LUCIDMEDIA

By far the best part of any comic book convention is getting to interact with your favourite writers and artists. I was able to get some time with four top creators; they are listed as follows.

AAD: First, it's a pleasure to meet you. I've been a fan of V For Vendetta since high school, so I can only imagine which book you've been signing all day.

DL: Yeah, it's true.

AAD: I re-read V before I saw the movie and it's still very based in the the 80s when it was written but at the same time it still resonates. Why do you think that is?

DL: Well, I think a lot of people have come away with the spirit of the idea largely because when we did it Margaret Thatcher was a fairly radical conservative in British politics. In Alan [Moore]'s introduction to the graphic novel, he mentions Margaret Thatcher and to a large degree what we doing then was a kind of reaction to that sort of radical conservatism.

But the spirit and theme of the book is constantly popular because, let's face it, dictatorships are everywhere. No matter where you go there's always somebody trying to tell somebody else what to do and surpress democracy while repressing cultural and social behaviours; and that's been going on for decades. It's been happening before 1990 and it's going to happen in the future and it happens everywhere.

I think that's one of the keys to the success of it across the world and in every country because it speaks to a situation that's commonly happening all over the place.

AAD: One of the things that stands out about the novel is the image of V himself. Ho did you come up with it because it's such a simplistic image, but it works so well?

DL: Well, I think the mask concept is something that's been used quite a lot, but I think we used it as a kind of expression of the individual; somebody who represents everybody. It's a long story about how we came up with it, probably too  long to be recorded here, but if you look at the English graphic novel there's a whole article in there that will tell you how we came up with it, and who Guy Fawkes was.

Basically, Guy Fawkes was a saboteur that failed in his attempt to destroy a repressive English government, and we had a hero who was going to succeed. We were planning for him to succeed in the against the oppressive government, so it seemed quite appropriate for us to create a character who adopted the persona of the failed saboteur. So the mask itself is a very useful tool to blank out a specific identity for the character, and what we always intended was that he represents the everyman.

That was the whole point of the exercise; that he personified the perfect individual. Nothing can represent the individual identity better than an unknown identity, and that's what I always wanted V to personify.

DL: Well it has freed me. I mean, the thing is that I never need to have a business card because everybody knows me and everybody in the business knows what I'm capable of. Often there are some people who ask me to do work for them who expect me to do something along the lines of V. But my whole policy in my craft is to attach a style to a subject  so whatever I'm asked to do I just attach a style to it.So if I want to do film noir or something that's a kind of comedy style then I'll do that.

But I think that the important thing that V has given me is a lot of freedom to do whatever I want to do.People ask me to do lots of things that, if I was unknown , I wouldn't have the opportunity to do. So I have no complaints about it at all. I wish though that the simple arithmetic with people knowing me from V and going straight to a book I've drawn that wasn't V worked a lot better then it seems to because I don't see that happening and I wish it did.

I think it happens to writers. I think people will read anything that Alan Moore has written, and I think they do that with other writers, but that doesn't seem to work with artists and I wish it did. But I've got no complaints; I'm perfectly happy to be involved with V, and associated with V, because I'm very proud of it. It's been good to me.

AAD: You've done stuff that's more mainstream superhero fare and other things, like your new book, that's like a film noir. Do you have a particular favourite style or do you like to be able to go back and forth?

DL: I do love being able to go back and forth. I'm a big fan of thrillers so naturally I'm driven to something that's dramatic, that's what I'm attracted to. To be honest I could spend the rest of my career doing short stories; you know, comedy one minute and romance the next, then a horror story or a political thriller, because that's what really makes me happy.

I have a very low boredom threshold. Put that down, that's important. I like to be stimulated and I like challenges, there's nothing I like better than a challenge. So I like to try different things and basically all I want people to do is to be able to recognize that whatever I give them as a creator and as an artist is that it's going to be good. If everybody reacts like that to what I do, then I have no complaints at all for anything I've ever done.

AAD: One of the big themes of this year's comic con is Women In Comics, and looking araound at all the girls here today do you think that now's the time that the idea of women in comics is going mainstream?

RT: I really hope that that's the case and not necessarily because we're all here, but because this is the time. And I know that many of us have been talking amongst ourselves and on panels and it seems like everybody agrees. Everybody that's been a part of the symposium we're all just like, "let's get over that; let's keep working, let's do really good work" and hopefully that will be what ushers in the era of the level playing field.

AAD: Would it take something like a women writing Superman, for example, to really push the idea?

RT: I don't necessarily think Superman is going to change anything. I think it's going to be less about Superman especially when it comes to girls. Like you might get girls into comics they might end up reading something else, or thinking that there is something else besides superheros.

AAD: How did The Babysitters' Club comic come about?

RT: It was very organic. The editors at Scholastic wanted me to do an original project for them and I pitched a couple of stories and nothing was quite perfect at the time. Then they asked me what I read when I was a child and I said, "The Babysitters' Club". So not realizing what they'd say, they said, "well that might make a cool comic. Why don't you give it a shot?"

