The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log » Mike Carey

Mike Carey talks

Joe — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:01:16 +0000

Ulysses E Campbell continues to post more interesting short video interviews with a variety of comics industry folks. This time the Fantastic Forum interview is with the excellent Mike Carey, who is always a fascinating writer, be it in comics or in his engrossing series of prose novels:

Mike Carey Interview from Ulysses E Campbell on Vimeo.

The general election in comics

Joe — Mon, 10 May 2010 23:07:57 +0000

Confused by the live debates where party leaders switched from ‘I agree with…’ to ‘get real’ depending on opinion polls, policies which are never fully explained and indeed the actual outcome of the election viz a viz who will actually be the next government (currently they are trying to decide via the medium of musical chairs but can’t agree on which song to play)? Saturday’s Times had a handy comics summary of the campaign, which you can also view online as a PDF (thank to Michael Moran of the Times’ Blockbuster Buzz for the link):

(comics summary of the UK 2010 general election from and (c) The Times, art by David McLelland)

Meanwhile, several days after the Collected Will of the Great British Public was made clear (very clear; we obviously don’t trust any of them enough!) and we find ourselves still wondering who is actually going to be the next Prime Minister I asked some of our UK comics creators who they, ideally, would like to see running the country. They could chose anyone, contemporary or historical, real or fictional; perhaps unsurprisingly none of them chose an existing politician:

Mike Carey: I think I might choose the Emperor Ming the Merciless. At least you know you’ll get what it says on the label. No spin with old Ming. He’d axe the Sure Start scheme and family tax credits, increase prescription charges to a million pounds and introduce two hundred and sixty seven new capital offences. The Tories will do that, too, but they’ll fib about it.

Boo Cook: Despite his lack of Britishness (and the fact that he is sadly dead) I would vote for Jack Kirby to be in charge of not just our nation but all nations, and in fact, planets. Honest, practical, fair, gung-ho, bad-ass yet kind and humble… and very cosmic. Resurrect him now and vote with your heads and your hearts people of Earth! Yoda would make a kick ass foreign secretary.

Andi Ewington: I reckon Homer Simpson, I mean it can’t be any worse than what we have now… think about it, they’d be free Doughnuts, Duff beer, and Enforced Sleep Breaks and rules like the mandatory stopping-whatever-you-are-doing-and-watch-sports-on-TV-instead-Law. Also I’d never tire of Homer going ‘D’oh!’ during Prime Minister’s Question Time.

(Homer for Prime Muncher… I mean, Prime Minister? At least when Mum’s Net asked him important questions like what biccy do you like with your cuppa Homer could answer them… Simpsons (c) Fox)

David Lloyd: Katie Price – she’d be fully-supported. Mr Fantastic – at a stretch he can do anything. Anyone but Gordon Brown, it now hurts me to say.

Rod McKie: I’m going to pick Mister Potato Head (the real life-sized living one) because he can appeal to everyone just by swapping parts of his very expressive face. Also, he can put his mouth on his forehead, and that is always funny. No matter how bad the news he is giving, a quick shuffle of that mouth up to his forehead, and you will just laugh all the way through it. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that MPH is the man for the country.

The Unwritten – it’s all about the story, all about the fictions

Richard — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:10:59 +0000

The Unwritten Volume 1: Tommy Taylor And The Bogus Identity

by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

Vertigo / Titan Books

This reads very much like Vertigo books of old, with all the high fantasy elements you used to get with Gaiman’s Sandman. And so it should, since it reunites Carey and Gross, who previously shared 70 odd issues of the Lucifer series that I remember fondly from years ago.

With The Unwritten. I think I’ve finally found a Vertigo title I want to follow (I have a feeling Fables is another, but I missed out on that and I’m too, too far behind to catch up now). I’m hoping that Carey has a definite idea of where he’s taking this, building up his literary conspiracy theory into something huge. Because based on the first volume this is definitely something I’ll be picking up with each subsequent volume. It’s old school Vertigo, but that’s no bad thing, because it’s intriguing, packed with potential and very, very satisfying.

The story centres around Tom Taylor; famous for being his father’s greatest creation, immortalised in the hugely popular 13 book Tommy Taylor series, featuring the adventures of a boy wizard and his friends – yes, Harry Potter makes it to comics, just via a different name.

