FOLLOWING IN MOORE'S FOOTSTEPS: ANTONY JOHNSTON ON NIGHTJAR

[MattBrady]

It’s the comics equivalent of finishing up the last few strokes of the Mona Lisa. In March,
Antony Johnston is back, adapting more of Alan Moore’s work.

This time, Johnson is joined by Max Fiumara, late of DC’s aborted THUNDER Aganets restart on Nightjar, a four issue black and white miniseries, picking up from Moore and Bryan Talbot’s story begun 23 years ago. Originally meant to be a continuing series when the creators began, only one story was ever seen.

It’s got magic, secrets, and a teenage girl who just might hold the fate of the world in her hands.

On with the show.

Newsarama: Start out from the ground – in your own words, what is Nightjar?

Antony Johnston: Okay, well for the benefit of those who haven't already heard the story...

Nightjar was created in 1980 by Alan Moore and Bryan Talbot for Warrior magazine, which was already publishing Alan's Marvelman and V For Vendetta strips. But it didn't work out - shortly after completing the first script Alan fell out with Warrior, was promptly hired to write Swamp Thing, and that was that. Bryan had only drawn half of the first eight-page chapter anyway, so the story lay unpublished and forgotten for the next twenty-odd years.

Fast-forward to 2003, and Avatar asked Bryan to finish the rest of the art for the first chapter, in order that they could publish it - along with Alan's script, and notes - in Yuggoth Cultures #1. Which Bryan did.

Fast-forward again, to just before Yuggoth #1 hit the stands in late 2003, and Avatar asked me if I wanted to take over where Alan left off. After double-checking it wasn't April 1st - and that Alan himself was happy with the idea, I said yes...

As for the story, I'll let the blurb do the talking:

It's 1981, and Mirrigan Demdyke is the last in a long line of sorcerers – a member of a magical community who call themselves Birds.

Mirrigan's father, Harold Demdyke, was once Emperor Of All The Birds. But when Mirrigan was ten she watched Harold die in their back yard, killed in a psychic attack by rival sorcery. It's only eighteen years later, on her grandmother's deathbed, that Mirrigan learns the full truth - her father wasn't killed by one rival Bird, which is the proper custom, but by a gang of seven, led by Sir Eric Blason - a member of Parliament, and the new Emperor Of All The Birds.

These Birds are stronger, wiser and more powerful than Mirrigan, but she's not going to let this crime go unpunished. So she swears vengeance on them, and vows to confront them one by one. What Mirrigan doesn't realise is that her father's assassination wasn't merely a grab for power. It was just one step in a potentially world-shattering plan which is now reaching its final stages, and this cabal of seven isn't going to let anything come between them and their destiny. Certainly not some wayward young Demdyke girl.

The first arc is called "As The Seasons Turn," and finds Mirrigan preparing for this revenge quest. She's confident, of course, but knows that it may take some time. So she visits an old friend for the annual Halloween celebrations on Pendle Hill, in the area where she grew up, before leaving to do what she has to. But Sir Eric Blason is way ahead of her, and what should have been a pleasant au revoir to an old friend quickly descends into a nightmare scenario of death and fear...

NRAMA: So what did you have to build from? How much did Alan and Bryan do, and why did they stop production on it?

AJ: Like I said, Alan fell out with Warrior and was very soon after picked up to write Swamp Thing, which didn't leave much time or inclination to carry on with Nightjar. I honestly don't know the details... I can tell you that they
both did a fair amount of prior research, though. Alan went up to the Pendle area with Bryan for a couple of days - Bryan was living nearby at the time, in Preston - to look around and get a feel for the area. And Bryan gathered quite a bit of visual reference for the setting.

NRAMA: So how much did Alan leave in regards to notes - a skeleton with bones missing, or something more fleshed out?

AJ: Somewhere between the two, really. If you've read Yuggoth Cultures #1, well, that was it - that's the full extent of their notes. Which, as you'll have seen, isn't an awful lot. Most of Alan's notes were concerned with what he wanted to achieve, and the mood and feel of the story, rather than specific details of story, character and plot.

