JAMIE DELANO: DRUG ADDLED PROPHET FOR THE MASSES

Jamie Delano, author of such titles as CAPTAIN BRITAIN, HELLBLAZER,WORLD WITHOUT END, ANIMAL MAN, NIGHT RAVEN, GHOSTDANCING, TAINTED, THE HORRORIST, BATMAN/MANBAT, 2020 VISIONS, HELL ETERNAL, CRUEL AND UNUSUAL, and THE TERRITORY, shares with us his life story.

1954: Born in Northampton, UK. Got Stoned. Never summoned the energy to move away.
1972: Got stoned. Left school to work in local library. Read most of the books. Got bored.
1973: Left library to work for high-street bookstore. Got stoned. Stole most of the books. Got bored.
1974: Got unemployed. Got stoned. Got bored.
1975: Drove crane and cut up trees in timber yard. Got stoned. Got annoyed with boss. Got fired.
1976: Sold paperback-books to newsagents from van. Got very bored.
1978: Got unemployed again. Remembered always intended to be a writer. Got bored.
1979: Got arrested for getting stoned. Got off.
1979-84: Worked in taxi business. Became nocturnal.
1984: Got lucky. Introduced to Marvel UK editor by Alan Moore. Combined driving cabs with writing NIGHT RAVEN, CAPTAIN BRITAIN and DR. WHO, stories. Still got stoned.
1986: Got luckier. Got partner and three ready-made step-children to keep me in touch with reality.
1987-99: Got job writing HELLBLAZER for DC Comics and wrote a whole bunch of subsequent stuff from a smoke-filled room in the rural Midlands of England while pretending to be a regular citizen. Enjoyed doing it... mostly.
1999: First grandchild born. Thought: Christ, is that the time already?

Wow, comic writer who gets stoned a lot, you ever hang out with Grant Morrison?

Spent some time with Grant in Stockholm. Unfortunately a combination of raw fish and schnapps plunged me into a coma so I don't remember much about it. Grant saved my life, if not my dignity. Alcohol: it's the devil's piss.

Driving cabs while stoned and thinking about comics, any of your passengers ever evolve into one of your characters?

Not directly, but you hear some interesting shit if you keep your mouth shut while you drive. I think most cab drivers are garrulous as a self-defense mechanism - something about cabs seems to make people think they're in a confessional or police interview room.

Some quick Q's to tide you over; Favourite characters? Heroes? Villains? Bad guys with giant heads who wear funny hats??

Always kinda liked Zippy The Pinhead.

Favourite old school artist? Writer?

Old School? I thought that was the kind of dance music my son likes... Old comics are a pretty dry wicket with me, I'm afraid.

Best Kirby creation?

The Black Racer strikes me as having a lot of weird, unexploited potential. He gets a minor role in a Legends Of Apokalips Darkseid 2-parter I wrote for Steve Pugh to draw.

Most underappreciated creator currently in the biz? J

We all deserve better, I think. Tom Peyer should get more attention. I generally don't get on with superheroes, but HOURMAN is a lot of fun and his contribution to CRUEL & UNUSUAL was massive and hilarious.

Worst fanboy experience?

I don't know. Fanboys seem to steer well clear of me...but once at the San Diego convention I was talking to a quiet, shy, sensitive young 'fan-girl' who had finally summoned the nerve to approach me after hanging around the booth for a while when a (nameless) DC editor of the day loomed over my shoulder with a booming: "Hey Jamie, lining up the babes?"

Proudest body of work?

I have a love hate relationship with just about everything I've ever done. 2020 VISIONS still works for me, though.

Advice to those trying to make it in the Biz today?

Find your own vision and don't let anyone talk you out of it. If no one else will publish it, do it yourself on the net. Get a dictionary of deities and make expensive sacrifices to as many of them as you can afford.

What has been your favourite book to work on?

CRUEL & UNUSUAL. Having a writing partner means that whenever you run the plot into the sand you can hand the wheel to your buddy and go for coffee while he gets you back on the road.

Current titles everyone SHOULD be reading?

Here we go. I hate this question. I generally see only DC comics because they come in a big box every month. Recently I've been pulling out: TRANSMETROPOLITAN, PREACHER, INVISIBLES, 100 BULLETS, FLINCH, HOURMAN, HELLBLAZER, some of Moore's Wildstorm library... Kyle Baker's YOU ARE HERE was a recent slick act, too.

Favourite characters, titles to hopefully some day work on?

I probably sound like an arrogant prick, but I really do prefer to make up my own.

Best "fucked up English" writer (other then yourself) currently out there?

"English" narrows it down a bit, and fucked-up...Guess I'd have to go for Warren Ellis, although Moore probably has the right credentials too.

Here's one that can easily turn into a rant, The comic industry right now isn't in the best of shape, what do you believe are some of the problems that are largely responsible for this and how would you change things to improve the industry?

