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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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For the past year, DC Comics has published Walter's Orion; Simonson handles the writing and art on this, DC's absolute best title. The joy that Walter takes in just telling a story well comes across in every panel, in every line; again, nothing is wasted. Orion is one of those rare books that even as it comes out every month, I realize how lucky we are to have it. A legacy is being built, issue after issue, and I'm confident that Orion will be remembered in the years and decades to come as one of the brightest moments in mainstream comics history. As so many have before, someone has taken Jack Kirby's ball and run with it. For perhaps the first time, the runner hasn't stumbled.
That Walter is doing work that is as good, or better, than the source material (pardon the pun), is the greatest compliment I can pay him. If you're not reading Orion, you're doing yourself, and the comics artform, a grave disservice. You're also missing some damn fine comic books.
My deepest thanks to Walter Simonson for taking the time to share his thoughts on his career with Comic Book Galaxy readers.
Alan David Doane: The thing that comes through to me in virtually all of your work is the sheer joy you take in telling stories. Where does that come from?
Walter Simonson: That's hard to say. I've always like reading stories.
And I just enjoy telling stories (Ask any of my friends to whom I've described
movie I've seen). And I love drawing. Which means that comics is a very
fulfilling place for me to work.
ADD: How did you first become exposed to comics?
WS: I read comics as a child. Don't remember the earliest ones
I read but I know I was reading them steadily by the time I was ten. I
particularly remember an adaptation of John Carter of Mars by Jesse Marsh that I
read back then. I didn't have any clues as to who Edgar Rice Burroughs was at
the time but I devoured the comic book. And I loved the Alex Toth adaptation of
the movie, The Land Unknown. Helicopters, the Antarctic, and dinosaurs. A
perfect combination.
ADD: What were your favourite comics as a child?
WS: I read almost everything that passed through my
hands--superheroes, westerns, humor comics, funny animal strips. But we had a subscription
to Walt Disney Comics and Stories, largely for the Barks lead story
(didn't know who Barks was either back then of course) and the Mickey Mouse
continued stories in the back.
ADD: What comics (if any) are you reading today? Is there
anything coming out these days that you think
represents the artform at its best?
WS: I read Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo for the same reason I read
comics 40 years ago. It's well done and it engages my interest with both
its stories and its characters. I just read it for pleasure without
analyzing how Stan does it. Which I believe is a measure of its success. I am
also delighted that Dark Horse is reprinting the Lone Wolf and Cub series.
Absolutely top drawer stuff, very powerful, very moving, beautifully
constructed.
ADD: You've carved out quite a niche for yourself with
Orion, and for my money are doing some of the best
work of your career. Are you having as much fun as it
looks like?
WS: The short answer is yes. That's probably the long answer as
well. Jack's Fourth World work is some of my favorite Jack Kirby work and
it's a real treat to be allowed to tell stories about some of the characters
from that world.
ADD: Does DC have a lot of input into the stories, or are
you pretty much operating solely on your own creative
instincts?
WS: DC has given me an immense amount of room in which to operate.
Essentially, I've been allowed to take the character, Orion, and run
with him in the direction I wanted to go. I haven't asked to turn him into a
frog yet but you never know! Essentially, the stories I'm telling are stories that are developing out of my own sense of who Orion is based on my reading of Jack's work.
He's a great warrior; he's deeply flawed. He's no dummy and he has a
deeper understanding of the cost of freedom than most characters do. Which
means that given the current direction of the stories in ORION, he's going
to be paying a very high price for what's been going on.
ADD: Previous titles dealing with the Fourth World mythos
seemed, for the most part, to tread water rather than
try to build on what Jack Kirby created. How conscious
of that were you in plotting out Orion, and did DC
resist at all the way in which you've finally moved
the saga forward?
WS: DC has been completely supportive of what I'm doing. They
ask for overviews of the future directions their books are going to be headed
in, so they've known where I'm heading with ORION from the beginning. My own aim has been fairly simple. It's the same aim I had when I
was doing THOR. I want the ORION comic to offer stories that haven't really
been told before. In the case of THOR, I started by taking Thor's hammer,
Mjolnir, and having somebody else pick it up, something that nobody had done up
to that time. In the case of ORION, I've taken one of Jack's key
concepts from the NEW GODS--the Anti-Life Equation: the outside control of all living
thought--and manifested it, that is to say, made it real in a way
that as far as I know hasn't been done before. Essentially, I look for a
jumping off point nobody's used, and I jump. After that, stories flowing from
that initial leap just seem to move in new directions. Essentially, I want
to write comics that I would like to have read; not variations on comics
that I did read.
