'Superheroes aren't appealing'

British comic book writer Andy Diggle talks about his impatience as an author and why he'd never write a series for superhero Flash

The service at swanky hotels make Andy Diggle self-conscious. "They do everything for you. I can pour my own coffee, I'm a grown-up!" he complains, seated at a Bandra five-star's coffee shop. The author is in Mumbai for the British Council's LitSutra Programme, a discussion about the detective and the criminal mind. Andy has not done much crime writing. Instead, he has been involved with action adventures, although he is currently working on Rat Catcher, a Vertigo comic in which the FBI is chasing an assassin who's not quite from this world.u00a0u00a0



Will it always be comics or do you plan to write a novel some day?
I am toying with the idea of a novel. But I'm not very patient; I have the attention span of a three year-old. In a comic, time is space. It's a very tight, controlled medium. With a novel, I'd be lost in its openness.u00a0

Novelist Ian Rankin said comics were tougher to do (he wrote John Constantine in Dark Entries) because of the detailed descriptions one needs to give the artist.
Yeah, he told me that too. There isn't any industry standard. True, Alan Moore (Batman: The Killing Joke) writes infamously detailed descriptions, but not all of us do that. I write simple guidelines. You've got to trust the artist. I suppose Ian didn't get the right brief.u00a0

You've largely written comic books for Vertigo, DC, Marvel. What's it like picking up after a different writer, writing stories for an already established character?
Well, I'd rather tell my own stories, create my own characters like I did The Losers, but this is fun as well. When an author is about to leave a series, he'll put the hero in an awkward position. Then it's up to the new writer to write him out of it. Daredevil (that's what he's on contract with Marvel for), was left as the leader of the League of Assassins. Now I have him imposing martial law in New York; he's turning dark.

But you like the dark side...
Yes, I love it. I can tell dark stories with a British sensibility: a combination of action, black humour, deep mistrust of authority and satire. It's why I always loved the comic magazine 2000 AD (Andy was editor of 2000 AD for a while), how I created The Losers, and it's also why I took on the Hellblazer comics featuring John Constantine. But my dark writing scares me now. I need to let some sunlight in.

Does sunlight mean a superhero?
No, I never really saw the appeal of superheroes. They were written in the 1940s for eight year-olds. Today, they are being read by 40 year-olds. Most authors are actually fans writing about their favourite hero. Not me. I was offered a relaunch series of superhero Flash, who can fly faster than light. But I found it silly; this guy in a yellow and red suit flying around. I have nothing more to say about him, really. Right now I have this epic science fiction idea. It's very expensive and anti-religious, so America won't really take to it. But Vertigo does edgy stuff, it might work for them.