Steve Gerber: An Absurd Journey (Part II)
By Darren Schroeder
It is hard to come up with an adequate introduction for a creator
who has had such an important impact on the comics scene. With
ground breaking work on such titles as Man-Thing,
Howard the Duck, Void Indigo and Nevada, he
has constantly shown that comics can tell a wide range of
stories, from dramatic to absurd to funny to shocking, and he has
never been afraid to try something new. While doing this Steve
Gerber doesn't insult the reader's intelligence and continues to
produce work that stands up to repeated reading. His answers to
my questions are a case in point.
DS: I'd be interested to hear your opinion. I know that
whenever I discuss this question with the Editor here at SBC we
decide that cover prices are way to high for what we get,
especially in light of the disposable nature of a lot of the
writing in comics. We put this down to the production house
methods which demands high numbers of staff and our own situation
of being in a little country at the bottom of the world whose
currency is worth very little compared to the US dollar.
SRG: I hadn't even figured exchange rates into the
equation. You're dealing with a couple of different issues here.
The disposable nature of the writing in many comics is a
writing problem, not a pricing problem. As I've been saying for
years now -- and Warren Ellis and Steven Grant have been beating
the same drum in their online columns and forums -- don't buy
comics you don't read, or, given the prices today, that you can't
even imagine wanting to read more than once.
Now, obviously, no one knows if a comic will be worth reading
again before they've read it the first time, but there are
comics whose content is completely predictable, based on the
reader's experience, if nothing else. When a series has proven
unsatisfying for several months preceding, what's the point in
letting the publishers and creators pick your pocket yet again?
I've never understood the fans who buy comics purely out of habit
or just to keep their collections complete. Unless you're in the
fertilizer business or a terrorist, a large pile of manure isn't
any more desirable than a smaller pile.
The larger question, though, has to do with the viability of the
32-page comic book format and its distribution almost exclusively
through comics shops. Now that the industry is staring death in
the face, it's finally starting to come to grips with the fact
that this format is useless. It's drastically overpriced for what
it is; even in the U.S., readers are paying more than a dime per
page of story. Advertisers hate it. Newsstands hate it.
Bookstores hate it. The only people who don't hate it are
fans with large supplies of unused mylar snugs -- oh, and mylar
snug manufacturers, I suppose. The format made a certain amount
of sense when comics were both cheap and widely available in
other kinds of stores, but it's now an anachronism. In fact --
although I'm somewhat less certain of this -- the entire paradigm
of the comic book as periodical may be outdated. The only
serialized stories that general audiences follow these days are
the ones delivered into their homes on television. They watch
The Sopranos or The Practice or Survivor
because they don't have to leave their homes and make a special
trip to get them at a store that sells serialized stories, and
nothing else. (A slightexaggeration about what's available
in the comics shops, but you see the point.) I'm not even sure
they'd watch them on TV if they could only get ten minutes' worth
at a time -- which is about what it takes to read a comic book --
and if each episode cost three bucks to view.
The future of printed comics is in trade paperbacks and
maybe some kind of magazine format. And the future, if
there is one, will not be comprised of vast superhero universes
with forty years of sacrosanct continuity. The content of
comics has to change, too, to attract a wider readership.
Repackaging Spider-Man in a magazine format won't cut it.
The industry is going to have to broaden its scope and attract
creators whose life's ambition isn't to write and draw the
characters they grew up with. Otherwise, the comic book business
is as good as dead.
What's happening in the marketplace now is not a repeat of
the early '50s or the early '70s. In the '50s, widespread
distribution of comics wasn't an issue. That was becoming less true
by the early '70s, but even then you could still find them, without
much effort, in drug stores and dime stores, at mom-and-pop candy
stores -- just about anywhere people went to shop. And until about
the mid-1980s, cover price wasn't much of an issue, either. Nobody
balked at the idea of a fifty-cent comic book. In the past fifteen
years or so, though, distribution outside the direct market has all
but dried up, and prices have risen, what, about six hundred
percent? The cheap entertainment
model no longer fits when
it's just as expensive to buy a comic book as it is to rent a
video. Or when three comic books cost as much as adding HBO to your
cable lineup.
