Interviews 

Multiversity Turns 5 with: the Return of “RoboCop” with Writer Joshua Williamson [Interview]

By | May 5th, 2014
Posted in Interviews | % Comments
RoboCop #1 Cover by Goñi Montes

As announced last month, “Ghosted” and “Captain Midnight” writer Joshua Williamson will be launching a new “RoboCop” ongoing series at BOOM! with artist Carlos Magno (“Planet of the Apes,” “Deathmatch”). We spoke with Williamson about the project, and got some exclusive inked lineart from Magno. Thanks to our pals at BOOM!, and make sure to check out the series come July.

Exclusive line art from Carlos Magno

How did this project come about? Was this a property you had a desire to work on?

Joshua Williamson: : BOOM! had offered me one of the four one-shots they were doing for the new movie, and I was like “ehh, I don’t know,” and I didn’t have time – well, first I said yes, but quickly realized I had no time. But on top of that I wasn’t really interested in the new movie, if I was going to do anything; it was going to be something with the original movie.

And then Bryce Carlson called me – we had gone back and forth on it, and I had turned it down again, because of time, but then a few months later the original series opened up and Bryce said “What would you like to do?” And I said I wanted to do a gritty crime story. I would want RoboCop to be the only thing that is sci-fi in the whole story, sort of like “Masks and Mobsters” where it is the mobsters’ view of that world, but with this, it is the criminal’s view of RoboCop. Like how do they see him? Obviously, you have this super cop in town, how do they see him? I was gestating on these ideas for awhile, and then I went on a jog and this character popped in my head named Killian – I could hear him talking, I could hear him talking about RoboCop, and it just sort of came from there. And I got home from the job and I called Bryce and I said “this is what I’m going to do” and he said “that’s perfect.”

Once I got the bad guy character down in my head, it all flowed from there. He’s really easy to write. He’s sort of this smarmy, charismatic bad guy – do you remember in Magnolia, Tom Cruise’s character?

Of course.

JW: Yeah, he’s like that. I actually sent that whole scene to Carlos [Magno], because at the beginning of issue 2 Killian is giving a speech, and I said, “This is what I want.”

There’s a scene in issue 1 where he’s talking to all these criminals he knows, and he says, “Where’s the party at? I want to raise hell!” and they’re all like, “there’s no party any more because of RoboCop” – but then he sees RoboCop in action, he looks at the other criminal, and says “you numbnuts, RoboCop didn’t get rid of the party, he is the party,” and the story starts there.

Exclusive line art from Carlos Magno

So last night, I watched the original movie in preparation of this interview, and it totally holds up.

JW: It’s great, right?

It is! I hadn’t seen it in 15 or so years, and I forgot just how good it is.

JW: It’s a nice little crime story, almost like a western, right? They kill the sheriff, and he comes back from the dead, and he’s coming for them, it’s great.

Now, that is the only piece of the RoboCop mythos that you’re using as source material, right?

JW: Yes.

Why did you make that decision, or was this a decision that BOOM! had made ahead of time?

JW: It was a conversation, let’s put it that way. It was something that early on I went to BOOM! with – I love the first one, it is amazing, but the rest of them, not so much – before I got this job, I watched them all again, and I remember my friend Vinny [Navarrete], the guy I do “Sketch Monsters” with, we were at my house watching the third one at my house, and were like “this is ridiculous!” Ninjas and jetpacks.

Continued below

Exclusive line art from Carlos Magno

I haven’t seen the sequels.

JW: Oh my God, they’re not good.

There are good ideas in there, but as movies they complicate things. The whole thing is with the mayor – he saves the mayor in the first one where the council tries to hold him hostage. He saves that mayor, and in the movie there is a second mayor, and his story is really confusing, the motivations are kind of strange.

Variant Cover by Carlos Magno

So, I decided to set the book just shortly after the first movie and go from there, like within six months. I took it to BOOM!, and they were ok with it, and I thought MGM would be ok with it, and they were. They’ve (MGM) been on top of stuff, but I can’t believe how much they are letting me get away with. MGM really wants to focus on merchandising with the new movie, so it makes sense to limit what is out there from the other movies, so by focusing just on the first one, it helps us all out.

Did they very particularly not want the series to touch on the new movie?

JW: Yeah – there were things that might have been too close. I haven’t seen the new film yet, but some of my editors have. My one editor, Alex, is a huge RoboCop fan, and so part of it is I’ve been writing to him as well. I have this with “Captain Midnight” as well; if someone in the office is a big fan, and they’re impressed, you know you’re doing something right.

I figured something out yesterday, when I was going over the lettering – RoboCop is never going to have emphasis in his speech, because he’s always so monotone.

That’s a really good way to show that on the page.

JW: Yeah, especially because Killian is so verbose and so over the top, old school, fire and brimstone preacher like, and then there’s RoboCop.

Exclusive line art from Carlos Magno

What supporting cast from the first film is showing up?

JW: Well, obviously Officer Lewis – there’s a lot going on with her. She has an arc, there’s a story there about her relationship with RoboCop. She’s…she’s not always going to be a beat cop. There’s a part of her that feels responsible for him – he is her partner, she’s very adamant about that – but there are times when she’s basically babysitting him, helping him out and, eventually, she’s going to move on, so what happens to RoboCop then, and to their relationship? Are they friends? I mean, he’s half man half machine, and he’s got his humanity back, but the problem is that RoboCop is never going to be anything other than RoboCop – that’s all he is.

