Catching Up with
the
Fastest Man Alive (Part 6)
Part 1 | Part 2
| Part 3 | Part 4 |
Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
[T]his
is the sort of book
serial killers have on subscription.
Speaking of your Vertigo
projects, The Saviour is going to be re-presented by Vertigo, is it not?
Well, it’s weird that
all sorts of rumors are flying out around it just now. It’s like—
[W]hen The Saviour came
out in 1990-whatever ... the company went bust when it was on issue 6,
and people always said to me, "Are you ever going to finish this
series?" and I said, "Well, it was a good idea, but I don’t
think I executed it very well, you know? It was my first-ever job; I’d
really rather not do it again." And people always say, "Do you
want to do it?"
Alex Ross, [painter of Marvels
and Kingdom Come], was actually in a pow-wow with me when I said
that, and he said to me afterwards, "You know, I didn’t realize
you wrote The Saviour. We should do it together." And I said,
"Well, it’s a big, expansive book. You wouldn’t have time to
draw 12 issues." And he said, "Well, why don’t we completely
rethink it?"
So we’ll do it like Astro
City, where he’ll do all the designs and be involved in the
plotting and things like that—and also do the concepts and the covers.
And we’ll get an artist to actually draw the pages.
That sounded interesting,
so I said, "Great." And that really got me charged up about it
again, and I just thought, "I’ll radically rethink it. I’ll
just keep this very, very basic premise and the title, and every, every
aspect of it will be redesigned."
And I just mentioned this
in passing to someone in Marvel who said they were very, very interested
in it. In fact, I was just talking to somebody at Marvel a half an hour
ago. And then I just happened to mention in passing to someone at DC
that Marvel were interested in doing this book with us, and they said,
"No, no, you must, must, must do it for DC. DC would love to do
this book."
And I haven’t even
written a word of a proposal or anything like that!
[Laughs.]
And suddenly we’re in
this really nice situation, so we’ll see what happens from here. It certainly
wouldn’t be suitable for DC Universe because, although it’s got
super-heroes in it, it’s a real sexed-out book, you know? I mean, this
is the sort of book serial killers have on subscription. So I think that
Vertigo is probably its home, you know? [Laughs.]
Have you had a chance to
talk with any potential artists for the book, or do you have anybody in
mind?
We really don’t,
actually. Once we’re decided on the company, we’ll probably think
about the artists, because each company has their own little stable of
guys. If we do it for Vertigo, it’d probably be a very different kind
of artist than whoever they have at Marvel, you know?
True. Who was your
original collaborator when it was published ... by Trident?
Actually, a couple. The
guy who I did it with originally was Grant Morrison’s next-door
neighbor when he was a boy, this guy called Danny Villelli. And Danny
was brilliant; Danny was great. I’d kind of taken the book to
this company, and after I’d come up with a character and all this kind
of thing, I needed to find someone to draw it. And Danny was the guy for
it. But he only did one issue because Danny was involved in a band and
all this kind of thing and didn’t have time.
And another guy called Nigel
Kitchens drew the next five issues. So, really, this wouldn’t be like
a— You know, it’s not like we’re using any of the designs or
any of the concepts or anything, so it would be an entirely different
thing. I’m just actually taking the title and the basic premise that I
had myself, so the copyright will lie with me and Alex Ross and whoever
the new artist is.
Well, I should also
mention that Red Son is not your first exposure to doing Elseworlds
stories in the DC Universe. In Swamp Thing, you did a series of stories
called "River Run."
Oh, right! Yeah.
Probably the highlight of
[your] run on the book was seeing all these characters that you had
known from 20 years of Swamp Thing taken completely out of context and
put into other worlds with strangely familiar trappings.
Yeah! [Laughs.]
Is that a fascination for
you—Elseworlds stories, different settings?
It really is. Did I say
to you the other day that I really wanted to do an Elseworlds monthly?
Did I tell you that?
No, you didn’t.
All right. ‘Cause
that’s one of the deals that I really, really wanted DC to do, and I
sent them a letter yesterday saying this. There’s a whole lot of
people to be consulted with this, you know. It’s something I’ve been
thinking about for a while, but I want to—
When Red Son finishes in
summer, I really want to follow up with a monthly book and get Dave
Johnson to do the covers. I’ve already spoken to a few artists, and
they’re really, really interested in it.
[I’d] get really,
really good artists to do four-issue story arcs and actually do three
four-issue story arcs a year, as a monthly book. So the first one would
be a Superman Elseworlds drawn by someone, then followed by a separate
(altogether separate) Batman Elseworlds drawn by J. H. Williams and Mick
Gray, then a separate altogether Wonder Woman Elseworlds where she’s
the leader of an all-female Justice League, drawn by Phil Jimenez.
And after that, [we’d]
follow up with the sort of Elseworlds you would normally get—with a
four-issue Shazam Elseworlds or something and maybe a four-issue
original Teen Titans one. I think it could be a blast, and the great
thing about it is every four issues you can have a great new artist and
a whole new premise, but the book itself would be Elseworlds # 1 and
continuing from there.
Yeah, I’ve heard some
rumors about the possibility of such a book. It would definitely be
something worth seeing.
Oh, I think it would be
enormous! It would be great! And it would be a good way of utilizing
these great characters without spreading it too thin, really. I don’t
want to see another six JLA books a month, you know? I don’t want to
see—
The most obvious thing to
do is just do twice as many books with the same guys. At least this
would be using the character imaginatively and setting him in different
scenarios so you don’t get tired of seeing him, you know?
continue
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