Admittedly, vampire stories ain’t exactly new these days. But in fall 2024, writer Mike Carroll and artist Joe Currie joined forces for a daring new take with Silver: Book One: Unearthed in the pages of 2000 AD. With so many layers to the story, the most effective explainer is that it’s basically about “guerilla fighters who dig up a centuries-old vampires in order to fight back against a gigantic mechanized army.” Book one had robots, vamps, and giant battles – everything you’d want in a daring new take on the “genre.”
Now, as of this month’s issue #2,427, Carroll and Currie have launched book two of Silver, called Perfidious. The fighters and our unearth vampire queen, Baroness DeSilva, have struck a major blow against the alien Sepsis. But while the Baroness recovers from battle, how will the mechanized invaders respond? And just how much longer can humanity trust a vampire to serve as their savior? Whether you missed Silver book one or not, book two is a brilliant time to hop on and enjoy an intense and compelling spin on the vampire mythos and tradition.
Silver: Perfidious will continue with 2000 AD #2,430, which is available starting April 30. To get a better understanding of all things Silver, we recently connected with Carroll via email to field a few questions. That includes what to know when coming into book two, the Baroness’ development and arc, why they opted to tell a vampire story in the first place, and what’s to come for the rest of Silver.
Courtesy of 2000 AD.
AIPT: For anyone who skipped book one (for shame), what do they need to know about Silver before leaping into book two?
Mike Carroll: Simply put, Silver is the story of a 500-year-old vampire who has awakened to find that Earth has been conquered by a technologically advanced alien race. She’s recruited by a band of rebels who believe she might be the only chance they have against the invaders. There’s lots of action and carnage and more carnage. And even more carnage.
AIPT: How has the collaborative process evolved between books?
MC: It’s been great – very productive and engaging! Joe’s a fantastic artist with an amazing imagination and a really solid grasp of how to imbue a scene with horror and intensity and bucket-loads of that wonderful carnage that we love so much. For the first book, we spent a lot of time throwing ideas back and forth, and while many of them didn’t make it into the book, they certainly shaped the way we were thinking.
There’s one scene in particular that we were both very excited about – and which was to be one of the key elements of the first book – but then the story veered off in a different direction, so we had to drop it…for now!
AIPT: Similarly, do you still have the same goals and path for this story? Has anything changed or evolved since you’ve started work?
MC: With book two, Joe and I had very strong ideas about where to take the story and we developed an appropriately detailed synopsis and character designs, but then the editor (all hail the Mighty Tharg!) wasn’t on-board with it – not necessarily the story’s destination, but the route we planned to take – so we had to scrap it and start again.
Courtesy of 2000 AD.
Not going to lie, that was a bit of a gut-punch…but, hey, when you’ve been in this business as long as I have, you learn that every obstacle is either a wall or a stepping-stone: you can choose to let it stop you, or use it to climb higher. The second synopsis – which was accepted – is, I believe, much stronger than the first and it allowed us to take the story to places that otherwise might not have occurred to us. So the lesson here, folks, is listen to your editors. They generally know what they’re talking about!
AIPT: What’s it mean to tell this story in 2000 AD? Does the magazine’s significance impact how you tell this story at all?
MC:The magazine’s format definitely plays a part! Each episode of Silver is only five pages long, so that forces us to be very economical with the storytelling. There’s not really much room for slow build-ups leading to startling revelations…But on the other hand, the readers only have to wait a week between episodes, not a month, so that gives a momentum to the story without us having to constantly remind the readers of everything that’s gone before.
On that note, it’s also important that we always bear in mind that strips in 2000 AD have to work on two quite separate levels: firstly as a tale sliced up into (in this case) ten weekly chunks, which is how the readers receive it on first publication, and secondly as a single fifty-page narrative which is how it’ll be read if the story is later collected into a graphic novel. Ideally for those readers coming in later the story should appear to be relatively seamless.
But, yeah, 2000 AD has a well-deserved reputation for courageousness in the comics scene: It can and does try out new things at which other publishers might balk. Because the comic’s an anthology there’s less of a risk if they want to go way out with a strange story or try out a creator who has very much their own style. With Silver, we knew what Joe could do and how avant-garde his artwork can be, and at no point (as far as I know) did anyone suggest that he rein it in.
2000 AD doesn’t have a “house-style” but if it did, it’d be simply “Be awesome.”
AIPT: Why are vampire stories still compelling enough to tell?
MC: This is only the second vampire story I’ve officially published, so I’m not well-placed to answer that, especially given that my first vampire story is only seventy-five words long!
