John Jackson Miller: Understanding Star Wars
When it comes to the comic book industry as a whole, John Jackson Miller may have spent more time 
under the hood than any individual. He’s been involved with book production, collectibles and studying trends within the industry for the last 15 years. More recently he’s written for both Marvel and Dark Horse. He recently took some time for SBC to discuss his upcoming projects, such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) 16.
Matthew McLean (MM): Your work with Dark Horse is on the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) line. For those not familiar with it, it centers on Zayne, a padawan that has been framed for murder. In the most recent story arc, Days of Fear, on top of being a fugitive, he’s been accused of being a Mandalorian spy and captured by Republic forces, all while attempting to stop genocide on a planetary scale. So, I have to ask, what do you have against Zayne?
John Jackson Miller (JJM): Heh! Well, there's not many comics characters that get a "happily ever after" so soon after they're introduced. The trials of Zayne are just beginning.
When we initially talked about doing the series, Dark Horse's Randy Stradley and later, my editor on the series, Jeremy Barlow, and I pored over the parts of the Star Wars movies that we really wanted to recapture in print. Boiling it down to the basic elements, as it were.
And one of the things I kept coming back to was right there in the very first prose Star Wars novel, ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster. There's a brief introductory history of the Old Republic that closes with a quote from Leia Organa: "They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally, they became heroes."
Now, that, of course, refers to Luke and Han and company -- but it also speaks to the fact that, unlike what you find in a lot of team or ensemble comics stories, these characters really were thrown together against their will. And so there's always a tension going on, because while there might be some larger goals, everybody's got their own agenda. Han's all about the reward, etc. They can barely get around the Death Star, they're arguing so much!
And that's one of the things I worked to do here. In Zayne, we've got a lesser light in the Jedi firmament; we've seen the really good ones, now, here's the kid at the back of his class. He's well on his way to obscurity when he -- and Gryph, the small-time con artist he's been charged with capturing, wind up "in the wrong place at the wrong time," accused of murder in a much larger conspiracy. And though they find their escape with other fugitives, they all have different goals, and none are too happy to be together. So it's a lot like the movies in that regard -- yes, they're being pursued by people who want to kill them, but that doesn't mean they can't drop everything and argue with each other!
And as the series has developed, I found there were plenty of "wrong places" and "wrong times" for them to be at, quite logically. The Mandalorian War had already been established as the great Empire-versus-Rebellion conflict of this ancient era; naturally, Zayne and company's flight to safety puts them right on the equivalent of Omaha Beach during the Mandalorian D-Day. Which leads to another round of tribulations, as you've mentioned. All Zayne wants to do is get justice and clear his name -- and he's getting in deeper and deeper.
MM: It seems that you already have the next three story arcs planned out - Nights of Anger, Daze of Hate, and Knights of Suffering. What can you tell expectant KOTOR readers about these upcoming titles?
JJM: The arcs for 2007, not coincidentally, refer to a downward spiral of events spoken of in the movies by Yoda. And here, following the Mandalorian onslaught, things are beginning to go from bad to worse for the Republic. It's like 1940 in Europe, with one country falling after another. 
There's finger-pointing and recriminations everywhere. Some corrupt politicians and industrialists in the Republic seek to escape blame. Other power-brokers seek to cut their own deals to survive. Old racial resentments burst out into the open. And even as the Jedi continue to stand aloof from the conflict, they've got their own rogue elements agitating for action --or running their own agenda, as Zayne's former masters are.
Already, in Days of Fear, Zayne's party has scattered to the four winds, with him in prison and Gryph a casualty of a horrific attack. Nights of Anger will reveal what one of his other fellow fugitives was running from all this time -- and how it directly relates to a game with galactic ramifications. There's another World War II analogy in this: What if someone had completed an atomic bomb in 1940? What would all the players involved do to get it -- and to prevent the others from getting it? Fate -- or perhaps the Force -- puts Zayne and his sometime companions at the center of this question.
And in Daze of Hate and Knights of Suffering everything crosses back over with Zayne's original dilemma: his flight from his murderous masters and his drive for justice. 2007 will see major events in that storyline -- and as we've already seen with Gryph, not everyone will get out alive.
