Archive for the 'interview' Category
May 6th, 2008, 1:17 pm by Shawn Munguia
I recently got a chance to speak with Matt Fraction. Fraction is part of the writing team that revitalized Marvel Comics‘ Iron Fist. He’s recently started writing Ma
THE COMIC BOOK GUY: First off, I wanted to ask you about “Thor: Ages of Thunder.” Is that something that came up spontaneously or something that you were moving towards?
MATT FRACTION: I never— and people might argue that I still don’t — but I never understood Thor. It was one of those characters where I never quite got it. And early on in my relationship with Marvel I told my editors there, “Oh hey, I’m not the guy to talk to about a Thor mini-series.” I very specifically remember saying that, because I didn’t get the character. It was all thees and thous and I just didn’t get it.
But then I got it.
I was at inker and writer extraordinaire Andy Parks’ house, and Andy has an original (Jack) Kirby Thor page. And something about looking at that page — and it’s not even a particularly spectacular Thor page, I think you could argue, as far as Thor pages go — but there was something about seeing it in its raw form like that. I suddenly got it in a way that I never had before.
 And then I started bugging Warren Simons, the Thor editor who’s my editor on “Iron Fist,” “Iron Man” and a couple of other things with ideas. Things like, “Oh hey, you know what’d be cool in Thor, an army of skeletons while it rained blood.” You know what I mean? Just all these rediculous ideas would come into my head and I’d just throw them out there because — well because I’m a jerk I guess. (both laugh)
Eventually it came to a point where, it wasn’t a conscious audition but it was kind of auditioning for a mini-series. Then the opportunity came along to do this and I was like, “Sweet! Finally I get to put all my stupid ideas in one place.”
So it’s a chance to do Thor as I understood it as I had my sort of revelation about him. Sort of a, “This is the greatness that I see about Thor.”
TCBG: So you kind of move toward him once you understood him.
MattF: Once I understood him I couldn’t imagine not telling Thor stories. Once I had, experienced the character for the first time, it was I could do not to think about it.
TCBG: And “Ages of Thunder” is kind of a good introduction to people who aren’t used to it. It does a good job of letting you know what he is. Which is Thor is a gods ass kicker.
MattF: Yeah, I mean they don’t give thunder to the lightweights. (both laugh)
TCBG: Well, beyond that, you now have the Secret Invasion Thor. What can we expect out of that.
MattF: In the main Thor book Thor has sort of, as the Asgardians do, they’ve regenerated themselves post Ragnorok. And part of this is Thor wanting all of the gods, not to ascribe motive, but sort of to reconnect the gods with man. He’s positioned them in rural Oklahoma. And so the problem is, that these Skrulls are coming and they don’t just want to fight they want to save man. They’re sort of Skrull crusaders in a way, there’s a religious aspect, there’s an aspect of faith to their war. And so they’re going to come for gods. And Thor, buy putting Asgard in rural Oklahoma has endangered the very people that he sort of wanted to honor.
So it’s Thor realizing that the Skrulls are coming and he has a town to protect. He has two towns in that he has Asgard and this town of mortals that never did, well, “they never did nothin.’” So it’s Thor facing a war on two fronts. It’s Thor trying to protect Asgard and Thor trying to defend this town.
TCBG: And is that the reason that Thor’s not wrapped up with the God Squad that Hercules is sort of leading?
MattF: Well, it’s not necissarily the reason but…Let me not answer that because I don’t want to step on anyones anything. But all will be revealed.
 TCBG: Well, along those lines, is “Invincible Iron Man” going to tie into Secret Invasion in any way?
MattF: Well the first arc is pre-Secret Invasion and then the second storyline is post-Secret Invasion. There are absolutely repercussions and ramafications. The Secret Invasion is going to have a very profound effect on the story but Secret Invasion is so big, it’s kind of its own thing. So the second storyline deals with the ramafications.
The Secret Invasion comes in between and the status quo has changed between the first arc and the second arc. It’ll all make sense in the reading.
You don’t have to know anything about Secret Invasion to read “Invincible Iron Man.”
TCBG: I was asking because Iron Man is really at the core here.
MattF: Exactly. And that’s the thing, he’s such a major character in Secret Invasion that to do a tie-in would be superfluous.
TCBG: Well, in that regard he was also a major character in Civil War and so you had to have come into this while everybody hated Iron Man.
MattF: Yeah, that was really one of the reasons that I wanted it.
TCBG: Oh really?
MattF: Yeah, I really aggressively wanted it. He’s so hated, he’s so despised, he’s so damaged at this point. He’s held in such low regard that he’s just a great character to write.
TCBG: Well, do you think that was warranted?
MattF: Um, I don’t think it’s my place to say that people were right or wrong for people to react to stories the way they reacted. Brian did that terrific, “The Confession” story where Tony still thinks he made the right decision but the price was too great and he wouldn’t make it again. That’s what’s important to know.
MattF: So I don’t think it’s necisarily warranted, I think he’s gotten a bad rap. So what I’m really looking forward to doing is reminding people who Iron Man is and why he’s a hero worthy of their love and admiration.
TCBG: And how do you see him as a character, other than being worth of love and adoration?
MattF: He’s fantastic as a character. As a hero he’s a cross between Robert Moses and Chuck Yeager with a little bit of James Bond thrown in. So as a hero he’s terrific, as a man he’s direly flawed. He is his own arch enemy, and there’s no end to the great stuff that comes with that. He’s infinitely complex without even getting out of bed.
It’s just a great character to write.
TCBG: So did you fall for the character as Iron Man or as Tony Stark?
MattF: I think a little from column A and a little from column B. I thik iron Man is always going to be easy to like but Tony Stark is just as fascinating.
I said earlier that he was on a redemption arc and it got interpreted to mean redemption for Civil War. But no, he needs to be redeemed for a lifetime of sins. His flaws run deep and to his core and go back years. Lest we forget, this is a weapons manufacturer. And that’s really what it’s all about. He’s dealing with the unfortunate aspect of his legacy, in a very real way.
Once he’s put these terrors in the world, someone is going to make them better. And by better I mean more terrifying.
Oppenheimer would weep if he could saw the capability of hydrogen bombs today.
TCBG: And that is one of the things that I saw in the teaser that Joe Quesada put out.
MattF: One of the things that this guy seems to be dealing with is that, even just his Iron Man armor, he’s put out some really amazing weaponry, that a lot of people have gotten a hold of.
Yeah, and tweaked. You’re not allowed to say, “Nobody touch my stuff.” You can’t really do that and it, again, speaks to the core flaw in his character. Tony Stark thinks that the world revolves around him. In his weakest moments he thinks he can control the world and ultimately he can’t.
I think that comes in. I think somewhere you referred to him as being like Bill Gates and if you look to what MicroSoft has put out, it really lends itself too that. In that technology is always evolving.
Yeah, that whole thing was misquoted and miscontextualized. That metaphor was to explain why he’s losing. He’s this sort of bloated tyrant of the 20th century and he’s faced with a 21st century for the first time. And that’s not necissarily casting aspersions on those whose methodologies differ from his or Bill Gates. It’s just that, Tony Stark isn’t going to survive in the 21st century playing by the rules of the 20th century. And that really is what he’s coming to realize in our first “Invincible” storyline. He’s starting to realize that he’s a bit of a dinosaur and he needs to evolve, he needs to up his game.
