In 1994 I started to stray from the world of Comic Books. It seemed like every title that was being produced had a tone that, for me, was too dark to be considered escapism. Amongst a sea large breasted scantily clad women with hand guns the size of cannons, I found myself coming across a bright and colorful world known as Snap City. In Snap City, a man known as Frank Einstein (former hitman Zane Townsend) was brought back to life by scientists Dr. Flem and Dr. Boiffard. With his limited memory, Frank donned an outfit that resembled a childhood comic book hero, Mr. Excitement as he takes on the persona as the Madman of Snap City. Along with his friend Mott the Hoople, lab assistants Bonnie and Gale and his devoted girlfriend Joe, Madman enters in a world of inter stellar adventure and intrigue.
The pop art style of Madman comics is created by writer and artist Michael Allred, who, along with his wife and colorist Laura, has continued to captivate readers for almost two decades. With the production of the first Madman motion picture months away and a brand new comic book series from Image, Jonathan and Brian of Geekscape gave me the opportunity to discuss all things Madman with the creator himself.
Ralph Apel: All right, I’m a little nervous.
Mike Allred: Well, don’t be.
RA: All right. I’ll try. I’ll do my best. I’ve been trying to figure out all weekend how to ease into this interview. I think probably the most obvious way is to just ask you about Madman. The origins of Madman and maybe get a little insight on why Frank Einstein and how he became who he is today and what your original idea of the character was.
MA: Where do you want me to start?
RA: Where does he come from? In your mind when you first started what was the concept of your character and where did it come from?
MA: Originally it was kind of a crossroads in my budding career. I had fallen in love with the art form and was making an attempt at it and was also having some surprise success at it. In other words it was a hobby that started to pay off. So I was just kinda playing with the art form but my first serious attempt was illustrating a screenplay called Dead Air and a friend who was a big comic book fan knew that I was an artist said, “Why don’t you, it’s like you’re storyboarding the screenplay, why don’t you draw it in comic book form?” And so I was reintroduced to this art form which I loved as a kid, was always around as a kid and took for granted as a kid; but I now seriously studied it. I studied the history of it and drew my screenplay, was published by Slave Labor Graphics, and by the time it came out it wasn’t just a one-off thing any more; I wanted to pursue it. So I started drawing other ideas out, still not really sure of what I wanted to do.
Then when I realized that this was what I wanted to make my career and dedicate my life to it I had to kind of just throw everything out. I guess I had to reset everything. And with that I had to figure out what I really wanted to do. What was important to me in the medium, and also what kind of niche, if any, I wanted to make for myself as a creator.
My kids had become school age at this time and I wanted to do something that they could tell their friends what their dad did. In other words I started looking outside of myself and made a master list of what I wanted to do and also the kind of material I wanted to show to people as an entertainer, or an artist, a creator. So I thought of all the things that I loved when I was a kid and things that I was gaining appreciation for or learning about then as an adult. So I was re-exposed to Plastic Man, the Spirit, and Alex Toth’s The Fox.
My good friend Bernie Morrow did this great character called The Jam. So I pretty much just kind of put everything in a bag and shook it up. Then I already had a pre-existing character with my favorite character, Frank Einstein which was kind of like a contemporary Frankenstein and also was the closest thing to my sensibilities, reflecting my personality. So it really just came down to throwing the costume on him. That’s, in the most simplified way, the best explanation I have for how Frank Einstein in costume became Madman.
RA: Awesome. At the time that you were deciding to start making a career of your comic books, what did Laura think of all of this? Was she behind you one hundred percent? Was it a bit strange to her?
MA: She really was behind me completely. She was an art major in college. That’s where we met and so she understood my passion for art and was always interested to see what comic book stuff I brought home. And it was a crash course.
I think all of my comics as a kid had been thrown away or lost or stolen prior to meeting Laura, except I had the Barry Windsor Smith Conan collection. I had everything he had done. And Red Nails, which today is on of my favorite comic book stories ever. And my first serious attempt as an adult, you know as a kid I’d be on the floor with my brother, folding paper, making little books of comic books. But as an adult, my first serious attempt, just before college, was trying to draw a Conan story. You know, in a Barry Smith style.
She saw later when I was really making a focused attempt at it I was borrowing stuff from my friend Charlie and buying stuff which excited me and reading books on the history of comics and rebuying books that I had as a kid like Jules Pfeiffer’s superhero book and Stranko’s History of Comics and just looking through price guides to read about how many issues of this series or that series and who was the artist on this series and who created that, on and on and on. It was just a really exciting time because all this wonderful, thrilling material was in the home and she was right there. Even when I was in broadcasting, I was a TV reporter in Europe when we really made the move.
