Pageturners: Collaborations
From the day John Wagner – the writer-creator of Judge Dredd - and I worked together on Romeo at D.C. Thomson, Dundee, I knew we were kindred spirits.
Welcome to Pageturners, a book I’m writing in which I share what I’ve learnt – and am still learning – about comic writing, film writing, novel writing and how new writers can sell their stories. I’ll publish a chapter or a section per week, available for free here on Iconoblast. And I welcome your feedback or questions, so do leave a comment below!
Missed the Pageturners intro? Read it here.
Pageturners: Collaborations
From the day John Wagner – the writer-creator of Judge Dredd - and I worked together on Romeo at D.C. Thomson, Dundee, I knew we were kindred spirits. We shared the same cynical and satirical sense of humour. We’d wander the corridors of D. C. Thomson wearing green eyeshades, on which were emblazoned in white letraset the word ‘Hack’.
Working with a collaborator, ‘creative jamming’, can kickstart your Muse. It certainly did mine. So I thoroughly recommend it as a way of getting started, particularly if your solo career is faltering. Nearly every comic and magazine John and I submitted stories to accepted them straight away. These included Lover magazine, Cor!!, Tammy and Battle Picture Library. I went freelance first, working out of a garden shed, with John joining me in the evenings and at the weekend. Soon we were so overloaded with work that John went freelance, too.
There are many advantages of having a writing-partner. It can help you overcome the inevitable insecurities of being freelance and you can boost each other’s confidence. Thus, before we started sending scripts to D.C. Thomson’s arch-rival, IPC Magazines, John rang up a friend who was an assistant-editor on an IPC comic and asked him whether there were any opportunities for work? ‘Oh, no,’ the friend replied. ‘It’s really difficult getting stories accepted by IPC. Almost impossible. I wouldn’t bother if I were you.’ This is typical of so many gatekeepers in publishing. Insecure about their own talent, they make damn sure nobody gets in to possibly take their place. Although we were depressed by this news, we decided to ignore our insider’s advice and still go for it. We proved him wrong.
Another advantage of having a partner is that you can edit each other’s work, honing it to a remarkable degree. John and I had already had a thorough training in editing stories at D.C. Thomson. Now we took it to another level: endlessly rewriting and polishing our material. I think it was the sharpness and clarity of our stories, as well as our cynical and powerful ideas, that got us through.
It was a very successful relationship that lasted for over a year. When the garden shed got too much and John headed south to work in IPC, the various editors were really concerned that we were splitting up. They didn’t know ‘which one had the talent’ and feared standards would drop. Of course they didn’t, and we went on to successful solo careers. Later, John would have another very successful writing partnership with Alan Grant.
It’s worth describing some other collaborations because they show other advantages of teaming-up with another writer. Undoubtedly my most successful was with Tony Skinner, a rock musician and practising pagan. He gave me some insights into the Celts on Sláine and I later encouraged him to write with me full-time. Together we wrote Punisher 2099 for Marvel Comics, which sold a million copies on issue one; Finn, an urban witch story, and Accident Man, the number one story in Toxic! now made into two movies starring Scott Adkins. And many other successful stories.
The advantage of working with Tony was I no longer had to get bogged down in boring but necessary research. He was an expert in martial arts, knew all about weapons and had met endless unusual characters who were perfect for stories. He was also a hereditary witch, with some fascinating insights into the occult. So, armed with all this material, we were able to write at incredible high speeds together, without any loss of quality.
I was so impressed by our approach I’ve repeated it since – writing with many other collaborators who have expert knowledge in their field. I recommend it as a method of getting started. It sure beats Wikipedia. Because Tony is extremely knowledgeable on a vast number of wholesome and not so wholesome subjects (guns, knives, cars, motorbikes, fashions, murders, assassins, police, army) that comic writers really need to know a lot about.
In fact, in many ways, Tony is, potentially, a better popular culture writer than I am. If he could be bothered, I’m sure he could write any number of best-sellers, but his musical career is always his first love.
Another favourite collaboration was with an Iranian actor friend I’ll call ‘A’. We wrote together in Tehran for several months and although it was some years ago, it’s best to be careful so I shan’t name him. Even minor ‘transgressions’ can attract the attention of the police. Thus in Tehran the only videos I could rent were violent action movies like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky and Judge Dredd (pirated, of course). There were no movies majoring on female roles, although they made an exception with Gone With The Wind, for some reason. So when I returned to the UK, I posted a video of Citizen Kane to my Iranian girlfriend. She received a visit from the police and was told Citizen Kane was unacceptable viewing and the authorities posted this dangerous movie back to me.
‘A’ also had no writing experience, but his narrative skills were incredible. He’s another great example of the joys of ‘creative jamming’: it proves how widespread the gift of storytelling is, and that your writing partner doesn’t need a formal training. Talent is at least 50% of the equation and the rest can usually be acquired or taught.
