BY JENNIFER M. CONTINO
To say I was shocked when I first read Rick Veitch's Brat Pack would be an understatement. I read mostly superhero comics at that point in time and hadn't read Watchmen or The Dark Knight in full yet. So, seeing everything I love about superheroes bastardized in this fashion was tough to take. The series was groundbreaking and intense. Veitch told THE PULSE, "The central theme of the book is that adults exploit children for their own selfish needs. So the surface part of the story has the adult superheroes, who are all kind of cracked, putting kids in danger for marketing and their own personal reasons. But you can also read it as an allegory about how comic book publishers exploit children by selling them sex, violence and vigilantism." Veitch is collecting the work for a new hardcover edition and gave us the scoop on some of the extras contained in these pages and what inspired this seminal work.







[EDITOR'S NOTE: Rick Veitch is one of the owners of Comicon.com.]





If you want to read an issue of the series before checking out this interview the entire first issue can be read for free here:
http://www.comicon.com/rickveitch/brat_pack_first_issue_sample.pdf

THE PULSE: A lot of people my age who hear "Brat Pack" are thinking of Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson and those other young actors who in the mid-'80s ruled the Box Office. But, Hollywood icons aren't the stars of this series. For those learning about it for the first time in this interview, tell them what sets this group of teen sidekicks apart from the typical lads and lasses assisting stoic heroes in their quest for justice, please!

RICK VEITCH: BRAT PACK is a satire that explores the dark underbelly of the "kid sidekick" phenomenon. It asks and answers those questions we all had about why an adult superhero might want to have a teen-age partner. It's very dark and very twisted; so much so it's meant to make you laugh much the same way a series like THE BOYS does. The central theme of the book is that adults exploit children for their own selfish needs. So the surface part of the story has the adult superheroes, who are all kind of cracked, putting kids in danger for marketing and their own personal reasons. But you can also read it as an allegory about how comic book publishers exploit children by selling them sex, violence and vigilantism.


THE PULSE: Did you name this "Brat Pack" as a poke at that group of Hollywood "royalty"? If not what inspired you to call this by that title?

VEITCH: I think it was a fairly new term when the book first came out. "BRAT PACK" has just the right satirical edge to it. It sort of conveys that sense of contempt everyone in the book has for kid sidekicks.



THE PULSE: I've heard bits and pieces about how this all came about, but what really inspired you to take iconic heroes and pervert them in this fashion?

VEITCH: Creatively, BRAT PACK was a response to what DARK NIGHT and WATCHMEN succeeded in doing, which was to kick open the door to new possibilities in corporate superhero comics. I took that in my own direction, essentially bringing an underground sensibility to my mainstream skills. BRAT PACK amped up the intensity beyond anything that came before it, I think. DARK KNIGHT and WATCHMEN are considered "dark" while BRAT PACK is definitely "twisted". My intention at the time was to create a superhero comic that would destroy all superhero comics.

Some people think the series was fueled by my anger at the comics industry after the SWAMP THING #88 debacle that ended with me leaving DC. But the real motivating factor behind BRAT PACK was disillusionment. You know, you grow up imagining how cool it must be to work at a comic book company, then you get there and it's filled with a lot of sad, cynical editors who hate their jobs, hate the creators, hate the characters and hate the readers. Except for a few bright spots, like Jeannette Kahn, Archie Goodwin or Karen Berger, that's what it was like when I broke in during the early 1980s. You'd go up to the offices and the job sweat would be so thick you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. Things have changed for the better in the last thirty years, thank God.

THE PULSE: I didn't read this when it originally came out, because the only comic books on my radar at that point in time were from DC, Marvel or Image Comics. I discovered this several years later when I was working at a comic book store. One of the other employees said, "Oh, you love everything Teen Titans, right? Then you need to read this ... " and he handed me the issues. I'm pretty sure he wanted to shock me. Was that one of your original goals with the story, to shock the audience as much as humanly possible? Because, after a few pages, I sure was floored by some of what you were doing!


VEITCH: I knew it would shock the younger audience, but there were a lot of older fans who had grown up on WONDER WART-HOG. I think they might have read it differently than a TEEN TITANS fan. The work doesn't just wallow in shock-- there's a thick layer of irony to the proceedings. Kid sidekicks carry a lot of cultural baggage that I expect the audience brings to BRAT PACK. The best shock value, I think, is when you shine a light in some dark corner that everyone's ignoring.


THE PULSE: It seems as if nothing is taboo here in these pages, but was there any point where you just thought, "This is too over the top, even for what I'm doing here!"? If so, what didn't you put in this?

VEITCH: Well, even though I think of the book as "undergroundy", it doesn't go as far, graphically, as Gilbert Shelton or S. Clay Wilson. The book doesn't actually show any sexual acts, but the way sexuality is exploited was very shocking at the time. It's also central to the premise.


THE PULSE: At that point in time you were a little disillusioned with "mainstream comic books," right? If you had been allowed to publish your controversial Swamp Thing issue, and hadn't had that falling out with DC Comics, do you think a project like Brat Pack would have saw the light of day?

VEITCH: I had conceived BRAT PACK while I was working on SWAMP THING and it was originally pitched to DC. They were launching a new imprint called Piranha Press and were looking for edgy stuff. To publisher Jenette Kahn's credit, she understood what I wanted to do and promised not to censor me. So if the whole SWAMP THING mess hadn't happened, BRAT PACK might very well have been a DC book!


THE PULSE: Wow. I never knew that! I always thought the original cover images for this miniseries were so striking. How did you decide what to capture on the covers?

