This is your first piece for Marvel Comics. What was it like working for the fabled "House of Ideas"

BMc: Other than to cut a few lines of text, they pretty much left me alone to get on with it, which suited me fine. The editor, Steve Wacker, suggested that I add The Vulture to the opening sequence, which worked well. They seem to like the new sparkly kooky-book style: David Bowie's Ashes to Ashes video, with all that great 'black sky' video feedback, fused with a Tim Burtonesque surrealism -- with a light sprinkling of silver-age stardust.

Marvel got a fun and unusual comic -- and I was able to get the Ditko/Dr. Strange thing out of my system. The FEVER trade collection also reprints the 60's Spider-Man Annual by Lee and Ditko that inspired my story. I wish they could have scanned it directly off the old printed pages to get the period feel. Still, artistically it's Ditko at his peak. His genius is there to be enjoyed. Sadly, I am not worthy to sharpen his pencil!

I'm glad I've had the chance to play with the magical and surreal world of Dr. Strange and do my own take on it. It's interesting that so few of the "big" writers have tackled the character. He seems such an obvious choice if you're into magick and psychedelia. I read a lot on magick when I was a teenager and I've revisited Crowley, Spare, etc in preparing FEVER. But my interest in that side of it has waned. All those black-clad 'occulture' hipsters seem very quaint to me now. People can get attached to certain phases of life and not make it on to true freedom.

I definitely pitched the series to a younger reader. If I think back on myself as a teenager, I would have loved a book like FEVER. A mixture of the silly, surreal, mystical, subversive and psychedelic. I'm also very happy that the pages will now be in the right order. It will make quite a bit of difference.

You've written before about the Australian Aboriginal influence on your work, but that was in Swimini Purpose, so I think it's fair to say not that many people will have seen it. Can you tell us about the Aboriginal influences on Fever?

BMc: The Australian Aborigines are the oldest continuous culture on the planet, with some anthropologists estimating a possible span of 60,000 to 100,000 years. Geographically isolated down under, they had developed a sophisticated system of sorcery in which I became interested. I spent about 5 years living in Australia, working on that new Mad Max film. It's a very big and strange place -- vast deserts of bright orange soil. It's like living on a British outpost on Mars.

The back story of Ms Ningirril, an Aboriginal Sorceress, is that she was banished from her tribe for borrowing the Elders' power-objects, things like their Gadachi shoes. So she's hiding out in the dimensions, on the run from some pretty dangerous Aborigine 'Clever Men' who are hunting her down. I'd like to explore this storyline further, in a future series.

Some Aborigine art can be stunningly beautiful. It's some of the best painting going on in the world right now. I love the story of Papunya Tula, of how the new indigenous art was kick-started nearly forty years ago by Geoffrey Bardon, a white schoolteacher stationed in a remote desert outpost who bought the local Aborigines paint and canvas. That would make a pretty interesting graphic novel.

The three parts of the comic each have a different feel to them: The first part of FEVER is in pop-video, rather than filmic style, and sets everything up. The second episode pushes the ethereal psychedelia on the visuals of the dimensions. And the third one brings everything back to earth, with Spider-Man finally punching somebody -- because after all, it's a Marvel comic and dramatically, something proactively physical needed to happen at that point. I tell the story in a fairly loose and surprising way, so that your reading experience stays unpredictable, but fun.

A FEVER movie should be co-directed by Tim Burton and David Lynch and go all-out for the Ditko look.

is also a beguiling enchantment -- a mind-story that is lived inside of for all our lives. What is known as 'self-realization' or 'enlightenment' is the falling away of the core belief in a separate 'personal self' that is running 'your' life. The life force is powering everything anyway -- You are not the doer. The awareness that is reading this right now is actually the true center. The fuzzy cognizing space that you are looking out of gives rise to the egoic thought-construct called 'me' and its subsequent story.

That weird "Harra-Harrah" refrain throughout the series -- where did it come from?

BMc: With the Harrah-Harrah chant, I wanted to create a hypnotic sound in your mind (right where the 'comic book experience' takes place) that would start to subconsciously disturb you... A bit like "those damn drums" in old jungle movies, when the heavily perspiring hero starts to lose his mind to the incessant throbbing of the tom-toms. I like how sound effects can create a "noise level" in your imagination. You can 'hear' them in your mind. The Harrah-Harrah's were purposely over-repeated to drive you crazy, so you got to feel directly what Spider-Man is going through in his fever-dream... Harrah Harrah. Harrah Harrah. Harrah Harrah. I've never really heard comic creators talk much about the imaginative "sound" of comics. Will Eisner used 'visual sound' really well. I think he and Krigstein were terrific.

More Beatles influences in this too - Strange's pedalo is very Heinz Edelmann, and when the need for utter nonsense arrives, Strange uses a "Number 9 incantation" from The White Album's most skipped track. Any chance of a follow-up; Spider-Man: Dr.Octopus's Garden? Or Thor: Odin's Silver Hammer?

BMc: A big part of Dr. Strange for me is that it was created in the 1960s, which was when I first read it as a boy. So I wanted to evoke the particular mood of that period by referencing The Beatles' Yellow Submarine (still an amazingly brilliant animated film) for it's obvious psychedelic imagery, as well as Revolution Number 9 to capture its creepy 'occult-Manson' vibe. I recall I once had a very vivid dream in which John Lennon had not been murdered and was on stage, finally touring, singing his version of "Good Night", fully orchestrated. I woke up utterly happy to have heard it. Isn't it incredible that we can create such beauty in our dreams?I should also mention that I once met Jack Kirby in a dream. If Ditko was your weird uncle, Kirby was your Dad. He winked at me, smiling from across a room, as if to say, "You son of a gun". It was like he 'got' me... Like he understood me, one comic book artist to another. It was a powerful dream.

