Alex Ross, renowned for his extraordinary painted
artwork on Marvels and the covers of Kurt
Busiek's Astro City, has just finished Kingdom
Come (see this month's cover), a monumental new
Elseworlds mini-series from DC. In a conversation
with Westfield Creative Director Bennett Neuhauser,
Alex talked about everything he put into completing
Kingdom Come, what it was like to work with
series writer Mark Waid, and what he hopes comics
fans will come away with when they read it.
Westfield: Although you've worked extensively
on covers and character designs for Kurt Busiek's
Astro City in the interim, would you agree that
Kingdom Come is your most ambitious undertaking
since Marvels?
Alex Ross: [laughs] That kind of goes without
saying. Astro City isn't done in the interim
so much. I've been working on Kingdom Come
consistently as my monthly work load, gee, I think
since September of '94. This is a project that takes
up to a year and a half to complete, pretty much the
exact same thing as Marvels, so it was only
during that time that I made the room for Kurt. And
the sketches and whatnot, and a lot of that caught
me off-guard, because it was another thing I had to
fit into the monthly workload. But, pretty much I've
been exclusively working on this project, because
it is so cumbersome.
Westfield: Approximately how long does it
take you to do a single panel of art?
Alex Ross: That's really hard to judge. The
best way to judge it all is to say that I do 10 pages
a month, give or take [a page]. When I had to fit
in Kurt's cover, that was 10 pages plus cover. I generally
take everything in increments of pencils first, then
a certain stage of painting in black & white,
and then a last stage of painting in color. All these
things go by, say, two weeks for the first step, two
weeks for the second step, five days for the last
step, that kind of thing.
Westfield: That brings me to another question.
Do you have any projects in the works that you plan
to do in traditional pencils and inks only?
Alex Ross: No, not really. I don't even see
the use for that in my career, because it would reduce
the unique appeal of my work. It's my market in a
sense. If it is hard for people to produce this kind
of work and I have an easy time of doing it, I should
damn well stay doing it [laughter]. I don't see where
I'm going to enjoy much having an inker going over
my work at any stage in the future. For all the pencilers
I know who find their careers to be nightmares because
of the awful inkers that exist within our industry
or just the fact that no two brains exactly match
up and you're never going to be completely satisfied,
because it's not entirely your hands constructing
that, and then you've got a colorist on top of that,
and as much as I might like to try it out as an experiment
- and you might see me do that in the next couple
of years - I wouldn't want to linger on that.
Westfield: Getting back to Kingdom Come,
how will it differ from Marvels?
Alex Ross: It's different in the sense that
it takes that step closer to the superheroes personally
and behind the scenes. The interesting thing about
Marvels is the fact that they really weren't
focused upon in an intimate light and you saw them
from a more distant perspective, which was really
more intriguing than if we had just had a big painted
book about superheroes and their daily living. Now
we're taking that step closer, but we're still taking
it from a human observer's perspective. So, you're
not necessarily stepping into the thoughts of characters,
but you're getting to see the DC characters in a much
closer fashion. You get to see a lot of intimate experiences.
Westfield: What should fans expect in terms
of the reexamination of the classic DC characters
that's involved?
Alex Ross: One, I'm hoping they will be surprised
in some cases. Everything that I'm doing is based
on inspiration from the past. Like, Superman has a
strong resemblance to the original, the one from 1940.
Then there are other things that are like, because
I've gotten a chance to age characters, I've been
able to add little things that as a young fanboy I
wanted to see come to life with a certain character.
Like say, such and such had a kid and that kid turned
out to be like this, or such and such wound up being
paired up with this other character. I was able to
realize all kinds of fantasy elements like that. If
I didn't want the whole thing of characters aging
to constrain me where I was going to end up having
all these old people in costumes, I would just say
either they've changed physically, which happened
in many cases here, or they've completely handed off
the role to younger person, maybe a son or daughter.
So, you don't look at this series as a bunch of old
guys. [laughter] In fact, it is only a handful of
the main superheroes who do really reflect the age.
The time that's passed is about 20 or so years.
Westfield: So you've really had to create
and invent new characters, is that right?
Alex Ross: Oh yeah, I've had to create hundreds
of characters for this as more or less background
filler, and every single classic DC character has
been altered to some degree. It's all been skewed
through my personal vision. In fact, probably the
least altered by all of this is Wonder Woman, because,
physically, we present her as immortal, that she doesn't
age. I only did slight stylistic changes to, I think,
her skirt, maybe a couple of other things. But then
again, what Mark has done with her character is the
real expansion of that, and the turnaround, so in
a way he's done the greater expanding upon her than
I've done upon her visually.
Westfield: How much of the overall concept
of Kingdom Come was yours and how much was
Mark's, and how did you interact to put your two approaches
together?
