Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I’ve been a very neglectful webmaster this week. I have so much stuff I want to put up, and I’ve had literally no time to do it. Every waking hour since we got a big bit of news on Monday has been taken up with preparing something for delivery. I’m punchy at this point, and I wanted to take 15 minutes to put a few things up, with this Bendis interview being a particular priority...
CLICK HERE for PART ONE or CLICK HERE for PART TWO!!
Welcome back folks, Vroom Socko here.
Here now, is Part Three of My Brunch with Bendis! You might want to have read Parts One and Two before proceeding. If you just want to read this section though, don’t worry, we won’t hold it against you.
The big buzz right now in comics is the manga stuff.
Yes.
A lot of comic creators go off on that, pretty much just aping the style. The books that you write, though, seem to have more of a substantive similarity; the pacing, and the cinematic aspect…
Yeah, I’ll cop to a certain kind of pacing, but it’s not a manga-influenced pacing, but I could see the similarities.
Do you read any manga?
I don’t read a lot of manga. There’s so much of it, and it’s hard to even figure out what the good stuff is, ‘cause it’s one of those things where if you say, hey point me out a good manga, and they’ll go “Buy that one.” Then someone’ll go “No, that one sucks!” and they… people are very, very into it. So I don’t read a lot, but I don’t not like it or anything. And I think, like… Akira is one of the greatest achievements of our lives, or in the history of comics.
Absolutely.
That’s a very influential comic on me, so.
That was another Cormorant, by the way, focusing on the manga. I look at the pacing and I just figure you’re ripping off The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly again, so…
HAHA! Yeah, it’s literally more from that kind of storytelling, from Sergio Leone than it is from… and from other directors that will tell a quieter story than from manga. But the only thing it does, when you’re… like when I was doing Jinx and Jinx was at five hundred pages, you go, “Well, Akira was eight THOUSAND pages, so it’s not insane.” Most of my friends are doing 88 page stories and I’m doing a 500 page story… it does help you over the hump.
And going off that past the Asian comics, what about European comics?
I’m a HUGE fan of European comics, and I’d love to… I was really hoping in Team-Up, and I’m still hoping one day to work with, like, Bilal. Some of my choices really hearken back to European sensibility in mood and tone set by, like Enki Bilal and Manara and… it’s so weird to me that Moebius is so big in this country, but Bilal is more of a cult figure, when he’s such a superior draftsman. And I just bent over backwards to try to get him to do something at Marvel; I just think it’d be amazing to see. Also, I wanted Manara to do Black Widow, with her ass sticking in the air and her tongue sticking out or something, I don’t know. But yeah, that stuff I absolutely adore.
See I grew up on Tintin, so…
Oh, Mark Ricketts is a huge Tintin fan.
Now a lot of books you write but don’t draw resemble your own layouts quite a bit. Do you ever sketch out stuff for your artist, or…
At first I did it for every book except for Ultimate Spider-Man. Bagley made it very clear he didn’t want to hear from my layouts. But on Alias I did the layouts on like the first twenty issues, and I did the first handful of issues on Powers. I’ve stopped as often as I can, unless there’s something I really want to show somebody. I’ve stopped, because I think it was megalomaniac of me, and… But I wasn’t doing it to be a dick; I was doing it because as a writer/artist I wasn’t sure where the writing ended. It all seemed like writing to me.
The layout of the page is so important to me, and when I’m writing I see it so clearly… so I write it as clearly as I see, and now I’ve come to this… I write, “This is how I would draw it.” I write it down, “Do it my way, do it your way, but just get us to this point. Take us on this journey.” And because I’m a visual writer, 90% of the time it’s exactly what I wrote, and… Bagley particularly always makes little changes and always adds something fantastic to the story, or he sticks in some level, some sublevel… There was one that both me and Bagley are immensely proud of, where it was one of those single issue stories where Aunt May was at school, and Peter was shocked to find her there. And while they were talking, Aunt May fixes his tag on the back of his shirt. And it was something Bagley added that sounded like something I would write, but it was totally Bagley. Just a little throwaway and we were so proud of it, it’s such an honest character acting bit of thing, y’know?
