MattBrady
05-06-2008, 03:07 PM
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/Hercules3_CoverB_Low_res.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/t_Hercules3_CoverB_Low_res.jpg" border="0" align="right"></a> <i>by Manolis Vamvounis</I>
Steve Moore began working in comics in 1967 at Odhams Press and his career has spanned the wholesale collapse of the British comics industry, though he declines to take any responsibility for this. Early work appeared in Dr Who Weekly and other UK Marvel titles, 2000AD, Warrior (for which he wrote <b>Laser-Eraser & Pressbutton</b> under the name “Pedro Henry”) and various other publications. A Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, he’s the author of <b>The Trigrams of Han</b>, a non-fiction book on the Chinese <i>I Ching</I>, and is co-author of a scholarly bibliography on the same subject. Most of the 1990s were spent as a contract writer-editor for the long-running UK-based “Journal of Strange Phenomena”, <i>Fortean Times</I>, for whom he edited and produced several volumes of the scholarly annual, <i>Fortean Studies</I>, amongst other things. Returning to the comics field in 2000, he wrote for <b>2000AD</b> and America’s Best Comics, more recently adapting <b>V For Vendetta</b> into a novel to coincide with the movie’s release. Steve Moore lives in London where he interests himself mainly in ancient and oriental subjects.
This May he makes his return to the comics medium, writing the <b>Hercules</b> series which launches new comic book publisher Radical Comics. The first issue of the prestige format series is offered at a special introductory price of $1, featuring a cover by comics legend Jim Steranko. The story follows the adventures of Hercules long after the end of the Twelve Labours, as the leader of a wandering mercenary band in Greece, and the artwork is from Imaginary Friends Studios.
The solicitation of the first issue reads:
Three thousand two hundred years ago, a tormented soul walked the earth that was neither man nor god. Hercules was the powerful son of the god king Zeus, for this he received nothing but suffering his entire life. After twelve arduous labors and the loss of his family, this dark, world-weary soul turned his back on the gods finding his only solace in bloody battle. Over the years he warmed to the company of six similar souls, their only bond being their love of fighting and presence of death. These men and woman never question where they go to fight or why or whom, just how much they will be paid. Now the King of Thrace has hired these mercenaries to train his men to become the greatest army of all time. It is time for this bunch of lost souls to finally have their eyes opened to how far they have fallen when they must train an army to become as ruthless and bloodthirsty as their own reputation has become.
We spoke to Steve about the project and more.
<b>Newsarama</b>: How do you view the other attempts to revive the Herculean myth on the screen or in comics?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/Hercules__2_Interior_Page.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/t_Hercules__2_Interior_Page.jpg" border="0" align="left"></a> <b>Steve Moore</b>: I have fond memories of seeing the Steve Reeves’ <i>Hercules</I> movies as a kid (at 10 they appealed to my liking for colourful adventure), but these days I no longer read comics, watch TV or go to the movies. I tried to watch an episode of the Kevin Sorbo TV series once, but turned it off after 5 minutes, because it just seemed like a travesty. So I really couldn’t comment on anyone else’s versions, and they really don’t hold a great deal of interest for me. The original myths are important to me, but if I’m writing about Hercules, I don’t want to know what anyone else has done, because I want to concentrate on making this my version, without anyone else influencing it.
<B>NRAMA</B>: What attracts you to the Greek mythology?
<B>SM</B>: I’ve always had a strong interest in the Classical world and its mythology anyway, and this gave me a chance to do the story the way I wanted to do it. According to the legends, Hercules lived shortly before the Trojan War, which puts him firmly in the Bronze Age period, about 1200BC. That means he’s in Mycenaean Greece, rather than Classical Greece, which has an entirely different look in terms of architecture, costume, and so on. So, as far as the artists will go along with me, we’re doing this as authentically as possible … which is the first thing that I find attractive.
<B>NRAMA</B>: Who is Hercules to you? Is he a god, a man, a selfless hero, a tragic figure, an influential warlord, a barbaric monster-slayer?
<B>SM</B>: All of the above, though we’re mainly concentrating on the human side of things. I’m very well aware of the fact that he was once worshipped as a god, so I want to treat the character with respect. As for the more mythological, monster-slaying side of things, in the first couple of series we’re treating this very much as stories that other people tell about Hercules, which he neither confirms nor denies; though in the third series, when he returns to Greece, we’ll confront this sort of thing rather more. In the first series, though, we’re concentrating much more on the warrior aspects of his character. Added to that, if you look at the original myths, you find that Hercules could be a fairly difficult character to live with, being subject to murderous rages, so he’s ended up as an outsider: roaming mercenary soldier is the obvious career for him. Also, in the old stories, like most people in the Classical world, Hercules was plainly bisexual, so we’ve kept that in too. Hopefully that’ll mean we have a more-rounded, human character, rather than just a “hero”.
