“It’s not real life… is it?”

By Tony Lee

So it’s a week and a half after Bristol, I’ve still not gotten completely over the ‘convention cold’ that you always seem to get on these bloody things, I’m sorting out my camping kit for an event I’m off to this weekend, and I’m currently dealing with dozens of emails regarding my news on All The Rage that I’m stepping down from Starship Troopers.

Granted, a large proportion of these bloody things are from people asking how they can get the gig to be the next writer – but we’ve already worked that out. I wouldn’t have left without someone in mind to replace me, and we had a very good chat at the Bristol Comic Con, while I was still not sure as to whether I was going to walk or not.

And yes, I am walking off the book with nothing to go onto. But yes, I do have plans. I have a lot on my plate at the moment, with one shots for U.S publishers and strips for UK ones, I have pre-production work to do on a variety of projects due out around the turn of the year – both Robin Hood and Dodge & Twist are up there with Hope Falls on the list of ‘things that are taking up my time still’ – and that’s not including the other projects like CrowTown which are finally starting to gain momentum. And of course we have San Diego in two months, and whatever follows on from that. So realistically, apart from September / October I shouldn’t be off your radar, as Starship Troopers ends in August and Hope Falls starts in November.

You lucky things, you.

So. How was Bristol for me? Actually? Not as good as most years. Mainly because I’d eaten something dodgy on the Saturday and was incredibly ill during the day – it’s one of the reasons I was a little out of sorts on the Saturday evening. But I was still strong enough to manage the Eurovision crowd, by the basis of being the guy closest to the Ramada TV. Apparently we weren’t supposed to change the channel / turn the volume up to full, but they decided to let us carry on after they realised that half the bar was watching it!

And the awards. Those bloody hell-fire awards. We learned a lot about those awards – mainly that project spray paint doesn’t flake like car spray paint. That was the main one. Next year? We’ll be spraying them both in non flake stuff. Still, for a joke awards that we shelled out for ourselves, we seemed to have some fun with it, and I thank you all, our loyal readers, for joining in the fun and spreading the word to the masses. I think Dan has only just recovered. The results were (of course) on the last column, so click back.

Of course one of the highlights for me was the Midnight Kiss trade. People have been commenting on and about it quite a lot over the last couple of weeks, and so far it’s all been positive. Which is good. The actual paperback trade comes out next month (June 2007) and there are two ways to get hold of it –

Near a local bookstore? Just go in and give them the ISBN number of ISBN: 978-1-905692-16-3.

Near a comic store? In that case just go in and ask them to order it - APR073859.

So what’s happened to us since the convention? Well, Dan’s been hard at work on more pages for Hope Falls. We have a deadline of mid/end of July for the first two issues, completed, so that Diamond can see them and believe that we’ll actually keep a monthly schedule. This of course means that he’s doing a crap load of art type stuff in Shed Manor. But believe me, it’s good. It’s very good. You don’t believe me? Go to http://users.livejournal.com/_tonylee_/179089.html - there are the first seven pages of Hope falls for your excited perusal. Just right-click ‘view image’ on each of them.

Don’t say we never give you anything. There’ll be more over the coming weeks – remember to check www.hope-falls .com regularly.

So this weekend, I’m off to be a pirate at a LARP event. I know, it’s something that’s one of those ‘you never mention that you’re into that’ type things – but you know? I’m not ashamed. I go to about four events a year, dress up, drink, flirt at pretty ladies and hit people with swords. To be honest, apart from the last part, there’s not a lot of difference between that and a comic convention.

But why shouldn’t I like this sort of thing? I mean, I know there’s always been a lot of comparisons between table-top roleplay (where you make decisions and role a dice to see if you’ve killed a foe) and live-action roleplay (where the only thing that stops you getting killed is how good you are with your own sword), and I haven’t done the former in years, but there’s a certain amount of fun in running around in costume, saving the world and defeating evil.

Wait a second, that’s… a comic book, isn’t it?

Exactly. Where else can you live out those fantasies that you had as a kid? And, as a writer of comics, to totally immerse myself in such an event for a weekend can really give me clarity when I return to the printed page. It’s no secret that many conic and fantasy writers have LARPed. Mary Gentle (if I remember correctly) used to be in the same system I’m in – and attributes several lines in ‘Grunts’ to various people she knew. Even Bruce Campbell played Brisco County, Jr in a Deadlands LARP once.

However as I said, finding something to totally immerse yourself in can be good, but sometimes it can be bad. You come out and write some of the weirdest stuff ever. Half of Midnight Kiss came out of my time in the Lorien Trust. I even go so far to thank them in my afterword. A great chunk of King Bill was influenced. There are people I meet who become character ‘archetypes’ for later characters. And to be honest? It’s nice to be in a story that someone else is writing for a change.

I think the other thing I look forwards to is the fact that, camping in a field for a couple of days with several hundred non-comics people, it’s very hard to contact me. My phone is turned off. I can’t read my email. For a weekend I get blessed peace.

Well, actually – I don’t. Because there will always be emails that need to be waited for, work that I’m pitching for that needs to be green lit or canned. I need to know as it happens, in case I need to make a call, or in a worse case scenario, leave early.

