"George Pérez Interview"
JUN 2000 Product
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George Pérez is perhaps best known for his work as an artist on Marvel?s Avengers and DC?s Justice League of America and New Teen Titans and writer/artist on DC?s Wonder Woman. This month, he relaunches his creator-owned title, Crimson Plague, under the Gorilla imprint at Image. Worlds of Westfield Content Editor Roger Ash recently spoke with Pérez about Crimson Plague.
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Westfield: What can you
tell us about Crimson Plague?
George
Pérez: Crimson
Plague, which was originally launched in 1997 under the Event
banner, is being relaunched under the Gorilla banner. It’s still going to
be a limited series although how many issues I’m still not quite sure. The
story’s gotten a little out of hand. It’s a finite series. How finite,
you’ll find out probably about the same time I do [laughs]. It deals with
a genetically altered young woman whose blood is toxic and corrosive to the
touch. The thing that makes this a little different from the usual fare is
that when she reaches her menstrual cycle, that toxicity becomes an airborne
virus capable of destroying an entire planet in the course of a day.
That’s the plague. One of the problems is, she’s getting closer and
closer to earth. Why is she getting closer to earth? I don’t want to tip
my hand, but when the people of earth find out, and they find out about the
plague, that’s the last place they want her to be. In the story, the
character’s only 5 actual years old. She had grown to full adult size in 5
years and so her cycle has yet to be measured; they don’t know what
frequency it is. There’s no way of finding out until it’s too late. From
there on, things get a little hairy.
Westfield: As you
mentioned, Crimson Plague was started before and then stopped. What
happened?
Pérez:
In the case of the original launch, one of the biggest problems was at that
time I wasn’t really doing that much mainstream work which also meant that
I wasn’t earning that much income. I was doing Crimson
Plague, even before Event came into the picture, solely without pay.
There was no upfront monies. So the amount of money I ended up using on it
was too large to bear and unfortunately, because of the fact that it was
always back end money, I couldn’t give up paying work to do it. The second
issue wasn’t even 1/3 done when the first issue came out. At that time it
was scheduled originally to be a monthly, then bi-monthly, and then a
quarterly. I couldn’t afford to do it.
The actual launching of the first issue would have been held back, if
it had come out at all, if it weren’t for the fact that the premiere issue
was tied into a charity event and I couldn’t screw the charity. So I
decided to take my lumps and let the first issue come out knowing full well
I was going to be in trouble with the second issue. I couldn’t let the
Firefighters Burned Children’s Fund suffer because of my bad planning. On
the good side, I managed to raise over $3500 for the Burned Children’s
Fund because of that first issue. It served a purpose. Even though a second
issue had been completed, by that point it had gotten so late, and in order
to survive I had to start taking on regular assignments, including
eventually the Avengers,
that Crimson Plague did not
become a priority book anymore because I had to get myself out of a
financial quagmire. Thankfully, because both of the success of the Avengers and the fact that
under Gorilla I am being paid money in advance of royalties, so I am getting
paid a page rate on Crimson
Plague, I can actually afford to do it again. And hopefully because
of my higher profile in the industry again because of the Avengers,
it will do better than it did the first time. It didn’t do badly for a
premiere issue of a book at that time.
Westfield: How did you
get connected with Gorilla?
Pérez:
I received a phone call from Kurt Busiek telling me that he wanted to put
together a collection of partners for a new comics company. This was before
the name Gorilla was agreed upon. They tried to get as many big, heavyweight
names as they could at that time. There were a lot of people who probably
had as big or a bigger name than I did, but one of the advantages I had was
that I was not affiliated with any other company yet. Most others had
already gone to their creator-owned lines at one point or another. Despite a
25 1/2 year career, I was still virgin territory. I was very flattered, but
my biggest problem was that I’m on exclusive contract with Marvel which
meant I couldn’t do anything new for Gorilla. But, my contract with Crimson
Plague preceded my contract with Marvel and there was a specific
waiver in my Marvel contract regarding Crimson
Plague. So I went to Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti and asked if it
was possible to get out of the Event contract so that I could use Crimson
Plague as my Gorilla launch book. They weren’t happy about losing
the title, but they were very understanding about it and I thank them for
doing that. From that point on, Crimson
Plague became the title that would allow me to be there when Gorilla
launched its first series of books.
