Inside the Comic Writer’s Studio: Ron Marz

Welcome everyone to this installment of Inside the Comic Writers Studio. Like many of you, comics have been a lifelong passion of mine and deep down, I still harbor the desire to make this passion my profession. My particular area of interest is in the art and craft of comic writing. So, with this column, it is my goal to seek out the best and brightest creators working in the industry today in the hopes of learning different perspectives and gaining insights into the industry we all love so much.

[Editors note: this interview was originally published on Oct 17, 2007]

This time we are joined by Mr. Ron Marz one of the Premiers here at the Bloc, the creator of the Green Lantern known as Kyle Rayner and one of the best in the business today. Ron has been there and done that in the comic business, having worked on titles at DC, Marvel, Dark Horse and is now taking up a spot in the Editor’s Office at Virgin Comics. This time out, Ron talks about fanboy reaction to the age old Kyle versus Hal question, the inspiration behind his unique Samurai titles and writing titles for an audience of one. So, without further ado, Mr. Ron Marz …

ELM: Hey Ron, thanks for agreeing to do this, I really appreciate it. Each time out, I like to start off with this question: do you remember the first comic book you ever read and do you remember the first time you actually paid attention to the craft behind the stories, specifically the writing?

RM: No, I don’t really remember the first comic I read. My older brother had a box of old Marvel comics down in the basement, real early stuff, early Avengers and Fantastic Four and Spider-Man and I can remember looking through those before I could even read.

One of the first stories I can remember having a reaction to was the Warlock/Thanos storyline that Jim Starlin did in an Avengers Annual and a Marvel Two-in-One Annual, with Warlock dying and Thanos turning to stone. I was really struck by the fact that characters lived and died. There was some permanence to the story; it wasn’t just another superhero fight without consequences.

ELM: Before we go any further, I’d like to extend my belated congratulations on the new position you’ve taken with Virgin Comics. They seem to have a lot of creative people working for them and are off to a great start. You will be serving as an Editor of their Shakti line of titles, including: Devi, Ramayan 3392 A.D. and The Sadhu. With that in mind, I would imagine that having extensive knowledge and experience as a writer can only help you as an Editor. Is that fair to assume?

RM: Sure, my experience as a writer is the main reason they recruited me, I would imagine. Both Gotham Chopra and Sharad Devarajan specifically mentioned my work at CrossGen, which had a mythic aspect to it, especially in the Joseph Campbell sense. They thought those sensibilities would be a good fit for the Shakti line.

ELM: Continuing on this theme for a bit, in your opinion, how much involvement should an editor have on a project with … specifically with the writer? As an outsider to the industry, I would imagine that this varies from person to person and project to project, but could you give us your general thoughts on this idea?

RM: To me, one of the best editors to ever set foot in this business was the late, great Archie Goodwin. Archie told me that an editor’s number one job was to hire the right team for the right book, and then leave them alone. If you do that, a big portion of the job takes care of itself. So that’s the ideal, but every project is different. Sometimes there’s more editorial involvement, by necessity, other times there’s less. An editor should be involved as much as he (or she) needs to be to get the best book. Sometimes that means leaving the creative team pretty much on their own, sometimes that means pretty deep involvement in the process.

At Virgin, I’m working with creative teams that are very new to comics and therefore pretty raw. So my role has a big teaching element to it, both for the writers and artists. At the beginning, it wasn’t unusual for me to send scripts back to writers for a fourth or fifth draft, because I’m not willing to settle for something that’s less than it could be. We’re now at a point where two drafts usually gets it done. The lessons are being learned.

ELM: You have had the opportunity to work on a variety of projects with just about every major publishing firm – DC, Image, CrossGen, Moonstone, Top Cow, Dark Horse, Devil’s Due, Marvel and now Virgin. Can you describe a little how some of the creative environments you’ve had at the different companies functioned? For instance, you created your Samurai: Heaven and Earth series at Dark Horse … again, as an outsider, I would imagine that working on that series was a different experience for you than working on a similar title, Blade of Kumori, for Devil’s Due. Would that be a fair assumption?

RM: Obviously CrossGen was the most unique, because the creative teams worked in the same studio. There was a great deal of collaboration, which was fantastic creatively. I think we got better books because of it. We had no editors, we were responsible for our books, so you felt a great deal of creative ownership. We were essentially our own editors.