 TCBG: I think remember when Warren Ellis moved onto Iron Man, he made mention of the fact that he had cell phones that could do as much as Iron Man’s armor could, that they’d never really upgraded the armor in that time.
MattF: Right, but I mean, the armor costs like $4 billion so it’s not like you could armor the entire police force of Paducah, Kentucky in Iron Man suits.
But there are real questions he starts to wonder. Like at one point he’s released a little bomb swarm and he’s wondering, “Can we create airborn vaccines? Can I like fly over Africa with vaccines like a cropduster?” So he’s wondering, “How far can we push this.” It’s one of the thing that we’re playing with for his character. It’s not, “is this strong enough to fight Fing Fang Foom?” Now it’s like, “Hey, how do I fight AIDS in Africa? There’s a villian. How do you do that? How do you fight hunger?”
I mean for all his accomplishments, he’s still a weapons designer at his core, and I’m trying to get him back to the daydreaming inventor in a lot of ways.
TCBG: And actually, I visited your blog and saw your mention of that misquote but where I saw it it felt more like MicroSoft versus Linux where, like with windows, they just keep pilling stuff into it where Linux is pretty streamlined.
 MattF: It empowers the user. It’s about user empowerment. If you read the whole quote, I think it’s clear. If you read the portion that that [person] took out of context, that turned into this headache that I had to deal with. But the thing is, what happens when you meet someone who thinks that the Iron Man shouldn’t be piloted by one guy and shouldn’t cost $4 billion. And that’s what this guy — and sure he’s a genocidal terrorist — but he’s applying open source or his understanding of open source philosophy towards terror. And that’s a foe for Iron Man to fight because he’s antithetical to everything Iron Man stands for.
I’m not saying that MicroSoft is good and Linux is bad, I’m saying MicroSoft is old. MicroSofts business practices are old, the philosophy.
TCBG: Sort of the swarm or acting like a hammer instead of a scalpel.
MattF: Yeah. The name of the first “Invincible Iron Man” issue is “The Five Nightmares” and it’s all about Tony Stark talking about his five nightmares. And it’s all, “The Iron Man is going to be come cheap, the Iron Man is going to become disposable, other people will be able to pilot the Iron Man other than me so I won’t have control over the Iron Man and lastly someone’s going to do this without me. And these all come true in the first issue.
TCBG: That’s pretty funny because all of those nightmares are pretty narcissistic.
MattF: Exactly. Exactly, it’s classic alcoholic behavior. Tony is really a dry drunk at the moment.
TCBG: Yeah, and putting him in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D. is sort of like handing him keys and a bottle.
MattF: Yeah, these are very real things that he’s dealing with.
And yeah this entire MicroSoft/Linux thing just infuriated me. Just because it was such a deliberate miscontextualization. If you read the issue, it’s clear it’s not true but no one’s going to read the issue. It just became a thing that I had to deal with.
 TCBG: And it’s something I’m noticing these days that even the proximity of a photo to a story can change things and take them out of context.
MattF: Yeah and he absolutely didn’t say what was being said. It was great for that guy, that guy wound up getting a bunch of hits and a bunch of referrals and everything else. And I got a bunch of angry people and suddenly I had to justify shit that I never said.
But that aside, what’s important is that philosophically the “Invincible Iron Man” is Tony realizing he’s got to evolve, he can’t run like a technological Plutocrat. As a hero, as a man, as a businessman, as an engineer, as a designer, as a futurist, he’s been living in the past and needs to develop. And he finally meets someone whose beating him at a game he was never designed to play.
TCBG: Like you said earlier, it seems the Iron Man armor gets more powerful and addresses specific foes and such. But it’s one of the things where it’s not really addressing the problem he’s looking at symptoms as the problem.
MattF: He’s just making the weapon stronger, he’s not making it any smarter. He’s not designed to fight an asymmetrical war, and when he finally comes across someone that’s fighting him on those terms, he’s at a loss.
TCBG: And one of the things to come out of those preview pages is that (Zebediah) Stane doesn’t think he’s a bad guy.
MattF: Oh yeah. He’s nationless, he’s loyalless, he…well he does lack the ‘right and wrong’ gland that most people have. I mean he is a villain, he is a bad guy, but yeah, he thinks he’s just trying to make a living, y’know.
TCBG: Well, and I think the best villains, that’s one of the things about them. I remember a friend and I were discussing Dr. Doom one time and I said that ultimately, the best thing about Doom is that he doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong. He honestly believes that the world will be a better place when he’s in charge.
 MattF: Sure, he’s a benevolent monarch. He believes he’s a benevolent monarch.
TCBG: So the movie is coming out at the same time as the book. What do you think of what you’ve seen of the movie?
MattF: I’m excited. I’m the guy in comics that doesn’t really like comic book movies. I don’t dislike them, but I’m not as impressed. I tend to dislike them more than my coworkers. But I saw that first trailer right after San Diego (Comicon) last year. I was in a room with a bunch of other X-Men writers. We were exhausted. We were tired of comics. We were tired of each other. Everyone just wanted to go home and sleep for a week and we turned up at the Marvel West offices and they were like, ‘Hey, let’s watch … let’s show you this ‘Iron Man’ Super Bowl reel.’ And they showed us the clip and we all just yelled and went nuts and we just wanted to see it. I was genuinely enthused, and that was before I was writing the book.
TCBG: Well, that was one of the things. If you look at the movie, it seems to be doing about the same thing you are in that it’s looking at Tony Stark and looking at his realization that he has an awful legacy at this point.
MattF: Yeah.
TCBG: Ok, this is going to be kind of a goofy question but I kind of have to ask. Tony Stark is pretty heavily known as a womanizer in Marvel Comics, is this something that’s going to be addressed?
MattF: Yes. It’s like a superpower. He’s great. It’s going to be celebrated. Is that what you mean by addressed?
TCBG: Well yeah, that and if there would be repercussions from it.
 MattF: Yeah. He’s in bed with a woman on page four of the book. Like very. I mean, repercussions, yeah, inadvertently there’s a huge repercussion.
But yeah, I love it. It’s one of my favorite things about Tony. I mean he’s in bed with a naked woman by page four or five or something.
TCBG: See listing it as a superpower just cracks me up.
MattF: It’s kind of thing like to me, it’s mostly what I responded to with James Bond. I love Bond as a character but it’s not the super spy stuff, although that’s great, it’s not the action, although that’s great, it’s that Bond always knows what to do in any situation socially. That was always exciting and fascinating to me as a kid.
To be the kind of insecure preteen/teenager and then to watch a guy that looks great in a tuxedo, order the right bottle of wine, sit down at a back baccarat table and win $20,000 and then like nail Ringo Starr’s wife. It was always sort of like g__damn that is incredible. That’s a superpower. That’s what I always loved about Bond was Bond knowing absolutely the right thing to say at any given time. And I want to play that up with Tony is that Tony can’t help but just be that cool.
TCBG: Well there was an interview with Marilu Henner on Jimmy Kimmel, where they brought up Gene Simmons’ constant flirting and she said, that’s just Gene. If Gene were here and no one else was he’d be flirting with the table.
 MattF: Yeah, exactly.
TCBG: I’m really looking forward to the comic, it looks like a lot of fun. And Stane is definitely taking a different tactic with Stark than his predecessors have.
MattF: Yeah, I mean he doesn’t want to kill Iron Man. I mean he does, but his ultimate objective isn’t like “mwaha ha ha, you know. His objective is, “I want to prove that you’re obsolete.”
