DE: The first book that I read that I remember as
yours was Marvel Team-Up.
JD: That was when I first started at Marvel. The
team-up books sort of existed off to the side. So I
was writing Spider-Man...but not. Then I moved away
from the Marvel Universe and did books like Moonshadow
[illustrated by Jon J. Muth]...then I came back with Kraven’s
Last Hunt. I tried to bring to superhero projects
what I learned about myself doing the more personal
stuff. Kraven’s Last Hunt really started that
relationship with Spider-Man... then two years on Spectacular
Spider-Man and then a year or two on Amazing
Spider-Man, and another year or so on Spectacular.
And several other Spider-Man projects.
DE: What was your favorite run on Spider-Man?
JD: I really loved the two years on Spectacular
Spider-Man that I wrote with Sal Buscema drawing.
Talk about underrated! Sal is one of the best
storytellers and a wonderful collaborator. I loved
that run.
DE: You had a chance to bring back the White
Rabbit.
JD: [laughs] Every chance I would get I would bring
back the White Rabbit. Because no one else was going
to do it. Then shortly after I got to Amazing
that’s when the whole Spider-clone thing happened
and the books started interconnecting. Every month you’re
writing chapter two of a four or five-part story, so
it started to not be fun.
What was fun in those days was to get together and
have those Spider-Man writers’ meetings. We would
map what was going to happen. It was some of the best
times I ever had in the business. But the problem was,
you’d have this great time and then these four
different writers would go home to each write a
chapter. There’s not a lot of creative satisfaction
in writing chapter two. There’s a lot of
satisfaction in sitting in the room, yelling at each
other and laughing and acting like idiots and creating
interesting stories. Going home and having to
translate that into satisfying work was hard. So I
left.
Then Marvel asked me to come back to Spider-Man
for another run on Spectacular Spider-Man. I
did and I felt like I had done this already. I had
stayed too long at the party. We did some nice stories
like the one about Flash Thompson’s childhood. But
in general I don’t hold that last run on Spider-Man
very dear to my heart.
DE: I want to talk about one of my favorites, Greenberg
the Vampire.
JD: We had originally done Greenberg the Vampire
as a black-and-white short story in a magazine called Bizarre
Adventures that Marvel published back in 70’s
and 80’s. It was the first time in my career in
comics that I wrote something that felt like me and
not Stan Lee or Roy Thomas. I wasn’t parroting
someone else’s style.
When you first get into the business, you’re so
excited about writing all your favorite characters in
the old familiar ways, re-creating the stories you
loved reading. But Oscar Greenberg was a character I
had had in my head for years, I had written half a
screenplay years before, I wasn’t trying to write a
comic book. I was just writing a story. So doing Greenberg
I just did it and people really liked it. Then we got
to do the graphic novel, which was a joy. I got to
work with Mark Badger on that; he’s one of my
favorite collaborators. We just had a blast. In a way
it was like working on the Justice League because
despite the fact that he was a vampire, there was a
lot of humor and I felt the characters were far more
real than any superheroes.
DE: Will that ever come back in any form?
JD: If someone asked me to do Greenberg
again, I would do it in a second. But I don’t think
anyone at Marvel is remotely interested [laughs]
unless they find out that it’s the only character
they have yet to option for a film.
DE: How autobiographical was Moonshadow for
you?
JD: It’s a weird thing with me, even Spider-Man
feels autobiographical. Not always in a literal sense,
but I would put things in there sometimes very
intimate things, that came from my life. Greenberg
wasn’t purely autobiographical but it had that
feeling of growing up in Brooklyn. That Brooklyn
attitude to the characters.
DE: I always pictured you with a big handlebar
moustache like Greenberg.
JD: Which I did have for many years. That was
definitely my moustache.
Moonshadow was very autobiographical except I
didn’t grow up in an intergalactic zoo, my mother
wasn’t a hippie, my father wasn’t a ball of light
and my best friend wasn’t a hairy alien sleazeball
-- but I really did pour my whole life into that
series. I read something, and I don’t remember who
said it, but it was something like, take whatever
piece you are working on and write as if it’s the
only thing you will ever write...so put everything you
think, you feel and that you want to say into that
story.
Moonshadow was probably the first time I really
did that. I poured everything I had into that with
whatever skill I had at the time. I was lucky enough
to find Jon J. Muth to illustrate it, which made all
the difference in the world. That, like Greenberg,
had nothing to do with comics, as I understand them. I
wrote it as if I was sitting down to write a novel. We
did it for Epic, and then we bought it back and sold
it to DC. Vertigo reprinted it and then we did a
sequel and they collected the whole massive thing
together. Moonshadow changed me as writer and
allowed me to find my voice. I don’t know where it
went but I found it then.
