Antony Johnston Sheds Light on Mysteries of Wasteland

Writer Antony Johnston takes a few minutes to discuss his new hit series, Wasteland. From Johnston and artist Chris Mitten comes a world devastated a century earlier by “the Big Wet.” The action follows Michael and Abi, along with survivors of the recently ruined village of Providence, on their journey to the city of Newbegin. Perils and tragedy follow them on their quest in the form of mutants, wild animals, and traitorous fellow travelers. Their ultimate goal is the fabled city of A-Ree-Yass-I, which some say is the source of the Big Wet itself.


CNI: The environment these characters find themselves in is hostile and unforgiving, both the physical and social environments. Tell us about the lives of people living in the world of Wasteland and the challenges they face.

AJ: Life in the world of WASTELAND is a hard struggle at the best of times. The land is a blighted quasi-desert landscape, and much of the natural world that we take for granted is gone. Fresh water is scarce, and the only kind of viable foodstuffs are those that thrive in a desert environment. Most animal life, including cattle, is either extinct or on the brink of it. The seas are poisonous.

As if that wasn't bad enough, society as we know it was destroyed by the Big Wet. Industry and technology have all but disappeared. Large-scale production of anything requires a community with a population of thousands, which is rare. Most people never leave the town in which they were born, and those that do generally do so in order to move to a city. The old cities are deadly places of disease and sickness, shunned by the population, and new cities have sprung up in their place as people try to rebuild some kind of society in a world no longer suited to human development.

In short, it's a bad time to be alive.


CNI: Your mysterious traveler, Michael, and the former “sherriff” of Providence, Abi, both have some sort of supernatural gift or talent with little memory of their past. What kind of connection is there between these two?

AJ: Well, there's definitely some kind of connection. But exactly what kind is something you'll have to wait to find out. It's one of the key questions to the whole series.


CNI: You’ve introduced the Lord Founder Marcus as the leader of Newbegin. He’s another character with a mysterious background. Is there some connection between him, Michael, and Abi?

AJ: Perhaps. Isn't it odd that they're the only characters with proper modern names?


CNI: Some comparison could be made from the “Sunner” cult in Newbegin and the early Christians. While the early Christians were oppressed by the Roman Emperors, the Sunner cult is oppressed by the Lord Founder. Was this intentional?

AJ: That exact analogy isn't intentional, but there are definitely parallels between the Sunners and oppressed people throughout history, yes. Humans all over the world have an appalling history of oppression and persecution, especially where religion is involved, and that was something I felt wouldn't just vanish from our make-up after an apocalypse. If anything, I feel it would become even more prevalent, as banding together in such a situation would be a much more important survival factor than it is in our modern world.


CNI: Assuming that Sultan’s caravan makes it to Newbegin, how long will our travelers reside there?

AJ: Who knows? Remember, most of the Providence travelers don't care about A-Ree-Yass-I, or anything beyond surviving and protecting their loved ones. The Sand-Eater attack brought that into sharp focus for them, and the Dweller massacre in #5 heightens that desire even more. Most of them simply want to enter Newbegin and start a new life. Only Abi seems interested in searching for myths.

Of course, once they get there they may decide they don't want to stay after all. But that's all in the future.


CNI: Is there an end to Wasteland that you’re driving us to or will the story go on indefinitely?

AJ: There's definitely an ending to this story, yes. I already know what that end will be, and how it will play out. But the world of WASTELAND really is a whole world, and it's possible that after we're done with the quest to find A-Ree-Yass-I there will be other stories to tell. It's too early to say.


CNI: There was a month skipped after issue 4. Do you plan to building in a break every now and then? How many issues do you anticipate releasing each year?

AJ: "Every now and then" is a very good way of putting it. The break is there to ensure Chris stays on schedule with the art so that we don't miss a ship date. Remember, he's penciling, inking and grey-toning every issue. A lot of modern comic artists can't even maintain their schedule just doing one of those jobs, so it's remarkable that Chris works as fast as he does. The main thing is that we all hate making promises we can't keep. With WASTELAND everyone involved would rather skip a month here and there in order to deliver when we say we will.

Realistically, we'll probably take two breaks per year, so ship ten issues. That's not a hard and fast rule, though, and we'll only skip one month at a time.


CNI: Who is the target audience and why should they pick up this book?

AJ: Anyone who enjoys a good adventure story. WASTELAND is equal parts sci-fi, Western, and fantasy quest. It has action, intrigue, compelling characters and a fully realised mythology all of its own.


CNI: If Wasteland were taken to a different medium, would you rather see it as a feature movie or a television series?

AJ: Honestly, I don't care. Someone could turn WASTELAND into a pop-up picture book for all the difference it makes to me. Chris and I wouldn't turn down someone's money, of course, but it wouldn't have any impact at all on how we produce the comic, or the story we're telling.


CNI: In the book your characters use new and interesting slang and idiosyncratic speech. What process do you use to create that?

