HONOR VINCENT and LEE MILMORE Return to RELICT in 2000 AD with INVASIVE SPECIES

Interviews Editor, Andrew Irvin, is joined by Honor Vincent and Lee Milmore, who have revived "Relict" from its Future Shock in Prog 2279 for Tharg's 3Riller, in Progs 2441-42-43.

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COMIC BOOK YETI: Honor and Lee, it’s great to have you both stop by to chat. Welcome to the Yeti Cave! How are each of you doing on your respective sides of the Atlantic?

HONOR VINCENT: Can’t complain, for the most part! It’s been about a hundred degrees over here. It’s a dry heat, so it’s like someone is constantly aiming a hair dryer at your face. A few petals burnt off my roses (not a metaphor) the other day. Very pleasant indoors, though!

LEE MILMORE: Right now, I’m feeling sheepish after a few too many beers at a party last night…generally though I’m doing 'alreet,' as we say in these here parts.

CBY: I'm glad you're both holding steady in a hectic world! You both dropped a Mega-Interview on July 17th, so I don’t want to re-tread a recent conversation, but can you tell our readers a bit about the world of "Relict" for those who haven’t read the original Future Shock "Relict" one-off? How does "Invasive Species" differ from the original run and build upon your inaugural 2000 AD tale in its new, longer 3Riller format?

HV: In the first story, we follow a mouse named Stephen who has become immortal due to senescence experiments (which are real!)) done before humans nuked themselves into an apocalypse. He was the only murine survivor (there were plenty of bugs), and as time wore on, he became more and more intelligent (a few centuries of reading!), until he was able to build a time machine and head back to the lab to meet his makers. He realizes they effectively tortured him and his fellow mice, and springs the mice loose to hide underground while the apocalypse happens again.

The 3Riller starts centuries after that. Stephen is still waiting on his brethren to catch up to him, and is quickly losing hope as they start to starve and get picked off by mutant dragonflies. He’s also starting to really lose his grip on reality – imagine living for a thousand years with no one to talk to!

LM: It’s really great that we get to do more in this world, I think we’ve shown a sliver more of Stephen’s world, and it’s dangerous and lonely. I’ve coloured this strip myself, which is a first for me professionally, as I had a vision of bringing a sense of this being a “main feature” after the Future Shock and for it to be bolder and badder as we uncover more of the world and Stephen’s plight.

CBY: Your relationship with Rebellion started with "Relict," but can both of you share a bit about your earliest experiences with comics and the perspectives from which you each approach the medium as both readers and creators?

HV: My dad was a lifelong comic reader and had a huge collection of books, mostly from the 80s and 90s, when I was growing up. He used them as a bridge between picture books and chapter books when I was learning to read – X-Men! (Violent, but I turned out okay. Maybe? Hm.) As I got older, I kept borrowing from his library, and started buying my own in college. I read less recreationally now that I also write, but I love that I can much more deeply appreciate the work that goes into a book now. As for creating comics, I think regardless of subject matter, comics have to be fun. If people are taking the time to read my work, I want to make it worth their while and entertain them.

LM: I’m probably starting to sound embarrassing talking about my Grandma Peggy, but every time I’m asked about my origin story she is at the forefront. She wasn’t trying to get me hooked on comics; she just loved making us grandkids happy. I think there are influences all over the place. The library was a big deal; my mam took us there every week and we’d get books. I’d get a chapter book (as Honor charmingly refers to them) and a Tintin and/or Asterix book. My dad read to me every night as well and I have deep, contented memories of that. The stories he read me were all fantastical and as I loved to draw it was the stuff my imagination was filled with that I would put down on paper.

But then the fantastical in me met the hardcore sci-fi of 2000 AD when my grandma gave me my first issue. Mind blown. It was that phase in the 80s where every artist in the comic was a frikken genius. I was hooked and comics became a bigger thing in my life from there. I love the line of creativity you get in comics, it’s a place where all manner of stories can be told and in a visual language all of it’s own.

So much of the great stuff in comics just can’t really exist in any other medium. I don’t think the films are a better version of the comics, they have a fundamentally different language. They can be fun but there are zero comic book movies in my top 10 movies for instance. I look for good comics where the writing and the art are harmoniously excellent but at the bare minimum, I have to like the pictures.

CBY: Honor, it's good that you had a father that introduced comics early in your reading journey, and Lee, I'm fortunately able to corroborate the critical importance of grandmothers in providing encouragement. Since both winning the 2021 2000 AD Thought Bubble contest, you’ve noted the ways in which it has changed your lives. What approach had both of you been taking towards your comics careers in the lead-up to winning the contest? You’ve both provided advice on future 2000 AD Thought Bubble contests, but what would you recommend more broadly to new comic creators about a career in the craft?