My friend Steve Seagal, the first comic book pro I ever met in Colorado Springs when I was teaching TV Production at the Air Force Academy he gave me my first real pointers and he also gave me my first real break when I was a TV reporter in Europe he got me this gig called Jaguar Stories for Comico which was twelve monthly issues. And it was such a generous page rate that it was safe for me to say, “OK, we have a year to try to make this happen.” So we pulled up our roots and came back to Oregon which where we ultimately wanted to retire and here we got a head start at being able to settle down in Oregon and from that moment on it was no looking back.
I took my work ethic that I had in broadcasting and spilled it all into my artwork and storytelling knowing that this was the best chance that I was going to have and we just really made a play for it and so she was completely behind me. Not only because she knew I was passionate about it but also once we had made that commitment that if I failed or didn’t have her complete support it could go very badly. She’s always been the best thing that ever happened to me on every level.
RA: I completely understand. My wife is also a saint. I have a question. I’m a huge fan of your work, by the way. I visit your boards almost every day.
MA: I’ve taken note of your posts on the message boards. I’m very appreciative.
RA: My wife told me once that she was going to start getting jealous of the character Joe every time she pops up on my wallpaper, which got me thinking. I was wondering what does Laura think of some of the female characters you create and some of the outfits you put them in? Does she ever maybe think that there might be too many curves? Does she get jealous or does she just smile?
MA: Actually, her attitude is, I try to make all my characters more realistic so that they’re not muscles on muscles that don’t exist in human anatomy and so the scales are more natural and she’s mentioned that she’s appreciative of that. My effort to do that. And when I have the ideal females, they’re almost always inspired by her. Specifically Joe and It Girl are to me they’re direct mirrors of Laura. In the same what that if any character I’ve created is of mine it would be Frank Einstein. For instance I kind of have, I’m always having this battle with self deprecation so Frank with his scars and that’s something that’s directly from my head and the way that I perceive Laura with her unquestioning devotion that’s absolutely inspiration for Joe. And It Girl has those same qualities as well.
She’s never had any insecurities about the characters. Bonnie, who is my buxom blonde, very typical buxom blonde, for me that’s a way to kind of play up and make fun of the fanboy mentality that gets excited about a woman with large breasts. Which you know I think is silly, but at the same time there are women that have large breasts and if I’m disappointed in myself, Laura’s certainly never criticized me about this but that I don’t have more characters that are super skinny or more overweight so I’ve kind of went down this happy medium of comic book idealism and reality and what I’m trying to do more and more is to stretch my comfort zone. And that includes characters. Letting go of characters and putting more real life disappointments and tragedies to further contrast the joy and excitement of the adventures and good vibes that I like to have in my work. So I’m really hoping to throw in some twists and turns, cartwheels and loops in the future and I’m just hoping that people that have supported our work are going to stick with us and enjoy the ride.
RA: This last weekend I picked up one of your latest trades, which is Madman and the Atomics volume one. Which I just started reading. I hadn’t read it before and you mention there’s light-heartedness to your work but every once in a while you’ll throw a curve ball and it almost heightens the impact. In an issue I just read over the weekend the Cadaver is in an alleyway with It Girl and Metal Man and he picks up a cat who is innocently walking through an alley and he completely melts the flesh off the cat, killing it. Is that a conscious effort to, for certain scenes like that, knowing that you have such a light-hearted storytelling style that these kind of moments will have a stronger impact? Is that a real conscious effort?
MA: Well, it is in that it’s really important to me to show the contrasts of life. Also the fact that bad things often happen to good people. And some people when bad things happen to them it’s really where they’re tested. And I think that’s why we’re here. I think that’s what life is about, to get tested. To see where we hold up and also to see where we appreciate the good things so in other words, if only good things ever happened to us, we wouldn’t really appreciate it because we wouldn’t have ever felt the other side of it.
The pain and the tragedy and so we wouldn’t appreciate love if it wasn’t for hate, we wouldn’t appreciate peace if it wasn’t for violence, and so it’s important for us to have these reflecting contrasts so that we can have our thoughts provoked and to expand our consciousness and to fully appreciate what’s going on around us.
Also to look outside of ourselves. You know it’s not like it’s all about us. I’ve found that the most happy a human being can be is when they’re actually concerning themselves with somebody else and it’s kind of a joyful paradox that the most selfish thing you could do is to help somebody else because that’s the ultimate joy. That’s why here we’re having this discussion right before Christmas, which is just my favorite time of the year. It seems to be a time when people are eager and enthusiastic about being kind and looking towards other people and helping those that are less fortunate than themselves and that’s sort of thing. So when people talk about wouldn’t it be great if that’s how it was the year around, well it can be and it should be and I make that effort. Failing miserably most of the time, but it’s all of these things that when I sit down to flesh out the outline and write my stories and work with my characters I have a list of priorities.
