Postcards from the Ledge (No. 11)
Sunscreen, check. Beer, check. Ipod, check. Oh, hey there! Sorry, but I’m just getting ready for my day off, as my main man and captain of the Comics Bulletin team, Keith Dallas, presents his interview with Exterminators writer Simon Oliver and editor Jonathan Vankin. Believe me, you’re going to love their discussion, as they’ll cover many of the topics that Exterminators fans have been wondering about since word of the series’ conclusion first hit the ‘net. As for me, I’m going to soak up what sun I can, being that I’m in Washington, D.C. in the middle of February. Fortunately, I have a heat lamp in tow and the natural power of the sun, so I should be fine. If only I had some baseball to listen to, I’d be in heaven! Oh, and for those of you looking for your Vertigo Trends of the Week, I’ll give you the rapid fire version: All three issues were endings. American Virgin ended the series, and both DMZ and 100 Bullets ended their pattern of one-shots, as Brian Wood’s series heads for “Blood in the Game” and Brian Azzarello’s opus begins it’s final story arc next month. So, I guess there are beginnings and endings... Whew! I’m already starting to burn (Remember, it’s all in your head!)! Well, without further ado, here is Keith’s interview with the Exterminators mind trust. Enjoy!
Keith Dallas (KD): Add me to the list of devoted Exterminators readers who are disappointed to learn of the series' cancellation. The last time I spoke to you, Simon, was at the 2007 San Diego Comic Con where, if I remember correctly, you told me that you had envisioned Exterminators as a 50 issue series. With the title now truncated to 30 issues, how challenging is it to conclude the Exterminators story in a manner that will satisfy you and that will satisfy its readers?
Simon Oliver (SO) : Yeah, I'd had a magic number of 50 planted in my head. The ways things came down I was a few issues ahead and that left something like three and half issues to wrap things up. It was tough. At one point I called Jon to try and sell on him the idea of not finishing it, have it just end, with no closure. It felt rushed to [end the series] so quickly, especially as I prefer a fairly relaxed pace so the characters have more room to breath. But Jon, as he tends to be, was right and I wrote an ending, with some degree of closure.
Probably the hardest thing was packing everything or even a small amount of what I'd planned to get to that final point in while at least still retaining something like the same tone and pacing of the book. A lot of things I'd had planned to look at in depth got cut, of course, like the relationship between Nils and his son, Mrs. Perez dating, some new exterminating characters. In the end the final three issues took me twice as long, with twice as many drafts. But despite the time constraints in a lot of ways I'm happy that it happened like it did, as the semi-stand alones that are coming out now, like the AJ in afterlife and the cruise boat issue were written before we got the chop. I really like those issues. I think they really show what the book is all about, warts and all, and Tony really pulled out all the stops on the art. If we'd known what was going to happen, those would not have been written, the issues would have been part of the final arc, and a six issues final arc over a three issue arc wouldn't have really made ending it any easier for me. In fact, the ending I had planned, when I got to it, didn't really work. It seemed too abrupt under the circumstances, so I changed it. So yeah, there's a lot of stuff I couldn't get to, but I tie up a lot of the loose ends and bring all the major plot lines together for an explosive ending. Oh, and there are two issues that had been written and didn't get drawn as we had to change our plans, the "lost" Exterminators issues, featuring Nils' son Stefan.KD: You HAVE to find a way to disseminate those "lost" Exterminators scripts. There are a few matters you brought up that I want to address, but first I need to ask Jon about the cancellation of Exterminators from his editorial perspective. It’s probably easy to deduce that the title was cancelled due to low sales, but I’m interested to know, Jon, if Exterminators was just suddenly cancelled or if there had been long-term concerns about how Exterminators was selling.
Jonathan Vankin (JV) : First of all, let me emphasize a point Simon made just now. While The Exterminators may not be ending in quite the way Simon originally envisioned, he’s come up with an explosive ending that brings together all of the major story threads without losing any of the twisted humor and over-the-top action this book is known for. We even learn the fate of “Goldbug,” which is the name we gave to the one surviving cockroach from the first story arc. The loyal Exterminators readers won’t be disappointed. Also, as long as I’ve got the floor, I want to thank everyone who read and supported this book. Especially you, Keith, and your writers. You caught on to this book at the very beginning and did a lot to help the cause. So a heartfelt thanks to you and to everyone who supported and bought the series, either as a monthly or in trades or both.
