An interview with
Dan Jurgens
Conducted by Richard 'rc' Caponetti
June 2004

Dan Jurgens broke my arm. In four places.

When he was done with that, he leveled bad, awful curses on my person. He cranked my house at 4 in the morning. Shaved my poodle. Salted my anthrax. Burned my lifetime’s worth of Boys’ Life magazines. And then he stole my candy. I tell ya . . . the man fraggin’ hates me.

Yeah, right. You wish, fanboy.

The truth of the matter is that there isn’t a single malicious bone in Dan Jurgens’ body. Whether owed to his nature (his God-given spirit) or his nurture (his corn-fed, Americana upbringing) or both . . . Dan’s demeanor is unflinchingly pleasant, his diction is reliably light and amicable, and his mood is always inviting, as far as I can tell.

Simply put . . . he’s a really, really nice guy.

So if you’re a-hankering to see Mister J rip me a new one because of the poopstorm of controversy that followed our first telephonic go ‘round . . . tough luck, Mojimbo. Dan’s cooler than you and cooler than you think. "A million times" cooler, no doubt.

Six or so weeks following our last interview, Dan emailed me to suggest that we catch up on things following the publication of Thor #79--Dan’s last month on the book he had helmed for over seven consecutive years, and, let’s be honest, quite possibly saved from extinction. A book that he had also taken from the safe, secure soil of Superheroslavia, where nothing really ever changes, and re-planted it in soil from the quirky, queer fields of Indieland: Under Jurgens’ pen, the Thor title became an understated study in comparative religion--understated in that Jurgens was ne’er stuffy or didactic (look it up)—that many fans loved and more than a few fans hated (if the Internet is to be trusted, that is).

Assuming that when I re-reached Dan he’d be sunning on a Caribbean beach, sipping girly-girl drinks, and basking in the finale’d glory of his Asgardian, Wagnerian magnum opus, I cracked a Corona and readied for the lazy, lilting waves that I was sure would be in his background to carry me away. This was going to be a walk in the park. A day at the beach, actually.

Not quite.

No waves. No sip, sip, ahhh . . . Just the wonderfully incessant scratch, scratch, scratching of what could only be some serious pencil work (yes, admittedly, or severe dandruff—but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. He looks April fresh to me). He had a lot to talk about.

The man is unstoppable. He doesn’t take a break. His idea of a vacation is more work. If he’s not writing, he’s penciling. If he’s not penciling, he’s plotting. It’s a professional lifestyle and work ethic that few could sustain or survive—something’s always going on with Dan Jurgens—and even less could remain cheery about. No rest for the wicked or a really, really nice guy, I guess. At least in Jurgens’ case. My friend Ed Jacobson is busier than a slut on prom night . . . and he’s a complete asshole, of course.

Just kidding.

Read on.

(Ring, ring, ring and all that jazz.)

Dan Jurgens: Hello?

Richard Caponetti: Dan?

Dan Jurgens: Yeah.

RC: It’s Richard. How are you?

Dan Jurgens: Hey, Richard, I’m good. How are you today?

RC: Very well, thanks. Is now a good time?

Dan Jurgens: We can do it right now, yes.

RC: So what’s up, man? What’s going on in your life now that your run on Thor has come to its end?

Dan Jurgens: Well, I’ve just finished issue 6 of Common Grounds, and I am just starting on an issue of Batman, which I’m drawing today [author’s note: See? Not dandruff]. Then I’m going to be drawing a Marvel project and I’m also drawing a Justice League project on the side. And a Legion arc.

RC: Oh, my God . . . you’re very, very busy there.

Dan Jurgens (laughs): Yes, I am.

RC: Let’s talk about Common Grounds. How did your involvement in that come around?

Dan Jurgens: Jim McLauchlin, who is Top Cow’s editor, gave me a call here and said, "You know . . . I know from time to time, Dan, that you like to do quirky and off-beat stuff. And, boy, do I have something to put on your plate." At this point, Jim started talking about Common Grounds.

