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Mark Millar and his collaborators Leinil Yu, Gerry Alanguilan and Sunny Gho met the readers at The Milla In Manila yesterday, Sunday, at the Glorietta 5 atrium.

Thanks to jet lag, a re-sked and a good Shiraz, our 20-minute interview with Mark Millar last Saturday turned into a 2-hour talk covering comics, film adaptations, Nicolas Cage, the number of men in Manila walking around with much younger women, and the least pervy way to ask the hotel concierge to schedule a massage (Get someone from National Bookstore to do it. Not the massage, the asking).

We’re posting the complete transcript of our conversation with Mark Millar in installments throughout the week. The Scottish accent is not a problem (Thank you, Trainspotting) but it was a long talk.

This interview was made possible by Miguel Ramos and Chad Dee of National Bookstore. Our friend Raymond joined us. We wanted to see how Millar would react to a guy in women’s clothing (Not us, Raymond). He didn’t even blink.

Here’s the view from the stage. The signing was supposed to last 3 hours. We dropped by 6 hours later and the crowd was still there.

Jessica Zafra: You flew over from where?

Mark Millar: Scotland. The time difference is seven hours and I haven’t quite caught up yet. I’ve only been here two days so far.

JZ: No sleep?

MM: It’s like Guantanamo Bay, where they keep you awake…

JZ: And then blast Air Supply over the speakers.

MM: I go back Monday, so I’ll be on Filipino time by the time I get home.

JZ: You’ve lived in Scotland all your life. You haven’t been tempted to move to London or New York where your books are published?

MM: That would’ve been before the Internet. With the Internet you can be in touch with everyone anyway. Then I speak to (his collaborator, the artist) Leinil Yu every single day, to my lawyers and agents and everything. That would’ve been impossible 15 years ago but now it’s great.

JZ: Miguel says National Bookstore won you in a contest.

MM: I know that makes me sound like a prostitute, ye.

Listen to him tell the story.

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MM: We do this fun thing whenever we have a new book coming out or need to promote something. And I said, “Whichever comic book store in the world orders the most copies of my new first issue, I will travel there on my own dime, stay at a hotel on my own dime, and do a signing for the store.” I kinda expected…there’s three stores—one in London, one in New York, L.A. as well. I was fairly sure it would be New York because of the order traffic, something like 3 percent of all Marvel comics come from this one store. I was quite sure it would be that. I’m in New York and L.A. regularly anyway, and I wasn’t expecting the Philippines, I go, what?

JZ: And Miguel says it was a blind bid. So what was your reaction when you saw it was the Philippines?

MM: Totally unexpected, I mean, Are you kidding? But it got me to thinking there must be a large readership, you’ve got Gerry (Alanguilan) and Leinil (Yu).

JZ: It makes perfect sense since you work with so many Filipinos.

MM: Ye, and it was brilliant. A. I get to come to the Philippines and B. I get to hang out with Leinil. He’s one of my pals. I only see him once a year anyway. Instead of another trip to New York I get to come here, which is great.

And then I haven’t seen sunshine in about a year and a half, in Scotland it’s so cold…

JZ: Here we wish the sunshine would go away for a while.

MM: Oh man, I dream of the sunshine. What’s funny is, I actually saw posters up saying “for a new, whiter, healthier you”…

JZ: Yes, people trying to be white. They shoot you with glutathione.

MM: In Scotland where there’s no sunshine everybody wants a tan…

JZ: And they have tanning salons.

MM: Everybody wants what they don’t have. I’m probably the blackest guy in Scotland.

Mark Millar signing our books. He’s all right, just very sensitive to sun. He says he wishes one of his grandmothers had had an affair with an African man so he would have had more protective pigmentation.

TO BE CONTINUED (Volunteer transcribers, please leave your email address in Comments.)

Meanwhile here is the trailer for Super Crooks by Mark Millar and Nacho Vigalondo. Super Crooks is the new series by Millar and Yu.

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Stay tuned to our Mark Millar interview for a chance to win copies of Super Crooks Issue # 1.