Stefan Petrucha: Myth & Meta-4

By Mike Jozic

There isn’t much I can say about Stefan Petrucha that isn’t already included in the interview you’re about to read below. He’s been one of my personal favourite writers since he made his mark writing the critically acclaimed and wildly popular X-Files comic book adaptation for Topps comics in the ‘90s and has continued to impress and entertain me with his genre-hopping prose and 4-colour fiction. He’s written stories based in White Wolf’s Dark Ages role-playing world, and created the industry’s first New Age super-heroes, who will, by the by, be making a comeback sometime in the very near future - more on that below.

Recently, Stefan has also begun to make the move into film via his Lance Barnes: Post Nuke Dick graphic novel, and with a little help from his friends - director Rick Friedberg and star Matt Frewer. Although that project is still very much “in development” at this time, the future does look bright for the eccentric P.I.

I should also point out that, as a bit of an added bonus, the first section of the interview includes comments from both Petrucha and Friedberg, who was kind enough to share some time with us and give us the perspective from the other side of the project.

BIG SCREEN DICK

MIKE JOZIC: Could you give a little back-story on the saga of Lance Barnes: Post Nuke Dick - from comic book to script to, potentially, screen?

STEFAN PETRUCHA: For quite a while a number of folks have seen big screen potential in Lance. Lawrence Mattis, who reps the Wachowski brothers trucked it around with some great results. Many folks loved the script, including Ghostbusters’ Ivan Reitman, but as is the way with these things, the project just never clicked - too weird, too episodic, too cross-genre, etc. It was almost a film, almost an HBO series, almost a bunch of online webisodes for Sony, pitched to the Sci-Fi channel and so on.

Meanwhile, I tinkered and worked on new drafts, making it stronger, I hope, each go round. It was a 2002 Scriptapalooza finalist, which got it another flurry of attention, great coverage, and a number of almosts. It was at that point Scott Billups and Matt Frewer became attached. Then, I read that Rick was looking for a noir comedy, and, after an e-mail pitch, he read and loved the script. And here we are.

JOZIC: What form would the online webisodes have taken? Live action or flash animated?

PETRUCHA: They would have been flash animated, with art by original comic artist Barry Crain. We were hoping to attract a "name" voice for Lance, like Adam West.

JOZIC: Did you find the "almosts" to be very encouraging, or did they, after a while, seem like an omen that this thing would never get made?

PETRUCHA: At first you get all excited, because, omigawd, something really might happen and change my whole life and everything. Then, after a while, it felt like torture, until, finally, I reached something akin to equanimity. Yeah, right, whatever. You have to develop that sort of detachment from expectation if you're going to work as a writer, or at least I did. If I didn't, I would have driven myself nuts.

For instance, at one point an option contract was sent out to me on Friday, but over the weekend the president of the production company - a big production company – was replaced by someone else and all the previous president's projects were canned. Monday, the offer was rescinded. Hollywood, if not the universe, is utterly random. If you take it too seriously, you're screwed.

That said, I don't know if I ever felt Lance would "never" get made – just that the right pieces had to be in place. Too many people liked it too much for me to think it would never happen.

Also, detachment from expectation doesn't mean detachment from the work – that’s where the real rewards lie. In this particular instance, I genuinely believe the script is being improved, so I'm pleased on a purely aesthetic level, you know? This is just fun to be writing, and it's great to have a receptive ear. I think, hope and pray that feeling translates into an actual production. My gut's been wrong before, but I've got a good feeling about it this time.

JOZIC: Rick, what was it that originally attracted you to the Lance Barnes script and concept?

RICK FRIEDBERG: The novelty and writing quality in the synopsis I read plus the humor and quality of writing in the note I received from Stefan with his initial inquiry.

JOZIC: Okay, you have a star, a director, a visual effects director and a screenplay - what's next for the project and how bright does the future look for Lance?

PETRUCHA: Money! That's the last, and biggest hurdle, but Rick can probably speak more to that. He and I are currently re-working the script yet again. He's been terrific to work with in a business where that's pretty rare. He's got some great ideas for the characters and the story, solving the dilemmas that others pointed out, and I'm starting to get optimistic that this time we'll actually see something happen. It certainly feels more like a film these days. Anyway, once Rick and I finish a draft we're both happy with, then it’s time to seek a budget.

FRIEDBERG: I'm planning a multi-angled approach - securing initial financing while simultaneously approaching producers, and managers to secure interest without financial commitment up front for various roles.

JOZIC: Will seeking a budget involve hooking up with a studio at some point?

PETRUCHA: You'd have to talk to Rick about those details. That's really his bailiwick.

FRIEDBERG: Studios are great, especially when it comes to distribution but I think both Stefan and I see this as more of an offbeat, indie vehicle - giving us the ability to be a little more "out there" and in control.

JOZIC: How faithful would you say the final script will be to the original comic book?

