Behind the scenes / Q&A with Will

What were you hoping MSCSI would achieve when you came up with the idea and what do you think of the response it's had this far? Did you expect anything like this?

What advice would you give to someone who wants to get into writing comics?

I think I said somewhere, earlier in the process, that all I wanted for MSCSI was for it to provoke discussion, make people think a little and suggest a way of doing things. It achieved that almost before it had even launched, so everything else has been a bonus.

I have been consistently surprised by how much MSCSI seems to touch people, but obviously I'm delighted. Individuals who have connected with Cat and her story have told us how much it means to them, to the extent that it's even inspired them, changed their approach to life and given them more confidence.

I also said early on that I'd very much like to see young girls drawing Cat fan art and writing their own stories, and we have already seen some great MSCSI fan art and heard from 11 year old girls who love the first issue.

My desk is a curious combination of digital and old-school. I often work between desktop computer, iPad and iPhone, sending notes to myself, but I also write a lot of things down on paper, using a pencil.


I printed out the entirety of my last book, Hunting the Dark Knight, to proofread it, and now I am using the back of every page for scrap paper, working through it steadily.

Often I find I get my best ideas when I am walking around or on a bus or train, so I frequently text myself or send myself brief shorthand messages from my phone, then paste them into a master document when I get home.

I do most of my actual writing and emailing at a desktop, and most of my more casual browsing and social media on an iPad.

What about MSCSI appeals to you most creatively?

I've been talking to you a lot about your 'voice' in various different texts. I think it pretty clearly comes through in MSCSI (the last panel on the first page, for example, if I'm remembering correctly) but what influences do you bring to the project in terms of style, characterisation and approach? Which artists do you most admire, and whose work inspires you most?

What would you most like to ask your readers/fans?

You can compare my writing in 2013 to my writing in 1978.

I have been writing pretty much all my life, and I am no longer young, so I hope I do have some sort of style of my own by now -- and I think that whatever my 'voice' is probably comes across to an extent in MSCSI, as it does in my other work.

I think the biggest single influence on MSCSI, in the early issues at least, was Neil Gaiman's 'A Game of You' storyline in Sandman. It's a very character-based, dialogue-heavy story -- I think he regards it as one of his 'female' stories -- and on a specific level, it's about a bunch of misfits living in a shared house in the 1990s. I was also a misfit living in a shared house in the 1990s, and I particularly enjoyed that story when I read it on its first publication. The fact that every character in 'A Game of You' has a secret, a dream-world, a special power or hidden history, is also pretty relevant to Dahlia Forrester's house in MSCSI.

The early-to-mid-90s Vertigo titles were some of my favourite comics, and no doubt I am very much informed and influenced by the work of Grant Morrison on Doom Patrol, Animal Man and Kid Eternity, Peter Milligan on Shade and Enigma, Gaiman on Black Orchid and, prior to that, Gaiman's Violent Cases, Moore's Watchmen, Miracleman and Swamp Thing, Morrison's Zenith.

That is the explicit feeling and aesthetic I was most trying to capture in MSCSI; superhero adventures that were woven with popular culture references -- alternative bands, cool fashions, little nods to news stories -- and had a sense of emotional resonance, a real weight and power to the characterisation and the dialogue. I am still haunted by moments in Doom Patrol -- I can still remember individual frames from Black Orchid and Enigma vividly. They are part of my personal history, like diaries, letters or favourite songs.

Those stories, for me, were very moving and inspiring, while never rubbishing or forgetting the genre they belonged to. They were still superhero stories, written out of love for costumes, continuity, icons and secret identities -- they were just very good superhero stories. Sandman is part of the DC Universe, and all the richer for it.

Here's some of my Batman book collection.