TALKING TO GERARD JONES

[MattBrady]

by Alex Segura

Gerard Jones, best known to present audiences for Men of Tomorrow, his detailed and revealing look at the birth and growth of the Golden Age of comics, has a much more detailed and entertaining comic book history than some might think. A veteran comic scribe from the 80s and 90s with almost every major Marvel and DC character checked off on his to-do list, Jones made a name for himself with his knack for balancing the dramatic with the funny, and for lengthy runs on Green Lantern, Justice League and Prime from Malibu. We sat down with Jones to discuss the paperback edition of Men of Tomorrow, the ups and downs of his comic book career and his future plans.

Newsarama: Most comic readers know you now for your nonfiction writing, specifically Men of Tomorrow, your latest work. But can you give us the Gerard Jones 101? Including your comic book work?

Gerard Jones: Let's see...The Beaver Papers, a humor book written with my pal Will Jacobs, published in 1983. A bunch of National Lampoon pieces, mostly with Will, from '83 'til about '87 or so. A few contributions to Paul Krassner's Realist. My first history of comics, also written with Will, from 1985: The Comic Book Heroes, from the Silver Age to the Present.

In 1987 Will and I started The Trouble with Girls for Malibu Comics, the first published comics work for either of us. Then I took off with a bunch of comics work on my own: The Big Prize for Malibu, El Diablo and The Shadow Strikes and assorted other stuff for DC. Starting around 1990 I became one of DC's regular writers, writing the whole Green Lantern expansion - GL, Mosaic, Guy Gardner, GL Corps Quarterly and scripting Justice League comics over Keith Giffen's layouts. After a while I took over Justice League International, then Justice League America from Zero Hour until it was cancelled. I did some DC miniseries in the early '90s too: Martian Manhunter: American Secrets, a few Batman projects, of which my favorite was Batman: Jazz, and The Elongated Man. I did some work for Marvel around the same time, mostly Wonder Man. A couple of limited things for Dark Horse, Oktane and The Haunted Man, the latter running on the Dark Horse website when they were experimenting with internet comics. And in 1993 and 1994 I was mostly preoccupied with the Malibu Ultraverse, of which I was one of the seven - I think it was seven - founding writers. I co-wrote Prime with Len Strazewski and on my own wrote Freex, Solitaire, and the first few issues of Ultraforce.

During my decade of writing comics I only did one big nonfiction project, a book called Honey I'm Home: Sitcoms Selling the American Dream for Grove-Weidenfeld in 1992. St. Martin's brought out the paperback in '93, and I believe it's still in print. I did a rewrite of The Comic Book Heroes in '96, then went back to nonfiction more seriously with Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Superheroes and Make-Believe Violence, from Basic Books in 2002.

For quite a while I kept doing little bits of work in comics. My last work for a "mainstream" comics publisher was a graphic novel for DC called Batman: Fortunate Son that Gene Ha drew. I wrote the Pokemon newspaper strip for Creators Syndicate for a year. And I've done a fair amount of "rewriting" of Japanese comics translated into English for Viz Comics. I particularly worked on their Rumiko Takahashi manga, polishing up every issue of Maison Ikkoku, Ranma, and Urusei Yatsura. I did some development work for the Cartoon Network. I've also been paid to write a few screenplays and teleplays along with the way, for Fox, Warners, HBO, and others, but nothing's made it to the screen yet.

NRAMA: As you’ve pointed out, you've worked on most of the big characters from Marvel and DC, and Prime from Malibu. What were some of the highlights - and lowlights - of your comic book writing career?

GJ: The most fun I ever had was writing Trouble with Girls with Will. Our mission was just to get together a few times a month and make each other laugh. All work should be that gratifying--and pay better. I was also very excited by developing Green Lantern: Mosaic, laying out the world, writing the "bible," pushing myself to see what I could do and what I fell on my face trying to do. It was always fun working out ideas and stories with Mark Badger, especially on Batman: Jazz. I was very fond of El Diablo, The Shadow, working with Brian Augustyn when he was a new editor and a couple of artists who were joys to collaborate with, Mike Parobeck and Eduardo Barreto. I had a blast doing Elongated Man with Brian and Mike too. I can still remember thinking of that series, walking with my wife through a classic English garden in Burford in the Cotswolds. And it all came out just about as I'd envisioned it.