I really don't feel up to an analysis of the comic market's decline, but some tactics which I think might be beneficial could include: More targeted, or 'niche' marketing of titles. The age of mass-market appeal is passing. Sub-cultures are increasingly numerous and accessible, we all have to find our own (smaller) audiences and talk to them. Speed up production time. Currently it seems to take about two years minimum from conception to realization of a project. The pace of the information stream is now such that ideas lose their currency almost overnight. If we're going to be a 'fast fiction' medium, then lets do that - get the stuff out and get on with something else. And if we're going to take half a lifetime to get a miniseries out, then for fucksakes let's give it longer than a couple of months on the shelves to prove its worth and make back the investment of time and production costs. I've probably written in excess of 250 individual monthly books in my career, of which I'd guess less than 20 are still available. Move some titles away from monthly publication -- make them 'straight to paperback' books and make them more accessible to the adult fiction buying public. Build a quality backlist that booksellers (high-street and on-line) can rely on. Pray for better weather.

Comic retailers are often jokingly referred to as 'dealers' (at least by me, trust me, if you've seen retailers recently hawking pokemon cards to little kids then you know what I mean), but seriously how many actual similarities do you really notice between the two?

Hmmm...They usually both enjoy their product and got into the job to secure a safe supply, I guess...But the question actually reminds me of visiting a gun show in Miami with Tom Peyer. After walking around for a bit, we both commented that if you swapped the guns and other vicious hardware stacked on the tables for comic books, you could easily think you were in the dealers' room at any con.

Upcoming projects of Delanos include;

THE BASTARD -- Future Constantine mini, drawn by Phillip Bond. Should be out in 2000, but probably under a different title. A 4-part future John Constantine miniseries set in 2025 London, in which our man can't resist the temptation to get involved in a UK constitutional politics conspiracy when he has sex with the illegitimate last heir to the throne of England. THE GREAT SATAN -- Is currently titled NEW WORLD, although it may change again before publication "sometime in the year 2000". This is a new monthly series for Vertigo, to be drawn by classy 'new' Croatian artist, Goran Suduka. It's a sort of surreal adventure story, with a cast of washed-up immortal 'classic' revolutionary outlaw archetypes who are reinvigorated by the return to America of one of their number -- a pulp writer/biographer of this 'wild bunch' -- who has been 'MIA' in Laos for the last quarter of the 20th Century. My intention is to set up a comic book stage on which larger than life characters can, eventually, identify and oppose the 'corporate capital politics' of "The New World Order" which seems set to screw up our lives through the 21st Century. Wish me luck. Apart from those, I've been working on adapting HELL ETERNAL for the screen. HELL ETERNAL: A Vertigo prestige one-shot published in 1998, illustrated by Sean Phillips. This is an 'inspired by real incidents' story of three young dilettante neo-Nazi British students who slip too far 'outside' to find their way back, and end up dead 'by their own hands' in heartland USA. Some strong interest has been shown, but I guess it has about a 10% chance of making it to production as a (low budget) movie.

Cool, who's your agent? Got a production company lined up?

No agent, so I'll probably get royally fucked over. I do have a production company involved though. They have a first draft screenplay in with FilmFour at present, awaiting a decision on further development funding. It's too soon to be optimistic, but I think I did pretty good work on the script, considering I was learning movie-writing on the job.

How has being one of the names largely associated with the Vertigo imprint affected your style? Career?

Well, I guess it's kept me in the business, for good or ill. If Vertigo hadn't developed into the kind of arena that permits me at least the degree of creative freedom and integrity that it does, I would have renewed my taxi-badge years ago. Then again, if that were the case, maybe I would have written a novel by now. Whatever, I'm pretty sure I couldn't have lasted 15 years in the business writing main-stream characters and titles. Same thing goes for style, I guess. My style is my style and, as I don't seem able or inclined to change it, it's fortunate that Vertigo has so far developed in a way that continues to accommodate me. That has always been Vertigo's strength, I believe. Karen Berger's editorial policy has always favoured creative individuality over any concept of a 'house style', and, while times may have been commercially tough of late, I still believe that is the only way to proceed.

When you write, do you write for entertainment value or with a specific ideal/purpose in mind?

Hmmm...I write to entertain (and support) myself, and to try and bring aspects of a huge and unruly universe temporarily under my control in the hope and expectation that enough people occupy common ground with me to themselves be entertained and engaged by what I write. I am too disorganized a thinker to ruthlessly plan, either for socio-political goals, or for calculated commerciality. My stories tend to arise from my current preoccupations -- my characters allow me to reduce the interior babble of conflicting opinion and ideology to manageable word balloons. I am congenitally unable to rigidly plot a story or series. They only really work for me 'when I'm 'making it up as I go along'. Sometimes I wish it were otherwise, but generally the serendipities of this 'wing and a prayer' approach are what keep me mining the wordface every day... keyboard thinking... instead of drifting off in a fog of ennui.

