Walt Simonson: Orion's Belt
By Jason Brice
Welcome to this interview! Pull up a chair, relax... Sit back and enjoy my first ever e-mail interview with a comics professional.
Let me start off my saying thank you very much to the man himself, Walt Simonson. I'm sure he is as charming and pleasant in person as he was by electronic means. If all my interactions with comic pros go as smoothly as this one did, then I am going to love this job!
Now that I have everyone reading thoroughly envious, on with the show...
Jason Brice: Could you please start out by giving our readers who have been living under a rock for the last 25 years a brief introduction to both yourself and your work?
Walt Simonson: I started off doing comics as an artist in 1972 for DC, shifted to Marvel about 1976, and shifted again to a variety of different companies in 1991 or so. I began writing comics in 1978. As either writer or artist or both, I’ve done Manhunter, the Metal Men, the Rampaging Hulk, Alien (the adaptation of the original movie), Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, the X-Men/Teen Titans cross-over, Thor, Avengers, X-Factor, Fantasic Four, RoboCop vs. the Terminator, Weapon Zero, Star Slammers, and currently Orion, this last title as I’ve moved back to DC.
JB: Now, you have been married to the writer Louise Simonson for many years, and I am curious about one thing... do folks really call her "Weezie"?
WS: Yep. She’s had the nickname since she was a little girl. It’s a southern nickname for ‘Louise’ here in the States. Her mother and
grandmother were also named ‘Louise’ and this was a way of differentiating everybody. Or at least her
JB: Back to something serious, are you surprised by the ongoing interest in the Manhunter work you did with the late Archie Goodwin?
WS: Well, I don’t think it’s a bestseller or anything but the strip has always had a number of fans who really liked it as well as a number of fans who still believe it to be my best work to date. And it’s been reprinted in its entirety twice before, in 1979 and 1983. So I’m not really surprised to see continued interest in the strip even now.
JB: You, along with just about anybody whoever met the guy, said on his passing that Archie Goodwin was just about the best person in comics with which to collaborate. Are there any names you'd rate up there with Archie?
WS: Not personally in the sense that I haven’t worked with any other writer with whom I’ve seemed to be so in synch. I’ve partnered with some wonderful writers and they would all forgive me for saying this, but whatever it was that Archie and I had together in a working relationship was unique in my experience.
JB: Do you ever take a look at the current issues of the books you have worked on in the past, Thor, for example?
WS: Almost never. Once I’ve done a book, especially one I was on for a while like Thor, I’m just not that interested in where it goes afterwards. When I have looked, I often find other people undoing my stories so I think, why bother?
JB: A few years ago you, Frank Miller, John Byrne and Mike Allred made waves with the Legend imprint at Dark Horse. At the time it was touted as a umbrella group for writer/artists and not necessarily tied to one publisher. Why did such a good idea fade into obscurity?
WS: Lack of cohesion I think. I can speak less about Legend than about Malibu’s Bravura as I came to Bravura in the beginning and Legend only toward the end. But it may simply be that there weren’t enough common interests to hold together an excellent but rather diverse group of creators at either Malibu or Dark Horse. And I’m not sure either publisher really knew quite how to handle their respective imprints or their occasionally cantankerous members.
JB: Did you get a feeling of deja vu considering the abrupt demise of Malibu's Bravura line?
WS: No more than I got from watching the industry tanking as a whole. Once sales began dropping and comic shops began folding, it wasn’t tough to see the writing on the wall, and that was true for whole companies as well as for individual imprints. But I’m really sorry it happened. I still think it was a good idea and I hope Gorilla Comics can make a go of it. I’m rooting for ‘em.
JB: With such a poor track record for imprints like Legend and Bravura, and the current state of the market, how do you think the folks at Gorilla Comics will go? Any words of advice?
WS: Oops. Wrote my last answer before I read this question. I think starting any imprint or company right now is a tough proposition but if Gorilla is organized in a way that gets them all going in the same direction, I believe they’ve got a shot. Best advice (on something that I think they can control)?--get the books out on time. But they already know that.
JB: On to a completely different topic: given that you are writing, penciling and inking your new book for DC, Orion, are you writing yourself full scripts to work from, or are you using a more fluid approach to your creative process?
