On Image, Spawn, Violator, Watchmen and 1963

Art by Bart Sears.

Excerpts from THE INTERVIEW FROM HELL... by Steve Darnall.
Published in Hero Illustrated n.7, January 1994.

[...] Most recently, Moore accepted Todd McFarlane's offer to do more work with Image, which led not only to the writing of Spawn #8, but also his next project, a three-issue Violator series, with art by Bart Sears which will undoubtedly be one of the hottest titles in '94.

DARNALL: Tell us more about the upcoming Violator series. When is it due, and how did the idea come to be?

MOORE: When I did my issue of Spawn, I sort of came up with some of the background for Todd's mythology. I think all of us [who guest-scripted issues] contributed a little bit. Todd invited us to contribute whatever we wanted in terms of ideas and so I contributed all this stuff about the Tower of Hell and the idea that the Violator had four brothers and all the rest of it. Todd asked me, originally, if I'd like to work with him again doing this three-issue Violator series, and I said 'Yes' because I enjoyed working with Todd. I think the original idea was that Todd would take a leave of absence from Spawn and someone else would write those issues of Spawn while Todd was doing the Violator series. As it turns out, I think Todd's now doing this Batman/Spawn crossover, which means he's got time to do neither the regular Spawn comics nor the Violator mini-series. At this point Bart Sears was appointed. Now, I've not actually spoken to Bart, I don't know the guy. I've seen his artwork for some of the first issue and it's wonderful. It's different from Todd's art, but he's certainly done as good a job interpreting my ridiculous little sketches that I burden these people with as anybody. I'm very pleased with the result.

The basic idea-not anything terribly demanding or intellectual-is hopefully an amusing or entertaining three-issue series in which we fill in some of the background on the Violator. We introduce the rest of his family, we run through what, for want of a better word, could be termed his origin story, and we have an obligatory scene where Spawn turns up. We also introduce the ultimate brutal gun-riding vigilante character, who's called the Admonisher. He tells people off.

I've had a lot of fun doing the Violator mini-series. As with much of the stuff I've done for Image, it's been a great deal of fun, because it is such a romp. It's very easy and I can do things that are just purely there for fun. They don't have to have a great deal of relevance to the state of the world, the collapse of Eastern Europe, the angst of modern man, or any of those other broad and weighty yet worthy social concerns. They can just be about a bunch of demons ripping each other's innards out, you know? And I've had as much fun with that as I can.

When you've got a character who is a heart-ripping creature from hell, you've got to have a certain amount of violence, however, and I don't really like the violence in a lot of modern comics, because it's all very very grim and depressing. It's not really necessary, a lot of it. This is unnecessary violence as well, but at least it's funny. They're all great big demons who can have their brains blown out without it affecting them greatly, so there's lots of brains being blown out, people being ripped in half...fun stuff like that.

DARNALL: When you're writing the Violator series, what is your business stake in all of this? Do you have some ownership in this work?

MOORE: I presume I own the work I've written. I've got no real interest in having a stake in the Violator. I suppose if they did do a Violator movie that was using concepts that I'd created, then, you know, I assume that Todd would write me a check for whatever he thought was the appropriate amount. I've done these on a very casual basis, where Todd phones up and says 'I think it'd be fun to do two or three stories,' and I reply 'Yeah.'

I haven't really thought about it, to be perfectly honest. I'm just throwing the concepts in as they occur to me because they're fun. Obviously, Spawn and The Violator are Todd's characters. I wouldn't go away and start bringing out my own Violator comic. At the same time, I guess if any specific use of my concepts was made in a film or something like that, I guess Todd would sling us a few greenbacks or whatever. I don't have any real proprietary interest in any of the stuff there.

But to answer an earlier question which I failed to address, I'm not sure when it's gonna come out. I've written two issues as of a few weeks ago, and I've seen Bart's artwork up to about two-thirds through the first issue. It looks great. I'll be starting the third one soon-early next year.

DARNALL: Is this the first time you've had an artist sort of thrown at you? Are you someone who carefully picks your artist to match a story?

