Steven Grant is today best known for his Master of the Obvious (MOTO)
column on ComicbookResources.com and his recent run on Marvel's X-
MAN. His past comic book credits include Punisher, The Pope John Paul XXIII
biography and Whisper. In this interview he reveals some info about his
MOTO column, his thoughts on writing comics and more.
Coville:
For a while you seemed to have disappeared from the comic
industry's radar. Then one day you're on CBR and then X-Men, thanks in
part to Warren Ellis. How important has Warren been to your recent career?
Grant:
Oh, projects come and go. I'll go for blocks of time without
seeing print but I'm generally working. I'm friends with
Warren and he puts in the good word for me now and then, but in
terms of my recent work... Warren was completely responsible
for my association with X-MAN. He asked me to do it. I was
more than happy to and I liked his concept a lot. I could have
gone another two or three years on it easily. But Warren had
nothing at all to do with MASTER OF THE OBVIOUS. That was Gail
Simone who put me forward for that. As a matter of fact, I put
Warren together with CBR for his column. He'd been talking
with someone else about doing one and that fell through due to
the insanely stupid terms he was being offered. I mentioned it
to Jonah (who runs CBR) and he asked me to put him in touch
with Warren.
Coville:
You've done a large amount of work outside the comic industry. How
has that helped you as a fiction writer?
Grant:
I don't know that it's helped me at all. Everything's its own
discipline. If nothing else, it has given me points of
comparison that I wouldn't have had otherwise. I'm maybe more
familiar with non-comics structures and dialogue constructions,
but you could say that about any number of comics writers.
Coville:
Do you get more satisfaction writing comics than your work outside
the industry?
Grant:
It depends on the particular project. You get your satisfaction where you
find it. It can be money, it can be one little character bit or dialogue
exchange you get in there, or the pleasure of developing a particular
storyline a particular way. But you should only look for enough
satisfaction to keep you going. I don't think writers should ever be very
satisfied. Satisfied writers don't write. It's really the flaws in work
that keep writers writing, that mar they see they didn't see while they
were doing it, and the desire to try it one more time to get it right.
People who are satisfied with their work don't try to do better work.
Coville:
Are there jobs you take strictly for money satisfaction?
Grant:
The money's never the satisfying part. Staying alive another
week, that's the satisfying part.
Coville:
Reading through your bibliography, I noticed you worked for a wide
variety of publishers. If you had the money, would you self publish
comics?
Grant:
Absolutely, though I'd probably mask it so it wouldn't look that way
to booksellers. And I'd find a partner who knew something about
business and marketing. But it would be lovely to have a situation
where I didn't have to flog ideas to death before I could produce
them, just up and go and get the material out while it was still fresh to
me. That's a big drawback with comics these days, it takes way too long
to get anything in the pipeline. There are moments of inspiration, but
that burns out fairly quickly, and there you are, two years down the line
finally pumping out material you thought of two years earlier instead of
what's burning you up inside at the time. There's really no reason it
should take more than three months from conception to presentation. A
self-publishing gig would give me the ability to do that.
Coville:
I know youre doing something through Platinum Studios. What is it
and how does that work? I know Platinum isn't a 'normal' publisher.
Grant:
I'm not entirely sure, actually. You should really talk to Lee
Nordling or Scott Mitchell Rosenberg about it. Basically, Platinum is a
"broker." They put projects together, largely to secure film rights to
them so they have material to pitch around Hollywood, then find
publishers for it. But until they actually start publication somewhere, it's still
just speculation. Things could change as they adapt to conditions. We'll see.
Coville:
I noticed you're doing a crime comic called CHARLOTTE
SOMETIMES for Fantagraphics/Eros, which is different as Eros is known mainly for porn.
I'm assuming there will be some sex in it or it wouldn't be published there.
Still many established comic writers don't go near porn comics. Why are
you doing it and why do you think other writers don't?