PETRUCHA: Based on what we're doing so far, it will be very faithful to the spirit and many of the specifics of the original comic. If anything, it's better, or at least more appropriate to its medium.

JOZIC: What kind of role is Rick playing in reworking the script?

FRIEDBERG: I played the role of Al Pacino in Scarface. If Stefan wouldn't change something, I sent someone to "disappear" his cat. If he did, I sent him his drug of choice.

The real answer is that, from the get go, Stefan and I seemed on the same page for wanting a tighter, tougher script which he did as well as incorporate a few of my "logic" considerations that a filmmaker always ponders.

JOZIC: What kinds of changes have you guys made in order to make it stronger?

FRIEDBERG: The characters other than Lance and Peg - who are so unalterably wonderful why would you change a thing - throughout are "edgier," the plot is tighter and more credible, Lance is more pro-active and the shortness makes it move like a bullet train.

PETRUCHA: One of Rick's original suggestions was to beef up the villains and tone down, not so much the strangeness or the non-PC aspects, but the more cartoony elements. With Lance I'd always used a wide brush, particularly with the movie script, trying to go for as general an audience as possible, like a Raiders or The Mummy. But Lance has a dark, noir underbelly and a counter-culture 'tude that just isn't Indiana Jones or Rick O'Connel. I think, in a way, by shooting too broad, I aimed away from where the actual appeal is. On that level, now, I'm veering it more toward the vein of an Escape from New York, or Mad Max, only much, much funnier. I think the new script has a much better shot at finding its audience.

Partly to that point, Lance is satire, and while that sort of cartoony over the top, self-referential quality doesn't interfere with story or character so much in a graphic format, where bold, condensed concepts and dialogue are par for the course, what was funny or pointed in that setting could easily seem goofy or over-wrought on screen, setting the wrong tone.

The comic was also, of course, episodic. In the script I'd always tried to keep the best elements from each issue, and it still, in some ways, retained that sort of episodic feel - one could say, 'epic' feel, but that's pushing it.

Also, in the comic series, Lance wasn't necessarily the moving force behind the story - he could be an observer, incidental to the main thread. That would work for any detective in any series. But with a one-shot, like a film - or even a novel, or a single graphic novel - you've got to focus on a single thread. The newest version tells the story of Lance in a more direct fashion, with a focus on him driving the story.

All that said, I truly doubt any fan of the original comic would, in any way be disappointed by the new script. In a way, it's just more of what it was.

JOZIC: Based on the script you have, would early projections on the film's prospective budget be high or low?

PETRUCHA: I'm going to leave the money questions to Rick, but there are lots of ways it could be done.

FRIEDBERG: Ditto my multi-angle approach. No matter what, keeping the budget contained assures us more control. Which means under $10-15 million - by studio standards, still low budget. But given the production design and effects, a minimum of $5 million is necessary. The difference between the two is casting.

JOZIC: What would your wish list be as far as the casting goes?

FRIEDBERG: Don't want to play those cards yet but like all good indie films, there would be that smattering of Coen brothers types that people would relish for eons.

JOZIC: If you had to guess, based on the legwork you have ahead of you, how long will fans likely have to wait to see the film happen?

FRIEDBERG: A year at least, two at most.

JOZIC: I remember there being an announcement regarding the release of Lance Barnes TPB from Moonstone earlier this year, and then it got shelved. Now, with the option, it will be coming out again. What was the story there?

PETRUCHA: The story is that Lance was published over a decade ago. While those who remember the character remember him fondly, that just wasn't a big enough crowd to garner enough advance orders for a high quality, very expensive TPB in an incredibly tough market. Currently we're thinking of doing the TPB in black and white. I've got all the pages scanned, but have to re-touch them before solicitation. That's a time consuming process, and hey, I have to spend most of my time writing, not playing with PhotoShop.

Meanwhile, if things start happening with the movie before I finish, we may wind up going full color again. I'm confident the TPB will be out, it's just a question of when. The way my luck runs, the movie will get greenlit the day I finish the 120 pages of B&W touchups, and all that work will have been for nothing.

Not that I'd complain.

LICENSE TO THRILL

JOZIC: Your work can also be seen in the prose novels for White Wolf. How is that going for you and how did you get involved in writing RPG fiction?

PETRUCHA: I was trying to get publishers to take a look at Making God. Stewart Wieck, owner of White Wolf, had heard of my X-Files comics, and after reading some samples, gave me a tryout story, which became “The Treatment of Dr. Eberhardt”, the opener for their Inherit the Earth anthology. After that, I was assigned Uktena, for the tribe novel series, Dark Ages: Assamite, second in their Dark Ages clan series, and “The Grass is Always Greener”, a novella for their Haunting the Dead anthology. I also did an all-new Fatima short story for the second volume of their Vampire the Masquerade clan novel saga. I know some folks look down on gaming fiction, but it's been a great opportunity for me to tell some really interesting stories set in a really complex, fleshed out world.

