My first exposue to Keith's work, was over in LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES. V4, as it has come to be known throughout fandom, showed me for the first time that you didn't have to have fancy costumes or superpowers to make a good comic book, just really great characters and a compelling story.

Since then, I have followed Keith wherever he has decided to take us. From title to title - and company to company, for that matter - Keith has left a legacy of titles that have pushed the status quo. Books like AMBUSH BUG, TRENCHER and THE HECKLER showed us the humorous side of Keith, while his work on books like MAGNUS: ROBOT FIGHTER and LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES gave us a much more serious storyteller. His newest offering is a series for DC Comics called VEXT. It is the story of a minor god evicted from Heaven due to lack of worship, who is forced to live among mortals.

Keith doesn't do many interviews, but he was kind enough to make some time and sit down with me to talk about VEXT, and pretty much everything else he's done in the last twenty odd years he's been in (and out) of the industry.

Meanwhile...: Lets start with TATTERED BANNERS, since it’s probably the most recent thing as of this interview...

Keith Giffen: Which is really unusual because TATTERED BANNERS is years old.

MW...: Yeah. I remember when D.C. first announced the Wave 2 vertigo books, and there’s a few of those books that have only just come out in the last year or two.

KG: Well, TATTERED BANNERS was something that...[sighs] Well, there was miscommunication, and plus the fact that I was going through a rough patch with D.C. at that time, so it kind of petered out. I’ve lost interest in it. Actually, I didn’t lose interest in it as I no longer wanted to do it, but I was allowing some of the hassles I was having with D.C. as an entity to get in the way of it. So, I’m glad it’s finally coming out. I think it’s a great idea, but when it hit the stands, nobody was more surprised than me to see it out there.

There were other things too. I believe I was going to do a book called CHIGGER AND THE MAN...

MW...: CHIGGER AND THE MAN?

KG: CHIGGER AND THE MAN, yeah. I did a little short story in TABOO, the Steve Bissette anthology, called CHIGGER AND THE MAN. A little story about a guy and the eight-foot sentient tapeworm that lives inside of him and the fun they have with women. I don’t think I ever got a more negative response to a story in my entire life. I was immediately branded “The Comic Book Misogynist”. But we were also going to do that as a sort of mini-series to see if there was room for that sort of real bleak humour, but that pretty much fell apart due to, let’s just say, personality conflicts between the team that was attached to it.

MW...: Where did the basic idea of TATTERED BANNERS come from? You’ve basically created a world here that would make Rod Serling proud.

KG: Well, I don’t know where it came from, actually. It’s like, I never want to explore too much where any ideas come from because I have a feeling that that’s a very delicate place, and if I handle it too much, I might break it. All I can say is that it came to me like almost every other idea I’ve ever had, fully blown and fleshed out, knowing exactly what was going to happen, who the guy was [and] what the basic concept was. The idea of two Big Bangs, and being left behind by a world undergoing radical change, struck me as being a really neat story idea.

I’m trying to think back if there was any particular thing that triggered that.

The closest I can come to it is actually funny. It’s a TWILIGHT ZONE episode from the new TWILIGHT ZONE - one of the few bright spots in that one - where there was a guy [and] the English language was changing around him, and I thought that was a pretty nifty idea, so I’m sure that had more than a little bit to do with TATTERED BANNERS. Whereas I just thought, “What would happen if two completely alien universes, with their own laws of physics, and their own imperatives, collided and blended to form a third universe that was nothing like either of the two,” and just ran with it from there.

If the idea sounds like it’s fun, I’ll usually go for it.

MW...: It’s not really your typical Vertigo fare. Why was the choice made to make it under that imprint?

KG: I have no idea.

MW...: That was a D.C. decision?

KG: For a while there, it seemed that if you were doing something that wasn’t a standard super-hero, or something...Let me put it this way. I couldn’t do TATTERED BANNERS in the D.C. universe because I was changing the entire universe, and people get continuity minded, so it’s just a safe place to put it for a self contained story that has no other relation to any other book, and back then, Vertigo was the place to do that. Vertigo wasn’t tied into all these different storytelling strings like it is now, basically. The disease of continuity seems to have crept over there.

MW...: It’s own sub-continuity.

KG: Oh, I am the arch-foe of continuity. I think continuity is what’s strangling this business. I’m very big on consistency - consistency as in you have your cast, your cast reacts a certain way, you know who the characters are and you know the world that you’ve dropped the character in. You’ve got to keep them consistent from issue to issue. You can’t have Peter Parker, Spider-Man in one issue, and Flash in the next issue.

