One of the books that industry prognosticators have been expecting since the launch of the New 52 is a solo book focusing on Vic Stone, Cyborg. Re-cast as a founding member of the Justice League, the character has, arguably, never been more high profile than he is right now – especially since he will be joining the DC Cinematic Universe in the near future as well.
When news of the book finally broke, from writer David F. Walker and artist Ivan Reis, it felt like a perfect pairing of disparate sensibilities: Walker (“Shaft,” “Number 13”) is a writer who has a grounded, realistic take on his characters, and Reis (“Aquaman,” “Justice League”) does widescreen superhero action better than almost anyone on the planet. I had the opportunity to chat with Walker last week about the book, pseudo-science, race, and a certain Beast Boy.
I want to start with your pitch for this. Did you have a vision for Cyborg before this project came about, or is this more of a product of just right place, right time, you found something to do with the character, or has this been something you wanted to write for a while?
David F. Walker: It’s sort of a combination of the two, it’s one of those things where, you know, I’ve been a fan of the character for years and you always have these sort of ideas that float around in your head, oh, if I only got to write this character. Usually, that opportunity never presents itself so it just becomes sort of these pipe dreams. Then DC had come along and said, “Hey, we want you to pitch some ideas for a handful of characters.” They threw out some names, Cyborg was one of them, and I was like, “Really?” and then they made the mistake of saying “We want you to get a little radical, think outside the box.” I warned them, I was like, “When I think outside the box, I get pretty far outside the box.” But they were cool with it, so I was able to deal with some of the things that I’ve always wanted to deal with and then bring some new stuff into it based upon what’s been happening most recently, what Geoff [Johns] has done with the character in The New 52, in “Justice League,” things like that.
What I found so refreshing about the first issue was how it obviously references a few things outside of the book itself but there is such a clear line of this is what’s happening inside this book, here is the supporting cast, here are the issues these characters are facing. Was there a temptation to go big in the first issue, or did you always have this nice little self-contained story you wanted to play within?
DFW: Well, that’s a really interesting question because you know, there’s almost this temptation. Cyborg has got this long history both within The New 52 and his work in the Justice League, but even all that stuff that’s happened in the previous incarnations and then as well as in the animated series where it’s like, “oh there’s so many things I can play with, so many characters I can introduce.” But then, at the end of day, those are all characters that are in support of Vic and Cyborg as a member of the team, as opposed to we’re building a world here for him, a solo world. So yeah, I really wanted to have Shazam in the first issue, you know, but I was like, this has got to be Cyborg’s book and the characters that we see, especially in the first issue, would need to be the characters that are specific to his reality as a solo leading man.
You mentioned Geoff Johns and the work on “Justice League,” and this book very much felt like an extension of that. How closely have you and Geoff been working to put together this book, and do you consult him on what’s Cyborg’s up to in that end of the universe?
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DFW: In the very beginning, there was one or two conversations between us, then later on there was another phone conversation and then it’s San Diego, at the Comic Con, that was like him walking up to me and saying, “Good job,” you know, so, I’ve been very much left on my own, well not on my own, obviously, there’s an editorial team that I’m working with, and Geoff and I have had one or two discussions in terms of what his big picture vision for Cyborg is in terms of “Justice League,” and then sort of what I was planning and making sure that they weren’t two completely radically different things, but no, for the most part, I was told, “Put together a book for Cyborg and just make it a great book. Don’t worry about what’s going on in Justice League or if he turns up in something else. Just focus on building him as a leading man.”
One of the hallmarks of your work in comics has been a really strong focus and incorporation of African-American culture. I think it’s so important that Cyborg is a character that embraces his culture, so when you were plotting this, were there certain beats that you felt were especially important that dealt with his race, or is that all just sort of a nice afterthought of working with a character that has this nice, rich history?
DFW: It’s more of just about building the character, trying to flesh him out as much as humanly possible. The more humanity we build with him, the more realistic he becomes, even though he looks like a giant walking tank. So in that regard, I was bringing in some of my own personal experiences and again, going back to some of the feelings I had when I was a thirteen, fourteen-year-old little black kid growing up reading those early Marv Wolfman-George Pérez “Teen Titans” and thinking, “this is kind of what I would like to see this character be about, or these are sort of things I like to explore.” I think that some of what I’m trying to bring to the mix overall, things like the relationship between Vic and his father, that’s a pretty universal thing, I mean a lot of people have strained relationships with one parent if not both parents, and then when you throw in the fact that the mother is dead and Vic not certain how his father feels about him.
These are all really universal things that we all go through and I think that in terms of pop culture, the problem is a lot of times black characters are thrown into a story in a supporting capacity. They look cool, they sound cool, maybe they do something cool, but you never see the nuances of a relationship, you never see the detailed emotion that you might get with a leading character. I’m all I’m trying to do is bring in and get that nuance and that subtlety that lead characters are afforded and supporting characters often aren’t.
While we’re talking about supporting characters here, you’re dealing with the S.T.A.R. Labs crew a little bit, you said you wanted to bring Shazam into the book, we get a peek at the end of the issue at one of Vic’s old high school football acquaintances. When you’re building the supporting team, were there certain characters you felt needed to be there from the start, or are you happy to just keep expanding this world bit by bit?
DFW: I’m happy to expand it bit by bit. I had a lot more supporting characters than I originally was going to bring in. But what happens is, in a mainstream comic, you’ve got 20 to 24 pages (if you’re really lucky) to tell the story within a single issue; maybe you’re telling a story arc that spans 5 or 6 issues and you start bringing in too many supporting characters and none of them get all the attention that you want. So I pared it down and I thought okay, I can bring in people later on. Whether it’s a recognizable character from somewhere within his vast history or bringing in new characters. The key is that every character has to be in service to the development of our leading man, of Vic Stone. If they’re not doing that, if they’re not propelling either the story forward or him, then you really don’t need them there.
