The writer who made John Constantine come alive, however rudely, is about to return to comics in a major way. He strikes, first with a reprint of his work 20/20 VISIONS and then with a multitude of projects at unnamed publishers to appear throughout the coming months. Jamie Delano was one of the first people I contacted when I started using the internet. His writing made an impact upon me and his immediate responses to my questions made me a greater fan, and I am happy to now after 4 years to call him a friend. This interview follows a much shorter one done in 2002 and a simple web search would reveal where that interview has been posted. This interview and commentary shared by comrades of Jamie was done between February and May of 2004 via email.
((Jamie uses expressive adult language so please consider this for mature readers))
an: What are your secret origins? What were the circumstances of your early existence and what did you experience that made you Jamie?
Jamie Delano: My childhood seems pretty distant now: I grew up in 1950s/60s English suburbia, the eldest of three brothers. My father was a sales rep for a construction supply company and my mother what used to be known as a housewife. The wartime and personal insecurities of my parents (my mother in particular was afflicted by a father whose religious monomania warped and made precarious her own childhood)instilled in them a desire to provide a stable and comfortable home in which to raise their family. Neither were the type to take risks - social, economic, or political - and our lives were thus far from adventurous: holidays were regular but domestic, approved hobbies placid and introspective— fishing and reading in my own case; bird-watching and photography in those of my brothers.
Like many others of my circumstance I alleviated the endless tedium of this existence through the vicarious adventures of fiction, which in turn seeded my own fantasy double-life. For several years, between the ages of 8 and 11, a close friend and myself operated in our neighbourhood as 5th column agents of the Reich, planned (but never executed) many acts of infrastructure sabotage to lay the empire of boredom low.. Later we managed our own clandestine space exploration programme, reached the far planets before the eagle ever landed. Later still I discovered drugs and significantly enhanced my potential for adventure through exploration of my own dark and mysterious interiors.
an:You grew up and worked here and there, stole stuff from the library, got stoned, dealt with deep boredom... essentially until you found your writing niche you wandered. Did that wandering lead to you being a more hardened and wise writer?
JD: Wandering is not necessarily aimless, just an indirect method of moving from A to B, taking in sites of interest, randomly assuaging curiosity, dallying with the pleasant, abandoning the miserable with alacrity before it mires one in its clay. I think, as a general rule, writers, like teachers, should not practise their vocation until they have put in at least a decade of creative wandering.
an:How are you as a parent do you think? I mean you are a rebel in your own way,a hippie by your definition, so has it been hard to be a parent with so much need to lay out and uphold boundaries and such?
JD:If I ever described myself as a “hippie”, I assume it was intended as a mildly ironic shorthand.
These days, I am both a parent and grandparent – neither job is a walk in the park. I never saw the role as authoritarian, rather as that of facilitator and guide for those first steps taken out into the minefield of life. The only boundary for which I have ever encouraged acknowledgment is that between simple good-mannered respect for ones fellow inhabitants of the planet, and the example of crass indifference and abuse p
Questions about your craft:
an:Are writers born or is it a skill learned? I am interested because I see myself as being skilled but not altogether talented. You seem to write just out of primal talent but skilled through years of practice... true?
JD: First you have to want to do it – which I guess requires some “genetic” spark – thereafter ones skills are developed by practise, thousands of hours of keyboard angst.
an:While you write does background music play?
JD:In my subconscious, no doubt, but never from the stereo. Too easily distracted toward reverie. My writing requires total immersion in the angst and misery of task.
an: Does a cat abound on and off your lap?
JD:Our cat knows better than to inhale the toxic fug that I exist in. Never gets proximate with my emotional static unless it's starving and neglected by my wife. Which it never is.
an: Do you write as in a fever favored or touched by the muse or scientifically, with a logical and paced progression not likely to deviate from outline or starting plot?
JD: I write like a drunk traversing a nightclub of characters and possibilities of plot, lurching from keystroke to keystroke, traveling hopeful, but still grateful for arrival.
an: I ask because I am curious about the practise of your craft
JD: Me too. It's kind of a curse. Sometimes I hate doing it, but then James Joyce's words kick my ass: "Write, you bastard! What the hell else are you good for."
Captain Britain
an: How did you make certain that the Character Captain Britain under your pen and or keyboard did not become a jingoistic patriot in the same light as some critics have considered Captain America?
JD: Without wishing to appear fatuous, I just wrote him that way. As someone who has always despised patriotic jingoism (and all dogmas, religious, cultural and political), it was easy.
an: Is it possible to be a nationalist without being patriotic or vice-versa?
