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JOE CASEY: COMICS, DRUGS & CORN FLAKES Introduction   There are a few things that separate this book from other superhero team books, for instance, not everyone necessarily wants to be a superhero but also there's no core villain, so the antagonists will be, each other? Think back to when you were in high school. There were no "villains". There were assholes, sure, and there were kids you hated (for whatever mindless reason), but no moustache-twirling, "I wanna' take over the world"-villains. When you're a teenager, everyone around you is alternately your best friend and your worst enemy. That's simply the minefield you have to manoeuvre as you're learning the socialization skills that will serve you during adulthood. And honestly, I find those types of relationships can be much more interesting to write than the clear-cut, black & white, "good vs. evil"-paradigm of most superhero comicbooks. It's also an excuse to be emotionally operatic. When adults act like that, it's sad and pathetic and you can't help but think, "Well, that person still has some growing up to do." I could tie this sentiment to the comics industry as a whole, but why stoop to that level, huh...? But teenagers can indulge in wildly large-scale displays of emotions and it works. Because that's what you do when you're a teenager and you think your entire world is ending over some random comment made in passing... you overreact. It certainly makes for good stories. You'll be playing on the 'Your best friends are the ones you rag on the most' sort of mentality? Sure, when they're not outright betraying you in some form or another. But that's the Darwinism of high school, isn't it? Its high drama is designed to prepare you for the shitstorm of adulthood. Pretty great, huh...? Not only can readers expect it to be a hard process for the students but the teachers as well right? Failed superheroes trying to command an audience while surrounded by tense and abrasive teenagers. For some unknown reason, I was fairly young when I first realized that adults weren't omnipotent. Now that I am an adult (or close to it), I know it for a fact. The number of years we spend on this Earth rarely provide the kind of wisdom and insight that allow us to move forward as a species. An adult nation put Bush in the White House, y'know. That's not a ringing endorsement. So the adults portrayed in THE INTIMATES are just as flawed as anyone. Hell, most adults are a failed something, aren't they? It's the realities of growing up. It's definitely an interesting dichotomy... one side of the fence is all about wild optimism and intoxicating angst, the other side is all about the virtual hangover of your teenage years. Some adults never get over that, do they? In the series, I do try to play the adults as genuine. Good teachers are always trying to break down barriers between themselves and their students. In THE INTIMATES, most of the teachers spend their time trying to impart the notion that it's not "us against them"... meanwhile, the kids are basically saying, "Fuck you. You're 'them' whether you like it or not!" I think there's something really joyous about that outlook. It's not just reckless abandon... it's about intimate abandon. The abandon within yourself. Maybe it's just me, but I find that shit extremely resonant. So that's what inspired the title, The Intimates? Ed Brubaker and I were talking shit about the Ultimate line (we often talk shit about any- and everything under the Sun. It's the basis of our friendship.). I started wondering, what would be the exact opposite of the Ultimates. Ed hilariously came up with "the Antimates" and, from there, I came up with THE INTIMATES. As I subsequently developed the concept that would soon take that name, I knew I wanted to do something that flew in the face of widescreen, decompression, pick your catch phrase and insert it here... where most superhero comicbooks pull back to show epic scale, I wanted to do one where you were constantly zooming in on the microscopic details. And there's nothing more microscopic than an emotion. Unless you're really looking for it... pure, unfettered emotion in modern superhero comicbooks is practically ethereal, not to mention ephemeral.  I mentioned this before, cool has become cliché. Now everyone wants to go back to being a geek, or are just fed up. Well, the fact is... pretending to be anything can be fairly exhausting after awhile. Geek chic is just another fashion phase and people who are really into all this stuff truly transcend fashion. I'm looking forward to the time where we each balance our unique individuality with that obvious universal commonality. We're all single organisms within a larger one. That said, do you try to approach a team book as a specific representative or microcosm of the world at large? In so much as GILLIGAN'S ISLAND was a microcosm for society, yes. Human interaction is probably the most fascinating thing that ever occurs on Earth. How people deal with each other, for better or for worse, is what it's all about. Another set apart is the feature of a cast of 'teens acting as teens'. Was it really that easy to remember what it was like when you were a teen? Some scars just stay with you. The personal issues of your childhood are issues that you have to deal with your entire life. The bullshit doesn't end when you turn 20. Besides, you're also talking to a guy that's living out the dreams he dreamed for himself when he was a kid. That has certainly helped when it comes to viewing my own life in its totality, rather than separating it into "childhood" and "adulthood". If you're fourteen years old and you want to be a rock star, but at thirty-five you're an accountant, then that disconnect is probably a lot more obvious. But not for me. I'm doing exactly the things I wanted to do since