BY JENNIFER M. CONTINO Over the past few years, comics saw a lot of writers make the jump from television and film into the ever-changing comic book waters. Some have been met with critical success and acclaim, while others have crashed and burned, finding the comic book deadlines apparently too hard to meet. Marc Guggenheim is one of the scribes who saw his transition to comic books happen almost flawlessly. He's working on some of comics biggest icons including an upcoming Batman Confidential tale. He's also one of the trio of Spider0Man writers creating the next chapter in the life of comics most famous wall-crawler. Guggenheim's excited to be working on this particular hero. He shared his thoughts about the series and told us why he believes a single Spider-Man is best.
THE PULSE: What did you think of the decision Spider-Man made in One More Day? Did you think this offers a lot more opportunities having him be single again, and having his identity be secret? Or did you think this might not be the best of ideas?
MARC GUGGENHEIM: It's really funny. I was thinking about this and I spent half of my life reading about a single Spider-Man and half reading about a married Spider-Man. I was kind of agnostic to the whole issue of if he should or shouldn't be married. I just didn't have an opinion.
When I was committed to write it, I didn't even know they were going to undue the marriage. I mean I suspected it in light of the comments Joe Quesada was making online, but I didn't really know what they would do, until the New York Spider-Man Summit.
Joe spent the first hour or so laying out the plan for One More Day. I just remembered thinking, "Wow, the fans are going to just love this. The reaction will be strong.” I really didn't have an opinion as to whether or not it should be done. That having been said, now that I have a chance to write my own stories with an unmarried Spider-Man and read others with him; I can definitely say it was the right move.
The book is better with a single Spider-Man. You get a lot more out of it. The truth is, the honest truth, despite the incredible work of other writers like Joe Michael Straczynski, John Byrne and David Micheline -- despite some very talented writers and artists, Spider-Man has sort of been an under-performing character as far as sales are concerned. People were not flocking to Spider-Man. I think the reason is that regardless of what was done by those creator -- no matter how talented -- at the end of the day, the idea of a married Peter Parker isn't the best version of the book. It's just not the most interesting stories given the characters DNA.
I think a married Superman works perfectly fine. The idea of Clark Kent being single wasn't part of the comics DNA. Whereas Peter being single was always a part of the comics DNA. I think you kind of benefit from going back to those basics.
THE PULSE: A lot of people hadn't read Spider-Man or its related titles for a while, because they thought the series was just missing ... something. In this Brand New Day era, how do you think that's filling a Spider-Man void?
GUGGENHEIM: I think that what we really managed to do here is return the focus of the comic book to Peter Parker. For the longest time, the focus was on Spider-Man. The thing people were missing was the Peter Parker aspect of it all -- the soap opera elements in the comics. When Spider-Man came out in the early '60s, what made it revolutionary was the fact that it was a superhero soap opera. That was the groundbreaking aspect of the book. It's always been sort of, when Spider-Man is successful, that part is the most successful.
But having Peter Parker dating a supermodel, living in Stark Tower and having all this respect and money, with no problems? You lose all those soap opera elements that made the stories fun and interesting. You've slipped away from the core concepts of the book.
THE PULSE: So you're back to the core concepts ... how do you do new stories that feel like we're at the beginning or the core, without repeating things that have been done in the series in the '60s, '70s, '80s, etc?
GUGGENHEIM: The first is thing is that we're approaching everything in Amazing Spider-Man with a 21st century sensibility. The stories aren't dated and won't feel dated.
As far as how you come up with something new, the run I've aspired to do with Spider-Man is like what John Byrne did with the Fantastic Four. That was a run where John returned to the basics -- in fact the first issue was called "Back to the Basics" -- he returned to the core concepts that made the book special in the 1980s. There was no feeling like this was a retelling of stories from the 1960s, because he still moved all the characters forward. Reed and Sue Richards had a miscarriage. They moved to the suburbs and adopted a new secret identity. The Thing and Alicia broke up. The Thing was marooned on an alien planet. She Hulk became a member of the Fantastic Four in his absence. The Baxter Building was destroyed. A lot of stuff happened in that '80s run that didn't happen in the '60s.
I don't want to have confusion about the back to the basics of "Brand New Day." It doesn't mean the original stories are going to be retold. It means we're going back to the core of what made the book successful and building off of that material. We are continuing to do new things. We've worked out the next two years of stories and there are a lot of brand new things going on.
We have a lot of story developments and plots going on that have never been done before in series’ history. We are introducing brand new characters and building on a foundation of what made the book special in its day.
THE PULSE: I think some people hear that the last 20 years of continuity are kind of erased, and he never married Mary Jane, and his secret identity is still secret; and wonder is this set in the present, or have we gone back 20 years as well? What is or isn't known about Spider-Man's private life ...? Has everyone's mind been erased about the whole Peter Parker is Spidey?
