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"QfK" Archives
Here are Kurt Busiek's answers to questions fans put to him about "Superman #661" and other relevant topics:
Kurt's Answers
Jason (jasonmajor32@hotmail.com) asks:Khyrana obviously has been a public figure, so why does she seem to know so little about Superman and Wonder Woman? Also why would Wonder Woman need Zatanna's help in contacting the gods?
Kurt: As is noted in the story, Khyrana's been publicly known under a variety of names over the years, but she herself is usually reclusive, not someone who's out there in the thick of things all the time -- for one thing, she doesn't want to make so many public appearances that people will realize she doesn't age. And she notes herself that she doesn't really keep up with things. This is why some of her dialogue is 1940s-era slang, and why she refers to Superman with the Golden Age term "mystery man" -- that's when she noticed that such people exist, and she hasn't paid much more attention since. Remember, Khyrana's been around for thousands of years, and Superman's been a public figure for more than ten, but not all that much more. Her perspective is different, and what's a distinguished career to Superman is a tiny fragment of her lifetime to Khyrana.
As for Zatanna -- the gods and the Amazons have been removed from regular contact with the earthly plane, aside from a few contacts initiated from the gods' side of things, so it takes a little extra to reach the gods, and Diana can't get aid from her Amazon sisters. Even reaching the Amazons, which she also mentions trying to do, would be a challenge.
jeremy harris (jeremyharris92@msn.com) asks:
About the whole Kryptonian child thing, would you like to see Clark and Lois have a child of their own?
Kurt: I think there could be interesting creative challenges in it, but I'm not in any hurry for it to happen. I do have plans to address the issue in a number of ways, though -- but not necessarily the ways you'd expect. And in the meantime, we'll need to see what happens with Chris Kent, who's in Clark and Lois's care at least for the present.
Thales Gomes (tgpereira@hotmail.com) asks:
Kurt, you are doing a fantastic job, it's been years since we (fans) have consistent good work on the superman books, but I have to ask, why all the delays? How can DC be so bad with it's organization that it can't mantain a proper order in the comics and force the readers to read unfinished arcs and wait months between issues to finish a 5 part stories. What's happening? Keep up the great work! PS: Please give us a origin story because the confusion is enough to make us go crazy.
Kurt: You're asking about ACTION COMICS and WONDER WOMAN, I think -- those aren't my books, and I don't work in the offices, so I don't get to see things on other books up close, not enough to be a spokesman for what's going on with their schedules or why various solutions to schedule problems might or might not be workable, or suchlike. SUPERMAN had a few schedule problems last year itself, and we dealt with them as well as we could, but didn't want to break up the story, so the book ran a little late until we got through #658, whereupon we were able to do a few one-issue stories to catch up on the schedule, and have tried to make better long-term plans. When you're stuck in a hole, the first thing you've got to do is get out, and then try not to dig your way into holes again.
That's not very informative, but like I said, those aren't my books you're asking about, and I'd be uncomfortable making announcements for DC on books I don't work on, or the schedules of freelancers on them. So I'll refer you to the Ask Matt column on that one.
As for an origin story, we're discussing the best way to do it, and I'm pretty tenacious. So I expect you'll get what you're asking for, but I can't yet say when.
Gregory (mcneill_35@yahoo.com) asks:
Since Camelot Falls, will we see Arion again at any point?
Kurt: Well, we've got another five issues coming with the second half of "Camelot Falls," and Arion's crucial to that story. So yes, you'll be seeing him in all five of those issues. After that, well, we'll have to see how that one ends up, first. But he's a lot of fun to write, I'll say that much.
Jason (jasonmajor32@hotmail.com) asks:
Is Clark Kent still a public figure? How come nobody recognized him? Are we expected to believe that Superman's secret identity is safe after this issue?
Kurt: Clark's a city reporter for a large metropolitan newspaper, not a celebrity. How many working New York or Los Angeles newspaper reporters do you know by sight? And if you know any, then how many of them have been on the job for something under 15 years? People recognize, say, Bob Woodward, but he's been a notable name for over three decades, there was a hit movie based on one of his books starring Robert Redford as him, and he's been on numerous book tours, doing all the big TV talk shows. Even so, when he turns up on TV, they put his name on screen so we'll know who he is. Clark's name may be known from his articles, but his face isn't famous.
Even if you consider that in previous continuity, Clark had three novels published, that's not the kind of thing that makes your face famous, either. I know a lot of working novelists, and even people who've been at it far longer than Clark go unrecognized on a regular basis. There are novelists whose faces are known, but they've generally been at it much longer than Clark and/or have much bigger hits. Wasn't one of his novels remaindered almost right away? It must have been a bomb.