Westfield: One of the
interesting things about Crimson Plague is that you’re using real people
as the models for the characters. How did that come about?
Pérez:
Before I was going to start Crimson
Plague, I was actually planning to do another series that was going
to be called The Gladiator, or George
Pérez’s Gladiator as my lawyer told me because Gladiator is not
an uncommon name. Originally, the character who was going to be called
Plague until I found out that that name was already used, was going to be a
villainess in the Gladiator series. I had just met at a convention, this beautiful
young woman named Dina Simmons. She was a Wonder Woman fan and loved my
work. As any artist will tell you, it is highly unusual and incredibly
flattering when a beautiful woman tells you they’re a fan. No offense to
the fanboys, but they’re a dime a dozen. Girls like this are pure gold
[laughter]. Her fiancée, now her husband, owns a comic book store and got
her into it and she became a big fan of myself, John Byrne, Neil Gaiman, and
a few other people. I was so taken by her that about a year down the line
when I was coming up with Gladiator, I asked if I could use her as the model for the
character, even so far as using her name. We kept talking about her
character more and more, and the more I got into it, particularly when the
aspect of feminine cycles came into it, the character became much more
interesting than the Gladiator. So I asked her if she would be bothered if I
scrapped the ideas for Gladiator and centered the series around her.
Strangely enough she said yes [laughs].
Because I was using her,
I found a small role for her husband, who had a totally different role than
he would get later on. I think it finally came together when I went to a
dance party at a studio my wife was taking classes in and saw another lovely
young lady named Shannon Lower and talked to her. I found out she was
fascinated with the idea of being a comic book character, so thus she became
the main adversary for Dina’s character. I found that so many people were
enthralled by the idea that I thought, “this is a great gimmick.” And
everyone said, “I can buy multiple copies for my family.” It would be a
stupid thing not to act upon [laughs]. At final count, I’ve closed the
casting for Crimson Plague despite
still getting people sending me photos, the cast of Crimson Plague is 240
people. Hopefully they have at least 5 family members each, and also knowing
that half a dozen to ten of the people own comic book shops, this could
really, really help the sales of Crimson
Plague [laughter]. And I’ve gotten people from all walks of life,
not only comic book fans. There’s an airline stewardess who just happened
to be a stewardess on a flight when I was coming back from a convention in
Texas; a man who moved in our furniture; our gardener; my dentist; all these
people are becoming characters in Crimson
Plague. A few are professional models, but for the most part, I’ve
got people from all walks of life and even some internationally. I do have
at least 1 or 2 cast members from Britain, 2 from Spain, and 2 or 3 from
France who all wanted to be members of this group.
Westfield: Is this your
first creator owned project?
Pérez:
It’s my first sole creator owned project. The first was Sachs & Violens with
Peter David.
Westfield: After being in
the business for all this time, why did you finally decide to take the
plunge with your own characters?
Pérez:
It’s actually something that I’d been knocking about in my mind for
quite a while. When Image was first being formed, they actually approached
me during the founding of the company to come in with an original character.
I could have been an Image founding father, but I had absolutely nothing
that I thought I had ready. And despite coming up with Gladiator
and then Crimson
Plague, it was something that still took a few years until it really
started to come together. I didn’t want to just plunge into creator owned
waters without having something really there. It takes a while in my
convoluted mind to come up with a story that is interesting to me and that I
know, beginning to end, what’s going to happen as opposed to coming up
with a concept and then figuring out where I’m going to go with it. I’ve
had enough time to create a Crimson Plague universe and, for better or for ill, it’s as
complicated and as detailed as anything I’ve ever drawn before.
Westfield: Do you have
any other comments on Crimson Plague?
