 | |  | THE WIZARD POLL | | |
|
| | | | |
| WIZARD UNIVERSE WEEKLY FEATURES |  | [MARVEL MONDAYS] PHIL HESTER INTERVIEWS ANDE PARKS! | | The artistic collaborators take a walk on the write side of the comics world and talk about Parks' upcoming 'Daredevil' one-shot | | | By Kiel Phegley | | Posted 4/28/2008 | |  | | ![[MARVEL MONDAYS] PHIL HESTER INTERVIEWS ANDE PARKS!](http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/wizarduniverse_2012_103593601) Sometimes they keep pulling you back in. And sometimes you want to get pulled.
This week, the over-used "Godfather" reference is somewhat more apt than usual as the "they" we're thinking of is Marvel Comics' crime-driven Daredevil titles and the "you" is writer and inker Ande Parks. While Parks is well known to mainstream comics fans for his inking work on titles like The Irredeemable Ant-Man and Green Arrow with penciler Phil Hester, he's also proven to be an up and coming writing talent with turns in the true crime genre with Oni Press' Union Station and Capote In Kansas. This week, he comes into the Marvel Universe for a second time with Daredevil: Blood Of The Tarantula, a follow up to last year's Daredevil Annual #1 which like this new one-shot was co-written by Daredevil's regular scribe Ed Brubaker and focused on reformed villain The Black Tarantula.
With this new story proving a sequel of sorts to the last go round and with Parks getting another chance to shine in the mainstream marketplace, we at Wizard Universe thought there would be no one better to pick Parks' brain than his pal Hester who has also made the shift from artist to indie writer (The Coffin) to mainstream scribe (a current run on Top Cow's The Darkness). What follows is a free wheelin' 411 on what it's like to step into a high profile gig at the House of Ideas from character research to learning story chops to bonding over...um...vomit.
PARKS: I'd like to think that you weren't able to work last night because you were writing like 50 questions...
HESTER: I didn't write anything down. But I did go over it in my head a little bit. I also decided to let my 10-year-old nephew ask the first question. So here's his question: What are the Tarantula's powers, and when will he be joining the X-Men?
PARKS: Nice. [Laughs] I don't think he's going to be in the X-Men any time soon, and his powers, to be honest, are in flux a little bit. I think at various times in his career he's had eye beams and super strength and healing powers and all kinds of stuff. When Ed used him in Daredevil which is where I first encountered him, he was in prison, and I think the theory was that he had no powers – he was just a big, strong, tough guy because they were giving him some drugs or whatever that were powering him down. When I got him out of prison, Ed and I talked about it, and we thought he'd get back his strength as he quit taking his medication. And I used the healing power. But I thought the eye beams were a little too far out there, so we just dropped that.
HESTER: It was a little too Darkseid.
PARKS: Yeah. Ed's established this Daredevil world that's kind of real, and a guy that's shooting big red eye beams didn't seem to fit in there very well.
HESTER: So just to be clear, this isn't the old Spider-Man villain with the pointy shoes.
PARKS: No. And that's what I thought initially. I thought that was the guy I'd seen in prison because he didn't' have the costume on. Once I found out it was a different guy I did some research. I think this guy was created by Tom Defalco and Steve Skroce [in Amazing Spider-Man #419]. He was in Spider-Girl [as well, although that Tarantula was the original's son.]
| |  HESTER: My least favorite questions that I get on a panel or in an interview start with "Talk about..." but I'm going to do that to you. Talk about this annual and how it's related to the last annual you did because you did an annual that featured Tarantula last year. The question I have is, is this sort of a backdoor mini series? Is the continuity so tight that this is read as a second part of that other annual or can the reader approach it fresh? What kind of over-arcing character arc is Tarantula on in these annuals?
PARKS: The first one – Ed wanted to do a story that was a guy getting out of prison and trying to do the write thing but having it not work out very well. [It's] kind of like what happens to the guy in "Heat." I forget the character's name...
HESTER: The short order cook? The Dennis Haysbert character?
PARKS: Yeah. He shows up in the real world with ambitions – "This time it's going to work out" – but the real world is so corrupt that he finds it impossible. That was our template. In the first one, he goes to his parole office who's crooked, and they send him to his old neighborhood where there's corruption all around and nothing works out right. By the end of the issue, he says, "You know what? I am motivated to do the right thing now, but doing it within the system doesn't quite work for me." So he sets himself up as kind of an anti-hero/vigilante in his neighborhood – trying to do the right thing on his own terms.
