John Wagner is a world-renowned comic book writer with many awards to his name. Born in America, Wagner emigrated to Scotland at just 12 years of age, he would go on to create some the best-known comics of his generation. For so many, 2000 AD, Battle Picture Weekly, Eagle and Roy of the Rovers were regular pick ups for me from my local newsagents in my younger days.
Not only did he write the Shadows of the Empire comic adaptation, but he is known for other Star Wars comics such as Boba Fett and The Jabba Tapes for Dark Horse Comics.
John recently took time out of promoting his latest venture Rok the God, to talk a bit about his career and his work on Shadows of the Empire.
Jedi News – Hello there John, welcome to Jedi News! How are you?
John Wagner – vaccinated, bored, but a lot healthier than pre-pandemic. I was doing too many cons in an attempt to sell my latest graphic novel, Rok the God. Didn’t realise quite how exhausting that can be.
You were obviously a fan of comics from a young age. Born in Pennsylvania in the US but you made the move over to Greenock in Scotland aged 12. There would have been myriad of differences in societal culture, but what differences did you find in the world of comics?
I didn’t read many comics in America. Batman and Superman were the two main characters then and the few I saw I found entertaining but rather silly. This was back in the 50s when they were pretty silly. The comics I grew up on were British. The stories were told in shorter chunks, were more concentrated and much, much more diverse.
You, Alan Grant and Carlos Ezquerra became a bit of a dream team over the years whenever you collaborated together. What was so special about the relationship that you had while working with them?
Alan and I had been friends since our early days at the Scottish publisher DC Thomson, so we naturally got on well. Carlos – I helped ‘capture’ him from DC Thomson comics when Pat Mills and I were developing Battle Picture Weekly for rivals IPC. We hit it off from the beginning. I guess we (and Alan when he joined us) shared the same relaxed attitude to work. You take it seriously, of course, but that doesn’t prevent you extracting as much fun from it as you can.
You won many awards during your illustrious career, which award still means the most to you?
Ones voted on by the fans are the best. It’s the readers, after all, that we’re doing it for (and for our own pleasure too, of course). The one I remember most was the first – I think they were the revived Eagle Awards back in the late 70s. I was using a lot of pen names back then and one of my alter egos – John Howard – won best British writer. A second Wagner clone – TB Grover – came second – and poor old plain John Wagner trailed in at third.
The 25th anniversary of the release of Shadows of the Empire is now upon us. 1996 is such a long way back now, what are your memories about the initial pitch to you about the Shadows project?
It came from editor Ryder Windham. I’d written other stories for him prior to that, though my fading memory refuses to bring their names to mind, and he must have liked what I’d done.
Shadows is a collective story told through 3 mediums: video game, comic book, and novel. The 3 differing angles of the story would have to dovetail together to bring us the overriding timeline of events, how collaboratively did you have to work with Steve Perry (Novel writer) and Jon Knoles (LucasArts Game Developer) on the comic adaptation of Shadows?
No, I only had contact with Ryder. He fed me the basic elements that had to be included and I wrote around them. It’s not a way I like to work but Ryder was an excellent editor and easy to work with so it wasn’t too onerous a task.
Kilian Plunkett’s artwork for the series was amazing. How was the experience of working with him?
I met Kilian just once, in San Diego, and after that communicated only via my scripts and the editor. I’m not the world’s best collaborator. I don’t like using the phone and for the most part only rarely meet face to face. That’s why I like working with talented artists like Kilian. I can write the script and forget about it, knowing the art is going to be superb.
What can you remember from the launch of the Shadows comics?
Unfortunately, not a thing.
Which part of the Shadows experience created a lasting memory for you?
As you can probably glean, my memories strong are not.
Are you still actively working, and if so, do you have any new projects on the go at the moment?
I don’t work as hard as I used to but did try to retire and got bored, so have returned off and on to scripting Judge Dredd, as well as developing the story of the world’s first alien footballer ‘Rok of the Reds’ (with Alan Grant, and exciting art find Dan Cornwell). For the sequel, ‘Rok the God’, we even landed shirt sponsorship from go-ahead tool company Laser Tools, as well as ground sponsorship from several Kickstarter backers, which greatly added to the authenticity. It’s a fun book.
Both graphic novels are available at our website rokofthereds.com. You’ll find reviews for ‘Rok of the Reds’ on Amazon, and others for ‘Rok the God’ on the web, but please, if you buy, buy from us!
John, it has been absolute honour and pleasure to speak to you and we would like to extend a huge Jedi News thank you to you for being part of our Shadows of the Empire 25th Anniversary celebration.
May the Force continue to be with you!
You can check out John’s Kickstarter page and see his brilliant new venture, Rok the God.
The team at Jedi News would like to say a big thank you to John for taking the time to talk to us.