But, continuity wherein you come up with this great story where Superman can meet Green Lantern and have this wonderful adventure, and you can’t do it because your story took place in September, and at September tenth at 3:40 p.m., Green Lantern was off planet, I don’t know what that means, I don’t know why they do that.

MW...: But that’s more of a fan response. There was a similar reaction during the big GENESIS cross-over, where Donna Troy was in green Lantern’s apartment or something, and the newsgroups just flared up saying, “Donna Troy wasn’t even on the planet,” or something.

KG: There is a hardcore fan base. They want all their I’s dotted and all their T’s crossed. They want to make sure that everything is moving in the right direction at the right time. I’m not a big proponent of that kind of book structure. I guess the best way I could put it is, I really don’t think you should have to have a Masters Thesis in X-Men to work on the X-MEN. Know who the characters are, understand the parameters of the world in which they exist, and go out and tell fun stories.

MW...: X-Men continuity doesn’t make any sense anyways. [laughs]

KG: Most continuity doesn’t make sense, and that’s a part of the problem. People become so concerned with the extraneous detail, and fitting everything in and making sure every piece bunts up against the other one properly, that the story just goes by the wayside.

Again, I don’t care if during the same month, Thor is smashing a troll in Asgard, and also showing up in the FANTASTIC FOUR. If it’s a good, rousing story, why not? They’re comic books. We’re not curing cancer here.

MW...: You’ve co-written TATTERED BANNERS with Alan Grant...

KG: Mmmm...I plotted it, broke it down, and Alan Grant provided the dialogue. I believe I might have done the first three issues. I think Alan flew solo on number four, maybe even parts of number three. I’m not sure. It’s a real memory stretch for me.

MW...: Why the choice to team-up and not just go solo?

KG: I like Alan. I think part of the fun in comics is the collaborations between creators. And back then, I was a little gun shy about putting it down just in words. I come from the art side of comics, the drawing of comics, and I felt comfortable plotting them out, but I used to draw them as itty-bitty comic books. When I was faced with the keyboard and the blank piece of paper, I tended to freeze. So, there’s a large part of it that I just like collaborating with people. I write stuff now, I still like getting involved with another writer and maybe trade-off plot and dialogue, but there was also an absolute fear of just writing something on my own and putting the dialogue in the character’s mouth and looking like, Tworhey, the donkey boy.

Now I feel confident enough that if I want to fly solo, I can fly solo. But still, this Spider-Man project I’m doing right now...It’s an Eric Stephenson story. We co-plotted it, he’s going to do the writing and I’m going to do the artwork. It’s just fun because it keeps it lively and I don’t feel so cut-off. This is a solitary business, you know? You sit in a room and you draw, or you sit in a room and you write. So being able to reach out to somebody to bounce ideas around, that’s always been preferable to me.

MW...: Do you still have an influence over the dialogue, and vice-versa?

KG: That’s up to the writer. If they want to bounce around different dialogue riffs and all, I would hope that I could have a little bit of input as to Spider-Man’s wise-cracks, and that’s fine.

Here’s a little known fact, alright?

The AMBUSH BUG series that Bob Fleming and I did? I never told Bob what to write. I handed him those pages cold. I never told him what was going on. never, ever, not on one single page. I would hand them to him...There was a scene in AMBUSH BUG where, for one page, he’s just chased by elephants. I did it because I felt like drawing elephants, and I just passed it on to him. And of course, he has no idea where these elephants came from, or why they’re there, and he used to call me up and curse me. But I never told him anything, and people find that really hard to believe, but Bob and I were just on the same wavelength.

It was the same with other people. Some writers I’ll get more involved in explaining what’s going on, but if somebody hands me a plot, I usually stick to it.

MW...: You used to do something similar with Paul Levitz on LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, did you not?

KG: Paul and I would bounce little ideas back and forth. Not even in-depth, it would be, “Wouldn’t it be kind of neat if...Wouldn’t it be kind of neat if...?” And I was allowed to play around with the plot. If I thought I could take a fight scene and push it to another level, I was allowed to. I could insert little odds and ends here and there, and Paul was generous enough to give me co-plotting credit that, I would say better than fifty percent of the time, I did not deserve.