even before I was a teenager. Besides, if that teenage readership still exists out there, it's our job as writers to be able to speak to them. To write something like THE INTIMATES, which sets out to try and depict the teenage experience (in an admittedly hyper-realistic fashion), you're communicating more directly with that audience. You're not so much dealing in metaphor, as you would if you were writing SUPERMAN or X-MEN, you're dealing more in documentary. You're documenting something akin to your own experiences and hopefully finding something universal within that. The stakes are really high when you're a teenager. You cling to your perception of life because, to you, that is reality. It doesn't matter if that perception is accurate. So were you a mix of Judd Nelson and Anthony Michael Hall then? Heh... I honestly don't know what I was in high school, in terms of the John Hughes stereotype. For the most part, I think I just kept my head down and concentrated on survival, more than anything else. Eventually, I was playing in bands and that helped establish an identity for myself.  One failing I've seen with writers trying to appeal to younger audiences is to jam in random pop culture references, even in inappropriate places or just obscure names, or most importantly, assuming that younger readers are the MTV generation. Which is far from the truth, MTV fans are like Bush supporters, apparently they're out there somewhere, but they're just no one you know. How do you avoid falling into the same traps? The easiest way to avoid that trap is to create a new pop cultural landscape that your characters inhabit. Something completely fictional, but still recognizable. It's a different kind of world building, but it's also part of the fun. And I actually think younger readers - if they're out there - are the post-MTV generation. They're more instinctively media-savvy than any previous generation so my job as a writer is simply not to talk down to them. I think that, despite the rush we all make for the newest, shiniest thing to hit the shelves (whatever it may be at any given time), even younger readers want something genuine. They want a bit of substance behind the spectacle, so much so that they're willing to infer substance where there generally is none. That's pretty telling. If THE INTIMATES was all surface detail, it wouldn't be worth doing for me. The real attraction I had to this series from the beginning was the desire to depict genuine emotion in the last place you'd expect to find it. It'll be up to readers to decide if we achieved it. So teen superheroes doing yoga was one of those? Of course. Falls under the heading of "physical education" quite nicely, don't you think? There's some interesting iconography in the designs and costumes, like the Star of David shaped classroom. Was this part of your original plan or were these ideas that grew out of the design process? I took a bit from Douglas Rushkoff's writings about teenagers and the possibilities of futura teenage culture and just started riffing from there. I also read a bit of Bruce Sterling for inspiration. The Seminary classroom designs are actually based on fractals. I guess I wanted to have my cake and eat it, too. On some level, I think we're trying to present a new kind of school, maybe an idealized version of what a school could be... but at the same time, we still want it to feel like school feels, that institutionalized feeling when you walked down the hallways of your own high school.  The desks are also set up so they're faced away from each other, so that even in a small room they are distanced from one another. They're simply not arranged in strict rows. The classrooms are based on fractals and the chaotic desk arrangements are meant to foster a different type of interaction between students and teachers. You'll also notice there are holographic chalkboards on every wall, so that no matter where you look, you're receiving information. The Seminary - just like the series itself - reflects the intense info dump mediascape that teenagers live in. But even the teachers know they can't compete with television. In the first issue, the cast's homeroom teacher gives a speech about the role of the teacher in modern education. More theories I nicked from Rushkoff, by the way. Could you introduce us to the cast and what roles they'll play? Jock, fat chick, rebel, smart guy, sexy girl? Well, they may seem like that on first glance, but it's going to be a lot of fun watching those "types" get subverted over the course of the series. I've done it before. Grifter was always the macho, gun-toting badass in WILDCATS and, in VERSION 3.0, I put him in a wheelchair almost straightaway. The revelation was that it didn't take anything away from his character. In fact, it added a dimension that I didn't even know was there. What started as an interesting plot development led to a deeper understanding of the character than I hadn't had before. So, I'd like to do that with all these characters... Punchy, the wise ass. Duke, the all-American type. Destra, the sexed up ice queen. Empty Vee, the insecure, overweight girl. And Sykes, the enigmatic weirdo. So which one is more likely to be found carrying a copy of Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs? Besides me? Punchy, definitely. Maybe Empty Vee, too. I love that book, although FARGO ROCK CITY speaks to me a little more. But between Klosterman and Andy Greenwald, I've actually gotten a subscription to SPIN for the first time in my life.  