This Isn’t A COVID Book — Discussing ‘The Pale Knight’ With Peter Milligan And Val Rodrigues

The upcoming Mad Cave limited series The Pale Knight follows Sir Hugh de Grey back to 1349’s England as he returns from war to face something much worse – the Black Death. To make matters worse, the Pale Knight’s son is dying from the plague.

In an exclusive interview with Comicon, series writer Peter Milligan and artist Val Rodrigues discuss the connections between the plague from the Middle Ages and the modern scourge, COVID-19 as well as how he was influenced by the tale of another fictional knight from The Seventh Seal.

Tom Smithyman: Where did the idea to tell this story come from – and why was it necessary to place it in Europe of the 1340s?

Peter Milligan: The story and the time and place grew together. I’m interested in this era, this almost unimaginable nightmare that descended on the world. I know that the Black Death was a global pandemic that did not just affect Europe, but it was Europe’s imagery that I was most familiar with and interested in. In England, in particular, it marked a great shift in society. It’s difficult to dramatize an entire pandemic, so I wanted to focus mainly on one knight, one dilemma, and explore that, while also exploring some of this knight’s very changed world.

Smithyman: It seems cruel to subject soldiers who had seen more than their fill of death and destruction to their homes, which were full of a different kind of death. How did that harsh reality impact the way you depicted the characters.

Milligan: You mean, cruel to subject this knight, who had witnessed and caused so much death, to have to deal with more death, on an unimaginable scale? Well, yes. Very cruel. The plague was nothing if not cruel.

Val Rodrigues: I tried to show that constant presence of death in the expression of the characters, conveying their deepest emotions, despair, hopelessness, fear, and anger in face of the doom that awaits them.

Smithyman: Did you base the main character, Sir Hugh, on an actual knight?

Milligan: No, not an actual knight. More of an idea of a type of knight, a knight who is the embodiment of certain kinds of chivalric ideals, who finds his ideals sorely tested in the most testing of times.

Smithyman: Should we read any similarities between the Black Death and Covid? The death toll was orders of magnitude, but the pandemic is burned into our collective memories. Did it have an impact on your writing the series?

Milligan: Of course, I was aware of COVID while writing The Pale Knight. Both the Black Death and COVID were global pandemics that, at least for a time, changed lives and continue to change lives. But this isn’t a ‘COVID book’ as such. All global pandemics share certain characteristics, just as I suppose all major wars share characteristics. Also, you just have to do some research into the Black Death to see the eye-watering scale is way beyond anything in living memory.

The First World War, followed by the flu epidemic, was probably the closest thing we can think of to the Black Death, something that haunted generations and changed society. But these thoughts are after the fact, after I’ve written the book, which I wrote because that time of unimaginable horror provided the backdrop and context to a story I wanted to tell – embodying both reality and the supernatural, because for people living and dying at the time the supernatural would have been very much a part of their lives and deaths.

How did the harsh reality impact the way I depicted characters? In many ways it defines them, or defines how they are in this story.

Smithyman: Can you talk about the creative process between the two of you?

Rodrigues: As a comic book reader since my teenage years, working with Peter has been a great experience. I read his scripts, describing just what is necessary to understand the tone of the pages and where he wants me to take the characters, then I draw the thumbnails and send them to Peter and Marla, our editor. Once I get their response I start properly drawing the pages, pencils then inks, all on Procreate.

Milligan: I love what Val is doing. I’ve been astonished at how he has recreated this long-gone world, amazed at how he has brought those long-dead characters back to life. The creative process is simple, as it should be. I write the scripts and then Val responds to them, and like all good artists, sometimes might tweak a little of what I’d imagined, we then throw notes back and forth a little. It’s all good. All very good.

Smithyman: You have previously discussed how the iconic movie The Seventh Seal was a huge inspiration for this story. How did the movie influence both of your works?

Milligan: Well, The Seventh Seal is an incredible film, one of my favorites, so it was perhaps a bit cheeky to try to hitch a ride on the back of one of the greatest films ever made. I mentioned The Seventh Seal to give a sense of the time and the feel of The Pale Knight. The main character in my story, the knight Sir Hugh de Grey, is based A LITTLE on Antonius Block, the knight in The Seventh Seal, in that he is returning from war to find a homeland ravaged by plague. But Block is concerned with God and His whereabouts in these terrible times in a way that Sir Hugh is not. Sir Hugh has – at least he tells himself – stopped believing in God. Searching for God or religion is not his main concern.

Rodrigues: As the person imbued with the task to visually represent the characters and the settings, I took some inspiration from the way the medieval age is presented in the movie, the clothes, backgrounds, and how Max Von Sydow played Antonius Block. A noble but tired man. A knight with a broken spirit. I try to evoke these feelings as I draw the pages. As I get used to drawing the character throughout six issues, he slowly becomes something else. A distinct creature in itself.

Smithyman: In The Seventh Seal, a disillusioned knight plays chess with Death. Are you a chess player? How long do you think you would last in a match with Death?

Milligan: I don’t know if Val plays. I play a bit, though I haven’t for a while. How long would I last in a chess match with Death? I’ll let you know when Death checkmates me.

Rodrigues: I have never played chess, but maybe I can defeat the Grim Reaper in Mario Kart.

Smithyman: That would make an interesting sequel! Good luck with the series!