With the release of Dark Horse Presents #12 next week, veteran creators Mike Baron and Steve Rude will return to their beloved, creator-owned character, Nexus, for the first time since their self-publishing venture closed its doors in 2009.The character has been published, almost exclusively by Baron and Rude, intermittently for over 100 issues since the 1980s and is one of the most well-regarded creator-owned books in comics. They’re frequently mentioned in the same breath as guys like Jeff Smith, Terry Moore and the Image founders, and their return to Nexus has been simmering for a long while, getting their fans nice and worked up over it. Now that it’s here, we’re happy to have had a chance to talk to them about the issue.Why Dark Horse for this iteration of Nexus?Mike Baron: No other publisher treats creators with such respect. Mike Richardson returned copyright and trademark to us. That’s unprecedented.Dark Horse Presents is the place to be.Steve Rude: Mike Baron and I have always had a cordial and respectful relationship with Mike Richardson, the head of Dark Horse comics. Mike, after all, is the one who gave us the rights to Nexus back. That alone puts us in his eternal favor.
Dark Horse Presents
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Dark Horse Presents
Nexus
It’s interesting–you guys have been doing this character for years. I know that it hasn’t always been easy, and in the comics industry most guys give up on their creator-owned stuff to go for a quick buck at some point. What’s kept the pair of you anchored to Nexus?
MB:
Nexus
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That asked, does going back to Dark Horse make it easier to make that a plausible alternative?
MB:
Does it feel good, being part of what’s obviously a major launch period for Dark Horse? It seems like once a week there’s some huge, insanely ambitious new series coming out and right in the middle of it–a fan-favorite like Nexus for the first time in a while.
MB:
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Is there a kind of cognitive dissonance, do you think, between that stylized more Silver Age feel of the art and the fairly harsh realities of the universe Nexus inhabits?
MB:
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With Harry’s age being held over instead of moving forward during the time when there were no books, what are the challenges of writing a baby? I mean, most guys don’t do it. To pick a name out of a hat, The Flash’s kids were artificially aged to be sidekick-appropriate ages almost immediately after they were introduced.
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Do you think the sociopolitical elements of Nexus tend to help you avoid certain tropes of the superhero genre, like always having to bring villains back? As you’ve said before, it means that there’s always someone new around the corner.
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