I truthfully think there’s not as much difference from company to company as there is from editor to editor. Everybody has their own style, above and beyond any overall company mindset. When you find an editor with whom you work well, you tend to stick with that person. It’s really a trust issue – the creative team trusting the editor, and the editor trusting the creative team. Dave Land is our editor on Samurai: Heaven and Earth and he’s a joy to work with. He facilitates the whole process, but really leaves us to our own devices creatively. He’ll give his two cents if we need a sounding board, or if he thinks we’ve gotten off track, but generally he trusts us to do what we do.

ELM: Fair enough, lastly on this topic, you were involved in one of DC’s big, line-wide publishing initiatives in the One Year Later storyline with Ion – which we will have to get into in more detail shortly – how was working on a DC title now with their current direction different for you creatively than in previous stints?

RM: I’ve worked with Eddie Berganza at DC for years, so we’ve built up that level of trust in one another. Eddie was the editor on Ion, and by necessity he was more involved in the process, because we were dealing with an overall storyline in the DC Universe that needed to be served. Anytime you’re in a work-for-hire situation, there’s more editorial involvement because you’re essentially playing with somebody else’s toys. One of editorial’s jobs is to make sure you don’t break the toys, at least not without permission. If anything, there’s more of an editorial stamp at DC now than during my previous time there, because of the overall storyline moving through the universe.

ELM: I would like to ask you a little bit about your influences. First off, your work on your original series Samurai: Heaven and Earth; what prompted you to want to write and tell these stories? The reason I ask is not because these are not compelling or interesting stories, but they are not traditionally what are found in American comics in this day and age.

RM: I don’t want to write the same thing over and over. I know there are writers who seem perfectly content to churn out superhero stories one after the other, and that’s great for them. But I wouldn’t find that to be at all fulfilling. I want to have variety in the material I write, because it keeps me interested and it keeps me learning. You use different writing muscles in different kinds of stories. I’ve used this analogy before: I like pizza, but I don’t want to eat it every day.

ELM: These types of stories are very typical of what are found in Asian folklore and in a great deal of their modern cinematic stories. Would it be safe to say that you are a fan of these types of stories?

RM: I do something like Samurai because it’s a story I’m interested in telling. I’m a history buff, I like the sense of a different time and place. And you’re right, it’s not the usual fare for American comics, because the American market is absolutely dominated by superheroes. It’s the same as if eight or nine out of every ten movies released was a romantic comedy. Just romantic comedies, over and over. A good portion of the audience would rather read about Spider-Man fighting the Green Goblin for the hundredth time, rather than try something new. It makes me scratch my head, but that’s the way it is right now. Hopefully, little by little, that will change and we’ll get more of a balance of subject matter in the industry.

You look at the European or Japanese markets, and it’s exactly the opposite – almost nothing you could consider a superhero, but plenty of everything else, all kinds of genres. Maybe the superhero fixation says something about us a culture, I don’t know. I don’t listen to just one kind of music, or see just one kind of movie; I like some variety. It’s the same with what I write.

On my plate right now, I’ve a historical epic like Samurai, science fiction with Pantheon City, contemporary espionage/crime with Russian Sunset and a supernatural police procedural with Witchblade. I just try to write about real people, as much as I can, whether it’s a samurai 300 years ago, or a guy with a magic ring.

ELM: One of the themes you have become known for writing are epic, cosmic stories. On series such as Silver Surfer, Green Lantern and your current maxi-series Ion, you have shown great skill in telling stories that feature fantastical, otherworldly characters while still keeping them grounded and making them easily accessible to those who might not be fans of “space operas” or even Sci-Fi. I would imagine one could attribute your skill at telling these types of stories due to your nature as a fan of them … what would you attribute that to? Lastly on this subject, these two genres are as different, on the surface at least, as you could find on a writer’s resume. How difficult is it to switch “hats” so to speak from one type of series to the other?

RM: The thing with “epic, cosmic stories,” as you put it, is that I’m not naturally drawn to that kind of material. That’s never my first choice as a reader. I’m more likely to read something that’s more grounded in reality, something closet to street level, like Batman or Daredevil. So when I do something that has a cosmic setting, it still has to be about the people, regardless of the setting. I need to be able to put a human face on the story.

Switching back and forth between genres isn’t that difficult. Again, it’s all about people, about the characters. I prefer to work on one thing per day, if at all possible. I don’t like to write Samurai in the morning and Witchblade in the afternoon, if I can help it, but other than that, I like the variety. I think it keeps you fresh as a writer.

ELM: That makes sense when you explain it like that. For you, what is generally the most difficult part of the comic writing process? Judging from your work to date, it would not seem that coming up with ideas is “hard” for you; what would consider that to be? What is the “easiest” part for you?

