How did you end up with Outsiders? For me, the series is still Mike W. Barr and Jim Aparo’s first version of the team, I was entirely the right age for that when it started.
Strangely enough, that’s exactly the reason why. Probably my single favorite artist at DC Comics, in addition to Garcia-Lopez, would be Jim Aparo.
He’s so good, and so underrated.
Jim Aparo’s The Brave and The Bold was what got me into DC Comics in the early days. For me, personally, I always enjoyed that book. I remember when Brave and Bold was cancelled and Batman and the Outsiders started, and I was there from the very beginning of that. I love the aspect of the team that’s fighting the rules and never receiving the respect that the other, more prominent, teams receive. It shows that they’re doing it for reasons other than just fame or glory. They’re doing it because it’s right, and that’s one of the themes that I want to explore with that book.
And there’s a wonderful soap opera quality to it. So many of the characters do not exist in other books or other series, so you can really focus your storytelling and direction in that book, because it’s the only place you can see them.
So is that what appeals to you about writing comics? The ongoing soap opera?
It’s really a bit of everything. There’s a sense of outrageousness that you try to accomplish, but try to make it seem as if it’s normal and part of the everyday life of the heroes. There’s the interaction with them. There are challenges in the writing itself, though. There’s a challenge to try and convey as much information as possible in a conversational manner, so you can keep the story going even as people learn what’s going on. Or the introduction of all the psuedo-sciences, all the backgrounds of the characters you need to keep the story moving forward. It’s a challenge to inject enough information and make it entertaining and fun to read. Right now, I have the huge saving grace of beautiful pictures. The issue that comes out next is some of his best work.
We’re trying to make this as frantic a book as possible. We want to introduce as many new concepts, new characters [as possible]. As the story develops, you’ll see that we’re introducing counter-teams – Geo-Force is building one team in Markovia, and Black Lightning is building another team in America, and you’ll see ultimately the challenges each team is being faced with, and ultimately, the confrontation between the teams. The challenge [for us] is that there are two distinct storylines going on, and the fun challenge is intertwining them as we go on.
But again, that sense of ongoing drama and soap opera, is similar to what comics were like back when Batman and the Outsiders launched in the 1980s, the never-ending battle…
It’s interesting, you asked before about the differences between being a writer and being co-publisher. I write in the style that I know, and the way that I know, the way that excites me. Which may not be the norm at the moment, or the standard way people are approaching books. There was always an expression we used in animation, that we never wanted to waste a word. Because you only have a certain amount of pages, or a certain amount of minutes in a show, every minute should be precious, every page should be precious, and should be presenting information on how to understand the character on the story on every single page. It’s very easy to come up with patter or banter, but unless it’s helping with the story or helping you understand the character, I tend to gravitate away from that.