I had the idea for Power Pack and wrote it up. Then I had a stroke of luck when June Brigman came into my office looking for work – all of the books I was editing had artists assigned to them, but it turned out that June could draw kids. She did illos of the Power Pack kids on spec – they were wonderful! – and I submitted the proposal to Shooter with June attached as artist. Shooter loved the proposal, and told me that June and I had a monthly series.
After that, I found I really liked the challenge of writing, and after a while other people offered me more writing work. So I quit editorial and started writing full time.
Q. You worked for Marvel during a time when some big names and big personalities were also at the company. What can you tell us about some of those people? Are there any stories or anecdotes that stand out in your memory?
A. Some aren’t printable, and it would take too long here to tell them all. But here’s one that I wasn’t involved in, I was just an amused bystander...
Shooter, in his demand for clarity, wanted Frank Miller to stop putting little blowing pieces of paper in the cityscapes of his Daredevil stories, since people “wouldn’t know what they were.” This pissed Frank off. Walter and I were out to dinner with Frank and he was telling us about it – pretty indignantly – when he got a great idea! Frank wrote a story where Daredevil fought someone – I think it was Bullseye – in the middle of a tickertape parade. This was a perfect dilemma for Daredevil, because the tickertape screwed up his radar sense. And all through the story, all very necessary, is page after page of blowing paper. The opening page, even, has the credits on blowing pieces of paper. And Shooter’s paper is upside down. It was a great character story. Great story period. I don’t think Frank heard that complaint from Shooter again.
And the moral is... I dunno. There are so many. Pick one.
Q. You worked in a predominantly male industry for quite some time. What, if any, were the challenges for you as a woman?
A. Actually, over the years, I’ve pretty much been treated like one of the guys. I was – and I know this will sound weird – sort of innocently unaware that the industry was so male-dominated while I was at Warren, and when I was first at Marvel, until people started pointing it out to me. I hadn’t thought my being included was anything special or unusual. I just loved doing the job.
I only ran into the “girls can’t do (whatever)” thing a few times, and that was never an overt statement except for that time with James Warren – it was more a feeling I’d get from one person or another. Generally, it wasn’t a big deal, since I had plenty of options. As an editor, it may even have worked in my favor. For instance, Chris seems to work really well with female editors. He loved working with Ann Nocenti.
As a writer, I did avoid doing “female character” books too often for fear of being typecast as a “girl writer,” although I did do a Spellbinder and a Red Sonja mini-series, and a couple of issues of She-Hulk. Too bad, in a way, but it made sense at the time.
I really enjoyed writing female characters as part of a group – in Power Pack, X-Factor, New Mutants, and Superman. But then, I love writing group books in general.
Q. You have worked for both Marvel and DC, taking on some of their most iconic characters. Do you find that you approach writing in different universes very differently?
A. Not really. I’m at heart an old school “Marvel style” writer, which means I like working plot-art-script-inks. But you do have to understand the world your characters live in, and that the tone of each world will be a little different, as will be your characters’ place in it and the agenda they bring to it.
I like active stories, where the conflict is physically defined, but hate it when slugfests are about nothing but one big guy hitting another one. For me, the question is always “Why”? What drives this character? What drives the action? Once I’ve answered that, I pretty much have my story, no matter what universe a character is in.
Q. When you sat down to create Power Pack, what did you hope for those characters and that title?
A. I hoped I’d be allowed to write the kind of story I’d loved as a kid, in comic book form, but my hopes weren’t that high. When I first proposed the idea, verbally, Shooter wasn’t all that enthusiastic. He said something like, “Write it up... maybe a mini-series,” and I could practically see him rolling his eyes. But, once I turned in the full proposal – with the plots for a four-issue arc – he loved it. It was a shock to me and June. Neither of us had ever done a whole comic before.
I never expected Power Pack to win awards or be as popular as it became. I never thought it would be a cult hit. I never thought it would have the best – the kindest, warmest and friendliest – fans in the world. I never thought it would still be going, in one form or another, decades later.
I was very lucky with Power Pack.
Q. Your X-Factor comics are among the first that are now sometimes read as having gay-coded characters, specifically Cameron Hodge. Can you tell us a bit about the process of introducing his character, and what you intended for him? Did the gay angle become more troublesome once Hodge became a villain?
A. I thought I was pretty subtle about “gay” Hodge. Heck, I wasn’t even totally sure Hodge was gay, myself.
I didn’t introduce him. He was there when I took over the book, with X-Factor #6. But his position with the team and his behavior was so against the team’s best interests that I asked myself “Why”? As I’ve said before, “why” – i.e. motivation – drives the story for me. It was in answering this question that the idea emerged, that his love/hate relationship with Angel and X-Factor as a whole might have its roots in jealously.
But what kind of jealousy? Might it have been only over X-Factor’s powers? But it was more fun if it was personal. So then, what kind of love? What kind of hate? And thus a character emerged. Hodge became the driven, single-minded, mad sort of character who, if he couldn’t have something, decided that no one else could have it either.
Poor Hodge. So conflicted. So crazed. He was a very fun character to write.