GUGGENHEIM: We are very much in the present. Minds have been erased. We're dealing with things as they happen. It would be very boring if we told stories that stemmed from what people know or thought or forgot or all of that. We could do those stories, but they would be phenomenally boring. At the end of the day, they would not be stories about our characters, they would be stories about continuity. Stories about continuity are never interesting. They sound very interesting when you’re talking about them in abstract terms, but dramatizing them into stories ultimately proves very unsatisfying.
Rather than just sort of tell those less-interesting stories, we're just basically going about our business and telling the best stories we can. When it's appropriate to hang a lantern about this person knows this or that, we will do that; but there is no percentage right now in doing it, no real benefit to it. Really, the name of the game is to produce the absolute best stories we can right now and keep the stories moving forward.
THE PULSE: So, he's still an Avenger and all that?
GUGGENHEIM: Spider-Man's still a member of the Avengers. Unless he’s a Skrull.
One thing lost in the controversy -- and this was my first reaction when I heard about this and One More Day -- is Geoff Johns did something like this in the pages of the Flash years ago. Wally West's secret identity was public and basically Geoff had everyone, including Wally himself, just forget he was the Flash. Wally was in the JLA, all the continuity things people are concerned with now with Spider-Man, didn't seem to matter when Geoff did it with The Flash. The only difference is that Geoff did it with a spirit of vengeance rather than a lord of darkness.
I think, honestly, the continuity concerns are more a function of people reacting to the marriage being undone or seemingly undone, than it is to sort of the way it was undone.
THE PULSE: I think it's because of the fact that the marriage was undone -- that it was kind of a do-over. I mean with the post Identity Crisis/Sue Dibny's murder, and all the other failed marriages in comics; people are kind of mad that there's no real happily ever after ....
GUGGENHEIM: Yeah ... y’know, it's funny... I wish there could be. The truth is, being married, there are interesting stories to be told with married characters and the right characters. Like I said, the essence of Spider-Man requires him to be single, but the essence of Superman doesn't. So, it's kind of dependent upon the character. I think there are, for the right ones, totally happy endings.
Bob's married too -- very happily married. We have nothing against characters being married. It's just sometimes the best drama comes out of bad thing happening to the characters, not good things. It's the nature of the beast, not just the comic book beast, but the narrative dramatic beast as well.
THE PULSE: Speaking of beasts, what's it like for Peter Parker being back in the dating jungle? Are there any new potential love interests in his life? Will we see the return of past romantic entanglements like the Black Cat again?
GUGGENHEIM: We've introduced two new female characters: Lily and Carlie. They were introduced to definitely put some single women in Peter's life. I don't want to spoil anything beyond that, but it was a big part of the reason for creating them. As far as Black Cat, there are no plans at the moment, but it's still totally within the realm of possibility.
THE PULSE: I know you don't want to spoil anything about Amazing Spider-Man, but are there any kind of secrets you can tell PULSE readers?
GUGGENHEIM: I kind of enjoy spoiling this... my next issue of Amazing Spider-Man [# 565] features the line spoken by Peter. He says, "I have a secret. I'm not who you think I am. I'm really ... A Skrull."
THE PULSE: A Skrull? No way! Since you mentioned it, what kind of monkey wrench is the Secret Invasion throwing into the Amazing Spider-Man plans? You said you'd all been talking about Amazing Spider-Man, and these plans for a while, so was Secret Invasion always on the table?
GUGGENHEIM: I'm not privy to all the Secret Invasion details -- all that information is need-to-know. Tom Brevoort is the editor of both Spider-Man and Secret Invasion, so he keeps us straight. We will be doing a Secret Invasion Brand New Day tie in. So, we're very much like cognizant of the story, and it will tie in through this tie in; but it doesn't really mess up too many of our plans, because they were conceived with Secret Invasion in mind. It's been in the works for a while. There really wasn't any sort of points where what we had in mind, and what they had in mind, were in conflict with each other.
THE PULSE: With Spider-Man's Brand New Day, and your comments about going back to the core, are we going to get the chance to see him establish or re-establish relationships with some of his supporting cast from the past like Flash Thompson?
GUGGENHEIM: I'm doing a self-contained issue that will spotlight Flash Thompson and we'll learn why he hasn't been in the book since Brand New Day started. We have a really good explanation for that that. It will make us see him in a whole new, fun light.
Spider-Man and Peter Parker have a very long ranging supporting cast, steeped in history. There are a lot of them that are fun to revisit and return to the book. We're trying to strike the balance between moving the book forward, and keeping alive some of the more familiar characters. You sort of have to see how we strike that balance over the next few months. I think we've done a pretty good job of that. Obviously there are so many characters that not everyone will be satisfied. But we'll be doing this three times a month with this group of writers for a long time to come, and there will be enough time to hit all the different bases.
THE PULSE: I hope we see more of Glory Grant, will she be featured?
GUGGENHEIM: Glory Grant's back! You should see her [by the time this interview runs].
THE PULSE: With Amazing Spider-Man, you've got a team of writers working on these concepts. I'd imagine this working arrangement is very close to your TV writing ...
