Joe Casey is the cowriter (with Brian Holguin) of the upcoming MR. MAJESTIC from DC/Wildstorm, and DEATHLOK with Leonardo Manco with Marvel. Until recently, his run on Marvel's CABLE was turning heads. His past work includes the last seven issues of THE INCREDIBLE HULK, Image/Avalon's HELLCOP, and X-MEN/FANTASTIC FOUR '98.
Y3: Can you give any details on your upcoming retro-X mini with Steve Rude? I know he's one of your artistic heroes...
He’s absolutely one of my favorite comic book artists of all time. I never thought in a million years that I’d ever be working on a project with him. The fact that he’s as nice a guy and as committed to his craft -- the craft of telling stories -- as anyone I’ve ever met, is just icing on the cake.As far as the actual book is concerned, I don’t want to get too deeply into the plot points at this point, since it’s still in the planning stages. I’ll tell you a few things… it’s not a “retro” book by any stretch of the imagination.
I’m not quite sure how comics can even be retro, because they’re all written in the first-person. When you pick up a comic -- any comic, whether it was published in 1969, 1979, 1989, or 1999 -- and read it, the events of that story are happening right now. That’s how they’re written. Most comics aren’t written in past tense. So, unless you explicitly state in the text when a story takes place (by naming the year or naming the President of the U.S.), I always assume the story is meant to be timeless.So, yes… our series will concern itself with the original X-Men, and it takes place before the events of X-MEN Vol. 1 #1, but we are in no way revisiting the early 60’s, and we’re not going to go out of our way to say this takes place “seven years ago on a sliding scale”, which is how most creators explain Marvel continuity.
What Steve and I are trying to do is something… timeless. We’re attempting to show the events that lead to the formation of the X-Men and put it in a context that will appeal to readers young and old.Here’s a bit of a digression… I was never a huge X-MEN fan when I was a kid. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I was more into the AVENGERS. It’s a theory I’ve held, much like the “Elvis-person or Beatles-person” argument. Either you’re an “AVENGERS-person” or you’re an “X-MEN-person”. I was an AVENGERS-person, no doubt about it. Still am. That’s not to say that the X-MEN didn’t appeal to an enormous audience, I’m just saying that, for whatever reason, I wasn’t one of them. I remember being impressed by the Dark Phoenix saga, as well as the remaining John Byrne-drawn issues. I think it was Byrne’s storytelling that really interested me, not the writing or characters or the concept or anything like that.
When Byrne left X-MEN, I simply followed him over to FANTASTIC FOUR without batting an eye. My interest in X-MEN always seemed to coincide with the artists involved. When I came back to check out what was happening, it was because Paul Smith had exploded out of nowhere and was doing exciting stuff. Unfortunately it only lasted ten issues. But great things aren’t supposed to last, are they?It wasn’t until I was offered the monthly gig that I sat down and really analyzed what the X-Men were all about… and what they’re supposed to be about. I tried to clear away all the continuity that seems to bog these books down (and I should know… I dealt with it enough writing CABLE), the kind of stuff that everyone seems to continually complain about, and all the clutter that tends to get in the way of the core concept that Stan and Jack created, and guys like Roy Thomas and Claremont embellished upon. What I found seemed really exciting… really powerful… I realized that there is an underlying mythology to the X-Men concept that I find enormously interesting. The disenfranchisement of youth, the feeling of being an outsider, the teenage paranoia that the world not only misunderstands you, but is explicitly out to get you… these are powerful themes, very resonant to kids. Of course, I would’ve loved to really get into that and explore that and illuminate the things about the X-Men concept that I think are relevant, had I stayed on the monthly titles. I think that, for me, there were changes that I would’ve tried to make to keep the concept relevant for the next century, but I stress that’s just my humble opinion. I’ve got a million of ‘em…
In any case, despite recent >ahem< political events I’ve unfortunately been involved in… these are still things that I find interesting about the X-Men core concept. This mini-series will allow me a chance to really explore those things in a way that doesn’t really occur in the monthlies. This is not necessarily a superhero story. It’s a story about kids coming of age, while at the same time, coming together to build the foundation of a modern myth. In that sense, we’re going to try to make a more direct connection to the readers than has been made recently.The characters -- the original mutants -- we’ll dealing with deserve to be treated with respect, and that doesn’t have anything to do with strict adherence to continuity. We’ll definitely upset some readers with some of the changes we have in mind. I can hear the cries now… “But, it just didn’t happen that way!!” Well, I’m not that interested in what happened and what didn’t happen. I’m interested in creating a series that injects a little relevance into the concept of the X-Men.
