This Is Not News

Barry Kitson is one comics’ top pencilers. He first attracted notice on the science fiction title L.E.G.I.O.N. ’89, and has since done stints on some of DC Comics’ most famous characters, including Superman, Batman, and the Justice League of America. Last summer he branched into creator-owned comics, publishing Empire with longtime creative partner Mark Waid under the Gorilla imprint for Image Comics. The story of an evil overlord who falls victim to none of the classic blunders and does take over the world, Empire‘s first two issues were a fascinating glimpse of a world gone mad. Look all you want for sympathetic characters; those few you find may not be around long. Unfortunately, the Gorilla partners were misled by people outside of Image on certain matters of funding, and the resultant financial problems meant the end of Gorilla. For some time it looked like Empire would not be back.

Fortunately, Waid and Kitson have found a new home for Empire at the Homage Comics imprint of DC’s Wildstorm division. Fresh off the news, I had the chance to talk to Kitson about the book, its new lease on life, and his career.

DT: So what is the news with Empire?

BK: Basically that the book will be becoming an Homage title as part of the DC group and that we will get a chance to – at last – publish the whole story without having all the problems with were struggling with at Gorilla – none of which were Gorilla’s fault! Mark and I will retain creative ownership and the whole team will be as per issues 1 and 2 . . . [with inker James Pascoe and colorist Chris Sotomayor] which we are hoping to have reissued in a special package so people who missed it first time round can pick up on the story!

DT: Now what exactly is the difference between publishing through Image and publishing through DC/Homage?

BK: The main difference is that under Gorilla’s arrangement at Image we had to pay for all the publishing, printing, a fee to have the Image ‘I’ and pay all the creators upfront – well before the books could come out. Also as a smaller imprint the printing costs were vastly higher under Image than for DC so the book cost alot more to produce than it will under the DC banner. We could have reduced quality of paper, story length, etc., but we really didn’t want to do that! Actually I may have got that wrong about the order the bills came in – printing, etc. may have been after publishing… but before we made any money 🙂

DT: Are they handling more of the logistics? On the Gorilla message boards, it sounded like you were one of the guys having to keep track of all the pieces.

BK: As to the logistics – it’s true there really was no one other than ourselves putting everything together for production at Gorilla. Ann Busiek was working really hard to keep all the editorial pages running and stuff, for which we will be eternally grateful – but as for getting all the pages put together it was down to us and paying the guys at Comicraft to do the work – like put ‘film’ together for printers etc.

DT: Which must have made the financial issues even more fun. At some point I’d like to get back to the whole Gorilla project, but for now let’s talk about Empire itself. You say you’re going to publish “the whole story” — does that mean that Empire is a finite series now?

BK: Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply anything about the length of the Empire tale other than it can go on being told . . . right from the start we said it might run for years or it might end tomorrow . . . we want people not to be able to assume too much . . . We have got definite objectives to reach in the story and we know where it will be going for a certain number of issues, but we also wanted the characters to drive the book – so that we will be ‘in their hands’ to some extent. It’s very possible that all the characters we’ve seen so far will not survive for long 🙂

DT: That element of surprise has got to be one of the fun things about the book. Even though I should have, I never saw Sebirus’ death coming in the first issue.

BK: That was exactly what we wanted… in fact it surprised us a little in our initial planning he had been going to be an ongoing figure! That’s what I meant about character driven events! 🙂

DT: At exactly what point did you realize, “No, he has to go?” And was there any resistance on your part to change plans right from the get-go?

BK: We just realized half way through plotting issue one that killing him was the ‘logical’ thing for Golgoth to do despite their history. Retaining power is Golgoth’s paramount concern.

DT: OK, that brings up something else I’ve been curious about. The credits of the book say Mark’s the writer and you’re the penciller, but it feels like you’re involved in the plotting. How exactly does the creative process with Mark work?

BK: Well we used the term ‘storytellers’ for both of us on JLA Year One and that confused a lot of people 🙂

DT: I saw you had that credit on the first issue of Brave and the Bold, then switched to more conventional titles on the second issue.

BK: What happens is that we discuss the story together initially and form a rough outline of events then Mark will prepare an initial plot, which we’ll go over together. Next I provide a set of ‘thumbnails’ for the story for Mark to look through and react to with new ideas etc. and we have another discussion – after that I will draw up the pencilled pages and Mark will add the dialogue to those. So every step of the way we’re in contact and honing the story – I really enjoy the process!

DT: Does that work better because you’ve worked together on so many other projects, or is that an approach you can take with other writers?

