The Ministry Interviews: Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti

On December 23rd, I spoke by phone to Marvel Knights editors Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti. My thanks to Marvel's Melissa Vogel for helping set up the interview.

Alan David Doane: We're heading into the second year of Marvel Knights--can you tell me how the imprint came to be?

Joe Quesada: Then-(Marvel) President Joe Calimari wanted to talk to Jimmy and I about what it was that we were bringing to our self-publishing business, we have a company called Event Comics, and what would we see as outside publishers as ways of improving Marvel.

Jimmy Palmiotti: He saw what we were doing, and we were doing things a little bit differently than a bigger company handles the business and he just wanted to get our insight and just sort of pick our brains during that dinner.

JQ: Right, sort of an outside approach, and then sometime during a subsequent meeting, we started talking about "What if we made this a possibility, what if we brought you guys down here--" into the offices to actually work as an outside publisher working within Marvel, working with Marvel characters. I guess you'd call it, contractors, Jimmy? Packagers?

JP: Packagers-slash-talent scouts.

ADD: The characters that you chose, Daredevil, the Punisher, the Inhumans--tell me if I'm leaving anybody out...

JQ and JP: Black Panther...

ADD: Black Panther. Were those chosen by Marvel or did you pretty much get to choose, "This, this, this and this."

JP: We had a list of characters we wanted, Daredevil was the main character Joe and I agreed on that we had to have in order to make the deal go down.

JQ: Yeah, that was the real linchpin for us.

JP: As far as The Inhumans, we both thought we had an interesting take on it, and Black Panther and the Punisher, I've worked on a lot of Punisher books myself--we had a bunch of other characters, but these are the ones that were decided on. But Daredevil, as Joe said, was the linchpin.

JQ: It was a just a matter of us sitting down and saying--first of all, they weren't gonna give us Spider-Man, and they weren't gonna give us the X-Men. And we didn't necessarily--we would have taken Spider-Man gladly (chuckles), but I don't know if we would have wanted the X-Men, but--it was one of those situations where we sat down and said, what really needs help, what do we think we could really excel at. Where are our strengths? And our strengths tend to lie, I think, in the realm of the less super-powered type characters and more in the realm of characters that are more urban based, and more grounded in reality, and probably would be easiest to produce as a movie as well, because they are so realistic in their sensibilities.

ADD: As far as Daredevil, I'm going to guess the Frank Miller era had a lot to do with the fact that you guys wanted on there?

JQ: It had something to do with it...I mean, Frank had a good run on Daredevil...but, y'know, so did Stan Lee, and Roger McKenzie and Denny O'Neil. Whenever there's somebody good on the book, the character really really excels, but it's one of those characters that really needs, I think Jimmy'll agree with me really needs somebody to handle it with care and look at the character, because he's very complex, he's not just a guy who puts on a cape, or puts on a leotard and jumps off buildings. There's many layers to the character. He's one of the few characters that's overtly religious in tone. He's very much within the realm of possibility.

ADD: Speaking of religion, the guy you tapped to write the book was the director of Dogma, Kevin Smith. Did he come to you, did you go to him, how did that happen?

JP: We had a relationship with Kevin back and forth, helping him out with some artwork for Mallrats, and helping him on the set of Chasing Amy...

JQ: Yeah, we actually wrote Clerks, but nobody knows that...

JP: We didn't want to say anything because Kevin, that's his big movie, so...Um, but we pretty much were dealing with each other on a different level, helping out Kevin with some art, and we actually approached him in his home town about writing Ash, which is a book that we put out through Event. It didn't get together that way, but later on when we had the Marvel deal, Joe gave him a call.

JQ: We knew that he was as much of a fan of the Daredevil comics as we were. And being that he originally had agreed to write an Ash story, and before we got the opportunity to get around to that this Marvel Knights thing came around. We just figured, "Let's ask Kevin, this might be really, really fun. And much to our surprise--here's a man whose movies are grounded in comic book folklore or geek-lore, and nobody's ever really asked him to ever write a comic book. it just seemed like such a bizarre thing that nobody would confront Kevin and say, "Hey, would you want to write, like, Batman? Superman? I mean, you are a fan." So we were kind of the first guys to really talk to him about it. But it was also a mutual-admiration thing. He liked what we were doing, we loved his movies, and it just sort of came to be that way.

ADD: Did Kevin provide you with a full script or how did that work?

JQ: Since Kevin hadn't written comics before, people were thinking "Well, here's a guy, he can write movies, of course he can write comics." And it's not like that. That's like saying just because you can direct movies you can direct commercials. It's two different worlds and two different techniques. So Kevin came in with his film background and wrote from that perspective. And Jimmy and I were like, okay, this is where--obviously comics, you have to sort of condense things, and give a Reader's Digest version, and Kevin's movies tend to be very verbose, so there were times we were like, "Kevin, within the context of a comic book, this is kind of like stating the obvious." Because the pictures might be showing what it is that you're telling. So it was a give and take kind of situation, in particular in the first couple of issues, where...again, some people judged Kevin very harshly on those issues, because they expected him to be like Alan Moore writing Watchmen right out of the box. And they keep forgetting that although he's written movies, this was his first comic book.

JP: It was a definite learning experience for Kevin.

JQ: Right. And as we got towards the middle of the run, his scripts came in and they were more comic book friendly, in terms of like less fiddling had to be done with them. It was pretty much all there--he understood the medium because he's a reader and he's a huge fan, but that still doesn't mean you understand the art behind the format, so to speak. So, he eventually caught on, as anybody with talent would catch on.

