DOING THE DEMO I: LOOKING BACK WITH BRIAN WOOD

[MattBrady]

by Chris Arrant

Over the course of twelve issues, writer Brian Wood and artist Becky Cloonan's DEMO carved a niche out of the familiar superhuman landscape of comics with something far more personal.DEMO took the staple of American comics, superhumans, and focused on the "super" and the "human" aspects of it. Forget the tights, the capes and the vigilante mythos … DEMO used superpowers to tell human stories… and human elements to tell a different kind of superpowered tale.

As the new edition of DEMO, Volume 1 nears release from Vertigo Comics, Newsarama returns to take stock and dig deep with an issue-by-issue conversation with writer Brian Wood. We talk about the trials and tribulations, the highs and the lows, and the individual elements to each story that made this a series that lived on far past its initial shelf-life.

Newsarama: It's good to speak with you again, Brian. Before we dig into the issue-by-issue breakdown, let's ask some big questions. Let's start with the hardest first – which of the twelve issues would you say was the hardest to write?

Brian Wood: #6, "What You Wish For", as I recall, took the longest to write. I got stuck on that issue... not sure exactly why, if it was the story concept itself or something psychological with the halfway point of the series. Not sure if that makes it the hardest issue or not.

NRAMA: On the flipside, which of the twelve issues would you say was the easiest to write?

BW: Several of them just flowed out of me super easy... "Stand Strong", "Mixtape", "Breaking Up"... I remember sitting down with those and just ripping through the scripts, maybe in two or three days? That's pretty quick for me. There is something very freeing about writing DEMO, about not feeling bound by any rules, or not caring as much about reaction. With some of the books I'm writing now, such as DMZ and Northlanders, I am very conscious of the 22-page format and getting as much bang for the buck in there as I can, very conscious of thinking about the trade format, very aware of the Vertigo reader and expectations of the imprint. With DEMO I just don't care about any of that... I try to just pay attention to the "now".

NRAMA: Which of the twelve issues would you say is the most personal?

BW: "Breaking Up" is personal in that is has/had resonance to my personal life, some of the failed relationships from my past. But somehow time must have done its job because it doesn't FEEL personal to me anymore, not in any emotional sense. If I had to look at it that way, the story that moves me the most would be "Mixtape".

NRAMA: That's apropos, as mixtape lists themselves were key in the essays that ended each single issue.

With this new edition of DEMO Volume 1 on the way and a six-issue volume of new stories announced for the future, is there any of the stories that you'd want to do a sequel to?

BW: Well, part of me says no, I don't want to do sequels... sequels don't fit into the DEMO concept. But very recently some possibilities have opened up for DEMO in terms of a film, some interest in adapting DEMO for the big screen, and I've found myself seeing some value in expanding out some of the stories, writing more about certain characters. "Bad Blood" seems a likely place to start. Although this would be for a film only, not for more comics.

NRAMA: In line with that, if you had to choose one DEMO story to represent the whole title and concept to a new reader, which story would it be?

BW: "Bad Blood", "Stand Strong", "Girl You Want", "Mixtape".... hard to choose just one. Any of those, I feel, are "classic" Demo stories.

NRAMA: Let's talk about the critical and fan response that came in when you were doing this series. When issue 1 came out and the positive feedback started going, where were you at in writing the series as a whole and how did it affect you?

BW: I was probably writing the fifth issue around that time. And I can't really remember what the feedback was like at that time... no doubt some of it was positive and some negative, but if I had to guess at what my overall sense of it was, I would go with: cautiously optimistic yet suspicious. People knew me as the political guy who did Channel Zero, or the guy who did those action comics The Couriers. And here I was with this series where, in the eyes of some people, "nothing happens". Especially when the series was promo'd as "Brian and Becky doing superheroes" or whatever it was. The very fact that it was nominally about superpowers had a lot of people tuning in and curious to see how it went, but I doubt it was the success it would end up being at the time of the first issue.

And so whatever the feedback was, I don't remember it affecting me in terms of the writing. I was sticking to my guns, stubbornly. I knew what I wanted the writing to be, and wasn't going to let anyone sway me.

NRAMA: Let's quit beating around the bush and dig in. The first issue was titled "NYC".

In this first story you describe a teenage girl who's heavily medicated to muffle her telekinetic powers. These drugs also effect her psychologically, and it's only until she bonds with her boyfriend she finds a way to kick the meds. This has some relation to the real world and the side-effects of correctional drugs. Have you had an experience like this in your own life, yours or friends or family, that influenced this?