BK: The approach generally depends on the writer – but I’ve been lucky enough to work this way with a lot of my past collaborators – Alan Grant in particular. Doug Moench is also very open to sharing ideas, but he likes to get everything down in plot form first before I get involved. Karl Kesel was also kind enough to let me chip in on the plots on Adventures of Superman too. I think it was really only on Azrael – where Denny O’Neil liked to work with full scripts – that my input was pretty minimal as to the plot lines.

DT: Getting back to Empire: what is it, in general terms, you want to accomplish with this story? What motivated you to make it your first creator owned story, and what motivated you to work to find a second home for it?

BK: We wanted to tell a story that had elements that readers would feel familiar with . . . costumed characters etc, but be able to take a totally fresh look at the genre . . . which I think we were [doing]. . . we wanted to try something away from all the accepted conventions of superhero books . . . i.e., the bad guys won, major characters die, etc., etc. Just play with the conventions and people’s expectations and have fun! The reaction to the book was so positive and we enjoyed working on it so much that we really didn’t want to let it just disappear because of things outside the creative process. It was important for us to tell the story if we could and keep the creative team together – we’d all enjoyed working on the book, the readers had liked it and we didn’t want to stop! 🙂

DT: We’re running short on time for this first section, so let me ask you this: besides Empire, what else do you have in the works?

BK: I’m just finishing up a Legends of the Dark Knight arc, written by Doug [in issues 146-148]. There will be a second one to come too. I have a prestige format book with Howard Chaykin and David Tischman [a sequel to the Secret Society of Super-Heroes miniseries] coming up and there’s a good chance of a regular DC monthly book too – so I’ll be going back to penciling only 🙂

Continued in Part 2

We spend most of our time in the Comics section of Not News focused on comic books, whether they’re monthly magazines, collected edition, or original novel-length works. But if we go back to the definition of comics suggested by Scott McCloud (in a nutshell: words and pictures arranged in a sequence), there is one area of American comics that we have pretty much neglected: the comic strip, long a standby of your local paper and now making its way onto the Web.

Part of the reason for the neglect is probably a frustration with the modern limitations of the form — short, three-or-four-panel strips tend to lend themselves more to gags and punchlines than complex storytelling. It’s exactly that frustration that led Judd Winick, for example, to end publication of his Frumpy the Clown strip and move on to projects like Barry Ween and Pedro and Me. At the same time, newspaper comic strips have a far wider circulation than even the most popular American comic, which might reach about 100,000 people a month. Obviously, comic strips are doing something to connect to readers that comic books aren’t; their contributions to the medium should not be ignored, even while we keep their limitations in mind. Read the remainder of this entry »

Continued from Part 3

DT: From the story so far and hints from other interviews and message boards, it seems you’re setting up the Antares family to challenge some of the institutions and traditions that have led the URRS to its current state. Is that something you think our own society needs to do? If so, since we lack skyfurnaces and spell protocols, how do you think we can accomplish that?

CG: Indeed. The Antares family is our symbol of hope against all odds. Their courage represents the best chance their nation has to overcome the tragic legacy that imprisons them. They are the heroic face in a cycle of renewal that civilization has engaged in since it was born. In the eternal struggle of humanity vs. society, they are the hands of freedom that tear down the walls of any nation that has forgotten the basic truth of law. Law must serve humanity to build their civilizations. When humanity becomes a blinded slave to their civilization’s laws, that society must renew itself somehow, if it is to survive.

I think it’s clear that, given my answer to the previous question, I feel our nation is on the brink of a very difficult transition. The transition from an industrial to an information society is something that is going to cause major international flux. It is a time in which the resources of the world, and the structures of power that profit from their distribution, are going to be challenged. New players on the world scene have become powerful, others have become weak. The aftermath of the Cold War has left us in a calm before what I feel will be a very destructive storm. In the analogous world of my fiction, the Antares family represents the common people, whose lives will somehow have to find a way to survive as the scheming manipulators that rule the world throw it into a chaos of their own greed.

To get back to the last part of your question, how can common folk not only survive, but challenge the institutions that are leading us? Well, history has the answers listed quite clearly. The catch is, such actions represent a subset of human endeavors that are incredibly costly, selfless and bloody. To write a comic about revolution, this is simplicity itself– but inspiring large hordes of humanity to take their destiny into their hands for better or worse? This is history at its most vital, and most complex.