ADD: There was some controversial stuff in that initial Kevin Smith-written story arc, not the least of which, throwing a baby off a building and killing one of the mainstays of the book for 30-plus years...what was the reaction on Marvel's part, were they afraid at all, when you went to take these steps?

JP: To tell you the truth, when we approached Bob Harras, the editor at Marvel, with Kevin's outline, especially with having Karen (Page) get killed, he was like, "Okay," if we justify it, if there's a good reason why it happens...

JQ: No meaningless deaths, you know what I mean, in some respects, Marvel sort of gave us the green light on it because it was also a much-maligned character. I mean, the Karen Page character had gone through hell, in particular through the Frank Miller run, I mean, she became a heroin addict-porn star, not necessarily what you would consider a Marvel, Comics Code kind of character...

JP: No Mary Jane...

JQ: Yeah, she's no Mary Jane. In essence, this was a character with so much water under the bridge, just make her death meaningful. Make it have repercussions all throughout the Daredevil universe.

JP: The thing is, when she was killed, we had a lot of response...because it was done so well, Kevin and Joe did a great job really making the death seem like a real, like somebody has passed. People sent us tons of e-mail and letters, and they were either "Oh, my God you killed her--I couldn't believe it, I was in shock. I loved the story but I'm very upset. I lived with this girl for so long..."

JQ: Which was actually exactly the response we wanted.

JP: Right. And then there's some more like, "How could you do that? How dare you!"

JQ: Which was also the response we wanted. The one good thing is, it was never met with, "Oh, well." (Laughs) We didn't get that. "Glad she's dead. Oh, well."

JP: No, people really cared, and that's when we knew the storytelling was really kicking in, because people really cared about her and the death, and it really hit them hard. We had some people going through tough times in their life, and they were associating it with what Kevin wrote. We got a lot of really good letters.

JQ: We got some letters from people who actually had recently lost girlfriends, fiancées, whatever it may be, and they said that it touched them tremendously. And even subsequent issues after that we got follow-up letters from people saying "We're so happy you didn't trivialize it and what the character's going through is very much what I went through--" the whole mourning process and stuff. And that's really a tribute to Kevin and his wonderful handling of dialogue and human nature.

ADD: Are you guys pretty well committed to staying on Daredevil for a while here?

JP: We're committed to the contract--it's obviously up to Marvel when the contract expires to renegotiate and go on to the next thing. We take it one contract or one year at a time. The second year we have it pretty booked up, we pretty much know almost everything we're doing. We just take it a little at a time. The company has had it's own ups and downs and we're hanging in there and trying to do the best job we can.

JQ: And things change on a major daily basis here, so...people that, for lack of couth here, people who may be here today who think we're doing a bang-up job may not be here tomorrow. And it seems like that's stabilized to some extent...ultimately it's on Marvel's shoulders but also more importantly it's on our shoulders. Are we...when it comes to the point where Jimmy and I are asking "Can we contribute any more? Do we have anything fresh?" If the answer's "no" then you can be sure we probably won't be in these (Marvel) offices.

ADD: Tell us a little bit about your upcoming work as writer on Iron Man, Joe.

JQ: I heard about Kurt (Busiek) leaving before the general public did, so weird enough that that night--you're always looking for something new to do, and that night I went home and didn't really think about it and had an Iron Man dream.

JP: Uh-oh.

JQ: Yeah, it was one of those. Jimmy has like Yasmine Bleeth dreams, I have Iron Man dreams. I'm sorry, but I don't dream about comics, y'know, I dream about missing deadlines, that's about it, I have nightmares about (that). But for whatever reason, I woke up and I actually remembered this dream because it was so out there, it just--y'know, it was a comic book dream, but it was a story. And on the drive to work, I was like, y'know, there must be a reason why I thought of this. And I just walked into (Iron Man editor) Bobbie Chase's office, and I asked her, "Would you listen to a proposal? I know that Kurt's leaving." And she's like, "Sure." I just said "I'm not asking for any special favors, I'm not a known quantity, outside of the artistic side of it, just give me a fair shot." And she loved the proposal or (laughs) so she says. But, that's how that sort of came to be. In terms of the characters, I'm using one of the characters Kurt created, and I'm bringing back an old Iron Man friend who will eventually find out is not friend, but foe.

ADD: Now Jimmy, have you got any projects away from Marvel Knights that you're working on?

JP: I'm working on a thing with the new company Black Bull Comics, which is owned by Gareb Shamus, it's called Gatecrasher. It's written and co-plotted with me and Mark Waid, and penciled by Amanda Connor, who happens to be my girlfriend, and inked by me.

ADD: That must save a lot in shipping the pages back and forth.

JP: (Laughs) Yeah, or after I ink it, she kind of walks in, like Joe, it's the same method with Joe, like after I ink it, Joe and Amanda go, "Can you do this, can you change that?" Which is a perfect situation for an inker. I don't start with a blank page, so whatever I do, I don't mind if it's touched up and fixed up, because actually the artist has a certain vision of the work, so it's good for me. I'm also laying out an issue of a Magneto special for when the X-Men movie comes out, with Mark Texiera will be working from my layouts, which is kind of fun for me, because I don't really get to draw that much, so it's kind of a neat little side project.

ADD: We should also mention the Daredevil Visionaries book out in stores now...

JQ: And there's also going to be a hardcover, Jimmy, right?

JP: Right, the hardcover comes out in February.

JQ: That's from Graffiti Design.

JP: It's amazing.

JQ: Also included with that, and this may be the first time they've done this in comics, there's a CD-ROM included with this with Kevin, Jimmy and myself. We recorded close to four hours worth of commentary on the Daredevil project and some page by page analysis and issue by issue analysis, that's gonna be cool.