{"id":740,"date":"2012-12-18T14:46:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-18T22:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/?p=740"},"modified":"2023-12-13T14:55:33","modified_gmt":"2023-12-13T22:55:33","slug":"mark-waid-a-banner-year-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/mark-waid-a-banner-year-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Waid: A Banner Year Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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THE TOUCAN INTERVIEW<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark Waid: A Banner year Part One<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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2012 was a \u201cBanner Year\u201d for Mark Waid<\/strong> in more ways than one. The writer celebrated his 25th year working in comics (as writer, associate editor, editor, editor-in-chief, colorist, and probably a few other job titles we\u2019re forgetting). In addition to his continuing work on fan-favorite <\/em>Daredevil at Marvel, he launched <\/em>The Indestructible Hulk (\u201cBanner Year\u201d . . . get it?) at that company, <\/em>Steed and Mrs. Peel at BOOM!, <\/em>The Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom at IDW, and his own online comics site, Thrillbent.com, which features his and other creators\u2019 work. As if that wasn\u2019t enough, this summer Waid won three Eisner Awards (surprisingly, the first three of his career) for Best Writer, Best Continuing Series (Daredevil), and Best Single Issue (<\/em>Daredevil #7), plus Comic-Con\u2019s prestigious Inkpot Award. We sat down with Mark in late September to discuss his career with him, in this interview, the first in a series with Comic-Con, WonderCon Anaheim, and APE special guests for our new Toucan blog. (As always, click on the photos and art for a closer look!)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/strong> You\u2019re currently writing <\/em>Daredevil for Marvel, and I<\/em>ndestructible Hulk just launched late last month. <\/em>The Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom miniseries from IDW has just finished up. You\u2019re also doing <\/em>Steed and Mrs. Peel for BOOM!. On the digital comics front you have <\/em>Insufferable ongoing at Thrillbent.com, your own website, and at Comic-Con 2012 you announced you\u2019re doing a new graphic novel with artist Shane Davis for Legendary Comics. Did I miss anything?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> No that seems like a good Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> So my first question is, when do you sleep and eat?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> You know what, I have a very patient family and very patient friends who understand that there are many times that I\u2019m just going to have to hole up in my office for hours and hours and hours at a time. It\u2019s a good problem to have. I can never complain about having too much work. I hope that the work itself doesn\u2019t suffer with the amount of over-committing and stuff, but the thing is\u2014to some degree\u2014it all uses different muscles. I mean Hulk, Daredevil<\/em>, that\u2019s playing in somebody else\u2019s sandbox, same with Steed and Mrs. Peel<\/em> really. And those are fun stories to tell, but to some degree I\u2019ve been with those characters since I was a kid, so they\u2019ve always been percolating in the back of my mind. With the Thrillbent stuff obviously, it\u2019s a lot more having to be out of my own imagination. In that sense it\u2019s a lot more work, but at the same time I\u2019m being able to invent new ways of telling stories along with Peter Krause and Nolan Woodard and Troy Petrie, the creative team on the book, and that energizes me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00a9 2012 Thrillbent<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll give you an example. Here\u2019s the thing about weekly webcomics that I just didn\u2019t take into account. I know so well after 20 years in the business the panic that comes with the deadline for every script. I know it well. It\u2019s a monthly ritual for every book. I\u2019m never hideously late, but I\u2019m always pushing it to the last second. And so I know about that creeping dread every month when I\u2019m doing a monthly series. This is weekly, so I have that every week. Last night at about 11:30\u2014when honestly, I\u2019d been hit with a sinus infection, I\u2019d been up since 7:00, I literally had not left the house yesterday, not even to go get mail, nothing and I\u2019d been behind the keyboard and I was exhausted\u2014but Pete Kraus needed the next chapter for Insufferable<\/em> for this morning so he could get moving. And I dragged myself to the keyboard. But I got to tell you, the moment I started coming up with \u201cOh well, here\u2019s something we haven\u2019t done in digital before,\u201d or \u201cOh well, here\u2019s a way of telling that story,\u201d or here\u2019s something that I can interject personally about my own experience into this thing, I got my energy back. Time flew and I looked up and it was about 1:00, 1:30 and I finished the chapter and I got a good night\u2019s sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> So that kind of dovetails into my next question, which is obviously to juggle the kind of workload you have, you have to have some kind of discipline. What do you do to get working each day?