If there’s one takeaway from his memoir, Confabulation: An Anecdotal Autobiography (Dark Horse, 2023), it’s that Dave Gibbons really, really loves comics. He loves reading comics, he loves making comics, and perhaps most of all, he loves the life that his five-decade career in comics has given him. His work over the years has included contributions to the seminal UK science fiction comic 2000 AD from issue #1; writing and drawing the Eisner-winning graphic novel The Originals; drawing The Secret Service, which spawned the Kingsmen movie franchise; contributions to other movies and video games, including the cult favorite graphic adventure game Beneath a Steel Sky; and, of course, his collaborations with Alan Moore and Frank Miller, so famous as to require no introduction. To have such a lengthy and successful career without a hint of cynicism is notable, and sets him apart from many of his peers and collaborators.
I sat down with Gibbons over Zoom to discuss that undying love for the medium, his work in and out of comics, a few of his most famous collaborations, and his legacy.
- Jason Bergman
[Full disclosure: I am a full-time employee of Gearbox Publishing, a subsidiary of Embracer Group, as is Dark Horse Comics, Gibbons’ publisher on Confabulation (among other works). That relationship had no influence on this interview.]
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JASON BERGMAN: Why did you decide to write an autobiography?
DAVE GIBBONS: I've always enjoyed reading autobiographies, particularly autobiographies of comic book people, because we all actually live more or less the same lives, but with very small differences. It's good to know that even the most revered comic book artist has a human side to their personality. I'm always interested to find out about that. And it also occurred to me that I've been really lucky in my career. I've worked with some of the very best collaborators, some of the best writers, some of the best artists. I've also been there for quite seminal things like the British comic 2000 AD, or Watchmen, or Martha Washington. So there are quite a few interesting milestones along the way there, I think. Also, I have been doing this now for almost exactly 50 years. That seemed a good time to stop and take stock of what had happened in the past. So that was really why I did it, not because people would find it fascinating, but it was just the kind of book that I would like to read, which has always been my decision when I've been working on things. “Would I want to read this?” And the answer with an autobiography was, “Yeah, I think I probably would.”
Why this unusual format?1
Well, there's something about autobiographies or any kind of biography, where it just plods through the years. You have to get through all the stuff about your early years and then your school years and then the jobs you did before you got into it. And it all takes on a certain kind of drudgery, I think. So I thought I would write short entries—or relatively short entries—for things I was actually quite excited about, or that had some significance or, you know, illuminated some aspect of comics or being a comics creator. And to be absolutely frank, it's not a completely original idea with me, because Mike Richardson and a guy called Steve Duin—Mike Richardson being the publisher of Dark Horse Comics—they actually did a book called Comics: Between the Panels [Dark Horse, 2003] where they'd used that to some extent. And I sort of like the editorial aspect of it as well - that, you know, in that book, they give maybe three or four lines to somebody like Bob Kane, and then 16 1/2 pages about some feud between two inkers in the 1950s. And I kind of like that weird juxtaposition. So I did kind of swipe the idea of it, but I like to think I made it very much my own.
You mentioned wanting to skip over the drudgery of early life, but your early life is in here, and it's pretty interesting. I mean, you credit your love of comics to an incident at school where you had your comics taken away and literally burned, which was eye opening to me.
Well, it was eye-opening to me as well. It was definitely a formative event for me because nothing could have made me want to do comics more than having these people that I despised doing something like burning them. In a nutshell, I very much thought looking at these people burning these comic books, "If people like you hate comics, then I love them." It was as clear cut as that. And of course, you know, times change, and I had later dealings with the school. In fact, my son went to the same school and he became head boy, which you’d call a valedictorian or something in the American system. He did very well at that school. And, of course, it had changed. By that time, they were quite interested in having me in to talk about comics because it was quite an interesting thing by that time, rather than being a bit of American culture that should have been expunged. So they actually invited me in to give a talk and I had the head of the English department and the head librarian coming up to me and asking me what comics should they get for the school library and what did I recommend. And then a few years after that, when they finally opened a proper art room, they asked me back, and on display there they had a prospectus which talked about famous old boys of the school. There was Tim Rice, the musical writer - you know, the librettist, I think you call it. So he was quite famous. And then it had Stephen Hawking, who, as you know, has got an international and kind of eternal position as a popularizer of science. And then it had Dave Gibbons, graphic novelist. So in that short time, it had passed from comics being a despicable piece of trash culture to being something pretty cool that you'd actually put in the school prospectus to try and encourage hip parents to send their sons there in order that they might do something as wonderful.
As I'm sure you're aware, we have a problem in America right now with books being pulled from libraries, and graphic novels in particular are being targeted. So history is nothing if not cyclical.
Yeah. Fortunately, you can't kill ideas as easily as just burning them on a bonfire. So it's a rather futile and depressing pursuit, I think.
What comes across really strongly in the book is what a fan you are, and not just of comics. You talk about Dan Dare, Doctor Who, magic, science fiction, music, Airfix models. You have a genuine love for all of these things, and they all get their own individual entries.