To answer your question, I don’t want to go off on a tangent about sales and the economics of the comics industry because as anyone who knows me will attest, I’m a lot more comfortable with the creative end of things than the business side. That’s why Vertigo is such a good place for me. It’s a place where creativity rules. We don’t just sit around tabulating sales figures on our pocket calculators. We pour our hearts and our souls into these books.
That said, this is a business and of course we always want our books to sell as well as they can, and we are always, ALWAYS thinking of what we can do to help them sell more. When books that we love, that we have poured our hearts and souls into like The Exterminators, come to an early end, well, I won’t lie – it hurts. But as I said, it’s a business. We don’t kid ourselves about that. The good news is, the creative process never grinds to a halt at Vertigo. The Exterminators may be riding of into the sunset, but I can promise that you haven’t heard the last of Simon Oliver, Tony Moore or any of the crew that made this series what it is.
In fact, Simon will be back this July with the Hellblazer mini-series Chas: The Knowledge, which, I can already tell you, is brilliant. Very different from The Exterminators, obviously. But to see Simon bring his skewed sensibility to the Hellblazer universe is really something. And when I say, “skewed sensibility,” I mean it as high praise. I think Chas also shows Simon growing as a writer at a remarkably rapid pace. What he does with Chas in this series, the new facets he brings to a character who’s been around for 20 years is truly amazing.
Anyway, it’s easy to get in a bad mood when a book comes to an end, and I know a lot of people are upset that The Exterminators is wrapping up – me most of all! But you also have to look at it this way: how many books with no super-heroes, no TV tie-in, no “big name” creators -- no obvious, built-in “selling point” at all, put together a solid 30-issue run the way Exterminators has? This series did pretty damn well for itself.
KD: I would argue that besides lacking an Infinite Crisis and “Sinestro Corps War” tie-in, The Exterminators also appeals to a specific sentiment that many readers may not want to tap into. What I mean is The Exterminators tells a misanthropic tale in which the human race is determined not only to destroy the “natural world” that besets it, but also itself. I’ve felt early on that the title “The Exterminators” had a double meaning: it literally referred to the chief characters who worked as exterminators, and it figuratively alluded to humanity’s impulse to destroy itself. Simon, within The Exterminators you’ve presented a Cambodian refugee who recounts his Khmer Rouge atrocities, an employer who drugs her assistant in order to have her raped, a white supremacist flooding an African-American neighborhood with drugs with the hope that it will decimate the community, a cruise ship that encourages its passengers to revel in sexual depravity, and the list can go on and on. It’s interesting to learn that you’ll be writing a Hellblazer mini-series (congratulations, by the way!) because I consider Hellblazer another misanthropic title.Now I’ve met you in person a few times, and I would have to describe you as an affable, knowledgeable man who, among other things, tells some really entertaining stories about your time in Hollywood. Unless you’re putting on a brilliant disguise, you don’t figure to be a misanthrope in the least.
Here’s what I’m asking: do you feel you have an affinity for writing misanthropic tales? Is there something about a misanthropic story that appeals to your sensibilities?
SO: Well, maybe the best person to ask about the "misanthropic" label would be my wife.
You must have caught me on a good day [when we met], but I am pretty misanthropic. I think a lot of writers are by their very nature. I mean who would enjoy sitting in a small room all day, hardly communicating with the outside world, except a misanthropic?
But yeah, I'm drawn to the darker side of human nature. Horrible, awful things happen in this world, and I think all too often we pass them off as the actions of monsters or madman, but I think that’s too simple. I want to know about the perpetrator. I want to know why people do the things they do. There’s always a chain of events, a personal justification for actions, and that’s where the real story is, what led up to that point where they decided it was okay to cut up Granny and bury her in the cellar.
My sick interests aside, I don't want to ever get pigeon holed in my writing, or by what people expect from one of my books. I really want to keep developing and trying different things. Maybe write Vertigo’s first romantic comedy, or something about a brave little puppy.
KD: Simon Oliver’s “Brave Little Puppy.” Sounds like a winner.
Now it’s been well documented that you created The Exterminators as a television show before Vertigo accepted it as a comic book. The Exterminators was also your first credited comic book work. Initially, how difficult was it to adjust The Exterminators from a screenplay to a comic book script? And did you become more comfortable scripting The Exterminators as a comic book as the months went on?
