Comics Interview #119: Jim Valentino

JIM: I'm the sponsor/editor of the 1963 series that Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch are doing with Dave Gibbons, John Totleben, Chester Brown and myself, with Don Simpson acting as all-back-up. I'm very, very much behind this series. I had a good conversation this morning with Alan about where we could take it from here and stuff. I'm very, very excited about this. What they're doing is that, if you take the notion that comics have gone so far over-the-edge one way (which I guess SHADOWHAWK would be a prominent example thereof), then the notion herein is that the next step forward is one step back. To return to this thing of innocence. And, with Alan, it's always working on two or three different levels depending on how deeply you want to go into it. There are those who will see it as straight-ahead, old-fashioned superhero stories; there are others who will see it on a more satirical level, others who will see it on a more nostalgic bent, and there are others who will go even deeper than that. It's got all those various levels we're used to with Alan Moore. And, since he's working with these people whom he has done such wonderful work with in the past, people who were his fans will just go crazy with this stuff. I think we're going to get more new fans for him, especially with his writing SPAWN #9 and his writing the three-issue VIOLATOR series for Todd McFarlane. We're hoping it all goes over well. It's very, very neat.

MARK: And, we see so little of their work.

JIM: That's part of it. They're really excited about this project. 1963 is a finite series. Each issue has a different title. The first is MYSTERY, INC., which is a cosmic-powered quartet. The second one is NO ONE ESCAPES THE FURY, which was described to me by Alan as a Ditko roofrunner. There's TALES OF THE UNCANNY, which is a split book like TALES TO ASTONISH or TALES OF SUSPENSE. Half is "The USA," who is the ultimate secret agent, and the other half is "The Hypernaut" ("Beyond Humanity lies . . . The Hypernaut!"). Number four is TALES FROM THE BE-YOND with the unbelievable "N-Man," "N" for nuclear, and "Johnny Beyond." Johnny Beyond is the one I'm going to be pencilling. This was described to me as, "Imagine Dr. Strange if he was Jack Kerouac." Then, we have ILORACE, THE LORD OF LIGHT. And, the final one is called THE TOMORROW SYNDICATE. The Tomorrow Syndicate is more-or-less our JLA or Avengers. The whole thing will culminate in an 80-page giant annual which will cross-over with the Image Universe. Everything's going to connect one way or another. The concept of the thing is a thing called the Maybe Machine, which moves people through time in 30-year gaps but through parallel dimensions. The way it works is, starting in 1963, they can jump back to 1933, the year before Superman was created, or up to 1993. Consider the Johnny Beyond story. This woman is • walking down the street. First, she's wear-ing 1993 fashions — lots of color, odd fabrics — that in 1963 just didn't exist. Johnny Beyond takes her to a coffee shop where she pulls out a cellular phone to call her office.

MARK: That would look unusual.

JIM: Right! Something as commonplace as a cellular phone! We'll notice the watch she's wearing. It could be one of those computer watches. It's all these little things. Imagine a villain who goes to 1993 from 1963, and brings an Uzi back with him. It's these science-fiction ele-ments in the 1963 world where, in 1993, they're commonplace. It goes up to 2023, another 30-year jump, which is where the series WILDSTAR is taking place. That's by Jerry Ordway and Al Gordon. I'm not sure exactly how we're going to work them in. There're just all these wild connections which seem to be working out wonderfully. It's another reason why I'm not doing SHADOWHAWK as a monthly series. I'm simply having too much fun. Image is a way to facilitate all of these things, because we pretty much have (within reason) to create carte blanche various new series and try to figure out new ways to ... have fun. I'm just trying to do what I've always tried to do my whole career, have a good time. And, I am having a delightful one.