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JAY: Can we start with a short but sweet potted history of Gratuitous Bunny Comix?

TERRY: Dave had the idea to do a comic in 1987, but we didn’t actually get round to finishing it until 1989! The Gratuitous Bunny angle came about when one of our readers noticed the bunny in More Tales #1 and said she would buy it if we put the bunny in as much as possible – hence various, indeed gratuitous, appearances of the bunny! We thought we were in a minority of one until the small press review zine ZUM! came out and showed us there were dozens of other groovy comics out there as well. We were selling quite well direct through shops by about 1992-94, when Tales came out, and were picked up by Diamond in 1995. Dave was finding it harder to write by then, so spin-offs like Tales and Surreal School Stories were designed to give him a breather, but he decided to give up altogether in 1996. He later came back to do issues 7 and 8, but was flagging again with #9, so I drafted in an extra writer – Adrian – to do a backup story Petra Etcetera. Eventually Dave admitted he hates writing anyway, and had no inclination to do anything any more, so….

ADY: But even though they started off as a small press venture Terry and Dave took it seriously from the start. Gratuitous Bunny were the first independent/ self-published outfit to adopt the American comic book format and professional production values, and the first to publish reprint collections in trade paperback format, and both of those have since become the norm with the likes of Paul Grist’s Kane and Gary Spencer Millidge’s Strangehaven. And of course, this year all that time and effort and quality paid off when we

finally won the National Comic Award after years of being nominated.

JAY: Ady and Billy: How did you come to be involved in GBC?

ADY: Well, Terry and I have known each other over 20 years, so I followed More Tales from the start, and I actually contributed a one page filler to an early issue. Their stuff was completely unlike anything else being done at the time – totally genre defying – and when Terry and Dave asked if I wanted to do Petra Etcetera, I was just chuffed to become a part of that and play with their toys. Unfortunately Billy can’t be with us today because of the restraining orders, but when Terry was up against a very tight deadline to produce Petra #2 in time for Caption 2000, we brought Billy in to do the back page pin-up. We were so pleased with the result it’s now a regular feature.

JAY: How did the Petra spin-off from Sleaze Castle come about?

TERRY: I came up with another story Adrian could do which could attach to the rest of the mythos with minimal impact. The only point of contact is Petra, who hasn’t really been in the main storyline THAT much…

ADY: It was originally just going to be a back-up strip, to give Dave a breather by only doing 12 pages of script an issue. But, after the “two-in-one” format of Petra #1/More Tales #9, it was decided to make Petra a full spinoff series while the main story continued in collected book form.

JAY: Would you like to attempt to sum up what the book is about for the boys and girls out there who may have been unaware of what they’re missing?

TERRY: It’s the story of Jo’s wacky sister Petra and her friends, involving a lot of drinking, snogging and the occasional fight, plus the emotional interplay between Jo and Petra.

ADY: But it’s also an age-old “love triangle” tale involving Petra, her boyfriend and a mysterious stranger who keeps turning up. There is a long term plot underlying it all, though, and I have a definite end in mind that I’m working towards – a bit like James

Robinson’s Starman but with less spandex and more sex. And don’t forget the “Etcetera” – Petra’s friends take centre stage from time to time, though Petra and the main plot will still be bubbling away in the background.

TERRY: We didn’t have Hugo Tate in mind, although Tales has been compared to it. I suppose deep down Dave wanted to do Cerebus, a convoluted, multi-layered non-naturalistic story, whereas I wanted to do Love & Rockets, more of a day-to-day, on-the-street sort of thing, which I suppose the general reader has less trouble getting into.

ADY: I definitely see Petra in the Love & Rockets mould. Real life is just as dramatic as any space opera or spandex fantasy to those living it. Whether or not that gorgeous blonde I met and liked so much ever gets in touch with me again is more important to me than the end of the world. It’s easy to use Doc Doom’s latest world destroying frammistat to generate suspense and entertain your readers, but it’s more challenging to make them care about your characters and the minutiae of their “lives” in a more naturalistic story.

JAY: Do you find the period setting of the series in the eighties as a hindrance or a strength of the book?

TERRY: It just turned out that way because the publishing gap is so much longer than the action of the story, plus to avoid stepping on Dave’s toes, every spin off story had to take place before the ‘main’ plot. I think the readers would kill us if we tried to do a ‘year zero’ thing and time-shift everything into the 21st Century! I don’t mind sticking to the timeline – it’s not that much different is it? Not like it was the Stone Age!

ADY: I find it more irritating than a hindrance. I’d love to do some witty social commentary stuff about today’s society; the way teenagers are mutating into some strange species of hybrid cyborgs with cellphones and backwards baseball caps permanently melded to their heads, for example, but the setting precludes that. There’s always a danger that it may eventually alienate any new readers who do regard anything before they were born as the “Stone Age”. But in 1985 Terry and I were about the same age as our characters are supposed to be so we have a lot of actual experiences to mine for stories.