Well, again, I mean, it's the kind of stuff that supports my world of comics, I suppose. It's all the things that I loved when I was growing up, like making model airplanes, like music when I was a bit older growing up. I am a fan and I expect you're a fan as well. And there's this certain thing about fans that it's this kind of lifelong enthusiasm for something quite obscure, you know? That something takes hold of you when you're in your younger years. And I mean, you could have many deep psychological musings about it. It's something to do with being transitional objects, where there are these things that you love when you are younger that you carry with yourself into later life. And it helps connect you with the spirit of that kid who really loved those things back then. And there's just something about having a pursuit or an interest of your own that most people don't know anything about.
I love it nowadays that you can get wonderful deluxe editions of practically every comics page that's ever been published. But I also like the idea of just buying a cheap comic book and rolling it up and sticking it in the back pocket of my jeans. There's something informal and something very personal about that. A good friend of mine, a guy called Mick McMahon, who's another British comic book artist I used to share a studio with. That was his reaction on reading this book. He said, “You know, Dave, what comes across more than anything is that you absolutely love comics.” And I think that is the key to it. I love everything about comics. I've done all sorts of things in comics. I've done fairly menial comic book production tasks. I've done pretty high-profile, award-winning series. But it's just being in that world of comics that I really, really love. And I've made so many good friends in the world of comics as well. When I was growing up, the place where I lived, I maybe had a couple of friends who were kind of interested in comics, but never as wildly and enthusiastically as me. So you are very isolated and very much in the minority. And then you find yourself, however many years later, in San Diego with a couple of hundred thousand people who are just like you. They've got the same passions, they've got the same interests. It's almost like you have discovered your tribe and you feel part of a bigger world.
Well, part of that—and I think this is something we're going to come back to more than once in this conversation—is that you’ve managed to maintain a sense of optimism and love, despite a 50-year career in comics. And yes, everybody comes to comics because they love it - you certainly don't come to comics for the money. But I've talked to a lot of people of your generation who have been in the industry for a very long time, and there is a fairly standard bitterness that comes from the industry chewing up and spitting out people. I don't need to name any names - I think you know who some of these people are, and you've worked with many of them. But this book is a love letter to comics. How have you stayed so positive?
Well, I suppose I have been lucky. I mean, I have on several occasions been in the right place at the right time or, you know, been the first in line to ask for something, or to do it. I always try and maintain the approach that it's just another day at the office. And in many ways it is. Not every day of drawing comics is unbridled joy. Not every business deal you strike is advantageous. And certainly, historically speaking, the treatment of comic book artists and writers has been appalling. I think I was lucky enough to come into it at the time when it was just kind of changing and was able to get off the work-for-hire bandwagon, where you basically get paid like a bricklayer. You know: you get paid for how many pictures you make in a day. So actually finding myself being able to own my own creations-- which is obviously the ultimate ambition, I think, of any creative person, to be able to live off what you make from your reputation, as it were. And I've been rather lucky in that respect.
And again, it's because I happen to have been friends or made friends with people who I've been able to do work with that's attracted more attention or has sold very well. But it isn't just the money. It's the thing of just doing something that you love. It would be a cliché to say if you love it then every day working on it is a joy. It isn't. I suppose I'm stretching for metaphors, but it's like any good relationship or a marriage or something like that. You're not necessarily ecstatically happy all the time. But overall, you look back on it and think, “Yeah, that was a pretty good experience.” I mean, if you read my autobiography, there's a few things in there which leave a little bit of a bitter taste. I haven't dwelt on them. I haven't tried to make them more than they were. But yes, I would say I've been lucky, and I've also… I don't know. How can I say this without sounding to praise myself? I tried to be tolerant and compassionate and kind of aware of the common things that can send you off the rails slightly when you're working in this business.
Another thing that comes through in the book, and again, puts you in contrast to some of your peers, is that you've never been intimidated by change. Either changes in the industry, or changes in technology. You have this willingness to try new things. You're one of the very few artists of your generation to really jump into experimenting with technology. And constantly! With things like video game work, or digital coloring. You did a fully CG generated book [The Dome: Ground Zero, with Angus McKie; DC/Helix, 1998]. Where does that come from?
Well, I suppose I've always liked to learn. I've always liked to learn about things that I'm interested in. I mean, I sort of taught myself to draw. Basically I didn't have any art training at all. I just read books and drew and drew and drew until I got good enough that I could get paid for it. And even in the sort of traditional comics world, I've always been looking for new pens or new methods of easing the drawing thing. I remember I bought one of the first Artograph projectors in this country, you know, where you can put your sketches in a sort of magic lantern and project it down onto your artboard, which saves lots of time working sketches up or achieving likenesses of characters and things. So even on that, you know, old school technology, I always wanted to have the latest tools, the latest pencil, the latest pen, the best board, and I’d try out different Bristol boards to draw on. And so I was always looking for things that would help.
