Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1993 23:39:40 CDT From: Bill Hayes <[IANR 012] at [UNLVM.UNL.EDU]> Subject: Volume 3 Issue 37 Part 3 September 14, 1993 The Comics List Weekly Vol. 3 No. 37 This Week: Interview : Steve Gerber - The subject is SLUDGE +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Date: 10 Sep 93 06:38:12 EDT From: Steve Gerber <[72267 3332] at [CompuServe.COM]> Subject: Volume 3 Issue 36 Part 3 Bill, For anyone who's interested, here's the text of an interview I did with Shaun McLaughlin for the MALIBU SUN. The subject is SLUDGE... ---------------------------------------------- No Mucking About Steve Gerber Talks About SLUDGE Steve Gerber began writing comics for Marvel in the 1970's. When asked what credits he'd like listed, he says: "Well, of course, there's the Duck..." by which he means his legendary creation Howard The Duck. He also lists Foolkiller, Legion of Night, Suburban Jersey Ninja She-Devils, Exiles for the Ultraverse and "...lots of other comic work, and some TV stuff." In this interview he talks about Sludge, a new title for the Ultraverse. Shaun McLaughlin: What brought you to Sludge? Steve Gerber: Actually, Sludge came to me, as a flash out of the blue. It was at the first Ultraverse conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, during one of several very long evening sessions. We had been discussing all kinds of concepts. We had taken a break and I had strolled out of the conference room, onto a walkway overlooking the hotel swimming pool and the beautiful Arizona desert. It was a warm night, not muggy at all. It was just beautiful. I was standing there having a cigarette, thinking about the discussions, and the entire concept for Sludge--including the name--just hit me out of nowhere. It was one of those moments when you want to shout, "Eureka!" The weird thing is, there was nothing even vaguely reminiscent of sludge anywhere in my field of vision. I mean, I was looking at cactuses, on a night without even a drop of humidity, and no city ambiance anywhere. Nothing to suggest New York. Nothing to suggest a sewer. It's extremely rare that something like this happens to me. In fact, the last time this happened to me--possibly the only other time--was when I came up with Howard the Duck. Some mental switch just clicks of its own volition, and suddenly you find yourself with this idiotic grin on your face, and you've got a name, a concept, a character, a story where there was nothing at all before. Mac: Who is Sludge? Gerber: Sludge was a police detective by the name of Frank Hoag who had, shall we say, certain ethical problems prior to his transformation. He was on the take from the mob and had done them various favors, mostly just looking the other way occasionally, or tipping them in advance to when a bust was going down. Not the kind of thing where anybody would get hurt, except people who, by Hoag's rationalization, were already destroying themselves. Then, the mob asked him a favor he was unwilling to do. They wanted him to kill another cop. He refused and got shot. The unusual circumstances of the shooting, combined with his having been dumped into a sewer afterward, turned him into something other than a policeman. Mac: Or even a human being? Gerber: Yes and no. Unlike a lot of other muck-monster type characters, Sludge is flesh and blood under all the gunk. If he gets shot, he gets hurt. For reasons we'll explain eventually, he heals very quickly, but there's still something almost human under all that stuff. Mac: What are Sludge's powers? Gerber: For now, let's just say he's got one extremely grotesque power in addition to his physical strength. I'd rather not give it away just yet. I want it to come as a shock to the people who read this book. Mac: Here's a question that's in a lot of people's minds: What's different about Sludge from the other muck-monster you worked on? Gerber: Well, let's not be coy about it. Let's just say "Man-Thing." This is a question that a lot of people have asked. They'll look at the character and ask: "Is this your new version of Man-Thing?" Then they'll ask: "What other 'thing' is this like? Is it like Swamp Thing? Is it like The Thing thing?" And the answer is "no" to all. Sludge is radically different from Man-Thing. I don't want to give too much of the story away, but we can discuss what Sludge isn't. He's not an empathic creature. He's not tied to any particular locale. He's not mindless. He has nothing to do with swamps. And he is not in any way magical. Those are some pretty striking differences to begin with. And unlike Ben Grimm, Sludge is not a guy you could dress in a tux and introduce into polite society. He smells really bad. Mac: What challenges you about Sludge? Gerber: Well, the single biggest challenge at first relates to the question you just asked. I had to make a conscious decision not to waste time and energy thinking about how to make Sludge different from Man-Thing. I knew the readers would be scouring the book for similarities, but I also knew the way to avoid those similarities was simply to let Sludge become itself. The nicest compliment I've gotten on the book so far came from Chris Ulm, who remarked on how little I seemed to be relying on the usual comic-book monster cliches. You know, your basic pathetic man-beast--your shambling, mindless mockery of a man, who slinks around the shadows and gets caught in the rain all the time to simulate tears. It's very true that Sludge doesn't strip mine that same old lode again, but not because I made a big effort to avoid it. All I really did was write Sludge as Sludge, as opposed to writing him as "Not-Man-Thing." I was actually surprised when Chris pointed out the absence of those elements, because I hadn't been thinking about their presence or absence. Mac: What's exciting about Sludge to you? Gerber: All kinds of things. The one thing the book does have in common with my version of Man-Thing is that it's a terrific vehicle for telling stories about real people. In many ways, Sludge is the most earthbound of the Ultraverse books. It takes place on and below the streets of New York, and the array of characters available to us is just astonishing. We've only begun to scratch the surface. Sludge is also a nice vehicle for sideways social commentary, because Sludge himself makes such a great foil for humanity's foibles. I'm also excited about it just because of what the book looks like. Aaron Lopresti and Gary Martin are doing a fabulous job on it. It's going to be a stunning book visually. Mac: The supporting cast is always important in your books. Are there any characters that we'll be seeing a lot of? Gerber: There are, but we're taking time and letting them develop naturally. There are a couple of characters that have already made very minor appearances. The policeman that Hoag was supposed to kill shows up