So I'd say Clark's secret is reasonably safe -- and more, I'd suggest that he avoids opportunities to make his face more widely recognized. I think it was a mistake, back in the 1970s, to make him a TV anchorman, showing his face to millions every day -- someone who's been a popular newscaster for even a short time is going to be far more recognized than any but the best-known print reporters or novelists -- and I think it'd be a mistake for Clark to let himself become a celebrity in his "civilian" identity.
Michael Bailey (supermanearth2@bellsouth.net) asks:
First, thank you very much for taking the time to answer our questions. It means a lot to us. I realize that you, Geoff and Richard are not going to delve into Superman's revamped origin anytime soon and I was kind of wondering why that was. Do you feel that re-establishing the character in the One Year Later world is more of priority to set up the new world before getting to the background? I realize that you don't make such decisions, but, in your opinion, wouldn't a separate mini-series work just as well to answer the questions some fans have while also letting the main books move on? Again, thanks for your time and attention to the fans. It is appreciated.
Kurt: As I was saying to Thales, Michael, we've had lots of discussions about how best to present the new origin, and hopefully, we'll have news on that before too long. In the meantime, though, we were asked to start the new runs off along with the rest of the "One Year Later" books, dealing with life a year after INFINITE CRISIS, and that precluded starting off with something that happened Thirty-Four Years Ago (or whatever).
Also, quite frankly, given the amount of reader unrest there's been over the unresolved conflicts between the "Man of Steel" origin and the "Birthright" origin, I suspect that had DC announced a new origin, whether as a mini-series or as something happening in the books somewhere, it would have been greeted with a great deal of negative reaction. What, again? You morons haven't explained the last one yet! All the more so because we wouldn't have been able to tell you ahead of time why there was going to be a new continuity, a new history, not without spoiling the ending of INFINITE CRISIS -- which ended two or three months after the new era on the Super-books began.
So it was decided that it would be better to show you New Earth for a while, until it was solidly established and people were interested in what's going on today and how things are progressing forward, before we drop back and show you an origin. And that strategy, good or bad, has resulted in people asking for a new origin project, rather than rejecting the whole idea of one. So right there, the idea is more welcome now than I suspect it would have been had we started off that way.
When we do the new origin, a separate mini-series (or some other format that stands alongside the main series rather than happening in them) is certainly a strong possibility. In the meantime, though, we'd like to have the books coming out steadily before we add a big side project to the mix...
Jeff (shaxpere37@netzero.com) asks:
Kurt, I've enjoyed your work on Superman overall since your start, but like Neal, I really just hated this issue. All nagging details aside, why go back to the old Superman outline where: Villain comes to town, Superman fights villain, villain loses and either leaves or is locked up?" That's a basic premise that way too many Superman books in the past 20 years have been based on. As a teenager, I didn't mind because they weren't old stories to me, but the comic fan base is now 20's to 30's and up who mostly have been reading comics about as long as I have. There are so many possibilities for a Superman one-shot. Why go back to a tired idea? I Really do like the rest of what you've done though. How many writers can say they made Arion cool?
Kurt: It's a single issue story, Jeff, not a manifesto for how things will be done from now on. And for that matter, the "formula" you describe is so basic as to apply to almost any hero-villain story. Take, say, "Reign of the Supermen." Villains come to Earth, they get fought by heroes, and are defeated. Or "Hush" -- new villain comes to bedevil Batman, there's quite a bit of fighting, and the villain is defeated or chased off. In both stories, a bunch of stuff happens along the way, but you can find those structural points in there nonetheless. Whether it's a one-issue story or a twelve-part maxi-series, if there's a villain in it, they have to enter the story somehow, their threat will have to be addressed, and unless you're going to kill off the hero or heroes, the villain is unlikely, ultimately, to triumph.
In this particular story, the villain doesn't exactly "come to town" -- it's the museum exhibit that comes to town, which draws her out into public action, but she was already here, living the life of a recluse in a ritzy Holloway Park brownstone.
But to answer in more specific terms why we'd choose to do a straightforward adventure -- I knew we were going to do three single-issue stories between the two halves of "Camelot Falls," and I wanted a variety of different approaches, so that someone who didn't like one of the stories would be more likely to enjoy the others. We have a flashback story, one that gives people a look at an aspect of Superman's existence that maybe they haven't thought about. We have a story told from the point-of-view of a different member of the cast (the Prankster, in this case), and we have a team-up story. [Originally, one of the stories was to be a Krypto story, which falls roughly into the same category as the Prankster story -- it's a story that involves Superman to a degree, but it's about someone else -- so if that hadn't been pulled for executive reasons, we'd likely have done that one instead of the Prankster story, so as not to give people two issues with not-much-Superman in them virtually back to back.]
