In this episode Jimmy Palmiotti has a sense of humor.

Topics include taking Harley Quinn away from Gotham, living above a wax museum, cosplay inspiration, literal emojis, seeing the good in people, collaborating with Amanda Conner, co-writing 101, World’s Wildest, and super hero origin swiping!

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Transcript:

Kara: Welcome back to the Twitch stage at New York Comic Con. I’m Kara here with Matt from comiXology and we’re talking to Jimmy Palmiotti. Welcome.

Jimmy Palmiotti: Thank you, thank you. Great to be here.

Kara: You’ve worked on some of my favorite DC books over the last few years with some of the coolest ladies in comics like Power Girl, recently Harley Quinn and Starfire. How did you get involved in working with these all great female characters?

Jimmy Palmiotti: I’m a lucky b-. I got to say, it’s just been Power Girl, we did a couple of years ago actually the original series. I was with Dan DiDio when a retailer said, “You should do a new Harley Quinn book.” He turned to me, he goes, “You want to do it?” I’m like, “Let me think about it.” I went home and Amanda and I talked about it and we came back we said, “If we can do it our way then we’re interested in doing it.” Thank God they went for that and I guess it’s comic history, I don’t know.

Matt: That’s a great way to segue because Harley Quinn is, maybe most people know as a Joker sidekick who’s a big villain but you do an ongoing series with Harley Quinn, how are you able to make that into a compelling character?

Jimmy Palmiotti: Honestly we had to take Harley right out of Gotham right away because of the book was dependent on the Joker’s relationship with Harley, the book would have lasted maybe six months, maybe a year. What we did is we pulled Harley Quinn out of Gotham, we brought her to Brooklyn New York and we’re in the right town to talk about that. We set her up- she lives above a freak show and a wax museum.

We gave her a brand new cast of characters and then every once in awhile we bring in somebody like Poison Ivy or we’ll bring in- actually the Joker is coming up in a few issues, but we visited, but we felt we had to build up her life and her new characters and her new world and then we can kind of go back and have some fun with the other things. She needed her own supporting cast and she didn’t have it back then.

Kara: I’m sure you’ve seen here at Comic Con like every other cosplayer is Harley Quinn, where do you think the appeal of the character is to so many people?

Jimmy Palmiotti: I think the original animated series obviously caught everyone’s attention. Between Paul [Dini] and Bruce [Timm] they just created a great character but when we took it over, Amanda made sure that almost every issue she wears something different. As long as the diamonds and the black and the red are consistent, any outfit can be Harley Quinn. We actually got inspired by all the cosplayers because we kept seeing different versions of the character and Amanda is like we really need to just let that go in the book and let’s have some fun and let’s be creative. If she is going out on a boat, there should be a sailor type Harley Quinn, every kind of outfit.

Amanda has been doing that on the covers and Chad Hardin has been doing a fantastic job in the book. When you set up that kind of costume for a character it gives the cosplayers all the freedom in the world to kind of make up their own Harley. There’s not many characters you can do that with. You can’t really mess around with Batman too much or Superman or even Wonder Woman in a sense but with Harley it’s pretty much anything red and black and you have to have the attitude. I think a lot of people like the attitude of Harley so that’s where we see a ton of cosplays.

Matt: Yeah.

Kara: Let’s talk about Starfire because she’s one of my favorite characters probably ever and I discovered her through the Teen Titans animated TV show. Your book now is kind of going back to that kind of aesthetic where she’s very lighthearted and a little carefree and still learning stuff. One of the things that I like most about that book is when somebody says like an idiom or something colloquial to her and she envisions it literally. Where did that idea come from?

Jimmy Palmiotti: The emoji kind of thing, came from my phone actually. What we thought, we were trying to do something different with her character. Amanda grew up with the Marv Wolfram/George Perez Starfire and I actually love the cartoons. When we were both writing the book I’m like, “We got to do this,” and she’s like, “Well actually if it’s that.” The character is an amalgam of all of the Starfires that’s come before yet at the same time we needed to introduce the character to a new audience.

The emoji stuff was just something we did that we thought would be fun, the idea that we would see a little drawing. We figured one day everybody would collect all the emojis and make some language out of it. Again she’s a character that- she has a hedonistic attitude towards life. She tends to see the better in people. Because she’s an alien living with us, she actually celebrates the things we take for granted. If you’ve ever been around anybody like let’s say you had somebody from another country visiting and you’re showing them around town it’s exciting because you can show off a little bit.

Her character walks through a supporting cast and they want to be around her because there’s a fresh look, she’s looking at things freshly and positive. That’s really attractive to anybody, to be around a person like that. We all look for that person in our lives in a way, somebody that’s going to be a big bright light of sunshine. Of course her orange skin kind of drives that home a little bit. We just felt that was the right way to handle the character. She is a smart girl but she’s learning at the same time.

The book has- and we decided differently from Harley, we decided to make the book into chapters. Rather than have it so sequentially set we move the story around from scene to scene to scene with a nice little title but we feel it gives everybody a lot more story for their $3 or $4 they are paying, because my pet peeve is I read a comic in a minute, I don’t like it. I want to read a comic. With Starfire we thought that was kind of a good setup to having the book. We wanted it to feel a little different from everything else we were doing.

Matt: How about your collaboration with Amanda [Conner]? You and Amanda, we see you guys work together all the time. She is always on covers, occasionally interiors. How does that collaboration- that’s going to be a great boon to the books you guys work on, that you can work together so closely.

