Quotes from Antony Johnston

I was wrapping up my stint on 'Daredevil' co-writing with Andy Diggle during the Shadowland story, when Marvel asked if I was interested in doing something else with DD but a bit different. When they explained the purpose of the 'Season One' books, I was intrigued - I'm a big advocate of books for people new to the medium - and said yes.

A 300pp novel can easily become a 200pp novel by printing with smaller type; a 100pp screenplay can potentially become a film of between 60-140 minutes in length; a 200pp stage play could be performed in anything from 30 minutes to four hours. For all these media, the script length is agnostic to the final work.

A lot of young writers ask me about my process. They know what they want to write - but they need to know how. What's the right way? How do the professionals do it? What's the secret?

Scrivener can be a tricky beast to get your head around. When you do, a bell rings, and suddenly it all seems perfectly clear. But to reach that stage you have to understand what it can do, and try it out for yourself. Which can be daunting.

I like SF environments that seem used, and lived in, every day; not just rolled off a props truck. Look around you! Everything is scuffed, scratched, dinged, faded, even rusty.

Our main character is Klem Ristovych, the most senior detective in the MCPD. Klem's a dinosaur, the oldest cop working the Fuse, and nobody can believe she hasn't retired yet. Hell, she can hardly believe it herself. But what else is she going to do? Sit at home and watch soap operas all day? She'd throw herself out of an airlock first.

Imagine a music business where all the music press talked about, all day long, was cover bands of old rock and pop groups. Beatles cover bands, Rolling Stones cover bands, The Who cover bands, Led Zeppelin cover bands. Cover bands, cover bands, everywhere you go.

Journalists constantly ask Metallica if the success of their new album means they've had 'the call' to record a Zeppelin cover album yet.

Every Shania Twain interview ends with someone asking, 'Which Beatles album have you always wanted to cover, given the chance?'

If you do approach a comics publisher, make sure it's one that publishes the kind of book you want to make. Don't take your literary fiction to Marvel or DC; don't pitch your Spider-Man epic to Image.

Writers are a superstitious cowardly lot, and we loathe learning new computer applications to do something that, let's be honest, we could accomplish equally well with pen and paper - especially when that application is as unconventional as Scrivener.

So, yes, 'Codename Baboushka' is all-action and over-the-top, at least by my standards. But it also has a complex, multifaceted protagonist, a deep mystery at its core, and a kind of humanity that, through all the bullets and high-kicks, is really the soul of the book.

The Purple Man helps Matt understand that his powers are unique, and maybe he is cut out for the hero biz after all. And Mr. Fear challenges Daredevil's very philosophy; how does a Man Without Fear deal with a man who induces terror in everyone he meets?

My process is kind of intuitive - I think about how a character will speak according to their station and personality, occasionally making notes with guidelines for their mannerisms, and then I just sort of crack on and write it.

What works for one writer may not work for another. There are as many methods as there are writers. Were you to live to a grand old age, you would still never have enough time to try them all.

I'd say 'Codename Baboushka' has been a slightly more difficult process for me, but I think that's precisely because it's quite different to my usual fare. And even then, being difficult doesn't make me prefer it, or not, to anything else. I like a challenge.

I love Scrivener. I've been using it since early 2007, and now I can't imagine working in anything else.

The general public has been conditioned to think 'comics = superheroes' for as long as caped crusaders have been around - by critics, mass media, and Marvel and DC themselves, who have what you might call a vested interest.