenager with a secret he can’t reveal along with being a superhero trying to do what’s right while he has his share of villains and detractors like J.Jonah Jameson branding him as a menace to society.

With great power comes great responsibility.

So true.

Were you a big comic book fan as a kid?

I was! Spiderman, the Punisher and Wolverine. Occasionally, Batman and Superman. I would read just about everything, but mostly it was Spiderman.

Let’s talk about the Green Lantern animated series.

It’s a big production. You’re going to see Atrocitus, Zilius Zox, Kilowog, the Red Lantern Corps and a lot of other characters in the Green Lantern universe. The stories take place in deep galaxies, so it’s not earthbound. There’s a lot more to explore in frontier space. There’s no origin episode, so Hal Jordan’s going to the ground running. A lot of it will take place on their ship, the Interceptor, where it has hyperspace capabilities and those possibilities are endless where they go.

Carol Ferris isn’t in this?

She is, but its not Earth-centric driven in story structure. I like to say, the sky’s the limit, but the sky is pretty much the starting point. There’s so much going on in this series. You have the battle with the Red Lanterns, characters come and go, some die.

So kids and adults will enjoy it as well.

Without a doubt!

Playing the Flash and Aquaman in the Justice League: Crisis On Two Earths must have been a challenge. What did you do to prepare for the roles?

Aquaman was cast as a cameo on the spot. The director said ‘read this Josh’, so I read the dialogue and it was the part of Aquaman. They gave me a shot at it and I told them that I really wanted to do this role and I got it! Here’s Aquaman, who oversees the entire underwater world of Earth who’s mostly gotten the short end as a character. This is the King of Atlantis we’re talking about! So I gave him a regal voice and it paid off for him.

Aquaman finally got respect!

Absolutely! Flash was fun to do. He’s a bit like Spidey, but without the quips and one-liners. I played Barry Allan a little more serious.

Everyone loves the Transformers and Jack Darby in the animated series is an interesting character. What’s the news on the show?

Transformers the animated series is different from the feature films whereas we place more emphasis on the robots themselves. Jack Darby is an important character, but the show’s really about the robots. In the final episode of the season, Optimus Prime gets his memory erased and he now thinks he’s a Decepticon.

So it ends on a cliffhanger?

Yes.

Thanks for taking the time out and talking to Starburst. We expect to hear more about your talented work in the future.

That’s very kind of you to say that. Thank you.

Green Lantern: The Animated Series is set to air Spring 2012 

Rule one: Always honour a contract but never trust a client

“Death’s Head is pure and concentrated commercialism. Kind of a child of Thatcher’s Britain pushed to the nth degree.” That’s the view of co-creator Simon Furman on the cult merc … freelance peacekeeping agent who debuted 24 years ago in Marvel UK’s Transformers.

Furman says Death’s Head’s popularity is still high because “he’ll never change or compromise or grow or repent or agonise like most comic book characters. He’s this unchanging, uncompromising rock that other characters bounce off. But you still kind of love him. Weird.”

 

Simon Williams’ art for the first Death’s Head collected trade paperback

The slightly satanic-looking mechanoid was put together on the pencil board of Furman’s Transformers collaborator Geoff Senior as an expendable one-off bounty hunter for the storyline Wanted: Galvatron – Dead or Alive back in issue #113. Occupied Autobot leader Rodimus Prime sends the assassin out to hunt his nemesis while he deals with the war on Cybertron. However, after kicking the crap out of the mad Decepticon’s lieutenants Scourge and Cyclonus, Death’s Head travels to the past to confront his quarry – and did surprisingly well until being yanked back to the future.

Death’s Head versus Scourge and Cyclonus

“We knew almost from the first panel Geoff drew that we had something special in Death’s Head,” said Furman. “He just captured something, some elusive ‘wow’ factor where you know a character is destined for more than just a brief supporting role. Death’s Head was created very much as a means to an end after which he’d have been killed off or discarded.”

Recognising Death’s Head’s potential, but innocent of knowing the Nazi connotations of the name, Furman revised his script, imbuing the character with his trademark verbal quirk (Yes?) and endearing mannerisms that don’t often grace your stereotypical killing machine-cum-freelance peacekeeping agent – just don’t call him a bounty hunter.

 Uncanny X-Men scribe Keiron Gillen resurrected Death’s Head for S.W.O.R.D.

All this effort would have been in vain had Death’s Head launched straight into the Transformers universe. He would have been absorbed into the encompassing copyright of toymaker Hasbro. So a teenage Bryan Hitch – who would go on to enjoy fame for his artwork on The Ultimates – was enlisted to take Senior’s designs and draw a one-page strip called High Noon Tex featuring the horned robot, thus making him Marvel.

After two more outings in the Transformers-verse (facing off against no less than planet-busting Unicron), it was time for Death’s Head to go on to bigger and better contracts.

