He's opinionated, and quite vocal in his criticism of what he perceives as shoddy work by others in the field of comics. As such, he's often drawn a great deal of criticism of his own.  But he's also a man who has admitted that he can be "difficult to work with," and who has said that, "I don't believe that people are intentionally doing bad work. I think that everyone is trying to do their best."

One of the founders of Image - perhaps the most successful independent imprint in comics history, established by a group of young men who wanted to have complete control over their own creations and destinies - he's the last of them to still be doing ALMOST everything himself. Ironically, he's probably missed less deadlines than any of his fellow Image creators.

He's a living, breathing bag of contradictions. He can be extremely funny while making a deadly serious observation. Despite being self-effacing, he's deservedly proud of his accomplishments and abilities. A star in his field, he is still eminently approachable and particularly interested in what his fans have to say concerning his work. Someone who's a complex and engaging human being, despite being a regular guy.

Ladies and gents, here's Erik Larsen

Bill:  How ya doing today, Erik?

Erik:  Hangin' in there.

Bill:   Your current work load is pretty heavy: you're writing several series, and doing the lion's share of work - as usual - on THE SAVAGE DRAGON. What's your daily schedule like, and how are you handling all of this work?

Erik:   Generally, it takes me two solid weeks to ink the DRAGON. That's the only part of this that's really kinda set in stone; that it takes me that amount of given time. It's this chunk of time that is unavoidable. But the other stuff goes pretty fast.

I've always scripted DRAGON in about ten hours. And I'm just looking at this and saying, THAT doesn't take like much!" And the other stuff, too … it plots very quickly, and I've [always] scripted very quickly and it comes easily. The writing end of stuff has never been something that has been a real concern, and I've never had writer's block to deal with in any way. It's just like, "OK. What do I wanna do, how do I accomplish it?" and just start typing, and then go through it a couple times and make sure it's everything I want it to be.  And you either love it or hate it.

Bill:   You NEVER suffer from writer's block? That's great!
 
Erik:   I have yet to have that really happen. I've heard of it happening with other people, but what ends up happening in the stuff I do, in general, is I have so many ideas of what I wanna get accomplished and so much stuff gets set up in a fairly short order, that I'm sitting there with WAY too much in almost all circumstances.

I'm just like, "Aw, I've got enough for 50 issues, and I wanna squeeze a chunk of that into one." So it's more a matter of coming up with what to leave out, than what to leave in, ya know? It's really … I don't know how to explain it. I guess other people don't have this situation going on. Where they're just, "Villain this issue ... villain this issue?" and they're scratching their chins. And I'm like, "There's TWO HUNDRED bad guys in the DRAGON ... who can I get to first, and who should I save for later, and what subplots need to be  resolved, and what ones can go later on?" Generally, when I do notes to myself, I'll end up having thirty pages worth of notes. And so that means, like, ten pages worth of material can't make it into the issue. There's not enough space for it.

Bill:   So how far ahead do you have the DRAGON plotted out?

Erik:   Uhm ... Generally, it's fairly solid about a year ahead of where I'm at, almost all the time. And there's some of that is set in stone - will be specifically in a specific issue - and then other parts of it are sort of the wild card elements, in which I'm not really sure HOW they're gonna resolve, and what goes on with them. And THEY keep things fresh, and interesting and stuff like that.

And a lot of those things, it's just one part leads to another and pretty soon you're off on some weird-ass direction you've never anticipated. [Laughter] But it keeps ME guessing, and it REALLY keeps it so the readers have NO clue what's going on. I figure if I don't have a clue, THEY'RE certainly not, ya know. [Laughter]

It's from reading most comics, and seeing a lot of movies, people get sort of this expectation of where things are gonna go. And, well, they'll go, "Typically, this kind of situation is resolved this sort of way." And as long as I don't go in those directions, generally, people keep pretty surprised at what's happening in the book. Almost every issue, somebody's just, like, "I did NOT see that coming at all!"

And that's how it SHOULD be, ya know? But there are also issues that tell nice little stories ... it's not all a matter of trying to bowl people over with shock following shock. There's a lot of that, too, but, sometimes, it's just this nice issue and there's some nice gags in here, or whatever.

Like the issue I just finished on DRAGON, which is 59. It's not like some of the other issues where they'll be, "Wow! Big Surprise! Big Spoiler! This, that and the other thing!" It's much more of a ... kind of a FRIENDLY issue. "Getting to know you."

And it also, unlike a lot of issues which take place over a period of a day, this issue takes place over a period of about five months. There's a LOT of ground covered in twenty pages.

Bill:   Right. Four pages for a month.

Erik:   Well, there's some scenes where it'll be one page for a month. And then, other stuff, it'll be, ya know, four pages dealing with this other aspect of it, and there'll be this scene here which will take place over a large amount of it [the issue].

The book is generally, in this issue, following Dragon's life and he doesn't immediately - following his resurrection in the previous issue - jump right back into being on the SOS and dealing with stuff there. You'll read it and think it's wonderful or horrible. It's up to you.

Bill:   So the afterlife wasn't much of a vacation; he needed...

Erik:   [Simultaneously] He needed a vacation from his vacation. [Laughter]

Bill:   Well, since you brought it up, here's a question I was gonna ask a little later on:  You've given a promise to your readers...

Erik:   Uh-huh.

Bill:   Do you think that you're breaking your promise not to bring back dead characters ... that "dead is dead" in the DRAGON? Or have you included an escape clause of sorts with the Dragon, and with Rapture?

Erik:   Without giving TOO much away ... [Laughter]

The problem is, I think, really, IF you do death in a comic, that death ought to have some ramifications ... IF you're going to bring someone back from the dead.

So if you bring back a character who has died, then it's like, "OK. Well, their SOUL survived, and their BODY is now gone. So you have to get a new body," and then it becomes, like, "Oh, OK. Now this body becomes this OTHER thing."

Already there have been OTHER characters who have - theoretically - come back from the dead. In that ... Oh, I can't even remember the guy's name now. The guy who came to Debbie Harris' door and shot himself after her, he came back as the Fiend.

Bill:   Right ...

Erik:   So, this is a character who came back from the dead, and he came back really early on. But he's NOT coming back as "Arnold Dimple", he's coming back as the Fiend. That's had a ramification.

Bill:   Right.

Erik:   In issue 18 or 19, Debbie was resurrected ... but she was like a zombie with a hole in her head, ya know. Death had ... there was SOMETHING that went on there.

Bill:   Yeah. If nothing else, it cut into her personal life. [Laughter]

Erik:   If you go to another universe, and there's somebody else there who's another version of the same person, THAT, too, is like, "Well, yeah, TECHNICALLY, it looks like the other person." But that person is also going to have had different experiences, not necessarily have the feelings toward a character that they would have had otherwise ...

The Dragon went to another dimension and rescued [a parallel] Debbie who hadn't died in our dimension. But THAT Debbie had never had a relationship with the Dragon, had much different life experiences than what the Dragon had had. And, because of her living in this [other] world, her life had been effected a GREAT amount. So that when you actually get to know this character at all, it's like, "Well, yeah, PHYSICALLY, this DOES look like the same person. BUT it's not really the same person anymore," ya know?

It's like the Gwen Stacy clone. You're going, "Yeah, but you haven't had all of these experiences. You haven't had all this stuff go on. You're not really the same girl I fell in love with at all. You're something else entirely."

Bill:   It's akin to the whole amnesia idea, as well.

Erik:   Yeah, but I look at Norman Osborn being resurrected and I go, "Ya know, THAT'S a flat-out cheat!" We saw he's dead. We saw him get buried. And then, suddenly, he's walking around with a scar on his chest going, "Hey, I'm fine!" And he hasn't been adversely effected by dying.

And Aunt May, too. It's like, "Oh, I got some ACTOR to play Aunt May." SINCE WHEN?! Ya know, I've seen some incredible make up jobs, but I've never seen one where I go, "Ya know, you managed to take Karl Malden and turn him into Sylvester Stallone. That's Amazing!"

As much as you can do, there's just certain things that people do in comics that are SO far removed from what's capable of being done in reality, that you just have to go, "OK. I'm not buying that one."

I believe a guy can fly. I do not believe that you can put on a pair of glasses and I can't recognize you as the same human being anymore. I'm sorry, THAT one's too much of a stretch.

Bill:   Right, it does break that "willing suspension of disbelief" - to use the fancy phrase - that allows all literature to work at all.

Erik:   Yeah. To me, some of that stuff just falls apart.

Ya know, in terms of Rapture being on the cover, I basically just wanted to rip off a WOLVERINE cover that I just did. [Laughter] And that's REALLY where the whole thing came about. And now it was just, "OK. Now find an excuse to have the scene in the book!  God damn, I'm racking my brains to figure this one out!!"

But when you read the thing, I don't think that there's gonna be too many people [saying], "Hey, he REALLY went back on his word!" and, "This is EXACTLY Rapture as we last saw here," and, "He's just pulled a fast one."

You'll go, "Oh. OK. I get it!" This is ... There WAS some ramification. There is something different here. It's NOT exactly the same as we left it. And I DON'T think it's a cheat, ya know? I don't think you'll get that same kind of queasy, "Aunt May's just revived?! Boy, that was a rip-off!" feeling.

Bill:   It sounds like your stories are pretty organic. They flow naturally, and they make internal sense.

Erik:   Hopefully! [Laughter] I really try, that when you sit down to read SAVAGE DRAGON 1 to 60, that it all flows one into another, and that it all does make sense. And that I don't have a lot of things that are set up and are never resolved. And that's the thing that drives me the most insane about just comic books in general, ya know?

I'm sitting here still going, "God, when are they going to bring in that guy who walks into the sky on those little glowing squares in DAREDEVIL 128?" I'm THAT guy who just wants to see this old crap resolved, ya know? When a comic book is canceled, and there's all these dangling plot threads, [it] just bugs the hell out of me. "Can't you resolve this before you cancel this? You're driving me crazy!" [Laughter]

Bill:   Let's talk about your working methods just for a few moments. It sounds like the script comes first with THE SAVAGE DRAGON.

