MattBrady
10-30-2002, 12:00 PM
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/pointblank_t.jpg" width="165" height="255" border="0" align="right"> His name may be new to American audiences, but it’s not to the rest of the world. Adding a distinctly European flavor to Wildstorm’s Point Blank miniseries, artist Colin Wilson has finally come to the US comics market after decades or work in the UK and Europe.
Starting off in New Zealand, Wilson moved to England, and then later France where he worked alongside the stars of the European market, from Brits such as Dave Gibbons and Brian Bolland to French luminaries as Jean Girard and Jean-Michel Charlier. Famous in Europe for his interpretations of Lt. Blueberry, as well as Judge Dredd, Wilson is a comic artist in the European tradition – skipping over costumed heroes for science fiction and Westerns, both writing and drawing stories that were printed in album format.
Newsarama caught up with Wilson recently for a chat about his life and times, and especially, his work on point Blank.
NEWSARAMA: Your distinction in the world of comics goes back a long time – even before your professional days. You and some friends started New Zealand’s first comics fanzine, right?
COLIN WILSON: Yes we did. With an extraordinary leap of creative imagination that still amazes me to this day we called it - Strips. It was a small A5 affair that contained a few comic reviews and articles along with comic pages of my own and about four or five friends. Over a couple of years I edited ten issues before handing the whole thing over to a couple of other
contributors, who carried on and produced another 12 or 13 issues.
NRAMA: So how did you get there in the first place? Were you a comic fan from a young age, or did you find them later on as you were becoming more serious about a career?
CW: Comics just always seemed to be around. But not the usual US superhero stuff - the comics that I remember were the UK produced weekly war comics like War Picture Library and Air Ace. And then I discovered Eagle, which at the time, the late '50s was going through its finest hour, with artists like Frank Hampson and Frank Bellamy. Terrific
stuff, if a little straight-laced, but beautifully printed.
NRAMA: You moved to London in 1980. Did you go there specifically for a job, or just because job prospects were better there than in New Zealand for illustrators?
CW: Actually, job prospects had nothing to do with it, as I was never supposed to be
working there anyway. I could only obtain a tourist visa, and even after I got married there the Immigration Authorities wouldn't allow me to stay! But that’s another story....
Originally I only had a short holiday planned in London before coming back to live in Australia. Living in New Zealand I had never imagined that anyone could actually earn a living drawing comics, and so when the first 2000AD work started to arrive I knew I was onto a winner in London, and there was no was that they were going to get rid of me after that!
NRAMA: Your work at 2000AD centered on a lot of Judge Dredd. What was it about the character that attracted you, and kept you coming back for more?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/relent.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/relent_t.jpg" width="165" height="185" border="0" align="left" alt="Wilson's Judge Dredd"></a> CW: Most of the stories in 2000AD didn't really interest me too much. But with my interest in SF and all the attendant hardware Dredd was always going to be the one for me. And it's difficult to remember now just how subversive and edgy Dredd was at the time..... the scripts were written by the best writers at 2000AD, and they were always pushing the boundaries. Dredd always got the good artists too - Dave Gibbons, Brian Bolland - who was doing his finest work at the time on the Judge Death story arc, Mike McMahon. All terrific artists. It was just a tremendous opportunity to work with some of the best.
NRAMA: You came to 2000AD relatively green, and left as a seasoned pro after a couple of years. Is there anything that you can put your finger on that your experience at 2000AD taught you that still stands out in your mind today?
CW: Without a doubt the two years or so that I worked for 2000AD taught me
how to be professional at what I did. Do your best work, hit the deadlines, don't make problems for the editors - they've got other stuff to sort out. And after doing the fanzine thing for a couple of years it was also rather nice to discover that someone would actually pay me to draw comics too!
NRAMA: While you were working for 2000AD, were you doing any other work, or was that your full time, exlcusive gig?
