This whole thing is Mark and Gavin's fault. They suggested that since we're better than the FAO, that we should get an interview with Erik himself.  So....since I'm keen to new ideas, I ran with it. I asked everybody to send in a question and then I'd call up the guy and run them by him. Thirteen BotFers obliged, and off I went. I managed to get the equipment needed and I gathered a few of the guys around the speakerphone as I placed the call. Here it is!

Erik: Hello?

Joe: Erik?

Erik: Yeah?

Joe: Yeah, this is Joe Shuler with the BotF for that interview you were wanting to do, er--

Erik: Yeah.

Joe: You busy?

Erik: No, I'm alright.

Joe: Alright, this one is a little weird cause I had everybody send in a question, so I'm just going to kinda go through the list and read each one in order and then just answer each one.

Erik: K, I'll answer.

Joe: K, the first one is from Paul, and he asks, "Do you plan on--

Erik: You don't need to give me anybody's name.

Joe: Huh?

Erik: *chuckles* I don't need to know who the names are from.

Joe: Okay, first question. "Do you plan on keeping the grid layouts for the foreseeable future, or will you gradually start to reintegrate some of the more visually exciting aspects of your page/panel composition?"

Erik: HA! Talk about a loaded question! I will be ditching it shortly. Not immediately, but the idea is to gradually ease up on it. Pull it back into what it was. Same thing with the lettering. Chris is already losing some of the Royerisms and is moving towards what we were doing.

Joe: More like the Workman style?

Erik: Yeah, more the Workman style. But Chris at this point is completely like, *chuckles* "I don't know what I'm doing!" "I don't know what you want of me anymore!" He used to know exactly what I wanted all the time, but now he just scratches his head.

Joe: Are you giving him any direction as to which style of sound effect goes where?

Erik: It's usually just up to him. I'll rough things in somewhat. I'll put it in a big square shape so he'll know what it is and where it goes. But which one or which kind I'm after, it's usually his choice. But if I do a big BRAKKA-BA-DOOM! usually he goes, "Ah, he wants the big square BRAKKA-BA-DOOM! that I always do." So he'll go ahead and give me that. As we progress the title, I'll gradually pull him back. I'm still every now and then tempted to do an issue where I go, "Eh, let's lose the narration and just have Dragon's thoughts projected over this as"...still kinda not sure where I'm going.

Joe: Have you ever thought of doing an all silent issue?

Erik: I don't think at this point that I'd want to do that. I'm sure I'm not really that big on all silent issues to begin with.

Joe: Yeah, it only would take five minutes to read.

Erik: Yeah, it takes no time to read and no big worthelence taking up all this space if I have to draw everything and everytime I'm going, "Hehehe." Stuff like that. It's okay. I also don't really have a story as it were that lends itself to that. Although I suppose I could next ish.

Joe: Oh really?

Erik: Issue 81. It's like, "Hey, Dragon's underwater. You can't talk underwater."

Joe: *laughs* There ya go. The next question is, "Can you run a pseudo Hostess ad starring Dragon while you're doing this whole retro thing?--

Erik: *laughs*

Joe: and if so, will you credit me with the idea?"

Erik: Uh...no and no. Yeah. I could do it. But I'm not gonna do it. And the reason I'm not going to do it is cause too many damned guys have done psuedo-retro Hostess ads already.

Joe: There was one in Thunderbolts.

Erik: I don't want to be the fifth guy to do it. If I can't be the first guy out doing a riff, then who wants to tell the joke for the fourteenth time if everyone has already heard it the previous thirteen times.

Joe: The next question is, "What's the latest word on Superman/Savage Dragon?"

Erik: The latest word is *gradually lowers voice* that I've cancelled the whole damn thing.

Joe: Oh. Really?

Erik: Or REALLY close. I've still got the stuff here. The last couple pages I still got here need a little something before they can be sent off. But it's all been entirely laid out and it's completely finished pencils except but the final few. It's almost there. But as far as I know, DC probably won't schedule it until it's "done" done....like inked to done. But my guess is that we won't see it until probably next summer.

Joe: Do you think it would confuse more readers right now than it would probably bring in?

Erik: You know....It's really weird because the way it's drawn and the way it's written...Dragon's a cop during it, so if you're like, "Oh I really like this Dragon cop." They would certainly be like, "What the hell?" This is nothing like what we're reading. In some ways, yeah I think it would confuse. Befuddle. Probably not piss off.

