A Spotlight Interview with Mike Grell part 2

In this two-part interview (the first of a special new spotlight series co-produced by Alex Ness), Richard Caldwell talks with industry legend Mike Grell.
The celebrated writer/artist’s long list of credits include such diverse works as the Legion of Superheroes and Starslayer to Green Arrow and James Bond; and among many other achievements, his creation of The Warlord is soon to be revitalized for the character’s 35th Anniversary at DC Comics.

A Spotlight Interview with Mike Grell (part 2)

R- One of my favorite works of yours was Shaman’s Tears. The related properties have bounced around different publishers from the 90’s on. It seemed to be much more of a spiritual and poetic approach to storytelling, almost idealistic I think, even though the worldview was just as grim as in Jon Sable or Green Arrow.
Was it frustrating that the books didn’t take on better at the time?

M- It was frustrating that I came in just as the bubble burst. That was really unfortunate.
The sales of the very first issue were enormous. We sold about, I think around half a million copies of issue #1. Issue #2 sold about a quarter of a million. By the time issue #3 came out- that was closer to my run on Green Arrow- I think 80-100 thousand. And, the bubble burst. It went from decent sales down to minimal sales down to losing our butts every month. The last four issues published actually lost money every month. I wasn’t in the wrong- it wasn’t that the books were ill-received, and it wasn’t the audience that I had. It was just that the trend by that point was towards the collectible.
Whoever came up with the concept of selling comic books in a plastic bag sealed did the entire comic industry a great disservice, because if you have a book in a sealed bag you can never read it. And if you don’t read it then there’s no real point in you collecting it unless you are just in it for the money. The reality is that something that’s printed in editions of a half million is never really going to be worth anything, except under really extraordinary circumstances.
The reason that Golden Age comics are so valuable is because most of them were ground up for pulp for the paper drives during WW2; and the reason Silver Age comics are so valuable is that most of our mothers threw ours away when we went off to college. I know mine did! I used to go back and torment my mom by telling her what that Spider Man #1 is worth right now, you know- the one she threw away that was under my bed.
The first time someone bought one of those books on speculation thinking he would invest 3 dollars and within a year it would be worth 300 dollars- the first time that guy walked into a comic shop with what he thought was a 300 dollar comic and said, “I’d like to sell this back to you,” the guy in the shop probably reached under the counter and pulled out a stack a foot high and said, “I got all you want for 50 cents each”. And that’s when that bubble burst. Everybody realized it was this great pyramid scheme- there was just nothing holding it up. Marvel Comics went into bankruptcy. Image Comics all but failed and had to restructure its organization. Nobody could maintain it. The more bound they were to a certain collector mentality as opposed to a solid readership, the less willing people were to put up with it; but that’s one of those things- you live and you learn.

R- Could you now see yourself leaning more towards online presentations for certain works, like how the entire Shaman’s Tears series can be read at the comicmix site?

M- Certain works do really well online, I think. The online model is really gearing more towards producing books that will go in bookstores, like trade collections. That’s the reason they are going up there. DC comics is online now (with an elaborate site and via its Zuda imprint). Marvel has an online-based subscription system for its archives. They meet viewers that way. In general, I would be surprised if everything you see appearing online doesn’t ultimately end up in a bookstore, or at least try to end up there. In the long term, in the long run, that’s what these need to be strong.

R- I hope so. I’m old fashioned enough to prefer the musty comics, you know?

M- Oh, me too. I’d love it if we went back to printing them on newsprint. I like the idea of a comic book that will fall apart after years of use.

R- The only thing that comicmix seems to be missing though is some kind of equivalent to the letters pages that have run in every series you’ve ever done that Mike Gold edited up. They’re infamous at times, and I think through all the comics you’ve done you have maintained a strong relation with your fanbase.

M- That letter column Gold did started way back when, and has been interpersonal like that. He made it seem to the fans that we were not only paying attention to what was going on, but we were also taking some of their advice and views and responding to their letters in a way that would often surprise them. We wouldn’t just print positive letters- we’d print negative letters. There’s nothing that Mike Gold and I like better than taking a stick and poking a hornet’s nest just to see what’s gonna come out. We don’t pretend to have all the answers- we have lots of questions; and if you stir up enough people and get them to talking then eventually someone will come up with the answers to the entire problem. That’s sort of the great thing about mutual correspondence.

R- I halfway wonder if that’s not one of the reasons people are talking of monthlies dying out- not that I think that will ever happen; but that kind of editorial and creative presence is missing, I think, from a lot of today’s comics.

M- Yeah I think that is part of that problem. There are these comment pages for people who get online to write in, but there’s not really any letters pages in comics anymore like there used to be. It is too bad- you might get an editorial page, with a checklist and a little insider information or something like that.
Geez, when I was a kid I always read the letters pages because it was interesting to see what other kids, other readers were thinking about and to see the editors’ reaction.
There were several guys in the industry who got in and became pros because they were letter writers to begin with, like Martin Pasko. Marty Pasko had the nickname ‘Pesky Pasko’ because he delighted in pointing out mistakes that other writers made. He would write fan letter after fan letter to Julie Schwartz, and after awhile, Julie said, “If you think you can do better, why don’t you?” That started him off on his career. Elliot Maggin- pretty much the same thing- wrote a Green Lantern/Green Arrow story as a thesis project in college, and sent it to Julie Schwartz for review. Schwartz liked it and put him to work. So, stuff like that actually does happen.

R- I think nowadays it’s more confined to online chat forums. It’s almost like there’s aspects of the industry that are jumping ahead too fast, like it’s an old versus new kind of thing.
Which, it’s nice in that sense that your Warlord book is making the comeback here, for its 35th Anniversary. How were you approached for that?