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> There is no discipline. You would think there\u2019s discipline. No, no, no it\u2019s not discipline, it\u2019s just sort of like you reach a point where you\u2019ve just got to do something. I wish that I were a 9-to-5 clock guy. I wish I were a Geoff Johns or a Chuck Dixon sometimes, who could just come in, and obviously they\u2019re great writers, but they\u2019re so disciplined. I mean Geoff in particular, will literally go into a studio at 9:00, sit at the keyboard, start writing, take a lunch break, sit back down, write, be over with it about 5:00, 6:00, and then go surf the Internet or do whatever the rest of us do all the rest of the day. I admire that discipline, but on the other hand if I really wanted that kind of a job, I\u2019d be working in insurance. I like the flexibility. There\u2019s no rhyme or reason to it. It\u2019s just some days are 20-page days and some days are a lot of searching online for old episodes of What\u2019s My Line?<\/em> or something. I wish I knew. I think that you could really do some interesting studies if you were able to get ahold of the browser histories of most comics writers and see what their days are like, because you just kind of pinball back and forth between going online to look up a synonym for some word that you\u2019re in the middle of writing a script for, and then the next thing you know you\u2019re watching old Flash Gordon<\/em> cartoons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Because somehow that came up in your search for synonyms.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> Exactly. I make light of it, but I have come to accept grudgingly that this is just part of the process for me. Everybody has a different way of working, and for me it just seems to be procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate and then leap into the frame and get it all done. I\u2019ve talked about this many a time with my other writer friends. If I could bottle the feeling I get when I catch a wave\u2014you know, when I sit there at the keyboard and I\u2019ve suddenly got an idea and I\u2019m all excited and at that moment I can\u2019t stop writing\u2014I could have the easiest job in the world. But for some reason, and this is true for all of us, we forget what that feeling is every time we sit down at the keyboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mark at the 2012
Eisner Awards<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em> In August you marked your 25th anniversary as a comics professional. After all that time, what\u2019s your most memorable moment as a comics pro?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> Wow, that\u2019s a good question. Not necessarily what\u2019s my most memorable story or my most memorable as a comics pro, very good question because there\u2019s so many and I\u2019ve been very lucky. You know what, help me narrow it down. Let\u2019s play word association. Give me something. Give me anything like conventions, store signings, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> How about seeing your name in print for the first time as a writer?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> That rocked. Probably my most memorable moment is the moment of being a fan reporter doing stuff for Amazing Heroes<\/em> magazine. And doing conventions, going back and forth as a guest liaison and getting to know artists and writers. And of course, all I ever wanted to do is write comics at that point in my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not true, I wanted to be an editor, but I wanted to be involved in comics. I wanted to begin as a writer and see if there was anything there, and in 1984 I went to see Julie Schwartz and sat down with him in his office. Very nervous little 22-year-old kid and I came in with a pitch for an 8-page Superman story. This is back in the year or so before John Byrne took over the book, and the edict from on high, the edict from Jenette Kahn and Paul Levitz to Julie Schwartz, was we\u2019ve got some big changes coming up, and we\u2019re not sure when they\u2019re going to fall. In the meantime Superman stuff does beautifully internationally for us, but we need it to be a little more kid friendly than the rest of the DC line. Not obviously sell comics for kids, not the Johnny DC line, but just make sure it\u2019s kid friendly and fairly self-enclosed and in 8-page increments. At that point the standard in the industry was 22 pages and it had been for a while, but if you go back and look, all of Julie\u2019s Superman<\/em> and Action Comics<\/em> books were 24 pages, because that\u2019s what foreign marketers wanted. They wanted 8, 16, 24 [pages], they wanted things they could package into 48-page graphic albums. So with that in mind, Julie was buying a bunch of 8-page stories from anybody who showed any promise whatsoever, and I came in and pitched my story and he bought it right there on the spot, and I was over the moon. I mean, that\u2019s still probably the greatest day of my professional life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> What was the story?