The Hero I'd Have Wanted to Be - An Interview With Alan Grant

I grew up on Alan Grant comics, but I knew the Alan Grant atmsophere, the Alan Grant experience before I recognized (and learned to look for) the name. I remember thinking “These Batman comics really read like Judge Dredd,” and there in the credits was Grant's name. Lobo? I was annoyed with what Lobo seemed to be in ads, in talk from others, but when I read Lobo stuff, it was hilarious. I began to associate the name with being metal funny, anarchically funny, but very sound and compassionate in an honest way.


Travis Hedge Coke: “You've worked on comics for a number of companies over your career, which presumably have different levels comfort about content. Do you deliberately tailor your work to the kind of publisher or the perceived market? Or, does it happen more naturally?”

Alan Grant: “Generally speaking, a writer has to tailor his work to the publisher who's buying it (and the publisher presumably knows what his/her market is). For instance, the black humour which was always an integral part of Judge Dredd (published by Rebellion) wouldn't fit well into DC's or Marvel's superhero line, or Dark Horse's Terminator comics.

“That said, dark humour was an important - possibly the most important - element in my and Keith Giffen's Lobo stories for DC. I wouldn't have been able to write Lobo as a serious story, as I find it impossible to take the character seriously. Dark humour was also used to some extent in The Demon, although it was balanced by the tragedy of Jason Blood's predicament. However, it would only very occasionally be suitable for Batman or other heroic types.

One has to be fairly careful with characters which have a long history of being written in a certain fashion. The fans come to expect a certain type of story, and the publisher is usually well aware of that. Changes from what's expected are not easily accepted or tolerated. I don't have a problem with this - the publisher owns the character, and to get the job you have to tailor the stories to what they want.”

Hedge Coke: “How responsible do you feel about the contents of comics you work on? Responsible to your audience, to comics history, or to yourself.”

Grant: “Comics history is the last thing on my mind when I write a story...it never even occurs to me how my work will be judged by posterity. I feel most responsible to my audience, because I don't want to let them down. Of course, it's possible to tell stories in different ways and I usually find that if I remain responsible to myself, not writing anything in which I don't believe, then the readers will accept what I've done.”

Hedge Coke: “Have you ever been part of something in a comic that you couldn't have imagined would get anyone's dander up, only to be cautioned by someone above you at the publisher or find it enraged folks after publication?”

Grant: “We-ell...not often. There was a RoboHunter story (2000AD) in which a robot rabbi used several Jewish 'swear words' which John Wagner and I thought was in character and good for some cheap laughs. However, the British Council of Jews (or something like that) took great exception to it after it was published, and the publisher had to make a personal apology to them. We were given a stern warning not to let it happen again.

“Then in Batman in Detective Comics (issue 601, if I recall), I had one character create a tulpa, a thought-creation, for which I used the Buddhist 'god' Mahakala. The American Buddhist Society ( or some similar body) complained bitterly about it after publication, pointing out vocally and at great length that I had used only the character's evil aspects. Denny O'Neil - like me, very sympathetic to Buddhism - apologised at length to them.

“Personally, I would have told them both to frag off - but then I'm not a very diplomatic person. I can see why they were offended, but I consider almost anything goes in a fictional story. Religious people are often not very tolerant of others' abuse of their beliefs.

“I shudder to think what reaction I'd get if the Buddhists saw my humorous take on their master in 'Tales of the Buddha before he was enlightened' (which appeared regularly in the recently-defunct comic magazine Wasted) - he swears, screws around, smokes dope, snorts coke. I kind of felt it was in character, from what little I knew of Gautama before he set out to find enlightenment, but I doubt if they'd agree. And when I teamed him up with Jesus as a hard-drinking duo who beat up Roman soldiers I was leaving myself wide open to attacks by fundamentalist Christians.

“Perhaps fortunately, Wasted sold only a few thousand copies per issue, so none of the religious guys saw it. Unfortunately, it was precisely because it only sold a few thousand that Wasted closed down.”

Hedge Coke: “Have you ever seen someone's contribution to a comic you worked on and been, if not offended, concerned about some content of their contribution?”

“Not that I can remember - though that doesn't count for much, because I make a point of expunging my previous stories from my consciousness before starting on a new one. With the huge volume of work I produced over the years, that was the only viable way to make it work.

“When my stint as a writer on any comic has finished, I never, ever read what my successors might write because I might not agree with their interpretation. Even characters dear to my heart - like Anarky and Batman for DC, or Strontium Dog for 2000AD - go unread, because I don't want to know how they might be handled (or maybe mishandled) by other writers.

