Tom King & Mitch Gerads Interview - Artist Interviews 01
Baltimore, Maryland October, 2022
I scored a dream interview with 2 comic book legends at the annual Baltimore Comic-Con. Before you start reading the interview, let’s rewind the clock back to…
2015. I was 9 years old. I was at the comic book store, and saw a comic book about Vision, a Marvel character I hadn’t really heard of before. I’d been told the series was very good, so my Dad and I bought the 3rd or 4th issue. I was instantly hooked. The writer of this comic would soon change the trajectory of my life. That writer is Tom King. I was lucky enough to meet him for the first time at a book signing in Washington, DC. Now that I’m older, the words I would use to describe Tom are extraordinarily genuine and caring.
2016. Tom became the primary writer of Batman, a mainstream break-thru in his career. After this, lines for his book-signings became much longer, but since I had so quickly become such a passionate fan, and was young (for his audience), he started to remember me, and was interested in getting to know me. It was really cool. Progressively through the years, I saw him again many times, and we developed a friendship.
2017. Tom teamed up with comic artist Mitch Gerads for a second time on a limited series called Mister Miracle. This series became my favorite of all time, and a cult classic among comic fans. Mister Miracle became a staple in any conversation I’d have with anyone about comic books. “Oh, you like spider-man? Check out Mister Miracle!”
2018. Mitch Gerads started to work more and more frequently with Tom, and they began to travel to comic events together. Mitch and I got to know each other during some of these events. One might mistake him for a tough guy based on his appearance, but let me tell you, he has a sweet smile, and is always a pure joy to speak with. Over the years I saw Tom and Mitch together many, many times at comic-cons, comic stores, etc. I learned that Mitch and Tom not only have a professional relationship, they also have a real, true friendship. Tom is even Godfather to Mitch’s son. If you ever meet this two you’ll learn 3 things:
1.) They love their craft, they love comics, and If you ask them for a comic recommendation, they’ll thoughtfully give it to you. They’ll talk to you about a particular series they’ve enjoyed, what they love about it, and they’ll do it like you’ve been longtime friends. For example, Tom recommended The New Frontier by Darwin Cooke, a series I also fell in love with.
2.) They are very generous with their time. Tom and Mitch are so incredibly passionate about what they do, and they’re very appreciative of people who support them, they’ve never, ever come off as phony or disingenuous or arrogant.
3.) They are both very kind.
Baltimore Comic Con 2022: I arrived at the huge convention center, full of fans, and I immediately went to find Tom and Mitch, like always. Only this time, in addition to catching up, and getting a bunch of comics signed, I asked them if I could interview them. Check it out below.
Matt:
Alright, my first question. What is your process from the first idea of a book? So when you're like, “oh, I should write this” to the pitch. What do you do in preparation?
Tom:
Generally speaking, I have some sort of overall idea, like a twist or something. I should say I'm a Comic book writer. What’s a good example? Okay, Mr. Miracle, what can I do with him? I was like, “he's an escape artist. How does he escape? What can't he escape? He can't escape death. Everyone's trying to escape death. Nobody can escape it. That's like, how life works.”
Matt:
Yeah.
Tom:
I was like, “if he was trying to escape death, what would he do? He would kill himself. I was like, Wait a second. The guy killed himself, to escape death. That's really messed up. So now I have an idea. Now it's a story. Then I have to come up with sort of a twist where that leads us. And that's when I start thinking about the characters in the story. And then the last thing I think about is- twists in the characters. I just want to know, where does this go? What's our driving force?” Yeah, once I have those three elements, then I write up a one-page pitch.
Matt:
That's awesome. That's awesome. Do you have a favorite line or a couple of lines that you’ve ever written whether they've been published or not?
Tom:
Favorite line I've ever written…
Matt:
One of my favorites you ever did was on the confessionals on Heroes in Crisis. When Spectre says, “I asked God.” That's good… I don't remember the exact words. “He couldn't answer through the tears”
Tom:
Um, In Superman Up In The Sky. It's not a very interesting line, but the last page says, “Why did you do this? You're not going to ask me why? They're like, I don't have to ask you.” And you turn the page and go, “you're Superman”. I get choked up. I wrote it. But somehow just her saying you're Superman like I can depend on you. And I know for me to just use two words to make myself cry, I'm proud of that.
