Superman: The Man Of Steel #37

There are about to be nine regular Batman titles — Detective Comics, Batman, Batman & Robin, Streets Of Gotham, Gotham City Sirens, Batgirl, and Red Robin, plus the November-debuting Batman Inc. and The Dark Knight. There are three regular Superman books (Action Comics, Superman, and Supergirl) and three regular Green Lantern books (GL, GL Corps, and Emerald Warriors). At the risk of oversimplifying, each of these titles exists on its own for a reason. Each supposedly tells its own stories, and each is independent (to whatever degree) from the others in its family.

And I feel a little hypocritical suggesting this, because I am all for the independence of any given series, but … what if these series worked together better?

DC tried to do just that on a macro scale a few years ago, when the weekly Countdown tied into practically every major superhero series. Described as the superhero line’s “spine,” and advertised as a bridge to the big-event Final Crisis, Countdown turned out to be an odd little gerrymander of a story, uneven and often confusing. Currently, several of DC’s books bear the banner of DC’s biweekly Brightest Day, but for the most part they only share characters with the year-long miniseries.

Anyway, that kind of line-wide coordination isn’t really what I had in mind. In the mid-1980s, Batman and Detective were, in effect, a biweekly series, written first by Gerry Conway and then by Doug Moench, and drawn by various combinations of Don Newton, Gene Colan, and Tom Mandrake. That ended with 1986′s Batman #400, but almost immediately, the load was picked up by the Superman books. For about the first ten years of Supes’ post-Crisis revamp, the regular Super-titles were, in effect, a single series. The revamp started with three monthly books: a new Superman vol. 2, Adventures of Superman (the retitled vol. 1), and Action Comics. In 1991 a fourth title was added, Superman: The Man of Steel; and in 1995, the “fifth weeks” were covered by the irregular Superman: The Man Of Tomorrow.

As you might expect, the two franchises had different approaches to their coordinated storytelling. Because both Bat-books were written by the same person, and drawn by artists with fairly similar styles, there wasn’t much to distinguish an issue of Detective from an issue of Batman. (Well, maybe length: thanks to backup features like “Batgirl” and “Green Arrow,” Detective’s Batman installments were frequently shorter.) Accordingly, the Bat-books were full of multi-issue arcs, including the final downfall of Rupert Thorne, updated versions of early foes like the Monk and Doctor Death, and (perhaps most notably) switching out Dick Grayson for Jason Todd. Sharing the books also gave Conway and Moench room to flesh out the supporting cast, among them Harvey Bullock, Vicki Vale, and Julia Pennyworth. It was an approach to Batman separate and apart from better-remembered interpretations of the character — which is a nice way of saying that today, it looks like a pretty bland time for the Bat-books. The period coincided with the height of New Teen Titans’ popularity (when, ironically, Dick Grayson was the bigger draw), and for all intents and purposes it ended with the release of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight. Denny O’Neil took over as Bat-editor with Batman #401 (which came out in the summer of 1986, about a month after Dark Knight #3), Miller and David Mazzucchelli produced “Batman: Year One” in issues #404-07, Jason Todd’s revised origin was told in #408, and the biweekly days paled by comparison.

Meanwhile, the “Byrne Era” had begun in the Superman titles. They came out like clockwork on the second, third, and fourth weeks of each month, with Marv Wolfman and Jerry Ordway’s Adventures sandwiched between John Byrne’s Superman and Action. Even with Byrne writing and drawing two titles (and, eventually, Adventures), the books were distinct. Superman was Byrne’s signature title, Adventures emphasized the supporting cast, and Action featured team-ups. After Action became a weekly anthology (with Roger Stern and Curt Swan on a Sunday-style“Superman” strip), and Superman went biweekly for a few months, Byrne left and the real cross-coordination began. Picking up from Byrne’s “Supergirl Saga,” Roger Stern and Kerry Gammill (on Superman) and Jerry Ordway (writing and drawing Adventures) eventually sent the Man of Steel into a guilt-driven outer-space exile, to return in time for George Pérez to re-relaunch Action Comics. The books still flowed into one another, but each featured a different perspective on Superman: Superman the superhero, Adventures the man, and Action the Kryptonian.