RM: Ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is the thing. If you’ve got a great idea, but the execution of how you tell that story is terrible, it’s all for naught. I think coming up with a proper ending is always the most difficult part of the process for me. There has to be a worthy payoff to make the story complete, and it’s not always the easiest thing to do.

ELM: At this point in your career, do you have a favorite story that you’ve written? And if so, what makes it your favorite? What about the notion of chasing a perfect story that a lot of writers seem to aspire to … is there even such a thing as a “perfect story?”

RM: Samurai is by far my favorite thing. Not even close. It’s the truest reflection of the kind of story I want to tell, and the way I want to tell it.

I don’t know if you actually chase the perfect story. It’s more a case of always trying to make the next thing you write better than the last thing you wrote. You can’t ever be satisfied, because then you’re just coasting.

ELM: If we can, I’d like to talk about your runs on Green Lantern. For fans of the character, this was (to put it mildly) a controversial time in the characters history … with the turn of Hal Jordan and the introduction of Kyle Rayner. I don’t want to get into the controversy too much, but what was writing that particular story like for you?

RM: Controversial? Really? I hadn’t noticed.

ELM: Yeah, a little bit. From all that has been written about it since it happened, I think the general consensus is that editorial made the decision about the character and you were the writer to put the story together to meet their goals. Obviously some time has passed since that story, so can you look back on it and appreciate it for its scope? Were you able to do that then? If you had to change anything … story-wise, what would that be?

RM: When I look back on the three issues of Emerald Twilight, the main thing I remember is that I was literally writing all three issues at the same time. The decision to do the story had been made pretty late in the game. Issues that were in process already, written by Gerry Jones, were yanked and I had to get all three issues going at once, because three different artists were going to draw them. So, there wasn’t a lot of time to sit around and obsess on the ramifications; I just had to jump in and do it.

If I could change something and I’ve said this before, it would be to tell the same story in at least six issues, rather than three. I never felt like we had enough pages to tell the story as completely and believably as I would’ve wanted. But, you have to play the cards you’re dealt.

ELM: About the fans and their reaction … I’m sure you are well aware of the seemingly endless, decade-long series of online “flame wars” that erupted about the two characters. As a writer, are you able to block out the criticism that inevitably comes from the fans? What about the praise? Do you ever let either affect the stories that you tell? How difficult is it – or is it even difficult at all?

RM: As far as the criticism, it comes with the territory. If somebody pays their money, they get the right to say what the want, positive or negative. I don’t think you can take either reaction to heart. As a writer, you have to ignore it all, and that includes the positive. If you’re going to ignore some guy who thinks you’re the worst hack in the world, you have to do the same thing with someone who thinks every word you write is a pearl. You can’t let the audience dictate what you do, because then you’re just prostituting your work.

I’ve always said that my primary audience is “me.” I write a story that I want to read, because I’m the only person whose tastes I’m sure of. You certainly hope the audience ends up agreeing with you, but that can’t be your primary motivation. You tell a story because you believe in it, not because you want somebody to write nice things about you on a message board.

ELM: OK, Ron, you’ve been great and open with this so this is the last question on this subject, I promise. With the Infinite Crisis and One Year Later storylines, you were able to revisit Kyle Rayner. The old saying of never being able to go home again really doesn’t seem to apply to the comic world. However, with all the changes that the character has gone through over the years, how “different” is he from the character you started and was it difficult to get back into his mindset and find his voice for both your Green Lantern and Ion storylines?

RM: Being able to go back and write Kyle has always been a pleasure. I don’t think I’d have the same reaction to revisiting other characters I’ve written, like the Silver Surfer. Kyle is very personal to me, because Darryl Banks and I created him. There’s a connection and to me he’s very much the same guy, despite everything he’s gone through. He’s more experienced, more confident, more powerful, but the core of the character is essentially the same. It’s usually pretty easy for me to slip back into writing him, though I think it takes me an issue or two to really get the voice just right.

ELM: That’s great. I’ll stop harping on it, but there is just something really “special” about a Kyle story written by you. Moving on, a question that I ask everyone is whether or not they believe in “writer’s block?” Do you and if so, how do you overcome it?

RM: “Writer’s block” is a nice way of saying “I can’t think of anything” or “I’m too lazy to sit my ass down and do the work.” It’s an excuse. American comics still work on that monthly business model, so there’s not a lot of time of time to sit around and moan about writer’s block, especially when there’s an art team waiting on you.