I don't like to think too much about lowlights, although I know those are the stories that are most interesting in interviews. Every time a project I liked got cancelled it was painful, of course. But I guess the two long, bad stretches was when Kevin Dooley and I were trying to come together on a plan for Green Lantern and we kept making each other mad--and created some really dull, aimless comics in the process--and when sales were plummeting on the Ultraverse and everyone was scrambling to find a way to save it and the writers and editors ended up at each others' throats. But rough experiences that led to bad work and crappy outcomes for everyone involved.

NRAMA: Speaking of Green Lantern, personally, the first time I came across your work was on the post-Crisis Green Lantern title. Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner and John Stewart are arguably the characters you're most identified with as a comic book writer. What can you say about your time with the title? What were your goals coming in, and how did that translate on the printed page?

GJ: Are those the ones I'm most identified with? I guess because there were so many Green Lantern readers, the sheer number of people who ran across my name on those comics was greater. And when I hear from fans who remember my work, a fair number are commenting on GL: Mosaic, although just as many are remembering Trouble with Girls, and The Shadow may be the one I hear about most. Apart from Mosaic, I'm not sure my Green Lantern left much of an impression.

It's kind of sad to admit, but my main goal was to restore Hal Jordan to glory. It didn't exactly turn out that way. I was a huge fan of the John Broome-Gil Kane Green Lanterns of the '60s and specifically a fan of Hal Jordan as they had conceived him, very sure of himself, even a little
arrogant, supremely competent, and I made say "simply heroic." I felt that character had weighed down horribly with self-doubt and depressiveness and too many weird character turns, and the series as a whole had been choked by a too-complicated train-load of continuity that it always seemed to be dragging along on its back. I wanted to do a '90s comic, with ongoing plots and continuity development, but with the cleanness and verve of those old Green Lanterns, and a more mature but equally admirable Hal Jordan in the center of it.

The first problem was that the editor, Andy Helfer, really felt it was important that we acknowledge past continuity and keep moving forward from where GL was already standing. I wanted a new launch almost as clean as John Byrne's Superman - although we wouldn't have had to deny the "reality" of any past issues, but Andy felt readers would want to see the next step after the last episode in Action Comics Weekly, with the interpolation of the "Emerald Dawn" origin that he and Keith Giffen had worked up. He also wanted to rotate between the three main GLs--Hal, John and Guy--and settle only after about two years on Hal as the central character. So I started off with a lot to juggle that I didn't really want to deal with.

Still, that turned out to be a fun process. I was really happy with my first Guy storyline, and I loved what Joe Staton did with it visually. I was very disappointed with the first John Stewart story I came up with, but then I was able to spin that into the Mosaic series, which I enjoyed. I came around to thinking that Andy had been right about the rotating-GL idea; although I still wish we could have thrown out a lot more old stuff.

Once we had Hal as the central hero, though, it still didn't come together as I wanted. By then Kevin Dooley and I were already fighting over the direction, which didn't help. There was some editorial pressure against Hal changing his personality as much as I wanted, also. We started having trouble keeping a consistent artist. I kept having to write fill-in issues that stalled the larger plots.

And I think I was just burning out from the workload and the delay and all the little battles. I just didn't have the fire for writing Hal Jordan adventures that I'd had two years before when the process had started.

NRAMA: What was the final straw for you with Green Lantern?

GJ: I left partly because I was pretty sure I was going to be fired if I tried to hang on, and that just makes everything uglier for everyone. When I heard that my plan for revamping GL with issue #50 had been rejected, I knew there was no point. I had tried to pull off a revamp that kept Hal Jordan as a good guy and moved us more gradually - I think by issue #55 or so - to a new, younger GL, but the editors running the DC universe didn't feel it was dramatic enough to make a difference.

