Volume 3 Followup |
Volume 3 Followup |
Steven, Webmaster of the Challengers of the Unknown fan site here. I'm unsystematically reviewing all Challengers comics and appearances, taking my time to get it right, in for the long haul. I've almost completed reviewing all your COTU books. I think they're terrific stories, very underrated, very much in the Challengers groove with a fresh breath of air. My biggest complaints were the art was too dark to see and, as you noted, the Red Sky issues were usually wasted books. I've collected some SG interviews from the web, but had some questions that touch on COTU background and can't be gleaned from the books themselves. Knowing you have a big workload, I'd like to pitch one question at a time. If you're willing to answer, feel free to give a long or short answer, with no hurry. I'll compile them as we go. If you don't time to answer any questions, I'll understand and back off. Hoping, here's the first question: |
Q: Kenn Kawa, Clay Brody, Marlon Corbet (one T), Brenda Ruskin: Are any of them based on real people? A: No. Gee, that was easy. I could do this all day. Next question. |
Q: Did you try to balance the team, or just throw together interesting individuals? My version of COTU began as a TV series pitch DC hired me on to put together. It was a directive from above that they wanted a new team more ethnically/sexually diverse than the original team, since (according to theory, though I never see much evidence of it on TV) no TV executive would be interested in a team composed of four white guys, though I suspect at this point they could sell it to Spike TV in a hot New York minute. So I puttered around with it a bit. They didn't give me any specific instructions. |
As in, the original Challs were like a WWII squad: Rocky the muscle. Prof the brain. Red the daring acrobat. Ace the leader. Both teams follow the Jack Kirby paradigm (shared with the FF) of earth-water-fire-air. Rocky/Clay: earth. Red/Brenda: fire. Ace/Marlon: air. Prof/Kenn: water. DC was pressuring for awhile for my guys to actually have superpowers related to their paradigm slots, but that was a bit too Wonder Twins for my taste. So I gave them "affinities." They don't have superpowers but elements bend in their favor. If you read the stories with that in mind, you'll see it. If you didn't know about it, you likely wouldn't spot it. |
The new Challs are more amorphous. Clay is muscle. Kenn is a brain but also an encyclopedia of esoterica. Brenda's ALSO a brain and an encyclopedia of esoterica. And Marlon is a pilot and deeply religious. All can punch their way out of a fight. If they're up against one or two, sure. None of them would stand up long against a small army, though Clay's from a more rough and tumble lifestyle than the others so he'd probably hold up longer. But I always viewed all of them as smart in their own way. They all have different areas of expertise, and Clay's the most down to earth, very anti-mumbo jumbo, so on a practical day-to-day level he's probably the best equipped of all of them to cope, and he's the best judge of character. |
But, again, all of them tend toward their own affinities. Both Marlon's pilot career and religious conviction point toward air. Kenn's also religious, after a fashion, but his beliefs are less formed and more wait for it fluid. The overlaps were intentional, so we could have aspects of the characters collide with parallel aspects of other characters. |
And how actively did you pursue diversity? Was it, "I need one Asian, one female, one African-American, one boring white guy?" or some other criteria? Yeah, basically, except I never considered Clay boring. But the white guy is always going to be seen as the most ordinary, since readers aren't very willing to accept much diversity of character in a white guy, if he's supposed to be a focal hero. If he's American. And he's likely to have the most common cultural experience. Specific racial characteristics, usually any physical characteristics at all, are rarely of much interest to me when I'm creating characters, so if DC or any other company wants a mixed race/gender team, it's no skin off my nose. Once those characteristics are set in place, though, you have to allow for different cultural experiences. |
For instance, Marlon's black, but I didn't want him to be a "street" black; black culture in America isn't strictly ghetto culture and I wanted him to come from a more integrated, more traditionally liberal middle class black experience, which, when I thought about it, would include a strong emphasis on family and religion. Whereas the original Challengers were mostly working class or military, my version was middle class; even Clay had achieved that economically, even if that wasn't the economic bracket he came from. And that wasn't just a whim; it was necessary if they were to have the approach to their work that I wanted them to have. Sometimes your characters tell you what they are. Sometimes you have to work backwards from what you want them to be and figure out what they'd have to be in order to get there. |