He wants to drive Stark to extinction. That’s what he’s about. And I think that’s something that we haven’t seen before. It’s not, “I’m going to punch you. I mean, I’m going to kill you. Don’t get me wrong. But I want to be the extinction level event that wipes you off the face of the Earth.”
TCBG: And like you said that is a whole new way to look at it. In the past it’s been using a bigger stick.
MattF: Yeah, “My robot can beat up your robot.” But this is a battlefield where Stark has never been challenged on. That’s the basis for the, albeit specious, MiroSoft/Linux analogy. MicroSoft was never designed to face something like Linux.
Not Linux, but the open source movement. The creative commons license is like the bubonic plague to an organization like that, that prides itself on locking down rights and proprietary information. Something like open source is a revolutionary act, so Stark is faced with a revolutionary villain, on the surface.
TCBG: Thanks a lot for your time.
MattF: Sure. Tell Joe I said hi. Take care
TCBG: You too.
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May 3rd, 2008, 7:25 pm by Shawn Munguia
I recently got a chance to interview Marvel Comics Editor-in-chief Joe Quesada. We spoke of a number of things happening in the Marvel Universe and in the latest Marvel film, Iron Man.
THE COMIC BOOK GUY: First off, you pretty early on seem to have taken, kind of an adversarial role with DC Comics. You kind of called them out, mostly like trash talking on a basketball court. Was this a conscious effort?
 JOE QUESADA: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. By the way I made a pretty public statement pretty early on, before I got in to any schoolyard thing with DC. A sort of a malaise had fallen over the (comic book) industry and I remembered back when I was reading comics just as a hardcore fan was that there was sort of a battle line drawn in the sand. There were the DC people the Marvel people and a few that read both but there were tons of arguments. Like DC fans didn’t like Marvel fans and vice versa. And there was a definite rivalry between the companies.
It was a lot of fun, and at the end of the day you can’t have the New York Yankees without the Boston Red Sox. That sort of a rivalry just makes baseball more exciting.
So I felt that the rivalry needed to be sparked up a little bit. So I did a little bit of teasing and prodding more like what Stan Lee did back in the day. Back then he used to call them the Distinguished Competition and Brand X. so it was keeping in the tradition.
And lo and behold fans woke up and DC woke up a little bit so, I think competition is great. I think passion is a good thing. Specifically fandom. Passion among the fandom is, and by the was if passion means some fans say they hate the guy at Marvel because he’s saying mean things, that’s passion, you know. Have at it. That’s great, So long as you’re passionate about it, that’s great.
CBG: So knowing that this was coming, did you really early on resign yourself to that?
JOEQ: What’s that?
TCBG: The idea that you would be hated.
JOEQ: Oh yeah. One of the clearest things that anyone ever said to me when I took over this job was when Tom DeFalco, editor-in-chief before the guy that I took over this job, came into my office and Tom did this job for a long time. So he told me, “Just be aware that you need a really broad back to do this job. Because no matter how good your intentions are there will always be people who are going to see conspiracies where there are none. And going to blame you for things that are totally out of your control.”
So knowing that, and now having experienced that, I can increase circulation and improve the books a thousand-fold - and I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that - but there’s always going to be people that are going to say, “He sucks.”
And that’s just fandom you know. I mean I’m a fan of comics, of sports and it just comes with the territory. Fans are very passionate. So you can either take it or you can’t, it just comes with the job.
To use another sports metaphor, there are people who say that certain athletes can’t play in New York because the fandom is just too passionate. And there may be some truth to that, but some of them can and do.
So knowing that, it was a simple decision to make.
TCBG: With that already behind you, that kind of feel for your job, does it make it easier to do something like “Brand New Day” where you know it will anger some of the fans?
 JOEQ: Brand New Day was a bandage that had to be ripped off sooner or later. This isn’t something that just occurred to us here and we said, “We think it’ll work better to have him like this.”
This is something that every editor that I know of, every one for the last 10, 12, 15 years has wanted to unmarry Peter Parker again. And they either didn’t have that solution or they weren’t ready to do that yet because you knew that there would be a backlash from a certain segment of fans.
But one of the things that I try and advocate around here is that we do not publish in fear. We can’t. Once you start staring into the rear-view mirror you’re going to end up in an accident.
And Brand New Day was one of those things where we could easily have sat back and said, “Oh, I don’t want to get all those e-mails.” but at the you know what, it was what was best for that character in the long run. So let’s just do it. Lets get it over and done with.
To me, One More Day was less important, to me it was more important to get to Brand New Day. And I get tons of fan mail telling me, “I didn’t really like One More Day but now I’m loving Brand New Day and I understand why you did it.”
That’s really the ultimate goal and two years down the road, five years down the road, no one’s going to care. So long as we keep putting out good stories.
TCBG: Right. And I was one of those fans where it really bothered me. I mean Spidey is what brought me into comics. But the stories in Brand New Day have been really solid.
JOEQ: And there’s so much more we can do with Spider-Man that you can’t do with him married dot Mary Jane. We haven’t even scratched the surface we haven’t had any real romance brought up in the book. But there’s stuff coming down the pike where I just want to tell everybody what’s coming but I just can’t.
I also think that, at the end of the day, one of the things that has lots of the fans upset is, “How does this fit into my Marvel continuity world.”
Those answers are coming, we didn’t want to give them away right away. But those answers are coming don’t even panic. Believe it or not, it’s all under control.
TCBG: And you just mentioned romance right now. I don’t know if it’s how you guys are thinking of it but to me it felt like it was a conscious decision not to have any romance right away because it would kind of be like seeing a friend that just recently got divorced with someone else. It just kind of feels weird.
JOEQ: Oh yeah no, that’s absolutely true. Part of it is also, lets clear the deck, lets clear the air, we’re introducing a new cast. Lets let the writers have their way with it. Who does Pete meet, who does Peter run into, who does Peter have a crush on and who does he fall out of a crush on. It’s just letting that happen organically with our writers instead of being like, he’s going to date her, he’s going to break up with her.
And it’s part of the deccision to give the old Spider-Man villains a break, we’re introducing a lot of new villains. Not that Spidey’s villains aren’t great and we will bring them back, it’s just that they’ve been used so much lately. And not just with Spider-Man, throughout the Marvel Universe. So we just want to give them a break for a little while and bring on new characters and make the cast even bigger and thus the soap opera even bigger. So I’ve been pretty happy with the way that these guys have been taking the books.
It’s also part of taking the books thrice monthly and a single title instead of three separate titles. Bringing back what made Spider-Man so great, what made Marvel so great was there’s one life, Peter Parker and the other part of his life if the Amazing Spider-Man. So we’re really looking at the soap opera of this guys life.
TCBG: You mentioned the term soap opera and I think that’s really been done on Ultimate Spider-Man where you’re really involved in this guys life. If the Spider stuff happens of it doesn’t happen, you’re still engaged as a reader.
JOEQ: Exactly. And remember the first six issues, there was no costume and you were just engaged in the life of Peter Parker.
And that shows you that what I’ve always been saying is true. You need to care about the guy in the red and blue suit. You have to care about Peter Parker to care about Spider-Man, you need to care about Matt Murdock to care about Daredevil. They’re their alter-egos first and the superhero second.
 TCBG: And that’s been coming up a lot with the reviews of Iron Man. Most of the reviewers have pointed out that it’s a long time before you ever see the suit.