<B>NRAMA</B>: Regardless of his popularity in the media, few people know the real ‘canon’ story of Hercules from the original Greek Myth.
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/Hercules3_CoverA_Low_res.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/t_Hercules3_CoverA_Low_res.jpg" border="0" align="right"></a> <B>SM</B>: Unlike Jason and the Argonauts or the Odyssey, we don’t have a complete narrative of Hercules’ adventures; just a lot of varying stories that don’t fit together very well. Briefly, though, he was the son of a mortal woman, Alcmene, and Zeus, who’d disguised himself as Alcmene’s husband. Unfortunately, Zeus’ wife, Hera, was jealous, and Hercules suffered from her jealous persecution ever after. Remembering that Hera is the goddess of marriage and family life, in my story I’m taking that persecution as affecting Hercules’ relationships … he’s unlucky in love with either sex … though according to some stories Hercules undertook the Twelve Labours to placate Hera’s wrath. For whatever reason, though, Hercules carried out the Labours at the command of his cousin Eurystheus, king of Argos, most of which entailed slaying monsters. Other stories make him a great warrior, leading campaigns against various kings, while others concentrate on his love-affairs. Finally, when the centaur Nessus tried to rape Hercules’ wife, Deianeira, Hercules shot him with an arrow; but the dying Nessus persuaded Deianeira that his blood would make a love-potion. She dipped a tunic in the blood and gave it to Hercules, but when he put it on it turned out that the blood was poisonous. In order to escape the pain, Hercules burned himself to death and ascended to heaven, where he became a god and married Hebe, the goddess of youth. As a god, he was widely worshipped throughout the Greek world. Like I said, though, all these stories really don’t join up properly, so my story takes place sometime after the Twelve Labours, and before the marriage to Deianeira.
<B>NRAMA</B>: How old would that make Hercules at the start of the first series?
<B>SM</B>: Like most of the other characters with Hercules, he’s about 40 years old when the story opens … which is taking a little bit of a liberty with the original stories, where he died in the prime of life. Probably the Twelve Labours are a decade or two in the past, and he’s trying to escape the “monster-slaying hero” tag.
<B>NRAMA</B>: In which chronological era does the story take place?
<B>SM</B>: Well, Hercules is supposed to have lived shortly before the Trojan War, which is traditionally dated to 1184 BC. So I’m taking these stories as occurring around 1200 BC. The precise date doesn’t matter much in the first series, but when I take the characters to Egypt in the second, we’ll be introducing actual historical characters that were alive at that point.
<B>NRAMA</B>: What gets the ball rolling in the first series?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/0213_Hercules_2_P13__0804.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/t_0213_Hercules_2_P13__0804.jpg" border="0" align="left"></a> <B>SM</B>: When the story opens, Hercules and a small band of mercenaries are just arriving in Thrace, the land to the north of Greece. Basically, Hercules is tired of being in Greece, where he’s expected to be a hero all the time, and where the Gods, especially Hera, are rather too present, so he’s come to Thrace, which is little more than a collection of disunited tribes. One leader, King Cotys, is intent on uniting the tribes and welding them into a nation, so he’s going to employ Hercules and his warrior friends to train his army in the ways of “civilised” warfare. And then, once they’re trained …
<B>NRAMA</B>: Will the focus of the title be squarely on Hercules?
<B>SM</B>: It’s much more of an ensemble book, mainly because we’re treating Hercules as more of a human warrior than a “hero”. Obviously Hercules is the main character and leader of the group, but certainly through the first couple of story-arcs, we’re telling the adventures of a group. Later, we may do more of a solo Hercules story as a change of pace, but I like to keep my options open as to where this is going.
<B>NRAMA</B>: From the mercenaries making up the cast of the book some are familiar names while some feel more obscure...
<B>SM</B>: All but one of these are characters from the myths, with their own stories, and the one major criterion for choosing them was that they’re all mythologically contemporary with Hercules and sometimes appear together in the original tales.
There’s <b>Iolaus</b>, who was Hercules’ nephew and charioteer, and who accompanied him during most of the Twelve Labours … he’s also the “voice-over narrator” for the first series.
<b>Amphiaraus</b>, the oldest of the characters, is both a seasoned warrior and a seer. I’ve played him as an epileptic, but the visions he receives from Zeus and Apollo are always true, if frequently ambiguous.
