AVC: How much of a personal investment do you have in things like restoring Hawkman to a coherent origin that's more in line with the classic character, or bringing back Hal Jordan as Green Lantern?
GJ: Everything I do is personal. For Hawkman, I just liked the character and I wanted to see him around. When David Goyer and I sat down and tried to figure out what his origin was, we went through all the aspects. How did we best feel we could explain him? And because we already worked with Hawkgirl, we went with the reincarnation angle. Really, it was kind of like—if we said he had many lives, I think it's a lot easier for the reader to swallow than if there's so many incarnations of Hawkman. To readers, it might make a little bit more sense. That was something we didn't feel was explored as far as that character went. We took a lot from John Ostrander, who wrote the book near the end, prior to us. We tried to take all aspects of it; we tried to try fit Thanagar into it. We didn't just say, "Let's go back to the Golden Age Hawkman," because there are quite a few elements we took liberties with, including his origin.
AVC: So tell me about your new job in DC.
GJ: I'm one of a couple of the guys that's just doing a lot of extra work, because I'm involved in Crisis and in contact with the majority of the writers there about what they're doing now, and what's coming out, and throwing that all into Crisis and helping to spin new directions... I guess they decided to compensate me a little bit more and ask for my input. I think my unofficial title is "consulting editor"—something like what Grant Morrison and Mark Waid are doing. So I just interact a lot with the editors and the writers for this stuff. We try to keep it all coherent so everything's in sync.
It's almost like what happened to Hawkman. [With Crisis On Infinite Earths] they said, "Okay, we're going to reboot," but it almost felt like they weren't prepared for every character, because a year or two years after, they rebooted Hawkman. Hawkman already appeared post-Crisis, so there were all these inconsistencies for the readers. I think at that point, there were all these new readers at DC, and the inconsistencies are kind of detrimental to people really getting enraptured and engrossed in the DC Universe when they start doing reboots a year after they've rebooted already. That's something we want to avoid, and we just want to have all the directions and all the takes and everything figured out prior to getting there, so when we do it, it's clear across the board, it's one year later, and every character has been worked out. Hopefully we'll have a very consistent universe. And that doesn't mean that if Hawkman is in Japan one month, he has to be in Japan in every other book, but just that the character and the background and everything is consistent. That's one of my jobs to watch and help figure out.
AVC: It sounds like a huge logic problem. Do you find that kind of attention to miniscule detail and coordinating of schedules and origins gets in the way of your creativity as a storyteller?
GJ: Some of that, sure, but some of the creative ways... Like, with Green Lantern: Rebirth, I really enjoyed trying to figure out how I could get all the stuff in and make a story out of it. But these little things, like small inconsistencies, I'm really more focused on where the characters are going to go as characters, and working that into Crisis. I haven't really felt stifled or overwhelmed or anything, because I love this stuff. And most of the writers I talk to, I've already known for a long time.
« Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next »
- Comments