Requiem Vampire Knight 5: 2000AD Lives On!

Diamonds and Blood

The great thing for me – writing Requiem – was that I could get a decent financial return for my science fiction ideas. It was becoming increasingly difficult to make a reasonable living writing for 2000AD unless I cut corners, as every 2000AD creative has to do from time to time, and this was something I hated doing. The similarities between Requiem and my 2000AD stories are very apparent to me, but writing for France I could take my time playing with different concepts and not have to rush them.

Thus, the aerial sword fight between aircraft was an idea I originally had planned for the Nemesis: Gothic Empire story, but there wasn’t time and space for Kevin O’Neill to continue with the saga. I’d love to have seen Kevin’s version of an aerial dogfight with sabres. But Olivier loved the idea and did a great job with it, so it occupies much of the volume.

Later, we see the Vampire Bounty Hunter, Sabre, shooting a dragon and removing its diamond eyes. This may well remind readers of Sláine: Dragon Heist, where Sláine is employed as a labourer on a dragon farm. The dragons are farmed and killed for their brains, which are made of pure diamond. Steelhorn in ABC Warriors also had a diamond brain. All three notions were inspired by an article I had read, which suggested that diamonds would make perfect computers.

According to the web today, diamonds are indeed being explored as a platform for quantum computing, particularly for implementing qubits, the fundamental units of quantum information. The unique properties of diamonds, like their stable crystal structure and ability to host specific defects called NV centres, make them promising materials for quantum computing. I’d read an earlier version of this, probably in National Geographic, and actually submitted it as a Doctor Who TV idea. I featured space Romanies – Novads – living in space ‘caravans’, connected by gravity bridges, who were in search of a robot with a diamond computer-head. I never got around to adapting it into a Doctor Who comic, but I liked the idea of Novads, so I featured one as the heroine in Metalzoic.

I’m surprised diamond as a computer hasn’t been used as the basis for a movie. It has huge potential. It’s why I used it so often.

Another idea that took me back to 2000AD was a giant stagecoach with a swimming pool of blood on the roof. Early 2000AD readers may remember Kevin O’Neill drew a feature for the Harlem Heroes.