WS: I don’t think I’ve ever written a full script for myself as an artist. I always work Marvel-style when I’m wearing both the writer and the artist hats. I write out a plot, thumbnail it, and then script it from my thumbnails. But I do a lot of preliminary writing on books I intend to stay on for a time. For example, I’ve probably got about three years worth of ORION stories in the can already. Not that they’re plotted out in detail, issue by issue. But I have extensive notes and I pretty much know where I want the story to go so it’s really a matter of whittling out each specific chapter in turn as I get to it.
JB: Is there an interesting reason why we have been waiting so long for Orion to take to the skies in his astro-glider, since this book was announced in early 1998?
WS: Not very. Wish there were. I had a few other projects to finish up and they took longer than I expected. Manhunter: The Final Chapter was the biggest of those and although it was only 23 pages long, I worked on it for about five months. Fortunately, my wife has a real job so I could afford the time.
JB: How much of a free rein has Joey Cavalieri given you on Orion?
WS: A very free rein. Joey’s been great to work with and has given me enormous elbow room with which to play.
JB: What sort of feedback from the artists have you gotten on the back-up in Orion scripts you have written for Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons?
WS: Ummmm. Well...they’ve liked the stories and are game to do them. That pretty much seems like a vote of confidence, doesn’t it?
JB: Can you give us a quick outline for the direction you are going to be taking Orion in?
WS: I’ve just seen a blurb on the web posted as DC’s solicitation for ORION #1. I haven’t seen the actual catalog myself so I’m assuming that this was posted without revision but it pretty much covers the facts and I’ll let it speak for itself.
“Orion confronts his mother, Tigra, about her claim that he is not truly Darkseid's child. Refusing to believe her words, he seeks the counsel of others, traveling to the heart of the Source and then to the darkness of Apokolips for answers. But the one who would know best -- Darkseid -- is nowhere to be found because, unbeknownst to Orion, he is wreaking havoc on Earth, taking over a city in the heartland of America as part of his voracious quest for the Anti-Life Equation! Future issues will feature a staggering confrontation between "father" and "son," the return of some beloved "Fourth World" characters done justice as only Simonson can, and the dark machinations of Tigra, Kalibak, and one of Simonson's brand-new additions to the New Gods mythos -- Justeen, power-hungry lieutenant of the malevolent Desaad.”
That seems a fair once-over-lightly of the first few issues.
JB: Are you going to be making an attempt to make Orion a more sympathetic character, after all he is one of the DC universe's toughest badasses?
WS: I don’t know about ‘more’ sympathetic. That probably depends on which version of Orion you’re using as a base line for comparisons. All I can say is that I hope to invoke some of the sense of Jack Kirby’s Orion, a ‘noble monster’ I believe one of the characters in his comic called him, ‘chaos personified’ by another, and yet a character who, understanding the uses of war, fights for the children of New Genesis and the hope of the future. A complex driven flawed god who is, in my personal view, the greatest warrior in the universe. I’ve said elsewhere that I think there’s a touch of T.H.
White’s Lancelot from THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING in Orion...the ‘ill-made knight’.
JB: Are there any of the Fourth World characters you feel an affinity for?
WS: Sure. Most of them. Or I wouldn’t be enjoying this book so much! But Orion and Darkseid leap to mind as two of my favorites.
JB: What do you hope to impart to the readers of Orion, having read any given issue?
WS: A feeling of gigantic scale, a sense of pulling-out-all-the-stops Wagnarian adventure, a fun read, and a desperate desire to know what’s going to happen next!
JB: With such a full plate with all the duties on Orion, are we going to see that dinosaur of a signature anywhere else in the near future?
WS: Probably not. Maybe on a cover here and there or a short story script for DC but I fully expect Orion to be taking up pretty much all my time.
JB: Finally, I have been asked to by a long time fan of yours how you managed to come up with so many inventive sounds effects!
WS: Nimble fingers on the typewriter (or word processor these days) and a great great letterer, John Workman.
JB: Thanks for the opportunity, I hope to hear from you soon!
WS: And thank you for the opportunity as well. My best to all your readers.
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