Interviews 

Multiversity Comics Presents: Justin Jordan

By | August 11th, 2011
Posted in Interviews | % Comments

Today, we have a special day of interviews that coincides with two events: Artist August and the upcoming release of Image Comics’ much buzzed about title “The Strange Talent of Luther Strode.” For the first interview, we have writer Justin Jordan (later we talk with artist Tradd Moore), as we talk with him about breaking in to the industry, where Luther Strode came from, how he hooked up with his art team, and a whole lot more.

You’ll see a lot more about this as we get closer to its release, but let it be known that the buzz about Luther Strode is completely deserved. Both MC EIC Matt Meylikhov and myself were blown away by just how damn good and assured the storytelling is, especially for newcomers like the Luther Strode crew.

Check out our conversation with Justin Jordan after the jump.

Justin, it looks like The Strange Talent of Luther Strode is your first major work, but that you’ve been trying to break in for quite some time. How did you decide you wanted to pursue a career writing comics?

You know, I don’t know.

What surprises me, looking back, is that it took so long. I have been reading comics literally as long as I could read. When I was a really little kid, maybe three years old, I was constantly bugging anybody who was around to read me Popeye comic books and the Spider-Man strip in the old Electric Company magazines. I was so insatiable that my family taught me to read at the first available opportunity so that they could actually get stuff done.

And I never really got away from them. My tastes changed over the years and still do, but reading comics has been a constant part of my life. It never crossed my mind to write them until I was in my mid twenties or so. I think what happened was the Internet and the Warren Ellis forum.

I’m from the middle of nowhere. I mean, I can look out at my yard and see bears and deer middle of nowhere and while I’m not too ancient, I did grow up without the Internet. I was so far removed from where comics were done that it never really occurred to me that this was something I could do. But after college, I started lurking on the WEF and the forums that it spawned, and I realized that comics were a thing I could do. And once I started doing them, I found out that I really liked doing them. A quick six or seven years of toil and misery and here we are.

So yours has been a long road to make it. How did you keep yourself motivated, and what were you doing to attempt to break in?

Comics are fun.

I mean, yeah, writing can be hard, but at the end of the day I enjoy the process. I like looking for artists. I really love seeing them surprise me with what they send back, because dudes like Tradd can take a script and make it so much better. I’m pretty sure that if I did like it, I’d have drifted off years ago. I was one of those kids who did really well in stuff I was interested in school and so so in other stuff, and that’s unfortunately still true as an adult.

I actually had a plan and, broadly speaking, it worked. I started doing comics journalism stuff back at the beginning; I have a couple dozen articles up at CBR and I was in the first or second issue of Comics Foundry. My thought was that it would give me the credentials I needed to be able to talk to people at cons with some confidence, as opposed to being some random schmo.

This actually worked, but what it helped with most was being able to see how the business worked and how people did their books and put together their teams.

At the same time, I was working on the actual craft. I started with short stories, because I figured if I got good at telling an interesting story in five pages, I’d be good at doing longer stuff. Now that isn’t always true, but for me it was. Plus, it was easier when I was really nobody (as opposed to my current mostly nobody status) to ask artists to come on board for five pages and be done.

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From there, it was kind of a matter of working my way up using what I had. The more people I worked with, the easier it was to get people to work with me, so I was able to put together projects. I think Luther was my fifth pitch to Image over the years, and it might have been the sixth. All in all I did at least fifteen different pitches to various companies.

Basically, I just kept going. That’s still true, actually. The scripts for Luther have been finished for a while, and I’ve got five other projects with very good artists attached in various stages of development. I don’t expect them to all get picked up, but my recipe for success is doing the next thing. So far, so good.

So you’re working on all kinds of different books at all times, and you have been for a while, but The Strange Talent of Luther Strode was the first book that got picked up. Before we get into the how of it getting picked up, how did you recruit artist Tradd Moore and colorist Felipe Sobreiro to be part of your band of merry men?

I spend more time than is probably strictly healthy drifting through places like DeviantArt looking for artists, which was how I found Tradd. And you know, I totally underestimated what I found. I knew he was good and I knew he was right for the project when I saw his art, but he’s turned out to be one of the most gifted artists I’ve ever worked.

His stuff just plain looks cool, which is awesome, but he also has a really tremendous grasp of body language and visual storytelling. I actually took a lot of dialogue and captions out of the book because Tradd just nailed it in the art and the words were fluff. He’s also got a downright scary ability to read one of my one line panel descriptions and then draw it exactly like it was in my head. I’m pretty sure he’s a witch. Possibly a warlock.