ADD: You've brought some of the best creators in comics
into Orion's back pages to illustrate tales of the New
Gods. Why do you think the best and the brightest are
still so anxious to play in Kirby's sandbox?
WS: I think a lot of professionals like the New Gods as much as I
do and doing a little piece for ORION gives them a chance to draw characters
that in most cases, they've never drawn before. Some are folks I've wanted
to work with for a long time and we've never had the chance to work together
until now. Some are folks I have worked with before and enjoyed it so much,
I wanted to work with them again. And since these are mostly fairly
short little pieces, folks find they can squeeze the stories into their
schedules. What I'm mainly trying to do is extend the sense of fun I'm having
doing this book to others and that seems to be working out.
ADD: What about the Fourth World still appeals to you? It's
obvious you're jazzed to be working on this series.
WS: I'm just a huge admirer of the original work Jack did on all
four titles back in the early 70s. I thought it was a beautifully
structured, multi-layered work filled with wonderful characters, a wealth of
incredible concepts, and a Wagnarian sense of drama. And the stories were ABOUT
something. Dysfunctional families for one. But there was
thematic material all through the original Fourth World work; free will vs.
slavery, nature vs. nurture, fathers vs. sons, love vs. hate...the original
books were a real exploration of thought. I believe that's one of the reasons
people keep coming back to them.
In addition, some of the ideas, like the use of cloning to create the
D.N.Aliens and the new Guardian, are the common currency of much of the
field now, but they were brand new in comics then. Jack was a little ahead
of the curve and the Fourth World work really demonstrated that. I think it's also true that nobody really reads that material now as it was
originally published. The books were bi-monthly, a different pair
alternating each month. Which meant that unlike the way a reader would
read them now--in collections straight though as stand-alone single
titles--they were originally read as a mosaic, in which the overall storyline about
the great cosmic struggle between New Genesis and Apokolips was gradually
built up in small pieces, becoming clearer and clearer as the months went by.
And I think because of that structure, deeper and deeper as the reader
discovered how everything fit together.
ADD: How far ahead have you plotted out Orion? And how's
the book doing overall? Are you confident it's going
to be around for a while?
WS: I'm plotted out seriously about five to six issues ahead.
I'm plotted out in a more general way--that is to say that I know where my
stories are going--at least a year ahead. And I've got ideas that
will likely take two or three years to develop. In some cases, I have bits
of dialogue written for scenes that won't be in print for another year
or so. Given the current state of the market in American comics right now,
I'm not confident anything's going to be around for awhile. But I'm game
to do ORION for as long as I'm able. I've got a lot of stories that I
hope I have the opportunity to get out there.
ADD: Tell us a little bit about the difference between the
way you're working today and the years you spent
working with other collaborators. Which mode do you
prefer to work in?
WS: I think the difference is that now, I get to wear two
hats--writer and artist--and I can curse myself as writer OR artist depending on
which hat I'm wearing when things aren't going well instead of being crabby
about somebody else. The truth is that I enjoy doing the writing AND the art
in comics and since I see them both as essential to the creation of the
story I'm making, I don't find I have a preference for one or the other.
Except that whenever I'm writing, I feel like I should be drawing and
whenever I'm drawing, I feel like I should be writing!
I still enjoy working with other creators a lot and still do work from
time to time where I only carry a part of the burden. I like drawing for
other writers; I like writing for other artists. For two reasons. First, I
enjoy working with my friends and that's what I've been fortunate enough
to do most of the time. And second, other creators, whether artists or
writers, give me feedback that helps to crystallize ideas in forms I would never
have thought of myself, which means that the final story is the result of a
fusion of ideas that have often gone in unexpected directions. When it works
out like that, it's great! And it keeps me refreshed at my job.
ADD: You seem to have developed a good online rapport with
your readers. How has the Internet changed the way you
approach your job?