An encounter with the Sylvester McCoy version of Doctor Who stranded the mercenary in the year 8162

Furman said: “So, having gone to so much effort initially, it felt that Death’s Head was always destined to outgrow his origins and thrive in his own right. But it took a while. And it was only the advent of Marvel’s US format line that provided the opening we needed to showcase Death’s Head. So, very quickly, we shuffled him out of Transformers, via Doctor Who (and a size/scale change), into Dragon’s Claws and finally into his own title and original graphic novel, The Body in Question.”

Excelsior!

Debuting shortly after Dragon’s Claws in the Marvel UK world of 8162, the pun-slinging contract killer went up against his own who’s who of wacky opponents in a series of self-contained stories during his ten issue run. Sadly, the same market forces that did for Dragon’s Claws – an American size format swamped on newsstands by bulky UK magazines, poor promotion, distribution and being 10 years ahead of US-sized comics looking commonplace in WH Smith – did for Death’s Head.

 A rare bit of Death’s Head/Marvel US synergy. His one and only appearance on a trading card from 1991

The series cemented its own cult following of fans who would get nostalgic nearly two decades later when the tales were collected into a pair of trade paperbacks. Among them was luminary Walt Simonson, current X-Men scribe Keiron Gillen and the Man himself, Stan Lee.

“Naturally, having co-created Death’s Head, I feel strong paternal instincts for the character, and having him ensconced in the mainstream Marvel (US) universe feels like the pinnacle of achievement in my career so far,” said Furman. “I still remember that when Death’s Head #1 hit the stands, I/we received a letter from Stan the Man himself, describing the first issue as ‘sensational’, and further praising the creators involved.

 Stan Lee’s letter of congratulations to team Death’s Head

“Now, while I’m grounded enough that this could have been some kind of almost ‘form’ acknowledgment, it came entirely un-solicited, and I guess I just couldn’t help but bask in the approval of the writer I’d grown up reading (and respected beyond easy measure). So it became something of a mission to not let Death’s Head go gently into the good night, and to keep pushing him into the mainstream spotlight every time I got the slightest opportunity.”

Head to Head

Death’s Head meets thy maker, Lupex, in The Body in Question

After a gorgeously painted origin story graphic novel by Senior (The Body in Question and serialised in Brit magazine Strip) that opportunity seemed to end when Death’s Head himself met his end at the blade-hand-axe-thing of his uglier, more muscled successor, Death’s Head II.

Furman said: “There were plans for a new series featuring the original Death’s Head during Paul Neary’s reign as editor in chief at Marvel UK. In fact, we may even have started in on script and art (Geoff was back!). Sadly, nothing remains of either story or that art. And before we got very far along Paul canned that series and launched Death’s Head II instead.”

Death’s Head meets Death’s Head II

Created by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, Death’s Head the Second reflected the trend in early 90s comics: big muscles, bigger guns, attitude and an art style reminiscent of current fan favourite Rob Liefeld. It didn’t last.

“I think the biggest problem with Death’s Head II is the look of the character became very generic movie-of-the-moment, and in personality terms he lost his most important aspect; the dark-edged gallows humour,” said Furman. “So in and of itself I think it’s a very tight, proficient and action-packed comic that really tapped into that early 90s anti-hero vibe. But to me it was never Death’s Head. It was another character.”

What If gave a hint of how Death’s Head would have gone on to look had he survived cancellation and Death’s Head II

The original would get his own back in Furman-penned What If #54 – returning as an even bigger, badder version which put the replacer into the ground. The new look, coincidentally, was what Death’s Head would have gone on to enjoy had he survived cancellation, a story that Furman hopes to continue.

Rule two: Make no concessions for age, size or gender

Hope reignited, albeit briefly, in 2005 when an online poll saw Amazing Fantasy readers vote heavily for Death’s Head to be featured in the comic.

During this time Greg Pak was making waves with his Planet Hulk storyline in Incredible Hulk. The two unrelated titles briefly rubbed shoulders when Furman introduced Death’s Head 3.0 in Amazing Fantasy #16, an all-black dreadlocked robot with gasmask face, recognisable as one of the Reaver droids from the Hulk story.

The situation, said Furman, was “a strange chicken and egg thing”. The Reaver design from Planet Hulk was absorbed into the Unnatural Selection storyline in Amazing Fantasy. The goal was for the tabula rasa that was the droid to begin picking up Death’s Head quirks during the five-parter (“a kind of Death’s Head year zero”) before it ultimately ended up being appropriated by mad magician Lupex from The Body in Question and used to create the classic Death’s Head.

 A vacant Death’s Head in Lupex’s lair prior to his programming and adventures

Marvel, however, were against the move (“maybe wisely,” said Furman) and the final product met with mixed reaction, including from the writer.