Pérez:
The one thing I want to do with Crimson
Plague is keep people guessing. It can’t be pigeonholed that
easily. It has the makings of a bit of a horror story, science fiction,
there are super heroes involved in the story, and a mystery. There’s a lot
going on in there. The one thing that I appreciate is that it’s making me
a better artist because, as people well know, I’m known for drawing not
only a lot of detail, but a lot of crowds. When I work on the Avengers,
for example, if I’m asked to draw a crowd, I’ll draw 15 individual
faces. Now if I were to draw a crowd with 15 people in Crimson Plague, that means
it’s 15 times I have to go for photo reference. The same scene will now
take me at least 3 times longer. I’ve learned a lot more about faces by
doing it this way. And despite the gory subject matter, which could be
controversial because of the biological factors of the story, I still want
to try to make it as accessible to everyone as possible, knowing that it is
not recommended for children under a certain age. For example, for the cover
that I did on the original Event #1, Dina was standing over a bloody
skeleton. If that bloody skeleton does not turn a person away, that’s
about as bad as it ever gets [laughs]. The violence and the bloodshed is
over the top and I don’t try to hide it. On the cover for the new first
issue, attackers are walking over a mountain of decayed, rotting corpses,
still done in enough shadow effect so it isn’t totally disgusting, but
that’s still about as far as it need go. Because I’m using real people,
and I know that many of these people will want to show this to their
families, there are certain things I will not do. I will not have nudity in
the story with any real character, because while they may not mind it, a
grandfather might. Some of the models who are being portrayed here have done
nudity in their own profession, but they’re looking forward to having
something they can show their children or their nephews and nieces.
Westfield: Do you have
any other projects coming up?
Pérez:
With Crimson
Plague and the Avengers,
that’s about as full as my plate can be. I’m doing a couple of
illustrations. I’m doing Last Man Standing for issue 105 of Wizard, with the Justice League and the Avengers, one of
people’s last chances to see me doing Justice League/Avengers of any kind.
And I’m doing one illustration for something related to the X-Men, but to
tell you the truth, I’m not exactly sure what it is anymore. But Avengers and Crimson
Plague are enough to keep me busy when you consider one book’s a
monthly in which I pencil a large group, and the other’s a bi-monthly
where I’m pencilling, writing and inking a lot of real people.
Westfield: Are you still
enjoying working on Avengers?
Pérez:
As long as I work with Kurt Busiek, I enjoy the Avengers. I’m having a
grand time with the stories we’re working on currently. I get to exercise
other artistic muscles since we’re dealing with a Hyborian Age-type
background. All my days of reading Barry Windsor-Smith’s Conan
are coming back to me now. Kurt actually looked at it and said, “some day
you’ve got to do a Conan story. You’re having way too much fun with
this.”
Westfield: So you have no
plans to leave Avengers any time soon?
Pérez:
That’s not something I have to worry about until August 1st
when my contract expires with Marvel. At that point, it depends on where
everything is. Also on what Kurt’s plans are too. As long as Kurt’s on
the book, chances are I will be. Now, I’ve left it very gracefully on poor
Kurt’s shoulders [laughter].
Westfield: Any closing
comments?
Pérez:
Because of Crimson Plague being the only Gorilla title that’s actually
partially a reprint, we managed to work out that the first issue will have
the original 32 pages, some of it modified, the entire thing is being
re-lettered for one thing, with 16 extra pages of story plus other material,
including a 5-page preview of Section Zero, the next Gorilla book. We’ve managed to put a
64-page package together that’ll only be going for $2.95. That way, those
people who did buy Crimson Plague originally don’t feel cheated because,
technically, they’re only paying 45 cents for another book. If you count
the 16 pages as extra, plus a 5-page preview of Crimson
Plague in Empire
#1 the month before, which is also totally new and is not included in the
first one, that means for $2.95, you’re getting 21 pages for 45 cents.
That’s not bad [laughter]. Because of the success of the Avengers,
I was able to work out an incredible bargain rate of nothing for that first
issue for those extra 16 pages so that we can keep fan loyalty and not rip
off those who already purchased the original one.
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