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To Live Outside The Law You Must Be Honest
Jamie Delano

Barb Lien-Cooper

December 2001

When I'm asked who my favorite comic book author is, I reply without hesitation, Jamie Delano. The way he plays with genres, the tone of dread, despair, and compassion in many of his comics, his wicked sense of humor, the depth of his plots, the ideas tossed almost carelessly about, the chances he takes with his narratives, the respect he has for the intelligence of his readers, and especially his characterizations have made me a life-long fan of his work. To me, Delano's oeuvre represents everything that matters concerning mature title comics. I especially admire his novelist's sensibilities, which are so rare in comic book writers. I also like the scope of his writing — from Hellblazer to Ghostdancing, from The Territory to Captain Britain, from Animal Man to Outlaw Nation, Mr. Delano has shown the reader the many sides of his authorial psyche. He has never broken faith with his readership. Sadly, Outlaw Nation was recently cancelled. I feel a sadness less for the author than for his readers — and what the cancellation of the title says about state of the mature title in general.

I was a bit intimidated about the prospect of interviewing Mr. Delano, but my fear turned to enchantment upon "meeting" the man through e-mail. In "person", Delano reflects many of the things I like about his work — the intelligence, the brutal honesty, and especially the sense of humor of the man made it a pleasure to interview him. In those respects, he resembles his good friend Tom Peyer, who I had the honor of interviewing a few years back. I only hope that the Jamie Delano interview is as much fun for the readers of Tart to read as it was for me to do.



Barb Lien-Cooper: Reading your biography on your website, it seemed to be the story of a person who liked drugs, books, and writing. As a matter of fact, books seemed to be and seem to continue to be your obsession. How did your love of reading begin? What are some of your favorite books of all time? Who are some of your favorite authors? Whose work has influenced you the most and what about the work affected you in such a profound manner?

Jamie Delano: My life as a child in late fifties and sixties England was dull and provincial, seeming to offer little in the way of danger or distraction — save the recent folk memory of WW2. My earliest childhood memories are of unspecified and unrelieved tedium. I think my mother recognized this premature ennui and infected me with the virus of The Word to pre-empt a life of miserable madness or thrill-seeking crime. I don't remember which books she read me in my earliest years (probably Kipling and other Victorian/Edwardian "classics"), but the first one I read for myself — in the under bed-cover torchlight of several long nights — was Treasure Island by R. L. Stevenson. Blind Pew still comes tip-tapping through my dreams sometimes, and I have since visited him upon my son in turn, and plan the same fate for my grandson in another couple of years.

Other favorite books and authors of mine across the years might include, at random: Capt. W. E. Johns' Biggles books; The Last Of The Mohicans, James Fennimore Cooper; H. Rider Haggard, (was it called She); Old Angel Midnight, Jack Kerouac; U.S.A., John Dos Passos; The Place of Dead Roads, William S. Burroughs; Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon; Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey; Blood Meridian, Cormac MacCarthy; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson; Dog Soldiers, Robert Stone; American Tabloid; James Ellroy; Joseph Conrad; Jim Thomson; Raymond Chandler … the list goes on: the mind reels under the weight of all that second-hand experience.

Impossible to say whose work influenced me the most, but I guess it is always a rich use of language and a seeming ease of ability to evoke empathy with an alien mindset or environment that does it for me.

BL: On your website's autobiographical section, you said you always wanted to be a writer. What attracted you to this profession?

JD: It's less a profession than an illness, an addiction, a genetic affliction, maybe. I pride myself that, despite sporadic dangerous flirtations through the medium of adolescent poetry, etc., I resisted the onset of the full-blown disease for many years, not setting pen to paper for money until the age of 29.

BL: Did you imagine yourself to be a comic book writer or did you imagine yourself writing for some other medium?

JD: I expected to write novels, I guess. But comic-book writing was the opportunity that presented itself. Although I've learned to love the craft, I have always felt a little awkward with the medium. Unlike most of my colleagues, I had no background in "fandom" … a factor that has worked more to my benefit than detriment over the course of my subsequent meandering career, I think.

BL: Before you entered the profession, what did you think the life of a writer would be like?

JD: Oh, I don't know … Rising at ten … breakfast over the international press at some cosmopolitan coffee-shop … a leisurely stroll … a couple hours typewritten erudition in my leather-bound study … evenings of hashish, wine, fine conversation and free love, and similar bullshit cliché.

BL: Did your perceptions change as you actually entered the profession? If so, how? Your biography used the words "got bored" a lot. Is writing ever boring to you? What about it has sustained your interest all these years?

JD: My perceptions changed absolutely. Writing to regular deadlines for wages is the hardest grind I ever did. You'd think it would get easier with practice, but it doesn't. Every couple of weeks, a new attack of blank-page/blank-mind terror to overcome … the interminable work avoidance strategies … the precarious daily search for the precise THC/caffeine/nicotine balance that will allow the anesthetizing of body and conscious mind to a point where the tedious chore of hacking an eventual torrent of reckless subconscious prose into a story of hopefully elegant integrity and meaning can be endured. Writing is sheer fucking misery: but it is not boring. It's the antidote to boredom, in fact. Perhaps it is boredom that drives compulsion. Who the fuck knows these things? I keep on doing it because I have to, and in the vain hope that one day I will manage to do it right.