Erik:   Uhm ... There's ALWAYS a plot that comes first, on everything. Sometimes there's huge amounts of dialogue that are in those plots, sometimes there's next to nothing. But, generally, what I'll do is write myself, generally it's a page of scribbled notes on THE DRAGON. And that's points I want to hit and I'll know - in my head, a lot of times when I'm drawing it - what the dialogue will be or what the exchanges will be. And then I'll put in liner notes, sometimes I'll even scribble in loose dialogue on the page when I'm drawing it.  And then it's scripting it afterwards, and sending it off to Chris Eliopoulos to get it lettered.

And he can block out all that stuff. I don't have to draw any backgrounds. [Laughter]

Bill:   That really does help, doesn't it? Especially in the inking phase.

Erik:   Having this stuff on the boards is SO great. I CAN'T conceive of doing this book and having it done on computer, and having it all pasted up afterwards. It's just, man, look at all the work I did on that, and then having it all blocked out with a caption or word balloon, or something.

It's much better for me to have it done on the boards, and then I know where to spot the blacks, and where some details can be added to make that look better, and everything else.  It really just works much better, I think.

Bill:   It also seems to really help keep you on time, which is important.

Erik:   Yeah. YEAH. Absolutely. [Laughter] But I've been managing, somehow, to make this book go out on a fairly regular basis, so, "Woo-Hoo!"

Bill:   That IS a reason for celebration.

Erik:   Yeah.

Bill:   Especially when you take a look at some of the different books that started off great, but then just disappeared ... both in terms of sales, and appearance on the racks.

Erik:   I don't know a lot of ... I don't know. I think when you start doing this stuff on your own, you can get this ... You can get it in your head that, "Oh, boy. They LOVED the first and second issues. I better make the third one even better!" And then you set yourself up as, "Now I've got this level where I can't disappoint people." And you really set it up in your own mind so that you're incapable of actually working anymore, because you're so intent on, "That panel's got to be better than the previous panel. I've got a certain level."

And then, after a while, "Oh, no! I'm only producing six issues a year. Well, those issues had better be damn good! They've got to be better than everybody else's stuff!" And it gets to the point where you look around and go, "Now I'm Adam Hughes; I do two issues a year," ya know. "I do one every year; I'm Art Adams." And Art Adams and Adam Hughes... Ya know, they could be millionaires several times over. Instead, Todd McFarlane is; and Todd is not HALF the artist those guys are. He isn't.

BUT he's willing to put his line down on the page, and put that page aside and get on to the next one, and the next one, and the next one. And now he's buying three million dollar baseballs and all sorts of insane stuff. [Laughter]

And now he can have a life of somewhat leisure, because of that. Because he was willing to put in that time early on, and produce work that people were taken with.

Bill:   It's kind of like the difference between the attitude of a fine artist, who's going to be almost anal retentive about stuff, and the workman, who's concerned with putting down really solid, sturdy stories ...

Erik:   Yeah.

Bill:   ... And then improving it as you work on it.

Erik:   Yeah. And I think there IS really good work that's produced quite fast, also.

Bill:   Oh, yeah. I mean, look at Kirby's work.

Erik:   Exactly. There was a guy who was producing a comic book a week.

Bill:   Sometimes more.

Erik:   And he was able to do it. He found himself a style that worked, and that was powerful, and appealing. And also there was a certain ... looseness and power to Jack's work that a lot of the guys who are doing this stuff and taking forever on it don't have anymore, because it just stiffens up. You spend too much time on a page, it becomes incredibly stiff. And it's like, God, there's no fluidity to these figures anymore." It's just this kind of restrictive stuff, where every muscle seems to be flexing at the same time and it's all rendered impeccably, but there's no feeling of movement to any of this stuff at all.

Bill:   What kind of tools do you use - pencils, pens, paper, etc.?

Erik:   Let's see ... Starting from the paper, I use a 3-ply Bristol that I have the printers print up for me. Actually, Image Comics has different kinds of paper that everybody has printed up. Some people like the stuff to have some "tooth" to it, other people like their stuff to be as smooth as glass. Generally, the stuff I use is pretty smooth.

The pens I'm using are almost entirely Hunt 102s. The reason I like the paper to be so smooth is I'm using a pen, and my line's chunky enough to begin with, and if I start using paper with any "tooth" in it, you're gonna see just how disastrous it is. [Laughter]

In terms of a brush, I use a series 7 Windsor-Newton #2. And for a lot of straight line stuff, I don't use Rapidographs ... I just use markers. [Laughter]

I've never had any good luck with Rapidographs. They always clog on me and it's such a pain in the ass to clean it, that I just decided at some point ... a "deft" Uniball will do every bit as much of a line as anything else, and a Pentel Rolling Writer will give me a little thicker line than that; why not use these tools? They don't seem to change [to] different colors and become something weird over time, which is a problem with some markers. You're going to
 have to experiment some with markers if you're going to use 'em, 'cause they can do all kinds of horrible things over time. Especially if you start applying zip-a-tone or something like that. The moisture in that stuff with affect these pens, and pretty soon you'll be looking back at this stuff and saying, "Wow! That's BRIGHT PURPLE! What the hell?!" [Laughter]

But I'm working for reproduction, too. This isn't something I'm where intending that these are to be works of art that are going to be hanging on somebody's wall. I DON'T sell my original art; it's all sitting here. I've got a stack of original art from SAVAGE DRAGON that's five feet high. Every page is here. [Laughter]

Bill:   Wow. Did you hang on to your Marvel and DC work, as well?

Erik:   No, because it wasn't as personal for me. But this really has been. And there's a few pages of SPIDER-MAN I kept; I kept my last cover of the last issue that I did. And there's another cover I think I kept around here, somewhere; there's a MARVEL COMICS  PRESENTS cover that I kept that's very ancient. There's a couple little things here and there.

But I found that, now that I'm no longer selling my artwork, that I'm a much happier person.  I really HATED the whole schlepping artwork thing, where people would just, like, "Well, if I buy two, can I get a cut in price? Is this set in stone?" And I'm just, like, "I HATE that. I don't wanna do this anymore." And if I want somebody to have something, I can GIVE it to them. And, for the most part, I DON'T WANT YOU TO HAVE IT! [Laughter]

And also, by not having to concern myself with this stuff - being on somebody's wall someplace - it doesn't need to be that beautiful. And I can feel like, well, it's OK to paste  up this building from a previous page, and white out details and mess around with it, because nobody's going to be seeing the original artwork, and seeing that, "Hey! This is a bloody Xerox with white out all over it! And stuff re-drawn here so that he didn't have to re-draw that same house four hundred times!'

Bill:   I was just thinking about seeing Eddie Campbell at San Diego last year, and him showing me some of his FROM HELL art that he was selling, and him saying, "Well, this page's less, 'cause it's got Xeroxes and white out on it." Of course, it was still beautiful work. [Laughter] I can see how the whole issue of pricing, and the arm wrestling over prices, could become a real big pain.

Erik:   I just can't stand the whole process. And I don't need the money, ya know? That has something to do with it, too.

The early Image stuff really did make it so that I don't have some of the pressures that some other people have in their lives, to go out there and get rich, and all this other stuff, and make a ton of money. I don't need to do that.

Bill:   Yeah, you're not worried about making your con expenses; your room and such.

Erik:   Yeah, I just go to the con and enjoy myself. And if I ... I don't have to sell anything, and that's OK, ya know. I can just greet the people who're reading the stuff, and have a nice conversation with them, and find out what they're liking, what they're hating. What they're reading and stuff like that. And life is good.

Bill:   So you're enjoying the cons these days.

Erik:   They're fine. It's great, I love it. Ya know, sometimes people think that they're being a pain in the ass when they just want to hang around and chat, but, dammit, THAT'S what  I'm there for! If someone just wants to spend the better part of an hour just shooting the breeze, I'm all for it! [Laughter]

Bill:   I'm sure you're going to have a few people willing to do that after this appears.

Erik:   I don't mind. I really don't. That's what I'm there for.

During the general day, I'm sitting here working in a place where I'm not conversing with a lot of people all the time about comic books. Ya know, my wife comes home and she doesn't read any of this nonsense, [Laughter] so this isn't something she's really crazy about, or whatever, too. So for me to get a chance to get out, and actually talk to people about this stuff, is a real treat for me.

Bill:   Do you do sketches anymore?

Erik:   Uh, nothing for money. But I do free stuff, at times. I try to do that, as much as I can.  But I've found that the "for money" sketches would always be these full body shots, and a lot of times they'd end up being really rushed because of the time [constraint] thing.

Somebody came up to me at San Diego one year with a piece I had done the previous year, and it was framed. And it was just the most god-awful thing I'd ever seen in my life!  [Laughter] And I was, like, "Oh my god! They're SO proud of this, and people are going to see this thing, and it's hideous! I don't ever want to do this again!"

Of all things, THAT got me to not want to do those things. And it became ... It was more of a chore, as I was sitting there actively working at a show, and trying to make money and trying to do this sort of nonsense. And now, it's like, "I don't need to worry about that sort of thing." It's made my life easier, ya know? [There's real relief in his voice] I've got "fuck you" money. [Laughter]

And that's the beauty thing of all this stuff, ya know. If something's a hassle, it doesn't matter, ya know? I can do ... I can write WOLVERINE, or I can not write WOLVERINE; my life is not dependent upon WOLVERINE, and whatever else. That's fine. If somebody along the line decides, "This just isn't working," it's, like, "OK.  Whatever."

I'm certainly happy to do the stuff, and I'm enjoying myself doing it, and I think people enjoy reading it. But it's nice to be able to go, "Hey, look. This is the story I wanted to write. If you want to publish this story, fine. If you don't want to publish this story, that's OK, too. But I don't want to do a real watered-down version of the same thing. So either you're up for it, or you're not up for it. But that's it."

It's nice that some editors have kinda taken that as, "Sure. Great. Well, that's what we wanted: someone to come on here and do NOVA. That's great. We hired you to do NOVA because we like what you bring to a project, and we like everything else. Why would we want to take that away from what you do? Ya know, it'd be stupid for us to hire Erik Larsen and then try to turn you into someone else."

So those are the kind of editors where, "OK, great! We're going to get along famously!"   And there's the other ones that, well... it's not the same. [Laughter]

Bill:   Do you end up doing work for those other editors?

Erik:   Uhm, I have. I have a situation that is ending, and I must say I'm not especially sad to see it go. And that is, AQUAMAN 62 will be my last issue of Aquaman.

