How did you get interested in writing comics?
I have always been a comic-book fan. When I was still a kid, I once moved from outside of New York
City to Boston. I had a new stepfather who was Vice-President of
Brandeis University. That's only important because one of the
students who was there was
Elliot Maggin.
Elliot had written a story,
which I still think is one of the best stories to have come out of
that period, called "What Can One Man Do?" - and it was
drawn by my hero, Neal Adams. So one day my stepdad came home and
said, "Would you like to meet Elliot Maggin?" And I said,
"You mean, go to a convention or something?" And he said,
"No. We'll have him over for dinner."
Elliot was a junior in college and I was a freshman in high school.
I was just totally gaga. He brought with him a copy of
"What Can One Man Do?" signed by Neal Adams and - this
is so Elliot - he wrote in it, "Jeph: Now you have
Neal Adam's autograph. So what?!"
At that point I realized that not only was creating comic books
something that one could do but that it was something I had an
avenue into.
So I wrote this story called "Why Must There Be a Superman?"
in which Superman begins to doubt whether he is doing the right thing
by saving lives which, maybe, should have been lost - as if he
were playing God somehow. The Guardians of the Universe came to him
and said, "Do you realize that by doing what you're doing you may
be stunting human growth?" And Superman has a sort-of loss of
confidence. The rest of the story veers off in a very strange
direction, but it's similar enough that, when Elliot read this, he
realized that I had stolen the end of Spider-Man #100. And so
he wrote me this long letter back, which I still have, which basically
says, "You can steal from movies, you can steal from plays, you
can steal from television, but you can't steal from other
comics." The fact that he'd responded was thrilling, and the
fact that he'd caught my hand in the cookie jar made me stop and think -
"Okay. I have to figure out what comics are all about."
Now the P.S. on this story is that - and I think that a lot of
people know this now - 10 years later, I was working with Tim
Sale on Challengers of the Unknown, Elliot was living in
California, and we all went out to lunch together. There used to be a
comic-book store right around the corner from my office, so we went to
the comic-book store, and Elliot, flitting through the back-issue
bins, pulled out "Must There Be a
Superman?." He said, "This was always one of my favorite
stories." And I said, "It was always one of mine, too, and
I always wondered why you told the story that I sent to you."
And he turned pale. I said, "Elliot, please. (A) It was
so long ago, and (B) you were so helpful, and (C) if I get
anywhere in the comic-book business it's because of your advice
and friendship." But he was just absolutely flabbergasted -
in utter shock. And as we went back to have lunch, every 5 minutes he
would look at me and he would say, "I can't believe that I
did that." And I would just say, "Elliot, I don't
care. I was really flattered that I had come up with an
idea that you might use."
What was your reaction when you first saw his
re-interpretation of the story in print, in Superman #247?
You have to remember, I was a kid in high school, so this wasn't a big
deal to me. I remember sort-of saying to myself, "Huh. I guess
that's how things work. You have a conversation with somebody and
they decide that it's a cool idea." There was another situation
where I remember Elliot coming to dinner, and he was talking about
Superman, and my mother said, "I always thought that Clark
Kent was more interesting. Why don't they do a Private Life of
Clark Kent series?" And then there was this back-up series
called The Private Life of Clark Kent - which I
have to believe was a coincidence. I don't honestly believe
that my mother came up with the title for The Private Life of Clark
Kent.
Your first published comic book work was Challengers of
the Unknown. How did that come about?
In the late 1980s, I was working as a screenwriter and as a
television & motion-picture producer. A friend of mine, Stan
Brooks, was working at Gubers-Peters, which produced the Batman
movie. They had a good relationship with Jenette Kahn, who at the
time was DC's publisher, and my friend Stan asked
if I would come in and meet with them to talk about some other
possible DC-related projects. So a couple of us went to go see them,
and we pitched a Flash movie, which they loved.
The movie fell through, but Jenette Kahn came back to us and said,
"If you're not going to write a movie for us, how would you like
to write a comic book?" That's like Santa coming to you and
saying, "Well, I can't deliver anything to you, son, but
how would you like to go into FAO Schwartz and pick out anything that
you want?" The next thing I new, I had gotten in touch with
DC Executive editor Dick Giordano, who was one of my heroes
because he inked Neal Adams.
I started talking to Dick about what character I wanted to do, and of
course I immediately said, "I want to tell a Superman
story." It never occurred to me that there was a regular team and
that you couldn't just have a kid come in and write one issue. So
after we finally got through all the major characters, he said,
"Why don't I send you a list of characters that are
available?"
