Dan Abnett should need no introduction to our readers, but for those who came in late, he is a seven-times New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning comic book writer. Cutting his teeth at Marvel UK as an editor and writer in the 1980s, he has written over seventy novels since, including the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series, the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies, volumes of the million-selling Horus Heresy series, The Silent Stars Go By(a Doctor Who story), Rocket Raccoon and Groot: Steal the Galaxy, The Avengers: Everybody Wants To Rule The World, The Wield, Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero and Embedded. In comics, he is known for his work on The Legion of Super-Heroes, Aquaman, The Titans, Nova, Wild’s End, and The New Deadwardians. His 2008 run on The Guardians of the Galaxy for Marvel, with Andy Lanning, formed the inspiration for the blockbuster movie. 2026 sees him at Mad Cave Studios, penning new Flash Gordon adventures.
A regular contributor to the UK’s long-running 2000 AD and Judge Dredd Megazine, he is the creator of series including “Brink”, “Grey Area”, “Kingdom”, “Lawless”, “The Out” and the classic “Sinister Dexter”. He has also written extensively for the games industry, including Shadow of Mordor and Alien: Isolation.
For the benefit of those unfamiliar with your work, because they’ve been living on Azimuth, or somewhere, how do you briefly outline your varied career as author, editor and comics writer? Because I’m sure there are readers of 2000 AD who perhaps don’t realise that the Dan Abnett who writes “Brink”, “Azimuth” and “The Out” is the same Dan Abnett who writes Doctor Who, Warhammer stories and his own novels, such as Embedded?
Dan: Well, since my start in comics at Marvel UK, fresh out of University, I moved from being an editor (at Marvel’s UK, working on The Real Ghostbusters and Strip etc, and then – oh, what a educational experience that was – at Toxic!) and became a freelancer writer. I worked in comics at first – Marvel UK, then Marvel US, and then for DC and 2000AD (sometime call at once), and in the late 1990s started writing novels too, when Black Library (Games Workshop) offered me the chance. Once the novel-writing began, I kept doing comics too, because I love the form. Later, I started working on computer games too.
So my work, in any given week, shifts regularly between those three things, moving on when something stalls or needs thought, or a deadline is looming. Next year will be my fortieth year, as a writer and in the industry. I’ve written seventy plus novels, and according to a recent poll, I am the twelfth most prolific writer in the American comic industry of all time. I sometimes wince at the word ‘prolific’, because it seem like damning with faint praise, but it means I must being something right-ish, surely?
What do you consider your career highlights? Are there particular projects you’ve enjoyed over others?
In comics, I’d have to say things like my runs on Legion of Superheroes and Aquaman for DC, of course my “re-invention” of Guardians of the Galaxy for Marvel that set up the movies, series like New Deadwardians (for Vertigo), and Wild’s End (Boom!), and I am very, very proud of series like “Brink”, “Azimuth”, “The Out” and “Lawless” for 2000 AD and Judge Dredd Megazine.
“Azimuth” is, of course, a massive re-boot of “Sinister Dexter”, which I created for 2000 AD almost thirty years ago, and have written every episode of since.
In novels, probably the big, best-selling Black Library things: the Eisenhorn series (and its follow-ups), the Gaunt’s Ghost series, and the Horus Heresy, which I started with Horus Rising and ended twenty years later with The End and the Death.
Games have been fun – I had a blast working on the Shadow of Mordor Games, and the recent version of Doom!, but I suppose the highlight was writing Alien: Isolation, which has become a bit of a classic.
When it comes to writing, do you have a daily discipline, a target, and has your approach to writing changed over the years?
My approach and “process” has changed a lot over the years (so many years..!). I used to be a “write until you fall over” kind of writer, burning the midnight oil. Just furious invention, paying no heed to time of day or regular routines. In the last fifteen years (and following a diagnosis of late-onset epilepsy, which required me to become more relaxed), I have become very focused. I write “like a job”, nine to five every day, weekends off. I even take holidays now, occasionally! I don’t write until I’m burnt out, I write until the day’s done… and I’ve found that means there’s still things left in the tank when I come back the next day, ready tog go, rather than having to “jump start” things again. I’m very disciplined, I suppose, which means I (creatively) love it even more, oddly. And, as I said, I switch between things – comics, the current novel, games – in the course of a week or even a day.
“I used to be a ‘write until you fall over’ kind of writer, burning the midnight oil… In the last fifteen years… I have become very focused.”
That’s not just about efficiency and deadlines – everyone gets stuck (or sick of what they’re doing) sometimes. Instead of taking a break, I “take a break” by doing something else. I switch between universes. That way I get the jobs done, never get bored, and I always find that working on “something else” subconsciously resolves any sticking point I was experiencing on the thing I had to step away from. My process (especially in comics) has changed too. It’s sort of too complicated to explain, but I now write comic scripts in exactly the reverse way I did when I started writing them. Not so much “backwards”, but constructed in a totally different order. Do something long enough and often enough, you find these things out about yourself 🙂
Who are your influences? You’ve mentioned Ray Bradbury and Stephen King in previous interviews, but as a professional and dedicated writer, is it still harder to be surprised by what you read or watch”
Yes, and no. I have obvious favourites – you’ve mentioned two of them – and others might include Jack Vance, John Buchan, Martin Cruz Smith, Ursula Le Guin, Julian May… that I revisit often. But that’s for fun. Inspiration is everywhere. I read voraciously, watch a lot of TV and movies… and I just consume.
