When I approach the Dark Horse booth near the entrance of the New York Comic Con showroom floor, David Lloyd appears deeply engaged with someone standing on the other side of the signing counter. His eyes flit from the fellow occasionally, only to put the finishing touches on a large sketch that dominates the inside cover of the book—his latest, a crime drama called Kickback, which sits next to him in a small pile on the counter.

Lloyd shakes the fan's hand, warmly wishes him luck, and then moves on to the next person, who asks sheepishly for a sketch of V on the inside cover of V for Vendetta, the work that helped the artist, who paid his dues on horror books and movie adaptations, become a legendary name amongst comics readers.

Lloyd complies with a an exuberance that betrays none of the general air of exhaustion that hangs in the air the morning of the third and final day of the Con. He's only too happy to answer questions about his new book or the Wachowski adaptation of his most famous work. It's a stark contrast to the inferred antisocial nature of his occupation—one only compounded by the outward appearance of many of his peers, including (perhaps somewhat undeservedly) his Vendetta cohort, Alan Moore.

It's because of this that it's easy to forgive his holding up our interview start time for a good half hour, due to a determination to personalize the books of all who lined up to meet him. When we finally sit down at an elevated table toward the rear of the booth he reveals with a sigh a bit of the exhaustion he seems to have been holding back for the last hour and a half.

It's the last day of the Con. How are you holding up?

I shouldn't have agreed to an 11:00 signing. Far too early for me.

Were you out late last night?

Yeah, I guess that's the trouble. I was with a crowd of folks and I fully intended to get back earlier.

How long have you been doing conventions for? You've got to be fairly used to the run of things by now.

Yeah. I've been doing them for years and years now. When I started, there were no conventions at all. And then they grew out of comic dealer marts. I started doing them in England and then over here. San Diego is the one I do most of the time.



It's Sunday now, and we're all exhausted, so perhaps it's not the ideal time to reflect, but do you generally enjoy going the experience?

Yeah, I love it. Absolutely. There's nothing better than meeting the people who read your books. All artists need reassurance. It doesn't matter how good you know you are, or think you are. You really need to get reassurance.

For the most part, book publishing seems to be an industry very much removed from its audience. You're sitting in your studio cranking out work, and someone at a comic shop or Barnes & Noble is selling your book for you. But watching you interact with each fan, you're selling one book at a time. Taking the time to interact with every single person.

Yeah, that's right, and I like that a lot. I never lose touch with that individual experience with everybody. That aspect is important. And I don't just sign books—I have in the past, if it's been a real long line, and I can't do anything else, but I prefer to do a sketch—to give it a personal touch. It's something that's personally theirs, over and above the print of the book.

The new book has been out for a little while, right?

It's been out for a while, but Kickback is just really reaching the people now. I think one of the problems in the business is that so many books come out. How do they all get seen? Conventions are the ideal way to do that. Word of mouth is good, too. I always say to people, "if you like this, tell all of your friends about it." I would like it to be in more stores, too. I was speaking to retailers here, and some of them said that it was on special order. They don't actually have it at their store. If people hear about it, they can order it, but the store should actually have books like that. Especially books that have a reason to be there

More stores have [V for] Vendetta, so all they have to do is get copies of Kickback, put it next to Vendetta, and it will walk out the store. That's exactly what happens. Retailers have told me that when they do that, it goes. It's a very simple thing, but this stuff about it being on special order—where are they going to hear about it?

It's interesting. Even the retail existence of this book seems to be something of a one-to-one interaction. Someone tells a friend, or somehow you get the book physically in front of people. It's a fairly personal process, as opposed to this idea of mass market paperback that dominates so much of the industry.