That was like ... spending the month running full bore into a tree; and then having somebody come by and say, "Yeah, we'd like to take the tree away." [Laughter] Oh, I'm supposed to object to this?! No, THANK YOU! [Laughter] Thank you for taking away that tree.

I found that, in terms of my working relationships, to probably be the most frustrating experience that I've ever had. It's like, the first thing I'm saddled with is, like, "We're having Mera break up with Aquaman." And that's to start it off.

And then it's, "How come Aquaman's not cheery?"

"Well, he JUST BROKE UP WITH HIS WIFE!"

"Well, just make him more positive. We want him to be more positive," and it's like, "Ya know, you just CAN'T do that; not without it sucking!"

Now, if you want comic books that suck, I don't really want to produce that. So, maybe you oughta get somebody else who wants to produce comics that suck. 'Cause I'm really not interested in having characters suddenly react in ways that are COMPLETELY unrealistic, and completely bizarre, just to facilitate some editor's idea of how they would like the tone of something to be.

And it drove me pretty well crazy to have most of what I considered the most interesting parts of those issues end up on the cutting room floor. To set things up, and then ... Ya know, it's like telling a joke and getting all the way to where the punchline [is] and having someone say, "Uh-uh. I don't like that punchline. Why don't you just not tell it at all?"  [Laughter] but all the set-up's in print, ya know, and now the punchline is gone.

Some of the changes made, drove me insane as well-- I had these lava guys hauling off women and their motivation was that they needed them in order to reproduce-- I was thinking of something along the lines of ALIEN or the cult classic HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP. The editor kept coming back to me saying- "you mean 'rape'- I can't have  these guys stealing women to rape them." And I was just aghast, you know- I wasn't  planning on SHOWING the birthing process or anything and it's not as though the characters in ALIENS were "raped."! I just needed a REAL motivation for these guys to take women and ONLY women. I ended up having them take women to EAT them- which, I thought, was pretty weak. But by that point it was being scripted - it was too late to just say, "let's forget using the Fire Trolls."

So, unlike SAVAGE DRAGON - where everything makes sense and all the little pieces get resolved - in AQUAMAN there is tons of stuff going somewhere and that doesn't go anywhere. And it's just ... Good lord! ...

Bill:   That's a common problem, isn't it, with comics?

Erik:   It's a common problem. Probably, for me, my biggest problem with AQUAMAN is that I actually came on with an agenda and wanted to do something, and progress something and flesh something out. And it's been frustrating in not being able to do that.

On a book like WOLVERINE, they hired me, and went out of their way to get me to come on and do that book. I did not seek that out. I did not write a proposal for that.

Bill:   Oh, they called you up ... ?

Erik:   They called me up and said, "We like what you're doing on SAVAGE DRAGON.  We heard you're interested in doing things at Marvel/DC. We had NO idea you were willing to do stuff at Marvel/DC. We would LOVE to see what you'd do on WOLVERINE." And it's been great. And on that book, the things where they're coming on and going, "Well, gee, we really want Cable to be in this issue," it's like, "Fine! I have no problem accommodating you here. I can still do the wacky shit I wanna do, but because I don't have an agenda or place that I need to get to, uhm, I don't feel that's really intrusive.   On a book where I've actually got a game plan ... yeah, it's irritating as hell.

Bill:   Was DC aware of your game plan?

Erik:   Oh, yeah. I wrote a proposal.

And then there's a certain amount of me wanting to have some things be flexible, and wanting to be a little impulsive, and go off and do something a little different. But ... it's just been a really frustrating experience, and I hope to not work in a situation where I'm butting heads that much with an editor again. Life's too short.

Bill:   Yeah. Yeah, that's generally my reaction, too. It's just really sad when this occurs, 'cause there's usually great talent on both sides, but there's a clash of personalities, or ideas... and it often shows in the book, too. You can tell when people are frustrated.

Erik:   Yeah. Yeah, I just think, once you go in there and start saying, "I'm going to take away the positive aspects that you bring to a project," it's kinda time to call it quits. Ya know ... the people who are reading this book because they like my work are not getting the full benefit of what I bring to a project. And it's unfair to my fans, it's unfair to Aquaman fans.

I know there's going to be a lot of people who are going to be going, "Hooray! The witch is dead!" ya know? "Now we can get to the GOOD Aquaman stories!" But I gotta say that Peter David left the book because of "creative differences." I'm off the book because of "creative differences." I don't know that you're gonna have a situation here come up where there's not something going on. Where everybody's going to be happy and it all works out.

I don't know. It's a difficult book. It's a hard book to write. It's a hard book to sell. I mean, you've got a character whose basic ability is the ability to ask for help. That's it. "Fish!  Come On!" [Laughter]

Bill:   That, and hold his breath for a LONG time, if you wanna put it that way. [Laughter]

Erik:   People's immediate suggestion to me was, "Well, you gotta have him go above water and deal with all of this stuff. Having it just set underwater is not a good idea." And my reaction was the exact opposite. "No, I don't want him to ever go up above water, if I can help it." What this book has going for it is the fact that it's in an entirely different world, an entirely different realm, and it has the potential to be really fascinating. Just think of all the weird crap you can put in this book. And it just didn't quite get to the point where I got that kind of satisfaction.

I did get to introduce a couple bad guys. I got to introduce a couple good guys; a couple of supporting characters. Don't know if anybody's going to use 'em after I'm gone. Don't know what's gonna happen with the book once I'm off it. And ... I don't know. I'll probably at least look at it for a couple issues after I'm off of it, but, generally, as soon as I'm gone off a book I don't even look back.

Ya know, it'd be kinda cool if someone decided they wanted to do something with Lagoon Boy, but, if people decide that he oughta be put in comic book limbo, well, that can happen, too.

Bill:   Yeah, and then Vertigo can always revive him twenty years down the line, right?

Erik:   Right. [Laughter]

Bill:   Well, moving on to a happier topic, what are your plans for WOLVERINE after the current "cosmic" storyline?

Erik:   Well, the book is somewhat editorially driven. Having said that, the ramifications are I don't get to decide a lot. I know that #145 is an anniversary of Wolverine issue. It'll be double-sized and it'll have Wolverine fighting the Hulk. I know that, and I'm very much looking forward to that.

But that's also something I didn't come to them and said, "Hey, let's have Wolverine fight the Hulk in this." It was editorial, and they're saying, "This is what's going on." And it's like, "Fine! Me getting to write the Hulk?! I'll take that!" [Laughter] "The Hulk is one of those characters that I've always wanted to write, so if you're able to do that in this story, it won't be the worst thing in the world."

But until then, there's a couple of issues that I've got Cable in them. I'm introducing a new Marvel Girl, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to do that in 141. But you've got "the best laid plans' here ... ya never know. But the nice thing is that this stuff doesn't get tossed away, it just gets delayed. And if it's not 141, then it'll be 146, ya know. And if it's not 146, it'll be 148, or something like that. But I know that eventually I'll be able to get around to it.

I had INTENDED that Wolverine would go on a quest to get back his adamantium. But that's not going to happen. From what I'm told, I believe he'll be getting it back, and in a far different way ... I can't really talk about that very much, ya know? [Laughter] The book is going to become VERY difficult for me to write once we start getting into these stories where one thing dovetails into something else which goes and dovetails into something else and it's this big cross-over thing. Those can be incredibly difficult to work on.

However, I think there's still cool things that can be done within the confines of doing that sort of thing. And I look at those as a challenge, and as something I look forward to. I'm  not dreading this stuff at all. This is part of the fun of working in an office like this, and being able to participate in things like this; that you get to work on these things.

And it's kinda cool to have someone come up to you and say, "OK. These are the six things that have to be in your comic. Stick those six in, but anything else is up to you." And it's like, "Oh. Cool. It's sorta like a puzzle." I get to figure it out and come up with the best  way of it working. And I think some wonderful things can result from that sort of way of doing things.

My experience on WOLVERINE has been the best, and fairly positive, ya know. With some minor exceptions of the second issue of WOLVERINE that I did [that] had some instances in there which, I think, could have been solved with a couple, well-placed  captions. But, instead, they said, "Well, I don't think we can have Hawkeye do that - let's substitute the Vision." And I'm like, "I don't know if Wolverine beating up the Vision in two  panels is really, well, POSSIBLE, for one. The guy's intangible, for crying out loud!"  [Laughter] You know, what the hell?

So there were parts of my second issue that were, "Ah! This is frustrating!" Then there's other huge chunks of stuff that ... where not really a word was touched. And, outside of  Image Comics, that doesn't happen.

Bill:   No, it's incredibly rare.

Erik:   Yeah, it is. It is.

It takes a whole different way of thinking to, to orient myself to writing in the Marvel way, ya know? Dragon's nickname is practically, "Bastard!" whereas I can't even use that word in Marvel comics, ya know. I can't use the word "hell" or "damn" in Marvel comics. It's like, geez ...

Bill:   You can send the characters there, but you just can't SAY it.

Erik:   Yeah. [Laughter] And some of the times, it's REALLY awkward. It's just like, god, the only way to say this is to say the word. But you can't say it, and you can't DO that. And it really can be quite strange, and stretching the confines of what people say, and having this stuff be believable dialogue coming from a character like Wolverine. It's like, ya know, Wolverine really should be saying, "damn," and, "hell," and, "bastard." He REALLY ought  to. Because it kinda makes him "thin" to have him sayin', "flamin'" this and ...

Bill:   Yeah. I was gonna say that that was probably some of the NICER language I could  see him using!

Erik:   Yeah. It becomes really awkward. Especially when you start substituting "darned,"  you know. That's just not ... That's really a tough one. But you gotta dance around these   things as best you can, and come up with euphemisms that at least sound plausible.

Bill:   I suppose you can't get away with any Asian euphemisms, or whatever, since he spent  time overseas, and such.

Erik:   All this stuff gets checked. And, also, they don't want to use those squiggly lines as   substitutions for the F-word, and stuff like that. It's like, "Geez! You can't use, whatever,  pound-number sign-dollar sign-exclamation point-question mark, ya know. So ... what can  we use?" It becomes ... an interesting exercise... [Laughter] ... to say the least.

Bill:   It sounds like some aspects of the editorial approach there have changed, while many
 other have remained the same.

