Talking 2000 AD’s ‘Silver’ With Mike Carroll And Joe Currie

Some things are better left buried, as Fraser is about to learn in Silver, a new strip by writer Mike Carroll, artist Joe Currie, and letterer Simon Bowland. For more on Silver (plus some preview pages and an EXCLUSIVE look at Currie’s sketches for “The Baronness”), check out this interview with Carroll and Currie below:

Rachel Bellwoar: You’re being very mysterious about Silver. What can we expect from the series?

Mike Carroll: I’ve never been comfortable giving away too much about upcoming work – and in this weather my spoiler allergies are really playing up – but by episode two of Silver the first Big Twist is revealed so perhaps I ought to let the metaphorical cat out of the bag before it claws its own way out and comes looking for revenge.

It all came about because The Mighty One asked for “something post-apocalyptic/Euro-weird/Heavy Metal-ish with Joe Currie.” I was already a fan of Joe’s work and immediately knew exactly what I wanted to do: a solid, intense and very accessible science fiction action-adventure. After bouncing a few ideas around – and some of them were not so much bounced around as sealed in lead and catapulted into the sun – we settled on the basic idea that eventually became Silver.

It’s strange how the development process works: sometimes things that at the start seem massively important wind up in the bin, while occasionally a spontaneous throw-away comment ends up being one of the story’s key elements. With Silver, there was one such comment that that Joe and I both latched onto immediately. We liked it so much it actually changed the entire shape of the story…

Joe Currie: And working with Mike Carroll has been an absolute blast. His craftmanship and wizardly skills of writing are a joy to draw. I’ve seen all of Book One now, and he hasn’t even hit the crazy button on the plot yet… it’s terrifyingly brilliant what comes out of that man’s brain.

Carroll: In one of my chats with Joe I wrote, “and if this was a movie then the leader of the British crew would ideally be played by Lemmy from Motörhead.” Well, we couldn’t exactly call a character Lemmy – even though Lemmy was a big 2000 AD fan – so we went with his middle name instead: Fraser. We meet him in the first episode – he didn’t end up being a leader, but he’s definitely the one of the primary characters.

At its heart Silver is deliberately quite a simple story, which was I felt I really needed after writing five series of Proteus Vex’s deliberately ambiguous narrative prose and interweaving storylines. It’s important to me that new readers should be able to drop right into Silver and hit the ground running! They don’t need to be familiar with tons of back-story to understand all the subtle nuances, because there aren’t any. (Well, there’s a few, but they’re not subtle.)

So, basically Silver is an action-packed science fiction / horror hybrid adventure that’s all about a – oh no, that’s a pity: I’ve run out of space for this answer.

Bellwoar: Usually silver is associated with werewolves but, without getting into spoilers, it seems like Silver is going to be dealing with a different type of monster. How did you land on the title, Silver?

Mike Carroll: “Silver” comes from one of the characters mis-hearing another character’s name. The working title for the strip was “Vermin” which I rather liked, but it was a tad too abstract for me, and if we look back over the entire history of all comic strips ever then it’s clear the really successful ones are almost always named after the main character or team. Superman, The Avengers, Sweeny Toddler, Judge Dredd, Dennis the Menace, Dennis the Menace (the other one), Maus, and so on, so I decided I wanted to do the same here. Unfortunately the lead character’s name didn’t really lend itself to a series title, but that was easily solved by simply changing her name. (One thing I really like about this modern high-tech computer age is that we no longer have to get the bus all the way into town to visit the Registry of Comic-Strip Character Names in person: we can do it all on-line.)

Joe Currie: I was politely removed from Tharg’s boardroom meeting after I suggested my titles for the series! Both ‘Ian100’ and K.A.R.L 9000 (which stands for “Kinetic Alien… something something”) were instantly rejected. Mike and I were also thinking of alternative 1970s heavy metal band names. Silver, rocks!

Carroll: Sometimes when I’m developing a story I’ll realise I’ve gone way too deep into the minutia so I’ll put it aside for an hour or two and instead I’ll draw, build something, or write some atrocious music while the story ferments away in the back of my mind, and at one point I came up with what I think is a rather nice logo for the strip. It’s way too complex to be used for the comic, but maybe they’ll use it for the inevitable movie adaptation…

 

Bellwoar: So far this story seems pretty timeless yet the date and setting are very specifically given at the start. Why did you decide to set this story in 2001 near Bristol?

Currie: I think we both wanted a feeling of local, down the road vibes, hence Bristol. The reason for the year… well that’s when the future started.

