Date:         Tue, 14 Sep 1993 23:39:40 CDT
From: Bill Hayes <[IANR 012] at [UNLVM.UNL.EDU]>
Subject:      Volume 3 Issue 37 Part 3

September 14, 1993           The Comics List Weekly      Vol. 3 No. 37
This Week:
Interview : Steve Gerber - The subject is SLUDGE
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Date: 10 Sep 93 06:38:12 EDT
From: Steve Gerber <[72267 3332] at [CompuServe.COM]>
Subject: Volume 3 Issue 36 Part 3

Bill,

For anyone who's interested, here's the text of an interview I did with
Shaun McLaughlin for the MALIBU SUN.  The subject is SLUDGE...

               ----------------------------------------------

No Mucking About

Steve Gerber Talks About SLUDGE


    Steve Gerber began writing comics for Marvel in the 1970's. When
    asked what credits he'd like listed, he says: "Well, of course,
    there's the Duck..." by which he means his legendary creation
    Howard The Duck. He also lists Foolkiller, Legion of Night,
    Suburban Jersey Ninja She-Devils, Exiles for the Ultraverse and
    "...lots of other comic work, and some TV stuff." In this
    interview he talks about Sludge, a new title for the Ultraverse.


Shaun McLaughlin: What brought you to Sludge?

Steve Gerber: Actually, Sludge came to me, as a flash out of the blue. It
was at the first Ultraverse conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, during one of
several very long evening sessions. We had been discussing all kinds of
concepts. We had taken a break and I had strolled out of the conference
room, onto a walkway overlooking the hotel swimming pool and the beautiful
Arizona desert. It was a warm night, not muggy at all. It was just
beautiful. I was standing there having a cigarette, thinking about the
discussions, and the entire concept for Sludge--including the name--just hit
me out of nowhere. It was one of those moments when you want to shout,
"Eureka!" The weird thing is, there was nothing even vaguely reminiscent of
sludge anywhere in my field of vision. I mean, I was looking at cactuses, on
a night without even a drop of humidity, and no city ambiance anywhere.
Nothing to suggest New York. Nothing to suggest a sewer. It's extremely rare
that something like this happens to me. In fact, the last time this happened
to me--possibly the only other time--was when I came up with Howard the
Duck. Some mental switch just clicks of its own volition, and suddenly you
find yourself with this idiotic grin on your face, and you've got a name, a
concept, a character, a story where there was nothing at all before.

Mac: Who is Sludge?

Gerber: Sludge was a police detective by the name of Frank Hoag who had,
shall we say, certain ethical problems prior to his transformation. He was
on the take from the mob and had done them various favors, mostly just
looking the other way occasionally, or tipping them in advance to when a
bust was going down. Not the kind of thing where anybody would get hurt,
except people who, by Hoag's rationalization, were already destroying
themselves. Then, the mob asked him a favor he was unwilling to do. They
wanted him to kill another cop. He refused and got shot. The unusual
circumstances of the shooting, combined with his having been dumped into a
sewer afterward, turned him into something other than a policeman.

Mac: Or even a human being?

Gerber: Yes and no. Unlike a lot of other muck-monster type characters,
Sludge is flesh and blood under all the gunk. If he gets shot, he gets hurt.
For reasons we'll explain eventually, he heals very quickly, but there's
still something almost human under all that stuff.

Mac: What are Sludge's powers?

Gerber: For now, let's just say he's got one extremely grotesque power in
addition to his physical strength. I'd rather not give it away just yet. I
want it to come as a shock to the people who read this book.

Mac: Here's a question that's in a lot of people's minds: What's different
about Sludge from the other muck-monster you worked on?