The first one I saw on the list was the Creeper, and I got all excited
and I called them up but they said, "No, someone else got
that." And then I went down the list and I saw the Atom, and I
said, "I like the Atom; he's very cool," and they said,
"Eh, no, someone else got that." And so on this list of
around fifteen, I think that the Challengers of the Unknown were the
only ones actually available. And I didn't really know them, so I
went out to my local comics shop and for something like $5 I bought
the entire run and then wrote a proposal.
Now at the time I wrote this proposal, Grant Morrison's Animal
Man was the rage. The approach basically seemed
to be, "Take the original premise of the character, no matter how
goofy it is, and make
it kind-of-adult." So that was what I proposed to do with
Challengers of the Unknown. Dick Giordano said, "It looks
terrific. I'm gonna get you an editor, and the editor will go and
find you an artist." So Barbara Randall, now Barbara Kesel, was
assigned the project. She had just become an editor, so it was a nice
fit. Neither one of us knew what we were doing.
It took us forever. It wasn't until a year later that we finally
found an artist. Barbara sent me
a copy of Thieve's World, which was Tim Sale's first work, with
a note on it that said, "I think that is our guy." I looked
through it, and what thrilled me was that he drew people who looked
real, not the idealized versions that we usually see in comic books.
This was very important to me.
Tim read through the 8-issue proposal, thought that it was an
interesting idea, and agreed to do it.
When I wrote the first script, I thought that it would be like
moviemaking, where you can re-shoot scenes that don't work out. Tim
would send me artwork and I would say to him, "Turn the camera
about 180 degrees." But you can't just turn the
camera in comics, somebody has to draw the page again. He was
incredibly patient with me. At this point, there were no faxes so
everything was done through the mail. He was in Seattle, I was in Los
Angeles, so this book was taking months to do, because I was
continually saying to him, "This isn't what I wanted. This is
drawn wrong."
By the time we had finished our first issue, Barbara had quit being
an editor at DC. I got a call from Dick Giordano, who said to me,
"We're gonna schedule this book now, and in scheduling the book you're
gonna need an editor. Do you know a guy named Elliot Maggin?"
I said, "Elliot Maggin is the only person I know who works in
comics!" "Great. He's your editor."
How did his name get on Dick's
desk?
He was an editor at DC and the book was an open assignment. Possibly
he said, "I know Jeph," I don't remember, but all I knew was
that we were together again and that he now had the opportunity to
help me with my writing while I was actually writing a comic book.
Superman put in a cameo in one of the
issues. He seems to be the exact same character in this appearance to
the one that you're writing now.
When I sent the script in, Elliot wrote back and said, "One day
someone will go back and read this book and realize that this is the
definitive Superman. You've hit it dead-on, and I know; I've written
the character for 10 years." I was blown away by the compliment,
but that's how Elliot was as an editor - he liked to use
hyperbole. It's funny, but that was the first time that I wrote
Superman, and no-one has ever put it to me the way that you've put it to
me, but I guess that it's just the way that I've always seen the
character.
Here's a story: Elliot was supposed to get permission to use the
Superman character. It's one of the unwritten rules of the DC
Office. Mike Carlin at the time was running that area, and had some
problems with the fact that Superman would go to court and would
exonerate four characters that, according to Mike, he didn't
know - because after Crisis he had no way of knowing the
Challengers. So we came up with a lot of ways of doing it, and
finally decided that the Challengers had built a Superman robot to
testify on their behalf. That's why it's ironic when the attorney
says, "How do we even know that this is the real Superman?"
and Superman lifts up the jury box.
Because on the next page in that
revised version, which Tim drew, the Challengers all go into the
bathroom and take "Superman" apart and put him in a
briefcase and walk out. We sent it in to Elliot.
He disagreed with it and ran the story without the robot explanation. But until
the book was actually printed, I had thought - and certainly
Carlin had thought - that the robot part was still in there.
When it came out, Carlin was
more than a little shocked. I called Elliot and said, "What
happened to that page?" And he said, "There was no way that
I was going to let that page in." I think it cost him his job.
You didn't write Superman yourself for quite a
while after that.
After Tim Sale and I finished The Long Halloween, he wanted to
do Superman. If he had said that we were going to do Aquaman, we
would've done Aquaman. DC was very open and very encouraging about us
doing something for Superman's 60th anniversary. And I just started
thinking about this story that would dovetail out of The Man of
Steel. It wasn't until the device of the holidays had clearly
worked so will in The Long Halloween that I decided to try
seasons.
