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07-20-2007, 12:27 PM
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JONATHAN LETHEM ON OMEGA THE UNKNOWN
 by Zack SmithENIGMA THE FIRST: the lone survivor of an alien world, a nameless man of somber, impassive visage, garbed utterly inappropriately in garish blue-and-red. ENIGMA THE SECOND: James-Michael Starling, age twelve raised in near-isolation by parents who (he discovered on the day they “died”) were robots. ENIGMA THE THIRD: the link between the man and the boy, penetrating to the depths of the mind and body, causing each to question his very reality of self. These words began each issue of Omega the Unknown, which Marvel Comics published for 10 issues in the 1970s. Co-created in 1975 by Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes and illustrated by Jim Mooney, its tale of a silent alien hero and his mysterious connection to a detached young child growing up in Hell’s Kitchen was an offbeat mix of action, existential musings, and sometimes shocking bursts of grim reality. The book abruptly ended in issue #10 when Omega was shot and killed, with a promise to conclude the story in The Defenders, which Gerber was also writing at the time. However, Gerber left the book before the story could be told, leading to Steven Grant and Mark Gruenwald wrapping up the tale in that book a few years later. Omega, it seemed, was destined to be little more than a footnote in Marvel’s history. That all changed in 2005 when it was announced that a new version of Omega the Unknown was in the pipeline, written by MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Jonathan Lethem. An acclaimed novelist whose works include Gun, With Occasional Music, Motherless Brooklyn and most recently, You Don’t Love Me Yet, Lethem has often spoken of the influence of comics in his work. His 2003 novel The Fortress of Solitude deals with two young friends in Brooklyn who gain superpowers through a magic ring, and actually references the original Omega in a few scenes. The announcement of the new series received a great deal of media coverage and led to the collection of the original series, but was also decried by Steve Gerber, who was frustrated over another creator working on a series that was deeply person al to him. This led to the creation of www.omegatheunknown.com to remind readers that he and Mary Skrenes created the character. Now, nearly two and a half years after the new series was first announced, the new Omega the Unknown, written by Lethem and his friend Karl Rusnak, with art by Farel Dalymple (Pop Gun War, Caper) and Paul Hornschemeier (Mother, Come Home, The Three Parodoxes, Forlorn Funnies). During his tour for You Don’t Love Me Yet, we engaged Lethem in a philosophical chat about the series, the controversy, and the enigma that is Omega. Newsarama: Okay, Jonathan, it’s been a while but Omega is scheduled for an October release now, correct? Jonathan Lethem: Yes, in October. And then – I’m not the fastest comic-book writer! – with that long head start, they’ll be able to put 10 issues out in 10 months and have a monthly schedule and tell the whole story within a year from October. NRAMA: Have you written all the scripts at this point? JL: Eight of ten. I’ve been picking up speed a little bit. I’ve become more comfortable with the form, I’m able to write them a little more quickly. I shouldn’t have any trouble getting Farel the pages he needs in the next couple of months. NRAMA: What’s the experience been like, going from prose to comics? JL: A learning experience. Reading comics as long as I have was a huge head start, but it wasn’t everything. I needed to feel my way into the form. You quickly realize that in a sense it’s not a written form. The words are important, but the more important part of my work is giving Farel Dalrymple these assignments to draw.  I think the dominant part of the comic book experience is the visual. One reason why I’ve been slow has been that I really have to do this job of storyboarding and visualization in my head, in order to make to my storytelling work in the medium’s terms. NRAMA: What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of working in this medium? JL: Well, I don’t think I think of it in terms of disadvantages. It’s completely satisfying on its level. I could never do only this kind of work, because I’m so engaged with language, and as I say I’ve come to feel that language is fundamentally in the back seat in comic book. Or, anyway, in the kind that I like and seem to be trying to write. I would be a frustrated writer if I had to satisfy my entire ambition through this narrow aperture of comic book panels. In the most basic sense, as containers for words, panels just don’t hold very many of them! So on the one hand I’m excited about doing this kind of work, and on the other, it confirms my sense that I’m fundamentally a prose writer, a novelist and short-story writer. NRAMA: Do you currently read any comics? JL: This and that. I haven’t managed to be caught up on this whole recent Captain America controversy or anything. I have to go back and acquire all the relevant issues and figure out what all that’s about. I’m reading more and more (comics) as a result of doing this work. It’s been