On his newly revived blog Comics, Covered, Kevin Melrose talks to writer Andi Watson about his upcoming book for DC’s Minx imprint, Clubbing:
With Clubbing, as with Paris, Buffy and a few other projects, you’re writing while someone else is illustrating. How does that collaborative process compare to working solo? Is working with an artist as fulfilling for you as doing everything yourself?
It depends on the artist. With something like Buffy, those artists are very capable but it’s not the kind of thing I get excited about. So much of that stuff lacks any kind of personality, and while it’s normal in mainstream comics to have a separate penciller and inker, I find it odd. Also, anything that’s licensed is generally robbed of any joy to work on, there’s just too much extracurricular nuttiness to deal with. With something like Paris, it was really exciting to collaborate with Simon [Gane] on the story and then see the pages come in with the beautiful art. I was a fan of Simon’s for years before we worked together; I remember seeing him prop up the bar at one of the Caption small press cons way back when I started. Ideally, with a collaboration you work with someone who does their job better than you can but also transforms it into something different, but in a good way. Maybe a scene is set differently, the characters act better, that kind of thing.
I think Simon was hoping to get away from the detail-oriented stuff he’d done before but I kept throwing the full-pagers at him because he does them so well, the research and attention to detail, the way he’ll dress a set, dress the characters and then have them interact, gush, gush, gush. So it’s fulfilling, but in a different way. It’s like Christmas every time I get pages in from someone like Simon. I can’t wait to open up all the files and see what amazing work he’s done.
It’s also kind of depressing as an artist because you know you’re not as good.
To throw in a bit of hype, SLG is releasing the Paris collection in July and I’ve written some new pages, so there’ll be a half-dozen or so new pages and Simon’s doing lots more extras like new images for chapter breaks and the like. S’gonna look great.
