Russell Discusses Manhunter #35 with Marc Andreyko
With this issue, Kate continued to launch her assault on Vesetech, the drug company that’s kidnapping poor Mexican women, while DEO Agent Cameron Chase and former Manhunter Mark Shaw seek answers regarding the whereabouts of Kate’s missing tech guru, Dylan Battles (a former employee of several of Batman’s rogues). Marc Andreyko sat down with us to talk about this issue, and what its revelations mean for the future of this title and the DC Universe.
ComicRelated: I think the major revelation of this episode is Cameron’s, not Kate’s! One of the things I like best about this series is the way that the supporting cast has subplots going on that don’t necessarily involve Kate.
Marc Andreyko: Kate's presence is felt, but every story hinges on contrivance regardless of what you're writing...but I have a real problem with the structure of everyone knowing everyone and that's one of the reasons that we were coming up with her origin and her lineage I was a little hesitant to make it an established character.
CR: Why is it that you see it as so important to make these stories as important as Kate’s own?
MA: It makes the audience treat the supporting characters as real, three-dimensional characters that you can relate to and they're not just walking, talking plot devices. I use the Robert Altman example to death, or The Big Chill. All those characters are fully realized and the movie is far better for it.
CR: In a way, I think it’s safe to say that those kinds of stories inform the rest of the book, too.
MA: Oh, yeah. You can figure out what kind of character Kate is by seeing Cameron, Dylan, Ramsey, Damon and Todd. Ask them five questions and you'll have a pretty good idea of who she is.
CR: Of all those characters, I feel like the only one who hasn’t had a mini-series worth of stories all to himself is Damon (Obsidian’s boyfriend).
MA: He’s going to see some development in the near future. There’s not a lot yet, but there will be stuff – and it won't involve AIDS or gay-bashing, I promise you.
CR: So what is Director Bones going to say about Chase’s situation?
MA: They can't know about it; she can't tell the DEO one, that she's pregnant, two that the father is a guy in witness protection; three, that he's a guy in witness protection who used to work for villains and is now on the run? No, no, no, no, no. If she wants to track down Dylan she's going to have to do it with a very light touch. And she's going to have to decide if she's going to keep it.
CR: What do you say to the reviews—and some fans—who say that this wasn’t an ideal story to comme back to? With Kate out of the courtroom, out of her element and all of the guest-stars it’s not the perfect place to catch up!
MA: I can understand it, though. I've been blessed with fans who can express what works for them in an concise and reasonable way instead of just going on the Internet and saying “you suck.” I have the benefit of not seeing it quite the way some fans do, because I know how it’s all going to turn out.
CR: So, based on the dialogue here: “If you want to know where Dylan is, you should ask the Joker!”—does that mean that Joker has been and gone off-panel, and that he’s already got Dylan hostage?
MA: I never even thought about it being read that way! No, we have not seen the Joker yet – if the Joker had been there you'd find a little smiling corpse of Dylan in the corner.
CR: I wanted to make clear, by the way – I thought I heard somewhere that you confirmed Mark Shaw was going to be the new Azrael. Does that mean we’ll get to see him back in costume during the search for Dylan?
MA: Those words have never passed my lips—I'm not saying he's not but I'm not saying he is. The tying in of Mark Shaw to the Azrael mythos was completely just because of the coincidence that his enemy is Dumas and Azrael is with the Order of St. Dumas…and the similarities in some of the design work and the fleur-de-lis that's on Dumas' mask being a prominent design feature in Azrael’s armor. The knights of the Order want him to be their champion, but that's a whole other story and maybe a whole other book.
CR: Does it even make sense that someone like The Joker, who generally doesn’t seem to have a plan, is stalking someone like Dylan?
MA: That's something that'll be revealed. We still need to see what was the case that put Dylan into witness protection, why Dylan worked with the Joker. There's so much backstory that I'd like to explore….The Joker's crazy but he's also brilliant. Even the way he's portrayed in The Dark Knight – he claimed it was all about anarchy but it's not anarchy at all. So I don't have any issues with Joker's portrayal. My issues with the portrayal of the Joker is when he's portrayed as more innocuous than not, or more benign than not. I think that’s what makes Joker so popular: He has absolutely no powers and he's the most terrifying individual in all of comic book literature.
CR: You told me last time that your favorite sequence in this issue was actually the two pages with Ramsey in the tub.
MA: I'm trying to write Ramsey to the point of what I remember from when I was six. Usually I hate kids, kid sidekicks, all that. But Ramsey isn’t like what you usually think of—most kids, they have that moment where they slip and say “My mommy’s a superhero!” Ramsey's never going to tell anyone who his mom is. Ramsey, if he chooses to do so, will be a great superhero because there's a really great soul in that kid. I'd love nothing more than to be 80 years old and to see the new adventures of a new Manhunter and it's Ramsey all grown up.
CR: So how is it that the Secret Six didn’t think to look for those nanyte things—isn’t that what Waller has been using for ages?!
MA: All will be revealed. The Secret Six is smarter than you think. And so is the Crime Doctor—the Crime Doctor's not dumb for hiring them. She knew exactly what she was doing.
CR: To answer Kate’s question: I think since Infinite Crisis, you don’t really know: How many people DO have access to Doomsday’s genetic material? Or even Kryptonite for that matter?
MA: I actually think the analogy used there is all the nuclear warheads after the Soviet Union collapsed. We think we know where they're at, but we know there's a couple out there nobody can find and we just hope to God that it's not Al Quaeda or the taliban who has it. It's not going to be like 20 or 30 years ago where everybody had Kryptonite, but the Vesetech story is going to have fallout. Imagine if we found out that Eli Lily or Baer was doing illegal human experiments—they make more than aspirin or antibiotics. The moment a multi-billion-dollar company is found doing illegal things like this…! From a legal analogy it's fruit from a poison tree. So every product that Vesetech has a hand in and every company they work with will be questionable. They have connections to Wayne Industries, to LexCorp, to Queen Industries. What we’ll see next issue is Ollie and Mia, and Alfred and Bruce, and a lot of other people reacting to these revelations. It's not a big crossover in the sense of Infinite Crisis or something, but all of this stuff is just an underlying concern in the DC Universe. The short answer: It’s rare. You can't get Doomsday DNA at Ralph's….For your readers, that’s a grocery store here in California.
CR: Anything else that you want to talk about with this issue?
MA: Nope! But if people want to go straight to heaven they'll all go order the four Manhunter trade paperbacks.
Page last updated on October 12, 2008