Speaking of Wildcats, these characters exist in the same world as the Halo Corporation and the Authority so will those characters and products and what not carry over and have a role or influence on the characters of The Intimates? I'm staying away from the WILDCATS cast (although Cammo drew in a photo of Cole Cash hanging in one of the girls' lockers), but the Authority looms large in the lives of some of the students. Especially in the first issue, you'll see how this series exists as a contrast or counterpoint to the values put forth in a book like THE AUTHORITY. Where exactly is this school? They may have the overabundance of media pop info but the school itself seems to be physically cut off from the rest of the world. The Seminary is located somewhere very isolated, very rural. Think the Overlook Hotel. I don't want to say exactly where, just in case readers of this interview decide to go looking for it. The comic within a comic by Jim Lee, will this be a source of inspiration? Entertainment? Instruction? Entertainment... or possibly corruption, if you want to get all Wertham-esque about it. It's really just another layer of information we wanted to pile on to the already voluminous mountain of stuff this series contains. And, hey, there's every possibility in the world that some readers will enjoy SUPERSONIC ESPIONAGE BOOM more than they do THE INTIMATES. One of them has Jim Lee art, so you never know... Was Cammo [Artist Giuseppe Camuncoli] brought on by Jim? Yes. And thank God he did. Cammo's work has been a revelation. He's always up to experiment and push the limits of how you can tell a story. I think he's been my greatest ally during this whole development process.  One thing the Intimates reminded me of on first glance was the old parody Doom Force one-shot. Is this series intended to be viewed with a sense of campiness in regards to the overall feel of the book? From my point of view, not at all. We're trying to mine the depths of emotion with this one, in every way we can. The series is meant to evoke, not lampoon (although there is some satire inherent in the concept). Plus, the way we're telling the stories... the documentary feel that owes more to new wave sitcoms like CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM and THE OFFICE - as well as what I thought was a groundbreaking TV series last year, K STREET - than it does to other comicbook series. It's rarely about setting up punchlines, it's mainly about observing behaviour. I wanted to write a series that contains all the flash and balls of a full-on superhero comicbook but with an added sociological bent that other "teenage superhero" books have never really explored. As far as I'm concerned, the title says it all. I see you're working with Rian Hughes again on cover designs. Is there an overall theme you'll be going for or will the designs be conceived on an issue by issue basis? I noticed the first issue seems to mimic the popular mag format. Rian designed the logo and will be designing the covers, just as he did on WILDCATS. He and I talked for a long time about the approach for this series, what the visual style of the covers should be. We came up with something that I think will relate to kids that are more plugged into general pop culture rather than only comicbooks. Think of a cross between BLENDER and a Japanese toy magazine. Massive amounts of info and text all at once. Just like the comicbook itself. Are big belt buckles the next hot fashion trend? C'mon... when have they ever been out of style?  The Intimates is a teen superhero romance comedy... is it challenging to create a climax in a single issue when action isn't the focus, especially considering any new series will only get a limited amount of attention from readers? It's obviously more work-intensive than doing Part Whatever of Six. It's getting back to the idea that, if you write a monthly comicbook series - twelve issues - it's your job to come up with twelve stories, if not more. These days, the demands of writing a monthly are fairly light. Two stories, six issues each, and you've got your year all set. That's a pretty lightweight load, if you ask me. My editor read a mock-up of the first issue of THE INTIMATES and commented that it felt like reading three comics' worth of material. Of course, I appreciated the compliment, but it also underscored how ridiculous things have gotten. As far as I'm concerned, setting out to "write for the trade" is a crime and a rip-off, no matter how well written it may turn out to be. If you're that kind of writer, it might be better to stay out of monthly, serialized comics and write OGN's. I just think these incrementally slow-developing stories are killing us in the long run. I noticed you'll be hosting a party for the Intimates just following the elections at the Isotope Lounge, could you tell our readers a little bit about what you have planned? A high school dance, basically. Everyone dressed for success. Streamers, a disco ball, punchbowls, the whole bit. James Sime throws the best in-stores in the country, so I didn't really have much of a choice when I decided I wanted to throw some kind of launch event. James is also the snappiest dresser in the Direct Market, but I think I'll be giving him a run for his money on Nov. 3rd. Powder blue tux? That's always the cliché that people jump to when they hear about this event. I guess I wouldn't be surprised if one showed up, but it ain't gonna' be me. I'm going more for a 50's Elvis showbiz style. Bold and beautiful. Shiny and purple? Could be shiny. But I'm daring to make an even more definitive statement than purple. Introduction
 Jonathan Ellis is Co-Editor in Chief of PopImage  PopImage Forum - Discuss this message at the PopImage forum. E-Mail Us - Send us an e-mail commenting on this article. Man Of Action - Creative Collective of Joe Casey, Joe Kelley, Duncan Rouleau & Steve Seagle Marvel.com - Publishers of Avengers: Earths Mightiest Heroes Wildstorm.com - Publishers of The Intimates Aftermath.com - Publishers of Infantry AiT/PlanetLar.com - Publishers of forthcoming Joe Casey OGN's Comic Book Resources - Home to The Basements Tapes Industrial Archive - Read past Industrial articles |
