MattBrady
11-27-2002, 05:31 PM
In a little over three years, Geoff Johns has gone from being a newbie writer at DC to one of the hottest guys tapping on a keyboard. Recently, he’s given up his job with Richard Donner in Hollywood to work on comics virtually full time, which, considering that he’s writing or co-writing Flash, Hawkman, JSA, Avengers, and a few other small projects, ain’t a bad deal. Newsarama caught up with Johns for a chat about…well, everything.
Newsarama: Just in talking about your series alone, there’s a lot to cover - let’s dive right in and start with Flash - you’ve been on the book for a fairly long time now – does it still give the same rush it did as with the first issues?
Geoff Johns: Oh yeah. If anything, it’s almost more fun right now. When Scott got on the book, that’s when everything gelled. Scott and I talked through ideas through #200. I knew already what I wanted #200 to be, so we figured it out, and now I’m writing the script to #196, and I’m psyched, because I’m into the storyline that leads up to #200, and I can’t wait to get there.
NRAMA: That’s right – you and Scott do work pretty far ahead of schedule…
GJ: Yeah, we do. I like to stay ahead on all my books because if something happens in a month, there’s no panic, and you don’t have to churn things out if it’s a hard story. For example, the issue of Avengers I’m on right now – it’s going to take me a lot longer to write than a normal script would, and I can take the extra time on it, and really make it kick ass.
NRAMA: With the process on Flash - how rigid is that? Do stories still surprise you if they come up while you’re working on something else?
GJ: Oh yeah – there’s stuff that happens all the time. There are other stories, like the Piper story that come up suddenly and we can shift things over an issue and take one out, and slot one in. Things like that happen all the time, but our general direction is still the same. So, it’s a flexible road – not set in stone, but we know the direction, our end point, and a lot of specific scenes along the way. It’s a matter of figuring out the best way of tying things together organically and letting it flow.
There are always surprises that happen. One of the bigger ones, early on came with issue #170. I had the whole arc planned out, and it wasn’t until the last pages of the script that I thought we could throw a kid in there who might be Wally’s. That came right when I was writing the scene, and everybody wanted to know what I was doing with it. I took a day, and figured it out, and made a few changes to accommodate it.
NRAMA: So it was a cliffhanger to you and to readers…
GJ: Yeah – I love cliffhangers, and in a monthly book you want them. I know the shift is to collect issues into trades, but I still like writing for the monthly audience – that’s my favorite.
NRAMA: Speaking of the child in #170, and using that to leap frog over to the Rogue’s Gallery – you’ve revitalized the Rogues, set up a solid status quo that encompasses the characters and the city. For all intents and purposes, the book is yours – everything you’re playing with has elements of something you established, pretty much. Does that change the tenor of the stories you tell, or open any new avenues?
GJ: Oh – there are millions of directions we can go. We’ve been leading up to this point for a while – there’s a major bomb that goes off in #200. I won’t say what though. Everything will change, and everything will be the same at the same time – if that makes sense. #200 is going to throw a lot of people for a loop, I think. It’s still a year off, so I don’t really like talking too much about it, but it will be a double-sized issue, and it will send us off in a whole new direction. It’ll be a lot of fun.
NRAMA: Speaking again about the Rogues, you’ve become known for reestablishing them as a deadly group of villains, but you’re still keeping them believable. Your revamps aren’t really amping power levels or adding fancy new armor. Theses are guys who’ve been revamps before, but yours seem to ring true – is there a key element to each revamp, such as adding a human anchor to each character?
GJ: That’s exactly it – you have to add a human hook to each character. It could be something as simple as the new Trickster, who before he pulls a job, goes and buys a Kit Kat and a Coke. If you have that moment where he’s goofing around or whatever, that’s a tiny, tiny thing, but it humanizes him, and it makes the character a little more real.
And then you can go on the extreme of it, where you really get inside characters heads, like with Captain Cold, who I think is a great character because he walks just that side of the “bad” line. He’s in no man’s land, but he steps over into the bad guy territory with every other step. At first glance, he’s goofy as hell, but then when you start to see what makes him tick, what his character is about, and how smart and confident he is, it’s a lot of fun.
But it is finding that human anchor – trying to explore them a little more than having the Weather Wizard wanting to zap the Flash with a bolt of lightning.
Using Weather Wizard as an example, if you look at his origin, he got this wand from his brother who’s dead. He was at the scene, and I haven’t gotten into his background, but whenever I write him, my whole thing is that he got there first – maybe he did kill his brother for the wand. That’s sort of been left unestablished – we don’t know that yet, but the thing is he doesn’t know.
In my mind, he did kill his brother, but he’s told himself that he didn’t do that, and he hasn’t forgiven himself for that, and he doesn’t believe in forgiveness, so he’s damned. He’s done bad things, and he’s damned. His life’s been wasted because he can’t be forgiven.
NRAMA: So, by putting the key human component in there, it makes the character much more usable and long-lived than a costume or radical personality change, right?
GJ: Yeah. Why should I want to make Captain Cold into a guy that wants to turn the world into an ice age? That’s not what he’s about. It’s much more interesting to have him do what he does because he likes living hand to mouth. He likes it – he likes getting money, blowing it all on booze and women. To him, it gives him a feeling of power and self-worth. To be able to walk into a hotel with a hooker on each arm, and blow two grand in a night? He loves that. He’s not worried about where the next cash is coming from – he’ll find it.
But that’s what takes him away from missing his sister or having a shitty childhood – he jumps into the deep end of the pool.
NRAMA: Moving on to a topic closer to Wally, and something that most likely plays into your future plans – it was revealed that Linda is pregnant in Flash #188. Flash wives don’t have good histories with pregnancies…anything you’d like to add?
GJ: Not a word. No hints. That’s part of the story, and I don’t even want to touch on it.
