:: UGO COMMUNITY:: Related LinksSteven Seagle is literally an official Man of Action. Together with fellow comic creators Joe Casey, Duncan Rouleau and Joe Kelly, the group makes up the Man of Action development house. Producing projects in film, television, comics, online and videogames, Man of Action's most recent work has been the blockbuster X-Men Legends game based on the Ultimate X-Men comic book series.  When we spoke to Steven Seagle, however, the topic was about his deeply personal book, It's a Bird, that featured art by Teddy Kristiansen. The acclaimed graphic novel is the semi-autobiographical tale of Steven being given the chance to write a Superman comic, but stumbling when he can't figure out how to relate to the character. Through the course of the story, Seagle finds his way into Superman by looking at it through the lens of his own mortality. Visit the book's official site at http://www.dccomics.com/graphic_novels/?gn=1630. UGO: Was this a book that had to be written? STEVEN SEAGLE: It's just a book that popped fully formed into my head, and when that happens you just have to go with it. I've worked with Teddy a lot in the past. I was at his house and he asked me what we were going to do next and I said I had no idea. But I literally thought of it, as you read it in the book, in about a minute-and-a-half. I came back to Teddy and told him, "I got it." There are two ways that stories come to me. One is like that -- fully formed that pops into your brain -- and the other way is when I have an idea and I just noodle with it until it gets done. The ones that pop in you just can't ignore.  UGO: There are a lot of guys who do personal stories in mainstream comics like Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison, but in many ways you are one of the first of the Vertigo writers to do autobiography. STEVEN: Yeah, I was curious to see what they would make of that. The story is semi-autobiographical because it has elements from my family's story. I wanted to look at why Superman is resilient because I think he still has importance in the world today. I know there is a lot of bashing when it comes to Superman such as people say he is outdated but he's not. If he was outdated he would cease to exist. I thought the right way to do that was to compare him to an average Joe or in my case an average Steve. It all made a lot of sense to me but I wondered what DC was going to do with it because they don't do books like this. I remember something [president of DC Comics] Paul Levitz said at a convention one time, "I don't understand why people don't bring us stories like Love & Rockets." So here you go! He looked at the book and just said yes.
UGO: You could have done this story as an independent comic. STEVEN: It'd be tough to have quite that amount of access to the Superman character. I certainly could have related my story to superheroes in general but I don't know if I would have been able to use Superman quite as explicitly. I was thinking what I could do with Teddy for DC Comics. This story just popped in with Superman plugged into it because I have thought for years that I wouldn't know what to do if I had to write Superman. The twenty short-stories that are in the book are better because they are about Superman. I think he's got a cultural place that just talking about heroes in an abstract way wouldn't come out quite as good.
 UGO: Why does DC Comics want writers like you to work on mainstream books? STEVEN: [laughs] I don't know if it's them. I did Sandman Mystery Theatre, which has very little to do with the DC universe when you get down to it. But that character has a historical connection with the DC universe so I think regular editors looked at that book and liked the book. So they would ask me to come do something else for them based on that. I think what your question is getting at is that the part they missed is that Vertigo books are Vertigo books for a reason. You can't do the same things in DC Universe, well you could, but it's not really accepted easily. It's hard to get the superhero story that they like from a writer like me. UGO: Were they happy with what you did with Superman in the regular comic? STEVEN: That depends on who the "they" is. Some fans didn't like it. My editor was happy with it. I had a job to do and they knew fairly early on into my run that Jim Lee was going to come onboard. So I was there to keep the book going and I got the job done until Jim came on. I was supposed to tell stories and not do anything too crazy, and that's what I did.  UGO: Were you happy with it? STEVEN: Not entirely. I was happy with them in that, contrary to some public belief, I don't put out books that I think are crap. I told the stories that I thought made sense for Superman. I was on the main Superman book so I wanted comics that, god forbid if a kid read them, they would like. I think some readers wondered why they weren't more adult Vertigo type stories. That's not what the Superman comic is for in my mind. I wanted something that was accessible and if you picked up one issue you'd get what Superman was. The It's a Bird book was where I would like to go, personally, with Superman. Hallelujah I got to do it, which is a rare thing with that character. UGO: Was the book difficult for you to do? STEVEN: It wasn't difficult because it was exciting. Here is this thing that I thought wouldn't get approved in a million years and it did. Then I figured I would get nothing but meddling and interference then I got none. That's the kind of work you live for. Also working with Teddy is great because he's an amazingly talented artist. The only tough thing was writing about stuff that happened to my family and I didn't tell my family that was what I was doing. They read it when it came out. UGO: Did you need to do this story or was it just a good idea? STEVEN: A little bit of both. The stuff that happened to Aunt Sara, who died of Huntington's Disease, has been in my brain my entire life. That stuff works on you and I think one of the reasons people work in the arts is that so they can have a way to exorcise parts of their brain that are working against them. If I didn't have the good fortune to be working in comics I don't know if I would have had another place to work things out. Maybe that's why people go to therapy. I feel like I had to do something with that and it worked out.