Naturally, when Superman: The Man of Steel debuted, it too came with a unique style, thanks to writer Louise Simonson and penciller Jon Bogdanove. By then, though, the books were defined more by their creative teams than by particular mission statements, not least because the creative teams on the other Super-titles had been moving around. Simonson and Bogdanove stayed on S:MOS throughout the book’s first seven years, but Jurgens moved from Adventures to Superman, Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett took over Adventures, and David Michelinie and Jackson “Butch” Guice replaced Roger Stern and Bob McLeod on Action. The books maintained their own identities, especially during the “Reign of the Supermen!” storyline, but all those characters, stories, and subplots got to be too unwieldy. In 1999, editor Eddie Berganza succeeded Mike Carlin (who’d been editing the books pretty much since the revamp). Berganza brought with him a (mostly) new slate of writers and artists, including Jeph Loeb, Joe Casey, Mike McKone, and Steve Epting, and the days of “weekly Superman” were over.

Before I get much farther, I should also mention the “biweekly” days of the ‘90s Legion of Super-Heroes, when the main Legion book and its companion, Legionnaires, helped relaunch the post-Zero Hour Legion. If memory serves, the books were biweekly from 1994 until Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning took over (also, probably coincidentally, in late 1999). In terms of storytelling style, I’d compare the biweekly Legion to the biweekly Batman, since both books used fairly similar creative teams. The books diverged somewhat when part of the Legion was stuck in the 20th Century, but for the most part both titles told one big story.

Now, considering all those comics, and especially the intricacies of some of their plots, the first lesson of tight intertitle continuity seems to be that it is not sustainable. The Superman books did it weekly (that is, four times a month) for about eight years, and that was after being twice- and thrice-monthly for over four years — and I would argue that the end came a couple of years too late. Moreover, cross-continuity necessarily involves a certain homogenization, such that one creative team’s style doesn’t end up overwhelming another’s. It’s not quite sacrificing quality for quantity, but it does require everyone to be on the same wavelength.

Nevertheless, when it does work, it can be a deeply rewarding reading experience. The apex of the weekly Superman books was the “death and return” mega-arcs of 1992-93, especially when each of the “new Superman” got a title to himself. A good weekly superhero comic should have an urgency appropriate to the story’s circumstances, such that the reader is carried along by narrative momentum. 52, the biweekly Justice League: Generation Lost, and (to me, at least) Trinity had that kind of energy, but each of them lasted “only” a year. The Super-titles built a pretty dense thicket of plots, characters, and subplots for over twelve years, and by the end they were just kind of there. In fact, thanks to the “New Krypton” mega-arc, recent Superman titles have gone through their own period of tight continuity, and now we are back to each book telling separate stories (specifically about Superman, Supergirl, and Lex Luthor).

So with all that said, why interconnect the Superman books, or the Green Lantern titles, or especially the Bat-titles…?

Well, franchises — or “fiefdoms,” “families,” whatever — are funny things. By definition they’re their own shared mini-universes. Batgirl, Red Robin, and Catwoman might not interact regularly (or even directly) with Batman (whichever one) and/or Robin, but they all tend to run in the same circles. They’re each adding to the texture and flavor of their Gotham-centric mini-universe. More to the point, Dick Grayson is still growing into the Batman role, and Bruce Wayne is relearning it. I’m all for fans puzzling out continuity, but I won’t turn down expositional clues as to which issue takes place when. The Superman books have been doing this occasionally, I think; but the Green Lantern books each seem concerned only with their own storylines. (I can’t speak to Emerald Warriors, which for various reasons I haven’t been reading.)

Of course, reminding readers about related titles might also encourage them to read said titles, as (for example) I might be encouraged to do with regard to Emerald Warriors or some of the ancillary Bat-books. As much as I have railed against it, that particular marketing strategy can be fairly effective. Also, it would help me feel like certain plot elements weren’t coming out of left field just because they were set up by books I hadn’t read.