BK: Well, even protocols and skyfurnaces weren’t doing it — both are state controlled. It’s personal conviction, sacrifice, and courage ultimately that must be brought to bear in order for things to change. We, in our own time can only do our little part, but the sum of millions of little parts is unstoppable. First, is to keep informed: read, read, read, and then read some more. Next is to use this information in making judgments when dealing with elections, propositions, candidates etc. “Turn on to democracy or democracy will turn on you,” as Nader likes to put it. Support campaign finance reform, look to the problems of government and address them however you can. Don’t necessarily trust standard channels of information–many news providing agencies have an agenda, and that agenda does not include informing the masses truthfully or impartially. When was the last time you heard on ANY of the main channels that we bomb Iraq on a daily basis and that hundreds of children die of disease and malnutrition there every week because of ridiculous sanctions imposed by our own government? Blaming Saddam Hussein here is just plain asinine. Stay aware and don’t be afraid to make your opinion heard, even if it is unpopular.

DT: Chris, you said that we can effect positive change, but that the actions required to do so are “incredibly costly, selfless and bloody.” Upon one reading, that comment seems pretty pessimistic . . . do you really think that’s the only way to make things better?

CG: Actually, yes. As you say, the pessimistic reading is only one take on this comment. My own sentiment when I expressed this thought was more objective than emotional. When in human history has positive change not been incredibly costly, selfless and bloody? Martin Luther King’s quest to bring civil rights to the black community wasn’t a Disneyland ride. Nor was Abraham Lincoln’s fight to preserve the Union from the southern hordes of racist farmers. The Russian people pushing back the Nazis in the 1940’s was a journey of utter horror, but without the sacrifice of the Red Army, Hitler could not have been defeated before millions more were killed on all fronts. Let us also give due time to all the American soldiers that were shot to pieces on the beaches of France, or Guadalcanal, or Iwo Jima or any other bloody pyre upon which history is decided.

Nothing truly worth achieving is simple. The easier something is to achieve, the less likely it is to effect any kind of far-reaching change.

DT: You also seem to dismiss writing about revolution when you call it “simplicity itself” — what, exactly, do you think is necessary to transform ideas into action? In your wildest dreams, what do you see people learning, thinking, and doing as a result of reading The Red Star? What else do you feel that you, personally, need to do to put the ideals you express into practice?

CG: Again, I was being objective. To write about revolution is easy — any marketing drone can splash ‘REVOLUTION’ on an advertisement for a luxury car and feel gratified by their own alleged genius — an actor can put on a costume and portray Che Guevarra or George Washington and perceive what it is to be a ‘revolutionary’ in some internal fashion; but to place ones self at the forefront of human conflict, to attempt to have your life alter the course of events, this is a very advanced set of human skills.

In my wildest dreams…well, I’m a writer, so my dreams get pretty wild. I’d feel more comfortable talking about my hopes and goals regarding the project. I’d like a continuation of what’s happening right now. Most days I get messages from people around the world or even in my own neighborhood talking about how The Red Star is touching them, affecting them, making them curious about what happened in Russia in the 20th Century, and how it affected their lives wherever they happened to live. Hungarians, Poles, Mexicans, Germans, and of course, Russians and Americans– our lives took place in an extraordinary period in human civilization. The Red Star is, at its best, a primer to remind us of that. It is also a valentine to the industrial age– a time quickly giving way to the era of computerization. The great thing is that these themes are working. People are getting it. My hope and goal is that more and more people out there continue to ‘get it’. What they do with it once they get it, that’s in the lap of providence. All I can do is stay true to the enthusiasm and vision that inspired me and try my best to make it all worthwhile to the phenomenal group of friends that decided to join me in this humble cause.

DT: You both spend a fair amount of time on the redstar.com message boards – what do you get from that interaction with readers?

CG: Fun! Concerning the message boards, publishing The Red Star is like beginning a conversation with as many strangers as possible, and the boards are the means by which that communication occurs. Obviously, we’re more invested in our work emotionally and artistically than a lot of teams out there in the mainstream. We’re not spread out over the entire nation, we see each other socially, we work very close, and we are telling a story that, according to your typical marketing drone, shouldn’t be as commercially or critically successful as it has proved to be. Therefore, communicating on our boards directly with the people who appreciate this work is very special for us. It’s just a reflection of who we are, really. We respect the fact that some artists don’t feel comfortable speaking directly to the public, and at the same time, why should this isolation be some kind of precedent? I suppose we’re so familiar with our computers that we’re not intimidated by this new form of human speech. It’s primitive, somewhat, it’s a bit more like ants bumping antennae than speech, but never in history has humanity done it this way, so how can we not participate, even in our own humble way?

BK: I personally get a lot out of it. Too many times when I have been a fan of this or that, actual contact with a creator was impossible, and too many times do they become aloof and insular. Now that the tables have been turned (about 1/10 of a degree) I feel that the buck should stop here. When I get questions directed to me, I like to answer them. Personal contact with people who enjoy our book is one of the things that makes Team Red Star stand out from the rest (with exceptions of course). Read the remainder of this entry »

Continued from Part 2

DT: You’re telling a story about very noble people who are saddled with leaders who are obviously not worthy of them. What is it about the people of the URRS (and by allegory, the former USSR) that you think accounts for this?

