Interviews 

Multiversity Comics Presents: Marc Silvestri

By | March 20th, 2012
Posted in Interviews | % Comments

Today on Multiversity Comics Presents, we have a treat for you. Image Founder and Top Cow Mastermind Marc Silvestri took time out from his busy schedule to speak to us about the past, present, and future of comics, along with why you should be picking up “the Darkness.” Follow along the cut for the chat, and look out for Top Cow Marketing Guru Filip Sablik who shows up in the interview as well!

Multiversity Comics: You’re coming up on the Twentieth Anniversary of Image and you’ve influenced the industry in a lot of ways, but what are you most proud of at Top Cow and Image?

Marc Silvestri: I guess the thing I’m most proud of with Image–and Top Cow, which is part of Image, obviously – is, that we have our own path that we’ve taken just like all the partners have taken their own path, but we’re still Image Comics; is the fact that we blazed a trail for a brotherhood and sisterhood of creators in our field. 20 years later, there is a solid choice. We weren’t a flash in the pan, we could have been! There were many opportunities to self-destruct. We tried hard to do that! [Laughs] But we fought through everything including ourselves and today, the best thing I can say is that people have a choice.

MC: 20 Years ago, there were no such things as characters like Witchblade, the Darkness, etc. And today in Marvel and DC, new characters have no chance of “making it.” You may have the odd one where they’ll relaunch Blue Beetle with a different character. How did you make sure that these characters not only became successful, but became multimedia icons?

MS: Absolutely. Internally, we call Witchblade and the Darkness mini-icons; modern icons. Like Spawn fits into that category, Hellboy too. When you think about it, I just listed four. I could probably start diving a little bit more but they fall off quickly past that. Then you go back to the Marvel stuff for icons. Like DC stuff: Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, The X-Men, Captain America. But even there, their icons are [50+ years old]! But for us, Witchblade, Darkness, and Top Cow/Image in general, don’t compete directly with what those guys are doing. Number One: they’re already doing it, and number two, like you mentioned; they haven’t been able to launch any new icon. All of their popular characters are at least 40 years old!

MC: I’d say the youngest is 35-40 years old, yeah.

MS: The closest thing they came to a new icon would be the Punisher. And when was he created; the late 70’s-80s? That’s it. Otherwise, like you said, they either rehash or ride the coattails or what have you, and they haven’t been able to crack it.

Well, we thought we’d do something a little different. With Witchblade, which was probably a huge gamble; Cyberforce wasn’t really a gamble, it was just a derivative of what I was already doing.

Filip Sablik (Top Cow PR Guru): SSHHH! Nobody knows that!

MS: Everybody knows that! [Laughs] There’s nothing wrong with that, I just put a twist on it. But it helped up because fans were able to identify me with that subject matter, so they could just follow to my part of Image Comics, and it’s what I like to do. Because we had the opportunity to do what we wanted to because nobody could tell us “no”–I GUARANTEE you Witchblade would never have happened at Marvel Comics if I had pitched that idea. If Brian Haberman, Michael Turner–especially Michael Turner back then, because he wasn’t Michael Turner yet as far as fame, and I had walked in, we never would have even had that meeting. They would have said “you know what? We’re closed today [laughs]! But the fact that we could make those decisions internally. Billy Tucci had just gotten started with Shi, so he cracked the door a little bit for–the term back then was–bad girl’s comics. It was this umbrella term that didn’t do any of the books any favors by labeling them that, but yeah ok whatever, we had that little crack there, along with the supernatural. The only place where Marvel was touching the supernatural was Doctor Strange, and even he was a fifth tier character. Everything else was all reboots.

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So we said “let’s do this!” no one was really doing supernatural tale based on the legend of King Arthur and there was an opportunity here for a female lead. We’ve got this new guy named Michael Turner that showed a lot of stuff when he did Ballistic for us, a mini-series, plus a lot of trading cards. We thought “let’s build a franchise on this concept with this artist and just go with it,” and to this day, it’s still one of my favorite launches of any of the books we’ve ever done. I think it’s textbook how we did that. Success was maybe fortunate, but none of the success leading up to that was an accident. It was all calculated, and it was something we wanted to do and we had all kinds of passion behind it, but it was something different; it was risky, and we had to get it out here in the right way for people to notice.

The creative team was important. Having Michael Turner on there right at the beginning of his career where everyone took notice; the backstory and the depth we gave the character, Sara Pezzini; we had meetings after meetings before that book was written. We launched it with Shi. We kind of snuck her into here with Shi/Cyblade, and so on. The freedom that Image gives allowed us to do that. That’s Image working at its best.