BW: Not directly, no. There is a pattern of mental illness in my immediate and extended family, so it's not an entirely foreign thing to me, but I wasn't basing this story or these characters off anyone in particular. I'm drawn to the idea of superpowers=mental illness, and I'm sure I'm not the only one to write a story around that, but it's a comparison I'm sticking with as I start writing this second volume of DEMO stories.

NRAMA: Let's talk about the theme of escape here. As Marie and her boyfriend escape the oppression of their parents, they also leave the suburbs for the sanctuary of the metropolitan city. In you own life, you left your parents to come to New York City as a late teen for college. What does the metropolitan city represent for you, for Marie, and for suburban kids in general?

BW: Both my parents were already deceased by the time I graduated college, and it wasn't until after a few years of drifting around my hometown doing little but party and go snowboarding that I decided enough was enough and I came to NYC to apply to art schools. I think I was 20 when I came. At the time it was so casual-seeming... I bought a one- way bus ticket and set up arrangements with my estranged older brother to crash on his couch at first (which ended up being a nightmare, by the way). It was an enormous thing to do, considering I had no plans and very little money and the enormity of it all didn't hit me until so many years later. I kind of can't believe I pulled it off, that I didn't slink back to Vermont utterly defeated. But I had literally nothing going on in my hometown, and I didn't want to be one of those 30-something losers that still hung out and partied with the high school kids (a type I would mock in my book Pounded)

So Marie and Mike do something a little similar, they bug out one day seemingly with no real plans, head to NYC, and as we see in the first scene of that story, they are acclimated and doing well enough.

NRAMA: You've explained in previous interviews how the roots for DEMO lie in your unreleased work on a Marvel series called NYX. As a comics writer who's actively avoided superhero work for your entire career, was their any trepidation in doing this superhero-inspired series?

BW: Yeah, it came from the writing I did on Generation X and then the couple unreleased issues I wrote for NYX (which, I should state, wasn't the same concept that eventually appeared under that title). I just felt like I had some things to say on the subject of young people and extraordinary powers that I didn't get a chance to, and its just as well I ended up doing it outside of the company-owned world. No trepidation, no real fear. DEMO was not in competition with anything else.

NRAMA: In the second issue, the lead character is very much the complete opposite of Marie from the first story. Where Marie is trying to free her
> supernatural abilities, Emmy is trying to contain them the best she can. Which came first to you, the power or the consequences?

BW: The consequences. "Emmy" was directly inspired by the Belgian film Rosetta, and if you've seen it, you see how similar the endings are to each other. That movie utterly destroyed me.. haunted me for weeks and weeks, and that final scene was lodged in my head when I was writing the proposal for DEMO. "Emmy" was actually summarized in the proposal document... it wasn't the first story I scripted, but it was the first idea I had for the series.

So I built off that ending, constructing a premise and a location (inspired by a line from a Steve Earle song, about a town so small and insignificant that people speeding by on the highway don't even know it's there), and then a reason for Emmy to do what she does. Of all the stories in DEMO, this was the easiest, and the one that came to be fully formed all in one go.

NRAMA: With Emmy being quiet for most of the issue, you put a lot of weight on Becky to illustrate Emmy's nuanced expressions throughout the issue. Did you go to extra lengths to direct what Becky would draw in this case?

BW: I don't think so. I'm looking at the script now, and everything is in there, but it's pretty brief and to the point, single sentences for the panels most of the time. The burden really was on Becky, and the credit should be as well. I should say that all the Demo scripts, except for "Bad Blood" (which I think I went overboard with the direction) were written in a sort of hybrid style that only broke the story down into pages, leaving the panel breakdowns to Becky. She would choose the number of panels, the layout, and pace out the action. There is a sample script on my website, in the "downloads" section if you want to see what I mean.

NRAMA: From issues with parents to an issue with no parents at all, the "Bad Blood" story of issue #3 really shook up readers with the curveball ending. How did this story come together for you?

BW: From the first few episodes of Six Feet Under, at least in part. The idea of siblings hanging out in the aftermath of a death in the family, which is something I knew a little bit about firsthand as well. This was also the first DEMO story I wrote, and the first one Becky drew. I ended up moving a few of them around after deciding this one was not representative enough of the Demo concept to go first.

So yeah, kids in the aftermath. Another theme of this issue, and a theme I come back to over and over in my writing, is the notion of embracing your imperfections, both in yourself and in others. Specifically with this story, Sean is schooling Samantha on how ____ed up their family is, but hey, that's cool.. it's your family, right?

You have to accept it, no matter what, and even love the flaws. The ending is really upbeat for a Demo story, isn't it? You know, its funny that I think most of DEMO is upbeat in its own way, when I see it reviewed as being relentlessly downbeat. I wonder what that says about me?