I’ve actually known Felipe online for a few years now, and I’ve always been a fan of his work, both this coloring and his actual drawing. Felipe actually did a kick ass back cover for the book that’s all him. Believe it or not, finding colorists is a lot harder for me than finding artists, because I’m not a huge fan of the over rendered look that a lot of people have gotten into these days. I wanted a pretty specific look, and Felipe nailed.

I don’t think colorists get enough credit, honestly. Felipe is an integral part of the book and, like Tradd, he makes me look better at what I do.

The project has been pretty serendipitous. Tradd was the first and obviously only artist I looked at, and Felipe was just right for the colors. And we work together really well. We’re just on the same wavelength. I mentioned Tradd’s uncanny ability, but Felipe has it too. Like the back cover; I had an idea, and I went to email Felipe to find that he’d emailed me with the exact same idea. It makes doing the project really easy and really fun. Plus, I actually like the guys.

Which is good, because Tradd might turn me into a toad, otherwise.

So you got your team supreme together, and the book itself started to come together. How did you decide to take Luther Strode to Image, and was it a fairly easy process to make that happen?

Well, I love Image, and I don’t say that just because they’re putting out my book (doesn’t hurt, though). Probably seventy five percent of the comics I buy are from Image, and there’s really not a better place for people who are submitting blind, which is what we did. I’ve actually met Eric Stephenson once, but I’d stake money he doesn’t remember it a one sentence exchange at a con a few years ago.

So Image is my first choice for my projects. If they’d passed, I’d have tried at other places – the book wouldn’t be out of place at Dark Horse – but I was lucky that they dug what we were doing. I sent in the pitch by email and they accepted it almost right away. By comparison, I once got a rejection letter from another company eighteen months after pitching, so getting a response back from Image the same day I sent the pitch was nice.

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This project has really come together really well. Everything has just synced up.

Well, Luther Strode itself is fantastic and recalls high school films – with the put-upon “nerd” characters – as well as horror films – with the Friday the 13th inspired high school and the extreme violence. But it also has a lot of heart to it. I’m very curious as to what the origins of this book were – where did it come from and how long had you been developing it?

I came up with the idea in and around this time in 2009. It actually went pretty quickly from concept to getting Tradd on, but there were some bumps between getting Tradd on board and getting the pitch to Image, which was November of last year. We’ve taken this long to get to the actual book coming out because we wanted to get the thing done before the first issue is on the stands, which we will.

But I think I only had the idea maybe two months before it was developed enough for me to get an artist, which is really quick. Most of my ideas percolate in my brain for a lot longer than that.

Jason Voorhees

Like most things, this came from a lot of different places, but the two big inspirations were Jason Voorhees and Charles Atlas, which might be the first time those two have been in a sentence together.

I had this thought a while back that the line between superheroes and movie slashers wasn’t necessarily as distinct as it might seem. I mean, take Rorschach. He puts on a mask, scares the shit out of people, and kills people he views as bad. That could describe Jason just as easily. There’s a certain kind of morality play at work in a lot of slashers – the people that get killed are the kids that smoke weed and fuck around. The kids that are doing bad things, basically. From a certain skewed POV, slashers are vigilantes. And in universe, Batman and, especially, The Punisher are going to inspire that same kind of terror.

But that’s not an idea that I could do anything with, on its own, so it just kind of bounced around in my head. But then I was thinking about the old Charles Atlas ads you used to get in comic books. One of the most popular ones is the classic sand kicked in the face at the beach one, which is so iconic that people who’ve never seen it will recognize it.

That’s pretty explicitly a revenge fantasy, asking people what if they could do to the bullies what had been done to them. And I thought, as writer types do, what if? What if it worked? What if it really worked? What if you were a person who’d been bullied, abused and generally kicked around by life and all of the sudden, you’ve got the ability to stop that. Not just stop it, but do exactly that to the people that hurt you. Even if you’re a good person, that’s a hard temptation to resist.

At some point these ideas met in my head, had a few drinks, made sweet sweet love and Luther Strode popped out.

So for readers who are not aware of The Strange Talent of Luther Strode yet, what can they expect from this book? Why should they pre-order it from their local comic book shop?

A lot of blood, action, humor and general mayhem. The Strange Talent of Luther Strode can get pretty dark, but it’s a pretty fun story and if I’ve done my job right you’re going to like spending time with the characters or, in the case of spending time with The Librarian, the main villain, you’re going to love to hate him. It’s a love letter to the kinds of movies I liked growing and the kinds of comics that I like now. It’s funny, it’s horrifying and it’s the best comic I could make.