Yeah, well, I think it would be nice to see that back again. When I was telling people about Kickback, I actually ended up phoning lots of stores—more than 100. A lot of them were very surprised and happy that I had phoned them up and talked to them. "you're the David Lloyd?" and they would tell me about their store and I got a really interesting view of their problems. Store managers have a tight budget, so they have to order something they're very sure about, with all of the product that they've got, and I understood their problems. And I talked to some managers who had had very specific clientele, and they didn't do anything but Marvel and DC. There are a lot of stores like that around. And then there are a lot of stores that like the whole mix of things—very eccentric stuff. It's very interesting finding out about stuff like that. I like that one-to-one contact with store managers, as well. I do signings abroad in Europe, and connect with them.



I'm sure some of the surprise stems from the fact that it's a very solitary field. Creators aren't always the most social, personal people around.

I know, I know, and some people just don't want to do things like this convention, but I enjoy it.

There's a little bit of an ego boost involved, as well.

Yeah, it's that reassurance. It gets me out of the house, and frankly, I like traveling. You get to meet new people and go to new places, and you can make something of a vacation out of it. Why not? You get invited to some nice places. Extend it by a week, and you've got a nice vacation.

But the big problem with being an artist in this business is that it's so very time intensive, and people don't have the time to do these things. They've got tight deadlines, and it takes ages and ages to draw a page, sometimes. You need a very strong constitutution to be in this business, so I think it's time as much as personality. I envy America artists, because they can get on a plane and quickly be anywhere in the States, and there are lots of conventions in the States. We only have one major one in England. That's Bristol—though there are a few more coming up. But I really envy that, because I couldn't do more than maybe one or two American conventions a year, because it's a 12 or 16 hour plane ride, and it can be expensive too, so you can't always do it.

Do you get a lot of creative fodder from traveling and interacting with people?

Well, I did a book on Sao Paulo—illustrations and commentary. Kind of a travel book. And when I was there, I saw a building that gave me an idea for a story, which I'll not go into, right now. But of course you see things like that, but stories are everywhere—it doesn't matter where you live. But I do enjoy people watching. I like nothing better than sitting in the sun with a drink and just watching people, because people are fascinating.

I'll give you an example: I was sitting in a bar, and I saw a bar man and a bar girl, and there was ice on one side, and lemon on the other. The guy was going for the lemon tray and picking them up for the drinks, and the girl was picking up the ice for the drinks. She was turning in one direction, and he was turning in the other, and I thought, "oh yeah, lemon and ice." That would be a great idea for a story, those two getting together. He was bitter and she was cold [laughs].

V for Vendetta co-creator David Lloyd

By Daniel Robert Epstein

Originally from SuicideGirls.com
It's come full circle for illustrator David Lloyd. Back when he and Alan Moore first created V for Vendetta in 1981 they couldn't have expected that 25 years later it would become a big budget action flick. While Moore has dismissed all future film adaptations of his work, Lloyd has embraced director James McTeigue and screenwriters/producers The Wachowski brothers. Lloyd has been traveling with the film and the filmmakers all over the world. I got a chance to talk with Lloyd at the big time movie junket for V for Vendetta in New York City. We spoke of how the politics of V don't need to change, being treated like a megastar and his upcoming books from Dark Horse, The Territory and Kickback.

Check out the official site for V for Vendetta

Daniel Robert Epstein: Did you like the V for Vendetta movie?

David Lloyd: Yeah. The movie's great.

DRE:

I heard that you didn't even visit the set.

DL:

No. They did offer me a chance of being a V in the crowd, but it's not my scene. I think they just thought it would be fun for me to do that, but I don't know. I heard that Stan Lee appears in every movie of his.

DRE:

Nearly every one. Is that why you didn't want to do it? Now I understand.

You and Alan Moore finished the V for Vendetta comic book back in 1989. There's this great quote, "If you're not a liberal when you're 20, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative when you're 40, you have no brain." Have your politics changed since you finished the book?

DL:

No, absolutely not. I've always been a liberal and I've always had strong socialist leanings. I understand why people do vote on the conservative side of the ticket because people have a tendency to go for strong governments when really, from an idealistic point of view, it's a bad thing. People accept a government that will be strong if they think it's looking after them. They will accept all kinds of judgments.

DRE:

The governments change things slowly on the people.

