WHEEL ME OUT - Mark Wright

Mark Wright took on the heady task of transforming Bryan Talbot’s iconic graphic novel, Luther Arkwright, into an audio play for Big Finish Productions. Here the writer recounts how impossible the task first seemed, the oracular casting of David Tennant and his plans for the sequel, Heart of Empire.

Interview by Alex Fitch

What was your history with Big Finish audio plays before Luther Arkwright? I'd done a few Doctor Whos — Project: Twilight, Project: Lazarus and The Church and the Crown — and I was in the process of writing a Tomorrow People play, The Slarvian Menace. Jason Haigh-Ellery, the Big Cheese at Big Finish, approached me at a party and said “Your Doctor Whos were alright. I've just got the rights from Bryan Talbot to do Luther Arkwright. It's one of my favourite graphic novels of all time — I was wondering if you fancy doing the adaptation?”

My first reaction was to run away screaming, thinking it couldn't possibly be done. It's a bit of a sacred cow in comics terms and then I started thinking about the story, the things that Bryan achieves; the visual representations are just so rich. I thought, “how on earth is this going to translate into audio?”

So I read it again for the first time in a while and wanted to say, “no, it's impossible.” But then I read it again and realised there were distinct parts you could break down into a three-act structure. That made me think, “maybe we can do this...”

This was a new kind of project for Big Finish. They'd done CDs based on characters from 2000AD but this was their first adaptation of an existing comic, having to make it work in a different format. Absolutely. I think that was the scary thing. I’d had no contact with Bryan and I didn’t have the confidence to go in my own direction with the adaptation. I actually met him at the Bristol Comics Expo, the first day that the story was being recorded, and he said he’d tried to get some messages through to me about what I might do. I've heard since that he likes the adaptation but felt it was too faithful in a way and I absolutely agree with him. I'd written Doctor Who which was also very daunting; it was like getting the keys to a car you've wanted to drive for a very, very long time. With Arkwright though, the dialogue's there and there are images of characters on the printed page — you have to find a way of getting round that, not to make the adaptation restrictive or place those restrictions on yourself.

I don't think it's any secret we're doing the sequel, Heart of Empire. I'm adapting it at the moment and with this second one I'm making a few more decisions that will service the audio and not necessarily the source material.

When you were writing it did you have any idea who might be cast in the various roles? We knew David Tennant and Paul Darrow were going to be in it. Jason had been chasing Paul for a while to give him something meaty and the casting of David Tennant was just a dream. Doctor Who was barely a twinkle in his eye, but he'd done Casanova and a lot of Big Finish already. I first met David when he was recording one of the Doctor Who Unbounds (he played a Unit officer in Sympathy For The Devil and a Timelord in Exile) and we got on. He's so inclusive, he'll talk to anyone and remembers you. We pitched the idea to him at a Christmas party and he was really up for it. One thing I'm proud of is that we had David Tennant screaming “Rose!” before Russell T. Davies did!

When you were writing the adaptation did you keep it in mind how comics are written: notes to the artist from the writer saying; “in this panel I want a vista with a zeppelin etc...” Doing the same for the sound effects? Absolutely. It’s very important for the sound designers. Jason and I had lots of discussions about how we were going to achieve the more esoteric sequences, the 'trippy' stuff, shall we say, the way Bryan deals with time — events speeding up and slowing down — and we came up with the idea of doing audio 'bullet-time'! We tried to do it Matrix style — chopping time up, holding moments and then coming back to them. I was trying to take a more stylised approach to those moments in the book where you think “what was that?!”

Do Big Finish have plans to adapt any other classic British graphic novels? I don't think so. They went after Luther Arkwright as it's very close to Jason's heart. I think for the time being it's Heart of Empire and that's a different sort of story that goes off in all sorts of wild directions. Victoria Arkwright is such an incredibly un-likeable character at the beginning of the sequel and she doesn't want anything to do with her father or the legacy. But then she meets Harry Fairfax and things start happening.

It would be interesting to have a crack at something like V for Vendetta, to take a different approach to the movie and some of Alan Moore’s other titles, maybe go back to some of the classic Captain Britain comics. Big Finish's 2000AD range ended after 18 releases and I always thought it would have been nice to tackle some of the great Judge Dredd stories — The Apocalypse War, Block Mania and The Cursed Earth.

One of the questions when adapting graphic novels is how does it serve the audience? Luther Arkwright's got an interesting fanbase and Bryan's got an interesting fanbase and it's such a rich story. It's such an honour to be working on this material again, to have a second bite at playing with Bryan Talbot's words, worlds and characters. It's good, basically! WMO

An extended version of this interview is available on this recording with Bryan Talbot

http://panelborders.wordpress.com/2007/05/24/podcast-the-worlds-of-bryan-talbot/

Mark’s written a lot of audio plays! Check them out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Wright_(writer)

Our other favourite Mark Wright

www.industrial-rope-access.co.uk/