I had never seen the little black-and-whites ["ashcans" or rough, sample versions] that [Common Grounds’ author] Troy Hickman had previously done. When I got them I thought "You know? These are really nice, little stories—[the kind of stories] that used to be a hallmark of this business . . . an aspect of this artform that has been almost totally lost." I happen to like the short story form . . . so I was more than happy to do it [sign on as Common Grounds artist], because . . . doing fun, offbeat stuff is really very nice sometimes.

RC: Like taking a vacation from the huge, epic stuff like Thor?

Dan Jurgens: I wouldn’t call it a vacation, but, it’s like . . . if you do epic stuff all the time, it’s like sitting down and having the same meal, day after day. And sometimes, you know, you do want to shift gears and have your mind think in a different way.

RC: How have you changed your [art] style for this book?

Dan Jurgens: The main thing is to scale back on the use of hard black shadows, which are prevalent in more traditional superhero books.

RC: Do you find it difficult to switch into new artistic modes?

Dan Jurgens: It’s not a question of [it being] difficult because you’re switching into a different mood; it’s more a question of [it being] difficult because you have to constantly find a new way over the course of the story to present the information. I guess I would probably think of myself somewhat as [mainly being] a superhero artist, so, to that extent, it might be more fun to draw—you know—Thor decking Silver Surfer on the face of the Moon or vice versa . . .

RC (fearing fanboy backlash): Oh, boy . . . you shouldn’t have said that.

Dan Jurgens (laughs): Yeah . . . that’s why I added the "vice versa."

RC: So, what’s the next big superhero arc for you—JLA or Legion?

Dan Jurgens: Legion will come out first, and that will be issues 35 to 38. Those issues were written by Gail Simone. I drew it and Andy Smith is inking it.

RC: Is there anything you can tell us about the plot, or is that still under wraps?

Dan Jurgens: Strangely enough, as we sit here and everybody’s talking about the movie The Day After Tomorrow, it’s kind of Gail’s take on what were happen if there were a huge [disaster]—it takes the concept of the disaster film a la Earthquake or The Towering Inferno or something like that and [puts] it in 30^th Century Metropolis.

RC: What about the JLA arc—can you say anything about that?

Dan Jurgens: Not a lot at present, because that’s a little farther off in the future. It was written by Dan Slott, who just did that very nice Arkham Asylum mini-series that came out several months ago. It’s going to feature the JLA in a couple of different realities, and what we’re going to do is have different inkers on the different realities to give the various realities a bit of a different look.

RC: Does that make your job harder—knowing that you’ll have so many different inkers handling your work? Does it force you to study each of their flaws and strengths so you can tailor your pencils to their abilities and style, or do you just have faith that each of these guys are professionals and will naturally handle your art well?

Dan Jurgens: This is a collaborative medium, and so I think it’s more just a matter of working with people that you respect and enjoy working with. And generally, I have always been able to do that, so I trust my inkers [on JLA].

RC: You had a great rapport with [inker] Brett Breeding for lo those many years on Superman. Will Brett be doing any of the inking on your JLA run?

Dan Jurgens: No, I don’t think Brett will be one of the guys working on this project.

RC: Do you still speak to him?

Dan Jurgens: No, I have not spoken to Brett for some time, actually.

RC: He really is great, isn’t he?

Dan Jurgens (with enthusiasm): Yeah. He really is.

RC: When you wrote to me a few months back, you said we should catch up after your last issue on Thor so that you could preemptively deal with the backlash you thought the issue would engender. What were you thinking would cause problems with the Thor fans with the ending to your run?

Dan Jurgens: Well, I don’t know if I would say that I thought anything necessarily was going to be controversial. I think it’s more a question of wanting to help answer any questions that might [come to] exist after this run is done.

I don’t think that I would look at this and say that it’s a controversial story—although, I have been wrong about that in the past.

RC: One thing that many Thor fans would like to know is if Thor still has the Odin Power as of the close of issue 79.

Dan Jurgens: I can give my answer to that, but it wouldn’t necessarily be the right answer to that.

Here’s what happened: I had written the script for [issue] 78 without any awareness that we were going to be wrapping things up at number 79. What was originally going to happen was that we were going to have somewhat of a concluding chapter in 79 and then, say, in issues 80 to 85 or 86, we were going to bring the next installment of [our] epic story. That was going to be the final touch. That was going to be the ribbon on the package, if you will.