CW: Drawing two pages a week for 2000AD didn't leave much time for anything
else. We had arrived in London with very little money, and the Immigration Deptartment made it very clear that we were not going to be able to stay for long, and so it was really important to work as hard as possible, learn as much as possible, and stay light on our feet. Exciting times...
NRAMA: So, after hustling for 2000AD, you moved to Paris. Not to be anti-French at all, but why? What were the benefits you saw for such a move?
CW: European comics had always been more interesting to me than the US variety, and so while 2000AD were still interested in giving me work I thought that it was a good idea to go over to Paris and test the temperature of the water there. It was also fairly obvious by that stage that we would need to get out of the UK before the authorities there threw us out. That would have been back to New Zealand, and I didn't need that.
We convinced someone to rent us their empty apartment in Paris, and eventually we spent about eight months there. The only problem with the deal was that the owner would come back and needed the apartment for a couple of days each month, and so several of those later 2000AD stories were drawn on a shaky table in a flea-bitten half-star room in a dingy outer-suburb Parisian hotel!
NRAMA: Ah, the makings of a romantic comedy…maybe. In the international comics community, your move to France began what’s seen as your most prolific period, resulting in eleven albums in ten years. Let’s talk about a few of the better known works – firstly, for us Yanks, what is Into the Shadow of the Sun?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/mantell02.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/mantell02_t.jpg" width="200" height="134" border="0" align="right" alt="Detail from Into the Shadow of the Sun"></a> CW: Into the Shadow of the Sun was a project to pitch at a few Euro editors. I'd never written anything at the time, we had no contact with any French writers at the time, and so I sat down and wrote the story as a limited three book series, with each book revolving around one of the three central characters. Arriving in Europe had suddenly introduced me to the enormous amount of input that I had never been aware of while living in New Zealand...... people were demonstrating in the streets, the Greenham Common protests were going on, journalists were constantly revealing previously secret government schemes and scandals. It was a lively time to be in Europe.
I used a couple of themes that interested me at the time - genetic engineering was only starting to be talked about - and extended these into the future a little. Science Fiction was the genre that I was most comfortable with at the time, and so Shadow of the Sun grew out of all that.
NRAMA: A large portion of your work during your years in France was on Lt. Blueberry, a creation of Jean Giraud (Moebius) and Jean-Michel Charlier. How did you get called up to the big leagues, so to speak?
CW: Shadow of the Sun was taken up by one of the big French editors at the time - Glenat - and photocopies of some of my early pages found their way into the hands of Moebius and Jean-Michel. At the time they were looking for an artist to take on a parallel series to Lt. Blueberry, and with my obvious Giraud influences I eventually got the job.
It was a tremendous opportunity for me - I was in total awe of Jean Giraud's artwork and entire approach to comics, and I was already familiar with the Blueberry series because I had mail-ordering several of the books while I was still living in New Zealand.
NRAMA: Again, for those not entirely familiar with the European comics market, can you explain a little about Blueberry, as well as the experience of working with Moebius?
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/Gunslinger.jpg" width="150" height="354" border="0" align="left" alt="Wilson's Blueberry work"> CW: The western has always been popular in Europe, and the authors there tend to bring their own particular approach to the genre. The US cinema is an obvious influence, and much like with cinema and the 'alternative' approach of the so-called spaghetti westerns, the Euros tend to bring a fresh attitude to a genre that appears to have rather played itself out in the US. The European format - 46 page full color, hardcover books, also tends to favor the long running multi-book saga, and to me Blueberry was always the best of the bunch.
Unfortunately at that time Jean Giraud was more interested in moving to Tahiti. He had his parallel career as Moebius going very well, and Jean-Michel Charlier was desperate to keep the Blueberry series going in one form or another. Several years earlier the two authors had produced several short Blueberry stories for Pilote that had already been collected and published in three books, Blueberry: The Early Years, and the idea was that this could then continue as a parallel Blueberry series. I was asked to take on the project, but unfortunately with Jean by then living in Tahiti I didn't get to see Moebius much at all.
