COMICS INTERVIEW #104 (1991)
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Someone scanned all the Comics Interview and put them online. If you want to download everything, it is 13.2GB
I posting the full text of the George Perez interview from Comics Interview #103 here. NOTE: I have only quickly scan through and fixed some typos or spacing issues or OCR-errors.
I posting the full text of the George Perez interview from Comics Interview #103 here. NOTE: I have only quickly scan through and fixed some typos or spacing issues or OCR-errors.
PATRICK DANIEL O’NEIL: Once
again, DC seems to be struggling with its
schedule — and, in this case, struggling
with something that it shouldn'tve had
to: When you're presenting a major
crossover, there shouldn't be a problem,
but things are coming out of sequence.
There has been some talk that in some
way you were responsible.
GEORGE PEREZ: As far as being responsible, I guess some of it was my fault. I over committed, which is not unusual for me, but I hope that won't happen again. As is the case when you over commit you tell one person you have plenty of time to do something while other things continue to pile up. You then start putting things off and then suddenly everything is due at the same time. Any delays on my part are certainly my fault although it had much more of an effect on INFINITY GAUNTLET than it actually should have had on WAR OF THE GODS. INFINITY GAUNTLET took longer to physically do than WAR OF THE GODS.
WAR OF THE GODS was a book
that was cursed from day one. If I was the
only person to blame, I would take the
blame, because I've done it before.
Unfortunately, there is plenty of blame to
go around, and DC has had its fair share
this time, particularly when you consider
that the WAR OF THE GODS initial
proposal was submitted January of 1990.
It took DC a few months to just get
around to reading it. The original title for
the series was HOLY WAR back then,
but of course we went to war in the gulf
so I changed that.
Initially, the original reason for WAR OF THE GODS’ existence was to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Wonder Woman. One of the things DC did was negate that reason of existence for the story— which really annoyed me, because that was why I agreed to do WAR OF THE GODS to begin with!
Because of delays on DC’s part, a lot of things snowballed. We ended up with the problem of John Byrne’ Captain Marvel. DC looked at my synopsis and John’s synopsis, and never putting two and two together that we have two completely different Captain Marvels now, gave the green light to both of them. I heard about Byrnes Captain Marvel from someone that said they heard him mention it at a convention. That was one of the first problems with WAR OF THE GODS.
There were other things; initially the storyline was to be a year long with WAR OF THE GODS being towards the end and the build-up being in the other books. This was to be DC’s big crossover. When I found out about ARMAGEDDON 2001, well, that was another problem. | want to state right here — and this will probably look bad as far as my attitude is concerned, but it is true, I’m not about to deny it — when I get ahead of schedule on a project, one of the quickest things that will slow me down to a slow crawl is something to go wrong because of something that should have been avoided, but wasn’t. When that happens I have a tantrum and I start to slow down.
WAR OF THE GODS was mine conceptually, and it was unfortunate that
so many things did happen. When people
comment about my slowing down I
make no excuses about my emotional
commitment and my emotional reaction.
With Captain Marvel, I had to rework the story as far as his involvement with the WAR OF THE GODS, because I had to make note of the Zeus connection. Plus, I had to correct something that was done incorrectly in the WHO’S WHO, where they did say that Mercury and Hermes were the same person — when I had already established in WONDER WOMAN that they were not. When I saw John Byrne’s script for CAPTAIN MARVEL I wanted to stay as close to his version as possible; that meant rescheduling WAR OF THE GODS, so that John’s CAPTAIN MARVEL could come first, so that any reference I would make would be to an already-existing CAPTAIN MARVEL. John did not want to work with anyone else on CAPTAIN MARVEL so early on, I guess, Whatever his reasons were, they were his, and he had some righteous anger on his side — as did I — because it was neither of our faults and we were both caught in the middle since DC should have told us this. Supposedly WAR OF THE GODS was rescheduled. Now, during the course of all this, DC had been trying to get an artist on WAR OF THE GODS to work over my layouts. Unfortunately, a lot of foot- dragging went on, where they would wait to call someone or.wait a month to do a follow-up phone call. If a month goes by and you don’t get an answer. from someone — you assume the answer is going to be no.
As for ARMAGEDDON 2001, well, that infuriated me because WAR OF THE GODS was to have been the crossover and now they were doing the Marvel approach and doing multiple crossovers. I felt that it took away from the uniqueness of WAR OF THE GODS — but they assured me that it was only with the annuals and not really a crossover. They described it as a continuing storyline using the annuals; I didn’t like the idea because initially I wanted to use the annuals so that I didn’t have to cross over into a book’s regular continuity, as creators balk at the thought of crossovers. DC assured me that they would back me up on the crossovers. About a year after I had done the first proposal and a few rewrites, many of the editors had not informed any of their creators about the crossover. I personally had to call up Marv Wolfman, only two months before the first issue is supposed to get started by me, and he had no knowledge of WAR OF THE GODS! And he wasn’t the only writer that was put in the situation that no one had told him.
PAT: And Marv was in the middle of a
very complicated storyline?
GEORGE: Exactly, and he told me that if he had known earlier he would have worked it out so that more of the Titans would have been available. As it turned out, Troy was what I had to force; I had no choice; Troy was a major part of the storyline. My original synopsis showed specifically what I wanted to do with Troy, the Titans, and all of the other characters. If they had said at that point that I couldn't use the Titans I would have talked to Marv. By Marv not having any knowledge of it, that put me in a situation where I couldn't just back up and change stories that have been planned for over a year.
