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This month, I interviewed Paul Cornell, probably best known for working on a number of Doctor Who novels in the 90s, and more recently he's done several episodes of the new Doctor Who television resurgence, episodes of the new Robin Hood series, and Marvel's critically acclaimed miniseries, Wisdom. He's going back to the world of Pete Wisdom and Marvel's England, with the brand new series Captain Britain & MI: 13, teaming up several of the character's from Wisdom's weird happenings investigators from his miniseries, with other British characters. We took up a few minutes of his time, and got him to ask a few questions about himself, and the book.
Jason:
What are some of your influences?
Paul Cornell:
The great Doctor Who writer of the last century, Terrance Dicks.
Increasingly as I get older, my Dad. In terms of simplicity and
efficiency, Kim Stanley Robinson. The original Outer Limits. Stan
Lee. R.F. Delderfield.
Jason:
You've worked in television, novels, and comics. Do you find any medium
particularly harder or easier than the others?
Paul Cornell:
Prose is the easiest of all, because you haven't got the limits of
time, budget, page space, so you have to make your own limits.
Jason:
How did you get started working on comics?
Paul Cornell:
I wrote several for the Doctor Who Magazine back in the day. An
editor called John Freeman indulged my desire to write them, and
tutored me into it, then to bigger and bigger projects. I'm one of
the few British writers in American comics never to have written for
2000AD. (Though I have for the Judge Dredd Megazine.)
Jason:
You adapted your Doctor Who novel, "Human Nature" for the third series of
the new show. Was it hard to reshape the story for tv, and did you lose any
ideas from the novel you wish you could have brought to the screen?
Paul Cornell:
Not really. The character of Alexander in the book has been served by
several other stories now, and the suffragette is really there as a red
herring. We were going to turn the school to glass for a while.
Jason:
Any desire to adapt other stories for the show, or bring some of your
characters to television?
Paul Cornell:
Yes, there's a couple of things I'd still like to do in that area.
Obviously, I'm not going to mention exactly what.
Jason:
What led to you getting the job writing Captain Britain and MI:13?
Paul Cornell:
My editor at Marvel, Naughty Nick Lowe, had always wanted someone to
do an MI-13 book, and his first try at it was to ask me to do the
miniseries Wisdom. So we're continuing along that path. Mark Millar
had originally got in touch after my Who episodes had screened, asking
if I wanted to work for Marvel.
Jason:
What will the new comic be about, who is in it, and what sort of stories
can we expect to come?
Paul Cornell:
It's superheroes against the sort of thing MI-13 deals with:
supernatural or alien threats, in an intelligence context. Basically,
an officially recognised super team that doesn't have to do press.
Jason:
In the Wisdom limited series that introduced a number of characters
you'll be using in the new book, you introduced a young version of the
character Killraven. Why did you decide to bring this character back in
such a way?
Paul Cornell:
Because Killraven (and Shang Chi, who's also in there) are two of my
favourite Marvel characters and I wanted to use them in case I didn't
get to do any more comics. You're lucky the Man Thing isn't in there,
too.
Jason:
What other characters can people expect to see show up in the pages of
Captain Britain?
Paul Cornell:
Tink, from Wisdom, is in issue two. Captain Midlands will show up.
Alistaire Stuart from Excalibur is on hand. We've got quite a few
British Marvel characters handy, ready to pop up at any time,
including a new regular, starting in issue five, who people don't
often realise is British.
Jason:
The book is kicking off in the midst of Marvel's big crossover, Secret
Invasion. What's it like trying to organise your book with the larger
picture of the Marvel Universe?
Paul Cornell:
It was easy, really, in that we just start in the middle of Britain
invaded by Skrulls. New readers can start here. It's a modern
crossover where no prior knowledge of what's going on in other titles
is required. I'm very pleased with the attention it's gotten us.
Jason:
What's the most satisfying thing about writing?
Paul Cornell:
The best thing about writing Cap is that I get to work with a small
team, basically me, Nick and Leonard Kirk, the artist, and we can sort
almost anything between us. It's one of the joys of my job to get new
Leonard pages in my inbox. He really is producing the most startling,
powerful work.
Jason:
And finally, aside from Captain Britain and MI:13, anything else coming from you in the future?
Paul Cornell:
Many TV things, none of which I can mention, a Radio 4 adaptation of
Iain Banks' 'The State of the Art', approved by the man himself and on
air early next year. A new novel. A Fantastic Four miniseries, True
Story, starting this summer, in which the FF head into fiction itself
to save the world.
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