<b>Tydeus</b> is a murderous, brain-eating cannibal … a berserker who’s the group’s “shock-weapon”.
<b>Autolycus</b>, the son of Hermes, is a notorious thief; he’s the sly thinker of the group.
<b>Atalanta</b>, the swift-footed heroine of the tale of the golden apples, was once vowed to virginity and Artemis, until tricked into marriage; now she just wants to die in battle, so she can be reunited with Artemis in the afterlife, though deliberate suicide would only consign her straight to hell.
<b>Meleager</b>, the great hunter, has been hopelessly in love with Atalanta, despite her obvious lesbianism, ever since they met at the great hunt of the Calydonian boar, some twenty years earlier; as she wants to die and he wants to protect her, there’s a certain amount of conflict here.
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/Hercules__2_Page_16_17.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/t_Hercules__2_Page_16_17.jpg" border="0" align="right"></a> All these characters are developed out of their original mythical stories; but there’s also one new member of the band, who’s a complete invention: <b>Meneus</b>, Hercules’ current youthful boyfriend. Apart from being the innocent foil through which some of the back-stories are explored, he also provides an optimistic counterpoint to the world-weary cynicism of the other characters, all of whom are twice his age.
<B>NRAMA</B>: What brings these disparate characters together?
<B>SM</B>: Basically, the group have come together as mercenaries: Hercules, tired of being a “hero” (and of the persecution of the jealous goddess Hera) wanting to lose himself in battle; Iolaus because he’s family, and he’s been along for the ride for so long there’s no way he could stop now if he wanted to; Tydeus because he likes to kill; Amphiaraus, because the gods tell him to; Atalanta because she wants to die; Meleager because he’s obsessed with Atalanta; and Meneus because he wants to learn to be a warrior and a hero.
<B>NRAMA</B>: What kind of stories are you looking to tell in this title?
<B>SM</B>: The first series is a fairly grim war story, and I’ve tried to make this as realistic as I can, using Bronze Age weaponry appropriate to the Greeks and Thracians, and trying to make the training of the warriors and the battle-scenes as authentic as possible … no fancy sword-twirling, and no one knows kung fu! But it’s also about fate and destiny … our characters are in this situation because there’s really nothing else they can do, and you don’t argue with the will of the Gods. The second series will take them to Egypt and, on the one hand, will be more of a “spy-thriller” involving political competition for the Pharaoh’s throne, while on the other it’ll involve magic and magicians, who were prevalent throughout the ancient world, though that’s often ignored. So mainly what I’m looking to do are tightly-plotted historical adventures, rather than hero-against-hero slug-fests.
<B>NRAMA</B>: How did the idea for this series come about?
<B>SM</B>: I should probably say at the outset that it was Barry Levine and Dave Elliott [Editor’s note: the Publisher and Editor of Radical Comics] who came to me and said “We want to do a Hercules comic, and we’d like you to write it”, and it was their notion that the story would be set later in Hercules’ life, after the Twelve Labours were over, and concentrate more on his human rather than his mythological aspects. Given that basic brief, I then came up with a treatment that gave them what they wanted, but also let me do what I wanted at the same time.
<B>NRAMA</B>: How did you first meet the Radical Comics editors?
<B>SM</B>: I’d worked with Dave Elliott before, as far back as the old Atomeka Press days, when he was publishing <b>A1</b>, and he got in touch when Radical was first setting up. Originally, we spoke about the possibility of my adapting an already-written movie script into graphic novel form, and then he and Barry Levine mentioned Hercules. That was rather more in my “area of interest”, though I wasn’t sure I’d have time to fit it in. Then we met for coffee one morning when Barry and Dave were in London, and discussed the project, at which point we decided to drop the graphic novel and concentrate on Hercules. Since then I’ve met Dave once or twice when he’s been in London, but we mainly keep in touch by email and phone … which suits me. They seem happy enough with the work, and I really just want to get on and write.