I know this flies in the face of a lot of peoples opinions of Paul, he gets bad rapped a lot. My working time on the LEGION with him was a very good time. He’s a very generous collaborator.

MW...: The TATTERED BANNERS story reminded me somewhat of your days with Epic, and your VIDEO JACK series with Cary Bates.

KG: Oh, yeah.

MW...: Do you like to tell the offbeat, non-superhero stories when you can?

KG: Yeah, I prefer the off-beat, non-superhero stories. Unfortunately, in comics, to get it through you’ve got to disguise the fact that it’s not a superhero. It’s like, AMBUSH BUG, to me, was not a book about a superhero. But you disguise what you’re doing to look as superhero as possible, even though it’s not.

MW...: AMBUSH BUG was labelled as more of a humour book than a superhero one, wouldn’t you say?

KG: Yeah, but it was a humour comic that sort of wore all the trappings that superhero comics do. I think he had to have the costume, he had to have the specific look. Doing AMBUSH BUG as an anthropomorphic animal, or just a plain ordinary guy wandering through life like that, I think would have been a much harder sell. But you put him in that costume, and you play the superhero game, it finds it’s niche in the marketplace better. The comic book market right now is very, very geared towards superheroes. Especially the mainstream comic book market.

It’s like, I’m doing a book for D.C. called VEXT. VEXT is not a superhero book, but again, I’ve got him sort of bumping up against all the superhero conventions because there’s a lot of people out there who just won’t even bother to pick it up if it’s not a superhero book.

MW...: And what is VEXT about?

KG: I had read one time, that Aztecs and ancient Egyptians - these very old civilisations - they had their major gods. They all had their god of war, god of the harvest, god of the moon, sun, god of love, right? But also these little, minor gods. You know, the god of not-stubbing-your-toe-too-often-on-the-path. Little gods. The people’s gods. And I figured, “Well, okay. Let me take one of these people’s gods and exile him on Earth when his little realm of minor gods is foreclosed on due to insufficient worship”. So Vext is the patron deity of mishap and misfortune, and he winds up on Earth, just trying to make do as an Earth-person. And his other god buddies are there - some friends, some enemies. Like, he winds up rooming with Paramour, who is the patron deity of relationships-gone-hellishly-wrong. Just having fun.

It’s sort of a logical outgrowth of AMBUSH BUG. As a matter of fact, I had originally gone in and said, “I’d like to do AMBUSH BUG again, but stay away from comic booky references,” and D.C. had sort of let me now that they’d rather have a brand new character. So, if anyone’s wondering when I’m going to do AMBUSH BUG again, pick up VEXT.

MW...: Is VEXT going to be a regular monthly series, or another mini?

KG: An ongoing series. Mike McKone is doing the art, and it’s stellar. It’s probably the best artwork I’ve seen him produce, and I was working with him back on the JUSTICE LEAGUE stuff, which was spectacular stuff. But this is just so far above and beyond, I would actually go so far to say with this book, Mike McKone is arguably the best penciller working in the business.

MW...: Speaking of pencillers, or artists, how did Mick McMahon get involved with the TATTERED BANNERS series?

KG: He was there.

MW...: [laughs]

KG: Yeah, he was available, and I loved Mick’s stuff since I discovered him way back when on JUDGE DREDD. It’s just a pity that everything didn’t work out the way I’d hoped it would work out. I just love Mick’s stuff.

MW...: What do you mean by, “Everything didn’t work out”?

KG: Like I said, I was in a rough spot with D.C. at that point, and it affected the book, and it affected Mick’s working on the book. I wish things would have gone a little bit smoother. You get a chance to work with someone you’ve wanted to work with for years, and then you kind of screw it up...

MW...: So, you’re referring to when it was originally scheduled years ago?

KG: Yes.

MW...: Okay. Now, I wanted to touch on your last collaboration with Alan...Well, I guess, at least part collaboration with Alan, THE BOOK OF FATE. He came in to dialogue the last four or five issues, I believe. Was that because Ron Wagner had left and you had taken over the art chores?

KG: That’s because I was on the art chores, yeah. I was having fun on BOOK OF FATE, but it was not the kind of book that I wanted to immerse myself in that deeply, so if I was going to take on the art, I wanted somebody else to do the dialogue. That’s it, pure and simple.

MW...: You’ve been involved with several incarnations of Fate...

KG: Yeah. I seem to be the go-to guy for Doctor Fate.

MW...: [laughs] ...why do you think the series is so hard to sell?

