Supervillains always seem to come back. No matter what. Doesn’t matter if their headquarters explodes or they fall into a bottomless pit. Doesn’t matter how impossible their survival seems, they’ll be back a few months later with another overly elaborate plan to defeat the heroes. But “Impostor Syndicate,” with issue #1-2 currently funding on Zoop, proposes a theory: That villain didn’t actually survive, so someone grabbed a random actor to fill in. Because after all, superheroes and supervillains are the biggest industry in the world. Someone has to keep the fight going, if only for business’s sake.
As of this writing, “Impostor Syndicate” #1-2 have raised $7,656 of a proposed $6,000 campaign goal, just shy of the first stretch goal. If you would like to contribute, you can find it here.
Matt D. Wilson writes the superhero satire, which combines the genre parody of “The Tick” with the celeb culture-infused action of “X-Statix,” reuniting with “Everything Will Be Okay” collaborator Rodrgio Vargas. Most of you may know Wilson primarily from his podcasting work. After all, for many of us in the comic fan community, War Rocket Ajax (which Wilson hosts alongside Chris Sims) has been a staple of weekly listening rotation for the better part of a decade. Though his writing work extends not only to comics (“Everything Will Be Okay,” “Copernicus Jones: Robot Detective”), but prose as well (The King Oblivion, Ph.D. trilogy). We spoke to Wilson about the book, how this story compares to his previous supervillain work, and didgeridoos. We would also like to thank him for his time.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
For the benefit of our readers, what is a brief synopsis?
Matt D. Wilson: This is the way I always explain it. Anybody who’s read a lot of superhero comics, or watched a bunch of animated TV, anything where the story has to go on for a long time. This isn’t so much the case in movies. But it’s certainly a thing in ongoing comics especially. And long running TV shows. There are all these instances where supervillains seem to be dead. You watch them apparently die. The example I always go to is… I believe this was an episode of Batman: The Animated Series… where The Joker was in a blimp. And it exploded. And it crashed into a bay. Like Gotham Bay or whatever. And everybody at the end of the episode was like “Well… guess he probably didn’t make it.”
But it’s always that, right? It’s always like they fall off a waterfall or otherwise are disposed of and seem to be dead. And then a few months later, none worse for the wear. I’ve always thought what was the explanation for their return? In a lot of comics, it’s just “Oh they survived somehow.” But in “Impostor Syndicate,” the idea is “What if they didn’t survive? And when they return it’s somebody else?” Somebody who possibly looks the same, wears the same costume, who is potentially even using the same name. But they’re a different person because some organizations, some shady group, has hired an actor to take over that role. Because they have a financial need for superhero fights with supervillains to keep happening. In this world of “Impostor Syndicate,” superheroes and supervillains are the biggest business in the world.
Nothing like real life of course!
MDW: Exactly! It’s kind of a mix of our world, where the biggest movies in the world and so much of our entertainment is now superhero stuff, mixed with a world where superheroes actually exist. So that’s the thought. Somebody is hiring actors to replace supervillains so they keep fighting with supervillains.
And you’ve had this idea since 2003? I guess the first question is: Why now? What made you think “It’s ready! I can do this?” Was it finding the right collaborators? Was it a matter of the actual structural elements? Finding the right arc for it? What made this the time?
MDW: What made it not the time for a long time was that first thing you mentioned. Not being able to get together with a collaborator who could see it through. That’s not to blame people I tried to make this happen with earlier. I didn’t have the resources to pay a page rate when I was 22. I still don’t have it now. That’s why I’m running a crowdfunding campaign. I have the ability to run a crowdfunding campaign now. Which I didn’t have in 2010. This is something that I’ve wanted to make for a long time. And it’s kind of been in a ready-state as far as the writing.
Continued belowI’ve told a bunch of people this. This book started as a Marvel Epic pitch. That’s how I know I had this idea in 2003. So I took some time after Marvel rejected it, because of course they did, to rework it into its own thing and kind of work a world around it. Maybe get bigger and file off the Marvel numbers at the same time. So that took awhile. But ever since then, the script for issue #1 has been virtually unchanged. I’ve tweaked things here and there. Kind of modernized things. Changed little bits. Added in little bits of detail that hint at points later. But the basic story has remained the same. The really hard part has been finding a collaborator to work with. And over the past five years or so, finding the time to make this the kind of main project at the forefront of my priority list. Because once I started finding collaborators to work with, once I kind of built out that network a little bit more, then I was too busy to really make it happen. Or I had some other project that was more pressing. Or I was bogged down in day-to-day podcasting, day job, just keeping my head above water.
A couple years ago, I had this project that I had been working on for over a year that just suddenly fell apart. Just wasn’t going to work out. And I sort of had this sense of like it’s been twenty years since I had this idea. I wanted to make this comic this whole time. And I don’t want to do another project where I’m going to spend a year or more of my life on something that may never see the light of day. Which is what I had been doing. That was when I finally said okay… enough’s enough. Let’s crowdfund it. Because I had shopped this idea around to publishers before. Tried to get it out there. But there is always a risk when you work with a publisher that an editor leaves, something changes, and your project gets shelved. That just happens. So I wanted to be assured that this would get out there one way or another. And with crowdfunding, that was a way I knew that could happen. That’s kind of the explanation on why now and why this way.
