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WIZARD Q&A: COMICS' TRIPLE-THREAT ROUNDTABLE WITH BENDIS, JOHNS AND LEE | | Brian Michael Bendis, Geoff Johns and Jim Lee chat up comics' biggest events from the 'Wizard era'…and how they could collaborate in the future | | | By Danny Spiegel | | Posted 04/21/08 | |  | |  Aside from the official company big wigs, when you think of the "the man" at Marvel, it's likely you think Brian Michael Bendis (Ultimate Spider-Man, New Avengers, House of M). If it’s DC, the man has got to be Geoff Johns (Infinite Crisis, Green Lantern, JSA). And if you’re looking for "the" man since Wizard's been around, the guy who's transcended comic companies, it's undoubtedly Jim Lee, WildStorm Editorial Director and creative force behind everything from X-Men #1 to WildCATs to All Star Batman & Robin. And so in honor of our celebratory mood, we gathered this power trio on a conference call to look back at the industry since our magazine's 1991 birth, the dominant trends and where we are today. You'd think this would be typical fodder for these creators but we were pleasantly surprised at how much they relished this opportunity.
"You know, it's interesting," says Lee. "I've talked to Brian many a time after hours at Cons and stuff like that, but I've never really heard him talk about comics, certainly [not] his [early] experience. I had no idea he'd worked in a retail store. Geoff and I see each other a lot more often so it's like doing a panel."
"Yeah, panels we should do," replies Bendis. "We should do these panels."
"I'd love to do these panels!" says Johns.
Glad to hear it, since there's a lot more to come… | | 
WIZARD: A lot has changed in the comic book industry since 1991. How do each of you look back at that time?
BENDIS: I think Jim should go first.
LEE: Uh, gosh, '91 was....
BENDIS: …What girls you were with... [Laughter]
LEE: That was the year X-Men #1 came out so the industry was on fire. There was a palpable electricity to it. Sales had gone through the roof. So [Uncanny] X-Men, Marvel's best selling book at the time, went from, like, 200,000 to 400,000 to 800,000 and then shot up to, 7.7 million which is what we saw on X-Men #1. This was really the beginning of the age of artists. A bunch of young artists were real popular at the time and just their name attached to a book could help move copies.
Perhaps you were one of them, Jim?
LEE: Possibly. Possibly. [Laughs] I'm trying to disassociate myself. Yeah, perhaps, I was one of them. In '91 things were firing on all levels. I was definitely competing with Todd [McFarlane] and Rob [Liefeld], trying to see who could sell more copies. That ran all the way from doing creative things like, "Oh, I'm gonna do this type of storyline where we finally reveal the one true, fake origin of Wolverine," to "Hey, I'm gonna have Spider-Man guest star," to "Hey, let's do multiple copies." All three of us were pretty involved with the marketing of the books. So that's what was going on for me.
BENDIS: Well, in 1991, I was in sixth grade and I remember…
LEE: You bastard. [Then] I was in seventh grade! Whatever!
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Sorry to say, but sixth grade for Bendis was in 1979; seventh grade for Lee was in 1977.]
BENDIS: No, seriously, I was in college and I was actually working in a comic book store so I was working the retail angle of Jim's 7.7 million. It was bedlam for retailers. [But] you could feel the market about to pop. Also, I was making my first comic [Parts of a Hole] and I had just signed with Caliber Comics, so that was a very scary and exciting time for me. It was actually the same time I had met all of my Caliber buddies which were David Mack, Mike Oeming, Marc Andreyko and Ed Brubaker. I was just trying to find my voice as a comic book creator which should have involved less drawing, but I didn’t find that out for 10 years.
LEE: This was pre-Internet so it's really interesting to hear Brian talk about it from a retailer's standpoint because it was really a mania. There weren't message boards where you could get instantaneous feedback, so all you knew from our end was this stuff is selling a tremendous amounts of copies. It just seemed like it was a geometric progression of love for the comic because it did start from people really liking, [for instance], Todd's work or Rob's work.
BENDIS: Absolutely.
Geoff, what was your comic book experience in the early '90s?
BENDIS: Yeah, how did you transition from porn to comics? I never knew.
JOHNS: Well, I kept my name.
BENDIS: Yeah, Buck Naked!
JOHNS: In '91 I was actually graduating high school and I was just reading comics that I liked. I bought my comics at a flea market on Saturdays. Post-'91, in college, there was a comic shop right on campus and it was the first time I was exposed to a real comic shop. My roommate and I could actually buy a comic, and a month later, trade it back to the store for more than we paid for it. The funniest thing I bought was Eclipso #1, like 40 of ’em with that gem on the cover.