First and foremost, to entertain and get people excited about what I do and what I’m presenting but also to make sure that they experience is unpredictable yet to have characters that you’re going to want to revisit and be comfortable with and familiar with.
There’s stuff that’s happening in the issues that haven’t quite come out yet that I’m really concerned with because I know some people are going to be very upset and I’m making some really crazy left turns that I know maybe it might be too much too soon but I really have been building up to these levels of impact and it’s important to me to not compromise too much, as much as I’m concerned about the readers and the people that are fans of the work I don’t want to betray them but at the same time I think it’s even worse to betray them by soft-pedaling things and not showing the ugly and tragic side of life. And it’s almost silly to talk about these kind of things when you’re talking about funny books but where I embrace the innocence and the simplicity of those early inspirations and the classic material that started the medium; I also don’t want to deny its potential.
So while I enjoy having this kind of light, entertaining, adventurous surface, I still want to have these deep existential, philosophical, emotional notes in the work. So for me it’s always a balance, it’s always fine-tuning and figuring out what notes to play and when a note is too loud or too in your face and when it’s just right and subtle and works everything naturally. These are things I’m constantly concerning myself with and whether it’s showing it’s a short cut to show a bad guy is bad when he kills a cat, at the same time where that may not be as subtle there are other things that I’m hoping people won’t immediately recognize or see the structure for something that I’ve been building towards so when I play the bigger notes that they have as much impact as possible.
RA: Madman Atomic Comics #2 comes to mind where in Frank’s mind he is trying to construct his own world, his own reality and it’s Warren who takes on the form of our current President. It’s moments like that where as a reader it really makes you think. Especially in the Madman comic which to me has always felt like an old Saturday morning matinee style serial. To see something so grounded in reality it’s really interesting to see something like that put out in front of you in such a medium that may be regarded as kid’s entertainment. But I definitely believe the impact is there.
MA: I’m glad you mentioned that. The angriest letter I’ve ever received was because of that moment and the writer of the letter was upset that I broke the barrier of this fantasy world which I’ve created and brought in this realistic, not only this realistic contemporary figure that reflects our time but also revealed possibly my politics. That through Frank I was showing that I thought the Bush administration was a disaster. And he was upset that I was using my comic book and that for him it took him out of the story because of that.
And for me, I agree with that and I respected what he had to say, but it was a moment for me to show that this wasn’t Frank’s reality, this wasn’t Frank’s universe, that if I was going to have any social commentary that this would be the moment to show it and some of that was reflected in the letter column, my feelings about that.
Especially since my older brother, who has been in the Guard and sent to Iraq three times, and there have been months and months when we haven’t heard from him or known what’s going on. So for all those reasons and for the fact that Laura and I from day one couldn’t understand why all of a sudden we were putting our resources into Iraq it’s just been this frustrating thing for us and so I took this self-indulgent moment in this alternate reality and threw that in there. I don’t regret it, except for the reasons I said before and that I did understand and respect this person’s point of view and how it took them out of the story. And I don’t want to take people out of the story but at the same time I want to kind of express these ideas and make people aware a politician is a politician. And if you’re looking for a savior in a politician, you’re always going to be horribly disappointed. This is what I was trying to get across in that my idea of a savior, but specifically a comic book savior would just be the kind of person who wanted people to follow the golden rule and treat another person like you would want to be treated: which I think is the one element that most faiths seem to have in common.
But as individuals we don’t follow that rule as we should. If we did, we won’t be looking out for interests that would allow us to make money off of war, which has always been the case. And in my mind there have been very few wars that have been justified or to use an extreme word, “righteous.” Whether it’s freeing slaves or fighting for your freedom or defending yourself.
So all of these concerns and ideologies and passions and disgust of politics all kind of filtered into that one moment. That’s why it was there. But it was a learning experience for me because on the one hand I have to kind of set some rules for each of my projects. In other words, with Red Rocket 7 there were certain rules I had to follow and having real rock and roll history and contrasting it with my fictionalized clone characters. And in Madman I have to kind of set the boundaries too and I think that I have probably cheated with that George Bush moment. These are the kind of decisions that you’re constantly coming up against, especially when your set goal is releasing a book every month and I haven’t been completely successful at keeping my monthly deadlines. I mostly feel successful about staying true to the rule that I’ve set for myself, that would be one moment where I bent those rules considerably, justified them, but at the same time in retrospect I don’t know if I would have done that.