But when computers started to be widely used, or even before that-- I remember buying a computer in the middle ‘80s, and not even quite knowing why I wanted one. There was some idea that I could do the household accounts or my tax returns on it, which I never did. But it's just that, "Yeah, here's a really fantastic tool. Someday we're going to need to use this." And then it became clear that the computer was a wonderful tool in comics production to do coloring and lettering and to deliver work and to seek out reference. I've never felt, "Oh, this new-fangled stuff is no good, the old ways are better." Quite often the old ways, when I look back on some of the things I used to do, were far worse. For example, before the days of being able to typeset on a computer, you'd have to get these rub down lettering sheets. And it was tremendously expensive, and you never got a very good effect. And you couldn't subtly scale it. But once you had it on a computer, you could do any type of graphical effect you wanted. So I’ve never felt that the old days are better.
And I guess I've always looked towards the future. Certainly getting involved with companies like Madefire [active from 2012 to 2021] who did these kind of motion books - that seemed like a wonderful new way to tell stories. As it turned out in that particular case, we never quite made it to the finish line. But just to be thinking about new ways of telling stories, again, inspires me and reinvigorates me and excites me all over again about the possibilities of what you can do with words and pictures. So yeah, I guess if you're looking towards the future, looking for a way where you can do things more pleasurably, it inevitably takes you into new technology and new methods.
I thought it was great that you talked about both Beneath a Steel Sky and Beyond a Steel Sky. I'm a big fan of both of those games. Obviously when the first one was made [1994], the in-game graphics couldn't look anything like your art style. The technology just wasn’t there at the time. But with the second one [2020], it was a 3D representation of your drawing style. How involved were you in crafting that look?
Revolution, [the developer] that did both those games you've mentioned, they approached me before there even was a Revolution. It was a guy called Charles Cecil, who was a games developer, I believe for what might have been Activision at the time. I'm not absolutely sure about that.2 But he'd seen Watchmen and he thought that the skills that I exhibited in Watchmen could be really useful in game design. In other words, creating environments and telling stories in a pretty stripped down way as you have to do in a comic. I became very friendly with him.
When he later went out on his own and formed Revolution Software and started to produce his own games, I was really happy to be involved because these gamers were actually just like the comic people. I sat in my bedroom drawing comics and eventually graduated to doing it professionally. They sat in their bedrooms writing their own adventure games and eventually graduated to doing it professionally. So there was a great feeling of becoming kindred spirits. And plus, we just really got on with each other. But it was a tremendous learning thing doing the first game, because although the graphics were fairly crude because of the constraints of the technology, the game was very clever. And it was the game itself that sold it rather than swishy graphics. But when we came to do the second one-- again, I did all the character designs for it, but they were actually able to translate those immediately into three dimensional forms. So I would literally do a sketch on my graphics tablet, press the button, send it to them. And almost within a day or two, I’d get the fully 3D modeled character back and then we could tweak that. That was an amazing thing.
We actually worked a little bit in reverse, because with the first game we had a comic book that kind of was the way into the game. You could look at the character of Foster drawn by me in my usual comic style, in great detail, and with hopefully an exciting and graphic look to it. And then in the game itself-- the graphics weren't quite so good, just blocks of pixels, but you could infer what the characters looked like because you'd seen them in the comic. But with Beyond a Steel Sky, the second game, it actually worked the other way. We did the game and then we used those assets to do the introductory comic. So again, the working methods had changed. The first game didn't have my particular graphic imprint, but the second one did. And it was tremendously thrilling, even more so when they did a version of it that you could look at on a VR headset. And that was amazing, to actually be in a three dimensional space with those characters I'd sketched. The whole thing was exciting, as exciting as anything I've ever done in comics. I think that shows in the end product.
Do you exclusively draw digitally these days?
Well, these days, to be honest with you, I don't really draw very much at all. As I mentioned earlier, I've been doing it for 50 years. The kind of drawing that I actually enjoy and do on a fairly regular basis is life drawing, because that continues to fascinate me. It's an essential thing if you want to draw comics, knowing how to draw realistic people. So I still love doing that. I don't tend to do anything these days that has a deadline or is particularly specified by anybody else. But I have for quite a while done the bulk of my art digitally using a Wacom pressure sensitive display tablet and a Macintosh computer. I don't necessarily do every step of it [digitally]. It's great for roughing stuff out. It's great for finally finishing stuff off, cleaning it up, adding lettering and so on to it. But somewhere along the line, there'll be something drawn on paper that I'll either scan in, or I'll just use as a guide to help me draw. The challenge is exactly the same, really. I mean, it helps with a lot of the monkey work. I've always tended to use fairly classic perspective, which takes a lot of plotting out and a lot of planning. You can do that so much more quickly on the computer. So that's an example of something that's almost monkey work that you can deal with very quickly and then get on to the real juicy, creative part of it. It's for those reasons that the bulk of my work, somewhere along the line, touches the computer. And even when I do the life drawing, I like to sit there with my little iPad and my Apple Pencil and do life drawing on that. So yeah, it's basically just another tool, but it's wonderful to have a range of tools depending on what you're doing.
Given how forward thinking you've always been when it comes to technology, I'm kind of curious to know if you have any thoughts about generative AI, and where you think that's headed.
