Stuart Moore: Q&A

Posted: Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Posted By: Tim O'Shea

Stuart Moore always makes for a great interview. So when the first issue of Stuart Moore’s PARA (Penny-Farthing Press [PFP]) landed on my doorstep, I dropped the writer a line. A few e-mails later, I had a fun interview in the bag. Before launching into the Q&A, here’s the official line on PARA: “…it focuses on one woman’s quest to find out what really happened to her father, who supposedly died in the disastrous maiden trial of the Supercollider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, twenty years ago.” Moore “has been a writer, a comics editor for Vertigo and Marvel Knights, a kitchen worker, a book editor, and various other, less glamorous jobs. He has won the Will Eisner award for Best Editor 1996 and the Don Thompson Award for Favorite Editor 1999.”

Tim O’Shea: Not every writer draws inspiration from the Superconducting Super Collider, how did you come to be interested in the facility and ultimately build a story inspired by it?

Stuart Moore: My father was a nuclear physicist -- he ran the Princeton University cyclotron for years. When I was in high school, he almost took a job building a facility kind of like the Supercollider, but smaller; he turned it down because he didn't want to relocate the family. So I've always followed this field.

The Supercollider is fascinating because it was this huge, expensive, inspiring project. It was supposed to be the world's largest particle accelerator, but it was ultimately abandoned for budgetary reasons. In PARA #1, Dr. Andersen talks about Congressmen attacking the project as "quark-barrel spending" -- that's all true. So it's now a giant, partly-dug hole down in Texas, 54 miles in circumference. (I changed the size and location a bit for plot reasons, as well as the timing of the project.) I've always thought it'd be a great setting for a thriller -- what the hell is down there, anyway?

As it turns out, the people at Penny-Farthing did some research and found out that part of the facility IS being used -- for antiterrorism training. My story is a lot stranger, of course. But then, in real life, there wasn't a giant, cataclysmic accident during the machine's first trials, either. Or mysterious robots. Or...

TO: Given your father's background, I'm sure you're quite familiar with the Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) attitude in the United States that has greeted nuclear anything after TMI (the industry's common reference for the more public fear inducing name of Three Mile Island). While this is a paranormal story, did you resist trying to address the sometimes unsubstantiated stigma that nuclear carries in the United States? (Can you tell my day job is with a nuclear consulting firm after that last question?)

SM: I didn't really feel the need to get into it, because (as you know) there's a great difference between nuclear power and nuclear experimentation. In real life, I'm sure the fear of anything with the word "nuclear" in the title was one of the reasons for the termination of the Supercollider project, though funding seemed to be a more important factor. In PARA, though, the project is shut down because of a mysterious, cataclysmic accident that's inexplicable by normal scientific means. So nuclear fear wasn't really an issue.

TO: When we first talked about PARA awhile back, you noted that you'd been "doing a lot of research" for the series. What were some of the hardest parts to research...and was it harder to research because of the heightened sense of security/secrecy with government projects in recent years?

SM: No, because I focused on the scientific end of things rather than the security/government end. A lot of this research is international in nature, and because we abandoned the Supercollider, some of the most advanced work is being done in other countries -- especially at the CERN facility in Switzerland. I highly recommend a book called THE PARTICLE ODYSSEY to anyone interested in this stuff -- it's very readable and the photos are awe-inspiring.

Also: The science is only accurate up to a point. It's vital to the story because PARA is about a certain kind of sense of wonder -- the kind that many of us got as kids from REAL science fiction, the sort where the authors had done their homework. The fact that a lot of the action in PARA is really going on, that we're probing the mysteries of the universe every day, gives it some extra juice. But it's still fiction.

TO: The book centers on Sara Erie, the adult daughter of Dr. William Erie--the man who got this whole plot started more than 20 years before the current plot. A few questions about the Erie family--will her mom play a role in the book? What is the significance, if any, of making her a social worker--will that skillset play a role in the way she reacts to situations she'll be facing in PARA?

SM: No, Sara's mom is not part of the story. PARA is about a young woman's relationships with the men in her life, particularly men who've been taken away, and most especially with her father.

I don't want to give too much away about Sara. Yes, there are things about her life and her dreams that will play very strongly into the climax of PARA.

TO: Who's idea was it to name the book Stuart Moore's PARA, instead of just PARA?

SM: Funny you should ask. I was a little embarrassed about that, but after I won the Nobel Prize AND the Booker in the same year, I had to admit it would help sales...

No no no no no -- bad Stuart, making up stories... Actually, it was mostly done for some obscure trademark reason. But it's nice to show my mom.

TO: At one point in the first issue, the characters stumble into a scene that one of them compare to "that abandoned colony in early Virginia." For those of us like myself rusty on early American history, what are you referring to with that line?

SM: That's a reference to the lost Virginia colony of Roanoke. When people came looking for it, everyone was gone -- all that was left was the scrawled word, CROATOAN. To this day no one knows what it meant, or what happened to all the people.

That was definitely one of the inspirations for PARA. When the exploration team goes down underground to find out what happened in the Supercollider, they find no bodies, no people -- just the word PARA scrawled in blood. Where did the scientists go? What does PARA mean?

TO: The first issue's narrative is framed by using archival educational videos from the early 1980s featuring the late Dr. Erie. Why did you opt to give the videos a 1950s vibe by making them black and white rather than color? Was this a visual concession made to make it clear these were flashback moments?

SM: I guess I had the '50s vibe in the back of my mind (with 70s sideburns -- just like Happy Days!). But mostly I thought of them as badly-produced instructional videos meant to be shown in classrooms. (The tiny copyright on the video actually reads 1978.) I think at that time those might have been made in b&w, but yeah, it accentuates the fact that Dr. Erie has been gone a long time now. Sara's, and the reader's, impressions of him tend to be dreamlike and distant.

