Greg Rucka is the author of ten novels including the Atticus Kodiak series and two novels and a long-running comic book series about British spy Tara Chace. He has written hundreds of comic books including long runs on Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Wolverine. He is currently writing Detective Comics, which does not feature Batman but rather Batwoman, a character Rucka helped create. Next month a new series Stumptown about an Oregon-based private eye will debut from Oni Press.
Oni was the publisher who gave Rucka his first break in comics, the 1998 miniseries Whiteout. The comic has been made into the film Whiteout starring Kate Beckinsale and directed by Dominic Sena and is coming out Friday. Beckinsale plays Carrie Stetko, the U.S. Marshall in Antarctica who finds herself in the midst of a criminal conspiracy.
I talked to Rucka recently by phone to talk about the film and his other projects. Weve spoken numerous times over the years and our conversations always return to comics we love, gender politics, and Ruckas tendency to end (not to mention begin) his novels with horrible events happening to all his characters.
ALEX DUEBEN: Whiteout comes out Friday. Have you seen the film?
GREG RUCKA: Ive seen it and I think it is a perfectly reasonable adaptation of the source material. I think that anybody going into it expecting to encounter the graphic novel is somebody who deserves the disappointment they will undoubtedly be feeling. I mean what Lieber [Whiteout's artist] and I did was tell a good, or at least a reasonably good murder mystery given the medium. To make a movie is very different and I think they did a very admirable job of adapting some of the core elements of Whiteout into a screen story.
AD: It was made a while ago. I remember sitting down with you and the director Dominic Sena back in 2007 after the film had been shot.
GR: I have been told a bunch of reasons why they held off on the release. The most compelling one that was given to me was basically Warner Brothers inherited a whole bunch of movies from New Line and they didnt want to bring out all the murder mystery suspense thrillers at the same time which makes a certain amount of sense.
AD: Youre credited as an Executive Producer on the film, but what was your role in production and pre-production? Or did you have a role?
GR: It was nonexistent, really. I was granted a token executive producer credit. What ended up happening was that I got to go for a set visit and then ended up going a second time. When I went up the second time, I got invited to stay, and I stayed for about three weeks through the end of filming. I did some rewrites, as they were constantly reworking the script, so I was part of the process. But thats about it. It was never a movie that I wanted to write for the same reason that I personally never wanted to do it as a novel. To me it was always a graphic novel.
AD: Having spent those weeks on set, has that made you interested in doing more work in Hollywood or did you run back home grateful for being a novelist?
GR: I would love to do more in Hollywood. Its not as if Ive never worked in film and TV prior. It was the first time Id ever been on set for any duration. Boy, was that a learning experience. I used to be as opinionated as the next arrogant bastard to come along and after three weeks of Whiteout I left going, I will never again walk out of a movie going how could they make something so bad. I will forever be forced to walk out of a movie going how could they make anything that was good. Everything in the process is against them. Its kind of staggering.
AD: The book was released about a decade ago and its been in development pretty much ever since.
GR: It was optioned fairly quickly after it came out and the option lapsed and then someone else picked up the option and the option lapsed and someone else picked up the option. Lieber and I used to joke, nobody was ever going to make this thing but we were perfectly happy to keep cashing their checks. My agent called and said, Joel Silver wants to make Whiteout. I said, ha ha ha sure. She said no really. I said fine. Let me talk to Steve, Ill see what he says but I cant imagine hed have any problem with it. He said exactly what I said, sure knock yourself out. Why not? So I called my agent back and she called back that night and said Joels going to call you at 7:30 tomorrow before he flies to Berlin. And he called at 7:30 in the morning and says Greg were going to do Whiteout. I was like, great. He said, were making it this year. I said, all right. He said, excellent fantastic Ill talk to you later. That was it. The next thing I knew they were casting the thing and going into production on it. Im still a little stunned.
AD: Years of nothing and then a whirlwind of activity.