HV: I had been writing comics for a couple of years at that point, and published the first four issues of Andraste myself — an indie series about Boudicca — thanks to crowdfunding. I was gearing up for a Kickstarter for the first part my other indie series, New Rat City, when we won Thought Bubble.

I have two pieces of advice. The first is that it can be difficult, and slow. If you’re a writer trying to produce your own series, it will also be expensive. Write or draw as much as you can. Put things away in a drawer and come back to them in a few months and rewrite them. Do whatever you can to balance the feeling of love and joy you have in creating something with the distance and judgement to figure out how to make the next story better.

The second: you might not feel ready to put your work out there, because it isn’t as good as you know it could be. Do it anyway. Do the best you possibly can, of course, but don’t wait forever to start sharing your work. You’ll improve for the rest of your life anyway, but if you’re getting feedback (and building up a carapace for taking it constructively) you’re raising the ceiling on how good of a writer or artist you can be one day.

LM: When I was 18, I went to London with my portfolio and just turned up at the old Fleetway tower as a grungy kid from Durham in one of Robert Maxwell’s giant newsrooms. I asked to speak to the editor of 2000 AD and a world weary receptionist (looking at me like I’d lost my mind) rang through to Steve McManus. I remember he took my call from reception and was telling me it wasn’t the way to do things (it isn’t the way to do things) but I deftly whined that I’d come all the way from Durham, which Steve thought was Northern Scotland, and he took pity on me and sent me to a local pub with instruction to ring later. I was really lucky, Steve had been meeting with Clint Langley and they must have fancied a beer, so they both came and met me.

We had a couple of beers and reviewed my portfolio. My portfolio was terrible, it was basically heaving with every scrap of paper I’d drawn on for the last five years or something, no rhyme or reason to it, but Steve saw some ability and we started corresponding. I went to University in Manchester that year and all the while received scripts from Steve which I painfully slowly drew and sent over to him. I’d call from a phone box and he’d give me feedback.

I did a Strontium Dog script for him which probably was the best thing I did, but it was super raw. It was about the time that painted art got popular and I decided that as I was a fine art school painter I’d blow Steve away with painted comics….I did not. Also I was even slower. Over time it fizzled out. I was devastated really, but even at the time I knew I’d dropped the ball. Around this time I spoke to Pat Mills and Kev O’Neill, and Pat told me to get in touch if things didn’t work out with Steve.

I continued to attend some conventions, met lots of artists and a few editors but my output was all over the shop, it’d have been hard to say, “oh, he’s that guy who does this kind of thing, or has that style” Then for a long while life intervened and I became a designer, which was okay, but not where my heart had been. I never sent any samples anywhere and I never got in touch with Pat Mills. Up until the 2000 AD art competitions started and pestered by my friend Vigs (a talented artist in his own right), I began getting back on the horse.

So all the above informs what I’d recommend to new comic creators.

1. Know what you’re about but critically understand what they’re about. At 18-19, I did a lot of knowing what I should be doing. I didn’t, I should have found out.

2. If you get an opportunity, take it with both hands. I knew I wanted to be a 2000 AD artist. It was my goal, yet I worked from 9-5 in the fine art studio at University for three years while the very opportunity I was looking for was right there in front of me. Be as clear headed about things as you’re able.

3. If someone like Pat Mills tells you to get in touch… for god's sake, get in touch.

4. Don’t try once, or once a year even. Put your work in front of as many people as possible, and refresh the portfolio consistently. Don’t worry about perfecting that page, or making the 1,000 page graphic novel. Draw a page or two of sequential art and get it in front of an audience. An editor if possible.

To recap, don’t do any of the things I did, except entering the Thought Bubble 2000 AD contest. It’s a true opportunity. Work really hard and keep going back if you don’t win.

CBY: Thanks for the thorough and specific advice from both of you based upon your experiences. On a more current note, Lee, you mentioned doing ink washes on watercolor paper before scanning and coloring - what are your preferred materials and tools for both analog and digital illustration? Honor, what sort of visual vocabulary do you offer as a writer when trying to denote a specific aesthetic or mood for Lee to communicate to the reader?

LM: I think a lot of us artists have this tension between digital and traditional. I work on an 27inch iMac and a 27inch Cintiq. My program of choice is Photoshop; as I’ve worked in the Adobe suite for many years, it’s second nature to me. In Photoshop, I use Kyle Webster brushes and a simple brush I made myself which is the diffuse airbrush. I use that because at some point I decided I was going to do 100% black and white art BUT I like having a grey option. The diffuse brush is my grey.

