Last Geek In Space
Last Geek In Space
Steve MacManus
One-time Tharg and comic-book legend Steve MacManus about his time editing 2000AD, Starlord, Judge Dredd with host Alan Cowsill, while also selecting the comics and artwork he'd take with him when blasted off into space.
This issue 2008 stalled volumes on the original actually run himself one time, t alked to my t eam, S teve. My name is A lan c ouncil of mission control, and y ou're listening to the last[ inaudible]. Hi, welcome to the l atest episode o f the last p eak i n space. The podcast we've seen c omic book creators and to t he great beyond with nothing but artwork i n m icro for company. This issue, w e've g ot a true legend on this series. S teve M aness editor writer o n t he M issy thug. Second[ inaudible] what's the collective w ord, food people, thugs.
Speaker 2:Um, I think, uh, John probably came up with it, but I can't
Speaker 1:Awesome. And then, because we liked your work so much, we're going to put you on the rocket ship and flux you into space. So before we do that, we're going to talk about your community, what comments you liked and then what influenced you. And then we always start with the first car you ever owned meant something to you.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, well, I was born in 1953, I'm the youngest of four sons. Um, and the eldest was 10 years, my senior year. Um, uh, we all slept in the same room with bunk beds. So as you can imagine, there were always books about some red, somehow Fred, which I would arguably peruse as a kind of youngster. Uh, and actually some of the books were for regas older when I was, and I remember there was some consternation when I was discovered deep into a w ell-funded novel by M ickey S plain. U m, b ut coming to answer your question, most suitable f are was a paperback featuring the work of Don Martin, apparently m agazines m atter s tarters. So anyway, amongst all this a paraphernalia was equal comic a nd it was the colorful trunk covers at the time. These were depicting Kings of the road racing calls, which r eally caught my eye. And t hen i nside, I I've, I've found, I like Harris t weet, the bumbling special agent. And then from Eagle, I graduated t o the Beano and t hen d ipping into Superman a nd green l amps a nd a long the way, so I think it was Eagle. I t was my first thing. That meant something to me.
Speaker 1:This wasn't the first job you ever had when you joined IPC on volumes of I get not long.
Speaker 2:No, you're right. And that was my first job. Yeah. So, um, having, having Boccia as a child and found myself working with the same carriage and still going strong,
Speaker 1:Um, that's, that's a good point to say, just tell us a little bit about how you got into the business and those early years, because I know if it's in your great most of biography and the mighty one covers the early days of sort of F leetway and all those great c omments.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It was, it was kind of by accident. I wanted to work on, um, in magazines per se. Um, plateware did publish magazines as well as comics, but, uh, I found I was kept getting turned down. I was turned down by new scientist. I was turned down by shoot magazine. Um, but they did say there is a job going on the comics, if you want to look in the door. And, um, I wasn't about to say no. So the next week I found myself sitting in the Valley and tophus and looking at the wild wonders and wondering nothing has changed except no I'm here.
Speaker 1:That must've been an exciting time, but looking back, it's exciting. I guess at the time it was just probably,
Speaker 2:Well, it was very new to me. I had no idea how comics were produced. Um, so it was every day was new. And then occasionally an artist would walk in with, uh, making step aside among them, Leo Baxendale, Mike, Western, Eric Bradbury. Um, but then it wouldn't stay along. They'd seem to be quite happy to ways back to the studios. Um, whereas the writers would make a day of it and genuinely it would all end up in the pub
Speaker 1:As a pop business model is the same going on from there though. What would you say would be your all time favorite comic issue of a comic you've had over the years because you've been involved with some of the best books. What would you say your best you've heard?