LEE: [Laughs] Geoff Johns—speculator! I love it!
JOHNS: We got stuck with those and that's when everything for me just stopped because I had no money left, and I remember for years afterward, I’d find Eclipsos shoved in my comic collection.
LEE: You were eating Shredded Eclipsos.
BENDIS: Do you find you've been meaner to the character because of this?
JOHNS: I actually love Eclipso. He's one of my favorite characters.
BENDIS: I know, but do you find that subconsciously you’re putting him in sh--ty positions just because of what he did to you?
JOHNS: Maybe I am. I did kill one of his hosts in JSA.
BENDIS: See? There you go. | |  Did you buy X-Men #1?
JOHNS: Oh, yeah. I didn't buy a ton of those but I think I bought like probably two copies. The Colossus and some other one. I don't know if I traded that one in.
Jim, do you want to show your appreciation to Geoff for helping out your success in some small way?
LEE: Oh, I owe him four cents. [Laughs]
JOHNS: That was part of the fun of collecting. I think people kind of rag on it a lot because of the effects that some of it eventually had, but part of the fun back then was speculating about it. It's bad now to say, "Hey, I'm going to buy a comic book in a backing board and put it in a collection." I think maybe it's gone too far to the other side—but I'm also stuck with 20 copies of Eclipso #1, so what do I know? [Laughter]
What do you think was the impact of the formation of Image Comics in 1992?
BENDIS: Well, I was still at the store when it hit and it hit huge! It was seismic. It was also the first time Marvel zombies would actually abandon Marvel books for something else. It's weird because I think about watching it all go on, and then for me personally to know that I would end up at Image a couple of years later, you would have never guessed that in a million years. And I was actually at Image longer than Jim was.
LEE: [Laughs]
BENDIS: It really is an amazing touchstone in the industry.
JOHNS: It also made creators' "names." I mean, Wizard was a part of that, too, obviously, but it made creators' names much more. When I first started reading comics, I remember I was, like, "Wow, that was really good." It was a Hulk issue and I'm like, "Who wrote that?" And it was some guy named Peter David. I just didn't know names of people who did comics until college.
BENDIS: I always followed creators even when I was, like, 5 years old. I knew who George Pérez was. I was a lunatic like that.
You were just opening an Eclipso to see who to blame.
JOHNS: Yeah. I did. I had to give [Eclipso plotter] Keith Giffen sh-- for that.
BENDIS: "Who the f--- did this to me?" | |  Jim, considering you helped form Image, you must have a much different perspective on its effects.
LEE: To start, on a financial one, I think it helped out a lot of the top end creators. I know that comic book creators worked at a flat page rate and then when they instituted royalties in the '80s there was this beneficial wave that went through the community. Then, when Image happened, because we were bidding up the prices on talent—writers, artists, colorists—people were making a lot more money all of a sudden. Page rates went from $120 to $500, $1,000. They're not at that level anymore, but some of the top end talent is still making a lot and I think you could definitely peg it right around that time period. If Image hadn't happened I don't know if there would have been that kind of pressure on the Big Two to open up the vaults.
On a creative level, I think it definitely appealed to younger readers' sense of rebellion and "sticking it to the man." These people were getting to own and control their own properties. I think it probably galvanized a lot of [fans] to get into comics. I've met so many people now who say, "I got into comics because of Image," and I don't think it was just because of the stuff we were producing between the pages. It was sort of the brand, the marketing.
BENDIS: I've talked to the founders individually—I was close to Todd for a while and I'm close to [former Image publisher] Jim Valentino—and I don't think people realize, because it all worked out so well so quickly, that it was scary sh--—you'd given up your careers!
LEE: Sure.
BENDIS: It could have easily blown up in your face.
JOHNS: But at the same time, Brian, imagine if a bunch of us on the writing side today got together and did our own company.
BENDIS: Yeah, why don't we do that?
LEE: I don’t know, why don't you guys do that?
JOHNS: There is an excitement level to that. It's, like, if you're in there with four or five of your peers that you really respect and admire and you’re all ready to rock and roll and you're in your mid-20s, I mean, why not do it?
BENDIS: Because I love Mark [Millar] but, seriously, could you have a business meeting with him? We'd go insane. [Laughter]
LEE: Well, you think our business meetings are easy? [Laughs]
JOHNS: But on the other side, I’m sure that's why they have the Icon imprint at Marvel.