And I'll tell you something else, I love writing comics, I love writing screenplays, but when you write prose, you're done. It's you and the editor and a reader. Even if it's not published, you can show it to someone – and it's a complete experience. That's very satisfying.

JOZIC: Are you finding the prose work to be more satisfying?

PETRUCHA: Don't get me wrong, I love comics, and I love writing the Lance screenplay, but I've six screenplays and fifteen comic proposals, many of which have gotten great responses, great coverage, whatever, but they're gathering dust. The most important thing for me as a writer is to have that communication link with readers, and that seems, right now, to come easier with prose.

JOZIC: Did you have to do a lot of research for the Dark Ages stories?

PETRUCHA: Hell, yeah! It was about a female Islamic vampire set during the fall of
Constantinople in the 13th century - and I didn't know crap about any of those things! I was surrounded by books! One of the things I loved about the process was spending time with the history, with the Koran, reading Arab accounts of the invading Christians, and learning for the first time about Byzantium. I'd known a bit about Rome, but this was sort of the sequel. I think it came out pretty well, but if there was one regret it's that there wasn't enough time to let all that history sink in enough so I could "own" it.

JOZIC: You've written for the Werewolf, Vampire, Orpheus and Hunter worlds – do you have a preference for any one or do they all offer similar rewards from a storytelling standpoint?

PETRUCHA: I most enjoyed my first story, “The Treatment of Dr. Eberhardt” for Hunter, and the recent “The Grass Is Always Greener” for Orpheus - I think because they're introductory tales, and in that sense the least inhibited by gaming constraints, so I can go off down my own paths. But they do really all offer similar rewards.

I think I'd equally enjoy working in any of the White Wolf worlds - I'm continually impressed with the rich details they have in their gaming books. I may also be doing some game-related fiction for an Urban-fantasy RPG called Deliria, but more on that as it progresses.

JOZIC: Do you listen to music while writing or have any other rituals related to the task?

PETRUCHA: Nothing ritual. I like to listen to WNYC, a news radio station, but often that becomes so engrossing I stop writing to pay attention. I try to surround myself with what I'm writing about - my new novel is set in South Carolina, largely in their swamps, so I subscribed to a South Carolina Wildlife magazine - that sort of thing. I find I really can write anywhere, and the ideas come whenever, so I do keep paper and pencil handy. For each project I have these huge notebooks, each with numbered thoughts that occurs to me whenever, then when I sit down to write at the computer, I go through them. Switching from computer to long-hand, or from writing a scene to working on the outline often help get me past log-jams.

JOZIC: What can you tell me about the new Telos novel you've written, “Tunnel at the End of the Light”?

PETRUCHA: That was a lot of fun! I'd sent Telos editor David J. Howe, a copy of Kolchak, since he's also a reviewer. He liked the book and asked me to pitch for their new Time Hunter series. They're known for doing some terrific Doctor Who novellas. Time Hunter is a spinoff, though in a more noir vein. The series is set in post-WWII London. The main character is Honoré Lechasseur, an African American vet who stayed in London after the war. He's a "spiv" - someone who can procure things for people on the black market, since that was most of London's economy at the time. It also puts him in touch with the underworld. Anyway, turns out he's "time sensitive" - he can see the past present and future of people and objects in the form of trails - not unlike Harry Keller in Squalor. The good Doctor puts him in touch with the mysterious amnesiac Emily Blandish, who appeared in London one night in her pajamas, out of nowhere. She's a "time jumper". So, the two work together - Honoré senses a location in Time/Space and Emily enables them to jump there. He hates it, she wants to figure out where she's from. So that's the series. My entry involves the accidental detonation of a V1 rocket that releases a group of cannibalistic Subterraneans that proceed to forage for sugar until someone co-opts them for a more devious purpose. It's got all the genre-hopping stuff I love.

JOZIC: Is there any genre you don't like writing in, and is there any genre you've yet to do that you wish you could?

PETRUCHA: I think I'd like to try them all - once - and would rather work forever in that strange cross-genre world I refer to as "my own stuff." Romance, I imagine would be tough, but that would be part of the challenge.

GOD COMPLEX

JOZIC: Making God was your first and only original self-published novel - also one that I am actually quite fond of. Do you think you will ever make another foray into self-publishing?

PETRUCHA: Thanks much. Making God is my personal favorite, and certainly one of, if not the best of my work. It went over fairly well in self-publishing circles and is still available at Amazon, etc. It was even on the syllabus of a college literature class. I did a live online chat with the class that was absolutely terrific. They were smart, engaged and really enjoyed the book.

I self-published Making God because I just had to get it out there. It'd been so close to publication so often. I'd received rejections that compared my writing to Wolfe and Pynchon. But, it was too short, it didn't fit comfortably into a particular genre etc. Me, I'm convinced there's a big audience for it out there.