Speaker 2:Well, I was going to pick Prague 500[inaudible], which I can sort of a culmination of my time as the mighty one, but instead I've chosen P rague t wo, three, tw o, w hich is kind of October, 1981. This was a, u h, t h ree gift gue st he r e, u h, w i th every earth mate receiving a yummy piece of bub ble gu m, But that's not the reason I selected a two, three. I p icked because it featured f our, 2000 dirtiest, most popular characters. U m, these being judged straight strong K im dog w rote a nemesis, u m, t hing itself t hat the new story starting by i s she was, u m, i ce t racking c o with pointy headed newcomer, A CE, and his crew, u m, which actually brought a nice dollop of relief to the mix and t hat. So looking back, I think that was a powerful, u h, engage. U m, it be that at the time Royal w edding f ever was s weeping t he country on planet 2 008. I was celebrating what I c onsidered the t itle's strongest l ying up to date,
Speaker 1:I think, steps this age really well. I think it's, yeah, I liked it more now than I think it's hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think you're right. It has that certain kind of charm doesn't it, but perhaps it like a wine it's mellowed with age in these dark times, it's nice to get a laugh.
Speaker 1:I've got so much about action. Cause I'm actually, it was probably the most influential comic on me as a kid. Um, I was one of those kids, you know, the s on was troubled by, u m, a new was actually m y j ourney. Tell us a bit about that came about, b ecause I l ove t he idea.
Speaker 2:Uh, XO few to Pat mills, they have so much in terms of seventies comics, he was creating action. And one strength o f action was i t had all these great features alongside of it. U m, i t had no old a nd, u h, money man, y ou would give out money and, u m, he just G wanted an action man as well. U m, so I w asn't on my proper job on battle. He walked into t he b eat b attle office a nd s aid, how would you like to be, y ou k now, action man on a pair as a ction m an in action. And u m, he said it would pay 10 quid a week. And I thought, well, I stumped, sorry. A nd I thought, well, t hat's, that's quite good money. So I said, yes. And, u m, I did a variety of s tumps. U m, I think my favorite was going up in a hot air balloon. That's quite s erene. U m, and my least favorite was going down the S uez, which wasn't much fun. L ike i t w ouldn't m ake, I mean, when you're 19 years old, you don't really think about health and safety. I d on't think I get one to o.
Speaker 1:He came up with the ideas for the stones,
Speaker 2:Uh, the readers, right. And challenge challenge, Steve, I think Pat would choose. But the hardest one, j ust with a maniacal l aw,
Speaker 1:She also, well, a few strips for both. We got a few steps over the years, but, um, for action, remember the warning man, especially in the early issues is a really good, so mafioso style strip. I think I seem to remember it as being the most violent.
Speaker 2:That would be saying something bag, hook, chores,
Speaker 1:Meat, cleavers.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I know you'll run.[inaudible] Narnia. That's right.[inaudible] you're going to be good at portraying, but grittiness of the story, a running man. Yeah. Again, this was Pat Miller saying to me, well, I, we do a take on the fugitive and um, he just sent me away to have some ideas before I knew that we were sort of on a road trip around America, visiting all the top things that we as sort of beam this thought, you know, last Vegas, San Francisco do know that he'll be on the side of that, that country. That was grateful. Yeah. I'd like to see that connected as sort of
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that'd be great. Yeah. Actually I can see as a Hollywood selection, 17 or South flick as well.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I send my checks up this way
Speaker 1:That we'll get to shock later, actually Hollywood stuff. Going back to the stuff you take into space with you they'll work in a way 2087 made a lot of the collections for graphic novels and stuff way. But if you had to pick one a ll a ll-time graphic novel, what would you pick?
Speaker 2:Um, in the door? Um,[inaudible] kind to me gave me a complete set of his adventures or which there are 20 volumes. So that's, that was quite nice. Um, the collected dark Knight returns, there's also a favorite. Yeah, it has one of the great p egs tones. I think N ate m ay h ave a t on o f a, t o find Batman, a s triker rearing horse p ub, but I actually am the one on bigger name as my fa vorite i s o ne I haven't read yet. I'm saving it for mos t se ven inches when it's hiring events wil l be all th e mo re solitary I'm referring of course to Charlie's wal l. I'm not sure how many connections there are, but I know the content will make me thankful that I never hav e to go to war myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good point. I did a bit of research on world war one for the book a few years back a nd found out my granddad sold the b lood. I t w as o ne o f t hose po or k ids who hi s 1 5 year old got killed in, u m, B u tler c rater. First time the Germans use flame to ol i s
Speaker 2:A terrible thing. Isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, I mean, I was joking when I was doing the research as a bad joke, but just, you know, we know it was hellish, but the more you read about it, you know, we think we've got it, but now staying in with the virus, but for years, but then bombed and
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly. Yeah. He kicked it credit.[inaudible] combined his kind of love of research with, um, you know, conveying the hardness of it all with a slightly yeah. From time to time, but comic relief. What like ten-year-old kids reading it. You have to be careful.