interesting to get connected again. NRAMA: Any favorites? JL: Well, in different ways, there are things that have sparked my interest. I’ve found Y: The Last Man (to be a) very compulsive story, very enjoyable. It’s like a great…it’s like Lost, kind of mental chewing gum. NRAMA: Well, you know, Brian K. Vaughan’s working on Lost now? JL: Is he? I’m not surprised. That’s a very good fit. There’s all sorts of (comics) that I like. I just read a really great three-issue sequence of Adiran Tomine’s Optic Nerve. It was excellent. NRAMA: I’d like to talk a little bit about your history growing up with Omega. The passage in The Fortress of Solitude (page 82 of the hardcover edition), where Dylan (one of the main characters) notices how James-Michael’s experiences reflect his own – I’m presuming that was similar to your own experience reading the book? JL: Oh no, I was much more fond of Omega than that. Dylan is very tough on the comic, and if you look under the skin of his reaction to it, he’s very threatened by it. There’s something about the plight of the James-Michael character that’s getting under his skin. But that reaction is quite typical of that Dylan, and exemplifies his reaction to a lot of things. Dylan holds disturbing and stimulating material at arms’ length. He and I are very much different in that way. Though he’s an autobiographical character, the emotional armor that he wears isn’t so typical of me. I was much more emotionally wide-open and vulnerable. Omega floored me, but I didn’t resent it. I thought it was fantastic. Those first issues, when Gerber and Skrenes were really allowed to do what they wanted to do and were building this incredible story full of all sorts of weird implications and possibilities…I simply thought it was the best comic book I’d ever read. The problem for me as a reader, in the original experience, was of course that it was wrecked. The thing was totally derailed by circumstance, by sales expectations and corporate meddling. There wasn’t enough of a precedent for what the creators were doing, and no one trusted it, so they never really had a chance to realize the story they’d initiated. But that whisper of it – the first two issues above all, with all the possibilities inherent in what they’d begun, made it hugely meaningful to me. And though I’m not telling their story, not trying to continue or conclude their Omega in the least, part of my impulse was to bring a version of Omega to something like fruition.  NRAMA: You’ve had a chance to speak with Steve and Mary a little bit. Did they tell you how they would have ended their version?JL: No. It wasn’t my place. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to try to get their secrets out of them. As is always the case – and I suspect this is true for many artists who work with preexisting materials – the charge and the inspiration that comes from the original is hugely important, but it’s also important to possess the materials yourself and make them your own. Similarly, screenwriters who adapt my work are rarely interested in having extensive conversations with me about what I meant, because they now have to build a new story and fill it with their own feelings. I had more than enough with the existing Omega material. What’s more, the gaps were important to me – almost as important as what was there, because those gaps were places where my own imagination could flood in. It’s worth saying that I’m not doing anything like guessing at what they wanted to do, and then doing it. I doubt it would strike them or anyone else that way. It isn’t that it wouldn’t fascinate me to know the original ending – though that presumes that it was meant to end, or that a clear destination had been outlined – and among the things I don’t know is whether that was the case! But, I think one of the things this engagement with Omega has taught me is that there’s nothing more powerful than a narrative fragment. Of course, for anyone who was thwarted the way those writers were thwarted from doing what they wanted to do, the associations for that fragment are surely painful ones. But paradoxically, just as in Sappho’s poems, where modern readers only have every third word, and in the case of other wrecked masterworks like, say, Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons, there’s a kind of strange force that’s the result of having something that’s incomplete. Part of what’s amazing about Omega is what they accomplished, and another part is the incompleteness. There’s this unconscious collaborative energy that results when you have to speculate on something. Gerber and Skrenes are very wise, I think, not to offer any information. NRAMA: So…what is your version of Omega, exactly? Is it a retelling, a recreation, a sequel…? JL: It’s a recreation. I think that’s the better word for it. I’m not interested – I don’t have it in me to fuss over matters of continuity. All the characters – well, the two character who mattered most in that story – were killed, if you believe and obey the earlier stories that were told. I’m not letting myself care about that. Though it’s a Marvel comic, I’m not writing it into the Marvel Universe where Omega existed before, and therefore trying to make some labored explanation as to why this story is