But there really is something very compelling about vampires! They’re stronger than us, faster, longer-lived, certainly compared to me they’re always better dressed, and they often get to live in a castle without having to be royalty. What’s not to love about that? Yes, the soullessness and eternal damnation are probably a bit off-putting, but…remember what I said about living in a castle?
AIPT: Do you see this story as being inherently connected to the current, white-hot political moment? Is all this Trump-ian madness just hard to avoid given how all-consuming it is?
MC: Nah, any connections between Silver and current world politics only exist in the eye of the reader, not the creators! My other ongoing series is Dreadnoughts and that one is absolutely steeped in politics, so for me Silver is a nice, blood-drenched diversion!
Courtesy of 2000 AD.
That said, Joe and I do mostly live in the real world so there could well be some influences creeping into Silver. I mean, it could be argued that the collaborators working with the alien Sepsis have some parallels to, say, organizations in authority who apparently suffer little to no discomfort at de-humanizing, imprisoning, enslaving, or even butchering innocent people simply because their superiors have instructed/permitted them to do so. But, y’know, something like that is not exclusive to the present political situation!
AIPT: How much of this book’s identity is visual first before the actual story? What about Currie’s style really helped this story and world really come together?
MC: Right from the start, when I learned that I’d be working with Joe, I instinctively knew that the right approach was to sit back and let him do his thing. Trust is hugely important in a collaboration like this! Sure, when Joe’s designs started to come in I was initially a little taken aback by a couple of them because they didn’t match what I had conjured up in my head…But I knew that if I were to micro-manage Joe’s output then the story would be ham-strung. It would never be able to soar.
My job as the writer is to tell the story to him: it’s his job to tell it to the rest of the world, and the world doesn’t need or want another comic designed by a writer who thinks they know better than the person actually drawing the comic!
In every case – without fail – as soon as I saw Joe’s designs, I knew he was right. I’m not saying that with a different artist Silver wouldn’t work, but it would be very different and not nearly as exciting. I’ve worked with some amazingly gifted and accomplished artists, and while Joe is very different to all of them, in terms of imagination and execution he is absolutely their equal.
AIPT: How would you describe the baroness? Is she someone to admire, fear outright, or some unnerving combination?
MC: Baroness Yelena Honorée DeSilva is very much a product of her own making…We don’t (initially) reveal very much about her past so I don’t want to give away any secrets, but I think the readers will recognize from the start that she’s not someone you want as an enemy. If she does end up as your enemy, there is perhaps some consolation in knowing that things won’t remain that way for very long.
She’s strong, savage, intelligent and utterly ruthless when she chooses to be… In many fantasy/SF/horror stories, it’s important to have a “fish out of water” character that can act as a surrogate for the reader, and in this case that’s the Baroness… except that she’s almost as different to us as the invading aliens. There’s little about her with which most readers will be able to identify. She’s cold, calculating… quite humorless at times. So just as we’re introduced to the world through The Baroness’s eyes, at the same time we’re introduced to her through the eyes of her human cohorts, some of whom are very much aware that by recruiting her they’ve made a deal with the devil… and it’d be foolish to expect the devil to play fair.
Courtesy of 2000 AD.
AIPT: What standout moments or other highlights can you tease from book two?
MC: Ah, no…! You can’t expect me to reveal anything! I suffer from spoilerphobia – I have a note from my doctor. All I will tell you is that for book two, we’ve ramped up the carnage level – hooray! – and my favorite character is Louise, whom we’ve not met before, and that she was a huge amount of fun to write. Unlike the Baroness, Louise does have a sense of humor… although that’s not always a positive character trait.
AIPT: Is there anything else you want to add about Silver, 2000 AD, stories, the future, etc.?
MC: You know, I could talk about 2000 AD forever – it has been just about the greatest influence on my life and career, and getting to contribute to the comic means more to me than I can ever express – but I’ll spare your readers my gibbering enthusiasm! After all, instead of reading about 2000 AD, their time would be better spent reading 2000 AD itself.
As for what’s coming up… The scripts for Dreadnoughts book four and Silver book three have already been delivered, and of course, coming up in future we should see the release of New Adventures of the Trigan Empire, about which I am far too excited.
Outside of 2000 AD, I’m about to start work on a five-issue series that for now must remain top-secret, and I’ve recently completed something that I really wish I could talk about, but even if I could, it’s not a comics thing… But it is one of those “grail” projects, something I’ve daydreamed about doing since I was a kid. So no complaints there!
Thank you for your excellent, thought-provoking questions – they forced me to look at the work from a new point of view and, y’know, I’m starting to think that perhaps I do know what I’m doing… sometimes, at least!
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