Which has been a bit of a blessing in disguise, really. Alan's intentions for the story, in general terms, synch very nicely with the kind of 'mundane horror' that I prefer myself, so we're on the same page there. But there's also a lot of leeway I can take advantage of in terms of specific story elements, plot developments, character backgrounds and so on. Which means I can put a lot of myself and my own work into the book, without it feeling like I'm treading all over Alan's baby.

NRAMA: Okay, so bringing up the details of the story itself - so is Mirrigan a sorcerer herself?

AJ: Yes, indeed. She's young, inexperienced and not especially powerful, but she is indeed a Bird. She couldn't not be - in this world, magic is passed down through the bloodlines. Political correctness be damned, you're either born a magician or you aren't.

NRAMA: The cabal of seven that killed her father - why was that so wrong? Was a one-on-one "duel" an acceptable way of battle and honorable death?

<>b>AJ: That's exactly it, yes. The Birds arrange their successions – the appointment of someone to the position of Emperor Of All The Birds - in the old-fashioned manner of a duel to the death. Not unlike wolves and lions, come to think of it.

But in any ancient organization there are rules and rituals, and the Birds are no exception. So the cardinal rule of Imperial challenges is that you go one-on-one - and for years, that's what everyone in the Bird community thought had happened with Mirrigan's father and Sir Eric Blason. But Mirrigan's grandmother knew the truth, and now that Mirrigan knows it too, she feels the onus is on her to right this wrong.

NRAMA: As you’ve said, you’ve been adapting a lot of Alan’s earlier works. Any thoughts as to how you got the job?

AJ: I'm still not entirely sure. I was talking to Avatar about doing some other work for them, and out of the blue they asked me if I wanted to adapt The Courtyard. I did, and Alan liked it, and it's all snowballed from there.

NRAMA: We’ve talked about the materials that were left by Alan, but for you, how do you approach adapting and extending Alan's works and ideas? Do you have a WWAD (what would Alan do?) knit bracelet that you hold on to and try to sound like Alan, or do you try to bring it along in your own style, with your own voice?

AJ: Ha! I like that, I should get one of those bracelets made...

It depends on the project. I know that's a cop-out as answers go, but it's true. With a project like The Courtyard or The Hypothetical Lizard, which are full-on prose stories, it's a case of visualizing the prose and breaking it down into a pacing that fits the comics medium. I often have to come up with background and incidental details myself, and I might introduce some visual symbolism that isn't in the prose, but essentially what you see is about as close to the originals as you'll get without reading the prose.

NRAMA: What about the more abstract stuff, though?

AJ: On something like the songs of Another Suburban Romance, for example, or the surreal free verse of Zaman’s Hill - there's a lot more leeway, because there's no definitive narrative thread to turn to. So in those works there's a lot more of me, my interpretation of the work and how I see it.

And then there's Nightjar, which is neither of the above... I'm doing this one very much in my own style. Sure, some of my influences are bound to creep through, and some of those influences might be from Alan's work, but that's the same whether I'm writing Nightjar, Spooked or Three Days in Europe. If Nightjar ends up feeling like a Moore comic, then I suppose it's a happy coincidence. But I'm not consciously setting out to imitate him.

NRAMA: Do you get any kind of feedback from Alan on the projects?

AJ: Again, that depends. In all cases he gets a proposal document from me, outlining what I think is the best way to approach the project. He approves or amends that document, and then I get to work. If I need clarification on something, I might call him up to discuss it. And then I send him the finished scripts, which he approves and/or makes suggestions on, and off they go to the artist. It's a pretty simple and relaxed process.

With Nightjar, though, things are a little different. I called Alan before I started writing out a series proposal, thinking he'd want to suggest ideas and plot developments. But to my surprise he gave me carte blanche to take the book, have some fun with it, and make it my own.