MC: Is there anything you would have done differently launching Top Cow or “Darkness” or “Witchblade”?

MS: I wouldn’t have done anything differently launching “Witchblade” or “Darkness,” because I think those were pretty much perfect launches; like launching  “Darkness” out of “Witchblade”. Darkness actually came up first. David Wohl–who was editor-in-chief at the time, in the early 90’s–and I would spitball back and forth at lunch and I tossed him the idea of “the Darkness.” I said “look, I love horror and sci-fi and fantasy, how about we have this guy that is limited to the dark? He could live in the light, but his abilities were limited to the dark and what that would mean.” The fact that what he had was actually a curse. He was actually a very lonely man because of it. We kind of went from there. We launched that out of “Witchblade,” even though “Darkness” came first as an idea. Witchblade came at the right time, and again with the right creative team, and the window for a female lead was perfect. We launched “Witchblade.” We developed “the Darkness” and he came out after that. So I wouldn’t change those launches at all.

I think the only things I would have changed about the early days of Top Cow would be taking what I know today, which would be impossible, because none of us what the Hell we were doing really. The fact our sales were so high allowed us to make a lot of mistakes. I just think being more mindful and more organized and being more of a company would have been smart, but at the same time, I would have to qualify that and add that Image would not be Image if we were like that, if we thought that way. There’s a reason we got away from the corporate culture, and that’s because we wanted to do what we wanted to do; the Hell with everybody else except for our fans! We were very in tune with what our fans wanted because we were fans. We were kind of the people’s creators at that point. In retrospect I can say “I know this now and I know this now,” but I can honestly say if I DID know this stuff now and all of us knew then what we know today, it wouldn’t be the same, it’d be another Marvel or DC Comics. But because it was the Wild West, because we were all kind of crazy, and because the fans supported us–they were the key really, we were able to have those teething problems. Those teething problems actually turned into a positive way or doing business today. We were so outside the norm, we broke so many molds back then, that we changed comics. To a certain degree, and this may sound big, but we may have changed the way pop culture is even presented from a creative standpoint. I think there was a big bleed off of what happened with Image in other media; the fact that people COULD own their creations which rarely happened in other media. Yo didn’t own it. Someone owned it, and you may have seen some nice residuals from it, but somebody else owned it.

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MC: Yeah, I think they say that if you do anything for Marvel or DC, they own it.

MS: which is fine! They still operate the same way today but it’s not really what we are. And that’s fine! I can completely respect and understand why somebody would just go and want to Spider-Man or whatever book, because they love that book; or because they don’t want to take that gamble. More power to you. As long as you’re doing comics and you’re happy. But then you get guys like Robert Kirkman that takes the chance and sticks with Image even though he has all these other opportunities, and he blows up! He’s the biggest thing now. It’s awesome for him, and all of us, really. Robert Kirkman is always my example of how Image works. If there were no Image there would be not “Walking Dead,” and that would suck. It would be a shame to not have that today.

MC: You went from “X-Men” and “Wolverine” back in the day to creating your own universe. Did you take anything from there when you created Top Cow, maybe in the sense of how you approached the universe?

MS: Again, we didn’t really know, all we started with was one creation just to see how that would work. When we saw the “Youngblood” numbers come in–which was already in production, Image or no Image, it was going to happen. Rob really kind of kicked it all off.

You really couldn’t think of a universe beyond that book too much, because then you’re getting ahead of yourself, putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. Once we knew it was successful, and we knew weren’t going away tomorrow; we started thinking: “what is the universe we can play in? How can we spin-off from what we’ve already started?” We didn’t really start thinking about a universe until “Witchblade” and “Darkness.” With them we had an anchor. Our anchor was the supernatural. That’s what our main universe is. That’s where our main universe will spawn out from. Combining that with common clichés and tropes from the superhero genre was all we did. My love for horror, sci-fi, and fantasy mixed with the world of tights and capes, that’s what our approach was to it. That’s when we really started building the Top Cow brand to separate it from everything else that was going on out there. Initially a universe is a little too much to think about, but thankfully we were able to.

MC: Witchblade was a popular TV show on TNT and the Darkness is a popular video game. Are there any plans to move on into movies with either of those?

MS: Yes!

MC: We have a thing called the casting Couch where we fancast certain properties, so if you could cast Sara Pezzini and Jackie Estacado, who would play them?

MS: Oh, I know who I want to play them, but I can’t say [grins]. Here’s the weird thing about Hollywood: I think anyone who WANTS to get their made and they answer that question, they just shot their movie in the foot. The reason why is that talent is very particular in Hollywood. If they see that you’ve announced them, or you want them first, you’re done. They and their representatives have to come to you, or at least feel like they came to you. No offense to your site, which I’m a fan of! But I do have people in mind, and coincidentally enough, there is interest, which makes us happy. Hopefully we’ll have some announcements very soon on both Darkness AND Witchblade as features, both of them. We’ve obviously already announced they’re in development. The Darkness will hopefully have a really good announcement really soon.