What we're going through now is not a slump
, it's a full-blown
crisis. The problems run very deep, and they can't be solved by any
of the old methods -- flooding the market wit more books, cutting
the number of story pages per issue, raising the cover price. Some
truly radical thinking is required, and how the industry responds
to this current dilemma is going to determine whether or not there
is a comics industry three or four years from now.
So far, the prognosis ain't good. Instead of putting forth the
effort to think in new ways about the future, comics people have
begun to quote the old bromide that comics do well in bad economic
times -- as if a Bush recession is going to save the industry. This
is, to put it bluntly, complete horseshit. In the first place, it
isn't even true. Comics' best sales period ever, in
the entire history of the medium, was during World War II, which
was a time of economic recovery in the U.S., following the
Depression of the 1930s. Comics sales slumped in the recession of
the early '50s and again in the recession of the early '70s. There
was an uptick in the early '90s, yes, just before the economic boom
of the Clinton years, but that was a fluke brought on by the influx
of speculators. It's not going to happen again. The industry isn't
just going to get better all by itself.
DS: How would you describe the reaction of readers to
Howard the Duck and did this reaction surprise you?
SRG: After Howard
was "killed off" in Man-Thing #1, the reaction was
unbelievable. Marvel was flooded with letters demanding that we
bring him back. The character struck a nerve that surprised
everyone, myself included.
DS: Regarding the court case you had with Marvel about
creator's rights concerning the Duck, did this action harm your
career in the short and/or the long term?
SRG: It may have, in the short term. Fortunately, I was
doing most of my work outside the comics industry while all that
was going on, so it didn't have any long-term effect. I'm
apparently one of the very few writers my age in comics who doesn't
seem to have trouble finding work.
DS: Was it worth it?
SRG: That's a harder question to answer. All I can say with
any certainty is that if I had it to do over, and everything
happened exactly the same way, I would probably do the same thing
again. I couldn't live with myself otherwise.
DS: Browsing in my local comic shop this week I found a copy
of Stewart the Rat, brought it home and had a read. It's
pretty surreal. How did that project come about?
SRG: I had been friends with Dean Mullaney for a number of
years before he and his brother Jan started Eclipse. After I left
Marvel in 1978, Dean wanted to do a book with me. The rat idea was,
I suppose, a natural follow-up to the duck. Looking back, I
consider it a mistake; I should have done something else, something
radically different, first. At the time, though, the temptation to
do a reverse-Disney -- first duck, then rodent -- was
irresistible.
DS: In the late 80's you started to work as a writer for
animated TV series such as Thundarr the Barbarian, G.I.
Joe, Mr. T etc. What changes in your approach to writing
did TV scripting demand?
SRG: Actually, between leaving Marvel and getting started in
animation, I had another experience that provided a kind of
epiphany about comics. Mark Evanier hired me to write a bunch of
stories for Hanna-Barbera's overseas publications. I was working on
characters like Jabberjaw, Hong Kong Phooey, even Scooby-Doo, and
having to tell a complete story in six pages. All of a sudden, I
couldn't extend a story over ten issues and an annual, as I did
with the Defenders "Bozos" sequence. I had to learn how to
communicate complex ideas -- some of these were very strange
stories -- in a way that looked simple, and, even more importantly,
I had to learn story structure.
Structure,
simplicity, and brevity are the essence of
writing for film, TV, and animation -- and for comics. Please
understand, I don't mean that you have to tell brief, simple-minded
stories in any of those media. What I'm saying is that the simplest
route to a complex idea is very often the most engaging and
the
most effective. If you want a visual analogy of this principle,
look at artists like Alex Toth or Carl Barks or Frank Miller. They
all pare down the sheer number of lines in a drawing to the most
essential, the most expressive. Jack Kirby's work was a variation
on that; he could do very "busy" backgrounds, but they usually
served as contrast to the massive, dynamic shapes of his
characters.
Anyway, to get back to the question -- I had to learn structure,
simplicity, and brevity. That part I got. I also had to learn to
"work well with others," at which I failed miserably. For better or
worse, I just don't have the right temperament for writing TV or
film. I'm not good at "collaborating" with producers, network
executives, and censors. I had some good experiences in the field,
mostly at Sunbow Productions on the G.I. Joe series and at
WB Animation on the Superman and Batman shows, but I finally
had to leave it behind.
DS: I notice you also worked on the Dungeons &
Dragons series. What did you think of the new movie?
SRG: Haven't seen it.
