AVC: Between the Great Ormond Street trouble and the possibility of obscenity statutes in the U.S. being violated, are you worried about bankrupting Top Shelf?
AM: I'm incredibly proud of the way Chris is standing behind this book. Chris knew what the book was when he decided to do it, and we've been completely honest about what this book contains during the whole 16 years we've been working upon it. Of course we don't want anybody to be disadvantaged or bankrupted by this book. At the same time, what are our alternatives? If you're living in a politically repressive time where you have this seemingly fundamentalist-directed agenda percolating down not only through America but through all of those countries who are fortunate enough be in the shadow of America, you've really got no option other than to make your statement as you see fit, or shut up. We are prepared, if there's trouble, to stand in our corner and fight. I have heard of comic shops being raided for things like posters of Wonder Woman. The officer involved thought it looked pretty pornographic to him. There isn't any way you can defend yourself against this kind of irrationality. The only thing you can do is publish and be prepared for the consequences.
Over here we have the Today program, a radio program, and they were the ones who first informed me of the Great Ormond Street story. They aired the subject of Lost Girls a couple weeks ago, and the first question the interviewer asked me, with a microphone practically halfway down my throat, was, "If even one child is harmed as a result of Lost Girls, how would you feel?" I wish I'd said, "If even one Ministry Of Defense covert weapons expert was found dead in the woods as a result of being outed by the Today program, how would you feel?" But instead I said I'd feel very surprised, because as far as I'm aware, attacks upon children are generally predicated upon the psychopathology of the individual involved rather than upon expensive, over-wordy literary pornography. Then, at the end of the program, when they were handing back to the main news desk, the woman turned to the sports presenter and said, "I bet you'll be ordering your copy," and the sports presenter said, "I bet you'll be ordering yours first." They were having a bit of a smutty snigger. Which is a healthy reaction, I think.
You know, most of the supposed underage sex in Lost Girls, it has to be said, is occurring between sexually active teenagers. There's no more underage sex in Lost Girls than is probably occurring in this block at the moment. I think the first time I had sex, I was 17, and I was embarrassed because I was a late starter. So something sexually questionable might happen to an imaginary character that looks too young by our current standards… though not by the standards that we held 100 years ago, when the age of consent in Britain was 12, and working-class teenagers were married with children. But because these characters appear to transgress upon our current arbitrary line of when it's permissible to have a sexual identity, are people really going to be that upset? When there are children right now being blown to pieces, often at our behest or in our name?
AVC: If there do end up being any legal repercussions from Lost Girls, will you regret not holding on to that V For Vendetta movie money, to help pay any bills?
AM: No, no. I've not regretted that for a moment. Yes, it led to a year of completely unnecessary trouble which led to me more or less severing myself from the American comics industry, apart from the increasingly slender thread that is Chris Staros. Because he has lost a lot of weight recently. But no, no. It's been so liberating. I've never really cared that much about money. I've got enough to live on. And it's not like I live in a fancy house, it's not like I own a car, and it's not like I ever go on holiday. For this past 18 months, I've been blissfully involved with writing my next novel, Jerusalem, which will probably take me another couple of years to finish and edit. It's going to be over a half-million words, probably about 1,500 pages or something. As big as a book can be, if not bigger. I've not got a deal for this book, nor am I seeking one. I haven't gotten an advance for it. I haven't earned any money for the past 18 months. I haven't done any paying work. But I'm not greatly inconvenienced. There's royalties still coming in.
The only thing that was important to me was that I completely sever my connections with Hollywood. I just wanted to get my work back to reality, which I found very difficult to do working with the movie or comic-book end of the American entertainment industry. When Jerusalem is finished in a couple of years, I'll think about how I want to publish it. I'm sure I won't be short of people offering to do it for me. But I will have written it exactly as I want to write it. I won't have anybody telling me to make it a bit shorter, make it a bit less obscure. It will be exactly the book I wanted to write. At the moment, that kind of freedom is most important for me.
You know, when I started Lost Girls, I had just walked away from an awful lot of money. I've been done with DC Comics since 1989, and I wouldn't have found myself working for them again if they hadn't gone to the extraordinary lengths of buying a company I'd just signed a contract with. Back then, I turned down an awful lot of security and money to work upon Lost Girls, From Hell, my first novel, and other things that weren't really commercial propositions. So money hasn't stopped me from doing Lost Girls. It's just taken a bit of time. We had two or three publishers go out of business, not entirely because of Lost Girls, but because of the market. These last several years, I've been paying Melinda, so she didn't have to do anything else. Because I was very committed to this book.
We both felt it was important for this book to come out. I don't think I'll ever personally break even on Lost Girls. But it remains one of the works I'm most proud of. It's not about the money. It's about the accomplishment. I'm a very smug show-off at heart. I'm altogether too pleased with myself. The big boost for me is to be able to turn out something that I think is pretty marvelous, like Lost Girls. I'm not in it for money, I'm just in it for the glory. Me and Melinda think that Lost Girls is pretty glorious.
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