UGO: How did all the publicity come out around the book? Like say you being on Terry Gross' show on NPR. STEVEN: I like to think that my comics would appeal to everyone in America, but by and large that hasn't happened until this book. David Hyde, a great publicity guy at DC, did a phenomenal job on this book. They contacted NPR, said that here was a book that really crosses over and anybody could read this book which was kind of the main goal. I wanted a book my mom could read without twenty years of continuity. NPR said it sounded interesting but probably not. Then, at some point, Salon.com did something on it and NPR got into it. That's where I think the Terry Gross thing happened. There are cultural agendas and as different people pick up on stuff that makes more people pick up on it. The New Yorker covered it and I got a lot of calls telling me that. That led to other things. I don't think it always helps just to do your best and hope.  UGO: Has the success of It's a Bird made you want to keep going down that route? STEVEN: I've always been all over the place. I do a lot of different things. I've got a play that's going on a national tour, I coach a speech team at a college and I work in animation and films. So this book was not a departure from what I do. If you look at a book I did, House of Secrets #16, you will see that it had a lot of structure of It's a Bird but nobody read that book. I always play around with the form but I never did autobiographical and I probably won't do that again anytime soon. UGO: Why not? STEVEN: Because this was it. You should only tell stories you want to tell or need to tell. I don't have an endless well of personal stories to tell that I think anyone would care about. UGO: A lot of people do autobiographical stories regardless of whether anyone would care. STEVEN: I read a lot of those and sometimes I wonder, "Why am I reading this?" but then I read the next one. More power to them but it's not me. UGO: What do your colleagues think of It's a Bird?  STEVEN: I've gotten the nicest bunch of emails. It's tough when you're doing comics and you don't get any feedback. Then you go to a con and they will bring up Sandman Mystery Theatre #50, but that can be ten years after the book comes out. So with this book it's been really nice that people's whose work I admire and people I don't even know have told me it's a great book. A lot of people said it gelled with them on a personal side. There is another writer who I am friends with who has diabetes and he said that he felt the way I said that Huntington's Disease is a big secret in my family is the way he feels diabetes is a secret in his life. He's got it and he deals with it but he doesn't talk about it because it's embarrassing to have to inject himself everyday. It was a nice way to connect with people. UGO: You found a way to connect to Superman; do you think the character still has relevance beyond just selling Underoos? STEVEN: I absolutely do. For one thing fiction entertainment always means something different to different people. There are people who loved my book and there are people who didn't. What's funny is how passionate they were about it either way. People might say they love Jack Kirby's Devil Dinosaur and I would say that Jack Kirby's Devil Dinosaur was horrible. But that's the coolest thing about art. What I was trying to figure out about Superman is, Why is he still around? If he's so relevant and such a do-gooder why does everyone on Earth know who he is. If he was irrelevant and unimportant he would evaporate into the global consciousness the way Brother Power the Geek did.
UGO: Is it difficult for you to look at the book now? STEVEN: With my work I look at it sometimes and go "Ouch, why did I do that?" Whether it's me not thinking of something to do or I didn't think it through all the way. But with books I think of all at once like this one it looks exactly the way I imagined so I love looking at that book. With Mike Allred I know that he will draw a page then ten minutes later he can't even look at it. But when stuff comes out horribly I want to put it on a barbecue and get rid of it. I did this really bad comic, part of it was my fault and part of it was the way it was produced. It was set in two different time periods and it alternated between them. But then it didn't get colored that way so when you read it you can't tell what the hell is going and no I won't tell you what it is. I am notorious for going to cons and buying every copy I see because I don't want anyone to get it. UGO: Do you own the rights to It's a Bird? STEVEN: To use Superman I couldn't have it be a fully creator-owned book. You can't own something with Superman in it. UGO: So it's complicated lawyer thing. STEVEN: It's not enormously complicated. I now no longer own the rights to my own life somehow. UGO: What are you doing next? STEVEN: The next thing I am doing is an Encyclopedia Brown book in graphic novel form. So I'm moving from adult Vertigo and Superman to a kid's book property.  UGO: Who are you doing that for? STEVEN: The guys who own the rights to Encyclopedia Brown are self-generating it right now. I'm not sure what their publishing plan is. I'm also doing a new monthly book for Shelly Bond at Vertigo. I can't name it to you yet because I haven't signed the contract yet. But for the first time ever I have the book before I have the artist which is not the way I usually work. They asked me for a monthly so I came up with one. Then I'm also doing stuff through Richard Starking's Active Images. He's going to put out a lot of my old work and some new work. UGO: In October 1998, you were hired to write a movie of House of Secrets, you sold a pilot for a TV show and you sold a concept for an animated series. STEVEN: Yeah, I did all that then quit working for two years because I was doing four monthly comics at the time. That just burned me out. I was doing X-Men, Alpha Flight, Sandman Mystery Theatre and House of Secrets.  UGO: I read that Mark Canton was in charge of the movie you were hired for. STEVEN: He's out at Warner Bros. which is where the movie was. He had a long option on it which expired last year so the rights came back to me. I'm talking to a new group now who is interested. The pilot was called Carnival and it was at FOX with Spelling which didn't get made. UGO: Oh, wow! STEVEN: I know. As much as you hear about Spelling shows, they were totally onboard to do something crazy and they were really easy to work with. UGO: What was your idea? STEVEN: It was circus sideshow freaks as a Mission: Impossible-type team. UGO: That sounds bizarre. STEVEN: It was so odd that it was cool. UGO: Did you write a screenplay draft of House of Secrets?  STEVEN: Yes, that was my first foray into film writing. At the development meetings we had eight or nine people talking and I thought my job was to take all that input and apply it. What I learned after the fact was that I should have said no most of the time. As soon as I got the rights back I rewrote it the way I would have written it in the first place. UGO: I know Man of Action just wrote the story for the latest X-Men videogame, X-Men Legends. How does one write that? Is it like writing a Choose Your Own Adventure book? STEVEN: Yeah, it was interesting. It is part fight game and part role-play so you have to have a plot. Since it's the X-Men, it has to have a lot of soap opera. Movies are usually three acts and X-Men stories are more like twelve acts. They had a really cool story and we added four more acts to it. It's fun and complicated. You write a big long plot then you break it down and work the game elements into it. UGO: What superpower would you like to have? STEVEN: I don't like to fly on airplanes, so I would like to fly. | |||||||||||||||||||||