That being said, I haven’t stuck to that as a rule. In "Relict: Invasive Species," I decided early on that I wanted to colour it and almost did the whole thing in full water colours. I found my initial attempt looked a bit too story book and switched to using ink washes to get the effect of watercolour but with a more graphic edge. I like to try new things. Tools-wise for traditional illustration, I use Microns. My studio is filled with Microns and mainly use 0.003 up to an 8. I use a Pentel Fuse Brush pen for big blacks and for washes usually with a refillable water brush pen in the working hand. Because I’m sloppy I also require a fair amount of white out. I’ve used loads of pens, Tombow make great pens to draw with but I find the ink isn’t waterproof which I don’t like.

There is no one tool though. The ‘draw real good pen’ is a myth. My Drawn in the Margins name comes from my habit of drawing with biro in the margins of note books, or anything papery that gets under my hands. One day I’ll do a strip in biro.

HV: I try to leave as much of it up to the artist as humanly possible. I trust – and this trust has been proven well-placed in Lee with every story – that he’ll be able to make better judgements about how to visually communicate the vibe to the reader than I can. My job with the script is to make sure the action and dialogue are as clear as possible and anything necessary for a future page is signposted so that he can add all of the magic he does in the details and (hopefully!) doesn’t have to guess what I mean.

CBY: Lee, it's good to learn experimentation never ceases, and always yields novel results. Honor, you pointed out the importance of constantly reading across genres and reverse engineering stories to arrive at scenes on pages. Have you two refined any shorthand systems based upon your shared lexicon of media references? How often do you encounter a need to dig deeper and clarify artistic intent with each other?

HV: Lee sent me some examples of his watercolor art early on to see what I thought and very humbly said he would not be offended if I didn’t like it. I believe I wrote, “You’re nuts!!” to him, and said something like “ksjanjksnf!” when I opened the file the first time, because it just looked incredible.

Re: the shared lexicon, I don’t think we have! Lee did recommend The Last American to me when we were working on this series as a reference for some post-apocalyptic city scenes (see part 2 of the 3riller!), and it’s fantastic. I imagine when we work on something different I’ll be throwing in things like “raggedly threatening in the manner of Grizz” from this series.

LM: If Honor says jump, I’m going to need to know, “how high?”

CBY: It sounds like you're both cultivating a mutual understanding of each other's process, and it's paying off. You’ve also both referenced your 2000 AD inspirations, and you’ve both picked up a variety of gigs working on titles since the Thought Bubble win; you mentioned in your Mega-Interview what you both have on your slate at the moment, is there anything our readers can expect from both of you with other publishers or independent campaigns after "Relict: Invasive Species" concludes?

HV: I have a whole bunch of stories in various stages of incompleteness, and I’d like to get them in shape to pitch by the end of the year. I also intend to finish Andraste; we have a couple more issues of that in the can, and as soon as I have the wherewithal I will get those out there, too (I have a 7-month-old and a 2-year-old, so wherewithal is in short supply).

LM: Outside of 2000 AD work I’m making a graphic novel with writer Gary Maguire, it’s early days so it’s a while away. As I’ve said before I’m so happy to be working for 2000 AD I don’t think about getting work else where too much but that’s not to say I wouldn’t love to work with other publishers. I’d really like to do something with John Constantine and/or Swamp Thing. I’ve written a couple of things too and if I ever find the time I could be interested in self publishing.

CBY: Honor, I deeply understand how parenting chews away at bandwidth for anything else (especially in those early years), and Lee, a new Constantine encounter with Swamp Thing would be a fitting return to his origins. Upon seeing the premise of "Relict," the 1971 Robert C. O’Brien book, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, immediately came to mind. I was also a big fan of the Redwall series as a kid, but are there other rodent-based stories that you pulled into the mix as you were working on building the world of "Relict?"

HV: I am also a huge Redwall fan! Did you know that Brian Jacques wrote the first manuscript of Redwall based on stories he told to kids from a school for blind and visually impaired children? He was a milkman and they were on his route, and he realized a lot of kids’ books relied so much on visual detail that he went overboard on emphasizing the other senses (especially the feasts) in the Redwall books. I am a sap and that made me tear up the first time I heard it. Anyway! I’ve actually never read NIMH, but I should.

Another one of my favorites as a kid was The Deptford Mice series by Robert Jarvis – that’s more fantasy, with pagan mice and rats and an evil cat god who lives in the sewers. They’re not rodents, but I’ve also always loved Watership Down by Richard Adams.

LM: I’m not aware of the Redwall books personally. From being very small my Dad read all sorts of books to me and a lot of them were anthropomorphic in their nature. I have a connection with that type of material; Aesop’s fables, Just So Stories, The Jungle Book, Brothers Grimm, The Wind in the Willows, Rupert Bear, and Animal Farm. So many others;

the one that resonates most of all for me when working on "Relict" is Watership Down by Richard Adams, which I read when I was about seven, maybe younger (my Dad would know). The pathos and horror in that story is truly affecting. I think Honor brings that to "Relict" which is not an easy thing to do.

