Here's another extract fro my Alan Grant interview tapes. This excerpt begins with Alan recalling a short-lived series called Time Quake, by Chris Lowder & Redondo…
ALAN GRANT Pt. 3
Chris hadn’t been writing for 2000 AD for sometime by then, he was off writing science fiction novels or something. He was never what I would call a proper 2000 AD writer. He was from the generation before. I would guess Time Quake was a leftover from Starlord, it has that feel about it. Jesus Redondo can be a beautiful artist but unless you give him the right story to draw you don’t get it. Time Quake looks like it harks back to 50s or 60s comic.
2000 AD started publishing comic strip adaptations of the Stainless Steel Rat series of SF novels...
I can’t remember whose idea it was, Kelvin I suppose. I remember meeting Harry Harrison a few times. He came across as exactly the sort of person who should be writing for 2000 AD. It was really good to meet him, really enjoyable. I think it worked, but I don’t think it was a 2000 AD story, but it worked in 2000 AD. It was never one of my favourite stories, but there was nothing to not enjoy about it. Carlos hates doing anything where he’s not created the characters so I’m not sure how much enjoyed doing Stainless Steel Rat. He used to complain if he had to draw somebody else’s character, so he would use pen-names, like L. J. Silver on ABC Warriors.
Judge Death in 149-151…
That was big because it was Bolland back doing Dredd and more than just one episode or a cover. It’s some of best artwork and probably the most reprinted Dredd story of all. Some of the ideas for Judge Death came from a science fiction book I’d been reading about a psychic detective. But it was mostly John and Brian, obviously. Good job it was only three parts – if it had been four parts, we might still be waiting! (laughs)
Reader reaction was fantastic. It was a major new character. When John came up with it, it was just another story. He wanted it to be a good story but there was no thought of bringing Judge Death for another story. But then when he saw the amazing job Brian had done on the artwork… In my opinion, that’s the best work that Brian’s ever done, apart from maybe The Killing Joke… When John saw the artwork he was blown away.
It’s always been one of the major problems with Judge Dredd, he’s so good that you can’t leave the villains alive. You can’t have Captain Skank breaking out of a cube every other week like the Joker does in Batman. The only person able to break out of the cubes is someone like a Mean Machine.
The number of reader drawings we got after Judge Death ran, it rose exponentially. The readers were obviously inspired by Brian’s artwork and by the character as well. By the time Death came back, we co-wrote that.
It’s really difficult for any researcher to figure out who wrote what. The number of bloody names that John and I used! He would write Dredd under John Howard. T. B. Grover was him on his own, then both of us used it. (One story in make-up book is attributed to Wagner & Grover & Howard!) Apart from that, some stories I wrote on my own were as Alan Grant, some we co-wrote were also credited to Alan Grant. Alvin Gaunt – that was a name that Kelvin and I used, but I kept using it after Kelvin and I stopped our partnership. Stacatto – I used that for annuals and specials.
At one time, when Eagle was a photo-strip comic and we were also writing Hard Man’s Game, a rugby strip for another Fleetway title. Neither of us knew a fucking thing about rugby but we thought we’d write a story about a hard man’s game. It was a great title! (laughs) We were writing under 14 different pseudonyms at one time. John didn’t want it to be known it was him, he preferred pseudonyms, but I wanted to be given the credit for everything we were doing. But Sanders wouldn’t let us.
Sanders sent a memo to Steve, after one particular 2000 AD, saying he didn’t care if John and I wrote all of 2000 AD, all of Eagle and every other comic, but he didn’t want the readers to know. So he insisted we use these pseudonyms. So we responded to that by coming up with the most ridiculous pseudonyms we could. When we sat down in the morning, we had to decide who we were for the day! F. Martin Candor – I don’t know what the F stood for! Fennimore, or something!
Jumping ahead to Block Mania briefly…
I remember Mike walking off Block Mania. He phoned us up and said how many more people are going to be in this story? We said it was going to be more of the same. He said I can’t fucking do it, I’ve had enough, I’m off! That was it! (laughs) Typically straight forward Mike, no beating around the bush.
The Blood of Satanus…
This must have been the first Dredd story Pat had written since Cursed Earth. Pat plotted the story, in the original version, the girl in the story actually one of Dredd’s old girlfriends. So Dredd had a personal interest in the case. (Alan talked to John about it, John didn’t want it but refused to rewrite Pat – so Alan rewrote the scripts before they went to the artist. But he never admitted this to Pat!) So any ire he felt wouldn’t be directed at me!
Alan talks Vienna Dredd, a character John Wagner subsequently revived in 2000 AD after this interview took place...
John said after he’d done the story that the character would never be brought back and I was in complete agreement with that. (Alan speculates the one-off was written in haste to fill a gap.) Although it did strike a chord with readers, they wanted to see more of Vienna Dredd. None of them noticed that this couldn’t have happened, that Rico had been banged up for twenty years! (Laughs.) You could write you way out of it, of course, resolve the continuity problems.
Alan Moore’s first scripts for 2000 AD went through Alan Grant when he was sub-editor…
I wrote back to him and said we would buy the story if he could cut it by thirty to fifty per cent. And he did it and we bought the story. (Alan recalls a much later Alan Moore interview where he said he had valued that request, being edited properly, because it rarely happened after Watchmen’s success.) It was a good story. That set him off on his comics career proper, as a writer.
It was funny… When I read it and realised it was far too long – everything was twice as long as it needed to be. Mentally, as I read through it again, I was thinking where I could cut it. I’d think about cutting one bit but I realised it would destroy what he says later on, because he harks back to it. I ended up thinking this guy’s a really fucking good writer because he incorporated everything into it. If I had found an easy way of editing it myself, I would have – that’s exactly why it was sent back to Alan!
Judge Child…
John was on a high at the time with the Judge Child story, although I didn’t like all of it, like the Salesman sequence. Mike McMahon was doing some beautiful stuff, the Necromancer.
Mach-0…
I was never a fan of Mach 0. I understood the logic of running it, because Mach 1 had been so successful – but that was because Six Million Dollar Man was running at the time on TV!
Readers’ art…
As well as using the best art that came in, I also had a policy of using the worst art that came in! Give them two quid, what does it matter?
Comic Rock? Were there ever any other Comic Rock stories done?
Pat wanted to tie in stories some how to punk bands or songs but this was the only one. I think he quicker realised Comic Rock was a non-starter, but Nemesis had more potential! Nemesis was very popular – again, Kevin did great design work on it. Followed by artists who were so inspired by Kevin’s work, they did some of their best work on the series…
Meltdown Man…
Strangely popular – I say strangely, because I couldn’t figure out why!
What’s your abiding memory of working in 2000 AD editorial?
I guess I left about Prog 174. I remember best the sheer amount of energy and vitality and, dare I say it, love that went into it. Friday morning artists would start coming into the office – Mike McMahon, Kev O’Neill, Carlos Ezquerra. By one o’clock when it was time for lunch, there’d be maybe ten or twelve artists in the office. Writers and artists, Steve and I would be there. John would come in – Pat almost never, he was more anti-social in those days. They stayed all afternoon, there was little or very little work done. It was like having a party with all your favourite creators. To meet these guys, producing this great artwork. That’s my main memory of working in the 2000 office…
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