Matt Wagner, the visionary comics creator behind indie successes like Grendel and Mage and the writer/artist behind a number of popular events for more mainstream publishers like his DC series Trinity, surprised everyone a little bit when he took a job with the upstart Legendary Comics.Not to create his own original property, like Frank Miller had just done in bringing them Holy Terror–but to work on a property he co-created and developed with Thomas Tull, the movie mogul owner of Legendary Entertainment, on a series of books that will take years to complete.The project–The Tower Chronicles, the first installment of which hits the stands today–marks the first serialized series from Legendary Comics and features nothing but A-list talent, from Wagner and artist Simon Bisley (Batman/Judge Dredd, Lobo) and inker Rod Ramos (Transmetropolitan) to cover artists who tend to draw the eye–like Jim Lee and Alex Ross.Wagner joined ComicBook.com to talk about the project, how and why he joined and what fans can expect from John Tower.
For the uninitiated, what is the basic premise of The Tower Chronicles?
The Tower Chronicles
The Tower Chronicles
Geisthawk
Wow, so this is quite a look back for you, then, doing these press appearances and talking about something that you’ve finished months and months ago.
I think it’s safe to say that comics people are often somewhat skeptical about these companies that come up and they say, “We’re going to make comics that make good movies.” There’s a lot of that going on right now.
Grendel
Mage
The Tower Chronicles
It’s funny when you say that because I feel like at the time when you really exploded, a lot of the cartoonists who were coming up around that time were expert genre mashers, as you say. It’s hard to imagine a time when we didn’t have Grendel and Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore and Madman from Mike Allred, but those were all in their heyday right around the same time.
Dark Knight Returns
Daytripper
Sweet Tooth
These covers by big-name comic book people seems to be aimed very much at the direct market, every Wednesday type comic book creator…but the project itself seems very much more at home in the bookstore market. Do you think that Legendary is intentionally trying to broaden the base more than the average Marvel or DC book would?
Trinity
And it’s interesting because it seems like such a common-sense approach to the project but…well…comics aren’t necessarily an industry dominated by common sense. Do you think that people like Legendary are coming into the market with a more complete understanding of the comics market than their forebears–companies like CrossGen–really had?
For you personally–you’ve been directly involved with things like production on your smaller books, I assume, so is it a little more comfortable to be able to be looking on this project and offering your insight to the bosses?
Mage
Grendel
Batman
Grendel
Mage
Grendel
Mage
Grendel
Zorro
Even just the layout and things of the early stages, you can see a lot of Simon in the art of the first issue. I’ll be interested to see the relationship develop through multiple books. I mean, it would be virtually impossible for a person with a grounding in modern comics to read a book by either of you guys and not know right away who did the art.
Oh, not at all. I think it’s like a Scorcese movie. You can watch for five minutes and nobody will ever say it’s a bad thing that the viewer can go, “Oh, that’s him.” Even if it’s just something like looking at Dan Jurgens or George Perez and you can just look and say, “Oh, look, I remember him. He used to do Superman.” Anybody you really like, they’ve all got that identifiable thing, and I think whenever you’ve got an artist working with an artist it’s interesting to me to see where the styles meet.
And even your inker–I mean, Rod Ramos is a master of what he does, too. At the risk of alienating anybody else, I think it’s safe to say that the issues of Transmetropolitan that Rod inked are head and shoulders the best-looking ones in the series. And that’s a beautiful series.