If I were forced to live it all over again, with a view of the future this time, I'd go back to before the rotating GL arc was finished, right as Kevin was taking over and we were so thrilled to be working together, and I'd sit down with him and hammer out an "adventures of Hal Jordan" master plan that would have guaranteed us some real direction in the series' third and fourth years, built inexorably to a powerful issue 50, and really made GL the hero I'd wanted him to be. I think I put too much faith in the fact that Hal was back in the center to keep my focus and enthusiasm up. I thought I could keep building month by month what I hadn't really thought through at a higher level.

NRAMA: In a way though, your departure was one of the last times Hal was the normal Hal for years. What do you think of Hal's subsequent "fall" and his recent "rebirth"?

GJ: I'm afraid I really didn't follow it. I read a couple of the early issues with the new GL and they seemed pretty fun. Recently Geoff Johns handed me a copy of Hal's first comeback issue and I thought it was very nicely done, but I haven't read further. I knew it would happen eventually, of course.

It's so hard to keep these 60-year-old franchises selling, and the business has become so dependent on the "continuity event." One can pretty much count on characters dying or going crazy and then coming back to their old forms as sales drag again.

NRAMA: Would it be a stretch to say you were burnt out on the industry as a writer after leaving Green Lantern? You moved on to JLA as you said, but was that a smooth ride?

GJ: The biggest problem for me on JLA was that the direction of the series, and even most of the specific plotlines, were Brian Augustyn's. Although I appreciated the ideas, I had trouble engaging with the stories and characters as I'd have liked. I've learned that it really matters to me to feel that I control the material I write. I'm not good at helping execute editorial or group-plotted visions.

But I was burnt also out on superheroes and to some extent on writing comics as a medium. It wasn't just because of my Green Lantern experience, although that was exhausting. I'd also been writing JLE on my own for a while, maybe a couple of years, and that had also gotten pretty wearying as that whole Justice League continuity got more tangled. I wish I'd been able to realize how tired and drained that part of my brain was, so I could have thought harder about whether JLA made sense for me right then. I thought that a new bunch of characters and a new beginning would energize me, and it did to an extent, but the threads kept twisting away from me.

NRAMA: How did your last years at DC compare with something like Prime, which seemed like a very fun project - at least from a reader's point of view? Did that too become a problem because of editorial interference?

GJ: Prime was nothing but fun at first. Working with Len Strazewski and Norm Breyfogle was great, and Malibu was full of optimism at the beginning. That too became stressful when Norm left, we changed artists month by month, too many Ultraverse-wide continuity bits were insisted upon, the editors became frantic about sales; the sale of the company to Marvel began to loom on the horizon. Those were hard years throughout the comics industry. First so much money and success that everyone went crazy snatching at it. Then plummeting sales that scared everyone to death.

NRAMA: Going back a bit and touching on your nonfiction work, you first got notice with your book The Comic Book Heroes, so, in a somewhat circular way, you're back to writing about the medium. How did the idea for Men of Tomorrow strike you? Did you feel there was a part of comic book history that was relatively unknown?

GJ: Well, I was first noticed by comics people with The Comic Book Heroes. I already had a career as a humor writer. Writing comics was never what I'd set out to do, and although I loved doing it for a few years I never saw it as a long career. But I've always been fascinated by the stories of how the comics came to be in the first place, and by the old timers who did the work I grew up on. It felt quite natural to me to come back to writing about comics, but with a much greater understanding of the business, the people, and how to write a nonfiction book. I'd had in the back of my mind for years to write something about the psychological and cultural underpinnings of the business and of superheroes. When I read Jack Liebowitz's obituary in 2000 I really started to think that there was a book there.

