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We caught up with legendary comic writer to look back on his career, how he helped transform Marvel and DC’s superheroes for generations in the 1970s, and his thoughts on movie adaptations.
"Hi Gamereactor friends, we are in Avilés in Asturias, Spain, for the Celsius 232 and here we are going to meet a bunch of very nice, interesting writers for both, you know, comics, novels, video games, films, and it's a pleasure for me to be with you, Steve, as my first interview here, and it's really nice to start talking comics first."
"You sort of introduced a more unstable aspect to superheroes in your time.
Did you feel like a pioneer?
What did you want to achieve when you did that, seeing the characters from a slightly unstable, you know, political, philosophical, psychological angle?
Well, I had liked very much comics to that point, and I thought if I was going to get involved with it, I should try to advance things somehow."
"And so that's really the motivation.
I didn't feel like a pioneer.
I just felt like I was taking what was given to me in terms of the people who came before me and trying to just take it farther."
"And that's the funny thing about it, that this was 50 years ago, right?
And so in the moment when you're doing it, you're just doing it.
You're just telling stories.
The idea that 50 years later I'd be invited to Spain because of it, you know, never occurred to me."
"Of course.
You've been writing for both DC and Marvel, same as many other writers and artists.
I guess you get this question a lot.
Which one is your favorite character from each, and which unstable aspect do you like from them?
Well, I like all my characters."
"People ask me that question a lot.
But I really like doing characters, and so I try to get as much out of each one as I can.
And so I can't say the Hulk and Doctor Strange.
How do I compare Doctor Strange and the Hulk and Captain America and these guys?
So I like them all."
"I just thought that the world was more complex in the 70s than, I mean, there had been a lot of good stuff done with Marvel to that point and with DC, but I really thought you could get deeper into the characters.
So I can't tell you which one was better, but all of them, I just tried to get as deep into them as I could."
"You just mentioned Captain America.
I asked Jeph Loeb the same question about Superman a few months ago.
I interviewed him.
What would your Captain America do today in today's world?
My Captain America today would be leading a revolution against Donald Trump, but I'm not writing that book, and I don't know what [would happen with] the powers that be."
"When I did it and did stuff about the President of the United States, it was just a comic book company, and so we were just doing comic books.
Now it's a multimedia company owned by Disney or by Warners, depending on who you're talking to.
So everything has got to be much more signed off on by various levels, whereas in those days I could do whatever I wanted to do, and it was a lot simpler."
"But if I were doing it today, Captain America would be leading the revolution, but that's not my option at this point.
That's very interesting.
You sort of liked to go back to unresolved plot lines from several lines."
"What drove you to do that?
Were you just curious, or did your writing technique invite you to complete unresolved stories?
Yeah. Well, again, I believe in each individual character, and so when I would take over a book, I would read—I had already read, but I would reread all the issues and see if there were unresolved things, because I came into Marvel 10 years after Marvel got started, and so I was writing the same characters that Stan Lee and Roy Thomas and other people had written."
"So then you would believe that this is the character, and so if there's an unresolved plot line, I sort of wanted to resolve it.
And also I liked the continuity of it because it built the world, right?
Sorry. No problem."
"It built the world around the whole thing as a coherent unit.
That's also something you can't do today because that was 10 years of continuity.
Now it would be 60, and nobody can say, go look at that book from 1974 to see what we're talking about."
"But it was easy to do, and I just felt that it completed, filled in blanks and completed the characters when I was doing it.
Well, speaking about continuity or the mark you leave for the ones that come after you, you did a really brief Batman, but it was heavily influential."
"So how do you feel about that looking back at what you did with Batman and what the character means today to nowadays audiences?
Well, I did everything that I thought the Batman should be, and it turns out that a lot of people thought that's what the Batman should be, and so it remains a benchmark of some sort."
"But I, again, in the moment I was just doing the best Batman I could.
The idea that it would influence people or that people, you know, I knew when I was doing it that it was good, I thought, right?
But even sometimes you think it's good, but do other people think it's good, right?
But the idea that it would become something that just is, other people measure their Batman against or whatever is like, again, none of that was in my brain at the time."
"Let me ask you about adaptations, of course.
We've mentioned several superheroes that you've written.
There's Batman, there's the Avengers.
There's two movies coming out real soon, the Batman Part II and Doomsday at the end of this year."
"How do you feel about them?
They've come and gone many times since you wrote them.
How do you feel about the modern and the ones, the upcoming ones?
Are you excited about them or you prefer to read the graphic novels?
Oh, well, I like, you know, I like comics best."
"I mean, I appreciate movies.
Movies are, you know, they're like you got to tell the whole story in two hours, right?
Whereas comics can go as long as they want to and you can stop and linger on things.
So I like comics as a medium better."
"On the other hand, I'm happy with the movies.
I have a quibbles here or there, right?
But I mean, in general, I'm good with them.
So I'm interested right now as we speak, there's the whole thing about superhero fatigue and whether people have, whether the whole movie thing has peaked or not."
"So I think, you know, Superman was an attempt to grab the audience again, right?
And we'll see what Batman does and we'll see what the Avengers do.
I mean, if people don't care, then, you know, then there you go.
But so I look at them, I guess, more in terms of how are those people handling their business?
And if they're using my material, that's good, you know, but it's not my thing at this point."
"Yeah, OK. And finally, you've been to Celsius several times here in Aviles, in Asturias.
Are you more of a reader or of a writer right now?
What do you enjoy writing about and what are you enjoying reading about?
Well, I'm learning a whole lot of things to be reading about here, right?
Going to talks and hearing what people are doing and people that I was unaware of or at least only vaguely aware of."
"As far as what I'm doing, I'm writing stories right now because I like to write.
Of course.
You know, I mean, I just enjoy the process of writing.
So I'm writing things, but I'm not trying to sell them."
"It's like I'm setting goals for myself.
Can I tell this type of story and then trying to do that?
Right. And so that the writing is the is the satisfaction of doing it.
I mean, if somebody wanted to publish it, that'd be fine."
"But I'm not, you know, I'm not pursuing that.
Yeah, I'm just pursuing the pleasure of writing at this point.
I think that's beautiful. That's a perfect way to wrap this up.
Thank you so much for your time, Steve. Enjoy the rest of the show."
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