TO: Anyone that reads your A Thousand Flowers column at Newsarama knows how you appreciate and understand the nuances of the comic book creative process. With that in mind, could you detail what you feel to be the strengths and assets of your fellow PARA collaborators?

SM: Pablo Villalobos, the penciller, is a Penny-Farthing discovery. He caught the characters right away, and his tech stuff (for which I provided a lot of reference) is really big-scale and gorgeous. But what I really like is the way he captured some subtle facial expressions. There's a lot of that in issue #2, when things heat up between Sara and Roger, her boyfriend/fellow explorer.

Mostafa Moussa is doing a nice job on the inks -- clean and slick. And I think Mike Garcia is one of the best colorists in the business. His work looks fully modern without being garish, and he really helps the story along; in issue #2, he links a couple of scenes together in a way that works exactly with the story I'm telling.

And Stephan Martiniere, our cover artist, pulls it all together. He's done a lot of game work and designs for the film The Time Machine; his robot cover for #4 is really wild. He's one of the best tech artists around.

TO: Speaking of your Newsarama column, how has writing it impacted your approach toward storytelling and have you found it has raised your profile in the industry to any extent? Do you think more readers may be checking out your projects because they've come to enjoy your column?

SM: A Thousand Flowers makes me think a lot about the field, which helps my writing. I am planning to end it pretty soon because I don't want to start stretching to meet its mandate -- "Comics, Pop Culture, and the World Outside." At a certain point, I'll have said all I want to say on that subject, for now anyway.

The column is generally well received and I hope it's helped bring people to my other work. It's certainly started some interesting discussions along the way. And yes, there are plans to collect the columns into a book.

TO: This is a six-issue miniseries, if there was interest on the part of PFP, could you see a way clear to develop other PARA arcs?

SM: PARA was conceived as a closed, finite story. That said: There are two possibilities for sequels -- one involving a creature created in the course of the story, and one involving a minor character seen only in a flashback in issue #4. Either one could be fun; we'll see.

TO: PARA's technical nature is quite a shift from the Western/apocalyptic LONE. Going forward would you like to do more stories along the lines of PARA and that subgenre?

SM: I like to jump around. Right now I'm talking with various artists/publishers about a hard-boiled elf crime drama, a dark look at the '70s through its sci-fi TV, a contemporary New Jersey drama about a medium who speaks to the dead, a proto-superhero story set during the Great Depression, an old west vampire story, and a sexy, violent future-superhero story. Among others.

TO: All the potential projects really pique my curiosity, but of all of them, could you please elaborate on the superhero story set during the Great Depression? The socio-political dynamics of such a book is fascinating in and of itself, if nothing else.

SM: I can't talk about this one too much, but it's to be co-written with Peter Gross (Chosen, Lucifer, Books of Magic). The basic idea, which was Peter's, is that comic-book superheroes work best as a metaphor for America -- its ideals, its enormous power, its potential for great good or evil in the world. Superheroes were born out of the Depression, and we want to use this difficult period in our recent history to really get into that metaphor. It's an ambitious project and should be really interesting to write.

TO: Will you be doing more non-PARA work for PFP after this project wraps? Any plans for more Zendra or another project with "Stuart Moore's" in the title?

SM: We've discussed a third Zendra, but nothing's definite; artist/creator Martin Montiel is pretty busy with other things right now. It'll be a huge-scale galactic macrodrama when we get to it, though: the Beasts raging through hyperspace, Halle all alone against infinity. Little stuff like that.

Other upcoming projects include two more Justice League Adventures issues (the first one out April 7th -- Flash & Kamandi vs. an army of apes!); a Vampirella story in issue #5 of the new magazine; a Metal Hurlant story about a Saddam-Hussein-style dictator; and a few miscellaneous things for Dark Horse.

As for "Stuart Moore's": It depends on how the trademarks fall.

TO: With the Saddam-type story, given his current overexposure with details of his reign and capture, etc. on cable channels 24/7, how do you take such a set-up and make it unique to the reader? Also given that it's for an international publication like Metal Hurlant, do you have to be cognizant of not injecting too much of an American bias (versus say a European perspective) on the whole dictatorship angle? Granted, Europeans are no more partial to dictators than Americans, but American foreign policy and perspective differs than the perspective of Europe quite often and one wonders how such a tale, written by an American, will be perceived abroad.

SM: The story deals with a "body double" for a ruthless Mideast dictator. Saddam had doubles, who would perform various public functions for him, appear in parades, go to military hospitals, and so forth. The story grew out of a very simple idea: What if you were just an ordinary citizen in an Iraq-like country, there's an assassination, you see the new President on TV and he looks just like you. You'd know instantly: My life as I knew it is over -- they're going to conscript me.

I think I did more research per page on this than anything else I've ever written, and it was absolutely fascinating. I doubt it'll be considered too offensive abroad; extreme right-wingers in the U.S. may not like the way America is shown in it, but they should appreciate the cataloguing of the dictator's atrocities.

I don't think I can announce the artist yet, but the guy they're talking to is absolutely top-level. Hopefully that'll be nailed down soon.

TO: Was the use of Kamandi your idea or a suggestion from DC editorial? What was it like to write such an underutilized character like him?

SM: I pitched the Kamandi story. The trickiest part was to introduce and deal with this character and his entire world, in 22 pages. Fortunately, in Adventures, you can screw around with the details. It's got a lot packed into it, but I think the pirate cheetahs alone are worth the 75 cent cover price. (What? Oh. Make that $2.25.)

I've written one more issue, featuring Superman and Batman. Those two are GREAT to write together. That should be out in summer, I think.

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