Mike Carey Interview 3/11/10

*quick note, I'm not sure the best way to post these and present the interview. If you guys have a suggestion on how to make it more readable let me know*

Hi Mike, thanks for taking the time to do this. I guess I'll start with the obligatory "How did you get started writing comics" question and get it out of the way. What led you to this particular medium? Do you feel like it's treated you well so far?

I think for most creators, working in comics springs more or less naturally out of reading comics. I was a huge fan and borderline addict from a very early age, reading first the British humour titles like the Beano and Dandy, Wham, Beezer, Sparky and so on, and then the American superhero books of the 60s. They were always a part of my life: I was steeped in that literature.

Then when I grew up I drifted to the outskirts of fandom, writing reviews and occasional articles for amateur fanzines. That introduced me to a guy - Martin Skidmore - who later became the editor of a very short-lived line of comics here in the UK. I pitched him some ideas, and he commissioned two series from me. The company went bankrupt before publishing anything of mine - well, apart from a few pages in an anthology book - but that got my foot in the door and a lot of things, ultimately, flowed from that.

I think the more you write and the more you get your stuff out there, the better it is. The context almost doesn’t matter. You hone your skills, you get to know people and you get a sense for how the industry works. All of those things are things you just have to roll up your sleeves and get stuck into, I think: you can’t learn about them from the outside.

Have comics treated me well? Yes. Emphatically, yes. I've been able to write a whole raft of characters who were precious to me back when I was a kid. If that's not living the dream, I don't know what is.

You’ve listed books and characters that shaped your interests growing up, were there any writers or artists that you followed as well? If so, have you gotten to meet or work with them now that you are on the inside?

If you look at all the artists who worked on X-Men Legacy during the Professor X arcs, you’ll see some amazing talent there. Working with John Romita Jr was a particular thrill.

As a kid, I don’t think I was ever really aware of whose work I was reading or looking at. I followed characters or titles, and gave very little thought to the creators. I just knew I loved the Fantastic Four: I didn’t know I was responding to Stan Lee’s writing and Jack Kirby’s amazing visual storytelling. Probably the first writer/artist team I knew by name was Claremont and Cockrum on X-Men. And then Frank Miller and Klaus Janson on Daredevil. After that, there was a period when I obsessively followed the work of certain writers – but never artists. Moore, Gaiman, Morrison, Delano, Milligan… You can probably see the common thread here. Oh, and Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, who break up the pattern both by not being British and by being writer/artists.

What is your take of the current state of the industry? Have you noticed any major trends on the business side of things in the last couple years as a writer?

The biggest change during the time that I've been writing has been the enormous, exponential growth in bookstore sales. Back when I came into the field, when people talked about comics they still meant - first and foremost - monthly pamphlets. Trade collections were extremely rare, and most comics stores did a brisk business in back issues. That's all changed spectacularly now: most series are routinely collected into trades, which means they stay in print and available for much longer. A lot of comics stores no longer bother selling back issues, because the demand has fallen to a tiny fraction of what it was: hardcore collectors still want to have all the original issues, but many people only buy trades, and still more mix and match. For a creator, that means that you can get a steady stream of royalties on a popular and successful book, instead of having to constantly drum up new work in order to survive.

The other big change, of course, is creator ownership. In the 80s, it didn't exist except for self-published books: now, it's an established fact in many parts of the industry, thanks to battles that were fought by the generation that preceded mine.

Seems like Hollywood has taken quite a shine to comic related IPs. What do you think of the big screen's clamoring for graphic novels over the last few years? Have any studios approached you about adapting your work?

I think it's a very good thing for the industry. Comics were a tiny niche for a long time, with declining numbers of readers. The X-Men, Spiderman and Batman movies have certainly made a lot more people aware of superhero books, and (sometimes) increased sales on flagship titles. More interestingly, movie rights to a lot of indie comics have been bought up, and they've often translated brilliantly to the screen. A History of Violence, Men in Black, Surrogates, Road to Perdition... many people who saw and enjoyed those movies probably never even knew that they were comics first. I've had a few discussions about my own stuff, yeah. Watch this space...

What is your take on the new ipad? Do you think it will open more e-publishing doors and go beyond what devices like the Kindle and Nook have started? How do you see these devices impacting the comic industry in the next 10 years, if at all?

