rascal_father
16-06-2005, 08:53 AM
(Long Read Alert)
As Geoff Johns writes the upcoming Infinite Crisis series that spans the entire DCU and touches essentially every character, consider, for a moment, the work involved other than the writing.
In preparation for Crisis, Johns has to essentially follow every character in the DCU, every storyline leading to Crisis, know their starting position, both role and endpoint in Crisis, and have a pitch-perfect working familiarity with them so they’ll remain true to their own voice within the pages of Crisis.
Almost sounds like a whole other job, doesn’t it?
Well, it is.
Though neither the writer nor DC haven’t officially given Johns a title, the writer has entered into an editorial/consulting agreement with DC through Crisis, which is seeing Johns take a more active role in helping to shepherd the characters of the DCU both into the coming Crisis, and out through the end, seven months later.
DC’s Dan DiDio explained: “The idea of working on Infinite Crisis, and being able to craft such a complex maxiseries for us was daunting at best. Geoff was spending a lot of time tracking the four miniseries, following the characters, and seeing how they were all coming into it.
"But more importantly, because we wanted to make sure that Infinite Crisis clearly established a lot of jump-on points for new series and new characters, Geoff was also very closely involved with seeing what we’d be doing with the characters following Crisis, and where they’d need to be by the end. So, he was reading a lot of material prior to things, and was responsible for a lot of the material that would be coming out of it as well.
“Geoff, being Geoff, he was more than willing to do this on his own time, but from my standpoint, I felt that we wanted to do the right and fair thing, so I wanted to craft an agreement that we could compensate him for the time and energy he was putting in to reading the new material, and offering suggestions on the best way to come in and out of Crisis. For me, it allowed us to have someone who was following everything that was going on in the DC Universe in the sense of the overview and how the pieces were fitting together, and making sure we didn’t have any redundancies in stories or any duplication of ideas.
"When you have so many characters and so many things trying to happen at the same time, your biggest fear is that all your creators will come up with the same idea at the same time, which would rob it of its uniqueness. This is one way that we can work and coordinate things so that each character and each story and each series will have its own level of individuality and a lot of that individuality and personality of the series will be coming out of Crisis.”
That’s the high-falootin’ side of things, but as for the nitty gritty? Johns gets to talk comics with a lot of people.
“The best thing about comic books is that I love working with people – I love talking with other creators and the editors at DC about what they want to do and what they’ve got planned, and Dan Didio has been an incredible leader” Johns said.
“So I’ve been talking to everyone - Bill Willingham (ask him about the turkey farm), Dave Gibbons, Gail Simone, Darwyn Cooke, Allan Heinberg, Judd Winick, Keith Giffen (yeah, wait until you see what he’s got planned), Jeph Loeb, Mark Verheiden, Stuart Moore, Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Will Pfiefer, Marc Anderyko and so many more – all these great, talented writers that are in the DCU right now.
"And the editorial staff of the DCU like Eddie Berganza, Peter Tomasi, Steve Wacker, Joan “Queen of the OMACs” Hiltey, Matt Idelson, Joey Cavalieri, Mike Carlin, Nachie Castro and the rest. I get to pick their brains and talk to them about what they want to do and what they have planned. I also get to work with a bunch of other writers who are involved with stuff after Crisis as well, there’s some brilliant ideas from Grant Morrison and another writer who’ll be doing a major book in the DCU that’ll be unreal, but no one can really talk about them yet.
"In doing this, I’m able to get a feeling for all these books and what they have coming after Crisis, and see where every book is going to be in order to make Crisis an event where things that happen actually affect the characters and get them to a place where the creators want them.
"I also have to single out Greg Rucka, who's just been an unreal partner through all of this, and is shouldering a huge part of the work on going into and coming out of Crisis, and he's been a great support in all of this. He and I have had a few New York work-weeks, and his work and input have just been integral to Crisis, both in the lead up and coming out of it.
“I guess, in the end, this is all just an expansion of what I am doing with Crisis. I really need to know what everyone wants to do and where everyone is going in order to make Crisis an event that matters. It’s a pretty massive undertaking and we’ve got one shot and we have to do this together.”
As DiDio further explained, Johns isn’t playing continuity cop, but he is detail oriented, tracking the series can characters leading up to Crisis, allowing him to, according to DiDio, ultimately give Infinite Crisis a much more organic feel. “From my vantage point, it’s another set of eyes to help wrangle this beast that we’re trying to control.”
It’s the details, Johns said, that are contributing to the speed at which he’s hitting the scripts for the series.
“Compared to a regular script, it’s taking me at least – not counting the plotting and the phone calls – at least a month to write a script,” Johns said. “I have to go slowly and carefully. For example, if Vril Dox appears in Adam Strange and Rann-Thanagar War, and has a certain persona and a new M.O. in those appearances, I’ve got to be aware of that, and talk to Dave Gibbons and see if he has plans for Vril Dox in his next book, what he’s going to do, what L.E.G.I.O.N.’s new role is going to be, etc. I need to know everything even if he’s only got three lines. They can’t just appear randomly.