NRAMA: How long did the working relationship last for you on Blueberry?
CW: Honestly, I was working more with Jean-Michel Charlier and the series editor at that time, Novedi. We eventually came to an agreement between Giraud, Charlier and myself, which was to produce no end of problems later following the death of Jean-Michel Charlier, that allowed me almost complete independence on La Jeunesse de Blueberry. I eventually
drew six books in the series.
NRAMA: From there, you moved on to do some more of your own work, and as you mentioned, ultimately ended working on Blueberry - what was responsible for the change?
CW: I continued to alternate Blueberry books with projects of my own, but by '94 the whole deal was starting to go sour. Jean-Michel Charlier had died in 1989, the series had changed editors several times, and I wasn't very happy with the stories that were being written for La Jeunesse. With the encouragement of Jean Giraud I began writing a script myself, but with problems between all parties involved the idea was never going to get off the ground.
With problems stretching out to the horizon, I thought that it time for us to get out, and in '96 we moved here to Australia. Luckily I had started talking to an Italian Editor about doing a Tex Special - Tex is effectively the Italian Blueberry, although the character pre-dates Blueberry by at least ten years. Each year the Tex editor invites an artist to work on a 220 page Tex Special - Joe Kubert has drawn one - and I was lucky enough to be invited to draw one of my own. Tex: The Last Rebel was published in 2000.
NRAMA: Looking at your time in Europe, and as a member of the European comics community as a whole, what would you consider your biggest accomplishments during that period of your life?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/tex05.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/tex05_t.jpg" width="150" height="289" border="0" align="left" alt="Wilson's Tex"></a> CW: Without a doubt working on Blueberry was the most satisfying project that I worked on during the 16 years that we spent in Europe. Comics are a respected genre in Europe with a popularity that amazes me, and getting the opportunity to work on one of the top series of the time, with one of the great writers of the medium, was a tremendous boost to my career, and a huge amount of fun at the same time. It also was a real education for me - Jean-Michel Charlier was a larger than life character and someone who I miss enormously to this day. Of the work that we did together I guess the second story, “Terreur sur La Kansas” would be the book that I am most proud of today.
NRAMA: Along with the move back to your home hemisphere, you also moved back to 2000AD - why?
CW: 2000AD contacted me while I was completing the Tex project - initially to return some artwork that I had done in the early '80's! - and I thought that it would be fun to work on some science fiction again after all the years of drawing westerns for Europe.
NRAMA: With what you’ve said about the differences between the European and American comics markets, it could be seen as slightly odd that you’re now here, drawing a project for WIldstorm. Did you make overtures to the US market, or did representatives approach you?
CW: Scott Dunbier at Wildstorm has told to me that he had kept an eye on the Euro stuff that I had done over the years, and so when he approached me last year to work for Wildstorm they already had a series that Scott thought that I would be interested in working on.
NRAMA: What made you agree to work for Wildstorm, then?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/09.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/09_t.jpg" width="165" height="255" border="0" align="right" alt="Point Blank pencils"></a> CW: While I was familiar with some of the US produced material while living in Europe my lack of interest in superhero comics had kept me out of the US market until Wildstorm approached me to work on Point Blank. Wildstorm were preparing their new Eye of the Storm range, and Point Blank looked like exactly the project to get me involved. I was - and still am - reading a lot of hard-boiled, private-eye type of books - why isn't there a better title for the genre in English? - and Ed [Brubaker] had written a complex script with all the elements that hooked me immediately – it had great action, mood, good dialogue, etc.
NRAMA: So there was never an appeal to first “make it” in the US market by doing a project with the spandex crowd?
CW: The spandex market has never held much appeal for me, and superhero involvement in Point Blank was never the major selling point when Scott originally pitched me the series. Obviously I needed to go away and do my homework as several of the characters are important to the Wildstorm universe, but PB was never meant to be a superhero comic in any conventional sense. The story is treated more as a thriller/detective story than a superhero series.