All of the characters we know and love will be present… Scott Summers, Bobby Drake, Warren Worthington, Jean Grey, Hank McCoy, Charles Xavier, and Magneto. It’s called CHILDREN OF THE ATOM.Y3: Shifting away from the X-Men... DEATHLOK. Once again-- why? Childhood nostalgia? Marvel Knights Syndrome-- the challenge and allure of a character that the majority of readers consider a dead-end? Or neither?
I have absolutely no nostalgia for the old Deathlok character whatsoever. In fact, I remember hating him with a passion.I was offered this book at the same time I was offered the X-books. When the series finally debuts, you’ll see why I took it, and how different it is from an X-book in every way imaginable. There’s certainly a challenge involved in taking on a book like this, especially in that sense you mentioned of taking a character that readers have zero interest in and trying to make it work on some level. Personally, I’m not going to concern myself with sales or whether or not a huge faction of the readership embraces this book. Trust me… it won’t be that type of book.
Y3: What's the scoop on Marvel Tech in general? Will DEATHLOK and the other Tech books take on a major role in Marvel's publishing line at large, or will they mainly inhabit a smaller, tighter corner of the Marvel Universe?I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t care. Like I said, whether they sell or not, that’s not my concern. My aim on DEATHLOK is to flex some creative muscles in ways people haven’t seen yet. It’s an outlet for experimentation. My favorite period of Marvel Comics’ history is the mid-Eighties, when you had guys like Bill Sienkiewicz drawing NEW MUTANTS. At the time, that was radical stuff, and it evoked an extreme response from fandom at large. Readers were outraged, but great art should outrage people. Me, I loved it. It just got better from there. When Frank Miller came back to mainstream superheroes (after he did RONIN, which I also loved), things just exploded. For a few precious years, mainstream publishers became the vanguard of the industry. Marvel started EPIC COMICS, DC was doing those sci-fi graphic novels, and monthlies like THRILLER, which I absolutely loved. Everything Alan Moore touched at the time was, at the very least, interesting, if not altogether brilliant. Keep in mind, this was back when Alan Moore was doing fill-in issues of VIGILANTE (remember that old chestnut?)! There was a real sense of experimentation in the air. These guys were treating every job as a chance to push the envelope. When Miller and Sienkiewicz teamed up, I was in comic book heaven. Their work together was downright dangerous, it was so good. Personally, I think ELEKTRA: ASSASSIN is one of Miller’s most underrated works.
On a book like DEATHLOK, maybe there’s a chance to get back to that spirit of “anything goes”. Marvel’s been pretty conservative the past few years, and look where it’s gotten them. Sales keep declining, stores keep closing. They’re scared to take a creative leap on any of their major icon characters, fearing that the tiny audience that’s left will jump ship and there’ll be no one left. So the place to do it is on something a little below their radar. I think DEATHLOK qualifies.There are risks involved, for sure. The market is pretty conservative, too. There may not be enough of an audience to support a book like this. I don’t think the announcement of the TECH line is causing that much excitement anyway, so we might as well go for it. If we’re going down, we should be going down in flames, baby! A glorious death!
Y3: THE INCREDIBLE HULK. I personally thought your final issue was excellent... you had plenty of guts to write it the way you did. What were your feelings on your HULK run? How's it feel to be the guy stuck with closing out Marvel's second-longest-running series ever (And the current longest at the time of its demise)?First off, thanks for the kind words. I certainly didn’t know I’d be the guy closing out the series when I started my run. I was about halfway through my seven issues when I found out. I was too busy to think about it. My feelings on it were pretty accurately expressed on the first page of #474. As for my feelings on my HULK run in general, see my next answer for the long-winded version.