JOEQ: Let me tell you, as a guy that’s seen the film about a dozen times at this point. From the very first iteration of the film, I keep telling people, “I don’t care if he ever puts on the suit.” Because Robert Downey Jr. just does such a great job of capturing Tony Stark. He does such an incredible job of making this multi-dimensional man that becomes this hero that the suit is secondary. You just want to see more Downey Jr. He really nailed what it is to be a Marvel hero, right at it’s heart.
TCBG: How did you feel about that casting when you found out?
 JOEQ: I loved it. I absolutely loved it.
First of all, I happen to be a huge fan of his. So much so that I even watched Alley MacBeal to watch him. (both laugh)
So I was thrilled when I heard it. And it really was art imitating life at that point because in a lot of ways he’s lived the life of Tony Stark.
TCBG: And the whole cast if phenomenal. The lead cast has about 7 Oscar nominations among them?
JOEQ: Oh yeah, and I’ll go on record saying this. Aside from Downy doing an incredible job in this, it’s the first tie that I’ve seen a romance on the screen of a superhero movie that really touched me. Where I was like, “OK, I really feel this.”
There’s just some sort of a magic between him and Gwyneth Paltrow (as his personal assistant Pepper Potts) that really touched me.
TCBG: And that’s one of the places where the movie can feel outside of the standard context of the book. There’s been romance between Tony and Pepper in the past but it’s never seemed like it could last.
JOEQ: And it’s funny that they should nail this particular romance because the Pepper Pots Tony Stark romance isn’t like Peter and Mary Jane, Peter and Gwen, Clark and Lois, you know, it’s not a classic comic book romance. And yet they managed to take something like that and make is something really special.
 Where Robert Downey Jr. has really captured the essence of the character, I think what Gwyneth Paltrow has done for us is that she’s given us a new look at Pepper Potts. Where we’re really looking at this going, “Wow.” this could be the case where an actor playing a character on the screen will probably effect the comic books because she she gave us a look at Pepper that we never saw before. We see her in the flesh now and I think that, invariably, will effect the way writers write her in the future.
TCBG: The movie has the modern Iron Man suit but I was wondering if at any point the Ultimate Iron Man suit was considered?
JOEQ: You know, that’s more of a question for our West Coast guys. The development guys and (director Jon) Favreau. What I do know is that Arnie Granoff, who was drawing Iron Man for quite a while was asked to design the suit. So I think they were looking at the standard version but that’s really a question for those guys.
TCBG: Sure. Speaking of the Ultimate Iron Man, there’s a few things in the Ultimate storyline there are elements of Tony Stark that makes him seem more tragic than in the standard storyline. Is something like that that is coming in the standard storyline?
JOEQ: In “Invincible Iron Man” we’re going to be revealing a lot of stuff about Tony. It won’t resemble Ultimates, it’ll be different, but there’s some stuff coming out about Tony that I think will reveal a lot.
TCBG: Well, they did shoot a cameo with Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. Is this kind of layng the groundwork because I noticed that the two Marvel movies have sort of a cross referencing.
JOEQ: Oh, you know … Is there a cameo somewhere? I have no idea of what you speak. (both laugh)
TCBG: All right. This is sort of a goofy question, you put out a song earlier this year called two weeks late …
JOEQ: Oh, actually that was last year. I put out a song to Marvel fans each year. I’ve done it five years in a row, unfortunately I didn’t get to do it this year. “Two Weeks Late” was a comment on late comics and fans were really getting up in arms so I put out this song.
It was for Christmas of 2006 but I put it out two weeks late so it was actually in 2007.
It’s just something I do. I used to do a musician for a living before I ever did any of this stuff so once in a while I like to get goofy with that.
TCBG: You have a history of actually standing behind the comics that are running late. A lot of the time it really pays off with a great comic. On a few occassions, like “Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk,” it just kind of stalled out in production. Is there any projection for when tht would be coming out or is it a dead project?
JOEQ: The current projection write now is that Damon (Lindelof) has handed in every single script except for the verly last. But that doesn’t really matter right now because Leinil (Francis Yu) is doing Secret Invasion.
My suspicion is that when Lenil get’s done with Secret Invasion, he really wants to finish this, so I think that this will be the next thing that he jumps on. And then we’ll be able to finish that and get the comics out.
So I know that Damon is pretty much done but he’s not really in a rush to get the last script out because we don’t have an artist for it now but I suspect that once Lenil is done we’ll green light it again.
TCBG: One thing that happened last year was a certain amount of “hatred” toward Iron Man. Was that something that was conceived before …
JOEQ: Oh yeah absolutely. We know which side of the registration act fandom was going to rally against so we knew we were putting Tony Stark into a really interesting position. But it was really a position that we thought was right for him.
What’s interesting about that is that is that shortly after, almost every single script we were getting in from our writers, nearly every pitch I was getting from our writers or young writers trying to get into the industry either featured Tony stark or had Tony Stark in a cameo. So at the end of the day I think its really been working out well for us in that he’s really the misunderstood hero in this whole thing. But it’s made him that much more interesting to all our fans out there and he’s literally in all out books at this point.
TCBG: Not knowing that that would be a by product, was that really a calculated gamble on your guys’ part, kind of casting him as the bad guy?
JOEQ: Well first of all, we didn’t cast him as the bad guy. When you look at the decisions he made … We didn’t take any side in this, we presented both sides of the argument with registration of not registering and everybody falls within those lines. But when someone, one of our characters says, “You know what, I think the government’s right” because of the climate of this country right now, most of our readership is going to say, “Oh, I’m not with him, he’s with the government.”
Say what you will but that happens to be what happened and we expected that. It doesn’t mean that Tony’s wrong, by the way. It doesn’t mean that the government is wrong either. In the storyline, Tony ended up being right but he made the tough call of saying, this is right for us right now.
So people might want to see him as a villain but that’s certainly not how he was cast in any of this.
TCBG: On that same level though, most of the best villains don’t think of themselves as “bad guys.” But I don’t’ think he was a “villain” I mean, he was going up against Captain America and it’s kind of hard to look like a hero while doing that.
JOEQ: Well yeah. (both laugh)
TCBG: Well if Cap were whacked out on drugs or something maybe but other than that you’re going to look like the bad guy. This next one is definitely a loaded question though. Are we going to see Steve Rogers return as Captain America?
JOEQ: Are we going to see Steve Rogers return? Quite frankly I don’t know. I mean, I’m looking at the next six months of books right now, I don’t see Steve Rogers anywhere. So I have no idea.
 What I can tell you is that “Captain America” the book is doing incredibly well and Steve Rogers ain’t in it. We even have a new Captain America and Steve Rogers ain’t in that costume.
TCBG: Oh, and it’s being done really well by Ed Brubaker. And I think it’s really one of the best entry level books out there in that it’s not a traditional comic story it’s being written more like an espionage book.
JOEQ: And he’s managed to do one of the most difficult things in our industry which is making Cap, I mean he wears the American Flag, and he’s made him an interesting character that we want to read about.
TCBG: Well Captain America has traditionally taken an interesting look at our country I mean he had, well they never directly stated, but he had Richard Nixon as a bad guy.
JOEQ: You now, when a writer decides to go out on an edge, like Ed has, Captain America is a really interesting character. But when Marvel says, “We don’t want him to take a stand, we just want him to be a superhero,” that’s when the character has suffered. So that’s what I’m saying. It’s a little bit tough to write Captain America because you really have to have a little bit of chutzpah to be able to say I’m going to have the character stand for something.