After the script came in for 78, Marvel determined that they wanted to make Thor part of the re-launch that was coming out of the Avengers, so we had to wrap things up much more quickly than I thought we were going to have to. Which meant that [the end] wasn’t necessarily going to be the end that I saw coming.

What we wanted to have happen at the end of the story was to position Thor in such a way that he could get something of a "clean start." If the last few pages [of issue 79] happen to feel a bit rushed—if they happen to feel a bit shoehorned in—it’s because we wanted to give the next crew of guys the chance to put their stamp on it. Which I think is only fair. I would certainly want that if I was the incoming writer.

So, in my head? Thor still has the Odin Power. Whether they [the next creative team] want to deal with that the way I would have is totally and completely up to them.

RC: That begs the question: If you had known that your run was going to come to its end with issue 79, how would this have affected the pacing and plotting of the preceding chapters in the arc?

Dan Jurgens: It would have depended on when I knew it was going to end. If I knew at number 70, for example, that I was going to have to wrap things up in 79, I could have paced it in such a way that the story would have came to a very natural end. If I found out at number 76 . . . it still would have been a very tough thing to do.

One of the things that Tom [Brevoort, Thor editor] and I had always talked about, and which I had always believed would be one of the most important aspects of the storyline, is that we were going to move on to a story in which Thor did penance. I always said that at the end of [the Reigning], Thor needed to find out that what he did was wrong, why it was wrong. And then he had to atone for it. I was very big on the idea of atonement, but it wasn’t going to be that sort of, you know, bleeding heart, leftist sort of reaction to everything. Another aspect of all this was that, moving forward, Magni was going to be a very crucial and important character in the book. In times past, we often saw Odin learn something by virtue of Thor’s actions and we could have built that same dynamic here. I think the plans we had would have been meaningful and that Magni’s role would have been greatly enjoyed. I’d also note that, even though Thor was going to atone for his sins, that we were going to lighten up the feel of the book.

I have always seen Thor as a character that needed guidance. That is not to say, by any means, that Thor is dumb. Thor, with the Odin Power, has an incredible amount of power at his disposal—but not the life experience that measures up to that level of power. I think the notion that any of us who suddenly gets great power would automatically know what to do with it is just erroneous. You [learn] through trial and error, and I think that Thor was not a complete person when he went through this journey, so he needed another journey of character to . . . bring him full circle. In my view, I was taking those steps that would bring him to the level of Odin—not just in terms of power, but in terms of judgment and the ability to properly wield that power.

RC: For the fans: Had Thor come into his own at least power-wise in issue 79?

Dan Jurgens: No, I don’t think he did. And part of that is based on a concept that Tom and I always talked about—that the Odin Power is actually different for different people. In other words, it might manifest itself in one way for Odin; it might manifest itself another way for Thor.

[It’s like] the concept Star Wars movies’ "Force": The Force was something that would be different for different people.

The concept that we always wanted to play with was that as Thor grew older and more wise, he would have a better handle on how to use the Odin Power. The magnitude of that power might always be there . . .

RC: Was it?

Dan Jurgens: No. I still don’t think that he quite came in to the magnitude of the power. I don’t think he could [have] because I don’t think that [power] could have been fully realized until that [Odin-esque] sense of judgment and maturity was there [in Thor].

RC (laughs): Your fans are going to love you for that.

Dan Jurgens (laughs): Well . . . I don’t see Thor as immature. Too many people see it [the difference between Thor and Odin’s wisdom] as the difference between a 15 year old kid and a 55 year old adult. I don’t see it that way.

RC: How do you see the difference between Odin and Thor’s maturity?

Dan Jurgens: [Like] a 55 year old individual [who] has an advantage over a 35 year old individual, in terms of intellect, and judgment and wisdom because of the things he has experienced.

RC: It’s a matter of professional skill, then—

Dan Jurgens: Right.

RC: —not of trying to write Thor as a buffoon. That was one of the criticisms that I came across on the Internet . . . that you presented Thor as an idiot.

