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R.E.B.E.L.S. writer Tony Bedard navigates outer rim of DC Universe
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Longwood, FL (Nov. 14, 2009) Writer Tony Bedard and artist Phil Noto greeted comic fans at Acme Comics, Cards & Collectibles in Longwood and signed copies of their latest releases. Tony’s critically acclaimed series R.E.B.E.L.S. #10 hit (and is flying off) shelves because of it’s tie-in to DC’s Blackest Night event. The writer was there to also promote the release of the first issue of The Great Ten, Grant Morrison’s conceived team of Chinese metas, based on Chinese mythology, originally debuting in the pages of 52 (issue #6 in case you’re keeping track). Tony is a really excited about what’s in store for each title, even if his characters aren’t brand names like Superman or Batman. Have no doubt, however, the characters in his books get the same care, attention and storytelling verve as if they were the fastest man alive or protector of sector 2814. Maybe it might have something to do with his editorial background editorial Valiant, DC and DC’s Vertigo. Keep reading for the transcribed interview with one of comics best writers responsible for some of the best stories in comics today as we talked about his recent releases, what’s in store for them beyond Blackest Night and much more. (Click here to read Phil Noto's interview about the release of his Batman/Doc Savage Special #1 and DC's new First Wave Universe.)
This is the first weekend of your R.E.B.E.L.S. Blackest Night tie-in. Tell us about weaving your story into the Blackest Night event and how it all came to be.
The fun of this whole event has been to find a dead character that would really shock the characters or have an emotional tie into the characters in your series and what can you do with that. My book, R.E.B.E.L.S., is mostly unknown or little known characters and it’s a little different than doing a Blackest Night tie-in for, say, Superman who has high profile dead characters you can bring back. But it’s still so much fun to do. The character that comes back as a Black Lantern in my book is the ex of the main character, Vril Dox who’s the son of Brainiac. He’s a good guy, but he’s not a very nice good guy. He’s an anti-hero. So his baby momma is coming back to mess with him and his son. And the thing that Geoff Johns (Blackest Night writer and architect), when I talked to him about a tie-in, he was insistent that it didn’t de-rail what’s going on in my book. Every series that ties into it should use this to forward their own story line and not make it subservient to this outside event. It’s a two-part arc, each 30-page issues, and it’s just been a lot of fun. Obviously, I did figure out a way to use it to move my whole saga forward. Another good thing about doing this is my book is kind of a cult favorite, it’s not a big seller, and when we tied it into the Blackest Night event our sales went up almost four hundred percent. If we can hold onto even a fraction of those readers, we’ll come out of this a lot better off.
Why was R.E.B.E.L.S. such a natural fit in this wave of Blackest Night tie-ins because previously the Superman, Batman & Titans tie-ins happened outside of the monthly books in order to not disrupt the existing stories? As a fan, I appreciate getting stories to tie into continuity. To have a separate mini-series outside the monthly feels like the event didn't really happen...you're just getting the story IF the event tied in.
Yeah, there are so many events that it works the opposite; it actually hurts whatever cool story is going on in the books that are forced to participate. This was an instance where I knew that they had this cosmic event, the source of all this stuff is from outer space, and my book is set in outer space, it’s very much a cosmic book so thematically it seemed like a good fit. So I called Geoff because I heard he liked the R.E.B.E.L.S. book and asked if I could participate. It wasn’t some editorial mandate or somebody telling me I had to go along with it to help the book and it turned out, story-wise, that it was a good fit.
The different colored power rings incentive has been cool too. It’s added a 4th dimension to the experience.
They’re pretty smart over there with their marketing.
When R.E.B.E.L.S. first came out it didn’t have the luxury of having a family of characters or existing franchise to latch onto in order to catch readership, has this been hurting the book or making it difficult to widen it’s appeal?
Yeah, it’s kind of in it’s own corner of space and that’s good and bad. It’s good because I have great freedom, story-wise, to do what I want and I don’t have to worry that I’m sharing the characters with someone else. There’s a certain mentality with some readers where this doesn’t really count because it’s not the core DC universe characters or it’s not set on Earth or something like that. So I have to be mindful of that and make it feel like it matters.
As a storyteller it has to be liberating not be anchored by the weight of a franchise character(s).
Yeah, as this book was gestating, it was so off the beaten path that nobody stepped in to mess with it. That’s one of the reasons I think it turned out reading so well.
Can the same be said about your other book, The Great Ten?
Sure, that’s another one, perhaps, the world was not clamoring for but I knew the characters were good. I knew that Grand Morison came up with them and the document in which he lays out what their origins are is really great. I got to edit Grant back when he was working on JLA and I was working in editorial at DC, so I would see the scripts as they came in and they’re really something else. Sometimes it’s more fun to read a Grant Morison comics as a script…that sounds kind of awful when I hear myself say it out loud…but I don’t mean it that way. Every page has got five ideas on it that you can do a whole series on, so I jumped at the opportunity. But I also knew that this was a book that was not spring boarding off of an event or having any marketing love.
