Data Sheet: David Wynne

NAME: David Wynne.
BIRTHPLACE: South East London (King's College Hospital, specifically).
AMBITIONS: To get paid to sit around at home drawing science fiction comics. As opposed to now where I get paid to sit around at work drawing science fiction comics. Well, technically that's not what they pay me for...
TURN-ONS: Comics, politics, whisky and guitars.
TURNOFFS: Glenn Beck.
GREAT COMICS: I love things like Tom Strong, The Spirit, Nemesis The Warlock and Black Summer- work that doesn't claim to be anything more than escapist entertainment, but the ability and passion of the creators is such that their ideas and personality are carried in the work anyway, and they end up saying something important without even really trying. Such works are often brash and unsubtle, and if the creators are particularly politicised (see the latter two of my examples), the may even be accused of "preachy"-ness. But you know, I'm a Rage Against The Machine fan. I like that sort of thing.
FAMILY LIFE: I live with the most intelligent, courageous and beautiful woman ever to walk this earth. You're damn right to be jealous.
FAVORITE FOOD: I want to say something impressively obscure or adventurous- but the real answer is probably "caaaaake".
WHAT I LIKE IN COMICS: Absolutely bloody everything about the form itself. The mechanics of it make my brain bubble in glorious ways. You draw a picture, and then another one, and then another one, and if you need to explain something that you can't put in the picture, well then you just write it in there... and pretty soon you have a thing, a work of art, that communicates directly with people in a more involving way than any other method I know. I love comics.
WHAT I DISLIKE IN COMICS: On a day to day basis, I find the way that a large section of the people who are apparently devoted to the medium simply cannot recognise and respect that the people who make these things are real live human beings, and not their personal comics making servants.
But on a broader level, what really gets my goat is the way the anglophone comics industry seems almost hard-wired to try and destroy itself. Ever since we moved out of newspapers it's been one long march toward a shrinking, isolated market and pop culture obscurity.
Which is why I make webcomics.
FAVORITE CREATORS: Will Eisner, Alan Moore, Mike Mignola, Warren Ellis, Barry Windsor Smith, Moebius, Paul Grist, Alan Grant, Greg Rucka, Jason Aaron, Sean Phillips, Henry Flint, Brian Bolland, Carlos Ezquerra, John Wagner, Pat Mills, Frank Miller, Robert Crumb... I could do this all day.
IDEAL EVENING: Good company, good food, a little whisky and no work the next day.