As we mentioned last issue, one of our favorite titles in 2005 was a
dynamic, humorous one-shot from Atomeka. Hero Squared reunited the
writing team of J. Marc DeMatteis and Keith Giffen, who among many other
projects made themselves notorious with a lengthy, funny run on DC’s Justice
League that began in 1987 and stands in stark to contrast to the “dark and
gritty” take on superheroes that permeated the ’80s and ’90s (and still
many comics today). The duo of DeMatteis and Giffen also re-teamed for a
successful mini-series, Formerly Known As The Justice League, which also
won wide acclaim (the follow-on story, “I Can’t Believe It’s Not The
Justice League,” is currently running in Justice League
Classified).

Now the writers have brought a new Hero Squared
mini-series to Boom! Studios. Scoop spoke with Ross Richie, Boom’s
publisher, about the project, and this week we’ve talked with DeMatteis about
his work on Hero Squared and his diverse career in comics, one that
includes a variety of creator-owned and company-owned
assignments.

Scoop: What was your first experience reading
comics?
JMD: The truth is, I don’t remember ever not reading comics, so I
must’ve started pretty young. (Another reminder that, once upon a time, there
were lots and lots of comics that kids could read without their parents having a
stroke!) I have vague memories of a cousin of mine giving me a stack of comic
books…and I remember some neighbors in my apartment building who would also
give me comic books…but, for the life of me, I don’t recall when I lost my
comic book virginity!

Scoop: Were you a collector, a reader,
neither?
JMD: I was a passionate reader, not just of comics; I loved to
read, period…but when I was a kid, I never thought about stockpiling the
stuff. (Bags and boards? I don’t think they even existed…or, if they did, I
never heard of ’em.) In fact, I can recall my mother making me throw out a box
of comic books that contained, among other things, Avengers #1! (I was primarily
a DC Kid at that point, but I’d picked up a few Marvels out of curiosity.)

Then, somewhere along I became a collector (my religious conversion to
Marvel Comics in the seventh grade might have had something to do with it)…but
I wasn’t hoarding stuff that I thought would be valuable some day. I collected
the comics I loved. The ones I enjoyed reading again and again.

Scoop: What were the steps you took from reading comics to writing
them?
JMD: I made a couple of aborted attempts when I was in my late
teens, early twenties. When I was about eighteen I sent a horrendous script
sample to Marvel and received a horrendous reply in return. Then, a year or two
later, DC had some sort of internship program for writers going and I submitted
a writing sample, got some very helpful feedback…but didn’t get the gig.

I was very involved in music then, my main focus was on playing in a
band, writing songs…but I never gave up the comic book dream. Two or so years
after the DC internship attempt, I sold some material to Marvel’s MAD magazine
knockoff, Crazy. (I knew a guy in college who’d been working for them.)
That didn’t help me make the jump to the comic book side of things, but I did
get a check with Spider-Man’s face on it!

What finally broke the wall
for me was sending in a new batch of writing samples to DC. The reply I got said
Paul Levitz was looking at material for the DC horror/anthology books: House
of Mystery, House of Secrets, Weird War Tales and the rest.
I’d never read those…I hardly knew they existed…but I ran out and bought
some, wrote up some plot outlines and sent them to Paul. He replied with a
letter that tore my plots to shreds and even criticized my typing. (He was
right, too.) But at the end of the letter he wrote: “Please feel free to
submit again.” And I did. Finally, I went up to DC for a face-to-face with
Paul and sold him on a story. It was a truly magical moment. After the script
was approved, he shook my hand and said, “Welcome to the business.”
It really took me another year or two to be able to fully support myself writing
comics…but I never gave up the dream…and I’m still here!

Scoop:
What was the first comic you wrote?
JMD: The first one I was paid for was
a House of Mystery story called “The Lady Killer Craves
Blood!” And the first one to see print was a Weird War Tales story
called “The Blood Boat.” As you can tell by the titles, these were
literary masterpieces that transformed comic books into a major art form
virtually overnight! (Actually, they were goofy vampire stories, but, hey,
you’ve got to start somewhere!)

Scoop: What was that experience
like?
JMD: It was fantastic. Those anthology comics were the vaudeville of
comics: a place where you could start at the bottom of the bill and learn your
craft, without too many people watching. Working with Paul…and then Jack
Harris and Len Wein, who became a real mentor to me in those early days, was an
extraordinary education.

Scoop: You’ve written company-owned
material and creator-owned projects. What are the upsides of each?
JMD:
The fun of company-owned material is pretty obvious: You get to write
Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, Justice League, Silver Surfer…the icons of your
childhood. And you’ve got a little kid inside you jumping up and down screaming:
“Wow! Superman! I can’t believe it!”

