Roots Of The Swamp Thing: Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, The Un-Men And More

Roots of the Swamp Thing: Your Portal to the Universe of Swamp Thing, The Un-Men and John Constantine: Hellblazer

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The Sandman Presents: Marquee Moon
by Peter Hogan

Putting It All in Perspective:
An Interview With the Author (Oct. 2007)

Full Moon				Interview with Peter Hogan
View the Lettered Artwork				Interview with Peter Doherty

SCRIPT PAGES:					Introductory Essay
p. 1-8	p. 9-16	p 17-24	p. 25-32	p. 33-40	p. 41-48	p. 49-56

When Peter Hogan agreed to let this site host his unpublished script for The Sandman Presents: Marquee Moon, he also offered to be interviewed for the occasion, so as to put Marquee Moon in its proper historical context. I happily agreed, of course, and the following conversation is the result:

RICH HANDLEY: How did The Sandman Presents: Marquee Moon first come about? Did you propose the concept to Neil Gaiman and Vertigo, or did they come to you? And how did it develop from there?

PETER HOGAN: Well, I'd been writing Sandman spin-off stories for a couple of years at that point, for The Dreaming. Then Neil and Alisa Kwitney, who was the editor concerned, decided that instead of rotating creative teams every few issues or so, they'd divide the writing chores on The Dreaming between Caitlin Kiernan and myself. So we did that for six months or so, and then Caitlin wanted to do this large, ongoing story, and since she'd brought her goth readership along for the ride they gave The Dreaming to her, and created The Sandman Presents umbrella for the stories that I wanted to do. The idea was to do four of those a year, most of them by me.

Love Street was the first of those, and after that...this was a long time ago, but I think what happened was that Neil wanted me to do a punk story, and Alisa wanted me to do a story about The People, so we combined the two. I think combining them might have been Alisa's idea. I remember calling Neil after I'd decided to call the story Marquee Moon, and him being very enthusiastic because it fitted so well—because of the Marquee rock club, and the wolf angle.

HANDLEY: I assume Neil Gaiman read the script since you have several notes to him throughout. What was his reaction to it, as the creator of The Sandman?

HOGAN: Neil liked it. I don't know that it was one of his favourite spin-offs particularly—or even one of mine, come to that—but he certainly championed it with Vertigo when it got taken off the schedule, and told them they ought to publish it.

HANDLEY: How involved was he in planning the storyline and approving what you'd written?

HOGAN: Officially, Neil was the 'consultant' on all the spin-off stories, and Alisa and I certainly consulted with him quite closely, though I can't speak for the other writers who worked on them. So, the story itself was mine, as was the case with all the Sandman-derived stories I wrote...but Neil and I usually talked at length before I dived in, and he was always very supportive. Sometimes he'd make a suggestion or two about a character or a plot aspect. Once in a blue moon, he'd ask me not to do something I was planning, or ask to change something I'd already done—but he always explained why, and usually suggested some other solution. I'm very glad Neil was involved in the whole process, both personally and professionally.

HANDLEY: The connection to Hellblazer is clear, given that the story features the punk days of John Constantine and Mucous Membrane. For readers not familiar with The Sandman, can you please explain how Marquee Moon ties in with that series? And how important do you consider it to have read The Sandman to follow the story of Tamara and The People?

HOGAN: Yeah, Constantine was obviously always going to be in it, partly because he was known to be a punk, and also because everybody wanted me to include him—including me. But I should point out that Constantine only gets a cameo in this one. Marquee Moon basically spins out of a Sandman story called 'The Hunt', which introduced a race of people called 'The People'—and these are shapeshifters and vampires and all kinds of other characters out of folklore, who journeyed out of Russia a century or so ago. Probably on the run from the Cossacks! Anyway, 'The Hunt' focuses on a young girl and her grandfather, and Tamara in Marquee Moon is the missing generation in between—i.e., the young girl's mother. But all you really need to know about them upfront is that the ones we're dealing with are shapeshifters who can take a wolf form at will, rather than being compelled to by the rays of the full moon.

HANDLEY: Both Love Street and Marquee Moon focus, at least in part, on the younger days of John Constantine. Were/are you a regular Swamp Thing/Hellblazer reader, and are you well-versed in Constantine's history? What, for you, is the appeal of the character that keeps you revisiting his past?

HOGAN: Sure. I was aware of Constantine from Swamp Thing onwards—and I still think his earliest appearances are the best ones. He worked best as a guest star, as a sort of hip version of The Phantom Stranger, who'd just wander on and manipulate people, thus solving whatever the problem was in a very mysterious way, then vanish again. Alan created him as a South London wide boy with occult leanings and connections, and that's how he plays best.

