Exclusive Interview: Mark Waid on Legendary's Shadow Walk

Superman: Birthright

and Kingdom Come writer Mark Waid is the latest in a series of superstar creators to join up with Legendary Comics, with his upcoming original graphic novel Shadow Walk. From an idea by Legendary founder Thomas Tull (who also worked with Matt Wagner on The Tower Chronicles), Waid scripted the series with World War Z author Max Brooks for artist Shane Davis and colorist Morry Hollowell. Waid, who will be part of Legendary's comics presentation at San Diego Comic Con International next week, joined ComicBook.com to talk about the project.

ComicBook.com: Since I wasn't at your launch party for this project at New York Comic Con last year, what's the elevator pitch for this book? Mark Waid: Thomas Tull gave it to me a year ago almost two years ago the difficult passage shadow of death--what if that's a real place--not a parable, not an allegory but a veiled reference to a lost land or a mysterious hard to get to place on earth that really does exist? What would that mean? What came of that is that Thomas and I sat down with Max Brooks who is a brilliant world-builder and smart as a whip and went through history and built a big, thick bible of the ways that this really could have been a touchstone in different languages and cultures over the years--a valley that tests your faith and tests your mettle and tests you for who you are. From there, I was able to make a story and give it texture where ours is a graphic novel of a story of a special forces officer, who stumbled into it during the Iraq war with a platoon of buddies. He's the only one who made it out alive and the only person who ever has made it out but now he has to lead a new group of people to figure out what it's about and why it's there. It's a realm of beasts and perils that doesn't make sense on any kind of cosmological foundation that we know. Is it science fiction? Is the gates of hell? ComicBook.com: How did Shane Davis come to be the artist on this project?

Waid: Shane is somebody who was on Thomas Tull's radar for a long time. He's a great artist and particularly good at the horror aspect of it--the science fiction, Giegeresque aspect of the world. They put us together [with colorist Morry Hollowell] and it was a really good marriage for this particular project. ComicBook.com: I think it's worth noting that ten years ago or so, before Irredeemable, perhaps, nobody would have thought first of Mark Waid for anything "Giegeresque." Is it interesting, after years in the industry, to kind of rebrand yourself that way? Waid: I think that the reason that I can sort of wrap myself around this genre without losing what it is that I bring to the table is that Thomas and I both agreed that as dark a subject matter as this is and as grisly and grim a story as it could possibly be, it is not a cynical story. There is an aspect of heroism to it, an aspect of personal triumph to it that is aspirational, maybe inspirational, and I think that is the part that I could latch onto easily and that in retrospect make me a good fit for this. It is not bleak or hopeless; it is hope-challenged, it is threatening, it is a hell of a scary adventure. There are consequences and not everybody makes it out alive but at the heart of it the good guys don't lose.

ComicBook.com: At this point in your career, you've worked with comic book publishers of all shapes and sizes. What makes Legendary a fit for you? Waid: Legendary is a different environment but I really like it. I had the suspicion, as I think probably many fans have had, that "you're just asking me to write movie treatments" and that is not an unfair suspicion to have. But what I love is that Thomas Tull loves comics. He was very very adamant that the reason you bring me in for something like this is because he may have an idea for a story but I have the skillset to make it a good comic. I have the skillset to make it not an illustrated pitch for a movie but rather to make it a true graphic novel that uses the comics storytelling tools to their maximum, if that makes any sense. He understands it's a different language and rather than forcing me to write in his language he trusted me to write in my language. That made me very confident and eager to work with this company. It would be great if this were a movie down the line or a miniseries on HBO or something, but for me that's not the goal and it was never impressed upon me from the outside that that should be the goal. The goal was just to tell a good story. It blows my mind that I can just sit down in a conference room for an hour with Thomas Tull and just knock story ideas for comics with him like the two of us are just taking a break from the dealers' alley at Comic-Con. That's the fun of it. They've been great to work with, I am listened to and dictated to. ComicBook.com: Do you think that the breakout success of the Pacific Rim hardcover will help your book? Generally the Frank Miller and Matt Wagner books were well-regarded but they weren't bestsellers in the traditional sense. Waid: I really do. That's the challenge of the Pacific Rim project, is avoiding the trap of making it nothing but a commercial for the movie. Instead letting it stand on its own and giving the creative people involved enough elbow room to tell real stories. I can't speak to the future of the company but from my perspective, what little I know about what the outreach programs are, it seems to me to be that's a big part of the agenda is making sure that Legendary is story first. ComicBook.com: When you're working with the Big Two--or really in superhero comics at all, since you're working with many of the same archetypes most of the time--you've got a kind of shorthand and so you can spend more time on nuts and bolts characterization. Is it a little more daunting to write something like this, where you have to create everything and everyone and the whole world from the ground up? Waid: It really is; the challenge of, this is not me introducing a new supporting character to Daredevil's world--this is me having to put five or six brand new characters on the table and by page 20 you have to be invested in them as people--not as a group but individually as people and the challenge of saying "Okay, we've got five main characters and I want to give each of them three pages of introduction, to use all of the tools at your disposal, not just dialogue but the visuals and the character bits of business and stuff to be able to give you enouhg stuff to a character so that by the end of the second page you know who they are and what they want and you're interested in them--having to do it for all the characters in th ebook and havin to do it very quickly becuase we want to get to th emeat of the story, is a huge challenge. It taxed my command of the comics language to its maximum if you will. ComicBook.com: You're a big voice in comics--and there are a lot of those in this industry, but Shane Davis has never really struck me as one. Professionally, is he willing to come to you and say, "No, this is how we've got to do it"? Waid: Yeah, which I love. I think it was good timing because I like being collaborative and playing to the strengths of the artist and talking about story and I think he was hungry for that experience so we spoke frequently during the creation of this book--I was thinking of this tableau for this scene, and how does that change the way that you want to write the character and all that. It was really productive that way and really collaborative and I think that it really made it a lot better. ComicBook.com: If you had to pick something out of your existing library to compare this to, what would it be? What's the video store shelf, "If you like this, try that" for Shadow Walk? Waid: I honestly think without overdramatizing it on a thematic level and on a content level that it has echoes of Kingdom Come--not in terms of superheroes ovbiously but in terms of spirituality and faith and how those play into the world around us, bein able to springboard off of the bible and mythology and to some degree as strange as thiss ounds there's an element of Fantastic Four here as well. FF they were going though truly mind-bendign horrible Shane Davis horrors but the idea of disparate people on a quest into the unknown and what they learned along the way. ComicBook.com: It's interesting. I think those are both very key and entry-evel Mark Waid stories. Some writers would be hesitant to make that comparison right off the bat. Waid: I understand the resistance but at the same time the reality is after a 30-year career you have themes. You have touchstones and hallmarks that you keep purposely or inadvertently brushing up against as a writer and exploring and I'm not afraid of admitting that because I like idea that 20 years on, my exploration of some of these themes is going to be different than it was ten or twenty years ago.