On the other hand I was able to communicate what I wanted to communicate in one moment, but maybe the Madman series wasn’t the right place for that, maybe I should have used another project to reflect that. I try to make it clear also that I don’t belong to a political party and I have really high standards for any politician to ever have my support. I’m wary of politicians, I’m wary of government, my faith is always in the individual. So on the one hand I’m very protective of my ideologies, of my faith, of the things that I believe and I never want to seem preachy, or condescending. I want to be the everyman when it comes to philosophizing, but with my work I want to be as unique as possible. So all these things were in consideration and are in consideration when making those decisions and every time you do make a decision also about the stuff I’ve already decided, committed to, just hasn’t reached the stands yet, in your local comic shops…
RA: I’ve seen some of the covers.
MA: You’re just never going to please everybody all the time. I guess that’s the best way to sum up this topic.
RA: Well, as long as you’re happy with the books. That’s all that matters. You can’t please everybody all the time. I think the books are great. On the lighter side, there’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while. It’s about the new series. Frank’s reality is really twisted now, a lot of stuff going on. I was wondering if we were going to see or revisit Frank from the first three issues of Madman. The Madman where he’ll rip a guy’s eye out and eat it or something will snap in his head where he becomes a violent monster almost.
MA: There is an ugly side, and we will see elements of that. The new series, what I’ve tried to point out is that the extremely violent moments that he’s had actually never happened. The first series and it’s a happy accident that it was released in that dreamy, two-color format, because in retrospect and especially context of the gargantuan collection it plays like a dream. It has this different, almost close to nightmarish quality.
And then with Madman Adventures and the pop art covers I think that’s when the character really found his soul and revealed who he really was which is this individual that has done questionable things in his past life but in his new life had really tried hard to rise above his natural tendencies. There’s a scripture, I don’t know exactly where but it’s “The natural man is an enemy to God.” That’s a theme that has always fascinated me where we look at people and go, “They were just born that way,” like murderers and serial killers, and there’s this justification for it. Or you blame the parents, when somebody does something horrible. “Oh, it was the way they were raised.” Like I said before, my faith is in the individual.
I also say that because I think each of us are capable of overcoming our selfish natural impulses. It’s why somebody as a child might go into a store and grab a fistful of candy, but later when they learn that that’s wrong they make a conscious decision never to do that again. Going back to my philosophy and belief that we’re here to experience life and to look at the extremes and the contrasts of human existence and we make choices of where we’re going to fall in there. Are we going to be part of an evil corporation or are we going to be part of a charitable organization? Or are we just going to be concerned with our sphere of influence and just be the best people we can be or do we follow those selfish tendencies and give into our natural base impulses that hurt other people but benefit us. These are things that are really important to me and ultimately what I’m most passionate about is give people choices. I think the most evil thing you can do is to take someone’s agency away from them to where they’re not allowed to make choices, where they’re not allowed to rise up from whatever position they might find themselves in.
There should always be a hand reaching down to lift up. So many wonderful things happened in my life because someone reached down to me. We all need to do that. We need mentors. we need guidance. we need role models. we need inspiration. As soon as we think we’re as good as we can be, we are. We’re done, we’ve made that choice. As long as we’re constantly striving to improve ourselves then there can be progression.
As a race, as people, as human beings. These are all the ideals that I can boil down and like sunlight through a magnifying glass, that’s what Frank Einstein is to me. He’s clearly not a perfect individual, he’s done horrible things. Not as bad as he thought he had, and what I tried to get across was that these really horrible violent things that the body did were the fear of being this very shadowy individual in a previous life and learning that and trying to get across to show that he’s learning, and to get across to everyone that we’re not who people perceive us to be, we’re not who our past shows us to be but we are who we decide to be right now today. It’s always about now.
There’s this great song by Flaming Lips, “All We Have Is Now” and that’s a really important idea to get across. We learn from our past, we have hope for the future and we have right now to decide who we are and that is ultimately who we are. So we’re not the guys that insulted somebody at a party last week, we’re the guys that apologize today and make a commitment to not do that sort of thing again. So that’s who we are, right now, what we decide to be so we don’t need to regret the past as long as we learn from it and move beyond it and are trying to improve upon it.
That’s who Frank Einstein is for me and by having that contrast of his violent past it’s important also to show that he’s moved beyond that and he’s found more esteem and matured considerably from those early issues. And as childlike as he remains he’s much less childlike than he was say in the early issues of Madman Adventures. So he is maturing and growing as he experiences life, but having said that, just like each of us we have our bad moments. As hard as we may struggle not to lose our temper doesn’t mean we won’t ever lose our temper again.