MOORE: [...] Obviously, if I know who the artist is going to be, then I'll try as best I can to fashion the script with that in mind. Working with Todd, for example, I figured that maybe Todd wouldn't want to wade through the vast amount of verbosity that usually fills my scripts. In fact, I think he saw one of Neil [Gaiman]'s scripts, which are considerably slimmer than mine, although they're pretty big. I think Todd got a bit alarmed. It's a lot of work wading through all that stuff, especially if you're used to a more informal way of working. So when I was working with Todd I did pictures. I sent Todd complete, full-page sort of layouts, and breakdowns, and Todd built up from there. I do try to gear it to the way that the person wants to work.

The first issue I did for Bart (thinking it was for Todd) I did it in picture form, then I started to think, "Well, maybe not everybody is like this." In Spawn 8, Todd was very faithful to my layouts, and that's great, but at the same time I thought "Well, perhaps this isn't very much fun for Todd." On the other hand, they might say it was a great boon, I don't know. So for the second issue I did for Bart, once I realized it was Bart, I've written it in full script form. I'm waiting to hear back from Bart, if he's got any preference, and I'll be glad to do the third issue exactly the way he wants it! [laughs] I try to be as responsive to the artists as possible, because you get a better result that way. Everybody's working in the way in which they're happiest.

[...]

DARNALL: What's the difference between the work you've done for Todd, and the work you've done for other people, like DC? After all you and Steve Bissette have said about working for DC, I would imagine that Todd must take a radically different approach to "hiring."

MOORE: As far as I know, Todd does a book with me and he splits the profits completely equitably. It's not that he's writing off the lion's share for himself. It's sort of, "If he does all the book, he gets all the money," but if he wants me to write it, he gives me an amount that is a fair dividing of the royalties on that. Which is all I ask for. Dave Sim does that story for Todd. He owns that story as much as Todd does, and Spawn 8 is co-owned by me and Todd. I didn't invent the character, so I don't have any sort of ax to grind there, whereas with 1963, where I did invent the characters- or semi-invented, shall we say- then we own all that. Image has no propriety over the characters. They have been very helpful in getting them out there, and we've profited greatly from Image's profile, but they're not saying, "Oh well, we own these now. We can give them to another writer." They're treating us like human beings because they're also creators. I only tend to work for creator-owned companies these days.

DARNALL: As a result, the quality of your writing has...I don't want to say "improved" because that wouldn't be fair to your earlier work, but it's obviously the work of someone who feels in control.

MOORE: No, with the 1963 stories, you couldn't say the quality has increased, because it's a different thing. I'm not going for an increase in quality with the 1963 series. I'm going for an increase in charm.

DARNALL: I guess I was putting that into the equation.

MOORE: Yeah. But if you look at say, Lost Girls or From Hell, and Big Numbers...whenever you see another copy, then I think, yeah, the quality has increased. These are steps on from Watchmen. That's not to rubbish Watchmen or anything, but I'm older now and I'm better. That work, what I consider my serious work, as opposed to something with which I have a lot of fun, like the Image comics work, that work has definitely improved. That's how I measure my progress. The Image stuff is very lucrative and a great deal of fun. It's been a real breath of fresh air amongst the other projects. After wading through entrails in Whitechapel for a month, writing an episode of From Hell, it's really nice to do something...silly.

[...]

DARNALL: This may just be a pompous metaphor, but if Watchmen and Miracleman were sort of your last word on superheroes, would Violator and 1963 be your parenthetical remarks?

MOORE: Well, at the end of the day, Watchmen was, I believe, a misguided attempt to give an intellectual weight to superheroes they were probably never designed to carry.

That's not to say I think Watchmen was a bad work, or that Swamp Thing was a bad work, but I do feel that it was probably a bad idea on one level, because I do see that to one degree we've dragged comics into a kind of new dark age, which isn't a terribly enlightening place to be. We seem to have given license for an awful lot of pretension, increasing the levels of violence. I know that this must sound perilously close to me as a reformed alcoholic talking about the evils of booze [laughter]. I acknowledge all the stuff I've done in the past, but I think we lost something along the way. I think we threw out the baby with the bathwater.