Every decade that Dave Gibbons has worked in the field of comics he has had a great influence on the industry. In the 1970s he was a seminal artist for 2000 AD with co-creating Rogue Trooper with Gerry Finley-Day. He is most famous for drawing and co-creating Watchmen with Alan Moore in the mid-80s and in the 90s he teamed up with Frank Miller for Martha Washington.
Now in his fourth decade in comics Gibbons has written, drawn and designed the most personal book of his career, The Originals. Though The Originals takes place in the future it is more about Daves personal experiences growing up in the mod scene of 1960s Britain. Retro and futuristic at the same time, the book has set a new standard for the original graphic novel. The two main characters Lel and Bok are two best friends who want nothing more than to join the Originals, the top gang on the streets. Soon after they are caught up in the world of fast hoverbikes, cool clothes and hot women. Then they must choose between gang loyalty and one another.
Gibbons has brought the medium of comic books to new heights.
Buy The Originals
Daniel Robert Epstein: I kept waiting for the characters to say stuff like mod or whatever it is they said back then.
Dave Gibbons: One of the strange things about being in mod is that it would have been really uncool to say I am a mod. Part of the whole ethos of it is that it was hidden. It was almost like a kind of a secret identity thing because all that your parents saw was that you had a short haircut and some nice clothes. They didnt know what you were getting up to when you went out of the house.
DRE: The mod culture has been compared to the hippie movement mostly because they were around at the same time. But were the mods actually roving gangs like they were in A Clockwork Orange or The Originals?
DG: No and even in my book its not exactly a roving gang. Its not like they were going out looking for trouble like Alex and his droogs were. You really would only get into fights with The Grease or as I call them in my book The Dirt if you happened to run into some of them. If one or the other was outnumbered something might kick off.
DRE: Were you were trying to homage Jim Sterankos work or is it just that pop art style that Jim brought to comics?
DG: Not really. Jim Sterankos art is something I loved when it came out and I suppose its to the degree that you are subconsciously influenced but I was really going for a look they went for in the old black and white Warren magazines when they used an old ink wash or a crayon and a rough board to get a textured look to it. That coupled with a simple outline. Its really more of an artist like Alex Toth though I dont want to mention our names in the same breath. His work was one of the things I had in mind to give that unfussy almost documentary look.
DRE: A lot of comic book artists readily admit that they have trouble drawing unique faces. You definitely pulled that off with this book. Was that very important to you?
DG: To have the characters be individual people has always been really important to me. There is a tendency in, lets say, bad comic book art to use a generic male or female head then give them eyeglasses or a moustache. But I always wanted to make characters distinctive. I spend a lot of time before drawing the pages doing model sheets where I will actually nail down what the characters looked like with their comparative builds. I would refer to them but just the process of doing that allows me to internalize it and gives them a reality. One of the things I worry about is keeping that consistently throughout the book.
DRE: I would imagine you had a lot of model sheets for the clothing, the architecture and the vehicles.
DG: Yeah, I did work the machinery out really quite carefully. The hover scooters are heavily based on scooters from that period. I used to have a scooter not unlike the one Lel rides. I used to have a Lambretta TV175 which is a fairly big and slow especially with all the junk I had on it. I really had a good feeling in my head on what its like to ride a scooter from various different angles. Since it is all chic and retro now I recently came across some fancy die cast models of scooters which helped me with the visualization of them. As far as the clothes are concerned I just came up with them out of my head though I did look at a lot of books. Now I must have the biggest collection of mod books in the country after scouring Amazon. I was looking for a lot of stuff from those days. I was actually there in those times but your memory can get a bit fuzzy, so in a book you can come across a really cool piece of detail.
DRE: Did you get the mod books to do The Originals?
DG: I guess it was one of those things that you are lucky enough to do in this business. You can buy things and justify them as being research such as DVDs of old movies. I got all these mod books which were great for research and it was cool to look through them and remember those great days. For the thing I am doing now I went out and got Seven Samurai, The Wild Bunch and The Dirty Dozen.
DRE: In The Originals the Dirt rode Harley Davison type motorcycles and the Originals rode what?