JAY: It’s interesting to note that for an all-male creative team, all GBC titles seem to have female protagonists. Why do you think that is?

TERRY: Um… partly because in so many other stories women get nothing better to do than be rescued, or sport enormous tits and fire guns… all the other ‘grown-up’ media have no problems with depicting regular women in regular roles – why shouldn’t comics? Plus female characters can get away with a much broader range and wardrobe than stuffy males can – they’re more fun to draw.

ADY: Almost all of my close friends are women and, while I don’t have any blinding insights into the female psyche, they have taught me how to fake a pretty good orgasm (laughs). A lot of Petra is based on events and experiences that actually happened to those friends (and three of the characters are based on them) so I have a wealth of anecdotes and material to draw from that I hope gives the book a more realistic feel. Besides – women are just more interesting to write for.

JAY: What sort of readership does Petra attract? Is there a big female following? Who is your target audience?

ADY: We seem to go down well with the university crowd, who can probably relate to the setting and situations, regardless of the time period. I do feel self-conscious about being a man writing for female characters, but a lot of our readers are women so I suppose

we’re getting something right. Our target audience is just anyone and everyone who we can part from their cash.

TERRY: It’s a bit funny – we don’t meet the audience that often! From those we have seen it seems to be about 50/50, which isn’t bad for a comic. I suppose we’re aiming for the sort of person who generally doesn’t read comics at all, since they outnumber the ones who do 19-1!

JAY: With an Eagle nomination after Petra’s debut in Sleaze Castle #9’s flipbook format, and the recent win at the Comics 2001

TERRY: Um, as you probably know, nearly everyone in comics these days needs a ‘real’ job on the side to keep body and soul together! So, short of a mighty lottery win, the output will remain fairly sparse, but constant! I’d go so far as to say we’ll bring out at least two new items a year, be they Petra or something else.

ADY: Well I have the next two issues of Petra plotted and partly written so those would be my choice for the two new items we put out this year! However, with Dave’s departure and the discontinuing of the main Sleaze Castle storyline, now would also be a good time to retain that readership with the launch of Beautiful Freak, which is sort of Panda’s origin story. This is something Terry and I will have to discuss down a dark alley with pieces of lead pipe, I think.

JAY: Why so long between issues? Is it purely for financial reasons, or more to do with Terry doing almost all of the art?

TERRY: Yep, as it stands, if I don’t draw it, it doesn’t come out! And I can only draw when I get time…

JAY: Would you contemplate bringing on board another artist or collaborator to ease the workload, or is it too personal to let go?

TERRY: Oboy, that’s a tough one! In my egotistical stance I’d say I’d like to either draw or write everything in the comic, so any new artists would be drawing my stuff. I’d hate to get to the point where both me and Dave end up retired and watching someone else playing with our toys!

ADY: I still see Petra very much as the spin-off of the main story, and as such would be happy to let another artist loose on it if that meant Terry was free to produce Beautiful Freak. But any new artist would have to be pretty good to ensure we don’t lose the high standard Terry’s set. And they’d have to be pretty cheap too because they wouldn’t get paid!

JAY: On a related theme, will Billy be doing any full strips for GBC, or does he prefer to do one-off illustrations?

TERRY: Billy is a jolly nice chap and a good egg! However, he is a perfectionist and without regular jolts from an electric cattle prod is apt to take as long to draw as Dave does to write! We haven’t anything lined up for him yet, but I see no reason why he shouldn’t contribute in that way.

ADY: I’ve seen his strip work and he’s almost as good as Terry, but slower. I’d be happy to let him have a go at Petra, but only if Terry acted in an editorial capacity – the Sleaze Castle mythos has a distinct visual style and I wouldn’t want to damage that.

JAY: Terry, tell us more about this side project Beautiful Freak that keeps getting mentioned?

TERRY: Beautiful Freak was of course inspired by the eponymous Eels song, and turns out to be the literal translation of Panda’s full name, “Pandadomino”. It’ll be the epic story of Panda and her family from birth up to her ascension to the throne of Sleaze Castle. God knows when I’ll get time to do it! It’ll need a ton of background worked out, and enough plot to occupy the cast for about 30 years! But we’ll at least get to find out who all those sisters of Panda’s are, plus what happened to everybody else who used to live there…

JAY: I understand that there are plans to bring out a reprint collection of Petra, possibly incorporating extra material. What can you tell us about that?

TERRY: Well, Adrian has already written at least three extra scenes which go in between the issues to expand on the plot. And after a long hard look at Petra #3 we have to admit it does lurch along a bit in places, especially the end, so we’ll expand #3 by another 12 pages or so. All told, we’ll then have enough Petra for a Director’s Cut-sized book, which we would bring out after the original issues have sold out – late 2002?

JAY: What’s next for Petra?

TERRY: I believe we finally get to meet Petra’s best friend in the next one! Adrian?

ADY: No, her best friend’s called Lydia, not Adrian. (THWAP!) Ouch.

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