Speaker 1:That's one thing p op i s really relevant. Isn't it mixing a bit of politics with a nd realism kids can l ead. U m,
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He likes all that. He's counting as it is amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Definitely. One of the stranger questions coming up when you're in space, you're going to be stuck with a comic book character on the s paceship. We're g oing t o give you the choice. You can choose a color to, you'd like to be stuck on t he s pace s paceship with a n a ccount you'd hate to be stuck w ith. So w ho d o y ou like to be stuck on the ship?
Speaker 2:Well, the first character that comes to mind is the genius change from rogue trooper. I think she'd be experts in repenting. Any parts that on why Smith chose to ship? Well, thinking about it. Um, I recently came across the brilliant character, but it is a Harley Quinn in Batman. And I think her unpredictable personality would definitely leveling up the journey to whatever the spaceships having choice. She is. My, she is my choice.
Speaker 1:Your first person is a chooser, which is a surprise actually as well. Great. And then who would you hate to be stuck on a ship with?
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say Hey because that's powerful work, but I would certainly do my best to spatially distance from the prankster. He was turned up in chief in drag as a copy of the joker because he likes to set off bombings and know can traveling through space. It's not the best place to be detonating, explosive practical jokes. So I wouldn't want him anywhere near me on the ship,
Speaker 1:Like sense of enough in the past, we've budgeted to dry down Batman as people won't be stuck on the with c ars.
Speaker 2:I think Batman could get a bit boring pacing up and down and looking for someone to punch.
Speaker 1:So just going back to your career, I keep forgetting magazines. You've worked on, I loved it when a lot. So, I mean, I'm trying to talk a little bit about Star-Lord so I know you, I think he was working on that just before you joined 2018.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. Just, it was short lived the CoStar law. This was Calvin Goldstone's sort of baby. He launched it. Um, when you took sort of producing a magazine, but was a month and slightly older, more in tune with a European comic magazines, such as heavy metal, metal, and a bit more SciFinder like me remember. Yeah. So what he ended up with was really, um, another weekly science fiction comic, um, and in its Genesis, he asked me to be the subeditor, which I said yes to, because I'd been on battle for quite a while, five years with Dave having 20, it felt right to move on. So yeah, that's how I got onto Star-Lord and um, I found myself subbing, strontium, dog robusters and Hamptons much underrated mind was Chris timed quake. So it was a, of course it was on better paper. I got a lot more calmer and um, I've tried to cover it's awesome.
Speaker 1:I was reading it and I loved it. Um, I was always a big fan of Tom quake because I love time trolls stories. But, um, I remember when I joined 2008 D being gusted about the paper quality dropping, I was 11 years old and was already, uh, you know, geek complaining about the paper quality, the company colors game.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. Yeah. That's interesting because I imagine the magazine is sort of full. No one would notice, but they hadn't realized, but a lready t he comics were attracting people who cared beyond the kind of F ang ending, as you say, a nd you're getting the paper quality a nd t he price frequency.
Speaker 1:And that's some like, like, so you've mentioned them well, busters and strontium dog started there. You know, some of the stretch that would go on to be 2008 rates.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, people often wonder what would have happened if 2000 data merged into Skoll gold. So you would have had strong QM, deliberate busters right at the Hunter, the better paper effectively, slightly on that price. That's one of those w ipes. Yeah, y eah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, it did. I like the fact that 2008 eventually got that paper, actually. It's a good point to mention artists because Starla down 2000 days, that's some of the pretty much Abby brilliant, great.[inaudible] work for them. But if you had to take one page of artwork into space e ach y ear,
Speaker 2:Ooh. Um, well actually, you know, I, one of the comics I worked on was crisis a wake. I had a story called new s tatesman, u h, written by J ohn Smith. And I remember asking J ohn to write t he scene where the new statesman was s acking a tree. I d on't know why. And maybe I've seen a B eatles p op video where Paul McCartney was jumping in and out o f a tree. I don't know. U m, but John purely agreed and h is s ubsequent s cene description found its way to the Arkansas Jim Baker. And, u m, John asked Jim to make the picture a whole page. A nd so that's my favorite page, c ause i t's a whole page. And what I like about it is it's absolute s erenity. I t's a v ery serene picture. U h, I think I got agendas gone now, unfortunately, but, u m, that's a great legacy only, et cetera, i s all the l ack of as well. So that's my favorite from the crisis. N ew s tatesman.