NRAMA: Not many people are familiar with the sheer amount of work that goes into a project of this magnitude. Could you paint us a picture? How long did you work on the book? Can you give us a ballpark figure of how many interviews you had to conduct? Were you basically a library rat for a few years?

GJ: The time from signing the contract to finishing the book was about two years, and I didn't do much else for those two years. Also, a lot of work I'd done on the two editions of The Comic Book Heroes and just for my own edification fed into this book. The library work wasn't so extensive, but the interviewing was. Flying to New York, Cleveland, and Florida, tracking down old timers and relatives of old timers, talking to dozens of people. I also had a lot of help from knowledgeable fans and comics historians.

Michael Feldman, Bob Beerbohm, Tom Andrae, Mike Catron, Mark Waid, and a lot more. I was tapping into decades of research by other people. Standing on the shoulders of fandom's giants, as it were.

NRAMA: When writing the book, what were some of the more surprising things you learned, both from research and interviews? Just from my own reading, the mob connections Harry had jumped out, among other things.

GJ: The fact that Jerry Siegel's father had been killed in an armed robbery when Jerry was young, for one. Interestingly, an alternate version of the family story has come to my attention since the book was finished. The one I printed, which seems to be fully accepted by Jerry's cousins on the Fine side, is that he was shot and killed. But now I'm discovering that other people in the family believe he died of a heart attack suffered during the robbery. Tom Andrae is apparently doing some deeper research there.

I was also surprised at how fully interwoven the worlds of sleaze and publishing and various countercultures were during the '20s and '30s. The fact that Harry Donenfeld intersected with Margaret Sanger, Hugo Gernsback, the art-nude photography scene, and the big bootleggers all at the same time. And then that the same sort of interconnecting was happening again in the '60s, as Harry's distribution company intertwined with Hugh Hefner, Gloria Steinem, the head shop culture, and so on and so on. I saw that comics were just one way of looking into a much wider world.

NRAMA: From an outside perspective, it seems like reaction to your work was fairly positive. Did you get any feedback from comic pros, both good and bad, about the work?

GJ: The response has been unfailingly positive--and more enthusiastic than I'd dared hope. Alan Moore called it "a magnificent piece of work." Michael Chabon called it "The quintessential history of comics for our time, and a constant delight to read." Dave Gibbons said something to the effect of it being the most moving book about comics he'd ever read. Neil Gaiman recently asked me for a copy because he keeps hearing so much good about it.

And so on and so on. I don't think I've heard a single bad thing from people in the business--although some of them pointed out a few factual errors I'd made.

NRAMA: Though it may be a part of your career that you’ve fully left behind, did you get any offers of comic book work after the book was released? Would you consider coming back?

GJ: Several people have wondered if I'd consider writing comics again, but right now it doesn't feel like I want to do. I think more people in comics are hoping I'll write another book on the subject, anyway.

If I were to do comics again, I think I'd rather make up my own ideas.

NRAMA: That said, what are you working on these days? What's next on your plate?

GJ: I just contributed a piece to Michael Chabon's Escapist that hasn't come out yet. I've got another book in development called Mad Fortune: The Forgotten Story of a How a Bodybuilder's Campaign to Redeem Mankind Transformed American Culture (But Not at All the Way He Planned), and I've got a screenplay thing going on that I can't talk about yet. I'm writing op-eds and articles for assorted magazines and newspapers, mostly the LA times, I guess. And I've started a novel called Strange Adventures. We'll see how that goes.

NRAMA: For those who haven't picked up the book yet -- which is coming out in paperback with new material -- why should they? What new tidbits will the paperback edition contain that might entice even those that have already read it to give it another chance?

GJ: There's new material on Jerry Siegel's psychology and private life, thanks to information I was given by his son, Michael Siegel, after the hardback's release. There's a bit of new material on Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, the founder of DC comics, and how Harry Donenfeld took the company away from him. That too comes from a son, the Major's son Doug Nicholson, who also contacted me after the first edition came out. There's a little more about how Jerry Siegel was "rediscovered" in 1975, the events that led to his public foray against DC. And some errors in the first version corrected.

