Jack Kirby. His name is synonymous with everything that is right and good with comics. One of Kirby’s grandest creations was the New Gods, and now DC is pitting them against the Green Lanterns. What? Ancient gods against a galactic police force? Why? For what reason?
Cue Robert Venditti and Van Jensen, two men who are pulling these two worlds together. From Green Lantern to Green Lantern Corps, this story has the force trying to keep the New Gods from capturing the combined power of all the rings. On the flipside, Highfather sees the rings as the answer to the Life Equation. Could the combined light of the rings bring an end to Darkseid forever?
Heady stuff. Venditti and Jensen are stepping into much-beloved territory and creating a story with no clear-cut bad guy. Everybody has a point or an agenda. Being a worshiper at the Kirby throne, as well as a long-standing reader of the Green Lantern books, I wanted to delve deeper into this. How better than to corner the two men at NYCC.
CraveOnline: Why are you bringing the New Gods together with Green Lanterns?
Robert Venditti: It was actually something that was suggested to us back when I first started writing Green Lantern. They brought the New Gods to me, and asked how I felt about having them be an antagonist crossing paths with the Green Lantern. I started reading all the Fourth World stuff. There was so much to work with I began thinking early on about how they would encounter the Green Lanterns. It’s two pretty expansive mythologies, Green Lantern and New Gods. It’s challenging to bring those two mythologies together but it’s also very exciting.
Artistically it’s difficult to capture the New Gods. After all, Kirby is king!
Venditti: (Laughs) We’re definitely trying to use the things that Kirby did, motifs and things he created. For instance in Green Lantern # 38, when the New Gods use their energy there is a “Kirby krackle” to it visually. This is a kind of power that the Green Lanterns don’t have, so it’s not only a “Kirby krackle” but it lends itself in establishing just how powerful the New Gods are.
Van Jensen: Pete Woods was the artist who did all the designs, which we worked on from the beginning of the book. He was designing and redesigning distant Kirby characters, and we also have created some new characters. I think Pete understood a lot of the color schemes of Kirby, the youthfulness and the exuberance. The costumes are very theatrical, and I think the art captures that but with a modern spin on it. It’s almost a modern aesthetic to their technology and their weapons.
Is there pressure writing this because of how revered the New Gods is?
Venditti: You’re never going to out-Kirby Jack Kirby, just like you’ll never out Geoff Johns, Geoff Johns. That’s just the way it is. The only way you can do anything artistic is stay true to what you do. All I can do is put my style of writing to these high concepts. I mean, that’s what writing for hire is. We’ve worked on Green Lantern, we’ve worked on The Flash, we’re working with the New Gods, and they all have very storied backgrounds that, if you sat and thought about, it you’d be too paralyzed to do anything. All you can do is be respectful to it and try to add to it.
Was it purposeful to not have either group be the clear villain so far?
Venditti: That’s what it’s all about. Basically they’re both good guys, the New Gods are looking at the Universe from the top down, and the Green Lanterns are looking from the bottom up as the cop on the beat. Who’s right and who’s wrong? They both think they’re right from their own perspective.
Jensen: In any story, the idea of who’s the protagonist and who’s the antagonist is all about perspective. You look at the Highfather who has been working for eons to keep Darkseid at bay, and he knows if he slips up, Darkseid will wreak havoc over all of the multiverse. That is no small thing. That is the weight of existence that’s on his shoulders. That’s going to change a guy, that’s going to push a man to do some very intense things.
Venditti: I think, or at least I hope, that if you go back and look at all my work, I have always written stories that way. My villains are not mustache twirlers. I try to write them so you can relate to them and readers can see their side of a situation. If you look at Lights Out, Relic was right but the way he chose to deal with it was a little off. I remember in Grad School reading a book called Grendel, which is the story of Beowulf from the point of view of Grendel. Here I am twenty years old, and Grendel is the most hated villain in literature, and then there’s a book and he’s just a guy trying to earn a living. That’s an aesthetic I’ve tried to keep.
Jensen: There is a lot of big stuff we have to line up and keep together to keep the book going. One of our decisions was to take the key characters and say this is who they are and this is what’s going on with them. This is how they’re involved in the crossover, but here is how the crossover will help tell their story. They aren’t just cogs for the crossover. It’s more a chance to tell the next chapter.
Will we see the return of Kyle and an answer to the Life Equation?
Venditti: Yes to both.