Y3: If John Byrne and Ron Garney had never panned out, do you think you would have stuck with INCREDIBLE HULK? And without stepping on any toes (Or, hell, stomp 'em to pulp if you want), do you think the Byrne/Garney HULK is a direction the series should go in?Without judging anybody else’s work (especially work that, at the time that I’m writing this, I haven’t even seen yet), from what I know of the new series, it’s not the direction I would’ve gone in. Bear in mind, I say that only knowing as much about the new series as everybody else probably does. Having said that, and having the hindsight that finishing my run provides, I’m not quite sure how successful my take on the Hulk really was in the greater scheme of things (sales notwithstanding, we all know it sank like a stone). I think I did the best I possibly could with the situation I was thrust into, but I’m not 100% sure I’d do it the same way if I could do it all over. I just remember getting the gig, and the next day I was writing my first issue. I would’ve liked to have been able to consider what I was going to do before diving in like I did, and plan things out a little better.
I will say this about my run… something a little surprising to me as I look back on what I actually did do. Within seven issues, I went all over the place, starting out as a more studied meditation of desert metaphors (my half-hearted homage to Alan Moore’s DC work) moving into a more hard-boiled crime story (exercising my Elmore Leonard mojo), and finally doing more straight-ahead sci-fi mixed with more psychological exploration. All this in seven issues. Maybe it was a little unfocused, but I haven’t read all seven issues together. I have a feeling it holds together pretty well.But, as an undercurrent to all of that, it turned out to be a much more personal writing experience than I would’ve expected. I think PAD expressed the same types of feelings on his 12 years writing the book. Now, the fact that the HULK was more of a personal book means nothing to anyone else but me, but it made putting up with all the crap I took for taking over for PAD completely worth it.
Y3: How's work going on MR. MAJESTIC? Brian Holguin's becoming almost as prolific as you (SPAWN, KISS: PSYCHO CIRCUS, ARIA)-- are you guys really clicking on the writing duties? Is Ed McGuinness ready for a monthly book again?Brian’s another good friend of mine, as well as being a great writer. We’ve known each other since before I went pro, so it’s great to able to really work together on something like this. In fact, we came up with this over dinner one afternoon. We were sitting around talking about the books we were working on, and how they seemed to fit into a darker -- or at least a more serious -- mode… Brian on KISS and SPAWN, me on CABLE, HULK and HELLCOP. We both expressed an interest in doing a book that was about expanding our imaginations… doing the kind of far-out stuff that our current gigs didn’t really allow for. I’d always thought Mr. Majestic was a character with a lot of untapped potential, so I brought it up as a possibility. Brian was immediately into it, and the next thing we know, we’re both riffing on each other’s ideas, making them bigger and bigger, almost as if we were trying to top each other in how wild our ideas could be.
I had just gotten into my two HULK issues that Ed and I were working on, and they were going great. In fact, here’s a bit of useless trivia… before Byrne and Garney were given the book, there was a possibility in the air that Ed and I would’ve continued on the title as the regular team. We had some wild ideas about what we would do on the book. Ed loves the Hulk way more than I do. I actually got him on for the two issues because we’d clicked so well on his CABLE fill-in. So, I went to him and said, “Hey, you wanna’ jump on board this Majestic thing?” He was totally into it. Ed’s a big Superman fan, but he’s never gotten to draw a character in that big, cosmic vein.At that point, with the team in place, we went to Wildstorm and said, “Here we are. It’s Joe, Brian and Ed and we wanna’ work with one of your characters. Whaddya’ say?” Next thing we know, we’re doing the book. It was one of the easiest gigs I’ve ever gotten. Can Ed handle a monthly? Absolutely. And it’s the best work of his career. But we’re playing it smart. We started on this last fall. The first issue hits late summer. By then, we’ll have at least five issues in the can. Hopefully more.
