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Radiation Interrogation: Robert Kirkman
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Location: Blogs Atomic FalloutRadiation Interrogation |
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| Posted by: Jake Bell |
Tuesday, July 22, 2008 4:41 PM |
 Robert Kirkman: Yea, hi, I was wondering if you guys have any War Machine comics in stock?
Mike Malve: Is this Robert Kirkman?
RK: Yea...but I still want those War Machine comics.
MM: We do have War Machine comics, my friend, and I'll tell you what--to make up for the fact that I'm now making you pay to call Malve, I will ship you out some War Machine comics.
RK: Uh...I think we could probably not do that and just say we did.
MM: You know what, I'm pretty sure you actually already have them all.
RK: Ha-ha! That's probably true.
We are doing a Radiation Interrogation today, so we're gonna interrogate you with all of these crazy questions that are going to throw you and make you go, "What?" These are not your typical questions...
...it's too bad you guys don't have long distance, so you'll never be able to call me back if I hang up.
Ixnay on the whole long distance thing.
Oh, ok, sorry, you're not a cheap-skate.
Everybody here knows that I am though.
What kind of discount do you give? Nothing?
Nothing. Nothing, my friend. Two pulls from the Quarter Bin!
Ouch!
How are you today?
Doin' alright. It's Wednesday, it's a good time, new comic day.
Actually, do you go down to your local comic shop on Wednesdays?
Oh hell no, I'm too good for that.
Do you have them bring the comics to you?
I have comics shipped. I live in Kentucky; I live in a small town, so my comic shop is about 45 minutes away, so it would take me a long time to go get my comics.
Well I'm sure now that you're the "Big Shot" they probably just ship you all of your stuff for free anyway.
It all works out.
So here we go with some questions. Can you put a white hot light right next to you so that you can sweat a little bit?
YES.
Is that how you normally work?
Yes, it helps me get stuff done.
We're going to be talking a lot about Walking Dead, because issue 50 hit today:
Is there any reason for readers to ever hope things might ever not completely suck for the people in this book? Or at least the ones who are still alive? Don't give away anything, but are things ever going to get better for these people?
Somewhat...but never for any kind of length of time. For the last 20-30 issues or so, I've wanted to do at least one issue where it's like, "Hey! This is great! Let's bake a cake! Let's go outside with cups of lemonade!" I've never really had the chance to do that, and I think that it would be incredibly boring. So I guess in order to keep the story moving along and to keep people interested, I just wreck these guys' lives and just make things worse and worse. I'm getting a lot of letters about how depressed reading the book makes people...
Well, and that's sort of why I asked the question. Is there one character where you are like, "You know what? Something good is going to happen to this one character." Anything like that? Is there anyone you would really like to hold on to?
Well, you know in the book so far, Glenn has fallen in love with Maggie. That's kind of a good thing. They've got a pretty good relationship. Um...and they're kind of not dead.
Are any of the characters based off of your own personality at all?
Not really. I think I mentioned that Glenn worked at a pizza joint in issue five, and I used to work at a pizza joint. And Alan was really in debt before the Zombie Holocaust, and I was really in debt before the writing…comics…holocaust. You know just little things like that, which I'll throw in.
So if you were a character in Walking Dead, Glenn would be you?
I would be the Governor--I actually don't know who I'd be, probably Rick because he's the coolest guy.
Are you gonna keep all his limbs, or are you going to take anymore off of him?
I think he's going to loose his head next!
Please no. You've already done that with at least a hundred guys.
Does your mood dictate when you write Walking Dead? Do you find yourself at the end of a particularly bad day more likely to sit down and say, "Let me gun down a baby?" Is there anything cathartic about writing about a guy getting his eye scooped out with a spoon that's been up his butt?
I am not efficient or together enough to be able to schedule my writing to the point where I can just go, "Oh! I guess I'll write Walking Dead today because I'm in a bad mood." I'm usually going, "Oh! Charlie is gonna be needing pages soon; I guess I should start writing that thing.” I think depending on what my mood is I might get ideas for the book more. I’m always getting ideas while I’m cooking dinner or taking a shower or driving someplace—so yea, maybe my mood dictates things that way, but as far as actually sitting down and writing the script, I’m typing a page where a baby is dying, and then I’m getting up, going upstairs and playing with my kid. So, it’s all pretty bizarre, I guess. I keep it separate. I don’t have any dead bodies in the basement yet. Yet.
 When you have all of these thoughts for books, do you write them down? How do you remember your ideas?
You know, I have forgotten more cool ideas than I have ever written down. What I usually do is go, “Oh jeez, I need to write that down!” And then I don’t. There was a time, when I had a day job, and I kept a notebook in my pocket at all times. I would hide when I was at work, on the back of a shelf and sit there and plot comics all day. Since then I haven’t really kept the notepad, but I should.
Did you ever work in a comic shop?
I worked in a comic shop from the age of 18 to 20, I think. I worked there for two years.
You did. So were you sort of like Brubaker? Sat in the back, never worked, just sort of jotted down comic stuff and write comics all day?
Oh! I was much better than that! I was the guy who had to come in on Wednesday because it was new book day, and I was the only guy who knew comics. So I was there opening the boxes, stocking the shelves, checking off stuff on the invoice. I remember all of the bizarre pornographic manga that people would special order. That was a lot of fun.
