Retro interview: Steve Dillon, 1990

This interview was first published in issue #7 of FTL — the magazine of the Irish Science Fiction Association — in October 1990. It was reprinted in issue #33 of Journey Planet in December 2016.

Steve Dillon is a young British comic artist living in Dublin. Well, perhaps “artist” is too limiting a term – he’s also written his own stories and until recently he’s been the co-editor of Deadline, a popular and successful comic aimed at the more mature reader, of which he is also co-creator. He’s one of those rare comic artists who has developed a unique style without the need for gimmicks.

Steve kindly contributed photocopies of his work on a upcoming Judge Dredd story, excerpts of which can be seen on these pages. Peter McCanney and I spoke to him about his current work for popular weekly comic 2000AD, as well as his input to Deadline.

What with the current boom in comic sales, and increased interest in comics per se, l asked Steve what he thought about the current trend in graphic novels. Does he think it’s a good thing?

“Well, l don’t think it hurts!” He replies. “Not for the people buying them. I sometimes wonder whether people are only going to have a certain amount of money, and can’t afford to keep buying all the expensive stuff, but no, it doesn’t hurt. There’s a lot of people buying them, obviously there’s a demand for them, and that’s all that really matters.”

But doesn’t he feel that in a way it’s exploitation of the readers? For example, they will buy a book because it’s got Batman on it.

“Well, no. ‘That’s not exploitation any more than l buy that” – he indicates the drink in front of him – “because it’s Guinness. I like Guinness, so I’ll buy Guinness. They like Batman, so they’ll buy Batman. What I don’t like is where they release silver-covered versions of a comic, you know, change a little thing. Of course, that serves people right for being so stupid as to collect them.”

l mentioned that Marvel have a habit of collecting a couple of issues of a comic and producing it with a square-bound card cover and calling it a graphic novel…

“If people buy it you can’t really blame them for wanting to sell it,” he replies.

What does he think of the four Batman titles, the four Spider-Man titles, and the soon-to-be-four X-people titles?

“Well, l remember when l was younger I was brought up on the X-Men, and if l could have got hold of more X-men I would have. That’s what l liked.” He says. “Once when I went to the States, I was about seventeen or eighteen, they had one of these scriptwriter’s strikes, and there was a great shortage of original stuff to put on American TV at that time. Where we were staying in New York we could get M*A*S*H about three times a day, l thought it was great! It was wonderful, because l really liked M*A*S*H and l could watch it three times a day. I liked it, and l could watch loads of it. So l don’t see anything wrong with doing loads of titles as long as they’re selling. It is a bit dangerous if you water stuff down. I’d be interested to see how the new Judge Dredd magazine works out, because maybe they’re spreading it a bit thin. Personally, l think it would be better with four longer stories or maybe one long story and a couple of back-ups. At the moment it feels like a copy of 2000AD, but all about Mega-City One.”

As we had strayed onto the subject, l asked Steve what he thought about Judge Dredd – The Megazine.

“Colin MacNeil’s work on the America story is really nice. Of the lot, l think that’s the one that really got me. I know Garth Ennis’ story [Chopper] is going to be fun.”

I mention that l think Chopper is a good story because it departs so much from the normal Judge Dredd-based story, and Steve, who knows about such things, agrees with me.

“Yes, the two stories that have really grabbed me in the Judge Dredd magazine have been America and Garth’s one, the Chopper story. The Dredd story that Alan Grant’s done is just straight Dredd, which is great if you like straight Dredd. Of the Judge Death story, well, it’s hard to tell from the first episode what the story’s going to be like. That first episode was obviously a teaser, so now we’re going to get into the real stuff and I’m interested to see what’s going to happen next.”

The conversation turns to his own work, in particular Harlem Heroes in 2000AD, in which Steve pencils and Kevin Walker inks. It’s a common enough thing in America, but it’s quite rare with British comics.

“In America it’s a tradition to work that way, also in American comics you produce a lot of pages per story, whereas in Britain there are only five- or six-page stories. There’s a lot more switching around between people, episode-wise, in British comics, but the American comics have these big chunks, so it’s a lot easier to handle. I don’t know too much about the American tradition, or why it started up. I think there were more assembly line-type places in America back in the forties, like Eisner. An Eisner-type studio was where somebody drew the backgrounds, somebody drew the faces, and so on, so I suppose it’s come out of that sort of tradition. Whereas British comics came out of an illustration tradition with one person doing the whole thing.

“But it was interesting to see what Kev was doing when we drew Rogue Trooper. I’d never really been inked by anyone before, except Brett Ewins, who’d inked Skreemer and an episode of Nemo.”