BL: Your first major assignment was as the author of Captain Britain (Marvel UK 1984). How'd this come about? How did you get your first big break? Being one of your first published works, were you at all nervous about being able to do it, or did you think, let me at it?

JD: I got my first break in comics as a result of a combination of nepotism, naivete and nerve, I think. Alan Moore was a friend of mine in our hometown of Northampton. I was driving cabs for a living when he first began working for Marvel UK. Moore gave me an introduction to an editor there, and I tried out as a possible successor to him in the writing of a series of short prose "pulp" fictions, featuring a character called Night Raven. I got the job and, a year or so later, when Alan moved on from Captain Britain, I got the job scripting that, too.

As I intimated above, the world of comics was largely new territory for me, but I was young and hopelessly arrogant, then. If Alan can do it, I thought, so the fuck can I. To some small extent that was true, I guess — I had imagination and a facility with words — but I was never a natural with the medium, and in retrospect, I probably would have fallen flat on my face without the experience of my artistic collaborator on Captain Britain, Alan Davis, to rein in my verbosity and streamline my clumsy visual storytelling.

BL: There are one or two scenes in Captain Britain that would be more at home in a mature title than a superhero title. The attempted rape of Captain Britain's sister by a man who looked just like him comes to mind. How did Marvel UK react to the scene? What problems, if any, did you have with censorship of the issue?

JD: It's weird: until I dug out my Captain Britain collection just now, I had absolutely no recollection of that story. Kinda scary. I don't remember any objection to that scene, or to any other. I don't think I ever gave much consideration to what was appropriate in a superhero comic, or otherwise. One of the benefits of the ignorance of the medium I referred to, perhaps. No preconceptions of what should, or shouldn't play. To me, a story is a drama of character, mood and emotion, first, and a work of genre fiction, incidentally.

BL: After Captain Britain, you also wrote some Dr. Who stories. How old were you when the series made its debut? Were you a fan at all? How'd it feel to write this series?

JD: When did Dr. Who make it's debut? I can remember it starting on TV — black and white, wobbly cardboard backdrops, irritating but a little bit scary, too — and I was born in 1954. You work it out. I wouldn't say I was a fan. I watched it when I was young … but we only had the one channel on our TV back then. Better than fuckin' Lassie, though. Kind of abandoned the TV after the age of 12 or 13 ... always fishing, or reading, but my younger brothers would be watching it Saturdays when I drifted by for tea. I think it was in color by the time the prick with the big scarf came along.

It felt weird to write the series. Someone had stuck a really irritating penguin into the continuity, as I recall. I can't remember any of the stories I wrote, but I'd guess I probably used it as a vehicle to try out a couple of light-hearted "science-fiction" concepts. I do remember John Ridgeway's art, however, and the pleasure which his visualization of my vague descriptions gave me.

BL: After Dr. Who, you took sort of a break from comics. What did you do in the time between Dr. Who and Hellblazer?

JD: Wrote a couple of Future Shock short stories for 2000AD. Mainly got bored and stoned, while earning a meager crust dispatching cabs and dabbling in the black economy.

BL: A writer's life can be a very solitary one. How do you incorporate a family life with the cliche of the writer locked in a smoke filled room alone all the time?

JD: Probably you should ask my family how they incorporate my sullen idiosyncracy into their human existence. Bottom line: a writer is an alien among humans, and has to work hard to maintain his cover. To be a successful secret agent in the world of emotional experience he must learn to conceal his true identity from those around him, keeping the ugly reality of his parasitic nature veiled in smoke behind locked doors. He should never let his family read his dispatches, either. What they don't know won't scare them and turn them against him.

BL: John Constantine, the lead character of the supernatural DC mature horror comic Hellblazer, started out as a supporting character in Swamp Thing. What inspired the actual series and where did you come into the process?

JD: I guess a favorable response among Swamp Thing readership to the character Alan Moore created in that saga was the inspirational impetus for DC in deciding to try out John Constantine with his own series.

By that time (1987), Alan's reception among US comic readers had alerted editors at the company to the existence of a pool of comics "talent" potentially available in the UK. I had a series proposal under consideration. DC thought that the intrinsically British nature of John Constantine obviously called for a British writer: I was asked to submit any ideas I had for style and direction of the series. Lucky for me, I got the job.

BL: How difficult was it to do the world-building for Hellblazer?

JD: Not too difficult, as I recall. It seemed natural that the story should run in the real world in real time: then it was really a case of assembling some precarious scaffold of metaphysics to support some of the more visceral special effects. Of course, that is a retrospective analysis. At the time I didn't have a fucking clue what I was doing. I just sat down and started writing as if my life depended on it — which it probably did.

BL: Why did you decide to make John Constantine a Liverpool native instead of a London native? His Swamp Thing appearances made him sound more like a pseudo-Cockney than a Liverpudlian.

JD: I might be wrong, but I think Alan had already established Constantine as Liverpudlian by birth: I did a story about him running away from home in his early teens, and spending the time since living in London, as a justification for his southern British accent.

BL: This was one of the first (some might say only) horror comic book that used tone and mood to evoke horror rather than violence and blood. Yet, with the exception of a few very dark moments in Captain Britain, you'd never had the chance to be this atmospheric in a work before. Was it a liberating experience for you?