WS: I enjoy going online generally. I like the directness of
online contact with my readers. Naturally, you want everybody to like what
you're doing; naturally, they all don't. And the web seems to bring out the
crabbiest in people sometimes. But I get a lot of interesting and
immediate feedback thanks to the web that I don't think I'd be hearing
otherwise.
It hasn't really affected the actual stories I tell. In that regard,
you really have to trust your own judgment. And there are some things
I'm very careful of. Thanks to the relatively easy access readers have to
professionals, for example, I often get requests to review submissions,
both writing and art. I can't do it. I just don't have the time to get
out a monthly book and look at all the stuff I'm sent. So I decline that
part of the web, as politely as I can.
There are a couple of very practical benefits I've found with the
web. It's a great resource for providing additional research on stuff I'm
doing. For example, I recently needed to compile a list of indictments, if you
will, against Darkseid. I know a lot about him; however, I don't know much
in terms of all the times he's been used in the DC Universe since his
creation by Jack about 1970 or so. So I left a note on the two ORION websites I
keep track of (www.comicboards.com/orion/ and the DC website boards), asking
for help in compiling such a list. In addition to a variety of suggestions
that were all over the map, many of which I really hadn't known about, I
was sent a complete list of all of Darkseid's appearances in the DCU since he
was created! I didn't have a chance to go back and track all of them
down, of course, but the fans gave me some leads I found useful for specific
stories.
The other benefit is that I get letters from fans through e-mail and
the websites I mentioned above. This is great for writing Letter Columns
as not that much snail mail comes in. And it means I can write columns that
are as close to the publication of an issue of ORION as possible. Generally,
I'm writing a LetterCol on an issue within a week of the issue's
publication.
ADD: You've been doing comics for a good portion of your
life so far...is it still as much fun as it was when
you started out?
WS: Absolutely.
ADD: With the diminishing market over the past few years,
what do you think the future of comics is?
WS: Beats the heck out of me. I think the future of comics had
better include plans to get them back out into the real world with some sort
of wider form of distribution or there won't be much of a future. If
you can't find 'em, you can't buy 'em.
ADD: What do you think are the biggest problems the
industry needs to overcome right now?
WS: See above. Once comics abandoned the newsstand market and
went with the direct market, I think they began cutting themselves off from their
wider audience. They began working seriously for a narrower audience for the
first time. And the companies began producing a lot of material designed to
appeal specifically to that narrower audience, a specialty audience, something
that comics hadn't done before. A lot of wonderful work had been
produced, including a lot of work that is no longer for kids--which I think is
pretty nifty. But by essentially giving up the "kid" market, I think
comics gave up much of their future audience. And maybe their future. If some way
isn't found to reestablish a connection with that young audience, I would
think that comics will keep heading in the direction it's going now, a
field of specialty items for what is essentially a smaller and smaller coterie
of readers.
I think that comics aren't out where they can be found casually any
longer. If you want to find them, you have to seek them out. That's no way to
develop an expanding audience. I think if the problems of distribution aren't
overcome, none of us are going anywhere!
ADD: What are its greatest strengths?
WS: What they've always been. Good stories, well told.
There's always room for stories, especially good ones. And comics, because of their
relatively fast turnaround time, can take advantage of pop culture
developments at a speed unmatched by almost any other fictional medium.
ADD: You've said the New Gods were the only mainstream
characters you hadn't done that you wanted to take a
crack at. Now that you're doing just that, any other
aspirations in the field? Anything at all you haven't
yet taken a stab at?
WS: Only in the sense that I'd like to be a better storyteller
in 10 years than I am now. I'd like to draw better, I'd like to write
better, and I'd like to put pictures and words together better than I do now. In
short, I'd like to be better at my job!
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I kid you not when I tell you that Walter Simonson is one of my all-time favourite comic book artists; from my first exposure to his work in the Alien graphic novel decades ago, through Manhunter, Thor, X-Men/New Teen Titans, and probably a dozen other projects, I've always been enchanted by his unique, design-oriented style. As the years have gone by, he's refined his line to the point where there is literally nothing wasted in his work. It's a rare ability, one seen in just a few other talents I can think of, such as Alex Toth and Gil Kane. Rarified air, indeed.