“The only exception I can think of to this was RoboHunter (2000AD). When John Wagner and I finished writing the series after many years, the task of writing was handed over to Mark Millar. John and I both read Mark's take on the character and were horrified at how badly done it was. However, that was more or less at the start of Mark's writing career...and looking at where he is now, it certainly hasn't hindered him.

“My 12-year-old grandson is a big heavy metal and Lobo fan; he has read other people's versions of Lobo and he tells me that he doesn't feel like he's reading 'real' Lobo stories. Of course, maybe he's just being kind to his Grandad. But I've never checked it out for myself.

Hedge Coke: “How much do you draft and tweak before the publishable versions of most of your comics work? Do you feel you get better if you revisit a page or a story several times or is first shot best?”

Grant: “It's six of one and half a dozen of the other. I have what is perhaps an unusual way of working, though - I start by typing up all of my ideas without trying to shape them into any form. Then I print it off and, using the ideas as my starting point, I write a longhand version of the story. I then type this up, print it off and edit it by hand - and keep following the same routine until I'm satisfied with the result.

“This is probably because when I started as a writer, there were no computers so onscreen editing wasn't possible. I have a feeling - unsubstantiated, I admit - that writers who edit their stuff onscreen are often much more long-winded than those who print it off and edit by hand. There again, I started off as an editor and from years of experience on the 'other side' of the desk, I know that there isn't a writer alive who doesn't benefit from editing.

“Having said that, I very occasionally waken up in the morning and go straight to my desk and start typing, because the story seems to have written itself while I was asleep!”

Hedge Coke: “Is there a difference in what is "kid appropriate", do you think, between America and the UK? I seem to remember people being really weird about the introduction of Anarky in your Batman comics, but as a kid at the time the balance of genuine issue and comedic antagonism was fun and seemed more honest than, you know, Batman's usual pastimes of beating up the mentally ill or someone breaking into cars to buy pills or ramen noodles without ever indicting any kind of system above them, unless it was a very un-systemic portrayal, where a business owner or politician was crooked but very clearly not the norm. Anarky, even if he was a little look-at-me snarky in the beginning, at least called that out clearly. It was systemic. Big business is going to hurt. Rebellious rockers are a corporate shill to promote things that keep us down. And the anomaly is when that isn't the case. Would anyone've batted an eyelash if Anarky had shown up in 2000 AD instead of a DC comic?”

Grant: “The UK and the USA have very different comic traditions. UK comics were generally released on a weekly basis, with each story or episode only 5 or 6 pages long, whereas US comics were monthly and around 24 pages. This meant that in British comics you had to have an end-of-episode 'cliffhanger' every week, whereas in the States there was more space to work in before you needed the 'cliffhanger' moment.

“UK comics featured a wide variety of stories - I wrote science fiction, war stories, sports stories, humour stories, police stories etc long before I started writing American superheroes. I think superhero fans are a lot more anal about the characters they read than non-superhero comic readers. Again, British comic fans - at least when I was young - were deeply into humour comics; each anthology comic might feature, say, 5 or 6 humorous stories and only 2 that one could say were 'serious'.

“Anarky might easily have appeared in 2000AD rather than in the pages of Batman. In fact, I based the character partially on a Judge Dredd 'villain', a kid called Chopper who - lacking a voice in Dredd's right-wing society - took to being a graffiti artist. I gave him much more of a political bias when I re-imagined him for Batman.

“Anarky's beliefs were similar to my own - he was very much the hero I'd have wanted to be when I was 15 or 16 years old, an anti-authority figure who wanted to expose the hypocrisy and mendacity on which so much of our culture/society is founded. I don't read many comics nowadays, because the few that I have read seem to be based more on merchandising possibilities than on any clear principles. Unfortunately, that seems to have spread out to include books, films and even the archetypal anti-authority medium, heavy metal music. My grandson (see above) recently went to his first concert, Iron Maiden, and I was pretty sickened by the amount of 'branded' crap that he brought home with him. Nobody ever made follow-ups to the greatest movies of all time (when I say Casablanca and Citizen Kane, I'm betraying my age) but now no matter how shitty a movie is, it's unusual if it doesn't become a franchise. I've nothing at all against making money - I've made and spent a lot of it in my time! - but when the raison d'etre of things becomes the cash they generate, it's time to count me out.

“(As an aside, I notice more and more of the music I used to love appearing as backing tracks in adverts for crap that nobody needs. The day some shampoo or floor cleaner uses Captain Beefheart material to sell their products is the day I stop listening to music!)”