The joy of creator-owned
material is that you’re creating from the deeps of your personal vision. Writing
your story exactly the way you want to write it. No constraints, no laws of some
preexisting universe. You get to sail out into uncharted waters and really
challenge yourself.

Scoop: What are the downsides of
each?
JMD: The downside of the company-owned material is that it’s a
cage. A fun, sometimes very well-paying, cage, but a cage nonetheless. And,
after a while, it can get awfully dull in that cage. Especially the super-hero
cage. You find yourself desperately wanting to communicate things that matter
profoundly to you…and realizing that those ideas have no place in that
corporate capes and tights world.

Which is why you turn to creator-owned
material in the first place. The downside of that? It usually doesn’t pay as
well. And there’s always a chance that nobody will be interested in your
“personal vision.” But the truth is, if you’ve got a story to tell,
a vision to communicate, that you’re passionate about, you’re going to tell it
even if there are only two people reading it.

Right now I’m working with
Mike Ploog, Nick Bell and Dave Lanphear (the entire Abadazad team) on a
new all-ages fantasy for Desperado/Image called The Stardust Kid. This is
a story I’ve wanted to tell for decades…and we’re all pouring everything we’ve
got into the work. Am I getting rich doing it? Nah. (Not yet, anyway!) Am I
having an incredible time, collaborating with one of the finest fantasy
illustrators on the planet, creating work that matters deeply to me…and that
I’m proud to put out in the world? Absolutely. And that’s what doing a
creator-owned project is all about.

Stardust Kid is a five-issue
mini-series and the first issue will be out in May. Everyone reading this should
immediately pre-order ten copies each!

And if I can throw in another
plug: Abadazad will be back as a series of fantasy novels (we’re mixing
prose, illustration and sequential art, trying to create something unique and
exciting) from Disney’s Hyperion Books For Children. The first two will be out
in the spring of 2006. End of plug!

Scoop: You’ve written all sorts
of styles, ranging from the comedy of Formerly Known As The Justice
League to the insight of Moonshadow, the fantasy of Abadazad,
and the surprising humor/horror of Greenberg the Vampire. Do you have one
style that you consider yourself more at home with than the others?
JMD:
I don’t think there’s any one style that’s more a reflection of myself…it’s
more how much that individual project, whatever the style, reflects my deepest
intentions, my most heartfelt beliefs and passions. Greenberg,
Moonshadow, Abadazad, Brooklyn Dreams…all of these are
very different-yet they all come from a place of honesty and integrity. From the
truth of my soul. Just as important-and this applies as much to the more
absurdist things Giffen and I do together, as well-they come from a place of
absolute belief in the characters and their world. We never approached the
Justice League…or, these days, the Hero Squared universe…with an attitude of
“let’s make fun of these guys.” We totally accepted them as real,
three-dimensional people…and the humor flowed out of that.

Scoop:
Is there a unifying approach or element in these seemingly disparate genres of
writing?
JMD: For better or worse, the unifying element is me! (Yeah, I
know it’s an obvious answer…but it’s the truth, too.) I feel very lucky that
I’ve had a chance to express myself in so many different genres. Yet you’ll see
many similar themes and ideas creeping through all of them because, whatever the
story is-an all-ages fantasy, a capes-and-tights sitcom, an autobiography, an
coming-of-age space opera, a superhero adventure-it’s all being filtered through
my ideas, my concerns, my obsessions and beliefs.

Scoop: Is there one
book or project that you think best exemplifies you or is it spread out across
all your work?
JMD: If I had to pick my all-time favorites I’d probably
choose Moonshadow, Brooklyn Dreams, Seekers Into The
Mystery (which Boom! Studios will be reprinting in ’05) and Abadazad.
On the corporate superhero side, my favorite is a Batman/Joker five-parter I did
in Legends of the Dark Knight, called “Going Sane.” (C’mon,
DC, when are you going to collect this?) I’m also very fond of my run on Dr.
Fate and many of my Spider-Man stories, especially the death of Harry Osborn
in Spectacular Spider-Man #200. But there are many others that are dear
to my heart. Too many to list. And then of course there’s the Giffen-DeMatteis
stuff which is in a unique little universe all its own.

Scoop: Aside
from the obvious, what’s the difference between Giffen-DeMatteis projects like
the Justice League and your new book, Hero Squared?
JMD:
For one thing, we’re out of the cage. However much freedom we had with the DC
characters-and we got away with quite a lot-we were still playing on somebody
else’s field with somebody else’s ball. With Hero Squared, we’re creating
from the ground up…discovering our characters and their worlds…and having an
amazing time. Essentially, we can do anything we want with this book. We don’t
have to worry about spoiling someone else’s continuity. Or dealing with the
“our characters wouldn’t say/do that!” problem. One of the things
I’m enjoying most about H2 (and keep in mind, we’re just getting started;
we’ve hardly scratched the surface) is that we’re taking a typical comic book
superhero, with all the inherent clichés and assumptions, and dropping
him into our world. Once you do that, it totally changes your perspective and
allows you to comment on the genre in a way you normally can’t. I haven’t
enjoyed any collaboration with Keith as much as I’m enjoying our work on Hero
Squared.