NRAMA: In both The Kingdom, and other appearances, it’s been established that, at least in one future of the DCU, Wally’s kids are Iris and Barry West, with Iris taking the Flash mantle to become the Kingdom Come era Kid Flash.
With the, or at least a future already written for Wally’s kids, do you lose some element of surprise of Wally and Linda having a baby, or is this a case of, as Mark Waid always puts it, “giving readers what they want, but not what they expect?” Or do you chuck the Kingdom continuity altogether?
GJ: As I said before, I don’t really want to talk about it…but there are some clues in the Kingdom series. Look at that family tree again.
NRAMA: Fair enough. Looking at the immediate future of Flash, what can you say about “Run Riot” which kicks off in #192?
GJ: It’s three parts, and is basically builds on what we did in Iron Heights. Gorilla Grodd breaks out – or Grodd tries to break out, and Flash has to go in and try to stop him. Of course, at the same time Hunter, our resident rogue profiler, gets trapped with the warden in the bowels of the prison.
NRAMA: The first time you used Grodd, the issue was very well received as – of course – a very cool re-interpretation/revitalization of the character. His threat level seemed to be away from a smart, talking, Superfiriends-style ape and more towards a Jurassic Park raptor in terms of raw power and the fear he would cause. What is it about Grodd that clicks with you as a writer?
GJ: Well – if you run into an angry bear in the woods, you’d be scared. This is a gorilla that’s four times the size of a bear, can talk, and can project images of your intestines wrapped around your throat inside your head while he’s beating the shit out of you. That’s scary. That’s not someone to take lightly.
It’s also not like Grodd is a serial killer or anything else – he’s an animal. And remember – in his last appearance, he was drugged and disoriented.
NRAMA: So he’s on a completely different plane of thought, then, more toward instinct, a place where morals and ethics really don’t carry much weight – or even exist?
GJ: Right – Flash can’t even get inside his head or figure out why he does what he does. If you set Grodd off the wrong way, it’s ten times worse than making Wolverine mad. He doesn’t even have to touch you to destroy you – he can just think about it. At the same time, he can rip you in half. He’s the closest Flash has to an actual monster that he fights, and it’s cool because you can go from one extreme to the next. On one level, Grodd can be sitting there, planning some huge plot against Gorilla City or how to escape from Iron Heights, but at the same time, his primitive instincts are laced within there, so every thought is jumbled and directed by those instincts. His intellect comes into conflict with his bloodlust with every thought.
NRAMA: Moving through the rest of your DCU projects – you’re on for a stint as the regular Superman writer. Was there a consideration to stay on as the regular writer when Jeph told you he was leaving?
GJ: Very briefly. But in the end it was better to just do four issues.
NRAMA: It seems as though Superman is a character that can possibly trick writers into thinking he’s easy to write until they’ve written that one story they had in their head. Would writing Superman monthly be something you could see yourself being able to do from that standpoint?
GJ: Yeah, because with the second issue I wrote, I found my theme for Superman – patriotism without government. I could explore that for years, because that to me, is what Superman is all about. It’s not anti-government. When you say you’re a patriot, that doesn’t mean that you support everything the government is doing, it means that you believe in America, and you believe in the people and the efforts of a lot of people. Superman stands up for this, and is one of the people who are trying to make the country a better place – the perfect country that everyone wants to believe it is. To me, that’s a great theme.
I love America – I’m a pretty big patriot, but at the same time, we have a lot of problems, and you can’t just ignore them and say the country is perfect. I think it’s the best place to live in the world, but we still have to keep things evolving and moving forward. To make a long story short, once I found my theme for Superman – no problem. That’s how I work on a book – I have to find a theme that I can grab on to.
NRAMA: Speaking of themes, and continuing round-robin with the DCU, what’s you’re theme that holds you to JSA? Is it still something that’s strong enough to hold your interest through issues #40 and beyond?
GJ: David and I have a plan through #50, and then he’s taking his leave of the book, so he can concentrate on film projects. I’m going to continue on solo, because I’ve got at least two arcs that I really want to tell, so I’ll be on the book longer than David.
NRAMA: So what’s the hook?
GJ: Legacy. The characters that are trying to continue on with the JSA’s legacy, and inspire other heroes to continue on. The heroes themselves are trying to become better heroes, too – Jakeem Thunder had a huge character arc in “Stealing Thunder.” Rick Tyler had a huge leap that was off-panel, but we’ll see more of as he’s trying to become a true hero. The same with Star Spangled Kid, and Mr. Terrific, who I think is one of my favorite characters to write in comics. A lot of the se characters are fantastic, like Sentinel, Hawkman and Flash – you can’t get any better than that. These are the guys that started it, these are the guys that showed everybody else how to be heroes, and are still showing everybody how to be heroes. That’s why the theme is legacy – it’s the easiest theme to come up with for any group in the DC Universe – it’s an extension of what this team already does.
In a way, comic books are history, and whether we believe it or not, we’re continuing a part of a legacy, just like Mark Waid added his legacy to Flash, I’m trying to add mine while respecting everything that came before. Hopefully whoever comes on to my books after I’m gone will make it bigger, better, and build on everything that’s come before. I guess the idea of legacy resonates in my whole feelings about comic books. That’s why JSA is a great book to write and wok on – it resonates with what comics, and really life, is all about.
NRAMA: You and David have enjoyed praise from all points for your work on JSA, and along with that comes the expectation that you won’t drop the ball. Does it ever become an issue of feeling like you’re writing in a fishbowl, with everyone watching?