GR: As I said, we wrote a comic. We didnt write a comic so that some day someone would want to make a movie out of it. We wrote a comic because that was how we wanted to tell the story we wanted to tell. Steve and I were of a mind that the movies the movie and the comics the comic. It wasnt as if I was heavily invested in the thought of one day somebody will come and make a movie of this thing. Its exceptionally flattering but its fundamentally surreal right up to and including when you walk onto a set and see that theyve decorated it like its a Steve Lieber drawing. It does mess with your head a little bit. Youre like, wait a minute, that was a two dimensional black and white image. Whats it doing walking around and talking in color.
AD: In some comics circles having a movie made and a production deal is seen as lending their work respectability or credibility or something like that--
GR: Maybe Ill get some artistic credibility. (laughs) I think comics still struggle desperately for that. Its one of the reasons I tend to get a little annoyed when I hear creators talking, well we did it as a comic so we could sell it as a movie. Thats always seemed to me essentially crass. You work with people who have a respect for the medium. My first comic book project was Whiteout and the first collaboration I had in the medium was with Steve Lieber. One of the things I learned from him really early on was that youve got to treat the form with respect because nobody else is. Ive got nothing against somebody coming along and saying, lets make a movie. Thats great. It really is. If it brings more attention to the work, even better. If its a good movie, even better. We wrote a comic. That was the way we wanted to tell the story and that was the story we told. And Im perfectly content with that.
AD: You and Steve Lieber have both talked about doing a third Whiteout miniseries, Whiteout: Thaw. Are you still planning to do that?
GR: Steves drawn the first issue and the first seven pages of the second and the reason hes only drawn the first seven pages of the second is because thats all Ive written. Thats entirely my fault and it comes down to a couple of things. He and I had a discussion about that. I dont want to write something just for the sake of writing it and I dont think he wants to draw something simply for the sake of drawing it. There really was a question of balancing the other work commitments with wanting to create a product of quality rather than a product that I was just rushing to get done so it would have synergy with the movie. Were going to do a third one. It will be the third one that we have always planned on doing, but it will probably be another year before it comes out.
AD: Since were talking about comics, thats a great segue into your new comic Stumptown. What exactly is Stumptown?
GR: Stumptown is my homage to The Rockford Files. I grew up on private eye stories. That was really how I came into writing was writing P.I. stories, or at least trying to. For a really long time Id wanted to do a series that would feel to me like a modernization of what you got when you watched Garner in The Rockford Files. That it was a show that was less about mystery than it was about the detective and those characters and that characters life. Its drawn by Matt Southworth. Its going to be colored by Lee Loughridge.
AD: And it features a female private eye.
GR: Write what you know.
AD: I read the first issue and its a fabulous character piece with a pretty simple starting point where shes down on her luck and gets hired to find a missing girl and gets roughed up and finds something is going on but hasnt figured out what yet.
GR: Im not trying to reinvent the wheel. Im just trying to streamline it and put modern rims on it.
AD: What is it about female characters in traditionally male roles that you find so compelling?
GR: Ugh.
AD: This is a question youve answered too many times over the years?
GR: It is a question I get so often and it is a question that I find very difficult to answer. I suppose the fundamental is that I like women. I like writing about female characters. I think I probably identify more with women than I do with men. But there are also I think dramatic dividends. You yourself just said shes hired to find the missing girl and she gets roughed up and these are all tropes of the genre but theyre all tropes that normally happen to a male protagonist. I think once you play with the genders you find yourself with different dramatic opportunities and different dramatic dividends. I think Im doing it now mostly because Im pretty good at it. I dont write exclusively women. It really does come to whos the character. Is the character male or female. Is the character married or single. Is the character straight or queer. Are they religious? These are all character questions. I dont know if thats a good answer.
AD: Do you think the same story and the same beats in a story become novel by changing the gender of the character?
GR: I think so. Gender politics affects everything we do every day. Gender politics feeds directly into sexual politics and were all hard-wired for sex whether we want to be or not. It is encoded deep in the DNA. As socialized and civilized creatures, all that is troubling but its still something that we effectively deal with every day. Im not saying its overt and Im not saying it needs to be the thing that drives everybody but its present and it does affect how we act. Basically Im just exploring that on different levels.
AD: And we respond to violence differently when its a male protagonist than with a female protagonist.