DE: A lot of creators that have been around as long
you don’t seem to be working at Marvel right now.
What do you think of that?
JD: If I added all my years at Marvel it might end
up being more than the years I’ve spent at DC. There
was previous administration there, things got really
ugly, and it was time to go. All these other changes
like [Joe] Quesada and [Bill] Jemas coming in have
happened since I left. Most of the people I know were
fired in the various mass slaughters of firings. So
many people I’ve worked with for years are gone.
Ralph Macchio may be the only person there that I’ve
worked with before. Quesada is a whole new ballgame,
so I have no sense of what is going there other than
what I see, just like everybody else, in magazines and
websites. Is my phone ringing off the hook from
Marvel? No.
DE: So you would go back there?
JD: Sure. There’s no reason not to. Mike Zeck
called me a few months ago and told me he was talking
to somebody about two of us doing some Kraven’s
Last Hunt-related story...but I just felt like I’d
beaten that storyline to death. I would have no
problems working on the right project. But I don’t
necessarily get what they’re doing up there right
now.
DE: What does that mean?
JD: Well I have to be clear. I don’t read the
books. I only know what I hear or what I read in the
news. The sense I get is that there is this Vertigo-ization
of the mainstream Marvel line. They want to be hip,
edgy and do what DC’s Vertigo does. That may be good
for a little bounce right now but it is the absolute
ass backwards way of doing things, as far as I’m
concerned. It’s like, “Let’s take our little
niche market and let’s alienate a wide readership
even more.” Please note I’m not talking about the
quality of the books, from what I understand they’re
very well done, but I think they’re aiming their
talent in the wrong direction. It’s not just Marvel,
it’s DC too. Unfortunately in the 1980’s there was
that phrase, “DC comics aren’t just for kids
anymore.” Then everyone just believed it and there
are no comics for kids.
Someone told me that they heard someone at DC say, “We
have to get younger readers, like the twenty
year-olds.” [Laughs] I just think in general that
the companies are playing to the fan base that’s
there but we all know that base isn’t very big.
Sales may be up a little bit but I’ve seen some
sales charts and I’m appalled. These books they
consider the big hot items right now, seven or eight
years ago would have been cancelled for those numbers.
I just think we have to broaden our base. You have to
do real comic books for kids. Not these weird hybrid
books. I know Marvel is doing their so-called adult
line with their superhero characters: again, I think
that’s a way to poison the well. You want to do
adult comics, do real comics for adults. A think a lot
of the “adult” comics out there would be better
labeled, “For angry adolescents only.” Adult doesn’t
mean you have to have sleazy sex and have gaping,
bloody holes in people’s chests. That’s a
seventeen year-old’s idea of an adult comic. My big
crusade is to do comic books for kids and no one does
them.
Joe Calamari [former President of Marvel
Entertainment] was very interested in doing comics for
kids. I really wanted to get involved with that.
Michael Zulli and I created this wonderful series we
wanted to do and then they went into bankruptcy and
administrations changed and that was that. I’ve
tried to sell a whole line of kids comics to just
about everybody. They really don’t get the fact that
all this time and energy and money would be far better
spent by creating better material for kids. We’ve
already got 100,000 (at best!) thirty five year-olds
in their mothers’ basements. I’m exaggerating to
make a point, and that point is if you keeping aiming
at the same niche where are you going to get the next
generation of readers?
The truth of really great children’s literature
is that kids love it, adults love it, and the only
ones that don’t like it are cynical teenagers that
think they are too cool to read it. It seems to me
that that’s what the industry is going for. There's
nothing wrong with that, up to a point: hey, I was
once a cynical teenager who thought he was hip and
cool, too.
I worked with DC’s Paradox line for my graphic
novel Brooklyn Dreams, which remains my
favorite thing that I’ve ever done in comics.
Paradox was an attempt, a very conscious attempt on
Andy Helfer’s part, to do genuine comics for adults.
I’ve done a number of projects for Vertigo that I’m
very proud of. So I’m certainly not knocking comic
books for adults. But my feeling is, if you’re going
to do adult comics, really do them, instead of these
weird hybrids that we’re stuck in, [such as] trying
to force adult sensibilities into superheroes’
mouths. And believe me, I’ve done that as much as
anybody, but the trend is getting more and more
extreme. As a writer I still enjoy those universes. I’ll
write a Spider-Man or Batman story because I have
great affection for those characters, but the answer
lies way beyond that. We need so much more variety out
there.
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