Jimmy Palmiotti: Well, she’s my favorite person in the universe. I mean she’s my wife but she is also my best friend. If I had to be with anybody to hang out with, she is the person. She has a great sense of humor. She has different interest than me and then we have a couple of things in common and I love that. I don’t want anybody that’s exactly like me. I think I would kill myself. As far as relationship we have a great relationship and we both have a really good sense of humor.

When we’re writing these books we don’t even set out for it to be like aha ha, that’s funny or anything. It’s a situation- my friends are giving me the finger over there. That’s really nice. Hi guys, thanks John. Thanks Frank. Anyway, so we kind of just- the humor finds its way into the book because when we’re writing it we’re actually kind of laughing and having a good time. I think it’s a contagious vibe that’s been in both series. Finding the right person to work with is half the battle. Of course then marrying them definitely makes it easier.

Matt: Marry your collaborator is what you’re saying?

Jimmy Palmiotti: Marry your collaborator, guys, girls doesn’t matter. If you dog talks to you, marry your dog.

Kara: How is that collaboration work? Does she have some input on the writing? Do you have some input on the art?

Jimmy Palmiotti: On the writing we tend to talk out what we’re going to do in the issue. Once we’re both fine with it, then I’ll go in and- fully script it because she is a terrible typist. I go in, fully script it, and then when we’re done- when I’m done I hand it to her and she goes in and tweaks things and changes things and messes with dialogue. When she’s done we read it out, over and then we send it out to the artist. It’s for the artist to interpret. When they’re done we get it back with the lettering and then we make another round of changes because we’re a pain in the ass. Our editors, God bless Chris Conroy, we work on this book three or four times before we let it go out.

Matt: Wow.

Jimmy Palmiotti: It’s the reason too a lot of it works, the dialogue works with the drawings, is because even if the drawing isn’t a 100% match to the dialogue then we’ll tweak the dialogue a little bit to match it. We’re both perfectionists and it’s a horrible house to live in if you’re not us.

Matt: Sounds awful.

Jimmy Palmiotti: Yeah, it is horrible.

Kara: The books come out great so obviously it’s worth it.

Jimmy Palmiotti: Yes, the price of perfection is that but we definitely like always getting the books out at the last minute. So much so Amanda is not here at Comic Con because we had a choice, she said, “You can either finish the book and you miss Comic Con or you could come to Comic Con but you’re going to miss the French Comic Con, the one in Paris.

Matt: Ohhh.

Jimmy Palmiotti: I promised her a vacation after that one so she’s not in New York. It’s the first New York Con she’s ever missed and she feels horrible but she made me apologize to every single person on line for her so…

Kara: What’s next? Is Starfire going to fly into Brooklyn and hang out with Harley?

Jimmy Palmiotti: Well the next book we have, the big book is for December and that’s Harley’s Black Book. That is a done-in-one, thirty-eight page one shot that’s bi-monthly. It’s Harley Quinn and another character in the DCU. The one that’s been announced in previews is The Harley Quinn Wonder Woman. The reason Amanda is missing New York is because we wrote and then- just got weird for a second. We wrote it and then she said, "Well, I have to be the one to draw this.” That’s why, she is drawing the first one but they’re done-in-one stories. In December we have Wonder Woman, January, February there’s another character. We’re going to be doing that all year long as well.

Matt: It’s like World’s Finest with Harley Quinn.

Jimmy Palmiotti:         It’s like World’s Finest. It’s a lot bigger book and it’s going to be pretty wild.

Matt: Sounds wild.

Kara: The World’s Wildest instead of World’s Finest.

Jimmy Palmiotti: It’s going to be World’s Wildest. They named it Harley’s Little Black Book because in my brain I’m like, Harley team up, right?

Matt: Yeah.

Jimmy Palmiotti: No. No such luck.

Matt: What about the Suicide Squad movie that’s coming out? Harley is a big part of that. Do you think there’s like a mixture of Harley Quinn fans that aren’t familiar with Suicide Squad Harley or do you think they know both?

Jimmy Palmiotti: Well I think that the movie is going to come out, I think Harley is going to be the breakout star, at least in the trailer, and the Joker, obviously. I like to think that people who don’t know about Harley, maybe watch the movie and maybe give the comic a try. The people that already know Harley are going to be lining up for that movie, so I think we have them already.

Kara: They’re already in costume. They’ve probably been walking around the con.

Jimmy Palmiotti: Look, I never expected to be on a book that sells that well so I’m really happy about that, but having the movie I think there’s a chance that it actually will be able to make the audience a little bigger. I’m hoping that we have at least the books are out at the time that they can kind of grab it and maybe get into her world.

Matt: Yeah. Do you have some more create your own work because I know you’ve done a ton of Kickstarter stuff that we’ve read about in the past. What’s next in that area for you?

Jimmy Palmiotti: In December we have the first issue from Aftershock Comics called SuperZero. If I wanted to compare it to anything it’s sort of like Kick-Ass without the violence. It’s a girl who’s a senior in high school who’s a very smart girl, who’s figured out that based on media like movies, TVs and comics, somewhere hidden in there is a formula to become a superhero and she starts deciphering it but at a price.

Matt: Death.

Jimmy Palmiotti: Well, it’s close to it. Because she’s convinced that if she tries to recreate a superhero’s origin that she might get powers but the first one she tries is the safest yet not safest. She approaches a homeless guy to mug her parents when they come out of a play that evening.

Matt: Oh man.

Kara: Oh my goodness.

Jimmy Palmiotti: It goes crazy from there. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a little bit heavy at times. It’s definitely light but if you read the stuff Amanda and I do you’re going to totally get this. This character Dru Dragowski, she’s just a great character. You’re going to fall in love with her right away but she’s definitely not like any other character you’ve ever read.

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