JD: I don’t know. The terms do not compute for me. I’m a flag-burner. Torch all the banners and insignia and discard the ideological hypocrisies they foster. My tribe is better, smarter, more humane than your tribe: I’m gonna fight you to prove it… Schoolyard shit. Grow up, world! Fuck, it’s so boring. That said, people are never happier than when they have an enemy to define them, justify their self-perception, become a focus for their fear and insecurity, so you can’t blame the average schmuck for not evolving beyond his primal instinct. I reserve the majority of my opprobrium for the cynical assholes who callously exploit that human tendency/weakness for their own political and commercial advantage. Professional patriots should be rolled up in their flags and beaten with sticks until they stop squealing.
an:Compare your run on Captain Britain to Alan Moore’s how were the two runs essentially different?
JD: Job for a critic, really. I’d guess Moore’s stories were carefully plotted for dramatic effect, with the characters acting his lines; whereas mine were hung on a rickety scaffold of happenstance and coincidence with the characters calling the shots.
HELLBLAZER
an: What story arc of yours was the best of your run ?
JD:I think The Fear Machine had the most to say (whether it said it or not is debatable);but the bisected Family Man “arc” was probably the most cohesive.
an:What writer outside of yourself has become your favorite on Hellblazer?
JD: Can’t say – all have brought something of themselves to the job (and paid some kind of blood price, I wouldn’t wonder).
an: Would you ever return to the book if the opportunity presented itself?
JD: I wouldn’t rule it out, but I doubt it.
an: Why not?
JD: That was then, this is now. All things have their time and place. Pick your own cliché.
Mike Carey (Current writer on Hellblazer and Lucifer) says:
Writing Hellblazer, I'm conscious all the time of the huge debt I owe to Jamie Delano. The character of John Constantine was created by Alan Moore in the pages of Swamp Thing. But - as has been pointed out many times - in Swamp Thing John is basically a plot device; an omniscient voice who tells the Swamp Thing what his powers really permit him to do, and places him in the starting position for a number of life-changing encounters.
It was Jamie who turned John into the flawed, haunted, sardonic, manipulative con-artist we know and love today - gave him a past, and a voice, and a compelling identity. And the most fitting tribute to what he achieved is that seventeen years later Hellblazer is still in the Vertigo line-up, and enduringly one of Vertigo's most popular books.
I feel privileged to be following in his footsteps.
WORLD WITHOUT END
an: Was World Without End an anti male diatribe of sorts waiting to be heard or an epic poem on your part that came to us in the form of comics? I think the second whilst others I know think the first.
JD: I like the sound of “epic poem” best. “Anti-male”,” misogynist”: both epithets have been applied to WWE, so I guess, whatever game I was playing, I maintained a semblance of balance.
As I remember World Without End was an (over) exuberant fantasy allegory of the culturally complex ongoing war between the sexes (fuck – how may wars can we take?) Ultimately it was meant to be a (largely tongue-in-cheek) assault on the dogmas of early-‘nineties sexual polarisation. Not wholly successful- got a bit carried away, I suspect – but judge for
yourselves by buying a cheap e-comic edition from
unbound comics
an: What was going on in your life at the time to help make the project so powerful?
JD: Let your imagination run riot.
an: Ummm well when I imagine things I think of unlimited piles of mint Jack Kirby comics sorry...
John Higgins (Color Artist, artist , writer and more for DC’s Watchmen World without End and other works from other fine publishers) says:
I was fortunate to work with Jamie on my very first comic project for DC comics after colouring the WATCHMEN. This was the fully painted WORLD WITHOUT END, six issue mini series, which won me the UKAK Best Artist of the Year Award. This I believe was due as much to Jamie’s generosity as a collaborator as to my ability as an artist, we worked very closely on this series. The opening pages of issue one are still some of my favorite comic illustration from my portfolio, and with Jamie’s poetic prose, I still get a frisson of pleasure at this strange New World opening up in front of me, all due to Jamie’s craft as a story teller.
Jamie’s period on Hellblazer, (which was published around the same time), I believe is a benchmark for the finest horror to have been published in comics. John Ridgeway’s (the artist on Jamie’s initial Hellblazer story arc) image of a man in the bath covered in flies is still a wonderfully disgusting picture of urban horror. His writing talent gives us that slightly skewed view of our world that makes you feel we have entered an alien and frightening place. It is never safe or comfortable in Jamie’s worlds, and I can never get enough of them.
ANIMAL MAN
an: Were you a vegetarian when writing this book?
JD:Lapsed, I think.
an:I loved Grant Morrison’s run on Animal Man but it was your run that made it into a book worth collecting every copy of. What was different about your take on the character than all the previous ones? What is the best thing to have happened as a result of the run?