Does he feel that Kevin Walker’s inking complements his work or detracts from it in any way?

“Yeah, there are some things which l think he makes look better than I ever could, but there are other things he does where l think he lost it a bit. Kevin’s very strong in certain areas and not in others. But again it’s hard for me to say because l know I’d do it a certain way, whether my way is better, l don’t know, it’s just different. But l know Kev can handle machinery and all that sort of stuff very well, and l haven’t got the patience to do a lot of the work that Kev puts into the machinery and stuff. I’m much more into people and faces, so it worked well that way.”

Steve works mostly in black ink, but l asked him if he’d be interested in producing a colour strip.

“l don’t know,” he replies. “Personally, l haven’t got too much time for all this full-colour painted comics. It was interesting to see Dave McKean’s stuff when it first came out. I think the best of the bunch is Bill Sienkiewicz, he manages to keep some energy in it. Simon Bisley does the same, keeps energy in it. The trouble with this fully-painted stuff is the danger of slowing it all down, it loses the pace, it deadens it. A lot of comics are about pacing and timing – if you’ve got rip-roaring stories you need a rip-roaring pace in the artwork, and if it’s all a bit too detailed, fully painted-up then you can slow it down.”

There’s a trend in comics like Revolver, Crisis and the new Judge Dredd magazine towards fewer panels per page and nice big colour paintings. I ask him if he feels that this slows down the story.

“Well, that’s where we start getting into dodgy areas. I mean, are the kids getting value for money? It depends what they want. Some kids love all these big panels, they love to look at the art, but they tend to be more on the fan end of it. 2000AD sells over one hundred thousand copies a week – I’m not sure how much over – you can’t tell me they’re all fans. Most of them are kids who buy it, or their parents buy it for them, they read it, they swap it, or throw it away. But they’re not fans. So l suppose the proof of the pudding is in the sales. If 2000AD can continue selling at that level, then clearly they’re doing something right.”

Wasn’t there a survey done in 2000AD, broken down into age groups? Didn’t they find that it was more older readers?

“Yes, it has more older readers than a lot of comics have. The trap 2000AD mustn’t fall into – and I do think they are conscious of it – is following one section of the readership as it gets older. I mean, Richard Burton is an ex-fan, he’s now editor of 2000AD, and Alan MacKenzie is a comics fan, he’s sub-editor. A lot of people working on it are fans who’ve become artists and writers, and a lot of people writing letters and turning up at the conventions are the same people we’ve been seeing for the last ten years. The danger is that you’ll follow them. You have to have a turnover of new readers. A good editor is one who can tell what the actual real comic-buying kids want, that’s what 2000AD should be: a comic for kids.”

I ask Steve about his own work on Hap Hazzard, a very popular story in 2000AD, which he both wrote and drew. Is it the first thing he’s written?

“Well, yes, it’s the first I’ve written myself professionally, it’s the only thing I’ve ever written that’s been any good. The trouble with a lot of stuff I’ve done in Deadline is that I ended up writing, drawing and lettering it overnight, five pages in one night. In some cases with a story idea, I’ll draw it. When I’ve drawn it I’ll fax it over to Deadline, and also send the artwork off at the same time. I would down sit down and write it, after I’ve drawn it!” he laughs.

“But Hap Hazzard… I’ve always wanted to do that. I’d an idea for the name, and somehow it just had to be that character to go with the name, and also I did quite like the slightly subversive idea of a story about two drunkards in 2000AD. I mean, there’s not much funny stuff in 2000AD, not any more. I liked it when Dredd had more black humour in it.

“Hap Hazzard could have been set anywhere. I happened to set it on a different planet because it was in 2000AD. It gave me the chance to come up with some interesting characters like the Kango twins – two brains in one body – and have them arguing away. You come up with different ideas for that sort of stuff, like the mind-transfer story, which incidentally was spoiled because a balloon was missing off the last page.”

Is there any likelihood that Hap Hazzard will crop up again in the future?

“I’m working on a five or six part story at the moment, the title is ‘Another Story of Love, Death and Dry Cleaning.’”

Turning to this artwork he’s shown us for the upcoming Judge Dredd story, I asked Steve how a story like this goes into production.

“Well, John Wagner [the writer] is past the stage now where he has to do too much liaising with the editor on plot ideas. He just writes it and sends it in. I think John does have a say, or a bit of a veto, on who draws it, but the trouble with Dredd is because now that it’s in full colour it’s hard to get just one artist to draw a lot of episodes. I think Carlos Ezquerra is the one artist who could have turned out six pages of colour a week over twenty-odd issues. So you have to get a lot of different artists on Dredd because of that. Dredd has always been the longest story. Four pages a week is manageable for a lot of artists, six pages a week generally isn’t.