DL:

Sometimes they do it slowly and sometimes they do it fast. You look at Hitler's Germany. Let's face it. Most of the German people would not have willingly supported that.

DRE:

Every week there was a new law.

DL:

That's exactly true. That seduces the population. You get in there and you say, "We're only going to send these people away." It's the whole thing of, first they came for them and then they came for me. As I said, Hitler's Germany is a classic example of people needing somebody strong. They were coming out of a terrible hyperinflation and poverty and unemployment and depression and this guy offered them a way out. Most of the German people weren't members of the Nazi Party. But they supported them.

DRE:

They supported their government the way they thought they were supposed to.

DL:

Yeah, exactly. It led them down the wrong road. That's happened throughout history. It's happened in the past and it's going to happen in the future. V is like a mythical situation. It's an allegory for what could happen. V has philosophies within it that actually warn against things like that happening.

DRE:

I know you and Alan Moore haven't spoken in a long time. When I spoke to him he said to me "If it's worth reacting to, it's worth overreacting to." I realized that informs nearly everything he does. V is certainly a reaction, not only is it an allegory but it's not 1984. The government doesn't win. V blows up everything. Were you full of piss and vinegar when you started this book?

DL:

When we started the book there was the Margaret Thatcher regime in Britain at that time. She'd only just been in power for a couple of years and she was getting her stride. Then as things progressed, we saw that she was quite ruthless. From a political point of view, we were interested in saying those things that we said in V, but we weren't actually politically active. Alan was always interested in politics in a major way. He actually believes that anarchy is a politically viable system, but I don't. I was always interested in putting forward the ideas that represented my viewpoint. I feel the same about anything I'm doing. I'm in a privileged position as an artist because if I've got something to say, I can say it. But you don't want to preach. That's terrible. But if you have a point of view and you're an artist or a writer, it's kind of crazy to not take advantage of that, especially if you can do something that's entertaining as well. I've done a number of things like that over the years.

DRE:

You are the first comic book artist I've ever spoken to at a movie junket. What's it like being in this position?

DL:

You get to stay in some really nice hotels. Also the people involved in the film were very nice. Of course it's kind of a completely different world and a rarified atmosphere to me. I just sit at the drawing board most of the time. I am used to talking to people. I love going to conventions, getting feedback and talking to people. Some artists don't. Some artists sit at their drawing board because their personality actually dictates that.. Although it's strange to be in this world, I'm really happy to be here.

DRE:

I like that they are treating you so well.

DL:

Yeah. At the end of the day, we're all makers. I didn't know how much I might think I might have in common with people like [director] James [McTeigue] then when I was invited to the preview in November, I met a lot of the cast, a lot of the crew, the sound director and some of the lighting guys. It's really interesting that we all have a lot in common. We're all craftsmen of one kind or another.

DRE:

The Wachowski wrote their first screenplay for V for Vendetta before they did The Matrix. Were you excited that the first Matrix was so good and now they were doing your movie?

DL:

I knew that they were fans when they did the first screenplay. I'm kind of sad that they were so successful with the Matrix. I figured if they hadn't been, they might have actually ended up doing the movie. But this version is great.

DRE:

I just read The Territory hardcover. It's great.

DL:

Thank you. It's a very interesting story but I'm afraid people missed it when it came out.

DRE:

What is it about?

DL:

It's about escapism and what leads people to escapism and why we need to escape and what it is that makes us want to escape. We wrapped it in this story about one person who is a mystery. When we first see this person, we don't know who he is or where he's come from and then we go on this journey with him. He's got to find something to look for to justify his own existence. The story that wrapped around these other stories was a tribute to the pop magazines of the '40s and '50s. They were one of the key escapist entertainments of that period. We did four issues and each one carried the character through this kind of surreal world of fantasy pop fiction.

DRE:

How did you and [writer] Jamie Delano first get together for The Territory?

