1.- Which was your motivation to become a comic book writer? Does a family member or friend introduced you in this world?
I discovered comics at a very young age. They taught me to read. They taught me the moral high ground. They taught me creative freedom. I don’t remember not having them
2.- What is your source of inspiration, SCFI books, another comics? daily news?.
every writer will tell you everything influences you. Things you hate, things you love, people you love, people you despise. You reach for empathy and sympathy in every direction and try to put it in your work. Sometimes I don’t even know what’s actively influencing my work until I see it all years later
3.- How many hours a day do you invest writing? How do you balance to raise your four kids when you need to work so many hours on your studio?
balance is so so so important. My kids are a little older now And have lives so it’s easier :-) they had a very set routine.
So I just make sure I am home when they are home from school and give them my undivided, put the cell phone down, attention until bedtime. I work at night. So I’m there for them until breakfast time. I get all my work done in the quiet of night, and they have a dad who is there if they have a nightmare or fall out of bed.
I work all the time but I’m home. I don’t go to an office. I’m always here. unless I’m at a convention which is rare.
4.- Are you fully recovered for your last year's shocking illness?
physically, yes. I’m six months clean health. I am very lucky. Many people have told me how very few people get to walk away from what happened to me. I have my wife and friends to thank. My life was saved.
I feel I would be doing a disservice to people who have been through similar situations if I told you that I was completely over it mentally. I wonder if I ever will be. I think I will be dealing with what happen for a very long time. thank God I have my family and work. It’s very difficult to go to sleep one day and wake up three weeks later having survived three near-death experiences.
It gives you a new perspective on life and a very hard look at how much control you have. thank God I have an outlet :-)
5.- You have worked with Marvel and DC, with creator owned comics projects (Powers, Jinx, Brilliant etc), and TV series scripts (Powers, Spider-man). So, of the three options, which is more changeling to write?
they all have their own challenges. They all tell a story but they do so using different tools. There is a Ven diagram that connects them but the things that make them different are so different. One medium being internal and the other being external, for example…
6.- You are working right now on the new era of Superman's comics, I know you are fully dedicated in investigate about this magnificent character, how are manage to absorb and digest 80 years of Man of Steel's tales? can you explain how do you want to approach Superman?
I’ve been digesting it since I was little kid. So it’s not like I did it all in six months :-)
I’ve been reading Superman comics since I could read. I am a deep deep fan with a very strong ties to the character. But finding myself connecting with the character not as a fan but as a co-author is a very unique. You get to rediscover things on a completely different level
7.-Your Powers live Playstation series was a great success in making superheroes real, you create an universe where super beings were normal, will Powers have another season? Or are you working to adapt your other creator owned series?
the powers TV show that aired on PlayStation is complete. I am sorry we didn’t get to do 3rd season. There was a time where we were offered a third season and then they just decided to pursue virtual reality. Powers was actually going to have a virtual reality component in the third season. They had us working on that when they changed their mind.
It’s a bummer too because our numbers were very good. People can see on YouTube we did almost 5 million views. That’s about 5 million more than a lot of TV shows on the air so it was frustrating to not be in the mainstream conversation of television because we were in such a unique delivery service that the mainstream press never really could figure out how to talk about us.
it was a great experience behind-the-scenes. In fact, just this last couple of weeks I’ve heard from almost everybody I worked with at powers. Susan is helping us on COVER as she works on the Harry Potter Broadway play. Logan starting in dear white people. Everyone is working and doing really special work and I know a lot of us feel very good about having the creative experience on powers.
right now our focus is on the scarlet TV show. That one is on the edge of either happening or not. I hope it does. It’s very challenging material. It’s very scary. Especially in this climate. And I’m eager to attempt that with the partners that we have
8.- In Powers you dedicated a chapter to the earthquake of Caracas in 1967, why did you choose this earthquake to be a pivotal moment in the series? After 50 years we still remember that horrible event in Caracas.
that was our showrunner Remi aubochan. we were trying to come up with a unique back story for the heroes that wasn’t all wrapped up in imagery we’ve seen in watchmen and justice society.
9.- Besides working with artists like Mike Deodato Jr., Mark Bagley, Alex Maleev, Olivier Coipel etc., with which other artist you always wanted to work with?.
I am getting such a grand opportunity to do just here at DC. There is a list of artists some are my heroes and some of my peers and some are people have come up behind me that I’m dying to work with but I didn’t think I get a chance because I had signed an exclusive with Marvel while they were exclusive at DC. The big opportunity to work with José Luis Garcia Lopez, Jim Lee, Adam Hughes, Ryan sook… These are huge names in my life so to team up with them is a very big deal. We have some new collaborations coming over the next couple of years. Major projects with almost complete strangers and very intimate projects with some of my favorite and most popular collaborators.
10.- Who manages your twitter, Instagram and facebook accounts? Does the social networks really helps to promote the work of a comic book writer?
That’s me. I do all of it. I am of the generation of creators that first came up through the online community and I think it would be a betrayal to that relationship to have someone else misspelling all of my tweets :-)
I love the readers and some of them have been with me and hanging out with me online for years and years. Those relationships keep me honest as a writer. They are people who share my sense of humor. my readers make me laugh almost every day. unbelievably funny ball busting. they don’t let me get away with anything :-)
And as the world becomes more and more troubling it’s nice to be there for each other. I write all my own scripts and I do all my own social media. I know there’s some rumors out there that people who achieve a certain success don’t do that and sometimes they don’t... but I do.
11.- You are a successful parent, writer and your work has inspired several TV series and probably soon to be movies, what other project is in your future that you crave to do?
Well, most of my goals as a creative person have not been met. that is a life journey. there has been financial and creative successes in my life, the goal is really creative and spiritual success. Truth through art. Writing something truthful every day.
I know it sounds hokey but I sat in the hospital for three weeks wondering if I was going to be able to finish my stories, I thought about what my goals would be if I got out of there. they were to tell my stories and to tell them as honestly as possible. When you are a younger creator you can get very sucked into being as colorful as possible but as you get older you realize that the goal as a storyteller and as a writer is to find truth. And truth can be funny and truth can be sad. truth can be hard to hear and even harder to write but if you’re not telling the truth and why are you bothering