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> It was a story called \u201cThe Puzzle of the Purloined Fortress.\u201d Here\u2019s the thing you got to give me credit for, the fact that I was writing for my audience. I knew what Julie liked. Julie liked stories with a strong first-page hook. He liked stories with a gimmick. He liked stories with a twist ending and with that bombastic alliterative title. So I pitched him a story in which Superman arrives at the Fortress of Solitude and opens the door to find that the place has been cleaned out and burgled. So it\u2019s sort of a locked-room mystery. Who could have stolen the contents of the Fortress of Solitude?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Would it be giving away if I asked who did it?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> Trust me, it\u2019s not worth going into. Next question. Next question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> So if the Mark Waid of today could go back and tell the Mark Waid of 1987 something about working in the comics industry, what would it be?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> Get it in writing, that\u2019s one. Don\u2019t overextend\u2014plan your career better. My one regret is I wish I\u2019d done a slightly better job of a certain narrowcasting, sort of picking and choosing my assignments with a little more care. Not that there\u2019s a whole bunch. I mean everybody\u2019s r\u00e9sum\u00e9 has some crap on it. It\u2019s just the way it is. Nobody passes that. Even Alan Moore wrote those horrible Vigilante<\/em> stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Especially in the wake of Kingdom Come,<\/em> I ended up being courted by everybody in the world, which was sweet and it\u2019s nice to be the pretty girl at the party and I probably took on a little too much work . . . I think someone like Neil Gaiman had the right idea. Neil could have written two or three different DC books at the time he was writing Sandman<\/em>, but he kept himself to one book and he did it smart. He just did one book, he did it to the best of his abilities, he focused all of his energy there, and that thing will be in print forever. Conversely, I wrote a ton of Green Lantern short stories for 80-Page Giants that nobody remembers. Also, Neil is insanely talented and I\u2019m a guy at a keyboard, but that\u2019s neither here nor there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Christopher Reeve<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em> So of all the characters over the last 25 years that you\u2019ve written, who is your favo-<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> Superman. You didn\u2019t even have to finish the question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Why Superman?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> Well he\u2019s not the character that drew me in, because Batman was the character that drew me in when I was 4 and I was watching Adam West cavort on the television. It\u2019s Superman because I liked Superman when I was a teenager and I liked the mythos. I liked all the continuity and I liked the world building around Superman and so forth, but my soul didn\u2019t belong to Superman yet. And then on January 26, 1979\u2014probably the most important day of my life, certainly one of the top two or three\u2014I went to see Superman, <\/em>the movie. I walked into that theater and I was a kid with a troubled home life, I was not sure what I wanted out of life, I was depressed. I mean not blue, more like a teenager; I was really starting to deal with some depression issues and no real strong parental figures, and I wanted to get out. I don\u2019t want to bring the conversation down, but let\u2019s just say it was a very, very, very dark period in my life, probably the darkest. And I went into that theater feeling like nobody in the world cared about who I was or what I wanted or what my place in the world might be and nobody gave a crap. And I came out of that movie, after seeing it twice in a row, just elevated because\u2014and it took me a long time to put two and two together, probably another 20 years to figure out the pieces of this puzzle\u2014what really happened in that movie was that Superman is a character, especially as embodied by Christopher Reeve, who cares about everybody. It doesn\u2019t matter whether you\u2019re black or white or rich or poor or American or Indian or whatever, male or female. He cares about everybody, and that compassion radiated out and somehow through that performance and through that movie and through that moment in time, it reached me in a way that nothing else ever had and nothing else has since. And from that moment on I just knew that no matter what the rest of my life was going to be and what it was going to revolve around, it had to involve Superman. It sounds almost saccharin to say it this way, but as improbable as it sounded when I was a kid, Superman really did save my life, and I mean that in the most fundamental way and that\u2019s an allegiance that will never go away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it\u2019s led me down a pretty good path. It could have been much worse. I could have gone to see The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,<\/em> and it could have been Clint Eastwood who had influenced me and I devoted my life to Clint Eastwood and I\u2019d be defending a guy who\u2019s yelling at an empty chair on the stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Or you could be wearing a serap\u00e9 right now.