Monday, July 31, 2006

A more productive day...

Got another 3000 words done today, and progressed the 2000 AD story up to the advent of killer polar bear Shako in Prog 20. Fresh material arrived from current 2000 AD writers Simon Spurrier and Rob Williams, who kindly answered my questions about their work for the comic. Both sent material to the comic while I was editor and both got rejected, only breaking in to the title after I'd left the Nerve Centre. Considering the quality of work they're now producing, that probably doesn't reflect well on me - but both were generous enough to concede flaws in the stories that submitted during my time. Happily, my successor Andy Diggle did recognise their talent, so it turned out alright in the end. Right, here is today's extract from the work in progress...
Mills resigned as editor in the spring of 1977, satisfied he had launched another hit for IPC. ‘I was bored of being at war with such a sad bunch of losers who wished we’d drop down dead. Frankly, I’ve had enough.’ Gosnell became editor and Landau soon joined him as chief sub-editor. Gosnell inherited the job of getting each issue approved by Sanders.

‘He had to see every page before it went to press to make sure it wasn’t too violent. Didn’t matter how many robots we killed or blew up, as was happening in Dredd by this time. But Sanders used to do a body count every bloody week on Invasion. I’d be called down on press day with the artwork in front of me. He would count the corpses and complain about how many there were. “Too many, dear boy, too many. Can’t we get rid of this chap being blown in two by a shotgun at close range? Let’s try to get the body count down to under 90 next week, shall we?” It was like horse-trading corpses every week, completely bizarre.’

Wordcount target: 120,000. Current wordcount: 13,764.

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