I'm going to go out on a Luddite limb and say "not very much". I just can't see most people going for digital comics to that extent. But it's probably a generational thing: for me, the physical object is really important. I like the feel and smell of comic books. I can certainly believe that younger readers don't have that quasi-fetishistic relationship with paper. I don't buy MP3s, either.

You’ve got a few novels to your credit, how would you compare preparing stories for the two mediums? Do you find that things that you are writing for one impacts the other? (I just picked up “The Devil you Know” on Kindle by the way. Might want to re-think that e-publishing stance).

In a lot of ways, writing novels is technically easier than writing comics. You have a lot more flexibility, just by virtue of the fact that there’s no limitation on size or shape. Mainstream pamphlet comics are usually 22 pages, occasionally going as high as 23 or 24, and if you’re going to write a multi-part arc, you need to have a cliffhanger or otherwise appropriate end point for each issue in the sequence. Novels can be as long or as short as you like, and you can pace them exactly as you like – or exactly as your material dictates. It’s a very different process.

It’s also different in that you live with a novel for a lot longer. Comics deadlines are short and frequent, and the worst sin you can commit as a writer is to drag your heels and leave your artist waiting for work to come in. A novel can take six, seven, eight months or more to write, and at any point in that time you can change your mind about very fundamental things.

Shifting gears, lets talk about some of your specific work. Lucifer is probably the title you are best known for, and the book that really put you on the map. What were the circumstances that led you to "The Sandman Presents: Lucifer" and the subsequent ongoing?

I got the Sandman Presents mini off the back of the work I was doing for Caliber. I’d been wooing Vertigo for a long time – a year or more – and I’d almost given up hope of anything happening there. Then, out of the blue, I got a call from Alisa Kwitney, asking me if I wanted to pitch for a Lucifer mini. I learned later that she’d been let down at a late stage by another writer – or rather, that a decision had been made not to go ahead with a script they had. The story I heard was that although the script was really strong, it wasn’t considered effective as a vehicle for the character of Lucifer. So they needed someone to step up to the plate, and they needed it fast – like, three days for a rough story outline, and then a first draft script a week after green light. It was as though everything I’d done in the previous three or four years had been leading up to this. I was as ready as it was possible to be without ever having written for a major publisher.

The ongoing had a rather longer gestation. I pitched it twice, and at first I couldn’t convince anyone that Lucifer could be the protagonist for an ongoing book. Second time around, I wrote a very detailed pitch document that went (I think) all the way up to the Divine Comedy arcs. I anticipated all the questions that might come up and tried to answer them one by one. And I got the commission.

You pitched Lucifer twice? What went into that? I've always found the pitch process interesting. Did you have written scripts and plot points, or just the overarching outline through the Divine Comedy arcs? That seems pretty far in advance to lay out a book in the pitch process - it's almost 30 issues.

We didn’t know it was 30 issues, of course, but yeah, it was a very ambitious plan – and it went a lot further than I’d normally go. I tend to pitch a year’s worth of stories for an ongoing, and then sketch in further developments more lightly. In this case, though, I felt that I had to answer a specific fear, which I’d heard expressed a few times, that a protagonist like Lucifer couldn’t sustain an ongoing because he couldn’t be put into dynamic situations in the ways that you’d need.

What led to the book ending at issue 75? Was there a measure of symmetry involved with Sandman having ended at 75 or was it just coincidence? And are there any plans to revisit the Sandman / Lucifer universe again in the future?

Yeah, we thought it was a nice homage to Sandman to end on 75. The plan I’d originally written ended with the close of the Morningstar arc, so I had the luxury of being able to plot out six more issues which would act as a coda for every major character, and play out the consequences of the decisions they’d made in Morningstar. Some of my favourite issues of all were in that last half-year.

You have a propensity for writing smart, cerebral characters. Are there any characters that you haven't gotten a crack at in either company that you would like to give the "Mike Carey treatment?" Maybe someone you would like to totally re-invent?