You know, because of the way he’s physically put together, science is obviously a big part of the story. Did you bone up on your science for this or does all just this sound very good, but it’s all mumbo jumbo. You’re talking to a liberal arts major here, I don’t know science from a hole in the wall, so you could just made all this stuff if you wanted to. So how much research does go into making a book sound reasonably scientific?
DFW: Oh you can just come up with mumbo jumbo and you take phrase from, you take one word from over here and another word from over there and you combine it and suddenly it sounds really scientific and smart. I’m very fascinated with prosthetics and biomechatronics, just been a fascination of mine for a long time and there has been so many breakthroughs. So I’m constantly reading articles about that and watching videos about these sort of things, and I sent them to different people at DC and said look, you know, this aspect of Vic that seems really cool right now and futuristic, this is actually going on right now, today, so we need to up the game. So in that regard, there’s a lot of me paying attention to breakthroughs in prosthetic technology and in biomechatronic technology because I never want Vic’s technology to seem dated or real.
That’s the thing, we live in a time when there’s so many incredible things happen, you know, the pictures of Pluto that we’re just looking at, who’d have ever thought that we’d see that? Or that we’d have a little phone in our pockets that we could watch movies on while we’re waiting in line at the bank. I mean there’s so many incredible things that technology has brought us and one of the great things about science fiction is that we want to see things that we go, oh wouldn’t it be cool if that happened or if that existed? So to that regard, you have to pay a little bit of attention to what’s really going on. I mean you can’t have Vic using a cellphone as if that’s the ultimate invention because we all have them now, right?
So it’s pretty interesting, and also it’s interesting for me because I’ve done work in the past with kids with different neuro-muscular disorders like muscular dystrophy and so it’s interesting to see these breakthroughs in technology and medicine that help people live “normal lives.” You know, someone who’s been confined to a wheelchair their whole lives can now actually get up and move around and walk. I think I want to be very cognizant about that in, ultimately Vic Stone is a person with a disability, and I want to make sure that as I’m telling his story, that I’m respectful of other people with disabilities and not trying to make them out to be lesser because, you know, they don’t have a sonic amplifier attached to their hands, you know?
Yeah. Actually my favorite scene in the issue was when Vic encounters the amputee that’s protesting outside the S.T.A.R. Labs. It seemed to me like it was this wonderful intersection between the real world and the science fiction world of comics and it let you have a really interesting place for this worlds to meet. Is that kind of a conversation going to be something we can expect more of in the book, sort of a privilege alongside technology, and the circumstances that lead them to intersect?
DFW: Yeah, that’s definitely it. I mean that character is actually going to be a supporting character throughout the first story arc and I’m starting to like him enough that he may actually turn into, I don’t necessarily want to say a villain, but turn into one of those sort of characters that pops up from time to time. He sort of represents this concept of like, we have all this technology, but if I can’t use it, what good is it? We see that a lot. We see that when there’s, you know, some story on the news about a breakthrough and some sort of treatment for whatever disease but it’s like, yeah but it’s not actually for people who can’t afford it, it’s only for the rich, it’s only for the powerful. So yeah, I definitely want to explore issues of privilege and also perception, because there’s that old saying, ‘I felt bad because I had no shoes so I met a man who had no feet’, and you know, here’s Vic who’s got all this amazing tech, this guy with the sort of outdated prosthetic arm, but then there’s someone who doesn’t even have the prosthetic arm out there.
Yeah. I very much look forward to seeing where that goes in the story. The artist on the book is Ivan Reis; you’ve worked in film before, a collaborative medium, so this isn’t your first time working with a collaborator, but what did Ivan bring to the book that maybe wasn’t something that you thought would be brought to it going in?
DFW: He brought everything and then a bag of chips, you know, he supersized the meal, as it were. Ivan’s an incredible artist, and you have a perspective looking at whatever he’s worked on in the past, whether it’s “Aquaman” or “Justice League” or “Green Lantern,” all these amazing books he’s done. But that perspective shifts dramatically when you’re looking at the pages and you’ve written them, and you see an expression on a character’s face where maybe in the description you just say, you know, “Vic looks sad,” and it’s that simple because any more description is superfluous, right? It’s up to Ivan to determine what sad looks like, but then you see it and you go, oh I didn’t realize he’s going to look this sad. This is amazing, it looks like Vic’s about to cry. Then you’re about to cry. So the collaboration with Ivan has been better than anything I could ever have hoped for. As a writer, it’s helping me, it’s helping me realize what a truly powerful collaboration can look like and what it can turn into. So it’s like, okay, I now want to step up my game as a writer so that I can provide the artist with the best possible jumping off point. Because that’s all my words are, they’re jumping off points for the visuals.
With the character that has such history, there’s such history with other characters. One of the best things about Vic is that he’s everybody’s buddy. No one dislikes Vic in the DCU, it seems like he has relationships with all these people. Who are the characters you really want to bring in to this world to see him play around with for a bit?
DFW: Well, I’m worried if I answer that then it might be a potential spoiler. But I will say that the one thing I missed about in The New 52, one of things I really miss was his relationship with Gar Logan [Beast Boy/Changeling], and more than anything, I would like to play with that. I don’t know if that will be possible, I’m putting together a proposal for that, but that’s the one that I really am most intrigued with. But the other one that I’m really intrigued with is his relationship with his mom. Because his mom died in the explosion that killed him, she died in the explosion that turned him into Cyborg.