So I’m much more open to the journey now, and it’s funny, who I learned it from was Todd. When I was working with Alex Maleev. I was so wound up about Sam & Twitch I drew every page of Sam & Twitch. I flat out drew the entire book, and I’d hand it, fully drawn, to the artist and say “Draw it just like I drew it.” All the artists and me were friendly they knew I wasn’t coming from a mean place. Everyone handled it.
And when I saw the issues what Todd did with Alex, where it was the opposite, where Todd wouldn’t even write a script, he’d just call Alex on the phone and tell him the script. He’d just say, “Okay, there’s two pages of fighting, and two pages of this, and…” and it was the total opposite. And then I saw what Alex was like, opened up without me strangling him by the back of the neck. And when we started Daredevil I said, “I’m not drawing anything. Here it is. Do what you’ve gotta do.” And I was very happy we’d learned that lesson. And maybe no one even notices what I’m talking about, but to me it made a world of difference.
But it’s still hard, because I’m a writer/artist, so you tend to want to show people little stick figures everything that you mean, so… I try to keep it to specialty layouts, where I usually think I came up with an interesting element or idea for a layout, and if it’s hard to describe, I’ll show it. But 95% of the time you can describe it with words.
It’s still something I wrestle with, but the good news is I get to work with all these artists who are so much better than me on so many levels. That people say, “Why don’t you draw anymore?” I’m like, look at what I get to do now! It’s so much easier to have Bagley draw it.
Do you think you ever will draw again?
Oh yeah. I love to draw. I’ll draw again.
I do visual work every day. I do all the graphic design for Powers. I sometimes draw stuff out for myself, and don’t show it to them. Particularly on Alias and The Pulse, I’m not sure why. Because it’s such a book of subtlety, I think what it is “how does this panel look against this, what does this panel do against this panel?”
I don’t know how interesting this is to other people. The problem, especially with layouts, or with the writing, is that there’s no right answer. There’s no “okay if you put this panel against this panel, and this page with this page you’re going to get the full effect that you want.” There’s sixty thousand ways to produce it; there’s no right answer. So it’s a constant involved situation, and it has a lot to do with why I write so much for so many different people. It’s a constant journey to find the perfect way to express an idea.
Going from that… since you are quite the wordy person, what would you say is the important balance between dialogue and the art?
I think anything you can do by showing it, that’s the way to go. I’m actually more proud of my quieter moments than I am about my talky moments. I think the juxtaposition of scenes like that is very important. I am always, always, always looking for ways to yank the balloons off the page, and I do it very frequently, particularly with Bagley, who seems to always deliver something where I look at it and go “it’s being said.”
And you look at Warren Ellis’ work on the first year of The Authority… I mean, he really nailed that kind of "less is more" stuff. But I think it’s funny… at the Eisners this year… they always show… I don’t know if you went to the Eisners…
I think I missed the Eisners.
It’s like a presentation where like they’ll show a clip. They’ll show a page, they’ll go “Brian Azzarello,” and there’ll be a page of 100 Bullets, and blah, blah, blah Bendis, and they’ll show one of my pages, and they’ll show some page with eighty thousand balloons on it. It looks like they’re making fun of me; Mack was on the floor laughing at it. It looks like Robert Crumb’s brother who went insane at the end… y’know?
I’m always yanking balloons though, I really am. It’s funny that I’m seen as such a talky writer when I yank so much off at the end.
Alright… (Where was I?)
You’re skipping over the hard ones.
I’m NOT skipping over the hard ones, I’ve just been skipping back and forth like a Mexican jumping bean.
I’m going to look at these while you’re talking.
Oh joy.
I’M going to read the questions.
Nice.
“What’s your angle on the regular Marvel U. Fantastic Four? Are you a fan of the classic Lee/Kirby material?”
I think I did miss that one…
Yeah, I’m a HUGE fan of the Lee/Kirby material, and we will be as lovingly to that as we are to the Romita years on Ultimate Spider-Man. Those stories are about family. They’re always about family, and those are the kind of stories we’re going to tell.
I’ve got another hypothetical. Tomorrow you get a phone call saying Marvel has imploded. Where do you go? Do you do more stuff like Jinx? Do you head to DC? What would you do?