GJ: It does and it doesn’t. JSA went from a book that no one was talking about to a book that everyone was talking about, and I find in this business, you’re either overrated or you’re underrated. There’s no middle ground. So, you just keep going and try to do your best. The sales have steadily gone up on JSA, but there will be people who the book is just not for them, but hopefully, we’ll be able to find more readers who have heard about it and want to give it a try. That’s all we can do – your best. I just try to do my best on everything I do.
NRAMA: Following on what you had mentioned in Chicago – a time-travel story is coming up, right?
GJ: Yup – issues #41 through #44, although #41 is set in the present day, and #42 - #44 are the time travel issues, but it’s all linked together. Short but sweet.
NRAMA: You’ve revealed that the new villainess Roulette is the daughter of the former JSA’er, Terry Sloane, Mr. Terrific. You’ve mentioned that she’ll be showing up in Keith Giffen’s Formerly Known as the Justice League miniseries – is that just a short-term loan, or have you washed your hands of her, and she’s his to play with now?
GJ: Keith’s told me what he’s going to do with her, and a couple of things that he’s going to add to her arsenal, which I thought were great, so he’ll do his thing, and be done. When we get back to her, we’ll get back to her.
NRAMA: Any other teases for JSA you care to share?
GJ: Mordru and Obsidian.
NRAMA: Together?
GJ: Yeah. They’re coming back for the big arc leading up to #50. We’re working on the mechanics of that arc right now, and it’s going to shake the team up dramatically. I’m really, really looking forward to it. Sentinel and Dr. Fate will get most of the spotlight but the whole team will be in full swing.
NRAMA: With as much as you’ve said about legacy being a theme of JSA, with a mention of Dr. Fate, and thinking back to Hawkman, along with a lot of other characters, it’s pretty clear that family plays a roll as an overall theme as well, right?
GJ: Oh yeah. They’re intertwined – family by blood, by step-parents, or by really good friends. The team is family, but not just by blood. For example, with Stars and Stripe - one of my big things was to show that a step-father can be good, and even possibly better than a biological father. Step-parents, in-laws and your extended family can be more important to you than your regular family.
NRAMA: Moving over to your final DC series – what’s the theme of Hawkman?
GJ: Love lasts forever – the most obvious theme in the world.
NRAMA: Whoa – so it’s not all boys’ adventure with wings?
GJ: Nope – it’s a love story. If you look at it, and take away all the fighting, it’s a love story. Take issue #6 and lift all the action out, you have Hawkman going out and trying to get over Kendra, who he has loved forever. That’s the meat of the book, and comes into play in the next six issues.
NRAMA: With that as a theme – it seems that you’re setting up almost a Moonlighting-style of anticipation with the sexual tension, where you can’t draw the Carter/Kendra heartache out forever, yet if you hook them up, you’ll lose a quality of the book. How do you get over that hurdle?
GJ: It’s not like the relationship is going to stagnate. It takes a major turn in issue #12. Well, it takes a major turn in issue #9, and then another turn in issue #12. We’ve got a lot of cool stuff other than just the relationship coming up in Hawkman - I’m really, really proud of it. The Atom is in #8, and that’s kind of the reverse of the Green Arrow appearance, where we look at why these two heroes are such good friends. We’ll make that pretty clear.
NRAMA: Gut level – what’s the attraction of the character for you?
GJ: To me, Hawkman is one of the best characters in the DCU, because he’s the most bipolar character I’ve ever worked on. When he has his helmet on, he remembers all his warrior lives, and remembers everything else, and is just in battle mode. But then, he can take it off, get dressed up, go out to a restaurant, and order the best food and wine. He loves art, history and culture, because he remembers it. It’s nostalgia to him. Seeing an artifact from 2000 years ago is nostalgia.
NRAMA: So for him, seeing a Greek statue is like a thirtysomething Star Wars fan seeing an original R2-D2 mint on the card, and remembering about how he first saw it at the local five and dime in 1977?
GJ: Exactly – it’s us with Transformers. That makes him a great character, but at the same time, he’s tough for others to understand, because he seems so moody. He goes from one extreme to another, and not a lot of people can relate to that, or figure that out.
NRAMA: To get all touchy-feely then, does that make him lonely in a way?
GJ: In a way. He has no one to relate to anymore. He used to be able to relate to Shiera, but without anyone else to say to him, “I understand what it’s like, and what you’re going through,” it’s tough. At the same time, the reason that Hawkman is doing what he’s doing, saving lives and trying to make this world a better place on any level he can, is that he knows how short life is. All his lives flash before his eyes like a filmstrip – they seem so short and so brief. He understands how precious life is, which is why he wants to preserve it so much. He’s a great character.
NRAMA: Winding down with your series, and jumping companies, let’s talk Avengers. Your team is one of the more racial mixed in a little while – was that something you set out to do from the start?
GJ: It’s not like I set out to do a new racial mixture of the team – I just like Falcon and Black Panther a lot. They’re good characters. Kurt did such a great job with some of these lesser tier characters, like Firestar and Justice. He did a brilliant character arc with Firestar, so let’s let her rest for a little bit, and I can try to do something similar with Ant-Man and Falcon. Let me try and turn them into really cool Avengers. I don’t remember the time someone said that Falcon was cool – I’m going to try and make him cool and interesting. That’s a really big challenge and something I don’t take lightly – you can’t just have him kick someone in the face and suddenly he’s cool. You really have to get inside their head and figure out what he’s doing. You’ve got to show the readers why he’s different and why they should care about him.
It’s the same with Jack of Hearts. I’m actually really getting into Jack of Hearts, and at first he wasn’t even going to be on the team. But when we couldn’t get another character, Tom [Brevoort] suggested that we use Jack, and the more I thought about him, the more I realized what I wanted to do with him, and now I know every step Jack is going to take…and some won’t be pleasant.