DG: The scooters that the Originals ride are based on the Italian Lambretta scooters. As for what the Dirt rode, I dont know much about motorcycles so I just made something up that was like fairly antiquated open motorbike and just stuck those hoverpads on them. As long as they were dark, had a lot of chrome and looked like smelly dirty machines that was good enough for me.
DRE: The Originals felt like a very mature 2000 AD story because its a futuristic story with violence and a lot of subtext to it. I hope thats not an insult.
DG: No thats a great compliment because at its best 2000 AD did a lot of really good stories.
DRE: You did a great deal of work for 2000 AD. When doing The Originals did it feel like those days again?
DG: What I really wanted to do with the story was be quite truthful with things. 2000 AD was particularly distinguished at the time because it was very truthful and didnt take the establishment line. It tried to say a few truths about trends in society like law and order. What I really wanted with The Originals was to make it true to the way I felt about things and to the spirit of the time. Also to not science fiction it up too much. I only wanted it to be science fiction enough to set it aside from reality. I remember I first saw scooters a bit like the opening scene in the book, that big two page spread. It was like Wow! The same way I felt when I first saw guys on scooters. But I realized that if I just drew people on scooters, since its fairly common nowadays, it wouldnt really look like anything special. So I gave it that since fiction element to put that wow factor back into it. I guess 2000 AD has that unmistakably British feel to it that is also in The Originals as well. The years I spent drawing stuff for 2000 AD where they wanted visual excitement and clarity found their way into The Originals.
DRE: I read that this story is very personal for you. Did you grow up middle class like Lel did?
DG: Yeah but I suppose that my background isnt as urban as theirs. I grew up in a town that was about 20 miles north of London. But in fact when the mod thing kind of spread it was a phenomenon in suburbia so I was pretty hip to it. There are incidents in The Originals that kind of actually happened to me that I distorted for dramatic effect. Such as when I was walking along on my own, some mod guys drove by and I wasnt old enough to drive a scooter but I was dressed up. They said to me Hello mate! I was obviously their mate because I was dressed like them. They asked me where to find a grease. I told them I just saw one go around the corner so they went over there and kicked the living shit out of him. In the story I make it so Lel and his friend go with them which I didnt do. That was very close to a thing that happened. To suddenly see the thing that you want to be is very exciting. There are other incidents as well. I didnt ever see a gun in those days so that was a bit of a dramatic license. But you might see a knife. There was always a bit of scuffling, kicking and punching.
DRE: Do you know what the other people you used to hang out with are up to now?
DG: In fact two of the characters, Squid and Binky, I still know. In fact I just saw them a couple of weeks ago. I just got my box of complimentary books so I will give them their copies soon. Although the characters arent precisely those guys they are very close to the way they used to be. I couldnt resist those nicknames because you just cant make up stuff as good as that. Squid got his nickname because there used to be a cartoon called Squiddly Diddly and we used to reckon that he danced like Squiddly Diddly. As for Binky, they used to have model die cast toys called Binky Toys and since he was a small guy he ended being called Binky. When I was doing the book it made the characters feel real for me.
DRE: Was your name Inky?
DG: [laughs] No, I was just Dave. They might have called me Gibbo. I did know a guy named Lel and a guy named Bok that I havent seen for years but the characters arent based on them. I like those names because they arent very specific. When you use specific names it places them in a time period such as if you met someone today named Justin or Britney.
DRE: Youve been doing comics for about 30 years. What made you decide to sit down and do one book for two years?
DG: What it really was is that I have drawn a ton of other stuff for other people and Ive written stuff for other artists to draw so the obvious next thing to do was to do something that I would both write and draw. I decided that if I was going to spend all that time doing something it should be something that really matters to me and not just another superhero or science fiction book. So what is something I feel passionate about that would make a good story? I thought that the stuff that happened in my past was something that had a feeling and a mood. I mentioned it to Karen Berger, who is my editor over at DC and who Ive known for almost as long as Ive been doing comics. She told me that I must do it and kept the pressure up. One day I just geared myself up, wrote a script that was well received; contracts were signed so I went away and did it. It was a long time to do one project and a long time spent doing something on my own because Im used to collaborating. At times it was pretty hard work and it was a little bit like being in jail. Its great to see it out there and its been pretty well received so Im happy about it.