It’s not about ‘stealing ideas’, it’s about being inspired by what the people do, and how they do it. I also carry a notebook everywhere, and jot down anything and everything that strikes me as ‘an idea’ for later use. Even just a name, or an overheard phrase.
I read a lot of non-fiction, usually as research (my pet theory is you can’t research the fantastical, unless you read and steal from other writers of the fanatical, so you research instead the closest “real world” analogue to the thing you’re writing about and then ‘shift’ that knowledge sideways into the fantastical.
An example – I wrote a Black Library novel about Titan War Machines. They don’t exist (!). So, I research accounts of tank and submarine warfare, and ‘shifted’ that research (claustrophobia, crewing a huge metal machine etc) ‘sideways’ into the Warhammer universe).
I read so much non-fiction that I stopped reading much fiction at all for some years – not because it wasn’t good, but because I felt I could ‘see the strings’. A few years ago, to my delight, I picked up a novel and re-discovered the joy of fiction, which I am now neck-deep in again. Reading fiction again has even changed the nature and quality of my dreams, but that’s another story… 😉
More than one publisher, from DC, Marvel to Games Workshop and Rebellion considers you a go to writer when it comes to writing tie-in fiction, but is there a particular appeal to creating stories in an established continuity over creating your own from scratch? (Which, I should emphasise, from anyone reading “The Out” just as one example, know it’s something you are more than capable of by the way!).
I (and I think I’m comparatively rare in this respect) really like the challenge of being given a ‘target’. Learning how to approach a given IP (something I suppose I learned on the junior titles back at Marvel UK) and writing to ‘fit’. Not breaking the toys, but still finding something interesting to say. I love it when an editor contacts me and says “we need a fill-in issue on this book – fast turnaround, and it needs to have these three characters in it”. That doesn’t hand-cuff my imagination. I get excited, and try to work out what’s the best story I can deliver to hit that very small, very specific target. And while creating your own original stuff is wonderful (“The Out” and “Brink” are both good examples), there’s still plenty of space to invent and create in an established IP if you do it sensibly. I’ve managed to ‘invent’ a huge amount of stuff for the Warhammer 40K universe over the years, for instance, concepts, words, ideas and so on that are now canon. It may not be ‘your’ universe, but that does’t mean you can’t live there too.
Coming to “The Terminal Man”, the character has a pretty “high concept” origin, and the story setting inside a massive Dyson Sphere is, too. What’s your approach been to picking up the story, and can you give us a taste of what’s to come?
The original is a bit of a lost classic, and unfinished. The art is gorgeous. I just read it all through, and I tried to work out where it might have been going from the clues left behind (there was no surviving outline or notes). I’ve picked up on the strands and ingredients, and I tried to imagine where it might have gone to deliver a satisfying conclusion.
So there’s a lot to explore about the nature and origin of the world they’re on, and the purpose of the Dyson Sphere, and, also, what Terminal Man’s role is and could be. However, I’ve also tried to retain the spirit of the original – fast-paced, action-based, cliff-hanging adventures. I’ve written it to “replicate” the episodic structure, as though these are “lost episodes” that would have originally run periodically. I didn’t want the strip to feel like it had changed from a “collected serial” to a “graphic novel” form. The rhythm and pace remain the same, with a cliffhanger ever few pages. So – I hope! – not only is it true to the IP, but also true to the spirit and flavour of the original strip.
Was CRASH a title you read when it was published in the 1980s?
It is, though not regularly, but I remember Oliver’s artwork very fondly.
Have there been particular challenges to picking up the story from the one Oliver Frey began to tell in CRASH Issue 40, presumably cut short because original publisher Newsfield was going through several changes at the time, and he was charged with new work that perhaps meant something had to give? (I’ve not been able to discover a particular reason for its sudden end, which may, of course, also simply been financial).
Only the fact that it ended without any external clue to where it might have been going. So, as mentioned, I’ve tried to interrogate what we do have to find clues as to what might have been intended. I suppose the other drawback is simply performance pressure. It’s a classic and beloved cult series, and I don’t let down the original by adding some substandard coda just for the sake of finishing it off.
Aside from continuing “Terminal Man”, what else are you currently working on? Have you been asked on board the new Blake’s 7 project, for example?
I’m not, but as a life-long fan of Blake’s 7, I’d love to be! Otherwise, I’m as busy (busier?) than ever. The latest series of “Brink” has just started running in 2000 AD, with a new collection of the last book out now, and I’m also writing new “Azimuth”, “The Out” and “Lawless “(the latter for Judge Dredd Magazine, with the wonderful Phil Winslade).
I’ve also got a new 2000 AD strip in development that I can’t talk about yet.
I jumped at the chance to write Flash Gordon, such a classic character, and knew it would be fun.
I’m working on my next novel for Games Workshop, and my most recent – an epic novel about the fate of an Imperial hive city, called “Hive” – has just been announced, out soon. It’s a blockbuster. I’m working on the Warhammer Dark Tide game. I’ve got two projects for Marvel and one for Dark Horse coming, and lots of stuff for Valiant, including a Bloodshot: Year One special. And I am loving working on Flash Gordon for Mad Cave. The issue zero and my first ‘regular’ issue are out very soon.
I jumped at the chance to write Flash Gordon, such a classic character, and knew it would be fun. I didn’t realise how much fun it would be, and how exciting and rewarding it would be to explore those characters, and invent some new ones for them to interact with. I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to do with the series.
There are a couple of other things I’m dying to talk about but I can’t…that’s enough for anyone, surely?
Dan, on that tease, thank you for talking to me and the very best of luck with all your future projects!
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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