CG: As Maya says in issue 3, “All the leaders of the world…they are all liars. Petty lords with petty schemes…” I believe this. I believe that not only in Russia, which is an extreme example, but most statesmen of the world are self-serving liars that represent the worst possible strata of human experience from which to draw leadership. Not only in our current time but throughout history. However, to speak of the immediacy of history, there is a great example for us to look to. As it stands right now, the Electoral College will most likely put George W. Bush in the White House. This is yet another example of a leader who is not worthy of his people. There is a lot of nobility in our country, and yet there is enough utter stupidity to put a buffoonish figurehead in the seat of power. The Red Star, in this case, does also gain its inspiration from the internationalist mindset of the early Russian Revolutionaries. No story about the Soviet Era could be complete without giving due time to agitation. How the theme of populist agitation is handled by the author in question has much to say about the stance of said author. As far as I am concerned, and I know Bradley feels the same way, our voices stand for radical political upheaval. This political stance is one of the most subtle inspirations for choosing the material we’ve chosen. Within this facet of our work lies the core of the story: What is to be learned from the Cold War? Why did this institution of paranoia exist? Why is our nation’s hegemony over the world failing to offer the majority of its citizenry the utopian lifestyle we were promised if ever we were able to ‘overcome the threat of communism’? We feel very strongly about these questions, and these beliefs expose what might be called our thesis; the greatest irony of the 20th Century is that in outlasting the Soviet Union, the U.S. is not liberated from any struggle against it, but is only revealing its own tyrannical nature. Further, that with every corporate merger, with every sweeping deregulation made possible by the fall of its greatest economic rival, our country continues along a path of reckless economic centralization heretofore comparable in the modern era only with Lenin’s Russia.

BK: I think it’s the same machinery that allows us as Americans to continually place leaders in office who do nothing in the way of furthering the will of the people while continuing a forceful propaganda stating the opposite. It is all the parts of complacency, fear, and selfishness saddled with a runaway system that was never intended for rule by, for, or of, the people that allows those in power to stay in power. It is no accident that nine out of ten elections in this country go to the candidate who spends the most money on the campaign (this is for all levels of office). Where does that money come from? Special interests, i.e.. corporations. What do they want in return? Enough legislative freedom to mete out the most biased of profit making schemes. The Russian people in the face of a democracy are no different, indeed many US heads are responsible for, and have benefited from, the unprecedented capital flight that has taken place in the former USSR.

DT: What do you think there is, other than propaganda, in the American system that leads so many to believe that it is a government by, for and of the people, and in your own mind, what would a truly democratic or representative government look like?

BK: Complacency. It’s not that people believe that our American system ISN’T for the people, it’s that the American people by and large don’t think about it. They would rather have their minds lulled by Jerry Springer and Survivor than to engage in any sensible argumentation about our legislature, say. And if they are thinking about it, they are not doing so with any sort of depth or understanding. People are happy with their choices of consumer goods and equate this with freedom, equate this with a government FOR the people. They have been lulled to sleep.

Our present state of affairs is dire: Multinational corporations are getting away with grave injustices at an unprecedented rate and neither the government nor the people do anything to stop them. Indeed it is our own people that are complicit in the multinationals’ behaviors. If everyone (the People capital P) stopped purchasing Nike brand tennis shoes, then Nike wouldn’t be able to get away with paying struggling and often times under aged Indonesian workers 11 cents a hour with no benefits. It’s disgusting! Yet the People would rather ‘be like Mike’ than be concerned with another’s welfare, even if that someone (thousands and thousands of someones really) is thousands of miles away in a foreign country. I may be rather cynical about this, but I see more idiots wearing Nikes than I see intelligent people speaking out against such atrocities as I have mentioned.

Okay, onward. What would a truly democratic representative government look like? To tell the truth I don’t really know. I don’t know how to bake a cake, but I do know that putting bleach in it is probably no so great. We have to change the system we have in increments. First-corporate finance reform (the real kind) is invaluable. We must take representatives of the People out of the pockets of the robber barons that currently run this country. Next, we must pass laws that will restrict the multinationals in their current laissez fair status. If a corporation pays overseas workers less than one tenth of one percent of the total cost of manufacturing an item (ahem..Disney) then the government should be able to step in and say, “Well Mike, you just can’t do business anymore until you stop this behavior.” We need representatives that have teeth and aren’t powerless to use them against those that would move against the will of the People.

Continued in Part 4