<B>NRAMA</B>: In a previous interview, Barry Levine described you as an avid fan of mythology and research. What were your main research sources for this book and Hercules’ back story?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/18Hercules__2_Interior_Pa.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/t_18Hercules__2_Interior_Pa.jpg" border="0" align="left"></a> <B>SM</B>: I’ve been interested in the Ancient World since I was a kid (which is quite a long time ago), and that and Traditional China have been my main areas of interest for decades; I’m also very fond of historical research, and have written a fair amount of non-fiction pieces about both areas. As for the mythology, anyone who’s read Alan Moore’s biography of me, “Unearthing” [<i>Editor’s Note: Alan Moore’s biography of Steve Moore, “Unearthing”, appears in the anthology edited by Iain Sinclair, London: City of Disappearances (Penguin, 2007, £14.99). A photo-illustrated edition of “Unearthing”, by Mitch Jenkins, is also in the works</i>], will know that I have a great affinity with the Greek Moon-goddess, Selene (about whom I hope to complete a book, sometime before I die), and in the course of researching her, I read virtually all the major mythological works from antiquity … Homer, Hesiod, Apollodorus and so on, including the obscure ones like Fulgentius … as well as a lot of the ancient histories and philosophical works, and modern scholarship on mythology, Greek society, and so on. So all that stuff’s in my head and on my bookshelves (the whole house is full of books on Greece and China) … but the handy reference I use when I want to do a quick check on the stories of Hercules and the other mythical characters is Pierre Grimal’s <i>Dictionary of Classical Mythology</i>. Then, for artists’ references, I either scan pictures from books I have here, or pick stuff up on the web … which is okay if you know what you’re looking for, and a bit dodgy if you don’t …
<B>NRAMA</B>: From your research and through your personal perspective into it, is there a real historic person behind the myth of Hercules?
<B>SM</B>: There seems to be a modern obsession with this sort of question … was Hercules real? Was there really a King Arthur? Did Jesus actually live? This sort of question really doesn’t interest me very much. What’s important are the stories (or in Christ’s case, the teachings) and what they can tell us about what people believed, what it’s like to be human, and so on. History’s largely a narrative that’s manipulated by writers after the events, anyway, so stories of Hercules would be no more nor less valid if there were a “real” Hercules at the root of them.
<B>NRAMA</B>: In the plays and stories remaining from Ancient Greece, it wasn’t uncommon to see the Gods descending into the world of mortals and interfering in their lives. What is your stance concerning the existence of the Gods and their involvement in mortal affairs in the context of the series? Are you accepting the Gods’ existence (and Hercules’ divine origins) as fact in the story?
<B>SM</B>: That’s a bit complicated. The Gods don’t actually appear in the story themselves, and when we introduce mythological material it’s in the form of “stories told about the characters”, by other characters; maybe they’re true, maybe they’re not. We’re handling them as stories, rather than “facts”. But every character in the series believes in the existence of the Gods (there aren’t any cynics to provide a “modern” viewpoint, which would be completely out of place in a story like this), and if Hercules says he’s the son of Zeus, and Autolycus that he’s the son of Hermes, then everyone takes that at face value. I prefer to leave this sort of thing ambiguous, without ruling anything out. There’s not really much in the way of “supernatural” content in the first series, though there’ll be a little more in the second, when our characters head off to Egypt, the land of magic.
<B>NRAMA</B>: What is your working relationship with the artists of the book from Imaginary Friends Studios?
<B>SM</B>: I’ve had no direct contact with the artists from Imaginary Friends, but that’s mainly because I’d almost finished writing the series before the artists were decided on. I provided a fair amount of pictorial reference material for architecture, weaponry, costumes, etc., along with the script, anyway; and I was able to comment, via Dave Elliott, on some of the character sketches they provided. I did exchange a few emails with Jim Steranko about the cover for the first issue, though, which was quite fun.
<B>NRAMA</B>: What are your far-reaching plans for the future of this series?
<B>SM</B>: For the moment, the plans run as far as the first three series of five issues each. The first is set in Thrace; the second takes place in Egypt; and third (which is still fairly vague at the moment) will return him to Greece, where we’ll confront much more of Hercules’ past, and the mythology. Essentially that’s three self-contained stories, though they’ll be chronologically continuous.
<B>NRAMA</B>: Are there plans for adapting the story for different media?
<B>SM</B>: As is so often the case these days, I believe Radical are interested in exploiting the Hercules “product” in a range of different media, and there has been some talk of a movie, and possibly novels. I’d really only want to write comic-books and novels, though. I’m not really interested in getting involved with movies, computer-games, and that sort of thing … though I’d be very pleased to see a range of glitzy Hercules items.
<B>NRAMA</B>: What other projects are you working on right now?
<B>SM</B>: With Alan Moore, I’m currently writing <b>The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic</b> for Top Shelf. It’s a fairly serious work on occultism, disguised as a 1920s kids’ book, with comic-strips, text-stories, articles, and so on, where we’ll cover the history, theory and practice of western magic. It’ll be a 320-page hardback, but exactly when it’ll be published, I’m not sure. Let’s just say we’re working on it, and it’ll be out sometime. Apart from that, though, domestic commitments (I have to care for a disabled relative) don’t leave me much time for other projects.