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What I tried to do, what I always try to do, is write the comics that I want to read. I want to read a comic where the nerd gets to kick the bully’s ass, where he has a funny best friend and a cool girl who thinks he doesn’t entirely suck. I want to read a comic where a pinstripe wearing librarian makes a person wear another person’s head as a hat, although I might be alone in that last one. Basically, I want to read a comic that’s got a plot that keeps moving and a story that kicks all the ass. Which this is, although my opinion on that maybe slightly biased.

Of course, they’ll definitely want to see what Tradd and Felipe have cooked up art wise. Even in the high unlikely event that someone doesn’t like the book (he said, modestly) it’s just do damned fun to look at. Tradd’s going to be a big name in no time flat, and you’ll see him here first. I just hope I get to work with him a couple more times.

Luther Strode, as far as leads are concerned, is kind of the nerd but also a bit of a step up in that he’s reasonably confident and comfortable with his burgeoning badassery. How did you develop him as a lead, and where did the name Luther Strode come from?

Laurie Strode

The name is the easy part. Strode is after Laurie Strode, who is sort of our final girl. Luther isn’t a girl, obviously, but he’s the hero of the thing and it seemed appropriate. Luther, on the other hand, is a bit of an homage to a certain comic book super-villain, albeit spelled differently. Which speaks to the other side of his story. I don’t generally go in for clever names, but it had nice ring to it and it’s freaking obscure that I think I’m likely to be the only one who gets it.

Now character wise, Luther is a nerd, but he’s not a pushover. He’s a smart guy and a fairly tough kid. He’s had to be, considering the life he’s had before the story starts. I had a pretty clear idea of the kind of guy Luther was before I started writing the story. I wish I could give a more specific answer, but some aspects of writing are a lot like alchemy – you stir some stuff together and get something that’s a lot different than the original product. The basic idea is that he’s someone who’s not had an easy life, but he’s working hard to be better than his upbringing.

Luther Strode is definitely a book that has its fair share of ultra-violence. What is your intent with the level of violence? Is it strictly plot, or is there a message within those actions? Was there ever a point where you thought you needed to tone the book down?

It’s there for a couple of reasons: the big and obvious one is that gore is a pretty integral part of the slasher movies we’re riffing off of. On a more story level, it’s because when you’re dealing with people with superhuman abilities, people are going to get fucked up. Now that hasn’t been a new concept since Wylie’s Gladiator, but one of the themes is the difference between fantasy and reality.

It’s one thing to dream about punching a bully in the face, but it’s whole different animal to feel his skin ripping under your knuckles and hear him crying. Likewise, you might think about having superpowers and beating up criminals, when the reality is more “holy shit, his head came off!” So it’s a sort of realistic take fantastic powers.

I never considered it toning it down. I did think about, from a business perspective, we might lose sales because it’s definitely a mature book. But it’s the best thing for the story. One thing that was an issue was making sure the violence level builds. There’s some fairly nasty stuff right from the second page, but the further along Luther gets, the worse the level of violence and general destruction.

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So far, thanks to mostly Eric Stephenson, the excitement for this book has been growing pretty rapidly, and the response has been extremely strong from those who have read it. Are you blown away by this, or is it something you really went in expecting?

Man, no. I try to keep a vaguely zen thing going with the projects I do – I do the best I can and send them out and hope for the best, but I try not to anticipate either them failing or them doing well. I knew Luther was a pretty unique book and that Tradd and Felipe were kicking ass, so I thought we had a better than normal chance of getting picked, but I didn’t expect things to go as well as they have. I keep waiting to wake up, you know?

Eric Stephenson has been tremendously supportive, and I can’t overemphasize how much I appreciate that or how good it feels. If we get half as much enthusiasm from readers and retailers, I’ll be a happy man.

Alright, now we’re into the more general, non Luther Strode portion of the interview – the Justin Jordan part.

So let’s say Luther Strode is a mega hit and you are the cat’s meow of the comic industry. You can choose what you do next. What would that dream project be? It could be creator-owned, any Big Two character, any collaborator.

Well, I’d be a big fat liar if I said there weren’t some Big Two characters I’d like to work on; I’d really like to get my fingers on Batman, Daredevil or the Punisher. And Azrael, actually. And there are characters that I’d be interested in because I think they’d be hard to write, like Superman or, especially, The Flash.

I’d would kill (well, maim, maybe) to work with Eduardo Risso or Stuart Immomen, although Azzarello seems to have Risso wrapped up permanently. I have this big sci fi series that I want to do at some point in the future that, in my head, is drawn by Risso. Incredibly unlikely to happen, but a boy can dream.