GR: The idea of strong female characters who can negotiate traditionally testosterone-y violent situations, I find that cool. I liked it in Queen and Country with Chace, I liked it with Carrie in Whiteout, I like it with Dex in Stumptown. Dex doesnt swagger. She never walks around going Im the toughest person here, shes very much a gambler. The Marlowe line about being willing to take what brains the good lord has given him and a willingness to get roughed up on behalf of a client. Ive always liked that as a private eye mantra.
AD: Your other big project at the moment is Detective Comics which you wrote earlier in the decade way back when Batman was in the book.
GR: Way back when in 2000. Yeah. Now in Detective Comics is Batwoman. And Im writing Action Comics and Supermans nowhere to be found. Im trying not to take it as a referendum on DCs opinion of me. But yeah Kate Kane is Batwoman and shes heading up Detective Comics at least for the time being.
AD: For people who might not know, who exactly is Batwoman and why has she taken over DCs flagship title?
GR: Shes taking over the flagship book because Batman died. Meaning that no fan actually believes hes dead and even the publisher is not trying to convince anybody hes dead, but characters in the Batman universe believe he is dead. Batwoman is a woman named Kate Kane. Shes in her late twenties. Why shes there and why shes doing what shes doing are questions that weve yet to answer. Weve got our fourth issue coming out this month and that will complete our first story arc and following that we will finally tell the origin story for the character which will explain why a perfectly reasonable young lady decides to dress up as a bat at night and kick people in the teeth. (laughs) And of course the thing that youre really asking is, shes gay. And yes she she is.
AD: I wasnt actually going to bring up her sexuality. I thought it would be a novel experience for you to get asked about the character without going, so, lesbian superhero?
GR: How terribly professional of you. (laughs) But yeah Kates queer and shes designed that way if that makes sense. When the character was proposed one of the things that was proposed was that we were going to introduce a character into the Bat family whos a superhero and who is a homosexual from the beginning. Its not going to be a shocking realization or an after school special. It will be simply a matter of character as much as anything else is.
AD: As much as you may hate being asked about it, and the way its being asked, I know from our conversations over the years that you really push to have a greater diversity of voices and characters and believe that a fictional universe should bear some resemblance to the real world.
GR: Absolutely. It needs to be representational. Look, I write suspense thrillers but that doesnt mean that I dont think of them as anti-art or even sub-art. Hidden deep within my material, to me at least, is an artistic agenda. One of the things I think we are obligated to do as artists is to reflect the world around us. The world around us is not white and straight. Its much bigger and broader than that. I think that if you want any sense of verisimilitude in your work and for certainly emotional resonance you need that verisimilitude then youve got to be representational.
AD: We would be remiss if we didnt mention your collaborator on the book, the great artist J.H. Williams III.
GR: Who I really feel is breaking new ground in what can be done on a comic book page and how a story can be told. I think he is a phenomenal talent and an honest to god true artist.
AD: I know youre working on a new novel for next year but Im not sure if you want to say anything about it.
GR: The new novel is the new Chace novel which should be out around this time next year. Its called The Last Run. Its the story of Taras last job in the field. Shes been working in the special operations office for several years now and she actually has a line in it, at this point if theres an intelligence agency in the world that doesnt know how I am its because theyre not bloody trying. Theres some truth to that. This is her saying Ive got a daughter, shes turning five I need a desk job. Then a job comes in and the politics conspire because the prize is so big that youve got to send her. She goes and of course, things go horribly, horribly wrong. (laughs) As you might expect.
Oni was the publisher who gave Rucka his first break in comics, the 1998 miniseries Whiteout. The comic has been made into the film Whiteout starring Kate Beckinsale and directed by Dominic Sena and is coming out Friday. Beckinsale plays Carrie Stetko, the U.S. Marshall in Antarctica who finds herself in the midst of a criminal conspiracy.
I talked to Rucka recently by phone to talk about the film and his other projects. Weve spoken numerous times over the years and our conversations always return to comics we love, gender politics, and Ruckas tendency to end (not to mention begin) his novels with horrible events happening to all his characters.