I wrote the script for the first book after Tim had drawn it. Now, I
generally describe each panel on a page-by-page basis, and give little
flecks of dialogue along the way so that whomever I'm working with
knows whether or not an expression should be sad or happy or fun or
whatever, based upon the dialogue.
I finished the script for the first issue, read it over, and was
absolutely convinced that, aside from the fact that nothing happened
during the story and that Superman didn't appear until the very end,
the fact that it was such a light read needed to be dealt with. I
went through many different ideas as to who ought to narrate it, and
was pretty set on Clark. But when I thought of the scene where Martha
is standing on the porch, I tried it with Pa talking about his memories
of what Clark was like as a baby. These were memories that I had of
what my son was like as a baby. I suddenly found a voice, and
to this day I still think that it's some of the best stuff that I've
written.
Once that happened, I was faced with a problem - I couldn't have
Pa Kent narrate the second issue, because it all took place
in Metropolis. Suddenly the
idea of having Lois narrate the chapter came to mind, and then, at
that point, I wrote the plots for the third and fourth issues with
Luthor and Lana in mind. But it is sort-of curious to me when I go
back and look at my original plots for the first and second issues,
how the stories were not geared around having anything other than a
third-person narrator, yet how easily Pa and Lois fit into those
stories. It's one of those things that just happened along the way,
and boy am I glad that I tried it.
And now you're one of the regular writers on
the
Superman books.
When you first came onboard, did you want to
change anything from the way the books had been?
In general, I feel that before we came onboard, the books had
drifted -
and I've heard a lot of different reasons as to why
that happened - away from the core cast and into the subplots. So
it wasn't all that difficult to come up with a take that sounded new,
when it was really sort of old.
In your second issue, Superman #152, you have
Superman training and expanding his powers.
One of my thoughts was that I found it odd that the greatest hero of
all time had never practiced, and that from the day that he first started
flying, he just flew. So we wanted to try to explain a few
things - one of then being the idea that, being invulnerable,
Superman has always held back, he never knew what it felt like to hit
someone as hard as he possibly could.
What can't he use more than one power at a time? Why can't he use his
X-ray vision at the same time as his heat vision, so that if he
really wanted to send a thread of heat-vision into a building
and hit something with it, he could? There are certain things,
like the fact that he didn't need to breathe in space, that we all
agreed we miss.
I also like super-ventriloquism, and all of those other powers that some
people feel a need to try to explain.
When I read these long, convoluted explanations of how Superman flies, all I
want to do is say to people, "He comes from the planet Krypton.
It had a red sun. Here he's under a yellow sun, so he can
fly."
But there are certain things that we're not allowed to change.
Clark and Lois are married, so I thought that we should just
deal with it. Let's tell a terrific, fun story about what
that's like, about what marriage is like, and how that can be fun,
that it's not boring to a 13-year-old. My children are under the age
of 12; they don't see me and my wife as not having fun, they don't see
marriage as the death of all things. I think that there's a way to do
it well - a little bit of
The Thin Man,
a little bit of
Moonlighting, and a little bit of
Lois & Clark, and
that's sort-of something for every generation, as far as I'm
concerned.
Must
There be a Superman?
And
years later I learned that one of the things that inspired Mark Waid
to write Kingdom
Come was this story "Must There Be a Superman?" So
he credited Elliot, and Elliot wrote the
foreword to
the collected edition, and in the foreword is this whole story,
which was shocking to me, not only because Elliot wanted to
discuss it but because Elliot put it into the most successful comic
book of its day.
I also knew that I didn't want to do the story from Superman's point
of view. I didn't feel comfortable being inside the head of an icon.
I couldn't even do it as Clark, separating the voice so that you would
only know what the human side was thinking about, as opposed to the
superhuman side.
Superman For All Seasons
When we started working on the story, the first thing that Tim said
was that we were going to come out of the dark and go into the light,
and what that meant to me was that we needed to do a lot of
double-page spreads, to do a lot of big sky shots, because that is the
grandeur that is Superman.
Excerpted from a much longer interview by Stefan Blitz and Brian Saner
Lamken; originally appearing in Comicology #1, Spring 2000
The truth is that
for me, while I really like earlier versions of Superman, the way that
he is now is more interesting to me as a writer, simply because I've
always found the mortal side more interesting than the superhuman
side. I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that Clark is just
a farmboy with super-powers; I do think that his Kryptonian heritage
weighs in, and that's something that I didn't address in For All
Seasons. But we are certainly going to address it in the monthly
series. Superman is about hope and a better tomorrow.
Must
There be a Heritage?
October, 1999