We’ve often been avid fans of Nick Spencer’s work here at Multiversity (obviously). Having started the site around the same time his comics first started being released, we’ve had the unique change to watch Nick’s career grow as we ourselves grew up as a site, often chatting and supporting his various endeavors. And with Nick about to have his five-year anniversary in comics and with three books announced at last week’s Image Expo, we thought it was a great time to sit down and have an extended chat with Nick about his work.
Today, in the last installment of our three-part interview series with Nick Spencer, we talk about Nick’s future plans in comics and the last of his three announcements: “The Great Beyond,” with Morgan Jeske.
So last, but certainly not least, we have “The Great Beyond” with Morgan Jeske. What I thought was interesting about this — Oh, and I guess before we go into it, can you talk a little bit about this book’s premise as well? It’s about a post-life community where how much money you had in life determines where you end up in death?
NS: Yeah. Yes. Well, what do you want to know? [Laughs]
I think what was interesting, and I think you said it right away at Image Expo, is that it is apparently similar to what fans might have expected or seen in “Infinite Vacation?”
NS: Yes. It’s really in that same vein. This has been a long-term goal for me, that I thought about even when we were doing “Infinite Vacation.” In fact, I had the idea pretty much at the same time, it’s just been about finding the right partner for it and the right time to do it.
When Christian and I did “Infinite Vacation,” one of the first things I thought about… I would like, whenever years or decades from now when I retire, I would like to be able to look at my bookshelf of work that I’ve done and I would like to see a nice row of self-contained science fiction graphic novels, that I can feel like I did a bunch of those. That’s always kind of been a big part of what I wanted my career to be. As you go and get all these opportunities to do bigger stories and longer stories and ongoings and things like that, and there are huge rewards to doing those, but I still love getting to do a story in four or five or six issues with a three-act structure and with something to say. I’m enormously proud of “Infinite Vacation.” Of my finished work, it is my favorite. It’s the one that I’m most satisfied with, and I’d like to keep working in that direction and add to that.
So “Great Beyond” is very much the spiritual follow-up to that. Christian set such a high bar for artist partners for those kind of stories, so I spent a very long time working out who could be the right person to bring this one to life. And then I became such an instant super-fan of Morgan’s on “Change” that he was an obvious first choice.
What I thought was really interesting, after the announcement when images started being put online so you could see the high-res arc, Morgan posted the image for “Great Beyond” and said even he doesn’t really know too much about the book yet!
NS: [Laughs] Yeah, well, you know… I’m always a bit cagey. [Laughs]
A bit.
NS: We’ve talked about this with Joe [Eisma], that I like Joe to be able to lie to the audience. There’s a little bit of that in play here, but… Also, to some extent I think this has a fairly simple premise. This isn’t meant to be a massively convoluted thing. I think it’s just a fascinating way to look at some problems that we have, and maybe by tying it to this thing that we have commonality in, wondering about and yearning or hoping for, that it might be illuminating. I think he knows more than he thinks he does! [Laughs] But I don’t know.
So much of it is in the part that I’ve already sort of laid out. I think, if you look back again, on “Infinite Vacation” we gave you so much of that premise in the initial pitch. We explained the world, we explained the initial problem that sets off the action, and that’s sort of true here. You’re going to see a character journey that hopefully people respond to.
Is it fair to say, not to really harp on the “Infinite Vacation” comparison, but I think one of the most impressive part of that was the visual aspect, the design of the book. Is it similar with Morgan here on “The Great Beyond?”
NS: Yeah, I want to give Morgan a lot of room to play around in, and a big canvas. You’ll see lots of big images and splashes and double-splashes and stuff like that. I’m excited to see him building a world, and particularly building a world that has no physical limit. That’s kind of the fun of this one. He doesn’t have to be bound by physics, he doesn’t have to have any kinds of constraints that would come with more traditional settings. That’s stuff that I’m really psyched to see from him.
So with this book, it’s about death. And I think, out of everything we’ve talked about or that you’ve explored in your work, death is probably one of the most difficult subjects in general, right? Because that is the … well, the great beyond. So with your exploration of death, it seems to sound very different than what you’re trying to accomplish with our other books?
NS: The big problem in life is our mortality, right? The limitiations, and every other problem feeds off of that one. The central problem is, limited time span, limited thresholds, basic human needs — they all kind of get tangled up into this one big problem that we end up having.
So what if we fixed it? What if we figured it out? What if tomorrow they figured out how to put your brain in a jar, your brain will last indefinitely, and then we can place your brain within a framework that you’re going to be conscious within, and you can just keep going in, theoretically forever. None of us need ever end. But not only do we need not end, when you’re in there, all these things that you need before: food, oxygen, sustenance and things that were happening to you like aging and sickness, that’s all gone. We figured out how to do this. You pay a certain amount, you get a certain amount of hereafter and a certain standing within the hereafter. What if that was no longer something that we needed to work or concern ourselves with anymore. What would our lives then look like? What would our lives look like if we didn’t need to work, if we didn’t need to sustain ourselves because we didn’t need shelter and we didn’t need food?