NRAMA: Together with Kurt, you have given Jack of Hearts the most face time he’s seen in probably fifteen years…
GJ: I think so. The issue in December that Gary Frank is drawing; half of it is just Jack of Hearts. Whether people like that or not, we’ll see – hopefully they will.
NRAMA: With both JSA and Avengers, you’ve got the dynamic where you have established characters to use, but at the same time, either new or underutilized characters that have lots of room and flexibility. Is that almost a formula of sorts that you stick to?
GJ: I think that you need to do that, otherwise, I would be writing about characters that I couldn’t do anything with, and that’s not interesting to me if I can’t make a character grow or change – either for better or for worse. If I can’t do that, then it’s not interesting for me to write. Plus, I love taking characters that have been around for forty years and haven’t really had that much screen time and working with them, because people recognize them, but they don’t know them. Spend some time on them, and people realize that they are interesting characters after all. I like doing that with all the characters I work on.
NRAMA: Who’s the heart of your Avengers? Is there one single character that’s the team’s heart and soul, such as the Martian Manhunter is with the JLA?
GJ: There is one, but I’m not going to say who, because I’m doing quite a bit with them and making it very evident. So – yes, there is a “heart” of the team.
NRAMA: Interpersonal relationships have always played a large part in the Avengers - who and what dynamics are you looking forward to playing with?
GJ: Oh, Black Panther is the best guy to add in the world. The first time he joined the Avengers, he only did it to spy on them. Now, everybody knows that. How fun is that going to be? He’s always a step ahead of everybody else, something that Cap doesn’t seem to mind, as long as he knows where he’s going, but Iron Man hates it. Tony Stark is supposed to be a step ahead of everyone, but Panther’s about a half-step in front of him. There are some things that Panther does in #59 that really sets Iron Man off, and Panther just continues to pull this stuff on him, and at the end of the day, some of it is for the betterment of the team, but it’s also going to be a bit hard for some of the Avengers to figure out why the Panther is doing what he’s doing.
There’s a great dynamic in the avengers because you have several alpha personalities. A lot of them are natural leaders like Captain America, Iron Man, Black Panther, Wasp and Warbird.
NRAMA: Anyone else coming up on the roster that will shake things up on the interpersonal level?
GJ: Oh yeah - someone is going to make their presence known shortly, and that’s all I’ll say. But he’ll cause a stir. A lot of people are going to be happy next year.
For me though, that’s what Avengers is all about. You look at the best eras of Avengers, and it’s always about the interpersonal with the big conflicts, and that’s what I’m trying to do, while still having intense action brewing in the background.
NRAMA: And your theme for the book?
GJ: It’s trust. It’s trust between the world and the Avengers and trust between the individual members themselves.
NRAMA: Is writing a team such as Avengers which is set in the “real,” or real-ish world and has political ties in any way more difficult than a book such as JSA where it seems there may be fewer constraints in terms of team policies and rules?
GJ: No – it’s a lot of fun. There’s a different feel at Marvel, because it is set more in the real world, so I tend to mention more real-world stuff. They’re in New York, and I liked the scene in my first issue where Wasp explained why she loves New York City to Yellowjacket. New York City is a character in the book, but it’s also a character in our lives, so it just feels a little more real to me.
NRAMA: Wrapping things up with a few general questions, probably the one you get all the time first – just how many regular series can you write in a month?
GJ: Four.
NRAMA: Including co-writers, or solo?
GJ: I can write about a book a week. When I co-write something with David and James, it takes about half that time. So, I can get about four or five books out a month, although I am going to be cutting back next year on projects outside the monthly books. I’ve just wrapped up my four issues of Superman, and my miniseries commitments are finished for 2002.
Next year, I’m sticking with four monthlies and there’s a mini-series i co-wrote with David Goyer that will come out around mid-year. Other than that, I’m going slow down. I’ve written a lot this year and it was fun, but i want to re-focus all my energy on the monthly books. I have more fun doing them than mini-series or fill-in books.
NRAMA: The miniseries next year that’s already written – is that be one of the JSA solo character minis you’ve mentioned?
GJ: Yeah – it’s JSA related.
NRAMA: You’re on comics full-time now, right? You’re not scribbling notes down while working for and with Richard Donner anymore?
GJ: Yeah – 90% of my time is comics.
NRAMA: Okay, playing devil’s advocate – are you nuts? You’re leaving film – and a job/connection with Richard Donner for crying out loud, for comics? You’ve heard what we’ve all heard - comics are a dying industry, there’s no money in them, and on top of that, you’re getting married soon – what, you have a death wish? Why stay with comics?
GJ: I worked with Richard Donner and did a lot of films and had a great time, and am still working on other things here and there in Hollywood, but I’m having a lot of fun on comic books, and I’ve gotten a lot of great opportunities. When I got Hawkman, and I was doing Flash and JSA, and had another miniseries that got greenlit – that was it for me. I decided to leave and do comics. I left Donner’s, which was very difficult, but now I’ve got a writing office, and I’m here every day, and it’s great. I love my job. Love it. Plus I still get to see Donner. We just watched Spider-Man in his home theater - which is literally a home theater - and he really enjoyed it. It was great fun to watch that film with him.
This year, for me, was finding out what I wanted to do, and do as many different things as I could. Next year will be fun because JSA is hitting #50, Flash is hitting #200, Tom Brevoort and I have already plotted Avengers out for the year, and I’m really excited about where everything is going.
NRAMA: You’ve really gotten a reputation for, if this was baseball, you’re a great utility player who always delivers no matter what position he’s put in. You can revitalize, refresh, do new looks at heroes, as well as accessible versions of classics. With all of that, have you ever considered a creator-owned project?
