Last week saw the release of Edison Rex #9–the series’ most surreal issue yet.While some critics have pegged Edison Rex in general as being a kind of continuation of Bronze Age Superman stories and a commentary on the modern age of comics, writer Chris Roberson and artist Dennis Culver made that explicit this time out, with an impish talking puppet of a villain that drew Edison out of his ongoing story for an issue to deal with Mr. Mxyzptlk/Bat-Mite-style mischief.Roberson and Culver joined us to discuss the issue, which you can buy here if you haven’t read it yet.ComicBook.com: First of all, I’ll say that you really managed to lump every post-Crisis era of Superman into one big parody in those first few pages, huh? You got the chubby, cigar-smoking corporate villain, you’ve got the long hair, and the New 52 armor.Chris Roberson: It’s actually less a specific parody of any particular character or era, and more a response to the kinds of superhero comics that have come to dominate in the last 20 years or so. I think in my head Edison Rex’s world is one in which the Bronze Age never stopped, but just kept evolving. As if you took the trends in superhero comics that prevailed when I first became an obsessive fan in the late 70s and early 80s, and then continuing rolling those trends forward.Dennis Culver: I’m coming from the generation right after Chris so I don’t have the same connection to the Bronze Age but my intent was to poke a bit of fun at the hyper realism trend in Superhero comics. Mad Scientists and seamless costumes may not be realistic but if you hold the genre to that standard then none of it measures up. For my money the way you make any story realistic is through honest character driven moments. That’s something we all understand regardless of genre. Put another way I think Aquaman can have just as much emotional resonance fighting a Gorilla in a submarine as he can fighting Somali pirates. One just happens to be more fun for me than the other.
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