Interview with David F. Walker Part 2

…continued from Part 1


DFW: I did a short story in…one of those sort of anthology books where they had two short stories per issue. I did that and then I did a Nick Fury one shot for that S.H.I.E.L.D.’s 50th anniversary initiative that they did last year. So those were my first two and they came right around the same time, but I’ve been introduced to Marvel and had been talking to them—probably mid-2014 was when dialogue first started happening…

MC: I think Luke Cage is a is going to be a really awesome thing to tackle. I think that you’re hard-pressed to find a character in the Marvel Universe who has the integrity and consistency of Luke Cage.

DFW: Yeah. And who’s also gone through such an immense amount of character growth.

MC: That’s also what I was going to say—he has been so many things in the Marvel Universe—he was in the Avengers, Thunderbolts, he’s got a kid, he’s been a fugitive…It’s pretty amazing to see where he started…and even from then the core of his character that has stayed the same.

DFW: I went back and re-read all that stuff, all the original Luke Cage Hero for Hire, Power Man…I mean I’d read it all before so a lot of it was just revisiting it and then getting into what the character was doing in Alias and the Jessica Jones series, and then Pulse and then New Avengers and it was like alright…this character is super fun. And same with Iron Fist…And so I’m playing with that relationship in a different way but it’s feeling good.

MC: They’re interesting foils for each other because Luke Cage is this character who walks in a room and just commands respect. And I feel like that’s how he’s been treated by most writers because he’s been around for so long and he’s been on every damn team except the X-men at this point…If he’s in the room, he’s the guy that you kinda want on your side.

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DFW: And I think that everybody likes Danny because everybody likes Luke.

MC: Exactly, so I feel like Danny has never had this opportunity or he’s never really commanded that type of presence or respect. And if you look at the character’s history in the publication, there’s never been a wildly successful Iron Fist series. But, you look at Luke Cage and there’s a history that defines that character. I don’t think Iron Fist has that.

DFW: I think there’s a lot of characters that don’t have that.

MC: Like even any of the other Avengers. Iron Man doesn’t really have that, he kind of does, but only because the movies.

DFW: The movies and his alcoholism…You start looking at some other characters, you start going down the list…and it’s difficult sometimes to come up with…the definitive moment for an individual character. But I still come back to the fact that it’s the introduction of Jessica Jones and her relationship with Luke is…this huge part of what defines him. And so I’m just I’m having fun with both of those characters. I’m having a really good time and making it just a fun book.

MC: What’s the difference between working with Dynamite…and Marvel? Is there an expectation to fit into this larger picture or they just kind of kind of letting you throw it against the wall and see how it sticks?

DFW: It’s a combination of the two. With Dynamite and Shaft, it’s a licensed property but…the Six Million Dollar Man isn’t appearing. Steve Austin isn’t appearing in Shaft, so I don’t have to get any clearance to do that…With Power Man and Iron Fist…in its original run had such an incredible cast of supporting characters and… I’m definitely bringing Misty Knight and Colleen Wing into the story but I don’t need to bring them in right now. You do have to get approval for everything…You sort of send a list as you’re developing a story and…you start to plot it out and then depending on the editor, depending on the publisher, you might get an answer in three or four days. You might get an answer in three months. You hope you get the answer in three or four days because it means you don’t have to do a massive rewrite later on down the road.

MC: You still have to produce a book whether or not you get the clearance…so if you don’t hear about it for three months, you still have to write the damn book.

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DFW: …It’s a very interesting thing to try to figure out…There’s these little cameos in the first few issues of Power Man and Iron Fist and I really thought about who those cameos could be and how they could propel either the scene or the story itself. And sometimes I just needed this character for three panels but I didn’t get them and now how do I make this particular joke work or how do I make this line of dialogue work because it doesn’t anymore…

MC: And it’s funny how just a three-panel cameo can change the direction of the book to a degree.

DFW: Exactly. But at this point, hey I’m writing Power Man and Iron Fist…What do I really have the right to complain about in the broad scheme of things?

MC: So about him using the Power Man moniker. He hasn’t done that in forever. Was that your idea?