DRE: Did you design the actual look of The Originals hardcover?
DG: I did everything from top to bottom because I had a very clear idea of what I wanted it to look like. Im the designer, Amy Brockway over at DC tweaked it and came up with some of the ideas for the packaging as well. We came up with the idea of having all the publishing information on a red band around the book so we could leave the book nice and clean. Since the book is about mod and style it was important to have the book look stylish as well and not be a crappy comic book.
DRE: What made you do the book in black and white?
DG: One of the things Ive always tried to do in books like Watchmen is give each page its own distinctive look. So even if you saw from across the street you would know its a page of Watchmen or The Originals. Every book nowadays seems to be luridly colored so black and white would give it that kind of documentary and retro feel. For all those reasons it seemed to be the natural thing to do. I was kind of worried about the printing but they did it beautifully and I think they made the gray tones glow. I actually have my own lettering font on my computer so all the captions and everything are based on my hand lettering. The real thing I wanted to do was make it look stylish and give it an atmosphere of its own.
DRE: How much of the book was done on the computer?
DG: I wrote it all out on the computer. I dont want to get too technical but all the lettering and the panel grids I did on the computer. Then I drew in all those as I normally would. Then I scanned all those in, dropped the lettering and added all the gray tones in the computer. Then of course I scanned in all the files to send to DC. If you look at the originals of The Originals they are all bits of papers with no words on them. So they only really exist in cyberspace.
DRE: What was the last story you wrote before this?
DG: It was a Captain America for Marvel back in 2002.
DRE: Thats interesting that a British guy wrote Captain America.
DG: Well the thing about comic book characters is that a lot of them are interchangeable. There are just a handful of classic comic book originals. There has to be Superman, Batman, The Spirit and Captain America. Captain America is absolutely iconic and one of the few Marvel characters that Ive ever had a great interest in. Also hes got a great costume not that I got to draw it. Hes a difficult character because he stood for America in the days when it was very clear what America stood for. If its America against the Nazis then there is no contest. The Captain America story I did was a bit of a cheat because even though it was set in the modern day it was a, What if the Nazis won World War 2, so I sidestepped a lot of the political ramifications of the character. I just wanted to have fun with the character by having him punch out Nazis and sling his shield across the room. Thats the stuff we all want to see after all.
DRE: Did you see the adaptation of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? on the Justice League Unlimited cartoon?
DG: Oh I did! In fact they sent me a videotape and a check. Bruce Timm, who is one of the creative people behind that whole JLA thing, has always been of big fan of that story. I love his stuff. He was really concerned that Alan Moore and I would like it. I think they did an excellent job and they kept so many of the best lines. There was a lot of stuff they had to throw out of course. But they used a lot of lines and visual cues that I set up in the design. It was a real thrill to see all that stuff moving around.
DRE: I was glad they kept when Superman yells Burn and fries Mongul with his heat vision.
DG: In the story Wonder Woman says Go to hell and in the cartoon it was Go to THWAP! They obviously cant say hell on kids TV. We also got screen credit which I didnt expect.
DRE: I spoke to Alan Moore a few months ago and I wasnt sure if it was a true story when you and he were promoting Watchmen and a photographer asked you guys to pose like Batman and Robin walking up the side of a building like in the Adam West TV show.
DG: We showed up and the photographer said There you go and we were like What? and he said There you go and we said What? He said like Batman and Robin. Ill turn the camera over and it will look like you are walking up the wall. We looked at each other and said No it wont because we are not going to do it.
DRE: I think that guy must not have even read Watchmen.
DG: He had no idea. I think he thought, comics, two guys, Batman and Robin. I dont think he realized we were serious artists.
DRE: Of course!
DG: [laughs] Being two serious artists we dont need to walk into humiliation.
DRE: Frank Miller has many of his creator owned projects moving quickly in Hollywood and I heard he is even writing a Hard Boiled screenplay. So is anything happening with Martha Washington?