NRAMA: That said then, what was the attraction, or the straw that broke the camel's back for taking on Point Blank?
CW: Without a doubt it was the quality of Ed's script that got me on board. But I didn't need much convincing. A superhero series would have been a hard sell, but Point Blank was exactly the sort of project that I had been hoping to get involved with for a long time.
NRAMA: What has the experience of working with Ed been like? How much input do you have on the overall storytelling?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/pic_lrgpoint2sht3.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/pic_lrgpoint2sht3_t.jpg" width="165" height="250" border="0" align="left" alt="Point Blank pencils"></a>CW: As an ex-artist himself, Ed has got an excellent visual sense already, and so on Point Blank all I've really done is visualize exactly what Ed wrote into his script. I'm a newcomer to all this, and so I wasn't too interested in taking the script of a already well-established writer and going off on my own tangent with the whole thing.
NRAMA: Were you familiar with Ed's work before this?
CW: Not at all. Coming into this my knowledge of US mainstream comics was
really limited, but it was obvious from early on the Ed was a writer on the way up at Wildstorm DC. Early on, when we were talking over Point Blank, it was obvious that we were on the same wavelength, which was just about all I needed to know.....
NRAMA: What's been the most challenging part of Point Blank for you?
CW: Primarily, getting the mood right. This is possibly the first present-day story that I've ever illustrated, so that was always going to be a challenge. Delivering eleven pages a month was a big ask too, as I've never had to produce pages at that rate before. European work is usually delivered at a much more leisurely pace!
NRAMA: Well then – despite the pace, do you have any more work for Wildstorm coming?
CW: Ed and I have been talking over a new Wildstorm project for some time. It will mean a return to science fiction for me - which will be fun - but with all his recently announced commitments at Wildstorm/DC I'm not too sure where this is going to fit into Ed's already busy schedule. But recently I've been approached by a French editor with an interesting offer, and with the obvious benefits of working in the creator controlled market there, I may have some interesting developments to announce soon. The European scene is so healthy at the moment - last year I went back to France for two months and I was amazed at how much good stuff is produced - so keeping one foot in that market still has its appeal.
Starting off in New Zealand, Wilson moved to England, and then later France where he worked alongside the stars of the European market, from Brits such as Dave Gibbons and Brian Bolland to French luminaries as Jean Girard and Jean-Michel Charlier. Famous in Europe for his interpretations of Lt. Blueberry, as well as Judge Dredd, Wilson is a comic artist in the European tradition – skipping over costumed heroes for science fiction and Westerns, both writing and drawing stories that were printed in album format.
Newsarama caught up with Wilson recently for a chat about his life and times, and especially, his work on point Blank.
NEWSARAMA: Your distinction in the world of comics goes back a long time – even before your professional days. You and some friends started New Zealand’s first comics fanzine, right?
COLIN WILSON: Yes we did. With an extraordinary leap of creative imagination that still amazes me to this day we called it - Strips. It was a small A5 affair that contained a few comic reviews and articles along with comic pages of my own and about four or five friends. Over a couple of years I edited ten issues before handing the whole thing over to a couple of other
contributors, who carried on and produced another 12 or 13 issues.
NRAMA: So how did you get there in the first place? Were you a comic fan from a young age, or did you find them later on as you were becoming more serious about a career?
CW: Comics just always seemed to be around. But not the usual US superhero stuff - the comics that I remember were the UK produced weekly war comics like War Picture Library and Air Ace. And then I discovered Eagle, which at the time, the late '50s was going through its finest hour, with artists like Frank Hampson and Frank Bellamy. Terrific
stuff, if a little straight-laced, but beautifully printed.
NRAMA: You moved to London in 1980. Did you go there specifically for a job, or just because job prospects were better there than in New Zealand for illustrators?
CW: Actually, job prospects had nothing to do with it, as I was never supposed to be
working there anyway. I could only obtain a tourist visa, and even after I got married there the Immigration Authorities wouldn't allow me to stay! But that’s another story....