CBY: I almost cited Watership Down based upon the tone of "Relict," which replicates that tone, I'd agree (I didn't mention it, since it's about rabbits, not rodents, but it comes through). What sort of freedoms or limitations does working with non-human characters provide from both a narrative and an artistic perspective? This is very much a post-human narrative, so is there anything you enjoy more about telling a tale without having to adhere to human conventions?

HV: Narratively, I love non-human characters. If you have a horrific story, but it’s happening to a mouse, there’s an interesting mix of distance and sympathy for the reader; here is a very cute thing going through a kind of hell that couldn’t happen to you, per se. So I think while you’re less apt to project yourself onto an animal character initially, by the end of any story about anthropomorphized animals you’re identifying with them just as much as you would a human character, which can make for more intense highs and lows.

The stakes were interesting to me with this story in particular; all the people are gone, so “...or else, humanity is destroyed!” is off the table. Instead we have the last creature who can still think like us fighting for the potential of more creatures like him making it in the world. He’s so vulnerable, and yet very powerful in his own tiny sphere, and he doesn’t really have a moral code beyond survival. In terms of limitations, it’s very similar to writing a sci-fi or fantasy story about humans; you have to define the new rules of the world and work within them. This is more Lee’s department, but I think visually representing emotion, goodness, badness is a lot harder to do with realistic animals. I think he does a great job, but it’s certainly a lot of extra work.

LM: Oh, thanks Honor - kind of you to say so. I think Honor puts that way better than I could regarding anthropomorphic characters, and I agree with her take on it wholeheartedly. I personally also like the freedom to draw lots of 'post' human skulls all over the place. Gotta love a skull.

CBY: Yeah, you definitely took the opportunity to play with the scale concerning how the skulls fit into the mix, Lee. You’ve explored a post-human world from a rodent perspective; do either of you have other favorite animals (or plants) you’d like to write about at greater length? What are your favorite unspoiled attributes of the natural world you might want to explore further in future comics?

HV: I love a good weasel! I would also love to write something about octopodes one day. A story I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is about cryptids. Bigfoot, Nessie, Mothman, et al., have to decide in the midst of either an alien invasion or robot uprising (who can choose?), whether they want to continue laying low or step up and help the humans.

LM: I’m a frequent visitor to The Lake District in Cumbria, I’d like to do something folkloric set on the fells.

CBY: Those both sound like strong starting places for stories I'd be keen to read! Closing things off, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to highlight the best comics, films, music, literature, art, and other creative work they’ve been enjoying unrelated to the comics they’re here to promote. What have you both been inspired by lately?

HV: I’ve been reading a lot of classics (Pliny and Lucretius, mostly), and so much if it is just startlingly good and prescient. The last novel I finished was Dan Simmons’s Hyperion, which I loved, and next up is Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep. I read The Vinland Saga and Berserk recently as well; both are fantastic. Also, Absolute Batman!! But I’ve been spending the most time playing video games, I think. I just finished Alan Wake II, which was truly, uniformly awesome. I played the Silent Hill 2 remake before that – woof, what a game!

LM: Ooh, I do like to bang on about things I like. I could go on at length but will try and resist the urge.

I recently did a marathon listen to The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft and shortly after reread Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows's Providence. It’s excellent. Don’t tell anyone but it’s better than a whole lot of the actual Lovecraft work.

I listened to Homer's Odyssey recently and then followed up with some really great re-imagining of Greek myth - The Fates by Rosie Garland and Circe and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. The Lamb by Lucy Rose was pretty great and ‘orrid and I believe is Booker Prize nominated.

I also want to plug my other co-conspirator’s folk horror novels; Withered Hill and Scuttler’s Cove by David Barnett. Really great! Speaking of Circe - I’m waiting on what promises to be an incredible comic book by Neil 'Bhuna' Roche and Simon Harrison, the previews are absolutely fantastic.

I am chomping at the bit to get my teeth into Viking Moon by Joe Pruett and Marcelo Frusin (whose work I adore) it’s about Vikings and werewolves (not swear wolves). I mean do I need say more…? Oh yeah it’s out in September. I’d soundtrack most of this with some Lankum and Heilung just to keep the vibe ancient.

CBY: You've both given us plenty to keep our readers occupied once they get through "Relict: Invasive Species!" Thank you both for dropping by the Yeti Cave. If you’ve got publication, portfolio, and social media links to share with our readers, now is the time and place!

HV: Thank you for having us! My newsletter is at honorvincent.substack.com, and you can find links to all of my writing at www.rhonorv.com/words.

LM: I have an incomplete but live website https://drawninthemargins.co.uk/ Give me a follow here https://www.instagram.com/drawn_in_the_margins/

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