“I always thought it strange that poll was to bring back one character and what readers got was another entirely,” he said. “It was part of my motivation to try and somehow meld the two together. It’s a shame. I’d have much rather done the original. I think it would have made for a much better series (though I rather like Unnatural Selection, I think it works well … But, as with Death’s Head II, it just isn’t Death’s Head). So I have mixed feelings about 3.0.”
 


A brief history of time (lord)

 A meeting with the 1990s Fantastic Four led to more time bouncing

If Marvel had not vetoed the above move, what Furman would have created was a time loop beginning from the character’s humble origins as an alien warrior robot, captured and modified by self-styled creator Lupex, before being stolen and enlarged to Transformer proportions. From there an encounter with the Sylvester McCoy seventh incarnation of Doctor Who in Doctor Who Magazine would have seen Death’s Head shrunk back down to human proportions and unleashed on the year 8162 and resident trouble-shooters Dragon’s Claws. He would go on to enjoy time-travelling cameos with the Fantastic Four and Iron Man of 2020 before killing his creator and in turn being killed by his replacement, Death’s Head II.

Despite being a closed circle, Furman lengthened the loop when he was reunited with the former teenager who had cut his pencils on the character, Bryan Hitch, during The Sensational She-Hulk #24.

Drawn to greatness

 Death’s Head’s last appearance in Transformers, drawn by Bryan Hitch and assisted by Geoff Senior

Furman said: “Geoff Senior and Bryan Hitch were both from Cumbria and Geoff may even have introduced us to Bryan, maybe via Steve Parkhouse (also based in Cumbria). I think Bryan, initially at least, based his style a lot on Geoff’s, and interestingly the final Transformers appearance of Death’s Head (issue #151) was drawn by Bryan and inked/art assisted by Geoff, so we got a real fusion going there.

“For the Death’s Head series, Bryan just seemed the obvious choice. Geoff was busy on Dragon’s Claws and had already handled his Doctor Who and Dragon’s Claws guest appearances, so we looked to Bryan (who had already drawn the High Noon, Tex strip) to step in.

The Bryan Hitch re-design

“Bryan came in with lots of energy and ideas, and the re-design was largely down to him. We all felt the title was in good hands. Sadly, deadlines started to slip, and Bryan was already being courted by Marvel US, so we drafted in a slew of guest artists (John Higgins, Lee Sullivan, Liam Sharp and even Geoff himself). But, fittingly, Bryan returned to draw the final issue.”

 Bryan Hitch back on Death’s Head art chores, in The Sensational She-Hulk

Since his time off Death’s Head, Hitch’s art had evolved into a larger-than-life style but not quite at the level he is known for in his work on The Authority and The Ultimates. “You could see how much his art had grown and how he’d shrugged off some influences and absorbed others (notably Alan Davis, who had kind of taken Bryan under his wing around that time), said Furman.

“But I’m really glad Bryan drew both the She-Hulk issue (he was regular artist at the time, so that wasn’t a huge stretch) and the Marvel Comics Presents story, The Deadliest Game. It just felt right somehow. Bryan understood Death’s Head in a way another artist might not have.”

Rule three: Never kill for free, but it pays to advertise

 Walt Simonson’s cover for Death’s Head #9

Another artist was drawn to the signature style of Death’s Head, Fantastic Four and Thor visionary Walt Simonson. He lent his pencils for the cover of Death’s Head #9, a cover for the serialisation in Strip and a final cover for the eventual collection of The Body in Question trade paperback. He even extended Death’s Head’s time loop by guest-starring the character during his run on Fantastic Four.

Death’s Head is back – and bigger in S.W.O.R.D.

Keiron Gillen, who has just started his X-Men run, was a fan of Death’s Head in his younger days and used the character – at his Transformers size – during his short-lived S.W.O.R.D. series.

Furman said: “My main aim is always to get Death’s Head back out where he belongs, as part of the modern Marvel universe. So other writers championing the character in their books is totally fine with me. Keiron was so polite. He asked me if it was okay with me for him to bring Death’s Head back in S.W.O.R.D. He didn’t need to ask, but it was nice of him to do so. Respectful, I guess. But – unless they intend to radically re-make the character – I’d never resist anyone dusting him off and getting him back in a monthly comic.

“Panini UK rolled out a Death’s Head vs Hulk story, of which I wrote the second part (the more Death’s Head-centric chapter). And I’m still knocking at Marvel US’s door with my latest plans for the character.

The first Death’s Head panel in Transformers

“What inspired/inspires all this effort? Maybe it all goes back to that very first panel, in a Star Wars-style alien cantina/bar, with Death’s Head looking at Galvatron’s holo-wanted poster. We just knew. We had that rare confluence of creative energies that, if handled right, could create a character with real staying power. And hey, we were right!”