JD: Absolutely — hence the wild profligacy of the prose. As a writer becomes more experienced in his craft, he learns that the number of his words is finite, and he needs to make them last.

BL: How did you come up with this use of tone and mood to scare and disturb people?

JD: Largely, I think I just took elements of reality which scared and disturbed me, and spun them through my imagination, adding a little cosmetic magic and feeding them back in the form of fiction.

BL: What works (both inside and outside the comics medium) influenced you when you wrote Hellblazer?

JD: Nothing direct, that I can think of: I never read too much horror fiction. There was a '70s British TV series, about an antiheroic ex British Intelligence agent called Callan whose atmosphere is echoed by Hellblazer in my mind.

BL: John Constantine is about your age. There are a couple of Hellblazer issues that feel so real that one wonders if they have any element of autobiography in them. This is especially true for Dead Boy's Heart, perhaps my favorite comic you've done (issue 84 being a close second). How much of you and your history is in Constantine stories that you've done which explore his past?

JD: Well, the scene where Young Constantine is invited to witness a bout of al fresco sex is "based on a real incident", but I swear to god no goddamn monkey ever stuck its finger up my ass. No sirree, Bob! [Editor's Note: The Monkey Reference is to Hellblazer # 84]. A man would remember a thing like that, never mind how much schnapps he'd drunk.

Dead Boy's Heart is probably my favorite, too. While it's true that most of the story is "pure" fiction, I think I got lucky that day and tapped into my own emotional memory of that age and time in a way that came through in the story.

As for the other stories: There are bits and pieces of contorted and distorted personal experience woven in here and there — "fictionalized autobiography"; all writers mine their own lives constantly for raw material: what else do we have to work with? — but all the black magic shit is imaginary or from books.

BL: I also notice that Constantine had a kick-ass taste in music back then. There are references to everyone from John Cale to Grandmaster Flash in the comic. Were these all favorites of yours? Did knowing his taste in music help you to better evoke the character?

JD: Constantine may have had a "kick-ass taste in music" back then, but if he's anything like me, he struggles to work the stereo, now. But yes, I guess giving him a taste in music that I understood helped me slip into the character more easily. And checking a person's CD rack, or bookshelf, is a tried and trusted shorthand insight into personality.

BL: While you were writing Hellblazer, Swamp Thing had a cross-over plot, of sorts, when John helped father Abby and Swamp Thing's baby, Tefe. As seen in the Original Sins graphic novel, the fathering of Tefe turned out to be the solution to a Hellblazer plot involving the new Messiah. How far along were you in writing Hellblazer when you heard about the Tefe subplot? How did that affect writing the first few Hellblazer story arcs?

JD: I think I probably knew about Rick Veitch's plans to use Constantine in Swamp Thing quite early in the development of the book, but avoided the ramifications as long as I could, not quite seeing the point of cross-over stories. I can't remember exactly how it all fit together, now. Constantine had to have a tree tattooed on his ass — and then didn't Swamp Thing give him a hard time manifesting from a bunch of tenuously organic materials around a demolition site?

I know readers probably assume that we writers have all this stuff carefully planned for months in advance — and perhaps some do, I can only speak for myself — but in reality it is much more haphazard than that. There's an image in a Hellblazer story somewhere, of a Young Constantine hopping from one large rock to the next along a beach, in a state of perpetual movement from balance point to balance point. Series plots are kind of like that for me. The possibilities for a story's progression are an infinite field of rocks to be crossed. You start out with a vague idea of direction and destination, but each individual footfall is random, decided instinctively. Some rocks that looked promising from a distance turn out to be slippery, so you avoid them in favor of a detour: some have an unexpected camber that sends you off on a new heading … etc., etc. …

Sorry — exhibiting a worrying recent tendency to ramble obscurely that seems to be associated with the onset of grand-paternity.

So all I'm saying is that the Swamp Thing elements that needed to be incorporated in the Hellblazer continuity became useful "rocks" that I used to inspire new directions to move my own story in.

BL: During the whole Tefe's birth plot in Swamp Thing, you wrote a stand alone issue of it that explored Abby's feelings towards Constantine. How did it feel to be writing the comic that launched the Constantine character onto the unsuspecting world?

JD: Incestuous. But again: "necessity is the mother of invention" — and the constraint of a story's need to fit a continuity can often force a writer's creativity in an interesting direction.

BL: It seemed that Hellblazer became increasingly dark as the book progressed — especially after The Family Man story arc. Did you intend for that to happen or were you surprised at the direction your stories were taking?

JD: It felt like a natural progression at the time. I guess The Horror had a hold of me.

BL: There were two issues or three issues of Hellblazer that read more like surrealistic drug trips than plots (On the Beach and Sundays are Different come to mind). What problems, if any, did you have getting this style of work published? What if anything did you have to edit out before the final version saw print?

JD: Yeah. On The Beach was written during a family vacation spent largely within view of a nuclear power plant. One of those stories where you haven't got a good idea, so you turn the job over to your subconscious and ruin everyone's holiday by being weird. Kind of liked it in the end, though; and I don't remember DC wanted anything changed.

Sundays Are Different was another subconscious lucky dip, I guess. Must've been feeling paranoid and alienated that week. Maybe I'd just turned 35 years old, or Thatcher had just been elected again … Technique didn't work as well as with On The Beach, though.

BL: What factors influenced your leaving Hellblazer?