Mentioned in passing... Dammit, I just thought of a great Challengers Of The Unknown line. I wish I'd thought of it ten years ago. Clay: "We're The Challengers Of The Unknown." Whoever he's talking to: "That ought to keep you busy. What you don't know could fill a library." |
So... did you pitch the new Challs as a TV series? What happened? I didn't pitch it, DC did. By sheer coincidence, a screenwriter friend of mine went in to the Warners TV division a couple years later to pitch some ideas and decided to run CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN past them. (Which isn't as unscrupulous as it sounds on the surface; there's nothing wrong with trying to convince a company to let you make a media project out of a property they already own.) Turned out the guy he was pitching to remembered Jenette's pitch, and said that they were actually pretty interested, but ultimately decided "Challengers Of The Unknown" sounded too much like a reality series. Which is a pretty good idea, really: if DC asked me to create a new COTU today I think a rotating cast of contestants in a reality TV show would work fairly nicely, though it might be a bit avant-garde for them. |
Do you still have the original pitch? Can I post it on the website as a curiosity? I probably still have it around, but it's DC's property. I couldn't give it to you without their permission. If you can get their permission and I can find it, you're welcome to it. |
So why not pitch some version of the COTU to Spike TV? You'd have to ask DC that, but as far as I know my COTU was hypertimed out of existence. (I didn't even know until long after I wrote it that I'd written the first Hypertime story.) Oog, let's hope Kenn, Brenda, Clay, and Marlon haven't been "unknowned". |
OK, the biggie... The backstory... You added wonderfully to the Challenger mythos by adding the fierce "white light" that would haunt and even pre-date the Challs' adventures. A life-changing light that means the viewers will never be the same. A wicked cool mysterious ethereal light. Except there are always TWO lights... |
The first Challs crashed because a fierce white light filled the sky (a retcon). This (first) light was never mentioned until years later. (COTU V3 8.) The same (first) light crashed the New Challengers' plane, then some more planes. (COTU V3 4.) Eventually we learn that Dr. Carcosa, a mad scientist experimenting with disintegration, caused the (first) lights and the crashes. (COTU V3 9.) So we assume the first light was a phenomenon of the disintegration process: a big ray blast, in effect. A simple scientific explanation. (Correct?) |
But, wait, as they say, there's more. After each crash, the survivors saw a SECOND light. The original Challs never mention any second light. Perhaps they never saw it, wracked up inside a smashed plane. There's no illo. The New Challs see the second light and are mesmerized. Marlon, who's religious, even sees 247 souls rise to heaven. (This is assumed to be a delusion from shock.) But all the Challs see it. And much later, Mister Sands admits HE and others saw the same fierce (second) light after the bombing of Hiroshima. (COTU V3 11.) And it changed his life. (And others', which will be a follow-up question.) |
So we know the SECOND light is not necessarily a function of the disintegrating ray, but could result from any big explosion that - what? Tears the fabric of reality? Shows a glimpse of Heaven? Fries synapses in your brain to induce recurring hallucinations? Something else? So... what is the SECOND light? |
The second light... If I remember correctly, and I wouldn't swear to it, the light was a gimmick editor Dan Thorsland suggested, like the light people who have near-death experiences claim to see. Obviously we were trying to evoke that. But I don't think Dan had any notion of what it was ultimately supposed to be, though we did discuss various possibilities like it's the light people follow when they die, it's God, etc., mainly to rule those out. It's the sort of thing you're supposed to build up over time, so we wouldn't have tackled it until the last story arc, had we been in the fortunate position of being able to decide for ourselves what that was. |
But here's the thing about the second light: there wasn't one. All those lights were the same light, existing somewhere outside time and beaming in on "our" reality at certain junctures. Carcosa didn't create it, he just jumped to the conclusion that he did. But I never quite decided what it should be, because at that point there wasn't any need to. It's always a temptation to plan these things out in great detail, but that's a trap too, because better ideas are always likely to occur to you the farther into something you get, and it's a bad idea to lock yourself out of any "upgrade" possibilities. Resolving that wasn't a precious issue. |