Originally I only had a short holiday planned in London before coming back to live in Australia. Living in New Zealand I had never imagined that anyone could actually earn a living drawing comics, and so when the first 2000AD work started to arrive I knew I was onto a winner in London, and there was no was that they were going to get rid of me after that!
NRAMA: Your work at 2000AD centered on a lot of Judge Dredd. What was it about the character that attracted you, and kept you coming back for more?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/relent.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/relent_t.jpg" width="165" height="185" border="0" align="left" alt="Wilson's Judge Dredd"></a> CW: Most of the stories in 2000AD didn't really interest me too much. But with my interest in SF and all the attendant hardware Dredd was always going to be the one for me. And it's difficult to remember now just how subversive and edgy Dredd was at the time..... the scripts were written by the best writers at 2000AD, and they were always pushing the boundaries. Dredd always got the good artists too - Dave Gibbons, Brian Bolland - who was doing his finest work at the time on the Judge Death story arc, Mike McMahon. All terrific artists. It was just a tremendous opportunity to work with some of the best.
NRAMA: You came to 2000AD relatively green, and left as a seasoned pro after a couple of years. Is there anything that you can put your finger on that your experience at 2000AD taught you that still stands out in your mind today?
CW: Without a doubt the two years or so that I worked for 2000AD taught me
how to be professional at what I did. Do your best work, hit the deadlines, don't make problems for the editors - they've got other stuff to sort out. And after doing the fanzine thing for a couple of years it was also rather nice to discover that someone would actually pay me to draw comics too!
NRAMA: While you were working for 2000AD, were you doing any other work, or was that your full time, exlcusive gig?
CW: Drawing two pages a week for 2000AD didn't leave much time for anything
else. We had arrived in London with very little money, and the Immigration Deptartment made it very clear that we were not going to be able to stay for long, and so it was really important to work as hard as possible, learn as much as possible, and stay light on our feet. Exciting times...
NRAMA: So, after hustling for 2000AD, you moved to Paris. Not to be anti-French at all, but why? What were the benefits you saw for such a move?
CW: European comics had always been more interesting to me than the US variety, and so while 2000AD were still interested in giving me work I thought that it was a good idea to go over to Paris and test the temperature of the water there. It was also fairly obvious by that stage that we would need to get out of the UK before the authorities there threw us out. That would have been back to New Zealand, and I didn't need that.
We convinced someone to rent us their empty apartment in Paris, and eventually we spent about eight months there. The only problem with the deal was that the owner would come back and needed the apartment for a couple of days each month, and so several of those later 2000AD stories were drawn on a shaky table in a flea-bitten half-star room in a dingy outer-suburb Parisian hotel!
NRAMA: Ah, the makings of a romantic comedy…maybe. In the international comics community, your move to France began what’s seen as your most prolific period, resulting in eleven albums in ten years. Let’s talk about a few of the better known works – firstly, for us Yanks, what is Into the Shadow of the Sun?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/mantell02.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/mantell02_t.jpg" width="200" height="134" border="0" align="right" alt="Detail from Into the Shadow of the Sun"></a> CW: Into the Shadow of the Sun was a project to pitch at a few Euro editors. I'd never written anything at the time, we had no contact with any French writers at the time, and so I sat down and wrote the story as a limited three book series, with each book revolving around one of the three central characters. Arriving in Europe had suddenly introduced me to the enormous amount of input that I had never been aware of while living in New Zealand...... people were demonstrating in the streets, the Greenham Common protests were going on, journalists were constantly revealing previously secret government schemes and scandals. It was a lively time to be in Europe.
I used a couple of themes that interested me at the time - genetic engineering was only starting to be talked about - and extended these into the future a little. Science Fiction was the genre that I was most comfortable with at the time, and so Shadow of the Sun grew out of all that.