My big hope with Making God is still that once I make enough in-roads in prose, a publisher with some distribution clout will pick it up. I seem to be headed that way - my prose work with White Wolf is going over really well with readers and critics. Dark Ages: Assamite is in its second printing, and I have a science fiction novel coming out from Telos Publishing England early next year, so I feel like I'm on my way. I just completed a paranormal thriller I'm particularly proud of, and will be looking for a publisher for that in January. Once I hit some sort of critical mass, I'll try to pitch
Making God again.

Will I self-publish again? I think I've gotten to a point where I won't have to, but if I write something else I feel that strongly about, that no one else wants to publish, I'd certainly consider it. It was certainly worth it, and I'm always pleased when folks such as yourself bring it up. Still, publishing and marketing are time-consuming efforts that require a lot of skill and money. All in all, I'd rather be writing.

JOZIC: If you could get a publisher interested in Making God, would you publish it as is, or would you go back and tweak it a bit?

PETRUCHA: I already tweaked it a bit in preparation for one of its near-publications. Reference to the Millenia were axed, descriptions upped a bit. I've written so much more prose now, that yes, of course I'd go through it again.

PARANORMAL PHENOMENA

JOZIC: Having made something of a name for yourself writing the X-Files comic book for Topps, do you find it kind of funny that, of late, you've had the opportunity to write an original story featuring Kolchak, the spiritual inspiration for Carter's series?

PETRUCHA: It seemed natural, actually. Topps wanted to do a Kolchak series as a sister book to The X-Files, and I'd written an entire proposal for that, ages ago. I loved the original Night Stalker movie, so “Devil in the Details” was a dream project. Since I'm pretty facile with the paranormal stuff, I was freer, I think, to concentrate on voice. Kolchak has a warmer, more humanist persona than Mulder and Scully, and it was a lot of fun to try and bring that out.

JOZIC: Like The X-Files, had you been a fan of Kolchak prior to working on that book?

PETRUCHA: As per above, I think the original TV movie, “The Night Stalker” is the single best vampire film ever made. It pivoted on keeping viewers in suspense about whether or not there was a real vampire - the same heart the X-Files had - when it had a heart. Once you hit the Night Stalker TV series, despite the terrific character, you can't repeat that original conceit - monsters show up every week in one guy's lap. X-Files solved that dilemma by having Mulder and Scully out looking for strange stuff all across the country.

But yep, I'm a fan.

JOZIC: Rice gave you kudos for your Moonstone Kolchak work, but I remember reading that he really disliked your original Topps pitch. Did you know beforehand hat he would be seeing your stuff and commenting on it, and did that make you hesitant to get in the ring one more time?

PETRUCHA: Where'd you read that? I may have mentioned it myself somewhere, but I only got the details of his reaction second hand, and I'd be curious if someone knew what he actually did say.

What I did for Topps was basically age the character - do a sort of “Dark Knight” with him to bring him into the present day, and my understanding is that that's what Jeff Rice mostly disliked. I was hoping to do an X-Files/Kolchak crossover eventually, so it seemed best to me to update the character rather than do the weird time-warp thing.

This may go back to the whole X-Files thing, but as a writer, when I look at an existing character, I say to myself, what can I do that is different from what's been done? But that's the stellar opposite of what a good licensor wants - they want something exactly the same - so that people will have a similar experience to the one they've already had. That's branding, consistency of experience, and that's what a good licensor seeks.

But, yes, of course, I was worried, especially after the X-files. Did it make me hesitate? Nah. The other proposal had been ages ago, and Moonstone Publisher Joe Gentile made some assurances that made me less worried.

JOZIC: What assurances were those?

PETRUCHA: That they could - and would - publish my script without Jeff's approval.

JOZIC: Did you research the television series before tackling the story to get the right tone?

PETRUCHA: “Devil in the Details”, like all latter-day Kolchak material, takes place in a timeless present day, with cell phones and a reference to the World Trade Center attack. Karl hasn't aged, really, kind of like Superman - so all I had to do was capture the characters. In retrospect I can certainly understand the decision - folks who haven't heard of Karl - and there are lots - might not care to read something set in the 1970s that really isn't about the decade, or about an aging reporter. It's the best way to keep the character and the franchise alive and give him the biggest shot at succeeding in the market.

JOZIC: When I interviewed you regarding the X-Files a few years ago, you spoke of the level of "interference" provided by FOX, and how that made writing the comic book difficult sometimes. Did you have anything even remotely resembling that with Kolchak?

PETRUCHA: No. Not at all. One of the highlights of my career was receiving Kolchak creator Jeff Rice's five pages of single-spaced manually typed notes. I was dreading what he'd think, especially after the X-Files fiasco, and I'd heard he was a tough critic - but heloved what I'd done with the character and the story, so, if anything, it was the utter opposite of my X-Files experience.

JOZIC: As a fan, was it more satisfying crafting your own original story, or would it have been more fun to adapt one of the lost episodes?