The 'Secret Sun' blog has some great essays on Kirby as a visionary artist, whose work has stood the test of time. I'd say the post-Marvel work looks better than ever.

buys talent. It's a brutal, toxic place and not for the faint-hearted. But somehow, good things do come out of all the craziness... Just name ten great movies! I've lived over there on and off for many years and you have a time when you're briefly 'hot' and that's when you have to go for it.

Speaking of heat, I enjoyed drawing that 'Captain America in the ice' short tale that Marvel commissioned me a while ago. I wanted to do a quieter story, using sepia and native designs without all the 'psychedelic' whiz-bang. It struck me when researching the Inuits that most of the images I was looking at were in sepia. It seemed to visually represent the past.

Those little shorts that Ditko did with Stan Lee in the late 50's are amongst his best work. I'd like Marvel to get me to edit a collection of the best of them, scanned off the actual printed comics pages, in groovy Chip Kidd style. And a companion Kirby volume too, thank you very much!

I recently returned to the UK from Los Angeles. I fear the US economy is about to crumble. The shit and the fan are about to meet quite soon. America, it seems to me, is now solely being run for the benefit of the rich, a ruling class of corporate financial criminals. The political system appears to be extremely corrupted and the country is falling apart -- The locusts have eaten all the grain. In the FEVER comic, Manhattan is portrayed as a hollowed-out Termite City. Only the facade is left standing. Inside, it's empty, there's nothing left. Spider-Man has fallen into a weak and passive state under the enchantment of the Spiders. It's only when his true center is restored (with the intervention of Dr. Strange, who is versed in the esoteric and understands the enchantment) that he overthrows The Arachnix and hurls them into The Abyss.

I was reading up on the Peasant's Revolt that happened in medieval England, in the early 1300's: Impoverished peasants rose up against the ruling class and marched on London, lynching many members of the political ruling class until the King brokered a deal with them. I think it's an interesting comparison with what may happen in America.


It's been a very productive period for you as a comicbook creator. Is this hot streak going to continue?

BMc: I hope so. I have some good creator-owned projects that I'd like to get done. Some sci-fi, a horror thing, a few kid's books and a couple of idiosyncratic graphic novels are all in various stages of readiness. A new edition of SWIMINI PURPOSE is something I'd like to get out there in a few years. It's just a matter of finding a stable publisher and a decent deal. Which is a lot harder than it sounds.

Comics are a writer's medium at the moment and all the buzz and money is generally with the writers. So if you can both write and draw them, you're better off.

The accepted paradigm that the writers are the main creators and the artists are mere illustrators of their wondrous visions doesn't sit well with me. In the world of fine art, painters are the intellectual equal of writers. In film, directors take a script and turn it into the actual movie. But in comics, all the weight is with the writer. I think it's something to do with the fact that almost all editors come from a literary background -- with the notable exceptions of Carmine Infantino in the 70's at DC and Joe Quesada these days at Marvel.


What comics are you enjoying at the moment, given that you still read them? Any new movies or TV series that grab you?

BMc: Yes, I still read a few, but not as much as I used to. I think I mentioned elsewhere the peculiar delights of Tobias Tak. But there doesn't seem to be too many new radical creators ruffling the pages of my Kooky-Book. I find that 'comics geek' bedwetter subculture very inward-looking. It doesn't interest me at all... Comics like Scott Pilgrim are not on my radar. I think that stuff has already had its day in the sun.

Recently, I watched the TV series Twin Peaks again: It really did change TV. It certainly gave rise to the X-Files and you can see its influence on more recent shows like Lost and Mad Men. David Lynch and Mark Frost touched on the deeper esoteric forces that run under the shiny surface of America. Aspects of Twin Peaks were genuinely unsettling -- The Black Lodge, the Owls in the woods, the backwards language of the little man and also Bob, the demonic killer who inhabited mirrors and carpets.

I am very aware of the "hidden in plain sight" nature of esoteric symbols... they are everywhere, when you start to look. John Carpenter's film They Live is worth viewing.

I met David Lynch a few times some years ago in LA, when he was trying to get an animated feature film off the ground. He was interested in my designs and in understanding the possibilities of cgi animation. He's definitely the real deal, a genuine artist and also very humorous. I'd quite like to do a graphic novel with him.

After viewing all that Lynchian weirdness, I thought Inception was really disappointing. The folding buildings sequence was the only thing that really stood out and that was already shown in the trailer, so the movie, sold as an adventure about dreams, offered nothing new. The Kubrick-swipe of the 'rotating room' was surprisingly dull too.


Vertigo Comics are re-releasing The Extremist by Pete Milligan and Ted McKeever soon. Is Rogan Gosh likely to follow?

BMc: I'm afraid not. All the rights to Rogan Gosh reverted back to us a few years ago. And at this point, none of the classic Milligan and McCarthy stories are in print.

Back about twenty years ago, I thought up The Extremist and it was going to be a new series from me and Pete. A kinky thriller. I had the basic idea of the title and of a woman who goes into a restroom, undresses, tapes down her breasts, puts on a black leather costume and emerges as The Extremist. But I had too many other work commitments on and I wouldn't have been able to draw it, so I just gave it to Pete who liked it, to do with as he pleased. He and Ted developed it into a much stronger concept. It's a good story and it would make a decent movie.


A real fannish question to end on: Any chances of seeing your work again in 2000AD?

BMc: Funny you should mention that, but there is a Judge Dredd short story I am working on as we speak. I haven't drawn ol' misery-guts for about twenty years... It's amazing what you forget. Al Ewing is scripting from a story I pitched. He's a great talent. I think he will go far.

To the iso-cubes.