Dan Jurgens: And the other part of it is—and people may not have realized this so early in the [story]—is that Thor was being manipulated by Loki. And I feel we were on pretty solid ground there because Odin was constantly being manipulated by Loki. I suppose you could make the argument that he was manipulated because he allowed himself to be manipulated, but I don’t see it that way.

Furthermore, we have always read about the incredible sense of wisdom and judgment that Odin had. I don’t dispute that at all. I merely contend that those traits were the results of life experiences, mistakes and accomplishments. Thor just hasn’t had the time to equal that yet, but surely will.

RC: You spoke of how the Reigning was originally intended to be a mini-series, but was then pulled into the actual Thor book. Looking back, was that the right venue for presenting the story, or should it have gone into something like a maxi-series or a leather-bound edition?

Dan Jurgens: I don’t know what [would have been] right or wrong. If we had done it as a 12-issue maxi-series, there [still] would have been a lot of stuff that we wouldn’t have been able to touch on. Now, for people who didn’t like the story, that might have been a good thing, but this business has evolved to the point where you can’t have Thor, you know, fighting the Absorbing Man every eight months, which is something how monthly superhero comics have always worked in the past.

We have gotten to the point where the book needs to move above and beyond what we used to think of the boundaries of the book sometimes.

RC: Who’s most responsible for raising the bar like that—someone like Grant Morrison, who infused superhero comics with Vertigo-esque sophistication?

Dan Jurgens: I think there’s a source that predates Grant’s work on JLA quite a lot . . . what Peter David did on Hulk. If you look where the Hulk was at the time Peter David started writing it and where it ended up by the time he left—we saw the change of the character [from] "Hulk smash!" to something . . . much more complex. Peter had some tremendous artists on that run and [together they] really evolved and moved that character.

RC: That’s not to say that what came before was necessarily bad, though, right? Even "flavor of the week" can work in the hands of a good writer.

Dan Jurgens (with enthusiasm): Oh, yeah.

RC: Which is what I thought you guys often did on Supey—there were a lot of recurring characters and ideas, but you made them work. But I do agree that it got stale for the industry as a whole.

Speaking of Hulk, what do you think of [writer] Bruce Jones’ run on the book? Have you checked any of that out at all?

Dan Jurgens: Oh, yeah . . . but I haven’t had the opportunity to read one for a while. At the time, when I first starting reading it, I certainly thought it was a fun, fresh take on the Hulk and on what the Hulk comic could be.

RC: It is one of those books wherein the hero doesn’t show up for 12-13 issues at a time, which we spoke of in our last interview.

Dan Jurgens: I think when you do that as a writer, you are taking a tremendous risk as it can get old—potentially—in a real hurry (I’m not sure that it’s gotten old with Bruce, as I said I have not read it long enough to know). What I’m always conscious of, and what I worried about when I was doing Thor, is the 11-year old kid. He’s running out and buying his first copy of Thor, or Hulk, or whatever it might be, and they don’t get a guy swinging a hammer and knocking out the Absorbing Man . . . which could be exactly what he’s looking for.

That’s where I think we, as an industry, might want to try to do a better job: If you have a book like that [where there is little action]—and I’ll use Thor as an example, because I’m potentially guilty—if we’re doing Thor as a 3-year arc . . . maybe there should be another book. Something like Thor: Year Two, where he’s on Earth fighting the Absorbing Man, or the Wrecking Crew, or [just] kicking a troll’s ass. Something like that . . . just so that there is that balance in the marketplace. You know . . . one project does not invalidate another in any way, shape or form. It’s like "If you’re looking for this, you can get it right here. If you’re looking for that, right there."

I think Marvel has done an excellent job with that with regards to Spider-Man. There are a couple of different Spider-Man editorial approaches out there . . . so anybody should be able to find what they’re looking for.

RC: Like how some of the quieter moments of what you were doing on Thor were offset by Thor: Vikings. It was very smash ‘em, bash ‘em.

Dan Jurgens: Yeah, but it certainly wasn’t going to be the right book for that 11 year old. (Laughs)

RC (laughs): No, obviously not [author’s note: Thor: Vikings is hyper violent]. But if you put out a book specifically for a younger audience, it’s gonna tank. Like those superhero "adventures" kind of books.