JD: Sounds like I’m evading the question, but the truth is I never read any Animal Man (DC Comics) before or since I wrote it, so I have no idea what was different – critic’s job, again. All I can say is that I exploited the opportunity my run on the book afforded me to explore some contemporaneous preoccupations concerning the inter-relationships of organisms and their host planet. I had some fun doing that: I hope it came through to the readers.
the HORRORIST
an: Working with Lloyd made this series somewhat noir ish in regards to the style. Would you agree that that was the intent and is Lloyd a person with whom you’d like to work again?
JD: “Noir” was indeed our intent. We set out to recreate the ambiance of the pulp dime novel in comic form. I think we succeeded, largely as a result of David’s literary/artistic sensitivity and skill.
Whoops, I answered that question under the misapprehension you were referring to Night Raven-House of Cards (Marvel UK), which was the first occasion I worked with David. He brought the same sensitivity and skill to The Horrorist (DC Vertigo), although that work was less of an homage. Self-evidently I wanted to work with David again, and did so on The Territory (Dark Horse)
GHOSTDANCING
an:you are a Brit what is with your fascination with Native Americana?
JD: US culture was the one preeminently influential in the 20thC – and it’s kicked off strong in the 21st. Its earlier treatment of the people and land it conquered and displaced whilst struggling toward latent maturity gives some insight into (and warning of) of its innate voracity. A lot of people in the world feel like “injuns” now.
the TERRITORY
an:I consider this work by you to be a lost gem, most people I know who like your work missed it when it came out and with David Lloyd art it is BRILLIANT. I wonder why you think audiences might have missed the boat and is there any hope of it seeing trade paperback in the future?
JD:Glad you liked it, but I suspect that the book, as David and I delivered it, was not considered a strong commercial prospect and suffered from critical and marketing neglect. The prospect of a TPB is a slim, I fear. That ball is entirely in the publisher’s hands – give them a call and see what they say.
BAD BLOOD
an: An aged Constantine returns to find a royal “situation” and raises hell like always. Were you writing yourself here? Crusty good hearted old fart taking on the overdue crisis of the crown and corruption?
JD: Crusty and good-hearted I’ll accept under protest, but I resent the “old fart”. Didn’t you hear? Fifty is the new teenage.
Bad Blood set out to be a satire on “royal conspiracy” and the eery (but fortunately short-term) hysterical post-mortem beatification of the sadly dead, sad ex-wife of a miserable would-be king – then Constantine came on board and threw his own crazy spanner in the works.
HELL ETERNAL
an: I have heard some say that this was your moment of reveling to revel in darkness. Do you think this book was unnecessarily dark or evil and what was your take on the book at the time?
JD: I don’t recall much reveling in the writing of Hell Eternal. As for ” unnecessarily dark and evil” Take it up with God – or whichever “Big Scriptwriter in the sky” you care to hold responsible. 80% of Hell Eternal is true story, the rest “dramatic extrapolation” to fill in the gaps in the reportage and satisfy the qualms of lawyers. I was commissioned to rewrite the story for film a couple of years ago, but don’t hold your breath – the project is out of my hands now and mired in some development hell.
OUTLAW NATION
an: I am amongst those who believe this series was under promoted, lost amongst the average crap and deserving of much more credit and success than it actually won. What were the factors that played into the work not reaching a large enough audience and tell us much more, if you would about the Johnsons?
JD: Blame for the premature demise of Outlaw Nation is largely mine. I deliberately chose not to write it in "arcs" in favor of a truly on-going free-form — almost shapeless — drama of chance and improvisation. In a continuing series, I suggest, it is the protagonist’s protracted odyssey that is important. To arrive is to end the story, and that prospect should loom over vague distant horizons. I designed Outlaw Nation more as a saga, or soap, with a large theme and slowly developing and interlacing plotlines, than as a series of episodic adventures. A reckless strategy, but one embarked upon under assurance that the series would be collected from the start in six-issue volumes to accommodate "new reader access" and hopefully reach that more "mature" audience who, I suspected, were tired of reading their graphic fiction in monthly installments, packaged amongst offensive “Army Of One” US military recruitment advertising. Unfortunately this “assurance” was negated by a publishing policy Catch 22: initial sales too low to justify the trade paperbacks needed to swell the numbers to profitability. Consequently the book endured an inevitable spiraling towards entropy, and the waste of a lot of strong characters and creative energy.
Derived from a 19th Century slang term for hobos and petty thieves -- "Johnsons" were characterized by Jack Black in his 1926 autobiography as a society of "yeggs" -- outlaws and small-time crooks -- who were nonetheless honorable in their dealings with one another and always ready to help out those in trouble.