KG: I don’t know. I really don’t know. The earlier Doctor Fate stuff that was done , the first miniseries, sold rather well. Well enough to give him his own book. You know, I have no idea. Absolutely no idea why DOCTOR STRANGE could catch on and keep on going, and DOCTOR FATE can’t. I suppose one’s being handled better than the other, I don’t know. I really have no idea. I don’t know why a lot of books that are out there fail.

MW...: And what was it that interested you in Jared, the newest fate?

KG: Well, they offered it to me, and I kind of liked the idea of a down-and-dirty mystical guy. And they also said that I could play it kind of tongue-in-cheek and have a little bit of fun with Jared, and that’s what sealed the deal. I think if I had to go in and play it straight, I would have passed on the project.

MW...: During the series’ run, fans spent a lot of time debating - particularly in the letters column - over who the character of Jared was based on, or who would be cast if there was ever a movie made based on the book. Did you base your version of Jared on anyone in particular, or did you just sort of go with what was already there?

KG: No, just straight from scratch. I don’t know about Ron Wagner and the visual riff on fate, but we just ran with it. It was just taking the stereotype of the tough, street-wise city guy, and pushing it in a different direction, adding a bit of humour to it, and frustrating him constantly. There was no “real-life” influence, no.

If they were to come to me and say, “We’re making a Jared movie, who do you think should be Jared?” I’d go, “Pfff...Don’t know. Don’t know, don’t care. Bye.” I have no idea.

MW...: There seems to be a lot of almost commentary between the lines of the book on superheroes, and the genre...

KG: Oh yeah.

MW...: ...almost to the point of parody.

KG: There was a little bit of parody in there.

MW...: Not really blatant...

KG: Not really blatant. Mostly it came from the fact that Jared thought that anyone who dresses up in spandex and goes out and fights crime is a moron. That was basically it. That was Jared, that was his point of view, and it came in really helpful when he had to bounce up against Sentinel and various others. Kind of defined their relationship, you know? “There’s no way I can respect you.”

MW...: Were you writing to the character, or was there some of leaking in there?

KG: Some of me leaks into everything I do.

MW...: Well, I guess. [laughs]

KG: Some of me leaks into everything I do. [laughs] I’ not that fond of the archetypal superhero.

MW...: Like Jared’s “destiny” speech to Arnie in the second issue, where he goes on about how maybe it’s fated to be this way, and Arnie says, “You really think so?”

KG: And Jared says, “NO!!!”. Yeah, exactly.

MW...: It seemed to try to defy the stereotype.

KG: Trying to. Yeah, trying to. Jared was a cynic. Jared was just a milder extension of stuff I’d been exploring when I was doing LOBO and TRENCHER. That is the idea that yes, you could have these wonderful powers, and be the toughest guy on the block, but life is still going to hand you shit, okay?

MW...: [laughs]

KG: There is no escaping it just because you’re the big, muscle-bound guy who can beat up anyone in the bar. Life will get you, and it’ll get you when you’re not looking. You’ll never...see...it...coming.

MW...: Was the final issue of FATE a reaction to the cancellation of the book? It almost felt as if you were lashing out, what with the Lobo guest shot, and the ‘til then running joke in the lettercol that Lobo is the last character you will ever see showing his face in this book?

KG: No, it’s just we knew the book was ending and...

MW...: Having fun?

KG: Having fun. Yeah, that’s all. It’s really tough when you know your book is ending, and you’re on the last issue of the book and you realise that it’s not going on anymore. Part of your mind starts saying, “Oh, we need to put this time to better use.” And that’s not something you’re proud of, but that thought is there. You have nothing against the fans who have kept the book alive, you have nothing against the fans who’ve been reading it, but when you know it’s dying, it’s like the heart goes out of you.

MW...: Someone call 9-1-1?

KG: Yeah. Sort of like that.

MW...: [laughs]

KG: It just goes out of you, and you just try to maintain.

MW...: There was a comment in the editorial in the last issue that this was not the last we would see of Jared, and that he would be appearing again where we least expect it. Was that referring to the Batman guest shot Alan wrote around the same time as the books cancellation, or do you know of any other plans for the character?

KG: I don’t now if Jared has surfaced again. Once I walked away from the book, I walked away from the character. Has he shown up again?

MW...: I’ve heard a buzz that he’ll be making an appearance in the new CIRCLE OF LIGHT or SENTINELS - or whatever the heck it’s being called nowadays - series that Steven Grant is supposed to be doing.