JD: Familiarity breeding contempt, maybe. Constantine was getting too close for comfort. I started to get sick of the flippant cynical bastard, and his constant jones for the most sordid and painful of human experience. A writer has that kind of shit to live with at home: he doesn't need it at work all day, too.

BL: How did it feel leaving this title that you breathed such life into?

JD: Pretty natural, I think. I'd uncovered about as much of John Constantine's contorted psyche as anyone could likely want to know: It felt like now it was time for someone to find the evasive bastard something to DO.

BL: You returned to Hellblazer after years away from it with issue # 84. Why? What made the time right to write Constantine again?

JD: Garth [Ennis] had finished his run on the series; and the next poor sucker wasn't quite ready to go, I think. Lou Stathis (then editor) asked me if I wanted to write a fill-in episode and I couldn't resist having the last word on that bastard Ennis. (Who I will never forgive for allowing Constantine to discover a taste for that filthy brew Guinness).

BL: Why the lighter tone modern urban gothic/shaggy dog type story for this issue?

JD: No conscious decision: It just happened that way.

BL: Why is #84 your favorite?

JD: It makes me laugh and I can reread it without wanting to edit it very much.

BL: You used a lot of musical references in your comics. How connected with the music scene of that era were you? What were some of the reasons you incorporated so much music into your comics?

JD: I wasn't really connected to the music scene of the era; other than as a consumer. Maybe musical references in comics serve in part as a cue to mood or context, a shortcut to shared experience, as I might have already said, above somewhere. Sometimes, just having a song in my head can provide enough mood to start a story moving.

BL: Do you listen to music while you work, or is it too distracting to do?

JD: Never. I have to totally suspend my belief in the exterior world in order not to be distracted by it and excused from work: to the extent that the intrusive hum of my computer's CPU must be stifled with layers of padding. I have a tranquilizer gun for exterior kids and dogs.

BL: Have you ever thought about a Hellblazer soundtrack? What tracks would you include on it?

JD: A Hellblazer soundtrack would be good. It would take too long to work up a track-list, now — but I'll come up with a small prize if you want to run a competition.

BL: Not long after your run on Hellblazer, you left the dark arcane yet familiar world for that of a well-known American superhero, Animal Man . Admittedly, Animal Man wasn't your garden-variety cape and cowl book. How did it feel writing a character so different from John Constantine?

JD: It was a challenge, laid down by editor Tom Peyer who suddenly found himself short of a writer for the series. My intention was to write a six-issue "arc" while someone else was lined up for the job, but Tom and I are both lazy guys and I guess a kind of inertia set in. Besides, after a while I found I was having some fun with the book. Kind of a novelty I enjoyed.

BL: How was John Constantine similar to Buddy Baker?

JD: Damn, I don't know. Maybe you could say both were occasionally disabled by empathy, always more inclined to observation than intervention — to the frustration of some readers.

BL: How were the two men different — besides the obvious fact that Buddy could take on characteristics of animals?

JD: I'd guess Buddy Baker was a lot less cynical and self-critical than John Constantine. He was American, after all; and he had a family to ground him in the human world and allow him a little sentiment.

BL: How did you approach writing Animal Man as opposed to your other works?

JD: No differently: I thought of a suitable theme, sketched out a rough scenario through which the available characters could explore it ... then sat down at the computer and started them walking and talking, choosing which parts of their movie to record and mix into a story.

BL: What was the most challenging about writing a superhero title?

JD: Maintaining due respect for a protagonist who has to dress like a dick.

BL: Because Animal Man was more recognizable due to his Justice League activity and the other mainstream DCU titles he appeared in, were you censored more writing this than writing Hellblazer or other Vertigo works?

JD: I think, in those pre-Vertigo Vertigo days, us weirdoes in the Berger wing were probably only allowed to mess around with DCU characters once their controllers thought they'd squeezed them pretty dry. To be honest, I have never really paid much attention to what happened in the DCU, except as it related to the odd specific commission, so I wasn't really aware of Animal Man 's status in the Justice League. I would have relied on my editor, Tom Peyer, to take care of concerns in that area, and just gotten on with the stories. I certainly don't recall being censored.

BL: In 1993 you wrote Night Raven (for Marvel Comics UK). This 1930s style detective story is very entertaining, to say the least, and just a tad lighter (not by much, mutters my husband appreciatively) than earlier fare. What inspired the work? Did you have to do any research into the era it was set in? What attracted you to the project?

JD: The initial impetus for Night Raven: House of Cards was provided by David Lloyd — who was a co-creator of the character (with, I believe, John Bolton and Steve Parkhouse) for Marvel UK. As mentioned above the prose stories featuring this character that I wrote in the early 'eighties were my first professional work and it was a sentimental attachment for the character that attracted me to the project suggested by David — whose work I have always admired. I don't recall (I keep saying that, don't I? Maybe it's not just short-term memory that is corrupted by THC …) exactly how we arrived at the decision to approach House of Cards as a sort of Night Raven "origin" story, but once we had, the character's history decreed a kind of jazz age, gangster, dime-novel treatment of the work … which suited me down to the ground. Other than a swift hunt for a suitably adaptable Native American mythology to inspire the psyche of the protagonist, I didn't do any specific research, relying on my own general knowledge of the period, and a few genre conventions to provide the scenario.

