John Semper Says Cyborg: Rebirth Will Address Vic's Life As a Black Man Living in Detroit

09/08/2016 09:32 pm EDT

While Supergirl and Batman might have gobbled up a lot of the attention from DC fans, it's Victor Stone, the young hero known as Cyborg, whose Rebirth one-shot gave him a shot in the metallic arm this week and gave fans a sense of what to expect from writer John Semper, Jr.

The former Spider-Man and Static Shock writer/producer will tackle his first ongoing series at DC with Cyborg, and his first priority was to help Vic establish an identity distinct from his peers and his family.

You know -- like young people tend to do when they grow up and move away from home.

Only in Vic's case, "home" is S.T.A.R. Labs, and moving away is a little trickier.

Minor spoilers follow for Cyborg: Rebirth #1, so if you haven't read it yet, head to your local comic shop first or buy it online to read along with us.

What do you think is the key difference between being a leader with a group of young people like Vic was with the Titans for all those years, and the youngest guy on the world's premiere organization with the Justice League?

I'm probably not the best person to talk to about that. The old books are obviously what they were and I don't feel and I don't feel at all really wedded to any of that. Then, I'm not doing Justice League so I don't really have to think about his relationship with any of those heroes.

I'll give you a sneak preview: There is a little bit of awareness of his association with Justice League. I do mention it a few times. You'll see. There are some interesting surprises coming up, but I don't even think about Justice League really. It's not my domain.

I think that I wouldn't have it any other way because this book is all about the reader having an opportunity to get to know Vic. That's my sole focus. I want the reader to start liking Vic more. I want the reader to start understanding Vic more. That's my sole focus, so I'm probably not the best guy to ask that particular question.

The question of his humanity and this idea of how "real" is he, is something that's been dealt with in basically every iteration. Is there a balancing act between addressing that fundamental thing that defines him while still saying something new about it?

That's a good question. Part of my mandate with this character is not to repeat a whole bunch of stuff that's been done before, but to really move into new territory.

I suppose the biggest difference right away is this notion that there's the possibility that his father thinks that he's maybe created a monster. That's kind of hovering over Vic because Vic doesn't know whether or not it's right, whether or not it's true. Is he in fact a good thing or a bad thing?

I don't think that's really been the issue before. I think the issue has been, "Am I human or am I not? Oh, woe is me. Am I human or am I not?" Now it's like, "Am I a monster? Am I good for humanity or am I not good for humanity?" I think that's a different question.

One of the things that I'm doing is I'm trying to get a little deeper into all of the things that you've seen before. This character, even though you know him, you might not know him as well as you think you do. I'm going to point that out. His relationship with his father, you might think you understand it, but you don't really understand it as well as you're going to understand it after you read this comic book.

Then, his fears. Yeah, he worries about whether he's human or not, but what are the shades of that? How deep does that go? How does that affect all the other aspects of his life in ways that we really haven't seen before? I think it's really going to surprise a lot of people.

This is the [story] that's really going to define this character for the entire history of the character. The previous twelve issues were great; they were wonderful. This is really the run where we are going to lay down the blueprint for who Vic is.

This is the mandate that was given to me when I took the job on: to really define this character in a way that's going to make the reader really want to spend more time with this character. The best way to do that is for you to understand better what motivates him.

What can you say about how this new revelation changes Vic's relationship with his dad? Over the years it's been depicted a few different ways and it's not always the easiest. Like you said, it's a very new wrinkle. Before it was always Vic who was crushing himself and his dad was like, "Oh thank God my son is alive."

I think both of them have some real difficulties, and problems, and hesitations about what's gone on and how to move forward. I also think in a way it's the standard thing that happens between a kid and a parent when the kid gets a little bit older. Fathers and sons are not always the best of friends when the son is in the late teens, early twenties. The son is kind of coming into his own. The father is not the dominant force anymore. This sort of, "Oh my son I love you." "Oh dad I love you." It's a little different than that.

I think Vic is really feeling a little constrained at this point in his life where he's still living with dad and he doesn't necessarily want to keep living with dad. One of the things I'm going to do is get him out from beneath dad's wing a little bit because I think that's how we define ourselves, is when we get out of our parents' house and we start living on our own.

This iteration of Vic has not done that yet. Yeah, he spends time with the Justice League but we don't really get to see what effect that has on him as a human being.

The whole dad/Vic relationship is going to get a different look, a different slant. One of the things I'm sure I talked about with you was getting him out into the street a little more. Getting him out into Detroit a little bit more. The first thing that happens when you get out from under your parents is you have to start learning how to navigate through life on your own. If you live in a big city, as I did, you start having big city adventures. Some good, some not so good. The first time you have a run in with the police, late at night, after sundown and you're on your own -- those are the kinds of adventures that define you as a human being. I don't think Vic has had those adventures.