ALEX DUEBEN: Whiteout comes out Friday. Have you seen the film?
GREG RUCKA: Ive seen it and I think it is a perfectly reasonable adaptation of the source material. I think that anybody going into it expecting to encounter the graphic novel is somebody who deserves the disappointment they will undoubtedly be feeling. I mean what Lieber [Whiteout's artist] and I did was tell a good, or at least a reasonably good murder mystery given the medium. To make a movie is very different and I think they did a very admirable job of adapting some of the core elements of Whiteout into a screen story.
AD: It was made a while ago. I remember sitting down with you and the director Dominic Sena back in 2007 after the film had been shot.
GR: I have been told a bunch of reasons why they held off on the release. The most compelling one that was given to me was basically Warner Brothers inherited a whole bunch of movies from New Line and they didnt want to bring out all the murder mystery suspense thrillers at the same time which makes a certain amount of sense.
AD: Youre credited as an Executive Producer on the film, but what was your role in production and pre-production? Or did you have a role?
GR: It was nonexistent, really. I was granted a token executive producer credit. What ended up happening was that I got to go for a set visit and then ended up going a second time. When I went up the second time, I got invited to stay, and I stayed for about three weeks through the end of filming. I did some rewrites, as they were constantly reworking the script, so I was part of the process. But thats about it. It was never a movie that I wanted to write for the same reason that I personally never wanted to do it as a novel. To me it was always a graphic novel.
AD: Having spent those weeks on set, has that made you interested in doing more work in Hollywood or did you run back home grateful for being a novelist?
GR: I would love to do more in Hollywood. Its not as if Ive never worked in film and TV prior. It was the first time Id ever been on set for any duration. Boy, was that a learning experience. I used to be as opinionated as the next arrogant bastard to come along and after three weeks of Whiteout I left going, I will never again walk out of a movie going how could they make something so bad. I will forever be forced to walk out of a movie going how could they make anything that was good. Everything in the process is against them. Its kind of staggering.
AD: The book was released about a decade ago and its been in development pretty much ever since.
GR: It was optioned fairly quickly after it came out and the option lapsed and then someone else picked up the option and the option lapsed and someone else picked up the option. Lieber and I used to joke, nobody was ever going to make this thing but we were perfectly happy to keep cashing their checks. My agent called and said, Joel Silver wants to make Whiteout. I said, ha ha ha sure. She said no really. I said fine. Let me talk to Steve, Ill see what he says but I cant imagine hed have any problem with it. He said exactly what I said, sure knock yourself out. Why not? So I called my agent back and she called back that night and said Joels going to call you at 7:30 tomorrow before he flies to Berlin. And he called at 7:30 in the morning and says Greg were going to do Whiteout. I was like, great. He said, were making it this year. I said, all right. He said, excellent fantastic Ill talk to you later. That was it. The next thing I knew they were casting the thing and going into production on it. Im still a little stunned.
AD: Years of nothing and then a whirlwind of activity.
GR: As I said, we wrote a comic. We didnt write a comic so that some day someone would want to make a movie out of it. We wrote a comic because that was how we wanted to tell the story we wanted to tell. Steve and I were of a mind that the movies the movie and the comics the comic. It wasnt as if I was heavily invested in the thought of one day somebody will come and make a movie of this thing. Its exceptionally flattering but its fundamentally surreal right up to and including when you walk onto a set and see that theyve decorated it like its a Steve Lieber drawing. It does mess with your head a little bit. Youre like, wait a minute, that was a two dimensional black and white image. Whats it doing walking around and talking in color.
AD: In some comics circles having a movie made and a production deal is seen as lending their work respectability or credibility or something like that--
GR: Maybe Ill get some artistic credibility. (laughs) I think comics still struggle desperately for that. Its one of the reasons I tend to get a little annoyed when I hear creators talking, well we did it as a comic so we could sell it as a movie. Thats always seemed to me essentially crass. You work with people who have a respect for the medium. My first comic book project was Whiteout and the first collaboration I had in the medium was with Steve Lieber. One of the things I learned from him really early on was that youve got to treat the form with respect because nobody else is. Ive got nothing against somebody coming along and saying, lets make a movie. Thats great. It really is. If it brings more attention to the work, even better. If its a good movie, even better. We wrote a comic. That was the way we wanted to tell the story and that was the story we told. And Im perfectly content with that.