Scoop: How does the collaborative process between you
and Keith Giffen work?
JMD: All those years on Justice League it was very
loose. Keith would plot the story…I’d usually have little or no idea what it
was gonna be…and then I’d sit down to dialogue and just go nuts, changing
whatever elements I wanted to, adding new elements, really having the freedom to
play with Keith’s foundation. Then Keith would see what I did, build on that-and
Keith being Keith he would take everything to the extreme-and then throw it back
to me.

Now there were times when I looked at what Keith had done and I
realized that the best thing I could do for the story was to shut my big mouth
and adhere very closely to that foundation…just fleshing out the basics,
putting some frosting and candles on the cake, so to speak. When something’s
that good-and there are very few people as good at the comic book game as
Giffen-you don’t mess with it. But the real joy is in the back and forth, when
we both have room to play and add new layers to the stories.

Here’s a
metaphor: Keith and I are walking past an empty lot. And that’s all I see: an
empty lot. Keith, with his singular genius, looks at it and suddenly envisions
an incredible house in his mind’s eye. Before I know it he’s run off, grabbed
some lumber, a hammer and nails, and built an amazing, and absolutely unique,
structure. But once the structure’s up, he turns to me and says: “Your
turn.” So I start painting the house, seeding the lawn, planting bushes,
putting up a nice picket fence. I go inside and do some more painting, pick out
the fixtures, hang some pictures on the wall. Put in some unusual furniture.
Keith walks through the house, looks at what I’ve done….and, inspired, moves
on to the next lot and starts in on another house, even more fantastic than the
first one.

Now my contribution to that house is substantial…but, if
not for Keith, there’d still be an empty lot there and I’d be standing around
with buckets of paint and nothing to do!

Scoop: Is it different on
different projects? Has it evolved over the years?
JMD: Our work on
Defenders-which is coming out in July from Marvel- is pretty much in the
same vein. I get Keith’s rock-solid plots and build on them. (And let’s not
forget our Defenders artist, Kevin Maguire, who was such an integral part
of our Justice League success. He’s flat-out brilliant…and his work, as
evidenced by our recently JL revival, is better than ever. The guy’s not
just an artist…he’s an actor. His characters don’t sit on the page, they get
up and perform.)

On Hero Squared there’s a lot more mutually-developed
groundwork. The initial idea was Keith’s but we’ve both been contributing
heavily to the development of the story, the characters, and the Hero
Squared Universes. (I say universes because our superhero, Captain Valor,
comes to Earth from another universe where superheroes are real…and we’ve been
developing an entire pantheon of new characters that we’re going to be
introducing into the book.) We talk on the phone regularly, bouncing ideas
around for the upcoming storylines. Then Keith goes off and plots…and we’re
off again!

I think the thing that’s changed most in our collaboration is
that we appreciate it far more than we did back in the eighties. Back then, Andy
Helfer-who deserves so much credit for shepherding that original JL run
and keeping us on creative track-pulled us together and then we were
runningrunningrunning on the monthly treadmill. We didn’t really have time to
think about what we were doing. Now we’re a little older and, I hope, a little
wiser…and very much aware of what special chemistry we have…of how much fun,
and how valuable, this collaboration is.

Scoop: Prior to last year’s
Justice League mini-series, how long had it been since you worked
together? Did you just drop into your old routines or find a new way to work
together?
JMD: The three of us hadn’t worked together since our
Justice League run ended in the early nineties. I was worried that the
book wasn’t going to work; that whatever it was we had back in the old days
would be lost…and we’d be standing around like embarrassed actors in a TV
reunion movie. Happily, it only took about half an issue for the old chemistry
to kick in. And it’s only gotten better since then.

Scoop: Your
first Hero Squared came out through Atomeka. Now you’ve moved to Boom!
Studios. What should readers expect from the mini-series?
The Hero
Squared one-shot was really just a prologue. With the mini-series, we’ve got
the chance to really launch into the story, explore the characters-both on Earth
and in the Captain Valor universe. This is a story about relationships: it’s a
buddy comedy, a romantic comedy, with a little bit of French farce thrown in for
good measure. It’s also an adventure and a satire. There are many levels to
Hero Squared and we’re looking forward to exploring them all. In fact,
we’re already talking about the next mini…and a one-shot anthology set on
Captain Valor’s homeworld, in which we’ll get to meet all the new heroes Keith
and I have been cooking up.