Death’s Head co-creator Simon Furman

Author Conrad Williams talks horror, sparkly vampires and childhood fears of the dark.

Starburst: If we could start with a little something about your early career: where you come from, school, influences, and as a child what scared you?

Conrad Williams: I was born in Warrington in 1969. From a pretty early age I knew I wanted to be a writer. I was lucky in that every English teacher I had supported and encouraged my ambition. It’s not enough, though, to have people on your side. You have to do some grunt work too. I wrote a lot of short stories and pestered people to read them. I remember getting in touch with Ray Bradbury, an early influence, and being a complete fanboy. But he was incredibly nice, sent me a note and a signed photo (which I have framed in my room) and picked out one of my stories for praise. It’s little pats on the back like that over the years that give you help to carry on. Early influences also included the double bill of horror films on a Friday night (BBC2, I think), where they would show one old black and white film (one that stayed with me was Night of the Demon) followed by a lurid colour. I remember how I felt watching these, being moved in different ways within the space of three hours: discomfort and dread followed by deep horror – the colour films that bothered me most (in the best possible way) were the two Dr Phibes movies, Theatre of Blood and The Ghoul. The level of acting in these films often goes unmentioned, but there is some top talent here. The Price films are pretty camp and filled with black humour, but The Ghoul is played with a straight bat. It was an effort to get myself up the stairs in the dark to bed afterwards. I was deeply unnerved by the dark when I was little, probably all the way up to 11 or 12, I would ask for a light to be left on. I definitely felt smothered by the dark; there was a physical weight to it, I thought. I believed I could feel it press in around me.

You’ve written a number of terrifying novels over the years which in themselves are a highly depictive, visceral look at horror: how do you set about conjuring the feelings of fear, dread and dismay in a reader?

I think the first thing I promised myself when I started writing fiction seriously was that I would not shirk from writing a horrifying scene. I wanted to be true to the genre I had fallen in love with. If you commit like that, then I think you’re most of the way towards writing horror that really works. There’s a lot of atmosphere-building, and finding the effective rhythms in a sentence. I think the reason horror is a difficult genre to get right is because a lot of people just don’t get that it has to be well written. There’s nothing worse than a clumsily-worded sequence exactly where you need to be precise. I also think you have to find some common connective tissue. You have to write honestly, about what it feels like to be an ordinary person in an extraordinary situation. I don’t always get it right, but I try to get my characters to react realistically to events, and one of the things that sometimes works is to have them act illogically, because we are – once you strip away the manners and the suppressed emotions – instinctive creatures, animals even. You think you know yourself well, but nobody knows how they would behave if they were in a life-or-death situation. I think back to the air disaster at Manchester airport in 1985. There was a documentary about it that was a fascinating, if uncomfortable, revelation about the human condition in extremis. Some of the passengers trapped in the fuselage while the plane was burning queued politely in the aisle while others clambered over seats, stepped on people, shoved others aside in their desperation to get out of the aircraft first. I’d like to believe I’d be one of the last off, suffering from smoke inhalation, rescuing children, but equally I might tread on your face to save my own life. I have absolutely no idea what I’d do.

Thoughts on Unblemished. Unblemished won Best Novel in 2007; what was that like to write?

It was interesting, and quite a challenge. The book I wrote prior to that was a crime novel, so this was a big switch in pace and scope. It’s the longest novel I’ve written, and I wrote it, in part, as a valentine to the big 80s blockbusters that had meant so much to me when I was growing up: Stephen King’s stunning early quartet: Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Stand and The Dead Zone; Peter Straub’s Shadowland, Ghost Story and Koko; T.E.D. Klein’s The Ceremonies. My wife and I had moved to France in 2003. The whole ‘humans behaving as insects’ idea for the novel came from living there. We had a crumbling farmhouse – no indoor toilet, no bathroom, no heating – and every room was filled with ancient cobwebs and the desiccated husks of spiders and flies. A cracked chimney breast fed a constant stream of bees into our living area during the autumn; a nest was trapped in the flue. When we arrived back after a long trip to London, we had a carpet of bee corpses to clear out.

An editor at Tor had expressed some interest in a short story of mine (Outfangthief, written as Gala Blau) and wondered if I had a novel on the go. I put together an outline and there was a lot of back and forth but he was unable to find the proposal any traction in the upper echelons of his publishing house. At around the same time I was corresponding with Paul Miller at Earthling, who had just published Game, a nasty little novella of mine about London gangsters and supernatural revenge. He had launched his Halloween series and wondered if I might have something that fit the brief. So I ended up writing it for him and he did a beautiful job.

The characters and creatures that inhabit Unblemished are all wonderfully flawed, and leave the reader uncertain of who is worse, monster or man? Is that intentional?

