AICN COMICS: Q&@ is our new semi-weekly interview column where some of your favorite @$$Holes interview comic bookdom’s biggest, brightest, newest, and oldest stars. Enjoy this latest in-depth interview filled with @$$y goodness and be sure to join the rest of your favorite @$$Holes for their opinions on the weekly pull every Wednesday with AICN COMICS REVIEWS!
@’s by Artist/Writer Phil Hester!
Hey folks, Ambush Bug here with another interview I took at this year’s Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2). This time around, I sit down with uber-talented artist/writer Phil Hester. Here’s what Mr. Hester had to say as we sat in the Artist’s Alley of the con.AMBUSH BUG (BUG): So how do you like the show so far?
PHIL HESTER (PH): It’s sort of destroying me. I mean it’s fun and everything, but you know I did a record number of panels today and I’ve been at my table sketching all day. It’s really killing me, but you know that’s why I come to these things.
BUG: So tell me a little bit about what you are going to be working on for Top Cow.
PH: At Top Cow I write THE DARKNESS and I’m sort of moving into my third year on that and it’s been like a…I’m sort of moving into my last act with the character and I’ve been trying to transform him a little bit, because you can’t just have an unrepentant asshole as a main character. It’s impossible, you know? He’s got to learn something and move a little bit further…he’s got to evolve a little bit, so with issue #100, which will be my last issue, it is sort of a landmark issue of THE DARKNESS, we want to have this climactic event where he has a final showdown with the evil power of the Darkness itself and it brings a final resolution to their relationship. I think we found a way to do that without just rebooting everything. We found a way to do that and make a definitive change to Jacky and a definitive change to his place in the Top Cow universe.
BUG: So as far as the rest of the Top Cow stuff… With the whole DARKNESS universe and with WITCHBLADE and all of that stuff there have been some crossovers here lately. Have you been a part of those? PH: Oh yeah, I mean I’m friends with Ron Marz, the WITCHBLADE writer, so we talk all of the time. We made a concerted effort, because he really wanted people to be serious about WITCHBLADE too and not think of it as a TNA book. I wanted people to not just think of THE DARKNESS as a gore book, so we made a concerted effort to make the books stand on their own and when they did cross over to have it be very natural and almost necessary to the plot. So we do have a lot of crossovers in that universe, but thankfully THE DARKNESS is sort of this little bubble until issue #100 where we can sort of wrap everything up and then all of the changes that take place and artifacts and my last arch of the THE DARKNESS all kind of sort of come crashing down at once.
BUG: Okay, so after you’re finished with that are you going to be doing more Top Cow stuff?
PH: Yeah, I think so. We don’t know what for sure, but I really like working there, like working with Philip and Matt, Mark, and all of the guys there, so any chance I get to work there I jump at.
BUG: Just to switch gears a little bit, I just reviewed GODZILLA on the site. PH: Yeah, thank you. I read it.
BUG: Oh, you did. Good, good. It was just an amazing issue. What was it like having that come out after all of the craziness that was happening over in Japan?
PH: It was rough. I think most people understand we do comics so far ahead that we have no sort of control over that sort of thing and in the case of #1 it was actually printed and sitting in the warehouse before the earthquake. We were just like “Oh boy…” Really our main concern was with our contacts in Toho, because we have to send things over to Toho for approval, so that’s what we were really worried about, about the people we knew. Thankfully they are okay, but I think the only time I had a real hard time was on the pages I was actually working on. I was drawing a scene of a skyscraper knocked over in Tokyo. I was like “Oh boy…”
BUG: And you see that on the news all day long.
PH: And a reporter reporting it too, so I was like “oh boy.” I think at a time like this, people really need escapism too and in a way I think IDW is trying to put together a benefit book, too, with Godzilla.
BUG: I talked with them last week. They were saying that you guys were doing that. That’s really cool.
PH: Hopefully people understand that there’s nothing we can do about the timing of the event and just take it for what it is.
BUG: And by the time it was coming out that happened that Saturday and you guys came out on Wednesday, so there’s no way to kind of pull all of those books back after they have all been printed.
PH: And we do informal…we’ve just asked people informally how they feel about it and almost nobody is offended by that. They understand it’s fiction.
BUG: So with that series are you going to be doing more of the monsters? I thought I had heard that there are going to be more of them? PH: Yes, even the ones I haven’t heard of (laughs) I have to learn how to draw. You know how to draw Mothra or Rodan, those are easy, but then there’s like Anguirus and…
BUG: How about Ghidorah?
PH: I haven’t had to draw Ghidorah yet, but…
BUG: Will there be anything with Gamera?
PH: I don’t know if Gamera is part of our license, but there’s Battra, which was like the evil butterfly. Mothra was the good butterfly, but there’s a bad one named Battra… Or not butterfly, he’s a flying thing, but he starts as like a little worm.
BUG: What about the little Godzilla? The baby one…
PH: Thankfully we don’t have to…who knows? I’ve only drawn the first four issues and this is an ongoing. Knowing Eric Powell you never know.
BUG: He seems to really love the characters.
PH: He does. He’s a big monster nerd.
BUG: So was about THE ANCHOR? I know that’s been big over there at Boom, are you still going to be doing stuff with that?
PH: No, it’s sort of wrapped up at Boom. We might do like a one shot or something in the future, but now we are done at Boom. They were worried about sales, because they were kind of dwindling and we reached a natural ending point I feel like, so we decided to just wrap it.
