Alan Grant is a writer best known to us for Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, and Anderson; but he also had a long stint writing Batman comics.
This interview was conducted by email by 2000AD writer James Peaty in December 2020. Thanks to Alan and James for permission to publish this here as a supplement to episode 143 of the Mega City Book Club podcast where James and I discussed Grant's work with John Wagner and Norm Breyfogle on Detective Comics.
You had co-written/co-created
one DC Comic (Outcasts) before this run began. How did the transition to
American comics come about and how easy/difficult was that change?
I can't quite remember how it came
about, to be honest. A couple of bigwigs from DC were coming over to London
seeking new talent. They got Richard Burton to prepare a list of 2000AD writers
and artists who might suit them. Incredibly, Burton left John Wagner and myself
off the list. So we clubbed together and Cam Kennedy - the artist on Outcasts -
went off to New York to sell our talents to DC. Compared to that effort, it was
relatively easy to shift from 4 or 7 pages a week scripts to 24 pages per
month.
When and how did the opportunity to write Detective Comics arise?
We received a phone call one
afternoon from Denny O'Neil. He said he'd been reading Judge Dredd in 2000AD
and wanted the Batman stories in his stable to be "toughened up". He
offered us a two-issue trial (The first Ventriloquist story) and after reading
it he extended our contract to a year. I ended up working on Batman for 10
years.
How did you approach writing one of the most
recognisable characters in comics?
Batman had been my hero of choice
since I was 4 years old. My cousin emigrated to the States and started sending random
collections of US comics to me and my brothers. I remember Wonder Woman,
Superman, Flash and Green Lantern - but it was always Batman who grabbed my
attention. During my teenage years I became a Marvel fan, but always kept my
eye open for what was happening with the Dark Knight. I knew the version of the
Batman that I loved, and that's what I went for.
So were you more of a US comics
fan than a British comics fan as a kid?
No, I was an "any" comic
fan. As well as getting the US titles I mentioned, my brother and I used to
swap our comics (Beano, Dandy, Topper, Beezer, Buster, New Hotspur) with my
mother's friends' daughters (Bunty, Judy, Princess Tina et al) on a weekly
basis. So I had a taste for everything in comics form. For years I dreamed of
being a comic artist, but my art was always pretty crap - something I used to
blame on the right/left argument.
What was your connection
to the character prior to working on the title? Did you look at
any previous stories/runs or did you just approach it with a totally fresh eye?
I seem to remember we just ran
with it. I did look at a few of the previous Batman issues, but soon gave up.
The late, great
Norm Breyfogle was the artist on most of these stories. He was an emerging
artist at the time, but would go on to become - arguably - the definitive
Batman artist of the late 80s/early 90s. What was it like to work with Norm?
I loved working with Norm. His vision of
Batman was basically the same as mine - mysterious, a creature of the night. We
became close friends while we were working together I often accused him of
reading my mind when illustrating Batman, as he so often captured the feelings
I wanted. I rate him as one of the top three Batman artists, ever.
When you say Norm was one of the
3 best Batman artists ever who are the other 2? I'd agree re Norm. He's one of
the absolute all time greatest.
Jerry Robinson, Neal Adams and Norm are my faves (with Dick Sprang and
Jim Aparo lurking on the subs bench).
Great minds think alike. I'd go
for Neal Adams and Gerry Robinson too.
Your run mainly
focused on new villains rather than the classic Bat-rogues such as The Joker,
Two-Face etc. Certainly some of these new characters - specifically Scarface
and The Ventriloquist, later on Anarky - feel like they could very easily fit
into Mega City One. Was it part of the brief to ‘Dredd up’ Batman’s world when you took the job?
Scarface and Ventriloqist was
basically a Dredd idea which we'd had in a file for a couple of years. But we
knew we'd never get the best of him in a Dredd story - one bullet and it's
"let's think up another character.” Anarky was my take on introducing the
USA to a new politics.
This move into US comics came
around 10 years into the life of 2000AD. Did this shift into working for US
publishers on longer form stories influence the solo work you would
subsequently do for both 2000AD and The Megazine in the late 80s/early 90s? I'm
specifically thinking about those Anderson stories from Shamballa/Engram
onwards?
I don't think longer stories had
much of an input into our UK work. As for Anderson - Arthur Ranson had the same
ability as Norm did when it came to reading my mind.
Around this time your full
time writing partnership with John Wagner came to an end, but it continued on
titles such as Judgement On Gotham, The Bogie Man etc. Why did you continue
working together after this 'split'? What do you think you learned from each
other during your time as collaborators?
We continued working together on
more humorous stories. It's easier to write comedy as a duo than it is to write
subjectively emotional material. I don't know if John learned anything from me,
but I learned a lot from him in terms of story structure, the importance of
pacing etc.
You wrote Batman for around a decade. What were the difficulties - as time went
on - in working on that character. Certainly when you took him on it was before
the first Tim Burton movie. How did the success of the character in other media impact on
working on the various titles?
It didn’t. I just told the stories that came to me. I
hated the Tim Burton Batman version - like Iron Man dressed as The Bat. His
success in other media appearances didn't really impact on what I was doing
with the comics.
How was it working for Denny
O'Neil? This was a period of massive expansion - and success - for the Bat
group and you were at the heart of it for a very long time. How did it change
over time?
Working for Denny was great - I
consider him the best editor I ever had, and we became firm friends, too. Denny
had the ability to pair writer and artist and then leave them to get on with
it. If he thought you weren't giving your best, he let you know. He only ever
made me rewrite one script - "The Killing Peck" - because he thought
it was too much to have penguins as killers.
Things
did get pretty intense when the US media became interested. It was like being
famous for a little while. I have to confess I enjoyed it.
When you look back on these stories how does you feel about them?
With a warm glow. I was writing a
character I loved with an artist I loved. And a certain amount of pride, too.
Thank again to Alan and James for this interview.