“I have to do about ten pages a week. As I’ve said I can do five pages over one night, but they’re not good! And it’s not what I want to do every night. I could work on two pages a day, and they’d be pretty good pages. Some of these pages I did two in a day, and it’s not bad.”

Changing the subject once more, I asked Steve about Deadline. How did it all begin?

“What happened was that both myself and Brett Ewins had been getting fed up with working at home. Brett because he lived on his own, and I was working a lot, so I wasn’t getting out of the house that much. So I thought I wouldn’t mind getting a studio with other people around, doing the same sort of stuff. And it was better for my family because I wasn’t always going, ‘Shhh! I’m working.’

“So me and Brett got together and decided to get a studio. We rented some studio space, right up the road from 2000AD, funnily enough. Brett was drawing Bad Company at the time, and I was doing Rogue Trooper. We just got talking about the idea of maybe doing a graphic novel together. We came up with a couple of ideas, and we realised that doing a graphic novel is a lot of work up front for no money. Neither of us could afford that, London property prices being what they were. So we had the idea of doing a one-off magazine for the convention. As we started talking about it, we thought we could get some other people in. Brett had met Jamie [Hewlett] and Philip [Bond] when he gave a lecture at Worthing.

“The whole idea started to snowball. We started thinking that maybe we could do this regularly. We thought it would he relatively easy, we thought, ‘This will be good! We can do this!’ At that time Heartbreak Hotel and Escape were around, and we thought we could do it. However, we wanted an independent thing, but with a more commercial idea about it – we wanted it in newsagents all over the country. Escape and Heartbreak Hotel were only sold in newsagents in London. We thought here’s a chance to show people that there are different comics around.

“Myself and Brett are not businessmen, we became businessmen – not very good ones – but we became businessmen!” He laughs. “Mike Lake of Titan helped us out with the figures and showed us how to deal with cash-flow sheets. In the end we turned to Mike and asked him if he wanted to back it, and he was interested. Anyway, things started stalling and Titan were saying ‘How about just launching it in London?’ And that was exactly what we didn’t want to do with it. So we asked Brett’s mate Tom Astor if he’d back it, and after only a couple of meetings he said he would, and then it was all sorted out pretty quick.

“So, we got the first issue out in time for UKCAC that year.”

Deadline seems to have gone for more alternative stories recently…

“Well,what we did when we got people like Jamie and Phil up. We basically said ‘Do what you want.’ We said we would be interested in having something of a more female angle, as Jamie put it: ‘Brett and Steve asked us for girlie strips!’ So Phil came up with Wired World, and Jamie came up with Tank Girl, and the rest is history!”

“We met Nick Abadzis via John Tomlinson and Stevie Cook. Nick came in to work with John for a week, and he had a portfolio with him, lots of very good stuff. And we came across these two pages of a little stick-man, kicking the cat, raiding the fridge, turning the TV on and off. And both me and Brett said, ‘Oh, we like that! Can we have it?’ And Nick said ‘I’m really glad you said that, everybody else just passes that by.’ So we got that, and Nick had to go off an think up a name for it, and he came up with Hugo Tate. I think it’s my favourite strip that’s appeared in Deadline.”

I asked Steve if, from all the work he’s done in Deadline, 2000AD, Warrior and so on, would he be able to pick out any one thing he’s more proud of than anything else?

“It’s hard for me to do that. I’ve been doing this since I was sixteen – 1978 I started – so for different reasons I’m proud of different things, like I’m proud of the ‘Alone in the Crowd’ story, because it was my first Dredd. And I’m proud of this Dredd story I’ve done here. I think it’s probably going to end up being the nicest work I’ve done for 2000AD. I’m proud of some of those Hap Hazzard stories, the first one I quite liked. I suppose I’m proud of that because it’s the first time I’d written anything for 2000AD”

As a final question before we parted, I asked Steve who he thought had influenced him most in the past few years.

“The bank manager,” he replies, laughing. “No, my early influences were people like Neal Adams. I was started too young, really. I got a contract when I was sixteen, I was offered a regular strip at Marvel UK. I was at art college, and I thought, ‘To do this I’ll have to leave college,’ and the only way I’d do that was if I had a guarantee of the work. So I got a year’s contract. Three pages a week, for Hulk comic, to do Nick Fury, and that was too much. You see, one thing a lot of fans don’t realise is that they’ll draw when they want, and they might think they draw a lot, but it’s because they want to.

