Full Throttle Fiction: Q&A with Comic Writer Rob Williams

The writer of SUICIDE SQUAD, JUDGE DREDD and DOCTOR WHO talks story-building and script-mechanics, as well as managing PETROL HEAD, his new creator-owned sci-fi project landing in November from Image

Art by Pye Parr

Mr Williams! You’re a veteran comic-book writer and you’re Welsh. What else do we need to know?

‘Veteran’ makes me sound decrepit and Welsh makes me sound… well, Welsh. I can’t deny the second one at least. I’m a writer, mainly of comics but also of TV and film screenplays these days. I’ve worked for 2000AD, DC Comics, Marvel, Hellboy, Kingsman, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Indiana Jones. I’ve been about a bit, comics-wise, I can’t deny.

Your writing on Petrol Head is as tight, witty, and fast-paced as anything I’ve ever read from you, while the artwork by Pye Parr is just this maelstrom of incredible design. I honestly feel like this book is going to take a lot of readers by surprise.

You’ll do a much better job than me of pitching the actual story. So, what’s it all about?

It’s the story of a very smart girl, Lupa, in a future domed city called ‘The O-Zone.’ Lupa’s dad thinks he has a cure to the environmental disaster that had destroyed the breathable planet, and so he and Lupa go on the run from the City’s terrifying administrator, ‘The O’, who doesn’t want that cure getting out into the world.

And Lupa and her dad then run into a giant, defunct, gas-guzzling drag-racing robot called Petrol Head who has his own beef with ‘The O’. Together they go on the run, and from that point on it’s a pedal-to-the-robo-metal chase thriller with colours and art that’ll take your head off.

Art by Pye Parr

So why write Petrol Head and why now? Why not chase another high-profile gig in superhero comics instead?

Couple of reasons. Primarily because Pye Parr was sharing these amazing robot and future racing car designs online and they were just crying out for someone to build a story around them. I asked Pye if he’d be interested in a creator-owned book - that’s another big reason why now on Petrol Head. This isn’t another work-for-hire book. Pye and I own Petrol Head 100%.

We co-created the world, the characters, the story. His art was just so perfect for this material, the way he sells the speed of the chases and races, the kinetic sense of speed - not many comic artists can do that. And the characters just immediately popped when we came up with them. I’ve learnt to sort of listen to that. Sometimes story-creation can be like pulling teeth, sometimes it all just sort of sings and feels easy and fun. Petrol Head felt easy and fun.

The hallmark of a great comic book is how well the art and words work in tandem. How closely are you working with Pye on Petrol Head? Do you think you could have pulled this off as well had you been writing full script for artist you don’t know?

Art by Pye Parr

As I said, it’s very much a story and script that is tailored to his strengths and things he enjoys drawing. That said, I didn’t know exactly how good Pye’s storytelling would be and it’s been a really wonderful surprise. I tend to write quite cinematically in terms of visuals, and then switch it up to repeating panels with little character increments, etc.

This was meant to be a widescreen comic, but we’re also doing fun little character-driven nine and ten-panel pages. He’s delivering everything beautifully. Everything is clear and attractive. I’m trying to be sparse with the book in terms of panels on pages, letting it breathe etc. It’s intended for an American market moreso than the denser storytelling of, say, 2000AD with its 6-page episodes. It’s all working really well.

I’ve always felt your storytelling style can be characterised as very slick, very American. I think it’s one of the reasons why you’ve had such success on American superhero books; you’re a natural fit. Petrol Head feels just as confident, but the tone feels a lot more British.

The sarcastic humour you’ve brought to so many previous books feels very much at home among these clunky, working-class robots. Also, the inventiveness and the mile-a-minute action feels very 2000 AD. Did you deliberately want to pull back from those American worlds and play somewhere that was a little different, a bit closer to home?

In one sense - pacing-wise - it’s aimed at the American market. In terms of tone, I wanted it to be all-ages, to give us the biggest potential audience possible. It feels and looks like an animated movie, so having lots of sex and swearing just wouldn’t have felt right. And I’d written Roy of the Rovers for a few years for a Young Adult audience and found it rather freeing in that the style was clean and stripped away over-writing and self-indulgent writing tricks.