Not everyone is going to agree but that’s what we’re going to do.
Again, everyone sees the American Flag and everyone has varying degrees when they see that. When I look at the American Flag, I think I’m as patriotic as the next guy and I have certain feelings. When my dad looked at it, I mean my dad fought in the Korean war, he feels, possibly similar to me but he feels something different. The same thing with my grandfather, he was an immigrant who came to this country and fought in World War II. So everyone who sees Captain America feels the same thing. They all see a piece of themselves in that character, so you’re never going to please everybody.
TCBG: Two more questions. One is about you. You’re probably about the highest ranking Latino in the industry right now. Do you feel a certain weight about that?
JOEQ: I don’t feel any “weight” about it. I feel a lot of pride. My father was very proud of his roots and made sure that I understood it completely but as far a weight, not really.
I mean Latinos, we’ve done really well in a lot of major industries. But at the end of the day I’m just a guy trying to do my job and if that inspires people that’s great, but really just trying to keep my head above water.
TCBG: My last question is really for you. At the end of interviews I like to turn over the floor in case there’s anything we forgot to talk about and something you wanted to say.
JOEQ: No I think we’re good. We covered a lot actually. (both laugh)
Posted in: Avengers • Buckey • Captain America • Ed Brubaker • Iron Man • Joe Quesada • Marvel • New Avengers • Nick Fury • S.H.I.E.L.D. • Tony Stark • Ultimates • Winter Soldier • comic books • comics • editor • hulk • incredible hulk • interview • movie • writer | 1 Comment »
March 3rd, 2008, 6:59 pm by Shawn Munguia
‘Cable’ is a thick slice of cool, but what do you expect when you team a crime writer like Duane Swierczynski with a fantastic penciller like Ariel Olivetti.
 Spoilers beyond this point, turn back if you don’t want to know anything about the story. I’ll try to keep it to a minimum though.
The story starts with the titled hero wandering through future Earth protecting the baby that he picked up at the end of the Messiah CompleX series.
 We see that this takes place after he’s been on the run for about six months (his time) and we get to see him take on a small group of baddies. The big thrill comes at the end when we see who the antagonist is going to be for the first arch of the series and it’s none other than __________.
I’m not about to spoil that for you. Check it out as the series looks like it’ll be a great ride.
Posted in: Cable • Marvel • X-Men • comic books • comics • hero • interview • preview • previews • review • reviews | 1 Comment »
January 30th, 2008, 10:40 am by Shawn Munguia
 When I saw that a movie about the folks that dress as superheroes on Hollywood Boulevard (“Confessions of a Superhero”) was about to drop on DVD I knew I had to check it out. The documentary is really one of my favorite films that I’ve seen recently and I highly suggest it to anyone with a DVD player. The film is moving, engaging and beautifully shot.
I got a chance to speak with the films director, Matt Ogens, by phone the other day. Read it, comment if you like, then buy or rent a copy of this film and see it.
The Comic Book Guy: First off I was wondering where you got the idea (to do this film)?
Matt Ogens: I was directing a commercial on Hollywood Boulevard and saw “the characters” hanging around and was drawn to them right away. I’ve driven by there a couple of times but, y’know, it’s like any tourist area. I didn’t really pay that much attention. But when I was up close and near them, I really wanted to know more. I was really curious, not so much about what they did on the Boulevard so much as, “What would draw someone to do that for a living,” “What are they like when they go home,” “Are they married,” “What do they do for a living besides this?” So that’s how I became interested.
CBG: And you decided to focus on the heroes just for consistency or something else?
MO: Actually, yes that’s exactly right. The first person I met out there was Chris Dennis who plays Superman and for whatever reason I was drawn to him so I knew he was going to be part of it. And yeah, it was for consistency. I thought that anyone in any generation would know who Superman and Batman were. They’re always redoing movies as well as comic books. Where as, if you do something on Marilyn Monroe or someone else, someone that’s younger may not know who that is anymore. And I thought “Superheroes are timeless and iconic” and I also thought they were pretty good metaphors for life.
CBG: And you did stick with superheroes with a long history. I don’t think any … Lets see Superman, Batman, the Hulk, they all have at least a 50 year history on them.
MO: Just coincidentally that they were ones that had long histories. That wasn’t necessarily by design. Actually we had a Spider-Man at first. And when we tried to include him in early cuts … He didn’t give us enough access and it just didn’t work. So then we picked up the Hulk. And we definitely met everyone through Superman, he was sort of our guide into that world. So we never really thought of it. I’m not a huge, huge comic book fan. I’m not an avid reader to where I knew when one character was created over another so it was just what I was drawn too. The characters, when I was a kid, that I knew of were those.
CBG: Yeah and Superman is pretty timeless.
MO: Exactly.
CBG: Um, Chris Dennis, I’m kind of curious about him. What was your take on him? Because he’s been doing this for an awfully long time. I get numbers that range from 2 years to 15 (years).
MO: I get different numbers too. (Both laugh.) I think he gives a different number every time he’s in an interview and someone asks him how long he’s been out there it changes. He’s told me from 13 to 16 years. I know he, allegedly, was one of the first ones out there. I wasn’t around so I can’t vouch (laughs) for exactly when he started but I do think he’s been out there the longest and is certainly, in the press, the most recognized. Whenever there’s any press or “The Jimmy Kimmel Show” or any press, they usually include him.
CBG: I noticed in the interviews after that there seems to have been a falling out between Chris and Max (Maxwell Allen who dresses as Batman) as well as, it seems like, you and Max.
MO: Yeah, y’know, towards the end of the filming there was already a falling out that was happening between Max and Chris. According to Max, at the time, Chris would get most of the press and I think Max started getting jealous. But Max felt like Chris was sort of hogging up the limelight for himself. So it was sort of starting in-fighting between them. But is was also at about this time that Max started drinking more and started getting in trouble with the law more so … It’s kind of a “chicken or the egg” sort of thing. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
You know, he doesn’t like how he was portrayed and it’s easier to be against me and against the film. What’s interesting is, whatever he said in the movie … it’s a documentary. That’s his thoughts. His opinions. His life. I’m not in the documentary and there’s no voiceover giving anyone else’s opinion so it’s a pretty objective documentary. There’s no way for me to really have injected my opinion unless I started editing up words to create something that didn’t happen but that’s not the case so I think it’s just easier for him to be angry at us. And as you see in the movie he is a character … by a character I don’t mean Batman, I mean Max himself, is a person who doesn’t seem to take a lot of self responsibility. Whether he’s getting arrested or whatever’s going on, he seems to blame everybody else. He blames (George) Clooney for his lack of acting work.
CBG: Yeah, I kind of caught that (in the film).
MO: Yeah, instead of … well, it never crossed my mind that he looked like George Clooney, until he said it. So it’s just, he’s just…You know, it’s a real great, I think, character study of different people and how to succeed. Because how I feel, as a director, is what I need to succeed is to work my ass off every day and to look at myself. And he’s someone that seems to think that you’re just supposed to get it right away and blame everyone else and, um, that’s how he lives his life.
CBG: He and Chris wind up, probably taking the lion’s share of the movie just because they’ve got…
MO: So much drama.
CBG: And one of the things that I notice is that both of them have somewhat questionable histories.
MO: Yeah absolutely.
