Whenever I meet a superhero comic book fan that wants to expand his or her horizons, the first book I always point them to is Concrete created by Paul Chadwick. Concrete is a creator owned comic book that just celebrated its 20 year anniversary. It is the story of a former political speechwriter that is mysteriously kidnapped by aliens and has his brain transplanted into massive stone body with tremendous strength, endurance and vision. While in the majority of comic books, Concrete would don a costume and fight crime on a daily basis instead Chadwick has his protagonist go on adventures, collect artwork and in the latest miniseries, The Human Dilemma, become a spokesperson for a controversial population control program. Meanwhile, after a hands off, but still sexual, encounter with his beautiful scientist companion, Maureen Vonnegut, a child version grows inside Concrete turning him into a surrogate mother.
Buy Concrete: The Human Dilemma
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?
Paul Chadwick: Its been an interesting day. We were without power, we have power right now of course, but it was off for a while. So Ive been mainly coping with that today.
DRE: What have you been working on this week?
Paul: The Matrix Online most of the week. Ive got to get the storyboards done for some cinematics.
DRE: I read that you were doing stuff with The Matrix Online.
Paul: Yeah, its sort of a part-time job at this point.
DRE: Do you like keeping up with that world?
Paul: Yeah. Not that I can particularly well. Its more like our own little world. They really thought The Matrix Online would be this huge hit like World of Warcraft. But it turned out to be a little niche game but the players who do stick around are very intense.
DRE: My brother plays World of Warcraft so I know a little bit about it. Is it the same sort of thing with these quests you can go on?
Paul: Yeah, these multi-players are very social. You meet up with your friends at a certain hour and you go on missions or do whatever.
DRE: Do you have a character that you take in there?
Paul: Oh yeah but I cant reveal.
DRE: So youre not supposed to reveal your guy or something like that?
Paul: No.
DRE: Do you play or do you just do administrative type stuff with your character?
Paul: I role play.
DRE: Whats interesting about the Human Dilemma miniseries is that all your previous books have advanced the main characters. But Human Dilemma has changed all the character dynamics forever.
Paul: Yeah it is funny how painful that is to do with characters youve worked with a long time. Putting your characters through a lot of stress, so much so that it changes them but thats what stories are all about.
DRE: Did you want to do something that would change everything or did the idea of this child came first?
Paul: Its pretty simple, what came first is that I had a son and I had to face all the issues of parenthood and how much that changes life. The story was a way to deal with my fears, well some of my fears actually [laughs]. My early fears of being a parent and also my worries about humanity as a whole.
DRE: Is your son that young?
Paul: When I first conceived the story he was still a toddler. Hes 13 now. I take a long time from a storys germination to finish. I was working on the story for six years but I was thinking about it for another couple of years before that.
DRE: Does it always take that long?
Paul: All I can tell you is that it is my process. I dont know if I could organize my life better. I probably could if I were more of an adult about this business.
DRE: One of my favorite things you do is when you show the inside of Concrete which youve done since the beginning.
Paul: I made a conscious effort to push that as part of the vocabulary of this story. Cutaway views of buildings and things but mainly going inside the people. So that when you have that eventual shock panel when you see the baby growing inside his back youre ready to accept that.
DRE: Do you understand Concretes biology or is it just something that is malleable?
Paul: Not in certain conceptions, but the idea of getting pregnant was not a notion I had in mind from the start. That was a new notion. My feeling is that hes a combination of artificial and engineered biology.
DRE: Is Maureen still based on your wife or has she become her own character?
Paul: Maureen has grown away from Elizabeth quite a bit.
DRE: I still read all Concrete books quite often and they really flow together well. Is keeping the continuity straight something that is important to you?
Paul: The continuity and also some familiar touchstones. You probably noticed I start almost all stories in the warehouse with Concrete in the cinderblock chair. It reminds people that hes not a multimillionaire super scientist or something and also to show that domesticity. Someone once gave me a story formula that said that you need to know in a story what things are like every day until something strange and new happens. You need to know what the normality was to appreciate why this event was significant.