Q. You sometimes created comics with your husband Walter. Did you have any sense that pairing up with him changed how you were viewed as a writer?
A. I didn’t work with Walter all that frequently, and I made that choice deliberately. I figured, that way, if one of us got fired off a book – or a book we were on crashed and burned – the other one would still have a job. Though Walter did write his first comic story for me when I was an editor – a Battlestar Galactica, which spring-boarded his career as a writer. And he drew Star Wars and The Uncanny X-Men and The New Teen Titans one-shot, which I edited. But face it, if you write as well as Walter does, you mostly don’t need another writer around.
We did do X-Factor together – me as writer, Walter as penciller – and we teamed-up to write the gorgeous Meltdown mini-series together, which was painted by Jon Muth and Kent Williams. And years later, we team-wrote World of Warcraft, partly because there was too much continuity in Warcraft for one writer to handle. But mostly, we’ve worked separately.
I don’t think teaming up with him made any difference, one way or another, in how I was viewed, except that we did good work together. Your readers would have more of a sense of that than I would.
Q. What is the most positive change in the comics industry that you’ve seen over the course of your career? The least positive?
A. The most positive would be that creators now get royalties, that comics are presented well in other media, and that there’s been such a rise of independent publishers who focus on other material than just superheroes. I do love superheroes, but it’s a big world out there. Also, the expansion of e-publishing, with individual creators beginning to figure out how to make it work for them.
The least positive would be that at Marvel and DC, story creation is too often handed down from the top, with single creators – sometimes very talented single creators, but still... – controlling storylines across a whole lines of books, including massi
ve crossovers. I think it stifles creativity and plays to a smaller and smaller niche audience.
Q. What advice do you have to budding female writers and artists in an industry that, on the creative side, is still overwhelmingly composed of men?
A. Do what you love. Make every single story you write or draw be the best that it can be. Be deadline conscious. Don’t settle for second best, and don’t give up. If one door closes, look for another that’s open.
Also, be friendly and open to constructive criticism. If someone takes the time to look at and evaluate your work, be grateful and say thank you. If you hear the same criticism two or three times, it’s probably something you need to work on. So do it!
Be willing to get your work published in smaller venues, if that’s what it takes. If it’s that good, people will notice. Just remember that you’re competing with the best guys in the field, so you have to be as good as they are... or better. If you’re that good, you’ll get your break. Then all you have to do is prove you can play in the big leagues.
Me vs. Me
Sarah Kuhn is the author of the geek romantic comedy novella One Con Glory, currently in development as a feature film. She has written for Back Stage, IGN.com, Geek Monthly, The Hollywood Reporter, Creative Screenwriting, Consumers Digest, and StarTrek.com. She is one fourth of the Alert Nerd collective (AlertNerd.com) and can be found blabbing about gender and genre on popular panels like GeekGirlCon’s “Character Studies: Geek Girls in Popular Culture.” In 2011, Sarah was selected as a finalist for the CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment) New Writers Award. She lives in Santa Monica with her gamer husband, an extensive Buffy action figure collection, and way too many comic books.
“Who would win in a fight?”
How many times have we comic book junkies heard this simple, six-word utterance? How many times have we used it, thought it, or typed it into our handy Internet time-suck of choice? If my mutant power was to amass all occurrences of this phrase as it was articulated outside the ArcLight Cinema’s premiere midnight showing of Thor alone... Well, first of all, that’d be a really shitty mutant power, but second, I would surely end up with a number somewhere in the quadruple digits. “Who would win in a fight?” is both ultimate nerd ice-breaker and ultimate nerd debate tool – a means of bonding swathed in the fiery coating of fan passion.
I kind of hate “Who would win in a fight?”
I didn’t always. I used to jump into such debates with unabashed gusto, brandishing my dog-eared issue of X-Men #30 (1994) as if the very existence of that one panel wherein Rachel Summers wore a horrifically ugly dress took my argument to a place of undeniable rightness, a place where no amount of point-refuting “actually...”s could take me down.
The realization that I no longer enjoy “Who would win in a fight?” hit me with the blunt force of Mjolnir during a recent Internet-based tournament wherein female characters from the DC Universe were pitted against each other, bracket-style, and fans voted for their favorites. To be clear, this tournament was not in the context of “Who would win in a fight?” It was just, “Who do you like better?” or “Who is more kick-ass?” Also, I would like to state up front that I do not begrudge anyone for setting up or voting in such contests. This one, in particular, seemed quite fun and lady-empowering. My realization was of a personal nature, not meant to rain on anyone’s “vs.”-style parade.
I voted in a few of the early brackets in a fairly cavalier fashion – I’d glance at the poll, have some sort of That one! gut reaction, and click the appropriate bubble. And then came the bracket that broke me. Then came Lois Lane vs. Oracle. The tough girl reporter who inspired my first career choice vs. the super-smart star of one of my absolute favorite books.
As my cursor hovered back and forth, I realized this was an impossible choice. I just couldn’t do it. Both bubbles remained unclicked, and I declared on Twitter that I was abstaining from this particular poll because there was no way I could choose.