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> Exactly. I could be walking around with a piece of metal hidden underneath it to shield me from bullets, smoking a cheroot. There are shortcomings and pitfalls to imprinting yourself on a comic book character like that that become more obvious as you get older. The obvious upsides to saying, \u201cWell, I want to be like Superman\u201d are obviously that Superman is a great role model for kids in terms of fair play, in terms of compassion, in terms of ethics and morals, but there\u2019s a dark side to that, too, and I can\u2019t pretend that that doesn\u2019t inveigle its way into your consciousness as well, which is that Superman is also about lying to your friends about who you really are. Superman is also about putting others before yourself at all costs and in doing so not always looking out for yourself, which in the real world is something you kind of have to do. Superman is about black and white and we live in a world that is not black and white. So as I got into my 30s and 40s, I sort of realized there are some of my own character flaws or some of my own personal shortcomings. I\u2019m not going to put them at Superman\u2019s feet, but I\u2019m just saying that\u2019s how I interpreted what I read as a kid, but it\u2019s interesting how it\u2019s on a subliminal level and a very deep-seated level when I was impressionable and young how some of that stuff sort of took hold. And if you look at the influence of comics and its ethics and morals and its messages on me as a kid, if you look at that as a big lush garden full of beauty, of ethics and morals and doing the right thing and being truthful and so forth, there\u2019s some weeds in the garden. I\u2019ve probably stretched the analogy as far as I can without it collapsing under its own weight, but you kind of get it, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Art by Paolo Rivera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em> I get it, and it also kind of relates to Daredevil, because he\u2019s probably one of the most ethical characters in comics right now, at least the way you\u2019re writing him. For a while there he was written way too dark and conflicted and kind of an anti-hero, but now you\u2019ve brought positivity back to him and he\u2019s very moral and very ethical.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> I think he has to be, and again I don\u2019t speak for everybody who ever wrote or drew Daredevil<\/em> and I would be foolish to, because it\u2019s a murderers\u2019 row of truly great talent, but from my point of view Matt had no choice but to be moral and ethical because it\u2019s so deeply engrained in his psyche . . . he has to believe. And when I say he has to believe I\u2019m not saying I think he must believe this and this because I want it to happen. I\u2019m saying I think he has no choice but to believe that good can triumph and light can come, that might comes from right. That things can be put right and that the world can be made fair and there can be justice, because otherwise there is just no reason in the world why a 10-year-old boy who helped a man across the street in traffic could have been blinded in a horrible accident and had all this stuff taken away from him. In other words, if you\u2019re Matt Murdock, you have to believe that it\u2019s not that there\u2019s a reason for it, not that there\u2019s some sort of a cosmic destiny behind the accident that happened, but just on a more fundamental level. You got to believe that good can come out of that stuff. Does that make any sense?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Yeah, definitely.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve hit exactly the nail on the head, but these are good questions you\u2019re asking me because you\u2019re making me articulate things I have not yet articulated in 800,000 interviews about Daredevil.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> And you\u2019re right in that <\/em>Daredevil over the years has had a murderer\u2019s row of creators on it, but he\u2019s also a character that every once in a while has to be jump started again.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> What attracted you to the character that made you want to take over the book at this point in time?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> A short story. A pro short story actually that was written in the late \u201970s and it was . . . did you ever see those Marvel novels of the late \u201970s, early \u201980s?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Ted White wrote a Captain America one I think, but that was maybe in the \u201860s.