Speaker 1:I'm actually trying to tell us a little bit about isle crisis and came about because that's another major British magazine the dealer. Well, um,
Speaker 2:I think what we should've done was before doing crisis, we should have done the magazine to get a slam dunk under our belt, which would have bought us time to, um, develop the crisis and revolver. Initially the idea of crisis as given to me by the managing director, John Saunders was for it to be a superhero title, uh, that we could then repackage for the American market. So hadn't, so that's why you have new States coming, which is a bunch of state has its own superhero. But when I was working with Todd, he was put on a pink wool. He kind of wants you to take it away from being superhero mad or more realistic. So when it came out, crisis was kind of Hoff of superior in the house, um, closer, um, deadlines say perhaps,
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's not the biggest superhero or pharmacy.
Speaker 2:No, no, yeah. Maybe I, maybe I should have made it clearer. I don't know. But um, I see that bringing out a third world war collection, I must say it seems to stand up. Well,
Speaker 1:Those suits, um, the game, it's a head of each time, I think,
Speaker 2:Uh, at that time everyone was sort of doing MD and Mayo, why they call the ecstasy and it was the summer of this man. People weren't really impressed again in a grim. Exactly. They didn't want to know perhaps because they had themselves have grown up in quite grim in time, but now it kind of has a prescient. It doesn't hurt some of the things he spoke about.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, it could be sad now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think one thing t hat everyone a cknowledged s he i s about crisis is that it proved a platform for new artists to s how their work. Oh yeah, definitely. C ause it was quite hard to get into 2008[ inaudible] they could only have a certain number. So, u m, crisis, t hey g ot, you were talking about our kids as well. U h, we had, u h, s howing a Phillips J ohn c onfiguration. U m, that's w hen I met John with John M cCrae as well as tried and trusted professionals like Jim and, u m, but also calming, calming l ist. Sorry, getting confused. C all m e o n the magazine. L ike y ou, you take my p oint. S o i n crisis I think has a position in British comics.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Garth Ennis, his real voice, I think. Yeah,
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like it will know that you can't try to add a point.
Speaker 1:Gave me my first break, so it's gotta have some good in it.
Speaker 2:Well, I was going to say, yeah. Um, what would that have been?
Speaker 1:We did them a couple of warm off strips, um, belong. First times we met was getting involved with hundred coli and cam Smith and my co-writer at the time and I'd been at the beach to come up to you and John Tomlinson and other 2008 days of exact set of time with a little bits of paper. Excuse me, sir. A bit like Oliver twist or something. Please get back. It'd be positive. Even if you didn't like them, you know, give us some good feedback and stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I remember you and to Allen, Andrew. Yes.
Speaker 1:Mine was my writing partner. Yeah. I don't do any work with part on toxic. The other toxic for awhile.
Speaker 2:Yes. The queue. What have I named to kind of role playing? Yeah.
Speaker 1:We started at games workshop trying to make it their first comic for a while, but that was um,[inaudible] great. Thank you. Each other strip in, um, again called chain so that no one's ever seen, you know, eight page comic strip the date and there's some, I think there's some Kevin Neil artwork in a dwell and things like that. Yeah. The shame, the stuff that was just hidden away.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's another, that's another hallway kind of kind of worms or entity, isn't it? Yeah,
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Things that never, but also comics that never made it out the wheel with stories that never made it out.
Speaker 2:People in there they got paid.