KG: Oh, good. You know, he’s an interesting enough character, but you’ve told me. This is the first I’ve heard of it.

MW...: When you came onto the series, you actually rewrote Jared’s origin somewhat. Was that an editorial decision, or did you just want to make the character your own?

KG: I wanted to go into it a little more in-depth, and I wanted to set the tone of the book - I’m selfish that way. I didn’t want to go in and say, “This entire origin was wrong,” I just wanted to flesh it out a little bit, and sort of broadcast to the readers that we’re launching ourselves in a new direction.

A lot of people took me to task when I took over LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES and started over again, and I bumped it five years into the future. Now, while I would admit that a lot of that had to do with, “No, I want to do my LEGION,” - and I was going to do my version of the LEGION, as arrogant as that may sound - but I couldn’t bring myself to gradually undo Paul’s version of the LEGION because Paul had this incredibly long run on the book. It was an impressive body of work, and I didn’t want to go in there and say, “Nope, nope , nope, nope. Let’s change this, let’s change that, and gradually turn it into this”. I figured if I bumped it five years, Paul’s body of work still remained. It still happened that way.

Of course things went horribly wrong when, all of a sudden, we couldn’t use any Superman mythos, and we were being second guessed every inch of the way. But the idea was to take the Legion stories that had been done in the past, hermetically seal them, and say, “There. They happened. We’re not going to piss on them.” But, things don’t always work out like you plan.

MW...: Every few years DC seems to try and...

KG: Redefine their universe?

MW...: Not their entire universe, but there’s a lot of magical characters that are still floating around that haven’t been “Vertigo-ised”, and with books like PRIMAL FORCE and the Weirdoverse, they seem to be trying to examine the dark corners of the DCU...

KG: That’s WATCHMEN fallout, and we’re still catching it. Hopefully, it’s the tail end of this whole post-modern deconstructing of the super-hero mythos. I see a lot more books out there that are sort of going back to the idea that a hero should be somebody who is looked up to, and have a moral code. I kind of like that. I know it’s hard to believe from the guy who came up with Lobo and stuff, but I kind of like that.

And Lobo was always meant to be an indictment of that particular kind of hero. Boy did that backfire on me.

MW...: [laughs]

KG: I think these little things you’re seeing now wherein they’re exploring the darker side of the character, or trying to drag the hero down to a less than heroic level, it’s kind of petering out. I think it’s run it’s course.

MW...: Getting away from FATE, or at least using it as a jumping off point, you’re involvement with the mythos stretches back quite a ways. In fact, I think I remember reading somewhere that it was your Dr. fate back-up stories with Marty Pasko that actually won the confidence of the editors, and led to your assignment to the LEGION with Paul (Levitz).

KG: Yes. My first work for DC in 1976, I did everything wrong. Blew myself out of the business, which is why I tend to get vocal about new guys that I see making the same mistakes that I made. I screwed myself over royally. Joe Orlando was nice enough, a few years later after I had gone through a series of nightmare jobs, to put me on probation to let me back in DC’s door. Put me on some ghost stories where I got to work with people like Bob Kanagher, so I wasn’t complaining.  Then gradually, I was moved into the back-up slot in THE FLASH with the Dr. fate stuff. They gained confidence in me, and as the Dr. fate back-up started gathering attention, I was going to be tried out on a series of Legion of Super-Heroes back-ups. I think I did one, and then Pat Broderick left the book for whatever reason - I don’t know the story - and I was thrown on to the main feature, which took a lot of faith on Paul’s part because when I left DC originally, Paul was the editorial co-ordinator and he had to put up with all of my nonsense. So, nobody was more surprised than me to find out that Paul not only approved it, but was looking forward to it.

MW...: Were you a Legion fan prior to working on the book?

KG: I was aware of the Legion, yeah. I used to read it when I was a little kid. I wouldn’t call myself a Legion “fan” as such. I used to flip through the different issues, and it was the artwork - Jim Sherman, (Dave) Cockrum - those guys would cause me to pick up the book. I wasn’t that immersed in Legion mythos, no. It was a crash course I had to take.

MW...: That was also right around the time that you started experimenting with your art style, correct?

KG: I always do. I’m always looking around for some different way of putting the line on the paper just to keep it fresh for me.

MW...: I guess it just seems more noticeable now.