Carroll: I didn’t want to set the story in a city. Cities get more than their fair share of science fiction adventures and, y’know, maybe the readers would like to see some trees and hedges for a change. Lush green foliage is more soothing to the eyes and the soul than cold grey concrete. We don’t actually get to see the city of Bristol itself in the series, but it’s a part of the UK that my wife and I have visited quite a lot for conventions – Lawless being the most recent – and we’ve invariably had a great time there (even if John Higgins always insists on dragging us along to the scariest pub in the world).

I picked the year of 2001 because it’s one of the four top-most science-fictiony years. My first choice was 1999 but that one’s been a bit over-used, plus it’s a prime number and therefore there’s a curse on it. 1984 wouldn’t work because George Orwell’s people would send the heavies around again, and we couldn’t use 2000 because that’s already in the title of the comic! I reckon we’re OK with 2001 because even though that was only twenty-three years ago in real time, it’s been fifty-six years since Stanley Kubrick used it for the second of 1968’s big space ’n’ monkeys movies. Fifty-six minus nine (the number of Planet of the Apes movies if we don’t count the Tim Burton one) comes to forty-seven, which is how many years ago 2000 AD was launched. (And just for fun, look up the element with the atomic number of forty-seven.)

Bellwoar: Can you tell us more about how you designed your characters?

Carroll: Joe’s the artistic genius here so I reckon it’s best if he answers that one… except to say that the nature of the tale imposed certain specific restrictions on the character designs!

His work on the series is astonishing, even breath-taking at times – it’s fluid, unique, intense, a little quirky, hugely imaginative, a touch nightmarish and absolutely captivating.

Currie: It’s all a collaboration with Mike. After a good discussion – and a bit of backstory business – I sketch up a few examples of the character send them over to Mike and see what sticks.

I’m trying to get a vintage ‘autumnal’ grim grey day look to the artwork. Also there’s lots of dust in the atmosphere due to all the crazy going-ons… which I can’t tell you about either.

Bellwoar: Part one involves some degree of carnage. Did you discuss how you wanted to approach the violence in this strip?

Carroll: I don’t recall discussing it… I think the nature of the story means that fast-paced action is inherent. When we were to find the ideal tone for the strip we conjured up some pretty intense action scenes (I don’t think any of them actually made it into the final script) and then kept throwing different ideas into the mix until it felt right.

Luckily, I happen to be an exceptionally dangerous, volatile and violent person so writing all that carnage comes quite easily. Fact is, sometimes I deliberately mis-spell some words just so that they’ll be underlined in red and I can pretend that my screen is splattered with the blood of my enemies.

2000 AD’s readers know the difference between real violence and pretend violence, I hope, so we can happily keep ladling on the massacre-gravy until it drips over the edges of their plates… as long as the violence doesn’t go so far that it becomes cartoonish. But then if that does happen, the best solution I’ve found is not to scale it back but to push on through. “Oh, it’s too intense, you say? Pfff! That was nothing! I’m gonna turning the dial up to eleventy and then use the bad guy’s freshly-peeled skull to smash that dial into little pieces so that it can’t ever be turned back!”

So, yeah, Silver is packed with lots of intense action that deliberately goes way over-the-top and then skirts back around to the top to give it another good kicking just to be sure.

Currie: Growing up in the 1980s there were large amounts of punching and spitting going on. Back then both Mike and I were on the street fighting circuit, touring around gas stations in an old ford pickup with a gibbon called ‘Clyde.’

Oh hang on no that’s a film.

Bellwoar: Book One is already being thrown around with Silver. How far ahead have you mapped out this series?

Currie: Mike has got it covered. We have discussed some super nice bits that we want to aim towards in the story. It’s very much the case of how far we can push each other to achieve maximum horror sci-fi-ness.

Carroll: As Joe says I’ve made extensive notes for possible future instalments, and I know exactly how I’d like it all to end, but where we actually go next depends on several factors… If we do get the green light for a second series I’ll toss some ideas around with Joe, see what he’d like to draw, and then compile them into a pitch for The Mighty One. Book 2 (if it happens) will most likely introduce a couple of major new elements that will ramp up the action even further!

Bellwoar: Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Mike and Joe!

Currie: I hope you all like it! It’s been great to work on, thanks Rachel.

Carroll: You’re very welcome! I do hope you enjoy the series as much as Joe and I enjoyed creating it!

Silver starts July 10th in 2000 AD Prog #2390.