Speaker 1:Well, they all came. We were living in Nottingham at the time when they were toxic, was going bankrupt and came up and stayed our house in Nottingham. We had about must be about 30 or 40 creators living there, sleeping in our living room over night before it lasted the next day to the next time we got paid.
Speaker 2:I had that can go well.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It was fun while it lasted.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Well we were all young. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. Going back to colleagues, we're going to give you a favorite cover to go with you,
Speaker 2:Dave Gibbons. Uh, the first topic he'd get for rogue through, uh, that would have been Prague two t o e ight, u h, September, 1981. So 2 003, you had this kind of science fiction paper on the cover. A s what a ffected me, l ooks l ike at first, c ome o n, i t's a w ar story and you've got road charging towards t hat. S o kind of magazine, a mysterious sticker and the background Dave's got all these dead bodies representing the grim r eality of warfare, but then the c olor line, hence this being such in the future because it says h e's the most feared man on n ew earth. And I think that proposition attracted n o to loads of new readers who perhaps previously s aw 2000 a s a science fiction c omic, but couldn't resist buying that t his y outh to see what this crazy w ar s tory.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually I've suddenly like you've either been editing the issue. One of the things I'm still w aiting 2 080 to do is bring down there, but to prove his innocence, I used to b e d ead Gibbons a few years ago for some little q uiz show a nd t hey asked him and he l ooks at me as if it was a bit strange, b ut 3 0 y ears waiting for him to come back from space.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You'll have to get some kind of online petition guests.
Speaker 1:I that's what I should do. I, she started paying to send down there from the law. We're going to give you a gate related objects to take with you. What would that be?
Speaker 2:Well, is it gatekeeper to collect comic offs?
Speaker 1:No Kuzma. Isn't it. Isn't but you can say that.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. Well, I, I, I have a small piece of original M on. Oh w ow. It's a picture of me actually Australia s traight p ike. Yeah. S o I commissioned to fill the C huck s tretch annual n ights i n 82. U m, it's only g ot about I five, a six. Not that big. I knowingly, I, when I got it to the a uction, I g et to Robin Smith rather than get a p rint of it. R ight. C ause he had it going across the Sprague and Daniel, h e took a scalp l ink right. F or the a rm. I think h e was a b it b it m issed, b ut I got M ike to grow w ith me. So I h ad the outlet to get some t o h oles. That's my p eak.
Speaker 1:That's a shame, but you've got it finished. I got it here. Just going back to the comics as well. You mentioned crisis. I had a lot of love for revolver, which you always wish you had lived a bit longer ago. Do you wanna talk a bit about that? So no, that was more instinctive things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely thing. And I think after crisis, we thought we should do something that perhaps had more commercial or rang more true with the audience of the day. And we've mentioned the kind of smiley faces and things. And Pete was clearly in Kune with that. I didn't know what the hell was going on, but what we could have was a title revolver. And we had one strip already g rant Morrison around Houston, u h, that we had been commissioned b ecause we knew we'd use it somewhere. But from that we just gave P ete his head and u h, commission and the rest and say, d ad, u m, with Frank, when n urses, they make a great team, they really get it. And they produced a great comment. W hat magazine? I think we may have had distribution problems at. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1:A shame. It was, um, we were supposed to bomb off. The first breaks in the business was the issue eight 60, 70 stops up. And we got a stripping issue and the coverage issue.
Speaker 2:Okay. Well it sounds so typical of comics, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think there's a lot of creators. You just went from, you spoke most of the early nineties going from jobs that didn't come out and got paid for it, which is nice.
Speaker 2:Oh, well that's good. You got pay. Yeah. That's good. So it's a Maxwell,
Speaker 1:I think can come off this one, but did you t hen go on to working on Sonic the comic and more managerial? S o side with E gmont t hat was the bit in between
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, we can wait on the magazine, the magazine. Well, it's a slam dunk currently. It wasn't it more dread John Wagner, make sure the scripts would ship. We, we, we, we, we put it open to lots of people to try get those, but in the end I think he felt safer kicking it off with this. Um, but yeah, so then I became managing and uh, Richard Burton was given a Sonic to, um, to edit, to get going. So I guess I wasn't really, I can't claim any success or, uh, affiliation of Sonic other than enjoying it.