DRE: At this point has the character been Concrete for about 15 years?
Paul: Please dont pin me down on that [laughs]. Im a big believer in Emersons A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
DRE: Do you feel that you needed a storyline like The Human Dilemma to shake things up?
Paul: I should give credit where its due. [Founder, president, and publisher of Dark Horse Comics] Mike Richardson said Paul it seems like it is time to really trip your characters up by changing their relationships. I think that was about 15 years into the series and I said, Well Ill think about that.
DRE: At this point what does [editor] Diana Schutz do for you on the book?
Paul: Shes been most helpful with Maureen. Shes been able to say, I dont think a woman would think in those terms or she wouldnt say that. With Diana being a woman, Im ready to defer on questions about Maureen. Shes also good at telling me when something is deadly dull. There were some pages in The Human Dilemma where I got a little bit heavy on the overpopulation policy and she said, Paul, several people have the opposite thinking but my thinking is that it crashes to a halt here. So I pulled that out and put in a seduction scene instead.
DRE: Is it difficult to keep it from getting preachy?
Paul: I guess I got a little preachy that time. Actually it wasnt so much preachy as it was a debate that was interesting to me but having people sitting around and talking wasnt the best way to do it. I wound up incorporating everything they said in some of those text pieces that were in the back of each issue. It worked better there. The main thing is to give everybody a fair shake. Nobody holds their opinions for no good reason. Were all a product of our background. I have my views and I try not to set up straw men to knock down. For example, in Think like a Mountain, I think I give a fair shake to what it is like to be a logger.
DRE: Are these all your views or are you ever in disagreement with what any of the other characters are feeling?
Paul: Its funny, when youre sitting alone in a room writing dialogue for a cartoon, you can almost convince yourself of anything [laughs]. But I think what were talking about are judgment calls and moral dilemmas so there is room to articulate the many sides to a question.
DRE: Even though I know you do other projects, is Concrete the perfect conduit for everything you want to do?
Paul: Most of the extracurricular work I do is partly driven by practical financial concerns. Believe me I appreciate what a gift having a character with a following is and I do think Concrete is a very flexible vehicle for a story. With the one exception being that sometimes Im drawn to the weird tale that has a hint of the supernatural or the bizarre. I love doing those types of horror stories like the 100 Horrors backup stories and The World Below. Im drawn to the weird and fantastic more than Concrete will allow. Ironically enough Concrete is a pretty real world so I try to keep it that way. But as far as personal expression, Concrete and The World Below pretty much fulfill me.
DRE: Youve done some Concrete merchandising mostly through Dark Horse. I always think of all the merchandise I see in the Concrete stories and Im like, Oh that would be fun to have if it existed. Do you feel too much merchandising would cheapen it?
Paul: No, Im not a purist in that way. I think the people who buy comics love that kind of stuff. If youve ever been to a comic persons den or studio there are always toys, sculptures and things. So some of that I just havent been terribly energetic in pursuing. Its the lack of relative paucity of Concrete merchandise that is one of my weaknesses as a businessman.
DRE: Have you done many Concrete statues?
Paul: Thereve been two. One early one had Concrete crouched down on one knee. Then about eight or nine years back, we did a sculpture where hes essentially escaping from solid rock like one of Michelangelos Dying Slaves.
DRE: What would be the one thing that youd want to do?
Paul: Id love to do a Concrete plush doll. Its such an oxymoron.
DRE: [laughs] Is Concrete still floating around Hollywood as a possible film?
Paul: I co-wrote a Concrete screenplay with [Beetlejuice co-writer] Larry Wilson but the closest Concrete got being made was when they hired Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh to write a script. This was before the Lord of the Rings movies started shooting. Concrete got very hot for a minute there and in fact Disney put it on its schedule for 2003. Then a month later The Blair Witch Project came out and that touched off a shock effect on Hollywood where everyone began to question whether they should be making big budget special effects movies with stars. So Concrete was killed and then a month later another big budget special effects film came out and everyone forgot about Blair Witch Project. While the antelopes stampeded in one direction, Concrete lost its window. But its still knocking around. Its got a few million dollars of screenplay money against it. So anyone who wants to make it, needs to pay off, not the whole amount but some percentage of that. So now it is burdened and its just going to take a director who read it when he was 22 and said, Id love to make a Concrete movie and now hes 38 with some clout to get it back going. But its been sitting around for six years.