I do think the writing mechanism is like a machine and you have to give it fuel on a regular basis. You need input for there to be output. A writer should always be a reader: comics, novels, magazines, anyplace you can draw inspiration from. You also can’t lock yourself up in a room seven days a week. You have do get out and be around people, listen to how they talk, observe how they act. I try to get out once a week and do work someplace other than my office – a café, a coffee shop, a bookstore.

ELM: Cool. During your time with Dark Horse, you were able to work on a few Star Wars stories. Now, if there were any fan base more “rabid” than comic fans, it would have to be those of the Star Wars franchise. What was your experience like in working on these projects? Was there any input from LucasFilm or at this point, was Dark Horse and its writers and artists handed the reigns of the comic-side of the franchise?

RM: I really enjoyed working on the Star Wars stuff. The first Star Wars movie hit me at just the right age. I was enthralled with it, so getting the chance to write those characters, that universe, was just great. LucasFilm actually signs off on everything in terms of the story, but I never found them to be an obstacle. They keep an eye on the franchise, but in my experience, they don’t tie your hands.

It’s really not that different than working within the Marvel or DC universes. There’s a history you have to be familiar with and there are boundaries you have to stay within. Two of my Star Wars stories were reprinted as part of the 30th anniversary hardcover series and I have to admit to being pretty tickled by that. It’s nice to have contributed to that mythology.

ELM: A question that I think you are in the unique perspective to answer is working on cross-promotional projects. You worked on the Marvel vs. DC series and the Batman/Aliens series. How do assignments on projects like these come about? What about the stories … as the writer, are you allowed to come up with them completely or are you given the broad strokes and goals? Also, I have to imagine that it can be quite … well, fun to with so many diverse characters at one time. What was your experience on those series like?

RM: I’ve been fortunate enough to do a number of crossovers and they’re almost always fun. It’s often a chance to do something that hasn’t been done before, put together characters that haven’t previously appeared together before. Most of the time it’s a situation where the publishers agree to the project and then you’re invited in. But as I recall, Batman/Aliens, Batman/Tarzan and Green Lantern/Aliens were all projects that I suggested because I have relationships at DC as well as Dark Horse.

ELM: Maybe this doesn’t apply to the Batman/Aliens series, but perhaps on the Marvel vs. DC it does. When working with such a large cast, how difficult is it to find the voice of the individual characters?

RM: Something like Marvel vs. DC is definitely more of a large-scale project and there are never enough pages for something like that. I think it’s less about finding characters’ voices than it is about having enough room to give each character their due. Marvel vs. DC could’ve been 300 pages and it still wouldn’t have been enough. You just have to do the best you can in the space you have.

ELM: I would like to ask you a bit about coming up with comic storylines or story arcs as opposed to individual issues. First off, when writing a comic, I would assume that the finished product, on your end, is on most occasions a script for the artist for a 22-page issue, right? With that in mind, how do you plan out your story arcs and overall stories or directions for the series you are working on?

RM: Right, I produce a script the breaks down the 22 story pages, plus dialogue, for the artist. The actual manuscript usually runs to around 40 pages. For story arcs, I write outlines that summarize what’s going to happen in each issue. Usually a few paragraphs per issue, just the major story beats so there’s a road map of where we’re going. The details and sometimes even major beats change with the actual writing of the issues, but you want at least a general sense of where things are headed. It’s especially handy if you have to write issues out of order to accommodate different artists’ schedules.

ELM: Taking this further, if we can look to two of your series from recent memory, your closing story on Green Lantern and the recent Ion maxi-series. I guess this is more of a question of mechanics, but how did you plan those out? Also, in the case of Ion, some plot points of the story changed as was seen in the solicitations and the decision to not feature the New Gods, for example … would it be fair to assume that stories are “organic” in that they evolve and change from initial thoughts and concepts? Lastly, are there ideas that you toss out that you revisit for later stories?

RM: In the case of Ion, the outline for the last six issues was a lot looser, because we were dealing with a number of plot threads from the greater DC Universe. You have to be able to roll with the punches. Plans change, different needs have to be served. That’s just part of a shared universe.

And yes, there are ideas you toss away because they don’t fit with the story you’re telling. It’s important that you don’t get married to any concept or particular bit. [William] Faulkner said, “Kill your darlings,” and that’s absolutely true. If you have a great scene, but it doesn’t serve the needs of the larger story, it has to go. If there’s another place for that scene or idea in the future, great, but sometimes that stuff just winds up on the cutting-room floor, never to be seen again.