Dan Jurgens: Well . . . don’t get me started on that, because I think those books are somewhat insulting to the audience. And . . . you wanna know what the kiss of death is, in terms of marketing to kids?

RC: What’s that?

Dan Jurgens: You tell them "This is a little kids book."

When we all got hooked—I’m talking about that 9 to 10 to 12 to 13 year old age, where you’re looking for big ideas and big stories that make you go "Cool!" . . . a big portion of that is just watching the hero go and kick some ass. I think we, as an industry, have kind of walked away from that that, and that we need to get that back again. And for too long, the solution has been to use an animated style that doesn’t appeal to that. Think back to what art style you probably liked at that age . . . it did not look like a coloring book!

RC: Actually, at that age, my favorite art was yours.

Dan Jurgens: And, in my case, it was Gil Kane’s or somebody like that. You know, you want excitement and action on the page . . . and that’s something we need to do more of.

RC: It doesn’t have to be all deep introspection. Something like the Superman/Batman book—that’s just fun . . . some people say it’s a little mindless, a little plotless—it’s just fun.

If you were brought back on to a character you’ve worked on previously, and were given the choice of three or four different models to work from—say: One, the incredibly childish and animated style. Two, the Superman/Batman formula. Three is total reinterpretation a la The Ultimates. Four is either the traditional super-hero milieu or what you did on Thor, which is working with new concepts on traditional characters. Which one do you choose? Or does it depend on the character?

Dan Jurgens: Well, part of it does depend on the character . . . there’s no doubt about that. But I would probably lean more towards just being able to take the core of the character and tell some fun, exciting stories right now—if only because my kids are ages 11 and 14, and they just don’t think there’s much out there for them to read right now. I’m sensitive to that. I see what they’re looking for and understand their point.

RC: So, it would be more of the Superman/Batman model or Ultimate Spider-Man model for you?

Dan Jurgens: Yeah, probably. Those are good examples.

RC: You had Loki speak of things in terms of Asgard’s "national security" . . . you actually have a background in national security, as you worked for [defense contracting firm] Honeywell, right?

Dan Jurgens: Yep.

RC: How many years was that?

Dan Jurgens: Just a couple of years. I started as a student intern and I stayed with them beyond graduation.

RC: You were in college when you [worked at Honeywell] . . . were you going down an international relations path in your studies?

Dan: No, no . . . not at all. I worked in their communications division, but it was always art that I was interested in. You’re talking about the late 70s when it looked like comics had absolutely no future whatsoever, when it was generally though that Marvel and DC were going to have to close up shop. This was after the DC implosion but before the emergence of the direct market.

RC: Did you draft weapons designs . . . or can you not talk about that?

Dan Jurgens: I did some weapons illustration and some conceptual stuff for things that were in the design process.

RC: When you draw weapons in your comics, do you ever use concepts or ideas that came up while at Honeywell?

Dan Jurgens: Oh, absolutely. I wouldn’t say [I use] concepts, I would say techniques. You get the knowledge of how a certain weapon might look . . . take that [and] multiple it, add it, divide it by 40 percent and you still have what you’re drawing grounded in reality.

RC: They should have probably done that with the last Matrix movie. Did you see that? Clunky metal walkers that provide no protection for their users . . . sheesh.

Dan Jurgens (laughs): Yeah . . . I saw it.

RC: Do you ever take vacation time? It seems like you just jump from one project to another with no break in between.

Dan Jurgens: Right now . . . that’s probably an apt description.

RC: It seems like you’ve been going non-stop since around 1987.

Dan Jurgens: I think if I was just involved in one discipline—just being a writer, for example—I would probably have to do that [take a vacation]; or just being an artist, I would probably have to do that. For me, being able to switch between those two disciplines in this business . . . that’s somewhat of a break itself. It’s something you can do to freshen your take and your outlook on how things are working in the business.

RC: But you never completely stop, do you?