Obviously I'm working from the notes he left behind, so there's a strong element of his plot already in the book. And Alan and Bryan both see the proposals, scripts, and artwork at each stage, as they ultimately have final approval on everything. But so far Alan's preferred to be surprised by what I'm coming up with, rather than dictating plots to me.

NRAMA: Before we wrap things up, back to the story itself, what exactly is a Nightjar?

AJ: It's a bird, common mainly to lowland heath and wooded areas of Britain. Or, and this is what I suspect you meant, it's the family line of magicians that Mirrigan is a part of.

NRAMA: Ah – a truck/lorry, elevator/lift thing…

AJ: If you’d like, yes. Magicians and birds are very closely linked in this world, and each family of magicians has a particular bird that acts like a kind of totem. The Demdyke's bird happens to be the nightjar, but there's also a heron, a swan, a cuckoo... Even a phoenix...

NRAMA: What are the stakes here? What happens if Mirrigan can't stop the seven?

AJ: Ah, well. Ostensibly, nothing - after all, it's Mirrigan who's taken up this mantle. Sir Eric Blason has been Emperor Of All The Birds now for eighteen years, so it's not like he's a young turk who must be stopped before he usurps the throne.

But... it's not that simple. It seems so, at first. And certainly, revenge is the uppermost thing on Mirrigan's mind. But as the story progresses, it will become clear that there's more to Blason, more to this cabal of seven, and more to her father's death than she could have even guessed at. So the answer to that question will change as the series moves on, from "not much" to "dooooom, dooooom!" by the end...

NRAMA: And you and Avatar are planning this as an ongoing?

AJ: It is, yes, bit we're going to be releasing it in story arcs in order to keep Max as the perpetual artist.

Max is brilliant, and is impressing all of us with the work he's turning out for the book, so we want to keep him as the book's sole artist. But to do that, we need to take a few months' break after each story arc to play catch-up. So with a bit of luck, you'll see an average of about seven or eight issues per year.

NRAMA: What has collaborating with Alan in this manner done for you, career-wise with your own work?

AJ: That's quite hard to quantify... I mean, I wouldn't have got the Nightjar job if I hadn't done the previous adaptation work, so there's that. I wouldn't have recently moved to the Pendle area if I hadn't come up here to research Nightjar in thee first place. And if Nightjar is a success, I might end up getting other stuff as a result... So it's difficult to pin down, that one.

With regard to things other than job opportunities, though, working with Alan over the last eighteen months has certainly helped me improve as a writer. Again, it's hard to be specific. But there are certain decisions that have been made, certain trains of thought that Alan's sent me off on, that have impacted on the way I look at my own work and how I craft a comics page. They're generally small things, not the sort of big ideas that would have anyone running down the road shouting "Eureka!" But every so often an idea, a technique, or just a different way of approaching something will form in my head that I can trace back to a thought I had while working on one of "The Alan Books," as I refer to them. And, you know, that's invaluable.

NRAMA: And you have more of the Alan Books to come?

AJ: Indeed I do. The aforementioned Hypothetical Lizard, which I actually finished writing some time ago, comes out later this year. That's a four-issue series, based on an award-nominated fantasy story of his. And I'm working on another big, big project that should hopefully see the light of day at the end of this year. I can't reveal it exactly, but it's a huge project and I'm really excited about it. I promise I'll let you know as soon as I can...

[Pupasweet]

Can anybody say Kill Bill meets Dr. Strange?

sounds pretty cool though, and will check it out...

[antony]

Kill Bill meets Dr. Strange[/quote]

I have to admit, I wish I'd thought of that

[pmpknface]

Avatar does a pretty good job of collecting this stuff, and I think I'm gonna wait for that. I did like the Yuggoth Cultures books and the Nightjar story in issue #1 was great.

I will be missing out on those rockin' wraparound covers, but I think I'll live.

Which reminds me, The Courtyard and Warren Ellis' Scars both came out in collected editions today, so if you don't have them GO GET THEM!

[Caramuru]

Everybody writing comics today should have a WWAD bracelet.