Finally, there is the notion that certain characters are “big enough” to handle multiple titles. I’m pretty sure Mike Carlin justified the weekly Superman books that way (although at times it seemed like the books were about anyone but Superman). With two Batmen, two Robins (one “graduated,” one not), a new Batgirl, the imminent return of Batwoman, and a renewed emphasis on Gotham City, the Batman line is already big enough to merit closer coordination. Once Batman Inc. and The Dark Knight have started, I feel sure I’ll be wanting a roadmap. Otherwise, everyone’s off doing his or her own thing and the big picture looks more hazy.

The key to all of this is logistics — making sure books come out on time, giving creative teams the freedom they need, keeping the chronology straight — but again, when it works, it’s worth it. If I’m going to plunge into these franchises, I hope the experience is sufficiently immersive.

Grumpy Old Fan

Although I wrote quite a lot over the past year about DC’s weekly series Trinity, I kept coming up with questions that went outside the scope of my weekly notes. Fortunately, writer Kurt Busiek was nice enough to participate in the following e-mail interview, conducted after Trinity concluded (and after he returned from a well- deserved vacation).

We discussed the nuts and bolts of producing Trinity, its connections to a couple of Busiek’s other DC projects, a few nitpicky items, and what the year-long series leaves behind.

* * *

TCB: How did the weekly format affect your approach? Did you feel obliged to pace the book so as to satisfy both the weekly audience and the “wait-for-traders?”

kdb: I always feel obligated to make a project satisfying in whatever formats it’s planned for. So yes, we wanted each individual issue to be an enjoyable read, and we wanted each trade paperback volume to be an enjoyable read. Which was a little tricky, since we didn’t know, going into it, whether it would be collected as 4 TPBs (meaning the volumes would end at #13, 26, 39, and 52) or 3 TPBs (meaning #17, #34 or 35, and #52).*

That said, we were aware that with a weekly schedule, it’s only 7 days to the next chapter, so if one week is light on action (or virtually all action), that would likely be balanced out by the next installment. Or maybe even by the story in the co-feature.

TCB: What sorts of decisions went into breaking the series into individual two-story issues? Were there any labor considerations, for example to give the artists time to rest up for the next crowd scene? Did you and Fabian Nicieza write particular second stories for particular art teams?

kdb: We did try to juggle things for the strengths of the various co-feature artists, yes. But we had flexibility there, because we had enough lead time so that we didn’t have to have them in strict rotation. If we needed two chapters in a row from Scott [McDaniel], for instance, we’d just have to make sure we were plotted far enough ahead that while he was working on chapter one of two, Tom [Derenick] and Mike [Norton] had their own chapters to work on. As a result, the co-feature chapters didn’t come in in order, but we had enough time that we didn’t need them to; we could juggle talent and material and match them up right.

As a rough rule of thumb, we started out giving Scott spooky stuff or crime stuff, Tom big superhero action and Mike “people” stories, but varied that around as we got more of a sense of what they could do. Tom turned out to be very good at space stuff, for instance, and Scott far better at “cosmic/trippy” stuff than anyone might have imagined, possibly even him. By the end of it, we were making sure he got the psychedelic stuff, because we knew he’d knock it out of the park, while at the start we were thinking of him for shadows and mood…

TCB: Especially considering the artists’ deadline pressures, I thought Trinity‘s art was consistently good. Among other things, I feel like I’ve been to Thayer’s Notch now that I’ve seen it drawn by Mark Bagley and Art Thibert; and I was very impressed by Scott McDaniel and Andy Owens’ psychedelic Worldsoul/Krona story. Not that you had low expectations for the art, but were there any scenes or sequences which looked better than you’d written them?

kdb: I agree with you on the art being consistently good — credit the artists, of course, but also credit Mike Carlin, for lining up such a good squad of guys and making sure to manage their schedules right.

As for which scenes looked better than I imagined, I’m tempted to say “All of them.” Getting pages in was a treat, because everyone found ways to go a little further, make it a bit bigger, or funnier, or more affecting. From giant battles to big mystery to chapters like that great Norton/Kesel chapter about the Riddler, which was just perfectly paced, it was a pleasure all the way through.