Joe: It would give people a glimpse into the old world though, for those that still want it for some reason.

Erik: Yeah, I mean there's always those guys. I get angry barbs every now and then from some people who are like, "Yeah, I'm never gonna read Dragon again. Pissed me off you bastard."

Joe: Speaking of which, "Do you ever get discouraged reading some of the posts on the Forum? I mean I'm sure you're used to negative feedback, but some of this stuff is brutal."

Erik: Ya know, I gotta live with this book a helluva lot more than they do. This comic is a big part of my life. It takes up many, many hours of my existence. I need to be enjoying myself. I need to be kept invigorated in part of this. And also....They're gonna be sucked into it! It's going to take a new months. It's going to take awhile.

Joe: I'm really psyched with that new cover!

Erik: It's like the first one, it was supposed to hit you upside the head that everything is completely different. And most everybody's reaction was, "Holy shit, this is completely different! This isn't what I'm used to at all." But by the time all these characters are reintroduced, it'll be, "Ah jeez, here it is. All the stuff that I knew, all the characters that I knew, blah blah blah." Gimme a few. It's going to be a little while.

Joe: I know a lot of people are excited about seeing Brainiape on the new cover.

Erik: *laughs* Yeah, that's all it takes. Is for that few things in there and then it's like, "Oh wait a minute, yeah I was going to quit, but then Brainiape's showing up and then, geez I was going to quit, but...whatever."

Joe: "Everything looks so cool..."

Erik: "I can't leave now, I gotta find out what this is all about."

Joe: "Is there any news on Dragon in Oz?"

Erik: That's not probably going to happen. As an exercise, it seemed like an interesting one. But trying to write it, it just...sorta the idea was to show the contrast between the two, but then the reality of it seems to be, "Yeah but you're not pleasing either audience." The people who're into Oz are going to be aghast at the Dragon stuff. And the people who are into Dragon are gonna be like, "All this fruity Oz stuff..." I think I'd end up kinda pissing off both camps, but I don't know. I'll sit there and tinker away with it. If it manages to pull itself together then great.

Joe: "Are you going to use the new world that you have going as your playground for any unfulfilled ideas that you may have used in Dragon in Oz?"

Erik: No.

Joe: "How much history do the newly introduced villains have, such as Brain-Child or Crustacean?

Erik: As much as anybody had in the old one.

Joe: Read: Not much?

Erik: Not a whole helluva lot. I mean most of the characters start from a visual stance and then they get filled in the more I think about them.  They're starting off as purely from, "Here is a cool drawing. This is my idea of a cool looking character."

Joe: So we know pretty much as much as Dragon does.

Erik: Yeah.

Joe: "This one is really stupid, but it's been bugging me for as far back as the original mini-series. I noticed that your characters and in the letter column and on the Forum and so on, that you use phrases like, "That would be telling," and, "Be seeing you," that were used a lot on the old Prisoner series. Are you a fan or am I just desperately trying to find other people that like that show?"

Erik: You're desperately trying to find people that like that show. I'm blissfully unaware. The only Prisoner stuff I'm at all familiar with is a few pages I've seen of the adaptation of the Jack Kirby stuff. Marvel at one point was going to do a Prisoner and they made several stabs, and they eventually abandoned it, but Kirby was going to do it and Gil Kane was going to do it. I'm not sure how far Gil got, but Jack had illustrated an entire issue.

Joe: What happened to the art from it?

Erik: I dunno. I have no clue. It's floating around out there someplace. It's probably very expensive as his art tends to be.

Joe: "You seem to make a concerted effort to be more accessible to your fans than most other creators out there. Why such an effort on your part, and is it a two-edged sword?"