KG: Well, I believe there was one instance, this LEGION issue, where I radically changed the art approach in mid-story.

MW...: [laughs]

KG: Yeah, I believe it was...

MW...: Was that one of the Prophet issues?

KG: I believe it might have been the first one, yeah. The very first Omen and the Prophet issue, and you start off in the style that everybody is used to, then you turn the page and...[makes sound effect]

Yeah, I do that to this day. I’m always looking for a way of keeping myself excited about what I’m putting down on the paper.

MW...: I know that with the later issues - particularly the deluxe series - you had a certain amount of freedom with the book to do what you wanted to. We talked about throwing things into panels and saying, “run with it”. Was it always like that, or did it take a while...

KG: No. From day one Paul was very open to interpretation. Always, always open to interpretation. When he’d hand in the plot, he’d realise the plot was mostly used for the spine of the story, and to set up where the characters are, but he let me play around with it. Just because he said Dream Girl and Element Lad are talking while laying in the sun on the beach, if I drew something weirder, or something a little more science-fiction oriented and there was no beach in site, he’d run with it. He’d run with it and make it a part of the story, maybe even return to something that I’d established later on. It was a real good working relationship.

MW...: After a successful run on the news-stand version, you helped launch the deluxe series and left after only doing three or four issues. Why the hasty departure?

KG: Because I did the Legion poster. I don’t know whatever possessed me to decide to do a Legion poster, and try to include as many characters as I could that ever appeared in the Legion. When I was done with that poster, I literally could not draw the Legion anymore. I just couldn’t. I fried myself on that one.

So, blame the Legion poster. I would have stuck around a while longer, but the Legion poster did it for me.

MW...: So, was that when you jumped onto AMBUSH BUG?

KG: Yeah. I was coming off the LEGION, and [I] went into Dick Giordano’s office and he said, “Okay, what do you want to do next? What have you got in mind?” I wanted THRILLER. I wanted the THRILLER book...

MW...: With Bob Fleming...

KG: ...with Bob, to draw. So I figured the best way to get THRILLER, would be to ask for something I didn’t stand a chance in hell of getting, and work my way down to THRILLER, which is what I wanted. I had just completed the AMBUSH BUG/LEGION OF SUBSTITUTE HEROES, and we were doing little Ambush Buggy things in the back of ACTION COMICS, so I said, “Dick, I’d love to do a four issue Ambush Bug mini-series,” and he goes, “Okay.”

So, I wound up doing AMBUSH BUG and I never got to do THRILLER.

MW...: AMBUSH BUG was basically the first time that fans got to see the infamous Giffen sense of humour unchained. Was it refreshing to cut loose as much as you did in that book?

KG: Oh, God, yeah. Are you kidding?

MW...: It seemed like one giant comic book catharsis.

KG: Yeah. You know what it was? To my way of thinking, I never explored that kind of...AMBUSH BUG owes a very, very big debt to Monty Python, in that it’s just disjointed humour strung together on the slimmest of storylines. And nobody in mainstream comics had been exploring that kind of humour, or doing that kind of “wink, wink - nudge, nudge...we’re in on the joke” kind of humour in a comic book. D.C., and especially Julius Schwartz, was behind it all the way. They pretty much just left us all alone and let us run amok.

You had the occasional hurt feelings when we went after somebody, but we’d always point to the AMBUSH BUG books and go, “Nobody takes more of a savaging than Bob and myself,” you know? [laughs] I mean, we go after ourselves constantly. So, okay, we make fun of somebody’s book, we take a cheap shot. Well, we were always taking cheap shots at each other. It was sort of, “Hey, c’mon, they’re comic books. Wake up and get a sense of humour.”

MW...: I heard that after you had completed the SON OF AMBUSH BUG series, you had felt that the character, and the concept, had basically run it’s course...

KG: No.

MW...: That’s inaccurate?

KG: Oh, no, no, no. I believe I know what you’re talking about.

MW...: I’d heard that the AMBUSH BUG NOTHING SPECIAL only came about because Julius Schwartz asked you to do it.

KG: Well, in the SON OF AMBUSH BUG story, Bob and I did everything to Ambush Bug everything that D.C. did to us, alright? This was a time that the hurt feelings were starting to surface, people thought we were deliberately making fun of them, there was a lot of hostility towards the character and the book and the way it was handled. So after SON OF AMBUSH BUG, it was such a painful experience putting that out, I just threw my hands up and said, “I’ll never touch this character again.” They obviously don’t want this kind of humour, and you’re right, the AMBUSH BUG NOTHING SPECIAL came about specifically because Julie wanted to go back there, and I told him point blank, “Then you’ve got to stand between us and these people. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want a list of thou shalt nots as long as you’re on. I want to be able to have fun with this book.” And Mike Eury was the editor, and he was very good at running interference.