Matt:
I like Superman under the sky. I think it's underrated for sure.
Tom:
Thanks, man.
Tom:
And, Because that was the last confession. I was like, who should go last? I was like, Spectre will go last. And Spectre talks directly to God. That's an in-continuity power, right? And he'll say something, I was like, what? Sometimes I have my outline in my head, I have my outline, I'll be like, and that's when you write the meaning of life. And I'm like, oh shit, I have to actually write it. I don't know what the meaning of life is.
Matt:
That's crazy.
Tom:
That was one of those times.
Matt:
What comics have resonated with you the most because Mister Miracle by you and Mitch, that's one that's, like, stuck in my heart as something that's, like, part of me. Do you have a comic you were reading growing up or even now that really stuck to you like that?
Tom:
There's a few. None of them are going to shock you, Right? Like the Frank Miller classics, Born Again, Year One, Dark Knight Returns, Alan Moore stuff. Watchmen. And the two Superman stories that Alan Moore did. Whatever happened to the man of tomorrow? And what do you get for the man who has everything? Yeah, those really stick with me.
Matt:
When you decided to write Danger Street, you kind of answered this as a panel. But what characters appeal to you, and what about them?
Tom:
All of them appeal to me. But I like the ones like, Lady Cop. People see that. They're like, oh, this is some sexist 70s thing. And it really is. But to look at it and be like, there is something genuine here. There is something that we can pull out of this and turn this sort of reinvention. Her origin was really cool. She had this kind of Batman origin story, and it was like a very old guy trying to write for the feminist movement. He was trying to make it modern, and you can kind of see the sparks in there to make it modern. That really interested me. Like, he went halfway to a great idea. I can bring him across the finish line.
Matt:
That's awesome. Recontextualizing it. And if there's a character you wish you could work on or a character I can guess this one, or a character you could go back and change what you did, who would it be?
Tom:
I'm a huge marvel guy. I grew up a Marvel Zombie. I would love to write The Thing.
Matt:
My guess was Spiderman, because of the “oh poop.” Yeah.
Tom:
Spiderman is really hard to write. I don't even want to write Spiderman because so many jokes. Jokes are hard to write.
Matt:
Yeah. I'm not a particularly funny guy. I couldn’t. it's hard.
Tom:
Yeah. I had to write Grayson. He kind of had to make jokes though. The hardest part writing superhero comics. You wouldn't think this, but when you have two characters fighting, and you have to create a dialogue between them when real people fight, they don't talk to each other, so it feels so unnatural. So you're like, okay, I'm going to keep you all the dialogue out. But then you get the pages back, you're like, oh, it's so boring.
Matt:
Yeah. You talk a lot in various comics about the meaning of life. What is that?
Tom:
What's the meaning of life?
Matt:
Yea.
Tom:
That's the final question?! (Laughs) The meaning of life is…respecting your father. You know? That's what it is. I have three kids. That's what I got to tell them. (Laughs)
Matt:
That's awesome. And do you have any closing statements before I go?
Tom:
No.. But, Thank you so much.
I walk over to Mitch’s end of the table and start speaking with Tom as he starts autographing stacks of books again.
Matt:
When I've been trying to come up with comic ideas, the page I look at is the first thing I'm like, okay, how can I make something that good, that inspires someone else? You know what I mean? It's the page where Barda and Scott are with Orion and Barda kneels when Barda told them to… and Scott's just standing there like, “I'm not going to do that.”
Mitch:
I've been a DC guy my whole life. I'm never tired of it.
Matt:
When you get a script, And see something that you have a hard time figuring out how to draw or can’t wrap your head around, how do you attack that?
Mitch:
Those are usually my favorite because I know that every page that I've read through a script and been like, oh, shit, how am I going to do that? It's always the best pages of the book because it requires me to sit down, and hammer stuff out rather than letting my brain take over and be like, oh, I know how to do that. Yeah.
Matt.
