Chuck Dixon, "The Simpsons" comic book writer: Mr. Media Interview, Pt. 2

(Return to Part 1)

ANDELMAN: Your son Colin is here. Would you encourage him to follow you? Does he have any interest in writing?

DIXON: Yeah, I think he has interest in storytelling and in writing. It’s hard not to when you live with a person who writes all the time. And writing looks easy, until you’re inside the person’s head and realize the lonely torment every day, this long distance marathon of trying to get a story together. But yeah, he can’t help but by osmosis be interested in it.

ANDELMAN: I actually had someone just yesterday say to me, “How do you get motivated every day and get up and write?” My answer to them was, I pointed to my daughter, and I said, “Because she’s got to eat.” Do you have a different kind of motivation?

DIXON: Well, no. I want to take care of my family. It’s like anybody else who goes to a job, but the mechanics of actually how to get started, that’s always been tough. If you’re a writer, you know. It’s tough, like, what are my first words? There are always in the writing magazines all these bozo writing exercises, none of which works. Just write down gibberish. That’s great. But the best advice I ever got was I read an interview with a screen writer from the 40s, and he said, “Never write down your last idea of the day, so that the next day, you know where you’re going to start.” And it sounds corny, but it really works. It’s like, well, I have an idea for one more page. I know what happens, but I won’t write it. I’ll quit for the day, and tomorrow morning, I know what my first page is. And once you get that done, it’s clear sailing. It’s easy. Well, not easy. But easier.






ANDELMAN: Let’s talk about some of the other comic series that you’ve worked on, Nightmare on Elm Street, for example. Is there anything you can tell us about that?

DIXON: I really enjoyed the time on that. When WildStorm got the new line license, they offered me my choice of Freddie or Jason or Texas Chainsaw, and I went for Freddie immediately, because there is something more cerebral about a guy who chases you in your nightmares. Plus, the suspense is all built in. I love the tension that you never know if the characters are awake or asleep. Are they in the real world and safe, or are they asleep and in Freddie’s dimension? And I built a lot upon that stuff. Plus, Nightmare on Elm Street, they aren’t necessarily Old Testament morality plays like the other ones are. In Nightmare on Elm Street, everyone’s up for grabs. It doesn’t have to be the cheerleader who is having premarital sex. It can be anybody.

ANDELMAN: How did you know I was thinking of her?







DIXON: So there’s less built-in predictability to Nightmare, plus, Freddie’s a great character. He’s obviously smarter than Jason or whatever that insane family is in the Texas stories.

ANDELMAN: Now, I understand you are working on a new Grifter/Midnighter series for DC’s sister company, WildStorm. For those, frankly, who have never heard of the characters or the publisher, no disrespect to either, but a fact’s a fact. Here’s an opportunity to pitch the series. What would you tell people about it to recommend it to new readers?

DIXON: Well, it’s a real post-modern comic in which you’ve got these guys that, they probably have to stand on a chair and get a dispensation from the Pope to be anti-heroes. I mean, they’re just not nice guys. The only thing that makes them a protagonist in the stories is that the bad guys are just so damn bad. Midnighter is a popular character. He’s a member of a group called The Authority, which is a big Eisner Award-winning series from WildStorm. Grifter is an original member of the WildCats series created by Jim Lee, and I’ve written Grifter before. I did a number of Team 7 books for WildStorm years ago in which Grifter appeared, and basically this is just the two of them getting together against an alien menace, and it’s a really weird alien menace. I mean, I came up with something really, really strange, and it’s got gorgeous artwork by Ryan Benjamin. It’s post-modern nihilistic superhero action the way that the fans apparently like it now. So as Abe Lincoln said, “If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you’ll like.”

ANDELMAN: Is that what he said?

DIXON: Yes, he did.

ANDELMAN: Let’s say I grant you the power to be able to make the phone ring and any editor you want, offering any character, an assignment doing any character you’d like, what would be the character?

DIXON: It’s a even split between two. I would love to do a long run on The Fantastic Four, and I would love an opportunity to write The Lone Ranger, and those are the two. After Batman, that’s pretty much… I mean, I never thought I’d write Batman. I never thought I’d write it, and when I got the invitation to come in and join the Bat-team, I was like, this can’t be real. There has to be a joke here somewhere. So once you’ve written Batman, everything else sort of pales in comparison, but those are the two that I would really like a shot at.

ANDELMAN: What would you do with Fantastic Four that hasn’t been done before?

DIXON: Well, that’s the thing. I wouldn’t do anything that hasn’t been done before, I’d just fall back on what makes those characters great and what makes it a classic… and just come up with new threats for them, because that’s what Stan (Lee) and Jack (Kirby) did every month, come up with a threat that made you as a reader believe this has to be the last issue, because they can’t get out of this, and I love that aspect of it. And the characters, I had a couple of brief opportunities to write them, and that’s the happiest I had ever been writing comics, because they simply write themselves. The relationships are all laid out and classic, and you can still write surprises within the framework, but they just work so beautifully together.

ANDELMAN: So are you excited or anxious about the Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer movie?