“But you must declare yourself!”, exclaimed Twitter. “You must make your allegiances known! Otherwise, how will we know what You’re All About?” In the midst of this, there was also the expected campaigning for each character: Lois is the best girlfriend ever! Oracle has an incredible dramatic arc! Lois is better represented across different mediums, like film and television! Oracle’s hair is basically amazing!
As this continued, building to some sort of fan battle fever pitch, I started to feel a little left out. Was I a bad fan for not being able to pick a side and clearly articulate why I picked said side? Was I not as passionate? Not as pleasingly obsessive? As these thoughts cycled through my brain, a few folks engaged in a new strain of Twit-campaigning: Basically, “You should vote for this character, because the other character is lame.” Lois is just a girlfriend: not a superhero! Oracle’s hair is basically stupid!
The tournament was, as I understood it, designed to champion female characters, and most people seemed to be doing a good job of that. But I was bothered by the few folks who resorted to the old “let’s praise one lady by denigrating another” thing. I wanted to be able to find both of these characters awesome – for very different reasons – without being forced to pick a side.
As I mulled things over, brow furrowed in overly serious thoughtfulness, I started to realize that maybe I was obsessing over this particular “vs.” issue because I’d been picking sides all my life. Even in fandom. Especially in fandom. And it was finally time to stop.
# # #
I vividly remember the one and only time I uttered a bad word in front of my mother. This woman – a second generation Japanese-American with a penchant for seemingly mild pastimes like sewing and Sue Grafton novels – could fillet you with a mere look, the smallest narrowing of her gaze accented by a disapproving eyebrow raise. My brother and I never wanted to be on the other end of The Look, so we usually managed to keep our language as vanilla as possible.
But there was one time I let a blue word slip and not only did I get away with it, my mother actually agreed with the sentiment I was expressing.
Allow me to back up a little.
I grew up in a tiny Oregon town. It had one main “street” and one all-purpose “Asian” restaurant, where you could get a burger with a side of fried rice. The environment was overwhelmingly white and more than a little strange for a half-Japanese/quarter-German/quarter-English mutt with a deep love of comic books and a Major Kira Fan Club membership card.
Comics were an escape, a portal to another world. I liked to imagine that someday my mutant power would manifest and I’d be outta there (but not before I demonstrated said mutant power for my more popular classmates, causing them to finally realize how cool I was). My obsession wasn’t limited to the Marvel Universe, however. I also thrilled in the teen dream adventures of Archie Comics’s Betty and Veronica: two best buddies engaged in a constant, epic battle over a boy, capital-F “Frienemies” before that was even a thing.
The books seemed largely sympathetic to Betty, a ponytailed middle-class sweetheart adept at wholesome activities like volleyball and diary-writing. Archie, however, tended to prefer scheming rich girl Veronica, who was so concerned with looking hot that she once donned a figure-hugging bodysuit with a built-in heating device rather than surrender to the bulky, unflattering cocoon of a winter coat. (In truth, I thought that was pretty dang genius, but I don’t believe you were supposed to think that.)
I wasn’t sure why I had to choose an allegiance. My favorite stories were the ones where Betty and Veronica just went shopping or whatever and Archie didn’t even enter the picture. In fact, my favorite of all time was probably the one where Betty got depressed over the general shittiness of her “artistic” (but actually pretty shitty) macaroni sculptures and Veronica went around strong-arming/threatening/blackmailing everyone else in the gang into buying one.
And yet, the books made it seem imperative that I choose – Archie always faced this dilemma, after all – so I expended a decent amoun
t of tweenage brain cells considering both options. In my head, I wanted to be for Betty (so nice! So ponytailed!), but my heart kept falling for Veronica. Much of this was likely aesthetic: A lot of the tween-focused media I was consuming offered up pretty blonde heroines and jealous brunette witches/villains/megalomaniacal dictators. What is a severely brunette Asian girl supposed to do with that? The fact that stories were sometimes written from Veronica’s point of view, and the fact that she was occasionally portrayed as borderline sympathetic, was huge. This, I now see, was very likely the genesis of my tendency to root for the Misunderstood Bitch (see also: Blair Waldorf, Emma Frost, Kitiara Uth Matar), even when what she’s doing isn’t exactly a rootable action.
As I was considering Betty vs. Veronica, I was also moping my way through my first big racial identity crisis, spurred largely by the heady cocktail of pre-teen angst and my classmates’ unending litany of “But what are you?” queries. My initial answer (“half-Japanese, half-white, all mutt”) never seemed to satisfy, so I just started responding with a defiant “Um, American” and then giving whoever was asking a gimlet-eyed stare, daring them to take their line of questioning any further. I also made every effort to play down my mixed-ness, to seem completely non-exotic, completely American: I might’ve looked different, but I could wear Guess jeans, read Bop magazine, and hoover McDonald’s French fries with the best of them. I felt like, just as the comics I was reading asked me to make a clear choice – Betty or Veronica – my little hometown wanted me to define myself in easily understandable, easily digestible, easily explainable terms. And if I did that, maybe people would stop asking me stupid questions.
Chicks Dig Comics: A Celebration of Comic Books by the Women Who Love Them Page 21