TCB: Mike Carlin edited most of Countdown, and worked on the “weekly” Superman titles of the ’90s. Was he more helpful with regard to the logistics of the book or the creative aspects?

kdb: Mike weighed in on the big-picture stuff, going over the outlines, the big ideas and so on, but when it came to the chapter-by-chapter stuff, Fabian and I had a pretty good sense of how to play it out, and Mike rarely asked for changes. So I’d say that after the big story decisions had been made, he was very supportive creatively, and had to be the scheduling logistics taskmaster more often than anything else. And his experience juggling a large creative team helped out a lot.

TCB: What was it like collaborating with Fabian? How much input did he have into those scripts, and/or the book’s overall direction?

kdb: Fabian was insanely helpful. On the one hand, Fabian and I have worked together in a lot of different situations, going back to when he was a promotions manager at Marvel and I was a sales manager. We get along, we have a similar enough sensibility that we can pretty easily pull in the same direction, and he’s an inventive and professional writer. One of the reasons Mike didn’t need to involve himself all that much in the chapter-by-chapter plotting was that we pretty much had it covered — Fabian was kind of an extra story editor, where I could call him up and bounce ideas off him, and get feedback and suggestions from someone deeply involved in the story, who wasn’t pulled in a million directions at once by other emergencies.

At the same time, Fabian brought tons of creativity and no ego to the process — he knew going in that I’d be basically driving the bus, and his job was to help. I probably trampled all over his stuff dozens of times, replotting co-features, tweaking the dialogue so much that at points it amounted to rewriting rather than co-writing — but it was all in the service of keeping the two pieces of the issue together and working at speed; it’s simply easier, sometimes, to rewrite rather than talk all the details through.

So in the end, the credits are a bit misleading. Fabian’s name doesn’t appear on the lead chapters, but he was essentially a contributing writer on those, a sounding board, a suggestion guy and more. And my name is only listed as co-plotter on the co-features, but I had a lot more input than that. It was very organic — we were on the phone a lot and figured things out together. So I was driving the bus, but Fabian was co-pilot, or something. He had a number of very good suggestions, pushing me to think harder about Gangbuster and Enigma and others, and making sure I didn’t set something up and then let it fade away when it should play a larger role. He’s had a lot more experience with gang-written books than I do, so he saw pitfalls and structural issues sooner than I did, and kept us from falling prey to them.

And then I’d rewrite all his stuff; what an ingrate!

TCB: Appropriately enough, Trinity itself seems to be the third part of a trilogy, wrapping up storylines from JLA/Avengers and JLA‘s “Syndicate Rules.” How much of what became Trinity did you have in mind when you were writing the earlier stories?

kdb: Almost none of it. We put Krona in the Egg at the end of JLA/Avengers because it seemed like a good place to leave him, somewhere that could lead to something rich, but we hadn’t figured out what, yet. And then in “Syndicate Rules,” we didn’t do a lot with the Egg itself, but built up ideas like the Void Hound, or the CSA’s favor- bank rules, knowing that they’d be paid off later, but again, not precisely how. So it’s more a case of putting things into places that feel like a satisfying resolution for the moment, but have a built-in springboard for further explanation. It’s more about knowing that there’s stuff you can do that’ll work than knowing exactly what stuff that’ll be.

TCB: Apart from simply being shorter, do you think Trinity would have been significantly different as, say, an arc in Superman or JLA?

kdb: Oh, it’d have to be. Keep in mind that the JLA doesn’t turn up until #3, and then is erased from reality for the middle third of the story. If it was a JLA story, we’d have gotten tons of complaints from people who thought we were using JLA as a vehicle to ram the Trinity down everyone’s throats, at the expense of the rest of the League, and then that we weren’t even letting the League be part of their own book. So it’d have had to have been a much, much different story.

Same for if it was in Superman – it’s not a straight Superman story; it’s a story that has Superman as one of the main characters. So to build it more fully around him would change a lot. It doesn’t really fit any existing DC book — to properly describe it, it’s either a book about the Trinity, with a whole bunch of guest stars, or a book about the DCU Universe, with a special focus on the Trinity. So if you don’t call it Trinity, you need to call it DCU or DC Nation or something like that. (It was originally pitched, by the way, as “DC Superstars: Starring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman….and The DC Universe!” Which would have fit pretty well, as it worked out.)