So the story spoke to you then.
Yeah, they (DC) didn’t offer it to me with a story attached, they just wanted to do something with these characters, they’d been trying for two years and nothing’s gelled yet so they asked me to give it a shot. So I pitched them a story, it’s a ten part-er and each issue is going to focus on a different one of the ten characters. The main mission wasn’t even so much about what the plot was it was about making those characters feel like they have depth and that there’s something about them that’s interesting. There is one over arching plot and we keep shifting the spotlight (to a different character). So far it’s doing pretty well. It’s been a lot of fun. I worry about sales of course, having been an editor, you become conditioned to that, but the editor I have on it, Mike Siglain, right away said don’t give that a thought. We’re making the comic version of an indie movie. We’re going to do something really cool on it’s own merit. If the world doesn’t beat a path to it, that’s ok because we’re going to have fun doing it. Which is great and then I asked who’s drawing it and they didn’t know yet, but they knew Scott McDaniel was available and I was like “yes!” (Tony almost jumped out of his chair remembering the excitement of the moment.) So Scott had to talk to me before he excepted the job. He wanted to know what I had in mind and the first thing he said to me was, I’m kind of a polarizing artist. There are some people out there who rally don’t like my style. But he’s so dynamic and clean. He’s a cartoonist as opposed to the other side of the scale with someone like Greg Land whose stuff is really lush and photo-realistic and I like both. Then you have someone like Andy Clark (artist for R.E.B.E.L.S.) with beautifully rendered gorgeous stuff but the strengths of that are completely different than what McDaniel does. And I really appreciate his cartoony aspect. You can give him ten pages of talking heads and he’ll figure out a way to make it vibrant and dynamic so I’ve been having a great time with it.
It’s like that saying, there’s no b-stories, just b-storytelling. Ok, back to R.E.B.E.L.S., what can we expect from this storyline after Blackest Night and how will the tie-in resonate.
Starro and Vril Dox’s son, Lyrl Dox, or Brainiac 3 if you’re keeping track, will be setting up the next two issues in which the Starro thing is finally resolved. That’s been the big over arching storyline so far, against which we’ve been pulling together and having fun exploring different planets and different alien races, but it’s dragged on long enough. We’re going to end it by issue 14 and then we’re talking about other things coming up. Oddly enough, for a series doing so well in it’s own corner of space, now everything I’m talking about doing with people is a crossover with JLA perhaps because James Robinson is a fan of the book and I love his stuff, so I’d love to collaborate. And we’re also looking at the next big DC event for next summer because it’s another cosmic, outer space thing. Also, the original Brainiac will figure in that storyline so I want my character, Brainiac 2 to confront his dad somehow.
Fans should get a kick out of reading that conflict.
Especially since Geoff (Johns) did such an amazing job of revitalizing Brainiac in Action Comics.
(After we talked about how much we enjoy what Geoff has been doing with the DCU, we finally got back to the topic at hand.)
What you’ve done with Starro the Conqueror has really taken the Silver Age villain in a new direction at this point. Is this a story you’ve been itching to tell, or something that came organically through R.E.B.E.L.S., or maybe something that came from editorial.
It came through R.E.B.E.L.S. because originally I pitched it, I pitched it as L.E.G.I.O.N. (Tony spells it out) and, this is another funny thing, the title with all the periods in it, I always called it just Legion and then I got to work with Dan Raspler who edited the series at DC, he always referred to it as L.E.G.I.O.N. so I got used to it. Anyway, when I first pitched it, I pitched it as L.E.G.I.O.N. and I wanted the bad guy to be Brainiac because I thought it would be a good fit because of Vril Dox. But DC said no because they had something really cool in store for Brainiac. After having read that story, I’m glad that’s the way it went. (If you haven’t read Geoff John’s Action Comics / Brainiac story, you’re missed a great book about one of DC’s greatest villains...so go get it.) But I had to rethink who the bad guy was going to be, and after we threw out a bunch of names, Starro’s name came up as a character that could use a revamp. And I’m hoping that the story we ended up telling didn’t invalidate the old stories. Yeah, this guy is a humanoid, he’s not a giant star fish, but I think the giant star fish is still valid, it’s just a different twist.
It’s like Starro has his own REBORN treatment. You’ve gotten to write so many marquee characters, who have you liked writing?
They tend to be more obscure characters. I love writing Vril Dox, he writes himself and he’s the whole reason for doing this space book. I’ve really enjoyed writing Lady Black Hawk in the Birds of Prey series. I like Black Adam, the Legion of Super Heroes, Mon-El is a favorite of mine. I’ve always wanted to write Aquaman.
Maybe you can bring him back to life. It seems like you like the character in the outer rim of the DC universe.
I think so, maybe it comes from when I first got into reading coming, Frank Miller was revamping Daredevil and Alan Moore was revamping Swamp Thing. That’s the way to go, if you can find that untapped character that’s got some recognizability but that nut has not yet been cracked. It think that’s why I’m attracted to Aquaman because as long as he’s been around, no one has done the great Aquaman run yet.