DRE: Did you like the screenplay?
Paul: Yeah. But Im older now so I wouldnt mind a completely different story being told about him.
DRE: What was the Peter Jackson script like?
Paul: The Peter Jackson version had this big action finish that was so out of character for Concrete. But that wasnt Peters fault. He was directed to do this by the studio. Concrete rides a missile up into space, lets go and blasts the alien spaceship. I just rolled my eyes when I saw that but I also know that until a director is attached, nothing is set in stone.
DRE: You said before the kinds of stories you like to do and that perfectly describes Y: The Last Man. How did you end up doing those two issues of the book?
Paul: Brian Vaughn is the only guy who has ever come up to me and said, You really influenced me. [laughs] That feels really good because hes a damn good writer. Y is a dynamite premise, full of emotion and is logically playing that out with a good sense of humor and a good sense of mystery. All the story qualities are in there.
DRE: Is the new book youre working on for Vertigo?
Paul: Its DC proper although its not really in the DC milieu. Years ago, Harlan Ellison wrote a film treatment which was kind of a Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven plot in a science fiction context. It was called Seven Against Chaos. I cant remember how it came to light again but he sold it to DC as a miniseries. What was ironic about that is that it was when Harlan was in the midst of this big lawsuit against AOL for copyright infringement. He cashed his advance check with DC and paid his lawyers to sue their parent corporation.
DRE: Oh you got to love Harlan.
Paul: Yeah, working with Harlan is a great pleasure. Hes so funny.
I am drawing Seven Against Chaos. It wont appear for a couple years yet. It will be a prestige format miniseries and for Harlan its a rather upbeat story. Its tortured characters and so on but also its got an old time pulp action adventure flair to it. Im penciling and inking and I think it will also be my duty to shackle Harlan to a typewriter to finish the dialogue.
DRE: You based that one character in Concrete on Harlan years ago.
Paul: Thats right. That was another reaction to real life.
DRE: I figured that you guys had met up.
Paul: Yeah, once you visit that strange mystery house you cant help but react to it somehow.
DRE: I always thought it was great how you portrayed him as a really nice guy. Most people dont portray Harlan like that. Not that he cant be but they usually portray him as a hothead because it makes for good stories.
Paul: Its true. Harlan is the best friend you could have and the worst enemy you could have. Hes a fighter. Hell fight for you if hes your friend.
DRE: How did you first meet Harlan?
Paul: When I first started Concrete, Harlan was hosting a radio show in Los Angeles called Hour 25. It was mostly about science fiction but he had comic guests on sometimes. He also used to review comics and he gave me my first praise. I remember a friend in LA recorded it and gave me a tape and I must have played that about 20 times. So he was an early champion of Concrete. The thing that got me the most heat in Hollywood was something Harlan had written for Playboy. I guess all the executives in Hollywood read Playboy because that opened a lot of doors for me. Harlan and I spoke on the phone and I eventually got the great tour of the house.
DRE: Is he still in the same house?
Paul: Oh yeah. There are parts of it I havent seen. Ive only heard about.
DRE: [laughs] Are you working on the next Concrete miniseries yet?
Paul: I have started. Ive written a ten page treatment and started to rough out a few pages.
DRE: Are you diving right into more storylines with the second alien or whatever this thing is?
Paul: Its a child. The child is still in the coma at the beginning of the story and part of the suspense is when it wakes up. But the premise of the story came from when I visited this place in Colorado called Sand Dunes National Monument & Preserve which is the largest area of sand in North America. It is a very strange place because you can climb over sand dunes and suddenly you hear no traffic, you see no human activity, no building, no nothing, pure wilderness. It is also the site of very frequent thunder and lightning storms. So Im going to have Concrete walk into the sand dunes one night and be struck by lightning and get amnesia. Hell wake up, wont know who he is, where he is or what planet hes on. He doesnt understand why his hands are covered with stone and the story will be about the search for him. A scared, non-affable Concrete is a very dangerous thing. So it will be a suspense story, a complicated arty-poetic story and theyll be parallel stories with Maureen and the child.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Buy Concrete: The Human Dilemma
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?