DG: Well thats something I need to talk to Frank about. I did see him earlier in the year at the San Diego convention but I always seem to see him after everyone has had a few drinks though we did speak briefly about it. I dont think there is anything specific happening, though in the past there have been some approaches. I have to tell you that the more of I see whats going on in the Middle East the more I think how right on the money we were. Id love to see something done with it and Martha is one of my very favorite characters. I really do owe Frank a phone call to find out whats going on but as you said hes a very busy man at the moment.
DRE: I love Martha Washington and especially Give Me Liberty. Did you and Frank develop it together or did Frank just hand you a script?
DG: From what I remember Frank had a fragment of an outline about a black woman soldier on a horse. It was something to do with a religious cult and all kinds of stuff, some which made its way into the finished book and some that didnt. I did a whole bunch of sketches based on that then Frank took those and wrote more words. In the end it came down to Frank writing a full script then I drew it based on that. Somewhere along the line Martha came alive for us. It started off quite dark and urban then we sort of switched it around because it started to feel like a bit of a clich because both Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen were kind of urban and gritty. We deliberately lightened it and gave it a sense that the approaching future was ridiculous and scary at the same time. Weve always said that the first picture in the book was her being born and the last picture was going to be her dying, whether thats in battle at the age of 28 or her as a great great grandmother, we dont know yet. She will return and she may even make it to the silver screen.
DRE: It seems like Bush might start recruiting criminals for the army eventually.
DG: Things couldnt get much more ridiculous and scary. I think that Martha is a really interesting book because it is an adventure but with lots of satire and cynicism in it which times like this need.
DRE: What do you think of Darren Aronofsky being off the Watchmen movie?
DG: I did read that but a friend of mine that is slightly connected to these things sent me an email. One question it raises is, are the people who were interested in acting in it still be interested without someone like Aronofsky being involved? The article also said that the suits want the movie to come out in the early part of 2006 so it would seem that Darren Aronofsky or not the movie is going to get made. The thing that I am hoping for is that it will keep the book alive longer. Its always nice to think that youve made some impact on popular culture. Ive read the latest script by David Hayter and I thought it was very good. Much like that Man of Tomorrow cartoon he got the real bones of the scene even though he dressed it up a bit differently. There is some actual dialogue from the book itself in it. Im always optimistic.
DRE: Even though it may not be your choice, do you really want Watchmen to be made into a movie?
DG: I dont know. I think in a way there is the book which is the piece of art. It was conceived and executed as a comic book so thats what it really is. Any adaptation, no matter how well done, will be inferior to the book because you can never get the purity of the book in any other medium. Therefore it does in a broad sense fall into the same category as lunchboxes and t-shirts as a piece of consumer product based on the property. Not to denigrate the efforts of the people that go into it because Hollywood has done superb films and I would be thrilled if they got some very good people to do Watchmen. But inevitably there are compromises to be made with movies that you dont have to do with comic books. I am flattered that they consider it worth doing but I have some trepidations as to what it might look like. When it comes out I will either be thrilled to be associated with it or sit quietly and pretend it has nothing to do with me.
DRE: In some ways it is too bad that you were involved with Watchmen therefore you never got a chance to be influenced by it.
DG: Thats true. I suppose Alan and I are in the unique position of never seeing it for the first time as a fully blown thing. It was blood, sweat and tears the first time I saw Watchmen. Someone recently asked me when the last time I read the book was. Ive probably read it twice. I read it once before Alan and I went on a signing tour of Britain because I knew all these people would ask me particular things about it. I was a little bit too close to it then but I read it again about ten years after that and saw it as if I hadnt seen it before. I thought it was pretty good and I can really see how it gets to people. It is dense, complex, satisfying and at the same time it does something for the general reader and something for the dyed in the wool comic book reader. I have an appreciation for what we did. Also as a life long fan of the medium I am pleased to have a hand in something which will always be included in the history of comics.
DRE: What are you working on next?