Gerber: Well, let's not be coy about it. Let's just say "Man-Thing." This is
a question that a lot of people have asked. They'll look at the character
and ask: "Is this your new version of Man-Thing?" Then they'll ask: "What
other 'thing' is this like? Is it like Swamp Thing? Is it like The Thing
thing?" And the answer is "no" to all. Sludge is radically different from
Man-Thing. I don't want to give too much of the story away, but we can
discuss what Sludge isn't. He's not an empathic creature. He's not tied to
any particular locale. He's not mindless. He has nothing to do with swamps.
And he is not in any way magical. Those are some pretty striking differences
to begin with. And unlike Ben Grimm, Sludge is not a guy you could dress in
a tux and introduce into polite society. He smells really bad.

Mac: What challenges you about Sludge?

Gerber: Well, the single biggest challenge at first relates to the question
you just asked. I had to make a conscious decision not to waste time and
energy thinking about how to make Sludge different from Man-Thing. I knew
the readers would be scouring the book for similarities, but I also knew the
way to avoid those similarities was simply to let Sludge become itself.

The nicest compliment I've gotten on the book so far came from Chris Ulm,
who remarked on how little I seemed to be relying on the usual comic-book
monster cliches. You know, your basic pathetic man-beast--your shambling,
mindless mockery of a man, who slinks around the shadows and gets caught in
the rain all the time to simulate tears.

It's very true that Sludge doesn't strip mine that same old lode
again, but not because I made a big effort to avoid it. All I really
did was write Sludge as Sludge, as opposed to writing him as
"Not-Man-Thing." I was actually surprised when Chris pointed out the
absence of those elements, because I hadn't been thinking about their
presence or absence.

Mac: What's exciting about Sludge to you?

Gerber: All kinds of things. The one thing the book does have in common with
my version of Man-Thing is that it's a terrific vehicle for telling stories
about real people. In many ways, Sludge is the most earthbound of the
Ultraverse books. It takes place on and below the streets of New York, and
the array of characters available to us is just astonishing. We've only
begun to scratch the surface. Sludge is also a nice vehicle for sideways
social commentary, because Sludge himself makes such a great foil for
humanity's foibles.

I'm also excited about it just because of what the book looks like. Aaron
Lopresti and Gary Martin are doing a fabulous job on it. It's going to be a
stunning book visually.

Mac: The supporting cast is always important in your books. Are there any
characters that we'll be seeing a lot of?

Gerber: There are, but we're taking time and letting them develop naturally.
There are a couple of characters that have already made very minor
appearances. The policeman that Hoag was supposed to kill shows up in the
second issue. An urban assassin named Bloodstorm also appears in the second
issue. There's a medical examiner named Agnes Trahern. Some of these
characters will reappear in other contexts later, along with other
characters from Hoag's past. I mean, he had a life before all this happened
to him--and he remembers it, which is yet another difference from Man-Thing.

One of the things I didn't want to do with this book, something that's
always struck me as very artificial, was to create an entire supporting cast
at the same time the character was created. We've all read books that were
constructed that way. It's like: "Here is our character module. Here is our
supporting cast module. Here is our location module. Put them all
together--snap-snap-snap, like Lego blocks--and here is our franchise." I
really hate that. I want the readers to meet these people and get to know
them as time goes on. I want to get to know them that way myself.
        Almost all the characters I created at Marvel that were
memorable in any way--Howard the Duck, Richard Rory, Wundarr, several
others--wandered in as relatively minor players in a particular story
and grew into more than that. I'm hoping the cast of Sludge is going
to develop the same way.

Mac: Sludge always seems like there's something on the tip of his tongue.

Gerber: That happens to him constantly. As I said, he's not mindless, but
he's sort of confused. His brain functions are, literally and figuratively,
somewhat mucked-up. One of the more interesting things about him is that
he's conscious of that, and portions of the stories are told from his
perspective, in his internal dialogue. It lends a whole different
perspective to the story.

Mac: Are there going to be recurring villains?

Gerber: Same answer as the supporting cast. There probably will be, but I
have no idea who they are yet.

Mac: The line between the good guys and the bad guys doesn't seem to be very
strictly drawn. Is this something you're going to continue to explore?