Paul Chadwick: Its been an interesting day. We were without power, we have power right now of course, but it was off for a while. So Ive been mainly coping with that today.
DRE: What have you been working on this week?
Paul: The Matrix Online most of the week. Ive got to get the storyboards done for some cinematics.
DRE: I read that you were doing stuff with The Matrix Online.
Paul: Yeah, its sort of a part-time job at this point.
DRE: Do you like keeping up with that world?
Paul: Yeah. Not that I can particularly well. Its more like our own little world. They really thought The Matrix Online would be this huge hit like World of Warcraft. But it turned out to be a little niche game but the players who do stick around are very intense.
DRE: My brother plays World of Warcraft so I know a little bit about it. Is it the same sort of thing with these quests you can go on?
Paul: Yeah, these multi-players are very social. You meet up with your friends at a certain hour and you go on missions or do whatever.
DRE: Do you have a character that you take in there?
Paul: Oh yeah but I cant reveal.
DRE: So youre not supposed to reveal your guy or something like that?
Paul: No.
DRE: Do you play or do you just do administrative type stuff with your character?
Paul: I role play.
DRE: Whats interesting about the Human Dilemma miniseries is that all your previous books have advanced the main characters. But Human Dilemma has changed all the character dynamics forever.
Paul: Yeah it is funny how painful that is to do with characters youve worked with a long time. Putting your characters through a lot of stress, so much so that it changes them but thats what stories are all about.
DRE: Did you want to do something that would change everything or did the idea of this child came first?
Paul: Its pretty simple, what came first is that I had a son and I had to face all the issues of parenthood and how much that changes life. The story was a way to deal with my fears, well some of my fears actually [laughs]. My early fears of being a parent and also my worries about humanity as a whole.
DRE: Is your son that young?
Paul: When I first conceived the story he was still a toddler. Hes 13 now. I take a long time from a storys germination to finish. I was working on the story for six years but I was thinking about it for another couple of years before that.
DRE: Does it always take that long?
Paul: All I can tell you is that it is my process. I dont know if I could organize my life better. I probably could if I were more of an adult about this business.
DRE: One of my favorite things you do is when you show the inside of Concrete which youve done since the beginning.
Paul: I made a conscious effort to push that as part of the vocabulary of this story. Cutaway views of buildings and things but mainly going inside the people. So that when you have that eventual shock panel when you see the baby growing inside his back youre ready to accept that.
DRE: Do you understand Concretes biology or is it just something that is malleable?
Paul: Not in certain conceptions, but the idea of getting pregnant was not a notion I had in mind from the start. That was a new notion. My feeling is that hes a combination of artificial and engineered biology.
DRE: Is Maureen still based on your wife or has she become her own character?
Paul: Maureen has grown away from Elizabeth quite a bit.
DRE: I still read all Concrete books quite often and they really flow together well. Is keeping the continuity straight something that is important to you?
Paul: The continuity and also some familiar touchstones. You probably noticed I start almost all stories in the warehouse with Concrete in the cinderblock chair. It reminds people that hes not a multimillionaire super scientist or something and also to show that domesticity. Someone once gave me a story formula that said that you need to know in a story what things are like every day until something strange and new happens. You need to know what the normality was to appreciate why this event was significant.
DRE: At this point has the character been Concrete for about 15 years?
Paul: Please dont pin me down on that [laughs]. Im a big believer in Emersons A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
DRE: Do you feel that you needed a storyline like The Human Dilemma to shake things up?
Paul: I should give credit where its due. [Founder, president, and publisher of Dark Horse Comics] Mike Richardson said Paul it seems like it is time to really trip your characters up by changing their relationships. I think that was about 15 years into the series and I said, Well Ill think about that.
