Ian Rankin

[abc warrior]

Scottish crime fiction writer, Ian Rankin (noted for his John Rebus books )is to write for DC comics.

I've enjoyed reading some of his books.

Link: http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=1210972006" target="_blank">Ian Rankin

[Floyd-the-k]

I've enjoyed them too. He's a bit cliched at times but very readable. What is he going to write?

[abc warrior]

It's not known currently what his project is about.

Wouldn't mind seeing him on Hellblazer, though.

[JeffreyMT]

It's Hellblazer! Probably the next story arc after Denise Mina.
Check out The Times today for full details, they have a 1 page feature on authors turned comic writers.

[JimBob]

From the times on line, which having had a look around for this article appears to have some genuinely good stuff:

"The creator of the Inspector Rebus novels says that he is fulfilling his dream
 
 
IAN RANKIN, the bestselling crime novelist, will begin a new career as a comic writer after he finishes the last Inspector Rebus novel.
However, Rankin will not be abandoning his chosen field completely. He has decided to throw himself not into the world of muscle-bound, cape-wearing heroes but that of a supernatural detective, John Constantine, who appears in the monthly comic Hellblazer.

 
 
Rankin is the latest author to transfer his skills to comics after Jodi Picoult, who has written bestsellers such as My Sister?s Keeper, announced last month that she was writing storylines for Wonder Woman.

Rankin announced that he was in negotiations with Vertigo ? an imprint of DC Comics, which publishes Superman and Batman ? at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Thursday night.

He told The Times that he had sent Vertigo a six-line plot outline that would give Constantine a new set of cases to solve. ?The beauty of comic books is that you can do new things with the same character and the readers don?t seem to mind,? he said. ?In my version he is going to be much more of a pulp fiction-style private eye who happens to deal with supernatural characters rather than ordinary cases like divorcing couples.

?I will do stories for five or six issues, but DC might do it as a complete graphic novel.?

He suggested that he might weave his love of horror films into the plot.

The Constantine character was created in the mid-1980s by Alan Moore, the British writer best known for V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, as a minor character in the Swamp Thing comics. The morally ambivalent detective, who has been to Hell and back, got his own series in 1988 and was turned last year into a Hollywood blockbuster starring Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz. The film made $230 million worldwide.

Rankin has been reading comics since the age of five. ?Sadly, at the age of 46 I?m still reading them,? he said. He grew up reading the Beano and the Dandy before moving on to more sophisticated comics including Swamp Thing.

He also tried drawing his own comics at the age of 6, but gave up when he decided he could not draw. ?I would get sheets of A4 paper and fold them in half, cut the edges to make a little eight-page booklet, break it up into squares and put in little stick men with little speech bubbles, and I?d have a spy story, a space story and a football story,? he said.

He also drew comics about an imaginary pop group called Kaput, who were always No 1 in the charts.

Rankin was introduced to DC bosses by Denise Mina, a fellow Scottish crime-writer who wrote the most recent Hellblazer issues.

?She broke the barrier,? he said. ?This New York-based industry started looking outside its normal area for writers. I pitched the idea for a storyline, but I haven?t fleshed it out yet.?

He said that the discipline needed for writing comics was very different from conventional books. Some writers, such as Moore, can write pages of text for one panel. ?You never know what will happen,? he said. ?I may not be any good at it.?
 I'm cautiously optomistic about this, I think of rankin   as a modern pulp fiction writer and I think he will be a good fit for monthly comics. Certianly Rebus and Constantine have similar drinking habits. I can olnly hope it's not Johns Whiskey trail adventures.
 
 
 

[abc warrior]

Excellent !
Something to look forward to.

[Proudhuff]

Has anyone warned him about the Doctor Shipman lookalike?

[Proudhuff]

or vica versa!!!!

[I, Cosh]

?The beauty of comic books is that you can do new things with the same character and the readers don?t seem to mind,? he said.

He should tell that to Byrne.