Sitting down with Ed Brubaker

I'm not sure if he knows this, but Ed Brubaker was one of the first comic creators I ever interviewed. We chatted a few years back about Point Blank, the mini-series that served as a prequel to Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips' critically-lauded Sleeper. I'd link to the original Newsarama story, but I can't seem to find it.

Regardless, he was a joy to talk to then and he was a pleasure to talk to now. In what I hope will be a recurring feature at TGC, I sat down with Brubaker for a quick interview. Here's what he had to say.

ALEX SEGURA JR.: Why do you think so many people have a hard time writing Captain America?

ED BRUBAKER: I don't know. Do they? I think maybe he's just one of those characters that comes with a lot of expectations from the fans. Like Batman, or even, as lame as he is, Superman. People put a lot onto those characters, and unless you've got a really good idea what to do, and are given the freedom to do it, you can get bogged down in what has come before and what you think people want to see from these characters, as opposed to what interests you as a writer. First and foremost, a writer must always interest themselves. If you're not interested, no one else will be.

I also think, in general, that writing a character that's been in 700 or 800 other comics before can be daunting, and this is a problem with work for hire company owned books sometimes. Trying to do something new with them can become so important that you lose sight of what's so cool about them, or you write around the character instead of writing about them.

Does that even answer the question?

SEGURA I think so. Did you instantly click with the character of Cap when you first started writing the book?

BRUBAKER: Yeah, pretty much that's how it is, you either have a clear idea of how to tackle it, or you're fucked. This was my favorite comic as a kid, but it was also one that I was very disappointed in much of the time, and wished would have done longer storylines much of the time, or been able to keep an artist longer, stuff like that. I quit reading the book regularly not long after John Byrne quit drawing it, though, so I know there were people who stuck around longer after that.

But in any case, my feeling for the character came from this childhood love, and those memories, but also came from things I wanted to see happen in Cap, things I wished they'd done, or that I thought would be cool to do. Thankfully, I'm being given the freedom to do these things myself.

SEGURA: Moving over to Sleeper, is it going to be hard to part with these characters? Ever plan to revisit them?

BRUBAKER: Not hard at all. I loved working on Sleeper, but it was hard work, and as Sean was always telling me, it was like pulling teeth to get script
pages out of me sometimes. I'm very happy with the end of it, though, and very happy the trades are doing so well. At this point the trades have sold far better than the comics ever did.

SEGURA: What's the best piece of writing advice you've ever gotten?

BRUBAKER: Different but very simply stuff -- Write every day. Read all the time, and pick apart the stuff you read. No writer is perfect, and if you can't see the flaws in your favorite writers, then how are you going to see your own? And my favorite one, probably -- originality is totally overrated. There are only five plots in the world, it's how you tell them that makes them interesting or not.

SEGURA: Are there any other characters you're itching to write?

BRUBAKER: Not especially. I'm not wired that way, really. I get offered a
character and see if they appeal or if any ideas occur, generally. I'm not sitting at home brewing up ideas for Spider-Man or She-Hulk.

SEGURA: I know a lot of your reading background was in indie/small press
books. Have you ever thought about moving away from the superhero mainstream for good?

BRUBAKER: Maybe someday. Right now I'm having fun and getting paid well to write them. I'd love it if the comics market would allow for non-superhero material to sell better, though. None of my creator-owned books are going to be superhero stuff at all.