FROM THE VAULT: WRITING FOR DC COMICS AND THE NEW 52
The Atom, Superboy, Animal Man and more.
All I ever wanted to do was write and draw my own comics. I never thought I would also write comics for other artists to draw or work for “The Big Two” of Marvel and DC. But in 2010, that’s exactly what I would start doing. If you have been following these From The Vault installments, you will note that there is no mention of me ever pitching ideas or sample scripts to Marvel or DC up to this point in my career. This is because I had zero ambition to become a ”comic book writer.” I just wanted to be a cartoonist and do my own things. And that’s what I did, and, ironically, by doing that, developing my own voice and style opened the door for me to try my hand at writing for DC.
Now, I may never have aspired to write mainstream comics, but when the opportunity arises, why not give it a shot and see what happens, especially when I could still juggle that with my own projects? In 2010 I was about a year or so into Sweet Tooth and it was garnering a lot of critical acclaim as well as surprisingly steady sales. This inevitably caught the attention of editors at both Marvel and DC looking to bring in new talent. Dan Didio and Geoff Johns approached me to gauge my interest in writing for DC, and around the same time, an editor at Marvel contacted me to pitch a Thor mini-series for them. The Thor project never got past the pitch stage, but at DC, I was offered a chance to write a series of short backup comics featuring the Atom in Adventure Comics.
I had no idea what I was doing. I had never written a script for anyone else to draw before, and there was a real steep learning curve. I was used to doing half of the “writing” as I did layouts and worked on the visual storytelling of a comic. But when working with someone else, I needed to leave this up to them. I didn’t quite get that right away, and I think in my early Atom scripts, I tried too hard to describe the layouts, etc., rather than trusting Mahmud Asrar, my collaborator. Those Atom comics are pretty mediocre. My inexperience is on display, but mostly I just had not found how to translate the storytelling voice I had developed doing Essex County and Sweet Tooth to superheroes and mainstream comics, especially when so much of my “voice” came from my art and visual storytelling. It would take a few more projects before that started to click for me.
But, apparently, those Atom comics were good enough for DC to offer me an ongoing series to write. The book was Superboy, and its rural setting really worked well with it. The themes and settings I was used to working with. This time I made an effort to really try and get the things I liked into the scripts. I put a strong dose of small town Essex County rural life into Smallville and also sprinkled in weird bits of my love of David Lynch and Terry Gilliam films. I also got to work with a couple of great artists in Pier Gallo and Marco Rudy.
Those Superboy comics were by no means perfect, but there was just enough “me” peeking through that you can see sparks of the writer I would become in them. The book was also nominated for the Best New Series Eisner that year.
Learning how to write mainstream comics was only half the battle. The other half was learning how to navigate the politics, editorial influence, and fragile egos behind the scenes at DC, and trust me, there were LOTS of that. My work at Vertigo was so different. Karen and the editors at Vertigo were creative, kind, and incredibly supportive. Their goal was to support the creators in realizing their vision. At DC, it was very different. It was all about the bigger picture, the DC Universe, and I was just one small part of that. I soon learned that other writers would jealously try and sabotage your career and your work for their own gain, and editors had agendas of their own and would try and force those on you. And the overall direction of the interconnected DC Universe would shift all the time, and you would have to learn to swerve with it or get cast aside.
Learning how to deal with all of this and still try to make good comics that had some personal connection to me was difficult, but I somehow managed to stick around. And not everyone was Machiavellian. During this period, I made some very good friends in the industry who would help and support me to this day. As I mentioned, Dan Didio was always very supportive of me, and I had some great editors and assistant editors that I worked really well with, like Joey Cavalieri. I also got to meet and work with many of my boyhood heroes like Keith Giffen, Dan Jurgens, Paul Levitz, and Marv Wolfman, and they were all incredibly gracious and supportive.
And not all of DC’s big shifts in editorial direction were bad for me. In 2011 we were told that DC would be canceling all of its books and relaunching its entire line and continuity as the “New 52” initiative. This was a chaotic time for sure. Us writers and artists didn’t really know what the new DC Universe was supposed to be. And a big part of that was that DC editorial was still figuring that out too. All I knew was that Superboy would be canceled and relaunched and that I was asked to pitch for several of the other new series as well. Initially, I was going to write the relaunched version of Superboy, continuing what I had been doing for the past year, but it soon became clear that DC wanted an entirely new character, and we mutually agreed that I would be better off focusing elsewhere.
The pitching process of The New 52 was just plain bizarre. DC editors would call me up and ask me to pitch various books to which I could tell they weren’t even totally committed. I think they were just throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what stuck. For example, I got a call one day asking me to pitch a Doctor Midnight series. And they would throw these “high concepts” at you like they wanted Doctor Midnight to be “like the TV Show House, but with superheroes.” And They would toss other things at me. I was asked to pitch a JLI book and a Suicide Squad series but got no direction on what kind of book they wanted or how these books should connect with the larger universe. Even more disheartening was that I knew they were asking other writers to pitch the same series at the same time.
None of this was very good for morale, and my heart wasn’t really in the pitches I sent. Making this process even weirder was that DC gave us these form letter style pitch documents we had to fill out. So, we weren’t even really coming up with pitches we were just filling out a pre-set form with categories like “High concept,” “Lead characters,” and “supporting cast.” This all left very little room for creativity. It really started to feel like there wouldn’t be a place for me in this new DCU.