DL:

Around '98, I wanted something to do that had the flavor of Lovecraft so I approached Dark Horse with a vague suggestion of it. Dave Land had an adaptable concept which was of a similar nature revolving around the idea of a Gatekeeper, a doorway into some other place or universe. The company then decided it was a good idea to develop the idea as some kind of intertwined set of stories.

In the middle of all this, I had suggested enlisting Jamie, who I knew well, to help with the story. Jamie brought one of his pet ideas along to the mix, the notion of a future prison system where inmates were stored and stacked for convenience sake like so many used cars, drugged and comatose to reduce management problems. As time progressed in the script and visualization process, the idea changed shape and took on different flavors.

DRE:

What keeps bringing you back to these themes?

DL:

Our society's need for escapism has always interested me. We spend more time developing means of escaping our troubles than we do solving the troubles we're trying to escape from. I'm interested in how artists and writers do this, using art as therapy. Escaping into the worlds we create. We're all victims and few of us are truly free. How we live in a world where we're all linked to each other through dependence on governing bodies like utility companies, phone companies, social security numbers, interests me. We all have a love/hate relationship with it. We can't do without the big machine around us but we wish we could. We want to be comfortably looked after but we want to be free to make our own choices. We have a desperate need for someone to tell us where to go and what to do in the big frightening world and often we end up being led to Hell like fools.

DRE:

You have another book coming out from Dark Horse this summer called Kickback, what's that about?

DL:

Kickback is a police thriller which I wrote. I'm very proud of it. I did it in two parts for France because when I wrote it, there wasn't the audience demand for crime stuff that there is now. There was just Sin City and publishers weren't interested in crime stuff and this was before 100 Bullets. It came out in France last year. It's about a corrupt policeman in a corrupt police force who changes his ways. I'm interested in why people compromise when they shouldn't. It comes back to what V's about in a sense. We've all got ideals, but given the right circumstances, we'll forget about them and put them behind us. I'm very interested in why people do that.

DRE:

Do your interests lie in doing crime stories?

DL:

Yeah, I like doing them. As long as the audience is out there for them, I'm happy to do them. But I like telling stories about anything. The thing is you don't always get the opportunity to do what you really want to do. I must say it's difficult to get your own projects underway. I'm lucky. I'm quite popular in this business and people know me. Most of the time there's somebody that wants me to do something. In a sense, you have to hope that the phone won't ring so that you've got time to do something of your own because otherwise you'll never be able to develop your own project. It's been a long time since I wrote the first draft of Kickback to when I actually got it sold because I just never had the time to sell it.

DRE:

Have you ever seen a V for Vendetta tattoo on anybody?

DL:

Oh yeah. There's a guy in England who has one. I think I've seen one somewhere else too. Somebody showed me one that they had made. They are pretty interesting. I think they'll be more now. I'd be interested to see exactly how it pans out when the movie opens because there are a lot of critics and people who aren't sure about the film. They've underestimated the effect the atmosphere of the film is going to have and the bizarre nature of it. It's not like a regular adventure story. 

Conducted for the French magazine Bahniwé at the Festival Quai des Bulles à St-Malo, October 30th 2005

Bahniwé: What made you decide to become an artist? What are your inspiration sources?

David Lloyd: Well, I always loved to draw, but the first time I realised I could make a career of it, was when I was a kid. I saw a TV show which was some kind of educational programme, with a lot of people in a studio representing different kinds of professions—and one of them was a commercial artist, a guy sitting at a big drawing table. It looked cool—a great way to make a living! So I thought, that is what I wanna do.

But the people who inspired me... I didn’t know European comics, we didn’t have access to them in England. There was Tintin, but I didn’t really like it—it was too gentle for me. So, when I was a kid, there was Steve Ditko, and two English strip artists: Ron Embleton and John Burns. Those guys are not really very well-known outside England. They were really great, and they were the two greatest influences on me, I think.

B: Are you interested in European comics now?