in the second issue. An urban assassin named Bloodstorm also appears in the second issue. There's a medical examiner named Agnes Trahern. Some of these characters will reappear in other contexts later, along with other characters from Hoag's past. I mean, he had a life before all this happened to him--and he remembers it, which is yet another difference from Man-Thing. One of the things I didn't want to do with this book, something that's always struck me as very artificial, was to create an entire supporting cast at the same time the character was created. We've all read books that were constructed that way. It's like: "Here is our character module. Here is our supporting cast module. Here is our location module. Put them all together--snap-snap-snap, like Lego blocks--and here is our franchise." I really hate that. I want the readers to meet these people and get to know them as time goes on. I want to get to know them that way myself. Almost all the characters I created at Marvel that were memorable in any way--Howard the Duck, Richard Rory, Wundarr, several others--wandered in as relatively minor players in a particular story and grew into more than that. I'm hoping the cast of Sludge is going to develop the same way. Mac: Sludge always seems like there's something on the tip of his tongue. Gerber: That happens to him constantly. As I said, he's not mindless, but he's sort of confused. His brain functions are, literally and figuratively, somewhat mucked-up. One of the more interesting things about him is that he's conscious of that, and portions of the stories are told from his perspective, in his internal dialogue. It lends a whole different perspective to the story. Mac: Are there going to be recurring villains? Gerber: Same answer as the supporting cast. There probably will be, but I have no idea who they are yet. Mac: The line between the good guys and the bad guys doesn't seem to be very strictly drawn. Is this something you're going to continue to explore? Gerber: It is. Sludge is probably the darkest, and most morally ambiguous, of the Ultraverse titles. In some stories, the line is very clearly drawn between the good guys and the bad guys. In others, it's very difficult to tell who is which and where your sympathies belong. Two readers could come to completely different conclusions about one character or another. In other words, the story resembles life. Those are the kinds of characters and situations I like to explore. Mac: How does Sludge get involved in the different stories? Gerber: Living on, or under, the streets of New York has a way of getting anyone involved. There are a quarter-million or so dramas in progress on the streets at any given moment. Sludge's involvement isn't always accidental or coincidental, though. He still has the street instincts of a New York cop, even if he can't always interpret them with perfect clarity. He can choose to involve himself in a situation if it catches his interest or piques his curiosity. Mac: Is there any one thing or combination of things that makes an interesting hero to you? Gerber: Sure. A highly individualistic point of view. A way of looking at the world that is different from other people's. For me, that's the single most important attribute of a lead character. Mac: How do you like working with penciller Aaron Lopresti? Gerber: I'm really impressed with Aaron. He's been great. He's a really intelligent guy, with a strong background in film as well as comics. And he's willing to take criticism. Unlike myself. (Laughter). We argue a lot, but it's a very productive tension. Mac: Has Aaron brought out anything in the book that you didn't originally see? Gerber: He really has. His initial drawing of Sludge gave me a whole different way of looking at the character. I kept his original pin-up of the character right at my desk so that I could look at it as I was writing. In a way, that drawing brought Sludge to life for me. I'd written a description of the character, but Aaron's drawing let me look Sludge in the eye, as it were. I know this sounds strange, but there were things I could see in the character's face that I couldn't extrapolate from my own verbal description. Incidentally, while we're discussing the art, we should mention that Aaron is working very closely with Gary Martin, who's inking the book. They really are a team, a collaboration, in the truest sense on Sludge, not just two artists that a company happened to assign to a title. And it shows. They've forged a single, unified style for the book. Mac: Is the Ultraverse giving you chances to do things you've never done before? Gerber: For me, it's almost more a case of having found the right atmosphere to do what I do best again. Chris Ulm has been absolutely terrific about giving me free rein to develop both Exiles and Sludge in the way I think best. All the best work I've done in comics was done either when I was editing myself, or when I was working with an editor who said: "Just go and do it. Get it in on time and we'll talk about it later." Those laissez-faire editors have generally made the more important editorial contributions to my work, too, because the atmosphere of mutual respect allowed me to bounce ideas off them when I did get lost or stuck. Chris and the rest of the Malibu staff have been giving me the autonomy I need to do the kind of stuff that I do best. Mac: You satisfied a lot of people doing that. Gerber: Satisfying editors and readers is relatively easy if you have the freedom to satisfy yourself. On my Ultraverse books, I've been able to sit back and write a story that interests me. That has to be my first priority, because when I'm alone with the computer, I'm the only audience I've got to work with. It's pointless to try to second-guess the market. You can go out of your mind that way. I work on the assumption that if a story interests me, there's a decent chance it's going to interest other people. The whole Sludge series is an example of how this works. Bolt from the blue. No market testing. No asking ourselves if muck-monsters are selling this year. And as it turns out, Sludge seems to have aroused the interest of the fans, the retailers, the distributors--almost everybody. I've been told it's one of the most eagerly-anticipated Ultraverse titles, although I can't allow myself to think about that, either. Mac: What's ahead for you? Gerber: Exiles, Sludge, and one strip for Image are what I'm concentrating on. I don't want to spread myself too thin. I like these books, and I really want to concentrate on making them the best I can. Sludge #1 ships in October. Shaun McLaughlin is the former Aquaman scribe and Malibu's cub reporter. He is hoping to someday move up in the world and get one of those nifty press passes he can stick in the band of his fedora. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- End part 3 more to follow...