But then, one day, I got one of those calls from DC about a possible series. Editor Matt Idelson asked me to pitch an Animal Man series. Little explosions went off in my head. I had been a massive fan of Jamie Delano and Steve Pugh’s run on the Vertigo Animal Man series of the 90s. And Grant Morrison’s run of the character is ground-breaking and iconic. The thought of continuing what these creators had done was very exciting. I was also a new father at the time. My son, Gus, was about 2 or 3 years old and, like the character of Buddy Baker, I had a young family, and I could channel all that into the book. I also had very little to lose. I only really had one foot in the mainstream superhero game at this point. I was still doing Sweet Tooth and my other indie books, so if this New 52 stuff fell through, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world for me. So, I just decided to pitch Animal Man exactly the way I wanted to write it. I wanted it to feel like the continuation of the Vertigo series, and I didn’t pull any punches. And luckily, I was teamed up with an artist who matched my ambition perfectly.
I wasn’t really aware of Travel Foreman’s work before Matt Idelson suggested him for Animal Man, but I soon became his biggest fan. Travel created an incredible visual language for the series. His work was so unique and so weird, and so compelling. It was all a match made in heaven. Everything just came together perfectly. The right creative team on the right character at the right time. This rarely happens, but when it does, it’s really exciting to be a part of. I think DC had no expectations for Animal Man. It was one of 52 wild shots they were taking, and when it hit the target, they were as surprised as anyone, and they didn’t really want to mess with whatever was working, so they let us keep going. When Travel left the book early in its run, I suggested we get Steve Pugh, whose work I had loved on the Vertigo series, and Steve came on and was able to bridge Travel’s work with his own sensibility perfectly.
The other advantage I have with Animal Man was that Scott Snyder was writing Swamp Thing for The New 52. Scott and I had bonded when he started working on American Vampire around the same time I was doing Sweet Tooth. We also were both brought over to the DCU around the same time. So, we became fast friends and formed a mutual support system to help navigate all the craziness and chaos going on behind the scenes at DC. So, as I developed ideas for Animal Man, Scott was developing Swamp Thing and we would talk daily. Our ideas just naturally fit together, and we were able to build our own dark, weird little pocket of the DC Universe for a couple of years.
And what a couple of years it was. Behind the scenes, things always seemed to be tumultuous, and creators were shuffled around all the time. I wrote a lot of other things for The New 52 as well, all with varying degrees of success. The most notable is probably my run on Green Arrow with Andrea Sorrentino. Little could we have known that this was a partnership that would continue to bear fruit even to this day. I do feel like Green Arrow may deserve a post of its own one day, so I won’t go into any more detail here.
I also wrote Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE, Justice League Dark and a few others. Some of these worked out better than others. That’s the thing about doing work for the big companies, there is just so much more that is out of your control than when you do your own indie work. Sometimes you get paired with an editor who doesn’t share your sensibilities, and it’s a constant struggle. Other times an artist may not go well with your storytelling. And other times, I wasn’t suited for a certain character or book. But in the end, I learned as much from the failures as I did from the successes.
And other times, the final product may not be great, but the experience of making a book is incredible; case in point is the weekly book Future’s End that I co-wrote with Dan Jurgens, Keith Giffen, and Brian Azzarello. I think it is safe to say the book was a disaster, and I could write ten paragraphs on all the reasons why, but at this point, all I really remember is having a really great time talking to those guys on the phone each week and doing creative summits in New York and teasing Keith and laughing our asses off.
All of the work I did at DC, and later Marvel as well, was valuable in getting me where I am today. I soon learned that I probably wasn’t cut out for long runs on company characters. Some writers thrive with that stuff and do great work and great epic runs on characters that last for years. And there was a part of me that wanted to be that too, but it just wasn’t me. I wanted to create and control my own stories, and after a while, I saw working for Marvel and DC as a means to an end. I could build a readership and make creative partnerships that I could then take to Image and Dark Horse and create my own books with, which is exactly what I started planning for around 2014/2015.
But I wouldn’t trade those years between 2010 and 2017 when I worked heavily at Marvel and DC for anything. It was like storytelling boot camp. You had to learn to meet your deadlines and turn in scripts even if you weren’t feeling inspired. I also learned how to juggle multiple projects. All of that would help me have the kind of career I do now.
I wrote so many books over the years for the Big Two that it’s hard to talk about them all. Some highlights for me are Animal Man, Frankenstein, Green Arrow, Moon Knight, Old Man Logan, Robin and, Batman, and The Question.
Looking back on my old files, I found all sorts of pitches and documents for series that never happened. Some of the books I was briefly attached to that I never ended up doing for all sorts of different reasons are:
Swamp Thing (after Scott Snyder)
Robins
Cyborg
Martian Manhunter
Adam Strange
The Thing
Machine Man
The Vision (before Tom King did it)
Shazam (three different times)
Hawkman (Almost)
Aquaman (twice)
…And probably a dozen more I forget about. I hope you enjoyed this look at how I started writing comics for DC. Below you will find my complete scripts for Animal Man #1, Superboy #1, and Green Arrow #17. I don’t usually share scripts, but enough time has passed. Enjoy, and see you back here soon for From The Vault: The Underwater Welder.
-Jeff
Like the others, I very much appreciate your candor about writing for the Big Two. I have heard a lot of stuff about it over the years, but it's another thing to hear it from someone who really knows. Animal Man introduced me to your work, which led me to Sweet Tooth, and everything else.
I notice you did not mention the JLU, and your work creating the Native superhero Equinox. At some point I would love to hear about how you got involved writing about Native/First Nations material, and what it is like to navigate that set of politics as a comics writer. (I am also thinking of the joint comic/music project you did about a boarding school escapee, whose name is escaping me right now. :-( )
Fascinating stuff! And I was there for most of it! 🤣