Steve Moore began working in comics in 1967 at Odhams Press and his career has spanned the wholesale collapse of the British comics industry, though he declines to take any responsibility for this. Early work appeared in Dr Who Weekly and other UK Marvel titles, 2000AD, Warrior (for which he wrote <b>Laser-Eraser & Pressbutton</b> under the name “Pedro Henry”) and various other publications. A Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, he’s the author of <b>The Trigrams of Han</b>, a non-fiction book on the Chinese <i>I Ching</I>, and is co-author of a scholarly bibliography on the same subject. Most of the 1990s were spent as a contract writer-editor for the long-running UK-based “Journal of Strange Phenomena”, <i>Fortean Times</I>, for whom he edited and produced several volumes of the scholarly annual, <i>Fortean Studies</I>, amongst other things. Returning to the comics field in 2000, he wrote for <b>2000AD</b> and America’s Best Comics, more recently adapting <b>V For Vendetta</b> into a novel to coincide with the movie’s release. Steve Moore lives in London where he interests himself mainly in ancient and oriental subjects.
This May he makes his return to the comics medium, writing the <b>Hercules</b> series which launches new comic book publisher Radical Comics. The first issue of the prestige format series is offered at a special introductory price of $1, featuring a cover by comics legend Jim Steranko. The story follows the adventures of Hercules long after the end of the Twelve Labours, as the leader of a wandering mercenary band in Greece, and the artwork is from Imaginary Friends Studios.
The solicitation of the first issue reads:
Three thousand two hundred years ago, a tormented soul walked the earth that was neither man nor god. Hercules was the powerful son of the god king Zeus, for this he received nothing but suffering his entire life. After twelve arduous labors and the loss of his family, this dark, world-weary soul turned his back on the gods finding his only solace in bloody battle. Over the years he warmed to the company of six similar souls, their only bond being their love of fighting and presence of death. These men and woman never question where they go to fight or why or whom, just how much they will be paid. Now the King of Thrace has hired these mercenaries to train his men to become the greatest army of all time. It is time for this bunch of lost souls to finally have their eyes opened to how far they have fallen when they must train an army to become as ruthless and bloodthirsty as their own reputation has become.
We spoke to Steve about the project and more.
<b>Newsarama</b>: How do you view the other attempts to revive the Herculean myth on the screen or in comics?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/Hercules__2_Interior_Page.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/t_Hercules__2_Interior_Page.jpg" border="0" align="left"></a> <b>Steve Moore</b>: I have fond memories of seeing the Steve Reeves’ <i>Hercules</I> movies as a kid (at 10 they appealed to my liking for colourful adventure), but these days I no longer read comics, watch TV or go to the movies. I tried to watch an episode of the Kevin Sorbo TV series once, but turned it off after 5 minutes, because it just seemed like a travesty. So I really couldn’t comment on anyone else’s versions, and they really don’t hold a great deal of interest for me. The original myths are important to me, but if I’m writing about Hercules, I don’t want to know what anyone else has done, because I want to concentrate on making this my version, without anyone else influencing it.
<B>NRAMA</B>: What attracts you to the Greek mythology?
<B>SM</B>: I’ve always had a strong interest in the Classical world and its mythology anyway, and this gave me a chance to do the story the way I wanted to do it. According to the legends, Hercules lived shortly before the Trojan War, which puts him firmly in the Bronze Age period, about 1200BC. That means he’s in Mycenaean Greece, rather than Classical Greece, which has an entirely different look in terms of architecture, costume, and so on. So, as far as the artists will go along with me, we’re doing this as authentically as possible … which is the first thing that I find attractive.
<B>NRAMA</B>: Who is Hercules to you? Is he a god, a man, a selfless hero, a tragic figure, an influential warlord, a barbaric monster-slayer?
<B>SM</B>: All of the above, though we’re mainly concentrating on the human side of things. I’m very well aware of the fact that he was once worshipped as a god, so I want to treat the character with respect. As for the more mythological, monster-slaying side of things, in the first couple of series we’re treating this very much as stories that other people tell about Hercules, which he neither confirms nor denies; though in the third series, when he returns to Greece, we’ll confront this sort of thing rather more. In the first series, though, we’re concentrating much more on the warrior aspects of his character. Added to that, if you look at the original myths, you find that Hercules could be a fairly difficult character to live with, being subject to murderous rages, so he’s ended up as an outsider: roaming mercenary soldier is the obvious career for him. Also, in the old stories, like most people in the Classical world, Hercules was plainly bisexual, so we’ve kept that in too. Hopefully that’ll mean we have a more-rounded, human character, rather than just a “hero”.