M- I actually made the approach myself. I had been doing some cover work for DC and had a good conversation with a couple of the editors over there, and I had pointed out that the 35th Anniversary of the Warlord was coming up.
My pitch for it I had already written, because originally I had done it for the 25th Anniversary. We were waiting on scheduling and had the green light when Archie Goodwin, who was the editor, passed away. Mike Carlin took over and after five months of being stalled I was finally able to meet with Carlin to discuss the scheduling and he killed the project. So out went that route.
Once I let it be known that I had this Warlord project ready to go, Dan Didio got really excited about it. Dan’s a big Warlord fan, and he’s probably the best guy now to run DC Comics because he’s such a comics fan himself. He loves comics. He was as disappointed as anyone else that the revised Warlord didn’t fly; but he was smart enough to realize that there were elements missing. I guess he felt one of the things missing was Mike Grell. When I talked to him, I was actually just pitching a six-issue mini series, and he came back and asked if I would do a monthly. I said “Yeah. Heck, yeah! No problem.”

R- Will you be drawing the relaunch as well?

M- I’m doing the covers and writing the scripts. I may be drawing some issues, but just recently we got the artists signed. Joe Prado will be doing the pencils, and Walden Wong will be doing the inking.
The unfortunate thing with the timing is that in order to qualify as a 35th Anniversary- it’s got to come out sometime in 2009; and I have a prior commitment to a project called “The Pilgrim” over at comicmix.com. So were I to draw the Warlord it would be pushed back to the tail end of 2009, and I don’t want anyone to wait that long.

R- I think everyone has waited long enough on this one.

M- Well, it’s gonna be an exciting story, exciting for me! I certainly had enough time to think about it, plot it out, plan it out Instead of it being what is referred to these days as a ‘reboot’, where you take the character and recreate everything, starting over from scratch and changing certain things about the origin for the sake of modernization, what I have done is simply picked up where I left off. The nature of the character and the nature of the world that he lives allows for that. In fact, I’m making no small bones about the fact that he has been down there for all of this length of time. It works within the context of Skartaris because basically what you’ve got is a Shangri-La where people grow older but they don’t age the way people on the surface age. Age being largely a question of mental and physical activity. If your mind stays sharp, if your body stays in shape and you still take care of yourself- it’s possible to be a powerful and athletic and vital individual well into your later years.
You take a look at, for instance, Kirk Douglas when he played Spartacus. Of course he was in great shape- he was in his 40’s then, but you also saw him years later and he was still incredibly physically fit. Ricardo Montalban just passed away. He was another great example. He played Khan on the original Star Trek series; and twenty years later he played the same character again, and he was every bit as charismatic and powerful and played that role so well.
In my version of Skartaris, the reason people there don’t age is because they are unaware of the passage of time. They have no way of measuring the passage of time because the interior sun at the Earth’s core hangs right in the middle and it’s always noon as far as they’re concerned. So when they fall asleep and wake up- they don’t know if an hour has passed, or a day or week or year or however long it might have been. So it becomes the sort of Einsteinian relative passing of time. It’s relative to your specific situation, and these people have just let time pass them by.

R- Of your body of work, what’s your biggest regret?

M- I won’t say this is my biggest regret, but I have kicked myself in the butt a few times over the years. Chris Claremont and I go way, way back. Just about the time I was beginning Sable he asked me when I’d want to get together and do mutants, and I passed! I passed on it and of course, didn’t bother to stop and think he had flown there in his Lear jet. So there’s definitely a regret there.
For the rest of it, there have been a couple of things that have slipped by while I was looking in the other direction. I always thought that I would like to be a good enough artist to draw Prince Valiant, or Superman, for that matter. The reason I say Superman is because having seen the amazing work that Curt Swan had done on those books- I know I’d never hold a candle to it. The only man I ever knew who could draw a group of people standing around a water cooler and make it LOOK like a group of people standing around a water cooler. When he drew Superman and Clark Kent, when he drew Clark Kent- yeah it was Superman in a suit, but he was different. He had a different posture, different attitude- everything about him; and Lois Lane was just amazingly pretty when he drew her.

R- There is an understated grace to his style.

M- Yes, yes- amazing!

R- So even though you are drawing the actor Mark Ryan’s script for the Pilgrim at comicmix, and we have the new Warlord ongoing to look forward to, are there any plans of ever returning to some of your other creations, like Jon Sable or Stalking Wolf?

M- Yes! I have another Sable story planned, the outline’s pretty much done for it; and I’ve got another Sable novel about one-third complete…

R- Fantastic!

M- …and a film deal to finalize before we go on with that. I have a screenplay written based on Shaman’s Tears that is getting reviewed. I would like to go back and do more Shaman’s Tears stories, as that one had a lot of directions to go in.

R- I think some of its environmental and ecological themes, I mean, they’re just as valid now as they were 10, 15 years ago; and unless certain national politics change it’s gonna remain valid for some years to come.

M- I don’t see things changing so dramatically that it will no longer be pertinent. I think it’s something that will still be important 5 years, 10 years from now; though I’m certainly more hopeful for our future now than I was before.

Note- To see more (and/or for purchase inquiries) of Mike’s original art, Scott Kress of Catskill Comics would be happy to assist. http://www.catskillcomics.com/grell.htm
I would like to thank Alex Ness for his instigation, and Mike Grell for not shooting me.
Images of Green Arrow and the Warlord all copyrighted by DC Comics.

http://www.mikegrell.com/
http://www.catskillcomics.com/
http://www.comicmix.com/