Geekscape Interviews: ‘Insufferable’ Author Mark Waid!

Picture Batman and Robin. They’re the ultimate two-man team: one, a vengeful but intelligent detective, and the other a spunky young ward. The dynamic duo of Gotham City, they rid the streets of crime and villainy!

Now picture if that spunky ward Robin was a total dick.

That’s the premise of Mark Waid’s Insufferable, which just launched its third volume on Waid’s digital comic website Thrillbent. From Captain America, to the seminal Kingdom Come, to Irredeemable and Incorruptible, Mark Waid is a reigning titan of the comic book industry and has forged a new path in creating Thrillbent, the web-centric comic book publishing house.

Waid’s latest series pits the superhero and father Nocturnus at odds with his brash, egotistical son and former crime-fighting partner Galahad. In Volume 3, Nocturnus and Galahad are struggling to join forces once more as the city they have sworn to protect is under siege. Will they save the day or are they only capable of saving themselves?

Before we get to Insufferable, I want to talk about your open letter to freelancers from last year. What led you to write to all working creatives? Did anything happen to you that led you to, in slang terms, drop a pipe bomb?

Waid: [laughs] Nothing happened to me. What happened was, because I’ve been in the industry for such a long time and I’ve seen everything and I’ve dealt with everybody, I tend to be sort of the wailing wall that younger freelancers come to sometimes to look for advice or to look for guidance for those sorts of things. And I’m flattered by that, I don’t know that I’ve got anything important to say, but I had just heard from the thousandth freelancer that week who felt like they had been screwed over by a publisher. And it was the same complaints over and over again. It became so common.

And I just felt like [it was time] to talk to young freelancers and say, “Look, the gist of what I’m saying is all you have is your reputation. All you have is your resume.” And it’s different for everybody, but you have to find the fine line between willing to take editorial direction and take notes to the point it makes the story better, but the moment it starts making the story worse, you’ve gotta walk away. Even though it’s a guaranteed paycheck. You’re gonna end up doing years of bad stories to please editors who are not loyal to you, and then you’re gonna look for jobs somewhere else and no one is going to look at the story and go, “Oh, this must have been badly edited.” No, they’re just gonna look at it and go, “Wow, this story sucks.”

What inspired you to write the story of Insufferable? What inspired you to pit former superhero teammates who are at the tail end of a grudge match?

Waid: I don’t want to name names, but I was reading an interview with a comics pro who was very full of himself [and] very ungrateful towards the people who had shepherded him along and just full of pomposity and braggadocio and I was rolling my eyes going, “Man, what if Robin grew up to be that guy?” And that sparked everything. That sense of seeing Kanye West grab the microphone from Taylor Swift so many times without wanting to say, “Man, dial it back!” So that struck me that that would be a really good superhero [story]. I’ve never seen that relationship before in comics. The idea of, what if your sidekick grew up to be an insufferable douchebag?

Hence the title. 

Waid: Yes!

So Volume 3 starts out with a bang. The whole city is basically on fire. You’ve got Nocturnus and Galahad kind of getting back in the groove, what can you tell us is in store for them? Is this their last hurrah?

Waid: It may actually be their last hurrah. We haven’t officially said so, but the challenge this time with this adventure was, let’s really blow up the stops and remind ourselves that we’re in control of the story. We don’t have to keep the status quo going because it’s part of some universe, we can do whatever we want. So, it is, as my co-creator and artist Peter Krause kept pointing out, for two story story arcs now we’ve had the two of them spiting each other. Which is fun, and fun to write and fun to read, but to keep it from being a cartoon, it’s probably best if their relationship could find some new level. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good level, or a happy level, but we need to find [a new] status quo for them. So that’s where we’re headed to with arc three. They’re going to be in a much different place than they have been.

In relation to your open letter to freelancers and Insufferable, which I assume you have total control over, what’s it like having that freedom? What is it like to stretch your legs without having to be hindered? 