I still have a soft spot for House of Cards, which was unfortunately abandoned by a new regime at Marvel UK almost before publication, and subsequently sank virtually without trace.

BL: In 1995 you wrote Ghostdancing, a six part miniseries for DC/Vertigo. How did this project come about? What inspired it? What sort of preparation/research did you have to do for this work? What sort of challenges did you encounter writing about Native American culture and mythology?

JD: Ghostdancing arose out of a long-standing interest in Native American history and mythology — engendered first in my early seventies late teens by such popular works as Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee — and a vague desire to, in my own small way, commemorate the then approaching five-hundred year anniversary of Columbus' European invasion of the American continent in 1492 — and the subsequent unremitting oppression of its indigenous peoples — from somewhere other than the conventional perspective. Unfortunately, the wheels of DC bureaucracy sometimes grind slow, and we actually ended up commemorating the 503rd anniversary, instead. The delay did however allow me time to take a memorable and ultimately inspirational driving trip around the deserts of the American southwest with series artist Richard Case. I've been returning to that landscape ever since in my imagination; but not yet physically, I regret. The largest element of the research that I did for the book lay in the exploration and absorption of diverse tales of the "power beings" of the creation myths of various Native American peoples — the trickster, Coyote; White Buffalo-calf Woman, the Thunderbird, etc — in order to utilize their mythological power to give strength to my story, without resorting to blatant piracy and reckless disrespect for another culture's icons.

BL: Also in 1995, you returned to the character of John Constantine in The Horrorist, a two-part story that really drilled down deep into the pain of the character and how he went from a burnt-out case to a feeling human being again. Why did you decide to come back to not only Constantine, but also the character's deep emotional conflicts? How did David Lloyd come aboard this project? How did you like working with him?

JD: I've got to get to the bottom of this memory loss thing. Each answer I give, I feel I must add that "As I recall ..." caveat. You know what I think the problem is: when one is writing series fiction on a monthly basis for years, there is rarely a gap in which to isolate the memories associated with each individual project. While one work is being written, the next is being planned: the art for the last starts coming in as its successor is being visualized. That breathless treadmill thing is a double-edged sword. It's good for productivity: the engine is always warm and ready to run, but it's the right brain that's always in the driving seat, leaving few opportunities for rational thought and analysis to take a spin.

Anyway, The Horrorist. I wanted to work with David Lloyd again, and David wanted to paint another graphic novel. I had an idea for a story featuring some kind of elemental character, who, put simply, would bring a taste of the fear, hunger, violence and misery that afflicts the majority of humankind back "home" to disturb the selfishly "innocent" heartland of Western democratic Capitalist society with similar random violence and injustice. This "elemental" eventually manifested herself as The Horrorist. While structuring the story, it became apparent to me that Constantine was the obvious "narrator" for such a piece. Of course, that bastard's presence was bound to add an extra weird spice to the mix; and he became a kind of symbol of the numbness and contempt which over familiarity with horror breeds in us all … only finally being redeemed and "reborn" in his humanity through the raw pain of an apocalyptic "skinless fuck" with The Horrorist, against the backdrop of a "militia" attack on a US city. (At least, that's what I recall it being about. I haven't read it for a long time.)

The Horrorist was not everyone's cup of tea: readers tended either to loathe or love it, but, while some of it was doubtless overwrought, I remember it with affection. And not least because of David's exquisite painting. I have the "skinless fuck" page framed on my wall above me as I type.

BL: In 1996, you wrote Batman/Manbat. With the exception of Animal Man (which I don't count as a typical cape and cowl book) and Captain Britain, this is the closest thing to a superhero project you've ever done. What attracted you to a Manbat project? Were you at all a Bronze Age Batman fan at all? How do you regard the Manbat? A lot of people think he got what he deserved sort of playing mad scientist, but some are torn because he had such noble intentions for making himself a monster. What do you think about the character?

JD: Sometime around 1990-91, Art Young — then a young assistant editor to Karen Berger at DC — asked me if I'd be interested in "doing something" with the old Batman villain, Manbat, to be illustrated by John Bolton. I had never heard of Manbat, but a brief recap of his continuity suggested that a project featuring him might provide an arena in which to tussle with a few of my preoccupations of the time; ie: genetic engineering, biological warfare, the nature of evolution, the means justified by the necessity for survival, the genetic imperative to reproduce and populate, conscience versus law, genetic/species loyalty and self-interest versus the planetary good. EarthFirst versus Greenpeace versus industrial military science and economics ... etc.

Yeah — I always try to cram too much in and up skating the surface; but "Better to have tried and failed, than never to have tried at all ..." as some miserable apologist for mediocrity once said.

Anyway. Manbat. John Bolton wanted to do the book, but he also really wanted to paint Batman, and Batman wasn't in my conception of the story at that point. I had a assumed that such a high-profile, big money-earning character would attract editorial paranoia and limit the possibilities of the story. Of course, the flip-side of this was that a role for Batman might also attract a much broader readership. I wanted John Bolton, and I wanted the readers: my "creative" concerns were relieved by DC's proposal to publish the work under the Elseworlds imprint, which was designed to provide a platform for mainstream DC characters to exist outside of their regular continuity. Unfortunately, my greedy desire for massive sales on the back of Batman movie popularity were in the event thwarted by unavoidably long delays in publication of the book. So serve me right. Although I do think I found a valid role for the Batman in what eventually became a sound and good-looking story.