SO: Yeah, I wrote the Exterminators pitch very early in my writing life, (even now I’m only marginally older in my writing life, I hope). I had had some of these bullshit Hollywood meetings over interest in the first couple of things I’d written. You get excited and then sometime in the next week it dawns on you that you will never, ever, in a million years hear back from them.
Those projects had been okay but not really me. So I sat down and wrote something to 100% please me. Great exercise, but there’s not a great market in prime time for what appeals to me. But I did have the idea of making a comic book out of it in the back of my mind.
As for adapting the Exterminators pitch into a comic book, it's one of those occasions where ignorance is bliss, and therefore I wasn’t intimidated into defeat before I started. I also think it helped that I wasn't that experienced at either TV outlines and had zero experience of the comic format. There weren’t years of habits to undo, or any do’s or don’ts setup in my mind.
So hacking it together became (as Jon will attest) a matter of time and sheer bloody-minded determination, as much on his part as mine. Seven full drafts for the first issue. I dread to think now how bad they were. I don't think I’ll ever have the heart to re-read them. After the long process of the producing the first issue, it got easier. I think I hit somewhat of a stride around issue #4, maybe. The thing is, even though I've written about 40 issues of comic books I'd be hard pressed to actually say I'd nailed down a set process. Some are easier than others, but it's always a challenge. As to a certain extent it should be.
KD: So then what was the most challenging aspect of writing The Exterminators? Dialogue? Pacing? Envisioning the action as page with panels?
SO: Dialogue and characters came somewhat easily to me, not immediately, but it came before some other things, like basic story telling. The hardest thing with any writing, and particularly 22 page comic books, is you have all these big ideas and the key for me is what to leave out, what to cut away, so the story comes through. That for me is the story telling part, figuring out what the bare bones of the story is and the best way to bring it out.
The static nature of the comic medium is always hard to get used to at first. I’d find myself describing two actions in the same panel direction. So then the trick is to learn what to pick out to show an action. Like do you show the guy crossing the room to leave, or is that a waste of valuable panels? Some one else may be talking, but do you show the other guy as his reaction is more important? I probably try and average about 4 panels on a page, 22 pages, that’s a story in 88 panels; you can’t waste them with “shoe leather” panels that don’t push the story forward.
I find to actually write a scene that I have to visualize it and break it down as storyboards. In this regard I was very lucky I’d worked 10 years as a camera assistant in movies and TV to help me, as from a cinematic perspective I made a good idea of how a scene is constructed. It also helped that Tony Moore had studied cinematography books and so we understood the same cinematic language. I soon found myself describing scenes as progressing like a Steadicam shot, or lifting up on a crane for a high and wide establishing.
Also Tony is in his own rights, as all great comic book artists are, an amazing storyteller. He takes my scripts, nails it every time, and then adds details and touches that don’t just show how good he is with a pencil, but move the story forward, which is what makes him so good.
KD: Jon, can you describe how you typically edited one of Simon’s scripts? How was editing The Exterminators similar or different to how you’ve edited other Vertigo books?
JV: The Exterminators was the first proposal I ever worked on at Vertigo and therefore, the first proposal I ever worked on as a comic-book editor. That alone makes it different. Karen handed it to me and said, “What do you think?” on my second or third day working here. So really, Simon may not be aware of this but we were both learning on the job with this book.
I’m sure some wise-ass out there right now is saying, “Yeah – and it shows!” But, hey, when I look at the work we did on The Exterminators, especially at the very beginning when we all did some pretty heavy lifting, I feel terrific about how it all worked out. Simon’s sensibilities and mine are pretty similar, so that helped. Karen realized that, so at least from my perspective, that was a great call on her part, because I’m awfully glad I got to be part of this book.
KD: Allow me to applaud you both for making sure The Exterminators adhered to its monthly schedule, despite all the changes in artists. Jon, once Tony [Moore] began dividing his workload between Exterminators and Dark Horse’s Fear Agent, how challenging was it for you to find available artists whose styles were appropriate for The Exterminators?
JV: Well, all artists need fill-ins. And in Tony’s case, he had to draw about 10,000 cockroaches in every issue, so you’ve got to cut the guy some slack. Anyway, the way the industry is today, it’s almost impossible for any artist to keep up with a monthly schedule for long. So the idea is to find “guest” artists who bring their own approach to the material while still retaining the spirit and “feel” of the book.
