Static Shock #4

Last month former Static Shock writer John Rozum revealed his side of why he left the New 52 series after only a handful of issues. His reasons came down to creative differences with his editor and with artist Scott McDaniel–or, as Rozum said on his blog, “From the first issue on, I was essentially benched by Harvey Richards and artist/writer Scott McDaniel.”

Now McDaniel has posted his side of the story on his website, noting, “I have remained SILENT because I fear no good thing comes from this type of public display. However, John chose to bring this into the public square. He has forced me to speak openly about our experience together on Static Shock, to correct the public record before his grotesquely distorted account matures in people’s minds as the truth of what happened here.”

McDaniel’s post is lengthy, as he gives some context around the book’s origins, the pressure of following in the footsteps of Dwayne McDuffie and the original Milestone book and how a poll on CBR about the New 52 books from last summer indicated the potential challenges the book might have in the marketplace. He then shares his side of how the collaboration started and when it soured, going into detail on some of the plot points Rozum called out in his original posts on the subject.

As I said, it’s lengthy and a lot to digest, so I’ll refrain from cutting any more of it up to post here and encourage you to read it on its own. My takeaway from all this is that sometimes people just don’t work well together, even talented creators like Rozum and McDaniel. Hopefully both of them will have a better experience on their next projects (which I look forward to seeing). I do agree with Rozum’s previous statement about the potential for Static Shock to be a breakout comic for DC, so hopefully this doesn’t sour the publisher on revisiting the character.

It seems like we were running a different trailer every day and twice on Sunday for one of DC’s New 52 books back in August and September, but then they stopped coming once the first issues hit the stands. Until today, anyway; Scott McDaniel, co-writer and penciller of Static Shock, sent over one for issue #4, which comes out Dec. 7. It’s the last issue he co-wrote with departing writer John Rozum; McDaniel’s writing issues #5 and #6 himself, with Marc Bernardin joining McDaniel as of issue #7.

"I throw him a growl I've brought all the way from Africa"

I was going to open with some snotty Wow, the holidays went by super-quickly! comment, but then I read the first issue of Justice League in seven weeks. Sometimes DC gets ahead of itself; sometimes it’s a little behind.  Happens to the best of us — sometimes you do two solicitation roundups in three weeks….

Anyway, with the January solicitations, the New-52 books each turn five issues old. Series wrapping up their first arcs this month include Blackhawks, Batwoman, Animal Man, and the Deadman feature in DC Universe Presents.  (Not to worry about the latter, because there is a lot of Deadman in these solicits.)  I’m not sure why five issues is such a wonky number for story arcs — there are five-issue miniseries all the time and they collect just fine. Still, I expected most of the New-52 books to take six issues for their introductory stories, and most of them may yet do that. Only a few books look to finish their first arcs after December’s issue #4s (Hawkman and Frankenstein, probably OMAC, maybe Batgirl), and those plus this month’s are barely an eighth of the relaunched line. It makes next month’s solicits more intriguing, I suppose.

Regardless, we live in the now (as it were…) so — onward to January!

JUSTICE LEAGUES

When I saw the solicit for Justice League #5, I thought it was another indication that Geoff Johns and Jim Lee were telling a more decompressed story, as issue #1 threatened. Accordingly, I imagined that Cyborg would be ready to go at the end of the issue, with the big Darkseid battle taking up an oversized issue #6. However, I was pleasantly surprised that issue #2 was such an improvement over #1. It moved more quickly, it brought together more of the future Leaguers, it kicked off Cyborg’s origin in earnest, and it teased another big Parademon fight. Plus it worked in a Gorilla Grodd reference, which I wouldn’t have expected so soon in the New-52 DCU. So now my mood has swung more to the manic side, and I am expecting the big fight to start in #5.

When a solicitation threatens that “[o]ne of these heroes will not make it out alive,” as Justice League Dark #5′s does, normally you think it’d be Mindwarp, the least familiar of the group. However, I then realized it could be a trick question, since that group includes Deadman — who’s not going into whatever-it-is alive….

CREATIVE TEAM SHUFFLING

I know that Tony Akins’ two-issue fill-in on Wonder Woman was planned, in order to give Cliff Chiang some flexibility, but the solicitation copy makes it sound like the issues come at least at the end (if not in the middle) of WW’s first arc. Maybe there’s some shift in the story’s tone which a different artist might help reinforce. By the same token, I can’t wait to see Darwyn Cooke and J. Bone’s guest-shot on The Shade #4.

Part of me is ready to give Green Arrow another shot, what with the three issues from Keith Giffen and Dan Jurgens and the upcoming Ann Nocenti Era, but part of me just thinks that this version of Ollie is almost too boring to fix. If anyone needed to lose his fortune, stop shaving, and go all #OccupyStarCity, it’s him.