For me with Laura, if my relationship with her is beyond anything I think I deserve and I think I only deserve it because I realize that the things that I’ve said before, that if I’ve made mistakes or treated her less than she deserved to be treated it’s not like you should just throw it out the window and get divorced or whatever, but move beyond that and the greatest moment in our life and in our relationship was when we realized, you know what, we’re going to fight. We’re going to have arguments, but we’re also going to love each other more in the future than we do right now if we maintain our commitment and when we had that moment of consciousness our commitment increased and now we’re living in that reward. That to me is just the perfect example of what makes life wonderful. When you don’t just throw your hands up and say, “Oh forget it, I don’t want to try anymore.” But when you do sweat it out, it’s wonderful to be living in that realization now. That’s why I think I’m loving life more than ever because I’m tasting the benefit of holding on and sticking it out.
There were times when it would have been real easy for Laura and I to say, “Forget it, I’m calling a lawyer, let’s just call it quits and stop.” It’s so easy to get divorced, it’s so easy to quit anything in life anymore and we didn’t. So because of that our love for each other our commitment to each other is more fulfilling and enjoyable and now we look back and here there’s somebody who’s shared over half of our life, the good times and bad times and it’s not like I’m having to start new with somebody and, “Well now I’m going to be a better person with this person.” No, I’m with someone who’s seen the worst of me and can appreciate the progression that I’ve made as a person.
Again, all this stuff, if anybody says that I fool myself and that none of this stuff is seen in the comic books, that is fine, but the intent is there. I want these kind of moments to reflect these things that I’m learning in my own personal growth as a human being. I have this perfect little playground to, in subtle ways I admit, hopefully subtle ways, filter this stuff into my comic book work.
RA: Right now I’m actually looking at the five-page preview for MAC #4 with Frank and Joe in the park. I think it really does come across. I think your relationship with Laura really comes across in the books. I definitely see that.
MA: That was a fun moment to be able to make. Especially where we see Frank healing. The mask is slowly been reducing his scarring. The scarring to me is symbolic of a damaged soul but unfortunately for Frank he was just dreaming, but it still does reflect his hopes and his goals, what he’s hoping to get out of life.
RA: It seems that it’s something that he’s going to bring back with him if he makes it back to Joe. This experience with him envisioning himself as “normal” in his mind and being happy with himself if he does make it back to Snap City and reunite with Joe it’ll be good to see him almost accept himself and understand why she actually loves him.
MA: Boy, are you in for some surprises.
RA: I don’t know, I’m really interested in seeing where this story goes. The new series has been definitely interesting and there’s definitely tension there.
MA: I’ve never been happier. I’m more happy with the work now than anything I’ve done. I’m very excited about what we’ve got planned and also the leaps we’re taking artistically. I was afraid that some of the experimentation I’ve been doing might have been too big of a leap, but so far people seem to be responding positively to it.
RA: The art is great.
MA: Thanks. If you look at Gargantua, you’ll see that we’ve been experimenting all the way. That we’ve never settled on one specific style that we’ve made little changes here and there, tried new techniques here and there, some less successful than others but with this new series I think the experiments have been a little more noticeable but hopefully the reaction we’ve been getting runs parallel with how the masses feel about it. I’m hoping there aren’t disappointed people that just haven’t been vocal. I’m enjoying it, that’s really important for an artist to please themself first, to follow their artistic impulses but at the same time I don’t want to alienate anybody by abandoning a particular style or feel that somebody has gained affection for. I’m hoping that ultimately if people like our work and are drawn to what we’re doing it’ll be because of that and this need to progress and improve upon it and be constantly excited about what we’re doing and we are that. We’re very excited about what we’re doing so if that is reflected in the work, then wow, we couldn’t be happier.
RA: It looks great. Not saying that the other stuff didn’t.
MA: I’ve had people say, “My favorite stuff you did was such and such,” and it was like ten years ago or something and I just kind of plaster a smile on my face. Glad I did something that you liked, but that’s kind of disappointing that you don’t like what I’m doing right now as much as you did then because I feel like it’s night and day. But everybody’s entitled to his or her own opinion.
RA: I started reading this series before I was able to pick up Gargantua. It was interesting looking through the new books and then going back to close to the beginning of Madman and seeing that artwork and how much it’s changed, like you said it’s definitely night and day. I’m going to ask a few more questions, just a couple more, because it’s something that I’m really, really interested in and as you were talking about experimenting with Madman, and different art styles, I need to ask you about one of the latest experiments with the character which is the movie. I know you guys are in the writing process, is that correct?
MA: It’s really frustrating because we’re right at the tail end of the writing process, but we didn’t have a lot of script and so the writer’s strike has completely shut us down. But I’m really happy with what we’ve got. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the screenplay is right on and it’s exactly the movie I want to see.
RA: I know there’s probably not much you can talk about as far as the movie’s concerned. I know that I’ve heard on a different interview that you’ve mentioned you have a clear vision of what the film should look like.