We would write so many stories together, I would be absolutely aching from laughing. In fact we laughed so much, my Iranian girlfriend, sitting in the next room, became jealous and angry. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t laugh like that when I was spending time with her. So A and I would quickly ‘shush’ each other when we came up with another humorous story together – in case we annoyed her.
Later we wrote Ayatollah’s Son together – a six page comic strip, which you can see here.
All this proves that writing should be FUN, not some dreary, deadly serious business of stories just churned out for the cash. That was my take regarding much of the comic industry when I started, and it has slowly become so again. Laughter was my consciously chosen antidote to keep this soulless regime at bay. And creative jamming with someone else is most likely to bring that humour out.
So how does the methodology of collaborating actually work? John Wagner and I would think up and write stories together, type up the descriptions separately, then swap and read each other’s work for typos. Once Tony Skinner got into the swing of it, he’d eventually be writing, dictating and sending off scripts – like Ravage 2099 – solo as well as stories we worked on together.
One collaborator, Steve Earles, had a unique gift for colourful dialogue on certain characters, so I would email him a particular scene and then let him loose on the dialogue. The results were often impressive. I’d compare it to the system used in The Thick Of It. Apparently, prior to rehearsals, the scripts are sent to a “swearing consultant” in Lancaster called Ian Martin, who adds some of the more colourful language. Steve had a similar role with character-based dialogue.
The Heavy Metal Pirates in the Requiem series are a case in point. I told Steve how Aleister Crowley/Black Sabbat was going to send a band of annoying heavy metal fan boys on a quest to the other side of the Universe, just to get rid of them. They have to locate the legendary Rock Relics of Resurrection. With his expert knowledge of Heavy Metal, Steve came up some authentic and colourful source material which I then adapted into the script.
Unfortunately the money in comics is just not in the same league as TV and with all the resistance I’d get from publishers for trying to have joint by-lines, it really wasn’t worth continuing, so I gave up. And, even when I succeeded in getting collaborators by-lines, like Tony and Alan Mitchell (my co-authors on Third World War), it never did them any good. The gatekeepers saw to that. As one jealous member of 2000AD editorial staff said to Tony, ‘You haven’t paid your dues.’ So there was no admittance. The comic industry is that spiteful and that stunted.
I know other writers use other systems for collaboration – like writing separate chapters or different stories under one by-line. John Wagner and I alternated when we were writing Dan Dare and Doctor Who, but I don’t know if it’s a particularly good system. Certainly we didn’t stay with it. Much as I like the classic assassin novel series Fantomas, written by two authors, when they swap chapters it really shows. Continuity is a bit rough and there’s an uneven quality about it that makes it jerky to read.
No account of collaborations would be complete without the one closest to my heart: Read ‘em and Weep. Kevin O’Neill suggested the idea of a comedy based on the outrageous world of British comics in the 1970s and, over many happy days putting it together in bars, we wrote it as a sitcom. Gareth Edwards, producer of Spaced, liked it, went over our scripts with us and finally green-lit it, but he couldn’t get it past his boss at the BBC who felt comics were ‘too niche’. We had similar responses from various TV production companies who thought it was ‘very funny’ but again ‘too niche’. So I decided to novelise it, developing the characters and plots further to have the power and drama needed for a four volume series. There were already several dark mysteries about Dave Maudling’s past which couldn’t be developed in a sitcom. These had always fascinated me. Who was his mother? Why did he have a strange fascination for fur coats? Now, in a novel, I could explore the answers. Practical considerations and geography meant that this was down to me. Collaborating on a text novel is not such a straight-forward possibility as collaborating on comics.
Here’s one of my favourite scenes from Serial Killer to end on. It’s the one where Dave explains his unique obsession with fur and it’s straight out of our original sitcom.
‘My sister first noticed when the nap of the fur went a bit flat ...’ Dave said meaningfully. ‘We never discussed it, but she left the key to mum’s wardrobe out ...’
‘That was thoughtful of her.’
‘Then my dad saw what I’d been doing with it and he went mad: “You never even took it off the hangar!” He said there’d never been anything like that in his family.’
‘What did they do about it?’ Greg was curious.
‘They talked about sending me for treatment… The doctor preferred not to talk about it,’ recalled Dave. ‘There was no pamphlet for what I had. And he didn’t want to write one either. I was very disappointed when I grew up to discover that women weren’t all furry like a grizzly bear. I would long for a woman with a back like a Turkish deck-hand. I wasn’t sure I was alone with these feelings, but apparently I am.’
‘So what happened to the fur coat?’
‘It packed me in,’ Dave frowned. ‘It was pretty terrible. The wardrobe dumped me.’
Today, everything I’m writing requires a solo approach, but I still miss those creative jamming days. I hope these examples show the possibilities in collaborating with another writer and how they may overcome some of the obstacles and challenges writers face. At the very least it can be a lot of fun.
Now collaborating with an artist – that’s something else again…
Good show! Hope to see you in print soon!
Thanks for this stuff, Pat. It really is inspirational.