John Reppion Interview

John Reppion & his wife. Photograph taken by Eddie Barford (Liverpool Echo).

With his wife Leah Moore (daughter of Alan Moore), John Reppion is the co-writer of the excellent comic book The Trial Of Sherlock Holmes  as well as comic book adaptations of Dracula and Alice In Wonderland, all of which have been published by Dynamite Entertainment. Visit www.moorereppion.com.

Can you give me a potted history of your writing career so far?

I started working on my first comic book series with my wife (then fiancé) in early 2003 but, because of the way the industry works – and, admittedly, because it took us a very long time to write – the first issue of the series (Wild Girl) didn't arrive in shops until November 2004. Leah had already written a couple of short stories for Tom Strong and Terrific Tales and had been asked to pitch series ideas to Wildstorm. We'd been living together a little while when she started brainstorming and it was natural for her to bounce ideas off me. Soon we were plotting the whole thing out together and when the pitch was finally done, and was accepted by Wildstorm, it had evolved into something we co-writing. Suddenly, I was a writer... or at least half of one. Since then we've co-written Albion (with Alan Moore and Shane Oakley), Raise The Dead (with Hugo Petrus), The Trial Of Sherlock Holmes (with Aaron Campbell) and loads of other bits and bobs including contributions to Tori Amos' Comic Book Tattoo, Popgun vols 1 & 2, various Accent UK (a fantastic British indie publisher) anthologies, and so on. We've also recently adapted Bram Stoker's Gothic masterpiece Dracula (with Colton Worley) and Lewis Carroll's Alice books (with Erica Awano) into comics for Dynamite Entertainment.
Co-writing comics with Leah is really what I consider to be my career – my day job – I tend to think of the other writing I do as more of a hobby. The first thing I ever had published on my own was an article about John Middleton – a 16th century giant buried near my childhood home – which was printed in Fortean Times #187, in 2004. Since then I've written articles – chiefly on folklore and weird history –  for the likes of Strange Attractor Journal, The Anomalist, Paranormal Magazine, Darklore, The End Is Nigh, Revenant Magazine, SteamPunk Magazine, etc., as well a few more pieces for Fortean Times. In 2008 my occult history/ghost spotters guidebook 800 Years Of Haunted Liverpool was published by The History Press. I've dabbled in prose fiction, contributing short stories to a few magazines and anthologies here and there too.

What advice would you giver to writers wanting to get into comics?

To be any sort of writer all you need to do is write something. There are, of course, people who are incredibly gifted, amazing, super talented writers but anyone with an imagination, or with something they want to tell other people about, and a half decent grasp of language can be a writer. Procrastination is your enemy: just get on and write something. The more you write the more you'll learn about writing; the more you'll see what you didn't like about what you did last time and you'll learn how to avoid or correct it the next.
Don't use too many words in comics. Leah and I limit ourselves to 210 words of text per comics page and try to never use more than four captions or balloons in any one panel. Obviously, that's a personal thing but I genuinely have to fight the urge to skip a huge caption or balloon when I'm reading a comic. Three or four wordy balloons in a row and I'll definitely skim read whether I mean to or not. The pictures are there to tell the story too – if you feel like you need 100 words in a caption or a balloon to explain something then you're not making the best use of the medium.
Short stories are a great way to hone your writing – six or eight or ten pages of comic is perfect. Set aside that 500 page epic graphic novel or ongoing series idea for now and concentrate on getting your pacing and story-telling right.
Get involved in the small press – it's a great way to get in contact with others in the same boat, get yourself paired up with artists and ultimately get your work published. An prospective employer would always prefer to see some work that's been drawn and lettered rather than just reading through your scripts, no matter how good they are.

It has taken “high brow” critics and publications (magazines/newspapers) a long time to accept comics as serious art form, and now they are finally giving comics serious coverage. What are your thoughts on that?

I'm not sure that's absolutely true. I think a big part of comics being taken “seriously” these days has to do with the comic book movie boom. They've become legitimate main-stream media and big – non-comics – companies are making a lot of money out of them. That means that magazines, TV shows, internet sites, and so on, tend to talk about comics more. I think for the most part they're still seen as sort of kitsch though – good, but childish, fun. Of course, you get autobiographical books like Persepolis or Palestine which do get treated more seriously like “proper” literature. Lots of literature is, of course, kitsch and trashy and over the top but no-one ever says books are silly or childish because they know it would be ludicrous to pigeon-hole a medium. Comics is a medium, not a genre – comics can be about anything at all but to most people right now comics is Iron Man– good, but childish, fun.

Do you have an agent? Is it important for a writer to have one?

Leah and I do not have an agent or an accountant or anything like that. We never seem to have any trouble finding work, in fact often we're turning stuff down. We work as much as we physically can already so I'm not sure that an agent could really do anything for us.

In terms of writing, what is your daily routine?

Right now there isn't one. My son is almost seven months old and is just beginning to get into a proper routine. Working from home means that the baby is in the office which isn't ideal. At present the routine is try to get as much work as possible done while Edward is asleep. That's really all we can do for now.

You write with your wife… Can you take me through the process of writing a single issue?