Bitch slap or pistol whip?

At my age I'm happy to get either.

Chicken or beef?

What's the difference?

A little segment called 'of choice', for instance; Jamie Delanos drink of choice:

Gin or tequila depending on mood and location... but these days I generally shun alcohol as The Devil's Piss.

Music of choice:

I have a pretty eclectic taste, but If I had to choose just one album to last the rest of my life it would probably be Lee Perry's "Super Ape", or maybe Beefheart's "Clear Spot"... or The Clash's "Sandinista"... I dunno.

Movies of choice:

Off the top of my head... "To Have and Have Not", "Blood Simple", "Rancho Notorious", "Nosferatu", "Apocalypse Now"... who can choose, or even remember them all?

Authors:

W.S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Cormac McCarthy, Jim Thompson, James Ellroy.....

Restaurants:

Imraam Balti Hut, Wellingborough Rd., Northampton.

And, anything else?

Drugs...? Hashish and psilocybin (or however the fuck you spell it).

What's your dream project? If you could work with any companies, characters, writers, artists, no restrictions, no rules, complete creative freedom, crossover as many characters from as many different companies as you wanted without any complaints, put together whatever creative teams you wanted, and no one would stop you, what would you do?

Run screaming for the hills, I should think. Too megalomaniacal a concept for me. Companies... characters... crossovers... I really am happiest when scuffling about my corner of the ghetto with a couple a chums. In my experience the only interesting thing about writing 'corporate characters' is finding a way to feed off of the restrictions that come along with the fucking costume.... (If you make me contemplate it, maybe Zippy the Pinhead meets Sandman would be an amusing juxtaposition... but only for about ten minutes.)

And now the name game, here's how it works, I say the name of a certain talent and then you say whatever comes to mind, here goes;
Phillip Bond -- looking forward to seeing what he makes of a septuagenarian Constantine in THE BASTARD
Warren Ellis -- keeps a basement full of evil clones. How else could he get through all that work?
Neil Gaiman -- Didn't he work in comics once?
Garth Ennis -- Uncouth beerboy masks a closet intellectual.
Steve Dillon -- Ditto
John McCrea -- Conspired with Tom Peyer to turn my political satire (CRUEL & UNUSUAL) into a sleazy exploitation rag.
Brian Bolland -- Epitome of refinement.
Jack Kirby -- Did some good work.
Simon Bisley -- Heard he made a lot of money.
Matt Wagner -- Solid.
Teddy Kristensen -- Calm
Walter Simonson -- Know the name, otherwise unfamiliar.
Grant Morrison -- Talented, inventive and 'probably' older than he looks.
Bob Kane -- I'm getting tired of this game
Archie Goodwin -- Funny as hell - a major loss.
Eddie Campbell -- Knows a lot about classical sculpture... restless expert... met him on just about every continent bar Antarctica.
H.P. Lovecraft -- Another fuck up who had to write it out of his system.
Alan Moore -- "Knows the score"
Oscar Wilde -- Over-quoted... almost as irritating as Stephen Fry.
Mike Mignola -- Know the name
Dave Gibbons -- Does The Human Thing.
David Lloyd -- Talented story-teller... under-appreciated.
Al Davison -- Ditto
Peter Milligan -- Intelligent writer, uneasy with comics medium.
Charles Vess -- I think of fairies, but only very briefly.
Rachel Pollack -- Likes to play poker (I think)
Ann Nocenti -- I know her name.
Steve Pugh -- Sweetheart
Sean Phillips -- Does the job and does it well.
Stan Lee -- A legend, I hear.

And now... Plug time! This is where you plug as many things as you want, comics, websites, movies, your collection of phallic shaped bongs, novels, anything old, new, current and upcoming, your very own homemade "special herbal" shampoo, where to buy your books, scripts, and whatever else. Anything that could somehow lead towards a mountain of cash in your pocket, and then we, the reader, go out and spend like crazy, until we're all broke and have to resort to selling our vital organs just to get more cash to buy more of your stuff.

Most things I've written are listed on my website http://www.argue.freeserve.co.uk - some are still in print. But I don't want to tell anyone what to buy. I'm sick of people telling me what to buy. I think the whole world should mark the dawning of the 21st Century by not buying anything for a week at least... and while we're at it, we should turn off our computers, too. Can you imagine it? Fuck, they'd have the tanks on the streets in hours.

Sounds like a party. The PopImage.com crew and I would like to thank Jamie Delano for taking the time to participate in this interview and would like to remind you that the first issue of the two part Darkseid story 'THE JUMP' illustrated by Steve Pugh featured in LEGENDS OF THE DC UNIVERSE is currently available at a retailer near you, so buy it dammitt! All characters, titles, images mentioned or shown are copyright and trademark their respective creators.