The Joe Kelly Interview
Joe Kelly’s work with comic books, video games, graphic novels, and cartoons is extensive. In terms of comic books and graphic novels, his accolades include work for DC, Marvel, and Image Comics, and that’s not to mention an entire list of various other works. Kelly is a member of the creative production team known as Man of Action as well, a group of comic writers and artists who are responsible for Cartoon Network’s Ben 10 and Generator Rex.
At this year’s New York City Comic Con in October, I had a chance to introduce myself and offer him my card. Since then, and after learning so much more about his work, I am absolutely flattered that he—a man of action with a reputation to support it—not only insists on calling me “Dr. Katie,” but also agreed to do an interview for GraphicNovelReporter.
So, without further ado, here’s an interview with the diversely talented Joe Kelly.
Before I ask some questions about your early and current work with comic books and graphic novels, I want to start by asking about something I randomly stumbled upon just the other day. A Pixar, DreamWorks enthusiast myself, I just so happened to go on the Megamind website and find that you wrote the downloadable Megamind comic book. What was it like to work with DreamWorks and write a comic book to help support the movie?
First, thank you so much for the kind introduction, Doc, and your patience! (Not a pun, I swear!) I really appreciate the kind words and your work on our medium. You, indeed, rock.
I was lucky enough to be asked to write the Megamind comic and I jumped at the gig. I thought it would be fun at the very least, but more importantly, they wanted me to come out and work at the Dreamworks Animation campus, and that sealed it for me. I was literally telling someone last night about what a creative place it is, how you’re surrounded on all sides by genius artist crasftspeople, and despite all the activity and work being done, there’s a sense that you’re somewhere peaceful. I worked with some incredibly talented people on that project and learned a lot about the Dreamworks process. One of the most educational jobs I’ve ever had, honestly.
At the end of the day, when you sit down to reflect upon your work with television, movies, comic books, and graphic novels, do you see any creative overlaps between formats? Or is each format its own entity?
There is a lot of overlap for me. Story is story, no matter the medium. There are certain pillars that you have to contend with or the whole thing falls down, regardless of how good your artists are, your publisher, animators, etc. I do my best to hit every project from a story and structure perspective first, and then work in the medium-specific elements—page turns in comics, for example, or commercial act breaks in animation. I was taught that as a writer I’m like a contractor on a house—my job is to build a solid frame so someone else can come along and dress it up. (It also helped put my ego in check acknowledging from the beginning that my hands wouldn’t be the last ones on the work!)
The biggest difference for me personally is how the scripts are physically written. Animation and film are strictly timed, so there is an economy to the writing that you have to master to keep the page count down. (It’s approximately a page a minute.) Good writing in a script meant to be shot is a wonder to behold. You read a master at their craft and they manage to pull out the most story and emotion with the least amount of words on the page. That’s a skill!
With comics, we have a luxury of acting as directors and writers, and can spend all the time in the world communicating to our artists our vision for the book if we want to. I have most definitely written 36-page scripts for 22-page books! But it’s a different relationship, so I have to express the story differently—cover more angles because at most three other people are touching a comic, as opposed to hundreds in animation or film or video games. It’s why a lot of comic guys get a bad rap when they try screenwriting: Learning how to be economical is difficult!
One of your more recent graphic novels, Four Eyes: Forged in Flames, is receiving a lot of positive attention. When I read Four Eyes, I was particularly impressed with your ability to teach the reader—without directly instructing him or her—to not only read the words, but also the images. It seems as though your writing is so thoughtful and conscious of the images that will support it, that you are able to gently glide the reader between the two. Can you tell us more about your writing process and what’s it like to write along with an illustrator?
Thank you! I was trained at NYU’s Dramatic Writing Program in the Tisch School, and from day one we were taught to “write visually.” Whenever possible, I try to let the images “do the talking.” Especially now that I have more confidence. Though anyone who has read my older work can point to many an X-Men or Deadpool issue with five balloons in every panel on a nine-panel page! (I may have put a few letterers in the hospital.)
On Four Eyes, I am extremely lucky to work with Max Fiumara. Someone once told me that they were surprised I didn’t draw the book myself because the thought-to-execution process was seamless. Max and I are completely on the same wavelength—it’s scary. I think it and it appears, even if I’ve done a half-baked job of describing a panel. Max truly is a genius, and I’m so lucky to have him…I just have to learn to write faster so we can get out more issues!
Lastly, I never write down to a reader. People who read are smart. People who like art are inspired. People who like both can handle uncharted territory and don’t need to be held by the hand all the time. I write books I would like to read, and try to keep that spirit in everything I do.
You have done a lot of work with DC and Marvel. What’s it like to have every comic geek’s dream job and really be the writer behind some of the most famous superheroes of all time?
It’s exciting, an honor, and completely humbling. Very quickly you realize that you’re standing on the shoulders of all of the writers who came before you—some of them who made incredible contributions to our collective comic-book conscious. I feel a great responsibility to these characters and the fans who love them. That said, I also feel that it’s my job to challenge the status quo and shake up the reader, because if they want to just rehash the same old stuff, that’s what their comic collections are for. Those stories have been told already!
After the initial period of terror where I’m sure I will destroy all of that work in one issue, I tend to settle down and do what I always do: Ask myself what story I want to tell and why. Find the heart of the character that I can relate to and go from there. It’s pretty exciting to come up with a new take on Superman or a twist on an X-Men story, but by far the biggest thrill was working on Spider-Man, because he was my favorite growing up. That was my 100% geek-out book and the most nerve-wracking by far. I love Spidey. Period.
What do you read for pleasure? Does this pleasure reading inform your own writing?
