The Comic Book Writer
The Inside Story of a Comic Book Creator: Monkeys, Stormtroopers and Ninja Penguins
PJ Montgomery is a young comic book writer based in Cardiff and is here today at Cardiff Comic Expo on Saturday 26th February 2011 in the Mercure Hotel. What are you promoting today?
The main thing is a comic called Stiffs, which is a comic I’ve co-written with my friends Drew Davies and Joseph Glass; Art by Gavin Mitchell; Colours and Letters by Adam Cadwell. We’ve got the preview book here which also contains some pages from The Pride, which is one that Jo and Gavin have done. [We also have] various bits of merchandise badges you know, the usual stuff comic fans love to buy.
What is Stiffs about?
Stiffs is the story of a group of twenty-somethings living in South Wales who are all stuck in dead-end jobs when they find out that there are actually zombies wandering around. So they decide, in their spare time, to start hunting them as a hobby mainly.
Who would you say were the major influences on your comic?
Well, we all cite different influences. For me, I think my major influence is probably Joss Whedon. I’m majorly influenced by the way he writes. Neil Gaiman is another one that I look to and also to a certain extent with my dialogue I suppose I am influenced by Brian Michael Bendis too. Drew would probably site Steve Niles.
What are your hopes for the comic at the moment?
That people buy it [laughs]. It’s supposed to be a five issue mini series and all we have here at the moment is the first half of the first issue. So we want to get it to the point where we can get four or five issues out there and then go on from there.
Is it available to buy online?
If we have copies left by the end of today then yes. [You can contact the Stiffs team via their Facebook group]
How was the creative experience with all of you working together?
It was really good actually. The initial concept was Drew’s: he started writing prose blogs on the internet about it and I kind of just forced my way in. My writing was set in the same world, which, thankfully he liked, and we were already friends so we started talking about turning it into a comic. We asked Jo to sort of iron out some of the details and help us out to just get it going. The way the three of us write is that we’ll plot it together, talk about basically what’s going to happen, we’ll then go away and write separate issue scripts (so, one of us will write issue 1, one will write issue 2 etc) and then we’ll come back together and make sure they all sound like one coherent voice. Then Gav draws it.
What would you say is the most difficult part about making a comic?
Getting it published. Just trying to find a publisher and raising the funds for that. Because independent publishing is expensive it turns out. We self-published this issue (funding it ourselves) not that the writing and all of that was easy, but that was the fun part. We were able to do that and turn it around in the timescale we wanted. Actually getting this book together is the bit that’s taken the longest definitely. It’s very rewarding to do but it is quite hard, you have to persevere. You can understand why the indie comic biz is difficult it’s hard to go mainstream. But yeah, it has been very rewarding.
Have you got any hints and tips for people who want to do this?
Just keep on trying. If you love it and you can keep on doing it then do it. We just want this so much that we have just kept on pushing and pushing.
As far as the UK comic book industry goes, as a fan of comics, how would you say it is growing now in comparison to over in the US?
Well I would say it’s actually pretty big. You will find that a lot of the bigger writers in America and everywhere are British like Andy Diggle, Rob Williams, Paul Cornell and of course all of the people who started with 2000AD. Of course 2000AD has been an institute for years and year now so I think that the British comic book industry gets underestimated. We’ve also got a lot of independent creators over here like Chris Lynch and ‘stu.art’ who do Monkeys with Machineguns, those guys are brilliant. People like Simon Williams who draws The Incredible Hulk and he’s done a Death’s Head story for Marvel UK this month; so, these people get the attention and keep the UK comic industry alive. It’s definitely there and it is definitely something that is growing and we’re getting more UK publishers like Com.X and Dead Star getting attention as well now, so I think it’s only going to get better. I’m cautiously optimistic.
Would you like to talk a little bit about your newest project: Life and Ninjas?
Life and Ninjas is a web comic that I’m writing and Sian Prescott (who used to edit CLIC!) is drawing. The website is due to launch this year and currently we only have a very small preview of it. It’s basically going to be two or three strips a week; two of which hare going to be ‘Life’, one is going to be ‘Ninjas’; it’s just little gags that we’re coming up with and fingers crossed that takes off as well but we’ll see.
Artwork by Gavin Mitchell.
1 Comment – Post a comment
Pasternak
Commented 63 months ago - 5th March 2011 - 19:15pm
"Stiffs is the story of a group of twenty-somethings living in South Wales who are all stuck in dead-end jobs when they find out that there are actually zombies wandering around. So they decide, in their spare time, to start hunting them... as a hobby mainly."
Okay, I'm intrigued: the first rule of zombies is that they're infectious and fond of biting people. Thus it is rather hard for them to live in secret. They're generally more interested in bringing about the apocalypse than keeping a low profile.
So how does one hunt zombies on a part-time basis? As tempting as it would be to keep the zombies' existence a secret for your own zombie-killing pleasure, it's only a matter of time before the infection spreads AND THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT CRUMBLES.
...or have I just predicted the plot of a future issue?