STEVEN GRANT

STEVEN GRANT
The following is an e-mail interview with STEVEN GRANT, who has worked the length and breadth of comicdom, writing such titles as CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN, THE PUNISHER, WETWORKS, and many other roasting-hot books. This interview took place February 12, 1998.
JOHN DALTON: What are your earliest comic book memories?
STEVEN GRANT: When I was four, I got a LONE RANGER comic from the barbershop I went to. Shortly thereafter, I stumbled across a SCAMP comic, and something else, I forget what, in my cousin's garage. They were Dell comics, I remember having next to no reaction to them at all. Then, when I was 7 and home sick with measles, my father bought me an ALL-STAR WESTERN. I didn't have all that must interest in that either, but there was a full page ad in it that said JUST IMAGINE--SUPERMAN! BATMAN! THE FLASH! GREEN LANTERN! WONDER WOMAN! MARTIAN MANHUNTER! AQUAMAN! GREEN ARROW! THE WORLD'S GREATEST SUPERHEROES TOGETHER IN ONE COMICS MAGAZINE! It was an ad for JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #5, "When Gravity Went Wild." I had never heard of any of those characters, I'd never watched Superman on TV, but I had to have that comic. I was dying to be able to get out of bed and get it. When I finally got over the measles, I rushed down to my local Rexall, but it was too late. #6 was out by then. That was the first comic I ever bought. The second was FLASH #123, "Flash Of Two Worlds." That was that.
JOHN DALTON: What in your earlier life most prepared you to work in comics?
STEVEN GRANT: Ha! Nothing prepares you to work in comics. I read voluminously from an early age. I read 300 page books when I was 6. I wrote a lot all during school, just to write. I was always a sponge for new things: TV, movies, music, books, it didn't matter.
JOHN DALTON: How did you get your first break in comics?
STEVEN GRANT: I made my first break, really. I wrote a fantasy author and got permission from him to adapt a story of his to comics. The adaptation wasn't very good, it only got published in a small run from a fly by night company. (It was originally intended for the underground comics, but they had collapsed by the time the work was done.) But that was enough to establish my credentials, at least in wannabe-pro fan circles. Fortunately that circle included the "CPL Gang" of Indiana, which included such people as Bob Layton, John Byrne and Roger Stern, who would trek to the same monthly conventions in Chicago that I'd go to. Roger and I became fairly good friends, and after he moved to New York to become a Marvel editor, I'd go stay with him when I went to the city. (I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin.) At one point, he got into a crunch, and I happened to be coming to town at the time, so he set me to work on a story. By then I really had abandoned the notion of writing comics, but since I had my foot in the door, it made sense to continue, particularly since I had no noticeable means of support elsewhere. I've mostly drifted away from those people over the years, but I never would have been in comics without them.
JOHN DALTON: What work have you been most proud of?
STEVEN GRANT: A crime comic I did in '92 called BADLANDS. Dark Horse still publishes the trade paperback collection. It was set in 1963 and starred the man who really killed John Kennedy. Pretty much everything about it came out the way I wanted, it's probably my purest expression in comics to date, and I wish I'd had more opportunity to follow up on that, in both content and style. I'm still trying, but crime comics are a hard sell. Aside from that, I'm probably proudest of my work with Mike Zeck: the PUNISHER mini-series (aka "Circle Of Blood"); the Punisher graphic novel RETURN TO BIG NOTHING; the LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT arc "Criminals" (#69-70); and the crime comic we did last summer at Homage, called DAMNED.
JOHN DALTON: What has been your most memorable moment working in comics?
STEVEN GRANT: Working with specific artists. Mike Zeck in particular, but also John Paul Leon on CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN, Vince Giarrano on WHISPER and BADLANDS, Shawn McManus on LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT and THE PUNISHER, George Perez on I-BOTS. It's all pretty memorable, but that has the unfortunate side effect of making not much of it stand out from the rest without prodding.
JOHN DALTON: If you could have free reign to write any character(s) in any book, what would it be?
STEVEN GRANT: Original characters. I'm happy to write pretty much anything, but with free reign, I'd only do books I originated. Company owned characters are all pretty much the same to me now. The only two characters I had a childhood love for that I haven't written are Green Lantern and Adam Strange, but those aren't the same characters anymore, so it's hard to work up an obsession.
JOHN DALTON: What have your influences been over time?
STEVEN GRANT: My father has, over the years, turned out to be a much stronger influence on me than I ever would have guessed. Lee Harvey Oswald was a huge influence because, as with many other Americans, my political consciousness begins on hearing his name, and my worldview in large part extends from the consequences of Lee Harvey Oswald, whether he pulled the trigger or not. Phil Ochs was a huge influence, giving me a means to express what, up to that point, had been a growing inchoate rage. In terms of comics, that first issue of ALL-STAR WESTERN was an unexpectedly strong influence; drawn by Gil Kane and Carmine Infantino, it formed the basis of my appreciation of comic art. Comics writers were never a particularly strong influence on me, that I know of. The problem with citing influences is that generally we have no idea who our influences really are, we only know who we want people to think our influences are. Work you hate can influence you as much as or more than work you like, and just liking a work, or even trying to emulate it, doesn't mean it's an actual influence. So I always find that a difficult question to answer.
JOHN DALTON: What in your opinion will change, for better or worse, in comics as we begin the 21st Century?
STEVEN GRANT: I believe right now we're going through a painful transition in comics from a magazine-based economy to a book-based economy. There's a strong nostalgic and reactionary undertow in comics, they've pretty much always had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future, and this is one of those times. In the next ten years, I expect the 32 pg. color comic to become something of a relic. At $2+ per copy, it's no longer a cost-effective vehicle. Comics have outpriced themselves. The comic book won't disappear altogether, but it will become a "loss leader" to (hopefully) pay for production and creative costs and generate good press and word of mouth for the trade paperback collections to follow. This is already happening to some extent--Warren Ellis' TRANSMETROPOLITAN tanks in comics sales but the trade paperback flies off the shelves--but it will become more and more the norm. Look for more mini-series being done with the expressed intent of collecting them as trade paperbacks later. Ultimately, I think this will finally drive the general quality of the material up, though the actual number of comics published will drop considerably, so it'll become a tougher field.