Erik:   They're looking more towards a "G" rating, if this would be a movie, ya know? Since  the time I was working there, now they're much more, like, "Geez! Aren't her breasts a little  big?" [Laughter] and down on the size of the cleavage, and, "Does this character need to be  walking around in her underwear?" and stuff like that. Whereas, when Todd and I were  doing SPIDER-MAN, hell, Mary Jane practically LIVED in underwear. [Laughter]

Bill:   Yeah. I'm honestly shocked by this ... It's kinda funny, isn't it?

Erik:   Yeah. It's a whole new world, ya know. Part of the reason that the SPIDER-MAN  stuff was so popular as it was is because there was all the cheesecake stuff in it. And now,  that's being like, "Well, we can't have that sort of thing!" and, "Let's soften that up  considerably!" and ... [Laughter all around]

Bill:   Good choice of words. Yes.

Erik:   "And as the collective softening goes throughout fandom ..."

Bill:   [After laughter subsides] What kind of scripts are you providing for the various artists  you're working with at Marvel? Are you providing the traditional Marvel script, an outline ...?

Erik:   Generally, what I'll do is I'll write a plot. And it depends on who I'm working with. I   know at DC, Jim Aparo drew half an issue of AQUAMAN and he never worked on a plot   before. Ever. He wanted a full script, and so I gave him a full script. With AQUAMAN, I  started out as writing soft of like, "Well, this is what happens on each page," and I ended up   going, "Panel One: this is what happens. Panel Two: this is what happens," just because I   wasn't getting the results that I wanted. That Eric [Battle] would sometimes look at it and  go, "OK. This needs to be eighteen panels," and it's like, "Wait a minute! What's going on  here? I meant this to be four!" So, hopefully, he's able to take what I've got and translate it  into something that works real well.

I tend to play to the page break, which I know a lot of writers DON'T do, but I ... Comics  is a MUCH different medium than any other medium, when it comes to storytelling. When  you're sitting there watching a movie, you're not watching three minutes worth of scenes of  the movie simultaneously. When you turn a comic's page, you're seeing the ramifications of  what happened in Panel One in Panel Six when you turn that page.

So, BECAUSE of that, it's really important where things lie in those ... on those pages. That  the last panel of the page, you should be able to put the tag "to be continued" on that last  panel. Or it should be a punchline. Uhm ... If you have a bad guy show up, and it's a  surprise, have him show up in Panel One; 'cause if you turn the page and they're going  down the hall, and they're opening the door and he shows up on Panel Six, they [the  readers] pretty much get to see him on Panel Six when they turn that page. 'Cause nobody  covers up an entire page when they turn it and just reveals a single panel to themselves.

But I think a lot of my internal thinking of how things oughta be in comics does come from  being an artist, also, in that I can look at it and go, "No. This doesn't make sense for this to  happen." And I've got a fair amount of pretty strong opinions on how I think things oughta  be done, you know. And I think there are certain rules that people [working] in comic  books ought to follow. They just ... make SENSE, ya know?

If you want a character who is IN the background to look, uhm, like he's in the  background, don't put a panel balloon BEHIND him, and another part of that SAME  balloon in front of somebody in the foreground; 'cause it makes that person look like he's  the Wasp, all of a sudden, and brings him from being deep in the background to being in the  foreground. I'm speaking of an illusion of depth. And a lot of WRITERS don't think about   that. A lot of EDITORS don't think about that. A good number of LETTERERS don't take   that into ... mind. But it's something I try and drive home to people when I work with them.

It's like, look: We've got a limited amount of stuff we can actually, successfully, pull off. We  can't do movement in comics. I've heard people argue that, "Geez, you shouldn't have that  character break the panel border. If you go to a movie, you don't see Tom Hank's foot  hanging off the edge of the screen!" I've heard this argument said. And my answer to that is that if they could MAKE his foot hang off the screen, they WOULD.

Don't impose the limitations of ANOTHER medium on our medium. Our medium has  enough limitations as it is! We can't do movement. We can't ... Ya know, I used to get  scripts that'd say, "Peter shakes his head." And it's like, "Well, this is one of the things you  can't draw in comics." Unless you do the Steve Ditko "guy with two heads." Which then  looks like he's shaking his head vigorously, ya know. It doesn't ... it doesn't just get across  that he's just shaking his head. Well, YOU CAN'T DRAW THAT! You can't do shaking.   What'd ya want me to put, put "shaking lines" around it? You literally can't draw this. And  there's a lot of things like that.

I don't describe things that are impossible to draw [when writing]. I don't ever say, ya  know, "Panel One: Guy crawling in the desert, with full moon behind him, towards a temple.  Sweat is on his face." Well, you go, "If I show the temple, then you can't see the moon  behind him. And if I show the moon behind him, then I can't see the temple. And if I can  see the sweat on his face, then I can't see ..." Ya know, all this stuff doesn't work together.

But, just being the writer guy, here, and having some of the visual sense, I can go, "OK. I  can draw that." And so, hopefully, the people I'm working with aren't confused. [Laughter]  And I can get a better result, because of that. [Laughter]

Bill:   Just briefly, uhm, what are some of the other rules. You've described about four here  already ...

Erik:   In terms of breaking the panel borders, ah, again, what I try to do is ... is to think in  terms of creating an illusion of depth. Uhm, if you're gonna have somebody and something  break the panel borders, it better be the thing which is in the FOREGROUND. More than  anything.

I see comics where, there's uh, ya know, a panel border. The side of a head is framed in   the panel border, and then you've got a character who's just entering the room who's  breaking the panel borders around him. And when you break the panel borders, what   you're essentially doing is establishing that as a plane, OK?

Bill:   OK.

Erik:   So, what you're doing by breaking it is, this person is in FRONT of that plane.    Imagine, instead of that being a panel border, that it's a window sill and you're looking  through a window. Now, somebody can come through that window, but the guy in the  background can't come through that window if he's in the background and there are things   in front of him, ya know.

Bill:   Correct.

Erik:   A tree can't come through that window if it's in the background. And yet those are  the kind of things I see in comics, all the time. That here you've got an important element  that the artist, in his composition, just couldn't figure out. So he'll have a character WAY in   the background dropping his gun, and it's landing outside of the panel border when there's  all this other stuff in front. And I'm like, "GOD!" It looks terrible, ya know?

John Byrne, when he does his own lettering, for Christ's sake! He's got balloons behind  other balloons in front of this and in back of that and it just, taken all together ... "BOY that  SUCKS!" [Laughter] Just awful, ya know. Clearly he's not thinking about this AT ALL.  And he's drawing the figures and hasn't figured out how much space they're gonna take,  and then goes on, "Nobody's going to notice, anyway," or whatever. Even if he even  THINKS that far ... and stuff like that. I don't know.

Bill:   No, what you've said makes sense, yeah. And the idea of breaking the plane as stepping through a window, that IS the closest way of describing what's going on there, and a kind of movement in comics, in a sense.

Erik:   And it can be fine, having a character do that. And it can be dramatic for that to happen, to have a character break the panel border. That can be a dramatic thing.

But another thing you have to realize, when you break a panel border, is a lot of times people will use that hand, that finger, that whatever, as a sort of arrow going into the next panel. And as the character is bursting out of Panel One, and their foot is hanging into Panel Four, they [the reader] can go from One to Four and MISS Two and Three.

Bill:   Correct.

Erik:   Because they've been headed the wrong way. And as the person drawing this stuff, you've got to keep that stuff in mind.

One of the things you can do to combat that is go, "OK. Well, he's bursting ... His foot is  gonna hang into Panel Four, BUT his hand's gonna burst over here, into Panel Two," so at  least you've got a choice.

Uhm, a lot of times, artists draw a stack of panels that'll be on the left-hand side of a page,  and then there'll be a big panel that'll be on the right-hand side of the page. As a reader, you  kinda go, "Huh? Which is Panel Two? Am I reading this left-hand column, or do I go  immediately to the right - which is what I've been trained to do. Which would mean I'm  reading Panel One, the Panel LAST, and then going back and reading Panels Two through Four, in the wrong order.

And I hate arrows. I just think arrows are REALLY intrusive in comics. So, generally, what I try to do when I'm working, and an artist has given me that, is I will write the dialogue and have it intentionally placed so that it's leading from Panel One, then you'll read down and it'll read into Panel Two. The next balloon will overlap the border and it will lead you right down to where you're supposed to go, without there being any arrows in there to intrude in what ... shouldn't have arrows in it, ya know?

Bill:   Right. In other words, it's not nice to trick your readers. [Laughter]

Erik:   There's no point ... I mean, there's a lot of guy's who've tried some REALLY fancy shit, and have tried some REALLY cool stuff; but you DON'T want your readers going, "I'm so confused! I feel stupid. I don't know how to read this, I'm lost. I don't wanna read this anymore. Comics kinda suck." ESPECIALLY when you're doing stuff that is mainstream, superhero, somewhat - I wouldn't necessarily say "beginning level reading" - but certainly ... it's younger reading than the Vertigo stuff, ya know. Or something that's trying to be more pretentious.

So make the stuff accessible. Ya know, it's the same [idea] which goes along with character names, and stuff like that. But people will be, like, "Yeah, I'm doing this new book for Image Comics and it's called," ya know, whatever, and it'll be a list of eight consonants in a row, ya know ... How the hell do you pronounce that?

Or, "Here's my new comic, and here's the logo," which you can't even READ!

Bill:   Right!

Erik:   It's drawn in such a way that you just go, "I don't know what ... those letters even are, or what they mean, or where they're going. I can't read it. I can't even comprehend it."  And then [the creators] go, "God, I can't understand it! My book CTHULHU Doesn't sell very well, and readers can't ask for it by name." Well, they don't even know how it's pronounced! [Laughter]

Bill:   Right. Well, that's a great example, because a lot of those words [from H. P. Lovecraft's horror stories] were MEANT to be unpronounceable.

Erik:   It's one thing where you've got a character like MR. MXYZPTLK. But MR. MXYZPTLK has at least the MISTER part of the name! And when you're coming in there and saying, "Mister ..." and some other, indecipherable sound that starts with an "M," you've at least got the idea of, "OK. Superman foe. MR. M … something with a bunch of weird sounds after it. I got a pretty good idea of who that is." But when you start getting into these other guys, and you go, "Well, this guy's name is ..." ah, you know, whatever.