VEITCH: Well, I was looking for something eye-hooking of course. I wanted the imagery to convey the deep currents contents of the book. So I focused a lot on the fetishism inherent in superhero costumes. There aren't any complete faces on the covers, just partial shots focusing on specific body parts. I take it over the top on Issue #5 showing the guy's bare butt, but I wanted to do something on steroid abuse. I was hearing kids were taking them to look more like superheroes.

I think the new cover I did for this edition, focusing on the boot with the mask design, fits right in with the whole series.


THE PULSE: When you did this in 1991, there weren't a lot of people taking beloved superhero concepts and turning them on their ear -- outside of what happened in Watchmen and The Dark Knight. Were you at all worried doing something like this would besmirch your career?


VEITCH: I was already pretty well known as someone who was into pushing superheroes over the edge. I'd done THE ONE for EPIC Comics, I'd pencilled a couple issues of MIRACLEMAN for Alan [Moore], one of which was the birth issue. And even at DC, when I was doing SWAMP THING, the higher ups were a little reticent to hand me their crown jewels. I did one issue where SUPERMAN battled SWAMP THING and they made me go back and change almost every single page with SUPERMAN on it.

THE PULSE: Speaking of Watchmen and The Dark Knight, a lot of people place The Brat Pack among that troika as groundbreaking comics that deconstructed the superhero genre. How does it feel to have the work spoke of in the same sentence as those works?

VEITCH: I've been getting a lot of mileage out of that quote! But I also like to point out one big difference: I own the rights to BRAT PACK. It gives me a very warm glow when I think about how lucky I was to hang onto my best selling work in an age when most creators had to sign away everything just to get published.


THE PULSE: I know you were and still are involved in a strong comics community, did you discuss this series with anyone and ask their advice about if you should do this or did you just put balls to the wall and go for it? Did anyone advise you against publishing this?

VEITCH: Oh yeah, I was talking to Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben and Neil Gaiman, all the time in those days. It was pre-internet so we networked by phone quite a lot. A very young Paul Jenkins, who worked on editorial at Tundra, did the production on the first trade paperback collection. All of them listened to my thinking as it evolved and made suggestions. In fact it was Steve who suggested the title BRAT PACK.


We were all very militant in the late '80s; trying to push the mainstream companies for more creative control of our work and fairer deals. That whole generation of creators, readers, retailers and independent publishers deserves credit for changing how those big companies did business.

THE PULSE: What kind of feedback did you get for your work on Brat Pack when it first came out? I would guess a lot of people were impressed, but did you get anyone incensed by it or so outraged that they threatened you?

VEITCH: It came out as a KING HELL/TUNDRA book and initial orders were a little underwhelming. I think the first issue pre-ordered about 13,500, which was no great shakes in those go-go days. But once in release it seemed to click and reorders were great. I think we did three printings of #1 and ended up selling around thirty thousand. By the third issue it was the best selling b&w book on Diamond's chart and we used that in an advertising campaign to find even more readers.

It was very promising for TUNDRA, as it was their first real release. It was good for me too, since I taken over writing SWAMP THING after Alan left and people understandably saw me as being not quite him. But BRAT PACK was such a departure from anything they'd seen before, it helped me peek out from under Alan's shadow for a bit.

There was some criticism; especially about how I handled THE MIDNIGHT MINK, which is fair. But there were no threats. We got a couple crank letters from some freak claiming to be from the "Man Boy Love Association" but that was about it.


THE PULSE: I was really grossed out by Luna's "treats" from Moon Mistress. How did you come up with that twisted idea?

VEITCH: Once you really begin exploring the idea of a super she-devil-with-a-sword it makes wicked sense.


THE PULSE: You're doing a new edition of the Brat Pack, what's in it that wasn't included in the previous collection of the series?

VEITCH: New cover and completely remastered interiors. Art-dealer-to-the-stars Albert Moy had all the original art and generously lent it to me to rescan. All the previous editions had been printed from the original films and looked too dark to my eye. So the new edition will be the best reproduction on the best paper.

THE PULSE: With the new edition is there anything you've tweaked or redrawn? Did you play a little Monday Morning Quarterback when you were working on this volume?

VEITCH: There were a couple word balloons I edited just a little bit. The biggest change was going in and making all the panel borders perfect in Photoshop. And getting the tonal values right where I wanted 'em.

THE PULSE: How can our readers get their own copies of the book?


VEITCH: Best way right now is to order from your favorite comic book store. KING HELL is one of those small publishers being squeezed by Diamond's new minimums, so for the month its in MARCH PREVIEWS it helps me if it's order through that channel. KING HELL is also being squeezed by Diamond's new restrictions of relists. There's no guarantee BRAT PACK will ever be offered again in Diamond's catalog so the time to get it is now.

THE PULSE: What's coming up in some of your other comic projects?

VEITCH: ARMY@LOVE just got canceled so I'm in the market for something interesting. I'm updating my blog with eye-candy every day, making art for myself and doing commissions.

















PULSE readers you can check out the first issue for free here:
http://www.comicon.com/rickveitch/brat_pack_first_issue_sample.pdf

Great interview, Jen!

But can you talk to Steve and Rick about fixing the weird scroll bars around this and other posts? They are incredibly annoying! Thanks!

I'm not sure what problem you're having ... I don't have any weird scroll bars. Have you emailed either of them with the program you're working from and asked them about it?
Jen

I see the scroll bars.

Thanks, Jen. I sent them the following message using the "Notify" function. Not sure if that was the right way to contact them, but anyway, here's the message I sent:

Actually, I think I just realized why the scroll bars are showing up in this post. I would bet that it's that last link in the article, sitting next to a piece of art, so that the whole thing is too wide for the screen. But that doesn't explain the more general problem of scroll bars showing up in nested quotes. I hope Steve and Rick do look into that. Thanks!

Yay, you fixed it! Thanks!

If it were a dog, it would be wagging its tail.