All these questions are popping up, but what does life look like if that’s the case? The trite answer has always been that — you hear this once in a while, that death is what makes life worth living. Otherwise it would just be very boring and eventless and everything. There’s some truth to that maybe, but I’ve never been entirely satisfied by that as an answer. It sounds like it could actually be pretty sweet! So getting to explore immortality and the end of scarcity, this seemed like a great way to get into that stuff.
With looking at this book as a sci-fi book, you were saying that you want to do something with all your work that you’ve never done before, right? That’s the goal? So what would you say is the particular thing for “Great Beyond?”
NS: I think that this asks different questions and maybe comes to some different conclusions, I think is what it comes to. Thematically, I think this is going to play out a little differently. There are things, without giving too much away, there are things about the endpoint that are different for me and I’m curious to try out. So it’s a little tough, because when I think about it I think about stuff I can’t talk to you about yet.
There’s going to be a point about midway through this thing where I think it stops feeling like anything I’ve done before and starts to be something somewhat out of left field for me. I like the idea of coming in with the first issue and hitting you with the high concept and the inciting incident and everything, but where it goes from there is going to be pretty different. I’ll say that I was influenced by some stuff that had nice digressions, I guess, so I’m curious to try that out.
Can you talk a little bit about influences, or would that give too much of it away?
NS: I think with this, I love my Spike Jonze, I love my Michel Gondry, I love my Charlie Kaufman… I’m always trying to get to that point. I feel like, I’m 35 now, and I’ve got a lot of years in front of me of stuff that I’ve already committed to and I’m really excited about, but there’s going to come some moment where a switch is going to flick and I’m just going to try to do that, you know? I just want to get to that, where the allure of doing these kinds of stories alone is going to get to be too great. I can see that happening someday and I don’t want to do that for a long time because I really love what I do now. But there will come a new point where it’ll be like a new phase, and when that hits books like this one will be ones I’m glad I did along the way.
The last thing I wanted to ask about this book is that with this, unlike the other two, this is your first time collaborating with Morgan. With the others, there was some ground work, but I imagine this is probably a pretty different point in how you two are working together.
NS: It’s early, it’s still very early. I say that on all these, but these are books that we don’t even know when they’re coming out. We’re really trying to avoid having to lock that in for as long as possible. Of the books that got announced at Expo, these will be among the last ones to come out, I feel pretty safe in saying. We’re still pretty early on, but we’ve had some really nice conversations. Look, I adore “Change” so much. For me, it was a little bit of a wake-up call to get back to doing these kinds of stories. Like I’ve said before, you get all these opportunities to do all these longer form stories that you can miss the allure and appeal of what you used to do. I started doing four or five issue Image books, and just really throwing my best punch first. Really hitting it with everything I’ve got really fast. That was something I was really kind of keen to dig back into.
When I saw Morgan’s work on “Change,” I got really excited. I just got really enthusiastic about it. I thought “I want to read thirty more books with this guy’s art in them, and I want them right now.” I’m sure he loves hearing that. It’s nice when you have that feeling about an artist whose work you haven’t seen before. That feeling of discovery was really cool. So I’m excited to get into it, the conversations that we’ve had have been really good and I sent him a first few rough pages and that was a lot of fun to get the ball rolling like that.
So I think with these three books, with “Bedlam” and “Morning Glories,” are you taking a different approach for how you script or how you work on the books based on the artist now? Given its been five years now, you’re in a much better place than you were when you started. You’re much more confidence as a writer.
NS: Every book is different and every artist responds to a different style or likes a different level of structure. I’ve found that any attempt to apply the rules of one working relationship to the next one is probably folly. Everyone is different, and I know that with Frazer it’s a much looser framework. We’re talking through the scenes and he’s breaking stuff down into how he’d show it, and then I’ll come back and respond to that with the beats that we need to hit. With Butch, I do a more traditional script but Butch is incredible for adding motion to the page in a way that is very unique to him. You’ll do a four-panel thing in your script, you’ll get a seven panel page back. He’s just made the transitions better, he’s brought the camera in for a quick close-in shot of a character and he just knows how to take your framework and really make it sing. With Morgan it’s early, but I’m keeping it pretty loose. Especially with Morgan, I’m trying to keep the panel descriptions fairly sparse so he can kind of fill in a lot of the blanks and have some fun with it.
Every single book has always been different in terms of how I script them, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. I like it. I like that each book has its own working rhythm and process of making the book is different for each one.
And all of these books are ongoings? Except “Great Beyond” is four to five issues?
NS: “Great Beyond” is going to be somewhere between four to six issues, we’re not sure. It’s something with, again, a defined beginning, middle and end. The other two are ongoings.
Are they ongoings that you have an issue mark that you want to hit, or you just know what the end point is and you’ll get there when you get there?