MM: Even though it’s out of place to ask, I have to; are Gryph and Slyssk really dead?
JJM: Well, he's pretty close to ground zero when the sirens are going off --and of course, we see what happens to his ship.
But one of the few true laws of comics is Wein's Law -- named after Wolverine creator Len Wein: "No one in comics is ever really dead unless you can see the body -- and usually not even then." So, who knows...
MM: It was hinted at in the game that Carth Onasi and Bastila Shan knew each other or at least of each other. Does Carth’s strong role in the Knights of the Old Republic comics mean we’ll be seeing her as well?
JJM: I get a lot of questions like this because there are so many threads from the games to work with. As such, I make a point of trying not to get too deeply into who's coming or who's where, lest the book get interpreted as a prologue for a game rather than a stand-alone work. (Though, I guess when you think about it, the games and comics together are prologue for the movies. But they're equally important pieces of the bigger picture.)
For fans of the Knights of the Old Republic video games, there will continue to be substantial appearances of familiar faces. I'm not big on cameos for the sake of doing cameos, so I think a lot of fans have been surprised at how meaty a role Carth Onasi and Admiral Karath had in Days of Fear. As always, those kinds of connections are presented in such a way that you don't have to have played the games at all to appreciate them -- but for the continuity buffs, it's a bit better than an “Easter egg”.
That said, I can gin up the rumor mill among the cognoscenti by saying that Carth wasn't the only playable character we'll see this year. Let the guessing games begin! 
MM: The publishing date for #16 is April 25th. That’s a really tight schedule. What goes into moving a title along so quickly?
JJM: Actually, the previous issue was delayed for two weeks -- #16 is actually right on time.
Part of the plan for 2007 was to have these mini-arcs so we could switch between our regular artists -- Brian Ching and Dustin Weaver, and we've added Harvey Tolibao to the line-up, who did a wonderful job pinch-hitting on Knights of the Old Republic #12.
One change for me is that after more than a decade editing books and magazines about comics and games for F+W Publications, I left my position there last month to write full time -- and hopefully get even further ahead on the stories than I already am. Most recently, I'd been working there as the editorial director for the websites for more than 50 magazines -- and then running home and working on my various comics and other projects on the weekends. With the addition of video game and other writing projects, I no longer had time to go to work!
Anyway, I'm plotting the series well into the future now, so it's a move that'll pay off for everyone. I'm still writing my column for Comics Buyer's Guide and on the side, I've launched my own hobby site, The Comics Chronicles, exploring my interest in comic book sales history. I started with the top-sellers lists for every year from the 1960s, and will be adding more to it in the months ahead.
MM: So I assume plotting into far in advance means the series is selling well enough that it looks like it will continue indefinitely? Or is there a definitive end that you have in mind?
JJM: I wasn't speaking of any specific or definite publishing plans -- the future, someone once said, is always in motion, and nothing is on the schedule until you see it in the publisher's solicitation. Really, I'm more talking about how I always plot a good ways ahead, so I can make sure I know where I'm going.
I've promised that all the mysteries I have presented have answers, and that I will try to present them before I'm through. I'm prepared to do that in however many issues the series gets -- though there are enough tales yet to tell that it won't feel padded if it goes longer. Thankfully, the Star Wars comics relaunch seems to have gone very well, commercially -- and with the continued support of fans, I hope we can go for a very long time. 
I think there's a new energy in the post-film period as people know there's a place on their comics rack to get their regular Star Wars fix in four different time frames -- Old Republic, Dark Times, Rebellion, and Legacy -- especially knowing how relatively broad some of the horizons are. I mean, we've got a lot of chronological real estate unexplored ahead of Knights of the Old Republic -- and Legacy is all about the future. That really makes all of these titles places where big things can happen -- and, thanks to the integrated continuity between all the Star Wars media, they really DO happen. So it's a fun place to be.
MM: You mentioned your work with F + W. It seems you got into comics a little bit backwards from the route of the average creator. While most people want to start at the creative end, you broke in through the study of comic productions. How did that happen?
JJM: It's been more of a story of crossing back and forth. I started writing and drawing my own comics at the same time I started reading them -- and in high school and college, I was both doing my own mini-comics work as part of the small press -- and my own fanzines covering comics. (These days, the equivalent would be webcomics and websites about comics.) So my interests were always on both sides of the camera, so to speak.