Yeah, I mean, this is a real thorny one. I'm aware of what you can do with AI. Somebody was talking to me the other week about ChatGPT, which is a thing for generating text rather than graphic images. I was a bit scornful of it, but I put it on my phone anyway, just to see what could happen. And during one of the things I've been working on recently, we were having a frivolous conversation about a character we just dreamt up out of the air. And so the first thing I typed into ChatGPT was “tell me a story about” and then I mentioned the character. It gave me back about four pages of what wasn't a bad kind of children's story. And I was thrilled, but I was also appalled because I thought, “God, if it's that simple...” As a writer, you can tell that it's not very well-written. But a lot of people aren't as critical of writing as I am. And I thought, “What's going to happen here?”
We were talking about computers just now. You know, there used to be a profession called 'graphic designer' where somebody would design letterheads and, you know, set type in newspapers and things like that. And all of a sudden you had all these fonts and all these tools on your computer. And even an amateur could produce something which kind of looked good - or at least looked, not quite professional, but close to professional, and probably good enough for your local school newsletter or your local little newspaper or something like that. And at a stroke, all these graphic designers, or a lot of graphic designers, had no function anymore. And I fear that's the way that AI might go, particularly with the creative industries. You can do something that to the undiscerning eyes [is] close enough, and it kind of degrades the medium. It means that you're happy to accept something that's an inferior product. Somebody again was talking to me about it the other day, and I don't know if this is a fact or not, but it seems to make sense to me that it's only possible for a human being to own copyright in anything. That a machine that makes an image actually cannot hold the copyright.
Not in the U.S, yeah. But who knows where this is all headed?
You know, it's the Wild West, really. God knows how it's going to turn out. Again, like most things to do with technology, I'm sure there will be wonderfully constructive things that you can do there, and wonderfully destructive things you can do there. I think, away from comics, out in the real world, out in the fields of medicine and so on, I think there are tremendous advantages to be gained. Although I've tended to embrace new technology, I'm not rushing to embrace AI at all. And I don't think I would ever find it part of my workflow.
Getting back to the book, you talk a lot about your journey as an artist, but not so much your approach to comics writing, at least not in any technical sense. Do you think of yourself as a writer of comics, or more as an artist who sometimes writes?
When I was growing up, I thought that the person who drew the pictures wrote all the words as well. So my ambition was to write and draw both, and there was no separation between the two. Comics that I would do as a kid, it would be a comics page with all the lettering on it as well. So I'd think about the story. And that's kind of the way I've always been. There are some artists who think only about the aesthetics of the drawing or the painting, but then there are other artists who sit a little bit nearer to the middle of that fictional person who writes and draws everything. So they've got artistic talents, but they've got a sort of a storytelling element in it, which is perhaps larger. And then it shades over into comic book writers, some of whom are very scholarly and very wordy, and others who have a much better graphic sense, and think in pictures as well as words. People like that are nearer to me.
For instance, my classic collaboration with Alan Moore doing Watchmen and the other things we did - I felt a great connection in that he was an artist. He was a writer who could draw quite good comics. And I was an artist who could write quite good comics. So we were close together in the middle. Whereas sometimes when I've worked with—and I won't mention them—less artistically inclined or image-inclined writers, it's a slight difficulty because they’ll give you things to draw that are really difficult, or don't work very well, and could tell the story a lot better with a little bit of thought. But yeah, after many years of drawing, I found to actually write to be a wonderful change of mental scenery, you know - not a completely different way of thinking, but a way of rendering a story in a different way.
And I've always found, and perhaps as this interview attests, I am a man of many words as well as many pictures. So I find it quite easy to write - particularly, say, in the case of my autobiography, where it was in my voice, it was me writing as I would talk. But I do love the technical side of writing as well. And obviously I've read all the books principally about screenwriting, that have got lots of interesting pointers towards comics. And I've worked out my own techniques for setting the ideas down. I think I might have one last big project left in me. And that would probably be something that I would write and draw... until it's a little more thought out, I won't say anything about it. But I always think in terms of the story, not in terms of the image or in terms of the words.
Well, what's interesting there is that the bulk of your career has been in collaboration, either writing or drawing, and not necessarily writing and drawing. And you said, when you were young, you were attracted to doing both. Is there a reason why you’ve mostly done one or the other for the majority of your career?
I think when you're writing and drawing your own stuff, you've got the coming up with the story, then you've got the writing it, then you've got the sketching it out, then you've got the drawing it, then you've got the coloring, then you've got the lettering. And it's a bit like telling a story once too often, you know - you sort of lose the energy a little bit. The one major piece of work that I did do completely on my own was called The Originals [DC/Vertigo, 2004; "Essential Edition" from Dark Horse, 2018], which was a science fiction Mods kind of thing that I wrote and drew. And it's really quite autobiographical. It's got lots of incidents in it which happened or almost happened. Everything about that I did myself, but I actually found it really difficult. Because as a creative person, you have these doubts as to the value of what you're doing, and the feeling of, “Does anybody really care about this?” When you’ve got a collaborator, at least you know there's one other person in the world who shares the passion.