GJ: I have a lot of original ideas, and I’m hoping to get to them as soon as I feel comfortable. All of my commitments outside my monthly books are done, so I can focus on the books at hand. Once I feel comfortable where everything is, I’m going to delve in. I take pride in my work, and I don’t want to burn out or go crazy or just write to write. I want to be passionate in everything i undertake, so as soon as I have the time, and have the best idea fleshed out, I’ll hit it with everything I’ve got.
Newsarama: Just in talking about your series alone, there’s a lot to cover - let’s dive right in and start with Flash - you’ve been on the book for a fairly long time now – does it still give the same rush it did as with the first issues?
Geoff Johns: Oh yeah. If anything, it’s almost more fun right now. When Scott got on the book, that’s when everything gelled. Scott and I talked through ideas through #200. I knew already what I wanted #200 to be, so we figured it out, and now I’m writing the script to #196, and I’m psyched, because I’m into the storyline that leads up to #200, and I can’t wait to get there.
NRAMA: That’s right – you and Scott do work pretty far ahead of schedule…
GJ: Yeah, we do. I like to stay ahead on all my books because if something happens in a month, there’s no panic, and you don’t have to churn things out if it’s a hard story. For example, the issue of Avengers I’m on right now – it’s going to take me a lot longer to write than a normal script would, and I can take the extra time on it, and really make it kick ass.
NRAMA: With the process on Flash - how rigid is that? Do stories still surprise you if they come up while you’re working on something else?
GJ: Oh yeah – there’s stuff that happens all the time. There are other stories, like the Piper story that come up suddenly and we can shift things over an issue and take one out, and slot one in. Things like that happen all the time, but our general direction is still the same. So, it’s a flexible road – not set in stone, but we know the direction, our end point, and a lot of specific scenes along the way. It’s a matter of figuring out the best way of tying things together organically and letting it flow.
There are always surprises that happen. One of the bigger ones, early on came with issue #170. I had the whole arc planned out, and it wasn’t until the last pages of the script that I thought we could throw a kid in there who might be Wally’s. That came right when I was writing the scene, and everybody wanted to know what I was doing with it. I took a day, and figured it out, and made a few changes to accommodate it.
NRAMA: So it was a cliffhanger to you and to readers…
GJ: Yeah – I love cliffhangers, and in a monthly book you want them. I know the shift is to collect issues into trades, but I still like writing for the monthly audience – that’s my favorite.
NRAMA: Speaking of the child in #170, and using that to leap frog over to the Rogue’s Gallery – you’ve revitalized the Rogues, set up a solid status quo that encompasses the characters and the city. For all intents and purposes, the book is yours – everything you’re playing with has elements of something you established, pretty much. Does that change the tenor of the stories you tell, or open any new avenues?
GJ: Oh – there are millions of directions we can go. We’ve been leading up to this point for a while – there’s a major bomb that goes off in #200. I won’t say what though. Everything will change, and everything will be the same at the same time – if that makes sense. #200 is going to throw a lot of people for a loop, I think. It’s still a year off, so I don’t really like talking too much about it, but it will be a double-sized issue, and it will send us off in a whole new direction. It’ll be a lot of fun.
NRAMA: Speaking again about the Rogues, you’ve become known for reestablishing them as a deadly group of villains, but you’re still keeping them believable. Your revamps aren’t really amping power levels or adding fancy new armor. Theses are guys who’ve been revamps before, but yours seem to ring true – is there a key element to each revamp, such as adding a human anchor to each character?
GJ: That’s exactly it – you have to add a human hook to each character. It could be something as simple as the new Trickster, who before he pulls a job, goes and buys a Kit Kat and a Coke. If you have that moment where he’s goofing around or whatever, that’s a tiny, tiny thing, but it humanizes him, and it makes the character a little more real.
And then you can go on the extreme of it, where you really get inside characters heads, like with Captain Cold, who I think is a great character because he walks just that side of the “bad” line. He’s in no man’s land, but he steps over into the bad guy territory with every other step. At first glance, he’s goofy as hell, but then when you start to see what makes him tick, what his character is about, and how smart and confident he is, it’s a lot of fun.
But it is finding that human anchor – trying to explore them a little more than having the Weather Wizard wanting to zap the Flash with a bolt of lightning.
Using Weather Wizard as an example, if you look at his origin, he got this wand from his brother who’s dead. He was at the scene, and I haven’t gotten into his background, but whenever I write him, my whole thing is that he got there first – maybe he did kill his brother for the wand. That’s sort of been left unestablished – we don’t know that yet, but the thing is he doesn’t know.
In my mind, he did kill his brother, but he’s told himself that he didn’t do that, and he hasn’t forgiven himself for that, and he doesn’t believe in forgiveness, so he’s damned. He’s done bad things, and he’s damned. His life’s been wasted because he can’t be forgiven.
NRAMA: So, by putting the key human component in there, it makes the character much more usable and long-lived than a costume or radical personality change, right?
GJ: Yeah. Why should I want to make Captain Cold into a guy that wants to turn the world into an ice age? That’s not what he’s about. It’s much more interesting to have him do what he does because he likes living hand to mouth. He likes it – he likes getting money, blowing it all on booze and women. To him, it gives him a feeling of power and self-worth. To be able to walk into a hotel with a hooker on each arm, and blow two grand in a night? He loves that. He’s not worried about where the next cash is coming from – he’ll find it.
But that’s what takes him away from missing his sister or having a shitty childhood – he jumps into the deep end of the pool.
NRAMA: Moving on to a topic closer to Wally, and something that most likely plays into your future plans – it was revealed that Linda is pregnant in Flash #188. Flash wives don’t have good histories with pregnancies…anything you’d like to add?
GJ: Not a word. No hints. That’s part of the story, and I don’t even want to touch on it.
NRAMA: In both The Kingdom, and other appearances, it’s been established that, at least in one future of the DCU, Wally’s kids are Iris and Barry West, with Iris taking the Flash mantle to become the Kingdom Come era Kid Flash.
