Hilary Barta Interview on Working with Alan Moore

Hilary Barta interview opening spread – via Hilary Barta Twitter

There’s an extensive Hilary Barta interview in Comic Book Creator magazine #17, out this week. Barta covers lots of ground – from The Thing to SpongeBob SquarePants. I was particularly interested in his account of working with Alan Moore on Splash Brannigan, one of my favorite comics series. I like Splash so much that I went and annotated all of his stories here.

Here are a couple of excerpts from Hilary Barta’s interview:

“Splash Brannigan” was another high point…

Alan’s original idea for Splash was a sort of Flash Gordon crossed with Felix the Cat, who would wear a Rapidograph-type gun in a holster. He’d use it to draw a window on a wall to make his escape and such like. Besides doing the actual character design, my biggest contribution to his creation was suggesting that as living ink, Splash didn’t need a magical Rapidograph – or a costume!