You said you had to file off a lot of Marvel serial numbers. And in that time the whole MCU thing happened. Were there elements that developed in ways that you didn’t expect, even if the core remained the same? Have there been twists and turns that you’ve had to adapt to 2023 as opposed to– I don’t want to think about 2003 being twenty year ago, but–
MDW: [laughs] Short answer: yes. It has adapted in some ways. Like I said, the first issue is essentially the same. But the way the story progresses from there, in the second issue and beyond, is definitely not what it would have been in 2003. Some of the reveals of who the shadowy employer is and who some of the other characters are have been informed by two decades of superheroes taking over film and television and so many other media. I don’t want to say that I was reading tea leaves and figured out what the future would be. The original idea was like “This world would be pretty nuts, right? This would be a bananas idea if all of entertainment was about superheroes!” And then it just became relevant. I’m not going to say I predicted the future because I wasn’t trying to. It’s like that thing were The Simpsons predicts the future all the time. Where they come up with the wildest satiric ideas–
President Trump?! That’ll never happen!
MDW: Exactly! That was kind of what happened. I built out my ideas for what issues two through five were going to be…I don’t know, maybe ten years ago. Those issues, like the basic character parts, are the same. But the world is pretty remarkably different because of the passage of time, for sure.
This also predates King Oblivion, which you also have as part of a reward bundle. I know you’re a big fan of villains, and you wanted to play with that kind of character archetype. Are there a lot of parallels between what you were doing with King Oblivion versus “Impostor Syndicate?” Or are they their own tonal entities?
Continued belowMDW: I think it’s both. I think it’s weirdly, simultaneously both things. The inspiration for King Oblivion, and a big element of “Impostor Syndicate,” is an exploration of why villains get trying when they know they’re going to fail. The supervillain mindset in practice– in a story where you’re supposed to sympathize with the hero, and the hero is the focus point, you’re not really meant as a reader to dig into the villain’s motivation, or mindset, or what drives them. They’re just a force to push back against the hero. Plenty of comics do examine the villain mindset and get into their psyche and all that stuff. I’m not saying that. But the person you’re supposed to identify with is the hero. And so I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of this kind of insistent, constant, unyielding persistence that supervillains have. Even after losing and losing and losing and losing. It’s a very trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result kind of situation.
Like King Oblivion. The idea of him… his persistence is from an incredible, unstoppable, outsized ego by which he views the world and sees everything. And he’s sure it’s going to work this time after he fails the twentieth-thousandth time. But with “Impostor Syndicate,” the idea is “What if the persistence wasn’t the result of the person doing it? What if it was a job they had to keep doing?” So it’s a little bit of a different take based on the same idea.
Another thing I talked about a lot in The Supervillain Handbook is this idea that a key part of being a supervillain is theatricality. It’s not enough to just be a criminal. It’s not enough to do illegal things and want power. You have to do it in the most theatrical, flamboyant, big, and overcomplicated way possible. Because otherwise you’re not a supervillain.
You need the giant blue laser!
MDW: Yeah! You gotta have the colorful costume, and you gotta do the big speeches, perfect your laugh, and you gotta get all that stuff. Or you’re just a regular criminal. And so that was sort of… theatrically is part of the gig. And “Impostor Syndrome” makes it more of the gig.
And makes it an actual gig too.
MDW: Yeah! You’re playing the role. I think I’m exploring some of the same themes. I’m just coming at it a different way.
This the second time you’ve worked with Rodrigo Vargas. How has it been working with him? He’s doing something that, even if it isn’t necessarily a completely different genre, is still different enough that there’s different trappings and different imagery? Basically…how awesome is he?
MDW: An incredibly awesome artist. “Everything Will Be Okay” is great. I’m really proud of it. And I think Rodrigo’s art in that book is the reason to read it in a lot of ways. But I think he’s leveled up and gone to even better place with “Impostor Syndicate.” The thing that both those books share is that they’re satires. So in certain ways we’re kind of going over the top. Going a little beyond the kind of subtlety in a more serious story. In “Everything Will Be Okay,” it was like…throw every disaster you can into this two page splash. And what came back had tornados and kaiju and meteors and flooding. Everything you could imagine in one image. With “Impostor Syndicate” it’s let’s turn up the ridiculousness on these characters as much as we can while keeping them identifiably superheroes and supervillains.
The example I keep telling everybody is…Rodrigo just adds in jokes that I don’t even put in the script. And they’re great. If you look at the preview pages on the campaign page, there’s a page where the lead character John is looking out of a hotel window. And he sees a superhero– like a speedster superhero– fighting a guy in mega stereotypical Australian garb. Like with the hat with the crocodile teeth on it and all the outback gear and a didgeridoo.