<B>NRAMA</B>: Regardless of his popularity in the media, few people know the real ‘canon’ story of Hercules from the original Greek Myth.
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/Hercules3_CoverA_Low_res.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/t_Hercules3_CoverA_Low_res.jpg" border="0" align="right"></a> <B>SM</B>: Unlike Jason and the Argonauts or the Odyssey, we don’t have a complete narrative of Hercules’ adventures; just a lot of varying stories that don’t fit together very well. Briefly, though, he was the son of a mortal woman, Alcmene, and Zeus, who’d disguised himself as Alcmene’s husband. Unfortunately, Zeus’ wife, Hera, was jealous, and Hercules suffered from her jealous persecution ever after. Remembering that Hera is the goddess of marriage and family life, in my story I’m taking that persecution as affecting Hercules’ relationships … he’s unlucky in love with either sex … though according to some stories Hercules undertook the Twelve Labours to placate Hera’s wrath. For whatever reason, though, Hercules carried out the Labours at the command of his cousin Eurystheus, king of Argos, most of which entailed slaying monsters. Other stories make him a great warrior, leading campaigns against various kings, while others concentrate on his love-affairs. Finally, when the centaur Nessus tried to rape Hercules’ wife, Deianeira, Hercules shot him with an arrow; but the dying Nessus persuaded Deianeira that his blood would make a love-potion. She dipped a tunic in the blood and gave it to Hercules, but when he put it on it turned out that the blood was poisonous. In order to escape the pain, Hercules burned himself to death and ascended to heaven, where he became a god and married Hebe, the goddess of youth. As a god, he was widely worshipped throughout the Greek world. Like I said, though, all these stories really don’t join up properly, so my story takes place sometime after the Twelve Labours, and before the marriage to Deianeira.
<B>NRAMA</B>: How old would that make Hercules at the start of the first series?
<B>SM</B>: Like most of the other characters with Hercules, he’s about 40 years old when the story opens … which is taking a little bit of a liberty with the original stories, where he died in the prime of life. Probably the Twelve Labours are a decade or two in the past, and he’s trying to escape the “monster-slaying hero” tag.
<B>NRAMA</B>: In which chronological era does the story take place?
<B>SM</B>: Well, Hercules is supposed to have lived shortly before the Trojan War, which is traditionally dated to 1184 BC. So I’m taking these stories as occurring around 1200 BC. The precise date doesn’t matter much in the first series, but when I take the characters to Egypt in the second, we’ll be introducing actual historical characters that were alive at that point.
<B>NRAMA</B>: What gets the ball rolling in the first series?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/0213_Hercules_2_P13__0804.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/t_0213_Hercules_2_P13__0804.jpg" border="0" align="left"></a> <B>SM</B>: When the story opens, Hercules and a small band of mercenaries are just arriving in Thrace, the land to the north of Greece. Basically, Hercules is tired of being in Greece, where he’s expected to be a hero all the time, and where the Gods, especially Hera, are rather too present, so he’s come to Thrace, which is little more than a collection of disunited tribes. One leader, King Cotys, is intent on uniting the tribes and welding them into a nation, so he’s going to employ Hercules and his warrior friends to train his army in the ways of “civilised” warfare. And then, once they’re trained …
<B>NRAMA</B>: Will the focus of the title be squarely on Hercules?
<B>SM</B>: It’s much more of an ensemble book, mainly because we’re treating Hercules as more of a human warrior than a “hero”. Obviously Hercules is the main character and leader of the group, but certainly through the first couple of story-arcs, we’re telling the adventures of a group. Later, we may do more of a solo Hercules story as a change of pace, but I like to keep my options open as to where this is going.
<B>NRAMA</B>: From the mercenaries making up the cast of the book some are familiar names while some feel more obscure...
<B>SM</B>: All but one of these are characters from the myths, with their own stories, and the one major criterion for choosing them was that they’re all mythologically contemporary with Hercules and sometimes appear together in the original tales.
There’s <b>Iolaus</b>, who was Hercules’ nephew and charioteer, and who accompanied him during most of the Twelve Labours … he’s also the “voice-over narrator” for the first series.
<b>Amphiaraus</b>, the oldest of the characters, is both a seasoned warrior and a seer. I’ve played him as an epileptic, but the visions he receives from Zeus and Apollo are always true, if frequently ambiguous.
<b>Tydeus</b> is a murderous, brain-eating cannibal … a berserker who’s the group’s “shock-weapon”.
