2007 Comic Book News Archives

Jason with Paul Dini

August 31, 2007: Dini and Quitely do T.O. Comic-Con

by Jason Marsh Larouche

This past weekend at the FanExpo 2007 in Toronto, Ontario, the annual Canadian event, as last year, did not fail to impress. This year, however, Superman and Warner Bros. Animation fans alike got a double dose of the creative talent behind the Man of Steel's exploits: writer Paul Dini and artist Frank Quitely.

Though the current head writer of the DC Comic series Countdown, Dini's forte has been in writing for animation. An interest in writing began at an early age and manifested through college and gravitated towards animation. As to the difference between writing comics and animation, he explains it is in the amount of content. "You have to be director in each case. You have to call the shots and plot out the action the same. The thing, in comics, you have a little bit more room to write and the characters can speak a little more. It's more of a writer's medium than in animation. In animation you have to be very brief with what you're saying because you don't want to show characters prattling on and on. When writing animation, you get right to the point."

As for Quitely, in a thick Scottish accent he digresses, "I've been drawing since I was a kid. I've been influenced by comic books, fine art, album cover art, posters, you name it. I went to art school, I get kicked out of art school, [and] I get back into comics again when I was in my early twenties, so that's pretty much it."

Frank Quitely One of the biggest character developments in Countdown has Superman's pal, Jimmy Olsen, not only gaining a myriad of superhuman abilities, but discovering Clark Kent's secret identity. "Jimmy is going through an evolution in body and in mind and is becoming more cosmically aware of certain events. So it kind of walks hand in hand with his growing powers."

Having collaborated with Bruce Timm on Superman: The Animated Series, he reflects on the importance of trying to balance the direction where they wanted to take the show with what fans knew about the characters. "You want to be reverential to the characters and you want to kind of write by what's gone on before and keep in mind of the continuity. And there are times when you want to go in a different way and you say, 'Well, this character B didn't work for me but I think I can find a way to not necessarily ignore it, but make it better, which is kind of what I want to do with the other characters.'"

Frank Quitely had a similar job as Paul's, only from an artist's perspective than a writer's. Teamed with writer Grant Morrison, his partner from Marvel Comics' New X-Men, Quitely delivered a story in which the Man of Steel receives a terminal illness from absorbing too much energy from the sun during a rescue, but a story that does not take place in regular continuity, thus allowing some creative freedom on his part. "[In designing] Superman himself, " he recalled as he signed comics, "I guess I was looking at what I considered to be classic Superman like Curt Swan, Len Walt, those kind of guys. Beyond that I had to get something that I thought was a classic look but was also something that I could actually draw. So it had to be kind of in my style and kind of classic at the same time."

Sketch by Leonard Kirk As to what advice these two can offer aspiring writers and artists follows the same line of thought: Don't aim high, and this applies to both fields. Dini suggests, "I would look at some of the smaller publishers and see what they're doing and try and write a story and publish it for them first. There are [also] some online comic opportunities out there. What big publishers like is they can read something that's been published before. You go in and say 'This is my independent comic, where I published this through a solid press company.' And they can read it and go 'Oh this is pretty well written. I'll give this guy a shot doing a backup story or something.'" [You] should definitely shoot for Marvel or DC but know you're not gonna hit the target the first time out, so don't get discouraged."

Following the completion of his duties on All-Star Superman, Frank has no plans as of yet. "Hopefully I'll get some offers when I'm at the end of it. I never make up my mind until I'm really close to the end of a project in case something better comes up, y'know?" As for Dini, while open to doing a Superman comic book story, fans should not expect his hand on an animated feature anytime soon. This is because "Warner Bros. doesn't exist anymore. Not as the entity that did the animated shows. They're not doing the shows anymore and I haven't had any contact with them for [over] two years. I know there are still people working over there, they have projects. You never say never, but it seems to be so thoroughly moved away at this point that I doubt that I would never do another one."

Don't miss out on Countdown every week, nor the remaining issues of All-Star Superman.

Note: Superman ink drawing by Leonard Kirk.



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