Dan Jurgens (laughs): Well . . . by drawing the Common Grounds stuff, by drawing the Legion arc . . . this is the first time in years that I have been drawing stories written by other people. I just drew one of the Julius Schwartz tribute stories featuring the Atom, which was written by Mark Waid. We had joked with each other for years about working together—you can’t do that, obviously, if you’re not drawing stuff that other people write. That in itself is a huge shift, and it’s something that I consciously set out to do about a year ago . . . to get myself back to that point where I just an artist again.

You go back a couple of years, and I was writing Thor, Aquaman, Tomb Raider [etc.] . . . I was writing four books a month!

(Laughs) I never got in this business to write four books a month!

RC: So, are you taking a break from writing for an extended period of time . . . will we see you do a seven year run just doing art, like we saw you do a seven year run just writing Thor?

Dan Jurgens: I don’t know . . . I don’t think your ever going to see anyone do a seven year run on a book again. This industry has changed so much.

RC: It’s all about "arcs."

Dan Jurgens: It’s all arcs, and, in fact, I think we’re going to suffer for that. It will go back [to longer creator runs], but . . . unless it’s creator-owned, where you have a writer doing a seven year run on a character, I just don’t see it anymore.

What you give up in an arc is that gradual evolution of a character. If you can only grow a character for six issues, chances are that the crew that comes in after you wants to start off with a clean slate. For example, when I was doing Superman, whoever walked in as a new writer and/or artist on the book, they always wanted to do the classic scenes. The classic stuff . . . the simple, basic elements of the character: Whether it’s the origin, or Clark Kent ripping open his shirt to show us he’s Superman as Perry White just happens to walk by the office . . .

When you’re dealing with the arcs, there’s the desire to go back to those core, classic scenes. The only problem with that is if you’re doing three arcs in a year, that starts to get very repetitive. That’s a gross oversimplification of the "arcs problem," but I still believe that, eventually, the audience wants to see a steady, progressive sense of storytelling, which arcs do not bring. The success of Ultimate Spider-Man, I think, proves that. You have [writer Brian Michael] Bendis and [artist Mark] Bagley doing this long, rock-solid job of re-presenting Spider-Man since day-one on the book and have moved [their vision] along fantastically.

RC: Do you think we’ll ever see a return to the 13 year-long runs of Claremont on X-men or you on Superman?

Dan Jurgens: No. No. The attention span of the audience is too short [now], and I think the publishers are aware of the fact that they need to consistently re-hype, re-energize, re-vitalize, re-infuse their characters with a sense of newness.

RC: Speaking of re-vitalizing characters, what’s your take on the re-boot of Superman with Superman: Birthright?

Dan Jurgens: I think that it was time for something like that to happen.

RC: There are certain things that have changed. I believe now that he’s only been Superman for something like 3 years—when he first went to Metropolis, [characters in Birthright] were talking about "red and orange alerts" and the Department of Homeland Security, so you know [Superman’s career] starts after 2001. That’s caused a problem with some people.

The biggest problem [some people] have had, however, is with him [Superman] now having very human characteristics: He may or may not have been seen drinking a beer; he got excited at the prospects of being able to pick up chicks in his superduds; and his family dynamic is totally different. Do things like that bother you, after working for years to solidify his very pure, Midwestern character?

Dan Jurgens: No, it doesn’t bother me because I think that, through it all, the one thing you’ll see is that . . . the core of Superman, what we all tend to think of as the core of Superman—the moral core—is going to remain in place. I know how Mark [Waid, Birthright author] thinks of Superman, and I just can’t imagine that [he’s] going to break the mold.

And . . . hey . . . I’m the first one to say that, if I did something 11, 12, 13, 14—whatever—years ago . . . go ahead and change it. It has to change . . . [just] try to be true to the character.

RC: Would you feel comfortable, though, or would it be an exciting prospect for you to come back to a character after they’ve experienced that much change? So long as the core is intact, would you feel comfortable writing, say, Ultimate Spider-Man or writing Birthright Supey?

Dan Jurgens (pauses): I don’t know . . . but only because I’ve never done it (laughs). That’s not to sound like a cop-out by any means, but, sometimes, you can think you’re going to do something and be okay with it (or not), but until you actually sit down and try to make it happen . . . you just don’t know.

RC: I gotta tell ya . . . there are a lot of people on the [Internet] boards and in the emails and in the community at the conventions who would really like to see some of the classic creators come back and do some of the new takes.

