Justice League's Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok Talk The Amazo Virus, The Darkseid War and More
Today marks the end of Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok's 'The Amazo Virus,' their first Justice [...]
Today marks the end of Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok's "The Amazo Virus," their first Justice League arc and the lead-in to the hugely-anticipated "The Darkseid War" storyline that will shape the comic's 2015.
With a pair of big moments in the third act and a conclusion that gives Lex Luthor his own...well, his own "Lex Luthor"...today's issue -- you can get it on ComiXology here -- ties up some loose ends while leaving a few dangling for stories beyond "Darkseid War."
Johns and Fabok joined ComicBook.com to talk about the issue, its roots and the future of DC's premiere super-team.
One thing that's interesting about this book is the variety of characters and different kinds of characters. Has it been more challenging or more fun to adjust on the fly a lot?
Jason Fabok: I'd say it was both. Coming into this book, I'd really only ever worked on a single-character book with Batman. Detective Comics and Batman Eternal. So to come into this book and now I'm drawing this wide range of characters, it's been a challenge. Trying to learn how to balance a page with all these different characters and where they are in relation to each other in a scene, especially a fight sequence or something, it's taken me a while to get used to that. At the same time, it's been the greatest experience of my life.
Before this, working on Batman books, I always thought, "This is where I'm supposed to be. This is the universe where I think I can really draw the best, and get it," and all these sorts of things. Coming into Justice League, it's totally opened my eyes to another realm of comic books. I've always loved the Justice League and Superman and all these characters but I just didn't know if I would ever fit with that universe. Now, I'm playing in this universe with all these different characters and I'm thinking, "Alright, maybe this is where I'm supposed to be." Maybe this is where I'm going to have the biggest impact in my career. This is where I'm going to have the most fun.
Geoff's giving me freedom to sort of do my own takes on some of these characters. You know, we did a new take on the Wonder Woman costume that was based on an old sketch I did years ago. You're going to be seeing some new villains and some different takes on some old ones that I've tried to update, and some heroes as well. It's been a big challenge, a lot of hours of hard work but on the other hand, I'm just having a blast and I feel like I'm producing the best stuff I've ever done.
Geoff, you're kind of the opposite. These big crowd things have become your bread and butter after Infinite Crisis and Blackest Night and everything. How do you juggle giving people the camera time they need to be fleshed out?
Geoff Johns: Well, like we're working on Darkseid War right now and when we're talking about Darkseid War and what the story's going to entail and what the characters go through, like when I talk about it with Jay, it's always about character first.
I love the spectacle, I love the DC Universe, I love every character in it. I think one of the things that I love doing best is taking characters that are kind of off the beaten path and pushing them into the spotlight and there's a couple that we're going to do alongside the Justice League in Darkseid War, because I think that's a fun exploration of character. But I always really try to have an end goal for everything in mind, so I don't just pull characters into a frenzy and have them battle. There's always a reason behind everything they're doing and going through. For instance, Forever Evil was really a Darkseid story when you look at it and though Captain Cold and Black Adam and Bizarro and Cyborg had their stories within it, there's a focus on certain thematics and characters that took the spotlight. And the same thing goes with Blackest Night, you know? Every event, or what they dub an event -- I mean, Sinestro Corps was never an event. It was just a story and people call it an event because it was I guess big in scope. But that was always about Hal and Sinestro and Kyle Rayner and ultimately, I knew their arcs for the whole story. The whole purpose of the story was about taking these characters through something. That's the same thing with Darkseid War, Blackest Night. Any of these big stories with the DC Universe involved, I really try and boil it down to a specific idea I want to get across and a specific journey I want to take characters on.
And everyone has a different journey. Batman has a very different journey in Darkseid War than Superman and Lex Luthor and Wonder Woman has a different journey than Shazam or Cyborg, but they all have a journey. I know the endings to every one of their character stories throughout Darkseid War. My goal is always to talk about character first becuase especially in a team book like this or in an event, it's really about the relationships. Sometimes it's the relationship with another character, sometimes it's the relationship with the rest of the DC Universe as in the case with Luthor.
