 COMICS |  | [TOP COW SPOTLIGHT:] 'GENIUS' | | Writer Marc Bernardin unveils the brilliance of his latest project 'Genius,' the latest Top Cow Pilot Season 2008 book | | | By Kevin Mahadeo | | Posted 6/17/2008 | |  | | ![[TOP COW SPOTLIGHT:] 'GENIUS'](http://ep.yimg.com/ip/I/wizarduniverse_2058_1869146960) You don't need to be a brainiac to see the appeal of Top Cow's latest Pilot Season book Genius. With political undertones, intense action and poignant storytelling, the work speaks for itself.
Pilot Season represents a series of one-shots released by Top Cow—two a month over a three month period. Once the final book hits, readers vote online for their favorites and the top two move from pilot books to full-fledged series. Last year, Pilot Season contained books starring some of the company's most popular characters, including Ripclaw, Angelus, and Necromancer. In the end, former Cyberforce members Cyblade and Velocity ran off with the win.
This year, Top Cow lets the creators run free by featuring completely creator-originated titles. Last month saw the release of the first two books—Twilight Guardian and Lady Pendragon. This month, two fittingly titled books hit the stands: Genius and Alibi.
We talked with Genius writer Marc Bernardin about his latest one shot and about his brief excursion into the land of rock with The Love Rhinos.
Basic start off Marc, can you tell us a little about the book?
BERNARDIN: The book comes from the idea that every generation gets its own crazy, savant military genius—Hannibal, Alexander, Hitler, Patton, all those guys. What if our generation's military genius was not a West Point grad, was not part of the system, did not come from the place you'd expect? What if she's a 17-year-old kid who grew up in South Central LA and had her fill of—what seemed to her—wanton police brutality and gang violence and everybody she knew gunning for everyone else she knew. She uses her god given talent to lash out and correct what she thought was the biggest slight—which was "the man." She essentially unites the warring factions and rivalries and declares war on the LAPD.
How'd you come up with the idea? Are you a big history buff?
BERNARDIN: Part of it was that I'm a sucker for History Channel and Discovery Channel documentaries. I could spend every Sunday, all Sunday just watching that stuff. There were two things I saw, probably on the same day. One was this documentary on Alexander the Great, who was 22 years old by the time he conquered most of the known world. Then, this other documentary on militias and hate crimes and hate crime groups. One of the guys they talked to was this guy in the middle of nowhere with all of his buddies and a whole bunch of guns training. Somebody asked him what he was training for, and he said, "If you look at LA and those gangs, these are people who are under fire every day. They've all held guns. They've all fired guns. They've all shot people. They're tested under battle and we're not. If they ever got their s--t together, we need to be ready." I saw that and thought, "Huh. That's interesting. What if somebody managed to do exactly what that guy was afraid of? What if somebody managed to lead those people?" | | 
In that respect, what can you say about the girl who will be leading them?
BERNARDIN: It's a young girl named Destiny, who grew up in South Central. Her father skipped town. Her mother was killed in a drug bust. She's got some axes to grind, needless to say, but she's a little too smart for this to be entirely personal. As we will get into it—provided the voters of Pilot Season decide they want to see more—we'll get into her backstory and where she comes from and how she skirted the authorities and school system to hide her gifts knowing that if she blipped on the radar she would be taken out of there. She'd be shipped off out of her comfort zone, out of her neighborhood, out of the womb of that environment where despite of what it took from her, she still loves it. She's a reluctant leader. She doesn't really want to be doing this, but she realizes this is what she's built for. This is her destiny. Huh. Wonder where her name came from?
[Laughs] It's almost as if it was planned that way.
BERNARDIN: And [co-writer] Adam [Freeman] has been into music his entire life, so he's big into the idea of a prodigy. What if this is your gift and you don't want it? Do you hide it? Do you ignore it? Do you turn your back on it? Do you lead it or does it lead you?
How did you get involved in this project? Are you a comic book fan?