Black's concept of the Johnson Family was inspirational to William S. Burroughs, who developed his own inimitable version in "The Place Of Dead Roads." Burroughs' "Johnsons" are a society of homosexual gun-fighting youth assassins waging a ruthless war on the law-makers who persecute those engaged in "victimless" crime, and on all interfering busybodies. To Burroughs, a person is either a "Johnson" or a "shit" - and I always admired the irrational simplicity of that. But to me it's more complicated than just "good guys" and "bad guys". A Johnson would always instinctively choose to do "the right thing". He'd like to mind his own business, avoid judgment on others, never interfere unless asked for help -- but the Shits always outnumber the Johnsons: and identifying with a minority inevitably leads to withdrawal, isolationism, a siege mentality, bitterness and paranoid self-righteousness.
So the Johnsons in OUTLAW NATION are different again. Drawing, I hope respectfully, on the established tradition, my Johnsons are members of a larger-than-life, semi-immortal family of mythic outlaw anti-heroes whose experience spans three centuries of American "history". The main protagonist of the book, 100 year-old Story Johnson, MIA in Vietnam since the ‘seventies, returns to the USA at the Millennial start of the story, revisits his own 20th Century Highway 61, treads that cultural road in an attempt to understand the 21st Century America into which it leads him.
I put a lot of energy into Outlaw Nation. I miss writing it, but it’s water under the bridge, now. I may reprint as a collection in the future, but although sometimes tempted, I doubt I will resurrect the characters.
Goran Sudzuka (Artist of Outlaw Nation) says:
I've been very fortunate to work with Jamie on my first American comic. Soon after starting working on Outlaw Nation I got PC and all the correspondence went via e-mail. Jamie would send me a full script for the whole issue, I'd make rough layouts of the pages after which we'd coordinate our ideas of the way the pages should look. Then I'd drew pencils, Jamie would provide lettering script, and I'd ink lettered pages.
BATMAN
an: I just read Legends of the Dark Knight # 64 Terminus and all I can say is yo Delano belongs on Batman. So I have to say that you're a talented sonuvabitch.
JD: Thanks, but my mom says: "fuck you!"
I Had three flirtations with the fascistic Batman in my career. First was a prose story for a kid's Batman annual published under license in the UK (1983: featured The Joker, I think). Then Batman/Manbat, as it came to be called, which still sells a few from year to year - and finally the Terminus story that you mention.
PLAYS an: You have said that the two or three years out of comics has been spent writing screenplays and plays... could you tell my readers about their subject matter and if we shall ever get a chance to see them?
JD: I’ve been finding a few ways to occupy my time – more outside of comics than in. In between building an extension to my house I have completed a comic miniseries for Avatar Press (see below); an as yet unadopted original screenplay called “Dizzy” – a UK set near-future fiction of party drugs, romance and terrorist assassination in a world divided by cultural/economic war; a couple of chapters of a non-genre novel called Peace”; a zero budget DV short called “Brick on Brick” – one man’s interior reaction to the build up to war; some “experimental” computer composed “music”; and many satisfactory late-night navel-gazing sessions.
AVATAR
an:Tell us about your upcoming Avatar Press comic and when we can expect for it to come out please?
JD: “Narcopolis” is a four-part miniseries – a “science fiction” allegory set in a vast island city state whose inhabitants – coerced by “Terror”, real and imagined – sleepwalk into totalitarianism. A talented guy called Jeremy Rock is drawing it , excellently, but very slowly. I’d like to say he’ll be done sometime this year, but I can’t guarantee it.
20/20 VISIONS
an: 20/20 VISIONS is coming out from Cyberosia very soon, When 20/20 visions first came out it was at a time when fear over the y2k was on folks mind and as such many saw this work in a light of a paranoid fear of the millennium. Did the millennium falsely enhance your work, or in collected state should we expected to dig up new and more interesting tidbits?
JD: Although not published until 1998, 2020 was actually designed and written around 1994/95 and inspired by my personal preoccupations of that time: mutant superbugs - viruses both biological and digital; economic and political polarisation; the tendency for the USA - deprived of it’s traditional 20th C Soviet enemy – to focus its fear on “enemies within”; reproductive rights and their commercialization/politicization… to name a few. As for “Millennial paranoia” – shit, man, the 21st C ain’t showing us many beacons of hope so far.
I’m very happy with Cyberosia’s collection of this series – even in black and white the art stands up well, and the work was designed from the start to be read as a collection. Four self contained three-part stories comprise the saga of three-generations scattered across a disunited states of America .
Scott Brown (Publisher of Cyberosia Comics, www.cyberosia.com) says:
When I approached Jamie about reprinting some of his work, I originally had my sights set on World Without End, but Jamie suggested 2020 Visions. To say I was overjoyed would be an understatement. I remembered the book from the late 90's for two reasons: 1) It was a nasty look at the future, and the different story arcs really stuck with me, and 2) I missed the end. My local comic book store just didn't order the last two issues, and I had a hell of a time finding them later.
We all worked really hard to make this book look good, and I'm eager to get it out on the market. When all the stories are put together, 2020 Visions really does read li
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