IDKIDD: In past interviews I believe you've expressed a desire to eventually move completely to the OGN format such as Orbiter rather than miniseries. Joe Quesada has questioned why a creator or even DC would support this model over the "standard" miniseries, hardcover collection, softcover collection as that model provides more revenue streams and also keeps the creators' work visible for a greater amount of time. Are you interested in the OGN format strictly for the artistic presentation of the work? If not, what about Mr. Quesada's view is off?
WARREN: Partly for the artistic presentation of the work -- not everything works when cut into 22pp chunks. Partly because, if it's the intended final form, people know it's the intended final form, and therefore they wait for the final form -- "waiting for the trade," as it's called today, which depresses the first of those revenue streams Joe talks about. Partly because I think OGN is the optimal form and I don't see the point of arsing around with the compromises when it's the OGN you're looking for. And, in any case, OGNs go straight into comics stores, bookstores, record stores, online stores, and any other market you can shove an OGN into -- multiple revenue streams for a single "product".

NATHAN: Could you tell us a little about the novel you're working on right now (the first one)? Maybe a brief description or something, like the simplified back-cover version (unless you feel like elaborating)?
WARREN: It's about the Secret Constitution Of The United States, detectives, and the mental Reset button for the human race. But it's really all about sex.

EMIL LATSON: There was a discussion on why black heroes (outside of Spawn) don't do well, as far as sells. Priest gave his reason's why he think's these books don't sell. Would you care to give your opinion as well?
WARREN: Hm. I'll be honest, it's nothing I've ever given a great deal of thought to. I don't know that I could give an informed opinion on that. I'd only be speculating.

I mean, it's quite possible it's a recursive thing: Very White Comics lead to People Who Are Not White concluding that comics say nothing to them about their lives, and leave the playing field. With no People Who Are Not White in the comics stores, there's a demographic unavailable to buy Comics About People Who Are Not White, they don't do so well, and everyone decides it's best to just do Very White Comics instead.

There's also the unarguable fact that Western comics creation is still a very white field. Not everyone lives in a multicultural region, either. I remember Morrison joking on stage at the '99 Melbourne con that there's only one black man in Glasgow. To an extent, we'll all reflexively write from what we know, and if there are only a bunch of caucasoids in our lives...

I've always tried to support gifted female creators trying to enter the field, because God knows they haven't always been welcome and the form needs their voices -- but comics are still awful white, too. And white boy writers are going to end up writing white boy comics because that's where they come from and that's their voice...

I dunno. I'm rambling.

 

STORMWATCH VOL. I: FORCE OF NATURE TRADE PAPERBACK

JOHNNY ARCHIBALD: Since you're writing UFF now, can you answer this dubious query: does the Thing have a penis?
WARREN: Yes. It is very large and retracts up into his abdomen.

What is wrong with you?

JOHN VOULIERIS: 1) Will you give us any info on your work for hire DC series? team book? solo? Characters you worked with before or not? 2) Why did you opt out of the other 2 work for hire DC projects at DC? 3) is this one project that famous last superhero job you promised an editor (Cavalieri I believe) at DC?
WARREN: 1) No.

2) Several reasons.

3) No, though I tried.

This was in Bad Signal. See, I thought I'd revive BLACKHAWK for them. So I said to Joey, I'll revive BLACKHAWK for you. Cool, says Joey. So I write a BLACKHAWK pitch. Not really very superheroey at all, but fuck it. I write the pitch. Everyone is happy. It goes up to Paul Levitz. Paul Levitz says, we can't do this, there's a film option on BLACKHAWK and this goes too far from the iteration of BLACKHAWK that's intended in the option. So I said, laughing, okay, I'll change all the names and you can give it back to me and I'll do it as a creator-owned series with you.

Okay, they said.

That's JACK CROSS.

AARON MEHTA: Been playing catch up with this thread but I completely missed the last one and I wanted to get this in, so apologies if this has been covered already. Warren, any thoughts on the recent "rebirth" of the Image guys? Jim Lee doing back to back solid runs, Liefeld with a new Marvel series, Silvestri drawing something, and all of them looking to be large sellers? Did the fan basses simply never go away, or is it that these artists had enough time to cool off and evolve that they can seem new or different? Or do the sales have anything to do with the fact that they appear to have learned from their mistakes and teamed up with top writers who know their stuff? On a completely different note, a while back you sent out an email in regards to webcomics, asking for people to link you to their work. Was there any reason for this, or just idle curiosity? Thanks for doing another one of these, and thanks for writing some of the best stuff in the medium.
WARREN: The webcomics thing? I was just curious. I figured there had to be better stuff out there than what I was finding, and I was well aware of being woefully underinformed about the webcomics movement.

On the "Image guys" thing: I think it's probably a whole mixture of those things. I mean, the fan base is provably no longer there for them. Retailers ordered 200,000 copies of Jim's SUPERMAN, I think someone said? Jim used to move books in the millions. Even with speculators in the room, there were four or five times as many comics stores then as there are now. Some of these guys, like Silvestri, became distant from the form -- I imagine more current readers remember him from THE DARKNESS than from X-MEN or CYBERFORCE, and certainly with THE DARKNESS he was teamed with an excellent writer.

Maybe it's that these guys come with a story. These were the rock stars of commercial comics in their youth, who went and formed their own label and became very rich. And now they're reforming and coming out on tour to play their early catalogue...

DOM BARTUCCIO: Do you get pissed off that a majority of the people who will read your upcoming UFF and Ultimate Nightmare work will have no idea you've worked in comics before?
WARREN: God, no. That's part of the appeal of these gigs. These books will be turning up in comics stores where, seriously, nothing else I do has been ordered by the management since maybe THE AUTHORITY. Maybe EXCALIBUR or DV8. There are at least a thousand stores where my creator-owned non-superhero just isn't carried. Therefore, one hopes, these books will end up in the hands of people who've never heard of me -- and if they like the stuff, and research my name a little, they'll find forty graphic novels of mine...

(Probably at Amazon or someone else's store. But whatever.)   

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