MA: Yes.
RA: I’m wondering if you have done any screen tests.
MA: Oh no, not yet.
RA: Not yet?
MA: Makeup type tests, design, but nothing on film.
RA: Can you say what kind of makeup tests you’ve done?
MA: The mask for instance. The best way to describe it is that it’ll be prosthetic to where it will go around the actor’s head, but then have an opening above the eyebrows and around the chin, but then it’ll be this kind of grayish white that will blend in with the face.
RA: Kind of like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz?
MA: Exactly. The Scarecrow is a good example of that. If you’ve ever seen the Blue Man Group.
RA: Yes.
MA: Where they don’t have ears, their head is just one, you can see their nose and their eyes…
RA: I’ve never noticed that they don’t have ears.
MA: It’s like that. There will be shots where a hand is in front of the mask and stretching it out to further cement the illusion. It’s always fun to see how people make their homemade costumes and stuff, they’ll put a sock over their head with the eyes cut out, but where the mask has evolved into this second human skin in the comic books, Frank has full use of his expression, so that’s what I’m really happy with, the actor will be completely unhindered. It’s going to be a really cool, surreal look to it. It’ll have that second skin look to it.
RA: That’s good.
MA: And it’ll be seamless.
RA: And what about the eyes? Are they going to be white?
MA: The eyes? Yeah, the color part of a person’s eyes, you’ll be able to see where he’s looking, but it’ll be that kind of dead, washed out, colorless look. What hasn’t been decided yet is if it’ll be these pale, white contacts or if we’ll just use it with computers. I guess it’ll depend on the comfort, the actor’s going to be in the Frank Einstein makeup for the majority of the film. There are these moments of the Zane Townsend character without the makeup but also then with the mask off you will see the scars and the stitches and the plate in his head, so there’s that as well.
RA: Have you done that makeup yet, has that been done?
MA: No, but that’s pretty standard stuff, nothing you need to experiment for that. Some badly mangled stitches and that sort of stuff, pretty easy to do.
RA: What other characters will we be seeing in the movie? Is there anyone? Joe, will obviously be in it.
MA: Oh yeah.
RA: Boiffard and Flem, I’m assuming.
MA: Joe, Boiffard, Flem, Monstadt, Gail, Bonnie, it’s pretty much an enhanced version of the original. It’s the non-dream version of the first three issue series.
RA: Oh, that’s great.
MA: It’s like what really happened. The mask always has the hair out of it, for instance. The main reason why Frank had that full head mask was for one reason only and that was because for people that had followed Graphic Music and had seen Creatures of the Id, I thought it was here I had this very small loyal following with my early work, and I didn’t want to reveal that my favorite character Frank Einstein was this new character Madman until the third issue, so I wanted there to be this reveal, so for people that liked Frank Einstein, who was by far my most popular creation at that point, and that remains so to this day, I believe, I wanted to have this reveal and his hair was so distinctive at the time. It actually used to be this wild, curly hair, and it’s kind of become more of a flipped out, windblown thing.
RA: A friend of mine refers to that curly hair as the nineties hair.
MA: But that was it, I always wanted to have that, one of my favorite characters as a kid was Kid Flash who had that mask with that open top with the hair coming out so that when Kid Flash was running his hair was blowing back and I always loved that look and so that was it, the only reason. For me that’s how we established that and if we were that faithful to the original series, then we’d have him in the full head mask all along, and I don’t really want to do that. Why? Also, when we find out the reason for his mask, it’s beyond the superhero identity which Frank Einstein wants for himself because of the self esteem issues.
The real purpose of the mask is it’s chemically treated and it’s a healing thing. So why would you have that over your hair? If anybody’s expecting the full head mask, that’s not happening. Which, the only person I know that’s incredibly disappointed about that is Alex Ross, for some reason. He just absolutely loved the original full head mask and is always giving me a hard time about it. Here’s a classic example of I gotta do what I want to do and the Madman costume you see now is the definitive Madman costume as far as I’m concerned. He’ll play with the Exclamation Bolt, the version you see now is the one I prefer.
There’s the one where the dot is square, and there’s the version that the bolt comes to a point. I may change my mind again at some point in the future, I don’t know. But the one you see now in the current series is the definitive one as far as I’m concerned. And we want to get as close to that as possible so I’m assuming we’ll use the same kind of material that’s been used for the Spider-Man costume, although if you notice when I draw the costume you’ll see little bags, it’s a little bit baggy sometimes, you’ll see the folds in the knees.