happening again, or happening differently. I’m just taking this brilliant fund of material, and transmuting it into something else. NRAMA: You talk about “filling in the gaps.” Are you trying to weave around sequences from the original book, or are you trying to do something else? JL: There are a few places where I go for very direction quotations from the original, and most of those are right up front. For me, the original Omega the Unknown #1 is a rather holy text. You know, the perfect comic book. So I utilize it heavily. And then my Omega grows away from that point slowly but steadily – corresponding to the slow but inevitable loss of interest through the original ten issues that were originally published. I don’t avoid a few pieces of direct quotation. I’m trying to do justice to the enormous power the original story had for me as reader, and for my friends, when we were 14 years old. To us, it was as good and important a comic as any origin story we’d ever read! It was Superman, it was Batman, it was something totally legendary. So, I’m treating it as a legendary text is so often treated in the comic-book world, which is to say those tales are told and re-told in new and strange ways precisely because they were so good. I wouldn’t want to make too direct a comparison, but if you’re familiar with James Sturm’s Unstable Molecules, dealing with the early days of the Fantastic Four, you might almost say that Omega is in that vein. In other words, I assume – perhaps absurdly – but I assume for my purposes that Omega is a canonical text, and therefore that anyone would be excited to see it retold in a strange and different way. NRAMA: Going back to the passage in Fortress of Solitude, and reading beyond Dylan’s hostile reaction to it, there’s a real sense that for you, this was a book that represented what was going on in your life at the time. JL: Well, sure. Even before Omega, of course, one of the things that made Marvel so compelling, the peculiar power of Marvel Comics for a kid growing up in New York City, was the way the Baxter Building was in Manhattan, and Peter Parker lived in Queens – the way real New York was featured in the margins of certain comics. Most especially in Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, there was great care taken in showing hot-dog vendors and taxicab drivers, this sort of everyday texture in the background. It was my city, so that was a big point of interest for me. What was so thrilling about Omega was that it seemed to take this commitment to another level. The lives of the ordinary people living in New York, and of this kid exposed to public school in Hell’s Kitchen, the whole crumbling infrastructure of New York City in those days – these were the actual subject of the comic! It had this huge persuasiveness for me as a reader, because there I was, approximately James-Michael’s age, in a comparable school in Brooklyn. To my eye, Gerber and Skrenes were fooling around with the archetype of Billy Batson and Shazam, or Rick Jones and the Hulk: the teenager who’s got this superhero sort of lurking in his world.  But the great irony that it seemed they were emphasizing was how little use the superhero was when it came to helping the kid in any of the day-to-day troubles that he encountered in a New York City public school. Given that, you can see how the original Omega sank very deep into my imagination, and obviously became a point of inspiration for The Fortress of Solitude.NRAMA: Definitely. When the project was announced in 2005, Steve Gerber was very public about his disproval of the comic being continued by someone other than himself and Mary Skrenes. What was your reaction to that controversy, and what were your subsequent interactions with Steve and Mary like? JL: Well, we only spoke once. It seemed to me that the important part of it – and a very, very legitimate part of it – was the flaring-up of a long-standing dispute between Gerber and Marvel. So it quickly switched from being my conversation to being their conversation. And I think that was what was called for. I was precisely attracted to the way in which there’s a kind of tapestry of collaborative artworks in the mainstream comics medium. What’s enthralling about the Marvel Universe is that no one person created it. Rather, all these different geniuses stitched into the same quilt – if that’s not too dull an image. If I’d wanted to make a comic book that had no connection to anything anyone had ever done before, that didn’t utilize existing characters, I likely wouldn’t have been talking with Marvel in the first place. The allure of working with Marvel was to take something that existed and repurpose it, give it a different spin. After all, I work with solitary materials all the time. And it seemed, of course, that Gerber, like so many of the comic book writers that I’d so admired, had himself done so much of this kind of repurposing and knitting in to the collective tapestry. So I couldn’t imagine there being a reason not to do it. I was quite disconcerted when his reaction was so unhappy. NRAMA: Would you say that the air has been cleared between you at this point? JL: Well, I don’t know! You’d have to ask them. NRAMA: I might just do that. Moving on, did you personally choose Farel Dalrymple