So I gave them pictures and I did a few thumbnails, submitted those, and everybody fell in love with it, and they decided that was what I was perfect for. At some point I'll end up doing original projects for them too, but for right now it's what I'm doing.

AAD: What did Ann Martin [Babysitters' Club author] think of them?

RT: She loved them, she thought it was great. She's not into comics, but now she reads mine. (Laughs.)

AAD: One of the ideas behind them was that this would bring in more young girls into comics; is it working?

RT: Yes, it is working. It's something in our brains, girls walk by, they see it and they look, and I know it's because the cover is pink. (Laughs.) I hope that's not it, but I think my work happens to be girl friendly and I know that I'd stop and look at it. It's the kind of thing I'd like to look at when I was a kid, and it's about girls; regular girls. It's not about girls with super powers or living on a weird planet, it's about girls in America in the present. Girls in America love The Babysitters' Club series, so the thought is that they'll love the comic book too.

AAD: I want to talk about independent comics because they're certainly not as unknown as they once were. Is that your feeling too, that the independents are getting as well known as some of the bigger names like Superman or Spider-Man?

DS: Yeah, but I don't know if that's because the circulation on Marvel and DC is coming down to our level or if we've been expanding and getting more attention. There's a lot more of us now for one thing. You've had 30 years of independents, a lot of people coming and going and coming back again. You have the wanderers getting published by different publishers.And you've got literally thousands of titles too.

AAD: Do you think that having comic books and graphic novels in book stores has helped in this development?

DS: I think there's something to recommend it, but personally I stay loyal to the comic book stores themselves. I don't believe in selling through book stores, it's like the situation with rock and roll. Rock and roll was sold through department stores and then got big enough that record stores became popularized and became primarily rock and roll stores; and I think that's the progression you want to have. We're already at the point where we've gone from being sold in variety stores to something that is sold in independent comic stores, so with book stores it almost feels like we're going backwards.

AAD: When you finished Cerebus was there maybe a moment of post partem depression?

DS: (Laughs.) It was a relief. The last year, the last few years, it was like hitting myself with a baseball bat. "It will be over, it will be over, it can't last forever." But the last six or eight months it seemed like the saying about hoe you can't get to the door because you're only getting halfway to your destination and then you're half way between that, then halfway between that. That definitely was the feeling for the last 30 or 40 issues; just thing, "it will be done". Working 15 to 16 hours a day, I just wanted to be done. So no, no post partem depression.

AAD: You come to a lot of these conventions, does anything surprise you anymore? The people?

DS: Girls, I think is probably the biggest difference in the last ten years. At conventions it used to be that if a female walked in it would be like, What is she doing here? Why would a female be at a comic book convention?" Then it was, "Oh, it's somebody's girlfriend or wife." Now we've got a fair number of girls who are here because they like comics and that's the big difference I think. If you asked me in 1984 if I thought that this would be a female destination, I'd have said, "when Hell freezes over."

AAD: You're perhaps most famous for your work on The Avengers, is there any plan in your mind of getting back to those characters eventually?

GP: Well, I have no real desire at this point because I have an exclusive contract with DC through till 2010.

AAD: So not for a while.

GP: Yeah. Never say never.

AAD: So why did you sign an exclusivity contract with DC?

GP: Because they made me a great offer; both Marvel and DC were making me great offers and there's a lot of security involved, certain realities, medical coverage for example. In the long run I had to disappoint somebody and as it ended up I had to disappoint Marvel in this case.

AAD: Is that becoming a new trend in the business, signing name talent to exclusive contracts?

GP: Of course, I think about all the major projects coming up and companies need to hold on to talent for extended periods of time. So it was the package that they offered me and with medical; I'm a diabetic and I've got other issues to deal with, my wife has medical issues. I mean, I'm over 50, so these have become realities you know.

AAD: One of the things about your art is your detailed backgrounds, how has technology changed what you're able to do as an artist?

GP: Well I think in my case the technology has caught up with me. Before people would complain, "you shouldn't put this much detail into your background" because they couldn't reproduce that much background. Now they can, now I can draw as detailed as intricate a piece that I can knowing that the technology will be able to handle it.

AAD: I asked Dave Sim about if there was anything that still surprised him about the convention circuit and he said the number of young women has risen.

GP: Yes, and this convention is no exception. There are some wonderful, lovely women here and in my case Wonder Woman had a very large female following, so I'm very pleased that there are so many strong female and gay followers. I treasure that, I please a lot of people I'm grateful to say.

AAD: Is there any one thing that you want to do while you're at DC since you're going to be there for a long haul?

GP: Well, first I'm going to be doing The Brave and the Bold because I've wanted to work with Mark Waid. But there's one series that I've never done, but was one of my favourites as a child and wanted to take a crack at one day, is The Legion of Superheroes. So we have to work hard to make up for what a grievous oversight we have here.

AAD: The Legion of Superheroes hasgone through several different permutations over the years, how would a George Perez Legion be different?

GP: I want to do a story that encompasses every single version of The Legion of Superheroes from the Swan version to David Gibson. Everybody! I don't know how we'll do it, but that's my goal, I leave it up to the writers out there.