With the, or at least a future already written for Wally’s kids, do you lose some element of surprise of Wally and Linda having a baby, or is this a case of, as Mark Waid always puts it, “giving readers what they want, but not what they expect?” Or do you chuck the Kingdom continuity altogether?
GJ: As I said before, I don’t really want to talk about it…but there are some clues in the Kingdom series. Look at that family tree again.
NRAMA: Fair enough. Looking at the immediate future of Flash, what can you say about “Run Riot” which kicks off in #192?
GJ: It’s three parts, and is basically builds on what we did in Iron Heights. Gorilla Grodd breaks out – or Grodd tries to break out, and Flash has to go in and try to stop him. Of course, at the same time Hunter, our resident rogue profiler, gets trapped with the warden in the bowels of the prison.
NRAMA: The first time you used Grodd, the issue was very well received as – of course – a very cool re-interpretation/revitalization of the character. His threat level seemed to be away from a smart, talking, Superfiriends-style ape and more towards a Jurassic Park raptor in terms of raw power and the fear he would cause. What is it about Grodd that clicks with you as a writer?
GJ: Well – if you run into an angry bear in the woods, you’d be scared. This is a gorilla that’s four times the size of a bear, can talk, and can project images of your intestines wrapped around your throat inside your head while he’s beating the shit out of you. That’s scary. That’s not someone to take lightly.
It’s also not like Grodd is a serial killer or anything else – he’s an animal. And remember – in his last appearance, he was drugged and disoriented.
NRAMA: So he’s on a completely different plane of thought, then, more toward instinct, a place where morals and ethics really don’t carry much weight – or even exist?
GJ: Right – Flash can’t even get inside his head or figure out why he does what he does. If you set Grodd off the wrong way, it’s ten times worse than making Wolverine mad. He doesn’t even have to touch you to destroy you – he can just think about it. At the same time, he can rip you in half. He’s the closest Flash has to an actual monster that he fights, and it’s cool because you can go from one extreme to the next. On one level, Grodd can be sitting there, planning some huge plot against Gorilla City or how to escape from Iron Heights, but at the same time, his primitive instincts are laced within there, so every thought is jumbled and directed by those instincts. His intellect comes into conflict with his bloodlust with every thought.
NRAMA: Moving through the rest of your DCU projects – you’re on for a stint as the regular Superman writer. Was there a consideration to stay on as the regular writer when Jeph told you he was leaving?
GJ: Very briefly. But in the end it was better to just do four issues.
NRAMA: It seems as though Superman is a character that can possibly trick writers into thinking he’s easy to write until they’ve written that one story they had in their head. Would writing Superman monthly be something you could see yourself being able to do from that standpoint?
GJ: Yeah, because with the second issue I wrote, I found my theme for Superman – patriotism without government. I could explore that for years, because that to me, is what Superman is all about. It’s not anti-government. When you say you’re a patriot, that doesn’t mean that you support everything the government is doing, it means that you believe in America, and you believe in the people and the efforts of a lot of people. Superman stands up for this, and is one of the people who are trying to make the country a better place – the perfect country that everyone wants to believe it is. To me, that’s a great theme.
I love America – I’m a pretty big patriot, but at the same time, we have a lot of problems, and you can’t just ignore them and say the country is perfect. I think it’s the best place to live in the world, but we still have to keep things evolving and moving forward. To make a long story short, once I found my theme for Superman – no problem. That’s how I work on a book – I have to find a theme that I can grab on to.
NRAMA: Speaking of themes, and continuing round-robin with the DCU, what’s you’re theme that holds you to JSA? Is it still something that’s strong enough to hold your interest through issues #40 and beyond?
GJ: David and I have a plan through #50, and then he’s taking his leave of the book, so he can concentrate on film projects. I’m going to continue on solo, because I’ve got at least two arcs that I really want to tell, so I’ll be on the book longer than David.
NRAMA: So what’s the hook?
GJ: Legacy. The characters that are trying to continue on with the JSA’s legacy, and inspire other heroes to continue on. The heroes themselves are trying to become better heroes, too – Jakeem Thunder had a huge character arc in “Stealing Thunder.” Rick Tyler had a huge leap that was off-panel, but we’ll see more of as he’s trying to become a true hero. The same with Star Spangled Kid, and Mr. Terrific, who I think is one of my favorite characters to write in comics. A lot of the se characters are fantastic, like Sentinel, Hawkman and Flash – you can’t get any better than that. These are the guys that started it, these are the guys that showed everybody else how to be heroes, and are still showing everybody how to be heroes. That’s why the theme is legacy – it’s the easiest theme to come up with for any group in the DC Universe – it’s an extension of what this team already does.
In a way, comic books are history, and whether we believe it or not, we’re continuing a part of a legacy, just like Mark Waid added his legacy to Flash, I’m trying to add mine while respecting everything that came before. Hopefully whoever comes on to my books after I’m gone will make it bigger, better, and build on everything that’s come before. I guess the idea of legacy resonates in my whole feelings about comic books. That’s why JSA is a great book to write and wok on – it resonates with what comics, and really life, is all about.
NRAMA: You and David have enjoyed praise from all points for your work on JSA, and along with that comes the expectation that you won’t drop the ball. Does it ever become an issue of feeling like you’re writing in a fishbowl, with everyone watching?
GJ: It does and it doesn’t. JSA went from a book that no one was talking about to a book that everyone was talking about, and I find in this business, you’re either overrated or you’re underrated. There’s no middle ground. So, you just keep going and try to do your best. The sales have steadily gone up on JSA, but there will be people who the book is just not for them, but hopefully, we’ll be able to find more readers who have heard about it and want to give it a try. That’s all we can do – your best. I just try to do my best on everything I do.
