Mike Carey was born in 1959 in Liverpool, England, where both his parents worked in a bread factory and Mike "got [his] first glimpse of hell."

He began writing the Eisner-nominated Lucifer monthly -- a story about the devil's quest for autonomy in a deterministic universe -- for DC/Vertigo in 1999 after working on several projects for Caliber Comics and the British the sci-fi anthology 2000 AD.

Lucifer has been described as "a work of genius in the dark fantasy genre" and "the best fantasy comic around." Other writing credits include Hellblazer, Batman: Gotham Knights, Flinch, Sandman Presents, My Faith in Frankie for DC/Vertigo, and Ultimate Elektra for Marvel.

His first movie, a romance between the dead and the living, begins principle filming July 2005.

 

ULTIMATE ELEKTRA #1 - SIGNED BY WRITER MIKE CAREY

DF: How'd you land the Hellblazer gig and what first drew you to the character of John Constantine?
MIKE CAREY: I've been a Hellblazer fan from day one - or day zero, I guess, since I was introduced to the character when he appeared in Swamp Thing, a fair while before he had a title of his own.

I've always thought he was a very cool and very iconic figure: Vertigo's Batman, if you like. Apart from that, I think probably what drew me to him is that John is kind of a fictional alter ego from me. He was born in Liverpool but migrated South to live in London. Amazingly, that's exactly my own situation. Actually it's not amazing at all: hundreds of thousands of Northerners come down to live and work in London every year. But still, it makes it easy for me to sympathise with John and to project myself into his shoes.

As to how I landed the gig, it was by invitation. When Brian Azzarello was finishing up his run, he and editor Will Dennis discussed other Vertigo writers who Azz could possibly hand the baton to. My name was one of the ones that came up, and when Will called I was very keen to take a shot at it. I submitted an informal outline for the first year's stories, and Will liked it. He got back to me and we talked some more until we had a framework that we both thought was pretty tasty. The funny thing is that at that time I was doing a fair bit of European TV work, and I was really worried about how I was going to fit everything in. But as luck would have it, the TV production company lost out in the next funding round and axed all their foreign writers. It was like GOD WANTS ME TO WRITE HELLBLAZER.

DF: After his creation by from Alan Moore, who has best defined the character?
MIKE CAREY: Jamie Delano, definitely. Okay, this is a cliche, but things don't stop being true just because they get to be overly familiar. When Alan Moore introduced John in Swamp Thing, although he was immediately a very compelling and charismatic figure, it has to be said that in a lot of ways he was a plot device. Moore needed to expand the Swamp Thing's capabilities, and it suited him to have this man of mystery come along and say "look, did you know you could do this - and this - and this?" But he didn't give John much of a social context or identity, because the guy who steps out of the shadows and then vanishes back into them doesn't need those things. But when John got his own book, that situation changed - and it was Jamie who fleshed John out as a person, gave him a past and a personality beyond the demands of the story. it was a very fruitful amalgam - Jamie building on Alan Moore, and staying true to what was there already but adding new depths and highlights to it.

DF: What's your favorite Constantine story or collection?
MIKE CAREY: I confess to a great weakness for HAUNTED, the story that introduced Warren Ellis's run on the book. I liked the supporting cast that Warren brought in, and I liked the very verbal approach to horror that you get in that story: the thing that you can't scrub out of your mind afterwards isn't even something you see, it's just something that you're told about - the brutal and protracted murder of John's ex-girlfriend. It had a tone all of its own, which included both the harsh and the elegaic.

DF: What's next for Hellblazer?
MIKE CAREY: Well in the issues that follow on from #200, I'm exploring the ongoing possibilities opened up by John's having a family - and a demonic family, at that. I've got this storyline coming up called Reasons to be Cheerful, in which the three children, Saul, Maria and Adam, are setting out to kick away all John's crutches - essentially, to kill anyone who's ever had any contact with him in the past and could conceivably help him in the future. After that we're going to take John down to Hell, which is going to be a long arc starting with #209. I guess in many ways that brings me to the culmination of what I wanted to do on the book. All the stories I've written, from High on Life onwards, have tied together in a great chain of cause and effect. Some readers found that a bit much, but others seem to have enjoyed it a lot. When it's complete, it'll be possible to see it as one lone arc spanning nine hundred pages...

DF: What brought the hardcover [ALL HIS ENGINES] project about?
MIKE CAREY: I was just in the right place at the right time, I guess. With the movie coming out, the time seemed to be propitious for a Hellblazer OGN. I pitched an idea to Will and Karen and they both thought it had some intriguing possibilities. We spent a few months knocking it into shape, but the seed for All His Engines was in that original proposal, which I guess I pitched about fifteen months or so ago. In fact, looking back, it's incredible how quickly things got moving once we decided that this was a story we wanted to tell.