Alex Ross: I had written about 40 pages of
material before I met Mark and I wrote it in the midsummer
of '93 when I was still working on Marvels.
At that point I was still looking for a writer and
looking to get this all geared up for DC. So I had
done a very exhaustive layout of a beginning, an end,
and a number of interesting things happening in the
middle, but not necessarily the real concrete things
that were needed to make it make sense, to get from
point A to Z. But after all my copious notes on this
stuff, I generally didn't find that this stuff was
thrown out in the final draft of what Mark's brought
to it. Mark had to sit down to re-think it to say,
"what is the substance of what we're trying to
say here and what is really making the story go?"
So he brought the depth and the personal characterization
to our main cast that wasn't necessarily quite there.
I had some characters who were more or less just wallpaper.
Like, a good example is Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman
was highly placed in my original storyline, but I
really didn't do anything as interesting with her
as I could, and that's why I needed that other spark
to come in there. And Mark gave that to her and everybody
else.
But, basically, I had a lot of the framing stuff,
the general premise of the main narrator I came in
with. That was, in fact, the inspiration for the whole
project, because it was based upon my dad. I wanted
to do a series where the human narrator was a model
who was this person close to me here. And, well, he
was a lot easier to get a hold of. [laughs] But, there's
a lot more depth for me personally in it by doing
this. It also helped that I had a lot of people just
sort of waiting on standby that I was dying to use
[to pose] as DC superheroes, namely the main fellow
who posed for Superman. He was someone used exhaustively
in Marvels, but I never felt I got a lot of
play out of him till now.
Westfield: Who did he pose for in Marvels?
Alex Ross: Oh, Giant Man, The Human Torch,
Captain America, Thor, you name it.
Westfield: Describing your working relationship
with Mark Waid, how is it similar to and/or different
than your relationship with Kurt Busiek on Marvels?
Alex Ross: Well, with Kurt I had come up with
only a real general concept initially that I approached
him with back in '91. He had to, for the sake of getting
our proposal through, reorganize it in such a way
where it was no longer a bunch of thinly strung together
anthology stories. It really became something that
Kurt had crafted, with various points that paid attention
to little visual things, little story points I would
like to touch upon, but it definitely took away any
claim that I could have that I originated the story.
So, really, Kurt deserves the brunt of the credit
in Marvels for anything great that the plot
had done. The most I could say is what I gave to him
superficially began with the origin of the Human Torch
and ended with a story based around the death of Gwen
Stacey, but examining it closely it really wasn't
quite there. It could have been something else, because
I did have some ideas.
What I came to with Mark on Kingdom Come was
trying to set up myself so that I was giving a lot
to the initial plot. And when I was working with Mark
on each script, he didn't just sit down and knock
out the entire series - well, since he's the hardest
working man in comics [laughs], he had to fit it in
between issues of X-Men and everything else
that's being published - but, he would come back to
me and we would talk extensively about a certain issue
before he had written it and I would give him a lot
of critique afterward, notes of things I'd think he'd
missed. It really was a pretty even handed working
process. He allowed me about as wide a berth for putting
in ideas as I could have wanted, but in no way do
I want to short-change him for how much he put into
it. Because, really, when the writer sits down with
it and has to think out the depth of the characterization
that's going on, he's really adding the soul to it.
I think the greatest thing that Mark has brought to
Kingdom Come is the depth.
Westfield: What about the theme of Kingdom
Come? In light of the title, as well as the storyline,
which, from what we gather, casts Superman, Batman,
Wonder Woman and another key DC character as the four
horsemen of an Elseworlds apocalypse ...
Alex Ross: Oh, I never even thought of it
that way. Jesus, that's pretty good. [laughter] I
never thought about it that way at all. They're the
four horsemen of the apocalypse? That's pretty cool.
[laughter]
Westfield: Well, that's interesting, because
we got that description from DC promotional literature,
so you may want to check to them. [laughter]
Alex Ross: Really? Hmmm, that's kind of cool.
I'm just trying to think now, well, who's Death, who's
Famine? 'cause I can't tell. [laughter]
Westfield: Well, anyway, the idea I wanted
to get at is that you are grappling with themes that
are literally Biblical in proportion. Why did you
decide to put that spin on the story?
Alex Ross: That really, again, is a major
instigation of Mark. Because I had pressed for the
main character, the human character to be ... well
I wanted to use my father and then I thought what
could he be if he's this person interacting with superheroes
in the story and I pretty much had the plot in mind,
or a rough idea ... and then it came to me the idea
of him being just what he was, which is a minister.