BENDIS: I definitely feel like the aftereffect of Image is still felt in the way they don’t want to repeat that mistake they made by letting you guys go. If they would have given you guys what you wanted and let you do your books at Marvel, the whole industry would have been completely different. It took them 10 years to recover from that. So I don't think they ever want to repeat that mistake. They're not going to give us everything we want, but Icon wouldn't have existed back in the Image days.
JOHNS: And DC, their ownership rights would not be anywhere near what they are now.
BENDIS: Absolutely. So thank you, Jim Lee!
LEE: [Laughs]
BENDIS: And also, this brings up another subject: I definitely feel over the last 10 years or so a lot of things have been made very easy for me and my peers to get stuff done not only in comics but in transitioning the rights to Hollywood stuff. Now I can go write Powers for another medium without people going, "You're a comic book guy! You can't do that!" And Image and Frank Miller are a big part of that.
LEE: And you have to thank yourselves, too. I think, also, the quality of writing is, on average, much higher now, and the fact that you guys are as a collective whole doing much better work makes it a lot easier.
BENDIS: Well, I thank myself all the time, so... [Laughter] | |  How do you think storytelling has evolved from the '90s until today?
BENDIS: The biggest difference is it went from almost completely artist-focused to equally writer/artist-focused. I think the quality of storytelling improves dramatically when that's the case.
JOHNS: It's also evolved just like comic art has evolved. You look at the '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s and writing's evolved the same way throughout the decades. It was kind of super-hyper exaggerated in the '90s, so you got art that was matched by writing that was maybe more in your face, more action-driven because you wanted the splashes and the spreads. It felt really loud. And it just evolved to another stage.
BENDIS: It seems like the audience was very ready for the sophistication, the removal of the exposition as a whole by most writers. You don't need to hammer people with exposition and giant thought balloon images of who this character is and what they're doing. And I’m pretty happy to be part of that movement.
JOHNS: Brian, the way you used thought balloons in The Mighty Avengers, you didn't bring thought balloons back—you changed them. All your thought balloons are character-driven more than they are exposition-driven. In the old days, you'd see Green Lantern flying and he'd explain everything he had to do.
BENDIS: What was funny about it is they'd also give you the history. It would be Wolverine slicing the air and there'd be a 30-line flying balloon over his head explaining exactly who he is, where he came from, what he did yesterday, what he had for lunch. And my argument is when you're going about your day you don't have to let everyone in on how it is that you got to this place. Maybe we just grew up and we saw what worked and what didn't work. And I’m not saying that we're more trained than our peers. It’s just the language changed.
How do you think the prevalence of trade paperbacks has affected the industry?
JOHNS: Everything's collected. I work with a lot of artists who say—and rightly so—"I want to draw all six issues of this storyline because I want my work collected in a single volume." That’s completely understandable, but it changes the dynamic of how you approach a comic.
BENDIS: The trade paperback really changed everything. I remember the day that [former Marvel President] Bill Jemas told us that Barnes & Noble said six issues is what [the guideline for] a trade paperback should be.
JOHNS: I was actually pretty unhappy with that because I didn’t want to have to add a story to where there was no story.
BENDIS: We've all varied and done less or more, but here's the standard bearer, six issues, $14.95. What happens is you get a lot of writers who are now developing styles based on the three act structure broken down into six issues, and I think for as much crap as Warren [Ellis] and I and some other people get for decompression or whatnot...
JOHNS: Well, you're approaching it as more of a complete story all at once.
BENDIS: Exactly. And lot of comics we loved as kids, they were making them up as they went along without knowing how many issues a story was going to be, so there's a lot of pluses to the six-issue thing because it forces people to plan out better.
JOHNS: [But] you need more pages to tell emotional beats about the characters or to show off their abilities or powers instead of crowding it into a six-panel page.
BENDIS: That's the flip side of getting rid of the exposition is that you now have to still get that information across.
JOHNS: You know, the other thing I'm interested in is the next generation of writers who grew up with the Internet and how that's going to affect their writing.
BENDIS: I think they're all going to be insane. Serial killers!
JOHNS: I think it can have a negative impact on someone's writing style. Some people get scared, so they'll stop writing what they believe in and write what they think people on the Internet will enjoy, and that’s absolutely damaging for someone's writing style.
LEE: I'm sure I would have stopped crosshatching in the '90s if I had read post after post saying, "Damn, all he does is crosshatching."
JOHNS: For me, it builds up my resolve to strive to be the writer I want to be, but at the same time, be who I am and be okay with that.
