An interview with Andy Diggle and Dan Abnett. Make with the clicky...
Link: The Dredd Generation: Heirs to the Throne
Hey, enjoyable read, worth a look.
One complaint:
"I should have gotten Henry Flint to draw the entire ABC WARRIORS series, as his art was surely the best thing about it..."
Mike McMahon? Much as I love Henry's work, I wouldn't have passed up the chance of having MM guesting in exchange for a full run of Flint art.
Apart from that, some good stuff there. Both guys sound like they really care about the comic, and I can sympathise with Andy's "eternal triangle", even if it does sometimes result in dreck like Killer... ;-)
Well, McMachons style is likeable enough (though, IMHO, just plain lazy looking in comparison to the beautiful detail of his earlier art) but I'm not sure its a good match for ABC Warriors any more, and the overall effect of switching artists every 3 episodes was jarring and unpleasant, as it was for the first outing of the Meknificent Seven.
I think getting McMahon is obviously too tempting for words, but the whole series would have gelled more if it had been drawn entirely by Flint. if one of those stories had been held back for McMahon and kept for one of these prog 2000 efforts that would have been nice.
I think it's a real shame that time can be such a limiting factor for quality. I mean you can only do what you can in the time alloted with the material at hand. Like an editorial version of the krypton factor.
"Here are a 100 future shocks, only one of them is even half good, your job is to find that future shock, you have ten minutes, your time starts now"
It must be pretty hard to produce a high quality product in such a pressured enivronment, did they ever get more staff?
Cheers :)
Paul
It's hard to compare McMahon and Flint directly.
I much prefer Flint art to, say, much of McMahon's more recent stuff, but Mick in his heyday, IMO, could not be beat.
My favourite of his will always be The Shoggey Beast, which was atmospheric masterpiece stuff.
Henry Flint at his best is excellent, but can't come close to that.
- Posh blue-blooded fish bloke
Oh, I'd agree that a ABC Warriors series with a single artist - in this case Henry Flint - is preferable to one which leaps from one artist to another. However, if it's a choice between having a guest artist like McMahon & the coherence of a single artist on the whole strip, I'm afraid I'd still go for the former. If it were any other artist, I'd probably say no, but I'm a massive McMahon fan, so...
As for his more recent style - I'm pretty much sold on it. Ever since he reappeared (in the Meg at least) with Howler, the readership seems to be fairly cleanly split; you either love it or you hate it. I love it.
It may not be Sky Chariots or Block Mania, but it's just as refreshing & powerful.