Waid: It’s great and it’s very liberating, but, and your mileage may very, it’s not the end all be all. Because there’s a lot to be said for working with established characters in certain universes too. The upside to something like Insufferable is, as you said, we own it. It’s ours. We’re the boss. We can make up the rules. But that also means we have to invent everything from scratch. And that means there is no mythology or continuity to draw upon, and therefore you can’t take things for granted. You can’t just bring back an old villain because nobody has seen him in awhile. You have to invent this guy. And so, honestly? As much fun as it is to do your own stuff, there is that drawback that people don’t talk about often. Which is, it’s a lot more work.

You’re actually first writer to tell me about how more of a burden there is in creating your own mythos.

Waid: At least equally a burden. Not more of a burden, but equally.

If you had to choose, where do you find yourself the happiest: working on established characters or creating your own?

Waid: Honestly, I know this sounds like a cheap answer, but it really depends on the project and how enthused I am on any given moment. When it comes to being happy, it doesn’t have anything to do with the character whether it’s an established character or one of my own. The happy moments are when you’ve discovered something new about the characters or about storytelling in general or some new technique in comics. That’s the fun part, and that’s irrespective of who owns the characters.

Modern superheroes tend to be grim, a little self-loathing. Superman is supposed to be a shining beacon of hope, but in Man of Steel he was, I don’t know, a little mopey?

Waid: [laughs] Yes!

As someone who has created some of the most seminal works in comic books, what are your thoughts on superheroes today? Do you think they’re in the right to be self-doubting? Where do you see Nocturnus and Galahad fitting in the modern superhero landscape? Did you want them to reflect any particular age in the history of superheroes?

Waid: I think neither. I think they’re a little more timeless, but that’s because a lot of the heart of what their relationship is has nothing to do with superheroes or crimefighting. It has to do with father/son relations. And that’s pretty universal. So it wasn’t any attempt to do anything like a throwback or some new post-9/11 invention, it was just trying to get more universal themes and do them through a superhero lens.

And as far as superheroes today goes, I’m hoping the pendulum is swinging back away from relentlessly grim and gritty. I don’t think all superheroes should be fun, light, and goofy, but neither do I think they all have to be blood, guts, violence, cynical, and self-loathing. I think there’s a wider palette to be drawn from. I wish there were more out there that wasn’t dark and grim. But I’ve seen advancements. Luckily, I think the success of the Marvel movies as much as anything else are proving to people to people there’s an audience for stuff that’s not relentlessly grim. I think The Flash TV show is also a yardstick to prove that not everything has to be cynical, dark, and ugly.

The creative team you’re working on Insufferable with, you’ve worked on your previous titles like Irredeemable. What was it like getting that band back together?

Waid: Pete and I knew after Irredeemable we wanted to do something together that we could create from scratch. We had a bunch of ideas, but it became a question of what do we do next? I respect Pete immensely as a creative person, I would be a fool to let that guy travel far out of my sight.

You wanted Insufferable to be uniquely for the digital format. The widescreen format was a necessity. Why did you want that style and not the traditional comic book?

Waid: Well if we’re doing it on the web, it only makes sense to do it in the landscape format. Because that’s the shape screens are. And frankly, that’s the shape the world is. That’s the reason why your eyes are side-by-side and not one on top of each other on your head. That’s how we see the world, in a widescreen view. And so, my biggest problem with digital comics at that point had been trying to force that portrait format style on to a landscape screen. You’re scrolling up and down, but you’re not looking at the whole page at once because it doesn’t fit your screen. I just thought that was ridiculous. I wanted to use the screen space to its maximum. And let the art breathe. And that dictated the 4×3 format. Which, again, we can turn into print comics, and will turn into print comics, but I’d rather worry about digital first and then print comics later.

As you said before, we’re approaching an end of sorts with Volume 3. Whether it’s the end or not, what’s next after Insufferable? What do you want to tackle?

Waid: That’s a very good question. Honestly, no one has asked me that question yet and I’m not entirely sure. All I know is that it needs to involve Peter Krause because I’m not letting that guy go.

What, ultimately, is Insufferable about to you? What is it about this story you want out in the world?

Waid: That it’s possible to love someone in your family without liking them. That’s really the universal theme. That’s the father/son thing. It’s like, you can love your family without really liking them.

You can read Mark Waid’s Insufferable Vol. 3, now available on Thrillbent! New chapters are released every Wednesday.