We’re really digging Dark Horse’s revitalization of their heroes line, and a big part of that is tied to what writer Joshua Williamson is accomplishing on “Captain Midnight”. He’s making a comic that is fun. While that may not seem like a big deal to many of you out there, comics have a tendency of getting overly serious, and sometimes it is refreshing to read something that is an adventure that we’d like to see ourselves in, accomplishing bold achievements and saving the day. It’s a concept Williamson nails with ease, as this book is flat out enjoyable.
With today being the final order cutoff date for the first volume collection (meaning today is the last day to tell your shop to order this with Diamond Code SEP130024!), we have a brief talk with Williamson about this book, how he made the character relevant for today’s audiences, making a book like this fun, and much more. Thanks to Josh for chatting with us, and please, buy this book so we can encourage the industry to make more books that put a smile on our face.
Williamson: Captain Midnight is about a pulp hero named Jim Albright from the 1940s who was a super hero second and a genius inventor first. During World War Two he was using his discoveries as a masked hero fighting Nazis to create new technology and hardware to improve the world. After seeing the horrors of the Nazis but the triumphant sprit of the American people Captain Midnight hoped that he could build a better tomorrow, but then he was sucked into a time vortex inside the Bermuda Triangle.
Transported to present day, Midnight found himself in a new world that didn’t match up to his expectations. Midnight found out that all of his inventions had been corrupted by his old nemesis Fury Shark, and her corporation, Sharkbyte technology, and used for nefarious purposes. To stop her, Captain Midnight has surrounded himself with ace pilot and fan boy Rick Marshall, skeptical FBI Agent Jones, and the granddaughter of Midnight’s old girlfriend, Charlotte Ryan, who acts as the bad ass voice of reasons in the group. Together, they go on adventures trying to save the future that Captain Midnight lost.
Captain Midnight is a book you don’t want to miss because it’s a classic superhero story that has the commitment of Dark Horse and the creative team to tell a larger story. To make a fun, action packed comic that we felt was missing from the shelves.
Williamson: Personally it was a love of old retro pulp heroes. Good guys who just wanted to punch bad guys in the face. When the opportunity to write Captain Midnight and the larger story and plan Dark Horse had in mind was presented I jumped at the chance, because it felt we could do something really interesting and cool… and frankly unexpected in some ways with the character.
We made him different by moving him to present day, playing up the genius factor, having him be disappointed by the modern world, making him a bit obsessed with fixing the world and doing it his way. It’s been a blast to write.
The story of a hero displaced in time is obviously one that’s been told many a time in the form of comics, yet Captain Midnight has a bit of ominous cool that separates him from the pack. He feels a lot like a Lobster Johnson in this iteration, at least to me. Even better, he’s arguably not even the main character most of the time, sort of like the Lobster. For you, what is Captain Midnight all about? What makes him tick as a hero, and what made keeping him ahead of the others in the narrative the move to make?
Continued belowWilliamson: A large part of what I set out to do in the beginning was to build the idea and identity of Captain Midnight by using the perspective of the people around him. How his supporting cast saw him, y’know? Since he was a new take on an old character, there were a lot of opinions on how he should be, and we made that part of the story. Having Rick Marshall, Charlotte and Agent Jones all have their own idea of who Captain Midnight was an interesting way for us to tell our story.
Midnight is an old school “man’s man” sort of hero who sees the world in black and white, good versus evil, and is a bit obsessed with trying to make the world closer to what he thought it would have been in the 1940s. Midnight has this idea that the world should be a better place… and hasn’t quite yet figured out that ideas can be deadly. And that fixing the future will come at a great cost. Some people don’t like change.
And as much as I love his supporting cast, the book is called Captain Midnight after all.
You had an array of incredible artists on this book – shout out to personal fave Pere Perez! – who ably helped you bring the Captain’s story to life. Each of these artists had their own strengths, but what about them worked for you as a writer and as someone trying to bring this story to life?
Williamson: Having a few different artists in the beginning wasn’t the plan, but I think showing different takes on Captain Midnight helped us build the scope of the world we are trying to show. But one thing all the artists had in common was that they brought the fun and exciting action.
The thing that stood out about this book is its a whole lot of fun. Its a pulpy good time, a throwback existing in today’s world, and it stands out amongst much of what is being released in superhero comics today for that reason. Do you think that was just the nature of the project, or was that a direction you actively guided the book in?
Williamson: Both?
From the beginning one of the goals of the new Captain Midnight series was to create a classic super-hero story. And to me that meant heroes being heroes, and villains by villains. But in the process of that we started to create a story that played with those notions in our modern world. It’s odd to me that a book like ours seems rare in a market full of costumed characters. So yeah, once we had the idea of the book down, the character and story started to take shapes of their own. In some cases going against the original outlines.
If you pay attention while reading you’ll see the sub-plots are building. That we are taking the characters on an interesting journey, that will pay off big.
Captain Midnight is in the present, and I’m sure he’ll be adjusting to that fact and the world he’s in for some time. What’s next for the book past the first arc, and where do you hope to take this character going forward?
Williamson: The next two issue arc introduces the new “hero” Skyman. We learn if this new hero can be friend or foe. Then we get into a bit more of the Project Black Sky storyline introduced in the first arc, where Captain Midnight is trying to get more info on Project Black Sky, but also has a stop a dangerous and brutal assassin sent to kill Agent Jones.
After that we have a bunch of cool stuff planned that I can’t wait to share. It’s going to be a fun ride.