He's fought supervillains, but I don't think he's really been out on his own. I don't think he's lived on his own, or at least not that we've seen. Certainly not what we've seen in the previous twelve issues of this title.

It's going to be a whole new ballgame. I think anyone who's even remotely interested in this character, they should be paying attention to this run. This is all the stuff I'm going to be dealing with. It's going to be significant.

You touched on something there. You're exploring identity at the same time we are having a broader cultural conversation about what it means to be a young black man in America. Is that something that you're going to be looking at with Vic a little bit?

Yeah, I'm definitely going to be looking at it because it's got to be his life experience. I said this in my first round of interviews. I brought this up and I do read some of the fan response when these interviews get published. There were a number of people who were sort of outraged that I was emphasizing the fact that he was a black man. It was, "Oh is this going to be a black thing?" The reality is, he's a black man. He's living in Detroit.

If he were Bruce Wayne and I said I'm going to really start examining what it's like being a billionaire in today's world of geopolitics, no one would have batted an eye. That's the reality of the character and I think by not looking at that, you kind of reduce the character to being two-dimensional.

He's a black man living in Detroit. That's what was handed to me. I'm now going to use it because that's what we do as dramatists and creators. We use the elements that are given to us. I happen to particularly like this bag of elements because I was a young black man growing up in Boston, which is a city kind of like Detroit in a way. I had experiences and I had adventures. Some of that experience is going to work it's way into what Vic goes through.

Some of it is going to be based on the headlines. Some of it is going to be based on what we know. It's really going to be a very complete look at the reality of this character. No, I can't turn my back on the fact that he's a black man living in Detroit. That would be ridiculous.

Detroit is going to be a major character now. Before it was just sort of like, we're at S.T.A.R. Labs, and it just happens to be in Detroit. No, Detroit is the city in which this man lives and as he gets out from under his father's wing and isn't spending quite as much time at S.T.A.R. Labs, he's going to be in Detroit. That's gotta be his Gotham City. That's gotta be his Metropolis.

I think this book is going to surprise a lot of people. There are people who think they know my work from having done Static Shock or Spider-Man or having written a comedy, Class Act. This is a whole different side of my writing that I don't think anyone is expecting and that delights me to no end. I'm thrilled and delighted. I love surprising people. Even in my own life I like to pull pranks and surprise people. This is going to be the ultimate surprise really. I can't wait for this book to get out because I think people are not expecting it, and that delights me.

Vic is a young man but obviously he's kind of already an alpha male in that he spent the last ten years of his life either with the Justice League or with the football team as a leader. Is he kind of aware of that role in the world and in his community, in terms of how people perceive him differently than other people who have a similar background?

There's a lot in that question. It's a good question, but there's a lot in there. I think that there's some things that he's been aware of and then I think there's some things he isn't aware of.

One of the things that I feel strongly about is if you look at someone with Vic's background, where they felt that they were not quite loved by their parents, this is going to get a little deep so bear with me, they felt that they were not loved by their parents. They go on to become like a big man on campus, some guys there's a tendency to become a little bit of a jerk, quite frankly. To not necessarily accept the mantle in the most graceful way.

In my heart of hearts I really think that's the way Vic was before the accident. I think he was a bit of a jerk. I think one of the things he has to confront now that he's post accident and he's taken on the mantle of being a superhero is he has to kind of look at his past and realize there were some mistakes made. We're going to maybe delve a little bit into that.

I look at this controversy that's going on right now with Nate Parker and Birth of a Nation. Here you've got a person who was poised to become the next big thing in film in Hollywood and now this situation of his past has reared it's ugly head and reached up and grabbed him and is pulling him down. Here's a guy who's many years past it. Is married and has kids and has now got this amazing career. This thing that happened in college, when he was not acting in the most judicious way, and perhaps by his own words "I was a dog".

He's done the mea culpa, but the fact of the matter is, that it has an effect on his current life. This thing he did in college is now having a major effect on his current life. That's what happens in life. I don't think we arrive on the scene being perfect. I think things happen and that creates drama and that has to be looked at.

I go back to a lot of great mystery stories. Forgive me for rambling. This stuff just intrigues me. A lot of great mystery stories, the murder occurs because of something that happened way in the past. Conan Doyle did this in Sherlock Holmes. Every one of the Sherlock Holmes novels, the murder relates to something that happens decades earlier. I think that we are defined in a lot of ways by the mistakes that we make in our past. I don't think that's going to be any different for Vic.

Disclosure: ComicBook is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of Paramount. Sign up for Paramount+ by clicking here.