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> Yeah, and Otto Binder wrote an Avengers <\/em>one and that was the \u201960s. In the \u201970s it was Len Wein and Marv Wolfman and Ron Goulart and guys like that doing Hulk<\/em> and Fantastic Four<\/em> and Spider-Man<\/em> novels. But there was a short story collection, Marvel Superheroes,<\/em> and I think Chris Clairemont wrote one and I know Jim Shooter wrote one, and in there was a short story about Daredevil written by Marty Pasko\u2014he\u2019s one of my favorite writers\u2014under a pen name, it escapes me what it is now, I forget. I read that short story when I was a kid, and it starts with Matt waking up in the morning, it\u2019s that simple. In prose you don\u2019t get the cool visual cues that you get from Daredevil and his radar sense, you have to rely purely on prose, and Marty did a great job of in a few pages outlining what your life is like if you have radar sense and you have enhanced senses and you have to live in that world. And the way he focused on Matt\u2019s powers, the way he defined them for me in prose, made me really think about them, and I\u2019ve always loved that set of superpowers. I\u2019ve always been fascinated by what the world was like through Matt Murdock\u2019s enhanced senses. And so that as much as anything is what drew me to the book. I mean I had always been a fan, and honestly the other thing that drew me to the book was Marvel was great. I said, \u201cLook I accept the assignment but I can\u2019t do what Frank did. I can\u2019t do stories in the style of Frank Miller, because that\u2019s just not what I do well. What I would like to do is what Frank did, which is do my own thing. Just go and sort of break rank with the tone of the book that had been established since Frank got there and try to find some new voice. I think it was a horrific gamble, I really do, because there\u2019s every chance in the world that fans could have just strung me up and said well this isn\u2019t Bendis, go to hell. You know, where\u2019s Hell\u2019s Kitchen, where\u2019s Dark Daredevil, where\u2019s the blood? But instead we just\u2014in a gargantuan way thanks to Marcos Martin and to Pablo Rivera, the artists\u2014we hit the right place at the right time, I don\u2019t know, but man we struck gold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Well, both in the writing and the art, a lot of readers think you\u2019ve made <\/em>Daredevil fun again.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> You know the reason he hasn\u2019t been fun is because fun comics don\u2019t sell. Thanks . . . you just killed the book, thanks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> I don\u2019t think that book is in any danger of being killed right now. When you look back, the character is almost 50 years old. It\u2019ll be 50 in 2014. He was created to be kind of more of a wise-cracking, fun superhero like Spider-Man was at the time, not that Spider-Man, especially under Ditko, didn\u2019t have his dark moments, but Daredevil was a lot lighter.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> In some ways he was a poor man\u2019s Spider-Man in that they were trying to emulate the same sort of soap opera, but the problem that you have with Matt Murdock was that first off, the supporting cast was much smaller. Spidey had a huge supporting cast, and Matt had Foggy and his secretary Karen and that\u2019s it. And for some reason it\u2019s just not as angsty and soap operay when problems happen to a successful adult attorney with money as they are when they happen to a hapless teenage kid who is struggling to make the rent. It was always a swashbuckling book, and I loved that as a kid. That\u2019s one of the reasons the character appealed to me as a kid, but you know as well as I do fun comics . . . they close out of town. Especially in the superhero world there\u2019s just not much room for whimsy or lightness or what have you. I don\u2019t understand why we seemed to have escaped that curse for the time being, but I\u2019m kind of looking at it like I\u2019m the coyote walking off the cliff. I don\u2019t want to look down or I\u2019ll fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Art by Leinil Yu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em> You mentioned before that one of the things that fascinates you about the character is how he sees things, and I think especially with the art, you\u2019re bringing a lot of that to the page. The grid work on bodies and objects, that amazing cover on the first issue and all those things in the background, everything the way he sees them, this contributes to a totally different look for this character. But this interview isn\u2019t all about Daredevil<\/strong>. Let\u2019s move on and talk about the Hulk a little bit. By the same token of you taking over this character that has been around for 50 years, what made you want to take over the Hulk?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> I was in the same bind. You know they said, \u201cHey, do the Hulk,\u201d and I had the same reaction I generally do when you offer me a Marvel character, which is to say I have no interest. I don\u2019t think I can do this and then I go off and I think about it for a while and I find a little tiny toehold in it. And in this case it wasn\u2019t just \u201cHey, we want you to do the Hulk,\u201d it was, \u201cWe want you to do the Hulk and we want you to try to breathe the same life into it that you breathed into Daredevil.