Erik: There doesn't seem to be any reason not to. I generally enjoy talking about comics and being involved with comics. And I still think of myself as being a funnybook fan, so if there are other people who are willing to listen to me rattle on about comics, hey let's go at. As for it being a double-edged sword, I don't know. I don't have very much to contrast it with. It's sorta like, "Do you like having big feet?" I dunno. I've never had anything but big feet. So how do I know? So far, I don't think I've been harmed necessarily by it, except for a few times that I've went out and said something about somebody that people come back and felt like they needed to take sides. The problem with being at all outspoken on anything is that every time you say that some creator is a putz, then somebody else who is a fan of that creator is going to go, "Well if I have to choose sides between you and Mr. Putz over there, I'm going to go with the putz." Whatever. There's been a few cases where I've had people who've just felt like, "You don't like such and such, therefore I don't like you." It shouldn't be a personality thing. It should be, "What do you think of the work? Do you like the work? Fine." If people think I'm a dick, that's fine. I don't care. Just read the bloody comics. *laughs*

Joe: Moving on to some comics questions, "What was the deal with that second stint on Amazing Spider-Man? Man how many ways did Mackie screw up THAT story? And why did you want to draw Spidey again?"

Erik: It seemed like a fun thing to do at the time. I hadn't drawn Spider-Man for eight years. I still kinda had my jobs. I wanted to try it out. And I found it was an absolutely awful experience to go home again. The stories were terrible. They just didn't say anything. I didn't think much of Michelinie's stuff to be honest. But geez, there was just all this stuff I don't like. None of the cool characters. None of the stuff that I'm really into. I'm not a fan of Venom. I think Spider-Slayer's just really uninteresting. Those were the stories and there was no particular action going on in any of them at all. It all seemed to be, "Get more character stuff in here." And that seemed to be Bob Harras was forcing that down everybody's throat. More character stuff. The result was not so much interesting character stuff, but more people walking around in their street clothes. And I don't know of a kid alive who would go, "YES, I would rather have pages of Senator Ward than Spider-Man in action." I don't think that human being exists. Other than Bob Harras.

Joe: I read an article and Brian Michael Bendis said that Venom was going to have the most revamped origin out of that whole Ultimate Spider-Man storyline. How would you reinvent Venom if you were given the opportunity?

Erik: VENOM?

Joe: Yeah. If you had a chance to start him over from scratch.

Erik: I think at this point, with Venom being what Venom is and having been in the book as long as he has and what have you, you really do need to keep Eddie Brock as Venom. To do anything else, the readers who are reading it, they just won't accept anybody else as Venom. So to just go, "I'm going to put somebody else in the suit. That's going to fix it," is kinda the wrong way to go. I just think that if you're going to have him hate Spider-Man, that you've got to give him more motivation--stronger motivation than what you've got. The problem with him is that his reason for hating Spider-Man is very tenuous and very clumsy and that he's really got to have a stronger reason to want to kill Spider-Man. His reason now is this meandering bullshit reason. "I want to kill Spider-Man because I was a reporter and Spider-Man caught a villain yadda yadda yadda." It's just this long drawn out thing and it should be something as simple as, "I hate Spider-Man because Spider-Man killed my sister." And if it was a situation where Spider-Man was trying to save--a building's falling down. A girl's trapped. Spider-Man tries to hold up the whole building. The building collapses anyway. His sister died. Okay, there you go. "Sister's dead. Spider-Man did it. Therefore I hate Spider-Man." That's simple. And it's also easy to explain and it's easy to understand. That's a clear motivation. The whole thing he's got now...is just...stupid.

Joe: What do you think of today's hot writers in the comic biz, most specifically guys like Alan Moore and Garth Ennis who are pretty extreme in their writing styles? Who in your opinion are the best writers writing right now?

Erik: I don't read any of it, so I don't have any..

Joe: Just piles of unread comics.

Erik: *laughs* I buy an awful lot of stuff. I've certainly read my share of Alan Moore scripts and I think he's real good. I've read smatterings of the stuff that he's been doing, but not enough to really be able to tell you, "Hey, this book is this great," or, "Hey this book is not this great." I just can't say that much about it. The only Michael Bendis stuff or whatever it is--Brian--I don't know what his name is. The only stuff of his that I've read is the Ultimate Spider-Man stuff. I think it's okay. Kinda slow. It's alright. Whatever. Read an issue of the painted Spawn book--

Joe: Hellspawn?