I like it kind of loose-fitting, but I want it to look good. The fit of it is something we’re really going to have to figure out cause you look at superhero costumes over the years, over the decades and I think on-screen we’ve finally found this material that really looks good. The same material was used in the Fantastic Four movies, and it looks pretty good. But you’ve gotta be really fit to pull it off and these are all things that we’re going to nail down, what looks best, what’s most comfortable, and I want it to have a charming look, I want it to have kind of that realistic, real-world look, but I don’t want it to look cheap, so these are all things that we have yet to decide on.
RA: I have two quick questions about the film. Because it’s going to be the first three books, does that mean we won’t see, which is my favorite character, Mott the Hoople?
MA: Yeah, Mott hasn’t come into it yet, we’ve talked about sequels, hopefully it’ll be successful enough that a sequel is justified and we would go right into Mott and probably bring in the mean street beatniks and maybe bring in their Atomic identities too, that’s something we don’t know yet.
RA: Would you do Mott CG or in a suit, if you were to do it.
MA: I think he’d be pretty easy to do with prosthetic makeup. He’s kind of your classic monster character. I look at the Alien movies, I’ve never seen any CG creation that’s anywhere as cool as the Alien. Even when you see it full on. It’s great with those movies that the Alien is always in the shadows, and always you just briefly see it, where Mott will be out in full, there’s that shiny part of quality with the Alien character that I really like. I’d like some amalgam of that, where Mott looks all slick and shiny. I don’t know, we’ll see. I just don’t see why we would go with CGI. A character like Shrek in the comics, and I’d like to point out that I’d never heard of Shrek the cartoon when I created my Shrek, so what a bizarre coincidence, in fact, I named the character after one of my best buddies, my Madman editor at Dark Horse, Bob Shrek, I spelled it differently so it wasn’t a clear, direct tribute to him and here it turns out this cartoon character, it was really wild and it followed right on the heels. That character would have to be CGI if we did it in a movie. Insect thing.
RA: I was looking at that and I was thinking of a big lumbering man in a suit, kind of a Godzilla character.
MA: Right.
RA: And then have him put in digitally, but I expect…
MA: That would be easily done too, the way Robert’s got this state-of-the art green screen. He’s got the largest green screen outside of Hollywood in his Austin facilities and he’s breaking ground any time he does anything, he’s really tight with George Lucas, he’s worked directly with him, he’s been a champion of his digital process. At any level, if Robert says this is what’s going to work best, that’s all I need to know, because Robert knows what he’s doing. He’s done his homework and he’s also worked everything out, so it’s all good, he’s the man.
RA: Excellent. I don’t want to take up more of your time but I’m just dying to know more about this movie. I guess I could just ask you on the boards. Before I go, one last question, you mentioned at the beginning that you wanted your kids to be able to say what their dad does for a living, now many years later, what does your family think of your career on a whole, and what you and Laura are doing now, over the course of the past twenty years or so?
MA: It’s almost scary to talk about this kind of stuff because life is just so darn good right now and our family has never been tighter, we just love spending time together, there’s actually a lot of stuff that my kids were never interested in looking at or reading and now are, and it’s really enjoyable on every level. I just feel like in most cases we’ve made the right decisions, made the right moves, and there have been enough tragedies in our life that I’m hoping I’m not due for any more because we’re really just enjoying everything right now and my dad who is the biggest inspiration to me, died a couple of months ago and that was really hard and that has had a direct effect on my life and my work and my philosophy and it’s also been a very keen learning experience and also has been a reason that our family has grown even closer together. There’s just a lot of good times happening.
Recently Marvel did this series called Legendary Heroes, an action line figure and here we were able to go to Wal-Mart and see Madman on an end cap. Right there, first thing you see as you turn into the toy department and here we are all together, enjoying this moment.
So I’m really hopeful that in many ways the film would be the ultimate expression of that, to all sit together and to enjoy something that we’ve all dreamed about for so many years, it’s almost exhausting to talk about the film anymore because it was optioned almost immediately when it was the first series at Tundra. Kevin Eastman was my publisher and he at that time was having great success with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films and the Crow came out and was hugely successful, that was published at Tundra, so the phone started ringing and right out of the box we were getting offers, first from 20th Century Fox, then we had our first deal with Universal Pictures, which was during the Dark Horse era, then Robert picked it up. Just next year it’s going to be ten years that Robert Rodriguez has personally optioned it, and there’s a whole list of reasons why it hasn’t been produced yet, but I think ultimately we’re benefiting from all these delays and these other projects that we’re going to benefit from. But it’s been so long in the making and we’ve talked about it for so long, it just seems like a surreal possibility.