NRAMA: A large portion of your work during your years in France was on Lt. Blueberry, a creation of Jean Giraud (Moebius) and Jean-Michel Charlier. How did you get called up to the big leagues, so to speak?
CW: Shadow of the Sun was taken up by one of the big French editors at the time - Glenat - and photocopies of some of my early pages found their way into the hands of Moebius and Jean-Michel. At the time they were looking for an artist to take on a parallel series to Lt. Blueberry, and with my obvious Giraud influences I eventually got the job.
It was a tremendous opportunity for me - I was in total awe of Jean Giraud's artwork and entire approach to comics, and I was already familiar with the Blueberry series because I had mail-ordering several of the books while I was still living in New Zealand.
NRAMA: Again, for those not entirely familiar with the European comics market, can you explain a little about Blueberry, as well as the experience of working with Moebius?
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/Gunslinger.jpg" width="150" height="354" border="0" align="left" alt="Wilson's Blueberry work"> CW: The western has always been popular in Europe, and the authors there tend to bring their own particular approach to the genre. The US cinema is an obvious influence, and much like with cinema and the 'alternative' approach of the so-called spaghetti westerns, the Euros tend to bring a fresh attitude to a genre that appears to have rather played itself out in the US. The European format - 46 page full color, hardcover books, also tends to favor the long running multi-book saga, and to me Blueberry was always the best of the bunch.
Unfortunately at that time Jean Giraud was more interested in moving to Tahiti. He had his parallel career as Moebius going very well, and Jean-Michel Charlier was desperate to keep the Blueberry series going in one form or another. Several years earlier the two authors had produced several short Blueberry stories for Pilote that had already been collected and published in three books, Blueberry: The Early Years, and the idea was that this could then continue as a parallel Blueberry series. I was asked to take on the project, but unfortunately with Jean by then living in Tahiti I didn't get to see Moebius much at all.
NRAMA: How long did the working relationship last for you on Blueberry?
CW: Honestly, I was working more with Jean-Michel Charlier and the series editor at that time, Novedi. We eventually came to an agreement between Giraud, Charlier and myself, which was to produce no end of problems later following the death of Jean-Michel Charlier, that allowed me almost complete independence on La Jeunesse de Blueberry. I eventually
drew six books in the series.
NRAMA: From there, you moved on to do some more of your own work, and as you mentioned, ultimately ended working on Blueberry - what was responsible for the change?
CW: I continued to alternate Blueberry books with projects of my own, but by '94 the whole deal was starting to go sour. Jean-Michel Charlier had died in 1989, the series had changed editors several times, and I wasn't very happy with the stories that were being written for La Jeunesse. With the encouragement of Jean Giraud I began writing a script myself, but with problems between all parties involved the idea was never going to get off the ground.
With problems stretching out to the horizon, I thought that it time for us to get out, and in '96 we moved here to Australia. Luckily I had started talking to an Italian Editor about doing a Tex Special - Tex is effectively the Italian Blueberry, although the character pre-dates Blueberry by at least ten years. Each year the Tex editor invites an artist to work on a 220 page Tex Special - Joe Kubert has drawn one - and I was lucky enough to be invited to draw one of my own. Tex: The Last Rebel was published in 2000.
NRAMA: Looking at your time in Europe, and as a member of the European comics community as a whole, what would you consider your biggest accomplishments during that period of your life?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/tex05.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/tex05_t.jpg" width="150" height="289" border="0" align="left" alt="Wilson's Tex"></a> CW: Without a doubt working on Blueberry was the most satisfying project that I worked on during the 16 years that we spent in Europe. Comics are a respected genre in Europe with a popularity that amazes me, and getting the opportunity to work on one of the top series of the time, with one of the great writers of the medium, was a tremendous boost to my career, and a huge amount of fun at the same time. It also was a real education for me - Jean-Michel Charlier was a larger than life character and someone who I miss enormously to this day. Of the work that we did together I guess the second story, “Terreur sur La Kansas” would be the book that I am most proud of today.