At that point [while making The Originals], I'd also moved to an office that didn't really have a window in it, it just had a skylight. And I had this feeling of being like a monk locked in a cell, having to go over and over the same stuff. But eventually I got the people at DC to phone me once a week and ask me for a number. And that would be the number of the page I was on. And hopefully it was several numbers after the last number I gave them when they phoned up the previous week. So I had to use little tricks like that. But in the end, it turned out that other people did like it and I actually got an Eisner Award for it, which was amazing to me. But yeah, so I do like an element of collaboration. And I did, to a certain extent, have it even on The Originals, because I had a good editor working with me. I think you need somebody to bounce your ideas off, or you need to have to be doing the work quickly, so that you never get the chance to descend into angst about whether it’s any good or not.
I want to talk about a couple of specific works that you mentioned in the book. You already talked about The Originals, so I can cross that off my list. But the first is, “The Terra-Meks!” a story you did for Ro-Busters [in 2000 AD] with Pat Mills. And you specifically called that one out as one of your favorites, and I'm going to quote you. You said, "Of all the dozens of characters I've drawn or created the look of for others, Charlie," who is the robot character in the story, "is the one that I really regret not being able to call mine." What is it about that story that made you feel that way?
Well, it was such an unlikely thing. You know, it's a story about a giant robot, and property developers, and so many elements that almost don't belong in the story together. And it was also based a little bit on a thing that Pat Mills and I had tried, to work up as a kind of a sequel to The War of the Worlds. So we thought about this whole notion quite a bit, you know, and there were some things that made it over into the Charlie story. It was also because Pat Mills is a wonderful writer, and it was the chance to do something substantial and, you know, really top-rate with him. And also, I think the reason why I commented that I would like to have owned it, is that Pat actually held out, and actually did not have to sell the copyright on that story. But I was persuaded by somebody on the editorial side of 2000 AD that, you know, “Don't rock the boat at the moment, Dave, the day will come, but could you just leave it simple for this story?” And I sort of let myself be talked into it, which I do regret because I think if we had owned it, you know, there were probably other things that we might have been inclined to do with it. But yeah, when I read Pat's story, the bit at the end, the emotional payoff did sort of choke me up a bit because Charlie had become such a real character. And even though he had a heart of metal, he was almost a figure of flesh and blood.
Which is notable, because he's three stories tall and wades into the ocean.
Yeah, but he's kind. And these robots that he fights are not kind at all. They're absolutely brutal. It takes a writer like Pat Mills to put emotion into something that's potentially as cold as a robot, you know.
Another collaboration for 2000 AD that I want to get into is Rogue Trooper. And the reason I want to talk about that one is that it's among your best-known works, and while you’re not outright dismissive of it, you do seem conflicted about your contributions to the character. Is that accurate?
Yeah, it was a funny one, Rogue Trooper, because I saw it as the chance to do something sort of the stature of Judge Dredd. Something that would be in a different setting, the equivalent of the Judge Dredd character, you know, that had some depth to it, and you could treat the stories in the way that Judge Dredd stories went. And what I didn't want it to turn out to be was the kind of traditional war comic, you know, like Sgt. Rock or Battler Britton or something like that, where it's merely machine gunning the enemy and trying to win the battle. I thought it could have been more than that. And I also thought that he was capable of having a big emotional depth to it, because some of the war comics that we used to get in England had actually been written by people who had served in World War II, and seemed very authentic. Although they were ostensibly war stories with a lot of action and explosions and stuff going on, they actually talked about a lot of male emotions like redemption and cowardice, and things that would truly happen to men in these very stressful situations. I thought there was a possibility to do that.
And I was working with Gerry Finley-Day, who I previously worked with on Dan Dare. I thought that maybe-- I don't know how to put this, because I like Gerry, and Gerry's a hugely creative writer, but to me, his work has often needed a little bit of a polish. And I was a little disappointed, particularly with the early episodes, that I thought the story could have been better. And I got kind of disillusioned about it. I actually did. I made the fatal mistake of giving the editor a decision to make. I said, “Look, I don't really think I want to carry on with these scripts. So either Gerry goes or I do.” Anyway, I went. Because, you know, obviously the editor wasn't going to be put in that corner. And I do regret that. I do think I could have given it maybe a little bit more of a shove. But I think it was as much to do with my own ideas of it immediately becoming something wonderful and groundbreaking. And it was just very good rather than being excellent.
Do you feel any ownership over the character anymore? Because he's been reinvented four or five times at this point.
Yeah. And of course, I got the chance to reinvent him myself when they lured me back to 2000 AD. I actually talked them into letting me both write and draw Rogue Trooper. But as it turned out, I didn't have time because of other things to actually draw it. But I wrote it, and I gave my spin on Rogue Trooper. The basic idea is that he's this lone infantryman on this hell planet, and all his friends have been killed, but he's preserving their souls and their personalities on these tiny bio chips, like circuit boards, that he would have to plug into a piece of his equipment like his helmet or his backpack or his gun. And it would keep his dead comrades at least alive in that sense. And that they would also be somebody that he could talk to or communicate ideas to, which is obviously a lot easier to write than just having a guy wandering around on his own without any friends or anybody. But I never liked those bio chips. I thought they were a little bit of a cop out.