DS: Was your work as co-writer with Beth Woods on the
episode Contagion for Star Trek, the Next Generation
a good experience on that level? From what I've heard Start Trek
TNG was a very producer driven show.
SRG: Beth and I worked directly with Gene Roddenberry on
that episode. Let's just say that after we finished
Contagion, I didn't want to do another one. (Beth did a
write at least one more episode, I believe.) I liked Gene
tremendously as a person. Beth and I had dinner at his home one
evening, and besides discussing our script, we spent a couple of
hours swapping stories about his battle with Paramount over Star
Trek and mine with Marvel over the duck. We had a long talk
about show biz in general, about politics, religion -- you name it.
It was a very memorable evening. As a producer, though, Gene drove
me completely nuts. Beth and I must've done about six or seven
drafts of the Contagion script, and it really didn't get any
better - just different - after about the third or fourth. It got
to the point that Gene was asking for changes just for the sake of
making changes. It was his show, of course, and he had every right
to do it his way, but I can't work like that. It was a case of two
very independent thinkers whose thinking didn't mesh.
DS: Void Indigo
has achieved an almost cult status as an important piece of work
that is marred by its cancellation. What were the reasons for the
halt in publishing?
SRG: There were two reasons. First, I was working full-time
in animation, and that caused problems -- entirely my fault -- with
the schedule of Void Indigo. Then, of course, there was the
controversy surrounding the book. After they saw the first issue of
what was supposed to be the ongoing series, a number of
distributors urged their retailers to boycott the book. They were
offended by the sex and the violence. As a result, orders dropped
from something like seventy or eighty thousand on the first issue
to something like fourteen thousand on the second issue.
Given the scheduling problems and the resistance from retailers and
distributors, Archie Goodwin, who was editing the book, felt it
wasn't worth continuing the series, and reluctantly I had to agree.
You have to remember, this was just a year or so after the
settlement of the Howard the Duck lawsuit, and I wasn't much in the
mood for banging my head against another brick wall.
DS: It's weird that the distributors would bulk at that
violence when titles like the Punisher etc dealt with a far
more mindless violence and no one seems to have raised an eyebrow
about that.
SRG: If I remember correctly, the more violent version of
Punisher, as well as books like Watchmen and Dark
Knight, didn't appear until a couple of years after Void
Indigo. By that time, the audience and the distributors were
willing to accept them. Also, there was a sexual component to some
of the violence in Void Indigo that people found disturbing.
That was the intention, of course, but the audience just wasn't
ready for it.
DS: How do you think the comics audience has changed since
then?
SRG: For a little while, it got younger and hipper, and its
points of reference changed. It was an audience that also went to
movies regularly and watched MTV and maybe read the occasional
horror novel. Its notion of what constitutes a story went
completely to hell, because movies had gone into the business of
providing thrill rides, not real narratives, but it was an audience
no longer outraged by any material that couldn't get through the
doors of the Southern Baptist Convention.
DS: The story summary available for issues
#3-6 of Void Indigo appears to be from correspondence
between you and Val Mayerick. How did it find its way onto the
web?
SRG: I posted it on the CompuServe comics forum back in the
late '80s, I think, to answer some forum members' questions about
where the series was headed. The synopsis itself was written at
Archie Goodwin's request, before we made the final decision on the
fate of the book.
DS: Do you feel vindicated by the success of Nevada,
a series that shares its sense of the bizarre.
SRG: I wish that
were true. Nevada wasn't nearly the success I wanted it to
be. I think it's the second-best thing I've ever written, after the
Foolkiller limited series, and it was beautifully drawn by
Phil Winslade, but never really took off. It's the only major work
of mine that's currently available in trade paperback, so I'm
hoping readers will discover it over time.
DS: Oh, I thought the appearance of the Trade paperback
reflected good sales on the part of the individual comics.
SRG: Good enough to justify reprinting it in that format,
but not a howling success in the comic book shops.
DS: At one stage there was talk of a second Nevada
mini series that you were starting to write. How far did that
get?
SRG: From DC's point of view, the sales of the first limited
series didn't warrant it, unfortunately. I hope to do something
with Nevada on the Web or with another publisher,
eventually.
DS: What is it about the Foolkiller limited series
that makes it your best work?