<\/em>\u201d Well that sounds awesome and flattering, but I\u2019m not sure what that means, because on the face they\u2019re two vastly different characters and setups. With Daredevil<\/em> you can tell a lot of different sorts of stories and there\u2019s a lot more room for witty badinage between the characters and irony and humor and smartness and what have you. I think the characters are smart and I like writing smart. Hulk is a force of nature who is a living engine of destruction, and my old line was I don\u2019t understand why Bruce doesn\u2019t just throw himself off a bridge every day. He\u2019s the most tormented character in all of comics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So with that in mind I said, okay, well what do we do? What do we do to re-create in some degree what we did with Daredevil?<\/em> What\u2019s the commonality? What possible thing can thematically bring these two together? And then it came to me again. Again, that idea of torment. Both Matt Murdock and Bruce Banner were horribly tormented characters. In fact, I would make the argument that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby with the Hulk created in 1962 the first and quintessential tormented superhero. Before that the only contender would have been the Thing from Fantastic Four<\/em>, who predated Hulk by like half a year, but Thing wasn\u2019t happy in his skin and Thing resented being the Thing, but still he had a sense of humor and he was still heroic and he wasn\u2019t tormented every second of the day. Whereas Bruce Banner, from the moment he first becomes the Hulk, is just weak and put upon and looks like he wants to die every moment. And he\u2019s on the run and he is just\u2014again, tormented is the one word that you can\u2019t not use when you talk about Bruce Banner. So I said, okay, well . . . my problem with that now in today\u2019s comics is that you can\u2019t go to a comic store and throw a stick and not hit a comic about a tormented superhero. They\u2019re all tormented. Jeez . . . I mean look at the DC lineup. Torment is the thematic keynote of the entire new DCU. They\u2019ve got to be people feel cursed by their powers. \u201cMy powers are a curse.\u201d Oh, look at the horrible things that happen to me because I have superpowers. And that gets old, man. I mean, that\u2019s a valid storytelling tool, but to make it the entire cornerstone of entire universes worth of comics . . . and it\u2019s not just limited to DC. It\u2019s a lot of heroes feeling like their powers are a curse, and I thought, well, Banner started that whole thing and now everybody\u2019s like that, so maybe we should take Banner in a completely different direction. Maybe Banner doesn\u2019t have to feel cursed by his powers any more, and that sort of led me to the breakthrough of doing what we did with Matt Murdock, which was to say look, Bruce Banner wakes up one day and has his epiphany as Matt Murdock did. Matt Murdock\u2019s epiphany was \u201cI\u2019m tired of being depressed, I\u2019m tired of digging a hole, I\u2019m tired of being miserable all the time so I\u2019m just not going to be miserable any more.\u201d And there are complications that come with that obviously, but that\u2019s kind of what we\u2019re playing out in the series now, but with Banner\u2014same kind of deal. Banner gets up one morning and realizes all he\u2019s done in his lab for the last 50 Marvel years is try to stop himself from being the Hulk, and it never works. Tony Stark gets to be a heralded super-genius billionaire and Reed Richards gets Nobel Prize after Nobel Prize, but Bruce Banner\u2019s tombstone is going to say \u201cHulk Smash\u201d and that sucks. And so Banner\u2019s whole new outlook on life is as Hulk destroys, Bruce Banner will build. I cannot get rid of the Hulk. I can minimize his impact. I can try to tap it down as best I can, but it\u2019s going to happen, so when it happens I\u2019ve got to be sure I\u2019m pointed in the right direction, I\u2019ve got to be sure I\u2019m in places where the Hulk can be used. I\u2019ve got to make sure that I\u2019ve got people and the support staff around me who could point Hulk in the right direction. And in the meantime, I will spend my civilian hours no longer obsessing over this unsolvable problem with the Hulk and instead obsess over how do I sort of balance the karmic scales for all the things that Hulk has done. And in that sense it\u2019s not a throwback story and it\u2019s not a light Silver Age-y romp, but at the same time it is a more positive, less cynical story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Was it you who came up with the \u201cIndestructible\u201d tagline?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark:<\/strong> No, actually it was I think Mark Paniccia, the editor, but it fits beautifully in the story because it really is about Bruce Banner sort of having to realize at some point that he can\u2019t get rid of the Hulk, no matter how hard he tries. He just can\u2019t. He\u2019s indestructible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Toucan Interview with Mark Waid is indestructible, too, and continues in Part Two . . . click here<\/a> to read it!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Written by<\/p>\n\n\n

Comic-Con International<\/div>\n\n\n

Published<\/p>\n\n\n