Q&A 17: big two comics experiences (Patreon)

Patrick M Fitzgerald:

"Do you have an artist or writer you'd like to work with on a one-shot or short series?"

Jon Sibley

"Would love to hear about any past dealings with the major publishers that never happened, for whatever reason. And why wouldn't Marvel just publish Kit & The Wolf? Another Wolverine comic on the shelf surely couldn't hurt. Did you ever approach them with it?"

Mark Kirwan

"Would be very interested in hearing about that New Avengers project, and/or various other 'Big 2' pitches that didn't come to pass."

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These are, if not exactly three variations on the same question, three routes to the same answer. I will start with a little background. 

When I started making webcomics, I was so far from the traditional "big two" (Marvel and DC) comics industry that the idea I would interface with it seems ludicrous. I grew up reading Marvel and DC comics, but had largely outgrown them by my late teens. There's a big gap between creation and consumption of an art form and while I felt driven to make comics, my relationship with them as a reader had fundamentally changed.

When I couldn't self-publish any more, I wound up working in the US indie comics industry, first by publishing Bad Machinery through Oni Press, then Giant Days through Boom!Box. With Bad Machinery I relinquished the control of books, with Giant Days I allowed someone else to draw my stories. Neither of these were easy decisions.

When Giant Days became critically acclaimed and was nominated for the Eisner Awards, I started to get the attention of Marvel Comics. This was in the latter stages of "Marvel Now", which I think is probably the era yo umight think of as most harmonious with my approach to storytelling. I wrote a Power Pack story for Civil War 2: Choosing Sides. In doing this, I felt that I was following a path beaten previously by my friends Ryan North and Chris Hastings (on Unbeatable Squirrel Girl and Gwenpool) - with great success.

THE LIST: 

Deaths Head 2 / Deaths Head

She-Hulk

Spider-Gwen

Marlo Chandler

The Thing

Machine Man

Machine Man 2020

Spitfire And The Troubleshooters 

Eager to please, the dialogue continued, and I was asked what projects I was interested in. I think I assembled as motley a list of no-hopers as you could possibly imagine (a classic "leave me alone" move). I was gently disabused of any notion that I would be reinventing Deaths Head II or Spitfire & The Troubleshooters for a new era, and given the opportunity to come up with any number of ideas for New Avengers (a superhero group who, if memory serves, are the children of some of the contemporary Marvel superheroes). 

What followed was what for many writers would have been a dream - an extended game of "yes and" with a nice and very gifted editor in which I spent vast amounts of creative energy on something that I did not care about at all. I wasn't being paid to do this. It was impossible to think of anything without being told that someone else had already locked down that character, or done that idea. It was nightmarish. At one point the New Avengers became the Thunderbolts... but in the future? 

I should add that at this point I was hugely overworked writing Giant Days and By Night and should not have agreed to even discuss this. By Night was already one project more than I could manage. But I felt like it was what I "should" be doing? I pretty much had a full nervous breakdown at this point, downed tools for months, and began to reconsider my interactions with the US comics industry.

Perhaps I should also add at this point that when you start working for Marvel, you sign a contract that says if any significant work product you do is used for one of their billion dollar movies, you get $5000 and not a thin cent more. I was asked at one point to write Power Pack. I was asked in the last couple of years to write something called "Strange Academy" and I said no. I decided that as long as I have my own stories to tell, in my own interest, and a limited lifespan in which to do so, I will. 

So, I didn't take Kit & The Wolf to Marvel because I didn't want to run a story through their editorial for someone else to draw. I knew what I wanted to do, I did it for my own entertainment, and that was that. My idea of a Marvel comic doesn't have anything to do with their modern line. It's the memory of comics I read nearly forty years ago. It's a child's excitement channelled for a few weeks. I'm sure someone there saw it. It may have raised a wry smile. I doubt it would have pleased large sections their core audience.

This brings me back round to the first question I was asked - who I would want to collaborate with. Given that my greatest success has come through my collaborations with Lissa Treiman and Max Sarin, you would think I'd have my eyes on the prize in this area. But when I write a comic, I want to draw it myself. 

My working relationship with Max is very established at this point, with a great deal of understanding baked in after seven or eight years. I am lucky to have it.  But as much as I could name a hundred artists who are better than me, or completely different in an exciting way, I write my stories to draw myself. I've wanted to work with my friend Warwick Johnson-Cadwell for years, but we never quite get there and I suspect that's because his approach is so different to mine. 

The shotgun weddings of big two comics, where writers and artists are swapped out like interchangeable parts, work against whatever strengths I have. Some people thrive in that system, but I don't. It's like working with one hand tied behind my back. I'm grateful to get to do things on my own or with one trusted partner. That is enough for me.