SRG: It's the fullest exploration of a character I've ever
done, and of all my work, it's the least glib, the least facile. It
doesn't take any shortcuts in terms of characterization or plot,
and it never attempts to resolve the moral ambiguity of its
protagonist. It leaves it entirely to the reader to judge whether
Kurt Gerhardt is a hero or a villain. Or both.
On the surface, Kurt might seem to fit the definition I gave above,
but for the fact that he was acting as self-appointed judge, jury,
and executioner, which tends to cast a certain moral pall over his
actions.
DS: Had any
chats with the folk at Marvel about getting it released as a trade
paperback?
SRG: I've mentioned it. They haven't shown any interest.
It's a shame, because it's exactly the kind of property they say
they're looking for. (Bill Jemas, if you're reading this -- make
someone dig up this series for you.) The problem may be the
artwork. They hired J.J. Birch to pencil the book specifically
because they were impressed with his work on DC's Catwoman
limited series. Then, by some twisted logic I'll never understand,
they intentionally hired an inker they thought would prevent
the book from looking like Catwoman. I forget now who that
inker was, but he was totally unsuited to J.J.'s pencils. The
pencil art was a lot stronger than what finally appeared on the
printed page.
DS: With your involvement things like the CompuServe comics
forum back in the late '80s you were one of the first creators to
take advantage of the possibilities that the Internet held for
comic professionals. What did you think about the net back then and
has it meet your expectations?
SRG: A little history first:
I first got interested in computer telecommunications back in the
mid-'80s, when Gerry Conway showed me an early email service called
MCI Mail. I was working on the G.I. Joe animated series at
the time. The producers' offices were in New York, and I was based
in Los Angeles. The producers weren't yet computerized, but MCI
Mail offered a service where I could transmit a script
electronically and then have a hard copy delivered to the producers
within just a few hours. Up to that point, we'd been using Federal
Express to ship scripts cross-country. Suddenly, we had a way to
cut the lag time -- in 24-hour increments -- between finishing a
script and getting it to the production offices. (This was before
inexpensive fax machines became commonplace, too.)
MCI Mail was expensive, though. So I began looking into other
possibilities and discovered computer bulletin boards. When Sunbow,
the producers of G.I. Joe, opened an office in Los Angeles,
I set up a BBS that both the writers and the producers could use.
Now, if a writer finished a script at three in the morning, he or
she could upload it to the BBS, and both I, and the producers,
could have it in our hands at start of business the next day.
During that time, I was also
investigating the commercial online services like CompuServe and
BBS networks like Fido and something called RelayNet, which allowed
locally-based BBSs to participate in world-wide conferences similar
to Usenet forums. All of these services, though, were entirely
text-based. There was no World Wide Web at the time, no such thing
as a browser, top speed was 2400 bps, and there was no
interoperability between services -- a CompuServe user, for
example, couldn't send a message to a BBS or even to an AOL user.
On top of all that , the online population was very limited. Most
people barely knew what a personal computer was, and the concept of
a modem was something futuristic, exotic, highly technical, and
vaguely unsettling. So the possibilities for comics were extremely
limited. You could upload and download files (artwork and scripts)
, interact with fans and a handful of other professionals on the
forums, and do online conferences, but that was about it.
Then, in 1993 or '94, the Web came into existence; the first
browser, Mosaic, made its debut; and the Internet exploded. By that
time, modem speeds were up to 9600 bps, and the concept of
transmitting at least simple graphics over the net, directly from
one user to another, was beginning to look real. That's when the
real possibilities for comics on the net started to become evident.
The biggest problem then, as now, was bandwidth. At 9600 bps, it
took forever just to receive, say, a JPG scan of a comic book
cover. Nobody wanted to wait forever while those things loaded, and
you can't blame them. At the same time, though, it was becoming
clear that all this stuff was only going to get faster.
I thought then, and I still believe, that the real future of comics
is on the Web. Now, I don't mean that printed comics are going to
become "obsolete." They'll always be around, in some form or
another, but as computer graphics displays get better and
simultaneously cheaper, as network speeds get faster and bandwidth
increases (about a third of U.S. homes now have cable modems or
DSL), and as printed comics get progressively more expensive, the
Web looks more and more attractive as a distribution channel for
some new breed of comics.
Has it fulfilled its promise yet? No. It hasn't even come
close.
There are a number of reasons for that.
