The Machine and The Rock

THE MACHINE :

You don't own me!

You don't own me!

Nobody does! 

I want my respect. 

THE ROCK :

Well, come and get it. 

Come on, Tommy. 

I loved you, man! 

You know that? 

You and me, we were supposed to be like •this•, Tommy. 

You BLEW it! You...

Q : 

Do you still hang out with your former protégé Mark Millar at all? 

A : 

No.

Q : 

Is that an estranged situation?

A : 

It’s a can of worms. I met Mark when he was 18, and I really got on with him, because he laughed at all my jokes. He has the same sense of humor as me, he’s very dark, and has that sense of humor, so we bonded. 

I used to phone him every day, and we ended up doing some work together on 2000 AD, which went well. 

It was funny stuff, we’d meet in the pub and get drunk and do this Big Dave strip, which was a comedy strip, and obviously, he was trying to get into American comics, so I got him on in Swamp Thing, and they asked me to write the book but I said, “Let’s get Mark in, let’s give him a job,” so I consulted with him on the stories, and so on through the Nineties.

When he got The Authority book, his star started to rise, and at that point, he felt he was in my shadow and he had to get out, and the way to get out was to do this fairly uncool split. 

It was quite hard, I felt, but he had to make his own way, and he was in denial that I’d been there, because I saw a lot of his work had been plotted or devised, even dialogue suggestions were done by me right up until the point of The Ultimates. 

It was seen by him as a dimunition of his position, even though it wasn’t, I was quite proud of him as a mentor.

He’s done well without me, he has his own style, he does his own stuff. It was kind of that archetype, you get caught up in that story.

 

Q : 

You came out and acknowledged this, but that was after the estrangement?

A : 

Yeah. Before that, everyone in the business knew that I was working with him, it was obvious, I was 10 years older, I was already successful. His star rose, and that history became sidelined.

Q : 

He still lives in Glasgow, is there a chance of bumping into him?

A : 

There’s a very good chance of running into him, and I hope I’m going 100 miles an hour when it happens.