"When Animal Man and Fire and Damage show up, they have to have a specific reason to be there, they have to be there for the sake of story not just appearance, otherwise they’re not going to be in it (though those three definitely are).
Logistically, Johns’ new…or revised relationship with DC has him occasionally flying from his office in California to DC’s New York offices for week-long stints to meet with both other writers and editors.
“We get to sit down and go through what’s going on, and how everything is flowing, while at the same time, I’m working on more details in the script, just to keep it all cohesive,” Johns said. “It’s hard to do something like this over the phone or via e-mail. This way, we’re face to face, and we can go out on tangents, and just cover what we think is working, what’s not working, and what they want to see happen. To come to New York and have a crash course in where things are and get caught up just makes the job a hell of a lot easier.”
DiDio said. “The way it works for me is that Geoff is helping me to coordinate the overview and scope, and then I’m working with the editors, and the editors are working the details with the writers and artists. It really doesn’t break the structure of how we do business; it’s just another voice, and another place that I can turn to for help. Geoff being here in this capacity is to allow me to do my job better.”
Johns: “It’s like a conversation – I’m talking to creators about what we want to do with characters in Crisis. It’s like being in the middle of a giant pitch room where I get to bounce ideas and hear other ideas from all the creators working in the DC Universe. It’s so cool to hear all of these ideas and be in the middle of it.
"Again, the main motivation for this is to make Crisis as important to the DC Universe as possible, while making it as big as possible and as consistent as possible. It’s not all about continuity as much as it is about consistency – we want the characters across the DCU to act in a consistent manner.
"And while I’ve been talking most about working with Dan and the other creators, I do have to mention that [DC President and Publisher] Paul Levitz has been integral in all of this as well, and has such an incredible understanding of what the DCU is. He's a guy who brings amazing ideas to the table as well. He loves these characters as much as anybody else, and is giving us a lot of direction as we move along."
And the end result of all the flights, all the meetings, all the conversations, and all the details?
“It means that Crisis is going to be a better story for it,” Johns said. “It will be an event that will actually track with all of the characters and actually mean something. And the, with ‘One Year Later…’ coming right out of Crisis, it will give all of us an opportunity to implement our own ideas and new directions.
"Yeah, everything is kind of tied together headed into Crisis, but afterwards, I truly think 2006 is going to be the best year DC’s had creatively in a long, long time. At the end of the day though, Crisis will be the result of working with every single writer and editor in the DCU and sharing the passion for these heroes and villains who are, in my opinion, the greatest characters in comics. It’s all about a team effort to make Wednesday kick ass.”
As Geoff Johns writes the upcoming Infinite Crisis series that spans the entire DCU and touches essentially every character, consider, for a moment, the work involved other than the writing.
In preparation for Crisis, Johns has to essentially follow every character in the DCU, every storyline leading to Crisis, know their starting position, both role and endpoint in Crisis, and have a pitch-perfect working familiarity with them so they’ll remain true to their own voice within the pages of Crisis.
Almost sounds like a whole other job, doesn’t it?
Well, it is.
Though neither the writer nor DC haven’t officially given Johns a title, the writer has entered into an editorial/consulting agreement with DC through Crisis, which is seeing Johns take a more active role in helping to shepherd the characters of the DCU both into the coming Crisis, and out through the end, seven months later.
DC’s Dan DiDio explained: “The idea of working on Infinite Crisis, and being able to craft such a complex maxiseries for us was daunting at best. Geoff was spending a lot of time tracking the four miniseries, following the characters, and seeing how they were all coming into it.
"But more importantly, because we wanted to make sure that Infinite Crisis clearly established a lot of jump-on points for new series and new characters, Geoff was also very closely involved with seeing what we’d be doing with the characters following Crisis, and where they’d need to be by the end. So, he was reading a lot of material prior to things, and was responsible for a lot of the material that would be coming out of it as well.
“Geoff, being Geoff, he was more than willing to do this on his own time, but from my standpoint, I felt that we wanted to do the right and fair thing, so I wanted to craft an agreement that we could compensate him for the time and energy he was putting in to reading the new material, and offering suggestions on the best way to come in and out of Crisis. For me, it allowed us to have someone who was following everything that was going on in the DC Universe in the sense of the overview and how the pieces were fitting together, and making sure we didn’t have any redundancies in stories or any duplication of ideas.
"When you have so many characters and so many things trying to happen at the same time, your biggest fear is that all your creators will come up with the same idea at the same time, which would rob it of its uniqueness. This is one way that we can work and coordinate things so that each character and each story and each series will have its own level of individuality and a lot of that individuality and personality of the series will be coming out of Crisis.”
That’s the high-falootin’ side of things, but as for the nitty gritty? Johns gets to talk comics with a lot of people.
“The best thing about comic books is that I love working with people – I love talking with other creators and the editors at DC about what they want to do and what they’ve got planned, and Dan Didio has been an incredible leader” Johns said.