Speaker 1:And what's well, did you play then is more managerial watching all the stuff? Was that
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. Um, the comics petered out really became children's magazines. They became full of free gifts and uh, puzzles really? No, no paper strip. That's what they are today. Spot the guestrooms. Exactly. I mean, it's so easy. If you get a license site to a property, they just send you the style guide. Really. You use that doesn't cost you anything. You take that imagery and you write works around and you make up a spot. The difference, as I said, puzzles, many, put a piece of plastic on the cover,
Speaker 1:Three bits of plastic[inaudible] wall going on at the moment between it
Speaker 2:Pay pay Smith's 20,000 pounds for the privilege of getting on Michelle from small marketing. Now obviously there are people out there doing their best to keep a modicum of good stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well now there's a lot more self-publish well, it's not even self published, but more like Kickstarter stuff like the 77 things, which you had a stripping. I think that was it. The first issue. Yeah. I got bolts first and second.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Thanks to Ben comics. He just got in touch with me and said, why can't we do this? I said, yeah, because the script, the scripts had already been written because they're at the back of my comic novel, the shared, um, conspiracy, um, and that the, the, the comic company is launching a new title. And I thought a big, big at the end of the novel to actually show the scripts they came up. And so it was a simple case of saying to artists, which of these would you like to draw? So Brendan right. And New Zealand chose the tinkling triangles and Johnny Gillespie bless his heart super, super artists. But it is so the collector, like, I suppose he made much money. I'll go some super hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Great. I actually do want to talk about the books. I know that's your third book as well. Yeah,
Speaker 2:The book. Yeah. Um, yeah. Well they say writes about what, you know yeah. Thing written about my life. I thought, well, I don't know anything else I love when you call mix. I'll do a fictional story about, um, a 1970s comic publishing company, which just happens to resemble the dairy company. I started working in 1973, um, and all that, the whole seventies vibe smoking and cow gum and everyone going to the pub and flares and log of being a new fangled bear, all that it's all in there. Uh, and uh, I think it came out quite well. What about Colin noble since the endings a bit abrupt and why such a calming was well that's this is only volume one, b ut i t's another, it's l ike g oing t o be a t rue c hase, nothing wrong with l ike abrupt ending w ith a s urprise when it's coming out. Well, yeah. Good question.
Speaker 1:Back to the spaceship. We're going to get onto like songs and books. Now you've got one song you can take with you into space.
Speaker 2:Uh, the Western girls, because I think it's a great song. And B when I had a call, which I've done now, I used to drive to, to work. Um, cause there was a garage I'm doing the opposite in stamp and uh, and uh, Oh, in house. So I could park the call that without paying. And that was the music that I had lost sting out the eight in the morning, as I rode through London, streaks, cross Western girls, it just set the day up nicely. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's a good bit of music to start the downs always impact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. How about a book? Oh yeah. The theoretical wool by Jill Haldeman. Yeah. Can't be that. I love it. Cause you said earlier that you like anything to do with time and that plays a major, well it's time donation. That's what plays a major part. Got get it. Right. So it combines what, because I love, or I love future war time stories and um, just gets back to back to the key, but you're getting to the book, the more he kind of trays you around the room with surprises, you know, this is quiet speech of writing if I may say so we've got to give you a movie as well. I'm quite a big fan of them, film Noelle. And I think the one I'm going to mention the reason I don't like it is because the dialogue is so snappy. U m, and it's l ike, comics have to have the same snappy d ialogue. You can't really be w here you can be b y t he s ea if you want. But I prefer my comics to be the r ights o f, to get me a nd kind of s ome s ubstrate. So I know that I'm in a fight a s well. I've said that f ive. I think I would choose double indemnity. Oh wo w. Treadmill Mu rray u sually plays comedy comedic roles. It's kind of like the bad guy, but I think it's, an d i t's got Edward G. Robinson. Who's the good guy. An d t h en B arbara Stanwyck, wh o's k ind of like the Ra nney t h at u h M c Nary a n d s h e a v ery dog DePaul, it's a great film.