DG: After spending a couple of years on my own bashing my brains in doing this personal vision thing Im now signed a contract with DC Comics to do some regular superhero stuff. They offered me the chance to do something there but Im under an embargo to not say anything about it. But I will have a chance to write and draw it.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Now in his fourth decade in comics Gibbons has written, drawn and designed the most personal book of his career, The Originals. Though The Originals takes place in the future it is more about Daves personal experiences growing up in the mod scene of 1960s Britain. Retro and futuristic at the same time, the book has set a new standard for the original graphic novel. The two main characters Lel and Bok are two best friends who want nothing more than to join the Originals, the top gang on the streets. Soon after they are caught up in the world of fast hoverbikes, cool clothes and hot women. Then they must choose between gang loyalty and one another.
Gibbons has brought the medium of comic books to new heights.
Buy The Originals
Daniel Robert Epstein: I kept waiting for the characters to say stuff like mod or whatever it is they said back then.
Dave Gibbons: One of the strange things about being in mod is that it would have been really uncool to say I am a mod. Part of the whole ethos of it is that it was hidden. It was almost like a kind of a secret identity thing because all that your parents saw was that you had a short haircut and some nice clothes. They didnt know what you were getting up to when you went out of the house.
DRE: The mod culture has been compared to the hippie movement mostly because they were around at the same time. But were the mods actually roving gangs like they were in A Clockwork Orange or The Originals?
DG: No and even in my book its not exactly a roving gang. Its not like they were going out looking for trouble like Alex and his droogs were. You really would only get into fights with The Grease or as I call them in my book The Dirt if you happened to run into some of them. If one or the other was outnumbered something might kick off.
DRE: Were you were trying to homage Jim Sterankos work or is it just that pop art style that Jim brought to comics?
DG: Not really. Jim Sterankos art is something I loved when it came out and I suppose its to the degree that you are subconsciously influenced but I was really going for a look they went for in the old black and white Warren magazines when they used an old ink wash or a crayon and a rough board to get a textured look to it. That coupled with a simple outline. Its really more of an artist like Alex Toth though I dont want to mention our names in the same breath. His work was one of the things I had in mind to give that unfussy almost documentary look.
DRE: A lot of comic book artists readily admit that they have trouble drawing unique faces. You definitely pulled that off with this book. Was that very important to you?
DG: To have the characters be individual people has always been really important to me. There is a tendency in, lets say, bad comic book art to use a generic male or female head then give them eyeglasses or a moustache. But I always wanted to make characters distinctive. I spend a lot of time before drawing the pages doing model sheets where I will actually nail down what the characters looked like with their comparative builds. I would refer to them but just the process of doing that allows me to internalize it and gives them a reality. One of the things I worry about is keeping that consistently throughout the book.
DRE: I would imagine you had a lot of model sheets for the clothing, the architecture and the vehicles.
DG: Yeah, I did work the machinery out really quite carefully. The hover scooters are heavily based on scooters from that period. I used to have a scooter not unlike the one Lel rides. I used to have a Lambretta TV175 which is a fairly big and slow especially with all the junk I had on it. I really had a good feeling in my head on what its like to ride a scooter from various different angles. Since it is all chic and retro now I recently came across some fancy die cast models of scooters which helped me with the visualization of them. As far as the clothes are concerned I just came up with them out of my head though I did look at a lot of books. Now I must have the biggest collection of mod books in the country after scouring Amazon. I was looking for a lot of stuff from those days. I was actually there in those times but your memory can get a bit fuzzy, so in a book you can come across a really cool piece of detail.
DRE: Did you get the mod books to do The Originals?
DG: I guess it was one of those things that you are lucky enough to do in this business. You can buy things and justify them as being research such as DVDs of old movies. I got all these mod books which were great for research and it was cool to look through them and remember those great days. For the thing I am doing now I went out and got Seven Samurai, The Wild Bunch and The Dirty Dozen.
DRE: In The Originals the Dirt rode Harley Davison type motorcycles and the Originals rode what?
DG: The scooters that the Originals ride are based on the Italian Lambretta scooters. As for what the Dirt rode, I dont know much about motorcycles so I just made something up that was like fairly antiquated open motorbike and just stuck those hoverpads on them. As long as they were dark, had a lot of chrome and looked like smelly dirty machines that was good enough for me.