This issue was the team-up, and it was going to be a one-issue story by design, which requires something to involve both Superman and Wonder Woman, and a threat that's in some way or another resolved by the end of the issue, because the next one will be about something else. Khyrana's story isn't over, though -- it'll continue in WONDER WOMAN, eventually, as Diana attempts to do something about Zeus's harsh curse.
In any case, sorry you didn't care for the issue, and I hope you liked the two previous ones more -- that was the point of taking three very different approaches. And with next issue, we're back to bigger, more sprawling structures, and back to the stuff you liked with Arion, so maybe you'll enjoy that more.
Bob (bobmullin@hotmail.com) asks:
How is it possible all the problems with the Superman book not being on time could fall squarely on the shoulders of the artist? Bagley over at Ultimate Spider-man has pumped out 14 issues a year without a problem, are you guys not giving him [the artist] the script on time? Is it a management issue? What is going on? I find it VERY hard to believe it is the artist's fault.
Kurt: I don't think anyone's made any public statements about why SUPERMAN was running a little late last year, Bob, and I'm not going to start -- I'd rather put the energy into fixing the problems and doing our best to make sure they don't happen again, which is what we've been doing. And while I can't speak for the other books, I can tell you that my work has been far enough ahead of schedule that not only have I written all the SUPERMAN fill-in issues (with the co-plot aid of the lovely and talented Fabian Nicieza and Richard Howell), but I also worked on seven issues of ACTION COMICS last year, one issue of SUPERMAN that was completely done but not published, and I'm currently pitching in on another four ACTIONs.
As for management issues, this is "Questions for Kurt," and I'm definitely not management, so I'll point you at the "Ask Matt" column, where Matt can answer or deftly sidestep as he chooses.
I will note, though, that Mark Bagley, who's a pal of mine and an old creative partner on THUNDERBOLTS, is a very fast artist. The fact that he can do 14 issues a year doesn't mean that all other artists can. Some guys are faster than others -- and some books go faster than others, too, as witness the fact that on THUNDERBOLTS, we managed to cram so much stuff in there that Mark had to draw that he occasionally needed a guest artist to help out with the schedule. I don't say that to address anything on the Super-books, just to point out that not all artists have the same speed. John Byrne can draw two books a month, and probably more. George Pérez, on a regular book, needs a guest artist now and then. And there are guys faster than John and slower than George, to boot.
TalOs (talos_rokyian@yahoo.com.au) asks:
G'Day Kurt! I've always wanted to ask you this, would you be willing to do a sequel to SUPERMAN: SECRET IDENTITY only, have SuperGIRL be the star come this time around that may possibly inturn have her crossing paths and meeting her "cousin" from the first? (Kind'a like a JLA Classified thing). It would really mean ALOT to us Superfamily fans if you kindly could.
Kurt: The story in SECRET IDENTITY is pretty much done, TalOs, and while the Superman of that story didn't have a super-powered cousin, he did wind up with two super-daughters. But I don't see a need to do a sequel to that book -- I think it worked out well and stands on its own.
We have discussed doing a thematic sequel to SECRET IDENTITY, though -- one that explores a similar situation for a different character -- and I've even written a first issue. It got sidelined due to other work for both me and the artist, but maybe we'll be able to get back to it someday. Still, it doesn't involve Supergirl, but a different DC mainstay.
Tyson L Cromeens (pharmdtlc@hotmail.com) asks:
Is the "Action Comics" Superman and the "Superman" title Superman the same exact guy on the same exact earth?? PS. You Rule!!!
Kurt: Yep. The Superman in both ACTION and SUPERMAN is the same guy. There haven't been all that many cross-references yet, because all of the first half of "Camelot Falls" took place before "Last Son," but we did see a reporter in SUPERMAN #655 make reference to the "Back in Action" story in ACTION #841-843, and of course "Up, Up and Away" went back and forth between both titles, and "Camelot Falls," "Back in Action" and "Last Son" have all referred back to those events.
And I thank you for the ruling thing, and will do my best to rule wisely and well.
Thanks Kurt! We appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to come here and do this new feature for us all. We look forward to a long and mutually satisfying relationship.
Kurt: My pleasure. I'll look forward to the next batch of questions.
So how'd I do? More straight answers than Matt, right? Huh? Right? Aw, c'mon...
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