Scans_Daily

"I'm a skeptic about the virtues of "dark and gritty." I think that there was a time when that was revolutionary and exciting and really really interesting, but that time was 1987. Since then, it's been done. Done well, done poorly, remade, replayed, and flogged to death. In this context, "darker and grittier" isn't revolutionary or exciting or interesting; it's desperate and tapped out.

"What I want to do with the comic book -- and with the novels and short stories for that matter -- is move away from the impulse that equates bleakness with realism and try for some actual realism and complexity, only with superpowers. The six-issue arc that I'm working on right now has fights and deaths and Croyd Crenson and all that kind of good stuff, but it's at heart a story about survivor's guilt. If I get another shot after this one, I'd like to do a comedy in the Wild Cards universe. Maybe a few very small, personal stories that don't require the grand epic sweep. Brian Wood put out a series called Demo that I think is really great work along these lines. I would love to see the Wild Cards universe have room for a story about the boy with X-ray vision going to his first day of fifth grade at a new school or telepathic girl coming home for her first Thanksgiving after moving away to college.

"Humane is the new gritty. I think we should go there."

- Daniel Abraham

( Read more... )

'We have never actually used the word “superhero” in Wild Cards. Our aces may have 'powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men,' but very few of them are the sort of professional heroes you come across in comics. They're ordinary men and women, flawed and human, who have been gifted with extraordinary abilities. The impact that those abilities have on their lives and on the world at large is the focus of our stories. You have to ask yourself, “How would my life change if tomorrow I woke up with a superpower? What would I do?” The answer to that, seventy years of comic books notwithstanding, is almost never, “I would dress myself in spandex and go out to fight crime.”' - George R.R. Martin

( Read more... )

"I had been reading comic books all my life, and loved them dearly, but even as a kid, I realized that certain comic book conventions were downright silly. All those skin-tight costumes, for instance. The way that people in comic books always decided to use their superpowers to fight crime. And the origins of those powers, that was a huge problem. [...] X was hit by a lightning bolt, Y stumbled on a crashed alien spaceship, Z whipped up something in his lab, Q was bitten by a radioactive wombat, M unearthed the belt buckle of a forgotten deity. Any one of these would be a wondrous occurrence all by itself, and when you pile wonder upon wonder upon wonder you strain the willing suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. To make these characters work in a legitimate SF context, we needed a single plausible cause for all these superpowers." - George R.R. Martin

( Read more... )