In our second story, we take that, and again...even in that world things can't quite work out for him. He doesn't have that switch Daredevil has to not push it too far. The point of this annual is to show that he and Daredevil are two sides of the same coin. They're both vigilantes trying to do the right thing in their neighborhoods, but where Daredevil can say, "I'm still a good guy, and I have certain rules I have to live by" Black Tarantula doesn't have that judgment. Things always go a little too far, and he can't hold himself back.
I think the second one will be a little richer if you read the first one and know where he's coming from because we don't make a point of recapping that too much. But I think the second one stands on its own pretty well as a stand-alone story.
HESTER: To me that's the most appealing thing about these is the contrast between Daredevil and Tarantula in that they both have this impulse to do the right thing, but because of the background that they have, it's almost easier for Daredevil to do the right thing because he was raised in this – not necessarily a positive environment but an environment that's focused on doing the right thing. Tarantula grows up in an environment where you're rewarded for doing the wrong thing.
PARKS: Exactly. It's a theme I'm used to because there's a lot of that in my Capote graphic novel where Truman and one of the murderers had kind of the same background, but Truman had one person who cared about him and Perry Smith didn't. And that made all the difference.
HESTER: Since we're on that topic, let's talk about how different it is to do work for hire as opposed to creator-owned stuff. You and I are in the same boat this year. Everything we've written pretty much up to this point has been for ourselves on a creator-owned project where we called the shots. And now you're doing something that's work for hire for Marvel, but you're also doing something with Ed, so you have to anticipate what two different sets of people want. I'm wondering how much of a change that is for you. How do you feel about it?
PARKS: It certainly makes me work a different set of muscles. The guys at Oni who I've written my two graphic novels for offer good notes, but then they always say, "This is your thing, and you do it however you want." It's all my responsibility and the tempo can unfold as I see fit. And at Marvel there are certain expectations they have about the thing's going to roll and how you're going to make sure the audience always has the information they need, set within their big continuity and so on. And obviously these are pre-established people who have to act a certain way. I'm just a little spec on the Daredevil horizon. What I do has to fit into their whole universe.
HESTER: Are you saying he's going to be a Skrull at the end of all this?
PARKS: No. [Laughs] Fortunately, getting to learn how all that works under the guy who I think does it best right now is as good as you could hope for. When I wrote the first one, I kind of packed it full of detail with all the information I would've wanted to squeeze into one of my graphic novels. And it was a 34 or 36-page story. Ed read it and said, "This is all good, but you're trying to do WAY too much stuff" and showed me how to strip all that stuff down – maintain all the information that had to be there but just strip it down as much as necessary. That was a really good exercise, and like I said, you can't hope for better than learning that from the guy who is doing it so well on a monthly basis.
HESTER: The guy who's sleeping on a pile of Eisner's. Speaking of Ed, do you want to take this opportunity to tell the legendary story of how you bonded with Ed? And even more publicly humiliate one of our friends?
PARKS: Sure! [Laughs] I guess it was a year and a half ago? I knew Ed a little bit because he'd written me after my Capote book came out and said he'd liked it. We exchanged a few e-mails. So when he came to town for a convention, I knew the convention guys, so I said, "Hey, I'll pick up Ed if you want." I picked up him and his wife, and we hung out a little bit. We ended up that first night going to dinner and going out to one of my favorite joints in Kansas City, which is the place where they have Italian food, great cocktails and Rat Pack singers on the weekend. One of my buddies made the mistake of keeping up with me on the martinis...
HESTER: Brook W. Turner!
PARKS: [Laughs] And he made a few trips to the restroom that night. And Phil, dutiful Phil...
HESTER: I held his hair back.
PARKS: [Laughs] And then I hand my keys back to Phil and say, "Hey, drive us back to our hotel." And on the trip, Phil and Brook and in the front seat, Ed and I are in the middle, and Ed's wife and Andy Kuhn are in the back. And Brook starts losing it again on the highway where there's not really an option to pull over. So he rolls down his window, and we're all yelling "Get out the window! Out the window!" And I think the first spew was uneventful except for the side of my car. The second spew though, Ed and I both caught like tiny shrapnel so we both ducked like it was the Kennedy assassination. [Laughs] Ed's looking back at his wife like, "Oh sh--! Are you okay? What have we gotten into?"
| |  HESTER: It's almost like you're war veterans, and you bonded in a fox hole under enemy fire. I love that story, and I lived through it. I love it still. And speaking of the two annuals, you're blessed to have had two great artists on both. Let's talk about the new one, Chris Samnee. What do you think he brings to the table as opposed to Leandro Fernandez. Not that he's better than Leandro, but what do you think are his strengths compared to Leandro?