As to the character of Manbat: I liked him. I thought that his vision of a world from which humans had been removed to the advantage of competing and oppressed species was logically valid and even justifiable (in intellectual if not emotional terms). And his eventual altruistic sacrifice of his goals at the point of victory, in service of a higher morality, contrasted him favorably with the humorless and totalitarian Batman, whose worldview was totally and inflexibly described by adherence to and enforcement of human law.

BL: Many people have written the Batman. How did you feel writing such a high-profile character? What was it like scribing the tales of a "living legend"?

JD: The couple of times I have written a Batman story, it has felt like slipping on a totally alien skin. I guess it's kind of fun stomping about in the guise of a mentally disturbed, vigilante psychopath for a while — but you always feel a little sick and clammy when you peel that rubber suit off.

BL: In 1997, you wrote Shadowman, issues 5-15 for Acclaim Comics. Shadowman was one of my favorite supernatural thrillers of that time, as it involved the world of voodoo and an exotic New Orleans locale. How did you get involved with the project? What sort of research into the world of voodoo and magic did you do for the book?

JD: I got involved writing Shadowman as a result of an approach from then Acclaim editor Madeleine Robins. Garth Ennis had written an opening four-parter for the series, and the company was looking for someone to carry the thing on. As usual, I had never heard of the character, but the background premise seemed to offer some possibilities, and I'm crap at saying "no". My treatment of the "voodoo" elements in the book was similar to my treatment of Native American myth and religion in Ghostdancing. I tried to remain true to the basic "mechanics" of "vodoun", and its pantheon, whilst fictionalizing the detail and "magic", so as to avoiding traducing the religious beliefs of that faith's adherents and causing needless offence. Call me superstitious but you don't fuck with Voodoo.

Whatever: my approach must have pissed someone off, because the company eventually sacked me perfunctorily by email (fuckin' weasel bastards), and employed a "real voodoo practitioner" to write the thing. Guess the spirits liked my sacrificial offerings better, though, 'cause last time I saw it mentioned, Shadowman was a damn video game, or something.

BL: You co-wrote some of Shadowman with Dick Foreman. What sort of challenges did you face writing with a collaborator?

JD: Division of labor is the hard part — who gets to have the last word in the writing to give a piece overall coherence, etc.. For collaborative writing to work satisfactorily there has to be some chemistry of ideas between the parties, a reaction that results in an outcome greater than the sum of its parts. It also requires that both collaborators have strong creative egos, but yet enough artistic objectivity to trust their partner and go with the flow when his own inspiration provokes him to take a story in a new and alien direction. The competitive element — setting dramatic traps and plot dilemmas for ones partner to resolve — is a great deal of the fun in collaborative writing for me. Writing is such a solitary self abuse that it is refreshing to have another mind to fuck with from time to time.

BL: In 1999 you and Tom Peyer wrote Cruel And Unusual, a four-parter for Vertigo. Was a black comedy about crime and punishment a hard sell? Whose idea was it in the first place? How did you approach working with Tom Peyer, a popular editor and writer in his own right?

JD: Tom Peyer emailed me a press-clipping one day, detailing some appalling immorality of the US corporate incarceration industry. His email was titled something like: "Am I the only one shocked by this?" It had long struck me as mildly ironic — not to mention terrifying and intrinsically unjust — that "The Land of the Free" currently imprisons some two-million and rising of its citizens, the greater percentage of them poor, stupid, or of minority ethnicity, using its justice system as a Draconian blunt instrument of social control. And the ugly practice of state execution — setting the condemned on fire with electricity, in the case of Florida — was kind of disturbing, too. The fact that government and capitalist entrepreneurs could conspire to find shareholder dividends among the tax-dollars allocated to sustain the unpleasant "necessity" of incarcerating humans was just icing on the cake.

Myself never one to shy from making a buck on the back of another's misery, I suggested to Tom that we make a story of it — a biting social satire that would storm the Bastille and set the people free — and talk DC into publishing it.

Well, the "Bastille" is still standing, the justice system no less cruel and unusual, and we didn't make much money; but Tom and I had a great time writing the book, chuckling like devils as we mailed scenes back and forth between Northampton and Miami, trying to find a funny side to all that human depravity. Tom is a very funny and perceptive guy, and a clever story-teller: I learned a lot working with him.

BL: Also in 1999, you and David Lloyd created The Territory for Dark Horse Comics. Would you tell our readers a bit about this mini-series? I notice that you seem to work with the same artists over and over again when you can (David Lloyd, Sean Phillips, etc.). Why do you do so? What strengths do they bring to the creative table?

JD: The Territory was a kind of incarceration story, too; revealing in its conclusion that the "pulp fiction" territory that the protagonist exists in is the product of the joint imaginations of inmates of a sinister jail in which the prisoners serve their sentences in a state of medically induced coma. It is the story of an intellectual forced to live the life of a classical action adventure hero. But, bottom line, it is an excuse to have some fun flirting with a few archetypal dime-novel characters and scenarios.