Grant:
I'm doing it for fun, because Gary asked me to, and because a lot of
other writers won't. There's still a lot of stigma attached to porn
in our society, so that doesn't surprise me. I don't have any
particular affection for porn, but I'd never done porn so I was
curious to see what I could do, and it's as much a crime comic as a
porn comic and I want to do crime comics. Gary's giving me the chance to
do a crime comic. I actually go way past most porn in CHARLOTTE
SOMETIMES because, unlike most porn, sex and violence are intimately connected in
it; virtually synonymous, and they're both way over the top. I don't
think porn fans are going to be very comfortable with the sexual content
in the book. Men don't fare very well in it.
Coville:
What can you tell us about your new Whisper: Day X Graphic Novel?
Grant:
The last WHISPER story came out in 1991. This story takes place in
2000, and concerns her being leveraged out of retirement by an FBI
agent who wants her to help him investigate a terrorist movement. It
re-immerses her in the "shadow politics" milieu she spent most of her
series in, as she unravels a plot tracing back half a century. All the
supporting characters are there in very changed situations, but no one
will have to be familiar with WHISPER to get it. I don't think she'll
appear in costume in the novel.
Coville:
Do you think you'll be able to get your old Whisper work back in print?
Grant:
Not likely. I have no idea where the film is. Ideally, I'd hire one
artist to redraw all the scripts, but I don't see that happening either.
I don't have the money and I don't know a publisher who has the
interest.
Coville:
You are one of the few writers that goes into politics with your
writing. Why do you think creators and the industry stay away from
political stories?
Grant:
I'm not sure many of them have any real interest in politics, but
you'd have to ask them. I'm fascinated by politics, but my
background's very political. Campus radicals and all that.
Coville:
Okay this interests me. How did you become a radical, what were you
protesting?
Grant:
I grew up in Madison WI, the Berkeley of the Midwest, in the late 60s and
early 70s. Trying to stop the Vietnam War and social injustice, know
what I mean? It wasn't something you became, it was just in the air then.
Antiwar marches, underground newspapers, that sort of thing. Never
bombed anything.
Coville:
In doing WWF Wrestling Comics for Chaos, the stories seem to go
into fantasy. You ever wonder how a comic about behind the scenes
involving Wrestlers would do?
Grant:
Knowing quite a bit about wrestling behind the scenes, I think it'd be
pretty much like doing a comic about plumbing behind the scenes. There
are occasionally scenarios such as those documented in films like BEYOND
THE MAT and WRESTLING WITH SHADOWS, but for the most part
wrestlers lead fairly ordinary lives. They have wives and kids, they have mortgages,
etc. But the WWF Comics I wrote for Chaos were fiction but pretty much
steered clear of what most people consider fantasy. But those were based
on the ring personae of wrestlers, not on their real selves.
Coville:
I know it's cliche, but do you want to create the great American novel?
Grant:
Oh, sure. But there are so many great American novels out there it
makes my eyes bleed, and there's no money in it. If I could go a year or
two without having to worry about money, I'd be happy to write a Great
American Novel, but I make my living at this, so I can't afford to take a
year or two off. Novels are a lot of work, particularly if they're done
well.
Coville:
You created @venture as an outlet for prose writing for comic
writers. Are you at all worried about getting stories and ideas stolen by
giving your work away for free online?
Grant:
No. Once they're published, regardless of venue, they're published
and entitled to the protections accorded any form of publication.
There's no more concern about theft and plagiarism than if they're
published in PLAYBOY. Web publication doesn't warranty anyone
against getting sued for plagiarism, either way.
Coville:
@venture now has a number of stories by a variety of comic writers.
Do you consider this a success or do you still have a bigger vision of what
the site should be doing?
Grant:
Unfortunately, @VENTURE's been in limbo for the past several months
as my time has been completely eaten up by personal things. I've never been
able to promote the site to my satisfaction, and I want to promote not to
make money off the site but so the writers can benefit from publication of
their work.
Coville:
You've written/writing two stories for @venture, do you want them
both turned into comics?
Grant:
No. If I'd wanted to do them as comics, I'd have done them as comics.
