Last week we wrote about Fantastic Four issue #549 where FF arch-nemesis The Wizard cloned fellow villain Klaw, a being of pure sound, through a sample obtained on BitTorrent. This week we got a chance to talk to current FF writer Dwayne McDuffie and we posed a lot of hard-hitting questions about his mystery projects for TV and Marvel, the fate of Klaw, and what Dwayne’s currently downloading (through completely legal means).
BitTorrent: So did The Wizard use a private or public tracker?
Dwayne McDuffie: (laughter) I don’t know! That’s a good question…
BT: OK, no problem. So how did the idea come about to use Klaw and bring him back?
DM: Well Klaw is a classic Black Panther villain and classic Fantastic Four villain. Since the Panther is currently in the FF, it seemed pretty obvious for me to bring him back. But Klaw’s continuity is very convoluted right now, and I wanted to use him without stopping the story to explain where he came from. I kind of thought of it as a joke and the more I thought of it the more I liked it.
BT: That’s awesome! I was floored when I picked up that issue and saw that in there. I freakin’ love that it was The Wizard of all people who brought him back using BT. I’m a little insulted and a little intrigued at the same time that one of the biggest super villains uses BitTorrent, though I like that he’s riding the wave of technology…
DM: Kind of makes you wonder what else is out there.
BT: Right right! Exactly. I recently posed the question “Is there potential for a Klaw mass army?”
DM: It certainly seems to be open to that, but I first set things up so the actual Klaw, whatever that device is that controls him that’s necessary to hold him together, I imagine there’s a lot of copies of him out there, but they’re useless without one of the devices, and one of the people smart enough to make it. But that certainly opens up some possibilities in the future. A whole squadron of Klaws.
BT: Well with the Fantastic Four you’ve also got Black Bolt, another sound character. I posed the question: Is it possible to have a Black Bolt Cold War? Or is there even the technology in the Marvel Universe to do that?
DM: Well I don’t think it’s a special quality in the sound. It’s the amplitude of it. It’s just very loud and carries a lot of energy.
BT: (feeling like an idiot) Oh.
DM: So recording it consider this: First, good luck finding a microphone, and second it wouldn’t go louder than your speakers.
BT: Well now you’re doing the Justice League comic, so how did you get attached to it? I followed your run on the Justice League cartoons, and I love your work on Static Shock, so how did you get hooked up on the comic?
DM: Well that’s pretty much how. I had done the cartoon and that was over, and Justice League was in the middle of a very popular run from a New York Times bestseller [Brad Meltzer] and that was almost over and he was moving on, and DC was trying to think of someone to take over and my name came up!
BT: How do you like writing team books versus, say, Deathlok or Static. What’s the difference for you?
DM: I actually prefer to write solo books even though I’ve become the team guy.
BT: Why do you prefer solo?
DM: Well you can really, really explore one character a great deal more. You have to be really careful in a team book to not let it turn into a soap opera. I enjoy writing team books, but it’s a LOT more direct and you can just go deeper in a solo book. You’re going to find out more about Batman in Batman than you will in Justice League. Although the flip-side of that is, in Justice League you will see sides of Batman you won’t see in his own book, just like how we’re different with our parents than with our friends than with the people we work with. You see different facets of characters, but probably not to the depth. Your friends don’t know you as well as your wife.
BT: It seems like you always include a lot of humor in your books and I remember reading that you enjoy writing comedy and it seems you get a lot of that in Fantastic Four and you get more of that in a team book than a solo book, so how does that feel to you?
DM: That’s probably true. Although in a solo book you do the same thing with the supporting cast. I’m kind of old fashion and think that comic books, in particular superhero books, are supposed to be fun and I have no trouble doing dark stories and dealing with serious issues but there’s fun in life, and if you want to reflect life, you have to have fun with it.
BT: It’s interesting because you’re known for a lot of your work on Milestone and a lot of your work on Static Shock a “kids” TV show, and it’s interesting that you’re very much into putting fun into your work and you’re also known for the dealing with heavy issues.
DM: I don’t think that’s as contradictory as it seems on the surface. I think that if you’re going to deal with serious stuff you don’t want to be ponderous. And humor is a part of life.
BT: I was talking to a friend of mine at Isotope Comics about how there’s very few African American writers represented in mainstream comics and James [of Isotope] was saying there’s so many British writers in the industry and virtually NO black British writers. Also I read in an article about how you were saying there’s still a lot of racism in Hollywood and the comic industry, so how does that affect you now that you’ve been in the business for over 20 years?
DM: Well when you’ve got a job that’s very competitive and very difficult to get into, when you add race into that, it’s just that much more difficult. So it’s not surprising that it’s harder, but maybe it’s surprising in comics at just how difficult it is. Justice League of America is the second book in my 20 year career that someone else assigned me that I’m the regular writer to. I had only done fill-ins, mini-series, or teamed up with other people to do books.
When I came in to the business, only Christopher Priest, who was Jim Owsley back then, he was the only writer. Now, I’m only talking about the mainstream. There’s always been guys publishing their own stuff. But otherwise, there’s very few guys. Right now there’s three [African American writers] at Marvel which is unheard of. One guy is the head of BET and made 100 million dollar movies, the other has created a movie franchise, and I came out of TV. A lot of people who read me in comics now didn’t know I wrote comics. The bar is pretty high to get in and as Reggie [Hudlin] and Kevin [Grevioux] succeed and as I succeed, it’ll create more opportunities for people. I hope the next guy doesn’t have to wait 20 years.
BT: It seems that in an industry that’s based on pop culture, that things like race and sex would take a backseat…
DM: Well think about it, half the population is female, and how many female writers are there?