Y3: Can we expect to see a lot of existing WildStorm characters visiting the pages of MR. MAJESTIC, or will you focus more on blazing new trails for the WildStorm Universe? Any plans for LadyTron, Majestic's "daughter" of sorts from Alan Moore's WILDC.A.T.S. run?For the most part, MR. MAJESTIC will stand on its own. That was our idea from the beginning… that if you could only read one comic book a month, reading MR. MAJESTIC would give you everything that comics do better than any other medium. Big stories, big ideas, big emotions, big themes, anything and everything imaginable. You’d get your “imagination fix”. But, notice how I said, “for the most part”? LadyTron shows up in #3.
Y3: You've made it common knowledge that you've always wanted to do Superman-- is MR. MAJESTIC Superman-by-proxy? (Not to say that you're "settling" for Mr. M... I think you know what I mean). Superheroes-in-widescreen, 2.85:1?I do know what you mean, and you’re exactly right. In the beginning, I figured that, in writing MR. MAJESTIC, we’d get to do the things that DC would never let anyone do with Superman (when you read the first issue, you’ll know what I mean). Ironically, now that DC owns Wildstorm, it’s a little strange. But, if anybody reads our book and says, “Wow! Why can’t Superman comics be like this?!” then we’ve done our job.
I can imagine that the Superman and Batman franchises are as creatively hamstrung as the X-books at Marvel, in terms of what you’re allowed to do. There’s tremendous corporate pressure on each of those books, in ways you couldn’t possibly imagine. Some are valid pressures, and some are completely ridiculous. But they exist, and as freelancers, we just have to accept them. But actually, on MR. MAJESTIC, we don’t. Our only “pressure” is to do a quality book. Just the kind of pressure I like…Y3: HELLCOP: the Jonas Abraham conspiracy. Will that storyline be running through the title for a while, or is this just the first arc? What's up ahead for Virgil, in terms of stories to come?
HELLCOP is going on hiatus after issue #4, which wraps up the first story arc. We’re doing this for two reasons… 1) because sales, while decent, seemed to be in the kind of decline that would cause the book to start losing money, had we continued past #4. I don’t want to be responsible for a publisher -- who happens to be friends of mine -- to lose money on any project that I’m involved with. 2) I was starting to get overworked, having so many monthlies. Ironically, I’ve got MORE work now than when I counted HELLCOP as part of my monthly workload. But, that’s the way it goes, I guess.
Anyway, there are definitely more Virgil stories to tell, and we’ll tell them. We’ve been talking about doing HELLCOP the way Mike Mignola does HELLBOY. When we bring it back, it’ll be as another mini-series or as a giant-sized special. I’m fairly happy with how the first story turned out, and I just don’t want to simply pump out stories month-in, month-out, just to do it. It’s better for the book and the concept if we come up with a new arrangement.Y3: Let's jaunt back into the Merry Mutant World for a while and discuss CABLE. It's probably one of the last Marvel books still using complex literary devices and some genuine, unforced characterization-- you and a handful of others (including Joe Harris on SLINGERS) seem to be the only people who can get away with that at Marvel proper. How long do you think that can last? Why do you think you've gotten away with it so far?
On CABLE, most everything I “got away with” was the result of either being sneaky, or fighting like a rabid dog for something I believed in. Subtlety in characterization is not something that Marvel really asks of their writers. But one of the things that’s always cranked me off about superhero comics is that these guys are never written as men… as grown-ups… as adults… they’re written more like some kid’s idealized version of a man, which doesn’t interest me in the slightest. Even young readers are way more sophisticated than the publishers give them credit for. They don’t want to be talked down to. I know that I didn’t, when I was a kid. So, when I write these characters, I try to give them the complexities of an adult personality.