<b>Autolycus</b>, the son of Hermes, is a notorious thief; he’s the sly thinker of the group.
<b>Atalanta</b>, the swift-footed heroine of the tale of the golden apples, was once vowed to virginity and Artemis, until tricked into marriage; now she just wants to die in battle, so she can be reunited with Artemis in the afterlife, though deliberate suicide would only consign her straight to hell.
<b>Meleager</b>, the great hunter, has been hopelessly in love with Atalanta, despite her obvious lesbianism, ever since they met at the great hunt of the Calydonian boar, some twenty years earlier; as she wants to die and he wants to protect her, there’s a certain amount of conflict here.
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/Hercules__2_Page_16_17.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/t_Hercules__2_Page_16_17.jpg" border="0" align="right"></a> All these characters are developed out of their original mythical stories; but there’s also one new member of the band, who’s a complete invention: <b>Meneus</b>, Hercules’ current youthful boyfriend. Apart from being the innocent foil through which some of the back-stories are explored, he also provides an optimistic counterpoint to the world-weary cynicism of the other characters, all of whom are twice his age.
<B>NRAMA</B>: What brings these disparate characters together?
<B>SM</B>: Basically, the group have come together as mercenaries: Hercules, tired of being a “hero” (and of the persecution of the jealous goddess Hera) wanting to lose himself in battle; Iolaus because he’s family, and he’s been along for the ride for so long there’s no way he could stop now if he wanted to; Tydeus because he likes to kill; Amphiaraus, because the gods tell him to; Atalanta because she wants to die; Meleager because he’s obsessed with Atalanta; and Meneus because he wants to learn to be a warrior and a hero.
<B>NRAMA</B>: What kind of stories are you looking to tell in this title?
<B>SM</B>: The first series is a fairly grim war story, and I’ve tried to make this as realistic as I can, using Bronze Age weaponry appropriate to the Greeks and Thracians, and trying to make the training of the warriors and the battle-scenes as authentic as possible … no fancy sword-twirling, and no one knows kung fu! But it’s also about fate and destiny … our characters are in this situation because there’s really nothing else they can do, and you don’t argue with the will of the Gods. The second series will take them to Egypt and, on the one hand, will be more of a “spy-thriller” involving political competition for the Pharaoh’s throne, while on the other it’ll involve magic and magicians, who were prevalent throughout the ancient world, though that’s often ignored. So mainly what I’m looking to do are tightly-plotted historical adventures, rather than hero-against-hero slug-fests.
<B>NRAMA</B>: How did the idea for this series come about?
<B>SM</B>: I should probably say at the outset that it was Barry Levine and Dave Elliott [Editor’s note: the Publisher and Editor of Radical Comics] who came to me and said “We want to do a Hercules comic, and we’d like you to write it”, and it was their notion that the story would be set later in Hercules’ life, after the Twelve Labours were over, and concentrate more on his human rather than his mythological aspects. Given that basic brief, I then came up with a treatment that gave them what they wanted, but also let me do what I wanted at the same time.
<B>NRAMA</B>: How did you first meet the Radical Comics editors?
<B>SM</B>: I’d worked with Dave Elliott before, as far back as the old Atomeka Press days, when he was publishing <b>A1</b>, and he got in touch when Radical was first setting up. Originally, we spoke about the possibility of my adapting an already-written movie script into graphic novel form, and then he and Barry Levine mentioned Hercules. That was rather more in my “area of interest”, though I wasn’t sure I’d have time to fit it in. Then we met for coffee one morning when Barry and Dave were in London, and discussed the project, at which point we decided to drop the graphic novel and concentrate on Hercules. Since then I’ve met Dave once or twice when he’s been in London, but we mainly keep in touch by email and phone … which suits me. They seem happy enough with the work, and I really just want to get on and write.