Gerber: It is. Sludge is probably the darkest, and most morally ambiguous,
of the Ultraverse titles. In some stories, the line is very clearly drawn
between the good guys and the bad guys. In others, it's very difficult to
tell who is which and where your sympathies belong. Two readers could come
to completely different conclusions about one character or another. In other
words, the story resembles life. Those are the kinds of characters and
situations I like to explore.

Mac: How does Sludge get involved in the different stories?

Gerber: Living on, or under, the streets of New York has a way of
getting anyone involved. There are a quarter-million or so dramas in
progress on the streets at any given moment. Sludge's involvement
isn't always accidental or coincidental, though. He still has the
street instincts of a New York cop, even if he can't always interpret
them with perfect clarity. He can choose to involve himself in a
situation if it catches his interest or piques his curiosity.

Mac: Is there any one thing or combination of things that makes an
interesting hero to you?

Gerber: Sure. A highly individualistic point of view. A way of
looking at the world that is different from other people's. For me,
that's the single most important attribute of a lead character.

Mac: How do you like working with penciller Aaron Lopresti?

Gerber: I'm really impressed with Aaron. He's been great. He's a
really intelligent guy, with a strong background in film as well as
comics. And he's willing to take criticism. Unlike myself.
(Laughter). We argue a lot, but it's a very productive tension.

Mac: Has Aaron brought out anything in the book that you didn't
originally see?

Gerber: He really has. His initial drawing of Sludge gave me a whole
different way of looking at the character. I kept his original pin-up
of the character right at my desk so that I could look at it as I was
writing. In a way, that drawing brought Sludge to life for me. I'd
written a description of the character, but Aaron's drawing let me
look Sludge in the eye, as it were. I know this sounds strange, but
there were things I could see in the character's face that I couldn't
extrapolate from my own verbal description.

Incidentally, while we're discussing the art, we should mention that
Aaron is working very closely with Gary Martin, who's inking the
book. They really are a team, a collaboration, in the truest sense on
Sludge, not just two artists that a company happened to assign to a
title. And it shows. They've forged a single, unified style for the
book.

Mac: Is the Ultraverse giving you chances to do things you've never
done before?

Gerber: For me, it's almost more a case of having found the right
atmosphere to do what I do best again.
     Chris Ulm has been absolutely terrific about giving me free rein to
develop both Exiles and Sludge in the way I think best. All the best
work I've done in comics was done either when I was editing myself,
or when I was working with an editor who said: "Just go and do it.
Get it in on time and we'll talk about it later." Those laissez-faire
editors have generally made the more important editorial
contributions to my work, too, because the atmosphere of mutual
respect allowed me to bounce ideas off them when I did get lost or
stuck. Chris and the rest of the Malibu staff have been giving me the
autonomy I need to do the kind of stuff that I do best.

Mac: You satisfied a lot of people doing that.

Gerber: Satisfying editors and readers is relatively easy if you have the
freedom to satisfy yourself. On my Ultraverse books, I've been able to sit
back and write a story that interests me. That has to be my first priority,
because when I'm alone with the computer, I'm the only audience I've got to
work with. It's pointless to try to second-guess the market. You can go out
of your mind that way. I work on the assumption that if a story interests
me, there's a decent chance it's going to interest other people.
     The whole Sludge series is an example of how this works. Bolt
from the blue. No market testing. No asking ourselves if
muck-monsters are selling this year. And as it turns out, Sludge
seems to have aroused the interest of the fans, the retailers, the
distributors--almost everybody. I've been told it's one of the most
eagerly-anticipated Ultraverse titles, although I can't allow myself
to think about that, either.

Mac: What's ahead for you?

Gerber: Exiles, Sludge, and one strip for Image are what I'm
concentrating on. I don't want to spread myself too thin. I like
these books, and I really want to concentrate on making them the best
I can.

    Sludge #1 ships in October.

    Shaun McLaughlin is the former Aquaman scribe and Malibu's cub
    reporter. He is hoping to someday move up in the world and get
    one of those nifty press passes he can stick in the band of his
    fedora.

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End part 3  more to follow...