TCB: It seemed to me that Trinity shared some of its story structure, at least superficially, with JLA/Avengers. Both stories begin with a quest to gather certain powerful items, which are then used to create an alternate timeline. Although the two stories have their differences, are the similarities just coincidental?

kdb: I think they’re coincidence. The quest-for-power-objects part of JLA/Avengers was there to help make it a travelogue/showcase of the two universes, an excuse to have a lot of fun locations for the fights. In Trinity, it was the villains going after power-objects, and that was to set up the building mystery of the Tarot connections and the personal items that were used in the Trinity spell.

TCB: Another JLA/Avengers question. In JLA/Avengers, I got the feeling you were lamenting the heroes’ various personal tragedies, and saying that no matter how appealing it looked, the combined DC/ Marvel timeline was just a pipe dream. Here, though, the experience of the deified Trinitarians suggests that the characters’ tragedies are inevitable, and perhaps even necessary. What do these stories say about the usefulness of these events?

kdb: In JLA/Avengers, the “tragedies” you’re referring to were things like the Scarlet Witch losing her children, or Hal and Barry being dead — I’d call that the kind of upheaval and calamity that happened to the heroes over the course of their careers, but which they had to accept as their burden to bear to restore the world to what they should be. In Trinity, you mean the legends, with the death of Robin and the Max Lord thing and such, right? I don’t know that we’re saying those are necessary, merely that they were big events that sent the heroes off into directions that isolated them, and they had to overcome those and reconnect with their true missions, rather than obsessing about personal failures.

TCB: Apart from those tragedies, how important generally was it to tell a story about these particular versions of the characters? Was it simply a case of using what had been established and/or what was current? Could you have gotten the same points across with more “timeless” versions?

kdb: I think they were reasonably timeless versions. We didn’t dwell all that hard on minor details — we used recent history in the legend stuff, but we used it in the process of illustrating who the characters are at their core. In another era, with different histories, those legends would have been different, but I’m sure we’d have found ways to say what we needed to say.

TCB: Were there any characters who, for whatever reason, didn’t make the final cut? (Personally, I was a little surprised not to see the “Sword of Atlantis” Aquaman.)

kdb: DC didn’t seem to know what they were going to do with Aquaman, so even though I created that version, I didn’t want to force him into the story. The big loss, to my mind, was Metron — we’d set up that Metron was interested in what would happen to the Cosmic Egg, and then couldn’t use him as we saw it play out because the New Gods were off-limits due to Final Crisis.

And we couldn’t use Madame Xanadu, because of her Vertigo series, but that meant that Charity got to play a role, which spun the story a bit differently, and that was fun.

Overall, though, we got to use most everyone we wanted to.

TCB: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are each inspired by their parents in very different ways. However, Trinity didn’t really concern itself with those differences. Why not?

kdb: It didn’t really come up. We could have made that another aspect of their trinitarianity, if that’s even a word — Superman was raised by loving parents, Batman’s an orphan, Wonder Woman had a single Mom; Superman’s adopted, Batman’s a natural son, Wonder Woman was created…but after a while adding more details starts to feel like you’re just piling them on, not going deeper into the characters.

There certainly stuff there to explore, and maybe someone will do a story about it. But we had enough going on that we didn’t need to add that in, too.

TCB: Here are a couple of really nit-picky questions about the altered timeline. First, why did Hal Jordan become Sky-Knight if John Stewart was still Green Lantern? I take it Hal quit because he couldn’t operate as GL on Earth, leaving John to be the GL of Sector 2814 everywhere but Earth. Also, why did Interceptor wear those goggles?

kdb: Interceptor’s visor has hi-tech sensors in it — it allowed her military bosses to observe what she saw; to see and hear what she did. Part of her being an agent of the government rather than a solo act. Hal Jordan quit being Green Lantern at some point and then built a new identity to keep being a hero, and John became our sector’s GL. Neither of these really came up, but like you say, it’s nit-picky. Given the way comics work, we could see either character again and learn more about them, I suppose. I really got to like Interceptor, and would love to see Supergirl meet her, in a compare/contrast story. Each one would think the other’s life was unbearable; it could be a lot of fun.