Do you have any in your collection? Bizarre pornographic manga?
No…let me tell ya, I wish I could go back in time and tell myself not to look at some of the ones that were pretty bad, but that’s just me.
Do they still haunt you?
Yes, they do.
So what year did you work in the comic book store?
97-99, I think.
What were some of the hot books that you were pushing?
I was pushing Savage Dragon left and right, but I wouldn’t call it the most successful book in the store. I know that Preacher was a big book.
Were you a fan of Garth Ennis’ stuff?
Oh yea, it’s really good stuff. It seems like that was at the end of Preacher and he was starting Punisher around the time that I was leaving the store. Grant Morrison’s JLA was really huge.
When you first started Walking Dead, how much of a challenge was it to overcome the "Oh, it’s another 28 Days Later knock off" stigma?
We got the odd letter here and there that would talk about the 28 Days Later similarities. But then a lot of people would say ’28 Days’ instead of ’28 Days Later,’ which was the Sandra Bullock rehab movie, so that would always make me laugh. So that kind of made it a little better. For the most part, I just kind of ignored it. I know the comic and the movie are vastly different besides someone wakes up in a hospital bed in the beginning. So, I knew that it would eventually go away, and I tried not to dwell on it. It was very frustrating for a while. I actually had people come up to me face-to-face and just basically say, “You totally ripped that movie off!” You know, I totally never could have come up with someone waking up in a hospital bed on my own. Creatively bankrupt that I am.
Part of your plan for writing Walking Dead was your complaint that most zombie movies have endings and you wanted to tell an ongoing story dealing with the post-zombie apocalyptic world. With that in mind, would you have any interest in doing a Walking Dead movie? How would you make that work?
I would make it a series of movies, or a television show, if I had my druthers. I’m not powerful enough in Hollywood to make that happen on either front right now.
Well hang out with Rob Liefeld for a day!
I should. Or get to know that Jeff Loeb guy. Millar now, after this weekend.
We're going to be having Millar and Harris for a signing in August, but back to the movie-TV show idea. I’m surprised you haven’t talked to anyone about starting something like that.
I’ve had meetings with dozens and dozens of different people about that stuff, and I always try to steer it towards TV, but the fact of the matter is, that if Spielberg came to me and said, “Hey, I would like to make it a movie.” Then well, I would say, “That is the best idea ever!” Let’s do it.
So why isn’t Robert Kirkman writing Amazing Spider-man? After this week, Erik Larson is stepping down from Image and working more as creator. I’ve heard rumors of him maybe coming to do a Spider-man project. Would you have any ties to that, or is that something you would like to do?
I have heard those rumors; in fact, I could probably go as far to debunk them. It would be news to me. I mean, I talk to Erik quite a bit, and I haven’t heard anything about that. If I were to write Spider-man, I would want to have it all to myself. I wouldn’t want to be a part of a brain trust. Part of the appeal of writing Ultimate Spider-man that it’s the one Spider-man book that you can actually control 100% and just do whatever you wanted and have fun with it.
So are you announcing right now that you’re taking over Ultimate Spider-man?
Pish…Bendis wishes.
But like I said, Spider-man is one of my favorite characters in comics; I would love to write it. But I don’t want to be part of a team, I’m selfish like that.
 Let’s open up the floor for some questions from some customers—Andy has a question for you:
I’m a big fan of Wolfman, and I just read last week that you’re going to start doing it monthly. I was just wondering, since you decided to go monthly, did you have to change your game plan about progressing the story issue by issue? Are you going to slow things down since you have more issues coming out, or are you still going ahead with what you’ve got?
I was doing time jumps before between issues when it was bi-monthly. Issue 6 goes into issue 7. I’m not going to be writing the book any differently now that it’s monthly. It will still pretty much be the same book. I was trying to make it a rule to have a big jump in time between each issue, but I kind of gave up on that.
There is a lot of chatter on message boards about the ultimate cover you did for #50, the Superhero cover. Was that just for fun to do a superhero cover with Erik?
Pretty much just for fun. There are a bunch of other companies making zombie covers for their superhero books, so I thought it would be a hoot to do a superhero cover on a zombie book.
Albert has one more question for you, Robert: My question falls back to your Invincible stuff. When you’re writing it, is there a certain idea that is completely absurd that you won’t do, and how do you play off with the artists? Do you play off of their interests, or do you just fly by the seat of your pants?
I fly by the seat of my pants quite a bit on that book. There are ideas that are too silly, I mean, that book has a bit of comedy in it, but I don’t want to put too much comedy in it that it loses its dramatic touch. I don’t want to do things to the point where people stop taking the book seriously. As far as working with the artists, I know there’s a few times where Ryan has done sketches for fun, and I’m like, “That’s a hilarious scene! I’ll totally write that into the book!” We go back and forth; they have a lot of input on stuff. It’s a good working relationship as far as I’m concerned.
 A few of our employees dressed up as zombies today--Stephanie, what would a zombie say to Robert Kirkman right now?
“I love you.”
Hey, Robert, we do love you, thank you so much for calling in. We’re gonna go back to work and sell more copies of Walking Dead #50.
(Sell more Wolfman #7 while you’re at it!)
You got it.
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