AD: You and Steve Lieber have both talked about doing a third Whiteout miniseries, Whiteout: Thaw. Are you still planning to do that?
GR: Steves drawn the first issue and the first seven pages of the second and the reason hes only drawn the first seven pages of the second is because thats all Ive written. Thats entirely my fault and it comes down to a couple of things. He and I had a discussion about that. I dont want to write something just for the sake of writing it and I dont think he wants to draw something simply for the sake of drawing it. There really was a question of balancing the other work commitments with wanting to create a product of quality rather than a product that I was just rushing to get done so it would have synergy with the movie. Were going to do a third one. It will be the third one that we have always planned on doing, but it will probably be another year before it comes out.
AD: Since were talking about comics, thats a great segue into your new comic Stumptown. What exactly is Stumptown?
GR: Stumptown is my homage to The Rockford Files. I grew up on private eye stories. That was really how I came into writing was writing P.I. stories, or at least trying to. For a really long time Id wanted to do a series that would feel to me like a modernization of what you got when you watched Garner in The Rockford Files. That it was a show that was less about mystery than it was about the detective and those characters and that characters life. Its drawn by Matt Southworth. Its going to be colored by Lee Loughridge.
AD: And it features a female private eye.
GR: Write what you know.
AD: I read the first issue and its a fabulous character piece with a pretty simple starting point where shes down on her luck and gets hired to find a missing girl and gets roughed up and finds something is going on but hasnt figured out what yet.
GR: Im not trying to reinvent the wheel. Im just trying to streamline it and put modern rims on it.
AD: What is it about female characters in traditionally male roles that you find so compelling?
GR: Ugh.
AD: This is a question youve answered too many times over the years?
GR: It is a question I get so often and it is a question that I find very difficult to answer. I suppose the fundamental is that I like women. I like writing about female characters. I think I probably identify more with women than I do with men. But there are also I think dramatic dividends. You yourself just said shes hired to find the missing girl and she gets roughed up and these are all tropes of the genre but theyre all tropes that normally happen to a male protagonist. I think once you play with the genders you find yourself with different dramatic opportunities and different dramatic dividends. I think Im doing it now mostly because Im pretty good at it. I dont write exclusively women. It really does come to whos the character. Is the character male or female. Is the character married or single. Is the character straight or queer. Are they religious? These are all character questions. I dont know if thats a good answer.
AD: Do you think the same story and the same beats in a story become novel by changing the gender of the character?
GR: I think so. Gender politics affects everything we do every day. Gender politics feeds directly into sexual politics and were all hard-wired for sex whether we want to be or not. It is encoded deep in the DNA. As socialized and civilized creatures, all that is troubling but its still something that we effectively deal with every day. Im not saying its overt and Im not saying it needs to be the thing that drives everybody but its present and it does affect how we act. Basically Im just exploring that on different levels.
AD: And we respond to violence differently when its a male protagonist than with a female protagonist.
GR: The idea of strong female characters who can negotiate traditionally testosterone-y violent situations, I find that cool. I liked it in Queen and Country with Chace, I liked it with Carrie in Whiteout, I like it with Dex in Stumptown. Dex doesnt swagger. She never walks around going Im the toughest person here, shes very much a gambler. The Marlowe line about being willing to take what brains the good lord has given him and a willingness to get roughed up on behalf of a client. Ive always liked that as a private eye mantra.
AD: Your other big project at the moment is Detective Comics which you wrote earlier in the decade way back when Batman was in the book.
GR: Way back when in 2000. Yeah. Now in Detective Comics is Batwoman. And Im writing Action Comics and Supermans nowhere to be found. Im trying not to take it as a referendum on DCs opinion of me. But yeah Kate Kane is Batwoman and shes heading up Detective Comics at least for the time being.
AD: For people who might not know, who exactly is Batwoman and why has she taken over DCs flagship title?
