Post by PPAIN aka Michael on Aug 27, 2004 12:36:38 GMT -5
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BRUBAKER: ON LEAVING CATWOMAN
A little earlier than he originally planned, but still, four years after starting, Catwoman writer Ed Brubaker has confirmed for Newsarama that November’s issue #37 will be his final outing with DC’s feline femme fatale.
Two years ago at Comic Con International: San Diego, Brubaker announced he was planning on leaving the series around issue #50, but roughly a year and a half early, here we are.
We caught up with Brubaker to talk about his reasons for leaving, as well as a quick look back on his time spent with the characters.
“Yeah, leaving around #50 was the original plan,” Brubaker said. “There were a couple of things that I wanted to do on the book – ideas that I had for stories, as I got closer to them, I could see that they weren’t going to pan out, or that they weren’t going to work with the character stuff that I was doing. So I had these character’s stories mapped out through what I thought was going to be issue #50, and as I was working on them more and more, I was starting to feel a sort of burnout on the book in a way – I was starting to feel less enthusiastic than I had initially and that I felt towards other books. I didn’t want that to pass along to the readers – I didn’t want to give them less then what they were paying for.”
As Brubaker explained, his Catwoman run represents the longest time he’s spent on any one title or character, and for him, he began to feel that he wasn’t going to be able to put as much into it as he was with his other projects, notable among them The Authority for Wildstorm and Captain America for Marvel, as well as a large handful of creator-owned projects.
“It got to the point where I could feel the difference when I would sit down to work on something like The Authority – the newness of it was actually something that was helping me – just the mere fact that it was something that was new, instead of something that I had been working on for four years. I was feeling a lot of pressure because of it, and I didn’t want to see anything start to suffer.
“I was also thinking that when I started writing Captain America, something had to give. Looking at it, there was no way I was going to let go of Gotham Central – I only write it half the time anyway, and Greg [Rucka] and I created it, and it’s something that’s different and special. I looked at Catwoman and thought I‘d left a stamp on it. I’d accomplished most of what I’d set out to do – I’d established the characters and worked on them. Now I’m at the point that I’d like to see what someone else will do with them, now that they’ve all been redefined to a degree. Now, as I left things, it’s not a situation where you think that if Catwoman shows up as a guest star in some other book, she’s just going to be some silly slut.”
When asked, Brubaker also took the opportunity to nip any rumors about his departure in the bud – the point being, he’s not leaving because of the editorial mandate that Catwoman be home to part of the “War Games” crossover currently running through the Batman titles.
“I’ve worked on crossovers before, and they never made me quit anything, so no, that wasn’t it,” Brubaker said. “Really, it was the stress of my schedule starting to get to me. A couple of years ago, I went through a really bad repetitive strain injury where I had to cut back on my workload because I was spending 12-14 hours a day in front of a computer. My body at that point was telling me not to push myself so hard, and not sit in front of a computer all day. So I struggled through that and went through physical therapy, but I could tell that the stress of my situation was starting to get to me again, and I didn’t even want to have another situation like that, so something in my load had to give.”
Brubaker’s other favorite rumors regarding his departure that will come up: he was instructed by DC to replace Selina Kyle with the next “Catwoman,” who would, completely coincidental to a recent stinker movie, be an African American woman with a penchant for torn leather; and that he pulled a pima donna move, refusing to work with the more realistic art stylings of Paul Gulacy and Jimmy Palmiotti after the book had been home to the Alex Toth-y looks of Darwyn Cooke, Cameron Stewart and Javier Pulido.
“Uh, no, and no,” Brubaker said.
Just because he’s leaving the series however, Brubaker isn’t leaving the characters behind, cold turkey. “Maybe I’ll do more Catwoman at some point in the future, because I love all those characters and I hate the idea of not working on Slam Bradley,” Brubaker said. “Actually, I’m doing a two-issue Gotham Central storyline right now with Jason Alexander, and it has Catwoman and Slam in it. I’m really attached to those characters.”
The root of both Selina Kyle and Slam Bradley’s attraction for Brubaker lies in the character’s respective attitudes toward that world that the writer shares. “I like Selina as a sort of outsider with her own sense of what’s right and wrong, and being the person who’s against the system, although that doesn’t mean she has to be a bad guy all the time,” Brubaker said. “I really liked taking a character like that and fleshing her out and giving her a supporting cast, and making her realize what matters to her.
“When I got the character, I read everything that had come before in the previous Catwoman monthly, and even though she was a pretty well defined character in a lot of ways, there was so much conflicting stuff within her history. But I felt that, even with all that history there, I didn’t have a total sense of who she was from those comics. I didn’t feel that she was that incredibly defined. I felt that she’d been more defined in the ‘70s and ‘80s in Batman comics than she was in her own comic in a lot of ways…she didn’t have enough things that mattered to her. How can you be a protagonist of a comic unless something matters to you? Even Jonah Hex had things that mattered to him.”
As Brubaker saw it, Selina was being played for type, moving from month to month, stealing this, heisting that, with a quip here, and a flirty or sarcastic comment there. “No disrespect to the people who worked on her before, I feel that was just the direction that the character had been set on, making it a book about someone who was, essentially, a bad guy. If you don’t want to get away from that, or the editors don’t want you to get away from that, then it can quickly turn into what’s she stealing this month?