<B>NRAMA</B>: In a previous interview, Barry Levine described you as an avid fan of mythology and research. What were your main research sources for this book and Hercules’ back story?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/18Hercules__2_Interior_Pa.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Radical/Hervules/02/t_18Hercules__2_Interior_Pa.jpg" border="0" align="left"></a> <B>SM</B>: I’ve been interested in the Ancient World since I was a kid (which is quite a long time ago), and that and Traditional China have been my main areas of interest for decades; I’m also very fond of historical research, and have written a fair amount of non-fiction pieces about both areas. As for the mythology, anyone who’s read Alan Moore’s biography of me, “Unearthing” [<i>Editor’s Note: Alan Moore’s biography of Steve Moore, “Unearthing”, appears in the anthology edited by Iain Sinclair, London: City of Disappearances (Penguin, 2007, £14.99). A photo-illustrated edition of “Unearthing”, by Mitch Jenkins, is also in the works</i>], will know that I have a great affinity with the Greek Moon-goddess, Selene (about whom I hope to complete a book, sometime before I die), and in the course of researching her, I read virtually all the major mythological works from antiquity … Homer, Hesiod, Apollodorus and so on, including the obscure ones like Fulgentius … as well as a lot of the ancient histories and philosophical works, and modern scholarship on mythology, Greek society, and so on. So all that stuff’s in my head and on my bookshelves (the whole house is full of books on Greece and China) … but the handy reference I use when I want to do a quick check on the stories of Hercules and the other mythical characters is Pierre Grimal’s <i>Dictionary of Classical Mythology</i>. Then, for artists’ references, I either scan pictures from books I have here, or pick stuff up on the web … which is okay if you know what you’re looking for, and a bit dodgy if you don’t …
<B>NRAMA</B>: From your research and through your personal perspective into it, is there a real historic person behind the myth of Hercules?
<B>SM</B>: There seems to be a modern obsession with this sort of question … was Hercules real? Was there really a King Arthur? Did Jesus actually live? This sort of question really doesn’t interest me very much. What’s important are the stories (or in Christ’s case, the teachings) and what they can tell us about what people believed, what it’s like to be human, and so on. History’s largely a narrative that’s manipulated by writers after the events, anyway, so stories of Hercules would be no more nor less valid if there were a “real” Hercules at the root of them.
<B>NRAMA</B>: In the plays and stories remaining from Ancient Greece, it wasn’t uncommon to see the Gods descending into the world of mortals and interfering in their lives. What is your stance concerning the existence of the Gods and their involvement in mortal affairs in the context of the series? Are you accepting the Gods’ existence (and Hercules’ divine origins) as fact in the story?
<B>SM</B>: That’s a bit complicated. The Gods don’t actually appear in the story themselves, and when we introduce mythological material it’s in the form of “stories told about the characters”, by other characters; maybe they’re true, maybe they’re not. We’re handling them as stories, rather than “facts”. But every character in the series believes in the existence of the Gods (there aren’t any cynics to provide a “modern” viewpoint, which would be completely out of place in a story like this), and if Hercules says he’s the son of Zeus, and Autolycus that he’s the son of Hermes, then everyone takes that at face value. I prefer to leave this sort of thing ambiguous, without ruling anything out. There’s not really much in the way of “supernatural” content in the first series, though there’ll be a little more in the second, when our characters head off to Egypt, the land of magic.
<B>NRAMA</B>: What is your working relationship with the artists of the book from Imaginary Friends Studios?
<B>SM</B>: I’ve had no direct contact with the artists from Imaginary Friends, but that’s mainly because I’d almost finished writing the series before the artists were decided on. I provided a fair amount of pictorial reference material for architecture, weaponry, costumes, etc., along with the script, anyway; and I was able to comment, via Dave Elliott, on some of the character sketches they provided. I did exchange a few emails with Jim Steranko about the cover for the first issue, though, which was quite fun.
<B>NRAMA</B>: What are your far-reaching plans for the future of this series?
<B>SM</B>: For the moment, the plans run as far as the first three series of five issues each. The first is set in Thrace; the second takes place in Egypt; and third (which is still fairly vague at the moment) will return him to Greece, where we’ll confront much more of Hercules’ past, and the mythology. Essentially that’s three self-contained stories, though they’ll be chronologically continuous.
<B>NRAMA</B>: Are there plans for adapting the story for different media?
<B>SM</B>: As is so often the case these days, I believe Radical are interested in exploiting the Hercules “product” in a range of different media, and there has been some talk of a movie, and possibly novels. I’d really only want to write comic-books and novels, though. I’m not really interested in getting involved with movies, computer-games, and that sort of thing … though I’d be very pleased to see a range of glitzy Hercules items.
<B>NRAMA</B>: What other projects are you working on right now?
<B>SM</B>: With Alan Moore, I’m currently writing <b>The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic</b> for Top Shelf. It’s a fairly serious work on occultism, disguised as a 1920s kids’ book, with comic-strips, text-stories, articles, and so on, where we’ll cover the history, theory and practice of western magic. It’ll be a 320-page hardback, but exactly when it’ll be published, I’m not sure. Let’s just say we’re working on it, and it’ll be out sometime. Apart from that, though, domestic commitments (I have to care for a disabled relative) don’t leave me much time for other projects.