as the artist for the project? JL: Yeah. I was looking for someone, and I didn’t know who it was. I hadn’t been reading as many comics lately, so I needed a little refresher course as to who the current young talents were. When I first saw pages by Farel, I immediately knew that what I’d been picturing was possible. His style is so scrupulous. He’s a great designer as well as a great illustrator, but above all his human figures had a sort of homely and intimate and sincere feel that matched that of the story I hoped to tell. He’s a great talent, so it’s very exciting to provide him with this showcase, and maybe try to throw out challenges that he wouldn’t try to draw on his own. NRAMA: So is this set square within the Marvel Universe, but not really? JL: Well, after briefly attempting to do some stuff at the beginning, I decided not to play that sort of “cameo game.” J. Jonah Jameson doesn’t stroll onto the pages, let alone some other known costumed figure from the Marvel Universe. Technically, sure, it’s in the Marvel Universe, but there’s nothing that would much prove it inside the story I’m telling. As interesting as that whole question of continuity and overlapping stories can be, in this case I thought I might be able to achieve a slightly more concentrated tone in this story if I didn’t start going down that path. NRAMA: Do you have plans for any other comic book projects after this one? JL: I don’t have any plans to, but it’s hard to think beyond this sequence – it’s what’s obsessing me now, and it’s really hard to say. Omega the Unknown #1 comes out from Marvel this October. The original series has been reprinted as Omega The Unknown Classic. Jonathan Lethem’s seventh novel, You Don’t Love Me Yet, will be published in paperback by Vintage in 2008. |
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07-20-2007, 12:40 PM
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#2 |
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I'm excited about this, mostly for Farel Dalrymple and Paul Hornschemeier
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07-20-2007, 12:49 PM
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#3 |
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finally. i remember reading a preiview about this two years ago in Wizard. way to be timely marvel.
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07-20-2007, 12:52 PM
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#4 | |
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MattB |
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07-20-2007, 12:59 PM
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#5 | |
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That would imply that people read the interview before commenting. |
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07-20-2007, 01:00 PM
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#6 |
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Looking very forward to hearing Gerber's comments, which I'm sure are following shortly. Lethem has an interesting take on how writers don't get the chance to "finish" their stories.
He also says he learned more about how to write comics as he went along. One wonders if he went back to the first couple of scripts and applied what hea learned, or will see the storytelling improve as the story goes on (not to imply the first issues will be poor, perhaps just less polished)? One wonders if they'll give Gerber a "Hunger Dogs" at some point in the future. One would assume it would sell as well as the collected Omega did. |
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07-20-2007, 01:03 PM
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#7 |
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I know this isn't really related but this is the third article with either Flight or Omega in the title which have briefly made me hope it was about announcing Omega Flight as an Ongoing. A man can dream.....
 Sounds pretty good but kinda weird at the same time, unless i hear really good things i doubt i'll pick it up, i've reached the time where my pull list has expanded to the point where i have to be really careful about what i add sadly, otherwise i'd probably have checked the first few issues out. Last edited by Omega Flyer : 07-20-2007 at 01:06 PM. |
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07-20-2007, 01:06 PM
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#8 |
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Lethem is one of my favorite writers, and I look forward to all of his releases, not the least of which is this. In fact, it inspired me to read the source material. Cannot wait for his take.
Good interview, too. Thanks. |
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07-20-2007, 01:10 PM
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#9 |
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Looks and sounds like it'll be entertaining.
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07-20-2007, 01:18 PM
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#10 |
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Great Interview
I am buying this comic, and I think I may have to pick up one of his novels. This looks like a refreshing change.