But in terms of the voice of the piece, and the characters, Petrol Head’s just me enjoying myself, really. I want to write stories with characters you care about, whether it’s a little girl or a giant drag-racing robot. And there’s usually a strong degree of humour, often silly, in my strips when my voice is at its purest. But I wanted this to be hopeful and fun. There’s some dark humour, sarcasm and cynicism in there in places, but for the most part, it’s a bright book.

Art by Pye Parr

What I always see in your writing and what I see again in Petrol Head is simplicity. Your stories always feel like a perfectly cooked dish. All the elements are there in the right amount. Everything’s balanced. You don’t overthink concepts. You don’t overwrite dialogue. You keep your premise simple and let the characters breath.

I’m guessing your grasp of all this comes about at the planning stage, when you’re approaching a story very early on and putting it all together? If so, can you take us through that?

I think one of the great writing maxims is ‘keep it simple, stupid.’ I have little scraps of paper above my desk to remind me - idiot notes. One I’m staring at now says ‘Clean hook’. ‘What it the promise of the premise?’ is another. I try not to over-complicate things. It’s really easy from a writer’s POV to fall into the ‘oh, I’m so clever, look how clever I am’ trap. But all stories really need a main character(s) you care about, they have to want something, something is stopping them getting it (the baddie, normally). Also, if you’re working with a great artist, get out of their way. Let the visuals tell the story.

Pye’s terrific as he gives me acting performances from the characters, so I don’t have to write horrible explaining dialogue. All this can sound like writing by numbers, I’m aware. But you have to put something unique of you in there too. If something’s working I’ll write a sequence or a bit of dialogue where, for good or ill, I think “well, no one else is going to write that.” Petrol Head has a satnav character called Satnav Sid who’s a cockney robot and talks in futuristic rhyming slang. That’s an odd idea. But it’s very me and not by the numbers. And it makes me laugh. You need a bit of that in there too to lift things above the basic structures.

Art by Pye Parr

And theme… I can bang on about theme at length.

Do you use plot paradigms like Save the Cat, the Hero’s Journey, Dan Harmon’s Story Circle and all that? What’s your general feeling about this sort of thing?

I’ve read all of the above. Books like the John Yorke’s Into The Woods. My opinion of all of these books is the same - there’s great stuff to learn in all of them, but you have to bring your own approach to bear too or else you’re going to fall into the ‘by-the-numbers’ writing that no one wants. It still has to have your voice. That’s what people want. I’ve found that a lot in writing spec dramas for TV and film. It is very rare that anyone buys an original TV spec, but they’ll read it, might love your voice and want to meet you to maybe hire you for something else.

Your voice is your golden ticket in making a living as a writer, so you’d better have one and not just write the same as everybody else. Going back to the ‘how to write/structure’ books. I know a lot of people are really sniffy about Snyder’s Save The Cat, but there’s some really good advice in that book. So, take that, be judicious about what is useful and what is formulaic. Just don’t follow his screenplay beatsheet that tells you exactly what should happen on what page. PG 67, the bad guys close in. Nope. That’s way too prescriptive. And dull.

Taking on a creator-owned project like Petrol Head is always risky, right? With most Image books you don’t get paid until the first book hits the stands and then you have to take time out to promote the damn thing all by yourself.

How do you find the time to write and stage-manage a personal project like this on spec in between all your paid work?

It’s difficult but this is the only way you retain 100% ownership. Every other comic publisher out there who speaks about creator-ownership will do some variation on an ownership split. The most common of which is a 50/50 split on media rights. Image allow you to own the whole thing yourself. The downside, as you say, is you have to create the book for either no money up front or a modest advance, and that advance needs to go to the artist because it takes way longer to draw and colour a comic than it does to write it.

From a writer’s POV you have to mix this in with doing a few other work-for-hire jobs so you are paying the bills. But I think it’s wise to do a few creator-owned books here and there. Work-for-hire jobs can shut their doors on you. Owning a number of your projects means you can monetize them gradually in different ways over the years, whether it’s film & TV options, merchandise, foreign sales etc. You have to keep money trickling in from various avenues to make this writing thing work.

