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Articles › An Interview with Gary Millidge
Gary Millidge is a long term self publisher and illustrator.
His works include Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman and the award-winning Strangehaven series.
Like a good guiness, this interview has been a while in being published, but is worth the wait.
When did you first get into comics?
I’ve always been into comics. When I was growing up my parents used to give me ones to read every night. Apart from a period in my pretentious art school days I’ve always been really into comics.
At what stage did you start doing your own ones?
Since I could hold a crayon basically! I was doing my own Batman comics, Secret Squirrel comics from as far back as I can remember.
At what point did you think “I can make some money from this!”
I’ve never really been motivated by money. I create comics because that’s what I want to do. I’m driven to do it. I enjoy writing and art and to me a comic is the perfect art-form for a single creator to express themselves. I was self publishing my own fanzines when I was at college, about ‘78, ’79, I was doing an anthology with some other guys – what was the question again!
At what point did you think you could do it full time.
Self publishing takes up a hell of a lot of time, it’s tremendously difficult to switch from the writing to the drawing to the admin side and the promotional side of it and while it has made some money, I wouldn’t say it is a full time thing for me. It’s probably the same if you are a freelancer anyway, because if you are a freelancer (and I’ve done a little bit of that as well) you are always looking for the next job, hassling for the next job. To say that anyone does comics for a living, unless they are salaried, is a bit of a misnomer.
What is your life story in brief?
Right then, born in Hackney, lived in the South East of England till I was about eleven, went to Spain with my parents for about four or five years. Came back and went to art school in Southend, and pretty much remained in the Essex area. I opened a comic shop in the mid eighties and published a comic called Food For Thought which was for Ethiopian Famine Relief, inspired by the Band Aid records back in ‘85. I’m also into lots of Rock music and Pop music and played in lots of bands and done lots of home recording stuff. Again moderately successful, but I was more motivated by the creativity of creating new music rather than the money potentials, so some of my peers in the music industry at the time went on to play in cover bands like The Legal Eagles and that kind of thing but playing in cover bands never really appealed to me. At some point I decided I was too old to Rock’n Roll, I got back into my first love which was comics.
About ’95, I set to work on Strangehaven.
How do you describe your style?
Dramatically its maybe got more in common with TV dramas than it has with traditional comic subjects. I wanted to create something that appealed to the average punter, the average browser in a book store rather than a comic store. I wanted to write it in a straightforward, easy to access way. The art is photo-realistic, very representational. I wanted to see all kinds of influences that wouldn’t be possible in things like TV drama and try and bring certain aspects of that to comics, a combination of soap opera, murder mystery, black humour and base it around a small village in Devon! A very traditional English kind of Avengers, The Prisoner type of thing. I expand on that with different characters who live in the village, an Amazonian shaman, a lady who talks to the animals and they talk back to her. I like to bring a little bit of Science Fiction into it.
Have you ever looked into getting Strangehaven animated or ever had it animated?
Animation no, because the photo-realistic artwork would probably not lend itself well to animation, probably much more to live action. There has been movie and film interest in the last six years, and it was under option in 2000 but after a year I terminated the agreement because I didn’t really like the direction it was going. There didn’t seem to be much headway and there were other offers around. There was a Hollywood agent around 2001 and constant interest from independent TV producers but to make it to film or TV, you need the studios, the ones with the money, but they are the most difficult of all.
How long does it take you to complete a page?
It’s strange, it does take me forever to actually produce a new issue, but to produce an individual page once all the references are pieces together probably takes about 12 to about 18 hours, depending on the complexity of the page. I’ve tried to modify my style in different ways, using digital stuff, using photoshop, but the page still seems to take me that length of time, which in theory means I could knock a quite a few pages out, but the amount of research that goes into the story, the amount of visual reference I do (actually whenever possible I physically go out and take my own reference photographs for it), and the fact that it is a part time thing, along with the other freelance jobs things I do, and actually earning a crust, I am producing about an issue a year for the last few years. I’m looking to step that up to two a year next year.
Where do you take your influences from?
I take them from everywhere like any creative person. The actual real inspirations for Strangehaven was a combination of things, but principally I wanted to create a kind of English rural Twin Peaks. Twin Peaks was one of my favourite series, the way it drew on the magical elements and the magical realism that was coming into TV then. I wanted to make it very British, bringing influences from The Prisoner, the Avengers. Probably the closest comics to it were Love and Rockets and maybe Alan Moore’s aborted masterpiece Big Numbers.
What other artists do you admire?
I’m a big fan of Dave McKean. I’m very fond of a lot of the French representational guys and Francois Boucq. Those guys are the ones that spring to mind. I’ve very much a comic collector and am interested in people pushing the art-form in different directions, particularly the Fantagraphics crowd like Dan Clowes, Chris Ware and Charles Burns’s black and white stuff.
If you had to make a comic out of a current celebrity’s life, who would you choose?
I actually did a comical biography of Alan Moore for the Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman that I published a couple of years ago and I’m hoping to turn that into some kind of series of life story comics. I think the next project will be either Terry Gilliam or maybe George Best. Those kind of iconic figures have influenced me in different ways.
What advice would you give to young kids who want to start creating comics?
I suppose the obvious advice is don’t. Self publishing and freelancing is incredibly difficult. Do it because you love it and be motivated by what you want to do rather than the money because if your work lacks sincerity you won’t achieve many things.
What’s you favourite band or musician?
My favourite band is an Australian band called The Church and my favourite singer/songwriter is Robin Hitchcock.
What’s you’re favourite drink?
Tea.
If you had the choice of any character from history to do a book on, who would it be?
Jesus (laughs)
Any messages to your fans?
Sorry I take so long. I am trying to get the forth book in the Strangehaven series finished in 2007 and start work on a new project.
Gary, thank-you very much.
Posted by The Brick on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 (06:14:00) (645 reads)
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