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BRUBAKER: ON LEAVING CATWOMAN
A little earlier than he originally planned, but still, four years after starting, Catwoman writer Ed Brubaker has confirmed for Newsarama that November’s issue #37 will be his final outing with DC’s feline femme fatale.
Two years ago at Comic Con International: San Diego, Brubaker announced he was planning on leaving the series around issue #50, but roughly a year and a half early, here we are.
We caught up with Brubaker to talk about his reasons for leaving, as well as a quick look back on his time spent with the characters.
“Yeah, leaving around #50 was the original plan,” Brubaker said. “There were a couple of things that I wanted to do on the book – ideas that I had for stories, as I got closer to them, I could see that they weren’t going to pan out, or that they weren’t going to work with the character stuff that I was doing. So I had these character’s stories mapped out through what I thought was going to be issue #50, and as I was working on them more and more, I was starting to feel a sort of burnout on the book in a way – I was starting to feel less enthusiastic than I had initially and that I felt towards other books. I didn’t want that to pass along to the readers – I didn’t want to give them less then what they were paying for.”
As Brubaker explained, his Catwoman run represents the longest time he’s spent on any one title or character, and for him, he began to feel that he wasn’t going to be able to put as much into it as he was with his other projects, notable among them The Authority for Wildstorm and Captain America for Marvel, as well as a large handful of creator-owned projects.
“It got to the point where I could feel the difference when I would sit down to work on something like The Authority – the newness of it was actually something that was helping me – just the mere fact that it was something that was new, instead of something that I had been working on for four years. I was feeling a lot of pressure because of it, and I didn’t want to see anything start to suffer.
“I was also thinking that when I started writing Captain America, something had to give. Looking at it, there was no way I was going to let go of Gotham Central – I only write it half the time anyway, and Greg [Rucka] and I created it, and it’s something that’s different and special. I looked at Catwoman and thought I‘d left a stamp on it. I’d accomplished most of what I’d set out to do – I’d established the characters and worked on them. Now I’m at the point that I’d like to see what someone else will do with them, now that they’ve all been redefined to a degree. Now, as I left things, it’s not a situation where you think that if Catwoman shows up as a guest star in some other book, she’s just going to be some silly slut.”
When asked, Brubaker also took the opportunity to nip any rumors about his departure in the bud – the point being, he’s not leaving because of the editorial mandate that Catwoman be home to part of the “War Games” crossover currently running through the Batman titles.
“I’ve worked on crossovers before, and they never made me quit anything, so no, that wasn’t it,” Brubaker said. “Really, it was the stress of my schedule starting to get to me. A couple of years ago, I went through a really bad repetitive strain injury where I had to cut back on my workload because I was spending 12-14 hours a day in front of a computer. My body at that point was telling me not to push myself so hard, and not sit in front of a computer all day. So I struggled through that and went through physical therapy, but I could tell that the stress of my situation was starting to get to me again, and I didn’t even want to have another situation like that, so something in my load had to give.”
Brubaker’s other favorite rumors regarding his departure that will come up: he was instructed by DC to replace Selina Kyle with the next “Catwoman,” who would, completely coincidental to a recent stinker movie, be an African American woman with a penchant for torn leather; and that he pulled a pima donna move, refusing to work with the more realistic art stylings of Paul Gulacy and Jimmy Palmiotti after the book had been home to the Alex Toth-y looks of Darwyn Cooke, Cameron Stewart and Javier Pulido.
“Uh, no, and no,” Brubaker said.
Just because he’s leaving the series however, Brubaker isn’t leaving the characters behind, cold turkey. “Maybe I’ll do more Catwoman at some point in the future, because I love all those characters and I hate the idea of not working on Slam Bradley,” Brubaker said. “Actually, I’m doing a two-issue Gotham Central storyline right now with Jason Alexander, and it has Catwoman and Slam in it. I’m really attached to those characters.”
The root of both Selina Kyle and Slam Bradley’s attraction for Brubaker lies in the character’s respective attitudes toward that world that the writer shares. “I like Selina as a sort of outsider with her own sense of what’s right and wrong, and being the person who’s against the system, although that doesn’t mean she has to be a bad guy all the time,” Brubaker said. “I really liked taking a character like that and fleshing her out and giving her a supporting cast, and making her realize what matters to her.
“When I got the character, I read everything that had come before in the previous Catwoman monthly, and even though she was a pretty well defined character in a lot of ways, there was so much conflicting stuff within her history. But I felt that, even with all that history there, I didn’t have a total sense of who she was from those comics. I didn’t feel that she was that incredibly defined. I felt that she’d been more defined in the ‘70s and ‘80s in Batman comics than she was in her own comic in a lot of ways…she didn’t have enough things that mattered to her. How can you be a protagonist of a comic unless something matters to you? Even Jonah Hex had things that mattered to him.”
As Brubaker saw it, Selina was being played for type, moving from month to month, stealing this, heisting that, with a quip here, and a flirty or sarcastic comment there. “No disrespect to the people who worked on her before, I feel that was just the direction that the character had been set on, making it a book about someone who was, essentially, a bad guy. If you don’t want to get away from that, or the editors don’t want you to get away from that, then it can quickly turn into what’s she stealing this month?
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