DRE: The Originals felt like a very mature 2000 AD story because its a futuristic story with violence and a lot of subtext to it. I hope thats not an insult.
DG: No thats a great compliment because at its best 2000 AD did a lot of really good stories.
DRE: You did a great deal of work for 2000 AD. When doing The Originals did it feel like those days again?
DG: What I really wanted to do with the story was be quite truthful with things. 2000 AD was particularly distinguished at the time because it was very truthful and didnt take the establishment line. It tried to say a few truths about trends in society like law and order. What I really wanted with The Originals was to make it true to the way I felt about things and to the spirit of the time. Also to not science fiction it up too much. I only wanted it to be science fiction enough to set it aside from reality. I remember I first saw scooters a bit like the opening scene in the book, that big two page spread. It was like Wow! The same way I felt when I first saw guys on scooters. But I realized that if I just drew people on scooters, since its fairly common nowadays, it wouldnt really look like anything special. So I gave it that since fiction element to put that wow factor back into it. I guess 2000 AD has that unmistakably British feel to it that is also in The Originals as well. The years I spent drawing stuff for 2000 AD where they wanted visual excitement and clarity found their way into The Originals.
DRE: I read that this story is very personal for you. Did you grow up middle class like Lel did?
DG: Yeah but I suppose that my background isnt as urban as theirs. I grew up in a town that was about 20 miles north of London. But in fact when the mod thing kind of spread it was a phenomenon in suburbia so I was pretty hip to it. There are incidents in The Originals that kind of actually happened to me that I distorted for dramatic effect. Such as when I was walking along on my own, some mod guys drove by and I wasnt old enough to drive a scooter but I was dressed up. They said to me Hello mate! I was obviously their mate because I was dressed like them. They asked me where to find a grease. I told them I just saw one go around the corner so they went over there and kicked the living shit out of him. In the story I make it so Lel and his friend go with them which I didnt do. That was very close to a thing that happened. To suddenly see the thing that you want to be is very exciting. There are other incidents as well. I didnt ever see a gun in those days so that was a bit of a dramatic license. But you might see a knife. There was always a bit of scuffling, kicking and punching.
DRE: Do you know what the other people you used to hang out with are up to now?
DG: In fact two of the characters, Squid and Binky, I still know. In fact I just saw them a couple of weeks ago. I just got my box of complimentary books so I will give them their copies soon. Although the characters arent precisely those guys they are very close to the way they used to be. I couldnt resist those nicknames because you just cant make up stuff as good as that. Squid got his nickname because there used to be a cartoon called Squiddly Diddly and we used to reckon that he danced like Squiddly Diddly. As for Binky, they used to have model die cast toys called Binky Toys and since he was a small guy he ended being called Binky. When I was doing the book it made the characters feel real for me.
DRE: Was your name Inky?
DG: [laughs] No, I was just Dave. They might have called me Gibbo. I did know a guy named Lel and a guy named Bok that I havent seen for years but the characters arent based on them. I like those names because they arent very specific. When you use specific names it places them in a time period such as if you met someone today named Justin or Britney.
DRE: Youve been doing comics for about 30 years. What made you decide to sit down and do one book for two years?
DG: What it really was is that I have drawn a ton of other stuff for other people and Ive written stuff for other artists to draw so the obvious next thing to do was to do something that I would both write and draw. I decided that if I was going to spend all that time doing something it should be something that really matters to me and not just another superhero or science fiction book. So what is something I feel passionate about that would make a good story? I thought that the stuff that happened in my past was something that had a feeling and a mood. I mentioned it to Karen Berger, who is my editor over at DC and who Ive known for almost as long as Ive been doing comics. She told me that I must do it and kept the pressure up. One day I just geared myself up, wrote a script that was well received; contracts were signed so I went away and did it. It was a long time to do one project and a long time spent doing something on my own because Im used to collaborating. At times it was pretty hard work and it was a little bit like being in jail. Its great to see it out there and its been pretty well received so Im happy about it.