I've already learned more since I had to turn in my corrections on the paperback. I could easily do a revised third edition. In lieu of that, though, I'll be writing an article for Alter Ego soon covering some of my new discoveries.

[Raphe Cheli]

This was a terrific book -- of course, I wish I would've waited and bought the softcover since there is a lot of extra and revised info.

[Brian Langlois]

Good interview. I always liked Gerard Jones, even when his work seemed aimless. It always felt like he was trying to accomplish something, and looking at the real-world struggles he had at DC tells us why. It is a shame that he got dragged down by editors that couldn't agree on what to do with the characters. I appreciate everything Gerard tried to do. Thankfully, all that is behind us now and DC has some focus back and a cohesive plan. Who knows where that plan will take us though. The Comic Book Heroes is a great read as well. I'd recommend checking it out for a deep look into superheroes and the industry that spawned them. I haven't read the new book yet, but maybe I'll check out the soft cover.

[Cully Hamner]

Hey, it's like old home week around here!

I'd like to say that I've read Men of Tomorrow about three times now, and I never get tired of it. It's simply a staggering, brilliant piece of work, and if you're interested in this medium, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy.

Great job, Gerry.

[blazerk0hl]

Here's a link to a podcast interview with Gerard Jones from a few weeks back on many of the same topics:

Comic Geek Speak

Peter

[Lord Simian]

I just bought the softcover Friday. I'm enjoying the hell out of it!

[rocketscientist]

Great to hear from Gerard Jones again! I began reading GL with his run. I still think his initial arc, The Road Back, was one of the best comic book stories I ever read! I enjoyed his GL, JLI, Guy Gardner, and Mosaic was a very weird and fun read (loved your pencils too Cully! ). I noticed the slip in quality with GL sometime after The Third Law and years later, in interviews like this, I learned why.

Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks to Mr. Jones for writing some great stories.

[skeletorjr]

Mr. Jones' The Shadow Strikes is one of my favorite comics ever. Now that Men of Tomorrow is in softcover I'm gonna have to pick one up and give it a read

[Ace]

I've been meaning to read Men of Tomorrow for ages, but held off because I always found Jones to be something of a bland comic book writer. The very fact that he can admit how poorly a lot of his GL run came off though, is enough to push me over the edge. I'm going to go grab the softcover when i see it.

[eh_ver]

Cool. Cully Hamner posted! I looked up Mosaic, a comic that has always interested me even though I've never been REALLY into GL, and just now found out that it was written by Jones and penciled by Hamner. I may just have to dig into the back issue bins tomorrow! Great interview guys! Loved Prime and I look forward to the day that Marvel and the Malibu guys get everything straightened out legally so everyone can see those characters again (c'mon Marvel, its not like YOU can do anything with them right now either!).

[Bill_Nolan]

Man, tricked into reading another story without a single reference to Stardust the Super-Wizard...



- Bill

[carl kolchak]

The Comic Book Heroes is a great read as well. I'd recommend checking it out for a deep look into superheroes and the industry that spawned them. I haven't read the new book yet, but maybe I'll check out the soft cover.

Comic Book Heroes is actually what got me interested in comics again. I love his remembrances of some of the backyard fights in the industry. I can't wait to pick up the new book.

[gerardjones]

Sorry about all the typos in the interview. Geez.

Re: Stardust. At least Fletcher Hanks got credit for cover art with the paperback. First edition left that off.

Hey Cully! Let's get back in touch sometime soon!

Gerry

[Lord Simian]

Originally posted by gerardjones
Sorry about all the typos in the interview. Geez.

Re: Stardust. At least Fletcher Hanks got credit for cover art with the paperback. First edition left that off.

Hey Cully! Let's get back in touch sometime soon!

Gerry

Thank YOU for such a great book about comic's golden age founders! I've already got three non-comic fans interested in reading it!