But as long as I have my endings, that's the most important thing. Knowing where I want to take these characters and knowing what I want to accomplish with an event, or a big event story, or a big story like this. It's always like "Why is this story happening?" What's it going to take the characters through and ultimately, what is the end result? Because I really like playing with big changes in status quo when we get to these gigantic DC Universe reality fabric-bending stories and hopefully that's what Darkseid War is.
We're really putting everything we can into it. I think Amazo Virus, I really enjoyed working with Jay on it and we always talked about this being our opening salvo for Darkseid War so that we could develop our working relationship and collaborate and find a groove. I'm really excited because I think we have.
You've had Darkseid War percolating for a while now. What made Jay the ideal collaborator when you decided it was time to pull the trigger?
Johns: I always wanted to kind of do the Justice League in three stages. The first was to have them go up against the biggest villain in the DC Universe, Darkseid, and then ultimately kind of touch upon the existence of the Anti-Monitor. It would be a lot of fun on the surface to have these two super powerful destructive forces go into battle, and they're doing it for very different reasons. And we've never seen them kind of in combat before, and the Justice League having to take on them at the same time, and all of the other stuff that entails something like that.
I've watched Jay's work since he first started at DC and I've seen him just grow tremendously. It was a night when I was on the set of The Flash in Vancouver and it was almost 9 o'clock my time, and it was midnight in Windsor -- at least we were both in Canada, Jay! -- and I didn't even have his e-mail address, I sent him a message on Twitter and I was like, "Are you up?" He was like, "I'm home, I'm about to go to sleep," so I said, "Well, cool, let's talk tomorrow."
Then he was like, "Well, I'm up if you want to talk." So I called him at like midnight his time and I'd just been looking at all of his art and I found this piece of Wonder Woman that he'd done -- what was it for, Jay? You just did it for your portfolio? You just did it for fun?
Fabok: Yeah, it was for my portfolio I did to get into DC.
Johns: And I just found it online and I thought it was amazing and actually a lot of the costume now is the one that I think we're using in the book. And I just was blown away by it. I talked to Brian Cunningham right before that and I said, "Can I call Jay and see if he will do the book?" And he was super supportive and I was really excited about that. We'd been talking about Jay's art for a while.
So I just called him up because I knew that his attention to detail, his emotional storytelling (which I find incredibly important and underrated in a lot of artists) and his scope and his action was just perfect for the book. I knew that we would have some time to gel together on an arc before we got into Darkseid War and it was really important for us to do that because we couldn't just drop into Darkseid War. I slowly started pushing the boundaries for Jay throughout Amazo Virus. I mean, issue 39 is far and away -- his work looks beautiful in everything, but in #39, you can see him just go to the next level. And I just knew. I knew he had the talent and the enthusiasm and the passion for this, and that's what I want in a creative partner because we are partners. We talk several times a week about these characters and it's very important we're on the same page.
Two major teases come out of #39. We get Hal returning and also Amos Fortune. Are those going to play directly into Darkseid War or are you still feeding for further down the line?
Johns: Hal is going to be a big part of Darkseid War. He returns to the book in #39 and then in Darkseid War he plays a very pivotal role with Batman and the Justice League and the development of Power Ring. Then Amos Fortune is just a hint at something else that we're brewing right now.
He's an old character that hasn't really been used or seen and he's got kind of a cool, interesting background to explore and maybe blow open, so we're sowing the seeds of that for later.
I really liked the way Cold interacted with members of the cast during Amazo War. He almost seemed like he had a quasi-flirtatious moment with Wonder Woman this week. Is it fun to play some of these longtime villains off the other characters without it necessarily being just confrontational?
Johns: I don't think think Cold was ever really motivated by...
...I love writing these characters, and what I really loved about that interaction between Cold and the Justice League is that when he and Wonder Woman got together, they just started talking. Cold, I think, may have talked a little too much because he's a little in awe around here. He's impressed by her and I think that she's almost amused by him. I actually found that relationship in the very short time they spent together really fun. The thing I like about Cold is that he brings a perspective that isn't an normal perspective to these characters and he's a very regular -- as regular as you can get -- guy in the midst of all this craziness. So yeah, that was really fun, and Jay draws the hell out of Captain Cold and Wonder Woman.
