So I got a Kindle for Christmas. I want to read more, but I don’t like books. You see I don’t use bookmarks so I either have to turn over the corners or try and remember where I am it’s a pain in the backside. I also hate holding books, they are big and the more you read the more you mess up the spines, so when you are done with them the damned thing won’t stay shut. You have to put them on shelves or in boxes where they take up way too much room. All this hassle for something I’m most likely only going to read once. In fact I can name to you the books I’ve read more than once.
- The BFG by Roald Dahl
- The Twits by Roald Dahl
- and George's Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl
And those were because I read them as a kid then my school said "hey we're going to read these books".
Essentially what I’m saying is eff books!
I like comics though. I also like history. So while looking for books to put on my Kindle I found a book that combined the two. And for only £1.99! Sir you have a sale.
2000 AD: The Creator Interviews collects four interviews (duh) from the Judge Dredd Megazine. The interviews are always a delight. They are able to do that rare thing where they try to create a narrative. Normally it is just the life of the interviewee but it is a trick that is seemingly lost on Internet journalists. How many times have you read an interview that consists of Question followed by another unrelated Question. They read like they’ve been written by robots (funny considering people who work on 2000AD are known as Droids).
In The Creator Interviews there are interviews with Carlos Ezquerra, “The Godfather of British Comics” Pat Mills, Mike McMahon and Ron Smith. Of the set the Ron Smith and Carlos Ezquerra interviews are my favourite. They focus more on their non-2000AD work, with Smith’s only focusing on 2000AD till near the end. It is really a fascinating to read and hear of this man who’s career started in what is normally seen as the old style in interviews with Pat Mills or Alan Grant.
Ezquerra’s interview spends a good time talking about how he creates characters and visualises pages, which when you are talking to the co-creator of Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog, yeah that's what you bloody do. The Pat Mills interview is very much normal Pat Mills interview stuff, Subversive writing, changing the norm, you know the kind of stuff that after you have read a half dozen Pat Mills interviews you could write yourself.
The Mike McMahon interview focuses on his art and how it developed over time, from his early work where he tried to mimic Carlos Ezquerra to his more daring but more divisive work in the 90’s. It is the stuff that would be super interesting to me if I were an artist but I’m not.
Overall the book is a good one. Because the interviews are self contained you could read them in any order you want if you were crazy like that. It is also a quick read, taking me around a hour and a half with some messing around on kindle time. If you are interested in 2000AD, British Comics or even comics in general you should probably buy it. I mean it’s only £1.99 that would be nothing if it weren't £1.99.
2000 AD: The Creator Interviews is written by Michael Molcher
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