Coville:
You've mentioned on @venture that you have a fetish for the name
Elvis. Why?
Grant:
No, no, I said I DON'T have a fetish for the name Elvis. It just
works well with other words, and, due to Presley, has cultural
connotations that work as jokes. So I use the name periodically.
Coville:
Were you surprised by some submissions to @venture?
Grant:
Not really. Most writers have something unexpected percolating in
them that they have no venue for.
Coville:
You've been doing Master of the Obvious since August 1999, which
is a pretty good run. Do you see yourself stopping anytime soon?
Grant:
I know when it's stopping, if that's what you mean. I've had it
planned from the start. But I'm not saying when.
Coville:
Do you think MOTO helped or hurt you in getting you work in the industry?
Grant:
I don't think it's had any effect on that one way or the other. I
know quite a few highly placed people read it regularly.
Coville:
What MOTO columns did you get the biggest backlash from?
Grant:
Probably the column where I compared the Bush Presidency to the
Luthor Presidency. A lot of conservatives got very upset with that one, pretty
much doubling my hit rate. I wish I had a column like that in me every
week. There have been some columns specifically to do with comics that
raised a ruckus, but I don't recall which ones they were offhand.
Coville:
I can't believe you devoted a whole MOTO column to something as
fanboyish as Thor vs. Hulk. Why on earth did you do it?!?
Grant:
Fanboys read the column too! The reason you can't believe I did it is
because I didn't. Maybe a quarter of the column involved whether Thor
or The Hulk was stronger, and I used it for an anchor for other points.
Besides, there's nothing that isn't worth talking about, if you've got an
angle on it.
Coville:
Recently in MOTO you've been trying to get people to accept Zines
as a replacement term for indy & progressive comics. Why use the word
Zines?
Grant:
It sounds vaguely familiar to most people, yet vaguely unfamiliar at
the same time. It's a word whose meaning can be easily molded to our
purposes, it's simple to say and remember (which is important to
redefining associations) and it doesn't sound like comics or comic book
or graphic entertainment or any number of other terms. And it does have
some connection to us.
Coville:
This was tried before using Comix, do you think you'll be more
successful than they were?
Grant:
Oh, I don't expect to be successful with it. But anything's worth a
try; what do we have to lose? Actually, "comix" as a term for
undergrounds was pretty successful, it only faded because Supreme
Court rulings on obscenity put underground comix out of business.
"Comix" referred to a specific type of product and it didn't take long for
the association to form. Some of them, like FABULOUS FURRY FREAK
BROTHERS, were outselling Marvels at the time. It was attempts to apply "comix" to
things like AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and BATMAN that didn't catch on.
Coville:
Do you think zine should replace the term Graphic Novel?
Grant:
No, graphic novel sums itself up pretty well. But you can't
call periodical publications graphic novels.
Coville:
Warren Ellis is putting his Come in Alone in print, do you see that
happening with MOTO?
Grant:
Larry Young and I are sorting that out right now. There will
probably be two MOTO collections.
Coville:
What is Paper Movies website going to be about?
Grant:
It's going to launch a reinterpretation of the comics medium.
Coville:
Where did you come up with the name Paper Movies?
Grant:
I thought about how most people would best respond to comic books
and decided the best way to pitch them was to tie them into something people
were already familiar with and understood: movies. Everyone watches
movies. It's my guess that designing comics that approximate that
experience is the best way to draw a new audience to the medium. Hence
Paper Movies: movies you can read anywhere.
Coville:
Isn't Paper Movies as a term for comics an oxymoron? Movies are
called that because they are moving pictures. Comic pictures don't
actually move.
Grant:
Neither do movies. Movement in movies is an illusion, a trick of
perception. Comics require a more conscious conspiracy between
creator and reader to generate an illusion of movement, but the basic
principle isn't all that different. It's the story that moves the movie
and the comic book along, not the mechanicals.
Coville:
How will your Delphi forum called Graphic Violence be different
than Warren Ellis's forum?
Grant:
That's something only time will tell. Our focus will be a little
different, though.