I can certainly understand the commercial reasons why they wanted to give him his own title, but—with all due respect to all the writers concerned—I think it was a creative mistake, because the more he's been fleshed out, the more diluted and less interesting he became. I'm as guilty of fleshing him out as anyone else, but I do feel my version sort of rings true with Alan's, whereas I don't think that's always true of some of the others. It was Jamie Delano who decided to make Constantine a Liverpudlian, and that never rang true for me.

At any rate, Alan liked Love Street, and that's one of the reasons why he invited me to go and write for ABC.

HANDLEY: Have you ever considered/been approached to write for Hellblazer?

HOGAN: Never been asked. I thought I might be after Love Street, since I felt I'd proved I had a handle on the character. If I had been, I'm sure I would have seriously considered it, and equally sure I could have come up with some interesting storylines, being a South London wide boy with occult leanings myself.

Hellblazer is a difficult one though, because it's mired so deeply in a mythology that's at least a century past its sell-by date—at least in the way it's been depicted there. I mean, the last survivor of an alien race coming to Earth is something I can buy. A psychopathic vigilante who dresses up like a bat? I can buy that too. Hell and Satan? I can't buy that at any price, nor would I want to. It doesn't even work as fiction any more, which was one of the points Neil made in Sandman: we should lock the door on Hell and throw away the key. There are plenty of other supernatural toys to play with.

Anyway, the truth is that the real heir to Swamp Thing isn't Hellblazer—it's Promethea, which made every other supernatural title on the racks look rather silly.

HANDLEY: How did editor Alisa Kwitney react to the script once you turned it in? Was the reception a positive one, given that it was ultimately never published? Were a lot of changes requested, especially given how specific and detailed you are in your directions to the editor, artist, colorist, etc.?

HOGAN: Alisa was absolutely fine with the script. I did two drafts, so as to incorporate whatever changes she and Neil wanted, but that was nothing unusual. The problems came later on. Alisa was just about to leave Vertigo as the project was coming to an end—I think it was all drawn at that stage, and it might even have been lettered as well—and everything was somewhat confused. She did like the finished thing, but she also told me Vertigo wanted a few changes made. I was never told what these might be—art changes or dialogue changes, or what. Changes were vaguely mentioned again after Alisa left, but once again I was never told what they wanted.

As to the detail in the script, I later had one person at Vertigo severely criticize me for taking that approach, which to them seemed totally unnecessary. But that's the way I learned to write, and which I mainly learned from Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman—and when it comes to storytelling, I'm pretty sure both of those gentlemen know what they're doing.

The point about putting the detail in is that it might have some good effect, even if only subconsciously, upon the way the artist approaches it. The artist remains free to disregard or query things, but at the very least it might lead to conversations that you wouldn't otherwise have had. Plus, if I didn't put the detail in, I wouldn't feel I'd done my job properly. With this one, there was all the historical research to contend with as well, and I felt very strongly that that aspect really needed to be accurate.

HANDLEY: How did you manage to get The Clash involved, and what would have been the extent of their involvement, besides appearing in the story? Would they have helped promote it? And did you ever get any feedback from the band about the script?

HOGAN: I wanted to set the story in winter, because then you got to have things like wolf-tracks in the snow. It seemed to make a bit of dramatic sense to kick it off on New Year's Eve 1976/1977, and since the Clash actually played a gig that night I thought it would be fun to use them if I could. So, I approached them and asked for their permission. Mick and Paul agreed immediately, but Joe took a bit of persuading, because of the title. He was still carrying this decades-long hatred for the Marquee club in his heart, because they'd rejected the Clash very early on. Anyway, somewhere in my files I've still got this series of hand-scrawled faxes which were basically Joe saying no, then me talking him into it. Do it for the kids, Joe! And in the end he agreed. I doubt very much if the band would have done anything else to promote the story, but their appearance would probably have got us some press coverage.

HANDLEY: So Peter Doherty actually finished illustrating Marquee Moon?

HOGAN: Pete completely finished it, and it's all lettered as well. Alisa wanted John Bolton to do the cover, but I don't know if he was ever actually approached.

HANDLEY: The preface to the script offers a detailed and insightful look at punk's rise and fall, and musical history references abound throughout the entire story. Clearly, this is a subject of great interest for you. How autobiographical is Marquee Moon in comparison to your own youth (that is, were you part of the punk scene once you realized this was more than just kids in costumes)?