“So I’ve been talking to everyone - Bill Willingham (ask him about the turkey farm), Dave Gibbons, Gail Simone, Darwyn Cooke, Allan Heinberg, Judd Winick, Keith Giffen (yeah, wait until you see what he’s got planned), Jeph Loeb, Mark Verheiden, Stuart Moore, Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Will Pfiefer, Marc Anderyko and so many more – all these great, talented writers that are in the DCU right now.
"And the editorial staff of the DCU like Eddie Berganza, Peter Tomasi, Steve Wacker, Joan “Queen of the OMACs” Hiltey, Matt Idelson, Joey Cavalieri, Mike Carlin, Nachie Castro and the rest. I get to pick their brains and talk to them about what they want to do and what they have planned. I also get to work with a bunch of other writers who are involved with stuff after Crisis as well, there’s some brilliant ideas from Grant Morrison and another writer who’ll be doing a major book in the DCU that’ll be unreal, but no one can really talk about them yet.
"In doing this, I’m able to get a feeling for all these books and what they have coming after Crisis, and see where every book is going to be in order to make Crisis an event where things that happen actually affect the characters and get them to a place where the creators want them.
"I also have to single out Greg Rucka, who's just been an unreal partner through all of this, and is shouldering a huge part of the work on going into and coming out of Crisis, and he's been a great support in all of this. He and I have had a few New York work-weeks, and his work and input have just been integral to Crisis, both in the lead up and coming out of it.
“I guess, in the end, this is all just an expansion of what I am doing with Crisis. I really need to know what everyone wants to do and where everyone is going in order to make Crisis an event that matters. It’s a pretty massive undertaking and we’ve got one shot and we have to do this together.”
As DiDio further explained, Johns isn’t playing continuity cop, but he is detail oriented, tracking the series can characters leading up to Crisis, allowing him to, according to DiDio, ultimately give Infinite Crisis a much more organic feel. “From my vantage point, it’s another set of eyes to help wrangle this beast that we’re trying to control.”
It’s the details, Johns said, that are contributing to the speed at which he’s hitting the scripts for the series.
“Compared to a regular script, it’s taking me at least – not counting the plotting and the phone calls – at least a month to write a script,” Johns said. “I have to go slowly and carefully. For example, if Vril Dox appears in Adam Strange and Rann-Thanagar War, and has a certain persona and a new M.O. in those appearances, I’ve got to be aware of that, and talk to Dave Gibbons and see if he has plans for Vril Dox in his next book, what he’s going to do, what L.E.G.I.O.N.’s new role is going to be, etc. I need to know everything even if he’s only got three lines. They can’t just appear randomly.
"When Animal Man and Fire and Damage show up, they have to have a specific reason to be there, they have to be there for the sake of story not just appearance, otherwise they’re not going to be in it (though those three definitely are).
Logistically, Johns’ new…or revised relationship with DC has him occasionally flying from his office in California to DC’s New York offices for week-long stints to meet with both other writers and editors.
“We get to sit down and go through what’s going on, and how everything is flowing, while at the same time, I’m working on more details in the script, just to keep it all cohesive,” Johns said. “It’s hard to do something like this over the phone or via e-mail. This way, we’re face to face, and we can go out on tangents, and just cover what we think is working, what’s not working, and what they want to see happen. To come to New York and have a crash course in where things are and get caught up just makes the job a hell of a lot easier.”
DiDio said. “The way it works for me is that Geoff is helping me to coordinate the overview and scope, and then I’m working with the editors, and the editors are working the details with the writers and artists. It really doesn’t break the structure of how we do business; it’s just another voice, and another place that I can turn to for help. Geoff being here in this capacity is to allow me to do my job better.”
Johns: “It’s like a conversation – I’m talking to creators about what we want to do with characters in Crisis. It’s like being in the middle of a giant pitch room where I get to bounce ideas and hear other ideas from all the creators working in the DC Universe. It’s so cool to hear all of these ideas and be in the middle of it.
"Again, the main motivation for this is to make Crisis as important to the DC Universe as possible, while making it as big as possible and as consistent as possible. It’s not all about continuity as much as it is about consistency – we want the characters across the DCU to act in a consistent manner.
"And while I’ve been talking most about working with Dan and the other creators, I do have to mention that [DC President and Publisher] Paul Levitz has been integral in all of this as well, and has such an incredible understanding of what the DCU is. He's a guy who brings amazing ideas to the table as well. He loves these characters as much as anybody else, and is giving us a lot of direction as we move along."
And the end result of all the flights, all the meetings, all the conversations, and all the details?
“It means that Crisis is going to be a better story for it,” Johns said. “It will be an event that will actually track with all of the characters and actually mean something. And the, with ‘One Year Later…’ coming right out of Crisis, it will give all of us an opportunity to implement our own ideas and new directions.
"Yeah, everything is kind of tied together headed into Crisis, but afterwards, I truly think 2006 is going to be the best year DC’s had creatively in a long, long time. At the end of the day though, Crisis will be the result of working with every single writer and editor in the DCU and sharing the passion for these heroes and villains who are, in my opinion, the greatest characters in comics. It’s all about a team effort to make Wednesday kick ass.”