Matt Fraction: Far-From-Predictable Writer

By Tim O'Shea

Matt Fraction is a writer knee-deep in Marvel Comics, what with writing Punisher War Journal as well as co-writing Immortal Iron Fist with Ed Brubaker. But his work at Marvel is only the latest milestone in a writing career ranging from AiT/PlanetLar's The Annotated Mantooth! (2002) to his current Image series, Casanova. Interviewing a pop-culture genius like Fraction was a pleasure and nothing like that time Bob Costas tried to interview the late Jack Palance.

Tim O'Shea (TOS): In listening to your podcast interview on Word Balloon with John Siuntres, I was interested to hear your take on the Punisher you're writing in your War Journal series. From your perspective, he's no longer trying to avenge the loss of his family, but rather he fights crime to prevent a scenario playing out again that would create another punisher. So, in a way, if I heard you correctly, the Punisher really should go by the name "Protector". What fueled your decision to "evolve" the character in such a manner?

Matt Fraction (MF): Well, first, the Frank-kills-his-family's-killers story has been told. So, just from a logical standpoint-- he HAS to have processed that. He can still be motivated by it but it's not his primary thing, you know? Peter Parker is still motivated by the death of Uncle Ben, but he's not, like, actively looking for the guy that pulled the trigger every hour of every day. I don't really think of it as evolving the character; the character was already there. Nobody reads The Punisher because they want to see him avenge the death of his family-- we read it because we want to see him punish these monsters that inflict misery and suffering onto the world. To ignore that, or to pretend otherwise is to make Frank a big sad weirdo. It's just not an interesting place to see him as a character-- as a Punisher fan, I want to see and read about a Punisher that's active and cunning and aggressively going out and preaching his gospel.

TOS: In that same interview, you acknowledge that you engage in a "seat of your pants" writing style (as described to you by Siuntres), where you're not sure where the story will take you until you get there (in a partial effort to avoid becoming a predictable writer). Normally Punisher takes out anonymous lackeys or henchmen, but if you look at the body count (spoiler delay) within the first few issues, you've had the Punisher take out a plethora of villains. Looking at the body count of the first few issues of Punisher, were you shocked to look back and see the carnage of the character--at your own hands?

MF: You know, Marvel just put up a body-count on their website and, I'll be goddamned, I really was kind of taken aback. And that was just the first three issues!

Mostly I'm amazed we got away with nuking Stilt-Man in the taint, and stabbing the Tinkerer in the spine.

TOS: As the writer of Five Fists of Science, last year's project with a team-up of Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla, what are the odds that (with a narrative telling a tale of several eras) that there will be some historical celebrity "cameos" in Iron Fist?

MF: I tried to sneak one in to #3 but narratively it didn't quite work with what we needed the scene to be. The scene changed and the historical character didn't make sense being there anymore, so out he came. It was one of those things where I wrote it and I knew it was too cute and clever by half, you know? Like, if you're nervous to show the script to people, that's a good sign you've blow something. Anyway. I think trying that once was enough.

And to answer your next question: Ernest Hemingway.

TOS: How daunting is it to tackle Punisher War Journal, while Ennis is writing the critic- and fan-favorite Punisher series? Granted the two series are apples and oranges, but did you hesitate at taking the assignment or relish the challenge?

MF: It was daunting at first. Profoundly so-- not just as a writer but as a fan. As a fan of Garth's run, the surface idea that another Punisher book was starting up seemed gratuitous and unnecessary. And as another writer, I could go my whole entire life without having to ever be compared to Garth Ennis, especially on Punisher, which is as definitive a run on a Marvel character as Miller on Daredevil or Bendis on Ultimate Spidey.

But once I got into it and started rolling along, it became clear to me-- again, rather schizophrenically, as a writer and fan-- that PWJ was such a different book, that it was coming from such a different place, that to compare the two was ridiculous. If Garth's Punisher is a whisky, ours is a RED BULL, you know? The similarities are in name only. There's a reason our Frank busts out the Ross Andru suit.

TOS: Captain America is a major catalyst/role in the first Punisher War Journal arc. I was curious did you pick Brubaker's brain a bit on how to approach Cap--or did you come to the writer's table with your own firm grasp of how to write Cap?

MF: Hmm. Not really, but we do talk about his work on CAP from time to time. Ultimately it was exploring the Frank and Cap relationship that made me leap at the book-- having the chance to write these two as they bounce off of one another was really strange, and really appealing to me. Two soldiers, from two way different wars, suddenly having to fight together.... once I came up with the idea that young Frank in the service had a photo of Cap in his footlocker, everything fell into place.