One of my gripes on the Aquaman stuff was that a lot of the characters had names that were, ya know, one guy would be named Cordax, and another would be Corvax. And Corvax would be Cordix, and Cordix would be Corzix. And you'd be looking ... There's a bunch of guys here, they're names are REALLY close to each other and ... "What are ya thinking?!" ya know? Don't do THAT! That just ... just makes it confusing.

And beyond that being confusing, you've got this bunch of other guys who've got names  that are REALLY difficult to pronounce, or ... or super obscure. And it's like ... wow!  [Frustrated sound]

At some point it doesn't become coming up with cool names. At some point it just becomes  lexiphanicism. Where you're using an obscure word just to show off, ya know? You're   going, "Hey, look at this pretentious use of an obscure word here! Look at me, I'm literary!  I'm well-read!" and, come on! Again, you're making your reader feel like they're dumb, or ... Ya know, maybe somebody's thinking, "Great! I'm now gonna go get my dictionary and   figure this all out," but ...

Save that for Vertigo, ya know. If you want, call your book HELLBOY, and THEN use  your weird stuff. But call your book HELLBOY, ya know. Don't call him CTHULHU and then expect people to come running to buy CTHULHU.

Like, "No. Call it HELLBOY." It's an accessible name, ya know. It's strong artwork. And  he can have werepigs from other dimensions with odd-sounding names. But at least he got in the front door. And it's an accessible style, and ... whatever. [Laughter]

Bill:   Yeah. Make it easy to order, etc.

Erik:   It's ... it's ... it's just BASIC THINKING on this stuff, ya know?

And I've had people who've come to Image, and who are just, like, "I REALLY feel   strongly about this and I really wanna do this. And I really think this is a good title. And,  yeah, this title has a lot of meaning behind it." And then the stuff comes out, uhm, they draw a cover which is so complicated that you ... There's no image which sticks in your head immediately, and it's too cluttered, and claustrophobic, and unfocused. And then it's got a logo you can't decipher and can't pronounce ...

And then the orders come in [and] they're [for] twelve copies. And they [the creators] go, "Why? I don't get it?" [Laughter]

Geez, ya know, a first issue with a strong image on the cover, ya know? A single figure, or a focused group of figures. A title you can pronounce, with a logo that's clear and easy to read. It's basic comic book stuff that anybody who's thinking about this stuff for any amount of time should just immediately go, "Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Why wouldn't we do that? Why do that at all?"

Bill:   "Why make it difficult for the reader?" Exactly.

Erik:   Why make it difficult on the reader.

And just there's ... things people do that I don't particularly like. I don't like sideways pages that are arbitrarily put into comics. I find it irritating to be reading along and then, suddenly, everything's sideways. I find turning the page, itself, to intrude on the experience of reading the comic book. That's ME, ya know?

To use the analogy that I shot out earlier … you don't watch TV and then, suddenly, have the screen changed to sideways. Like, yeah, you can turn [the camera] sideways. You can do that. That's not a limitation in TV. They could actually do that. But people would have to turn their heads. Just like we have to do with comics, where you're turning your head, or having to physically turn the page around. I find that intrusive.

I find a lot of the computer coloring tricks to be intrusive. When you've got a realistic fire, that's a computer effect, and a cartoon guy standing in front of it ... to me, that looks like  ROGER RABBIT.

Bill:   Right.

Erik:   What's supposed to be a realistic drawing ... and now you've turned it into a definitely a cartoon, 'cause of the stark contrast with that background, ya know? It's OK to do that as a trick on the cover, because it can be attention-getting. But I think it's really distracts to be reading through an issue of NEW GODS and suddenly there's a computer-generated background in one panel, and one panel only, on a page. It's ... Couldn't you make that look a little more like an actual drawing, if you're gonna ...

Bill:   Either that, or use that effect way Kirby did; that it's - literally -other-worldly.

Erik:   [Skeptical sound] Ya know ... But I think that some of Jack's things were intrusive.  That, suddenly, you'd have this collage that, ya know, would have a screen on it and everything else, and it's like ... It doesn't quite read as being as that "cool place" when, on the next page, you're having them go into the Negative Zone and, suddenly, things are drawings there now. Ya know? If it's gonna be that this world looks like a weird photo, then have the world look like a weird photo from then on.

Bill:   Consistency, in other words.

Erik:   Right. If you've got Roger Rabbit walking around in the real world, you don't go,  "Geez, here he is walking around in the real world for two minutes of the film," and then, suddenly, we got a cartoon background. You just go [as a viewer], "Wait a minute! I thought this was the real world. Where are we?!"

Bill:   [Laughter] Exactly.

Erik:   Uhm ... [Giggle] I'm anal, and old, and bitter. [Big laugh]

It's a weird thing to look out and suddenly go, "God, I thought I was still a young punk, just getting started in this business!" And suddenly you realize, "Jesus Christ! Fifteen years have gone by! I'm now a grizzled, old veteran." [Laughs, then assumes an "old man" voice] "Ah, the good old days!" ya know. "Yeah, yer not a real professional, [until] you've had yer work destroyed by Vinnie Colletta. 'Til you survive THAT baptism of fire, yer just young punks. Who do you got to deal with today?!" [Laughter]

Bill:   Well, speaking of young punks, I do want to talk about NOVA. But, since you brought it up, what suggestions would you make to kids trying to get into comics today, other than following the rules listed earlier?

Erik:   Basically, just try to make your storytelling as clear as possible. And that, when the writer asks you to draw something on the page, that it's communicated in as simple, straightforward a way as possible.

I'm all for people having detail in their artwork, and fancy this and fancy that. But, if you start putting too many weird panel borders on things, and putting your panels in too strange an order, uhm, it can just make it really [too] confusing to comprehend what's going on.    Like I say, I'm all for all the diverse art styles people are doing, and I quite enjoy looking at all the stuff coming up from people. I quite like it. I'm not capable of producing it, but I quite  like looking at what other people do. [Laughter]

Now I look at some of that stuff, and, man, some of that inking these days is just incredibly precise, and slick, and perfect. And I'm looking at my own stuff, and going, uh, it's, ya know, Klaus Janson meets Walt Simonson, ya know, 1982. [Laughter] Ah, it's not as clean as could be, here. But there is a crude charm here.

Which is not to say I don't like my own work, but ... but, ya know, I realize that it's not super contemporary in term of what's ... what is being done in the field today, and I just gotta go, "Sorry." [Laughter] "I'm doing the best I can with the tools Mother Nature provided," ya know.

Bill:   What about writers?

Erik:   Uhm, my biggest bitch about writing these days is that the stuff's just either to incredibly bland - where the characters just don't have any discernible personalities, and the characters are talking just to facilitate the plot - or they're just incomprehensible, and that you are feeling like, "Wow, I'm in the middle of an eighteen part saga, and I am in no way getting caught up on what's going on." That it would be nice if people could go back to using occasional captions to kinda catch us up on what's going on, or ... or thought balloons, or some such way of ... of recapping events so that you didn't feel like you were completely lost. As, I will admit in SAVAGE DRAGON, I'm as guilty of this as the next guy. [Laughter] But, on the other books I'm doing, I think I'm doing a pretty fair job of catching people up on what has gone before. And making each issue so that it is coherent, and ... uhm, really accessible to 'most anybody.

Bill:   What are your plans with NOVA?

Erik:   Survive. [Laughter]

This is a book that has died several times before, and ... uh, it's a hard sell because of that.  Ya know, it's a guy with a bucket over his head.

I know that there are people who dislike the costume, and I know there are people who quite like the costume. And it just seems like one of those things where either you love or hate it.

Actually, I've been told that the editor on NEW WARRIORS doesn't like Nova's costume, and so, in the NEW WARRIORS, he's gonna have a different costume. But in his regular book, he's gonna have the same costume he's always had - because I like it.

I'm sitting here, talking with Jay [Faerber], going, "How do we make sense of this? This is the most idiotic thing conceivable. And you and I - somehow - are going to take the heat for Nova having a different costume, when it's PURELY an editorial decision that's out of our hands." And I came up with, "How 'bout this: He wants to be a big star. He wants to be, like, the coolest guy in the world. He wants to be Spider-Man, Captain America, Batman, whatever.

"And he looks at the New Warriors as, 'Oh. Joining up with the New Warriors AGAIN? That's like going back to kindergarten, ya know? I should be like Justice and whatever her name is, Firestar. Or whatever she called herself. Starfire. Firestar. And I should be joining  the Avengers. Instead, they want me back in the New Warriors, and I can't get into the Avengers to save my life! Well, let's see ... If I'm gonna join them ... I'M not going to join them. What I'm gonna do is, get a different costume and I'm gonna join them, but I'm gonna say I'm Kid Nova. I'm gonna pretend to be, basically, Bucky!'" [Laughter from Bill]

"'Ill be my own Captain America - which will be in my regular comic - and I'll get one of my room mates to dress up as Kid Nova if we ever have to be seen together at a press conference, or something,' ya know? So, this'll sorta be like the Teen Titans, where Robin will go off and be part of the Teen Titans, but Batman is above all that."

So, that was the idea ... and they [Marvel] said, "No. We just want him to wear a different costume." [And I replied] "God dammit! There's no reason! It's just COMPLETELY stupid, that he's wearing a different costume in one book. It makes NO sense at all, and the only reason we can give you, you just refuse to let us use. So now WE look like boneheads! Thanks a lot." [Laughter] Uhm. Whatever.

There are ... There are these frustrations when you're dealing with mainstream comics, ya know? And dealing with different personalities, who've got different concerns and different ownership and all this other stuff, and you've just gotta go, "Well, it's ... As much as I wanna say ... and want this to be ... my stuff, it ain't my stuff," ya know? SAVAGE DRAGON is my stuff. And I don't have to worry about somebody coming along and saying, "Well, we wanna use the Dragon, but we don't want to use him looking like the Dragon. We want him looking like something else." I can say, ya know, "Screw you!"

But at Marvel, and at DC, I DON'T own those characters. And, as much as I wanna put my own stamp on it, I can NEVER own those characters. So, you just have to go, "OK.  That's your decision. I guess that's the way it's gonna be," and let it GO. You just have to bite the bullet, and let it go.