Certainly. It’s no coincidence that the monsters in the book look like us. I think the actions of Salavaria and Manser are, in a way, far worse than those of the Unblemished who, after all, are only employing mimicry in order to get close enough to us to enjoy a hot meal. There’s no cruelty there, just animal instinct. What Malcolm Manser gets up to is utterly repellent, but I felt I had to go as dark as possible, in order for the reader to have some sympathy for the ‘creatures’.

Do you think Unblemished could be seen as a contemporary reflection of the true horrors of the world: the recent London riots, for example?

Possibly, although I’m a little squeamish when people hold up horror literature as some kind of mirror to society’s ills.

Thoughts on One. One is a bleak survival story of a man’s search for his son – with monsters, of course. As a father, did you find it easier to identify with the main character? Do you think one has to experience horror to be able to write it?

I couldn’t have written One if I wasn’t a dad. It certainly helped me find the right tone. Some people criticised the book because they found some of those passages between Richard Jane and his son, Stanley, too mawkish and they might be right, or it might be just that they don’t have children themselves. I wanted to tap into that common, low-level terror that a parent feels for his son or daughter every minute of every day. I wholly believe in Jane’s drive to find his little boy, even though, deep down, he knows he can’t still be alive. You keep going because you have to know for sure. To give up is to deny the love for your own child, and which right-minded person can ever do that? In terms of experiencing horror… I’m not so sure. I’ve (touch wood) never been at the heart of any traumatic event. I’ve never been involved in a car crash, or an act of terror; I’ve never seen a dead body. What I do have is a very active and bleak imagination. Which is both a blessing and a curse.

Thoughts on sequels?

I’ve written sequels to my novels Head Injuries and London Revenant, but they are both short stories (‘The Return’ and ‘O Caritas’ respectively). I have a chapter out-take from The Unblemished that might work as a standalone, and I’ve thought about a possible follow-up novel to One, but I doubt I’ll ever get around to writing it. There are other ideas, new material, that seems so much more compelling. It’s not that I have a problem with sequels (I’m looking forward to reading Stephen King’s new Danny Torrance novel) but at the moment there isn’t a sequel project pushing itself to the front of the queue; certainly not where my work in horror is concerned. One sequel I’ll definitely write is a follow-up to last year’s Blonde on a Stick, which I always saw as a sequence of five ultra-black novels.

What’s next for Conrad Williams?

I’m currently co-writing the story for a video game for Sony and will write a ‘prequel’ novel for them, which will be published prior to the game’s release. I’ve also got a couple of new novels on the go – what I hope will be a subtle modern ghost story with a twist, and a big, blustery YA novel. Next year sees the publication of my second collection of short stories, Open Heart Surgery, from PS Publishing, which will be ready, hopefully, in the summer. I’ve got a couple of new stories I want to write for that.

And on a final note. Your thoughts on the standard tropes of the genre: werewolves, vampires, zombies, Frankenstein’s monster? Have they been done to death, or is there always room for a sparkly vampire or two?

Well, the YA novel I mentioned will contain an old horror favourite, but done in a different way. They keep coming back, these horror ‘standards’ and I can see why, but sparkly vampires? Not for me, I’m afraid. I don’t get that whole emo/Goth/undead boyfriend wank fantasy. I don’t want my monsters to have issues, or a sensitive side. That’s not horror. That’s a teenage diary dressed in black.

Thank you, Conrad Williams.

Pollyanna McIntosh has performed in a wide variety of roles from stage to screen, ranging from the girl next door to a feral, cannibalistic cave-dweller. A fascinating and charming woman to chat with, we discussed her work in The Woman, the black comedy about Scotland’s infamous body snatchers Burke and Hare and what the lovely Scots lass has coming up next.

Starburst: Thanks for taking time out to talk with us.

Pollyanna McIntosh: My pleasure.

You were born in Edinburgh but had a very cosmopolitan upbringing growing up in several different countries. Were there any major influences because of this that made you want to become an actress?

It was all my mum’s fault! When I was nine years old, living in Edinburgh, I was a hyperactive child, always up to something loud so she thought that excess energy could be put to good use in an after school acting class once a week. As far as moving around, I suppose frequently adapting to new cultures and situations is a good grounding for an actor’s observing eye as well as their adaptation into new characters and into new on-set families. As a newcomer or outsider you’re more watchful of others and you learn about people’s ways pretty quickly. I always felt very lucky to get to move about the way we did.

What attracted you to the story of The Woman?

I had played the character in a previous film, Offspring, after the director/producer gave me the novel of the same name by Jack Ketchum to read. I was fascinated by it. Then, half way through shooting Offspring they decided to keep my character alive as I was having, “too much fun” with her. After Lucky McKee saw the film and was asked if he would consider collaborating on a novel and screenplay to take my character’s story forward, he and Jack Ketchum wrote The Woman for me. I feel very connected to this character, she’s nature itself. A survivor.

