Busiek Gets Frosty

Kurt Busiek talks about his letter-writing days, Marvels, Avengers, JLA, Conan, and Astro City with STL Comics' Alex Ness.

It turned out the letters were more helpful than I ever knew they'd be -- once I started knocking on doors and pitching stories, editors remembered my name from the letters, and it turned out they associated me with intelligently-written, publishable stuff. As one editor told me, if they saw a Busiek letter in the pile, they knew that they could use that, at least, even if most of the mail was incoherent. So on that small level, at least, they thought of me as someone who wrote stuff they could use. That made them readier to give me a listen when I was pitching stuff, which gave me a leg up on the other guys out there pitching.

I wonder if the same will be said about message boards. Personally, I doubt it. The incoherent seem to overpower everyone else.

The big difference between the Avengers and the JLA is that the Avengers are a team -- they train together, live together, function very strongly as a unit -- while the JLA are a league -- they're very much individual heroes who come together as needed to deal wit the humungo threats. That's not to say they don't train or have any teamwork, but they don't focus on it to the extent of the Avengers, and it gives the book a different flavor. The JLA are the best of the best as individuals, the Avengers may not all be superstars taken individually, but they come together into the primo team of the Marvel U.

Kurt nails this one in my book, which is why I'm not sure what to think of Bendis and his New Avengers. To me, it seems like this is just an attempt to turn The Avengers into the JLA. I have not read New Avengers and I'm not sure I will. I loved Avengers up until Bendis' "Chaos" arc, which seemed to come out of left field. Perhaps Marvel needs to hand the book over to a creator who has a better grasp of the concept.

ASTRO CITY will be back in 2005, but I doubt it'll ever be a monthly series. It's too hard to write, and it involves so much new design all the time that it ain't a cakewalk to draw, either. Still, we'll keep at it, and as long as it keeps coming out, I think the readers will be glad to see us.

So we have shadowy vigilantes and a pantheon of heroes and flying, caped wonders and heroic families and monsters and tricksters and armored heroes and mythic heroes and more -- but we're more interested in telling people stories than in doing our version of Marvel's or DC's characters. If we really wanted to do that, Marvel and DC would be happy to let us use the real guys.

It's good to hear that Astro City will continue indefinitely. As much as I'd like to see a regular series, I can understand where he's coming from regarding the time comittment. Besides, AC is the type of book you don't want straining for content or getting lost amongst all the other regular series flooding the market. I think DC and Marvel should try this more often with characters that readers want to see in their own book, but can't support a regular series.

Check out the rest of the interview here.