PETRUCHA: Oh, much more fun to write my own episode. The TV series had its moments, but there were some klinkers, and I'm really much more enamored of that original movie.

JOZIC: Part of your X-Files stories, and a major theme in Making God was how and what people believe. Did that manage to filter into your Kolchak work?

PETRUCHA: You know, not really. Kolchak is much more noir, not about the same issues, more focused on corruption, corrupt people, corrupt systems, and the lone, lonely light of the "good." That sounds like an X-Files theme, but it's much more to the fore with Kolchak. What the monster, whether the monster is, aren't so much important as thst the monster is, and that it has to be faced, often alone.

If that makes sense.

JOZIC: Will you be revisiting Kolchak in the future, or is “Devil in the Details” probably going to be your only shot at the character?

PETRUCHA: Joe asked me for a new plot a while back, but I think that was back-burnered due to the other projects I've been working on with Moonstone - Meta-4, the Lance Barnes TPB and a second Boston Blackie. Hard to say, really. Depends on time and sales.

JOZIC: You know, I’d never heard of Boston Blackie before the Moonstone story but it’s actually a licensed property like Kolchak or The Phantom, isn’t it?

PETRUCHA: Boston Blackie was created by Jack Boyle in, like, 1914. There were silent films, radio shows, talkies, even a 1950s TV series. He's one of those incredibly famous characters that no one remembers anymore. His later stuff had him as a more a typical detective, so I did try to return to his early proto-noir roots.

JOZIC: And you said that you were working on a new Boston Blackie story?

PETRUCHA: Yep. I just finished penning my second BB story, “Inside Out”, in which Blackie is sent to prison and has to solve a murder therein. I'll be tweaking the script over the next few weeks. Joe would eventually like to have enough material for a TPB.

JOZIC: I had read somewhere that you actually wrote a spec script for the X-Files and sent it in to 1013. I'm curious what, if any, reaction your script received?

PETRUCHA: Oh, they hated it. It was different, didn't fit the formula easily. More like a Columbo episode than an X-Files, I think the notes said. They didn't like me very much.

JOZIC: Did 1013's reaction to your script have anything to do with your being taken off the monthly series?

PETRUCHA: It was more the fact that they didn't like what I was writing for the comic. I was taking chances, doing different things with the characters that they didn't like - some of which they later adopted themselves. It seemed almost everyone else in the world loved what I was doing with that book, except the owners. In fact, they started talking about getting rid of me after the second issue, but Topps stuck by me all the way through #16.

That's the downside of licensed material - it's not yours, you can't do what you want with it, even if you're convinced you have the best, more brilliant, most wonderful ideas for it, even if you love what you're doing to death. Often big licenses see the comic as more or less a commercial for the series - they want it to look just like the TV show - but as I said
earlier about Lance - what works on screen isn't the same as what works in comics. That's one reason many adaptations are banal. Even something that's standard in comics, like using a caption narrative over an action sequence to fill in back story, doesn't feel like a TV show or movie, and might raise eyebrows.

A lot of that depends on who you're dealing with, and how big the show is. The bigger the X-Files got, the more they wanted to get rid of me. And I'm certainly not the only one to have had that problem. I heard that the Star Trek comics, for instance, had to have each image of each actor approved by each agent. You can imagine the problems one might run into.

JOZIC: Did you keep tabs on The X-Files after being taken off the series, or did you wash your hands of the experience?

PETRUCHA: I kept watching the show - hey, I was still a fan, but I cringed more and more as it became increasingly awful. The comic, no, I really couldn't bring myself to look at it.

NEXUS' DARK HORSE

JOZIC: Here’s a blast from the past for you. I’ve recently started rereading all of my Nexus collection and I was wondering if I can ask you a few questions about your experience with that title?

PETRUCHA: Sure.

JOZIC: Steve Rude had taken several leaves of absence during the series’ run, but Mike Baron was always a constant on the series, even writing many of the back-up stories. What were the circumstances surrounding you getting the “Liberator” job?

PETRUCHA: You're stretching my memory here, and I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that since Nexus was doing well for First, they wanted to publish additional material, which Steve Rude's and Mike Baron's schedule would not permit. I think Mike was writing three or four titles a month at the time, and couldn't script either, so the First editorial staff - I believe Alex Wald may have initiated it - talked them into being okay with a non Baron/Rude mini-series, provided it took place in the past, and didn't muck with established continuity.

The book was completed under First Publishing, but then, they closed up shop. About a year later, Dark Hose had picked up Nexus. At first, they had no intention of publishing “Liberator”, but Anina Bennett, formerly of First, pushed for it. When the honchos there found out the book was already finished, they figured, why not?

JOZIC: Is it satisfying to be the only writer other than Mike to handle the character?

PETRUCHA: Y'know, I wasn't really aware of that for the longest time. I'd read a lot of Nexus, but not all. It's kinda neat, but mostly I'm pleased to have written what I think was a good story for a great character.