I was happy so see that Lucky McKee finally got his big break with an indie production. Many studio pics take away your creative control, stifle creativity and you end up with a film that barely resembles what your original idea was.

Lucky’s experiences in the studio system were unlucky in many regards after his great success with his first indie feature May. Here, with The Woman, it was imperative he had creative control and he got it. He’s a great filmmaker.

The role of the Woman looked physically demanding. Did you do a lot of prep work for it?

Yes, physically I worked out a lot, concentrating on the muscles she would use in her lifestyle. This meant I was sometimes leapfrogging around the gym or hanging off the bars like a monkey. I must have looked really daft. I also grew my hair out in every conceivable place and spent a week in the woods alone. Studying animals such as wolves, big cats and apes in nature documentaries and in zoos was a big part of it too as well as studying our ancient myths, especially with regards to hunting. I had to create a sense of my life if I were outside that cellar, what was most important to me, so I knew what I wanted to get back to and how I judged the family I was now faced with.

Chris is extremely well portrayed by actor Sean Bridges. He has the characteristics of an alpha male sociopath and your character is a woman out of her element brought into a dysfunctional family environment creating a lot of conflict and drama. Did you and the cast do a lot of rehearsing together before filming?

No, we didn’t rehearse but I swapped notes regarding everything in the script with Lucky for four months before hand and as Lucky and Jack Ketchum also wrote the novel at the same time, this gave us all even more insight into the characters’ minds.  I was working with such a great cast and Lucky makes you bring your best as he allows you to work as individuals, with the freedom to try things on for size yet has a very clear overview of the piece. He’s really incredible, it’s hard to describe.

Burke and Hare. Here’s a film that had all the markings of a successful movie with John Landis directing, starring Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis, Tim Curry, yourself and yet, it only made $947 in the one theater that I was fortunate enough to see it in here in the United States. What do you think happened?

It was the number one comedy at the box office in the UK for some time. IFC did the distribution here and I don’t think they did near enough publicity. People keep asking me when they get to see it in US theatres and I have to tell them it came out already, just nobody was told! It’s a shame for all involved, but also the US audiences who missed a beautiful looking film as it’s meant to be seen.

It’s a very funny movie! So, what do you have coming up next?

I just wrapped on Love Eternal with director Brendan Muldowney who had adapted the novel Loving the Dead by Japanese author Kei Oishi (much has changed from the book, waaay less horror oriented) about a man who has been a shut in for ten years and comes out to face a world he no longer understands. I play a grieving mother who forms a relationship with him and we bring each other back to life, as it were. Next up is a drama called I Do with Jamie Lynn Sigler, Alicia Witt and Brit David W Ross and a comedy by Brian McGuire called Prevertere. He and I worked together already on a few projects including Carlos Spills The Beans which comes out soon.

In the meantime, we urge everybody to see the critically acclaimed cult classic in the making The Woman, which is out now in the UK on DVD/Blu-ray. Read our review here.

Ramsey Campbell talks horror, Victorian fairy tales, and things that go bump in the night.

Ramsey Campbell is a British writer considered by many to be one of the true great masters of horror fiction. His work spans the last half-century, and he has won more awards than any other living author of fantasy and horror. We caught up with him at this year’s Fantasycon for a quick, informal chat.

Starburst: What are your thoughts on horror fiction? Do you think one must experience horror in order to write it? 

Ramsey Campbell: I think you have to experience horror in the imagination. That’s what you dream up onto the page. On a personal level, my childhood is a case of nightmares. Someone once said I was born to write horror; I’m not too sure about that. A fair number of horror writers have a strange background. It’s not specific to the field, and I’m not certain if it’s even special to it. That said, I grew up reading adult horror. It was a very small step from reading George MacDonald to fairy tales. Victorian fairy tales were a complete nightmare that have been cut out of the later versions. They use the same kind of suggestions. What is left out is then up to my imagination, for me, that’s how much of the best horror fiction works, even today.

Thoughts on your childhood?

I had a very strange childhood. I lived in a small house with my parents. They became estranged very shortly after I was born, and I didn’t know my father at all for about twenty years, even though he was in the same house. I never saw him, and he became this kind of monstrous figure. My mother suffered from schizophrenia, and at a very early age I had to figure out the difference between what she saw and reality. I had to work that out when I was three years old, you know. A useful perception, obviously. That’s defined a lot of what I write, this difference between what is perceived and what is real. That was a long answer. (laughs)

What type of influence did H.P. Lovecraft have on you, in particular your early work?