So when I did my [reinvented] version of Rogue Trooper, I didn't have any bio chips. And the unanimous decision from the readers was, “Bring back the bio chips!” So that shows probably how little I understood the character. But as you know, I'm sure this is public knowledge. I probably won't say too much about it other than what is public knowledge, that there's been talk of a Rogue Trooper movie.3 And again, I think there are so many characters in 2000 AD that would make wonderful big screen stories. I did actually as recently as last week get a little glimpse behind the curtains of that. And I'm very excited by what I saw there. So I'm very happy, because I like the people who are doing it. And I think they're approaching it the right way. So no doubt my name will be associated a little bit more in the near-future with Rogue Trooper, and [I’m] happy for that to be so.
Another character you've been associated with several times over the years is Superman. He comes up a lot in the book. At one point you say he's always felt like a very good friend.
There's something about Superman and other characters who’ve got the sort of status of Superman that you're so familiar with - they actually become something that has a reality. And there's a wonderful book written by a guy called Alvin Schwartz, who used to write Superman and Batman stories back in the late ‘40s. And he wrote a book [called] An Unlikely Prophet, where this guy, as it were, manifests Superman in the form of what I believe is called a "tulpa," which is like a creature of meditation, where if you think about a thing enough, it becomes for all intents and purposes real. And my experience has been when I've written Superman, I've written a couple of Superman stories that I kind of know how he would talk and I know what he would do. And I know how he would think. So the characters have got that kind of reality, I guess, because I've been following his adventures since I was 6, 7 years old. And he is the granddaddy of them all. He is, you know, the archetypal original, you know, the ur-superhero. So I'm always attracted to the character. [There’s] something innately good about him, I think, when he's done well. And yeah, he does. He does feel like a good friend. It's almost like, you know, people go, “What would Jesus say?” So, “What would Superman do?” Obviously, from time to time, he's got subverted for various reasons. But I think if you look back at the entire published career of Superman, there's an essential goodness and an essential kindness and compassion that comes across with it - which, you know, I think probably is an attractive quality or two.
One thing you hear from people who aren't necessarily fans of the character is the idea that Superman is hard to relate to, or that in order to appeal to more people, he needs reinvention. I definitely get the sense from your book that you don't buy into that at all.
Well, I mean, wasn’t it Stan Lee who said that the purpose of what you do in comics is to have the appearance of innovation - you know, just as long as you keep churning things up. And how many times has Superman been reimagined and then brought back to the way he was in the iteration before? But despite that, and with other characters like Batman, there's something about them. There's something basically solid and it’s almost eternal about them that they'll take any kind of treatment. You know, you can write them wrong, but they will eventually shine through even if they have to wait for a change of editorial guard or something like that. I mean, we showed in Watchmen what a true Superman might be. And that's not necessarily good. He's more likely to be indifferent. And of course, you are in a fantasy world with Superman; no matter how super he is, he can't right all the wrongs of the world. He can't save everybody who's in a house fire. He can't, it's just impossible. So it's kind of an idealized concept. Not truth, justice and the American way, [but] truth, justice and the human way, I think perhaps I'd rather say.
Well, it was interesting to read in the book that the story that got you the World’s Finest gig at DC4 was “Survivor,” the one you did with Ted McKeever for A1. I love that story. But it's like-- it's your nightmarish inversion of Superman, right? What do you think about that story attracted Mike Carlin to you as a potential Superman writer?
Well, yeah, that was a kind of a reverse Superman. It was the shadow that showed up the light, really - that actually to be super and to be an alien, and to be disliked or to be envied or to be feared, actually wasn't so good. And the fact that he couldn't feel anything, the fact that he was invulnerable was actually kind of a curse. But I think it's a strange story, because it was one of these stories that just came to me almost in a flash, and just felt right. And I suppose perhaps having seen the sweet side of Superman all these years, the not-so-sweet side was just begging for me to explore it. And also the idea of doing it in first person, so that you literally saw through this-- I mean, he was never called "Superman" in the story, let me make that perfectly clear, but he was clearly a superhuman being. But it was all seen through his eyes - which again, was part of considering what that reality would be like to be Superman.
I really can't quite understand it, because it was definitely not an audition piece for Superman as I thought DC Comics should publish it. But Mike Carlin did like it. And I think at least it showed him that I'd thought seriously about the character, which over the years I had. And that did open a couple of doors for me. Originally I was going to both write and draw the A1 story myself. But then I got very friendly with Ted McKeever. And we spoke about one thing and another and said, well, actually, it might be more fun for us to write a story for each other and see how the different talents sort of show the idea up. And as it happened, because Ted's got that slightly nightmarish way of seeing things, it worked really well for the story.
Another one of your big collaborations is Martha Washington, and you give a tease in [Confabulation] when you say, “Frank [Miller] and I are still in touch, and it looks like our dear Martha is going to be very much in our thoughts again soon.” So I just have to ask how you revisit Martha Washington in the post-Trump era?