At this stage in the game, fewer than you might think. I’ve always wanted to write a Doctor Strange story, so that would be one. I’ve already written both Batman and Superman, although neither story was ever published. I’d love to write the Grant Morrison version of the Doom Patrol, but I guess that ship sailed two decades ago. The Challengers of the Unknown, maybe, or the Metal Men, or one of those other Silver Age teams…

What were the circumstances behind the Firestorm pitch for DC a few years back? How close was that to becoming a reality?

How close? I wrote four scripts! My idea for the character was that the Firestorm matrix goes into convulsions and – in order to stabilise itself – anchors itself in half a dozen different personalities. One of them is an AI; another is a cat; a third is a guy who has a heart attack when the matrix touches him, so he’s Firestorm, but he’s also dead.

The editorial response was positive at first, but then there was a big shake-up, with Dan Raspler leaving DC, and my version of Firestorm was – sadly – shelved.

Your Hellblazer run was brilliant. Where do you see the evolution of John Constantine's character headed considering he's aging in something close to real time? Any plans to revisit the character at some point, maybe something in short story form like "Exposed"?

That would be fun to do. And there are precedents, of course – both Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis came back for a second pass at Constantine, and wrote great books as a result.

The real-time ageing is something that fans feel very strongly about, so any attempt to rejuvenate John would probably be met with outrage. So at some point, his story has to end. But that wouldn’t rule out doing flashback stories to any time in his life, or for that matter continuing the title with a different character in the lead role. I favour Gemma Constantine.

Being a British born writer do you ever find it difficult writing dialogue for American characters or characters based in other countries? Do you run into any stumbling blocks with colloquialisms and slang? (I think if I were ever tasked with writing dialogue for Constantine I'd probably butcher it.)

I can’t say, of course, how authentically my American dialogue reads, but I believe it’s easier for a Brit to write Americans than the other way around. We’re saturated in American culture: most of the movies screened here and a good 30 or 40 per cent of the TV programmes originate in the US. But yeah, having said that, I have blind spots. Occasionally I’ll write a British idiom without even knowing it’s British: fortunately, US editors are well placed to spot that.

Unwritten has been warmly received and is moving along nicely. With the 3rd major arc beginning some time in May what can we expect to happen with the book in the coming months?

Issue 12 is a stand-alone, like issue 5, and we’re all very proud of it. It has cute cuddly animals and psychopathic killers – always an intriguing mix.

After that we have a longer arc which brings all of our core cast together for the first time, as they react to the impending publication of a new Tommy Taylor novel. It’s very action-driven to begin with, but also throws each of our protagonists a big, unexpected curve ball and leaves them in a very different place. Lizzie in particular has a moment of crisis that I don’t think anyone will see coming.

Then there’s a one-off that focuses on the Unwritten cabal themselves, and after that… Moby Dick. Plus a supporting cast of other famous cetaceans.

You've been doing a fantastic job on X-Men Legacy, writing some great stories while sticking to continuity, which can be a tricky balance I'd imagine. What prompted you to go after the X-Men franchise and land that particular book? Have you been following them for a long time or is your adherence to their history more a credit to well-done research?

I’ve always been an X-Men fan, but even so the continuity looks daunting when you take on one of the core books in the franchise. I had to fill gaps in my knowledge, because there were periods when I hadn’t followed all the books, and I had to decide how far to acknowledge all that weight of backstory. I was very nervous going in, I have to admit. You realise pretty quickly with a book like this that some of your readers have made huge emotional investments in the characters: the opportunities for upsetting and angering people abound. But the X-Men were such an important part of my childhood: there was no way I was going to turn down the chance to add some chapters to their ongoing story.

Well that about wraps it up, thanks again for your time. I know you had to fit this between a number of other projects you are working on and I really appreciate it. Any last words of wisdom you'd like to impart?

With any book, it comes down to the same question in the end – or one of a small set of questions. The most important one is, or ought to be, am I going to love this? Am I going to have fun writing it? If the answer is no, there has to be a follow-up: then why am I doing it?

I can remember being at a Marvel creative retreat in New York, and Brian Bendis led an exodus at lunchtime on Wednesday because it was new comics day and he wanted to go down to Stateside and pick up some books. “The day you stop caring about new comics day ought to be the day you stop writing comics.” I think that’s true to a very large extent. You can’t write what you don’t love. That’s bull, obviously you can write what you can’t love. But people will find you out.