NRAMA: Following on what you had mentioned in Chicago – a time-travel story is coming up, right?
GJ: Yup – issues #41 through #44, although #41 is set in the present day, and #42 - #44 are the time travel issues, but it’s all linked together. Short but sweet.
NRAMA: You’ve revealed that the new villainess Roulette is the daughter of the former JSA’er, Terry Sloane, Mr. Terrific. You’ve mentioned that she’ll be showing up in Keith Giffen’s Formerly Known as the Justice League miniseries – is that just a short-term loan, or have you washed your hands of her, and she’s his to play with now?
GJ: Keith’s told me what he’s going to do with her, and a couple of things that he’s going to add to her arsenal, which I thought were great, so he’ll do his thing, and be done. When we get back to her, we’ll get back to her.
NRAMA: Any other teases for JSA you care to share?
GJ: Mordru and Obsidian.
NRAMA: Together?
GJ: Yeah. They’re coming back for the big arc leading up to #50. We’re working on the mechanics of that arc right now, and it’s going to shake the team up dramatically. I’m really, really looking forward to it. Sentinel and Dr. Fate will get most of the spotlight but the whole team will be in full swing.
NRAMA: With as much as you’ve said about legacy being a theme of JSA, with a mention of Dr. Fate, and thinking back to Hawkman, along with a lot of other characters, it’s pretty clear that family plays a roll as an overall theme as well, right?
GJ: Oh yeah. They’re intertwined – family by blood, by step-parents, or by really good friends. The team is family, but not just by blood. For example, with Stars and Stripe - one of my big things was to show that a step-father can be good, and even possibly better than a biological father. Step-parents, in-laws and your extended family can be more important to you than your regular family.
NRAMA: Moving over to your final DC series – what’s the theme of Hawkman?
GJ: Love lasts forever – the most obvious theme in the world.
NRAMA: Whoa – so it’s not all boys’ adventure with wings?
GJ: Nope – it’s a love story. If you look at it, and take away all the fighting, it’s a love story. Take issue #6 and lift all the action out, you have Hawkman going out and trying to get over Kendra, who he has loved forever. That’s the meat of the book, and comes into play in the next six issues.
NRAMA: With that as a theme – it seems that you’re setting up almost a Moonlighting-style of anticipation with the sexual tension, where you can’t draw the Carter/Kendra heartache out forever, yet if you hook them up, you’ll lose a quality of the book. How do you get over that hurdle?
GJ: It’s not like the relationship is going to stagnate. It takes a major turn in issue #12. Well, it takes a major turn in issue #9, and then another turn in issue #12. We’ve got a lot of cool stuff other than just the relationship coming up in Hawkman - I’m really, really proud of it. The Atom is in #8, and that’s kind of the reverse of the Green Arrow appearance, where we look at why these two heroes are such good friends. We’ll make that pretty clear.
NRAMA: Gut level – what’s the attraction of the character for you?
GJ: To me, Hawkman is one of the best characters in the DCU, because he’s the most bipolar character I’ve ever worked on. When he has his helmet on, he remembers all his warrior lives, and remembers everything else, and is just in battle mode. But then, he can take it off, get dressed up, go out to a restaurant, and order the best food and wine. He loves art, history and culture, because he remembers it. It’s nostalgia to him. Seeing an artifact from 2000 years ago is nostalgia.
NRAMA: So for him, seeing a Greek statue is like a thirtysomething Star Wars fan seeing an original R2-D2 mint on the card, and remembering about how he first saw it at the local five and dime in 1977?
GJ: Exactly – it’s us with Transformers. That makes him a great character, but at the same time, he’s tough for others to understand, because he seems so moody. He goes from one extreme to another, and not a lot of people can relate to that, or figure that out.
NRAMA: To get all touchy-feely then, does that make him lonely in a way?
GJ: In a way. He has no one to relate to anymore. He used to be able to relate to Shiera, but without anyone else to say to him, “I understand what it’s like, and what you’re going through,” it’s tough. At the same time, the reason that Hawkman is doing what he’s doing, saving lives and trying to make this world a better place on any level he can, is that he knows how short life is. All his lives flash before his eyes like a filmstrip – they seem so short and so brief. He understands how precious life is, which is why he wants to preserve it so much. He’s a great character.
NRAMA: Winding down with your series, and jumping companies, let’s talk Avengers. Your team is one of the more racial mixed in a little while – was that something you set out to do from the start?
GJ: It’s not like I set out to do a new racial mixture of the team – I just like Falcon and Black Panther a lot. They’re good characters. Kurt did such a great job with some of these lesser tier characters, like Firestar and Justice. He did a brilliant character arc with Firestar, so let’s let her rest for a little bit, and I can try to do something similar with Ant-Man and Falcon. Let me try and turn them into really cool Avengers. I don’t remember the time someone said that Falcon was cool – I’m going to try and make him cool and interesting. That’s a really big challenge and something I don’t take lightly – you can’t just have him kick someone in the face and suddenly he’s cool. You really have to get inside their head and figure out what he’s doing. You’ve got to show the readers why he’s different and why they should care about him.
It’s the same with Jack of Hearts. I’m actually really getting into Jack of Hearts, and at first he wasn’t even going to be on the team. But when we couldn’t get another character, Tom [Brevoort] suggested that we use Jack, and the more I thought about him, the more I realized what I wanted to do with him, and now I know every step Jack is going to take…and some won’t be pleasant.
NRAMA: Together with Kurt, you have given Jack of Hearts the most face time he’s seen in probably fifteen years…
GJ: I think so. The issue in December that Gary Frank is drawing; half of it is just Jack of Hearts. Whether people like that or not, we’ll see – hopefully they will.