ELM: A question I asked before to Mike Baron that I think you could also help us out with since you are the current writer of Witchblade for Top Cow is how are you able to write strong, female characters? There have been lots of criticisms over the years of the writing and treatment of female characters in comics but the Witchblade character stands out in that it is a character with a long back story built in and the series is well into the #100s yet has always rung true and maintained its center. As the current series writer, what advice do you have to offer someone struggling with being able to get into the mind of a female character like that?

RM: I truthfully don’t think of it as writing a “strong, female character.” I just think of it as writing character first and foremost. Being a woman and being pretty self-assured and tough, are aspects of that character. Sara has a tough aspect; she also has a vulnerable aspect. Characters shouldn’t be all black or all white; they should have shades of gray.

As far as advice, if you want to write female characters, be around females. I watched my wife give birth to our three kids, each time without any drugs whatsoever, absolutely natural. That was a pretty good education in a “strong, female character.”

ELM: Do you enjoy writing heroes more or villains? This might be a dumb question, but I have heard from several individuals that there is really a cathartic joy that comes from writing such base, evil characters. Is that something you agree with?

RM: Yeah, the villains are generally more fun to write. You mentioned the Star Wars stuff before. It’s a hell of a lot more fun to write Darth Vader than it is to write Luke. But I think readers sometimes confuse what a villain does with who the writer is. When Major Force murdered Kyle’s girlfriend and stuffed her body in a refrigerator, there was immediately this outcry of “Marz must hate women,” which is just an ignorant viewpoint. You still see nitwits commenting on it 12 or 13 years later, still completely missing the point. When Thomas Harris writes about Hannibal Lecter, it’s not like he’s advocating cannibalism. Evil characters do evil things. That’s how we know they’re evil.

I’m really enjoying writing Don Miguel in Samurai. He’s a survivor at all costs. I also really loved Bron in Scion. He was the villain in almost everyone’s eyes, but in his own eyes, he was justified in what has doing. Villains should be just as multi-faceted as heroes.

ELM: All right, Ron, we are just about done. What is the best piece of advice someone has given you regarding the craft of writing?

RM: If I had to pick out one thing, it’d be a Stephen King quote: “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.”

ELM: Fantastic. Before you go, can you share with us what you are working on now and can you share with us any news about any upcoming projects?

RM: I’m continuing on Witchblade. Stjepan Sejic is coming onto the book with issue #116 early next year, so the plan is that he and I will be the team through at least issue #150, which I figured out is something like 2010. We’re just finishing up the First Born crossover now, which really sets the stage for the next year or so in the Top Cow Universe. I’m also doing a Magdalena mini-series, four issues with painted art by Keu Cha. It’s a long process, but the stuff looks amazing.

On the creator-owned side, the trade paperback for Samurai: Heaven and Earth volume 2 just came out and Luke Ross and I are rolling right into volume 3. Pantheon City, which was in the Dark Horse Free Comic Book Day release, will be a mini-series in the spring, with amazing art by Clement Sauve. And Russian Sunset is still on the way. It was stalled by Desperado’s move away from Image, but it’s still coming.

I’ll continue writing backup stories for Virgin’s Ramayan Reloaded series, which was just relaunched in the summer. Each story is drawn by a different artist and, so far, we’ve had Mike Oeming and Jim Starlin. David Petersen (of Mouse Guard), Luke Ross and Bart Sears are next in line.

I’ll be writing a series of backups in the new Tangent project that will be out from DC next year. And I have a Friday the 13th two-parter in the can for Wildstorm. I think we’re looking at January for the first issue. It’s a very nasty little piece of work with plenty of sex, violence and swearing.

There are a few other irons in the fire, but I have to give you the standard “I can’t talk about them yet” answer.

ELM: That all sounds great! Thanks again Ron!

Well folks, there you have it; another ComicBloc exclusive. Ron was a great sport and was very candid in everything he says. He is truly one of the best “vets” in the industry right now. Virgin is really doing some amazing things right now and I think their success is in no small part do to Ron’s work.

That will wrap it up for me and for this installment of Inside the Comic Writers Studio. Things should be coming out fast and furious from now on. I have some great guests coming up that I have been dying to tell you all about. Next up, is a rising superstar who will soon be tackling A Man With No Name, followed by another one of our Premieres here at the Bloc and then the mastermind of World War Hulk. So, see you soon … same Bloc time … same Bloc channel.

And, to Mr. Marz … il miglior fabbro!