Well, I've got to be honest, the situation is absolutely dreadful. But as reality unwinds, you think, my god, have they been reading Martha Washington? And, you know, you look at images, we came up with these sort of grotesque versions of an American president and things like that. But to see what's really been happening… somebody over here was saying, the state the politics are in these days, satire has more or less become irrelevant. Because you actually couldn't come up with more scary and ridiculous things than are happening in real life. So certainly, you know, over the years, there has been a lot of interest in doing more with Martha - not necessarily doing more comic books, but, you know, translating Martha into other media. But of course, as I mentioned earlier, and as I'll have to reiterate again, so many things that may or may not happen are under embargo or under, you know, NDAs, that I probably can't say any more than that. But I certainly think that Martha is very relevant to the sort of thing that we're seeing today. And certainly, it has always had a satirical edge to it. Martha is somebody who is a true hero, somebody from a very disadvantaged background, who through her own efforts and ingenuity and intelligence manages to make something of herself. I would love to see something more done with the character. I love Superman and I probably love Martha almost as well.
The last one I want to touch on is Watchmen, but not really about the work itself, because I think at this point you've probably said everything there is to say on the subject.
I think I probably have.
But I do want to talk about some Watchmen-related subjects, because they come up in the book. You seem pretty happy with the adaptations. You have some good things to say about your interactions with the movie, and especially the HBO series. Which was interesting, because the HBO series is an original story. And you're not nearly as generous with Before Watchmen, the DC Comics series, which was also an original story. Was the difference there the medium?
I think the thing is, to go from the simple to the rather more complicated, the movie adaptation was something that Alan and I discussed from the very, very start. We had a couple of meetings quite early on about the possibilities of translating it into a film. We were both absolutely gung ho to let that happen, and actually quite excited by it - that something that we dreamt up would become a Hollywood movie. Of course, many years went by and the problems of adapting Watchmen became evident. And also the relationship between Alan and DC became strained, to say the least. So the gloss wore off that for Alan, anyway, although he had no objection to me being involved with it, to the degree that I was. I was actually very involved with it, and I found it a very enjoyable experience. And I think that what came out of the end of it, given that probably at some point, there was going to be a Watchmen movie, I think it probably was about as good as you could expect. It wasn't a perfect movie. There were some bits of it that I thought were not so good, some parts that I thought were almost sublime. So that was quite clear-cut to have a Watchmen movie.
As far as Before Watchmen is concerned, I didn't like the premise. It's a bit like-- and I believe I actually said this in the introduction to the new edition of Watchmen that came out at the same time as Before Watchmen, that we literally put into Watchmen everything you needed to know to enjoy Watchmen.5 It's a bit like explaining a joke too much. If you put in all the prequel stuff and everything, it's all setup. I do appreciate that it was done by and large reverentially, but it seemed sort of superfluous, and it seemed an exercise in just trying to squeeze a bit more out of Watchmen.
But then when it came to the HBO series, I was intrigued by that. And I think the secret of me entertaining that was that it was set so far away from the events of the Watchmen graphic novel, that it was set in a future that was unforeseeable, and only one of many possible futures that might have spun out of what Alan and I did. And in a sense, it wasn't a direct sequel. It wasn't “Further Adventures of Watchmen.” Again, it's a kind of complicated and convoluted thing. But on balance, I thought, "I find this tremendously exciting and I think these people are going to do it really well." And I think it's something that feels fresh. I think a lot of people felt like that when they first heard of it. It was, "Oh, I'm not too sure about this." But when they actually saw it, they thought, "Well, actually, that far exceeded my expectations." It actually added something, rather than took something away, which is what I felt Before Watchmen was doing. But it is a very complicated thing. Alan's changed his mind, and mine has gone backwards and forwards with Watchmen as well. So whether my stance on these things is ultimately the correct thing, I really don't know. But I generally just tend to go with my gut. And I think the way it's turned out is something I'm comfortable with.
My last point on Watchmen is in regards to what you were just talking about, which is that your collaborator has been vocal about the way you were both treated by DC Comics. The nature of your agreement with DC is kind of the original sin that he points to. My understanding-- and please correct me if I'm wrong here, but your publishing agreement, which was considered groundbreaking at the time, was that you were going to do this series for DC Comics, and when it was done, when it went out of print, as all books did in those days, the rights would revert to you. But of course, that never happened. Through the miracle that is Watchmen, it has stayed in print, and remains even today a bestseller. Your collaborator refers to this in very stark terms. He talks about his time in comics as traumatizing, and draws parallels between what happened to you and what has always happened in comics to creators over the years. But you seem, again-- to come back to what we were talking about earlier, you seem okay with how you've been treated.
Yeah, I think what you've said is a fair summation of it. A couple of points I would make about this. At the point at which we did Watchmen, there were really no examples of graphic novels. We had no expectation that the comics would ever become a graphic novel. We thought it would be a monthly comic book, they'd be sold while they were current, they’d go into a back issue bin, and that would be the end of that. We certainly didn't imagine that DC would even reprint it once, because that wasn't what happened to comic books. So the notion of "if they don't print it, it comes back to us" was a very attractive thing. And the only reason that I believe that clause was in the contract, that it would revert to us, was because what DC used was like a boilerplate book publishing contract. Obviously, if you're an author, when your book gets published you don't want it then to be gone forever, you want it to be available from the publisher - or, if they don't intend to do another edition of it, give it back to you so you can get somebody else to do a further edition of it. So I think the inclusion of that clause was actually a positive thing intended in the original boilerplate contract as a favorable thing for the writer and the artist. But it wasn't perceived like that, because Watchmen exceeded everybody's expectations in the way it sold and has sold continuously. That clause never came into effect. But I honestly don't believe it was a clause that was put in there to harm me or Alan, or to take something from us that they weren't entitled to. I think it was actually a good thing that actually had a bad effect. So I've never had that bit of feeling about it at all.