Once we've got the series broken down and know roughly what's happening in each issue we write down that issues pages in a column. We write a short description next to each one to show what happens. Then we sit and talk through each page and Leah roughs them out (my roughs are too rough for her to work from). We each take some of those roughs and we type the pages based on them. Sometimes we dialogue as we go along but more often the dialogue comes last. At each stage we check over each other’s work and change anything we don’t like until eventually we’re both happy.

What kind of research did you have to do for your Holmes (‘The Trial Of Sherlock Holmes’) comic?

Much of our foreknowledge of the stories came from listening to radio versions on BBC 7 with the wonderful Clive Merrison playing the great detective. Holmes is one of those characters that most people have some experience of, even if it's just via osmosis. Unlike, say Count Dracula, Holmes' hasn't been that heavily revised – people haven't taken so many liberties with the character (deerstalker, oversized pipe and “elementary my dear Watson” aside) that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original vision has become too badly distorted. Books like Mayhew's London, The Victorian Dictionary, and Les Klinger's Annotated Sherlock Holmes all proved invaluable, as did Mr. Klinger himself who very kindly helped us out with a few things.

You’re currently writing an adaptation of Alice In Wonderland. Have you seen the Tim Burton film yet?(What do you think of it?)

Our Complete Alice is all done and dusted now – it's an adaptation of both Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and Through The Looking-Glass. I think the hardcover collection should be coming out some time very soon. I haven't seen the Tim Burton film yet; one of the side effects of having a baby in the house has been that Leah and I haven't been to the cinema for a while. It's a shame because I get the impression that the 3D element was pretty important to the Burton film – I don't think it will be the same watching it at home.

What has been your most challenging script thus far?

It was The Trail Of Sherlock Holmes #3. We deliberately painted ourselves into a corner with the first two issues to make sure that the mystery element would work properly – we didn't want to make it too easy for the reader to guess what was going on. It was really, really, really hard but I think it did work to our advantage ultimately and made the series stronger.

Who are your literary influences?

My favourite writers are H. P. Lovecraft, M. R. James, Phillip Jose Farmer... it's not a very long list. I'm a slow reader and I tend to find I have less time to read now than I ever have. I do listen to audio-books though; they're a great way to quietly occupy yourself whilst rocking a baby to sleep in the wee hours. Books I've recently read or listened to include Heart Shaped Box, Creatures Of The Pool, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel, The Day Of The Triffids, The Strain and I'm midway through Salem's Lot at the moment. Without wanting to sound too clichéd, I genuinely think that everything you read influences you as a writer, just the same as everything you see on TV or hear on the radio does. If I wrote more prose fiction – which I would like to do – I suppose I'd have to find my voice a more and it might become clearer whose styles influenced me most. At present, and especially where writing comics is concerned, I think film is still my biggest influence. That said, it would be ridiculous to suggest that my father-in-law has not been an influence also both in terms of his work and his advice. My wife is, naturally, probably the biggest influence on my writing.

What are your favourite comics/graphic novels?

I'm a big fan of Jim Woodring and I've just got my hands on a copy of Weathercraft which is just as fantastic and mental as you'd expect. I recently picked up volumes one to three of the beautiful Hellboy library editions which I haven't yet had a chance to sit down and devour. Glancing quickly around the shelves right now, things I'd gladly pick up and read again immediately if I had the time: Grandville, Springheeled Jack, League, Girls, Strangehaven, Mouseguard... oh, and The Dark Knight and The Killing Joke. Dark Knight and Killing Joke were the books my uncle lent to me when I was ten or eleven and that was really what got me interested in comics to begin with. That and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Who are your favourite comic book writers?

In terms of what I read, I don't really tend to follow specific writers so much as finding books or series that appeal to me. I suppose I gravitate more towards writer/artists like Woodring or Mignola because they build a universe and stick to it (for the most part anyway) so you know what you're getting. Once of the weird things about comics is that good writing is kind of invisible – it should blend in seamlessly. For the most part, if you can really see that someone is writing the hell out of a book, it means they're not allowing the artist to do their bit properly. That said, as I mentioned earlier, there are still some super talented writers out there. The last book I read where I was properly blown away by the writing was Steve Moore's Hercules: The Thracian Wars.

What are your favourite TV/film comic book adaptations?

I enjoyed The Dark Knight just as much as I liked Burton's Batman when I was a kid but for the most part the Spiderman and X-Men and Iron Man [films] have passed me by. I've literally just watched Surrogates and thought that was very nicely done.

What is your personal collection of comics and books like?

I don't have a massive bagged and boarded collection of single issues or anything like that. We have maybe five shelves worth of single issues in the house and the rest is all trade paperbacks and hard-covers. There are around four Ikea Billy bookcases worth of collections and graphic novels in the house – not that much really.

What projects are you working on right now?

We've plotted a follow-up series to a horror book we wrote for Dynamite a couple of years ago and we're going to be working closely with the writer (who we're very excited about working with) and sort of overseeing the project. Sorry to be so oblique but contracts have not been signed yet. Right now we're working on a follow-up Sherlock Holmes series which is going brilliantly.

What are your future ambitions?

I'd love to write a novel or three but I'm not sure when I'm going to get the time to be honest. Right now the goal is to just keep going, keep building momentum and a fan-base and keep getting better at writing. Beyond that, a bit more money wouldn't hurt.

Interview by Neil Daniels 2010