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DOWNTHETUBES: John, if you had to pitch Albion to sell it to new readers, how would you do it?

JOHN REPPION: Okay, here goes (cue gravely voice over): America has always had it's heroes but where are ours? Who, these days, has ever even heard of Tim Kelly and the Eye of Zoltec or Jim Hollis the Rubberman? It's almost as though these characters never even existed. But then, maybe that's what they want you to think... Albion is the story of perhaps the greatest comic book cover up in history; a journey into a world were what happens on the page is a mere shadow of what happens off it.

DOWNTHETUBES: Sounds good to me! How did the Albion Project and this return of so many British comics characters – characters who haven't been in print in the UK for years -- come about?

LEAH MOORE: I blame Shane for everything. He was speaking to Dad [Alan Moore] and saying he really wanted to do a comic with the old characters from British kid's comics, and Dad being the genial old soul that he is said he'd see who owned them. Shane had the idea that he could somehow buy the rights to the characters but when dad spoke to [Wildstorm editor] Scott Dunbier and asked him, Scott said that maybe Time Warner AOL (the conglomerate that owns DC comics, IPC magazines and most other things too) already did.
Unbeknownst to Dad, Shane or Scott, Bob Wayne was speaking to Andrew Sumner at IPC magazines. Andrew is a huge comics fan and wanted to try and get the old characters out of the dusty old cupboard they had been languishingin. Bob is a fan of British comics too and was happy to take the idea away and figure something out. Scott spoke to Bob, they sorted it all out sodad plotted it, we wrote it and Shane drew it, and even got Dave Gibbonson the covers and the rest is history.


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