[Alex Segura Jr.]

Originally posted by gerardjones
Sorry about all the typos in the interview. Geez.

Re: Stardust. At least Fletcher Hanks got credit for cover art with the paperback. First edition left that off.

Hey Cully! Let's get back in touch sometime soon!

Gerry

Thanks for the great responses.

-- Alex

[samnoir]

Men of Tomorrow was a great read, even for non-comics fans.

In terms of Gerard Jones' comics work, Green Lantern Mosaic was a wonderfully experimental series.

__________________________________

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[Lord Simian]

Indeed, I never read much of Mosaic... but what I did read was highly enjoyable... I think I'll try to pick up a run on eBay.

[BEC]

I had the pleasure of working with Gerry as penciller of The Big Prize for Malibu way back, what is it now, 16 or 17 years ago (holy smokes!). I always found him to be an absolute gentleman and a wonderful talent.

I've heard nothing but great things about Men of Tomorrow and eagerly look forward to finally sitting down and reading it. Thanks Newsarama for the interview and the chance to catch up on what Gerry's been up to since I last ran into him.

Bryon E. Carson
Otterslide Studio

[Herald]

I admit that my liking for Mr. Jones's DC work varies wildly. While I liked GL: Mosaic and what little of plain ol' GL I read, I found his JLE and JLI... frustrating, to say the least.

I particularly point to his take on my favorite heroine, the Japanese female Dr. Light, Kimiyo Hoshi. She was extremely strong-willed and self-assured when she first premiered in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but was completely changed into a weak-willed wallflower during Jones's JLE, due to, of all things, artificial sweeteners. Frankly, she became a parody of her true self.

The fact that Jones rewrites manga made this total alteration all the more bitterly ironic and baffling. You don't see strong-willed ladies like Ranma 1/2's Akane Tendo or Inu-Yasha's Sango being rendered so painfully self-doubting and unassertive like Kimiyo was. And those are representations of Japanese females written by a Japanese female.

Having read this interview, though, perhaps he isn't entirely to blame for all this. It sounds like he might have been fighting the editor when he was on JLE and JLI, too.

So, if you're still reading this, Mr. Jones, (and I wouldn't blame you if you didn't get past "frustrating" or "parody"... ), could you tell me how much of Dr. Light's weaker personality was your idea, and how much was the editor's? Why was the character altered so significantly in the first place? Thank you in advance.

[Cully Hamner]

Originally posted by gerardjones Hey Cully! Let's get back in touch sometime soon!

Gerry

You got it! If nothing else, I'm sure I'll track you down in San Diego next summer...

[Beria]

Anyone remember Jones' Its's commentin' time with Sidney Mellon column in Amazing Heroes? Hilarious stuff.

[Fazhoul]

I loved "The Trouble With Girls" and if there's not any plans for new adventures of Lester Girls then I would at least like to see his old adventures collected.

[lesterg]

Originally posted by Fazhoul
I loved "The Trouble With Girls" and if there's not any plans for new adventures of Lester Girls then I would at least like to see his old adventures collected.

Ahh..."The Trouble with Girls". Man, did I love that book (my screen name is actually short for "Lester Girls"...I'm such a geek).

I wonder if Jones, Jacobs and Hamilton would ever reunite for a "Girls: The End" special or something?

[steveupson]

Originally posted by Cully Hamner
You got it! If nothing else, I'm sure I'll track you down in San Diego next summer...

O my gosh, that just brings a smile to my face.
Gerard & Cully's work on GL: Mosaic was really meaningful to me at the time, and it's great to see such collegiality still after all these years.

By the way, I plan to read Men of Tomorrow soon; sounds great.

[Simon DelMonte]

Sincer Gerard and Cully are both lurking here, let me add my voice to those who loved Mosaic. I thought it was one of the few truly innovative and adult super-hero comics DC was doing at the time of its short run. John Stewart remains a personal favorite, even though he's become far more conventional since those days.