GR: Shes taking over the flagship book because Batman died. Meaning that no fan actually believes hes dead and even the publisher is not trying to convince anybody hes dead, but characters in the Batman universe believe he is dead. Batwoman is a woman named Kate Kane. Shes in her late twenties. Why shes there and why shes doing what shes doing are questions that weve yet to answer. Weve got our fourth issue coming out this month and that will complete our first story arc and following that we will finally tell the origin story for the character which will explain why a perfectly reasonable young lady decides to dress up as a bat at night and kick people in the teeth. (laughs) And of course the thing that youre really asking is, shes gay. And yes she she is.
AD: I wasnt actually going to bring up her sexuality. I thought it would be a novel experience for you to get asked about the character without going, so, lesbian superhero?
GR: How terribly professional of you. (laughs) But yeah Kates queer and shes designed that way if that makes sense. When the character was proposed one of the things that was proposed was that we were going to introduce a character into the Bat family whos a superhero and who is a homosexual from the beginning. Its not going to be a shocking realization or an after school special. It will be simply a matter of character as much as anything else is.
AD: As much as you may hate being asked about it, and the way its being asked, I know from our conversations over the years that you really push to have a greater diversity of voices and characters and believe that a fictional universe should bear some resemblance to the real world.
GR: Absolutely. It needs to be representational. Look, I write suspense thrillers but that doesnt mean that I dont think of them as anti-art or even sub-art. Hidden deep within my material, to me at least, is an artistic agenda. One of the things I think we are obligated to do as artists is to reflect the world around us. The world around us is not white and straight. Its much bigger and broader than that. I think that if you want any sense of verisimilitude in your work and for certainly emotional resonance you need that verisimilitude then youve got to be representational.
AD: We would be remiss if we didnt mention your collaborator on the book, the great artist J.H. Williams III.
GR: Who I really feel is breaking new ground in what can be done on a comic book page and how a story can be told. I think he is a phenomenal talent and an honest to god true artist.
AD: I know youre working on a new novel for next year but Im not sure if you want to say anything about it.
GR: The new novel is the new Chace novel which should be out around this time next year. Its called The Last Run. Its the story of Taras last job in the field. Shes been working in the special operations office for several years now and she actually has a line in it, at this point if theres an intelligence agency in the world that doesnt know how I am its because theyre not bloody trying. Theres some truth to that. This is her saying Ive got a daughter, shes turning five I need a desk job. Then a job comes in and the politics conspire because the prize is so big that youve got to send her. She goes and of course, things go horribly, horribly wrong. (laughs) As you might expect.
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
...but that's a big part of why it was just okay. given the film's $5.1M opening weekend and the glut of comments on this thread, i'm going to assume nobody cares enough to be bothered by the lack of spoilers.
the first thing i noticed was that there were a lot of chicks. having never been to Antarctica, i couldn't tell you how accurate the comic was, but one thing it stressed was the low ratio of women to men, and how that affected the social dynamic.
ironically, the one place in the story where there was another chick besides Stetko, they put in a dude. i swear, movie makers make Glenn Beck look like a hippie liberal--god forbid you cast a strong female lead and a female co-star. movie audiences won't know what to do!
they also chickened out on Stetko's backstory. i swear, George Lucas's neck has taken over the whole industry. you can't have the protagonist just straight out kill someone in a movie--it always has to be self-defense. the other guy always has to be going for his gun. Stetko's backstory in the comic made her simultaneously stronger and more vulnerable: stronger because her actions were her choice, and more vulnerable because her actions were arguably the wrong choice. there's depth there that the movie chooses to reject.
there were other things. for instance, how the hell did Price get out to Vostok? teleport? Stetko has to virtually shanghai a pilot to get her out there before the storm hits, and Price just shows up with no means of transportation--he has to hitch a ride out with Stetko and her pilot, for chrissake. the hell, man. they even chickened out on Stetko's frostbite--in the movie, she lost the last two fingers on her left hand instead of the first two on her right.
overall, it was a decent location-based thriller, but that's all it was. it lacked the strong and interesting characterization of the source material--which was, to me, what made the comic good.