PARKS: He fits so well into this Brubaker Daredevil universe right now, which is very much grounded in the reality of that city. And Chris draws figures, faces and character acting really well. He also just excels at the setting and making everything feel real, and he's a very textural artist. Really, I always say this when I talk about [his work on] Capote but he's too young to be as good and mature as he is. He doesn't overdraw stuff. He knows how to let the negative spaces do the work and really let the characters breath in that space.
HESTER: It's really pretty disgusting that he's that young and that good.
PARKS: He's only like 27 or something. It's just fantastic. And I'm really excited about this book for me because it looks great and for him because he hasn't had a chance to open up a lot in the superhero world. He kind of got typecast as a guy who draws talky stuff. He did Capote, and he did a Queen & Country arc, and it's really cool to see him cut loose a little bit but still bring that realism that he brings to everything but also let the characters live a little bigger than life. It's really cool to see. I hope it opens up some eyes to what he can do.
HESTER: I think previously the only time people had ever seen that is if you saw him at a convention and asked him to draw something like Galactus or something. You see his realistic rendering style but applied to more fantastic elements, and it's a neat blend. Hopefully that's a stepping stone to him doing more. But you yourself are an artist, and I struggle with this when I write...I wonder how much do you visualize a page as a comics page when you're writing and then how you match it up with the end results? Are you disappointed? Do you try to cut loose? What's your approach?
PARKS: I'm kind of torn about that. It's always been my approach to include as much visual information as I can think of figuring that the more I give them, the more they have to work with, and if they don't want to use it or they want to do something different, they're free to do that. But looking at how Ed works makes me think, "Holy cow! I'm working way too hard." I'm trying to put in all this visual stuff that I should just be trusting the artist with. And if you're working with guys like Chris or the guys Ed is lucky enough to have, that'd probably the better approach. It's just hard for me to shake that. I think visually, and it's hard for me to leave that stuff out.
As far as getting the art back, I've had very few unpleasant surprises. Almost always, and always with Chris, I get the stuff back and go, "Oh wow. That's what I had in mind but better" which is a good position to be in. I'm sure you're familiar with that. You've worked with a number of excellent guys.
HESTER: Yeah. We're living charmed lives at this point.
PARKS: I know you often give thumbnails because I'm sure it's easier to draw than type in what's going on. I've never done that. That's might be more efficient to do it that way. I'm not sure.
HESTER: Yeah, I think you're falling more on the Alan Moore side of that line where if you just load up a panel with information, an artist can just take or leave whatever he or she needs to get that panel drawn. It's been very effective to date.
PARKS: Like I said, I'm trying to look at Ed's template a little bit more.
HESTER: Yeah. Because this writing is a freaking scam.
PARKS: [Laughs]
HESTER: We've been penciling and inking so long that getting paid for writing is blowing our minds. Like, "Wow! People are getting paid money for this?"
PARKS: I've written a couple of graphic novels and some other things where there was not a lot of or any money involved. And then the check shows up after you write something, and you go, "Well, look at that! Bonus!"
HESTER: [Laughs] "I didn't even anticipate that that was going to happen! It's like a miracle!" And that's not meant to disparage any writers we need to work with in the future. So getting back to the Tarantula again, do you see this as a launching pad for a larger product that features the Tarantula? Maybe a mini series or a continuation of this "Annual continuity"? Has any discussion taken place on this?
PARKS: Not really yet. I think they've been busy wrapping up production on it. So we haven't had that talk yet. It would be my dream that Chris and I would move ahead with some continuing story. We've set him up in a good place where he's living in his neighborhood in New York, but he has to kind of live under the radar because things have blown up in a bad way. And he's waiting for an invasion from his home gang in Argentina, so there's a lot that's about to happen with him that I think we could follow up on. Of course, if Ed has plans for him in Daredevil that takes precedence, so I need to have that conversation with Ed and the editor Warren Simons.
| |  HESTER: Yeeeeeah...I forgot to tell you. He's getting killed next month in Daredevil. Sorry.
