Geek Syndicate
just wouldn’t have worked because it had to do so much stuff and interact. Originally I would have liked to have made the robot. It would have been great. For the next one, if it happens, Lost Valley of the Lost with the dinosaur valley there will be made dinosaurs, even to the point that I want to take photographs of lizards and Photoshop the fins and the horns on and stuff to make it look like the proper sort of thing GS: Fantastic! So we’ve talked about the robot, tell us about the key characters in the series DB: Well the key characters... Doctor Boybrett. Well it’s awful and she’ll hate me for saying this and I haven’t actually said this to her yet, but Doris Knight who’s supposed to be a play on Doris Day, Knight and Day, did you see what I did there?! GS: Yes, very clever DB: I wouldn’t go that far! Originally she was going to be like the one from The Forgotten Lands in that she was going to have kind of a tied up shirt in a cropped top kind of thing and was going to be blonde and all this kind of stuff and then my girlfriend wore this dress and I was like “Wait! You’re this character!” which on a level she’s very happy that she’ll be immortalised in a comic, yet she doesn’t actually act like her in the comic. I think she’s probably “well cheers for that!” because the character; Boybrett? I’ve basically plundered her life for inspiration. Boybrett is her granddad’s name but it’s not actually Boy its Boyd, Boyce sorry, but this is why I call him Boybrett, because when he was a kid all the teachers would go “come here boy! Boybrett!” and he thought his name was Boy, so he wrote Boy on all his exercise books, and I thought that is such a good name! But then you think about it and I’ve put her and her granddad into this weird pseudorelationship romance thing, not there is a huge romance thing, but there’s an underlying sort of, well not a will they won’t they kind of thing but that’s just what happens in those kind of films. I haven’t told her that but I’m sure she’s figured it out. I haven’t actually shown her the first issue because I’m worried she’ll just go “WHAT?!” and it’ll be too late because it’s gone into print! The man of the fifties knew everything. You didn’t argue with a man of the fifties, they just had knowledge about everything even if it was flawed or completely useless. It was more the confidence and bravado in dispensing that knowledge. All stars revolve around the Earth and that sort of stuff. That kind of ignorance is bliss thing. That, “well I know what I’m doing because it’s the fifties and science is advanced to the point where it can go no further”, and that was what he was meant to be. I didn’t want to make him a sort of toff-esque character, some upper middle class yobbo, and transferring that into a British setting because the closest we have to that is Quatermass, which is fantastic and there was actually a point when I was first coming up with the idea that it was just Quatermass and that’s why it veered away from it, because it was just Quatermass and the Pit basically which is fantastic, but it’s a B-movie, but it’s meant to be a British take on that. I don’t want to say things like Hot Fuzz because I don’t think it’s quite like that but it’s that thing of Britishising GS: That’s a new word! DB: I write now, I can make up words! Anglophiling? Anglosaxing? That sounds like something you’d read in the Sun! But it’s having those kinds of characteristics. I just wanted him to be this, someone saying misogynistic, it’s more he’s a bit of a prick but he doesn’t mean to be GS: It’s sort of how they were then, it was the norm DB: He has testicles and he’s proud of them. Someone said, he’s a man’s man, but I don’t think he really is a man’s man; he hasn’t punched anyone in this book and he won’t because barely anyone even shoots a gun in it. What I was aiming for with him was “loveable prick”, which is what I hoped people viewed ?????????Q???????? ???????? ?????????????????$??????????$????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????%?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????$?????????Q?????????????????????????????????????q????????????????????????????t?????????????q???????t?????$?????????e?????????$??????e???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????e???????????????????????????????????????????????????e??????????????Q????e?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????$????????????????M???e???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????M???e??????????????????????e????????????????????((??((0