SDCC 2016: John Semper Talks Cyborg

Former Spider-Man: The Animated Series story editor John Semper has his first job at DC Comics coming up, when he launches Cyborg as part of the DC Rebirth initiative.

Vic Stone, who in the post-Flashpoint DC Universe is no longer a Teen Titan but a founding member of the Justice League, will get a new backdrop as he moves away from being defined by his fellow superheroes and his father.

Artists Will Conrad and Paul Pelletier will help Semper shape that world, when the series launches in early August.

Semper joined ComicBook.com at Comic Con International: San Diego yesterday to talk about Cyborg.

I guess the first thing is what drew you to Rebirth? Did they just call you up and say, "Hey, we want you to do Cyborg, or was it a little more involved than that?

It was the former. They called me up and said, "Hey, we want you to do Cyborg." I said sure. I've never really, I mean, I've worked for Warner Bros. I've done animation for Warner Bros., but I've never really worked for DC Comics before, so it was a new experience. I'm always open to new experiences, and the people that called me where good people, people whom I trusted, and I said sure. I'm in.

Were you reading David Walker's run previously or no?

No, I wasn't. I have read it now, but I was not reading it, no.

To me, the interesting thing about that is with Rebirth, so many of these characters are going back to what made them brave and back to basics. David did this critically acclaimed run that was all about kind of breaking from the basics and doing something wildly different. Is it kind of added pressure on you to make this book great while struggling with the fact that the last guy was doing pretty well doing the opposite of what I'm doing?

I never worry about that. The last guy did what the last guy does, and I'm going to do what I do. I have a pretty good track record. I don't think you can be in this business, in the entertainment business without having confidence in yourself. If you're worried about what you do and how well you do it, then you probably will not last very long. I'm always willing to admit the things that I can't do, but I'm pretty confident about the things that I can do.

The readers will now get my take on this character. It will be a little different from David's. I'm certainly going to benefit from the wonderful groundwork that he's laid, but I get to expand it in ways that I think it needs to be expanded, you know, Cyborg's world, and I'm looking forward to that. I'm very excited about doing this.

One of the things he didn't get a lot of time to do because he was building mythology was to build a supporting cast. Are we going to see a little bit more of the world immediately around Vic?

Yes. That was actually one of the first things I noticed was that Vic's personal life was sadly devoid of detail, and that's going to get changed. I'm devoting a tremendous amount of time to Vic's personal life and what's going on in his head.

I think that he's a wonderful character. I'm not sure that the readers have yet been exposed to who he really is in his private moments, and those who have handled him in the last five years have certainly handled the epic quality of this super hero character, but I think the personal side of him is sorely in need of expansion so that will be addressed.

That's something actually that I kind of feel, and these poor publicists have heard me say this over and over again because this is one of my personal talking points, that's something I feel in general superhero comics have gotten away from the secret identity and focus almost solely on the superhero now.

Yeah. In fact, the way that I put it is that especially with titles like, and this is not a DC title obviously, but titles like the X-Men, I feel like they are no longer connected to the common man. It's superheroes battling supervillains or sometimes other superheroes, and the little guy gets lost in all of this. We're supposed to be, the heroes are supposed to be protecting the common man. That's one of my biggest issues with a lot of superhero comics right now, so I'm really addressing that with Cyborg. We're going to see him interacting with his environment, with the people in his environment, with the city. He's going to be much more a part of Detroit, which is where he's based. I'm very adamant that that be explored.

When I was the head writer for Spider-Man: The Animated Series, I used to always tell my writers, "We're not doing the Spider-Man show. We're going the Peter Parker show. He just happens to be Spider-Man." We're really doing Vic's comic book, Vic's story, and he happens to be Cyborg.

What I really like about that idea for me is I've always loved Cyborg as a character, but over the years, there's been essentially one story that's been told in a lot of different ways with Vic, which is how he struggles with his other half. It seems like what you're doing offers you kind of a broader canvas than that.

Yes. To put it simply, I think sometimes the character has ended up being a bit one note, and I really want to expand that into a full orchestra. We're certainly not going to lose that. I mean, he does still struggle with that, but we're going to go deeper with that than I think it's ever been before, and at the same time, we're going to give him a supporting cast in an environment that is more fleshed out.

We're also going to give him some humor. I think that the way those things, I think the way to make someone more fully developed is to surround him with really interesting characters who bring out his personality and put him in interesting situations, so yeah.

I still think of Cyborg as a young character. Obviously a lot of things you're talking about, like you can look at things like Spider-Man, you can look at the Blue Beetle from John Rogers and Keith Giffen that did similar things, those are all specifically teenage superheroes, and you could easily fall into the trope of kind of making Cyborg 18 again, which is not really what DC is doing with him right now.

No, we're not. I don't think of him as a teen at all. I think of him as somebody who's in his early 20s. He's a young adult. He is finding his way in life. In fact, one of the things that I really am adamant about, and I was just talking to Geoff Johns and my editors about this just a few days ago, I want to get him out from dear old Dad a little bit.

It's time for him to move out of the house, and I know that he's based in S.T.A.R. Labs, which is great, but I'd like to tell stories that involve more than just him being with his dad. I think it's time that he started developing as an adult all by himself.

It's a little tricky too because historically he's been surrounded by basically his dad and then super-people. To me, I'm super interested to see him engaging the real world, so to speak.

Yeah, well you won't see as much of that in the first issue, the Rebirth, what I call issue #0, but issue #1, mark my words, you will begin to see what it is that I'm bringing to the character that is different from what you've seen before.

Is that again, that's kind of a thing that we've seen in these Rebirth one-shots is the Rebirth one-shot is almost wrapping up what's going on now and setting the table. Is that kind of a fair assessment, that really you're starting with issue #1, but that the Rebirth gets you there?

The Rebirth gets you there. It's also an introduction for people who are just picking up the comic book for the first time, especially in the case of Cyborg. I think that with his new prominence as one of the stars of the major motion picture coming up and then also subsequently having his own movie, I think more and more people are going to be exposed to the character, introduced to the character. The Rebirth issues are a way of introducing new readers as well as pressing the reset button for older readers.

Taking on this character for the first time, working really with DC as you said for the first time, was it kind of getting tossed in the deep end to be like, yeah, it's going to be part of this huge thing, and we're going to do it twice a month?

Yes, but I've been here before. I'm not sure whether they're aware that they picked the right person for this, but you know, getting 65 half-hours of Spider-Man on the air 20 years ago was no picnic. I've handled characters like Static Shock. I've handled characters like Alvin and the Chipmunks. Handling big franchise characters is really what I do best and what I like to do, so I think I was the right person to give this too, but yeah: it really is being thrown into the deep end.

I think when I was at WonderCon, when we did that big rollout at WonderCon, literally I had only been on the job for about three weeks, and it was all still very new, but, you know, it's what I do. I don't panic.