About Me

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Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019); AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021); and HOW WE BECAME POST-LIBERAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOLERATION (2024).

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Sunday supervillainy - an interview with Mike Carey

This interview with Mike Carey is a few weeks old, now, but I thought it worthwhile linking to it.

As regular readers know, I'm a big fan of Mike's work on X-Men: Legacy, which he is leaving very soon (a couple of issues have yet to be released, but they were doubtless scripted long ago).

I've been especially impressed by his character work with a wide range of established and new characters (if you think that writing dialogue and action for previously established characters is straightforward, try writing even a couple of lines of plausible, yet distinctive, dialogue for an established character in literary narrative or popular culture, without lapsing into caricature; you'll find that it's fiendishly difficult getting the "voice" right).

At some point, I'd like to review Mike's entire run on the book, but in case that doesn't happen I'll take this opportunity to bid him farewell from it and wish every success in all his other activities - writing novels, TV scripts, and everything that he's apparently doing. His run has been up there among the great ones in the field, especially in recent decades.

Farewell, Mike! Continue the great work wherever you go.

1 comment:

Ross Balmer said...

Aw, man! I didn't know he was leaving!

Mike's run on X-Men Legacy has been spectacularly good. The team with Rogue, Magneto, Legion, Gambit and Frenzy is one of the best X-Men teams ever IMO, especially the way he wrote the interplay between the characters. Frenzy has turned out to be a great character and if she continues the way she has been it would be really touching to have Cyclops present her personally with an "X" badge for her uniform. (Not sure she'd take it very gracefully, though!) Legion has really come into his own and is now living up to his name wonderfully with his wrist-bracelet allowing him to dial up the powers of his limitless numbers of sub-personalities. Just the name of the latest storyline is awesome: "five miles south of the universe".

Any idea who's next up for writing duties? Or is the title itself going to get cancelled in the wake of Schism?