CBG: The other two were straightforward. And Jennifer (Gehrt who dresses up as Wonder Woman) was kind of … Well she was in kind of a weird position in that she had so much drama going on in her life but it was, I don’t think it was so easy to show, because so much of it was internal.
MO: And it was real. But yeah, a lot of it was internal I mean, and she’s also younger so it’s probably harder for her to show certain things. She’s also a woman and the only woman in our cast so it’s probably harder for her to show certain things. But her, I guess you’d say character arch in the show is probably more traditional, normal. It’s almost cliché. Small town girl, prom queen, comes to the big city and is a small fish in a big pond. And then going through personal stuff with getting married and eventually getting divorced.
 CBG: And being a woman it looked like it was a whole different world for her in the way she was seen and the way things were done. I mean there’s not a lot of pictures of girls ogling the guys as opposed to, there’s that one shot that of her that I think shows up twice in the film and I kind of cracked up both times where she’s getting something out of her car and the valets are kind of leaning over to get a look.
MO: That’s also probably why she makes more money than the guys on the boulevard.
CBG: Yeah, in my initial review, it’s one of those things that got cut out for space, but in my initial review I said that she’s a favorite of the guys in that she’s a good looking girl so they’re going to flock around.
MO: And give her the bigger tips.
CBG: Heh, yeah. But um, Max … sorry, I mean Joe (McQueen who dresses as the Hulk) is the character that got the least amount of time and it seems it’s because he had the most straight arch.
MO: Yeah, there’s a couple of reasons. One, he’s logistically weak because he’s the one that replaced Spider-Man and so we really didn’t have a lot with him. And he has a much straighter arch like you say. It’s almost more of a physical arch than an emotional one. The arch is sort of him getting that role. But at the same time, people seem to react, when we’ve had screenings, to him more than anyone else. He’s been the one that gets standing ovations and that kind of thing. He seems to be the most loveable character to other people.
(During the filming of “Confessions of a Superhero,” Joe McQueen lands a big part in a feature film.)
CBG: Well, I think, part of it is that you have the other two guys that have some questions.
MO: Yeah, the other two are definitely more complex and you need more screen time for them. To tell their stories.
CBG: And Joe is just pretty easy and he never seems upset. He never seems even a little upset.
MO: It’s interesting because that’s how I’ve always felt about him, and lately I’ve seen him be more upset and angry. And sort of seen more sides of him that we didn’t see during the filming but I sort of found after the fact, you know what I mean.
CBG: Yeah.
MO: It really surprised us. Like being down on himself for not acting enough or not making enough money, like if he’s out there and isn’t getting tipped as much as he likes. I’ve seen sort of flashes of things that surprised me and aren’t in the film because I never saw it during the filming. So I definitely see some frustrations in him.
CBG: Do you think it’s just the limited time since you had so little time with him during the filming, since like you said, you had to replace someone?
MO: It could be that. It could be timing. It’s just, maybe things were going better for him while we were filming. Maybe while we were there it was like, “Hey this is going on for me,” and then when the filming is done … It’s like, even when I did the documentary, after it’s done there’s a little bit of a, I wouldn’t say depression, but it’s something missing from your life. When you’re so used too… I worked on this for two and a half years, me and Charlie (Gruet) who produced it and (was the director of photography for) that. And there’s a little bit of something missing that you’re so used to that. And maybe it’s the same for some of these characters, particularly Joe. That, “Oh, they’re gone now.”
CBG: What has happened to these guys? Have any of them left the street?
MO: Well yeah, um, from that arrest, for Batman. Part of his, I don’t know if you’d call it probation or stipulation, is that he’s not allowed on Hollywood Boulevard for three years, until 2010. (At the end of the movie Max Allen, dressed as Batman, is shown to have been arrested for fighting with some construction workers over his use of their port-a-potty.) After he was arrested, they told him that and of course he couldn’t stay away. He went out there one week later, got arrested again.
(He) got beaten up in jail, pretty bad, he lost a tooth. And I think he’s doing security full time now because he’s not allowed to be on Hollywood, actually in Hollywood. He’s not allowed to be in that zip code.
Jenn is on the Boulevard a lot less now, very rarely. She is, gotten a couple of bit parts in some things, I think she got a bit part on “Mad TV.” She’s an extra a lot in some movies. She studies with The Groundlings which is a pretty famous um, I guess you’d call it an improv group …
CBG: I think Will Ferrell came from them didn’t he?
MO: Yeah, a lot of Saturday Night Live people did. I don’t know how involved she is but she does study there. I don’t know if she’s quote unquote, part of The Groundlings. But she studies there, she takes her acting seriously. She does little videos on YouTube, she has a new agent, she’s out there trying to do it. In the more traditional way.
CBG: She really did seem to be fighting for parts.
MO: She is in that in-between because she is a very pretty girl, but we’re in LA you know. There’s a million of them.
CBG: It was one of the comments that I made, while watching the film. This is going to sound really awful, I was surprised at how well she acted.
MO: Yeah, yeah.
CBG: You almost don’t expect them to have much acting chops because, like the “mayor of Hollywood says” they’re pretty much panhandling.
MO: It is. They’re not working for the city.
CBG: They couldn’t do this anywhere else.
MO: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Um, the Hulk (Joe McQueen) finished that movie, “Finishing the Game” so that was a legitimate movie. It was at Sundance 2007. Justin Lin directed it who had directed one of the “Fast and the Furious” movies (“Tokyo Drift”), he directed a movie called “Annapolis” a movie called “Better Luck Tomorrow.” Legit director. That came out, I think in December so that’s a legitimate movie that was in our film.
CBG: I do remember seeing the press material when it came out. When I saw that part in your movie, I definitely remembered that.
MO: Yeah, but Joe doesn’t have an agent. I don’t know how people get a hold of him always, his phone number changes sometimes. So I don’t know what he’s doing acting-wise. I know he’s trying. There’s something to be said for that. I know Chewbacca is living with him now, helping to pay rent I guess. Superman is really the one who’s status quo, same thing. Apartments filled with Superman stuff, there’s always press about him someone always wants to do something with him. There’s no roles that I know of but he kind of seems to be an optimistic guy, kind of even keeled.
CBG: It was kind of weird, because at some point in the beginning of the film I felt like he’d just kind of given up, like he’d just decided this is where I’m going to be the rest of my life. This is where I’m going to stay. Then later in the film you start to realize that this to him is a stepping stone, this is what he believes is going to help him move along.
MO: It’s interesting because I don’t look at what he does to try and make it as an actor as necessarily, I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but its not what I would do. In other words, he’s not taking acting classes. Forget about making it, just practicing your acting chops. I’ve never seen him go to auditions, that kind of thing. So I think he thinks some director is just going to drive by and just sort of pick him out and go, “We’ve gotta have him.” The only issue, which I talked with him about, is that on the Boulevard and any time he’s with his Superman outfit or at a Superman event, they’re only going to associate him with Superman. And there’s no roles for Superman unless you’re playing the lead role in a Superman movie. So sometimes I wish he would distance himself, I don’t mean from his day job, but just sort of being Chris Dennis. And I think there’s a little bit of, that he’s recognized so much as Superman and I’m playing armchair phsychiatrist right now, but maybe he feels like he’s unrecognizable without that outfit on. It’s kind of like Clark Kent you know, he kind of feels like Clark Kent. That no one is gonna know who he is. So except for Jennifer and maybe Joe, these aren’t the traditional ways to become an actor. If you look at Max at the end of the movie who says, “I’m a security guard now, maybe a director will see me and want to put me in a movie.” I don’t think if a director is on set, that it would even go through his mind to cast a security guard in his movie.
