by Mike Favila, Senior Editor

ComicsOnline: I have so many questions after reading that first issue of Profane! Do you have an overall plan for the series? Do you have arc lengths planned?

Peter Milligan: I certainly have an overall plan. I know exactly where I’m headed. The exact route I take to reach my destination might change a little, but I know my final destination. Which is more than can be said for Private Investigator Will Profane as we begin his story in part one of Profane.

CO: How did you decide to collaborate with Raül Fernandez? His style for Profane manages to feel both instantly noir and at the same time have that weird 60’s brightness.

PM: At the early stages, we looked at a number of prospective artists. As soon as I saw Raül’s work I knew he was the right person for this project. The work he’s done on Profane totally validates the decision to bring Raül onboard. This is a detective story — albeit a weird arthouse detective story — and it quotes and is in some way an homage to classic detective stories, again with a large twist of weirdness. Raül captures this mood perfectly.

CO: I can’t wait for everybody to experience that weirdness firsthand! What was the genesis for Profane?

PM: Ah, it’s difficult to go into that too deeply without unleashing a few hefty spoilers. Suffice to say I’ve always had an interest in detective novels . I’m talking in particular about the classics, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and so on. They’re big influences on this book. Although a funny thing happened when I re-read some of the Raymond Chandler “Philip Marlowe” novels. I mean, they’re still great and the writing is superb. But it’d been a while since I read them and I felt a sinking feeling as I was re-reading these beloved books. Behind the pleasing prose and the memorable characters I detected something else: an ugly whiff of sexism, racism and homophobia. They were written a long time ago, I hear you say. And that’s true. They’re of their time. But perhaps that gap between the books I remembered and the reality of the books I now re-read says something about Profane. If there’s a genesis for Profane, maybe’s it’s to be found there, somewhere between memory and reality.

CO: We were big fans of your work on X-Statix. What brought you back to X-Statix with X-Cellent?

PM: The only thing that ever takes me back to an older story or character; I felt there was another or more story to tell. It had been a few years since X-Statix came out and the way people became famous had changed. I wanted to explore that, with Zeitgeist’s X-Cellent making X-Statix – and their TV specials — seem outdated. I mean, at heart X-Statix will always be modern…but their means of securing and spreading celebrity seemed a little outmodish compared to Zeitgeist and his ‘followers”.

CO: It seems like so many comics/movies/shows now deal with superheroes as celebrities, but you and Mike Allred were arguably the first to really take on the concept seriously. What brought that about?

PM: It seemed a natural thing to do. As I was devising X-Statix the whole ‘famous for being famous’ thing really seemed to be exploding, with reality TV stars becoming ‘celebrities’, a kind of endless circular celebrity feedback. That seemed one of the defining aspects of our culture as it then was. It’s very similar now, though slightly different celebrity-making means are used. Followers. Influencers. Doxing. I wanted to explore all this in a new X-Statix/Xcellent story.

CO: It feels like the breakout star of X-Statix was Doop! Do you have any theories as to why he’s become so enduring?

PM: I don’t know. Edie Sawyer and Tike Alicar got some traction. But I think Doop’s more surprising fame came from the fact that he was amorphous and spoke in a language no one could understand. The perfect politician, bound to win the presidency. Has no shape, speaks gibberish. Whatever you want him to be he can be.

CO: I loved your Human Target stories when it came out, though I wasn’t familiar with the original 70s iteration. How did you get involved with the idea of rebooting Human Target? Did they ever talk to you when they made the show?

PM: I was asked to look at Human Target with a view to revamping it. At first I had no interest. It seemed too one-dimensional and action orientated. Then I started to think about it from a different way and saw that it could be a story about identity. I started to wonder, if you could impersonate someone to a deep enough level, would you in some sense become that person. I don’t know if my comic was one of things that got people interested in making the TV show. If it was it was strange—because the TV show had no interested in exploring the things that I wanted to explore. They didn’t talk to me about it. Maybe they should have. But of course that’s just my opinion.

CO: What’s the best way for fans to get a hold of you?

PM: Twitter: @1PeterMilligan

If you haven’t already, check out our review of Profane #1.

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