Tom’s is someone else’s life, and almost inevitably, he scrapes a a living on the minor celeb tour circuit, hawking signed photos, making appearances at the cons, with crowds all full of questions about his father, Wilson Taylor, who famously disappeared before writing the final volume in the Tommy Taylor series.

(That’s the moment it all goes badly wrong for Tom Taylor. Just one question. But it’s going to change his life. From The Unwritten Volume 1 by Carey and Gross, published DC Comics/Vertigo)

But Tom Taylor is in for the surprise of his young life when he finds out that his entire world may have been based on, if not a lie, then certainly a fiction, or maybe a series of fictions, maybe a whole library of the things.

In the middle of a con a young woman, with a name from Dickens’ “Our Mutual Friend” plants the seeds of doubt in his mind. Worse still, when the story breaks that Tom Taylor might not be Wilson Taylor’s son at all, the fans turn on him, some with anger and recrimination and others who make the claim that this merely feeds into their theory that

“Tom Taylor has no past because Tom Taylor wasn’t born in this world…. Tom Taylor is Tommy Taylor .. He’s the messiah, the word made flesh.“

And you know, there may be more than a conspiracy theory in that idea, because all through The Unwritten there’s an awful lot of words made flesh, fictions coming to life, and the idea of writers influencing reality. It’s all about the power of the written word to shape the world, the power of words, the power of the writer. So Tom Taylor finds his life falling apart, and it looks like he may really be the boy his father wrote about, made real from the pages of the books.

(From the pages of the Tommy Taylor books, villains loom large. But the real villains of The Unwritten are perhaps the men controlling the stories or maybe those contolling the writers? From The Unwritten by Carey and Gross, published DC/Vertigo)

What’s worse is that, as Tom discovers that his life may be far more complicated than simply being a washed up D list celeb, he may be the next target for a very dangerous, very powerful group of men, men who’ve had a hand in influencing the shape of the world through the words of writers they’ve manipulated and controlled through the ages, men who influenced countries, wars, society. And it’s these men and their influence on one Rudyard Kipling that ends the book, with it’s final story shifting from Tom Taylor and journeying back to turn of the century, with Kipling, Twain, and the reappearance of these mysterious, powerful men who use fictions to create fact, stories to create history.

(Back to the real world – whatever that really is. Tom Taylor finds himself at the mercy of a deranged fan. But that makeup’s far too real for a fan, and it looks like fiction and Tom Taylor’s reality are about to come crashing together. From The Unwritten by Carey and Gross, published DC/Vertigo)

The future of The Unwritten appears to be focused on Tom Taylor’s flight from these powerful men and his journey to uncover exactly who, or what he is that will take him around the world, following his fathers map of stories, stories that are such powerful things that they have manipulated reality and history in their telling.

I’ve been relatively disappointed with quite a lot of recent Vertigo comics, but The Unwritten got me from very early on. Carey carefully lays his story before us, with shifts from Tom’s life going badly wrong, extracts from WilsonTaylor’s books, cutaways to the mysterious men who may be the controllers of this real/fictional world we find ourselves in.

And all along the artwork by Peter Gross is brilliantly competant. There’s no insult in that, I merely mean that to me this is Carey’s book, a writer’s book about words. Gross’ job is to translate those words, those ideas onto the page – which he does quite wonderfully well.

I have to say I really, really enjoyed The Unwritten. Now maybe this is because it reminds me of the very first set of Vertigo titles, or maybe it’s simply because it takes an old favourite of fantasy writing – the very concept of a metafiction and reality bending to accomodate fictional characters, or maybe it’s just because it’s a really solidly written, solidly drawn piece of enjoyable comics. Any one of those works for me.

As always, the best recommendation I can give to The Unwritten is that I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on Volume 2.

Richard Bruton.

Best of the year: Mike Carey’s faves

Joe — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 14:16:22 +0000

Today’s guest for the Best of the Year has to be one of the most prolific scribes in the business right now, a writer who mixes scripting major mainstream characters like the X-Men, Hellblazer and Fantastic Four with his own highly acclaimed series like Lucifer and Unwritten and somehow has also found time to pen one of my favourite series of prose novels, the excellent supernatural Felix Castor books (published by Orbit), which I highly recommend. I’m also delighted he managed to squeeze selecting some works from 2009 into his hectic shedule as he’s contributed to all our previous Best of the Year features and it wouldn’t be the same without his picks. Ladies, gentlemen and associated cross-dimensional being, Mike Carey‘s favourites from the last twelve months:

FPI: Can you pick three comics/webcomics/graphic novels which you especially enjoyed over the last twelve months and tell us why you singled them out?

Mike: Greek Street (Vertigo). Prodigal son Peter Milligan returns to the Vertigo stable with this dark re-mix album of ancient tragedy and modern sleaze. In Soho’s Greek Street, old stories find new puppets to play themselves out. With a cast of gangsters, loners and losers, a chorus of strippers, and a flavour all its own, this is one you should definitely check out.

Three Shadows (First Second). I picked this up on a whim and absolutely loved it. Pedrosa’s background is in Disney animation, but he’s working in a somewhat darker vein here. A family live in perfect happiness in their isolated farmhouse – until three shadowy riders take an unsettling interest in their son. Part family drama, part allegorical fable: read it and weep.

Boody (Fantagraphics). This is an utterly fantastic compendium of stories written and drawn in the 1940s by Boody Rogers – humour strips with a surreal sensibility. It’s hard not to fall in love with them, especially the ones featuring Babe Boone, baseball’s female phenomenon. I actually enjoyed this book a lot more than the much-celebrated I Will Destroy All Civilized Planets, Fantagraphics’ great period reprint collection from 2008.

FPI: Can you pick three TV shows and/or movies which you especially enjoyed over the last twelve months and tell us why you singled them out?

Mike: Coraline (Laika/Focus). I love the book – in fact, I think it’s the best thing Neil Gaiman has ever written – so I came to the movie version with caution. But it satisfied on all counts, including the crucial one of being scarier for grown-ups than it is for kids. Great use of 3D, too, not to hit you in the eye with flying objects but to immerse you a little deeper in this thrilling, disquieting world.

Up (Disney/Pixar). Yeah, so I watch a lot of cartoons. What’s your point? My God, this was good. Dazzling adventure, perfectly placed emotional beats, a dogfight with real dogs… If ever there was a movie that the whole family can enjoy together, this is it. And like all Pixar movies, it’s the sole occupant of its own genre: grumpy-old-man-and-obese-boy-scout-go-to-South-America adventure stories.

The Wrestler (Fox Searchlight). You can smell the sweat and tears in this agonising portrayal of a wrestler (Mickey Rourke) growing old reluctantly and gracelessly – trying to connect with his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), almost getting inside the emotional guard of a wary lap dancer (Morisa Tomei) and finally refusing to compromise his fucked-up professional ethics in a last, disastrous grudge match. Outstanding.

FPI: How did 2009 go for you as a creator?

Mike: I’ve got a new monthly book out from Vertigo, The Unwritten, which IGN has just selected as Best new Series for 2009. Plus I’m still writing X-Men Legacy and the Torch for Marvel, and I’ve had two Castor novels out this year (Thicker Than Water and The Naming of the Beasts respectively – Joe).

FPI: What can we look forward to from you in 2010?

Mike: Next year… first Unwritten trade is out in January, I’m writing a horror book for Raw Studios and I’ve got some more Marvel projects still to be announced.

Carey and Gross on Tom Waters’ podcast

Joe — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:02:49 +0000

Mike Carey and Peter Gross discuss their highly acclaimed new series for DC, The Unwritten, on Tom Waters’ Big Words I Know By Heart podcast. Unwritten is coming out from DC at the moment in monthly form while the first collected edition, Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity, is due to be published in January and has already received plaudits from comics luminaries such as Bill Willingham and Brian K Vaughan.

(cover to Unwritten Volume 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity, written by Mike Carey, art by Peter Gross, cover by Yuko Shimizu, published DC)

On a related topic Mike’s latest prose novel with his freelance exorcist Felix Castor came out very recently from Orbit; The Naming of the Beasts. That makes five books in the series so far and I stand by my previous assertion that it’s one of the best series going at the moment. In fact I’d have to say each new installment has drawn me in deeper and deeper – the damned things are addictive! While each volume has its own main story there is a strong feeling of continuity from novel to novel (so its best to start at the beginning with Devil You Know) and the background details that have been hinting at a larger picture developing across each novel are getting stronger with each book, which just makes them even more absorbing. Highly recommended.

(The Naming of the Beasts, the fifth Felix Castor novel from Mike Carey, published Orbit)