First, the comics industry in general tends to be a "late adopter"
of new technology. It took 'way too long for the publishers to
grasp the idea that comics could be lettered and colored digitally,
and, as I mentioned earlier, they still haven't managed to
introduce anything resembling nuance into digital coloring. And
they're still only flirting with the possibilities of digital
"inking," which, if executed properly (big "if"), would allow
comics to be reproduced on paper with the penciller's style very
nearly intact.
Second, too many of the experiments with comics on the net have
been an attempt to replicate on a computer screen what comics do on
paper; the daily strips distributed by email, for example, or
Scott McCloud's recent Zot! serial on the Comic Book
Resources site. True enough, Scott didn't limit himself to the
spatial constraints of a comic book page, but he also chose to
ignore the multimedia capabilities of the Web, because he considers
those extraneous to his narrow definition of "comics."
Daisy-chaining panels down an effectively bottomless page is one
way to do comics on the Web, but I think it's very far from the
most effective way.
Third, some other Web-based comics ventures -- most visibly Stan
Lee Media, where I worked briefly -- both suffered from the dotcom
euphoria syndrome of the late '90s and abandoned the very quality
that makes comics unique, the melding of words and pictures into a
gestalt that is both visual and literary. They chose instead to
adopt every new technology uncritically, just because it was new.
So what you got on sites like stanlee.net was the Web equivalent of
mediocre Saturday morning cartoons, not comics at all.
What's been
overlooked, though, about Stan Lee Media, in the flurry of news
about the financial shenanigans and stock manipulations, is that
its business model was actually working! Yes, the company expended
far more energy and time on promotion than on substance. Yes, it
spent money foolishly and profligately. Yes, most of its product
was utter crap. And yet, in spite of all that, there was a theme
park ride and a movie deal, the latter admittedly dicey, on 7th
Portal. The Drifter series had been picked up by Sci-Fi
Channel for an original TV series. There were substantive licensing
deals for toys and other merchandise on the verge of completion
when the company ran out of money. If the people running the
company had been just a little bit wiser, if they'd been able to
hang on for another six months, Stan Lee Media might have been a
colossal success story rather than a monumental
embarrassment.
I've been involved with two Internet-based comics ventures -- one
prior to Stan Lee Media -- so far. The earlier one never got off
the ground for a variety of reasons, including personality clashes
among the principals and a drastic underestimation of how much
money was needed to fund such a venture. Stan Lee Media failed,
because it became a textbook example of every stupid dotcom
cliche.
There were huge lessons for me in both of these experiences. What
I've learned, though, does not include the notion that every
Internet-based comics venture is doomed to failure. Exactly the
opposite, in fact. I'm absolutely convinced that such a venture can
succeed, if it's adequately funded, competently managed, and
maintains at least as much focus on substance as on promotion and
deal-making -- and if it has a real vision of what comics on the
Internet can be.
In fact, I'm in the process of putting together such a venture now.
For obvious reasons, I can't discuss any details, but I think I've
got the right team of people this time, as well as a very workable
business model, and I strongly believe we have a distinctive vision
of how to do comics on the Web.
DS: I can't help think that such a move is just exchanging
one set of problems with another. I recall being at a seminar about
this topic at SPX in 1999. Some of the speakers were trumpeting the
Internet as the dawn of a new freedom in comics but I was struck by
the irony of the fact that my friend and I had been wandering all
over Bethesda the last few days looking for Internet access and had
no luck at all. All the reader of a traditional comic book needs is
some light.
SRG: There are always trade-offs. Some projects will always
be better suited to paper than a screen. But there's a Japanese
manga publisher who's subsidizing the development of an e-book
reader designed specifically for comics. And the Web is only going
to become more pervasive, despite the hiccup it's experiencing now
-- and unlike comics' current crisis, the Internet's problems
are a hiccup. The net is going to recover and come roaring
back. It's very fashionable to put it down now, but that won't be
the case in a year or so.
No offense, but comics fans are almost as conservative as comics
creators and publishers; they don't want to see this happen,
because they don't completely understand it, and because it
necessarily changes the entire framework of what it means to be a
fan. After all, you can't really collect digital media.
They're instantly reproducible with no loss of quality, so the fan
whose definition of himself is based on his longboxes will be
facing a major crisis of identity. But the change is coming, and
nothing is going to stop it. For fans, creators, and publishers
alike, it's the old, bitter choice of adapt or die. I thought then,
and I still believe, that the real future of comics is on the Web.