DL: Well , I only discovered European bande dessinée very late with things like Metal Hurlant... but I really admire the work of the creators here. You’re very lucky in France—you have a fantastic range of great creators at different levels, and a wide range of readers who are interested in a wide range of stories. That keeps the medium of strips healthy and open to artistic growth. In England, only a small section of the public buys comics regularly so our only long-running comic of relevance to fans of the medium is the science-fiction title, 2000 AD.

A lot of the creators who worked on that book are now working in the American market. DC comics recognised the quality of the folks working on that comic and came over to the UK in the mid-’80s and invited a whole crowd of them to dinner at the Savoy Hotel—one of the most exclusive hotels in England—to convince them that they should work for them. It was a succesful tactic. At the time, you’d be lucky to get a pub lunch from a British publisher. They all looked on their contributors as completely dispensible and interchangeable.

B: When did you begin to draw attention to yourself as an artist?


ABOVE & BELOW: Pages from Kickback
DL: When I was drawing Night Raven for the British division of Marvel: Marvel UK. That was really the first thing that made people notice me. There was a quality to that strip which showcased some of my particular strengths as an artist.

The editor of Marvel UK at that time was a guy called Dez Skinn, and when he left the company he created his own comic magazine called Warrior (you can still buy copies of it mail order from Dez’s trade journal Comics International). Before Dez took over at Marvel UK they only published reprinted American stuff, but Dez began to publish English artists and writers doing stories which were specifically created for Hulk Comic—a comic issued to capitalise on the appearance of the Hulk TV show in England. That’s where I drew Night Raven—he was a vigilante, a crime fighter in Prohibition America. When Dez started Warrior he wanted a character that was similar to Raven created for it, so he basically asked me to come up with something, and initially said to me, "Just write and draw it yourself." But Alan [Moore] had been recruited to Warrior and was working on an update of an old British superhero, Marvelman. I’d worked with Alan well before. He was a great writer and a great guy, and I felt the strip would be better if he scripted it.


V for VendettaThen... well... the story of how V for Vendetta developed is all in the article at the end of the collected US edition, and it’s too long a story to go into here...

B: In France, you’re mainly known for Night Raven, V for Vendetta. and now Kickback. What are your other works?

DL: Oh, I’ve got a whole page of credits, you’ll have to publish them with the interview... I jump from one thing to another. I mean, a lot of artists... when they finish one thing they go straight on to another. I don’t. There are big gaps between the things I do. If something interesting comes up, I’ll do it. Like a Hellblazer, or war stories...

But the greatest thing about Kickback for me is that it’s all mine. I like writing my own stuff, but the problem is that when editors like what you do as an artist, and see how well you illustrate various writers’ scripts, they always want you to keep doing that. It’s very difficult for an artist to get to write his own stuff because he has to make an effort to do that, and take time out from paying work he can get doing other stuff to develop his own ideas—in effect, that means ignoring calls from editors who want him to do something on someone else’s script, or hoping the phone doesn’t ring with the offer of a job.

Kickback became more than usually important for me to get off the ground a couple of years ago because just before it I’d done a couple of war stories with the great writer Garth Ennis. I did one that was set on board a destroyer and one set on a Lancaster bomber. They were good, realistic stories, and they had to be accurately drawn with the use of extensive photographic reference material. The result of the research was a good job—but the intensive effort involved in doing it removed much of the pleasure of the work. I wanted to get that pleasure of working back for myself. Kickback is set in a mythical US city—not a real place at some specific time. Franklin City is in the state of New Plymouth. It’s a fictional state but as familiar in all aspects as any other real city you’ve ever seen portrayed in a film or an album. But nothing, absolutely nothing—apart from the revolvers—is completely accurate in structure to the real objects and settings of the contemporary world around us... the cars are just regular basic cars that could be Fords or Chryslers, or whatever. It was done without piles of reference material to stop me enjoying my work and enjoying telling a story to the people I hope will enjoy reading it.

B: Your drawing style is very recognisable, very dark, it gives a very particular mood to your books, were you sometimes tempted to change your style for more commercial stories?