How important is it for creators to have built a readership or a following ahead of putting together a project like Petrol Head? Can social media still help? Or do the algorithms make it a complete waste of time?

Uhhh, we’re going to find that out. I think the ideal Image scenario is you’re creating a big readership and you’re hot creator A from writing Batman or X-Men or something, and then you do your creator-owned work and bring your readership with you. Ideally, you’re also financially well off to allow you to do a creator-owned book.

Pye and I are not coming off Batman or X-Men. We’ll do a shitload of PR and do all we can to push the book, but the days of thinking you can post a few things on Twitter and that’ll do are long gone. It’s going to be retailer outreach, hiring someone to do a bit of PR for us. We’re talking about getting an animated trailer made, we have a website for merchandise ready to go.

It’s effectively running your own little small company, doing a book like this.

Art by Pye Parr

You’re a full-time freelancer, right?

I am.

How long have you been writing professionally? What did you do before?

I’ve been writing for comics around 20 years now. Before that, and during the first, probably ten years of my comics career, I was also a freelance journalist. So I’ve written professionally since leaving college, really (aside from that year on the dole where I played a lot of pool). I wrote scripts for corporate videos, wrote features for some exciting magazines like GQ, wrote for a lot of really boring magazines like The British Journal Of Optometry. I wrote horoscopes on one mag, hair tips on another. Did a lot of sub-editing shifts that I don’t remember fondly.

Describe your ideal working day. Either that or a typical one…

Minimal weeping. That’s the ideal. Minor weeping.

I sit in front of the computer. Procrastinate wildly. Take the dog for a walk or a run if I’m feeling energetic. Hit peak self-loathing, then write some stuff. I try and write around five comic pages in a day. I don’t always make that. I have done more in the past but I don’t think that’s conducive to good work.

How do you stay focused on the task in hand?

Fear of my bank balance.

I have a theory about comic book writers. Bear with me…

To take 2000 AD’s founding talent pool as an example, I think writers tend to fall on a spectrum between ‘Classicists’ and ‘Experimentalists’. John Wagner is your classic classicist. He writes economical, eminently marketable, flat-out entertaining stories. Pat Mills is an ‘Experimentalist’. His stuff is wild and woolly and not always popular, but kicks holes in the boundaries of both the genre and the medium. The great Alan Grant sat somewhere in between.

I’d put you down firmly as a ‘Classicist’ alongside writers like Andy Diggle and Garth Ennis. Would you agree with that?

Probably. I’m not your definition of an experimentalist as given above, probably. I’m not as terse as Wagner in my scripts, but the approach is probably a bit more similar to John than to a, say, Alan Moore. I think you’re right in putting Garth and Andy in a similar school.

Writers never stop learning, right? Whatever you’re Neil Gaiman or working on your first short story. So what is the most recent lesson that you’ve learned about writing?

Oh God… Ummm… I’m getting more and more into the habit of writing the final act first. That’s got to really hit home with a reader, whether it’s to sell a cliffhanger to get them coming back for more, or to complete your story. So, make sure the pacing’s right there.

If there’s cuts that need making due to space, do that in the middle act (we all hate writing the middle act, let’s be honest, it’s the least favourite child). So, plan out your final act. Make sure the pacing sings.

Art by Pye Parr

This latest issue I was determined to end with a splash image. I knew what it was, I knew it’s got to be a proper punch in the gut of the reader. So, write that - lock that down. Then write the four pages leading up to it to pace that sequence perfectly. Once that’s done, then you can go back and spend time and effort on the more cuttable bits.

Petrol Head #1 will be released by Image Comics in November and then will run monthly. Where can our readers find you online?

I’ll be posting Petrol Head material and news on Twitter at @Robwilliams71 and Instagram @RobWilliams1971

And I’ll be updating my website www.robwilliamscomics.co.uk

Pye can be found on Instagram and pyeparr.com

You can also find Petrol Head news, issues and merchandise at www.petrolheadcomic.com

Thanks for your time, Rob.

Stay weird.