So I kind of impressed it upon the plot that he be
this minister giving a sort of moral, judgmental ...
well, no that's not it ... just maybe a more humanistic
insight into events at hand, and he's lending his
personal perspective to another character. That's
how he gets drafted into the story, literally. But
this was something that was hard for Mark to resolve,
because, as my editor put it many times, the story
works very well without this guy. For Mark, the burst
of inspiration came when he thought, "we have
this apocalypse story, we have all these things coming
to a head, why doesn't it possibly relate to, say,
the Book of Revelations?" So he tied in this
whole aspect of the Book of Revelations. There were
these visions of imagery that seemed to be related
to the Book of Revelations, to certain moments within
those books that were being fulfilled by visual imagery.
The imagery isn't necessarily even definitely indicative
of superheroes, but it's being interpreted as such,
that these superheroes are fulfilling this imagery.
Westfield: So the Book of Revelations gave
you a framework for interpretation of the imagery?
Alex Ross: Well, I think the reality of it
is that Mark just pulled some stuff out of there that
seemed cool. [laughter] But as far as us relating
the entire thing, or fulfilling the entire Book of
Revelations, that's a long damn book, and so at the
most we're toying with it, but I think we toy with
it in a very creepy, interesting way. I think most
everybody has a feeling about those books. Whether
you pay much mind to them at all, it's kind of a creepy
thing to have this Nostradamus[-like] vision of how
a great cataclysm will come. So this was the bouncing
off point for Mark where everything finally made sense.
The fact that the main character was a minister and
how you see much more in this series how the DC characters
stand up like gods. I guess that was done in Marvels,
too, where they did come across in a god-like manner,
but it just seems to come all the easier with the
DC characters that they have this god-like status.
Westfield: Speaking of Marvels, comparisons
of Kingdom Come and Marvels are probably
inevitable. How are you coping with the excitement
about the release of Kingdom Come and the expectations
that come with it?
Alex Ross: [laughs] I don't see that there's
anything to cope with. I think Mark might, because
- I shouldn't speak for him here, but - as great as
his comic work is on all of his regular comic titles,
all 50 of them, he's probably looking at being more
analyzed than ever before once this thing comes out,
because they'll be comparing his work to Marvels
and he didn't write Marvels. I'm not worried
about being compared to Marvels because I did
it and I've gone beyond Marvels. The artwork
is just better.
There's a certain thing that Marvels did we
can't do in here, in that Marvels introduced
pretty much anyone to the concept of what it's like
to believe a superhero coexistence with man as fact.
We presented the illusion fairly well and here we
kind of have to jump back into that illusion without
giving you a perfect build-up for it. We do a little
bit of it, but were limited in how much time we can
spend on that, because certainly Marvels was
pretty much devoted to that idea. It's like in every
movie that relates to a superhero they have to go
through a period of making you buy the fantasy and
here to a certain degree we have to assume that you're
ready to accept the fantasy.
But, also, we're not expecting everybody to have
a lot of knowledge of previous continuity. We're trying
to work off of the absolute minimum of recognition
that the average person could have for DC characters.
And even as you see these hundreds of different characters
in here, they're not the main role players where you're
going to need to know, "why is Hour Man still
young?" Or, "what happened to Dr. Fate?"
You don't have to know these things. They'll be intriguing
for the fans like myself who have known these characters,
but they're not important story points.
Westfield: So a person who's a new reader
or a "fringe" reader could pick up Kingdom
Come and enjoy it just as much as the devoted
DC fan?
Alex Ross: Well I remember one of the nicest
comments I could hear from fans regarding Marvels
was - and this is something I always like to shoot
for - is they would say to me, "My girlfriend
will never read any of my comics, because she doesn't
care for any of them, but she sat down and read this."
Or, they would pass it over to, say, a parent and
the parent would read it and be able to understand
it. That's something that should be a goal for really
anyone and the fact that we hit upon that, in certain
cases, in Marvels really made me hunger to
have that again. That's the greatest pressure for
me, thinking, like, "well, did we do it?"
Because there's certain things where people might
think we didn't match up, but if we didn't accomplish
that, well .. that's gonna be a bummer. [laughs]
But I think that this story will draw the reader
in more because you're more intimate with the superheroes
and there is a stronger sense of melodrama and urgency
and it's a lot more fierce. The storyline's a lot
more exciting. The fact is what we have over Marvels
is it's not about just some guy who watches a bunch
of stuff happen every fifth page. [laughter] Kingdom
Come has superheroes practically on every page
and you get an intimate feeling of the power of each
and every one of these characters ... well, maybe
not each and every one, but you get the idea. [laughs]
Kingdom Come is also quite a bit different
in the fact that Marvels had already happened
in terms of the history we were covering. None of
this stuff [in Kingdom Come] has happened and
the illusion that this could be a possible future
for DC is a nice thing to play off of, too. But, of
course, we all know it's not gonna be. [laughter]
But I mean that would be nice. DC could play into
that if they wanted to. They could introduce characters
into the regular continuity that appeared for the
first time in this series and they could sprinkle
a little bit of the aesthetics that I gave to certain
characters into their comic books now. But I doubt
if any of that would happen. I think, more likely,
there would be one person who saw something in here
that they liked or agreed with what they wanted to
do anyway and they may incorporate some of it, but
I don't see DC making use of this whole future, beyond
the point of the series, as their future.