DRE: Did you design the actual look of The Originals hardcover?
DG: I did everything from top to bottom because I had a very clear idea of what I wanted it to look like. Im the designer, Amy Brockway over at DC tweaked it and came up with some of the ideas for the packaging as well. We came up with the idea of having all the publishing information on a red band around the book so we could leave the book nice and clean. Since the book is about mod and style it was important to have the book look stylish as well and not be a crappy comic book.
DRE: What made you do the book in black and white?
DG: One of the things Ive always tried to do in books like Watchmen is give each page its own distinctive look. So even if you saw from across the street you would know its a page of Watchmen or The Originals. Every book nowadays seems to be luridly colored so black and white would give it that kind of documentary and retro feel. For all those reasons it seemed to be the natural thing to do. I was kind of worried about the printing but they did it beautifully and I think they made the gray tones glow. I actually have my own lettering font on my computer so all the captions and everything are based on my hand lettering. The real thing I wanted to do was make it look stylish and give it an atmosphere of its own.
DRE: How much of the book was done on the computer?
DG: I wrote it all out on the computer. I dont want to get too technical but all the lettering and the panel grids I did on the computer. Then I drew in all those as I normally would. Then I scanned all those in, dropped the lettering and added all the gray tones in the computer. Then of course I scanned in all the files to send to DC. If you look at the originals of The Originals they are all bits of papers with no words on them. So they only really exist in cyberspace.
DRE: What was the last story you wrote before this?
DG: It was a Captain America for Marvel back in 2002.
DRE: Thats interesting that a British guy wrote Captain America.
DG: Well the thing about comic book characters is that a lot of them are interchangeable. There are just a handful of classic comic book originals. There has to be Superman, Batman, The Spirit and Captain America. Captain America is absolutely iconic and one of the few Marvel characters that Ive ever had a great interest in. Also hes got a great costume not that I got to draw it. Hes a difficult character because he stood for America in the days when it was very clear what America stood for. If its America against the Nazis then there is no contest. The Captain America story I did was a bit of a cheat because even though it was set in the modern day it was a, What if the Nazis won World War 2, so I sidestepped a lot of the political ramifications of the character. I just wanted to have fun with the character by having him punch out Nazis and sling his shield across the room. Thats the stuff we all want to see after all.
DRE: Did you see the adaptation of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? on the Justice League Unlimited cartoon?
DG: Oh I did! In fact they sent me a videotape and a check. Bruce Timm, who is one of the creative people behind that whole JLA thing, has always been of big fan of that story. I love his stuff. He was really concerned that Alan Moore and I would like it. I think they did an excellent job and they kept so many of the best lines. There was a lot of stuff they had to throw out of course. But they used a lot of lines and visual cues that I set up in the design. It was a real thrill to see all that stuff moving around.
DRE: I was glad they kept when Superman yells Burn and fries Mongul with his heat vision.
DG: In the story Wonder Woman says Go to hell and in the cartoon it was Go to THWAP! They obviously cant say hell on kids TV. We also got screen credit which I didnt expect.
DRE: I spoke to Alan Moore a few months ago and I wasnt sure if it was a true story when you and he were promoting Watchmen and a photographer asked you guys to pose like Batman and Robin walking up the side of a building like in the Adam West TV show.
DG: We showed up and the photographer said There you go and we were like What? and he said There you go and we said What? He said like Batman and Robin. Ill turn the camera over and it will look like you are walking up the wall. We looked at each other and said No it wont because we are not going to do it.
DRE: I think that guy must not have even read Watchmen.
DG: He had no idea. I think he thought, comics, two guys, Batman and Robin. I dont think he realized we were serious artists.
DRE: Of course!
DG: [laughs] Being two serious artists we dont need to walk into humiliation.
DRE: Frank Miller has many of his creator owned projects moving quickly in Hollywood and I heard he is even writing a Hard Boiled screenplay. So is anything happening with Martha Washington?