“When you get into the business, and you have to do it professionally with publication dates to deal with, then if you don‘t feel like drawing you’ve still got to draw. And I’d never had to draw three pages a week before. Once a month I might do three or four pages, I might do them relatively quickly, which made me think l could do three pages a week, but I wouldn’t do them every week. So a lot of my style has grown out of the fact that I had to learn to do the stuff quickly, and also make it look all right. I didn’t really get it together until I started doing the Doctor Who back-up strips.

“The thing is, first and foremost this is a job. A friend of mine was a drummer – this is when we were at school – a very talented fellow on the drums. I kept saying to him ‘Get some session work, you’d make loads of money.’ He ended up going to art college, and he’s now working as one of the modellers on Spitting Image. But when he started out I said, ‘Why the hell didn’t you get into drumming?’ He said ‘Well, I like drumming too much to make it a job.’”

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Addendum, 2 December 2016:

Steve Dillon died on October 22nd, 2016, at the age of fifty-four. I wish I could say we were close friends, but the last time we met was about twenty years ago. But back in the early 1990s, when he still lived in Dublin, Steve was a great supporter of both the Irish Science Fiction Association and Octocon, the Irish national SF convention. The interview, in fact, was published in issue #7 of the ISFA’s magazine FTL, which doubled as the programme book for the first Octocon.

It was shortly after the interview was conducted that Steve began to work more and more for American publishers, first for DC with notable runs on Animal Man and Hellblazer, and then he and Garth Ennis unleashed their modern-day classic series Preacher onto the world.

For the past fifteen years or so, Steve worked mostly for Marvel comics, chiefly on Punisher for multiple acclaimed series (totalling about seventy issues), plus a twenty-five-issue run on Wolverine: Origins.

When my own career in comics began to take off I compiled a list of other creators with whom I wanted to work: Steve’s name was top of that list. I adored his work, and he was not only phenomenally talented, he was genuinely one of the good guys. Ask anyone who knew him – he was universally loved. As we in the ISFA learned back in the 1990s, Steve was more than generous with his help and advice for new creators, and when it came to fans he would happily spend hours chatting with them and sketching for them.

Everyone who knew Steve has their favourite Steve Dillon story, and here’s mine: After a panel at another Dublin convention in the early 1990s Steve found himself absolutely mobbed. He was trapped in a corridors surrounded by maybe two dozen young fans all clamouring for his attention, but he was needed elsewhere. He kept politely trying to excuse himself, but the fans weren’t willing to let him go. Steve spotted me at the far end of the corridor, and shouted, “Hey, Mike!” to attract my attention. He told the fans, “That guy’s a massively famous writer! You should all go talk to him!” Then, when all their attention was momentarily on me, Steve ran away. A sneaky trick, but those young fans saw me as Steve Dillon’s pal, which made that one of my Best Days Ever.

I’d always wanted to catch up with him one day, and say, “Hey, Steve, remember all that advice you gave me about creating comics? Well, you were right!” Sadly, that reunion will never happen now. I don’t know: maybe he knew. Maybe one day he saw my name in the credits of a Judge Dredd strip and thought, “Good for you, Mike!”

Then again, Steve knew a lot of people – you couldn’t help liking him and wanting to be his friend – so it’s possible that he didn’t remember me at all.

But I remember him. And maybe that’s enough.

Rest in peace, Steve.

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Addendum 2: Judge Dredd: Nightmares — portfolio

When I met with Steve for the interview in 1990 he kindly brought along some photocopies of the pages on which he was currently working: “Nightmares”, a five-part Judge Dredd tale written by John Wagner. Steve gave me the first two episodes — twelve pages in total — and I used some of the panels to illustrate the interview. Sometime in subsequent years the envelope containing the pages disappeared, seemingly lost forever… until last week, when it turned up in a box of assorted bits and pieces that I know for a fact I’ve searched a good half-dozen times. But the pages were all intact, as crisp and clear as they had been that day in a Dublin pub in 1990.

“Nightmares” was published in 2000AD from issue #702, cover-dated 27 Oct 1990 — or thirty years ago this week. With the kind permission of Rebellion — owners of 2000AD and Judge Dredd — I now present all twelve pages in full… a rare chance to see some of the original artwork from “Judge Dredd: Nightmares” exactly as it was drawn by Steve Dillon!

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Judge Dredd and all related characters and images are © Rebellion 2000AD Ltd. All Rights Reserved.