JOZIC: I remember when I first realized that it was done by a different writer and, at first, I felt totally betrayed because this couldn't possibly be canon, but then I thought, "Waitaminute, I actually liked that story so why am I complainin'?"

Looking back, it fit very well with the storytelling style that Baron had established in the series. Was that a conscious effort and was it a difficult thing to accomplish?

PETRUCHA: Thanks. It was very conscious. As a writer, I've always been a good mimic - probably why I've done so much licensed stuff - so that's really my effort to write like Mike Baron. I think the beginning was a little clunky, but things improved as it went on.

JOZIC: How did you think the fans would react to a new writer? Did you have any early indication either way?

PETRUCHA: Didn't know. At the time I was pretty new to comics, so I was throwing myself as deeply as possible into any assignment I had, working things out about style, dialogue, etc., along the way. In fact, early on, before Squalor was even published, Larry Doyle - now screenwriter of Loony Tunes: Back in Action, then editor at First - offered me an issue of Badger, which I turned down, because I was afraid I couldn't write martial arts sequences.

By the time Nexus came up, a few years later, I had faith in myself as a mimic and was happy enough with the gist of the story to think readers would like it, but, of course, you never really know until folks see it.

JOZIC: Did you have any guidelines you had to follow or were you pretty free to tell your story however you saw it?

PETRUCHA: Other than not mucking with established continuity, I was free.

NEW AGE META-4

JOZIC: Speaking of First Comics, you mentioned Meta-4 a little earlier among some books that you were currently working on for Moonstone. You still have plans to revive the old series?

PETRUCHA: Yes, still happening! There will be a four-issue mini-series sometime in 2004, bringing back the world's first New Age superhero team in a revamped, all new story. We've got the first cover and the first 13 pages done by Hugh Vogt, who is doing a terrific job. After some tweaking, I'll be making a PDF available of the first half of the first book, once I clear a few projects off my desk.

JOZIC: What were the reasons behind your decision to resurrect Meta-4?

PETRUCHA: Oh, a few reasons - I still love the characters, I think it never had the shot it deserved, I think it traipses the line between the New Age and superheroes in a way that really hasn't been done before and I think it's close enough to my other work to build on my audience.

JOZIC: For the uninitiated, can you give a brief history of the series and concept?

PETRUCHA: Back in 1990, right after Squalor, I was convinced that the New Age and superheroes was a great mix - a new fount for ideas, a great way to bring new readers into comics, a cool thing to write about. I came up with a proposal originally called The StarChildren. Editor Anina Bennett is to be credited with the Meta-4 title. In fact, I originally fought her about it at first - I couldn't see past what I thought was a goofy surface. Anyway, First originally planned it as a three issue mini-series, but was so in love with my first scripts, and getting Ian Gibson to do the art chores, that they decided to make it their first new monthly series in years.

Then, of course, the best laid plans. Before the premiere issue came out, First's financial problems became chronic - and the monthly series was cancelled - giving folks far less of a reason to buy it. Instead, First planned to do an annual series of three issue, 44 page books for all of their characters. Meta-4 and Squalor were both slated to be part of that re-birth, and I scripted three issues apiece for them. But, sadly, they went out of business, ending my first brief golden age as a comic writer.

As for the basic idea - the superhero myth is driven by an innate human desire for power, control. The New Age genre works the same way. In the former, that power is realized via super-strength, psi-blasts, whatever. In the latter, it's ESP, healing, channeling, etc. Both invariably involve a battle between good and evil, the light and the dark. The kicker is that the superhero genre is taken as pure fantasy, but people really believe in the
New Age.

So the goal is to take the superhero genre and put it in a context that straddles that line between what's believable and what's not - a realistic series, but realistic to someone who might believe the Loch Ness Monster exists. I wanted both levels to be recognizable, so in designing the characters, I went back to the old earth, air, fire, water thing that drove the Fantastic Four, and is also, of course, key to many New Age beliefs and magick systems.

JOZIC: What would you say will be the differences between the new Meta-4 and the old series, and why fans of the old series should be picking it up?

PETRUCHA: An important difference is that in the first two issues I'm actually going through what used to be the first six issues, three of which were never published. The gang was left in a stolen flying saucer that had exploded. Now there's a complete arc which really explains who the Star-Children and their enemies are. And, I hope in the intervening decade my writing skills have gotten a tad better.

JOZIC: Did you approach Ian Gibson to do the art on the new series?

PETRUCHA: No. Ian didn't really like the first three issues. I think he was expecting something different, though I'm not sure what it was. I was still working through a lot of things as a writer at the time, feeling my way around, so some of those books are very talky, and that may have turned him off. Past the first issue one never felt he was giving it his all.

JOZIC: I checked out the preview you sent me and I can't help but obsess over the cat's name - Mehitabel. Where the heck did that name come from?