BENDIS: The reason I love the Internet—and I love my board and the people who come and give me sh--—is because I think it's still a tool of honesty. You can't hack out anything, man, because they’re going to let you f---ing know. And I love that.
JOHNS: I remember when we were making Kyle Rayner Parallax in the first part of "Sinestro Corps," Ethan [Van Sciver] said, "People are gonna hate us. Shouldn't we tell him he’s not gonna be Parallax?" I was, like, "No, it's okay. Let them hate us. We know where it ends up. We need to just be okay with it."
BENDIS: And enjoy the ride. People are going to strangle me and I like that now. That's part of the fun for everybody involved.
JOHNS: Well, probably the same thing happened to you guys on All Star Batman, Jim. They didn't get the tone. It took three or four issues for people to understand, "Oh, wait a second! This is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek!"
LEE: I know we won't capture, you know, 90 percent of the audience, but now it’s almost two-thirds "for" and one-third "against." And, honestly, I don't know where it ends up, but I have faith that it'll end up somewhere good. | |  Over the years, there have been a lot of crossover events. Why have some stood the test of time, creatively, better than others?
JOHNS: I think the better ones are when they're as close to a singular voice as possible and a simple story.
BENDIS: Historically, also, every generation's creators kind of dictate the tone and language and the feel of whatever the universe is [for] DC or Marvel. You can see it in the first Crisis on Infinite Earths, you can see it in Secret Wars. It's definitely "Jim Shooter’s Marvel." It's an accumulation of Jim Shooter's career there. And I think the reason they're back is because the creators who have been toiling away are all on their mark now and it's time to express the bigger idea, too. I think that's why Geoff did his.
JOHNS: I don't know about you, Brian, but I look at you as kind of my Yin over at Marvel to my Yang thing at DC.
BENDIS: We're looking through a cracked mirror together. [Laughter]
JOHNS: It's interesting because Brian did House of M and now he's doing Secret Invasion, and I did Infinite Crisis and Sinestro Corps War; I'll be doing Blackest Night [2009's Green Lantern event] and I actually like doing more than one because you learn as you write. These things are tough. And I'm really anxious to see what you do, Brian, with Secret Invasion just because I enjoyed House of M. I'm just really anxious to see how you nail this one.
BENDIS: Well, thanks, man. And I picked up Sinestro Corps in hardback and I'm reading it and going, "There's nobody else who should do this story." That's a comic book experience. That is the best. That's what I love out of comics.
Jim, what are your thoughts on crossover events?
BENDIS: Are you going to do one? Do you want to do one?
LEE: I did one back in the '90s! ["X-Tinction Agenda" in 1990]
JOHNS: Brian and I will write The Secret Crisis and you can draw it. [Laughter]
LEE: Oh, well, one day when there's a massive crossover between Marvel and DC and they both co-write it, I can draw it.
JOHNS: See, that would be awesome.
LEE: That would be a lot of fun. I worked on crossovers back at Marvel in the '90s and it's a lot of work just because you're trying to coordinate all these different things. There's a lot of logistical baggage that you get.
JOHNS: I also think that the tighter they are, the smaller they are, the better. Sorry to plug a book, but with "Blackest Night," it's so tight. I'm writing almost everything on that just because I want do a story that’s going to affect a lot of stuff, but it's going to be contained and small.
BENDIS: On a completely personal level, though, you feel that it's definitely the top of the mountain as far as work-for-hire comics.
LEE: It's the Super Bowl of comics. You want to get there, do it once and win.
Each of you has been involved in reboots, relaunches and reimaginings, a big trend in the last 15 years. What are the creative pros and cons?
LEE: I like Geoff's approach which is a fresh take on the character but he usually intertwines all the crap that people attach to a character and he makes it work. On the other hand, there's definitely a lot to be said for doing an Ultimate or even an All-Star line. All Star Superman is an awesome book and I just love the fact that they are doing their own thing, especially in today's day and age where the fans understand there doesn't have to be just one version of a character.
JOHNS: You get on a book and if you really have a creative vision for where you want to take that book, you take it there. You know, Frank Miller didn't reboot Daredevil but he revamped it. And you do something like an Ultimates line or an All Star line, it's completely different. It's saying, "This is a character-driven take on Spider-Man." So I don't see a downside to it.
BENDIS: Every comic's someone's first and someone's last and it's your job to control that as much as you can. The best way to do that is, as often as possible, distill the character down to its core. The Ultimates thing is just a different way to express the character for a different audience. But when you take a character like Green Lantern or Luke Cage or something like that, you're basically presenting your vision of it or what you think the modern version of it should be.
