Among the people I have been asked to interview by readers and fans of his has been Kurt Busiek and really if you look at any of my online archives it is rather clear that he is a very large talent who as of yet had not been cornered and forced to answer my questions. His very fine answers here are really appreciated and I recommend any of his present or past works. I have found that whatever level of familiarity I have with the worlds he writes within, the stories are deeply enjoyable for me upon a number of different levels.

Thank you Kurt for your time and answers!

Alex Ness: LETTER HACK Eagle Eyed readers have only to look in letters pages in 1980s comics to see your letters, and some other equally well thought of Comic Book professionals.   What role did that play in your future as a writer in the industry.

Kurt Busiek: They wouldn't find many of my letters in the 1980s -- I was a letterhack largely in the latter Seventies, and stopped before I broke in in 1982.

AN: Sigh, I remember that. Sorry for my brain fart.

KB: It turned out the letters were more helpful than I ever knew they'd be -- once I started knocking on doors and pitching stories, editors remembered my name from the letters, and it turned out they associated me with intelligently-written, publishable stuff. As one editor told me, if they saw a Busiek letter in the pile, they knew that they could use that, at least, even if most of the mail was incoherent. So on that small level, at least, they thought of me as someone who wrote stuff they could use. That made them readier to give me a listen when I was pitching stuff, which gave me a leg up on the other guys out there pitching.

It also taught me, over time, to think critically about structure and character and pacing and any number of other things. In writing letters of comment, I had to articulate my thoughts, and that made me analyze the books more clearly than I otherwise might have, and that was a learning experience too.

AN: MARVELS - Many people consider MARVELS to be one of the greatest titles ever. Tell our readers if you will how the book came to be.

KB: I'd worked with Alex Ross before, on an issue of OPEN SPACE that I edited and which he did some art for, a story that didn't get published until years later -- and I'd been showing his samples around to try to get him into the industry.

He'd done a bunch of presentation paintings of Marvel characters he liked the most, with an eye toward doing an ongoing anthology series of painted stories, with him being one of the painters. I talked him into the idea that he'd have better luck if what he was pitching was a mini-series, with a single overarching story, where he'd do the whole thing -- a newcomer wasn't likely to sell Marvel on a new ongoing anthology series. Anyway, we'd batted around ideas for how such a mini-series could work, when Marc McLaurin at Marvel saw Alex's samples and wanted to know what these Marvel paintings were, was there a project in that?

So we ended up pitching MARVELS to Marcus, and it went through several versions (all the different proposals are in the Tenth Anniversary Hardcover) before it got accepted. But once it did, away we went, and that was the result. I think we had a lot of freedom on the project because nobody knew it was going to be such a hit, so they didn't pay too much attention to what we were doing.

AN: AVENGERS - Your Avengers run helped return the Greatest Super Heroes Team to greatness. Were there Marvel edicts as to the team roster and if so were you content with the line ups you used? Your work with George Perez was rather excellent, is clearly one of best runs in the books history. What character on that book turned out to be your favorite to write?  What story arc is your favorite as well?

KB: There were no Marvel edicts about the roster. My own edict was that I wanted Thor, Iron Man and Cap, all together, to show we were serious, that this was a big thing. And George insisted on the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, or I'd have left them out for a couple of years. But Marvel didn't tell us anyone had to be in there, or couldn't be -- with the exception of the Beast, who we'd have loved to have used, but the X-office wanted to keep him, and really, they've got dibs.

I had lots of fun writing Hawkeye, Cap, Thor, Firestar, Wonder Man, Wanda... I don't know if I could pick one single favorite. I think the best story we did was the "Ultron Unlimited " arc in #19-22 (plus #0), but the whole thing was fun.

AN: JLA - You will be on JLA doing another team.  What differences are there between the two teams, and what makes JLA special?  Which of the cast is easiest to write, which is the hardest, and if you could write whatever characters into the book, who would be your perfect team?

KB: The big difference between the Avengers and the JLA is that the Avengers are a team -- they train together, live together, function very strongly as a unit -- while the JLA are a league -- they're very much individual heroes who come together as needed to deal wit the humungo threats. That's not to say they don't train or have any teamwork, but they don't focus on it to the extent of the Avengers, and it gives the book a different flavor. The JLA are the best of the best as individuals, the Avengers may not all be superstars taken individually, but they come together into the primo team of the Marvel U.

So the JLA is an alliance of superstars, and that makes them pretty damn cool indeed.

AN: CONAN - By CROM your Conan writing has been excellent.  Were you a fan of Roy Thomas's Conan comics or primarily a reader of the Robert E Howard books? Who at the basically crux of his soul is Conan?   Some people have told me he is good hearted, others a bad guy in the role of the hero.   I have read all the REH books and most of the Conan from Marvel, and I think it remains a good question as I cannot answer it.

KB: I'm a huge fan of Roy's CONAN. It was Roy's Conan comics that led me to read the Robert E. Howard stories, and they got me hooked, too -- so in a very real way, if it wasn't for Roy I'd never have gotten to REH.

The core of Conan? Conan's the pure, wild, untamed man -- the barbarian in the sense of being uncorrupted by civilization. Much of the REH stories are about Conan as this pure, unrestrained icon of freedom versus decaying, corrupt civilization, showing how the "civilized" world elevates unworthy men to power, and they screw over the little guy, while Conan, in order to stay free, topples their power structures and rips their sordid little worlds apart. There's plenty of magic and monsters in CONAN, but if you check, you'll see that usually, the magic or the monsters are working for corrupt men -- they're the ones who are truly the villains.

Conan, though, while he's out for himself and is a thief and a brigand and a killer, is essentially fair-minded, passionate about what he believes in but not out to prey on the weak, like so many of the people he fights are. So he's not a hero like Captain America, but he winds up fighting the right guys.

AN: We at STL comics love, absolutely love ASTRO CITY.  Is there any outlook towards a regular monthly version coming out from anywhere? When you write ASTRO CITY what level of satire or parody of other worlds do you consciously place in it, and with so many levels in how to approach it, do you find it to have many different sorts of fans?

KB: ASTRO CITY will be back in 2005, but I doubt it'll ever be a monthly series. It's too hard to write, and it involves so much new design all the time that it ain't a cakewalk to draw, either. Still, we'll keep at it, and as long as it keeps coming out, I think the readers will be glad to see us.

I don't place a lot of parody or satire of other worlds in it -- I'm far more concerned with ideas, with what we can do with the superhero genre beyond what's usually done. I'm not making up the characters to be stand-ins for other guys -- there are archetypal similarities, but not much more than that. All the guys who think the Confessor is "my Batman," for instance, don't think it through enough to see that we couldn't tell that story with Batman -- it depends on the Confessor being a very, very different guy.

So we have shadowy vigilantes and a pantheon of heroes and flying, caped wonders and heroic families and monsters and tricksters and armored heroes and mythic heroes and more -- but we're more interested in telling people stories than in doing our version of Marvel's or DC's characters. If we really wanted to do that, Marvel and DC would be happy to let us use the real guys.

-- kdb


AN: Thanks Kurt.