DFW: Nope. That was Marvel’s. [It’s] a running joke right now where he’s like, “My name is Luke Cage,” and everyone’s like, “Hey no, it’s Power Man,” and he’s like, “No, it’s Luke Cage,” and it’s about this sort of grudging acceptance of the fact that to a lot of people…he’s always going to be Power Man…And I’m sort of exploring him getting comfortable becoming Power Man again and also how they come back together as a team, as Power Man and Iron Fist…it’s this bizarre dichotomy between these two, which is often how it is in any relationship…There’s a lot of Iron Fist going, “This is so awesome!” And Luke going, “No it’s not. We’re fighting 20 guys at once. This is not fun.”

MC: That’s awesome. And also Sanford Greene was a fantastic choice for that book. Did you have any input on the artist?

DFW: He was right there from the beginning. When Marvel approached me they [asked] what do you think of Sanford Greene?…I love his work. And I’d known him casually for years. I’d met him at San Diego I don’t know how many years ago and I picked up one of his sketchbooks and we follow each other on Twitter and Facebook and all that sort of stuff.

MC: He’s a talented guy, he’s really good.

DFW: Yeah, and when Dynamite asked for a list of artists to do covers I gave them a list of probably 15 or 20 people…I think Sanford was one of the only ones that they used so that was actually the beginning of our working together and then Power Man and Iron Fist came up and…I cant think of someone I’d rather work with…because I love Sanford’s work…

MC: I cant wait to see what you guys come up with because it’s got all the makings of a really fun comic to read

DFW: Yeah, I feel it’s good, and hopefully everyone else will feel that way too…

MC: I think it’s pretty fair to say that you’re passionate about Black representation and portrayal in comics and media in general…I think there’s an obviously lopsided ratio in terms of Black characters to Black creators, or if you want to expand that even women and people of color in general…There’s just a lack of representation other than the archetypal man superhero…or the white male creator as well, and it results in some pretty misguided attempts at diversity…but I think we’ve seen attempts by the two big publishers to have more diversity in their lines, specifically in the last three years is really when we’ve seen it…How many Black creators are there? In mainstream comics…if we’re lucky, a handful.

DFW: There’s more artists than there are writers, there’s a handful of inkers, and then if you wanna get even more into it…how many editors are there, how many art directors?…There has to be people in every facet of the industry including even retailers.

When I’m in other cities, whenever I get an opportunity I try to go to at least one comic book shop…and I cant tell you how many I’ve been in where it’s that same old model of all they have is your Marvel titles and your DC titles and…maybe ten titles total representing the entire gamut of all the other publishers, so maybe they got some Buffy books from Dark Horse or a Terminator book from Dark Horse, but that’s it.

And there’s a lot of great stuff out there, but you have retailers who are locked into a mindset, and then you have a distribution system that’s largely locked into a mindset, and then you also have a lot of bloggers and journalist and critics that are locked into a mindset…There’s a book that Dark Horse put out called Concrete Park, my friends Tony and Erika did it, and it’s an amazing book, and it made several lists for one of the best books of 2015 but…not that many people are writing about it, not that many people are talking about it, and yet there’s a lot of people clamoring for diversity, and here’s a book that’s got it, but…

MC: …but you don’t know about it. And that’s a huge obstacle…even in the day and age of the internet and Twitter and this mass social media movement, it’s still hard to get your content in front of a bunch of people that aren’t actively looking for it.

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DFW: Yeah, and the reason I talk about it the most is really simple: because it’s put out by Dark Horse, so there’s not a single retailer in this country that you can’t go to and go, I want the Concrete Park trade paperback. And if they tell you they can’t get it for you, they’re lying…Or you can get it on amazon, or you can get it digitally on Comixology. It’s literally one of those books that there’s no excuse for you not having it.

But there’s so many other great ones out there and it’s just a question of looking for it…They just last week released the first Brotherman graphic novel in like 20 years…It’s not just people of color, there’s women. My friends Lisa [Weber] and Kelly Sue [Milano] have a book…called Hex11; they just finished their Kickstarter campaign and it’s a great book. And Spike Trotman is always doing something, she’s got her Templar, Arizona series.

There’s a ton of stuff out there but the key is… you gotta start snooping around, and I think some people either don’t know where to start, or they’re too lazy…whatever it might be. I spend a lot of time on Comixology just buying these 99 cent comics from independent publishers, and if they suck, I’m out 99 cents. What the worse?

MC: It’s true…if it sucks, you don’t have to read it…I did want to ask, because I saw on your site a post about The Wiz…what did you think about the remake?