Fanzine publishing led to training as a journalist -- and after a few side trips, I wound up working for the world's largest publisher of hobby books and magazines. That allowed me to get into print a lot of thoughts I'd had about comics, but there was always that other thread there, where eventually you say, "Well, I've got these ideas about what I think comics should be about -- so maybe it's time to put up or shut up." My day job had evolved into book editing by that point, so I was cleared to start pitching.
I still am interested in the non-fiction side of comics -- and as a hobbyist, I can devote attention to topics that interest me regardless of their commercial value. That's one reason I started The Comics Chronicles -- not all the information is of mass interest, but the people who are interested in it are really into it.
MM: You’re one of the authors of the Standard Catalogue of Comic Book Series, a huge compendium about comic books. What possessed you to undertake such a mammoth project?
JJM: I had always wanted to see a print guide to comics that was broken down by issue instead of aggregated -- and the company had a model in the Standard Catalog series for doing that. From there it was a matter of working with Pete Bickford of ComicBase to merge our information pool, and then to design an interface to actually coax a book out of it. I think the first one was around 1,200 pages -- the fourth one was up to 1,624. 
The size issue eventually put brakes on the project -- anything much larger would have taken it fully electronic, and that already existed with ComicBase and the Grand Comics Database and other efforts. Even as good a job as the web does with this kind of information, I still think there is something to having a reference you can quickly scan or simply browse -- but I don't know how you'd ultimately solve the problem of what to select. I imagine the company will find some angle to come at it from in the future -- I'll be interested to see what they come up with.
Myself, I'd really like to see someone develop something along the lines of the "DVD extra" for comic books, both new and old, sort of annotating publisher and continuity notes, perhaps even with recollections from the creative teams. I do a little something like this for my own works on http://www.farawaypress.com -- I have my personal reflections on most every product I've ever been involved with there, down to the individual issue level. There are others who do the same, and we've seen publishers apply a little of this here and there. I'm just not sure what the format would be. It's an interesting idea for someone.
MM: As someone who has studied the industry and worked on the creative side of it I’d like to ask you something: Many folks operate under the idea that comics is a dying media, that competition from newer media such as video games has put the squeeze on it. What are your thoughts on that?
JJM: I think it's a popular assumption in the general public about comics -- but as with many of their assumptions about comics, it's about 50 years too late.
The fact is, we had our "squeeze moment" when television replaced comics as the great babysitter in the 1950s. THAT was when comics faced its moment of truth, and had to rally around its most active demographic group or die. So our answer was the Silver Age and the rise of the super-hero comic book, and the decline of anything directed at any other demographic group besides adolescent males.
When the narrower audience plus inflation caused the collapse of the newsstand market in the 1970s, we focused even harder on the core audience -- and the comics shops were born to market to it. And that development -- with its attendant lowered barriers to entry for new publishers with new ideas, has combined with the trade paperback to help the medium break back out again. We still have that devoted fan base acting as the test market for new material in the comic shops -- and we now have booksellers that had dropped comics as periodicals stocking them again in collected form.
So for the first time in half a century, really, we're reaching back out again. And the sales numbers in the market have shown that. The industry was up in every category in 2006, including individual copies. That is not the mark of a dying medium.
Yes, the moment when comics were a mass medium lies in the far distant past -- but in a highly fragmented entertainment market like we have now, comics are doing all right relative to some other pursuits. If we can get continued, steady growth like we've seen -- not the runaway train of past booms -- comics will definitely be around for another 50 years and beyond.
MM: You’ve mentioned your pet project, The Comics Chronicle, a few times. One of the reasons I asked about the previous questions is that I noted on the Chronicles that sales in general are up in comparison to last year. Besides individual book rankings, what’s it about?
JJM: There are all these questions about comics nobody really knows the answer to when it comes to responding to questions from the mass media. I know -- I've given hundreds of interviews over the years, always addressing the same sorts of questions. "Who buys comics? How have their sales changed over the years?" And people are always a little surprised to learn that there's not more information available than there is. 