HOGAN: Not as autobiographical as Love Street…but yes, it's there. I was a little old to be an active participant in punk—I think I'm a year older than John Lydon—but I was certainly an avid consumer. Bought lots of records, went to lots of gigs. I did eventually encounter a lot of punk's movers and shakers—John Lydon, Strummer and Jones, the Ramones, all kinds of other interesting people—but that was a few years later on, when I was a journalist or working in the music business.

HANDLEY: What did you do in the music business?

HOGAN: I worked for Pete Townshend for four years, editing books on rock music for his publishing company. Then I was a record company press officer for a year or so. Worked with the Smiths early on in their career, did a short UK tour with R.E.M., then became a journalist.

HANDLEY: And three decades later, do you view the early days of punk the same way you did then?

HOGAN: Not quite. There was a lot of naïveté, a lot of sloganeering, and some of it looks truly embarrassing now. But—as I think I say somewhere in the script—it was still enormously important, and completely changed the way people did things artistically, which had a real knock-on effect on the rest of society. Punk's kind of the curtain-raiser to everything that came after, so it remains fascinating and always will. Some of it still sounds great, too.

HANDLEY: The script runs a total of 56 pages. When writing this, did you envision it as a miniseries or as a graphic novel?

HOGAN: It was going to be a one-off, complete in itself. Later, I seem to recall somebody suggesting we turn it into a two-parter, but nothing further happened.

HANDLEY: As with Jamie Delano's tenure on Hellblazer, Marquee Moon offers a great deal of commentary regarding the political and societal scene in England, both in the past and in the then-present day. Was that your intention going into it, and how do the views of London, Thatcher and so forth, as expressed by the characters, mirror or differ from your own?

HOGAN: I don't think you could write anything about punk without dealing with the political situation at the time, and the frustration that young people felt then. Of course, the irony is that when Thatcher got in, she made things ten times worse. She carried out a lot of necessary and unavoidable changes—like defanging the unions—but she did so in an incredibly brutal and heartless way. Then she went barking mad, and simply demolished a lot of really good things that used to exist in Britain. After her, it just wasn't possible for the country to radically change course, and I don't know that it ever will be.

HANDLEY: Why wasn't Marquee Moon ultimately published? Were you ever given any explanation as to why it ended up in limbo?

HOGAN: Honestly, I have absolutely no idea. They made various noises about making changes and nothing happened, and then eventually, they told me they weren't going to publish it after all. Didn't tell me why.

I'm inclined to believe the reason is very simple, and rooted in Alisa Kwitney leaving the company. This was her project, I was a writer she'd discovered; after she'd gone, the project was quietly elbowed into limbo. It's exactly the same as the way that Hollywood operates after a change of studio executives, which I've always thought was kind of stupid.

HANDLEY: What is the current status of the project—do you think it will ever see the light of day, beyond this website?

HOGAN: Whenever I talk to Neil he always mentions it, and talks about trying to persuade Vertigo to reconsider. I kind of doubt that they ever will, but Karen Berger—bless her—has told me that they have no objections to me re-writing the story in some other form, minus the Vertigo characters. Neil's suggested that I turn it into a movie, which may be possible, although I'd almost certainly have to make it a much more straightforward horror story. Right now, I just don't have the time or the energy—but if anyone in Hollywood wants to throw money at me to develop it, please feel free.

HANDLEY: Finally, do you anticipate ever returning to the world of Sandman and Hellblazer?

HOGAN: Well, Marquee Moon getting canned was pretty much the end of my relationship with Vertigo, and that was nearly ten years ago. Still, we didn't part on bad terms or anything—I was more mystified than anything else—so it's always a possibility. If they rang and asked me, I'd certainly consider it.

HANDLEY: And what else can fans look forward to from you down the line?

HOGAN: My book The Rough Guide To The Velvet Underground was published in August, and I have three more music books coming out over the next year, one of which I'm still in the middle of writing. I'll probably be doing that kind of thing for a while, and I'm also trying to write a novel, at a pace where I can see snails whizzing past me. I'd happily write more comics as well, but it kind of depends on what projects I'm offered. We'll have to see, won't we?

Read the introduction

Thanks to Peter Hogan for providing the script and artwork, Peter Doherty and Hogan for answering my interview questions, and Adrian Brown at the Voices From Beyond forum for helping make it possible. An excerpt of this script originally appeared on John McMahon's Straight to Hell site.

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