FS: Were waiting on contracts. We have two potential announcements with The Darkness.

MS: which will be very cool.

FS: We’re just being dicks and teasing you.

MS: [laughs] But I think we have a really good track record taking our stuff into other media. If you look at our TV shows and you look at Wanted. Certainly if you look at the vide o games we’ve done with the Darkness, we’re not ones who are going to throw our creative hats and say “we wanna make a movie!” There are guys that make deals like that because it’s exciting and nothing happens. Or it does happen it could be really shitty, just because it’s exciting. It’s like “Oh Hollywood wants me!” Well yeah, they do, sorta, but you’ve got to be careful.

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We’ve had a good track record of teaming with people who aren’t going to screw us or our franchises up, because we like our franchises, and our fans like our franchises and we want to keep them the best we can.

God, I can’t even think of how many Witchblade treatments we’ve turned down or projects we torpedoed just because we weren’t happy with how they were going. Our contracts give us that right. We have final approvals on everything, which is essential for us. We could have a really crappy Witchblade movie out there, or a really crappy Darkness movie out there, or a really crappy Darkness video game out there.

I actually watched the pilot to the Witchblade TV series, and it’s pretty damn contemporary. It was made 12 years ago and you look at if and you look at an episode of CSI, visually, it looks very much like Witchblade. The way it’s shot, the way the stories are told, we did that years ago. It was kind of under the radar, but we did it. There are things I would have done differently, but I was proud of the fact we even got it on the air, considering what it was and if you think about it, how impossible it was to get something like that made with the subject matter. It wasn’t cheap; we spent a lot of money on that show. I was really proud of both Darkness video games.

MC: It probably helped launch cable television too, because before that, there wasn’t a lot of it. Before that it was mostly reruns of like Law and Order.

MS: Yeah, and TNT at the time was trying to put their stamp out there. I think it was the same season TNT started that “We Know Drama” ad campaign and we were one of those shows. It was sometimes a fight, because sometimes what they wanted was different from what we wanted. But they signed the checks so whatever. We had production problems and we had to shut down. We still hold the dubious distinction of being the highest rated show ever canceled! [Laughs]

We’re proud of everything that we’ve done. Certainly we could look back and things there are certain things we could have done better, like a certain book could have been cared for more, but we have an opportunity here, especially since we’ve relaunched the entire Top Cow Universe with “Artifacts”, is that Jackie Estacado has made the whole world in his own vision to make himself happy. If you know anything about Jackie, you know that’s kinda fucked up! [Laughs] He does a very selfish thing because he has the opportunity to do so because he’s been tortured for so many years, that he just goes “to Hell with this, this is what I want” without considering the butterfly effect, which we’re going to explore in all of our books, which I think is going to be a lot of fun. Not just for us, but for the readers as well along with the creators. We’re extremely creator friendly. We’re extremely collaborative and we trust the people we work with, like Ron Marz. We gave that guy a big responsibility to take the reins of our universe. How long has he been writing for us?

FS: 7 years I think? And for the past 4 he’s been writing the majority of the Top Cow universe books by himself. We’ve always been about empowering creators and making them feel like they have ownership in the characters and the direction of the company.

MS: and that falls in line with the idea of Image: Creator Involvement. Again, one of the reasons that Image was started, was so creators, like artists, it happens to the writers but primarily the artists–were treated as hired guns. Like “Editorial has already had the conversation, this is what you’re going to do. This is what we want. We’ve already told the writer this is what we want.” It’s like “ok, this is really…freeing…and that was another reason why Image was formed.

I think Todd [McFarlane] pointed this out when he created “Spawn.” Spider-Man started selling really well when he joined the team. He thought “what’s the correlation to my being on the book and the sales spike? Was there a connection? I don’t know.” They didn’t tell him because they never involved him in the discussion, which is bizarre. I think that was one of the motivating factors for Todd was that they just didn’t want him to be a part of the creative process. Which, I get it, it’s Spider-Man, it’s their baby, whatever, but Todd probably had a few good ideas that he could have shared. We all felt that way. I had ideas for the X-Men, and as a matter of fact, Cyberforce was one. I was going to pitch it to Marvel as an offshoot of the X-Men. The way I had it structured very natural but they didn’t even want to hear about it. And then Image came alone so I just took it over there and we’re still here, 20 years later.

