“The creator-owned boom is like the Californian gold rush. A few will get rich, but the majority will leave their creators a opiate-addled toothless hobo” ‘Ordinary’ creators Rob Williams and D’Israeli on the pros and cons of creator owned comics
As comics fans we’re all too familiar with the idea of a hero who is gifted with super powers and forced to deal with the extra-ordinary, but what if the tables were turned and everyone else had powers but you? That’s the premise of the brilliant new creator-owned series, ‘Ordinary’ from Rob Williams and Matt ‘D’Israeli’ Brooker. Released in last week’s Judge Dredd megazine #340 via the 2000AD iPad app, we got a fantastic sneak peak of some the pages, but we still wanted to find out more and so got in touch with Rob and D’Israeli to find out more about their take on super powers and the pros and cons of creator owned comics.
‘Ordinary‘ is labelled a ‘superhero’ book but is still anything but the conventional spandex and capes, what was the initial inspiration for the book and how did it evolve during the early stages?
D’Is: Hmm… I think the “superhero” tag is a bit misleading to be honest – it’s actually far more about superpowers, and what happens when everyone in the world similtaneously gets more power than they can handle.
RW: Well, it’s not a superhero book at all. No capes or costumes here. It’s more the juxtaposition of the everyday with super powers. I think it’s more equatable to a Walking Dead/zombie apocalypse situation. One day the world wakes up and everyone has gained a super power, and everyone has an individual power. All apart from one guy. And he’s our protagonist. We follow him through this insane landscape. And while he initially seems like the most ordinary man alive, he becomes the most extraordinary.
It was inspired by watching superhero movies and realising they all have the same setup. In an ordinary world, one person becomes extraordinary. What if you flipped it?
It has a much more sci-fi feel than silver age super heroes, would that be a fair assumption or will there be more conventional superhero stuff coming soon? Which direction would you prefer to take the story? And what are the touchstone books that you would say inspired or informed ‘Ordinary‘?
RW: Do you know, I don’t think there were any particular books that inspired Ordinary, which is quite refreshing, really. As a writer you’re usually inspired by one or two movies or comics or novels with any project. This was far more about the core idea, taking this ordinary guy and then giving him an emotional journey. In retrospect I’d say it feels like it’s an influence mix of Shaun Of The Dead and Finding Nemo. But that wasn’t the intention going in. That’s something I’ve kind of realised after re-reading it.
D’Is: One of Rob’s early injunctions on this was to avoid anything super-heroey, so we’re staying with the SF vibe – we’re not even going for parodies of superhero comics or anything like that.
Inspiration – for me you’d be talking about a fair amount of European stuff, particularly Blacksad and Jacques Tardi’s adaptations of Leo Malet’s Nestor Burma mysteries. Really I was looking for work that had captured the mundane detail of complex urban environments in a visually exciting way.
The book is set in America but still has a very ‘Brit’ feel (or at least a very indie sensibility) what was the thinking behind setting it in the States? Are you planning to release it separately over there if it does well? And any particular challenges to creating in that world?
RW: The story deals with the Government and the President and Vice President and the threat of nukes. I thought we needed a superpower for that. Setting it in the UK would have felt a little more parochial. Plus it being in New York and Michael attempting to get into Manhattan which is cut off allows us these big, iconic visuals which were fun to play with. Manhattan being an island etc. And we’re repackaging Ordinary for the US market. It’ll be published as a mini-series and a GN by Titan in 2014. So setting it in the States probably doesn’t hurt our sales there.
D’Is: The big… it’s not a difficulty really, so much as a complication – is that between Google Image Search and Street View and Flickr you can find so much reference for the real New York locations that you can get lost in it. Y’know, at one time the best I’d be able to do was buy a few books on New York and a couple of movies and if anything I needed wasn’t in those I’d just have to say “fuck it” and make something up – now I’ll spend half an afternoon seeing if I can find detailed views of the exit to a particular building , because there’s a good chance they will be out there somewhere.
The pair of you have worked successfully together on ‘Lowlife‘, what makes the partnership so successful, what do each of you bring to the table creatively and did you always plan to do ‘Ordinary‘ together?
RW: It’s always a bit of a leap when you work together with someone for the first time, to see how your styles mesh. For whatever reason, I think D’Israeli & I work very well together and that’s largely down to him. His storytelling is rock solid, he captures scale and dynamism brilliantly and the acting performances he gets from his characters are superb. And that really grabs the emotional and comedic beats that you write and sells them on the page. Lifts them. There’s a lot of comic artists who are mainly interested in the punch and the money shot. D’Israeli does things with architecture and human reactions that find the things in my scripts and takes them to another level. And because I’m aware of his strengths I think that lifts my writing. I write things in a script for him that I wouldn’t for a lot of other artists because I know he can handle it. He probably curses me for these decisions.
We were talking through doing Low Life: Saudade for Trifecta and got together in London to discuss maybe doing a creator-owned sci-fi thing in deep space, but it wasn’t quite there yet. I think we came away with the plan to go away and give it some thought, and then at the last minute I said ‘or, I’ve got this other story…’. That was Ordinary. D’Israeli initially said no but then the next day emailed to say he’d like to do it. I’m delighted he changed his mind.
D’Is: Well, as a middle aged man with a beard, personal hygiene issues and a minimal grasp on reality, I identify strongly with Lowlife’s Dirty Frank, so that helps!! What surprised me, early on in my work on Lowlife, was how much positive feedback I got from Rob about the way I portrayed the characters – the “acting” if you will – which I’d always thought of as my weak point. That encouraged me to look at my work differently and push that side of things more. I think from Rob’s point of view, it’s a plus that whatever he writes, I’ll always try to find a way of drawing it, however difficult or bizarre.
When we work on Lowlife, I just get the finished scripts and away we go – Ordinary is the first thing we’ve done where we’ve shared a degree of planning, mostly me suggesting a few ideas for minor characters or bizarre powers.
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