NRAMA: With both JSA and Avengers, you’ve got the dynamic where you have established characters to use, but at the same time, either new or underutilized characters that have lots of room and flexibility. Is that almost a formula of sorts that you stick to?
GJ: I think that you need to do that, otherwise, I would be writing about characters that I couldn’t do anything with, and that’s not interesting to me if I can’t make a character grow or change – either for better or for worse. If I can’t do that, then it’s not interesting for me to write. Plus, I love taking characters that have been around for forty years and haven’t really had that much screen time and working with them, because people recognize them, but they don’t know them. Spend some time on them, and people realize that they are interesting characters after all. I like doing that with all the characters I work on.
NRAMA: Who’s the heart of your Avengers? Is there one single character that’s the team’s heart and soul, such as the Martian Manhunter is with the JLA?
GJ: There is one, but I’m not going to say who, because I’m doing quite a bit with them and making it very evident. So – yes, there is a “heart” of the team.
NRAMA: Interpersonal relationships have always played a large part in the Avengers - who and what dynamics are you looking forward to playing with?
GJ: Oh, Black Panther is the best guy to add in the world. The first time he joined the Avengers, he only did it to spy on them. Now, everybody knows that. How fun is that going to be? He’s always a step ahead of everybody else, something that Cap doesn’t seem to mind, as long as he knows where he’s going, but Iron Man hates it. Tony Stark is supposed to be a step ahead of everyone, but Panther’s about a half-step in front of him. There are some things that Panther does in #59 that really sets Iron Man off, and Panther just continues to pull this stuff on him, and at the end of the day, some of it is for the betterment of the team, but it’s also going to be a bit hard for some of the Avengers to figure out why the Panther is doing what he’s doing.
There’s a great dynamic in the avengers because you have several alpha personalities. A lot of them are natural leaders like Captain America, Iron Man, Black Panther, Wasp and Warbird.
NRAMA: Anyone else coming up on the roster that will shake things up on the interpersonal level?
GJ: Oh yeah - someone is going to make their presence known shortly, and that’s all I’ll say. But he’ll cause a stir. A lot of people are going to be happy next year.
For me though, that’s what Avengers is all about. You look at the best eras of Avengers, and it’s always about the interpersonal with the big conflicts, and that’s what I’m trying to do, while still having intense action brewing in the background.
NRAMA: And your theme for the book?
GJ: It’s trust. It’s trust between the world and the Avengers and trust between the individual members themselves.
NRAMA: Is writing a team such as Avengers which is set in the “real,” or real-ish world and has political ties in any way more difficult than a book such as JSA where it seems there may be fewer constraints in terms of team policies and rules?
GJ: No – it’s a lot of fun. There’s a different feel at Marvel, because it is set more in the real world, so I tend to mention more real-world stuff. They’re in New York, and I liked the scene in my first issue where Wasp explained why she loves New York City to Yellowjacket. New York City is a character in the book, but it’s also a character in our lives, so it just feels a little more real to me.
NRAMA: Wrapping things up with a few general questions, probably the one you get all the time first – just how many regular series can you write in a month?
GJ: Four.
NRAMA: Including co-writers, or solo?
GJ: I can write about a book a week. When I co-write something with David and James, it takes about half that time. So, I can get about four or five books out a month, although I am going to be cutting back next year on projects outside the monthly books. I’ve just wrapped up my four issues of Superman, and my miniseries commitments are finished for 2002.
Next year, I’m sticking with four monthlies and there’s a mini-series i co-wrote with David Goyer that will come out around mid-year. Other than that, I’m going slow down. I’ve written a lot this year and it was fun, but i want to re-focus all my energy on the monthly books. I have more fun doing them than mini-series or fill-in books.
NRAMA: The miniseries next year that’s already written – is that be one of the JSA solo character minis you’ve mentioned?
GJ: Yeah – it’s JSA related.
NRAMA: You’re on comics full-time now, right? You’re not scribbling notes down while working for and with Richard Donner anymore?
GJ: Yeah – 90% of my time is comics.
NRAMA: Okay, playing devil’s advocate – are you nuts? You’re leaving film – and a job/connection with Richard Donner for crying out loud, for comics? You’ve heard what we’ve all heard - comics are a dying industry, there’s no money in them, and on top of that, you’re getting married soon – what, you have a death wish? Why stay with comics?
GJ: I worked with Richard Donner and did a lot of films and had a great time, and am still working on other things here and there in Hollywood, but I’m having a lot of fun on comic books, and I’ve gotten a lot of great opportunities. When I got Hawkman, and I was doing Flash and JSA, and had another miniseries that got greenlit – that was it for me. I decided to leave and do comics. I left Donner’s, which was very difficult, but now I’ve got a writing office, and I’m here every day, and it’s great. I love my job. Love it. Plus I still get to see Donner. We just watched Spider-Man in his home theater - which is literally a home theater - and he really enjoyed it. It was great fun to watch that film with him.
This year, for me, was finding out what I wanted to do, and do as many different things as I could. Next year will be fun because JSA is hitting #50, Flash is hitting #200, Tom Brevoort and I have already plotted Avengers out for the year, and I’m really excited about where everything is going.
NRAMA: You’ve really gotten a reputation for, if this was baseball, you’re a great utility player who always delivers no matter what position he’s put in. You can revitalize, refresh, do new looks at heroes, as well as accessible versions of classics. With all of that, have you ever considered a creator-owned project?
GJ: I have a lot of original ideas, and I’m hoping to get to them as soon as I feel comfortable. All of my commitments outside my monthly books are done, so I can focus on the books at hand. Once I feel comfortable where everything is, I’m going to delve in. I take pride in my work, and I don’t want to burn out or go crazy or just write to write. I want to be passionate in everything i undertake, so as soon as I have the time, and have the best idea fleshed out, I’ll hit it with everything I’ve got.