DL: Well I like changing styles now and again. If you see more of my work, you’ll see that. But the opportunities to change style a lot in the regular comics market aren’t plentiful—especially when editors like you to do what you’re well known for doing most of the time.

I could be more commercial and do superhero stuff, and people always tell me, "Your style is dark, you should do Batman." But, I’m not interested in Batman. I’m not interested in superhero-style stuff at all, these days—I hate the way the superhero genre has practically taken over the whole industry in the US, though I like the best of the characters in their traditional forms... I did a Captain America story in Captain America: Red, White and Blue—but I only did that because I was told it was going to be a benefit book, and, generally, I’m happy to suppress my personal preferences for charity. I also did some covers for Madrox, recently—a Marvel series about one of their X characters. This Madrox was different, though—not a guy in a spandex outfit. It was a terrific private eye story and very well done: the kind of super powers story that is believable and sophisticated and something I’d like to see more of.

B: In Kickback, you use a computer in your drawing. How do you see the evolution of your style?

DL: I don’t think my style has ever ’evolved’ in the usual sense of the term. I’ve always just chosen to use different tools or techniques according to the needs of a story.

I didn’t actually plan to use any computer effects at the beginning of Kickback, but it just occurred to me to use them while I was doing it. I know some comic purists hate them. But I don’t overuse them. It’s very important not to overuse them. I use them in very specific cases. I think they’re valuable tools. I didn’t have a computer for many years. I got my first one in 2000 and discovered it had great value to me.

What I do with Kickback is scan in my black and white art, reduce it to the size of the printed page, print it out in black and white, then use colour pencils to colour it. Then I scan that using a Photoshop filter tool—smart blur. You can turn the texture of the colour pencil work into a pure colour shade, or keep some or all of that texture depending on what you want from a page or panel. Copy and paste the black. Make tifs, put it on cd. That’s it.

B: You couldn’t do that with V for Vendetta...

DL: Well, I didn’t have a computer like I’ve got now back then, but if I had, I would have wanted to use it. But nobody in the US was using computers on comic colouring, then. The ’blueline’ system of colouring was used on V—something you’re familiar with here. It was very different. I made some rules for the colourists who did most of it—like not using strong reds. But it’s the actual printing of V that’s been a problem over a long period. That’s just starting to change, now. I’ve been fortunate recently to be able to change the colour balance on some new US and Scandinavian editions of the book. Ideally, I’d like to be able to do that in every country it’s published in. Here in France, also.

B: It being such a huge thing, how do you handle the fact that V for Vendetta overshadows your career?

DL: Well I don’t argue with it because, to be honest, if I hadn’t done V for Vendetta I wouldn’t be here talking to you. People wouldn’t know who I was. Kickback wouldn’t have happened. I don’t mind it. It doesn’t stop me doing what I want do. I’ve done various things. I did Global Frequency, Aliens, Territory, I’ve done horror stories, war stories. They’re usually thrillers of one kind or another—but that’s what I like doing anyway! But there’s nothing stopping me doing something radically different if I want to. I have the freedom to do anything I want to. But I wouldn’t use the extent of that freedom just because I have it. There’d be no point to that.

B: What are your future projects?

DL: I haven’t got the slightest idea, and I like that, you know. I finished Kickback in September. I’m gonna take three months off. I won’t do anything else until January. I might do a single issue of something. I’ve got no plans. I must say it will depend on Kickback’s sales. We need more publicity on it. But I’m very glad to have done it, and been given the opportunity to do it here, directly for the French market. I like the fact that books here are usually on the shelf for a reasonable length of time. In the USA there are hundreds of new comic books each month, and whatever you’ve spent months and months creating gets a brief moment in the spotlight then gets relegated to a pile of back issues. And you have a more accepted variety of styles here, too. Of course, there’s the traditional ’clear line’ style that much of the population is devoted to—but there’s a wide variety of other stuff, as well. Like I say—you’re lucky here.

Two pages from Kickback.

(Answers collected by Lucie, Nicole, Pierre and Stefan Radulovic. A big thanks to Lorba for her help on the transcription.)