Erik: Yeah! I thought that was alright. But none of these are being written for me. Actually, none of them are being written for kids. And that's my biggest bitch about comics in general these days. If I'm eight years old or ten years old there's nothing for me to read right now. Nobody is publishing comics that I would want to read. I look in the Hulk and people say, "The Hulk is alright." And as a reader, and as a guy reading it, I can go, "Ya know, I think the Hulk right now, if I'd been reading it for the last twenty years, I think the Hulk is pretty cool. And I kinda like the way it's being written and I like the characterization and blah blah blah." If I'm eight years old, I think it's the worst book Marvel publishes.  Cause nothing happens. When I was eight years old and reading the Hulk, Hulk was cool because he was always getting into the coolest fight.  You always had the coolest bad guys. There's all this big stuff. Nobody is coming to comics with any kind of an imagination in terms of visual stuff. All the writers seem to be coming and going, "Oh let's explore the psyche of this. Let's talk about how fucked up somebody's relative was or how this guy was tortured as a child and why that's turned them into such a twisted person." It's like, a kid doesn't give a shit about that.  They wanna know, "Why is this guy slugging this guy in the head and what's cool about it?" I just don't get that much of an "Oh, cool!" factor from any comic. Some of them look kinda pretty. But there's just not that much visually going on. Nobody's coming up with any challenging or interesting visuals anymore.

Joe: Well, "Who are your favorite current artists?"

Erik: I don't know. I've always liked Rick Leonardi's stuff. I like what John Romita Jr. is doing. If I had the books in front of my face... I can't really thumb through stuff. I generally like what the Kubert boys put down. I know that I'm going to forget a ton of guys. I like Bruce Timm's stuff. He's good. I like that kind of stuff because it's open and it has some nice strong storytelling. I don't know.

Joe: "What's your opinion on those writers who think superhero comics are the bane of the medium and serve no purpose but to 'feed the mind-numbed degenerates who buy them and put money in Big Company's pockets'?" And how do you feel about the state of superhero comics?

Erik: I think those people should not be writing superhero comics. They should go write something else.

Joe: Sounds kinda logical.

Erik: Yeah, I mean it doesn't make any sense to me. It's like saying, "I don't like Curious George." Fine. You don't need to write Curious George. Go write your high-profile book or whatever. That's fine. Everything doesn't have to be Curious George. But Curious George should still exist because Curious George gets people reading. Gets kids interested in all this new stuff. Hey, they're reading. That's Step One. That's the right direction. We want people to be reading. So, I just think....I don't know. We're going the wrong way with superhero comics. People are embarrassed about doing superhero comics so they're trying to turn superhero comics into something other than what superhero comics should be and I don't think that better comics are a result of or because of that. This is going sound REALLY negative. *chuckles*

Joe: Eh, it's okay. I'll rearrange some stuff or something. I dunno. I'll figure out some way so that it doesn't look so bad. *didn't*

Erik: Everything sucks out there except Savage Dragon!

Joe: *laughs* That doesn't make you sound bitter.

Erik: That's not the point I'm trying to make here.

Joe: You're trying to have fun with what you're doing.

Erik: I'm trying to put out a comic that I'd enjoy and at this point I'm kinda trying to fill a niche that's been abandoned. Nobody's doing comics out there for the younger reader.

Joe: You said on the Forum that you're reading the latest issues of Dragon to your kids.

Erik: Yeah!

Joe: Are they liking it?

Erik: Yeah! It's the greatest comic in the world! Except when there's one of those regular people walking around and then they're like, "Oh man, when's he going to start hitting the sixty foot woman again?"

Joe: I had one last question, and it's from me, so I had to ask this one. "Have you been to the Brotherhood of the Fin website recently--"

Erik: I have not been there.

Joe: You haven't?

Erik: Uh-uh.

Joe: Dude, go check it out. It's pretty cool.

Erik: *chuckles* I got way too many places that I got to go...really the Web as it is, with all these different forums and all this different stuff I feel like I should be up on, I just can't keep track of everything.

Joe: Yeah, we've got issue summaries, a bunch of interviews, and just a whole bunch of stuff that everybody seems to like.

Erik: Cool.

Joe: We all want to thank you for doing the interview, and if we get bored, who knows, we may do it again.

Erik: Alright, yeah anytime really.

Joe: Take it easy.

Erik: *laughs* Sorry if I was all pissy about modern comics.

Joe: *laughs* It's okay, everybody has their moments.

Erik: Okay. I'll talk to you later.

Joe: Later, man.

Erik: Bye.

The Brotherhood of the Fin is a ruthless organization bent on controlling the world... Joe Shuler on the otherhand likes to wear woman's underwear.  To learn more about both, visit BrotherhoodoftheFin.com