This week, Thrillbent.com released the long-awaited new Empire series by Mark Waid and Barry Kitson. Thrillbent is a digital comic service featuring creator-owned titles, including Waid’s comics and comics by other authors. Waid was available this week to discuss the return of Empire. Waid also dug back into some of his history with The Flash, The Hulk and even more obscure comic books he’s authored.
CraveOnline: Empire is coming to Thrillbent. Is this the original series or is there a new Empire story from you and Barry Kitson?
Mark Waid: Oh, a whole new Empire story from me and Barry Kitson. It’s something that we’ve been wanting to do a sequel for nearly 15 years but now is the time and Thrillbent has provided the opportunity. So we are launching a brand new series starting Wednesday, and for those of you who want to catch up on the old material, which has been out of print for a while, we are also offering Thrillbent subscribers a free DRM free PDF download of the original graphic novel complete so you can read and catch up and feel like you’re in on it.
When the last Empire story ended, Golgoth was in an even darker place following the death of his daughter and Lohkyn was kind of hooked up with the resistance. Will the new story pick up on that?
Yes, as a matter of fact the first story picks up exactly a year to the day later because it is across the world a day of mourning. An enforced day of mourning for Golgoth’s loss. Unfortunately for the empire, in the year that has gone between the previous series and this one, there have been some resistance forces that have been percolating behind the scenes to use this as an opportunity to create some chaos and throw some new opposition against Golgoth.
So he has to deal with this. He also has to deal with the loss of the one person that kept him human, the one person that helped keep him grounded and gave him a reason to keep wanting to do what he does. When we catch up with Golgoth in Vol. 2, his big challenge is not who do I conquer next or what do I fight, because he’s won the world. He’s conquered everything that there is to conquer. The big challenge for him is now what? Now what do you do with this power when there is no opposition? What do you want? What is your goal now that you’ve achieved everything that you want to achieve?
Does Xanna still feel loyal to Golgath or is actively working against him now that she knows one of his secrets?
Xanna actually is in a terrible, horrible place because you have to be careful what you find out. Be careful what you know because she knows one of Golgath’s dark secrets which is the sources of the Eucharist, which is the addictive performance enhancing drug that’s given to all of Golgath’s closest ministers including Xanna.
She knows its horrible, terrible secret but she doesn’t know if he knows that she knows. She can’t share that with anybody else either because it’s a very dangerous piece of information to have. She didn’t really want to know, and now that she does know, she can’t unlearn it. But she has to act on it because she knows that to ignore what she has found out puts her and a lot of other people in jeopardy.
What influenced the creation of Empire?
The primary influence, honestly, was my favorite movie, Citizen Kane. I always thought that Charles Foster Kane was a fascinating literary figure of the 20th century, one of the most complex, best realized characters I’d ever seen and I love this notion of a character who was continually reaching for power and reaching beyond his grasp, yet continuing to achieve and running out of things to reach for, running out of worlds to conquer. What is it that drives a man like that and the paradox of the more power you amass, the more trapped and helpless you become because so many people are depending upon you to keep that train running, to keep the railroad working and keep the machines running on time.
What was your favorite moment from the original Empire story?
Without spoiling too much, the realization that comes about when he has his big conversation with his daughter, the princess. The realization of the things that he’s been wanting and the things he’s working towards are in fact all ephemeral and all pointless and all an illusion, and what action he has to take as a consequence of that.
How will the presentation of the story change for Thrillbent?
It doesn’t change radically but it changes in an interesting way. Barry Kitson, who again, I cannot say enough good things about as my co-creator and my co-storyteller on this. Not only is his artwork just the best I’ve ever seen, because he’s just getting better every time he puts pen to paper, but he’s adapting quite well to the digital storytelling format, which is to say that with a traditional comment, there’s not many places I can surprise you as a reader.
You’ve got all these panels in front of you and your peripheral vision will catch what’s coming up, but with digital, every turn of the screen if you will, every new screen is a potential for a cliffhanger surprise, a jolting shock or a different way of pacing the story. Barry’s adapted quite well to that. I like the idea that it’s easier to build suspense in a digital comic than it is in a traditional print comic.