MW...: How did the original concept for Ambush Bug come about?

KG: I read about the Ambush Bug. It’s indigenous to New Jersey, where I live. There is actually an Ambush Bug.

MW...: I have seen pictures of the actual insect.

KG: There is an actual insect, and I liked the name, and he was first conceived as kind of a goofy villain, but more and more of me kept creeping into him.

MW...: So, his original appearance in...

KG: Doom Patrol. D.C. PRESENTS with Doom Patrol.

MW...: Doom Patrol, yeah. He was...Actually, didn’t he kill a senator or something in that issue?

KG: Oh, yeah. Not many people realise he’s a murderer. He was originally conceived as being just a wacky, homicidal maniac. Then he gradually turned into just an annoying criminal, then an annoying scoff-law, and eventually into the can’t cut an even drape, trying desperately to fit into the D.C. Universe schmendrick that he became.

MW...: So, was switching gears like that difficult?

KG: No, it was a gradual process. It was a really gradual process. The character was going in the direction he should have been going in so I didn’t fight it.

MW...: It felt right.

KG: Yeah, it felt right. That’s exactly the way to put it. Just like with Lobo. When it started getting over the top, it felt right.

MW...: Speaking of over the top, there’s a natural segue here to THE HECKLER.

KG: God, I love that book.

MW...: He basically replaced Ambush Bug as your humorous book of choice...

KG: Yeah, okay. It was an attempt at doing Bugs Bunny as a super-hero.

MW...: I’d read somewhere that you said that if D.C. offered you the choice of doing JUSTICE LEAGUE, LOBO and THE HECKLER again, you’d go with THE HECKLER in a second.

KG: In a second. In-a-second. THE HECKLER was a book that just didn’t find it’s audience, and I was the one who walked into Mike Carlin and said, “We gotta kill the book, it’s dying.” That book was just fun to do. I don’t think it was as deconstructive as AMBUSH BUG, and some of the humour was more subtle...Yeah, I would do THE HECKLER in a second.

MW...: Considering the push these days towards “More Fun Comics”, with books like IMPULSE and DEADPOOL being so successful, do you think the environment is ripe for a Heckler revival?

KG: No, I don’t think so. Lighter books, while you see more and more of them, they are still not the favoured approach to a super-hero comic. You’re not going to find some new guy coming in off the street doing that kind of book. If you look at these books, they’re usually guys who have reached a certain point when the companies want to keep them around for whatever reason. D.C. wanted to keep me around when AMBUSH BUG cam about. They wanted to keep me around when we were doing JUSTICE LEAGUE. I believe Mark Waid is the one who came up with Impulse?

MW...: Yes.

KG: Yeah, see, Mark Waid is someone they wanted to keep around. So, you reach a certain point where you can throw your weight around a little, but I think given their choice, I don’t think either D.C. or Marvel would do very many light, humorous takes on any characters.

MW...: Now, Heckler is a creator owned character, correct?

KG: I’d have to check my contract, but I believe I own it again. It fell back into mine and Tom and Mary’s hands.

MW...: Okay. I was just about to ask what the arrangement you had with D.C. was - if they owned the publishing rights and you owned the character.

KG: After a certain amount of time, which has passed, then it reverts back to us. I’d have to, again, yank out the contract just to check, but I believe I own The Heckler again. Or Tom and Mary and I own The Heckler again.

MW...: Would you ever try and take a shot at it again independently?

KG: Well, if I saw life in the comic book market and thought there might be an audience out there for it, yes. But right now, I’m very hesitant about taking characters I like and throwing them out to a market place that obviously just doesn’t seem to give a damn.

MW...: Are things really that bad? I mean, you constantly hear creators talking about how depressed the industry is, but...

KG: Where is our audience? Who are we doing these books for? The kids aren’t reading comic books anymore. Comic books have gone back to being the nerd symbol, you know? If they find out you read comic books, you’re going to get your ass whupped on the playground.