Westfield: You mentioned there are hundreds
of characters in Kingdom Come. We understand
there will be appearances by plenty of characters
DC fans will recognize, but maybe haven't seen in
a while. Is that true and are there any characters
you put in just because you always wanted to do that
character?
Alex Ross: Oh, yeah! Oh, God yes! God yes!
[laughter] Yeah! I mean, the nicest thing about this
20-years-in-the-future plot is that it opens you up
to anything. If I didn't want to do a current character's
costume, it was gone. And if I didn't want to do a
certain character because they annoyed me, we can
assume they're gone. You know, they don't necessarily
have to be dead, but who's to say that all these people
would do this for the rest of their lives. I also
hope that people don't get the impression that all
of these higher echelon characters would just remain
doing this all their lives. I hope people absorb the
fact that there are obvious costume changes and possibly
man-power changes amongst the ranks, like the Hour
Man mantle being passed down again or the fact certain
characters don't look like they could be the same
human being or the same physical creatures. Like,
both Dr. Fate and Dr. Midnight, and the Red Tornado,
all look physically transformed.
Westfield: So people should be ready for just
about anything to happen.
Alex Ross: Yeah. You'll see me stick in goofy
little character bits, like, you can even look for
the Wonder Twins at a certain point or Marvin from
the original Super Friends show. I was throwing
in anything that I might have seen as a kid. Stuff
that was really archaic I was re-inventing, putting
a little bit of a superficial gloss on top of it,
so that it might be a little bit less recognizable
to you. Just about everything would be interpreted
to a certain degree and some of it would be interpreted
to a funny degree. Like when we present Lobo in the
story, he's a big, fat slob. [laughter]
There's stuff like that, but more often than not,
the character presentations are as lovingly done as
they can be. I'm a big one for respecting what an
initial creator may have done. That's why Superman
will reflect more of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel,
to me, than of the last 50 years. And with most everybody,
I like to go back thematically and incorporate a lot
of elements the original artist had done or creators
had thought for this character.
Westfield: Having discussed some of the older
characters, what about the new generation of characters,
like Magog, Nightstar, Cathedral and others, that
you created for Kingdom Come? How do they diverge
from the traditional?
Alex Ross: They're really more just a reflection
of today. They are more present just by physically
being there. Only one of those characters has an important,
motivating role in the series. In a lot of those cases
I was doing up designs that would reflect the change
in styles and maybe, in some ways, parody some of
the styles of today.
Westfield: What insights or feelings would
you like fans to come away with once they've read
Kingdom Come?
Alex Ross: In some ways I hope that they come
out seeing a storyline and the possibilities for storylines
where there are more shades of gray, not just black
and white, because that's what life's really like.
We called upon that complexity to show how things
can go horribly wrong. [laughter] I also hope that
people come away with a greater appreciation for the
more classic characters, the characters the molds
were formed from, Superman being the most important
of those. The main guys we focus upon, their concepts
and the work done under those characters is what's
affected everything since in superheroes. Everything
is somewhat of a deviation from that original template.
Westfield: Would you say you're dealing with
getting back to what it means to be a hero?
Alex Ross: Oh yeah, that's in there. There's
a much better way to answer this question, which would
be to say how we hope they come out of here realizing
what superheroes really should be, in a sense - what
they were before, and what we've lost. I would criticize
modern superheroes as being little more than gangs
fighting gangs. When they're removed into their own
environments that are all these techno-babble, Kirby-derived
playgrounds and you've got characters upon characters
and not one person looks like they live in the real
world, after a while it feels like another planet.
Except, this is supposed to be what we're finding
ourselves drawn into and it just becomes too removed
from a sense of reality. I feel like that reality,
if you have it side by side with the fantasy of the
superheroes, makes the superheroes stronger.
Westfield: It's the contrast between real
life and the life they lead, in other words, that
is the source of what's interesting about them.
Alex Ross: Yeah, because ultimately, as far
as I'm concerned, once you remove them to their own
environment, where it's just a land of superheroes,
then it's literally become as boring as real life
[laughter]. So you need to keep up the contrast between
the two and Kingdom Come is somewhat pointing
out things like that. I wish I could explain it better.
I think Mark does a better job of it, because he's
better with dem words [laughter].