DRE: At this point what does [editor] Diana Schutz do for you on the book?
Paul: Shes been most helpful with Maureen. Shes been able to say, I dont think a woman would think in those terms or she wouldnt say that. With Diana being a woman, Im ready to defer on questions about Maureen. Shes also good at telling me when something is deadly dull. There were some pages in The Human Dilemma where I got a little bit heavy on the overpopulation policy and she said, Paul, several people have the opposite thinking but my thinking is that it crashes to a halt here. So I pulled that out and put in a seduction scene instead.
DRE: Is it difficult to keep it from getting preachy?
Paul: I guess I got a little preachy that time. Actually it wasnt so much preachy as it was a debate that was interesting to me but having people sitting around and talking wasnt the best way to do it. I wound up incorporating everything they said in some of those text pieces that were in the back of each issue. It worked better there. The main thing is to give everybody a fair shake. Nobody holds their opinions for no good reason. Were all a product of our background. I have my views and I try not to set up straw men to knock down. For example, in Think like a Mountain, I think I give a fair shake to what it is like to be a logger.
DRE: Are these all your views or are you ever in disagreement with what any of the other characters are feeling?
Paul: Its funny, when youre sitting alone in a room writing dialogue for a cartoon, you can almost convince yourself of anything [laughs]. But I think what were talking about are judgment calls and moral dilemmas so there is room to articulate the many sides to a question.
DRE: Even though I know you do other projects, is Concrete the perfect conduit for everything you want to do?
Paul: Most of the extracurricular work I do is partly driven by practical financial concerns. Believe me I appreciate what a gift having a character with a following is and I do think Concrete is a very flexible vehicle for a story. With the one exception being that sometimes Im drawn to the weird tale that has a hint of the supernatural or the bizarre. I love doing those types of horror stories like the 100 Horrors backup stories and The World Below. Im drawn to the weird and fantastic more than Concrete will allow. Ironically enough Concrete is a pretty real world so I try to keep it that way. But as far as personal expression, Concrete and The World Below pretty much fulfill me.
DRE: Youve done some Concrete merchandising mostly through Dark Horse. I always think of all the merchandise I see in the Concrete stories and Im like, Oh that would be fun to have if it existed. Do you feel too much merchandising would cheapen it?
Paul: No, Im not a purist in that way. I think the people who buy comics love that kind of stuff. If youve ever been to a comic persons den or studio there are always toys, sculptures and things. So some of that I just havent been terribly energetic in pursuing. Its the lack of relative paucity of Concrete merchandise that is one of my weaknesses as a businessman.
DRE: Have you done many Concrete statues?
Paul: Thereve been two. One early one had Concrete crouched down on one knee. Then about eight or nine years back, we did a sculpture where hes essentially escaping from solid rock like one of Michelangelos Dying Slaves.
DRE: What would be the one thing that youd want to do?
Paul: Id love to do a Concrete plush doll. Its such an oxymoron.
DRE: [laughs] Is Concrete still floating around Hollywood as a possible film?
Paul: I co-wrote a Concrete screenplay with [Beetlejuice co-writer] Larry Wilson but the closest Concrete got being made was when they hired Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh to write a script. This was before the Lord of the Rings movies started shooting. Concrete got very hot for a minute there and in fact Disney put it on its schedule for 2003. Then a month later The Blair Witch Project came out and that touched off a shock effect on Hollywood where everyone began to question whether they should be making big budget special effects movies with stars. So Concrete was killed and then a month later another big budget special effects film came out and everyone forgot about Blair Witch Project. While the antelopes stampeded in one direction, Concrete lost its window. But its still knocking around. Its got a few million dollars of screenplay money against it. So anyone who wants to make it, needs to pay off, not the whole amount but some percentage of that. So now it is burdened and its just going to take a director who read it when he was 22 and said, Id love to make a Concrete movie and now hes 38 with some clout to get it back going. But its been sitting around for six years.
DRE: Did you like the screenplay?