And you worked with Marvel once, if you could, outside of DC, Draw any character, Marvel, IDW, whatever it may be, what character would it be?
Mitch:
I’m the opposite of Tom, I’ve always been a DC kid, it sounds lame because he's basically just Batman, but Daredevil.
Matt:
Yea, all the different Reds would be fun.
Mitch:
Yeah, He'd be fun to like, color.
Matt:
Yeah, for sure.
Matt:
Do you have a page that you took a ton of artistic liberty on that ended up working out really well? And what page?
Tom butts his head back in, the question peaking his interest.
Tom: Yeah, where did you take artistic liberty, Mitch?
Mitch:
I’m trying to think of… There's all sorts of little things. Like, anytime Tom writes a seven-page panel, I turn it into a nine-page panel, which I feel like on the script for our new Unannounced thing. He knows that. Well, I told him. I told him at the start of it. I was like, “Tom, I don't want to do away with the nine panels, but can we have less of them?” And now he's written a bunch of seven-panel pages, which he knows I turned into nine.
Tom:
Oh, did I? If I'm on seven, that means I've made a mistake. Not a mistake… but usually if I'm on seven, that means I wrote to five and realized I had gotten to whatever I got to, because usually, I'm writing to five. And then I add the 6th reluctantly and then I get to the 7th and realized I fucked up.
Mitch:
Yeah.
Tom:
On the sexiest* page of Mister Miracle that was not written that way, I didn't have a crucifix. (* A sex scene in Mister Miracle where the main character is getting laid on his bed tied to a mock-up crucifix)
Matt:
My First time seeing it, and not knowing, What that meant…
Mitch:
What? Yeah, that was all me.
Matt:
When It came out I was twelve, like, “what does this mean?” And then going back… NOW, I'm like. OK, OK, I think I got it. (Laughs)
Mitch:
I think part of working with Tom is that we understand each other so well. I think he knows what I might draw and I know what he might write and I've never drawn.
Well like, embellishment then redoing something like the double page spread and Riddler where they are on the basketball court. The way it was written was just like a page one, page two thing and then I did the whole leaves falling, combining it. That's the only thing.
Matt:
I don’t know. I was like, I was like, oh, they probably had to do this just for promotion, for The Batman.
I read and I was like, it's deeper than that. I really, really liked it.
Mitch:
So that book was my, like, literally my dream book. Like, ever since I've known Tom, I've pitched him a Batman Riddler book. It was Incredible. And so we finally got to do it.
It was really, really incredible.
Matt:
Yeah. And so you mostly draw digitally now you've done some things physically, but what sort of?
Over physically.
Mitch:
It's great, so:
The original reason I went digital was not out of any sort of, like, artistic thing. It was that I'd spend all day in my studio drawing. My wife would come home from work, we'd say hi and have dinner or whatever, and then she would go off and watch TV and I'd have to go back to my studio and we wouldn't see each other. And I was like, this sucks. And so I was like, alright, I knew about the Cintiq companion at the time, was like, well, I can do that and then just draw while we're both on the couch watching TV or whatever.
Matt:
Awesome.
Mitch:
So that's how it started. But like it revolutionized like how I view art and comics where, I mean it sounds like the funny answer is, you know, the undo button. And but it's true because what it did is the undo button allows me to experiment more than traditional because I don't want to wreck it if I'm traditional, but digital I can be like, oh, what would this look like if I did this?
Now it Completely changed how I draw.
Matt:
Yeah, when I've drawn digitally and I'm like, OK, I can try so many poses, but once I'm inking something physically if I erase it too hard, the page gets ruined and I'm like, OK, Now I have to do it all over again.
Mitch:
Yeah for sure.
Matt:
Do you have any closing last words?
Mitch:
Closing last words, I don't know. I don't have anything to promote right now.
Matt:
To check out whatever you and Tom are making.
Mitch:
That, yeah. The next thing's really cool. I'm excited. The next thing is something.
Matt:
Yeah. What can you say about that?
Mitch:
Yeah, let me figure out what I can say. The thing we're doing next is… Concerning a character that I literally have 0 interest in drawing, but because Tom and I hashed it out, now I'm like in love, with interest there.