I liked Peter David’s first 30-40 issues of Aquaman before it fell into the same what are we going to do with this character now. (That’s right, I’m the only one who didn’t mind the spear hand.)
And Captain America was a character like that until recently. Right now, this is THE Captain America run.
What do you read these days.
I almost never make it into the comic store for pleasure but I do read the Walking Dead. I just have to know what’s going to happen in the next issue. I can’t even put my finger on what it is.
It’s the perfect zombie story.
And I love zombie fiction. I like The Mighty. Pete Tomasi’s creator owned title. It’s very ballsy in how it’s been paced. He didn’t rush to give all the good stuff right away therefore he really built up suspense. Ex-Machina is really good. Pretty much anything Brian K. Vaughn.
I solicited questions from readers to promote this interview and got a really good question about when you were originally set to write The Outsiders. The solicitation came out (see the original solicitation here) and then all of a sudden Chuck Dixon came on to the book and a new solicitation followed rather quickly. What’s the behind the scenes story on the change?
It all came down to the direction I wanted to go with that team. I don’t think Dan (Dido, Senior Vice President, Executive Editor, DC Comics) didn’t agree with it and sometimes when you have creative differences like that you let it go for a little while to give the other guy a chance to see if it will come together later even if you’re not digging it now. Well, what I was doing didn’t come together for him and finally he said, no, he wanted to launch it differently rather than proceed. I didn’t realize, at the time, that Dan has really strong feelings about The Outsiders. I think Batman and the Outsiders was a moment for him in his comics reading past and he has very definite ideas about how that book should be and I was going in a very different direction. But that’s ok. It wasn’t anything acrimonious or anything like that. And having edited I am very realistic about these things. But as you can see, everything is going well now…it wasn’t any sort of disaster. I’m glad Chuck stepped in. He actually did a better book than I think I would have.
Even the line-up had changed quite a bit from your concept to what Chuck had eventually settled on. (See here for Bedard's Outsiders line-up and here for Dixon's)
What I wanted to do was a reverse of the Thunderbolts, so instead of bad guys posing as good guys, it was good guys posing as bad guys. That way they could do things that weren’t strictly legal. Things the Justice League couldn’t do. The Justice League are like the police. They have certain rules they have to play by and this was Batman’s own team. So I figured he would bend the rules.
So it would have been a team of good guys going undercover?
It would have been the young Aquaman, Catwoman and Martian Manhunter.
Kid Boomerang?
No, he was part of the event that was leading into the relaunch but he wasn’t going to make the cut. But the point was that they were all going to have bad reputations and everyone was going to believe they were on the wrong side of the law and that would allow them to do certain things. But that wasn’t what Dan wanted and that’s alright.
You’ve been in comics for quite awhile. What is the role of comics in pop culture and how has it evolved over the years?
The obvious thing is that it’s more accepted and there are so many comic book movies and TV shows that pick up on the themes that have lived in comics for so long. Now they can do the visuals correctly, it doesn’t look hokey. Even something like Road to Perdition that you wouldn’t know was a comic (shows the quality of what comics can be). So comics are a great place for storytelling, but it’s also a great place to develop stuff cheaply. Of course there’s a lot of stuff that we all wonder about like how long are we gonna be doing this stuff in print as opposed to reading comics on your phone or online.
How real do think that is? Do you really think the day will come when we won’t be picking up our stack of comics every Wednesday?
Mike Carlin at DC once told me, as I was kvetching about the same topic, as long as people need something to read while they’re on the john, comics will be just fine. I don’t know how true that is, but it got me to shut up.
But to your point, it seems like the decline of sales for single issues has resulted in becoming a down payment on the graphic novels as they are really driving sales these days.
R.E.B.E.L.S. is a good example of this. I don’t think they (DC Comics) were making their money on the series but they’re waiting to see how the trade does. And just like in movies and TV shows that lose money, the DVD set comes out and they make it back so the whole model on how you make money is changing. And the other thing too is how we’ve got all this back and forth between TV writers, comic writers and also with the gaming world. I’ve looked into picking up work in the gaming industry and I’ve done some screenplay stuff. It’s all the same skill set.
That’s a good point. In the past 8-9 years so many fans of comics that are in the movie or TV business are writing comics to do something they love and, vice versa, many comic book writers are being taken much more seriously in television and film.
I’m all for it.
It legitimizes the business and helps push it into the mainstream.
As a professional in the industry, you have a shelf life. You see guys bouncing back and forth between the big two or three years at one publisher and you kinda wear out your welcome or you’re just kinda old hat. You’re not the new fresh face anymore and then you pop over to the other one and they think they stole you away. We also have the option to step out of the industry. James Robinson went off and wrote movies for awhile then made his triumphant return to comics, so to give your career longevity, there’s more options.
Thank you for hanging out to answer some questions. I think I’m scaring away the people that have been waited to get you to sign their copies of R.E.B.E.L.S. #10. Good luck with the book, I know I’ll keep reading.
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