On this occasion, I worked with David Lloyd because he asked me to collaborate with him at the outset of the project. I agreed, because David is an intelligent and talented story-teller who always has his own strong vision of a piece which it is fun and rewarding to wrestle with. I guess he must find the experience worthwhile too, or he wouldn't keep coming back for more. Sean Phillips and Steve Pugh are another couple of guys with whom I have often been happy to work: both have a strongly individual artistic identity, consummate story-telling skills and, above all, a sympathy with my stories and characters which brings them to life and makes me look good. Fuck knows what they get out of it: it certainly isn't royalties.

BL: The Territory was more sci-fi than some of the work you've done, yet there's a sci-fi feel to works such as Cruel and Unusual, too. Are you a fan of SF at all, or does the interest in science and the future only extend to buying scientific journals? If so, what sort of science fiction do you read?

JD: I read a lot of science fiction — or "speculative fiction", as I think we called it — in my teenage years (Bradbury, Heinlein, Dick, Sladek, Disch, Aldiss, Ballard ... to name a few), but I never moved on to the "modern" stuff (Neuromancer and its successors). The "science" part of the creative equation never interested me in its own right. It is in the response of individuals and societies to political, technological and cultural change that the fascination lies for me. Near-future fictions allow the opportunity for extrapolating current trends and building laboratories in which to test human nature.

BL: In 2000, you wrote Bad Blood, Hellblazer. What sort of challenges did you face in writing a story involving a possible bastard inheritor to the throne?

JD: I actually wrote Bad Blood (or "The Bastard" as it was originally called) a long while before it was finally published, in the immediate aftermath of the unfortunate death of Princess Diana. The insane sentimentality and pseudo-religious hysteria of the public, media and political reaction to this accidental demise made me feel extremely queasy, and provoked me to want to scratch a little blood from the cozy baby-face of the New Labour vision of 21st Century Britain. We'll blame the lawyers for delaying publication so long. It took a couple of years for DC's British counsel to advise that while they felt the story should be condemned on grounds of taste, they could find nothing legally actionable in it.

BL: The ending seemed optimistic in spite of itself and the future the story was set in, while disintegrating from the entropy of government neglect, wasn't as depressing as one would have thought ....

JD: As to the ending: I recall I left it a little ambiguous … all still to play for, really; so if there's a glimmer of hope there, perhaps it's the reader who provides it.

Whether or not I am maturing as a writer is open to discussion, I guess, but I'm certainly personally no more optimistic about the social and political evolution of our species … just a bit more practiced at cynical detachment maybe. Doesn't mean I can't see the funny side of all our vicious monkey antics, either. Laugh my myself raw, some days.

BL: Where does Bad Blood fit into Hellblazer continuity?

JD: Whether, or how, Bad Blood fits into Hellblazer continuity is something for whichever poor bastard is writing the book in 2025 to determine — as the series generally runs in real time.

BL: At least one theme in your work seems to be that underneath the thin veneer of civilization, we are all animals. The only difference between some human beings and others is that some of us try more than others to keep the animal within under control. How does your writing keep your animal under the skin at bay?

JD: How do you know writing does keep my animal at bay? Sometimes I worry it's more like poking a stick through bars of the cage. Like all magical crafts, writing is a two-way street: you get shit out but you let it in, too. Writing can function as a lightning rod: it can pre-empt disaster, calling it down on some hapless doppelganger before it can blast your house, but a little collateral damage will occur from time to time — just don't get too close to your characters, or base them on people you care about unless you're prepared to suffer.

BL: I've often felt terrified, saddened, and even depressed by some of your work. How does it affect you as the writer of it? Do you ever get times where you say, "I can't look at these sick fucks I'm writing about a second longer, I'm going to watch telly?"

JD: What — the TV isn't wall-to-wall sick fucks, too?

I don't know how writing affects me. I guess I'd have to stop to find out. It's tempting, but the withdrawals would be vicious, and the risk of the animal busting out of the cage, too great. I tried to give up nicotine once. Got weird and ugly at my brother's wedding, scared my family so bad they forced me to start smoking again.

Anyway: if I had to quit writing I'd have to do a "proper job".

BL: You wrote on your website, "Writing does that ... devours your life." How do you keep the balance between living and writing? How does one live and write at the same time?

JD: A degree of practiced schizophrenia is involved, but when it comes down to it there's no separating the two. A writer's life — his experience of the world — is the only raw material he has. The more he consumes, the more he must mine, or else risk recycling to the point of entropy.

And hey. Anyone knows a way to write when you're dead, let me know. Economizing on time wasted on food, sex, and bodily maintenance is a definitely attractive proposition.

BL: Why the long initial story arc in Outlaw Nation instead of something that lends itself to being collected? Do you think the lack of a collection is stopping new readers from trying the title as they need to hunt down 12+ issues to understand the story-line?

JD: First I should say that — as has been rumored abroad on the 'net for a while — Outlaw Nation will not continue past #19. The book has a core following of "Johnsons" supporting it — just not enough of them to keep DC happy. It's a shame. Largely my fault for giving the thing such a seemingly shapeless construction. But I deliberately eschewed trying to write it in "arcs" in favor of a truly on-going — some might say rambling — drama of chance and improvisation. In a continuing series, it's the journey that counts: there is no expectation of imminent arrival, and I wanted the story to be more of a saga, or soap — with broad scope and slowly interweaving plotlines — than a collection of episodic adventures, focused around the escapades of a central protagonist. A reckless strategy, for sure — but one embarked upon on the understanding that the series would be collected from the start in (probably) six-issue volumes, to accommodate "new reader access" and hopefully reach that more "mature" audience who (like me) is tired of reading their graphic fiction in monthly installments, packaged, interspersed amongst inappropriate advertising, in pamphlets. We ran into a publishing policy Catch 22. Sales figures not initially high enough to "justify" the trade paperbacks needed to swell the numbers to profitability.