BERNARDIN: This is the long version of the story, but I started up Entertainment Weekly's comic coverage about three or four years ago and would head out to San Diego and meet all these people. Every year I'd go out there, and as our comic coverage was taking hold, I would get all these questions like, "Hey, you're a pretty decent writer and you know comic books. You clearly love them. Did you ever think about writing them?" And I would say, "Yes. Every day since I was about 12. But as long as I'm covering them, I can't write them." The conflict of interest was just too high and timing—the paragon of journalistic integrity—it was just not an option. But, as time went on and the comic coverage was growing roots and becoming solid and firm, I was like, "Maybe I can pass this off to somebody and chase this dream down before I get too old to do it." So I called up Larry Young, who I met my first time out in San Diego and was the dude who kept on asking me every year, and I said that I'm ready. He told me to write me something. I asked if he wanted to see outlines or pitches, and he said that he trusted me to just write something. So Adam—who I've known since fifth grade. We went to elementary school together and high school and different colleges, but we were in a crappy band together and the whole nine yards—but he had the same dream. He ended up working in TV and I ended up in magazines, but it was always, "Hey, it'd be awesome if we get to do this." We sat down and came up with Monster Attack Network, which was our first graphic novel that came out through AiT/Planet Lar. Over time, while still attending San Diego, I met Rob Levin at Top Cow and pitched him a bunch of stuff. He was making waves about diversifying the Top Cow brand and changing the Top Cow image, so he was looking for stuff. We pitched him a bunch of stuff and one of them was Genius. He said, "Man. That's something. I don't know what it is yet, and it's a bit of a hard sell because it's political and racial and there's a lot of things marketplace-wise that are going against this book. But I think it's a really strong idea and if the execution is as strong as the ideas, then we've really got something." So, we talked about it for a while, and he said that he couldn't get it as a six-issue miniseries, but he can get in Pilot Season. | |  Not to digress, but you said it, so I have to ask. What was the name of the band you were in with Adam?
BERNARDIN: [Laughs] The name of the band was The Love Rhinos, which was totally stolen wholesale from a Bloom County strip where Opus and Bill and the other guys were in a band, and I think their first song was The Love Rhinos. So, we totally just swiped that.
What did you play?
BERNARDIN: I was the lead singer, which will tell you right away just how bad this band was. [Laughs] If I'm the dude who they found to sing, then we didn't have much hope. It was a high school into college band and it was like, "Hey. Let's make some noise." It was like Living Color, Bad Brains and Red Hot Chili Peppers all rolled up in this awful stew that we managed to still convince people to go see.
You and Adam still together and play sometimes?
BERNARDIN: It's been a while because he's out in LA and I'm still on the East Coast, but we still have these desires to get the band back together. And now that we have kids its like, "Let's let daddy make a fool out of himself."
Well, if anything, you can make a comic book about a band called The Love Rhinos.
BERNARDIN: [Laughs] Totally. And send Berkeley Breathed [creator of Bloom County] the required payment after besmirching his good name.
[Laughs] Attempting to go back on topic, you said you started the comic coverage for EW. So, you're into comics yourself then?
BERNARDIN: Yeah. Huge into comics. It's been the constant since I was 10 or so, with a brief period off in the late 90s when Marvel went crazy with covers and swimsuit issues...
To be fair, those swimsuit issues were pretty awesome.
BERNARDIN: For a 16 year old, sure, they were great. But I didn't have that much money anymore. I think it was during that crazy X-Men crossover—X-tinction Agenda or something. I was getting my Marvel comics for free at that point, and I still couldn't read them. They just started pilling up. So, I just stopped reading for a good five years at that point. Then when I got to EW and started having a slightly more liberal expense account, I gave it a shot again. | |  What did you first go buy once you realized you could get back into comics?
BERNARDIN: I think it was just going back into comic book stores again, which I hadn't been into in forever. Smelling the smells I had forgotten. It's totally sense memory. "Oh. That's what it was. Right." That moldy, newspaper smell. And heavy body odor. And the sound of heavy rock that's not playing very loud but enough to piss you off on the loud speakers. It's what I imagine alcoholics must feel like when they go back into a bar after 10 years. They don't even have to have a drink. Just that this place feels like home.
[Laughs] Wow. I don't know how to move on from alcoholics.
BERNARDIN: [Laughs] Had to get my fix, man.
Alright, as the usual closer, why should people vote for this comic?
BERNARDIN: Whenever you hear people complain that they're tired of what comics have to offer, this isn't that. If you say that you want something different out of comics, then this is your chance to get out there and make it happen. Take a shot. What's the worst that could happen? You spend 15 minutes to read 22 pages about something you wouldn't have gotten anywhere else that month. If you want to know if a 17-year-old girl can actually take on the LAPD and win, then you need to vote.
I'm sure people definitely want to see that. I mean, the LAPD does have a pretty bad rep.
BERNARDIN: [Laughs] They do. But I don't want to make this out to be like Ice T. This isn't Cop Killer. I think it's a balanced story in that you understand where she's coming from, you understand that there's a price that she's paying for what she's doing. There's a slightly even keel to the book provided that you come to it with open arms, despite the fact that the first page shows a police officer getting his chest blown out. I think that you'll understand where she's coming from, you'll understand where the LAPD is coming from and you'll understand that this is an untamable situation for everyone. Harsh times call for harsh measures.
Click here to check out our preview of Pilot Season: Genius #1! | | | | | |
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