PAGE 23
Peter was interviewed for the OA Stories podcast in 2021 and the full OA Stories interview can be found on the website. What is it about comics, and adult comics in in particular, that excite you so much? Mostly because it is a visual medium, and one of the things about comics is that you have an unlimited budget. If you want a cast of thousands, you can have it, you just have to get somebody to draw it. If you want 30 UFOs descending from the skies, you can have it - it's very cost effective! What inspired you to write Resident Alien? Having worked with Steve Parkhouse before (on Revolver) I knew we worked well together and I wanted to give that another shot. I said, Steve, what do you want to draw? And he said, ‘aliens’. We had a chat about it and decided that we were both tired of aliens always being the bad guy or the monster. They were always the ‘thing’ that was trying to invade us, probe us or abduct us. We thought it was a bit played out and tired. So we thought, what if it was just a nice guy who got stuck here? One who has crashed landed and is now just hanging out, keeping a low profile, hoping that a rescue ship is going to turn up one day. We came up with a story in which he has been hiding out, where he has been a recluse for about three years and during which time he has learned about us and come up with a cover story, but he's basically keeping himself to himself. Then there's an event that draws him out into the world, and he discovers that he actually quite likes it. He quite likes people. And he ends up going native. He doesn't look like us, does he? He does look different. He has anthropomorphic tendencies in that he’s got two arms, two legs and a head, but he’s not human as such. How did you get around that problem of having an alien amongst us? I toyed with the idea of doing it like they do in films or on TV and having him change from human to alien and back again. It was the sort of thing that would work in those mediums but just becomes confusing in a comic. There was another consideration as well, which was that, if we showed him as an alien all the time, we've got an alien on every page even if it's just somebody having a chat about the weather. That's kind of interesting in itself, so we depict him throughout the comic as an alien, although everybody around him is treating him as if he were just another person. It is left to the reader to work it out.
There is quite a lot of humour in the comic. I mean, there is humour in it, but not as much as in the TV show where it's really ramped up. That's partly because they've got a comedy writer as their showrunner and Alan Tudyk, who is a very good comic actor. He has a very good aptitude for physical comedy. Did you have in mind a ‘screenplay’ from the outset? The funny thing is, when we were approaching publishers, we did about six pages as a taster. They were the opening scenes of the comic which is also is also the same as the opening of the TV series. As I was writing it, I found myself thinking, this feels like a TV show, which was something that I had never felt about anything else I had ever done. Anyway, we sent it in and one of the publishers we sent it to was Dark Horse who have quite a successful track record in bringing ideas like ours to the screen. They have collaborated on Hellboy, The Umbrella Academy, The Mask - there's quite a few of them. Mike Richardson, who is the head of Dark Horse and has a lot to do with Hollywood, saw the opening pages and immediately had the same thought as me, which was that this might have legs in a different medium. I am sure that was a major reason why he signed us up. Are you happy with the way Resident Alien has been adapted for TV? Yes it is a good adaptation and I am very happy with the way they have handled it. It is very, very different from the comic, but that is a good thing in its own right. It is funny. I laughed out loud at pretty much every episode and it takes quite a bit to make me laugh out loud. I am pleased it has gone this way rather than them having done a really faithful version that was actually a bit dull and not very good. Chris Sheridan, the show runner, says it’s about 80% different and I'd probably go along with that. Resident Alien, the TV show, is going off in one direction. Peter Hogan and Resident Alien the comic book, is that still moving forward? Are you still writing that? We have just finished the sixth miniseries called ‘Your Ride’s Here’ and that has been just been published. It is the longest Resident Alien story so far and involves a shooting, a kidnapping, a stag night, a wedding and a government agent stalking Harry on the streets of Patience, his local town. I think it has enough twists and turns to keep you guessing all the way! Apart from that I am trying to get a novel off the ground.
PETER HOGAN Resident Alien An interview with scriptwriter and creator
Like so many before him Peter Hogan (63 -70) has taken a long time to become an overnight success. He left Dulwich with only two O Levels in 1970 and it was not until January 2021 that an adaptation of his comic book series ‘Resident Alien’ starring Alan Tudyk, premiered on Sky TV. Resident Alien tells the story of a doctor named Harry Vanderspeigle who is actually an alien visitor who has crash landed on Earth. He then poses as a doctor as he awaits a rescue that may or may not ever come. While he waits, he passes his time by playing amateur detective. After Dulwich, Peter entered an Adult Education College where ‘I did some more O Levels and took some A Levels. I might have gone to university, but the economy was in such a state back then that it didn’t seem the wise thing to do at the time.’ So began a career of careers starting with setting up a bookshop for his friend and The Who guitarist, Pete Townshend. Before long he
found his way into music book publishing and from there he took on the role of press officer for two record companies, Rough Trade and IRS (a small record label owned by Stuart Copeland, drummer for the Police) followed by a move into writing for Melody Maker, Vox and Uncut as well as ‘some obscure stuff no one has ever heard of’. ‘By the early 1980’s the demand for comic books was booming and I ended up editing for the 2000AD group then one day I was asked to start a new comic from scratch called Revolver and it was here that I first met Steve Parkhouse with whom I was to go onto create Resident Alien.’ It was not until much later (the comic dates back to the early 2010’s) that the pair collaborated on creating Resident Alien which has just reached its sixth miniseries and been so critically acclaimed that a second series for Sky has been commissioned.
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs