Unwritten writer talks ahead of BICS

SB: The Unwritten has many familiar literary influences and refrences such as Harry Potter and Christopher Milne. How important are they in the story? strong>

MC: We chose the boy wizard thing because one of the things the books is about is fame, celebrity and how that influences people's live. We wanted a cultural meme that everybody would recognise and the wizard seemed a logical one to go for given how huge that phenomenon has become.

One of the inspirations is the situation that Christopher Milne found himself in when as a boy growing up he is appropriated as a fictional character by his father and then finds, whether he likes it or not, that becomes his public identity. He can't step away from Christopher Robin and just be himself.

He had the supremely horrible experience of being beaten up by bullies at his prep school, who actually chanted poems from the books as they roughed him over.

Understandably he grew up feeling that his father had stolen something very important from him. He once said 'My dad has appropriated my childhood and given it back to me in a shape I can't use'. That's the situation Tom Taylor finds himself in, except his alter ego is a boy wizard at a school for wizards. A fictional avatar that's very recognisable to a modern audience.

SB: How important are stories and literature to you?

MC: I did a literature degree. I love stories, they are very important. One of the things we are exploring is how far stories become interwoven with our lives and become blueprints for our lives.

It's massively intertextual on every level from one panel notes to a deeply interwoven narrative. Frankenstein's monster we've seen once in the first volume comes in again and turns out to have been in Tom's life for a long time for reasons which aren't immediately apparent. There's a strong parallel between the two.

If Tom turns out to be Tommy then like the Frankenstein's monster he's been created by somebody else who has then been negligent or selfish. We love metafiction but we're also deeply cautious of it. There's a type of metafiction where because anything is possible, nothing really matters and we didn't want to do that kind of story. The threats Tom faces are real threats, and the fact stories can bleed into reality doesn't make them any less real.

SB: In other genres or novel the story might be seen as a literary classic. Does it bother you that comics are seen by the wider world as pulpy and lightweight?

MC: My wife's stepfather, who I am very fond off, dutifully reads everything I write, but says 'you have a skill with words why don't you write a novel, why don't you write something that really counts.

Comics are a self-defining niche, people who get it, get it, and that's who you're writing for. There are other people who have never explored the medium, they have no understanding of it. I think there is a comic literacy. You have to learn to read comics, in the same way as you learn to read prose and learn to watch movies. Some people come to comics and are baffled, they just don't click with it.

I was having comics read to me when I was three years old. The Beano, the Dandy, the Leo Baxendale comics. When I was little older my brother gave me a Fantastic Four issue and I never looked back. It was a life long love affair.

SB: How was it being asked to write for Marvel after reading the adventures of X-men and Fantastic Four for many years?

MC: It was great to write Fantastic Four, X-men as well. You feel you're adding bricks to a huge building which as a kid you played in, while admiring it and loving it. It's very cool.

I love using those iconic characters. This is a silly and trivial detail. There's a character called Blindfold in the X-men comic. She hasn't been around all that long, six or seven years and she had never been given a civilian name, So I gave her that name I had her called Ruth Oldine. Then a month later I was on Wikipedia and her entry had that civilian name. and I realised your adding to the myth.

SB: Do you prefer working on your own creations or writing for a franchise?

MC: It's different when you're writing on something as huge as the X-men, there's six monthly books, one-offs, crossovers There's always so much going on with the characters. So if you want to move them in a certain direction you have to check to see who else is using them and what their plans are. There's always that process going on.

Whereas The Unwritten is our own.

SB: Ozzy Osborne is a Birmingham legend, I understand that one of your early works was a biography. How did that happen?

That came about. I did a bit of work for UK indie publishers and wanted to get toehold in the States because the comic industry's so much bigger there. I got this job working on biographies for the Rock Rocket.
I did Ozzy and Pantera, not because I was particularly into heavy metal, but that was what they were doing and the opening was there.

Ozzy was a very cool experience. The Pantera book was like dropping a stone into a well, I wrote a script, sent it in and the comic duly appeared. With the Ozzy book I got a lot of help and support from Ozzy's people.

Sharon put me in touch with a guy who was one of Ozzy's number one fans who'd been keeping scrapbooks of articles about him ever since the start of his career. This guy came over from Ireland and handed me this pile of priceless scrapbooks. He just wanted to help. I got most of the reference for the comic from that one resource.

The Unwritten panel is at noon on Sunday.