In this case, Tony was a big help in recommending Mike Hawthorne for issues #11 and #12. I liked Mike’s work so much that I offered him a monthly book – The Un-Men, which he now draws and which everyone should be buying! Especially if you liked The Exterminators, because though the books are very different, the twisted sensibilities and sense of humor are quite similar. And yes, that’s a shameless plug.
I’m always looking for assignments for Chris Samnee, who is one of my favorite young artists. So when I got the script for #8, a “quiet,” character-oriented story, he immediately sprang to mind. Darick Robertson? What more need be said? The guy who did Transmetropolitan – that’s kind of a no-brainer for The Exterminators. And Ty Templeton, simply one of the funniest and most versatile artists in comics. He can be outrageous and elegant at the same time, which made him perfect for the stories that he worked on. John Lucas has been our regular inker since issue #14 so he was another clear choice to fill in as penciller, too.Obviously when you’re talking about really great artists, availability is always an issue. So I guess we just got lucky in that respect.
KD: Simon, something that I’ve been fixated on since the first issue is the lead character’s name: Henry James. Is there something symbolic about the fact that the protagonist is named after the famous American author that I’m missing?
SO: Yeah, it’s a good question and I’d like to have a fancy, smart answer, but it’s fairly dumb. When it came to naming Henry, I wanted a good strong, basic name. I was going through various ideas and for some reason the name Henry James came up. In one instant it stuck, and the next instant I realized it was also the name of one of the giants of modern literature. I weighed up other names, but Henry James just seemed to fit, so fuck it, Henry James it was.
KD: Ha! Well, there you have it.
You said earlier that the dialogue and the characters came pretty easily to you, and I think the best Exterminators stories demonstrate this. For me the most memorable Exterminators moments involve… I’m going to describe it as... “hysterically bizarre dialogue and actions” that aren’t forced onto the characters or the readers. They emerge organically from the characters’ dispositions and situations. I’m thinking specifically of Henry’s commentary on fellow exterminator Kevin’s devotion to Karen Carpenter:
Kevin: “[The Carpenter’s] God-given talents and infectious harmonies, brought together by a visionary production team, have got me through some tough times.”
Henry (caption): “I couldn’t imagine what kind of hard times would drive you to the Carpenters and I spent ten months in solitary.”
And in my favorite Exterminators character exchange Stretch elaborates his religious beliefs:
Henry: “This resurrection thing is, like, real to you, isn’t it?”
Stretch: “No. Reincarnation is. Now, Resurrection, that’s some crazy tooth fairy shit.”
That line validates the entire series, and I laugh out loud every time I read it.
And if I may offer some criticism, dialogue like that was missing from the “Crossfire and Collateral” story arc. If I have a least favorite Exterminators story arc, it’s “Crossfire and Collateral” as in that story everyone seems to be running around yelling, “Fuck this shit!”
But then you follow up “Crossfire and Collateral” with issue #24 that is an absolutely brilliant “Heart of Darkness” homage and displays, once again, the hysterically bizarre dialogue and actions that make Exterminators so inimitable.My question to you both is what Exterminators story, issue or scene is your favorite, and which one do you feel in retrospect could have been better?
SO: I like the “Hearts of Darkness” issue. It’s the only true stand alone of the series, and Tony pulled out all the stops on the artwork. Also, the AJ in the afterlife issue which followed it and in the whole run there’s a lot of pieces of dialogue like the ones you mentioned that still make me laugh.
As for doing anything better, there’s always room for improvement. It’s what gets me up and gets me through the days when nothing goes on paper, or it all goes in the trash.
I’d rewrite everything from the start if given the chance, and I think and hope that will always be true.
The Exterminators was a first book and you could ski jump off the learning curve you go through. In every issue you learn something and hopefully it starts to show.
Yeah, I hear you on the “Crossfire” arc. It’s maybe a strength or maybe a huge weakness that I really tried to do different things in the Exterminators run. I didn’t want to keep repeating myself, and sometimes it worked for some people, other times it didn’t. I may try a different approach next time.
I think in hindsight the “Crossfire” arc probably didn’t have as many of those moments and lines that the previous arcs did, but if there wasn’t a place for them in what was happening, well to force them in would then look contrived. But point taken.
JV: It’s hard to pick favorites, and it’s easy to be self-critical. So taking the second half of your question first, all I can say is that, as an editor, there’s nothing I do that I think I couldn’t have done better after the fact. All you can do is try to do the absolute best job you can while you’re doing it, learn from your inevitable mistakes and move on.
