Look at that bit of Brendan McCarthy loveliness - if that doesn’t make you want it like ice cream in the desert, then you are dead inside. For everyone else, you can read it in 2000 AD next year. If you want more information to help get you through to then without your heads exploding (mine is throbbing) then CBR have an interview with more picture:

CBR News: Can you give a brief run down of what “The Zaucer of Zilk” is and what the strip will be like? How does it set itself apart from other stories in “2000AD?”

Brendan McCarthy: “The Zaucer of Zilk” strip is a phantasmagorical psychedelic extravaganza that features fanciful fantasy rather than hard-core techno sci-fi. It’s something a little bit different for the jaded palettes of the typical “2000AD” reader, I hope.

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The art style you’re utilizing for “Zaucer” seems a lot brighter and vibrant than some of your older work. Why the switch?

The digital revolution has changed what can be done in the art, and I’m always looking for the chance to do something new. In this case, the bright delight of “Digital Fauvism” is calling me.

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Why the recent resurgence in your “2000AD” output?

I want to keep my hand in getting back into comics and “2000AD” has always felt like home. Also, it’s a bit more open to oddball ideas. There’s a history of oddities in the comic.

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“The Zaucer of Zilk” is a kind of bonkers “Monty Python” version of “Harry Potter” and “Dr Who” with bits of “The Wizard of Oz” thrown in, and fits into that wonderful British surrealist tradition rather well. It could be a nice performance-capture CGI animated TV series that would play well to the ever-increasing US “Dr Who” audience. When “Zaucer” is completed, I would like to talk to the BBC to see if it could be turned into a good live-action/animated TV series, with people like “The Mighty Boosh” and other British comedians and actors playing different roles. Noel Fielding as Errol Raine, Bill Nighy as the Zultan, etc., would be just dandy.

More.

Matthew Badham gives us the raw text from an interview with Arthur Wyatt in the current Judge Dredd Megazine:

The latest Judge Dredd Megazine (on sale now) contains an interview I conducted with ace comics writer Arthur Wyatt. As is often the case with these things, there were unused quotes. I’m presenting those here as a mini-interview with the permission of both Arthur and alien editor the Mighty Tharg.

(Megazine #311 also contains four pulse-pounding strips, interviews with Steve Dillon and D’Israeli, film reviews and comes bagged with a ‘floppie’ that reprints work by Pat Mills, Carl Critchlow and John Ridgway.)

When did you decide that rather than being ‘just a fan’, you wanted to be a creator?

Well, it might have been when I was very earnestly doodling Nemesis the Warlock or the ABC Warriors on schoolbooks in imitation of Kevin O’Neil or the Biz, but I don’t really think that was going anywhere. I actually started writing comics and being involved in the small press scene around about the time I was heading off to university, during the ‘dark times’ when I’d left 2000 AD behind for a while. Serious, densely written Vertigo-style books were very much the model I was following, with the odd EC comics pastiche or SF piece in between the angsty slice of life works; slices of life being of course that much more difficult to portray if you’ve only really lived a little of it.

Then I pretty much put that all away, got a degree, got a job, moved to London, forgot about it until I picked up Prog 2001, saw the submission guidelines for future shocks (always a favourite) and decided to give it a go.

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Having dabbled in the Rogue Trooper universe, are there any other classic thrills you’d like to revisit?

There’s my pitch for Shako: 2012, which I’m sure would be drawn by Henry Flint or someone, and maybe be the star attraction of a Christmas prog. You see, it’s 2012, and the icecaps have melted, releasing Shako from where he has been entombed in an icy slumber. Now he is on a rampage, the space capsule he has swallowed giving him strange powers to control wildlife (caribou, penguins, etc…) and turn them against the feeble hu-mans that might stop him. Only one woman stands in the way against Shako’s terrible quest to destroy the human race: President Sarah Palin.

Now that I’d like to see!!