PETRUCHA: Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis! It was originally a newspaper column started in the 1916, written by a cockroach named Archy. Archy wasn't strong enough to press the shift key, so everything was in lower case - a fun series of sort of free verse poems. Mehitabel was a black cat in her ninth life - she was once Cleopatra - Archy's foil. Archy was the philosophical type, but Mehitabel a hedonist - toujours gai!

JOZIC: And the new Meta-4 will be coming out from Moonstone?

PETRUCHA: Yep.

JOZIC: When?

PETRUCHA: That'll depend entirely on when Hugh is finished with the art. We won't solicit until it's in the can, so to speak. Sometime this year, I should think.

JOZIC: You received a glowing review for the first series from Warren Ellis which you've posted on your website. I was curious if you had sent a preview of the new book to Warren for another round?

PETRUCHA: Nope - but that's certainly a good idea.

IT AINT OVER...

JOZIC: You play around with metaphysics, religion, quantum theory, aliens and government conspiracies in a lot of your stories, genres that have pretty much made a career for guys like Grant Morrison, Pete Milligan and the aforementioned Mr. Ellis. Why do you think you're not up there on that pedestal with the better-known writers?

PETRUCHA: A question I cry myself to sleep over every night! Seriously, though, that's a tough one to answer without sounding either too self-deprecating or too egotistical or too whiny or too bitter, so I'll try to sound like all four.

A few thoughts come to mind - maybe most important, the three writers you named managed, at some point, to hook up with large companies that are still publishing comics. Those connections, for me, anyway, and I think for most writers, have always been tough to make, especially if you write out-of-the-box. You have to have the right publisher and the right editor at the right time to click. The editor has to believe in you, know how to guide you, and the publisher has to have the clout to promote the book and the distribution mechanism to get them in front of the right audience.

If First had continued publishing, I'm sure they would have kept working with me, and as a consequence, I suspect I'd have been better known by now. If they'd published me continually for say, a year, I think it might have been the lift I'd have needed to get noticed by the majors.

I was on the whole paranormal/conspiracy kick, I think before any of the others you mentioned, but perhaps ran into difficulties that they didn't. Squalor made an impact, but it was six months before the first and second issue - hobbling sales. Meta-4 was announced as cancelled before the first issue came out. I think it's a testimony to my stuff that despite the few issues, incredibly low press runs and poor promotion, people still recognize, quote and compliment things like Meta-4, Squalor, The Bandy Man and Making God.

I also had a lot of, for lack of a better word, bad luck. In between my two "golden ages" in comics - First and Topps - came a slew of material that I was paid for but was never published. I wrote six issues of Legacy for Majestic, another company that folded, and eight issues of a Brother Power the Geek series for Kim Yale at DC that ran into some bizarre political difficulties.

Then came Topps and, ultimately, The X-Files. My "in" there was childhood pal Jim Salicrup, but even there I wasn't the first choice for the X-Files comic. They tried for, I think, Peter David, who turned it down. Now, again, if Topps had kept publishing comics, I'm comfortable I'd still be writing for them, and again, be better known.

On the flip side the X-Files certainly did put me in the public eye for about a year, but it was a very unusual success. It was easy for someone who hadn't read the book to dismiss its high numbers as being solely the result of the X-Files cult - and of course, we were riding some huge coat tails. Then, even if you did read the book, what do you compare it to? It ain't super-hero certainly, it ain't Preacher. And its readers were not your usual comic readers.

At the time, part of me naively expected that once I was a Wizard's top 10 writer, some editor somewhere might give me a call and ask me to work for them, or if I asked to work for them, they might give me a story to do, but with the exception of a request from a Harris editor who asked me to do a Vampirella story, I didn't get a single call or positive response. People tend to work with who they know, and I've never been very good at networking.

Also, and this may be paranoia, but it sometimes felt almost as though in some quarters, in some ways, the success of the X-Files comic was resented. I remember at the San Diego con I attended at the peak of the X-Files’ success, I spoke with the late Lou Stathis, an editor at Vertigo at the time. He said he'd read the book, but that it was "better than it needed to be." I said thanks, which puzzled him. "Oh, I guess that could be interpreted as a compliment," he said.

Now, I would have killed to work with Vertigo, but they would never give me the time of day. One exception - just before X-Files hit big, post-Grant Morrison's run, I was invited to submit a proposal to Animal Man, along with about eight other writers. It was down to three of us - one was liked by new editor, again, Lou Stathis, the other by EIC Karen Berger. I was odd man out, but they did agree that my proposal was the most professional. Lou was expecting them to compromise on me, but at the last meeting Karen decided to go with Lou's favorite choice.

During my X-Files run, Topps kept me pretty busy with graphic novels, digests and half-issues. I also did the letter column, so it was a full-time gig. I was also supposed to be writing the episode adaptations as sort of "battle pay" for having to deal with all the difficulties from Fox and 1013, so I really didn't have the time to seek out other assignments that might have kept me going.