Result: an inevitable spiraling towards entropy — and the waste of a lot of strong characters and creative energy. Oh well. "Won't get fooled again." No more over ambitious, needlessly complex monthly series from Delano (who cheered): more likely a grab-bag of random short-term projects to keep body and soul together while I work up the nerve to write a novel. Writing in dialogue is fun, but I want to flex my prose again.

BL: I notice that the titles of a few issues of Outlaw Nation are taken from Bob Dylan songs, the most obvious being "Need To Be Nervous", from a song off Highway 61 Revisited, which like most Dylan songs of that era, is a surrealistic look at America (and by extension, world mythology). With the references to Dylan and Burroughs in the comic, could this be considered to be YOUR Highway 61 Revisited? Why or why not?

JD: It was an early conceit of Outlaw Nation that the issue titles would all be song-fragments that I felt somehow resonated with that story chapter ... a shortcut to a certain emotional timbre for those who recognized the quote. The Dylan ones are the most obvious, but overall the mix is quite eclectic, including: The Doors, Robert Hunter, Morphine, John Lee Hooker (I think, and very truncated), Captain Beefheart, Little Feat, Nina Simone, the theme song to a Fritz Lang western, Rancho Notorious ... The novelty wore off after around 12 issues, and the subsequent titles were largely more conventionally arrived at.

But yes, I guess this "soundtrack" kind of fits the road-movie of weird Americana theme of the story: and Story Johnson, if not me personally, is definitely "revisiting Highway 61". Eventually, my hope was, that Story would re-tread that 20th Century highway far enough to update his vision of America by 25 years, and begin to understand the 21st Century reality from his hundred year-old "roots" perspective. Given the time to insinuate the history and politics into the overall saga of personal drama, without overburdening it with pomposity, the purpose of the piece might have become clear. As it turns out, you'll have to take that on trust.

BL: Burroughs said that in life, one is either a Johnson or a shit. Do you believe this to be true? If so, which category do you consider yourself to fall under?

JD: That's one of the questions I wanted Outlaw Nation to attempt to answer. I'd kind of like to believe it is true. But it's more complicated than just "good guys" and "bad guys". A Johnson would always instinctively choose to do "the right thing". He'd like to mind his own business, avoid judgment on others, never interfere unless asked for help. But the Shits always outnumber the Johnsons: and identifying with a minority inevitably leads to withdrawal, isolationism, a siege mentality, bitterness and paranoid self-righteousness.

BL: Beyond the Burroughs quote, where did you get the inspiration to write about the Johnson Family?

JD: America. Your country was a really great idea, and it pisses me off you let the Shits make it as ugly and stupid as the rest of this fucked up planet.

BL: If The Territory could be seen as one character being trapped in the conventions of genre story telling in almost a hellish way, Outlaw Nation seems to be partly about one author's attempt to escape both the story and the burden of having to write stories. Can and should these stories be seen as a reflection of your own personal ambivalence concerning your profession. Why do you keep returning to this post-modern theme of examining the idea of being trapped in the story, either as a character or an author?

JD: Yeah. I'll have leave go of that theme before I vanish up my own asshole. Writers and their relationship to writing was another of the questions I wanted Outlaw Nation to address. In Last Words, Burroughs says: "... for all of us in the Shakespeare Squadron, writing is just that: not an escape from reality, but an attempt to change reality, so the writer can escape from the limits of reality."

If that is true, how then does the writer endure the responsibility for the reality he changes — for himself and all his "characters"? And how does that sit with being a Johnson and minding your own business ... ? Are comics the medium through which to flirt with these intangibles? If not, why not? Discuss.

BL: Did you deliberately plan to use devices that seem to be becoming British comic-writer conventions (eg. the 100 year old protagonist, men in white suits, not to mention the deconstruction of The American Dream)? [cf. Milligan (Shade), Morrison (Invisibles), Ellis (Transmet, Planetary), Ennis (Preacher) and Carey (Lucifer)]

JD: Never heard of any of those books you mention, or their writers: but maybe America should stop exporting its fucked up cultural archetypes if it doesn't want them reflected back in weird European distorting mirrors.

BL: How do you feel about people comparing Outlaw Nation with Preacher?

JD: As long as it is favourably, I'm happy enough — although it's a pretty pointless exercise. Inevitable that it would happen, I suppose ... and it made me uneasy enough at the outset to give my main protagonist a Zippo engraved with the legend "Fuck War" in an attempt to signal the contrast in the book's general perspective with that of the "other series with Glenn Fabry covers".

BL: Will you write anything else for Vertigo?

JD: Sure. If they want me to. But I don't think it will be another part-work, unless as a serialization of a simultaneously published graphic novel. Whatever one of those is.

BL: Have you got something new in the works?

JD: As of this moment, absolutely nothing ... Just two more Outlaw Nation scripts to write (see what I mean about deadline Hell?), and about enough money in the bank to see me through Christmas. It's great. Poverty is the best inspiration, I know.