TOS: Do you think on some level that the contempt Captain America has for Punisher is in fact Cap being jealous of the "freedom" that Punisher enjoys while "preaching his gospel" (as you so aptly put it). Cap lives by a stricter moral code, where he can't kill Red Skull, but on the other hand, if given the means, Frank more than likely would.

MF: Oh, no, absolutely not-- Cap thinks Frank is a mad dog that needs either help or to just be put down. The contempt stems from, I think, that Cap feels Frank uses the notion of being a soldier at war as a catch-all moral justification of his ends and means. If Cap is George Washington, Frank is Francis Marion. That's the paradigm.

When their cores come into conflict, Cap can look like an impotent figurehead of a dead or dying empire, trying to inflict outdated and old-fashioned dogma onto a world that's modernized, evolved, and turned savagely, apolitically asymmetric... the shiny hood ornament on the broke-down jalopy of nationalism.

Or he can look like Captain Goddamn America and be a living beacon of every core value that makes this nation great. And part of that is a stead-fast belief in due process, and a defense of the precepts of the Constitution. I never thought Cap made sense as a literal personification of America's military might-- I don't think a Captain America comic is the best place to confront those kinds of issues-- but as a living symbolic aggregate of everything this country does and has done right, he's perfect. That's the space he shines in most. That's the space we need him in the most.

The other side of the coin is that Frank Castle looks like a warped, sad little boy deformed by hatred and suffering into a grotesque parody of law and order, and an utter mockery of everything he claims to fight for. Frank's inherent contradiction-- a lawbreaking killer that breaks the law to kill killers-- that paradoxical WTF? that everybody but Frank seems to have trouble with-- negates any kind of worth his actions have in a moral society. He's no better than the animals he stalks and, if we as a people agree with his methods, we diminish our own worth and become that which we hate... he's a monkey in a man suit.

Or he can look like the goddamn Punisher, and he executes an absolute and un-flexible moral authority against anyone that would violate those most sacred bonds of the social contract. And while capital punishment has surely taken the lives of people later exonerated, Frank Castle never has. Our society has always thrived on the backs of men like Frank Castle that do our dirty work, that get their hands bloody, that win the west. Frank is the living embodiment of a kind of moral manifest destiny.

TOS: Is there one scene in your Punisher work that has made you sit back and relish the "fun" of crafting that bit of plot or dialogue?

MF: I loved writing the back and forth about WW2 that opened the second issue. I could've written that scene for a whole issue.

Every bit of bar conversation from our upcoming 4th issue was a joy to write.

TOS: When you said: " I could've written that scene for a whole issue." When you say that, it makes me curious--what kind of other material has "ended up" on the cutting room floor so far, elements that you scaled back in your stories?

MF: Nothing's really been... there's not been anything scaled back except for length. Being in the Marvel sandbox is a little thrilling and overwhelming at first. You want to, like, touch every toy you can and sort of celebrate the place you've landed (I mean, I couldn't stop myself from throwing in the homage to BORN AGAIN in our first issue, for the love of god). I've written Spider-Man in four different books now and and he's only worn the same costume twice. There's a kind of weirdness and craziness and I-Can't-Believe-I-Put-Words-In-Spider-Man's-Mouth-ness to it all. My tendency is to just write, write, write, and play with all the toys I can reach, sometimes for no immediately discernible reason, so you have to suddenly earn the reason you took the toy off the shelf.

(To stay with Spider-Man: he shows up in Punisher War Journal #4 because I had a gag I wanted to write where someone thinks "Spiderman" is his last name. They call him Peter Spiderman and he has to explain, no, it's Parker, and it's Spider-hyphen-Man and I was fifteen and I hate you. But once he's there, he sort of... acts as the moral axis the book swings around. A wholly gratuitous gag became the pivot-point for what I wanted to say all along.)

I've not run into any content issues with Marvel at all; anything that gets cut gets cut for story and narrative purposes, not because anything was scaled back necessarily.

TOS: What is the writing process like on Iron Fist between you and Brubaker? What strengths of your writing best play off of Brubaker's storytelling assets?

MF: We talk on the phone and teleconference via XBox 360. While batting ideas around and chainsawing each other in the face, we get the issue or arc or whatever put together. An outline is written, bounced back and forth, and then locked in. The outline is broken out into a page breakdown, so we know how big or small to go. Then the scripting starts; sometimes one of us will call dibs on one particular scene or the next. It's bounced around back and forth until we're happy with it. Then David and Travel sprinkle their magic awesome dust over it, and The Immortal Warren Simons keeps it all running nice and smooth.

I think my, erm, near-childlike sense of wonder and aggressively over the top scale is held in check by Ed's steely eye for structure and the discipline of his pages. It's been a kind of How To Write Comics The Marvel Way boot camp for me, and the end result is a book we both love working on.