That’s his endgame.

JW: Yeah, he will be RoboCop until his body parts fall apart.

Sarge is in it, yelling stuff at Cecil from behind the desk. Cecil is in it occasionally, Mason is in it. Mason is a character who is barely in the first movie, but he’s the first cop that Murphy meets, who gives him the tour. He’s one of the guys who goes on strike with the other guy. So, that guy plays a big part. I needed more cops in the story – someone for Ann to talk to that isn’t a robot – someone who isn’t part man part machine all cop.

The old man is there, who doesn’t have a name, he’s just the old man.

But everyone knows who you’re talking about when you say “the old man.”

JW: Yeah, it’s so weird. The mayor is there, and that’s just about everyone. Well, and Killian.

Killian is more than just a bad guy; he’s a supporting character, too.

Do you have any interest in going into the pre-RoboCop history of Murphy?

JW:Nope. I’m going to avoid all of that. RoboCop is part of the book, but it is about the police force and Detroit, so I want to move forward and focus on the present rather than deal with the past.

Continued below

Exclusive line art from Carlos Magno

How did you and Carlos come to work together on the book?

JW: BOOM! brought him on, but I was thrilled when I saw his work. Any artist that works will me will tell you that I have little ticks, things I like and don’t like, and when I saw Carlos’s pages, and saw that he did things I do like and didn’t like things I didn’t like, I was cool. I liked his stuff on Death Match and on Planet of the Apes. He’s just on it – his attention to detail is so crazy, it’s almost Geof Darrow-ish. Because of the world we’re working in – if you watch the first movie Detroit is so grimy and dirty and gross – he’s adding so many little details that makes our world look like that. And again, that fits in really well with going off of the first movie.

Who is the character that Carlos has changed the most, from the vision in your head, to the vision he put on the page?

JW: Well, Killian is the only character that we created together, and he grounded Killian in a way. In my mind, I was writing Killian as being way too over dramatic, and he came in and – there’s something about Killian’s face that he just nailed. This book takes place in the world of the movies, which is in the 80s, and he was able to make Killian have that sort of look like a bad guy in Miami Vice, which I had sort of missed when I was writing him.

Because of the nature of writing a licensed book, where everything goes through both an editor and MGM, does that change the way you go about writing the book? Do you have to be less attached to things?

JW: I get attached to everything, no matter what, which is a bad habit, and I get very defensive about something I think is good – I’m not the type of writer that lets things slide. If they rejected anything, and they haven’t really, I would just use it in another book, or put it in a notebook and regurgitate it for something else.

When I turned in issue 1, I turned it in and then I went to 5 Guys to get a hamburger. And Bryce texted me saying that the editors really loved it, and I was like “Yeah, but Bryce, you know that MGM isn’t going to let me get away with that stuff. I’m writing a hard, rated-R RoboCop comic. They are not going to be all that excited.” And he said, “no, you’ll see.” I was worried, and he was right, they totally let me get away with it. But that’s the thing, I didn’t hold back. I wrote what I thought would be this badass RoboCop story, and they are cool with

Exclusive line art from Carlos Magno

What has been the most fun part of writing a robot cop?

JW: I think for him, it is that he is indestructible – that’s one thing I’m having a little license with. In the first movie, he can take a lot, but he can get hurt. I’m writing him more as a slow moving, unstoppable force, which I’m doing so that when something stops him, it means something. Just knowing that I can have a ton of people just firing bullets at him and he’s going to be fine, that’s awesome.

Is it a hindrance to writing a character without, for lack of a better term, a ton of ambition or life goals?

JW: That becomes the story. That’s the thing with my story I’m going to tell – it’s not that he doesn’t have the ambition to, he can’t. He can’t be anyone else. And how does that affect those around him? Does he care? Does he even know to care? How much of Murphy is still in there, and how much is the robot?

It’s interesting, there’s that whole thing about how police officers become robots, they get older, they can ingrained into the system, they get desensitized to violence, and they’re sort of going through the motions.

Continued below

So you cut out the middle man of time.

JW: Yeah. That’s the interesting thing about RoboCop, he’s just going through the motions. Everyday he fights crime, day and night, and he’s never going to be anything else. So, the idea that he lacks the ambition to do anything else becomes part of the story..

It sounds almost like Killian is the focal point of the story, and RoboCop is just the hook to get people into the series.

JW: He (Killian) is a major part; the two main characters in the book, sort of, are Killian and Officer Lewis. I compare it to “Gotham Central,” but instead of avoiding Batman in the stories, RoboCop a force of nature that moves through the book.

If someone had never seen RoboCop, how would you sell them on this book?

JW: How could you not want to read “Part man, part machine, all cop?”

Fair enough.

JW: But listen, to the fans who do love Robocop, I get it. I know what needs to be done here and have done my best to create something kick ass that honors to parts of the first movie that we all love.

Variant Cover by Alexis Ziritt

//TAGS | Multiversity Turns 5

Brian Salvatore

Brian Salvatore is an editor, podcaster, reviewer, writer at large, and general task master at Multiversity. When not writing, he can be found playing music, hanging out with his kids, or playing music with his kids. He also has a dog named Lola, a rowboat, and once met Jimmy Carter. Feel free to email him about good beer, the New York Mets, or the best way to make Chicken Parmagiana (add a thin slice of prosciutto under the cheese).

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