My hope with The Comics Chronicles is to eventually put together a repository of some of the historical information that's been floating around out there that can help address some of these questions -- and then layer some analysis over the top of it, so that it's more than just numbers. When you see on the site that ARCHIE was the #1 comic book in 1969, you also find out about how external factors like the TV show and the band made that happen.
MM: You are involved with comics and publishing, but you also do writing for video games. How did you end up doing work for some many different media?
JJM: Working as a writer, you soon find that it’s just a matter of figuring out the market. I used to write for lumber magazines, of all things, though I didn't enjoy it very much.
Gaming has been a twin interest of mine along with comics over the years -- I was the editor of SCRYE magazine, and one of the last things I did for F+W was to help acquire GamingReport.com for the company. So when my comic work caught the attention of someone in the video gaming field, I already knew some of the language. It came easier to me than writing about lumber, I'll tell you that!
MM: What’s the MMORPG coming up that you are working on?
JJM: SWORD OF THE NEW WORLD is a baroque-themed game that re-imagines the explorations of the 15th century -- only instead of America, what's discovered is a continent of monsters and magic. So there's an open-ended nature to it, as more is discovered -- and players get to develop their own familial dynasties.
The game is already very popular in Korea under its original name, GRANADO ESPADA (after the new continent) -- I'm helping the translators and writing new quests for the game. One of the more celebrated aspects is that players run three characters through simultaneously, so they can level up at the same time. That existed in the original Knights of the Old Republic game, for example, but two of the characters were always playable NPCs. Here, they're all "you" in a sense.
Check the website for the U.S. release schedule.
MM: Way back when, comics were often blamed for corrupting youth. Now video games are getting most of the blame for this. As someone involved in both industries, what’s your take on this, particularly in light of the Virginia Tech shootings?
JJM: Obviously, the news of this tragedy has spellbound and saddened us all -- but we've been down this road before, as you've said, under different circumstances. 
One of the things I did after Columbine was to coordinate media response with Michael Stackpole, the head of the Industry Watch Committee for GAMA, the Game Manufacturers Association. In addition to being a fellow Star Wars writer, Mike took the lead in the 1980s and 1990s in defending Dungeons & Dragons against claims that it was dangerous -- even extracting a death-row confession from a convict who had claimed game-play in his defense. Whenever something horrible happens and people look for something to blame, we like to find out the truth about what’s being said about our fields.
So at the time of Columbine, I called area comics and game stores just to see what we might be dealing with and was told that the shooters had been customers at one of the stores, but that they had dropped out of the community in the months prior to the tragedy. And that could be telling, because one of the things you get with a hobby IS a community. You collect comics -- there's people online and at cons and at stores to share your thoughts with. And if you're into tabletop gaming, well that's all about social interaction. You flatly can't do it without becoming a part of a community. You abandon all of those things, and you're on your own with whatever demons you've got to deal with.
Yes, there's a solitude in online gaming that isn't part of tabletop gaming -- but the entire direction of online gaming is just like that of the Internet in general: towards bringing more and more human interaction into the picture. You may never physically meet someone you encounter online, but they’re real people nonetheless (though they may be pretending to be something else) -- and eventually some kind of socialization process happens.
Hobbies are escapism, whatever they are -- and, yes, a lot of us turn to them because we have something to escape. But I think they're also part of what rights the societal ship, so we're not all free agents acting in isolation -- we get interaction with people who share something with us, no matter how trivial. The fraternal organizations and the bowling nights of the past are, in a way, found the gaming groups and the online discussion sites of today.
MM: So anyone who’s read this far into the interview knows you write for comics, video games, you edit and also put together massive collections of data on industry numbers. I have to ask the question that is on everyone’s mind; what type of amphetamines do you use to get all this accomplished?
JJM: Heh! It's all legal.
I guess I spent all those years as a fan imagining the things I wanted to do, if I ever got the opportunity. So when the chance to strip-mine my childhood for a living came around, the biggest challenge has been finding enough hours for it all. But it's all fun -- and given the choice, who wants to write about lumber from 9 to 5 when they can write about lightsabers 24/7?
MM: Amen. Thanks for taking the time John to talk with SBC. I look forward to the next issue of Knights of the Old Republic.
Be sure to visit SBC Contributor Matthew McLean’s website here.
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