As I recall, the idea I had on the light closest to the cancellation was that it was caused by the Challengers themselves, to bring themselves into being. All of them, plus Saxon and Sands and whoever else was touched by the light at whatever point in any COTU series. I never got as far as why, but I liked the paradoxical circularity of it. Or maybe I made that up thirty seconds ago. It's hard to tell. |
[Steven said] as far as I know my COTU was hypertimed out of existence. Rocky and Prof have been seen after Infinite Crisis... Rocky doesn't count as one of my Challengers. Essentially Karl Kesel, a big Kirby fan, resurrected the original Challengers during his SUPERBOY run and from that point on mine were never spoken of again in the offices or in the comics that I'm aware of. So aside from Howard's out-of-continuity revamp, Kirby's Challengers are the only Challengers now, again as far as I know. Which is too bad, not so much because any of my characters necessarily deserved better, but certainly much of the art, particularly the work by John Paul Leon and, later, Mike Zeck, deserves to be collected. |
Q: What was to be the last story arc that began in COTU V3 18 with the return of a new shadow-haunted Saxon? You mentioned that was a prologue to a new sweeping epic. Can you tell us anything about that story? By around #17, it was pretty obvious the book wasn't going to make it for the long haul, and originally I was told it was being cancelled at #25, so Dan and I started concocting one last big arc to run from #19-#25 which would pretty much have rained disaster down on the Challengers, leading up to a big two or three issue conclusion that tied all the threads we'd dropped throughout the series together and answered all questions. |
Anyway, I never got a chance to work it out. While I was in the middle of writing #19, I got the call that they'd moved the final issue of the book to #21, so I rolled my eyes and started a new draft of the story to pick up the pace, but before I had a chance to finish the second draft, I got the call that they'd decided to end it with the issue then being drawn, #18. Despite having beautiful art from Mike and terrific coloring from our collaborator Kurt Goldzung, it's not the issue I'd have chosen to end with. It always burned me a little that the Challengers weren't even in the final issue of their own book, and I'd have loved to get John Paul back to draw a final issue, but I suppose the way it worked out is sort of in keeping with the spirit of the book, in a sick and twisted way. |
I think I had more fun writing CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN than any other series I did at Marvel or DC, and I managed to stick an awful lot of strange ideas in the book and got a lot of art I loved from John Paul, Tommy Lee Edwards, Jill Thompson, Ryan Sook, Mike Zeck. I know I'm forgetting someone, but I loved all those issues. I finally met John Paul this past summer, and it was great. Even knowing how it turned out, I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat. (PS. Ask me about the Batman guest issues and the Superman crossover issue. I have great nutty stories about them.) |
[You mentioned somewhere "The
first hint your book is in trouble is when your editor suggests
that Batman or Wolverine guest-star." So how did these
pan out?] One of the big problems the series had, in terms of acceptance by DC fans, was how is anyone a skeptic in the DCU? Everywhere you look, there's evidence of aliens, ancient civilizations, demons, magic, parallel dimensions, etc. Plus why are they handling these situations themselves when they can call in the Flash or Martian Manhunter to deal with a crisis? And that's a huge problem with something like Challengers Of The Unknown. In order to work, the concept really has to take place in "our" world, so my tendency was to minimize contact with the DCU as much as possible. |
With the Batman story, Dan called me and told me with great enthusiasm that I can guest Batman in COTU if I want to. He wasn't very pleased by my response, which was "Do I have to?" Yes, I had to, because at Marvel, if your book needs attention, they tell you to guest-star Spider-Man or Wolverine, and at DC they tell you to guest-star Batman. But everyone's hip to that gimmick, and, to the best of my knowledge, it has gotten to the point where sales go down on books that guest-star those characters. So word came down that Batman would guest-star so sales could have a hook to push the book with, and I think that was also in the middle of big head month where a lot of the covers had a close-up of a character's face on it. But I liked the Batman story in general. I got in a bit of trouble for it because there were things I wanted to do that the Bat offices weren't pleased about. |