Ya know, I think NOVA will take a lot of people by surprise, because it's a very ... it's a very entertaining book. It's a very energetic book. It's, ah ... if anything, like a lot of the early SPIDER-MAN stuff, but ... ah, more contemporary than that. And, ah, you're not gonna read it and feel like it's an homage to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, it definitely feels like it's something that's coming out now, but all the stories are self-contained.

There's no "continued" from one issue to another. There's some parts that are, but you're not gonna see him fighting the Sphinx for eight issues in a row. It's like, when the Sphinx shows up, OK, he's in this issue, and that's it. There will have been pieces of Sphinx stories that have led up to it, but, ya know, once he shows up, that's it.

As a kid, it always used to drive me nuts when I would go to a store and it'd be like, "Spider-Man fighting the Green Goblin," and then the next month it would be, "Spider-Man fighting the Green Goblin," and then it'd be like, man, five issues in a row he fought the Green Goblin. I coulda MISSED four of these issues! [Laughter] I spent so much money, and invested so much time in these comics, and they haven't really progressed things enough for my taste, ya know? I'm like, "My god, what a rip! I want a NEW bad guy. I know they got other bad guys kickin' around. Why are we dealing with this idiot for eight issues in a row?"

So, if I've got a story that requires that I take more than one issue, I'll certainly do it, but I'm trying my best - at least initially - to keep these things down to one part stories. And I think that they're pretty strong stories.

And I think that, visually, Joe Bennett is doing a bang-up job. He's the guy that I chose to do the book. They asked me who I wanted to work with, and I said, "Geez, you're kickin' THIS guy off SPIDER-MAN? I can't believe it! Geez, this guy's good!"

But NOVA, it's a hard sell. And I think that retailers under-ordered it. And I think that, once people get this thing in their hands, and are able to see it and read it and ... and get up on it, they're gonna really enjoy this comic book. I think it's an entertaining comic book.

I know initially I'm gonna be sort of running through the who's who of Nova villains, as sort of an introductory thing of, "OK, we've got this guy, this guy, this guy. Let's get them all out there. Let's get them all done." 'Cause, as a, ya know, guy who is very aware of this  industry, and what goes on in this industry, I have to say that I don't know if there's going to be an issue 15, or 20, or 30. I'm not gonna build up to a great issue 25 story, when there's a DAMN good chance I'm not gonna get to issue 10.

So, I gotta say, I'm leading with my best foot forward, and that I'm gonna get all of the really good stuff outta the way, that I always wanted to do, and I'm gonna get it done, ya know, first thing. It's like, "Boom!"

In my initial proposal, I had a cliffhanger ending to the end of issue 12; well, now that cliffhanger's the end of issue1. [Laughter] Ya know? And, it's like, "Hey, scramble man!  Let's go! Got to come up with the next thing, resolve this story line and move this stuff forward!"

But I gotta be aware of the very simple fact that this is not an industry - it' not a company - that's gonna go, "Yeah, we can afford to have this book lose money." I mean, this is a company in bankruptcy, for crying out loud!

Bill:   Yeah, just crawling out of it.

Erik:   So, they're NOT gonna be that willing to just hang on, and let this stuff ride and find an audience. Unfortunately, ya know? I'm hoping that they'll at least give it at least a couple issues and let people see it, and decide whether they like what they see or not, rather than just go, "Ah. First issue's sales not gonna be that good. We project that, by issue 4, they're gonna suck wind. Let's cut bait today."

But the book'll be out this month. It'll be out shortly. It'll be on sale March 31st, along with WOLVERINE and SAVAGE DRAGON. [Laughter] So, if you need your Erik Larsen fix, THAT'S the day to get it. 'Cause there's gonna be a double-sized issue of NOVA, and then these other two comics. "Woo-hoo!"

Bill:   Are you planning to have NOVA and WOLVERINE cross over?

Erik:   Um, I would certainly enjoy doing that sort of thing. Realistically, it's very difficult to do something like that, because of the two books different schedules. Basically, NOVA is about four months ahead of where WOLVERINE ought to be, so it would be like me writing ... I'll probably have Wolverine show up in NOVA, and Nova show up in WOLVERINE, but, ... uh…

Again, part of keeping a book self-contained is keeping it self-contained. And I kind of like that. It may be old fashioned, but I kinda like the idea that you can just read NOVA and have a pretty good grasp on this character, and what's going on with him, and not feel you gotta run off and buy IRON MAN or FANTASTIC FOUR.

Bill:   I suspect that a number of your readers will thank you for that. I mean, it's gotten REALLY expensive just to buy what you REALLY want, much less feeling like you have to buy the extra stuff just to get the whole picture or story.

Erik:   Yeah. And I can certainly feel for the people who are reading this stuff, ya know. But comics are really weird these days, and it's gotten really complicated and it's a really difficult situation because, we are ... uhm, as a field, and as people working in this field, we have been catering to a smaller and smaller audience. By having stories that progress a lot of things, and that the comics are always changing, that readers have gotten to the point where they are demanding some kind of real, visible change in their characters from issue to issue.    They want that progression, to know that, OK, this issue ... ya know, whatever, that something happens to progress this entire storyline. They want that.

And the problem with giving people that is that the stuff becomes really cumbersome. And then it becomes unapproachable for anybody new who might want to come in and read it.    So there's somebody going, "Gee, I'd LIKE to read SPIDER-MAN, but there's all these stories that are in motion, and there's no way I can ever really get caught up on all those backstories, and all this other stuff. So deal me out. I can't do it. Too much."

Bill:   Yeah. In a weird way, it's the same sort of problem Dave Sim faces with CEREBUS, isn't it? I mean, even though the "phone book" collections ARE available, it's hours and hours of reading.

Erik:   Yeah. Yeah, but - luckily - they're good hours, ya know?

Bill:   Oh, yeah. Exactly.

Erik:   If you're gonna read that stuff, it's like, OK. There's a few "clunker" hours in there,  [Laughter] but, for the most part, them are good hours!

Bill:   [Laughter] Oh, exactly. Yeah.

Erik:   But it DOES diminish your audience. And the X-Men stuff, that way of writing stuff, can certainly make it, like, "Oh god." I read the X-Men ... I've got a half hour commitment, here, to reading the X-Men, and, quite frankly, I don't have to poop that long, ya know. [Laughter]

I mean, most of my reading is in the can, ya know? And I get these things sent to me, and I go ... Just LOOKING at these pages, just thumbing through the book, there's so much copy that I can't even CONCEIVE of sitting down and reading this anytime soon. So it gets put aside, and then I don't get around to reading stuff, and the days turn into weeks, and the weeks turn into months, and suddenly I've got a stack of stuff that I would really like to read at some point, but may never get around to reading.

Bill:   Another problem with that particular family of titles has been - as you said earlier - dangling plot lines.

Erik:   Yeah. And there's an awful lot of stuff … just because the book gets set up and then writers change, that story lines are set in motion that never get resolved. And it's INCREDIBLY frustrating to somebody who's been reading it a long time, to just go, "Oh,  god! This is all … This NEVER gets resolved. And this part will never get resolved, and  that will never get resolved. And this guy's setting up something now that's gonna be long term, and then he's not gonna be on the book, so he's never gonna be able to resolve it."

You know, on CABLE, you've got that Twelve story line that's been mentioned and going on for ... ever since the book got started. In fact, before that, in the X-Men stuff, they were talking about the Twelve. And then Joe Casey has an idea of WHERE he wants to go with it, and WHO the Twelve are, and then - BOOM! - and somebody else is doing it.

Well, I get the feeling that Joe Pruett [who took over as writer] doesn't know what Casey had in mind, and that Joe Pruett's not gonna be able to resolve it in the way that he had [planned]. And so there were various hints that were set up in the book, those might just not all gel anymore, might not make sense anymore. And it gets to be complicated.

Bill:   Well, we've been kinda talking in a roundabout way about some of the things that might be considered wrong with the industry today; what are some of the good things?

Erik:   The good thing about it is that there are people fighting for change, and they're trying to make things ... uhm ... how they COULD be, and how they SHOULD be, and how they can be. Ya know, Kurt Busiek is doing a real nice job of making his stories all self-contained, and interesting, and accessible. And he gives you enough background on what's gone on before so that you can really grasp what's going on and walk away going, "Gee, I got a decent meal there." And I think there are other people, too, who are kinda waking up, and realizing what kind of world we live in, and what we have created for ourselves here, and trying to make an active change about ... uhm, geez, I don't know. I think just the fact that there's a lot of people doing this stuff, and actively care about characters, and wanting to make this a better world is a good thing.

Heck, me doing Marvel comics again, THAT'S a good thing. [Laughter] And it's good that you know my reasons for doing it are pure. [Laughter] You know I'm NOT motivated by money. Clearly, I wouldn't be doing NOVA if I was motivated by money. [Laughter] But that's, ya know, the love for characters, and the desires to tell certain stories, and certain kinds of stories, and use certain characters. It's just ... you know, great.

A lot of these companies have INCREDIBLE characters. And I think some of the paint needs to be chipped off them to find what was cool about them at some point, but there's still ... ah, there's still good stuff there. And it's still worthwhile to find that good stuff.

And it's still enjoyable as hell to work on this stuff. I'm having a hell of a time working on this stuff, and I wouldn't be doing it if I wasn't. I'm probably the most self-indulgent guy in comics. I really just do this stuff 'cause that's what I wanna do. And that's it. There's really no other motivation, other than I'm gonna have myself a damn good time, and I hope you do, too, sort of thing.

And I think I'm ending up with some entertaining comics. And, unfortunately, there is some comics that aren't all that entertaining that have ended up with my name on them, and ... ah, I hope not to have there be anymore of them like that. [Laughter]

Hell, me getting off of AQUAMAN is a GOOD THING! [Laughter]

Bill:   Do you have a dream project, outside of SAVAGE DRAGON?

Erik:   I always wanted to write and draw, like, the Incredible Hulk; and I always wanted to do the Fantastic Four. I wouldn't mind having a sustained run, at some point, of SPIDER-MAN.

It pisses me off to no end that they re-numbered all these bloody books.

