Apppearing in the back of Artifacts #26, out today from Top Cow, is an interview ComicBook.com conducted with series writer Ron Marz and outgoing artist Stjepan Sejic. For the full interview, check out the comic either on ComiXology or at your local comic shop–but here you can get a peek of Ron Marz’s share of the conversation.Russ Burlingame: This has to be the first time that you’ve had a miniseries go to ongoing without missing a beat, right? I mean, Artifacts is kind of an odd animal.Ron Marz: Well, this isn’t the standard operating procedure in comics. This was initially planned as a 13-issue, event-type series where we were going to literally destroy the universe so there was not an initial plan to extend it. As we got into it, though, it was successful and the response was such that it felt like there was more story to tell. There was a natural progression in the story for these characters in this universe after we had basically destroyed the universe. So the decision was made to keep it going–and yeah, you’re right, it’s very unusual for a publisher to not take every opportunity to slap a #1 on the next issue…but the decision was made to just keep going.RB: And because it’s continuing a thread that have been going on for a logn time, I feel like there’s some weight to a higher number and that weight extends beyond the one-month bump that you get from a new #1.RM: Certainly that’s the overall mindset at Top Cow, which obviously has books in The Darkness and Witchblade that are in triple digits. There aren’t any books at Marvel and DC that have three digits in their numbering anymore! Its certainly the anomaly because the easy gimmick is to just relaunch but I think there’s something kind of honorable about just continuing.RB: With Artifacts it’s interesting because, say, three years ago you were writing a bunch of Top Cow books as opposed to just one but now you get to serve in that same capacity as a kind of Top Cow myth-maker, but do it while still having time in your schedule to do creator-owned material of your own.RM: Yeah, it does afford me the opportunity to play with all the different characters in the universe with a bit more freedom than, say, when I was just writing Witchblade. Certainly Tom Judge is the spine of the series in a lot of ways–he’s the recurring character–but I can have him do a solo story, I can have him bounce off other characters or I could have him kind of do a cameo appearance in someone else’s story.RB: When Top Cow did the Talent Search this year, it felt like the stories they were soliciting are the kinds of things that would be totally at home in Artifacts.RM: I’ve always said that one of the things about working for Top Cow that’s really attractive is the amount of freedom that I’m afforded at any point during the process. Whether it was on Witchblade or Magdalena or Velocity, they really trust their creators to create, which is more rare than you might expect. They let the creators take the ball and run with it and Artifacts is really just another example of that where the idea was to continue the book and have Tom Judge be the main character as much as there is one–but really it’s kind of turned into “whatever character Ron feels like writing this month.” Which is cool, and I make sure that I don’t abuse the privilege and that we’re serving the needs of the universe and the readers. But it’s fun for me because I get to pick the toys I want to play with.RB: But the fans want ALL the toys played with. Do you ever feel like you’ve got to make someone show up just to have them on the page?RM: It’s kind of like writing a team book, actually; in a team book you generally make sure that everybody makes their appearance in each issue or each couple of issues. For Artifacts, I guess I’m keeping it more in mind that we’d like these characters to appear or have some impact on the overall storyline every story arc or so. We’re not getting everybody into every issue but everybody is in every five or six issues to a certain extent.RB: It isn’t a traditional team, though; a lot of these characters would be happy to never see each other.