And that’s the problem with being a writer. It’s not a 9 to 5 job. You’re effectively on call 24/7 while you’re making your name. If a big name editor drops you an email saying ‘can you do this’ – you do it there and then. Only when you’re the level of Geoff Johns, Warren Ellis or Ed Brubaker can you sit back and go ‘later. I’m busy’. Maybe if you’re Grant Morrison you can send them a million nanotech bees with the mail. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I could be in a field for four days, miss a Marvel pitch opportunity – and miss out on a prospective gig. And it’s not just gigs – in the next couple of weeks, I have meetings with publishers and editors before San Diego – if they move, or the publisher changes their plans I need to know so I can re-arrange all the others accordingly. It might sound a little ‘control hungry’, but it’s the way I work. I want to be seen as the guy that, when you go ‘we need this script altered’, I look at a watch rather than a calendar. And for the main, I can do this. But only while I keep my eye on the ball.

Dropping Starship Troopers has enabled me to free up a lot more time – granted, I’m still editing, but that’s a breeze compared to plotting, blocking, writing, dialoguing…

Maybe I’ll even get enough time to play my character.

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So Dan’s working hard at Hope Falls, but he’s provided us with a few words…

I regained consciousness leaping from atop a speeding railton, legs akimbo.

“Have at you!” I cried, for no reason in particular.

By my side as ever was the gentleman rotter, the Omnipresent Count Woogie who, having loaded himself into his favourite blunderbuss was eager for a scrap. Hefting him skywards I depressed the trigger and let one off! The kickback causing my spleen to rupture and making me feel a bit dizzy.

Out of nowhere a Peelers truncheon caught me in the biffer, knocking me for six and causing all my hard stolen tuck which I wragged from the new house to scatter across the cobbled floor.

Fearing the worst and with the Laudanum wearing off I desperately reached for a tin of biscuits, hoping that my last memory would be about hobnobs and not that time in the vicarage.

Woogie was falling fast and was sure to fail at any moment, his topper, clearly visible above the maelstrom like a shining beacon in the night, romance was in the air - we had saved the last dance and it was a tango!

They closed in all around us, as one would imagine a group of them doing in those circumstances. Keeping them at bay by shining the light of a street lamp into their eyes with my membership to the manor club we backed into a corner.

Reaching into his pocket with his remaining limb, the knave Woogie pulled out not, as one would expect a pistol but a hipflask.

“This is no time for brunch old man!” I whinged, leering at him with all the grace of a flasher at a cricket match.

“Tis GIN!” He cried triumphantly, cracking open the top with his officers sword!

A distant rumble filled the air as we skedaddled down an incumbent opening, becoming louder by the second till it filled our ears with stuff that would make them feel a bit stuffed up. What was happening?

Our question answered itself as the Lord Winchester careened through a group of orphans and skidded to a halt before us!

At his helm my trusty batman Reginald Skinner, called forth from his archaic slumber by the smell of gin released into the atmosphere.

Leaping through the closed windows we set to for the deepest part of the ocean and vowed never to visit my family again.

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One thing that wasn’t mentioned last column was that, following the Bristol convention, we’ve decided to move Dashing Tales – For Young Chaps, our 1948 Almanac back to mid 2008. The reason? Hope Falls, mainly. Dan’s only just able to pencil, ink and draw the five issues in time, with the added work of making sure The Gloom is tip top for an end of year release – he couldn’t take another project.

That said, we also have an addition to the ‘Three Drunk Guys In A Bar’ for this project – Queen Of Diamonds, Civil Wardrobe and Mr Tuggles artist Bevis Musson will be taking up some of the slack, writing and drawing some of the strips including ‘Penny Pink – she is a Girl and therefore alien to us.’

Look for more news on this later in the year.

So, I’ve also spent the last two weeks emailing hundreds and hundreds of shops – so many in fact that I even broke the Gmail spam filter on one day – all asking for permission to place them on my new mailing list. So, if you’re a comic shop, and you’d like to be on my mailing list – send an email to mrtonylee (at) gmail.com with the subject header ‘Put me on the list!!! ’

It’s going to be a heavy pimped year, to be honest. Midnight Kiss comes out next month, as does my second Starship Troopers trade, Dead Man’s Hand. And then at the end of the year we have Hope Falls, possibly another yet-undisclosed US one shot and I know Larry Young is hoping to be putting Dodge & Twist out around Christmas. He’s even scaring me with suggestions as to where to hold the launch party. But we’ll see about that one. I’d rather we didn’t kill Paul before he finished. We might even show a few pages a month or so down the line. If you really want to see fantastical previews, you must find Larry Young at the AiT/PlanetLar stand at San Diego and scream loudly ‘I LOVE TONY LEE!’

You won’t see any fantastical previews; I just think it’d be good for my ego, to be honest.

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Tony Lee is the award-nominated writer of things including The Tizzle Sisters with G.P Taylor and Dan Boultwood, Starship Troopers, Doctor Who, X-Men, and Midnight Kiss. Later this year Tony has stories involving Wallace & Gromit and Shrek coming out. At the end of the year he hopes to have Dodge & Twist out by AiT/PlanetLar. In 2008 he has Robin Hood – Outlaw’s Pride with Sam Hart

Michael Moorcock says that ‘Tony Lee is one of the best story-tellers working in comics today’. He drinks, though.

Dan Boultwood is the critically acclaimed artist of things including The Tizzle Sisters with G.P Taylor and Tony Lee, and both Monster Club and Comicana for APC.

Together they have written and drawn The Gloom (out later this year as a collected edition) and the upcoming Hope Falls, out in November from AAM/Markosia. The website is www.hope-falls.com.

Tony’s website is www.tonylee.co.uk. Feel free to email him and interrupt his day.

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Discuss this column at the Only A Forum forum.
© 2008, Tony Lee

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