Paul: Yeah. But Im older now so I wouldnt mind a completely different story being told about him.
DRE: What was the Peter Jackson script like?
Paul: The Peter Jackson version had this big action finish that was so out of character for Concrete. But that wasnt Peters fault. He was directed to do this by the studio. Concrete rides a missile up into space, lets go and blasts the alien spaceship. I just rolled my eyes when I saw that but I also know that until a director is attached, nothing is set in stone.
DRE: You said before the kinds of stories you like to do and that perfectly describes Y: The Last Man. How did you end up doing those two issues of the book?
Paul: Brian Vaughn is the only guy who has ever come up to me and said, You really influenced me. [laughs] That feels really good because hes a damn good writer. Y is a dynamite premise, full of emotion and is logically playing that out with a good sense of humor and a good sense of mystery. All the story qualities are in there.
DRE: Is the new book youre working on for Vertigo?
Paul: Its DC proper although its not really in the DC milieu. Years ago, Harlan Ellison wrote a film treatment which was kind of a Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven plot in a science fiction context. It was called Seven Against Chaos. I cant remember how it came to light again but he sold it to DC as a miniseries. What was ironic about that is that it was when Harlan was in the midst of this big lawsuit against AOL for copyright infringement. He cashed his advance check with DC and paid his lawyers to sue their parent corporation.
DRE: Oh you got to love Harlan.
Paul: Yeah, working with Harlan is a great pleasure. Hes so funny.
I am drawing Seven Against Chaos. It wont appear for a couple years yet. It will be a prestige format miniseries and for Harlan its a rather upbeat story. Its tortured characters and so on but also its got an old time pulp action adventure flair to it. Im penciling and inking and I think it will also be my duty to shackle Harlan to a typewriter to finish the dialogue.
DRE: You based that one character in Concrete on Harlan years ago.
Paul: Thats right. That was another reaction to real life.
DRE: I figured that you guys had met up.
Paul: Yeah, once you visit that strange mystery house you cant help but react to it somehow.
DRE: I always thought it was great how you portrayed him as a really nice guy. Most people dont portray Harlan like that. Not that he cant be but they usually portray him as a hothead because it makes for good stories.
Paul: Its true. Harlan is the best friend you could have and the worst enemy you could have. Hes a fighter. Hell fight for you if hes your friend.
DRE: How did you first meet Harlan?
Paul: When I first started Concrete, Harlan was hosting a radio show in Los Angeles called Hour 25. It was mostly about science fiction but he had comic guests on sometimes. He also used to review comics and he gave me my first praise. I remember a friend in LA recorded it and gave me a tape and I must have played that about 20 times. So he was an early champion of Concrete. The thing that got me the most heat in Hollywood was something Harlan had written for Playboy. I guess all the executives in Hollywood read Playboy because that opened a lot of doors for me. Harlan and I spoke on the phone and I eventually got the great tour of the house.
DRE: Is he still in the same house?
Paul: Oh yeah. There are parts of it I havent seen. Ive only heard about.
DRE: [laughs] Are you working on the next Concrete miniseries yet?
Paul: I have started. Ive written a ten page treatment and started to rough out a few pages.
DRE: Are you diving right into more storylines with the second alien or whatever this thing is?
Paul: Its a child. The child is still in the coma at the beginning of the story and part of the suspense is when it wakes up. But the premise of the story came from when I visited this place in Colorado called Sand Dunes National Monument & Preserve which is the largest area of sand in North America. It is a very strange place because you can climb over sand dunes and suddenly you hear no traffic, you see no human activity, no building, no nothing, pure wilderness. It is also the site of very frequent thunder and lightning storms. So Im going to have Concrete walk into the sand dunes one night and be struck by lightning and get amnesia. Hell wake up, wont know who he is, where he is or what planet hes on. He doesnt understand why his hands are covered with stone and the story will be about the search for him. A scared, non-affable Concrete is a very dangerous thing. So it will be a suspense story, a complicated arty-poetic story and theyll be parallel stories with Maureen and the child.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
Maybe this will help to drag him out into the limelight a little!