Now, I don't mean that printed comics are going to become
obsolete. They'll always be around, in some form or another, but
as computer graphics displays get better.....the Web looks more and
more attractive as a distribution channel for some new breed of
comics.
DS: Your Word Comic Book
Script Templates seem to have become a popular feature of your
website. Why do you think that is?
SRG: A couple of reasons. First, there's never been an
established format for comics scripts, as there are for, say,
screenplays or teleplays, and until recently, when writers began
posting script excerpts on the net, new or aspiring writers had
very few examples to work from. For new writers, the template
eliminates the worry over what kind of impression the manuscript
itself will make, because it provides a professional format and
allows the writer to concentrate on content instead.
For established writers, it can work much the same way. I use the
template for my own scripts, because it lets me forget about the
technical aspects of word processing while I'm working. If I want
to start a new story page, I hit Alt+PageDown. If I want to start a
new panel, I hit Alt+P. If I want to enter a line of dialogue, I
hit Alt+D, and that's it. The template does the formatting for me,
and I don't have to stop and think about fonts, paragraph styles,
tab settings, or whatever. Those are the things the computer is
good at, so I want it do the drudge work. I'd rather pay
attention to the story.
I should mention, by the way, that the template isn't available on
my site at the moment. As of Word 97, Microsoft changed Word's
programming language from WordBasic to Visual Basic for
Applications (VBA), which meant the entire template had to be
rewritten in that language. VBA is much more powerful, but it's
also a bitch to learn. For the past couple of years, I've been
putting it off, and using a very buggy hybrid version for my own
work. That was fine for me, because I knew where the bugs were and
how to get around them, but it wasn't something I could inflict on
innocent users. Finally, though, I've climbed a little way up the
VBA learning curve, and I'm in the process of coding a completely
new version of the template.
I'm actually very excited about this. I've been able to fix some
functions that never quite worked the way they were supposed to
under WordBasic, and I've added some features that I always
wanted to have available, and that make the template much more
user-friendly. I've also added a lot of error-trapping procedures
that should have been included from the very beginning. And I
may eventually be able to make this version work on the
Macintosh, as well as under Windows, since Word now uses the same
programming language for both platforms. (I can't promise that yet,
but it's something I'd really like to do.)
Anyway, about 85% of the coding is done now, but I still need to
update the user manual and put the new version through at least a
brief round of beta testing before I release it. Assuming my
testers don't find any major bugs, the new template should be
available at www.stevegerber.com sometime in
June.
DS: The interactive bibliography system that Steff Osborne
put together for your site is a great idea and the best
implementation of this sort of thing that I've seen. Have the
additions to the bibliography by the public turned up any surprises
for you?
SRG: Unfortunately, there are bugs in that program that
Steff hasn't had time to correct yet, and they've kept people from
entering much new information. She's been busy with other, paying
work, but I'm going to start nagging her about fixing the
bibliography.
DS: What do you make of geeky comic fans who spend all their
time making websites (ie The Swamp
) for their favorite comic characters?
SRG: If people enjoy doing it, I think it's fine. It's
really just a 21st century equivalent of writing fanzine articles.
Those sites may help rekindle interest in some character or creator
who's been out of print for a while. And, as an added benefit, it
allows the fan to become a little more comfortable with the
technology that surrounds all of us.
In that latter sense, it has a lot in common with my work on the
comic book script template. If anybody had told me twenty years ago
that one day I'd be writing computer programs -- as a form of
recreation, no less -- I would have thought they were out of their
minds. That changed when I discovered a good reason to write a
computer program. Now, I actually find it relaxing, despite the
occasional frustrations, simply because it uses a completely
different part of my brain from the part that writes fiction.
If someone else's good reason for learning the basics of HTML and
maybe some rudimentary Javascript happens to be putting together a
fan site, that's wonderful. I'm in favor of just about anything
that makes people want to learn and explore.
DS: What work have you been doing recently?
SRG:
Most recently, a Superman Elseworlds called Last Son of
Earth, a two-part prestige format book that came out last
summer. I'm currently writing the sequel to that one.
There are other projects in the works, but I'm not at liberty to
discuss them yet.
DS: This one sneaked past me while I was avoiding comic
shops at the suggestion of my bank manager, so can you give me the
pitch on what it was about?
