From: "Dylan Horrocks & Terry Fleming" 
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 10:47:53 +1200
Subject: What Dylan's up to (ignore if you're not interested)

- -Poster: "Dylan Horrocks & Terry Fleming" 

Hi Bart

>Dylan, I'm not surprised at the volume of the list following my post. I
>figured if I tossed in a bomb it would either wake the list from its
slumber
>or rattle around doing nothing. I guess I wouldn't have been surprised
>either way, by I'm happy to see some signs of life. Also, what the hell are
>you working on for DC? I had no idea!

I'm writing the new relaunch of THE BOOKS OF MAGIC, a Vertigo title edited
by our old friend Heidi MacDonald (she's even got Jon Lewis writing a Swamp
Thing untold tale!).  So first a 5-issue miniseries (starting December, I
think) called THE NAMES OF MAGIC and then a new monthly title, called (last
I heard) HUNTER: THE AGE OF MAGIC.  So there it is: a paying gig (freeing me
to now ONLY work on comics, rather than endless freelance illo. work, which
chews up the time and the mind), and it's - believe it or not - enormously
fun (I've always wanted to do a fantasy comic - those who chatted to me at
SPX in 98 may recall me complaining that no-one wanted to publish the
fantasy epic I'd been writing for years...!).  This, I admit, won't actally
be that fantasy epic; it's something quite different and working on it the
past few months has led me down directions I hadn't expected, but it is fun.
The miniseries kind of wraps up the existing series (it's like a bridge, in
song-terms), so it's not yet 100% the direction I'll be taking it.  But the
monthly should be pretty unmistakably me: I've been bamboozling mainstream
comics press interviewers by describing it (pretty flippantly) as a cross
between Tolkien, William Gibson and Jean Baudrillard.  ;-)

Anyway, enough about that - lest you fear I'm 'lost to the dark side' (as
Heidi likes to wryly put it), I'm also hard at work on the first issue of
ATLAS, my new series from Drawn & Quarterly.  Halfway through drawing the
issue, I suddenly changed my mind about some pretty crucial details (like
the identity of the main character) and had to go back and replan the whole
damn thing and do some hefty rewriting.  But that's under control now, and
has the happy side effect of making Atlas a true sequel to Hicksville (it
was originally a pretty separate story which gradually kept creeping closer
and closer to tying itself in with Hicksville - in spite of my best efforts
to the contrary).  I hope to have that first issue finished in time to have
it published as close as I can to the debut of Names of Magic (so people
don't think I've given up doing it).  If anyone's curious about it, it
involves Emil Kopen (see ch.4 of Hicksville), Leonard Batts and - once
things really get going - an extended sojourn in Hicksville and the whole
damn history of the 20th century.  And some other stuff.  It should end up
as a series of volumes running (way) over 1000 pages and take me at least 10
years.  Sigh.

I'm also working on a graphic novel for Top Shelf (turning my story for
DIRTY STORIES 1 into a book length story) which I hope to have out next year
(fingers crossed).  And Hicksville is coming out from L'Assoc. soon in
French.  And I've just done 12 pages for Dirty Stories 2 (ask Eric Reynolds
about that...) which I'm real happy with: it's three Tijuana bibles, which
tie together into a single narrative.  Oh, and back with DC, I've been
working on a couple of things for a one-shot book Joey Cavalieri is editing,
getting 'alternative' cartoonists to play with the DC universe characters.
I've written a Supergirl & Mary Marvel story for Jessica Abel to draw and
I'm also drawing a Hawkman story written by James Kochalka (which is a
blast!).

Does that answer your question?  My apologies to all for a post which seems
entirely a kind of CV.  But I seem to remember someone else asking me about
ATLAS too, recently on the list - oh yeah, they wanted to know about the
drawing style.  Well, it's eclectic: I'm keen to use various drawing styles,
which I move between all the time.  The basic style at the moment is nothing
like the 'Western Wind' strip I did for Dark Horse Maverick 2000: that was
me redrawing (in b&w) a strip I'd done in colour in 1992 for an ill-fated
Tragedy Strikes Sampler.  Instead it's - er - influenced more by people like
Roy Crane, Harold Gray, and other strip cartoonists of that era.  Though you
probably won't be able to tell...  The other big influence at the moment is
Picasso, but I'm almost embarrassed to admit that, as it seems so obvious
and almost twee these days.  But I'm besotted with his drawings, etchings
and - dammit - paintings at the moment.

Anyway, I'll shut up now.  Back to talking about other stuff.

Dylan Horrocks