It's funny -- Wonder Woman plays a bigger and bigger role in the book and her role will just continue to grow. A lot of that a direct result of Jay does one of the most, most beautiful and powerful takes on Wonder Woman I've ever seen.
I also really dug the way you depict Cold's powers. Is that something you put a lot of research into?
Johns: Yeah, it's just kind of my take. I was looking for reference from the past of how does this gun work, how did other artists draw him doing this? And I don't know. He's a newer character for me. I always thought he was kind of goofy-looking when I was younger. I always thought he was kind of lame and goofy. As I read Forever Evil and I saw the way that Geoff really has a take on this character, I started to fall in love with him. Man, this guy's actually really, really awesome. He's a lot of fun.
And it turned out that three of the characters that I've really clicked with drawing this book are three characters that I really didn't think I would gravitate towards. Those characters are Captain Cold, Wonder Woman and Lex Luthor. So when it comes to Cold, I don't know. I'm just trying to interpret the character as I see it. It's really hard to draw people getting frozen. I've found that's very tough to draw.
But I love the interaction that you can get with that character and other characters, the little smirk that he's always got on his mouth. He's got such a cool costume and we kind of cheesed it up a bit where he's got the hazmat suit on but he still wears the fuzzy hood over his head. I love little things like that; they make me laugh when I draw them. He's just become one of my favorite characters and I guess I'm really just trying to riff off Brian Bolland and that awesome Captain Cold cover he did years ago. To me, that's the ultimate version of the character and I'm doing my best to channel that in a way through my artwork.
The end of this story sets up the possibility of a lot of new metahumans. After the streamlining of the DC Universe at the start of the New 52, what makes now the right time for that?
Well, a lot of what Jay and I are looking forward to doing -- and I've done it in the past -- is that I love the iconic characters, I love the DC Universe form A to Z, but I also do like introducing a lot of new concepts and a lot of heroes and villains into the universe alongside of them.
So what we really want to do is just introduce both new ideas and new characters in our run. That includes The Amazo Virus and in particular Darkseid War. We've got a lot of new characters and new ideas that we're going to start to reveal and kind of have them unfold during our series. This is just for us another interesting way to analyze and look at Amazo and try and reintroduce and put a new spin on Amazo untimately. Making him more organic and making it intentionally something that was going to affect the rest of the DC Universe for us just felt like it was bigger and felt like it was worthy of a Justice League-level threat.
One of the things we're playing with is that the Amazo Virus is actually going to end up on the black market and people will literally roll the dice and will purposely infect themselves with the chance that they might develop a metahuman ability permanently. That's something we want to play in the background and we want as a texture in the DC Universe.
Ultimately what this story has done if you look at it, is at the end of the story, Patient Zero who's really the new Amazo is talking to Lex Luthor and he's saying "I'm going to come kill you. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get out of here and I'm going to do what I do and I'm going to kill you. I'm going to infect you and kill you." And for us, it's like "Well, you wanted to be a hero, Lex, you wanted to be in the Justice League. This is what happens: you develop enemies. The people you care about are under threat. This is the first rogues' gallery member of Lex Luthor's, and it's all because of something he created and he did. He inadvertently gave birth to this new Amazo. So these ideas -- we want to take old characters and put new spins on them, we want to introduce new characters and new concepts and ultimately for us, for now and certainly with the start of Darkseid War in June, all we want to do is kind of expand and make new things.
Because when there's new stuff and new scenarios the League are going through, like Darkseid versus Anti-Monitor, we've never seen it before so it's unpredictable. We don't know what's going to happen. And when new characters show up, you don't know what their fate is. You don't know whose side they're on. And that's what we're going to start to play with more and more as we roll into Darkseid War.
You kind of touch on something with the Amazo/Darkseid conflict that I think is really interesting about your work as a whole. You do a lot of those things that everyone thinks of in a very abstract way, especially when they're young, but that haven't been translated to the page yet. Do you think having a long game in place allows you to go, "Yeah, this isn't a gimmick. Let's indulge in it and see where it goes?"