I have gotten a lot of offers from DC. I… my heart right now is in the Marvel Universe. It really is. I was a Marvel kid…
He just took the questions away from me.
Hahaha.
Um… it’s a “What if?” let’s say. I’d still be making comics, I’ll tell you that. If the whole industry imploded I’d still be making comics. I did it for twelve years without making a dime. I know I’m in there for life, I just know I am.
And there was no way to know any of this was gonna happen for me, you know what I mean? There was no way to know. It sounds like I’m being cute, but twelve years is a loooong time. It was every day, sixteen hours a day, nothing. But I worked every day at it, and I know I will, too. I know David Mack will, I know Mike Oeming will, I know there will be… we’d just make comics. We’d find a way.
What would you want to do at DC? Would you want Gotham Central, or another of the Batman books, or would you want Superman…
Superman’s a tough one. I don’t know, I don’t think about it much. My brain’s just full of Marvel stuff. I listen to Rucka, who lives here in town, when he tells me what he’s going to do on Wonder Woman, and I just think, “Wow, what an amazing journey he’s got ready for that character.” And I wouldn’t have ANYTHING to say with Wonder Woman. He’s like the perfect guy for Wonder Woman. I wouldn’t know what to do. Like Geoff Johns’ work I adore. I enjoy reading some of it because I have absolutely no investment in it at all, career-wise or creatively.
And I’m not blowing off the question. I really don’t think about it. I think it’s inevitable that I’ll do something with Batman, just because I’m that big of a whore. Everyone’s going, “DO BATMAN!” “Okay, I’ll do Batman.” But, again, I’d have to wait until, much like Daredevil, you’ve got to have a take that is totally… If me and Alex had an opportunity to take over Batman, I don’t know how interested DC is in tipping over trucks. I don’t think DC would ever allow us to do to Batman what we’re doing to Daredevil. I think they’re more inclined to a certain type of thing. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m not saying it’s something I wouldn’t want to do one day. It’s just right now… I’m at where I’m at. I’m very lucky to have the books I belong on. I mean, I shouldn’t be writing Thunderbolts either. There’s a bunch of books I shouldn’t be writing. I’m on books I belong on.
I figured that since this’ll be on Ain’t-It-Cool-News, which is primarily a movie site, I’ve gotta ask what’s going on with the Torso movie?
We just sold Torso again. It was at Mirimax. Mirimax seemed a little inclined to make it into a lower budget… one of those Dracula 2000 pieces of shit, which I’m just not interested in purposefully being involved in. It seems to me (not having tons of experience), but it seems to me that making a good movie is very, very hard, and making a bad movie on purpose seems a little insane. So I’d just rather, at least, go into it with the best of intentions. Also, I don’t even know if anyone even read the script who matters.
So Todd was totally backing us up, and we ended up riding out the option and Todd sold it to somebody else, which they’ll announce soon, I guess. But it’s resold, and we’ll see what happens. It’s not going to be with our script, ‘cause Mirimax kept our script. But that’s how it goes; they paid for it they can do whatever they want with it. I think it’s a great story, and I say this not with bragging. It’s a true story, which I just find fascinating, and I hope they make a movie of it one day. It’s one of those things I don’t think about a lot, because it’s so out of my hands. So the check cleared; God bless America, and we’ll see what happens.
And Powers is at Sony. Frank Oz is finishing up Stepford Wives. I’ve gotta tell ya, having duly chronicalized all the idiots that I’ve met in this business in fortune and glory, it’s such a pleasure to announce to people that Frank Oz is just about the biggest mensch and one of the smartest people… what a great guy.
And hopefully it’ll be the next thing he does. If not, what a pleasure working with him for that little bit, but right now it’s going well. Right now it’s in a good place. But I’m always, when I’m talking about movie stuff publicly, I always err towards the non-promise. Because I think a lot of people in comics, due to their own naïveté and excitement over someone in Hollywood signing them to do something oversell what it is that they have.
