DDS creator Chris (his surname is withheld due to legal advice) kindly agreed to give Team Redjec a brief interview in between court sessions, he wouldn't say what the court case was though he did grumble something about how she didn't look 13.
TR : For how long now have you been creating comics?
CD : Since about 1978 or 9, whenever i saw Star Wars at the cinema, that prompted me to try and create some comic stories. Reading Starlord and then 2000AD also encouraged me to start drawing. There hasn't been a year i haven't done some comic stories since though some years i was less prolific than others and its only been the last 10 years i have been creating stories regularly with the UV series.
TR : How did you come up with the idea for the DDS?
CD : Well the Dinos came first and i have been drawing them since the early 80s, when i went to college in the early 90s i met Carl my best friend and we developed something more military based on films like Predator and other cinematic classics. Originally the DDS was a spin-off off the Dinos but over time the Dinos were replaced by human characters like Windscorpion.
TR : Ah yes Windscorpion how did you come up with him?
CD : Carl came up with the initial concept and the name. I fleshed it out, refined it a bit and made him the uber gay terrorist we know, love and fear. He was not the main character to start with but over time has evolved to become the focus of the DDS.
TR : Is that why you couldn't kill him off for good?
CD : Yes in the late 90s when i was going through a crisis of confidence with the DDS i did try to relaunch it without Windy but he is too much a big name to do without. Of course the great thing about comic characters is that you can bring them back to life if you kill them and then change your mind. You can't do that with pets, i've tried.
TR : When did you start to build a coherent universe?
CD : When i moved to "real time", in that each book covers a set period of time with the UV series in 2001 i started to formalise the universe and bring the DDS and Dinos together into a "canon", this website is a big part of that of course. It is a massive database of the DDS Universe which i refer to all of the time!
TR : So how do you come up with your ideas?
CD : All over the place, from TV, other comics, stuff just pops into my head. I don't have any formal plans apart from when there are big continuous storylines such as the Utrek War when i have a basic outline of how the war will go. Carl is a big help to me, he comes up with outlines and suggestions and also helps me out with consistency. He is the world's biggest DDS superfan and lives the DDS.
Oh, court is in session again. See you!
