Growing up in Malaysia and England, there wasn't an obvious route into the comics world, so my creative energy went into theatre and prose and then movies and TV.

I've always wanted to write comic books, my earliest memories are of waiting for Dad to come home from work, and, secreted in his lawyer's leather briefcase, would be comics from the store.

I think it crucial to recognize that you can't straightforwardly "adapt" Douglas Adams. Douglas's genius was uniquely his own. What I've tried to do here, and in every other version, is to be true to the character and the Adams' tone and approach to narrative, his unique brand of word-play and "idea-play" humor.

It is of course daunting to make ones public debut in a new format, particularly with a well loved character, and in a medium as much scrutinized by the web-o-sphere as comics... But I had the comfort of having great editors at IDW (Chris Ryall and Denton Tipton) and I knew whatever I wrote, Ilias would make me look good.

For better or worse, I've become the person the Adams Estate has entrusted to guide Dirk Gently into new mediums and to new audiences. I take that responsibility pretty seriously, which is, I'm guessing, where Ilias's comment about me being a "hands-on collaborator" (code for control freak) comment comes from.

Dirk Gently has been a long passion (my career started with Douglas Adams and my stage adaptation of Dirk Gently) .

There is more sexy-stuff a coming in this book, though.... This ain't your grandmother's Dirk Gently.