CBG: Yeah, cause there’s legitimate casting agencies.
MO: Yeah.
CBG: I did notice that the few times that you see Chris in civvies, so to speak, he’s still got the hair.
MO: Still got the hair, there might be a Superman shirt on.
CBG: Yeah.
MO: Listen, I followed these guys for two and a half years, I’ve maybe seen Chris out of his out fit, I’m not exaggerating, four times. One was traveling to Metropolis on a plane.
CBG: Yeah and he had that DC Comics tee shirt on, or rather a crew shirt.
MO: Exactly, so I’ve maybe, most of the time when I go over he’s right about to go out there or right at the end of the day when he still has his work clothes on. And right now when we’re doing interviews and promotions and stuff. So then it’s nice to have that because it’s part of the movie.
CBG: Yeah, well and at that point it’s almost his working clothes for this.
MO: Yeah.
CBG: I mean if this was 50 years ago you’d have to be wearing the riding pants, as a director.
MO: Yeah exactly.
CBG: I only had one more question and it’s about Chris. Why do you think he’s latched on so tightly to Superman?
MO: Ooo, that’s a good question. Um, I can only guess because I don’t know, I’m not inside his head. Maybe he identifies with him. Maybe he … You know, I think part of what I think my movie is about is people wanting to matter. Wanting to succeed but, part of wanting to succeed is wanting to matter, wanting to be something. Or maybe you need something tangable to hold onto. And maybe that’s it for him. Or maybe it’s as simple as, he just loves Superman. In other words, we all try to dig and dig … not just my movie but people in general … but why people do certain things. And maybe it’s just as simple as, he just loves Superman.
CBG: Well I’m not going to get on him for that, I do write s comic book column for God’s sake. (laughs)
MO: There you go. (laughs) He just takes it to a different level, but I think he does it respectfully and he really honors the character and he knows everything about Superman. For God’s sake he got married in a Superman outfit.
CBG: Yeah. And honestly, he’s got my favorite line in the picture where he’s walking with Ghost Rider, “No, his head’s on fire but he’s not smoking.”
MO: That’s my favorite scene.
CBG: It’s a great shot. Its such an odd deal in that you have, very much, a more modern hero and Superman is walking along with him trying to teach him the ropes.
MO: Yeah exactly. Totally unexpected. We had no idea that that was going to happen. And I love the part where Ghost Rider says … When Superman says you can’t smoke and Ghost Rider goes, “But he’s made of fire.”
(Both laugh.)
CBG: Well, I think I’ve got all I need was there anything you wanted to say?
MO: Just so everyone knows it just came out on DVD and one way to get it is through our Web site which is www.therealsuperhero.com. You can click through to Netflix and rent it or Amazon and buy it. But if you’re a Netflix subscriber or Amazon or whatever, you can go there and buy it. You’re not buying it from us going through there, it’s just to make it easier to click through. You can watch the trailer there and whatever.
Even besides the video there’s over two hours of bonus footage. Chris, Superman, and his wife Bonnie do the commentary not me. And there’s outtakes from Comicon, there’s some fun scenes in there.
CBG: I saw the John Schneider one and that really cracked me up.
MO: Yeah, and there’s some good stuff at Comicon as well. My favorite one is “When Bonnie Met Superman.” It’s where Chris and Bonnie are sitting side-by-side and they’re telling the story of how they met. And they each have their own version. And one is R rated and one is PG rated.
CBG: Yeah and her’s is such a …
MO: It’s a love story.
CBG: Yeah, her’s has this dreamy feeling and such and then he keep, “And what did we do. Tell them what we did.”
MO: He keeps interjecting.
CBG: It’s actually really fun. They definitely come off as a real couple at that point.
MO: Yeah, like they’ve been married for 50 years.
(Readers may also be interested in visiting the film’s MySpace page here.)
Posted in: Batman • Confessions of a Superhero • DC Comics • Superman • comic books • comics • documentary • hero • hulk • incredible hulk • interview | Post a Comment »
December 18th, 2007, 7:57 pm by Shawn Munguia
Mad Magazine put out their “20 Dumbest People, Events & Things of 2007.” As one would expect it’s full of moments that make you laugh, shake your head and feel nauseous all at once.
In conjunction with the magazine’s appearance on newsstands, I had the opportunity to speak with Mad Magazine Editor John Ficarra. Below here is the transcript.
The Comic Book Guy: First off I wanted to start off by getting some information about you, I don’t know a lot about you to be honest. So how did you get started with Mad.
 John Ficarra: I started as a freelance writer and after about 3 years I came on staff as an associate editor. Then 4 years later Al Feldstien retired and Nick Meglin and I became co-editors. Then Nick retired, I guess about 2 or 3 years ago and I took over sole editorship.
CBG: So what’s a standard week there?
JF: Well it varies. I mean were always on deadline, obviously. We put out a magazine every 30 days and then we have MAD Kids, as well which comes out quarterly. And MAD classics which also comes out quarterly and then we have the book projects. This last year we just did the War on Bush. We did the big Don Martin project. And then we have other things going on as well, so … One of the things I really like about my job is that I get to wear a lot of different hats and no two days are alike.
CBG: That’s pretty cool. I mean it always keeps you on your toes.
JF: Yeah.
CBG: Is there anything you guys consider off limits as far as something to poke fun at or anything?
JF: Um, newspapers we never make fun of newspapers. (Both laughing) And reporters we love reporters. We think some things are above reproach in this society.
CBG: Nice try.
JF: I do what I can you know (both laugh).
It’s pretty much fair game you know. I mean we try never to do the victim humor. There are enough big guys out there who do stupid things that we don’t have to. So y’know, if there’s a tragedy or something we’re not gonna … We didn’t do 9/11 jokes for example.
CBG: For spe…
JF: Although the Bush Administration can be considered a disaster but we have done those jokes. So I guess we don’t always hold ourselves to that standard. (chuckles)
CBG: Well the thing is there’s a bunch of little disasters going on constantly there that you can pick on instead of the overall issue. (both laugh)
JF: It’s like a face with acne there, lots of places to pick and you never know what’s going to ooze out. (both laugh)
CBG: Painting quite the visual there by the way.(both laugh)
So I was curious about the (20 Dumbest People, Events & Things of 2007)list. What is the selection process like?
JF: Believe it or not the selecting process starts on Jan. 1st. Most days start in my office just talking about the events of the day and brainstorming, seeing what we might like to see in the pages of the magazine. And if something happened I’ll open up a file and type in a little bit about what something is about. Sometimes things have legs, sometimes they don’t.
And then around August, I guess mid-August we really start to winnow the list down. Things that we thought were big went away quick and things that we just thought ‘Oh this is nothing’ can sometimes blossom. Then we’ll send out a memo to our freelancers telling them what we’re looking at for ideas and then they’ll start hitting us with ideas. At the same time, me and my staff will be sitting here trying to come up with visual presentations for things that we deem the dumbest.
The mad 20 is a little bit different from the usual magazine because we try to do what we call ‘high-impact visual pieces.’ They’ll capture the story in one page, very quickly. You know, movie posters, take offs on books, take offs on magazines as oppossed to articles where you might have to sit there and read quite a bit to get the satire.
