Walking the Line: Peter Milligan, Leandro Fernández, and The Discipline

It’s the story of Melissa, a woman from a working class background who’s lately found herself among New York’s upper class. Living on the border between those two worlds, she’s approached by a seductive man named Orlando (perhaps a reference to Virginia Woolf’s gender-swapping protagonist) desperate to initiate her into a secret society with ambiguous motives. Shape-shifters and erotic magic come into play, with ritualistic indoctrinations centered around highly charged, generally kinky sex. It’s graphic, but Milligan and Fernández have other things on their minds: as Melissa straddles (no pun intended) the worlds of rich and working class, she is similarly faced with a new world that pushes her out of her day-to-day complacency. For The Discipline, the question becomes: how far is too far? Writer Milligan and artist Fernández chatted with us to provide some insight.
So, Peter: some of my own earliest exposure to your work was with Enigma and The Extremist, both for Vertigo. Even though this book definitely covers new ground, it feels like a bit of an evolution from those earlier graphic novels. Is that something that’s on your mind as you’re writing?
Peter Milligan: Not really. Enigma, I feel that is a very different book. There are links with The Extremist, some interests or obsessions have been built upon for sure but I’m a bit loath to call this an evolution as such: it suggests Extremist and The Discipline are closer related than they really are. Both deal with sex, and what you might call secret societies, but The Discipline really is much more concerned with metamorphosis.

Easy question, hopefully: what’s the elevator pitch? What’s the book about, from each of your points of view. I’m always interested in the creators’ spin on a book.
PM: The Discipline is the story of a woman who seems to be living a great, wealthy life but is in fact emotionally and sexually frustrated and unfulfilled. When a handsome stranger enters her life she goes looking for excitement…and ends up getting an awful lot more than she could possibly have imagined.
Leandro Fernandez: I see this as the way she has to discover her own potential to move forwards into such a big change to face new weird and difficult situations. It’s about finding and taking out what’s already inside her, and at the same time a change that comes after that, even if it’s intentional or not. Like Peter said before: is about metamorphosis.
Melissa’s an interesting character in that she’s in some ways a subject of sexual violence (or at least sexual exploitation), but very quickly develops her own sense of agency and strength. What are your feelings about the character, and how tricky was it to walk that line? To have her face the things she faces without being a victim?
PM: I don’t see that Melissa is the victim of sexual violence or exploitation. Some of the sex she encounters has an edge of violence or danger but I feel that, step by step, she is a conscious and willing partner in the strange dance she embarks upon. Yes, she feels a bit overwhelmed by it all. Yes, Orlando is persuasive and uses every trick he knows to lure Melissa, but she wants to be lured. And pretty soon – as she begins to change in some very profound ways—the power balance between her and Orlando becomes much more ambiguous. I’m interested in characters who—like Melissa—are able to straddle more than one world: she comes from a blue-collar background but now easily fits into this high-end Manhattan lifestyle. A social chameleon, if you will. It’s this ability that enables her to cope when her world—and her very metabolism—changes in an even more intense way. So to sum up, it was important for me not to make Melissa a victim, and I certainly don’t see her as one. That’s not to say she can’t get scared, hurt, or confused along what is an incredible journey.
There’s a fair bit of sex in the book, but it definitely feels as though it’s a way of getting at other topics. Without asking you to be too pedantic about it, what’s the role of sex in the story?
PM: That’s it exactly. There’s a lot of sex, but it isn’t about sex. On one simple level the sex is part of, stages in, a complex and ancient ritual used by The Discipline to draw out the strange inner potential that some people like Melissa have. What I like about this is that in so many stories sex is the endgame. It is, for want of a better word, the climax. Melissa is probably thinking no further than that when she begins her “adventure.” But in The Discipline the sex is just the beginning, a staging post leading to what this is really all about: metamorphosis.
Are Brits just kinkier? It seems like some of the most “edgy” (for lack of a better word) comics material, going back to at least the 80s, has come from British writers (yourself included, Peter). Is it the weather? Memories of Margaret Thatcher?
PM: Ha ha! I assure you, memories of Margaret Thatcher do not compel me to write steamy, sexually explicit stories. Having traveled the world, from the USA to Australia and across Europe, I can safely report that Brits are no kinkier than anyone else. Or if they are, they’ve been hiding it from me, the bastards! I think though that maybe Brits are more comfortable or willing to trawl through that side of their lives or imaginations, and then reveal it to the world. Why? Maybe we come from a culture where comic books—with many of their supposed restrictions – are not quite so culturally central.
Leandro does incredible work with some challenging material aside from detailed scenes of urban life, there are also chameleons and people in various states of undress and/or copulation, as well as scenes set in the ancient past. What was the working relationship like? Some of these scripts must have been a…interesting on first read.
PM: For me, the writer, it was great, perfect. Leandro is good at following complex scripts but at the same time he’s always willing to put forward creative suggestions of his own. I’ve said it elsewhere but one thing that strikes me about Leandro’s work in this book is that he often lavishes as much care or creative attention on the way light falls between two buildings in Manhattan as he does light falling across naked bodies. I think this contributes to the strangeness of the book. It’s as though everywhere is alive with erotic potential. And this is great because in a way it mirrors the strange world that Melissa, as she changes, enters.
Melissa has a unique appearance; she’s not a cookie-cutter heroine. What went into her look? How much of that was Leandro, and how much was input from Peter?
PM: We reached Melissa’s look between the two of us. There were a few things I was very sure about. Those pneumatic-assed, torpedo-breasted girls (i.e. impossible women) who populate most of comics really piss me off. I wanted Melissa to look like a normal, attractive young woman, not like a photo-shopped super model with a boob job. Leandro was in total agreement with me on this. Another thing that we agreed was important was that if we were going to show sex and nudity in this book—and we had to, if the book was going to be true to itself—then men as well as women would be seen naked.
LF: Everything had to have a coherence. Melissa needed some research on her whole look, clothes, and places where she moves around both to make it real, and at the same time having a sort of sex appeal. I want to work the atmosphere of the book to be sexy in some way. I try to find sexiness even on things that aren’t sexual in their own nature, like objects or scenarios. So if I get it, the whole book will have the right feeling we want it to have.

You’ve both done work on mainstream, big-company titles, as well as some creator-owned-type work like Discipline. What’s the difference? Is one better/easier/more rewarding than another?
PM: I don’t think it’s about being better, easier or more rewarding. It all comes down the type of story. I found XStatix very rewarding, and that was about a bunch of X Men superheroes. I put a lot of myself into Shade The Changing Man, and that was a mainstream Vertigo book. For a story like The Discipline – where for it to work you really need to experience Melissa’s shocking journey—a company like Image has been perfect. And that’s all you can say, really.
LF: In my case it just belong to a different stage on my career. It’s good to work on mainstream companies, with popular and well known characters, I had a great experience doing that, it was rewarding and I’ve learnt a lot, I love it. But after so long doing it I found out what I want to do and what I do now, that is to work on new things…creations of my own. My feeling about it is that in this field, the limits are only those we, creators, put to ourselves, so the challenge is much bigger. Artistically speaking, of course. We create the whole world we are showing.
What’s next for The Discipline?
PM: I think there’s a lot more story in this book—I’m really interested in following Melissa and exploring the Discipline and Stalkers more, and seeing how they can continue in this modern, social media drenched world. Leandro and I are planning to do at least two more storylines. We’ll look at our schedules and discuss things with Image and hopefully come to a decision about timings soon.
The Discipline is available on October 11.