But I love creator owned stuff. I’ve got a list of sixty or so idea that are developed enough that I could probably find a story in them (as opposed to the near infinite number of orphaned ideas in my skull looking for a home) which is enough to keep me occupied for the next decade or so even if never had another idea. What I’d really like to do is be Warren Ellis.

Not so much in terms of style, but I like that Ellis is able, probably more so than anyone else in the industry, to experiment with format. He puts out single issues, minis, ongoing, a web comic, a design object comic with thought bubbles that be read with UV, all that. Plus, lately, movies and novels. So yeah, I’d like to do what he’s doing. I also really admire what Jonathan Hickman is doing – I’m really psyched to see Feel Better Now.

Speaking of all of those names, even though we could likely guess a few of them from those creators you shared, what are your own personal favorite comics, both current and in the past?

I really admire Morrison, too. He takes a lot of risks with the way he tells the stories, which is really impressive considering that as of late he’s mostly been working on DC’s flagship titles. It says a lot that he was able to put out something as fundamentally nuts as Final Crisis. He doesn’t always succeed, but he’s always trying something different. Which, you know, is probably why he’s still top dog after what, twenty five years in comics?

My favorites? Well, I don’t think saying that Planetary and 100 Bullets are probably my top two comics is any of kind of a surprise. Of course, like anyone else in comics, I’m a pretty big Alan Moore fan boy, so you throw most of his stuff in there. I’m a big fan of the old pulp stuff, so I really liked Tom Strong.

I’m a big fan of Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder, although I haven’t picked up the new editions that Dark Horse has put out. I really admire the depth of her work. She adds in hundreds of details that she doesn’t explain in the text, although she does have annotations, and it gives this tremendous sense of place to her work. It’s something I’ve tried to integrate into my own stuff, actually.

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I really like Chew. Aside from the fact that it’s funny and fun, I like that it’s so damn weird. One thing I don’t do well is that kind of weird. I’ve got a sort of clockwork mind, and I like stuff where people can just slam together all this strange stuff and make the whole thing work. I’m a big fan of mysteries and crime novels, so Scalped and Criminal are some of my favorite stuff. And Cooke’s Stark adaptations are the bees knees.

Brandon Seifert’s Witch Doctor is really pretty awesome. Now, Brandon and I have been friends since before either one of us was at Image, but it’s still one of the best debuts in a while. I also like a lot of Jodorowsky’s stuff – Metabarons in particular. His stuff, for me is kind of like watching a David Lynch or Dario Argento film, there’s this sense that it all makes perfect sense in some other world.

Wow, that’s even more disjointed than usual. What can I say, I like comics.

So as someone who is making his break into the industry, what advice can you give to others who are looking to get into the industry?

Be relentless. I didn’t make it into Image on the first, second or even third try. You might hit one out of the park on your first try, but you probably won’t, so be prepared to pitch a lot of stuff. At the same time, make sure you’re working on your craft. One of the key parts of being successful, I think, is developing the ability to know when you suck. And believe, you will sometimes suck. Maybe Alan Moore gets it right every time, but I don’t think anyone else does.

Go to cons. Not necessarily to meet editors or even artists, but to get a feel for what the industry is like. Plus, they’re fun. Take what you do seriously. Now, as should be pretty obvious from this interview, I am not a super serious dude, but I make what I do creatively take priority. I make sure everything I do is done as well as I can do it, and I try to keep an eye towards building an actual career out of it.

But really, it’s persistence and making sure you do the work. I was lucky to get Tradd and Felipe on board. I was lucky that Image picked it up. I was lucky Eric Stephenson liked it. Those are all things I can’t control. What I can do, which is why I’ve got so many projects going, is give myself the most chances for luck to be on my side. So if you’re trying to get into comics, always be doing the next thing. Or things.

Last question for you. What’s next for Justin Jordan?

Probably some friend chicken and mashed potatoes. No, wait, you probably mean in comics. I’ve got a bunch of projects in the hopper, so it depends on what gets picked up. I know I’d like to follow up Luther with a comic called Blackheart Valentine that’s about made up urban legend (as in, someone started it intentionally) that seems to have come to life. It kind of follows in the same weird look at superheroes that Luther does, and it’s probably the funniest thing I’ve ever written.

I’m also, right this second, looking at layouts for The Weird Adventures of Jenny Strange, which is basically Veronica Mars crossed with Doc Savage. I’ve also got some sequels in mind for Luther Strode if the first series is a hit. Like any slasher, he’ll be back for more mayhem. Beyond that, I’m always cooking up something. And I am available for hire by any large, big twoish type companies, hint subtle hint.


David Harper

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