Static Shock #5 is the first written entirely by Scott McDaniel, following the mysterious (but apparently amicable) departure of John Rozum. Walt Simonson pencils Legion of Super-Heroes #5, and contributes to THUNDER Agents #3.

THIS AND THAT

“Aquaman stranded in the desert” was actually a cliffhanger from 1985′s DC Challenge miniseries, and I want to say Aquaman killed a bird and drank its blood in order to get the liquid he needed to stay alive. Or maybe that was Watchmen; I always get those two confused. (They were both twelve issues….) Still, I bet the All-New, All-Hardcore Aquaman would totally rip out a bird’s throat with his teeth.

Considering he’s not part of the Doom Patrol, and his assistant is apparently a New-52 reworking of an old DP enemy, Robotman’s New-52 origin (as revealed in My Greatest Adventure #4) probably won’t feature the classic team. In fact, from what I saw of the New-52 Robotman in MGA #1, it looks like the Doom Patrol has gone the way of the original Teen Titans. Maybe the MGA feature is testing the waters for yet another Doom Patrol revival?

The “seduction of Damian” subplot described in the solicit for Batman And Robin #5 sounds good, although it seems like Grant Morrison covered similar ground when Damian faced his mother and the rest of the League of Assassins back around issue #12 of the previous series. Likewise, I look forward to Gail Simone’s Batgirl take on the old “female hero fights female villain who controls men’s minds” story, but I kinda want her to drop in a reference to Marsha, Queen of Diamonds.

SYNERGY

There have been plenty of guest appearances so far, but is the OMAC/Frankenstein intertitle crossover the first for the New 52? It may depend on how you categorize the connections between Superman and Stormwatch and/or Stormwatch and Demon Knights.

Speaking of which, only Hawkman can see “horrifying visions of the dead,” and so he “question[s] his own sanity?” Maybe he should talk to Grifter about that.

The solicitation for I, Vampire #5 — featuring a Batman appearance — makes me think I was right about the series’ vampires-vs.-superheroes aspect. That’s not a bad thing (apparently the original character met Batman in the pages of Brave and the Bold, as discussed below) but I wonder how much the series will go to that well.

I was surprised (synergy again!) to see Deadman figuring prominently into Hawk & Dove #5.  While they all were introduced in the late 1960s, I always associated Deadman and Hawk & Dove with different generations.  See, I keep forgetting that Hawk and the late Dove were teenagers back then, and adjunct members of the Teen Titans as well. And not to digress, but I have been thinking about the ways in which that generation of characters has been taken out of the New 52.  While I never put Hawk in that group (or the new Dove either, but I’m not sure how old she’s supposed to be), he should be there. Thus, DC hasn’t completely eliminated the Original-Titans generation from the New 52, because there’s Nightwing, Hawk, and Red Arrow. I should be satisfied with that, right?

(Again, not to digress.)

COLLECTIONS

Prior to the new I, Vampire series, the only exposure I had to this character was in the good-natured mockery of Tales of the Unexpected’s “Architecture & Mortality.” However, I have to say, I am totally ready for the omnibus I, Vampire paperback, reprinting the serial from House Of Mystery and Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #195. Ironically, while I am most interested in it as a rare example of main-line ‘80s DC doing a non-superhero story, I’m very curious to see the Batman team-up….

Hardly surprising considering the artist’s role in the New-52 relaunch, DC collects the original Karl & Barbara Kesel/Rob Liefeld Hawk & Dove miniseries (5 issues!). I didn’t read the miniseries when it came out (and still haven’t), but now I am curious to see what a strong inker like Karl Kesel did with a relatively-new penciller like Liefeld. I do remember thinking that regular-series penciller Greg Guler meshed with Kesel better.

For those who might have missed it the first time around, the Batman: Year One hardcover is well worth getting. Even if you have the original issues or an earlier collection, the hardcover (and maybe a 2007 paperback, but I’m not sure) features new coloring by Richmond Lewis which really makes David Mazzucchelli’s work pop even more. Plus, the hardcover is more durable, and you will want to look at this book a lot.

The Batman Vs. Bane paperback is a curious thing to me. The Bane of the Demon miniseries was better as a Bane story than as a Bruce-vs.-Bane rematch, mostly because it introduced Bane to Rā’s and Talia al-Ghūl, and (shall we say) gave them some non-Batman options. I don’t remember much about the Batman/Bane special except that it was a tie-in to the infamous Batman And Robin movie, and as such probably confused the heck out of anyone who might have known the character only from that. I understand that (as it happens) this paperback is meant to tie into The Dark Knight Rises, so DC is interested in the more villainous side of Bane, but it might also consider collecting “Tabula Rasa,” a nice little arc from Batman: Gotham Knights #s 33-36. Written by Scott Beatty and drawn by Mike Collins & Bill Sienkiewicz and Roger Robinson & John Floyd, it features Bane’s uneasy alliance with, and unexpected connection to, the Darknight Detective.

