comiXology: Conversations
Peter J. Tomasi + Patrick Gleason | Superman
In this episode Peter and Patrick sat with us to talk about fatherhood and also Superman.
Topics include bringing parenthood into storytelling, not caring about Damian, fatherhood as a weakness or strength, parenting isn’t as easy as you once thought, creator for writer and artist, and what he’s reading!
Links:
Transcript:
Matt: Tia, this is arguably the best one we’ve done so far. It hasn’t even started yet. We’re here with the makers of Superman, the brand new series. You might remember them from Batman & Robin, Mr. Tomasi and Mr. Gleason. Welcome to the show.
Peter: Thank you. Thank you for having us.
Matt: I’m going to just say right off the bat, I love this book, Superman. I’m a dad. Are you both fathers?
Peter: Yes.
Pat: Yep.
Matt: I just feel a very strong presence of fatherhood in your work. The Superman story, I’m not a huge Superman fan, but I think it speaks to the strength of your work together as storytellers and as you’re built as storytellers to be able to draw father and son relationships into new readers like myself. Has that always been your focus point from Batman & Robin, or what put you on the path for that kind of fanatic storytelling for Superman?
Peter: I think honestly the situations that had occurred. We did Batman & Robin, Damian was already in the mix in terms of Grant Morrison having created him, but our job at that point was to really add a great deal of flesh and blood on the character. A lot of just enough of a situation where people were on the fence on Damian. They didn’t really care about him but they hated him and they didn’t see much and our job was to really make people at least empathize and care about him and see reasons why he acted the way he did. At the same time, now we were lucky enough to come into a situation with another family situation, that we, as dads and as family people, we can plug right into and get right to the heart of.
Tia: I felt like Issue 3, which I just read, Superman almost felt out of control and was really emotional. I’m wondering, do you see fatherhood as a weakness of Superman’s or is it a strength that he is so emotional and willing to go there?
Pat: That’s actually a really good way to put it. I don’t know if I’d say it’s a weakness, but it definitely maybe could catch him off guard. We’ve seen Superman do so many things, but when you put a kid in the mix, anyone that’s a parent knows it’s really easy to tell people to toe the line and to be a certain way and to be a good guy, but when you’ve got a little kid watching you and looking up to you, it’s not as easy as you thought it was. I used to think before I had kids, “Oh, why don’t parents raise their kids this way or that way?” Now I have kids and I go, “Oh. Okay. That’s all right.”
Even Superman and Lois, too, she’s definitely part of this as a team with him and having a child in the mix makes Superman have to really think through what he’s doing and what he’s putting out there as an example for Jon. It also gives Jon that really nice example to look up to, so it’s going to be a challenge for him.
Matt: You’re both billed as “storytellers” for this run and most people that listen probably think of Waid and Samnee as the most recent one that also did the same thing. Is that with the years of working together that you feel most comfortable doing that together that allowed you to be considered, “We’re doing this together. Let’s put that in writing on the credits page.”
Peter: Yes. The intent was to just show that this was a purely co-created piece of material. Pat and I are both writing it. We’re literally beating out story together, working on dialogue together. It’s really both of us doing all of the heavy lifting in every regard.
Matt: Let’s say you do a different book down the line. Is being listed as a storyteller like that in the back of your head? “I would want that,” or is that something that you can only build up over time, that kind of working together and, as the artists, listed as the storyteller itself?
Pat: Oh, that’s a tough one.
Peter: That is a tough one. To be honest, to a weird degree, as a writer for so long, any artist is still a storyteller, even if they’re not … Like if Pat wasn’t contributing to co-writing it, he’s still a storyteller. He’s still taking the words and he’s still deciding where to put the camera. The artists, they really are storytellers still, no matter how you cut it. The credits are always sort of weird. It’s done for payment reasons and how to break things out properly, but we’re just like a pure writing team at this point.
Pat: It’s been really great, too, because we worked really close together on Batman & Robin, too, but being able to actually work alongside Pete writing, there’s a lot of benefit and camaraderie that comes through that and the story. Plus it’s a bi-weekly book, so … I want to see Pete writing two books-
Peter: It does help to have somebody to bounce stuff off to, and rip off of. Honestly, it makes it more enjoyable, especially if … I don’t know how Pat feels about this, but when you’re writing for so long as I have by myself, suddenly it is nice to have someone that you could just sort of bounce stuff off of instead of being by yourself. Writing is isolating, so it’s nice to be able to get on the phone and talk everything through.
Matt: I appreciate you guys taking the time out. We love the book and we can’t wait to read more.
Peter: Appreciate it.
Pat: Thanks for reading!
(Source: SoundCloud / comiXology)