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07-20-2007, 01:21 PM
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#11 | |
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Him addressing it in the interview doesn't preclude it being commented upon. And it's an open question whether simply saying "I'm not the fastest comic book writer" really qualifies as addressing why the book's two years late (or, more specifically, why Marvel publicized its release two years ago when clearly it was nowhere near ready to be published). Last edited by kalorama : 07-20-2007 at 01:24 PM. |
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07-20-2007, 01:21 PM
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#12 | |
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Check out Motherless Brooklyn, that's what I started with and I've been hooked ever since. After that, and if you like short stories, give his The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye a read. |
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07-20-2007, 01:22 PM
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#13 | ||
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So Marvel gets bashed for not putting out a comic that if they HAD put out, would have been terminally late. But I'm sure had they released the comic in a "timely" manner, as you suggest, they would have been bashed for not waiting until it had all been completed. Tom Brevoort was right. Quote:
Nice pun, although I don't think you did it on purpose. Anyone else get it? |
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07-20-2007, 01:23 PM
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#14 | |
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You're referring to the line "I’m not the fastest comic-book writer!" as the only reason given for the 2.5-year delay? In any event, the art looks fantastic. |
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07-20-2007, 01:25 PM
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#15 | ||
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It was more than just, "I'm not fast." He said: Quote:
Why is it that fans cry out when a book is late, and say, "WAIT UNTIL IT'S FINISHED BEFORE YOU SOLICIT IT!" and yet, when Marvel did just that, they get bashed for "taking too long" to solicit it? |
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07-20-2007, 01:28 PM
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#16 |
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He name dropped Optic Nerve!
 Looking forward to this mini. I don't know why, but I am. |
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07-20-2007, 01:29 PM
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Because that's not what actually happened. Marvel publicized the book's release two years in way that clearly suggested its release was imminent. If the plan all along was not to release it until October of 2007, then pushing it like it was coming soon back in the spring of 2005 makes little sense. |
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07-20-2007, 01:30 PM
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#18 | ||
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It was more than that. Not everyone is with the knowledge and capabilities to write comics out of the womb. He also said: Quote:
...implying that he had to adapt his writing style to fit what was required of the medium. Remember when Marvel began accepting EPIC submissions? The biggest problem with them was that writers did not know how to write a comic book script. Sure, you can have a great idea for a story, but can you translate that idea seamlessly into a script that an artist can use to recreate what you had in mind and keep it managable (ie- not a 200 page novel for a 22 page comic)? It's probably not as easy as it seems. But I guess we'd rather have more comics like Ultimate Hulk vs Wolverine, that was released after it was announced and is now months behind schedule, right? |
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07-20-2007, 01:33 PM
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#19 | |
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Again, Marvel was listening to the fans, and held back publishing it until it was ready. We can't have our cake and eat it too, you know. Either we get the book right then and there and it's chronically late, or we get the book monthly, but we have to wait for it to be completed first. I think the internet has made it clear that fans want monthly rather than instant gratification. |
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07-20-2007, 01:35 PM
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#20 |
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I don't get why people are upset about it. None of it came out, so you haven't missed anything and the storytelling hasn't been affected. Now, it's all coming out. Why be upset? If anything, the story will be better for the delay.
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07-20-2007, 01:39 PM
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#21 | |
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Not strange at all, my friend. I thought the same thing |
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07-20-2007, 01:39 PM
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07-20-2007, 01:40 PM
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The press release seemed more to publicize the acquisition of Lethem's talents rather than the imminent arrival of the book. I mean, are you going to complain that Marvel made a press release about their movie development deal but most of the films they mentioned arent out yet? |
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07-20-2007, 01:41 PM
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#24 |
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It also would have been neat to see some more of the artist talent for this book. I like what I see.
Last edited by painters_eye : 07-20-2007 at 01:43 PM. |
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07-20-2007, 01:46 PM
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#25 | |
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In going over the article, I figured that, given his line of not being the fastest comic book writer, as well as his active novel schedule (which has seen releases and tours in the interim) that people would be able to figure things out or at least put together a fairly accurate picture in their heads of what more than likely happened to an "outside" continuity book that was creator-driven and not dependent upon any specific event schedule. I regret the error. Anyway - can the nitpicking and Marvel bashing end? No one's looking good here. MattB |
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