DG: Well thats something I need to talk to Frank about. I did see him earlier in the year at the San Diego convention but I always seem to see him after everyone has had a few drinks though we did speak briefly about it. I dont think there is anything specific happening, though in the past there have been some approaches. I have to tell you that the more of I see whats going on in the Middle East the more I think how right on the money we were. Id love to see something done with it and Martha is one of my very favorite characters. I really do owe Frank a phone call to find out whats going on but as you said hes a very busy man at the moment.
DRE: I love Martha Washington and especially Give Me Liberty. Did you and Frank develop it together or did Frank just hand you a script?
DG: From what I remember Frank had a fragment of an outline about a black woman soldier on a horse. It was something to do with a religious cult and all kinds of stuff, some which made its way into the finished book and some that didnt. I did a whole bunch of sketches based on that then Frank took those and wrote more words. In the end it came down to Frank writing a full script then I drew it based on that. Somewhere along the line Martha came alive for us. It started off quite dark and urban then we sort of switched it around because it started to feel like a bit of a clich because both Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen were kind of urban and gritty. We deliberately lightened it and gave it a sense that the approaching future was ridiculous and scary at the same time. Weve always said that the first picture in the book was her being born and the last picture was going to be her dying, whether thats in battle at the age of 28 or her as a great great grandmother, we dont know yet. She will return and she may even make it to the silver screen.
DRE: It seems like Bush might start recruiting criminals for the army eventually.
DG: Things couldnt get much more ridiculous and scary. I think that Martha is a really interesting book because it is an adventure but with lots of satire and cynicism in it which times like this need.
DRE: What do you think of Darren Aronofsky being off the Watchmen movie?
DG: I did read that but a friend of mine that is slightly connected to these things sent me an email. One question it raises is, are the people who were interested in acting in it still be interested without someone like Aronofsky being involved? The article also said that the suits want the movie to come out in the early part of 2006 so it would seem that Darren Aronofsky or not the movie is going to get made. The thing that I am hoping for is that it will keep the book alive longer. Its always nice to think that youve made some impact on popular culture. Ive read the latest script by David Hayter and I thought it was very good. Much like that Man of Tomorrow cartoon he got the real bones of the scene even though he dressed it up a bit differently. There is some actual dialogue from the book itself in it. Im always optimistic.
DRE: Even though it may not be your choice, do you really want Watchmen to be made into a movie?
DG: I dont know. I think in a way there is the book which is the piece of art. It was conceived and executed as a comic book so thats what it really is. Any adaptation, no matter how well done, will be inferior to the book because you can never get the purity of the book in any other medium. Therefore it does in a broad sense fall into the same category as lunchboxes and t-shirts as a piece of consumer product based on the property. Not to denigrate the efforts of the people that go into it because Hollywood has done superb films and I would be thrilled if they got some very good people to do Watchmen. But inevitably there are compromises to be made with movies that you dont have to do with comic books. I am flattered that they consider it worth doing but I have some trepidations as to what it might look like. When it comes out I will either be thrilled to be associated with it or sit quietly and pretend it has nothing to do with me.
DRE: In some ways it is too bad that you were involved with Watchmen therefore you never got a chance to be influenced by it.
DG: Thats true. I suppose Alan and I are in the unique position of never seeing it for the first time as a fully blown thing. It was blood, sweat and tears the first time I saw Watchmen. Someone recently asked me when the last time I read the book was. Ive probably read it twice. I read it once before Alan and I went on a signing tour of Britain because I knew all these people would ask me particular things about it. I was a little bit too close to it then but I read it again about ten years after that and saw it as if I hadnt seen it before. I thought it was pretty good and I can really see how it gets to people. It is dense, complex, satisfying and at the same time it does something for the general reader and something for the dyed in the wool comic book reader. I have an appreciation for what we did. Also as a life long fan of the medium I am pleased to have a hand in something which will always be included in the history of comics.
DRE: What are you working on next?
DG: After spending a couple of years on my own bashing my brains in doing this personal vision thing Im now signed a contract with DC Comics to do some regular superhero stuff. They offered me the chance to do something there but Im under an embargo to not say anything about it. But I will have a chance to write and draw it.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
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Could it be because of SuicideGirls?