JOHNS: Things that won't work, the fans won't accept and they go away. I mean, Spider-Man: Chapter One [in 1999] is a perfect example. It just didn't really click with a lot of people so it just kind of disappeared.
Geoff, not to put on you on the spot, but Brian helped launch Ultimate Fantastic Four and Jim did the "Heroes Reborn" version of the FF—which one do you like more?
[Long pause….then laughter]
BENDIS: [Laughs] Yeah, he doesn't want to put you on the spot! [EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, we were joking.] Well, as much as I'm sure Geoff would love to answer that, there's a question I've always want to ask Jim. I think about the trends of mainstream comics and the only two people who have ridden the wave of this from 1991 are Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee. And I don't mean that the other people aren't vital in a mainstream way, I'm talking more about the fact that you look at the top 10 books now and the top 10 books of 1991 and look who's there. And I'm fascinated by that aspect of both Jeph and Jim's careers.
LEE: I do think about it. The stock answer would be, "Oh, my style's changed and grown." But I would say every artist tries to do that. I think things, for me, careerwise, were on low swing just because I wasn't doing a lot of work [in mid to late '90s] but that might have ultimately helped me because people kind of missed out on it. In the '90s, so many people liked the stuff I was doing so I had a lot of fans to sort of dwindle down from.
JOHNS: But you still have a gigantic fan base.
LEE: But the next step would be to be like Stan Lee where you're not doing any work and people will still line up for an autograph because you're "Stan Lee."
JOHNS: I think you're already there, though.
LEE: I consider myself very lucky. If I could explain how an artist becomes popular to someone, they could just do it. It's inexplicable how it happens.
Comic books are always evolving with new "hot" creators. And even though it seems impossible now, do you guys ever think about how you would handle a shift that would leave you possibly struggling for work?
BENDIS: Not only is it not impossible, it absolutely is going to happen. It's show business. As far down the totem pole of show business as we are, all of us, we took somebody's job and someone will take our job.
JOHNS: You just gotta do your best and get better and better and enjoy the ride.
LEE: I have my exit strategy already. [Laughter] Retire when they still want your work!
BENDIS: Oh, I'm going down with the ship, man.
JOHNS: You'll be writing Dazzler. They'll wheel him in.
BENDIS: I'll be trying to get Tom Brevoort [Marvel's executive editor] on the phone with my Dazzler pitch. "I wrote House of M…Hello?" I think what's important for us is for all of us to meet those guys that are coming up and share with them all of our feelings…and destroy them. [Laughter]
In the spirit of Brian's earlier question, Jim or Geoff, do either of you have a question you've always wanted to ask the others?
LEE: My question is: "What would you have written on your tombstone?" [Laughs]
JOHNS: You know what's funny? Last night I had dinner with a friend and they said, "If you were going have one comic over your tombstone, which one would it be?" And it was a really hard question to answer.
BENDIS: Holy crap. Oh, I know what mine would be. Wendy Whitebread: Undercover Slut. [Laughter]
JOHNS: What's that?
BENDIS: Wendy Whitebread: Undercover Slut. It was an Eros comic in 1990.
LEE: Yeah, I remember that!
BENDIS: I had nothing to do with it. I just think it was one of the greatest comics ever made.
JOHNS: For a second I'm going, "Did he draw that? Oh my god!" I gotta get that.
Geoff, do you ever wish you could swear in your comics as much as Brian does?
BENDIS: [Laughs]
JOHNS: Do I wish I could? Sure. I usually do and they take it out. [But] I don't need Hal Jordan to say...anything that he doesn't already say.
LEE: He can't even say it!
BENDIS: When Sinestro charges up his ring, he should swear and go, "Come on, bitches! Feel my might, bitches!" [Laughter]
JOHNS: I had Superboy[-Prime] say "bitch" and they took that out once.
If you could collaborate with each other, what would be the dream project?
BENDIS: Well…I want to do Avengers with Geoff. I think that Geoff needs to do Avengers again. I would like to collaborate with him like that.
JOHNS: I'd love to do that. That would be awesome.
BENDIS: And I would like the three of us—and I'm not starting sh-- again, I promise you that’s not why I'm saying this—but I'd love if the three of us could create an inter-company crossover event. The next logical step, if there were no rules or laws, would be for us to create the greatest inter-company multi-tiered 12-issue crossover that has ever existed on the planet. So that's what I want. "Only that."
LEE: And I'd like to draw one issue of that. [Laughter]
BENDIS: Oh great, it doesn’t exist and it's already late. | | | |
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