I mean, that is the most irritating thing in the world! And the fact that they've NOT tossed out the old continuity - but just started over the numbers again - is a real pisser, ya know. It's like, "If it's NOT a new beginning, why are you trying to make it SEEM as though it is a new beginning?" ya know. WHY is there references to stuff that happened in the old AMAZING SPIDER-MAN in the new AMAZING SPIDER-MAN if this is a new start?!

Bill:   Thank you. It's almost like they're giving people a reason to quit reading.

Erik:   I DON'T think they realize that - for a lot of people - this has become a good jumping-off point for old readers.

Bill:   Rather than the jumping-on point for new readers, right.

Erik:   There are some people who are definitely going, "Yes! I'm gonna start reading SPIDER-MAN now that it's started over with issue one. Thank you!" And retailers ... The reason they do this is because retailers order more. Because retailers say, "If you do a # 1, we will buy more copies of it."

But, frankly, I hope that once it gets to the point where HULK sales have settled down, and Byrne and Garney have decided they've had their share, and the book is up to issue, ya know, # 38 - or some odd number like that - and the sales have settled down to the point where they're not THAT spectacular, or more spectacular than they were, that somebody could come along and go, "I have an idea: Why don't we do issue 475 of THE INCREDIBLE HULK, and restart THAT title and make that good again? Uhm, 475 is a good place to have a double-sized issue. It would be a new beginning, of sorts. A good jumping on place for new AND old readers. And we would pick up that old numbering."

And, in terms of "Well, it'll be a slap in the face to Byrne and Garney ..."

Bill:   Yeah, that could be interpreted as a slap in the face of those creators; but, then, a lot of fans have felt like THEY'VE been slapped, lately.

Erik:   Sure. Absolutely. Uhm, and there's also the sense that, ya know, yeah, you're doing THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN now - but that's not the REAL AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. Because the REAL AMAZING SPIDER-MAN was the one Stan and Steve started, and there's something really ... something really COOL about working on a comic book that has that sort of longevity, and has that kind of history to it. And, ya know, issue 7 of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN just doesn't ... It's NOT ... It's not the same thing. And it's certainly no where near as good as the other issue 7, anyway, so ... so what are ya tryin' for? Not that I've seen issue 7 of the new one, so ... It's a false comparison, but I'll take it that it WON'T be as good.

Bill:   Let's talk about THE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, just for a moment.  You recently announced - as editor of the book - that it was gonna be ending.

Erik:   Yeah, well, the sales had gotten to the point where it was UNDER 5000.

Bill:   Oh, my ...

Erik:   I mean, that's just impossible. I mean, you look at the top ... You look at the Diamond list; any books out of the top 100, you can pretty much count on sales being 20,000 or less, outside of the Top 100. And most people, I don't think, realize HOW bad that is, and that - in order for a comic at Marvel or DC to turn a profit - that they've gotta be in the 35,000 kinda range ... Or that's what they're wanting, books to be at the 35,000 range, and that there just aren't that many people who are buying it, and there's not that kind of audience that they're able to maintain a lot of books that get those kind of numbers.

And, ya know, when people say, "Well, how come yer canceling the book?" well, 'cause Mirage decided at one point they didn't want to spend $6000 a month for the PRIVILEGE of reading their comic book, featuring their characters in it. They just decided ...

The cartoon is no longer on the air ... Ah, the guy who puts on the children's programming for Fox has decided to put on one of his OWN shows, because he can get a 100% of the merchandising, rather than put on the BETTER rated TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES show because he WASN'T getting 100% of that merchandising. And so the TV show was canceled, and, ya know, no longer is there a presence in toy stores, or anything like that. It's like, "OK, it's ... It's been PLAYED," ya know? Time to put this one on the shelf for a little while, and uh, hopefully, times will change, ya know, and five years from now there'll be a TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES nostalgia craze, and we'll all go running back to that, as ... as the children of the period who grew up on the TV show are growing up and having children, and stuff like that.

But at this point, there's just no life left in that stuff anymore, and I think it was ... I think it was a good comic. To my PERSONAL taste, this is a better TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES than there has EVER been in ANY comic from ANYBODY. So, ya know, I look at it and go, "Wow, if THIS isn't making it, then ... then I don't think the TURTLES CAN be sold these days. But ... whatever.

Bill:   This is kinda related; there was a SAVAGE DRAGON animated series ...

Erik:   Uh-huh.

Bill:   Well, have you talked to anybody about a full-scale movie?

Erik:   NO.... Nor will I.

Bill:   Why's that?

Erik:   'Cause it would SUCK. [Laughter from Bill] And I don't want anymore product out there with my name attached to it that sucks.

Uhm, frankly I think there needs to be more people JUST doing comic books 'cause they're cool comic books, and not doing comic books 'cause it would make a cool video game, or a good happy meal. Uhm ...

I'm doing the DRAGON 'cause I want ... 'cause I enjoy the character, and I enjoy doing the comic, and that I'm the KING of my domain. When you start going into others' domains, you find that, suddenly, you're just one of the cooks in the kitchen, and sometimes you're not even the guy holding the recipe book.

I found the DRAGON cartoon to be a great learning experience, but a HORRIBLE cartoon. Uhm, which ISN'T to say it's anything worse than anything else, 'cause it's ... it's every bit as good as a lot of the stuff that's on the air. But it certainly wasn't WHAT I wanted it to be. And it didn't SOUND the way I wanted it to, or LOOK the way I wanted it to. All of total, uh, there may be, uhm, a MINUTE worth of animation out of 26 episodes that I could say, "Yeah. That was KINDA good." And the rest of it was ... was pretty excruciating.

And I realize that there were some talented people who were working on this show. But, even WITH the talented people who were working on it, there were an awful lot of UNtalented people who were also working on it, and - taken all together - you ended up with a show that ... was NOT what ANY of us really wanted it to be. And, uh ...

The end came when the two owners of the USA Network were in the midst of suing each other and ... and no new material
was being approved, AT ALL. And so, uh, the DRAGON just got put kinda on hold. And they bought a bunch of pilots, and half-finished those that had been produced, and started popping that sort of stuff on the air, and the DRAGON just sorta got lost in the shuffle.

The ratings of it were VERY good. In fact, at one point, they started showing it daily, 'cause it was doing real well for them, and it was ... Most of the time it was on the air, it was being shown at least twice a week - on both Saturday AND Sunday. And, uh, people SEEMED to like it OK. But I wasn't really happy with it, and ...

And if there's gonna be something of the DRAGON, I would like it to be something where I could have some control. And where I could look at the product, the end product, and go, "Yeah, this is what I want it to be," ya know? To work WITH a toy company so that the Dragon LOOKS like the Dragon, and, ya know, fights like the Dragon, and stuff like that.

But my time at this point is INCREDIBLY limited. I've taken on all this other junk, and to go and try and, A) sell a movie, and then, B) sell it, and then get myself in a position where I would have enough power within the confines to be able to effect it in a positive way, are ... is virtually impossible. And it would take a great deal of time, and a great deal of schlepping about, and ... and selling myself, and all this other kind of other junk, that I ... I'm just not that interested in doing, ya know?

Would I like to SEE a cool DRAGON live action show? YEAH! I think it would be kinda neat - IF it were well-done.

Do I EXPECT to ever see it? NO. [Laughter]

Bill:   Two different questions, exactly.

Erik:   But if somebody came up to me tomorrow and said, "I'm really interested in DRAGON. I have a good idea of what I would do with it. I have ..." and they could talk a good talk, yeah, I could be talked into almost anything. But ...

Bill:   So, Oliver Stone or James Cameron should take note ...

Erik:   Yeah. If Cameron suddenly decides, "Yeah, let's do this," as long as it's not on a boat! [Laughter]

Bill:   Yeah, "But you CAN have ROBOTS!" [Laughter]

Erik:   I think that, ya know ... whatever. I think that most anything CAN be done. I think a decent SPIDER-MAN movie COULD be made. I don't NECESSARILY think one's GOING to be made, but anything's possible.

Bill:   Yeah, the old Cameron script that's been floating around for years - depending on the version - is pretty solid.

Erik:   Yeah?

Bill:   And with him, at least, you know that's basically what's gonna get filmed. That being one of the problems with Hollywood, you turn in a great script, and that's often not what makes it to the screen.

Erik:   Well ... well, you can't count on delivery from ... Ya know, the problem with the DRAGON cartoon was, it all SEEMED fine, it seemed OK. And I'd read it and - most of the scripting was a little too utilitarian, where it was just kinda progressing the plot, but not really giving you any insight into the characters' feelings at all, or giving you any personality stuff from any of them - uhm, but then, when it was translated into voices, it lost EVERYTHING. All meaning of what anybody said was just DRAINED out of it, and lines that seemed like they'd sound perfectly natural, could sound REALLY unnatural if delivered poorly. And, definitely, that's how I thought it came off. I don't know ...

I like working on projects where I have a little control over them, because, at least then, you can look at it at the end and go, "Yeah, THAT was ME. I take full responsibility for that." Ya know, if you read an issue of SAVAGE DRAGON, I don't have anybody to blame that on but myself. Ya know, it's ENTIRELY me. The letters page is ME; I type in all the letters, it's ME. I type in all the responses, it's ME, ya know? Every word coming out of everybody's mouth, and every balloon is playing exactly where I want it to, and the coloring has been gone over by ME.

So there's nobody [else] to blame. And that's a GREAT thing. And a great responsibility.  And, ultimately, I think it makes for a better product. I don't think any of the other books ... uhm, I don't know they can get to be as good as that.

The only thing they can have going for them, that I can't have, is I can't have the Red Skull show up, ya know? Yeah, I can have the Plaid Skull show up, and I can do some wacky send-off on ... on Marvel characters, or whatever. But I can't have the real deal show up. I can't use Darkseid. I can't use the Joker. I can only do cheap knock-offs - if I REALLY want to do a Joker thing, at all. Ya know, I end up making up my own characters ... which is FINE. But, there's something, fer sure, that is really cool about using ... using these icons, using those characters that have these rich histories.

Bill:   So what are the other books and artists you enjoy today?

Erik:   That's a TOUGH one! [Laughter]

Bill:   Hey, we can just skip over it if you want. [Laughter]

Erik:   There's a book from Fantagraphics called MINIMUM WAGE [by Bob Fingerman] that I almost always mention first, just 'cause I think it has really realistic characters and dialogue. The art is super cartoony, and some people are put off by that, but, uhm, in terms of the characters and the feeling and the sense of ... of these seeming like regular people just going through regular shit, it can't be beat. It's really an entertaining, funny book.