This month’s pleasant reprint surprise is Showcase Presents Young Love Volume 1 — more to come, I presume! — which I feel somewhat obligated to buy considering I have dinged DC previously for not reprinting its romance books. Still, I would probably have bought it anyway, just to see some non-superhero work from artists more closely identified with the caped crowd. No doubt some of the stories will be “so bad they’re good,” but on the whole it should be a fun read.

Here’s hoping that sales of the Xombi paperback — a bargain at $14.99, cheaper than the individual issues’ retail prices — are enough to make DC want more elegantly-crafted goodness from John Rozum and Frazer Irving. Xombi was just getting started when the New-52 came along, and I don’t want Rozum to have left Static Shock in vain.

AND FINALLY…

The “Batman: Black & White” line of statues has been pretty appealing so far, even if most of them are outside my price range. However, it’s going to be hard to turn down the Sergio Aragones one. What a great expression!

* * *

Well, that’s what jumped out at me this month. What looks good to you?

Bernardin, a former senior editor for Entertainment Weekly who co-wrote The Highwaymen and The Authority for DC, will join current artist/co-writer Scott McDaniel with March’s Issue 7.

“As a Black comic book fan and as a father of Black children, it’s really important that people see themselves reflected in a media they like,” Bernardin tells BET.com. “I remember growing up and looking at the Cosby Show for the first time and getting to look at people who were like me and doing things like I did, people who were my age going to college and studying for exams. I think for a long time, a Black kid picking up a comic book never got the chance to see himself, so I think that characters like Static are incredibly important.”

Static Shock #2, by Rozum, McDaniel and Andy Owens, was released last week.

Update: Comic Book Resources talks with Bernardin about his plans for Static Shock.

Somehow I missed that Scott McDaniel got the jump on the trailers for individual titles in DC Comics’ September relaunch with this teaser for Static Shock #1, which of course stars the Milestone superhero created by Dwayne McDuffie and John Paul Leon.

The brilliant, slightly awkward high school student Virgil Hawkins transforms into the cocky electromagnetic hero Static!

A mysterious tragedy forces the Hawkins family to relocate from Dakota to New York City! Virgil embarks upon new adventures in a new high school and a new internship at S.T.A.R. Labs!

As Static, he dons a new uniform and establishes a new secret headquarters! But is he ready to take on the new villains who lurk in New York City’s underworld?

Written by McDaniel and John Rozum, and illustrated by McDaniel, Jonathan Glapion and LeBeau Underwood, Static Shock #1 arrives in stores on Sept. 7.

Batman by Greg Capullo

The artists behind this September’s “New 52″ have taken to Twitter, thanks once again to David Macho, revealing a whole lot of art from the new books that are due next month. There are a couple of hash tags to follow over on Twitter … #52splash will show you pages of new stuff from Greg Capullo (above), Scott McDaniel and many others. And as Kiel noted last week, #thenewvillains hash tag that kicked off last week slowed down after last week’s push, but a few new posts have popped up today.

And speaking of villains, I don’t think anyone has shared artwork yet for the villain of the new Justice League title — who it turns out is one of DC’s biggest and baddest, Darkseid.

Check out more artwork after the jump, and watch the hash tags for more!

(Note: I’ll update as I can with additional art).

Animal Man by Travel Foreman

Kid Flash by Andrew Dalhouse

Firestorm by Yildiray Cinar

I, Vampire by Andrea Sorrentino

????? by Rob Liefeld

(Updated per Sterling Gates’ comment below)

Swan by Rob Liefeld

Static by Scott McDaniel and Jonathan Glapion

Birds of Prey by Jesus Saiz

Deathstroke by Joe Bennett, Art Thibert and Jason Wright

Nightwing by Eddy Barrows, JP Mayer and Rod Reis

Static Shock #1

DC Comics has revealed the release date, art team and first cover for Milestone Media and cartoon star Static’s new ongoing series. Static Shock #1 by Felicia Henderson, Scott McDaniel and Jonathan Glapion will arrive in May, with a cover (above) by Keron Grant.

Announced last July, Static Shock sees the return of the second Milestone Comics character to his own comics series this year, as Virgil Hawkins joins Xombi on comic store shelves again.

Static was one of the four original titles published by Milestone Media back in the 1990s, and his title ended in 1997. He made the jump to TV in the form of an animated series, Static Shock, and joined the Teen Titans shortly after the Milestone characters were merged into the DC Universe in 2008.

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]