GUGGENHEIM: Exactly. It's like a TV show -- only one where I'm not in charge. We certainly have differences of opinions sometimes, but it's funny, I think we're really good at respecting each other's opinions, but at the end of the day, someone has to write these things. I think there is a general policy where if Dan has to write a story, we all sort of have to defer to the way Dan chooses to tell it. At the end of the day, he has to make our story beats work. Similarly, with my stories, I have to make my beats work. We are all respectful of the group consensus. We all like to keep these ridiculous long email chains going, have conference calls, and our annual or semi annual summits to discuss the future of Amazing Spider-Man. Between those ways of communicating, we hash out a lot of stuff. Usually it's the best idea wins -- the best idea the group can agree on.
THE PULSE: Ok, so we kind of know your thoughts about what's happening with Peter Parker/Spider-Man, but villain wise, with this new direction, are we going to see some of the iconic Spider-Man villains or are you doing something all new?
GUGGENHEIM: We sort of decided for the first six months, to put all the tried and true Spidey villains in a box -- a very solidly locked box. A lot had gotten stale, and a lot were, like, overused. There were so many fights with Green Goblin that those fights ceased being special. For six months we had two choices: either stop having Spidey fight villains or create some new ones. We got a few really good new ones.
In Spider-Man Swing Shift, the FCBD, issue we introduced a character named Overdrive. He could basically superhumanly pimp out any ride he touched. Like if he touched a motorcycle, he could turn into this thing that seemed like a motorcycle on steroids. Next was Mister Negative, the new crime villain in town. Menace is a character I like to describe as "goblinesque." Freak made his debut this month [March]. He's a drug addict, who takes the wrong drugs, and ends up with an incredible deformity and superpowers. Paper Doll is a two dimensional supervillain. We've also got Screwball, a live-blogging supervillain. Dan Slott came up with that one. He has more ideas, and good ideas, than any 20 people I know. He's hysterical. He's a nice, sweet guy too.
THE PULSE: This is a chance to really establish something fresh and new for a character created in the 1960s. What's it like getting this opportunity?
GUGGENHEIM: It is so surreal. My wife read my third issue, and she turned to me and said, "You write Spider-Man!" It's just surreal. I'm very bad at processing the good stuff that happens in my life, so when something really cool happens, I'm bad at putting it into emotional terms. It's just kind of too cool for me to figure out and process. It sounds weird, but it's just like, it's bigger than me. It's the biggest thing I've done in comics thus far. It's really humbling. You spend the vast majority of your energy just trying not to screw it up. You sort of have this pressure on you, but you don't get a chance to enjoy the coolest factor of it, as you thought you would, when you got the gig. You enjoy it for two seconds, and then think, "Don't screw it up."
But I'm really enjoying it. When I write Amazing Spider-Man, I can see myself, if people liked it, doing it for a long time. I can see myself not getting tired of it. He's a fun character to write. The book is a lot of fun to work on, in the fanboy wish fulfillment factor. It's really enjoyable.
THE PULSE: In all this everything is new again, what's Peter Parker's job now?
GUGGENHEIM: He’s still shooting freelance photos for the Daily Bugle -- excuse me, The DB! For now, anyway. Heh...
THE PULSE: When do your next issues in Brand New Day come out?
GUGGENHEIM: My next arc hits in July. There’s an odd gap between my first and second arcs just because of the way things worked out, scheduling-wise. But once I’m back, I’m back with a vengeance: A three-parter in July, a self-contained issue (the aforementioned Flash story), an annual (drawn by Mike McKone) and other goodies.
THE PULSE: Ok, I think we've got all the Spider-Man information you can reveal, without Tom Brevoort putting out a hit out on your life .... So go ahead and tell us a little bit about that TV show that's taking up a lot of your writing time, Eli Stone.
GUGGENHEIM: Eli Stone. My TV show on the air right now. Ten p.m. Thursdays. If you're watching Lost already, just keep the TV on and check out Eli Stone afterwards. It's the best thing I've ever been involved with in television. It's such a quality show. It's an Emmy-caliber show. I'm not objective when I say this, but the people who watch it and get it, really get it! It's already developed an incredibly rabid following, just people who really, really, really like the show and appreciate it for what it is. We're coming into our best episodes. The show certainly gets better as it moves along. We're learning and writing better, but also, because once you set up the characters and situations, you can play around with those toys, and pay off some dividends.
What's fun about it, is the mythology element to it -- a sci-fi or genre element to the show, even though it's a law show. It has elements of superhero-ness to it. The best genre shows are ones with a mythology. We've developed a mythology between Eli's dad and his past. The show deals with a million different social issues and comedy and visual effects. I like to say, "We tickle you in the stomach, before we punch you." We really try to build a lot of emotion into each episode along with the humor.
EDITOR'S NOTE: this interview was conducted before the final episode of Eli Stone aired. Due to site problems we weren't able to post it until now.
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