I enjoy HELLBOY a lot. The writing can sometimes be ... occasionally a little stiff, and the... But the artwork is incredibly engaging, and I just enjoy it, a lot.

Generally, I enjoy the stuff Frank Miller does, uhm, no matter WHAT it is, to varying degrees.

Bill:   300 was ... He just keeps amazing me.

Erik:   I haven't even read that yet.

Bill:   [Quite emphatic] Oh, if yer a Frank fan, you MUST. [Laughter from Erik] I'm serious!

Erik:   I know. I WILL, I WILL! [More laughter] But, it's just another thing ... It had stacked up. I read the first one, and it was such a small ... such a small piece of the pie, and it had progressed things so little, that it was like, "Well, maybe I better read this when it's done. The whole thing, at one shot." And then I never got to that point where I had them all, and had them all together.

[Sound of door opening] My comic book collection, at this point, is huge heaps of "Misc.," ya know? Where it's all just "miscellaneous" and, there's a bunch of stuff that was all filed away in nice, neat order, but it has gotten to the point where I've got stacks 'n' stacks 'n' stacks 'n' stacks of stuff that are ... Well, SIMPSONS COMICS on top of WOLVERINE on top of DC UNIVERSE on top of AQUAMAN on top of, ya know, whatever else happens to come in.

Ya know, a lot of the comic book buying I happen to get is on visual level, or on that, "Man, this is gonna be SO bad I'm gonna enjoy it!" [Laughter] There's comics like that, and I just go ...

I can count on John Byrne to give me a WRETCHED read on CHAPTER ONE, and that I can just count on being completely appalled by how he has destroyed stories that I read and enjoyed as a kid. And there's a perverse fascination to just sitting there and watchin' the train wreck, ya know?

Bill:   Ya just have to pull over and watch, right?

Erik:   Yeah! It's just, like, "Man! Lookit that!" I'm a rubber-necker when it comes to SPIDER-MAN and CHAPTER ONE. Like, "WOW!" [Laughter]

Now that wasn't at all mean, was it? [Big laugh] I think ya need to talk to somebody who can open up a little!

Bill:   Well, the thing is that you've not said that EVERYTHING he's done is horrible ...

Erik:   Yes, I've enjoyed some of his stuff. John Byrne ... I just don't think he's a very good writer. I mean, he obsesses on all of the wrong stuff, and he's trying to make it all make sense, and he's THINKING he's being incredibly clever by tying all this stuff together in a nice, neat little bundle. And, like, [he's saying] "I did my first story, and I justified why the policeman who was chasing him in one place and happens to be in another place," and it's like, "That WASN'T the problem! I don't think there WAS a problem!" The problem with Spider-Man is not his past; it's his present. And instead of just coming in and just mucking with this stuff and making it worse, uhm ...

Ya know, the cool thing about Spider-Man's old origin, it was just COMPLETELY anonymous. He was bitten by a radioactive spider and NOBODY KNEW IT. There was NOTHING suspicious about that at all.

And now he is one of two survivors of a radiation experiment. The other guy, who now has tentacles on him and is running around, and here they've combed all over the accident [site] and found all kinds of dead little things there, INCLUDING a dead spider. And now there's a guy who's suddenly crawling on walls. And ya kinda go, "Ya know, it seems to me that, if that's NOT suspicious, it's then a little MORE suspicious that it was before," ya know? And that's NOT a good thing.

Ya know, he fixed Superman, and he had it that he got his powers as time went on and by the time - ya know, that he didn't just start out as Superboy and all this other stuff, but that he got more and more powers as he went along - but that he ... and by the time he decided that he'd disguise himself as Clark Kent and put on a pair of glasses and pull his hair back ... Well, to me, I look at that and go, "You mean everybody that he went to high school with is gonna see Superman and [not] go, 'Hey, there's Clark!' And that in this world where you put on a pair of glasses and, suddenly, you look like a different guy, that those people he went to high school with will be going, 'Who the hell are you?' when they look at Clark Kent."

Bill:   That makes it seem like everyone he went to school with is either STUPID or BLIND.

Erik:   Yeah. And it makes it WORSE. And that somehow, in his [Byrne's] brain, this has been fixed! But it's really ... CONSIDERABLY worse, and considerably ...

You know the whole ... CHAPTER ONE is so LOADED with things that make ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE AT ALL, in ANY conceivable way! All of the changes he made to the origin were for the worse. Having the robber casing the joint, looking out the window and seeing Spiderman come out and NOT think, "Hey! THAT'S SPIDER-MAN!" but, instead, think, "Hey, he must be a second-story man like me!" Uhm, there's just SO many things like that that are, ya know, incredibly idiotic. And some of it is sorta like ...

Ya know, Peter Parker is frustrated in talking with Liz Allen, and accidentally rips the door off of his locker; and that's the one action in the comic that doesn't have a sound effect.
[Laughter] Why did that make no sound? Why was there nobody in the hallway, except for ... except for Peter Parker and Liz Allen, in a large high school? Ya know ... ya know, is somebody else now gonna have to write a story EXPLAINING where everybody else was... so that he could get away with that, and what happened to the sound effect there, and how that could happen? How ANAL are we gonna get on all this stuff? It's ridiculous.

If I can find it, there's a SPIDER-MAN: CHAPTER ONE thing which has probably the most idiotic dialogue yet. Electro said it.

Some guard in some place was ... there was an electrical lock on the door, and the door swung open, and then he went over, "Hey! Hey, what's the ...?" And then Electro showed up and zapped him, and said ...

It one of those where you go, "You ARE INSANE, right?! You DO realize, this makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE, whatsoever, to any human being, anywhere on the face of the planet, that you would say that!" It's completely preposterous. Electro said, "Jerk! When you saw that door pop open you should have known you were dealing with someone who controls electricity" [Laughter]

And it's such an incredible leap of logic that I would think, ya know, "No. I though I hadn't shut the door properly." But, "I think that somebody has electrical powers because a door came flying open," to follow that logic, ya know ... Are there THAT many people running around with electrical powers that people would be assuming that people have electrical powers? Ya know, as far as I know, in the Marvel universe at that point, Electro was the only guy - PERIOD - who had electrical powers ... and this was his first time he had ever gone and done anything. So for somebody to immediately assume that, "Huh! Yeah, door popped open. That must be somebody with electrical powers!" is insane. [Laughter]

Bill:   Correct.

Erik:   And it makes no sense at all, and it's like, "Wow, this is BAD stuff!" [Laughter]

And I'll admit - I don't hit the mark every time either- not by any stretch. But I don't make a point of pretending that I know what I'm doing [Laughter] I don't call myself "Mr. Fix-it."

So, we're completely off of whatever topic we're supposed to be on! [Laughter] I've been gone off on some bit.

 Bill:   Well, it actually does have some bearing on my next question: Besides looking at Byrne's latest work, and laughing. What do you do for fun?

Erik:   See, I'm married, with children. So, ah ... My kids are REALLY young. One of them is four and a half, the other one is not yet two, so ... Mostly, my week is spent ... just dealing with the kids, and stuff like that as soon as the workday is over. It's, ah, ya know, getting 'em ready for bed, or taking them to go watch a movie, or going to the park, or going to a fair or whatever else. We do a fair amount of going up and riding the steam trains, and going to the zoo and feeding animals, and junk like that. Completely unrelated to comic book stuff.

Bill:   Having a REAL life, then.

Erik:   Yeah, basically it's the whole real life thing, ya know.

 But I collect CDs all over the damn place. That's another thing that drives my wife insane, "Listen to the ones you have!"

Bill:   Like, limited editions, or ... ?

Erik:   Just disks. Whatever ... whatever happens to tickle my fancy. Ya know, I'll hear a song on the radio, and I just go, "OK! I gotta go out and buy that." And sometimes they're great; sometimes they're lousy, but they're part of the collection now. And so it just grows by leaps and bounds, and pretty soon I look around and go, "Wow! Look at that!"

But I don't have time to do a WHOLE lot of reading, unfortunately, other than bedtime stories for my kids. Christopher is now at the age where he's willing to listen to more complex books than when he was real little. You know, he doesn't ... doesn't have to have a picture be on a page for him to sit there and listen to it. So I'm reading through the OZ series with him, and he's enjoying those immensely, and I'm getting a refresher course on OZ, [Laughter] which is ALWAYS fun for me. Those were some of my childhood favorite reading things, so it's nice to be able to share that. And, ah, basically, that's it, ya know.

When I do find time to read stuff on my own, it's almost always nonfiction. Other than stuff I'm reading to Christopher ... I'm always wanting to find out how, ya know, real people  think, and act, rather than to read somebody's fictionalized versions of how they THINK how people would act, and stuff like that. So I'm always there for a ... a biography, or what have you.

Bill:   OK. Well, what's the one question you've always wanted to answer, but never been asked?

Erik:   [Laughter] Uhm. I don't actually have an answer to THAT. [Laughter] Yeah. I don't have one ...

Bill:   OK.

Erik:   Huh ... [Sounds a bit amused and ...perhaps mystified]

Bill:   Hey, it's not a trick question. It's just amazing, sometimes, the questions - even obvious ones - that people forget to ask.

Erik:   Yeah. A lot of people who see me will go, "How come you hold your pencil funny?"  That's the one I'm asked most often in person, but never on ... in an interview, because we don't ... since you don't see me hold a pencil like a Neanderthal, that you don't really ... it doesn't occur to you that would be going on. [Laughter] But that's not something I'm not necessarily going out of my way to answer, because I answer it all the damn time, when I'm dealing with real people.

Bill:   Right.

Erik:   It's, like, "Wow! What's THAT all about?" [And my answer is,] "Because it was that way as a kid, and nobody could get me to stop!"

Bill:   You use the same grip to ink, correct?

Erik:   Yeah. I hold a fork the same way.

Bill:   Well, any last thoughts?

Erik:   Uhm, buy lots of copies of every comic book I produce. I guarantee they'll all be REALLY good - except AQUAMAN, which'll probably not be quite as good as I'd like it to be if I were left to my own devices. [Laughter]

Bill:   Thank you much!

Erik:   That's all right, sir!