PARKS: He could be! [Laughs]
HESTER: This is just a little aside, but you and I were both in New York a couple weeks ago, and we weren't there very long, but do you feel being there gave you a better idea for the feeling of the city and how to write the city?
PARKS: It did and not how I expected. I've been there before and seen the visual stuff – the water towers on top of buildings and stuff. What I didn't expect was how cleaned up everything has gotten over the last 20 or 30 years. I was walking around on Saturday at about 1:00 am going from one bar to another, and I look up and it says "Hell's Kitchen Laundry."
HESTER: Yeah. We were in Hell's Kitchen at one point.
PARKS: I looked at my friend and said, "Am I walking through Hell's Kitchen at 1:00 am on a Saturday night?" He said, "Yeah." And I said, "Well, sh--...it's not bad. I don't feel any danger whatsoever." It's a part of town I wasn't really in tune with. And I think Ed is more in tune with it. In that first annual, he wrote a whole plot for that one, and one of the subplots for that is that there's a developer buying a building and turning it into million dollar condos in the Kitchen, and Ed wanted to mention that gentrification in the Kitchen is going on. I think he called it the "Yuppification." And that's really happening. You have to think about how that impacts Daredevil's world. Since Frank Miller it's been this crucial thing to have this dark and gritty place that Daredevil is trying to police. In the real world, I think that atmosphere has changed a lot.
HESTER: I think there's an interview with Frank from like 30 years ago where he talks about going through the kitchen with Larry Hama and how they had to fend off a junkie with a switchblade with just like a loaf of bread.
PARKS: If that's true, Larry Hama's the right guy to have with you, I think.
HESTER: Yeah, he could kill somebody with a loaf of bread. One more thing I wanted to ask you was – when you grow up reading these characters and admiring the people that worked on them. When you're working on them, do you ever stop and think, "Wow. Am I really here? Am I really working on a Daredevil story that's going to affect some 13-year-old the way Frank Miller affected me?"
PARKS: Definitely in two ways. For one like you said, every once in a while you're working on it and you go, "Holy sh--, I'm writing Daredevil. I'm putting words in the same mouth that all these other guys have, and even if I'm not doing it a fraction as well as what they did, I'm part of that library which is a very cool thing. Two, it's a little intimidating when you're thinking of Frank Miller and Brubaker, these guys who mean so much to me – am I doing something original? Am I finding my own stamp on it? But you kind of have to trust your vision and hope that some part of you makes it onto the page and you're not regurgitating some of the stuff that you loved so much.
HESTER: I think that's something that eventually you get over. Even if you have a little stage fright, you have to look at even guys you really respect or are in awe of and think to yourself, "I belong here. I can do this."
PARKS: What I cling to is maybe I can't be as good or better than some of those guys, but what I can do is do something that's just me. There is some uniqueness that I can put on the page. You have to cling to that, I think.
HESTER: And besides, I think on your last brush with Daredevil you were inking the armored version of Daredevil. So you sort of have something to make up for, don't you?
PARKS: Oh my God! [Laughs] I don't want disparage anyone else who worked on that comic, but holy cow. If there's low point in Daredevil's career, that's got to be it.
HESTER: Yeah. The motocross armor version.
PARKS: It was bad.
HESTER: They were trying.
PARKS: Yeah. They had the legacy of Frank Miller just hanging over them in the past few years. I think they said, "There's no point trying that. Let's just do something different."
HESTER: All I can say is that I'm excited to see this thing come out. I'm excited to see more of your writing, especially for a wider audience so that Daredevil fans can be exposed to what we all know – that you're a great writer. And I hope there's more Ande Parks Daredevil in the future.
PARKS: Thank you, sir. Me too.
Daredevil: Blood Of The Tarantula is on stands in comic shops this Wednesday.
| |
| | | | |
Share this article
![[Slashdot]](http://slashdot.org/favicon.ico)
![[Digg]](http://digg.com/favicon.ico)
![[Reddit]](http://reddit.com/favicon.ico)
![[del.icio.us]](http://del.icio.us/favicon.ico)
![[Facebook]](http://www.facebook.com/favicon.ico)
![[Technorati]](http://technorati.com/favicon.ico)
![[Google]](http://www.google.com/favicon.ico)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.stumbleupon.com/favicon.ico)
|  |
 | |
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
|  |
| |
|
| |