NS: Well, you know me. I was talking about this with Robert Kirkman at the Expo that, you know, I think we’re really similar in that we tend to be lifers with the books. You at least want them to have that opportunity. With both of them, I could seem them going on for a really long time. I feel like you could very easily stay in those worlds for a really long time and tell a lot of really good stories without ever filling in space. But you can’t expect that. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned it’s just how much lightning struck in order for “Morning Glories” to happen the way that it did, just how lucky I am to be collaborating with Joe on that and to have the fanbase that we have. It was just a perfect storm that allowed that book to happen and to have the life that it has had. You never want to get too far ahead of yourself, and start plotting out your 75th and your 100th issues or whatever, but I’m really excited about these and would like to be working on them for a really long time.
In terms of these books, are you planning to do anything with the single issue releases? “Morning Glories” has its backmatter, but do you have anything for the other books that you’d like to do?
NS: Oh god. Is this you looking for work, Matt?
I won’t say no to anything!
NS: Right, right. [Laughs] I don’t know. I’ve really loved adding it to “Morning Glories,” and I think it has been a huge benefit. A lot of the credit to that obviously goes to you and you’ve been doing an amazing job on it –
Thank you.
NS: It really does add a lot to the book and I really love seeing it in the back there, and I think it has done exactly what we set out for it to do. It helps people along the issue and points them towards a community for it. I think that anything you can do in the books to remind people of that, that maybe the experience of the written book doesn’t have to end with the last page and there are places they can go to discuss it more… we have some fun opportunities there.
Obviously with “Paradigms” there’s a lot of stuff I’m looking forward to doing and the marketing of the book just in terms of the various clans and stuff that people can get into in an interactive nature. With “Cerulean,” it’ll be interesting to see how much analysis that book inspires and stuff; I think that’s something that we’ll know a bit more as we get into it. It’s definitely a possibility there.
We’ll see. Right now, just writing them is daunting enough. But I’m all for finding ways to make the single issues worth picking up.
To wrap up, with these three new books on the docket, you sound absolutely amazingly busy between these, “Morning Glories,” “Bedlam,” “Avengers World,” “Superior Foes.” I imagine you’re aware of it, but are you worried about your scheduling for all of these books?
NS: Look, I’d be crazy not to worry at all, you know? And it’s good to worry. Usually when you get yourself into trouble is when you’re cocky about it. For one thing, I know my schedule better than anybody in terms of what ends where and when. I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that some of this stuff I’m working on will find natural endpoints that aren’t far into the distant future. I’m not scripting seven books right now; that’s not how this is working. I like to be scripting five, or sometimes six? That’s kind of where I like to be. Five is my dream number. When I get below four, I tend to get a little stir-crazy. I kind of need to be bouncing my head around different things to keep my brain moving quickly. I also have my threshold, and when I push it past six — I’ve been in that boat, and it’s fun in a sense but it’s a little too taxing.
There’s some stuff that is being published right now that will have natural endings in the immediate future, and it’s stuff that I’m lucky enough to be pretty ahead on right now, so it might be nearing the end for me but it won’t be for you for a good long while. Looking at it from a calendar perspective, I feel pretty good. It’s all phased in as well; Frazer is working on “Annihilator” with Grant Morrison at Legendary right now, and he’ll be on that for a little while. Then he’s got one more thing he wants to tie up, so we’re a little ways away from getting started. Butch and I will be getting started late in the spring. Morgan and I are getting started a little sooner, it looks like. The way that it works, without getting to inside baseball, I’ll be doing “Great Beyond” first and then as I get done with that I’ll be moving on to “Paradigms” and “Cerulean.”
We wanted to go ahead and announce everything because I don’t think it’s ever too early to start getting people hyped up, and I think that if you look at the timeline for announcements for the last Expo and when the books came out, we ‘ve got some cushion. For everybody involved, getting it out there makes it all a little more real, it gives everybody something to look forward to. So it’s really not that much of a net increase in my workload. I’m going up by one script a month, basically, by the time it’s all said and done. Which is fine.
Did I sound reassuring enough? [Laughs]
It sounds like you’re going to be making a big push back into the creator-owned world? Will we be seeing less for-hire work from you and more focus on the creator-owned?
NS: Not really. I do two books at Marvel right now and I’d like to stay at two. It’s a comfortable level. The reality is, because of the artist rotations and the shipping schedules at Marvel, two books is really three in terms of what you’re committed to in terms of script delivery. Two is where I’d like to keep it. I really love working at Marvel and I’m really happy there, it’s been a very good year there with “Superior Foes” and the launch of “Avengers World” going over great. I’m really proud of the work that we did on “Secret Avengers” this last year as well. So I’m enjoying what I’m doing there, there are some editors there that I really like dealing with day to day, and in work-for-hire it’s a very lucky thing to have relationships with your publisher that you like.
So, yeah, I’m not in any way looking for the exit or anything like that. I think I’ll be at Marvel for a good while to come. People will always associate me first with my creator-owned work and I’m very happy about that, but I still have a really good time at Marvel. Some exciting opportunities coming up! [Laughs] It’s good stuff. I love the balance. I love being able to bounce between the two so hopefully I get to do that for the foreseeable future.