BUG: So what else? You’ve got projects all over the place, how about at Dynamite? What’s going on there? PH: I’m currently writing GREEN HORNET, Kevin Smith’s GREEN HORNET and I’ll be handing that off after issue #15. I’ll be co-writing that with Ande Parks, my Ande Parks, my ANCHOR buddy who is also a great writer and I’ll be moving onto a secret project at Dynamite that I can’t talk about, but almost everybody knows what it is, because there’s a rumor about it, so people can put two and two together. Then I’m writing WONDER WOMAN right now at DC and I still work on FIREBREATHER.
BUG: So with WONDER WOMAN, what was it like taking up after JMS kind of left the book and everything? I know that was kind of controversial.
PH: It was kind of weird and kind of difficult, because there were people just predisposed to hate it and I guess it’s a good sign, because people are really invested in those characters. I’m glad they are passionate about it, but they’ve been around for decades and decades, we’ve got to try new things with them once in a while. So we did and he sort of… JMS left in the middle of the story and left it up to me which is a little daunting at first, but now it’s sort of liberating, because we have set goals and set parameters for the story, but inside of those parameters I can go crazy and do whatever I want, so I’m having a lot of fun with it.
BUG: Did he make the blueprint for the story and you are kind of following that?
PH: Yeah, what I basically have to work from is a pitch that he sold DC on and it’s just my job to make the back half of that pitch happen, because he did the front half already.
BUG: Sounds like it could be a lot of fun. PH: It is. It actually is fun and I really like Wonder Woman now, so it’s been a blast.
BUG: Had you liked the character before?
PH: I’m one of those guys that follows artists and writers more than characters, so Wonder Woman for me was like when there is somebody really great on Wonder Woman I was reading it, yeah.
BUG: So what else is going on with you?
PH: Isn’t that enough? (Laughs) I have a hardcover of my old graphic novel I did for Oni called THE COFFIN and IDW just put that out and that did really well for them, so they are doing another one of my past collaborations with Mike Huddleston called DEEP SLEEPER and that will be a hardcover later this year.
BUG: Cool--and I see BLACK TERROR?
PH: That’s old, I’m done with BLACK TERROR, yeah.
BUG: And DEEP SLEEPER I see up there. I don’t think I’ve read that one.
PH: You can have it.
BUG: Really? Awesome. Very cool.
[Phil points to the cover of the book.]
PH: Look how well we were reviewed by Ain’t It Cool News, “Nothing short of accelerating.” “Puts me in the mind of Gaiman’s SANDMAN.” Come on, it’s got to be good. (Laughs)
BUG: Thank you, I’ll definitely check that out. So with all of that stuff how do you juggle between being an artist and a writer and doing both so well? PH: Well, thank you. It’s tough, because I mean drawing is physically more taxing than writing, so there’s that. So I can only really draw one thing at a time, but to me they are both part of the same exercise. They are both storytelling, so it’s a matter of putting on a storytelling hat and just going to town.
BUG: Did you find it to be a difficult transition?
PH: I always did both, it was just that my skills as an artist became marketable before my skills as a writer. I’ve always done both.
BUG: Well is anything else going on that you want to tell our readers?
PH: My DVD comes out next week. FIREBREATHER DVD from the Cartoon Network movie. It comes out next week on March 22nd and…
BUG: So what’s the premise for that?
PH: It’s basically your mom is a working mom, normal nagging mom, and your dad is basically king of the monsters, equal parts Dr. Doom and Godzilla, and so you’re a kid who is sort of half and half. You are a monstrous kid, but you want to go to high school and your mom wants you to go to community college and your dad wants you to become king of the monsters someday and they are divorced and they share custody, so he goes back and forth and he’s got to sort of find his place in the world. To me that’s sort of… Being a monstrous teenager is a really good allegory for the way everybody feels when they are a teenager.
BUG: I don’t know too many stories out there that are dealing with a divorced kid with both parents pulling him in different directions.
PH: I think that’s the hook that sold Cartoon Network on it. They were like “They’re divorced?” It’s funny enough that they were ever together, you know, and that’s the technical details of which we gloss over, but that’s like the real hook is that they are split up, so you deal with that dynamic. That’s one of my favorite books to write and we are still doing new issues of the comic book and Cartoon Network was really happy with the numbers on the special, so hopefully there will be more.
BUG: Do you think there will be? PH: I think so. They asked me not to talk about it, so I think that’s a good sign.
[Both Laugh]
BUG: Sounds good. I look forward to that (Editor’s Note: FIRE BREATHER is available here now). Thanks a lot for taking the time to talk to me. I appreciate it. I hope you have a great rest of the con.
PH: Thanks man, you too.
BUG: You can find Phil Hester all over the place in comics. Be sure to check out FIREBREATHER, GODZILLA, WONDER WOMAN, THE DARKNESS, and his other many projects in comic bookdom. Any book he works on, be it as artist, writer, or both is worth seeking out.
Ambush Bug is Mark L. Miller, original @$$Hole/wordslinger/reviewer/co-editor of AICN Comics for over nine years. Support a Bug by checking out his comics (click on the covers to purchase)!
Check out THE DEATHSPORT GAMES’ Facebook Page
Special thanks to Muldoon for transcription.
Proofs, co-edits & common sense provided by Sleazy G