SRG: It sneaked past a lot of people. DC did almost no
promotion on it.
It's an Elseworlds book that takes the Superman legend and stands
it on its head. The premise is: What if Earth had been devastated,
and an infant Clark Kent, the son of Jonathan and Martha Kent, had
been rocketed to Krypton, rather than the other way around.
DS: What do you think this and the upcoming sequel add to
our concept of Superman's character that nobody has covered
before?
SRG: I'm not sure that it adds anything to the
concept of Superman's character, because this version isn't the
same person at all. What it does explore, in a way that's never
quite been done before, is the society and culture of Krypton, how
a human would respond to being raised in that culture, and then, in
the second book, how that person would react upon returning to the
world of his birth, and to a humanity that's barely survived a
cosmic catastrophe.
The third book picks up the story eleven years after the end of the
second and actually takes Clark back to Krypton and into the midst
of a war between cultural factions there. Jor-El, his adoptive
father, has begun to unearth the records of Krypton's ancient past,
a period before the Clone Wars -- what you and I would call the
"Silver Age" Krypton -- and wants to rebuild Kryptonian society on
that model. He's opposed by the Council of Elders and even his own
father, who are determined to protect Byrne's neo-Vulcan version of
Kryptonian culture, even if it means civil war.
I'm having a lot of fun with the third book, because it's allowing
me to play around with some of the wackier elements of the Silver
Age Krypton -- the Scarlet Jungle, the weird animals, the Phantom
Zone -- in completely new ways. There's even a new version of
General Zod, a little riff on the multiple varieties of kryptonite,
and a Luthor who's gone almost as loopy as the Joker.
It's interesting -- while I was researching the Weisinger-era
Superman material for this book, I really came to appreciate how
inventive it was. Much of it was silly, sure, and Weisinger clearly
had no judgment as to when he'd crossed the line into too much of a
good thing. But when you look just at the level of inventiveness,
at all the concepts and characters he and his writers were
originating on a regular basis, it's pretty damn astonishing.
You can make the same statement about the early Marvel era, as
well, and about Jack's Fourth World books.
You asked me very early on why I didn't much care for comics today,
and I think this may be the answer. Nobody is doing much
imagining anymore. Think about it. How many new
Batman villains have there been since, say, the early '70s? (Harley
Quinn is the only one that comes to mind, and she wasn't even
created by DC.) How many new characters has Marvel launched since
the 1980s? How many new Spider-Man or Fantastic Four
villains have we seen in that time? Where are the writers and
artists who are willing to dive off the deep end, even within the
established continuities, as I did with the damn duck? (And others
did, too, with various other creations -- I wasn't a completely
isolated phenomenon.)
Writers are willing to settle for regurgitating the stories and
characters they read as kids, and readers are willing to -- well,
let's not extend the metaphor any further.
You know, I'm not a big fan of Alan Moore's ABC books, but if
there's a reason they've been so successful -- apart from the fact
that Alan is a magnificent writer, I mean -- it's that he's had the
courage to show people something they haven't seen before.
He may be packaging it in familiar wrapping a lot of the time, too
familiar for me, but at least it's new. At least it's the product
of one writer with one very distinctive point of view.
DS: Thanks again for spending
your time on this, I appreciate it.
When Steve's upcoming projects get announced (or to get them
announced) we will be doing a catch up interview on those and any
other topics that seem relevant. In the meantime you can keep up to
date with Steve's work via his website:
www.stevegerber.com
Internet Movie Data Base page for Steve
Steve's rejected script for HOWARD THE DUCK
Pitch for the unpublished Void Indigo issues
Steve talks about EXILES
Steve
talks about SLUDGE
ST:TNG Contagion.
Chronology of Star Trek Novelizations
Mention of a Batman episode called "Critters"?
howardtduck.homepage.com
FoolKiller
Great GI Joe Site.
Batman/Superman Animated
Interview with manwithoutfear.com
Power Questions Interview
Interview with Popimage.com
Westfield interview
Interview with Reading For Pleasure
Iguana Studios Contributes to Stanlee.net and 7th Portal Launch
Gene Colan chats with Kevin Hall
Gene Colan chats with Comic Book Resources
rec.arts.comics.misc FAQ Part 3: Inside the Comic Book Industry