The Empire Is Back
In May of 2001, DC announced that they would publish Mark Waid and Barry Kitson’s Empire, a series centered around a successful world conqueror and the intrigues that surround him. I talked to Kitson back then about the book and his plans; Now, Empire is finally back, with a reprint of the original issues now on the stands and a brand new issue slated to arrive in July. It seemed like as good a time as any to check back in with Kitson. The following conversation took place via e-mail in late April and early May:
DT: We’re coming up on almost two full years since the first announcement that Empire would move to DC. Can you talk a little bit about the process of getting the series going again? Has it taken longer than you expected?
BK: It has taken longer to get the book back in the schedules than we’d hoped — it was really just a question of logistics. Mark and I never actually stopped talking over ideas and plots for the series, but Andy Helfer had asked if I would help out on Titans and that ended up taking more time from my schedule than we’d expected. DC to their credit were very good about waiting to schedule Empire until we knew we could put all the time into it that we wanted. Empire means a lot to Mark and me so we really wanted it to be right this time!
DT: How much time do you like to devote to Empire? Is it something you feel you can work on simultaneously with another project, or do you have to focus on it exclusively?
BK: I always prefer to work on one thing at a time when I can. If I have more than one project in progress I’ll assign specific days to a single task – for example Monday = Cover for project ‘a’, Tuesday = Empire interiors. Usually with a story I like to work on it unbroken so I can get totally immersed in it. At the moment Empire is taking priority over everything else. If there’s a little down time on Empire for any reason then I’ll get to working on preparatory stuff for JSA etc.
DT: What’s it like coming back to a project like this after so much time away? Is it a challenge to figure out how a concept (and two stories) from 2000 fit into your thinking and style in 2003?
BK: Well as I said we really never felt like we left the project. We’ve actually been talking about Empire for a long long time. Well before the Gorilla Comics issues — in fact even before JLA Year One! The concept hasn’t undergone any major change since 2000 . . . just continued to evolve the more we discuss it. Fundamentally things are the same — we had most of the major ideas behind the first story arc pretty well mapped out when we began . . . the biggest difficulty is probably that we’ve had two years to think of new ideas we want to throw in so it gets harder and harder to fit everything into the structure we originally thought of! We probably have enough ideas to fill about twice as many pages as we actually requested for this first arc.
I guess you might feel world events have thrown the story into a somewhat different light too — but you’ll have to read the story to judge how that might work.
I think there is a slightly ‘different’ style to the artwork from the original issues– due to my ‘natural progression’ over the time that’s passed . . . it would have been nice to redraw some of the original pages perhaps but not really practical. (I’d probably redraw everything I’ve ever done given the chance )
As far as the stories go, each issue was designed to be able to stand alone– the idea being that you could pick up any issue of Empire and get a whole story from it, but that story would take on extra significance if you had the whole series to refer to. Some things that might seem quite minor in #2 might take on a great significance in the light of #5 say.
The extra good news is that with DC reprinting the original Gorilla issues as #0 – everyone can get immediately up to speed with events if they’d like to!
DT: So if this first arc goes well, it won’t be lack of ideas that stops you and Mark from putting out more, I take it. Are you hoping to put out more miniseries somewhere down the road? What has to happen to make that feasible?
BK: If enough people enjoy Empire we’d pretty much like it to be an ongoing project. Basically if the market place is willing to support it we’d like to keep going until the whole saga is told. It’s a project that we both really enjoy and would like to keep working on whenever we can. Maybe releasing it in volumes — just as these first eight issues make up volume one. Joey Cavalieri our editor at DC has been really supportive and indicated that he’d be happy to take the hot seat again if things go well — so we’ll keep our fingers crossed that the readers enjoy it as much as we hope they will!
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.