As for a favorite, that’s like choosing among your children but I guess if you put a gun to my head, I’d agree with Simon and say that Issue #24, what we call “the cruise boat issue,” stands out. I’m always partial to single-issue stories anyway. And this one seemed perfectly self-contained not only as a story but as a summation of what this series was all about. Even though it substituted killer butterflies for killer cockroaches, I think if I absolutely had to recommend one issue of this series, that would be it. It’s a difficult choice, though. There were so many good ones. I feel bad for all the people who didn’t read this series. They really missed out. Fortunately, the whole thing will be collected so they can always catch up on it later. But still…
KD: Final question: what’s on the horizon for the two of you?
SO: My Gen13 run is for 7 issues. It ends sometime in the summer. Then with Jon I have the Hellblazer spin-off starring Chas, which we’re hard at work on now, and another project one that hasn’t been announced yet. There are also some pitches and ideas in various stages of getting hammered out. I’ve always got a million ideas. It’s more a case of getting them out on paper.
So The Exterminators may be out back at the Vertigo compound being boiled down for its glue content, but you ain’t seen the last of me yet.
KD: That’s good to know!
Jon, you were editing Deadman, Testament, and Exterminators. With those series all wrapped up, what’s on your Vertigo editorial plate besides The Un-Men? (Note to readers: The Un-Men, by the way, is an excellent title.)
JV: Thanks, The Un-Men IS an excellent title, and another one that makes me hope more people realize its excellence before it’s too late. As for the future, rest assured I’ve got plenty on my editorial plate. Unfortunately, I can’t discuss too much of it just yet.
Simon just mentioned the Chas miniseries, which is being drawn by Goran Sudzuka, a longtime Vertigo favorite. You know Goran’s work on Y: The Last Man, Outlaw Nation and an earlier Hellblazer mini-series, Lady Constantine – among other series. I’m also editing The Alcoholic, a graphic novel by Jonathan Ames and drawn by Dean Haspiel of The Quitter fame. Ames is a well-known novelist and essayist and this will be his first graphic novel. It’s what I guess you’d call a “fictional memoir.” It’s the story of his own struggles with alcohol and drugs, as well as his numerous sexual misadventures and even 9/11, mixing truth liberally with fiction as Ames tries desperately to understand himself. It’s like no other “addiction memoir” I’ve ever heard of. I think it’s going to get a huge amount of attention.
Down the road, there’s the Peter Straub/Michael Easton graphic novel The Green Woman. If you’ve ever read any of Peter Straub’s bestselling horror novels, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what this one’s going to be like. Michael Easton isn’t as well known as a writer, though he’s written for film and TV as well as published a book of poetry with the enticing title, “Eighteen Straight Whiskeys.” But he’s better known as an actor. Together, they’ve written an extremely frightening, creepy serial killer story with a supernatural twist. John Bolton is painting this book and judging from the pages I’ve seen, if you like your comics scary, you’ll be getting your money’s worth.
Beyond that, I’ll just say that I’ve got some stuff on the table with some names that you know doing projects you might not expect. And I’ll leave it at that!
KD: Thanks for your time, guys. I appreciate your responses!
Oh, I’m supposed to close things? I didn’t know that! Whoops! Sorry, everybody! I’ve had a few too many Rolling Rocks in the sun, so instead of boring you with drunk talk, I’ll give you a treat... Some preview art for another Jonathan Vankin book, The Un-Men! Issue #7 starts the “Children of Paradox” story arc, so this is a great time to jump aboard. Here’s the official D.C. word:
Part 1 of "Children of Paradox," an anomalous new story arc. Agent Kilcrop reluctantly returns to the deviant dystopia known as Aberrance. As the city's new security chief. Now, when an UnCorp employee is stricken by a grotesque illness, Kilcrop must face temptations he never could have imagined — in the form of a seductive sexpot with a sickening secret.
On Sale February 20, 2008
Check this issue out on Wednesday! Well, that’s all for today, but I’m back to work tomorrow. Yeah, the slave-drivers at Comics Bulletin only gave me one day off! Anyway, tomorrow I’ll present my interview with Incognegro writer and creator Mat Johnson, so make sure you’re back here in 24. I swear I’ll be sober by then.
Thanks for reading!
Robert
Got a comment or question about this Soapbox?
Leave at message at the Vertigo Spotlightes Message Board.