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MC: Since you were all initially artists coming from Marvel, did you stick to the Marvel way of doing books for your own titles?

MS: I never really liked working in the Marvel with just a plot. It was really unfair to the artist. First of all, you’re the slowest part of the process. I don’t care how fast you are, you’re still the slowest part of the process. Theoretically a good writer can write two of three books a month; at least one on a regular basis. An artist, especially working in the Marvel System, I don’t know if they’ve changed it since then.

FS: Most of the guys tell me they write full script there now.

MC: which save a Hell of a lot of time. I remember when I first started working in comics; I’d get thrown his chunk of paper, sometimes there weren’t even page breakdowns. You had to read the story, figure out to fit it into 22 pages and where do I put the breaks for each page so it’s dramatic for the reader. NOW you have to lay out the book, and now you gotta draw it! You had maybe a week of pre-production before you even started drawing the book, and now you have to draw the book!

We do the script version, which is just easier all around. You get what the writer wants; you still have leeway to make changes because you know exactly where the page breaks, you know exactly what happens on the page and I want to focus on this aspect of the page because this is where the drama really hits on panel three or four. It’s just better all around. It makes for a better experience for everybody.

MC: Moving on to The Darkness #101, which comes out this week, anniversary issues are usually jumping on points. Would you say this is a good jumping on point for the book or the universe?

MS: It’s a good jumping on point for the universe because it’s a relaunch, but it’s done in such a way that longtime fans will be rewarded. It’s very organic, in the way we wrote it. Filip was helpful in that, and so was Matt Hawkins We paid attention to the fact we had fans for twenty years, Top Cow has had fans for 15+ years, for Witchblade and Darkness. We need to make sure they are always serviced and happy. Plus we needed to shake things up a bit to bring in new readers who might check us out.

When we had our universe destroyed and we rebuilt it in Jackie’s image, there’s a lot of opportunity for new readers to just kind of catch up. For longtime fans it’s just another chapter that’s grown organically.

FS: one of the things we discussed in the meetings early on is that we didn’t want to involve time travel or alternate dimensions because they first of all, don’t make sense. And we wanted it to make sense. It’s a big pet peeve. It had to be linear. Something that was moving forward and didn’t disrespect fans who had read the books for years and loved the stories that we told.

MS: That’s true, and that’s important.

FS: Each of the Rebirth books, including “Darkness,” has a five page spread that explains what happened before so readers know this is built on top of something but I’ve got everything I need to know right here.

MS: You also don’t need to read 50 books to know what’s going on. We were very cognizant of that. That kind of stuff is daunting. Very few people I know are still completists when it comes to books. You have your favorites, and those are the ones you collect. You don’t want to read this book that makes no sense to you as a fan just to see what’s going on.  Were very careful with what we say. There are Easter Eggs everywhere for people who are familiar with our books. Continuity is there, even though we fractured the universe. For new people, it’s a great place to jump on.

MC: Are there any more books coming out of “Artifacts?” We have a Witchblade and a Darkness ongoing: are we going to have maybe a Magdalena ongoing or Angelus?

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MS: Filip, what CAN we talk about?

FS: for the next few months up until Comic Con in July, we’re focusing on Witchblade, Darkness, and Artifacts to make sure they come out on time and there’s the story for it. Everybody kind of gets settled into that, because from time to time, we’ve had issues making sure things ship on time, so that’s been a main focus with Eric Stephenson and the guys over at Image. These new teams are kickin’ butt so we want people to focus on that.

We have some stuff for the later part of the year, but–

MS: That we CAN’T talk about! But is there anything coming out in the first part of the year?

FS: No, just those three books, but we do have a new book from Minotaur, which is not related to the Top Cow Universe, called “Think Tank,” from creators Matt Hawkins and Rahsan Ekedal, who did “Echoes” which is about, I think the way Matt described it that he thinks science is cool, and he’s trying to make science and scientists, cool.

Finally, at the tail end of the year, we’re aware it’s the anniversary, so we’ve got some stuff that will highlight and celebrate that.

MS: That was nicely baked. [Laughs] We have a lot of cool stuff coming down the pipe. That’s all we can say right now.

Thanks to Mark Silvestri and Filip Sablik who took the time to talk to us!


Gilbert Short

Gilbert Short. The Man. The Myth. The Legend. When he's not reading comic books so you don't have to, he's likely listening to mediocre music or watching excellent television. Passionate about Giants baseball and 49ers football. When he was a kid he wanted to be The Ultimate Warrior. He still kind of does. His favorite character is Superman and he will argue with you about it if you try to convince him otherwise. He also happens to be the head of Social Media Relations, which means you should totally give him a follow onTwitter.

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