TOS: Did you have to do a great deal of World War I research for Iron Fist, or as a history buff were you already well versed in that historical period?

MF: Ed absolutely called dibs on that scene, as John Severin was doing it. I just sat back and waited for the pages to come in. So that was all Ed.

TOS: Much of Danny Rand's support network from past incarnations of the character are divided (thanks to Luke's role in Avengers and the Heroes for Hire book). Is there a priority for you and Brubaker to build a new supporting cast?

MF: No. The old folks'll be around. Besides, Danny won't have time to make new friends for a while yet...

TOS: Looking at your work on Casanova (Image), I can't help but wonder how long before Marvel taps you for a SHIELD miniseries. Would that interest you at all?

MF: Like a HISTORY OF S.H.I.E.L.D. story? Like how S.H.I.E.L.D. went from being a small black ops division during the second World War to the crazy technicolor SterankoScope superpower we know it as today? Fuck yes, it would.

TOS: Have you actually pitched anything to Marvel on the SHIELD front yet? Would you tell us if you had?

MF: I've not, and I wouldn't. I don't like talking about ideas I have to pitch in public; I'm convinced some editor somewhere will read it and remember they have a I MARRIED MODOK pitch in their bottom drawer gathering dust and now's the time to greenlight it.

TOS: Back to Casanova, in the text piece for issue 1, you discuss your "Wall of the Sound/Phil Spector" approach toward the series, juxtaposing it against the "'writing for the trade' stuff that's turned today's comics into watered down sketches". Unless I'm mistaken, you were not writing for Marvel when you wrote that text piece. Now that you do write for Marvel, one of those companies that issues trades, how have you avoided being one of those writers "writing for the trade"?

MF: I was writing for Marvel at that point; I did an X-MEN Unlimited story concurrent to the first issue of Casanova, and had been pitching and fielding offers the whole time. But I see what you're saying.

To reduce what I was talking about down it to it's simplest state, I think the art of writing the single issue has been lost. I think you can create comics that serve as both single-serving stories that are a chapter in a larger whole, just as easily as you can just take one long story and shatter it into pieces and just be done with it. And with CASANOVA, we had 6 fewer pages to pull the former off.

Anyway. I always try-- to mixed success, I'm sure-- to make each issue satisfying, even if it's part of an ongoing thingy. With Casanova, in a way, that's the whole point. With the Marvel stuff it requires a different touch since it's a different genre with different expectations.

TOS: When you say "I think the art of writing the single issue has been lost." It's clear that you're trying to resurrect that lost "art" in some of your work. I think Jeff Parker has that ability as well (particularly given the nature of the Marvel Adventures line). What contemporary storytellers do you think are attempting to practice this done-in-one "lost art"?

MF: Jason Aaron, whose Scalped and The Other Side both function to me as self-contained experiences that connect to a larger whole, absolutely knocks me out. Rick Remender & Tony Moore's Fear Agent is fun in chunks, and a double-barreled blast of mental post-EC science fiction as a collected whole. I think Brubaker and Bendis excel at switching back and forth between the two modes. That Warren Ellis can do both Fell and the Ultimate Nightmare stuff concurrently is a sign of... I dunno, something strange and terrifying. Grant Morrison can, seemingly in the same week, pull both modes off, sometimes in spite of himself or his deadlines. Garth Ennis.

And, I guess looking at it and rereading it now, "lost art" is maybe the wrong way of phrasing it. It's a neglected tool in the kit, a technique that's fallen out of favor. I read an interview with Paul Levitz about that JSA thing he did last year and, paraphrasing here, he said something to the effect that his day, that whole 5-part storyline would be contained in a single issue, but these days it's all done differently, so, 5 parts it is!

Anyway, it just struck me as... glib? Blithe? Counter-intuitive? A giant fucking red flag waving to and fro over the state of our particular art? Something.

I've always said that each 16-page issue of Casanova was an arc-worth of story for almost any other book out there; the second volume takes that to another level, where rather than follow Cass on seven missions, it's one mission we examine in seven discrete parts. It's turning the formula inside-out, but with the same demands the format places on you as a creator. It'll either be awesome or a disaster! Hurrah! No more padding! No more treading water! Sharks patrol these waters. Swim hard, motherfuckers.

TOS: You were part of the artbomb founding staff, a website that aimed to "promote diverse and sophisticated graphic novels." Looking at the landscape of the industry (and its consumer base) now, do you think the site accomplished its goal to a large extent?

MF: I don't know that that's really my place to decide or say, but I know a ton of librarians have contacted the site and used it as a resource for building Graphic Novel libraries. To have helped create a site that could be used as such a resource is extremely gratifying.