Hooked on comics works for Rankin

Now, this doesn’t exactly come as a surprise to me (as many of Rankin’s interviews – and there are many just in the Scotsman alone – touch upon his love for the format) but hearing that after he puts Inspector Rebus to bed, Rankin will turn his attention to writing comics is still pretty cool:

IAN RANKIN, the bestselling crime novelist, will begin a new career as

a comic writer after he finishes the last Inspector Rebus novel.

However, Rankin will not be abandoning his chosen field

completely. He has decided to throw himself not into the world of

muscle-bound, cape-wearing heroes but that of a supernatural detective,

John Constantine, who appears in the monthly comic Hellblazer.

Rankin announced that he was in negotiations with Vertigo — an imprint of DC Comics, which publishes Superman and Batman — at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Thursday night.

He told The Times that he had sent Vertigo a six-line

plot outline that would give Constantine a new set of cases to solve.

“The beauty of comic books is that you can do new things with the same

character and the readers don’t seem to mind,” he said. “In my version

he is going to be much more of a pulp fiction-style private eye who

happens to deal with supernatural characters rather than ordinary cases

like divorcing couples. “I will do stories for five or six issues, but DC might do it as a complete graphic novel.”

He won’t start doing work on Hellblazer till November – when he hopes to have the final Rebus novel finished and turned in. As for how the potential match was made? Thank Denise Mina, who wrote for Hellblazer earlier this year.