AJ: With the new languages and slang I use a process I call "reverse etymology", where modern words form the basis, but then I imagine how they might be corrupted and changed over time according to usage. I'm a word nerd, and it's one of my favourite parts of writing the book. The accents and mannerisms of something like the Sand-Eaters is different, that's more a case of working out how a creature's physiology would affect the way they speak. Alan Moore used to do something similar when he wrote SWAMP THING, and it's very effective.


CNI: Tell us about your artist, Chris Mitten. How did you come to work with him?

AJ: I first read Chris' work in LAST EXIT BEFORE TOLL, a graphic novel written by Neal Shaffer, and was impressed by his restraint. It's increasingly rare to find upcoming comic artists who want to concentrate on storytelling and panel flow, and can draw real people in real situations with a convincing verisimilitude. So I kept an eye on him, and it was his subsequent work on THE TOMB - which was a vast improvement over LAST EXIT - that made me think I'd like to work with him.

When I was asked to write a QUEEN & COUNTRY: DECLASSIFIED miniseries, James Lucas Jones suggested Chris as the artist, and during the making of that series we discovered that we share a lot of common ideas about how comics work, how a page should be put together and flow, that sort of thing. Plus, his art just kept getting better and better every time I saw it, and he started to develop this great rough, gritty quality to his line. So when we started talking about an artist for WASTELAND, Chris was my first choice. When he handed in some design sketches, I knew I'd made the right choice. The first page of WASTELAND was exactly how I pictured it, and I don't say that lightly.


CNI: You’ve got some great covers by Ben Templesmith. Will he be making all of your covers?

AJ: That's the plan, yes. Obviously Ben is a very busy man, so we can't say for sure if he'll be able to stay with us for the next 5-6 years, but we'd certainly like him to. And he seems to be enjoying doing them!


CNI: In the back of each issue is an on-going story, “Walking the Dust, Stories from the New Earth” by Ankya Ofsteen. Tell us about Ankya – is she a character in the book?

AJ: Ankya is an oddity in the world of WASTELAND. She's basically the equivalent of a travel writer, and comes from a family of journalists. of course, journalists have no real place in this new world, so instead she does the next best thing - goes out and sees the world, which most people simply don't have the opportunity or courage to do, and then writes about it so she can record what she finds.

We haven't yet seen Ankya in the story, if that's what you mean. We may do, though.


CNI: How did you come to work at Oni Press, how did Wasteland come to Oni?

AJ: I've worked for Oni for four years, now, since THREE DAYS IN EUROPE (a miniseries I did with Mike Hawthorne). I came to them simply because they were one of the only places in the Anglophone industry that published the sort of books I wanted to write. I have very little interest in superheroes, and my ambitions in storytelling have always been to write my own original works. But in comics, that's a tough road to hoe, and Oni is one of the few places left where you can do that and still get paid. Luckily, they like my work.

I pitched WASTELAND to Oni after I'd done a series of original graphic novels for them, and had been discussing the prospect of doing something in a long-form serial format with James. I'd never done an ongoing series before, and Oni were keen to get back into that format after spending a few years concentrating on their OGN line. WASTELAND is a story I've wanted to write for over a decade, so it was one of the suggestions I made for such a series, and they liked it.


CNI: On your website you write that you listen to music while you write. What music is playing while you write Wasteland?

AJ: I normally just have my iTunes on shuffle, so pretty much everything from Madonna to Motorhead turns up while I'm writing at some point or another. But the music that's most *appropriate* to WASTELAND, and the stuff that actually helped inspire some of the book, is generally goth and metal stuff. Covenant, Fields of the Nephilim, Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, Testament, Machine Head... that's 'my scene', if you like, and that sort of music has been a big influence on me throughout my life.

There's an "Official Unofficial" WASTELAND soundtrack on the Big Wet website, if you want a better idea of the "ideal" soundtrack to the book.


CNI: You’ve made quite the splash with this series – how do you feel about the success of the book so far?

AJ: I'm delighted, obviously. It's been quite overwhelming, because I'm definitely on the 'indie' side of the industry, but WASTELAND has been embraced by many more mainstream fans too. It's outperformed all our expectations, which is fantastic. And we're just getting started...


CNI: With several issues selling out are there reprints of early issues available?

AJ: We decided to go with overprints of each issue, instead of reprints. Unfortunately it still wasn't enough in many cases! However, the first trade paperback collection is now solicited, and will be out in March, so anyone who's missed the series can catch up on it there. And the very next issue of the main story, #8, is out just a week or two after the trade.


CNI: You have another series debuting soon, Texas Strangers from Image comics. Can you tell us a bit about that?

AJ: TEXAS STRANGERS is as unlike WASTELAND as you can get - it's an all-ages fantasy Western adventure book for kids, following the adventures of two teenage twins as they try to return a deadly artifact to its resting place and fall in with the eponymous Texas lawmen along the way. If you like WASTELAND and have kids, you should definitely buy TEXAS STRANGERS for them!


We extend our thanks to Antony Johnston for taking the time to answer our questions.

The entire first issue of Wasteland is available for free download from www.thebigwet.com. While you’re there you can sign up for the mailing list, read character bios, and find much more information about Wasteland and the people involved with making it.

Texas Strangers debuts this March and is published by Image Comics.