BT: Right exactly what I mean. It seems like that wouldn’t be an issue in this time. It’s 2007 how can that be going on?
DM: Well I think because particularly when we’re talking about superhero stuff, it’s male power fantasies — a very specific identification. And there’s a lot of really complex issues twisting around the stuff. And people don’t like to think about it and we don’t like to think about why we identify with someone and don’t identify with someone else, but it’s all there. People who read Milestone books saw that it was a contemporary superhero line. I think there were maybe three story lines of the 250 comics we did that were explicitly about race. But just the fact that it was so rare to see people who weren’t white guys as the heroes, people thought “race, race, race” and I kept hearing we were a black line, and we had the single most diverse line in the history of comics, not just black.
BT: Do you think the fact that you had such diversity gave people the image Milestone was a black line?
DM: Well we had a book with a Korean lady, a Cuban lady, our team book was mostly Dominican but people couldn’t see it. And I thought Static was a totally appropriate book for people who kind of… I made Static because I missed the old Spider-Man. I liked the idea of a teen contemporary hero, and at the time Spider-Man was grown, married, lived in a loft and stuff which was cool, but that wasn’t the part that I liked. Static did very poorly in comics, but was a hit on TV.
BT: What do you attribute to the power of it being on TV?
DM: I think people are, in TV, a little more used to seeing people who don’t look like them. Just a little bit. Not a lot, but enough to make a difference.
BT: Is that because it’s a smaller market in comics…?
DM: Yeah it’s a much smaller base of people. What, it’s half a million people? Two million people? I don’t know how many versus, you know, eight or nine million kids. Kids that haven’t made up their mind about this kind of stuff. So they look at it “Ooh he shoots electricity! Cool!”
BT: So do we have a chance that Static will come back?
DM: Always a chance. We have discussions now and then. Nothing’s gone very far, but, you know, it was very popular so it’s hard for me to imagine that we won’t see him in one form or another.
BT: You know I loved all the crossover stuff that happened. You’ve got Justice League, Justice League Unlimited, then Static Shock and Zeta, and Batman Beyond on top of that. So it was cool to see all of that come back around.
DM: Yeah It was kind of fun! None of that was intended to be in the same universe, so it was back engineered into that. Actually Static is the one that screws that up the most. We had to ignore a line from that to make it work.
BT: What was the problem with Static?
DM: In one of the first episodes Virgil makes a reference to Superman being Clark Kent; a pop culture reference. And then three years later he meets Clark Kent and doesn’t know he’s Superman.
BT : So you just kind of sweep that one under.
DM: But we forgot about that part.
BT: Did fans point that one out?
DM: No, no we knew it when we did it, but when we did the show at the beginning it wasn’t part of the same universe.
BT: Last week you mentioned that you were working on something with a deadline of Monday, and I also read that you were working on some new project that you couldn’t talk about yet…
DM: I’ve got a mini-series I’m doing for Marvel which will be announced in a couple weeks I think, which is sort of a return home for me. I’m a story editor on Ben 10 which is a show that’s been running for about four years, but we’re doing a revamp of it…
BT: Right, he’s going to be fifteen, correct?
DM: Yup! So we’re working hard on those. And as always, I’m JUST ahead of the gun. I’m finishing up Fantastic Four. I’ve got two or three more issues of those, and then gearing up for Justice League which means reading everything DC’s got. Which is a lot!
BT: Were you a Marvel or a DC fan going up?
DM: I was a Marvel fan. I didn’t really get into DC until, like Watchmen. I got that, Dark Knight Returns and that was around the period I got into DC. But I always read Legion of Super Heroes. I didn’t read any other stuff, and it didn’t matter to me too much. But I read all Marvel.
BT: I remember reading in a Marvel Bullpen article back in 1988 that your goal was to write Fantastic Four. That was one of your unfulfilled ambitions…
DM: Other than Little Lulu, that’s my favorite comic!
BT: So how does that feel now? Now that you’re finished up a solid seven or eight issues, right?
DM: I think I’m doing 10 of them.
BT: How do you feel about that now? What’s your ambition? What’s your drive?
DM: Well I’ve had the opportunity to write everyone I want to write, so now it’s just if there’s a story I want to tell.
BT: Can we expect to see more in Hollywood? And some more TV writing and things like that too?
DM: I’m doing a bunch of stuff on Ben 10, and I created a new show for BET which is animated but will be a prime-time science fiction series.
BT: Oh cool! Kind of a mature audience for that one?
DM: Uh, yeah. VERY mature.
BT: What’s that one called?
DM: You know, a name hasn’t cleared, so it’s kind of a pain in the butt.
Right now they’re calling it War God, but I don’t think that one’s going to stick. It’s very cool…there’s nothing like it.
BT: Can you tell us anything about it?
DM: No…
BT: Nothing! Other than War God is the name in progress…?
DM: It’s science fiction, it’s contemporary and a lot of action.
BT: Back to the BitTorrent thing. Do you use BitTorrent yourself?
DM: DO I?!
(Long silence)
BT: OK…WHAT do you use BitTorrent for?
(Laughter then silence)
BT: Now, I don’t have any lawyers in the room, I’d like to make that clear, and even though we’re on the up and up, I won’t pass this on to any authorities. So…
DM: British TV.
BT: Like Doctor Who and Peep Show?
DM: Doctor Who. IT Crowd. You know. Ironically, there’s a BitTorrent episode of IT Crowd about how wrong it is to do that.
BT: Really! I’m going to have to find that…
DM: Episode Three Season Two.
BT: That’s awesome that you know that off hand! How do you know that?
DM: Um…Lucky guess.
BT: Well perfect! Thanks for your time!
DM: You too. Take care!
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