Here’s an example… when adults have a conversation, what remains unspoken is just as important as what is said aloud. Characters can be illuminated for the reader through even the most mundane of conversations. Now, comic writing is a form of shorthand… we’ll never be able to be completely accurate in conveying speech patterns and the ways people really talk, because it just wouldn’t look good on the page. But we can get close. We can approximate it fairly well, if we take the time and the care to do it right. It’s a marriage of words and pictures… and facial expressions combined with more restrained dialogue can really give you insight into a character’s personality, much more so than just blurting out everything in endless balloons of expository dialogue.How long can it last? Well, I suppose it can last as long as I’m willing to fight for it. And I’ve got a lot of fight left in me.
Y3: Speaking of Joe Harris, do you guys converse at all? You, Harris, Jay Faerber, and a couple of others often get classified together as the Revolutionary New Blood at Marvel, not unlike the way Grant Morrison and Mark Waid are popularly considered the "driving forces" at DC. Are you guys actually some kind of group, or is it just one of those media things?Definitely a “media thing”, although I’ve never seen us grouped together like that, so I guess it is one of those things. As much as I hate to say it, I’m a little bit older than Harris and Faerber, and that makes our comic backgrounds a little different. For example, Jay’s a huge NEW WARRIORS fan. He loved that book when it was out. For me, I wasn’t even reading Marvel Comics at that point, I’d kind of left them behind. Hadn’t really read them since the late Eighties. So, in that sense, our frame of reference is different. Besides, right now at Marvel… writers aren’t exactly the “driving force” of anything, sorry to say.
Of course, I think there is a generation of writers that I belong to that do have the same frame of references, culturally, if not “comically”. I’m lucky in that regard… that there are other writers I can relate to on basic levels, simply because we’re all the same age, we all went through the same fads at the same time, we all got our driver’s licenses at the same time. That kind of thing means a lot more to me than whether or not we liked the same comics when we were kids. It’s certainly not a “movement”, and I don’t necessarily see us as any sort of “driving force” in the industry. Check back with me in ten years, though… we just might turn out to be just that.What all new comic writers my age have in common, I think, is that we’re all doing this out of a love for the medium, a love for the characters, a love of craft, a love of telling stories. We’re the “Post-Speculator-Boomers”… professionals who broke in after the bust of ’94. The big money, the fat contracts, and the overblown royalties of the speculator years is a thing of the past. Yet we’re still here, plying our craft, telling our stories. Money’s nice, but it’s obviously not the motivating factor here. At least, not for me.
Y3: What's your favorite work to date? What story are you most proud of? Was "CABLE: The Nemesis Contract" everything you hoped it would be?It was. The fact that it was during a time when CABLE went bi-weekly for a month, and that Jose and I kept it together through a such back-breaking, pressure-packed schedule, still amazes me. We were both so committed to seeing this storyline through till the end. I think that for my part, looking back on it, it could’ve been a lot better, had we had more room to tell the story. If it had been five issues instead of four, for instance, I think it might’ve played out better. On the other hand, the rush of cramming everything we did into four issues was thrilling in its own way. Jose was the real hero of that storyline, though. He really went the extra mile when I was throwing the most outlandish stuff at him to draw.
I think “The Nemesis Contract”, for both Jose and myself, was a story where we were able to give all of our various influences free reign. And if you study the issues, you can pick them all out, from Steranko to Kirby to Miller to manga to Moebius and back… it’s all in there. A lot of different mojos being worked out. That’s why I like it. We took a few chances, we took a few risks. That makes for the best comics, I think.On a personal level, that story was about me saying goodbye to my fan perspective and really looking at my job as a professional. Before you’ve broken in, you’ve got a million stories in your head to tell, usually derived from all the things you’ve liked an absorbed as a kid. Once you do break in, you’ve now got a chance to pull those stories out and tell them for real. “The Nemesis Contract” was exactly that. It was a story I wanted to do since before I knew I’d be working on CABLE full-time. From my very first issue, I was secretly working up to that story.
Y3: We've systematically covered just about everything you're writing right now-- you've got quite the workload. WHERE do you find the time? The closest the industry has seen in a good long time was Steven T. Seagle on ALPHA FLIGHT, HOUSE OF SECRETS, UNCANNY X-MEN, and SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE right on top of each other-- and then circumstances took them all from him before we could see how it would pan out. How do you plan to do it? Admit it, you're a freakish alien-human hybrid that doesn't sleep...I like that term you use… “circumstances”. Been a victim to a few of those, myself.