But just to state again, you don't own Charlie. You don't own Rogue Trooper. You don't own Watchmen. You do own Martha Washington, I believe.
Yeah.
But you seem pretty happy! I mean, you're certainly not bitter with how you've been treated.
A lot of it is, “If I knew then what I know now,” as they say. When we originally got the contract for Watchmen, I remember phoning Alan up and saying, “Have you got your contract for Watchmen? I've just been reading it through and there's a couple of things I think we should talk about.” And Alan said, “Well, I've already read it and signed it. And I'm about to send it back.” So there was no question of anybody putting pressure on us. It's not even me putting pressure on Alan to sign anything he didn't want. We've all signed bits of paper that we really wish afterwards we hadn't signed. It doesn't necessarily mean that there's any evil intent in it. But what I would say with Alan-- and I think these things go hand in hand. I've become reasonably well-known and famous because of Watchmen. But Alan's talents, and I think Frank Miller's talents, are on a different level than so many of us. What comes along with that degree of talent is a degree of difficulty as well, that people want things from you. That people are continually trying to get you to do things for them. And I think that that can quite often taint things.
I've never been in quite that position. Everything that's happened to me in the world of comics, almost without exception, is far better than anything I ever would have expected. I mean, when we started to work for DC, the deal that we were given was so much better than any deal we could get in England, that it was hard to feel anything other than “Yippee!” You know, [we] made it. But I do regret that it's had a different effect on Alan. Again, personality comes into it. Whereas I can look back on 50 years and what comes across is largely affection, what's happened to Alan, is he's left with bitterness. Which I think is there for very complex reasons. It's a multifaceted thing, and it's not just a question of me saying, “Yes, I'm going along with DC,” and Alan saying, “No, I'm not.” It's a much more subtle thing than that. And also, there's a lot of misinformation. I would also say that a lot of us creative types let our imaginations work on things and misrepresent what's really happened, join the dots up in a way that probably they shouldn't be joined up in or they weren't intended to be joined up in. So it's very thorny.
My last question for you is about your legacy, and your 50 years in comics. Without a doubt, many, many years from now, the headline of your obituary is going to read, “Dave Gibbons, artist of Watchmen.” Just as your collaborator’s will read, “Writer of Watchmen,” which I suspect is something that makes him physically ill to think about. Is there a work you would rather be remembered for? Or maybe the totality of your work like “Dave Gibbons, Journeyman Comics Artist,” or something along those lines? How would you summarize your legacy?
Well, clearly Watchmen was the Everest of my experience, really. And I'm perfectly at ease with that. It's been good for me in all kinds of ways, not only in whatever money we've made from it, or whatever fame we've had, but it's opened doors to other things. And I've had adventures that I otherwise wouldn't have had. So I'm long since resigned to the obituary reading “Dave 'Watchmen' Gibbons, dead at the age of 105,” you know, blah, blah, blah. I just feel happy that I've had the life that I wanted when I was 10 years old. There's so many people [who] aspire to do things. Perhaps [that’s] because I had a relatively easy thing to aspire to. I mean, I didn't want to get a Nobel Prize or a Pulitzer or anything like that. I just wanted to sit and draw comics. And that was literally what I wanted to do, just to find enjoyment sitting, drawing, coming up with ideas for comics. So I don't care what they call me or-- you know, “Dave Gibbons: the comic fan who never grew up,” or something like that, I guess would be a fairly accurate thing. But I think I'm going to have to settle for Watchmen.
* * *
- Eschewing the standard chronological format, Confabulation unfolds as a series of anecdotes from Gibbons’ life, grouped alphabetically by topic. Among other things, this leads to the entry for Before Watchmen appearing... before Watchmen.
- Gibbons is correct, Charles Cecil was a European development studio manager for Activision prior to founding Revolution with Tony Warriner, David Sykes & Noirin Carmody. Revolution, incidentally, is not to be confused with Rebellion, the games company that currently owns 2000 AD.
- In 2018, 2000 AD announced that Duncan Jones, director of Moon, Source Code, Mute and Warcraft, had been hired to write and direct a Rogue Trooper movie. Little has been heard since.
- This is to say, the 1990 World's Finest miniseries written by Gibbons with art by Steve Rude & Karl Kesel.
- Gibbons’ full quote from that introduction to Watchmen—which as he notes, DC published at the same time as Before Watchmen—is: “In truth, for all its breadth and detail, actual and implied, Watchmen is finite, as closed and complete as a varnished oil painting or, perhaps, a delicate clock mechanism. We crafted it as carefully as we could and, concentrated and intense though it was, enjoyed every moment of its creation. There really is nothing left to add other than to cordially invite the reader to enjoy bringing their own closure to the work.” Given this not terribly subtle shade thrown at Before Watchmen, Gibbons wonders in Confabulation if DC actually read the piece before publication.