And I try to be a little more frank, especially with a site like yours where people are much more aware of the business. I think it’s better off if you just let people know I’m not kidding myself, so don’t kid yourself. So if it happens, it’ll be great. Powers is a year and a half away if it’s anything, y’know, and hopefully it’ll happen. But it’s cool, ‘cause we’re one of the very few superhero properties out there that isn’t owned by Marvel or DC. It’s a legitimate franchise in the making, so they’re taking it very seriously. They re-upped us, which is… I’ve never been re-upped before, so that’s awesome. And we’ll see what happens. Re-upping was cool, though. I recommend it to anybody.
See, I’m a depraved lunatic, so the movie I want to see made is Fortune & Glory, starring Michael Chiklis.
Hahahahaha!
Keeping on the movies…
(Michael Chiklis…)
Has Marvel been capitalizing on its movies well?
Yeah, I think they’ve done a fantastic job. Are you kidding me?
Well, not just the movies themselves, but tying the movies in with the product. Like, the Daredevil movie was nothing like what you were doing, and the Hulk movie…
Well, what you don’t want to do… You don’t want to just repeat the movie. They’ve already seen the movie. Okay, now they’re interested in the characters. So our thing was… And listen, not to be bragging, but sales are up, so we know it worked. And the trade sales are fantastic.
The idea was lets deliver something different. The idea is that you see the movie, you like the movie, and then you read somewhere, “Oh, but in the comic book Daredevil’s been outed by the tabloids, and the whole thing’s bedlam.” And you go, “You know what? That sounds pretty interesting to me.” It isn’t “here’s the movie again,” it’s not an eight part Elektra saga to match the movie.
It’s “you saw that, here’s this.” And then what happened was, like, USA Today did a big write-up on all the Daredevil products, and said, “Hey, if you liked the movie, you’ve gotta see what’s going on here. It’s awesome.” Which is literally, if I wrote it myself I’d have wrote that, you know what I mean?
I think that the X-Men product and the Spider-Man product are right on. We’re doing something I’m proud of this time in USM which is Ultimate Spider-Man: The Movie. The gag is that Peter wakes up one morning and Sony is making a huge movie directed by Sam Raimi about Spider-Man. They don’t have to pay him, because…. Well, it’s not a Peter Parker movie; it’s a Spider-Man movie, which is public domain. So he just has to watch. The whole city of New York is alive with the biggest production ever, and it’s… and the arc actually guest stars Avi Arad and Sam Raimi.
Oh GOD! Hahahahaha!
I really wanted it to be like them in it, and it’s kinda like that season of Seinfeld where it became about making a show called Seinfeld…
Where they were writing that pilot, yeah…
So there you go. I think that’s going to be a lot of fun for people. I wouldn’t be surprised if it picked up some mainstream attention. Hope it does.
And also it hearkens… it’s nice because it hearkens back to a classic Ditko (I think Ditko did it), where they’re making some Spider-Man movie, and they wanted to hire Spider-Man to play Spider-Man, or something. And you do get to see the Avi Arad/Spider-Man face off. It’s like, Spider-Man will show up, just angry… just having a tantrum. And they start filming it… they start Bowfingering him, y’know? They start filming him because they get to save money on special effects. And it’s a lot of fun to write.
Best way to capitalize on the movies is to create really, really good comics. And you say to anyone standing in line for that Spider-Man movie, “After you’re done seeing this movie, for the price of a ticket you can have three really awesome Spider-Man comics that are a totally different perspective.”
Do you think comics can achieve the level of success, financially and distributionally and numbers-wise they had ten-fifteen years ago?
I don’t know. I don’t know. Boy, it’d be nice though. That’s something Joe likes to throw in my face. “Oh man, if it was 1990 you guys would be rich!” And I’m like, “Oh shut up.” Because we totally missed that boat.
I’ll tell you, it’s… and it’s one of the themes of the comic book The Pulse: people don’t read anything. And I’m not talking to the people reading this, because they are reading. So I’m not talking about you, if you’re reading this. But people generally, you know them, they don’t read anything. They don’t read newspapers, they don’t read books, they don’t read comic books… anything.
And all print media are in trouble; either books sell a lot to the Oprah club, or they don’t sell at all. And that’s a big problem for book publishing. Newspapers are suffering because of the incredible, incredible intense internet and the four 24 hour cable stations that they have to face, and they have to deliver something unique. So I think instead of worrying about that… and also we have video games. It used to be video games were just this cool thing. But now you can be Spider-Man! You can actually physically be Spider-Man!