DIXON: I think it’s a step in the right direction. The first movie I would have liked a lot better if they had treated the Doom origin closer to the comic, because Doom, he’s the be-all, end-all of villains for me. He’s a villain that you can’t help but like in a lot of ways, which that’s a great villain when you’re conflicted. He’s like the Tony Soprano of comics. He means well. So I’m glad to see with Silver Surfer that they are going to be hueing closer to what the comics are about. I’m just anxious to see, is Galactus going to be in it. Or are they just going to dodge around that one.







ANDELMAN: It would seem like there have to be some. I mean, why else would the Silver Surfer be coming to Earth, right?

DIXON: Yeah, yeah, you’d think that, but then how many times have we gone to a comic movie and think, oh, well, this has to …. Well, how did they miss that one?

ANDELMAN: You mean like The Hulk?

DIXON: Yeah, yeah. If you want a sublime comic book experience, The Hulk No. 1 by Stan and Jack, you can’t beat it. It’s got everything but the kitchen sink in it, and it all works, and I would defy anybody to find a comic with more in it told better, and they make a movie of it and throw it all out the window for some strange Freudian blather.

ANDELMAN: Chuck, one of the major issues in your industry is over the future of the so-called pamphlet, the traditional 32 page comic book versus the explosion of bigger, more expensive graphic novels and comic collections. What do you think the future holds for comic book publishing?

DIXON: Well, I think for one thing, the major companies, meaning DC and Marvel, and they are starting to do this, they have to look at something beyond superheroes, because if you see the list of top-selling trades and graphic novels, there ain’t a superhero on there. I mean, Asterix is on there but just no superheroes, and it’s because superheroes, and to the casual reading public, form a very small sub-genre of science fiction. They are not as admired. They are not Wizard hot in the real world of casual readers and library goers, and library sales are becoming more and more important to comics.

Comics are going to have to make some kind of a sea change, and I don’t think going directly to trade is it, because that’s a lot of money up front, and the comics industry is always used to getting their money in 30 days, and you know, in the book trade, you have to wait 90 days. That’s a big consideration for comics, and they will have to do more marketing and things like that. I prefer if they used the model in Japan of doing the big telephone book anthologies. I think that would be a better way to go because there is a lot of value there. There’s no value in a $2.99, 22-page comic. There just isn’t. I don’t know why anybody buys them. I know I write them, and I pray to God they sell, but I don’t understand why anybody would buy one. There’s no value there.

ANDELMAN: I think back to 30 years ago and going to the Krauszer’s convenience store when the new comics would come in and walking out with a stack that was about three inches thick, and they were 15¢ or 12¢ each. But now, I like to take my daughter to the comic book store. One or two comics, $3 to $5 each. That’s about all we’re going to get, and she reads them like eating candy.

DIXON: And they run way ahead of inflation. I mean, nothing’s going up in price the way… maybe movie admissions. I remember the month they went from a dime to 12¢. I was a kid. For a quarter you got two comics and a Mounds bar. Well, that all changed, and I was stunned then. I can’t imagine kids now. And you look at a Manga book, 170 pages for under $10, that’s a deal. You look at Shonen Jump, what is it, like $5, $6 for over 300 pages. Yeah, I want that. I don’t want this little tiny stack of real estate brochures.

ANDELMAN: As we are talking, the major comic book event of the year, Comic-Con International in San Diego, is still a few weeks away. What’s the appeal of that convention? Why do you go, and what do you get out of it?

DIXON: Mostly, I go to conventions to meet up with guys that I work with that I don’t get to see face to face, and the irony is that I don’t get much face to face time with them because the conventions are so big. I must have done 10 conventions in a row in which Billy Tucci and I said, “I’ll talk to you later,” and we never talked, so that’s the big attraction for me. Meeting the fans, that’s a lot of fun, although it’s very tiring, but you have some great conversations with fans, and it’s nice to see the public, and it’s nice to see the medium in sort of an almost carnival or state fair atmosphere and the enormity of it. It really is the one for the United States. I’d love to make a European con because they are even bigger.







ANDELMAN: Why do you suppose this one has gotten so big and its reputation has grown? I mean, this is an event now that is covered in the daily newspapers, the entertainment press. They all cover this now, whereas no other comic book show gets this kind of attention.

DIXON: Well, the proximity to Hollywood and LA is a huge factor. San Diego as a vacation destination point cannot be discounted, because it is an amazing place to visit. The weather is fantastic. Here we are in Tampa, and I am still jealous of San Diego’s weather. It’s like our weather in January all year long. It’s amazing, and you notice it when you get off the plane. I can’t say enough about their weather. This is no hyperbole. You get off that plane, and it’s like, Oh God, I’ve died and gone to Heaven.” I think those are the two big factors, plus they promote it. The city is very friendly to the comic book convention, and they always have been. They have promoted the convention just as they would any other huge event in their city, and they’ve helped build it. It’s a great convention center. It’s right down there by the water, right across from Coronado Island. It’s gorgeous. So there is really no downside except it’s gotten so big.

ANDELMAN: I have not been there yet. I keep thinking next year, next year I’m going to make it. I’m still hoping that that’s going to happen soon. It sounds like a great…

DIXON: It’s amazing. It’s the only convention that I’ve ever been to that has a horizon line.

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All Rights Reserved.