My take on it is that comics officially died last September, and everything we’ve been doing from that point’ til now is this weird publishing version of “Weekend At Bernie’s”. And eventually, the corpse is going to start to foam and stink, and we’re going to have to throw up our hands and go, “Okay, we screwed up.” There are comic books out there that are still making money, but they are few and far between.

MW...: So what happened last September?

KG: That was really the first summer in a long time when sales continued to plummet. There was no summer bump. I don’t mean to sound like a gore-crow here, but unless some kind of radical rethinking is done as to how we do comics, where we target comics, how we distribute them and get them to people, and our point of purchase, we’re going under.

I used to say that comic books and jazz have two things in common: they’re both unique American art-forms, and every ten years, both are pronounced dead. This time, it looks like the comic book industry is going to turn that pronouncement into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

MW...: It’s just odd hearing people talking like that, when most of what the fans see is all the hype and happy faces put on by the fan press.

KG: Yeah, didn’t WIZARD have an article to the effect that the comic book market is showing a little bit of an upswing?

MW...: I’m not sure.

KG: Maybe it was the COMIC BOOK BUYERS GUIDE. It’s funny that that article hit just shortly before Marvel went through and had mass firings and lay-offs. This is not the sign of a healthy industry. You can say to yourself that Marvel’s just streamlining down again, but...

MW...: Is D.C. just in the safety net of the Time-Warner entertainment conglomerate?

KG: Yeah, nobody is safe, but I think that D.C. is safer than many because it is umbilical to the whole Time-Warner entertainment giant. A Batman or Superman movie once every five years keeps them alive, but I think they’re making most of their money off of marketing. It’s always surprised me that D.C. and Warner Bros. seem to be able to sell anything with Superman on it but the comic.

MW...: [laughs]

KG: You know, Superman Underoos, Superman peanut-butter, Superman yo-yos, but the comic book just languishes. I don’t know how much of this is due to the fact that it’s all direct sales, and we’re asking these people, in rough times for comics, to continue rolling dice and shooting craps on how many comics they’ll be able to offload. How much of it is due to the fact that the content is just missing the audience, or how much is due to the fact that maybe comics just outlived their usefulness as they are now. Maybe it’s time to take that next step, whatever that next step may be.

MW...: You mentioned the Spider-Man project you’re doing for Marvel, and although I know you are a freelancer, what is the atmosphere at Marvel right now?

KG: Cautious optimism. That’s the best way I can put it. They’re still reeling from what happened. I think if you were to ask a lot of people there if it was necessary, they’d sort of hang their heads and say yes.

If Marvel is streamlining itself, if Marvel is getting itself ready for something, just cut off all the chafe and get in there and put out the best damn books they can, then all the more power to them. I guess a lot of them are just waiting to see if the other shoe drops.

But in the meantime, they’re plugging along. Good for them.

MW...: Maybe that’s why everyone keeps upping the price of their comics by a dime each month. [laughs]

KG: You know, it’s like we’re selling less, but we’re charging more. I always thought that one dollar was the drop-dead price for a comic book. I don’t care how many Mylar snugs people have, or their chemically treated boards, or whatever, comic books are disposable entertainment - that’s what they’re supposed to be. A kids supposed to read a comic book, roll it up, stuff it in his back pocket and go off and play softball, you know?

We’re a quick read. We’re a quick fix.

My son used to read SPIDER-MAN religiously, so I asked him one time why he stopped. And he said, “Because I’m tired of picking up a SPIDER-MAN story and getting one eighth, or one tenth, or one fourteenth of the story, and it doesn’t go anywhere and there’s no beginning, middle or end, and I don’t know what’s going on in the issue, and if I miss an issue I’m completely lost and it costs me close to three goddamn bucks to buy the comic book when, for three bucks, I can go rent the SPIDER-MAN video game and instead of reading about Spider-Man, be Spider-Man.”

And I went, “Ohhh, okay...We’re doomed.”

MW...: [laughs]

KG: Comic books, even the most innocent ones, always had this little edgy, subversive feel to them, and that’s not there anymore because a lot of people now look at comics as being nothing more than presentation pieces for other media. “Look, I did a WAHOO MAN comic and now I can bring it out to Hollywood and see if somebody wants to make a movie or a cartoon about it.” So of course, the idea’s homogenised and blended down to what is perceived as being attractive to other media.

We’re not doing comic books for comic books sake anymore. We’re not doing them for the audience, because if we were doing them for the audience, we’d end one of these stories every so often.

To be continued in Part Two of our interview with writer/artist, Keith Giffen