CBG: Yeah, and I noticed on these you went with more of a book lean, some were magazines, but there was more of a book feel. Was there a reason behind that choosing.
JF: Well, like I said, we think that they make good impact pieces. And since we’re doing 20 things, if we did 2 pages on each we’d fill the magazine with that and we don’t want to do just that. Occassionally we’ll do one. Like the ‘Sopranos’ one was basically a typical Mad article, going over all the endings the ‘Sopranos’ may have had. But we like the bigger impact pieces. The take off on the book with Micheal Vick. The ‘Home Alone’ poster take off. The Sporting News to The Snorting News for Kieth Richards, y’know where he’s snorting his father’s ashes. The movie poster, There’s Something About Larry with out beloved senator Larry Craig in the men’s room. Something like that, where people will get an instant laugh off of them. And, quite frankley, stuff that’s’ going to go around the net and plays well in the press when they want reproduce it. We’re not above showing form some attention.
CBG: Well, that’s a good thing. You brought up the net. I was curious about that. How do you guys interplay with the net knowing that that’s out there making an impact on publishing right now?
JF: Yeah, it’s a tough road because it seems like there’s a generation that doesn’t want to pay for magazines and newspapers. They’d rather go on the net and get it for free so it’s tough to always work that business model to make it successful for us. But we try to do things that will play well on the net so that when we do put it on the net it will play well. But we try to make the magazine a big enough experience so that you want to get it and hold it in your hands. I’m sure, you’re a newspaper man you feel this way too on some level, you know. There’s something about the tactile feeling of holding it in your hand, smelling the ink, smelling the paper and pouring over it. And one of the ways we do that is we really try to reward readers so there’s a lot of things hidden in the magazine, there are a lot of hidden layers.
So you might not get it on the screen it might not be that comfortable to read on the screen in all instances but when you have it in your hands you can really pour over it, go back over it and hopefully enjoy it.
CBG: Yeah, you guys tend to have little jokes within a picture besides for the main one.
JF: Yeah, and also in the margines we do, what we call marginals. Those little marginals by Sergio Argones. And like you just said, we really try to layer it in so if, in the forefront, there’s two guys talking on a city street, in the background there may be a mugging going on. There may be an aligator coming out of the manhole, something so that if you’re paying attention, we’ll reward you for that.
CBG: OK, so with the list, is there anything you guys really wanted to get in but it didn’t quite make that list?
JF: No, I don’t think this year. Sometimes we’ll really want to get something in, we just don’t have a great idea for it. And some might argue that a lot of stuff we didn’t have a great idea for. (both laughing)
But there are some things we knew we had to get in come hell or high water. Micheal Vick we had to get in, Larry Craig we had to get in. Um Brittney, Brittney Spear’s year and Paris Hilton, they were such big media stories we had to. Others, like Sanjaya, he was number 20. If something else happened it might have knocked him off in a minutes notice.
Other things were just, even though they weren’t a big news story like the Kieth Richards thing, snorting his father’s ashes. It was just such a dumb thing we were like, ‘How can we not put this on the list.” If you’re snorting your father’s ashes, you deserve to be on this list.
CBG: Well you mentioned the Sanjaya thing and that felt more of an American Idol thing in general. Bringing up Sanjaya felt more like what was specifically wrong with the season.
JF: Yeah. Well the fact that he made it into the top 10 and just kept hanging around. And the hair and the whole bit. That was pretty dumb. And I know that Howard Stern and others were getting their people to call and to keep him there but God. To watch that every week and see him coming out, it was like a weekly train wreck.
CBG: Yeah, and bringing back William Hung for that joke, by the way, was great. (both laugh)
JF: Well, you know, some old punching bags never go away. (both laugh)
CBG: Well, I’ve noticed, and I don’t know if it’s my perspective as a reader or if it’s just always been there but to me it’s kind of felt like there’s been more or a political stance over the years.
JF: That’s true. You’re absolutely, it’s true.
Part of it has been because me and a lot of my staff happen to be political junkies but I think a greater reason is because politics is now covered in the media almost like entertainment. In fact I would argue that it is covered as entertainment.
Just like they give movie grosses now, politics with all the talking heads shows, it’s celebrity politics rather than substantive politics and Mad is reflecting that.
CBG: And politicians are making about the same kind of dumb decisions that pop stars are making.
JF: I would argue worse decisions.
CBG: Well this is true but I haven’t heard of any cars winding up in the river lately.
JF: (laughs) Going back to Wilber Mills for that one.
CBG: Well, stuff jumps into my head from everywhere. It’s a fairly terrifying experience on occasion. (both laugh)
And what’s your guiding force behind your decision making process as the editor?
JF: Question authority.
CBG: Question authority?
JF: Question authority. If I had one tenet that Mad would be it would be, ‘Question authority at all times.’ I think that starts out for a lot of our younger readers Mad is maybe the first taste of that where we’re telling them, ‘Hey, every thing that you read in the …’ well I wouldn’t say read in the newspapers because everything that you read in the newspapers is true. (heh) But, ‘read in magazines or hear on television may not be true. Whether it be a politician, whether it be an advertiser, everybody has got an agenda and you’d better look out for yourself.’ And I think that really, Mad acts as an introduction to the world on that level.
I think it’s gotten younger for us to deliver that message because I think kids are more savvy and cynical these days than ever given a lot of the stuff that’s out there.
As a result of that I think advertising and politicians both are trying to get around that by saying hey, we know we’re conning you. And they’ll laugh at themselves. That’s why they’ll show up on The Daily Show, and they’ll show up on the The Tonight Show the politicians (saying), ‘Hey look I’m a fun guy, I can laugh at myself.’ Trying to poison the well about all the stupid stuff that they are doing.
CBG: And when did you start coming up with that idea as your guiding point?
JF: Oh I don’t think that’s mine. I think that’s always been one of the tennents of Mad going back to its very early days. Certainly from Feldstien on.
CBG: And do you feel that you’ve had any missteps this year?
JF: Well, I tell ya. I ate at a restaurant last night that I’m startinh to … I’m never going back too.
Oh, you mean with the magazine? (heh)
I don’t think there’s an issue that goes out that I and the staff don’t look at and go boy if only we had another couple of days we could have made this article better. I think by and large it was a pretty good year for us editorially. I’m very happy with the way a lot of the things have come out and we have a lot of things coming strong for next year also.
We’re working on the next two issues and it’s … We have a terrific one on politicians in the January issue. Like a poster, a take off on Heroes with all the candidates from the Iowa election that looks very strong. I’m looking at that now. And we’re going to try for some daring things on the cover this year to make it interesting.
So you know, if I had things to do over sure. But on a 30 day deadline, it’s sort of like a newspaper, it’s like ‘Yeah that was bad but you know we gotta feed the beast again so what can we do for tomorrow?’
CBG: Well, and another thing you just mentioned, the covers. How far in advance to you all get the work going on those?
JF: Well we just printed, this weekend, the issue that’s going to be on sale in mid-January and we’re working now on the one for mid-February. And we may be working on particular articles past that, whether it may be a movie spoof or a television spoof. Or just what we call ‘evergreens,’ stories that can run now or next year but they’ll still be relevant. But that’s pretty much the window, figure a 60- to 90-day window out.
CBG: Well that’s it for the questions I have written down so ….
JF: Well no, now I have some questions for you. (both laugh)
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