TCB: He only popped up briefly here, so where might we see Khyber again?

kdb: Anywhere! He’s out there, but he’s very secretive, so he could pop up anywhere, or stay under the radar for years. He could make a good JLA villain, or get involved with some espionage/intrigue characters, or whatever. We hinted at him in “Syndicate Rules,” by the way, when I was planning him as a JLA villain. But I don’t think anyone noticed.

TCB: The Tarot plays a pretty significant part in the story, especially early on. I imagine that is the kind of thing you want to get right, because you’ll probably have some readers who will know if you got it wrong. Did you have to do a lot of research before you felt comfortable with it? Did you consult any experts?

kdb: Fabian and I got a number of reference books, and used those — I sort of delegated much of that to him, because, well, I was juggling so much stuff I didn’t have the time to be more than cursory about it, and he was willing….

TCB: Trinity works in a lot of Clark’s co-workers from his pre-Crisis days as a TV anchorman. That seemed to me to indicate a fondness for the Cary Bates/Elliott Maggin/Curt Swan era of Superman. Apart from your own work on the Trinitarians, and the ways they’re being handled currently, to whom do you look for inspiration for each of these characters?

kdb: Everyone. I’m not looking to recreate any particular era, and my Superman, for instance, is informed by what Weisinger and his crew did, what Julie [Schwartz]‘s creative staff did, what Byrne and Stern and Jurgens and Ordway and others did…. I like the Bronze Age Superman a lot, especially the Cary Bates issues, but when I write Superman it’s a synthesis of all the stuff I like about Superman over the years. I don’t try to hit particular notes, I simply have a sense of who the character is from reading all those comics, and that guy in my head is the guy I try to get on paper. Same for Batman and Wonder Woman … I’m a big fan of Englehart’s Batman, for instance, but I’m not specifically trying to capture that, it’s just one piece of the mosaic that makes up Batman to me. Wonder Woman’s history is a lot more fragmented, so I suppose I’m more guided by the stuff from what George [Perez] did to what Gail [Simone] is doing today, but there’s certainly parts of the Bronze and Silver Age Wonder Woman in there, stuff that resonates with me and feels appropriate to who she is today.

TCB: Any immediate plans for Trinity‘s supporting cast, including Konvikt, Tarot and Gangbuster, Enigma and Stephie/Void Hound, and Tomorrow Woman?

kdb: I can’t say, at present. I hope we’ll see a lot of them — including the Dreambound — but if there are plans I’m not at liberty to announce them, and if there aren’t I’m too sneaky to admit it.

TCB: Finally, can you share what’s next for the new Earth-Trinity? Should we call it “Earth One,” or was that just a wink to fans of the old Multiverse?

kdb: “Earth One” was a deliberate choice, and done in part at DC’s request. There’s definitely more than a wink going on there.

But again, I can’t say, at present, what it’s leading to…

kdb

+++++++++

* [It turned out to be 3 volumes, with vol. 2 covering issues #18-35 -- TCB]

Irredeemable #1

This Wednesday marks the return of Peter Krause to monthly comics as the artist on BOOM! Studios’ Irredeemable. The series is described by BOOM! as daring to “ask the question: what if the world’s greatest hero decided to become the world’s greatest villain? A ‘twilight of the superheroes’-style story that examines super-villains from the writer of KINGDOM COME and EMPIRE!” Many people, including myself, fondly remember Krause’s great run on the 1990s DC series, The Power of Shazam. My thanks to Krause for this email interview regarding his return to monthly fun, as well as BOOM!’s Chip Mosher for facilitating the interview.

Tim O’Shea: This marks the first ongoing title you’ve done since Power of Shazam–but you’ve been a busy and happily employed artist outside of comics all these years. How has your non-comics work served to help improve your artistic skills overall and are there certain chances you’re now willing to take–or visual experiments you want to try now that you never would have considered earlier in your career?

Peter Krause: Wow…what a great opening question. I suppose there are some chances I’d be willing to take, but I’m not sure if I can point to the non-comics work specifically as the reason. After a time, I think you get a bit more comfortable in your own skin, and you’re not chasing the artistic flavor of the month. You can be a bit more confident in the decisions you make.

As an example, there are times where I just want to be loose and smear the ink around to show a certain texture or indicate a kind of ambiance. In my younger days, I might have been afraid to do that.