DFW: I thought it had its moments, and it was fun, but…there’s a lot of, “Who’s the old white dude that wrote this thing?” and then you find out it’s Harvey Fierstein…Lines like, “Oh I gotta get me some new kicks.” I’m old and I don’t even talk this way. There were some great numbers, and it was great seeing it but I’m old. The first time I saw it was when I was a kid, on Broadway with the original cast…It was interesting watching people react, people were like “this is reverse racism because, what if they did an all-white version?” and it’s like, how stupid are you?

MC: Yeah, that’s just a ridiculous argument.

DFW: …Even I had some friends who were like, “Yeah I didn’t like The Wiz,” but do you get why it’s important?

MC: Right, they’re two different things. I’m not the biggest Beatles fan but I can tell you why they’re important.

DFW: Yeah…there’s a lot of people who don’t understand historical context when they’re talking about certain things. And that’s especially dangerous if you’re trying to be a critic. It’s one thing to be someone with an opinion…but if you think you’re making some sort of critical assessment by [saying] The Wiz is reverse racism because there’s no white people in it, then what do you think the Wizard of Oz was? And don’t hand me that patented response of, well that was the 1930s, because there were Black people in America in the 1930s. Your argument is completely invalid.

MC: That’s very true. On the critic thing, I’ve been reviewing comics professionally for the last year, and the hardest lesson was learning how to critique something, because anybody can sit and slam somebody’s work…but to come up with a reasoned argument about why it does or doesn’t work for you, is…really difficult, and the thing is, it doesn’t necessarily get easier, because you have to come up with a pretty good argument to validate the fact that you feel your opinion should be heard.

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DFW: And let’s be honest, most of the time your opinion shouldn’t be heard; if it’s not well-reasoned and informed, then all you’re doing is just adding to the noise, and there’s already a ton of that noise out there.

MC: It’s true, it’s omnipresent, everywhere…Hopefully there are interesting things coming up in the next year for you. It sounds like you got a lot of good stuff going on, are you excited about it?

DFW: I really am. I wanna get back more into some of the creator-owned stuff. I’m working on another novel, and just sort of recognizing the fact that in the comics industry, some people have a very limited shelf life, and that shelf life is not always determined by the quality of your work, but by a whole bunch of other factors and again, I’m old enough and mature enough to know that, six months from now, people may be sick of me…and not only may people be sick of me, I may be sick of certain things, so let me try something different, let me try something new. That’s part of what I’m working on, what I’m figuring out, at this point. What’s gonna be in my best interests, and also what’s going to be in the best interests of some of the things that are really important to me, issues dealing with literacy, and representation and that sort of stuff.

MC: And it’s interesting because you’re at this point that you’ve got a pretty big platform right now… I think that you’re doing great work, and I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about this. All this stuff is stuff I care about too. One of my biggest things with comics is I feel like anybody should be able to pick up a comic book and feel as if they are represented, or potentially be represented within that book.

DFW: It’s what I call giving people permission to dream…How do you ensure that every kid—especially kids, because let’s not forget that at the end of the day, this medium has to be as much for young people as it is for 30- and 40- and 50-something year olds.

MC: Hell yeah. I tell people, I’m a white kid from suburban New Jersey, and I found comics by digging into my brother’s comic boxes when he wasn’t home. I grew up in a pretty white neighborhood, but Chris Claremont’s run on X-Men exposed me to a bunch of different people that were disliked sheerly for being different. And even something like that has a huge impact.

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DFW: This is a great medium, and…I just want to have an opportunity to entertain people and maybe, again, give people permission to dream, permission to understand that they have a place in this world. There’s a lot of things out there that are working against that, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a person of color, or a woman, or a person with a disability, or whatever it is, there’s so many representations out there that just exclude them. It’s not just one group that I’m concerned about. My background has me tending to lean more into one over another, but it’s still like, how are people with developmental disabilities, or physical disabilities, how are they being represented here? Because how they are represented gives them permission to see themselves and understand that they belong. That they have a place in this world, which they do.

MC: And it’s something you touched on in your article on The Wiz where you mentioned oppression through omission…If everybody in any sort of medium looks one way and acts one way…then all of a sudden, you just don’t matter. If you’re not part of that group, then all of a sudden that becomes your norm, and it’s demoralizing in so many ways.

DFW: Yeah, it really, really is.

MC: Well, thanks again. I really appreciate it. This is the first time I tried to do something like this for Black History Month. As a white dude it’s kind of a daunting thing to take on…thanks again man.

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