Oh huge. Huge! I read a number of anthologies from the library when I was young and teenage. You couldn’t get a book on Lovecraft, and it wasn’t until 1960, I believe, that the first ever paperback collection of Lovecraft stories came out called, Cry Horror. They contained Call of Cthulhu and Rats in the Wall. Some of his masterpieces. Also some of his lesser stuff like Moon Bog. But I read that through in a single day, and I was completely steeped in it. I knew that was what I wanted to write, basically. But I didn’t write short stories or a novel for at least three years. At eleven I completed a terrible work called, Ghostly Terrors, which was everything I read just stuffed together, but it gave me focus. I knew this was the kind of thing I wanted to do, and I wanted to imitate. But I hadn’t travelled, never gone further than Southport, and Lovecraft’s work was set in Massachusetts. I wrote five stories very much imitating Lovecraft. Lovecraft didn’t use dialogue, so nor did I. I unlearned a lot of stuff. I sent the works originally to Arkham House to see if they were any good. They wrote back two pages describing what was wrong with the pieces. Not the least of which, of course, was the lack of dialogue. It’s interesting how many writers start off imitating other writers.

You mention Lovecraft and fairy tales; what other influences did you have in your career?

Fritz Leiber: the first great master of the urban horror story. It’s a bit of cliché that the horror story used to be set in the gothic castle or the remote village or whatever. The thing about Fritz Leiber though was the everyday became the source of the supernatural. He has a love interest in Chicago: the source of the supernatural entity. A lot of his work does this, and he certainly showed me where I wanted to go after Lovecraft.

Would you say there were a number of themes running through your work?

I think they keep popping up, that’s the thing. Sure. The vulnerability of children. In a way I was writing about my own experiences. I suppose the uncertainty of what we see as real, the sheer fragility of everyday existence.

You spoke earlier about religion; as an atheist–

Ah no. As I got older I’m more Agnostic. I do believe you shouldn’t use your childhood as an excuse of what you are; you have to get beyond that. These days I’m edging my bets a bit. (Laughs) A little religious perspective is no bad thing; I have no set belief. I’m not part of Richards Dawkins, put it that way. That wasn’t your question, was it?

No, but it was a good answer. Do you have a belief in the supernatural or anything from your work that could exist in the real world?

In some sense it needs to be rationalised. Ghosts could be some sort of playback, some sort of recording. To be honest I am not a believer in any supernatural goodness, or supernatural evil, and the few times I write about this I don’t think I’ve done very much with it. I don’t think there is any supernatural force out there to make you do stuff.

What do you regard as your best work or possibly the most important?

Needing Ghosts – a novella – that took place within 24 hours. I wrote five pages and thought this was a whole lot stranger than normal, yet extremely funny in a ghastly sort of way. That would be the one I would certainly recommend. Novel: The Grin of the Dark, which is at least five years back. My first internet horror story: monsters go out and use the internet. I’m not opposed to the ‘net in any way. It’s not really a censored medium. It’s a medium of communication. But Grin of the Dark is very much a comedy of a dark kind. I’ve had people say they have had to leave the light on after reading it.

Do you think the same things scare today as they did twenty or thirty years ago?

Essentially they are the same. Not just twenty years ago but as far back at two hundred years ago. Fear of death, fear of the dark, fear of loss, fear of madness – these are constants. These are generic. These are the things that deeply disturb people.

What are your views on the more classical monsters: the werewolf, the vampire, Frankenstein’s creation, and the hot topic of today, zombies?

I’ve watched the films and the classic novels, certainly. There are people who have good ideas with them. I did like the new version of The Wolfman which was a genuine take on a Universal picture. Not just the graphic violence but the atmosphere to it. I’m not sure if I would be interested in writing it though. That said, I did do a novelisation of Bride of Frankenstein back in the 70’s.

What might we expect to see in the future?

Oh, a lot! Almost immediately there’s a novel called Ghost Knows. Which funnily enough addresses the same things we’ve been talking about today. A rodeo presenter who comes under the eye of a maybe fake psychic. Then lots of DVDs and things.

Ramsey Campbell, thank you very much.

Cold Call is a British horror-comedy short that screened at the 2011 Film4 Frightfest, one of the UK’s biggest and bloodiest annual horror festivals.  With strong performances from an intimate cast, a professional aesthetic and macabre punch-line, this tale of an ill-fated house call by an overzealous preacher hints at greater things to come from director Clive Ford in the future.  Clive agreed to speak to Starburst Magazine about his experiences developing Cold Call and his plans for the future.

Starburst: Who is Clive Ford? Can you give us a little background about yourself and your filmmaking goals?

Clive Ford: I’m a Brighton (UK) based writer, director and occasional actor. Many years ago I met a bunch of like-minded locally based souls and we set up our own theatre company. We put on a few successful plays before people started going off to raise families. A few years back I went off to do an MA in Screenwriting at London College of Arts. This gave me the confidence to write and direct my first short Mother’s Day which I loved doing and last year I decided to follow that up with a film version of a short play I wrote. I love directing and the experience of Cold Call has definitely made me aim to make a feature in the next few years.