Even now, most recently when we were actually talking about a March or April start date and the writers strike happened, and it stopped everything, so I can honestly say I’m not crushed by it. I’m steeled up by it, and in many ways I have a deeper appreciation and higher priority for the comic book series itself because of that. The huge detour I took on X-Force and X-Static, and then prior to that Red Rocket 7 have allowed me to realize how important the Madman universe is and waiting for the film to happen I was able to pull away from it and think, Ok, when we get back to Madman we’ll do it with a major motion picture behind us and we’ll be launched to the top of the sales charts and I eventually realized I can’t wait for that.
The comic book has to succeed or fail on its own merits and that’s why finally it was, ok, I’m coming back to it and I’m putting everything I can in it and the result of that has been Madman Atomic Comics, the most satisfying experience on paper I’ve ever had. So when the film happens it’ll be on the tail of the definitive series, as far as I’m concerned, as opposed to the series coming on the tail of a film, and whatever kind of level of success it has or doesn’t have. Now I’m in a much healthier position where I’m not going to live or die based on the success or failure of a film because I’m doing exactly what makes me happiest.
RA: It’s icing on the cake.
MA: Exactly. A successful, faithful film is just that icing, that bonus. It’s not the ultimate be-all end-all anymore which is kind of where it was building up to, so it’s a really good place to be.
RA: Well, I’m definitely excited for that moment as well. I had this vision of seeing your artwork opening the movie over credits. I don’t know if that’s going to happen or not, similar to Sin City.
MA: I’m pretty sure it won’t, we did that with G-Men From Hell, I did the artwork, and I drew a comic book sequence for the opening of that movie. I really want this film to be as real world based as possible. I want it to have its own reality, I don’t want to wink at the audience and say, “Hey, this is based on a comic book, folks.” So that’s something I really I’m pretty sure I don’t want to do.
RA: What about the logo?
MA: I don’t know how we’re going to do that. I’m hoping the logo will be exactly the same thing. I want it to be the definitive logo, but again if Robert or any of the design team comes up with anything better, hey my mind is open to that. If you look at the logo too, that’s evolved over time. So the logo that we have now is for me the definitive logo. There was at least two if not three incarnations before now and it’s been a good ten years since I’ve felt the need to improve upon it so I think it’s right where I want it to be.
I think the only nod to comics in the Madman film will be when Frank’s looking at the Mr. Excitement comic books, and I haven’t decided whether I’ll do the artwork for those, or bring in some of my friends like Nick Derington who did a Mr. Excitement strip in the King-Size Special, and other people like Jay Stevens, I see different incarnations of Mr. Excitement, which I’m very excited about so, we haven’t decided about that, but you will see comics in the movie, but they will be the comic books that inspire Frank Einstein.
RA: All right. I really should get going, but what about even maybe a poster? Would you do artwork for a poster? Maybe a variant of a poster, not the definitive poster?
MA: It’s possible. It’s possible. Years ago, Alex Ross and I did a huge man-sized, it’s like a six foot tall, I’m not exactly sure how tall, just a giant poster based on the Madman Comics 10 artwork, and for me that was like, “Wow, wouldn’t this be cool to see in a movie theater,” and we actually, in my indy film Master West, there’s this scene where the characters run past a movie theater and we managed to get that poster inside the glass display in front of this classic old theatre so I was able to live out that moment, but all this stuff is fun and I’m open to all of it.
From Dusk Til Dawn, a film that Robert Rodriguez did with Quentin Tarantino, you know the original classic photo montage movie poster, but they actually commissioned Frank Frazetta to do one and it’s like, “Wow, wouldn’t that be amazing, to get Frank Frazetta to do a version for the film,” you know I’m actually more interested in getting somebody that I’m really like “wow” with, like Frank Frazetta or another hero of mine, to actually have them move on paper or something. And also, you’ll see films that have different versions of posters, so they will maybe one of them will be based on artwork of mine, or a collaboration ,or artwork by some of my heroes, maybe we’ll get Barry Windsor Smith to do one, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll do over a hundred of them, in Madman Atomic Comics 3 get everybody who survived that. But that’s why I love the comic book industry so much, there’s just so much to get excited about.
RA: It’s just really exciting being a fan of Madman right now, so much going on and it’s great talking with you.
MA: Nice talking with you.
RA: Do you have any final thoughts, anything to say to the folks out there who are checking out this interview?
MA: Naw.
RA: Naw?
MA: No just, I love you deeply and intensely and always will.
RA: And keep those letters coming in?
MA: Yeah, keep those cards and letters coming.
RA: Well, thank you very much for taking the time. It was a pleasure. I can’t wait to see what comes out in the future.
MA: Good, I’ll do my best to keep that going.
RA: Thanks a lot, I’ll see you on the boards.
MA: Okay, take care.
RA: All right.
MA: Bye.
RA: Bye.