"Stuart Immonen Interview"by Roger A. Ash
Artist Stuart Immonen illustrates the adventures of
the Man of Steel in DC's Adventures of Superman
and is the artist on DC's fall crossover, Final Night.
He recently sat down with Worlds of Westfield Content
Editor, Roger A. Ash, to talk about his work, past, present and
future.
Westfield: For those unfamiliar with your work, what have
you done and what are you working on?
Stuart Immonen: I've got a fairly varied history as far
as my professional work in comics goes. I started out self publishing
two books with my wife. One was called Playground;
one was called Headcheese. Headcheese
was an anthology of local artists from Toronto, Ontario and Playground
was a book that my wife and I did which we published three issues
of and eventually was picked up for one issue by Caliber Press.
At that time, I also started working for Revolutionary Comics;
they publish rock and roll biographies of which I did several
and built up a substantial, if questionable, portfolio out of
that work. After that I did an expanded story with some of the
characters from Headcheese with writer Sheldon Inkol.
Two issues of Nut Runners were published by Rip
Off Press. Soon after that I was working for Innovation and I
did a number of their books. I did an adaptation of Stephen King's
Lawnmower Man movie which was unfortunately shelved
and I believe will never, ever see print for reasons I can't discuss.
That also served as a wonderful portfolio piece for getting work
with DC. The first thing I did for DC was a 10-page Showcase
story featuring Martian Manhunter. That was shown around the office
and I was given a shot at doing a fill-in issue of Legion,
issue #42, by then-editor Michael Eury. Michael Eury, and coincidentally,
the penciller at that time, Jason Pearson, were leaving the book
and KC Carlson was being hired on to take over the Legion
books and he asked me to stick around on a regular basis. So I
stayed with Legion for two years and in the summer
of '94 I was offered to come on to Adventures of Superman
after Barry Kitson had left. Right now I'm coming back to Superman
after taking three issues off, due to working on DC's fall crossover
called Final Night with Karl Kesel and Jose
Marzan Jr., both part of the regular creative team of Adventures.
Westfield: From what I've read, it sounds like the Legion
plays a major part in Final Night. What was it like
working with those characters again?
Immonen: I really enjoyed it and, as a matter of fact,
when I was working on Legion I never got to draw
the Chris Sprouse-designed young characters very much, so to not
only have the Legion that are represented in the current books,
but to have Superman and the Legion together in one package was
a big thrill. So I enjoyed that quite a bit. The way Karl has
designed the book, the DC heroes are split up into small teams
and there's practically a Legion character or two represented
in every team. They're almost in every scene.
Westfield: Can you say anything else about Final
Night?
Immonen: I think it's going to be a really unique project
and something that DC hasn't attempted in the same sort of way
just yet. Karl and I, on discussing what we wanted to do with
the project, wanted to do an emotionally gripping story, not one
that was based totally on fist fights. One of the ways we tried
to do that was to employ no super villain at all in the story.
We wanted to show how the heroes could be noble and honorable
without having them regress into senseless violence. The villain
of the story is a force of nature. It's going to be the first
appearance in current continuity of the Sun Eater.
Westfield: Wasn't that originally a Legion
villain?
Immonen: Oh yes, that's entirely right.
Westfield: Will Final Night have repercussions
beyond the mini-series or will it stand alone?
Immonen: We want it to stand alone and we didn't want to
have to require people to purchase a lot of side stories. However,
with the appearance of the Sun Eater, the sun, basically, is turned
off for the period of the mini-series, which is one month, so
in that sense, it's going to be very cold and dark throughout
the DC Universe in September. But beyond that, people don't have
to read books they don't normally read. They'll be able to have
the entire story in Final Night and it's more like
a bonus for them if they read other books and see how their favorite
characters deal with the cold and dark.
Westfield: You're also working on Adventures of Superman.
Can you tell us anything about what's coming up in that?
Immonen: We're being pretty secretive about what's happening
in Superman. We have a lot going on that's just
on the verge of coming out right now. Superman and Lois have broken
up recently and we're going to sort of pile it onto Clark as far
as his responsibilities go at the Daily Planet and as far as his
responsibilities go as Superman. When Lois goes, we really want
to see how far we can torture Clark Kent emotionally [laughter].
Westfield: How much input do you have story-wise on the
books you work on?
Immonen: Every nine months to a year we have summits concerning
the Superman books to which pencillers, inkers,
writers, editors, and sometimes colorists are invited to present
their ideas. Everybody has a fair say in what they would like
the characters to do and we decide by committee as to which ideas
are best and how best to implement the ideas we do choose. In
that respect, I've got about as much input as everybody. But whenever
Karl has a new plot ready, he'll discuss it with me on the phone
for a couple of hours before he actually sits down and writes
it out. I very rarely want to change anything, it's all so good,
but if I do have some questions, he'll take them into account.
After the story is written, I don't have free reign in deciding
to throw out scenes and so on, but I can change panel count or
design a page to suit what I think Karl intended.
Westfield: What do you go through when you're working on
an issue or a single page?
Immonen: The plots that I get are broken down into, say,
a couple of sentences per panel or sometimes just one paragraph
for an entire page. Generally it's up to me to determine panel
count and page layout and make sure there's enough room for necessary
dialog and make sure the story flows cohesively from one page
to the next and from one panel to the next.
Westfield: Is there any person that you haven't worked
with that you'd like to or any character you haven't had a chance
to work on that you'd like to?
Immonen: Well, actually, I would enjoy doing the Flash
quite a bit. Not only the character Flash, but I'd like to work
with Mark Waid. I feel strongly, still, towards Legion
characters and if I had a chance to draw them outside the mini-series,
then I'd be happy to do that too. Maybe do an annual one year
or a fill-in.
Westfield: Do you have any upcoming projects you'd like
to mention?
Immonen: Apart from Final Night, I'll be
doing a Spider-Man/Gen13 crossover, it's a Marvel/Image
crossover obviously, but this one is Marvel produced. I'm looking
forward to that, it's got Peter David writing it and I think it'll
be a very nice book. I think that's coming out in November.
Westfield: Have you ever considered doing any solo projects?
Immonen: As a matter of fact, that actually does touch
on something else that is confirmed that I'm doing. I'm doing
one of the 10-page stories in Showcase '96 #12 featuring
Sarge Steel and King Faraday, two old spy characters from DC,
and I'm writing and penciling that. I would love to do more writing
and exert a little more control over my environment. I do have
a couple of proposals in with the people at DC and it remains
to be seen how far they get. I do know the group editors are looking
at one of them right now, so I have high hopes.
|
|
|