Cold Call screened at Frightfest this year, how was the reception there?

Frightfest is a total blast and the audiences are great. The film was very well received although compared to some of the extreme violence and general madness that made up a proportion of the short film showcase we were positively sedate! Killer bananas, someone killing sea zombies with a dead child, and more severed limbs than you could shake a bloody stick at. What is great is that you were playing to a hardcore horror audience who got the references and laughed and applauded in all the right places. Also the Empire screen and sound system was immense so it was a thrill to see my little film up there.

I read that Cold Call was originally a play. What sort of changes did you have to make in order for it to work onscreen?

The play was a lot wordier and ran for about 25 minutes, the film runs just 11 minutes. It was also set in one room. In opening it up most of the big speeches became redundant and we could go outside and explore the world more. We could see the preachers’ story and follow them. The play was more obviously comic but in putting it on film the performances needed dialing down so it wouldn’t all come across as overly arch.

If things go according to plan what can we expect from you in the coming years?

I am working on a number of other scripts at the moment. I have two strong contenders for a feature I would love to make and a play I want to produce next year. All these are completely different. There is a comic thriller set on a night bus, a grisly horror about Satanism and memory loss and a story about a homeless unit, an errant priest and his obsessive housekeeper. I’d love to write for TV but that seems in a state of flux at the moment with too many soaps and reality shows and limited budgets for drama.

There’s a dark vein running throughout Cold Call. By choice would you predominantly write horror, or are there other genres that you hope to turn your hand to?

Even when I try to write something fluffy and romantic I find myself getting a bit bored and tend to throw in a bit of murder or intrigue to liven things up. The show ain’t over till the fat lady explodes. I love all genres and while I don’t want to exclusively write horror I am a big fan. I will literally watch any old rubbish if there’s a man with a big knife chopping up teenagers.  I love a good heist story or gangster movie and would love to tackle science fiction at some point. For many years I worked in a video shop and had the good fortune to have more free home entertainment than I could ever get round to watching. With the possible exception of the western I’d love to try a project in almost every genre. Who knows, maybe it’s time to think about that zombie musical.

Do you have any particular stylistic influences on your filmmaking? I felt like there was a little David Lynch with the baby in Cold Call, but that might have been me projecting my own tastes on the film!

With Cold Call I tried to homage many of my favorite filmmakers. David Lynch was definitely one and Eraserhead influenced the idea of the wailing baby making a strange otherworldly noise. The beginning, going from a film on the TV into the real world was stolen entirely from Pedro Almodovar. I remember seeing it in one of his films and thinking it was a great idea and one day I’d find a place for it. There are also nods to The Shining, The Exorcist and Evil Dead. From theatre Tennessee Williams plays, particularly The Glass Menagerie influenced the piece. The idea of bored women locked in the middle of nowhere and getting excited by the prospect of a ‘gentleman caller’ was a good starting point.

Are there any other artists that you consider to be your peers, either in theatre or film?

There are so many. I love good gritty British movies. I’m very impressed by the work of Shane Meadows, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Andrea Arnold and Lynne Ramsey. I’m also a huge fan of Kubric, Almodovar and Quentin Tarantino, who having worked in a video shop like myself, gets my vote. Most recently Ben Wheatley’s Kill List totally blew me away. As a horror fan you constantly yearn for a film that will frighten and unsettle you as oppose to bombard you with relentless violence. This had me terrified from about twenty minutes in and never let up and I wish I’d made that. With theatre Martin McDonagh (In Bruges) is someone whose plays fascinate me and you can’t go far wrong with Alan Bennett.

If you were given the chance to get your vision out to a wider audience but you had to choose between writing, directing and acting, which one would you go for?

They’re all so interlinked it’s hard to choose. I studied Screenwriting at London College of Communication so I guess that’s the thing I understand best but now I’ve got the directing bug and would find it very hard to envisage handing my work over to someone else as I fear they might get it wrong. Acting is great fun but I’m more than happy to let someone else do that. If they let me I’d definitely plump for directing.

Can you name one story that has affected you more deeply than any other, from any medium?

Bizarrely I think it would have to be Apocalypse Now. I remember seeing it on the big screen as a kid and getting so caught up in the madness of it and wanting to see it again immediately. Every time I catch it on TV I think I’ll just watch a few minutes and lo and behold I’ve been sucked in and watched the whole thing. You simply wouldn’t get a film like that made these days. Nobody would dare take the risk.

What have I missed – what one thing does the world need to know about Clive Ford now that they’re listening?

Thank you world! What can I say? Watch this space, there’s a hell of a lot more twisted stories where this one came from.