And when I said earlier that I overwrote this issue... poor Becky - not only did I give her an entire issue of two people talking in a car, I used really annoyed camera direction terms, like "one-shot", "two-shot", etc. It's amazing she stuck around after this one! At least I gave her the chance to draw a tree branch in someone's chest at the end.

NRAMA: You mention the issue taking place primary in the confines of a car. This issue marked a change of pace from the previous two issues, slowing down to provide a subtle character-driven piece. Was this a conscious decision to shift gears with this third issue?

BW: Like I said, I wrote this one first. But in general, not a lot of DEMO was consciously constructed to work this way or that way in relation to the other stories. I did move "NYC" to #1 as a deliberate move, but aside from that I treated each one as its own little graphic novel, and not as a part 2 or 4 or 9 of 12, ya know? It followed my instincts and didn't overthink anything. It was very fly by the seat of our pants.

NRAMA: That's nothing to be ashamed f.

In the story, the half-siblings Samantha and Sean have a decidedly unabashedly frank conversation about their lives, and it gives us a glimpse at a larger relationship and story for the two without hitting the reader over the head. When you were writing the dialogue and coming up with the points of the conversation, what led you to go this route instead of spelling it all out?

BW: After having dated a film director just prior to starting DEMO, I had logged dozens and dozens of hours watching short films (whether I wanted to or not), and I came to appreciate the format. The best short film, or story, is not a three-act story scrunched down into a small space, but rather a single scene, or a moment in time, or part of something larger that still functions on its own. This was the one mandate I brought with me to Demo, was to write these sort of short film comics and explore the format. To that end, it didn't matter what the backstory was, or what the characters did after page 24 of the story. It didn't matter.

NRAMA: Re-reading this issue for this interview and knowing the twist ending, I was surprised to see that the story works pretty well even before the ending happens and ties it back into the superpowers theme. This ties into later issues where you downplay the powers aspect much more to focus on the human drama. Writing this issue at the time, how did it play into the bigger DEMO picture?

BW: I honestly don't know! [laughs] It was just a short story I wanted to write. And as you said, how the superpower thing receded into oblivion in some of the later stories, I just chalk that up to natural progression... we did DEMO over the course of eighteen months, and starting new each month you are bound to evolve the concept, to think of new ideas you want to do, to experiment more. That's what happened, and since DEMO had such an accommodating concept and format, we were constrained by anything.

Stay tuned to Newsarama tomorrow as we continue our discussion with Brian Wood about the issues of DEMO, Volume 1.

[virginsinner]

The most awesome thing about Demo is how it took concepts we've seen in so many different forms and not exactly make it seem NEW, but make it relevant. It blew my mind how Brian Wood made having 'powers' feel like a collective emotional experience.

It stands as one of the best reasons why comics should exist.

[XIII]

Demo was excellent and I'm glad it's coming back.

[perk9600]

I really enjoy Brian's work, but I haven't read Demo yet. I'll be buying volume 1 as soon as I find it and volume 2 when it comes out.

Best of luck with the book Bri.

[CitC]

I picked it up at the library this winter pretty much by accident. I thought it was terrific. The varying art styles by the one artist was the first thing I noticed - what a talent.

I found Demo to be haunting as much as anything else. Emmy and the sniper story were so different, but they stuck with me for a long while. I don't think I completely understood all of them, and ones like the Break-Up I think I only sort of understand.

[JackHarkness]

Not a single question about the move from AiT to Vertigo...

[panicbxmb]

Originally Posted by JackHarkness

Not a single question about the move from AiT to Vertigo...

maybe Brian realized the if Vertigo published it, people would actually be able to find it in stores.

it's been really tough to find since it was released a few years ago. i had to do a bit of hunting for the trade when it came out.

[Volunteer]

I loved DEMO and can not wait for volume 2. There has been a drop off in the number of titles coming from outside the big 2 that I really enjoyed. Used to look forward to the next issue of DEMO, Teenagers from Mars and others in my box. Glad to see that at least one is coming back.

[newfoundma]

I would love for Wood to do something like DEMO in a shared universe. It was great to see these characters, but we only got an issue of each. He has such a fresh take; I think he coul revolutionalize mainstream superheroics like Moore and Miller did. Of course, he has more control and makes more money if they stay creator owned. As long as he is creating, I will be buying.

[panicbxmb]

Originally Posted by newfoundma

I would love for Wood to do something like DEMO in a shared universe. It was great to see these characters, but we only got an issue of each. He has such a fresh take; I think he coul revolutionalize mainstream superheroics like Moore and Miller did. Of course, he has more control and makes more money if they stay creator owned. As long as he is creating, I will be buying.

that would be a cool idea, but i think i'd prefer Wood to keep all control of the characters and ideas he creates.

and is your username a Get Up Kids reference? i miss those guys.