I’ve seen the new Spider-Man 2 game, it’s amazing! So now our job is to what, try to outdo that? Or try to deliver a totally unique experience. And that was the whole purpose of Ultimate Team-Up, was now that Bill had opened up all these avenues for new places to sell comics, I wanted to create a comic that would specifically express to people how unique an experience a comic book can be. I get that video games are cool, and TV and movies are cool. But here’s Bill Sienkiewicz. Here’s John Totleben. Here’s Chynna Clugston-Major. You cannot get this experience of reading a Bill Sienkiewicz comic anywhere but in comics.
This is a unique feeling. I know what that feeling is, y’know? And I wanted to give that, or at least attempt to give that. It’s part of the Ultimate… whatever the Ultimate game plan is. And I wanted it to be, yeah, the characters are cool, comics are cool, here’s this unique _expression that you cannot get anywhere.
The good news is, I’ll tell you, though. All those idiot creators that were in it for the money? They’re all gone. They either were all shown the door, or they all left in a huff. And who needed them? They’re the ones who fucked it up in the first place, with their shitty, shallow, carbon copy, do nothing, mean nothing comics that had no purpose to them. I always ask when my friends are developing stuff; my question is “what is the point of this?” and “Because it’s cool” isn’t enough. That’s what killed us in the 90’s, where everyone was trying to be cool. It’s not enough; it’s got to mean something.
The ceiling got way high the last couple of months. It seems that a lot of people have come back, so it seems that it’s working out okay. It’s a slow build, and it’s happening, But the reality of it is if there’d be nothing, never, this is it, then let’s just tell interesting stories. That way at the end of the day at least you told an interesting story. You certainly don’t try to tailor yourself to be everything to everybody, or to be Mr. Cool to everybody, y’know?
Does that make sense, or am I just babbling?
A little bit of both, actually. At the end of the day you’re just writing the best story you can.
Absolutely. You can’t go wrong with that. And really it becomes Marvel’s job to get those stories out. And I’ve found that my synergy with the company as far as the kind of stories that I want to tell, the kind of stories they want to publish, the kind of money they want to put behind getting those stories out has been flawless my entire time there. More than I ever, in a million years thought it would have.
A lot of people are coming up to us at shows, telling us that they’re back in comics. There were so many people in Toronto con that came up to us and said, “I just came back.” And you’re like, wow, it’s so awesome that you came back, that I said I wonder if you’re ever going to feel it on the charts. And it seems like we’re starting to feel it a little bit, so we’ll see. I hate to be such a cheerleader, but something’s going on.
Something is, I’m loving it.
I waited through… I was there the whole time. I never left, I was there the whole time. It felt dark, and now it feels like it isn’t so dark anymore.
It’s like, one of the best things I’ve read even about comics, not only just the best book, this one note I read that said, “Blankets sold out it’s entire first printing in an week.”
That’s amazing.
Which is like… one of the best comics I’ve read all year.
It’s a perfectly marketed comic too.
It’s a wonderful…
Yeah. Totally. I love those Top Shelf guys. Absolutely. He just told a story. And I read it… that was one thing, they asked me for quotes, so I read it six months before you guys did, and I was reading it without knowing that it was gonna become the graphic novel of the year. And you just get blown away by the dedication to it, and everything.
If history leaves me nothing but the fact that I got Craig Thompson to draw three pages of Peter Parker in Ultimate Spider-Man… Now it seems hilarious, I don’t know, it just seems hilarious to me that he drew Peter Parker. But I asked him off of Good-bye, Chunky Rice.
Chunky Rice is great.
I remember thinking, if Marvel lets me do this… and they did, which is pretty funny. Because who knew what he was gonna hand in?
There’s just one more part left, so be sure to come back to read about his special project due out from Marvel in February, letter columns, meeting his fans, and yes, you'll see him taking we @$$holes to task.
Hilarity ensues.
CAN’T WAIT for PART FOUR?! CLICK HERE!! NOW!!
"Moriarty" out.
