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| Posted by: |  MyHeadHurts |
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| Date: | April 15th, 2009 10:52 AM | ||
| Header: | Brendan McGinley on HEIST | ||
| Bulletin: | Brendan McGinley, editor of the Dose comics anthology, writer of Hannibal Goes to Rome and co-writer (with Joshua Elder) of Mail-Order Ninja, has rolled out a new webcomic–Heist–at Indelible Comics. He sat down with Blog@ to discusss the project. Blog@Newsarama: Why not give a capsule summary of what the comic is actually about for the uninitiated? Brendan McGinley: Heist is the story of the world’s greatest supervillain, a clever thief who has as little to do with superheroes as possible, and so they have no idea he exists. But he’s addicted to thrills, so he takes on the impossible job of stealing something dangerous from their headquarters. Blog@: And in doing so, he’s not going to be…err…raping any superhero’s wives out of sheer opportunity, right? Cause I guess according to some people that happens sometimes when the bad guys break in BM: No, he will not. Not because he’s better than that — he’s a horrible person –but because he prefers the thrill of the chase to outright violation. He thinks he IS better than that But he’s a thug. I’m honestly not sure if he’s capable of rape. I like to think it’s not in his character, but thankfully it’s not a question. Blog@: How do you write a character like that–someone who doesn’t have a real clear sense of self–and not make the reader feel confused? BM:Oh, it’s easy enough. He’s a caricature to start with. We pummel some depth into him. Blog@: So as far as format–are you going to have everything, or whole issues, go up at once or do more of a one-page-at-a-time approach a la Warren Ellis’ new thing? BM: Well my goal is to get the material out there. so as it gets lettered, it goes up and people follow. If they prefer to wait and read it all at once, it gets collected into the Flash viewer. But Andres is drawing it in comic book standard dimensions. That’s why the height changes but the width is constant. Blog@: You say you’d like to think he’s not capable of rape–so is this a character you’d like to see redeemed in the long run? BM: I’d like to see him…grow. Blog@: Well, you know, I think Marvel currently has an opening in its “Goliath” character role. BM: Some people will see the ending as rehabilitative, but I look at it as more about his deepening as a character. We plotted this back in 2003 or 04 as an Epic pitch then a DC pitch, and Wanted came out about that time. I couldn’t believe everyone was offended by the final page of that book. It was perfect characterization. I was more offended Wesley capped the big, revealed villain without a fight. I wanted him to earn his adulthood. So Geist will still be a jerk at the end, but he’ll be a fleshed-out jerk. Blog@: So is your ultimate goal to set yourself up as writer of Guy Gardner, then? BM: Guy Gardner? Yeah, still waiting. DC, find me! Blog@: Does this comic kind of deal with the question of what would motivate a villain to attract a superhero’s attention to begin with? It seems like a no-brainer to stay off their radar instead of goading them. BM: Great question. I just think they make it personal. And real career criminals…it’s often not so. Blog@: I think in a book I read not long ago, there was a particular psychiatric diagnosis that was specific to supervillains Something that differed from normal sociopathic behavior, and made them act out in exactly the way they do. BM: Sure. Dr. Doom plainly wants Reed’s awe and respect. Geist just doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about you. Blog@: Did you ever read the issue of Peter Parker: Spider-Man where the Chameleon tells Spidey that he loves him, and then commits suicide? BM: No. That’ll guilt up a nice kid from Queens, right quick. Blog@: That’s just what I thought of when you said that about Doom–these guys use these other guys to define their whole life, and in many cases (Chameleon went from jail to fighting Spidey to jail for thirty-odd years) the heroes are their only sources of stability. BM: Yeah, it’s all personal with supervillains. Which can be true of real-life crooks, but…well, look, I just did a Dose piece called “Doom/Tuck” and it’s based on the Fantastic Four movies where Julian McMahon is a natural choice for Doom, but in the flicks he’s just playing Christian Troy. What a missed opportunity. So I reverse that and put Doom in Nip/Tuck and the relationship doesn’t change. Doom and Troy are both so in love with their counterparts that when he does what he always talks about doing and kills Reed, he has no purpose. He just ends up killing himself, too. Blog@: …And he still wants to sleep with the other guy’s skinny, blonde wife! BM: Yeah, that happens too. Makes you wonder about Franklin’s parentage. They foiled very nicely. Blog@: That’s actually kinda strange. Someone should tell that dude to play off-type sometime. Blog@: A character like Geist, he hopefully has a life to come home to? BM: Not at all. No anchors whatsoever. When he does join an organization, he becomes reviled throughout it. Blog@: So do you think that makes him more unstable, or just better at his job, or both? BM: I think it makes him better at his job, but then his job becomes boring because of it.’ It’s just technical to him. Geist has to find an opposite number. Kind of a Spider-Man type, actually. Blog@: How deep and developed do you imagine this superhero universe to be? Obviously you can see in Austin Grossman’s book Soon I Will Be Invincible that there’s an inclination to make them pretty fleshed-out for some of these villain stories. BM: That book ran hot and cold with me. I really liked the villain’s tale, but the superhero stuff was very inconsistent. But I quite loved how he was building himself from lab geek to supergenius in the underground. There was a terrific line that captures the frustration of being at your start and ready to remake the world, “I was exhausted and broke, young and evil and superintelligent, somewhere in America.” Blog@: I was using him as an example, but how deep does your superhero universe/continuity run? BM: It’s contained. If you want soap opera and all that, go find a Marvel or DC book. We benefit more from a beginning, middle and end. I’ve cast some thoughts towards showing him running into someone from Invisible, Inc. or Iconography, but that’d kind of change the stories of the folks involved. Geist can exist in the Invisible, Inc. universe but I don’t think they can really fit into his. Don’t hold me to that. But at any rate, no, you won’t have to learn any continuity. Who wants to? It’s an afterthought. You commit emotionally or intellectually to the story THEN you get jazzed that the Hulk is fighting Thor. That’s what CrossGen got wrong. It had great titles, but nobody was making the leap, they just suddenly felt like they were committing to the whole shebang. You gotta date a bit before you enter a relationship, no? Blog@: So a little more like the approach that Image has been taking recently–”Yeah, theoretically Savage Dragon and Invincible live on the same earth, but they fight different bad guys and don’t leave their hometowns much….” BM: Well, I like how Image does it. It’s shared when they need it to be…then it isn’t. Even within Wildstorm that’s the case, and Wildstorm’s been doing the only worthwhile superhero comics of the 21st Century. Well, not the ONLY worthwhile ones, but certainly the front of the genre. Blog@: Right, gotcha. And so how long do you anticipate Heist taking to play out? Or the first arc anyway? BM: It’s five issues. I don’t have immediate plans to continue it, though I can think of maybe two stories worth telling: sort of an origin, and a chance to choose which way he’s going to go when he actually cares about something and it’s threatened. Blog@: So ultimately it’s a toy that can be put away and picked up later if the urge strikes you? BM: Yeah. I’d rather not overdo it. Geist is pretty entertaining to me, but I’d hate him to overstay his welcome. Eventually, every scary character in fiction gets his edges rubbed soft. Bond ends up surfing on ice floes or hopping on crocodiles. It takes a reboot to make them terrifying again. So if Mr. Geist doesn’t keep a relatively low profile, he’d stop being clever and turn into someone who very much enjoys sounding clever. Which is what he actually is if you had to meet him, but is more entertaining to see and so gets a pass on the page. Blog@: heh. Sort-of like if you actually ever tried to use any of Wolverine’s taunts in an actual fight, how people would laugh at you and then start hitting, as opposed to backing down? BM: Yeah, well it’s inevitable as you round out a character. You either keep pushing how hard they act until they’re absurd, or you chomp into the caramel core and then Dr. Doom’s just very sad, in need of love from someone: his mother, his one respected colleague, his colleague’s wife as proxy…all that. …Wolverine’s 5′-3″ with Flock of Seagulls hair. I imagine it’s all part of his strategy to lure them within range of his claws. Blog@: So I know that Heist is something that’s been percolating for a while. What’s different or special about this title as opposed to the other projects you already work on regularly? BM: Besides the art? Andres & Rocio are batting .999 I’d say the shift in issue #3 lasting through #4 is going to knock quite a lot of people for a loop, and draw in some folks who are looking at it now disinterestedly. Blog@: Do you think the biggest challenge with webcomics is just drawing people in? There are so many of them that really I never even checked yours out until I knew you and trusted that you could entertain me. BM: Yeah, there sure are a lot. Ones I’ve never heard of pull readerships so large they embarrass sales of Civil War. But I’ll tell you it’s a lot easier than doing it in print. Online’s kinder to both creator and reader, I’d say. Blog@: It’s interesting–I don’t know many people who make money with their webcomics, but I know a whole lot more who don’t bankrupt themselves, as opposed to trying to put together a print run. BM: And to go back to the dating/relationship thing: once an audience builds, they’re happy to commit to print. They WANT to possess it and call it their own. Blog@: Obviously you have printed material through Dose and some other work, but how do you deal with collecting things like this? Do you use custom printers or just take on the expense yourself? BM: Yeah, I’m in the red on Dose and probably always will be or maybe I’ll break even. Now I’m in the red on www.indeliblecomics.com but I’m only out…what, a few hundred? Compared to print costs, that’s a bargain. And it’s got an unlimited potential rate of return. Blog@: And do you make back? Do you have advertisers and the like, or is it just getting the work out there in the hopes of taking the next career step? BM: Yeah, I put ads on the site last month, which felt odd because I’d so deliberately pushed Dose as no ads. But firk, if a comic like Heist can’t operate on remorseless selling out, who can? It’s not like Geist has any principles beyond his own satisfaction. What I’d like to do is scrounge up some product placement for him. I think it’d be entirely fitting, even though it would be anathema to something like Iconography. Blog@: Obviously, there’s a lot of politics and a lot of humor to Dose. How do you balance the desire to do that as a writer when you’re writing something more serious or more genre-oriented, where those elements may or may not fit? BM: Heist has quite a bit of sociopolitical subtext, you just don’t have to pay any attention to it. But if it doesn’t fit, you must remit. Geist is never going to give a screed about gender politics, just as Cullen from Strychnine Kiss won’t talk about the Patriot Act. Basically, I just focus on what it’s about, and if the elements add something nice, they stay. If they don’t contribute, they can go home. Blog@: That sounds like a good note to end on…anything further you want to add? Big, obvious questions that I missed because I’m a foolish person? BM: Ask me the meaning of life. Blog@: O, great Deep Thought…err, I mean, what’s the meaning of life? BM: I asked this of my friend one day while we were painting a house. He paused, put his brush on top of the bucket, and said from atop the ladder: “Not. DYING.” |
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