NRAMA: Along with the move back to your home hemisphere, you also moved back to 2000AD - why?
CW: 2000AD contacted me while I was completing the Tex project - initially to return some artwork that I had done in the early '80's! - and I thought that it would be fun to work on some science fiction again after all the years of drawing westerns for Europe.
NRAMA: With what you’ve said about the differences between the European and American comics markets, it could be seen as slightly odd that you’re now here, drawing a project for WIldstorm. Did you make overtures to the US market, or did representatives approach you?
CW: Scott Dunbier at Wildstorm has told to me that he had kept an eye on the Euro stuff that I had done over the years, and so when he approached me last year to work for Wildstorm they already had a series that Scott thought that I would be interested in working on.
NRAMA: What made you agree to work for Wildstorm, then?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/09.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/09_t.jpg" width="165" height="255" border="0" align="right" alt="Point Blank pencils"></a> CW: While I was familiar with some of the US produced material while living in Europe my lack of interest in superhero comics had kept me out of the US market until Wildstorm approached me to work on Point Blank. Wildstorm were preparing their new Eye of the Storm range, and Point Blank looked like exactly the project to get me involved. I was - and still am - reading a lot of hard-boiled, private-eye type of books - why isn't there a better title for the genre in English? - and Ed [Brubaker] had written a complex script with all the elements that hooked me immediately – it had great action, mood, good dialogue, etc.
NRAMA: So there was never an appeal to first “make it” in the US market by doing a project with the spandex crowd?
CW: The spandex market has never held much appeal for me, and superhero involvement in Point Blank was never the major selling point when Scott originally pitched me the series. Obviously I needed to go away and do my homework as several of the characters are important to the Wildstorm universe, but PB was never meant to be a superhero comic in any conventional sense. The story is treated more as a thriller/detective story than a superhero series.
NRAMA: That said then, what was the attraction, or the straw that broke the camel's back for taking on Point Blank?
CW: Without a doubt it was the quality of Ed's script that got me on board. But I didn't need much convincing. A superhero series would have been a hard sell, but Point Blank was exactly the sort of project that I had been hoping to get involved with for a long time.
NRAMA: What has the experience of working with Ed been like? How much input do you have on the overall storytelling?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/pic_lrgpoint2sht3.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/pic_lrgpoint2sht3_t.jpg" width="165" height="250" border="0" align="left" alt="Point Blank pencils"></a>CW: As an ex-artist himself, Ed has got an excellent visual sense already, and so on Point Blank all I've really done is visualize exactly what Ed wrote into his script. I'm a newcomer to all this, and so I wasn't too interested in taking the script of a already well-established writer and going off on my own tangent with the whole thing.
NRAMA: Were you familiar with Ed's work before this?
CW: Not at all. Coming into this my knowledge of US mainstream comics was
really limited, but it was obvious from early on the Ed was a writer on the way up at Wildstorm DC. Early on, when we were talking over Point Blank, it was obvious that we were on the same wavelength, which was just about all I needed to know.....
NRAMA: What's been the most challenging part of Point Blank for you?
CW: Primarily, getting the mood right. This is possibly the first present-day story that I've ever illustrated, so that was always going to be a challenge. Delivering eleven pages a month was a big ask too, as I've never had to produce pages at that rate before. European work is usually delivered at a much more leisurely pace!
NRAMA: Well then – despite the pace, do you have any more work for Wildstorm coming?
CW: Ed and I have been talking over a new Wildstorm project for some time. It will mean a return to science fiction for me - which will be fun - but with all his recently announced commitments at Wildstorm/DC I'm not too sure where this is going to fit into Ed's already busy schedule. But recently I've been approached by a French editor with an interesting offer, and with the obvious benefits of working in the creator controlled market there, I may have some interesting developments to announce soon. The European scene is so healthy at the moment - last year I went back to France for two months and I was amazed at how much good stuff is produced - so keeping one foot in that market still has its appeal.