Leo Manco had just done his first work on the book, which had everyone who saw it completely blown away, so Will approached him a d asked him if he wanted to do the OGN. He said yes, and came on board with some rough sketches of the new characters we were introducing in the book: it was obvious straight away that he was going to be able to add layers of disturbing imagery to the story. We just struck sparks off each other, and the script got written in a sort of white heat between October of last year and January of 04. It's all a bit of a blur, now.

DF: Have you read the Hellblazer film script? Any thoughts?
MIKE CAREY: Oh, you know, I've read one of the many versions of it that are kicking around on the 'net. I wouldn't want to comment on the basis of imperfect knowledge. On the other hand, that never stops me the rest of the time, sowhat the hell. I think it'll probably be fine so long as you don't go into it expecting "the film of the book". This isn't John Constantine as we know him, because he's an American living in Los Angeles and he's played by Keanu Reeves. They've taken some of the broad strokes of the character and turned him into a somewhat different character based on those broad strokes, which is fine as far as it goes. From what I've heard and seen, I think it will be quite a fun movie - you just have to judge it on its own merits, as a production which is quite separate and distinct from the comic book.

DF: How did the Lucifer assignment come about? Neil Gaiman was a part of that launch, right?
MIKE CAREY: Yeah, he was very actively involved. The Lucifer monthly grew out of a Sandman Presents miniseries, and Neil has always had an important role to play in respect of all the Sandman Presents projects, as consultant and adviser. Lucifer was the first project to be approved, and Neil looked over the breakdowns and scripts very closely - he had some suggestions to make at the pitch stage, but was happy to let the scripts through as they were, which was a huge relief to me. On the monthly, too, he continued to oversee scripts for the first couple of years, and whenever we use any of the Endless as characters he always gets to check the dialogue because he's obviously and rightly concerned that they should be handled right.

I've always found him to be really generous with his time and really supportive professionally. When I finally got to meet him face-to-face, at San Diego last year, it was a great pleasure.

DF: What's next for the Lucifer series? Do you have an ending planned? Are we close to that ending?
MIKE CAREY: Yes to both. The series will wrap up in just under two years' time, with issue 75. There's obviously a certain amount of symbolic force in that number, because The Sandman also closed with its seventy fifth issue - but the truth is that I always knew where I was headed with the series and I've come to the climax that I've been building up to. It won't make further stories impossible, but it will mark a very clear and very decisive denouement. The climactic arc - not the last one, because there'll be codas afterwards, but the one that ties everything up - will be called Morningstar and will be six issues long, with a break in the middle that I won't say anything about just now. It will conclude with issue 69. The remaining issues will wrap up the stories of all the individual characters, so that nothing will be left hanging.

DF: How did your Marvel assignments come about? Anything coming up next from the House of Ideas with your name on it?
MIKE CAREY: I wanted to do some superhero work. I'd been wanting it for a while. When my DC exclusive lapsed, back in April, I got into talks with some of the Marvel editors about whether they had any projects that might work for me. Ultimate Elektra was mentioned as a possibility, and I jumped at it: it was exactly what I was looking for. I love writing strong female protagonists, and I love the Daredevil/Elektra dynamic, so it was a real pleasure for me to do that.

I've got one more mini in the pipeline, which is a book based on some old Marvel characters who've never had a book of their own. I'm also talking about another very exciting possibility, but it's too early to say anything about that just yet - beyond saying that if it works out I'll be a very happy man indeed.

DF: What are you reading these days? Listening to? Watching?
MIKE CAREY: Reading: China Mieville, who I think is the most exciting fantasy writer to come along in a generation; Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy; Lindsey Davis's Falco books; David Gemmell, for a reliable quick fix. Oh, and to make myself sound a bit more intellectual, Dyson's Darwin Among the Machines - very interesting and very weird stuff.

Listening to: REM are a perennial for me; the Strokes; Kathryn Williams; the Earlies; Leonard Cohen; Steve Earle's Jerusalem; Barenaked Ladies.

Watching: Anything by the Coen Brothers; L'Homme du Train; Spellbound; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Fahrenheit 9/11; Mystic River; 21Grams. You'll probably see from that list that I mainly see movies when they come out on DVD. The only things I get to see at the cinema are kids' films...

We highly recommend you check out Lucifer, which can be ordered from DF here as well as checking out Carey's work on Hellblazer, including the upcoming hardcover - All His Engines -- which can be pre-ordered here.

See you next week, when we spend another 5 minutes with one of today's best comic creators.