Then, when I was axed from the X-Files, emotionally, I was like Ripley in Alien 3 - It's happening again!??!! Losing First Publishing, Majestic, etc. was bad enough, but it was particularly hard to live down being fired after doing your best, most acclaimed, most financially successful work.

Topps wasn't publishing any other comics, so I tried to make new connections and so on, but it was tough. I did manage to get in line for a Thor proposal once. The editor never even spoke to me - it was all handled through his assistant. I didn't want to be part of the pack, one of eight proposals, it had never worked for me before, so I asked that my proposal be reviewed and then accepted or rejected. The assistant editor agreed, so I did the work, but a week later, the promise was reneged on - so I dropped out of the competition. I did another proposal for a new mutant book, which the editors said was "hands-down" the most creative of the bunch - but they just wanted to go in another direction.

I've won a lot of "most" awards for comic pitches - "most professional", "most creative", "most well-written" and I have a drawer full of about twenty proposals which will never see the light of day. If they were mixed in with some successes, I would have continued, but after a while, you just don't bother submitting anymore, which really reduces your chances of getting up on any pedestal. Not that I've given up completely, I sent a package of stuff to the acquisitions editor at Marvel recently, who really enjoyed my Kolchak and was passing my stuff along to the other editors there - that was four months ago.

It's been like that with me and comics from the beginning. I submitted my first story idea to Marvel in my junior year in high school - and received a response in my junior year in college. They liked the story well enough, but in the intervening six years someone else had already used the same idea. Did they want to see more? Nope. "No one has time to train a beginner."

It took a year for the artist to hand in the pencils for my first tryout story under Jim Shooter. When I tried a Spider-Man story for Jim Owsley - an idea he bought in 16 seconds - I was leery about getting involved after my last experience. He swore the art would come in much sooner than that this time - "I promise you." One might as well make a promise about the weather. It didn't. Didn't come in for a year and a half. And the successes I did have came by breaking the "advised" rules. "Don't ever send in a full script off the bat." Well, that's how I sold Squalor.

Life goes on in between these things, one's focus shifts. Whatever the reason - one must get a life. And of course, I have kept my hand in, thanks to Moonstone. Kolchak has received some Stoker Award attention - recommendations prior to the preliminary ballot - and with Meta-4 I want to try to build some synergies with things like the Fortean Times that may better help it find its audience. A smarter focus for me may be to find other things that are like what I write, rather than focus on a particular medium.

So, it ain't over until the fat lady sings. I may yet find myself on the same pedestal as my esteemed, better-known colleagues, or better yet, find a pedestal of my own.

JOZIC: I'm curious what the Spidey story was that Owsley bought in 16 seconds. Did it ever get published?

PETRUCHA: Yeah, sadly, it was my first published comic, with someone else's dialogue - Web of Spiderman #27, I think. “The Best Laid Plans”. An apt title. The story I pitched pivoted on Spidey getting a weird flu or something where his spider-sense would cause him excruciating pain. So, whenever he was in danger, he'd double over in agony, rather than hopping out of the way. The scenario worked such that he was forced to heroically go out and stop some crooks in this hobbled condition. Big decision, he's really risking his life this time, etc. etc. It was when a crook pulls a gun on him and his spidey-sense doesn’t go off that he realizes the gun is empty – and catches the bad guy.

Unfortunately, in the intervening year it took the artist to hand in the pages, then-Spider-scribe Peter David did a two panel throwaway thing where Spidey realizes a gun is empty because his spider-sense isn't going off. When that happened, Jim Owsley said I had to write the dialogue to change my original ending - gutting my story.

By then, I was pretty bitter about the whole Marvel thing - this being the second tryout story to crash and burn after a wait of more than a year - and I wound up doing a pretty crappy job on the dialogue. So much so that Owsley had someone else re-write it. It was eventually published when Jim Salicrup took over editing the book.

JOZIC: Are there any other projects that you hope to resurrect?

PETRUCHA: Resurrect? Well, There are a few things I'd like to do with Lance. I always wanted to do a series of illustrated Lance Barnes prose stories, pulp-size, like the old dime detective magazines. Part of me also really wants to revive Squalor, my first comic series with First Publishing, but I really can't see doing that without artist Tom Sutton, who sadly passed away last year.

The thing I'm most excited about right now is the novel I recently finished. It's a sort of paranormal coming-of-age story, which I think shows some major growth in my prose. It has a lot of the elements from my best work, like Making God, but more fleshed out characters, and a more complicated story line. Just like Making God was a sort of deconstruction of religion, this one is a deconstruction of the paranormal genre - embedded in what I hope is a real page turning story.

Well, come January, when I truck it around, I guess I'll find out!

	Mike Jozic has spent the last several years interviewing comic book creators and other entertainment related personalities for various publications. He has been published both online and in print, with his work appearing in The Comics Journal, FearsMag.com and Silver Bullet Comicbooks. He maintains his own website at www.meanwhile.net and currently serves as the Features Editor for SBC.

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