Marv and others were caught in a bad situation. By calling them up I was doing what editors should have done. It took DC until I was blue in the face to finally just have a meeting on WAR OF THE GODS to tell editors that they needed to cooperate on this book. This from a company that said they're really backing the book! So slowly, each and every frustration slowed me down. And I might add that at this point they were still looking for an artist.
We finally got started but started late. What they did inform me about was that since John Byrne didn't end up doing CAPTAIN MARVEL, the delay in schedule — the later date that we were to stick to in order to follow CAPTAIN MARVEL — was no longer there and that they had moved WAR OF THE GODS back up in the schedule again. At this point I was now a month behind and there was just so much I could get caught up on.
GEORGE PEREZ: As far as being responsible, I guess some of it was my fault. I over committed, which is not unusual for me, but I hope that won't happen again. As is the case when you over commit you tell one person you have plenty of time to do something while other things continue to pile up. You then start putting things off and then suddenly everything is due at the same time. Any delays on my part are certainly my fault although it had much more of an effect on INFINITY GAUNTLET than it actually should have had on WAR OF THE GODS. INFINITY GAUNTLET took longer to physically do than WAR OF THE GODS.
Comics Interview #104, page 21 (1991)
thanks to Leo W
|
Initially, the original reason for WAR OF THE GODS’ existence was to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Wonder Woman. One of the things DC did was negate that reason of existence for the story— which really annoyed me, because that was why I agreed to do WAR OF THE GODS to begin with!
Because of delays on DC’s part, a lot of things snowballed. We ended up with the problem of John Byrne’ Captain Marvel. DC looked at my synopsis and John’s synopsis, and never putting two and two together that we have two completely different Captain Marvels now, gave the green light to both of them. I heard about Byrnes Captain Marvel from someone that said they heard him mention it at a convention. That was one of the first problems with WAR OF THE GODS.
There were other things; initially the storyline was to be a year long with WAR OF THE GODS being towards the end and the build-up being in the other books. This was to be DC’s big crossover. When I found out about ARMAGEDDON 2001, well, that was another problem. | want to state right here — and this will probably look bad as far as my attitude is concerned, but it is true, I’m not about to deny it — when I get ahead of schedule on a project, one of the quickest things that will slow me down to a slow crawl is something to go wrong because of something that should have been avoided, but wasn’t. When that happens I have a tantrum and I start to slow down.
Comics Interview #104, page 22 (1991)
thanks to Leo W
|
With Captain Marvel, I had to rework the story as far as his involvement with the WAR OF THE GODS, because I had to make note of the Zeus connection. Plus, I had to correct something that was done incorrectly in the WHO’S WHO, where they did say that Mercury and Hermes were the same person — when I had already established in WONDER WOMAN that they were not. When I saw John Byrne’s script for CAPTAIN MARVEL I wanted to stay as close to his version as possible; that meant rescheduling WAR OF THE GODS, so that John’s CAPTAIN MARVEL could come first, so that any reference I would make would be to an already-existing CAPTAIN MARVEL. John did not want to work with anyone else on CAPTAIN MARVEL so early on, I guess, Whatever his reasons were, they were his, and he had some righteous anger on his side — as did I — because it was neither of our faults and we were both caught in the middle since DC should have told us this. Supposedly WAR OF THE GODS was rescheduled. Now, during the course of all this, DC had been trying to get an artist on WAR OF THE GODS to work over my layouts. Unfortunately, a lot of foot- dragging went on, where they would wait to call someone or.wait a month to do a follow-up phone call. If a month goes by and you don’t get an answer. from someone — you assume the answer is going to be no.
As for ARMAGEDDON 2001, well, that infuriated me because WAR OF THE GODS was to have been the crossover and now they were doing the Marvel approach and doing multiple crossovers. I felt that it took away from the uniqueness of WAR OF THE GODS — but they assured me that it was only with the annuals and not really a crossover. They described it as a continuing storyline using the annuals; I didn’t like the idea because initially I wanted to use the annuals so that I didn’t have to cross over into a book’s regular continuity, as creators balk at the thought of crossovers. DC assured me that they would back me up on the crossovers. About a year after I had done the first proposal and a few rewrites, many of the editors had not informed any of their creators about the crossover. I personally had to call up Marv Wolfman, only two months before the first issue is supposed to get started by me, and he had no knowledge of WAR OF THE GODS! And he wasn’t the only writer that was put in the situation that no one had told him.
Comics Interview #104, page 23 (1991)
thanks to Leo W
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GEORGE: Exactly, and he told me that if he had known earlier he would have worked it out so that more of the Titans would have been available. As it turned out, Troy was what I had to force; I had no choice; Troy was a major part of the storyline. My original synopsis showed specifically what I wanted to do with Troy, the Titans, and all of the other characters. If they had said at that point that I couldn't use the Titans I would have talked to Marv. By Marv not having any knowledge of it, that put me in a situation where I couldn't just back up and change stories that have been planned for over a year.
Marv and others were caught in a bad situation. By calling them up I was doing what editors should have done. It took DC until I was blue in the face to finally just have a meeting on WAR OF THE GODS to tell editors that they needed to cooperate on this book. This from a company that said they're really backing the book! So slowly, each and every frustration slowed me down. And I might add that at this point they were still looking for an artist.
We finally got started but started late. What they did inform me about was that since John Byrne didn't end up doing CAPTAIN MARVEL, the delay in schedule — the later date that we were to stick to in order to follow CAPTAIN MARVEL — was no longer there and that they had moved WAR OF THE GODS back up in the schedule again. At this point I was now a month behind and there was just so much I could get caught up on.
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