O’Shea: Did you start hungering for an ongoing series once you started working on the Cuffs collaboration with Derek McCulloch for Popgun 3? Or did that hunger hit you well before that?

Krause: Haha! A hunger, you say? I don’t know if I had an overwhelming hunger for an ongoing series as much as an itch to do comics again. Drawing the Popgun story “Cuffs” scratched the itch a bit. Comics really does get in your blood, but I would have been happy to do a little here and there.

But when you get a chance to work with Mark Waid—and you are helping design a whole world with new characters—well, that was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

O’Shea: What kind of visually engaging scenes has Mark Waid written for you that you’ve enjoyed rendering the most?

Krause: I’m not sure there are any certain scenes that I love more than any others, although Mark did have me render something in the first issue that took a bit of work. He said that he’d never ask for something like that again. I think you’ll know what that scene is when you read “Irredeemable” #1.

All of the characters are infused with such personality. That’s a testament to Mark’s writing, and it certainly helps me when I portray the way they act and react to each other.

O’Shea: Is Waid open to your suggestions of alternate ways to potentially play a scene?

Krause: We’ve already had a couple of times when I’ve suggested an alternative to what was written. Mark has been very open to that.

We’ve also had a few discussions on the phone where we’ve hammered out some small, unrealized parts of the script. It’s nice to have that input.

O’Shea: Have you been surprised at how enthusiastically and seemingly unanimously positive the response has been to the fact you’re returning to comics? Did you realize that you had developed such a loyal following from your Shazam days?

Krause: In these internet days, I don’t know if anything is unanimous! But I must say I’ve been taken aback at the nice things people said about Power of Shazam!

It’s sometimes hard for an artist to look back at his own work, because you know where all the strings and wires are that are holding it together. But I’m glad people enjoyed POS, and it was great drawing the Marvel family and working with Jerry Ordway, Mike Manley, Dick Giordano and Mike Carlin.

O’Shea: As an artist who infuses his characters with poignancy (as noted by Waid in the advance press on this title) what visual elements do you employ with your art to portray such poignancy?

Krause: I’m not sure there are any “visual elements” that I use to provide the poignancy. Good writing helps. I think any poignancy comes from getting under the character’s skin and feeling what you imagine they would feel.

You are an actor and a director when you’re drawing the comic. We have an example in the second issue where we show the Plutonian in a relationship. It was tough because he acts like a lout for a couple of pages, but you want to have some sympathy for him as well.

Matt Gagnon—our editor on the book—really loved that we pulled it off. That was a poignant scene, and it’s one that I think will be hotly debated by our readers.

O’Shea: Do you think the fact this new title will be a tale about the path to evil, do you expect that be a harder sell to readership, or do you think because of Waid’s track record with books like Empire people are hungry for another book tapping into that dark nature of the supersoul?

Krause: I’d hate to limit the scope of the book to just being a tale about the path to evil. I think it’s also about good people trying to oppose that evil, and what steps they would go to stop it. When you get to the end of the second issue, I think you’ll know what I mean.

Mark’s track record speaks for itself, and I think there are plenty of readers that will be on board because he’s writing “Irredeemable”.

O’Shea: Once you started working on the book, but it had not been announced, how hard was it for you not to tease folks about it at your blog?

Krause: Ah yes, my blog. I’ve been so bad at updating it, so it wasn’t that hard!

I don’t know how the rest of you do it with your flickr, and your twitters and your Facebook! I have work to do, pages to draw!

Okay, I’ll try to calm down now. And I’ll also start posting more on the blog. If the BOOM! crew says it’s okay, I can maybe put a few artistic teases for “Irredeemable” there.

O’Shea: Who is inking and coloring you on this assignment and how much have they made your best stuff look even better?

Krause: I’m inking myself on this, which has been fun. And our colorist is the amazing Andrew Dalhouse. I hope we can keep him around for awhile, because he’s doing a great job.

O’Shea: In addition to Popgun and Irredeemable, do you have any time for other creative pursuits in 2009?

Krause: I continue to do some storyboard work, but with the workload of a monthly, I’m not pursuing any other comic work right now.

Drawing “Irredeemable” is a lot of fun, and I hope people will give us a try.

Now, back to the drawing board!