Sure, I read a lot for pleasure. It runs the gamut from manga (Tezuka and Urasawa, specifically), lots of OGNs that are less mainstream, and also historical fiction, suspense, and horror. Once in a while some nonfiction creeps in, but mostly for research or something like John Waters memoirs. I read all of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo books and have been on a Chuck Palahniuk kick for a while (Lullaby, Diary, and Pygmy). Currently I’m reading The Hangman’s Daughter.
This stuff all informs the writing in one way or another, especially if the prose is stirring on its own. The Road was one of the most beautiful books I’d ever read in terms of McCarthy’s prose. Same with Out Stealing Horses.
I stay away from fantasy and sci-fi because I don’t want it to seed my ideas in the wrong way—but I enjoy that stuff too.
Man of Action is a creative team of artists and writers, a team ultimately responsible for the hit cartoons Ben 10 and Generator Rex on Cartoon Network. How did this particular group team up and form a working collaborative?
We like to say we started a company so that we’d have a place to sit at Comic-Con, but the origin story is slightly more dense than that. I met Duncan first working on the Juggernaut one-shot, and we hit it off almost immediately. We loved what each other brought to the project and stayed in touch by phone for a long time before we ever officially worked together again. Then I got the assignment to write X-Men and was teamed up with Steve Seagle—whom I also was nuts about because he’s so damn smart, and we hit it off as well. Meanwhile, it turns out that Duncan, Steve, and Joe Casey were already friends out in L.A., and at that time Joe started on Cable, so we got to know one another via X-Men summits and such.
We got into the habit of talking to one another about stories all of the time, even ones that weren’t related to the X-Men (and by now Duncan was working with us, specifically Steve, on Alpha Flight) so we decided to “make it official.” It was the perfect storm, really—a group of smart guys who are also friends doing good work wanted to branch out into other media at a time when Hollywood was checking out comic creators for ideas. So Man of Action was born!
When learning about your work with Man of Action, I wanted to be, for lack of a better term, “a fly on the wall” as you guys hashed out ideas. Behind the scenes, what does the creative process of Man of Action look like?
Like a bad episode of Springer when the audience and the guests are hitting each other with security guards. Only we don’t have a Jerry keeping things under control.
Seriously, our process varies from project to project. We work as a full collective, in teams, solo with back up. Whatever fits best for the project at hand. We’ve known one another for a long time, so we have a shorthand that helps us get through certain sections of development with incredible speed—but we also spend a lot of time just playing with ideas. That’s the glory of it, really, hanging with your friends making up cool stuff.
Once we know where we’re going with a story or a series, then the craftsman side kicks in—series structure, cast balance, story—these are things we know well, though we each hit from a different angle. The benefit there is that if I’m being myopic about a story, I have three guys who see the problem from three different sides and can help me through it.
In some collaborations you wind up with a “lowest common denominator” to make everyone happy. We’re beyond that. We’re like brothers who can fight then go have dinner. We want the best stories possible, and everyone works for that same goal. So far, it’s turning out okay.
My significant other has three children, one of which I think would love to pursue a career as an artist. What is your advice to young adults who want to pursue their creative dreams and—fingers crossed—end up making a career writing for comic books and graphic novels?
First, read as much as you can—all sorts of stuff from nonfiction to fantasy to essays. You never know where a good story will come from, but it also expands your horizons, vocabulary, and confidence. You read enough and you start to see how the “moving parts work” and go, “I could do that!”
If you want to draw, draw EVERY DAY. If you want to write, write something EVERY DAY. It doesn’t matter how much you get done, It’s the discipline of doing it that counts. The creative muse doesn’t hit all the time, so you want to be ready when it comes! The way you do that is by laying a foundation, a relationship to your craft and your art.
In school, obviously take writing and art classes, but also those classes that might teach you about characters and the worlds they might inhabit. I was amazed how much I would get from psychology and social studies to use in comic books!
Lastly, look for experiences in real life as well as film and other media that challenge you. We all like to sit down and turn our brains off once in a while, and that’s important, but more important is to try new things that will stimulate your thinking, even if they’re not comfortable at first. Go see new things. Try a new author that’s off the beaten path. Read a comic that isn’t already a cartoon. You’ll be amazed what it does for your brain!
One of your most well known works, I Kill Giants, is often compared to traditional, canonical literature, in that the depth of the storytelling is so complex and rich with all of the various elements of story (characters, settings, plots, themes, and so on). As a result, many teachers are using I Kill Giants in the classroom. How do you feel about this particular work being used alongside traditional literature in English language arts classroom?
That’s an incredible honor. IKG is close to my heart in many ways, and to think that it could also be used as a teaching tool is staggering to me. It is one of the projects that I am most proud of in my entire career, and if someone finds it at a time in their life where it carries some extra meaning, I’m ecstatic. So the thought that teens who might otherwise never set foot in a comic store are actually given IKG to read in class completely thrills me.
What can your fans expect in the upcoming year? Will you be at San Diego Comic Con? Does Man of Action have any new work coming out? Any new comics or graphic novels in the works?
I’m playing catchup on both Four Eyes and Bad Dog, but along with those comics I’m starting some new projects as well. A few short stories and longer graphic novels. The hard part is time, because MOA is mega busy in animation, especially with our newest job, Ultimate Spider-Man. But that said, we’re all working all the time, and if things go as planned you will be seeing a lot of new work coming from us both individually and collectively this year. I don’t want to say anything specific, because a) I’ve learned the hard way not to talk about things until they’re done! And b) Some of the stuff is top secret!
But I can say that we’re having a great time making stuff up, and so long as you guys want it, we’ll make it!
Thanks for taking the time, Doc! Talk to you soon!
-- Katie Monnin