Well, I could certainly use more sleep. Lately, it’s definitely dawned upon me that I’ve really given my life over to this career. I guess that’s okay for now, I’m in a position in my life where I can do that. It’s exciting to think that you’re testing your own limits. I don’t think the overall quality has suffered, so I guess that means I haven’t taken on too much stuff.I suppose if you look at everything I’ve got going on right now, it looks like a lot. Let’s see… I’m finishing up the CABLE run, DEATHLOK, and MR. MAJESTIC going on monthly, the CHILDREN OF THE ATOM mini, the IRON MAN annual, the CAPTAIN AMERICA annual, a FLASH fill-in, a couple of GEN 13 things, the CABLE/WOLVERINE bookshelf one-shot. It does look like a lot when you say it all in one breath.
But this is my job. Comics are all I do at the moment. I’m not working on a screenplay on the side, or designing a video game, or creating a cartoon show. I’m a comic book writer. That’s where my commitment lies, at the moment. I’m certainly not going to complain about having too much work, since it wasn’t that long ago when I had absolutely no work, in comics or anywhere else. I was on unemployment, right up to the point I started writing CABLE. So having work is definitely better than not having it.Y3: Any series, or writers in or out of comics, that you feel like plugging?
Well, I think writers do their own plugging quite well, so maybe I should talk about some artists that I feel don’t get their proper due in this industry. Part of what I try to do in my career is work with guys who’s art I love, but haven’t gotten the props they deserve.I should backtrack a bit first… the unexpected joy of my career is that I’ve been paired up with some of the greatest new artists working today. It’s great to have an opportunity to work with an artistic hero like Steve Rude, but he’s where I make an exception to my rule. For the most part, I much prefer working with artists that are still out to make a mark in this business… artists that are as hungry to prove themselves as I am. I think the best partnerships can be formed that way.
To have Jose Ladronn as a creative partner is something that words can’t even begin to describe. Over the past year and a half we not only jelled as a creative team, but we’ve become incredible friends. As well as being an incredible artist, he’s absolutely the nicest person I’ve ever met, period. The same goes for Ed. He’s a fantastic artist, no doubt about that, but we’re also good friends that value each other’s opinion when we work together. I just prefer to work that way, to be able to communicate with my collaborators. My days as a fan were all about the work of great writer-artist teams… Lee & Kirby, Moore & Gibbons, Wolfman & Perez, Baron & Rude, Miller & Sienkiewicz, Claremont & Byrne… I know that single creators like Miller and Eisner are considered gods in this industry (and rightly so), but the true miracles in comics have occurred when two creators have gotten together and produced something greater than the sum of its parts. That’s the magic of true collaboration. I strive for that with every artist I work with. So, for this year, I’ll try to make some new connections in that regard. One artist who’s been around for a few years, but no one’s really seen shine is Michael Avon Oeming, with whom I’m doing some JIMMY OLSEN stuff at DC. His stuff is amazing, and I’m determined to make people see in his work what I see. His characters can really act. Another artist who’s stuff I love is Charles Adlard, and hopefully I’ll come up with a project that plays to his strengths. The Spanish artists, German Garcia and Javier Pulido, are fantastic. Ashley Wood is a major talent. Leonardo Manco is another. Duncan Rouleau is perhaps THE underrated creator in the biz right now. Not only are his pencils amazing, but his sense of story and the ideas he brings to a collaboration are invaluable. We’re working on an issue of FLASH (#151, out in June) that’s gonna’ look incredible. It’s Duncan’s first DC work, and I take pride in the fact that I suggested him to the editor as a guy I’d like to work with. I really hope we get to work together again in the future. Y3: Any closing comments, complaints, or carousing to do?Good grief, let’s hope not! This is like a Comics Journal interview! Endless… but fun.
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