Speaker 1:The stranger questions are coming up. As you're traveling through space in a ship, you're going to get sucked through a wormhole and um, get the chance to live anywhere in any time, any space you want to, it can be a reality. Any reality, any time period, any fantasy? Well we want so where would that be?
Speaker 2:It's so easy. It has to be a mega city one. I'd b e t errified. O h, if you just b ake the law, all o f the great things you can get face change, you can get a, you can get a h obby board a nd you can, u h, watch superb TV. I t can meet some, u h, it's u h, one great big playground
Speaker 1:And the growing I could join the league of fatties. So
Speaker 2:Let's face it. There is crime there, but it's a lot safer than some of London's streets, I think with the judges whizzing around. So I would feel quite safe if I didn't feel safe, I just spend my entire time in the trunk. So that's my choice. I can't wait, how do we kill this?
Speaker 1:We've talked about your books and your career and stuff, but looking back, what's the thing you're most proud of that you've been involved with?
Speaker 2:I would say the first judge pred annual I think dated 1981. That was brilliant. Thank you. Um, but it would've come out at Christmas H because, um, from cover to cover, I don't think it has a weak page in it. You've got something like 25, 30 pages of Mike McMillan color off to kick off with. Then I had room to do some features on the background to mega city one, which I really enjoy giving and a couple of other scripts, a t ech story, and a fabulous B rown B o wman c o ver. Ok ay, great. Ron Smith inside mega city. I m e an, I just was, when that book came up from the printers, I just sat and looked at. It was really, really pleased. Uh, w hich is a good feeling be cause o ften yo ur c omic will come up as a story about getting qu ite a l ways. Ye ah, exactly.
Speaker 1:No, no tissues apart from the editor. A lot of the time, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well that saw that's the, uh, the cross better, right? Well, about how they compare to some of their old ones.
Speaker 1:Well, it makes me about that right on you as well. Like, so it's the quality, there's no old material or that wasn't everything originated in it or most of it. Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think everything was, um, originated because I get, well, Hey, there wasn't. No, no, that was the point not to it with reprint, which would have been easy peasy because there was a five-year rule that we moved in five years on somebody. Certainly some kids we're just about on the way we did that was like a second. I need a bigger budget. I got it.
Speaker 1:Oh, go down days. He publish it. I'll just need a bigger budget. Yeah, that's true. Um, well, as you're leaving earth, give a. What would you miss about the planet, friends and family aside?
Speaker 2:Um, that's a very nice pub in Tottenham called the donut, the Cox. And it's been there since the 14th century. Um, and quite a few comic people, Maven Devon, actually John Henry Flint, um, Dom. So, um, I kinda would miss, not that I ever well not have done it once, having pints with jock and his crew and the chakras, actually, we had a great Indian meal and, um, jock lights since his cake away really hot. So it's has Simpson Hawks to distinguish it from the more mild. So yeah, I would miss pump space at me. I would miss playing pool and just the countryside. Yeah, I think, yeah, definitely. Particularly. So there you are.
Speaker 1:Good. I think it was Mike Collins. They did miss having a coffee with his mates. Yeah. Maybe in the end now, but, um, I've got any question I've quite like these days where you get to other ones it's called getting my goals. So you can have anything you want minor major. So you
Speaker 2:Sometimes, you know, it could last for hours. This for me, I'm getting a goal at the moment. I think probably Boris Johnson, government ministers, they just drive me mad. Ally's like Excel in my life. Um, yeah. Yeah. That's great. That's a good answer. And um, we made the announced, so we're about to blast you off and, um, any last words or I can feel that it's the engine. That's great. And just, um, let people know where they can get your latest book from. They can get signed copies from me direct Steve McMahon or start mac.com or I suppose Amazon has it. Yes, it does. Yeah. Well, thanks very much for having me.
Speaker 1:You needs to the last gate can space practices, steeper monasteries time and pull motion vegetables last for the music. Muskegon space is a bullpen productions creation to council websites, bullpen productions.co.uk and other kelsall.com who buy my books
Speaker 3:[inaudible]
Speaker 1:Before you go. Well must mr. You solved the cognitive junk Tomlinson who lost the guard. So he should know the collective now for Catherine gov thugs is a thug last week in space and to taming and educational.