[Your Batman attitude was perfect,
I thought. He told the amateurs to get lost.] But I wanted to highlight the contrast between him and the Challengers. I don't think DC liked very much that I didn't have the Challengers be at all impressed by Batman or frightened by him. Their reaction was pretty much, "Hey, a guy in a stupid costume." They've got more self-confidence and self-assurance than to get freaked out by Batman. I never used Bruce Wayne in the other Batman stories I did, I played the character more like a force of nature, but the one thing I wanted to do in COTU that I was absolutely forbidden from doing was have them meet Bruce Wayne at the end of the story and Clay would look at him a little funny while shaking Bruce's hand and say "You're Batman, right?" Not that I really thought I'd get away with that, but it would've said something not only about Clay but about the whole concept of secret identities, which I find a little funny. If you know people, they're not that hard to recognize. I did the ending anyway, just not so blatantly. I think I had they walk off from meeting Bruce Wayne, and Clay says to the others, "Hey, wasn't that?" And I think it's Marlon who says, "Let it go, Clay." Or something like that. That was fun. |
[And the Superman crossover?] The Superman offices wanted the Millennium Giants storyline to be this major, major deal, and apparently editors were a bit slow to jump on. Dan figured this was a chance to show we were team players, which was fine with me. But while they wanted me to write a story tying in, nobody would tell me what the series was about. I asked if there was some element they wanted the book to hook into. From my POV, if you're going to have a big crossover series then none of the involved titles should be superfluous and every one should contain some sort of information pertaining to the ultimate resolution of the series. The Superman offices obviously didn't feel the same way; their approach seemed to be "no one will think this is a big deal unless lots of other comics are talking about it." But, like I said, no one knew what they were supposed to be talking about. |
By chance at a convention I ran into Dan Jurgens, who was the main Superman writer at the time, and talked about it. But the idea didn't originate with Dan at the time they were rotating generation of big crossovers among the teams on the various Superman titles and it wasn't his turn and even though he was writing the core book in the line, they hadn't even told him what was supposed to happen at the end of the crossover. He wasn't sure anyone knew. He was pretty despondent about it, because he knew how it would reflect on him if the crossover wasn't a monster hit, and there wasn't a lot he could do about it. |
I don't remember how exactly, but Dan Thorsland and I managed to pry a few details out of the Superman offices (Remember also that after the Captain Atom revelation that required a last minute rewriting of the ending to Armageddon 2001, DC was almost psychotically paranoid about the "secrets" of crossover series getting out, so they weren't eager to tell anyone not specifically in the loop, and we had to convince them that being a crossover hookup put us at least in the general vicinity of the loop.) about these things being ancient creatures having something to do with ley lines, etc., so that's the hook I took with the story. I worried less about connecting up with the rest of the crossover and more about what the Challengers could do about it. It was an interesting challenge, and had DC really been interested in giving COTU any promotion, the Challengers came up with a clue as to the nature of the stone giants that they sent along. It was a great chance for someone in the Superman books to say, hey, we've got this piece of evidence thanks to THE CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN! and this might give us the means to defeat these things. It would have taken zero effort to make the events of COTU 15 pivotal to the rest of the series, while in no way making them central or taking any spotlight off Superman. But no. Not even the remotest acknowledgment. Which I always thought was pretty selfish of the Superman offices; they wanted the rest of us to go out of our ways to make their series seem like the biggest deal imaginable, but they weren't willing to give even the faintest rub back. It was annoying. |
But I do think I wrote the best single story in that crossover, one of the few that actually functioned as a story, and having them black out England was fun. I liked Ryan Sook's art on it just fine. We did the best we could with what we had to work with, while Dan Thorsland was great in running interference and Dan Jurgens was as generous as he could be under the circumstances. |
More to come... |