It looks like he’s got an alligator in a backpack.
MDW: His name is Doctor Didgeridoo. And his whole deal is he plays the didgeridoo at heroes. The didgeridoo is his weapon. But in the script, I just said he’s Doctor Didgeridoo and he’s playing a didgeridoo at the hero character. Rodrigo added in the crocodile. The crocodile wasn’t in the script at all. And so, there’s a whole sequence where the crocodile’s in his backpack. He gets punched in the mush. And then a couple panels later, the crocodile’s sliding down the glass of John’s hotel window. That’s all Rodrigo. He did all of that. And he added so much humor to that one page that wasn’t in my script at all. He knows exactly the tone this book is going for and nails it.
Continued below
And it looks like you’ve got a gorilla guy here!
MDW: Yeah! You gotta have a gorilla guy! That’s the lead character of the book. He’s actor John Weston. And he is offered the role of the super villain The Bonobo, who is like a D or C-list grunt villain guy who wears an ape costume. It gives him extra strength and stuff. But he doesn’t have A-list superpowers. He’s just a guy in an ape suit who’s kind of strong. That’s his gig. He’s going to be The Bonobo.
You’ve mentioned that you’ve kind of planted seeds for maybe further adventures. Is this something that you may want to possibly build a future series off of? Or another world you would possibly like to play in?
MDW: I’ll tell you what I have in mind. I have written out plans for six issues or so. And I think John’s story specifically would probably last twelve to fifteen. I think the story of John Weston as The Bonobo is a pretty contained story. I don’t imagine that as an ongoing series. The thing that his story is building to— because he never learns at the beginning who’s hired him.to be The Bonobo. So in my head, the big reveal of John’s story is learning who his actual employer is. And after that, the story changes into something totally different.
I think John’s got a pretty self contained story. The Bonobo arc is a contained thing. But I could imagine more stories in this world. Where supervillainy, for at least a contingency of supervillains, is an acting gig. There’s definitely more stories to tell there. There’s more characters to explore. There’s more ideas. Because there’s going to be characters who pop up in John’s story that probably bear further exploration somewhere. John starts his supervillain training in issue #2, and learn about his trainers, which are all failed superheroes. They trained to be superheroes and it just didn’t work out for them. Those characters are there to play a certain part in John’s story. But I can imagine them having pretty rich stories of their own to explore later. I don’t want to put the cart before the horse in any way, imagining things that may never happen. But I can certainly see, beyond John’s story, other stories within the universe or within the world being compelling.
You did this through Zoop. Why Zoop?
MDW: I had been interested in Zoop. I kind of became aware of them more or less as soon as they started. At first I would see the name online here and there. Then I saw more and more projects getting done through it. And we got creators who were doing projects on Zoop as guests on War Rocket Ajax.
I knew that I wanted to do another crowdfunding project at some point. I don’t want to say my Kickstarter experience was all bad, because it wasn’t. But with the Kickstarter for “Everything Will Be Okay,” I felt like I had budgeted pretty smartly. But then at the end of it, on the very back end of the fulfillment, I kind of hit that wall where the money ran out. And I had to pay some stuff out of pocket, for shipping mainly. Specifically, shipping overseas. It didn’t kill me to spend that money out of pocket. But it wasn’t expected either. Or hoped for. With Zoop, I had more options. And it was more collaborative, where they have helped guide me towards rewards, fulfillment ideas. They have an option to help with fulfillment.
With a Kickstarter, you are kind of on your own. I as the writer of the project was also the editor, the shipping clerk, the customer service representative, the storefront. I was everything. And it is a lot to take on if you try to take on one of those projects by yourself. And Zoop gave me a little more help and cushion, so I quite feel so out there on my own. So that’s ultimately why I thought Zoop was the way to go this time.
And depending how many books you’re shipping out, it can add up too.
MDW: Yeah, it’s so much more expensive than you expect. And it’s not at the forefront of your mind when you’re thinking “I have a creative project I want to make. And I really want to just do the creative work.” When that’s your focus, you can get lost in “I’m going to make the book,” or whatever creative project. The sort of logistical stuff can sneak up on you because I’m not a logistic expert. I’m not a budgeting expert for that matter. So some of that stuff is really guess work and can really sneak up on you.
Continued belowYou expect this to be out around the end of 2023?
MDW: Earlier if we can do that. But certainly I would hope by then. It’s all written. Now that we’ve hit our goal, Rodrigo’s ready to start drawing the rest of the pages. And we’ve got a colorist on board we’re really excited to work with too. The hope that the art will get done pretty speedily. Then it will just be a matter of putting it all together and printing. Then getting it out to folks. Certainly I would hope by the end of the year would be a more than reasonable projection of when it could get out to people.
“Impostor Syndicate” #1-2 are currently funding on Zoop. You can learn more about Matt D. Wilson on his website: MattDWilson.net.