Johns: Well, I always like plotting long-term. The seeds of Darkseid War have been seeded since #1 of Justice League and if you go back and look at some of the stuff we've done since then you can see some of the build-up for Darkseid War.
I always feel like some of the best ideas are the ideas that you can't believe haven't been done yet. Certainly it's hard to say, too, since those are all very subjective things. But there are certain things we're doing in Darkseid War that we haven't even talked about yet that both Jay and I are like, "They have to have done this before!" And it's like no, they never have. And that's really fun when you hit on something like that. I think it's exciting and I think the element of fun in comics is vastly underrated and I like that.
As dark and kind of threatening as The Amazo Virus was, there's a lot of humor in there. Funny enough, Luthor brings a lot of humor in there and even Batman. For me, it was really fun to focus in on Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman and Lex in this arc and really drill down a little more into their characters. Again, Wonder Woman will be taking a much bigger role in the book as we move forward.
But when you hit on an idea like that, that you think is like a fun big idea and there's stuff in there that's going to help characters grow and challenge them in new ways and open the doors for new things to come out, it's really exciting. Jay and I, we were just at the summit together. He came out to LA and we spent a lot of time together talking about Darkseid War and what we were going to do with it and what the end of it is. We know the last four or five scenes of the story and that's really important becuase that's the payoff and that's the purpose of the story. That's when I think you get really excited. The story just falls right into place and the characters all have really important things happen to them and important things that they overcome or don't overcome.
And we had a great time. We put everything we have into this book -- and it's a difficult book because there are so many characters to write and draw -- but it's super fun and we hope that the fun we're having and the passion we're putting into it shows on the page with all this stuff. I feel like we're very lucky to work on a book like this.
Darkseid has been very monolithic up to this point. He's almost the specter that hangs over the DC Universe. When he's facing off against something like the Anti-Monitor is that going to give you an opportunity to explore what makes Darkseid tick and almost humanize him a little?
Fabok: Yeah. There's a scene in issue 41 that cranks up the creepiness factor of Darkseid by 100. Geoff and I were discussing this because when it comes to a villain, you really want to see that this guy is evil.
He's everything you want in a villain; he's dark, he's evil, he's got these crazy plans and intentions. But you want to get that across the readership because you want the reader to really not like this guy so that when the Justice League shows up and when they're fighting this guy, you're going to root for them and you're going to want the heroes to win.
We kind of discussed that, like how can we take this guy up to another level? We really solidify that Darkseid is the worst of the worst and you want to hate this guy because he's so bad and so evil. And Geoff, there's a scene in issue 41 right when we're kicking this thing off that Geoff nails it.
And from that point on, I think we're going to see Darkseid written the best he's ever been written when we tackle this character. We really get in deep with him. With the opening arc of the New 52 Justice League, Geoff had Darkseid versus the Justice League and whatnot and we saw his power, we saw these things, but now Geoff's really going to be diving into his mind and that's where it really gets creepy and really scary.
Johns: I'll say, thanks for the compliment, Jay. I'm just trying to do a version of Darkseid and when he first showed up in Justice League, he was just a force of nature and that was very much on purpose because it was more about the Justice League. This time, I'm diving a little bit deeper into the character and we're going to see a little bit more about what makes him tick. I think we have a cool take on him and hopefully people will like it.
I'm trying my best because he's the most iconic, powerful and evil villain in the DC Universe and he's had a lot of fantastic stories through the years. I'm just trying to do right by the character. I have to say, I've written a lot of villains and he's very different from any villain I've written. He's almost like just an idea. It's really fascinating and a little scary to get inside his head because it's a very foreign place.
There's certain things -- I don't think he feels certain emotions like we do or sees even things like we do. He's probably as alien a villain as I've ever encountered. There's a difference between Brainiac, who's a very cold, unfeeling, unemotional villain and Darkseid, who actually has some passion in him and he does have some pain in him, but there's so much darkness that it almost swallows up everything. So I'm just hoping that we can portray him in a way worthy of the character, because he is the ultimate villain.
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