Dan Jurgens: Oh, boy . . . I don’t mean for this to sound incredibly jaded or mercenary-like, but until someone pays me to think about it, [I] just don’t think about it at all.

There are a group of creators in this business who will run around and chase editors at cons [conventions] and say, "You have that character Popsicle Man . . . give me that damn book! I can do better than the slob you have working on it now!" I don’t do that, and I find that very distasteful when people do.

RC: In the beginning of your career, did you have to do something like that—being proactive and submitting proposals, like anybody else?

Dan Jurgens: The only things I ever submitted was for characters that I dreamed up. Like Booster Gold, for example.

RC: Let’s talk about team books. You’re doing the Legion and JLA arcs, but do you ever have a hankering to get on a team book and stay there [author’s note: Dan was the regular penciler on JLA in the early 1990s]?

Dan Jurgens: Well, I gotta say . . . they’re a bitch to draw, but I love ‘em! (Laughs)

RC: What’s the most difficult thing working on a team book—just accounting for all the characters as a writer or trying to squeeze all of them into a single panel?

Dan Jurgens: The story telling . . . and I doubt there is any book harder to draw than The Legion of Superheroes.

RC: Is Superboy still in the arc you’re drawing.

Dan Jurgens: Yeah, he is.

RC: Oh, yeah? What’s he doing, what’s he up to?

Dan Jurgens: He’s there. And let’s just leave it at that.

RC: What are you bringing that’s new to the Legion?

Dan Jurgens: What I did was go out of my way to make them a little more visually interesting and heroic. I think—for a long, long time—the Legion has all been drawn like they all weigh 82 pounds. (Laughs)

I coach middle school-level football. Last fall, on an eight-grade team that I coached, the smallest kid was about 84 or 85 pounds, while one kid was 305 and another was 275. We’re talking eighth graders! By the time these guys are 17, 18 … they are cut.

Part of being a superhero is . . . you gotta look like you can kick some ass, so I want my Legion to look like it can kick some ass.

RC: Who are the powerhouses on your Legion?

Dan Jurgens: Probably Timberwolf and Ultra-Boy. You know . . . you wanna see a certain sense of power, and these guys are supposed to have that sense of power. Karate Kid has some cool scenes too. I always love the concept of one guy, with no real powers, who can go take apart an army. It’s a lot more dramatic that the "point the hand and create a wimpy effect" power that so many of ‘em have.

RC: Any intra-Legion fights to demonstrate that?

Dan Jurgens: In this story, no.

RC: So, before we close here . . . the end result of our last interview: Are you just getting constantly harassed by way of your email box now?

Dan Jurgens: No, it lasted for a very short time . . . but we seem to be out of it, now.

RC: Was that the craziest thing you’ve ever seen?

Dan Jurgens: Well, what I think was crazy was just trying to do a interview that’s kind of light and fun. Many of us, if we’re doing a panel on a convention can say something and give it a facial expression. Or a shrug of the shoulders to reinforce the point. And, I probably was little careless about that in the interview certainly even more careless when I read the interview after you sent it to me and didn’t point out . . . you know . . . maybe a smile here was appropriate or something [like that]. A couple of things were taken seriously that probably should not have been.

RC: Well, on my end . . . everyone just assumed that you and I hated each other.

Dan Jurgens (laughs): Yeah, and what makes you think that they’re wrong? Ha ha . . .

RC (jocularly): Hey, now! Come on, now! I hope you don’t hate me . . . I’m a great guy.

Dan Jurgens (laughs): Hey . . . add the "laughter" into that one! Make a notation!

RC (pissing his pants): All right, I’ll make a notation! Anything else you want to talk about?

Dan Jurgens: Since this is going on the Thor board, the one thing I probably want to leave [with] is the notion that from the very start on Thor, when I approached it with Tom and J.R., Jr. [John Romita, Jr.—first artist on Dan’s Thor run], we approached it with as much deferential respect as we were capable of summoning—in terms of how we approached the creators who went before us. Not just [writer Stan] Lee and [artist Jack] Kirby, but certainly Walt [Simonson, writer] and Tom DeFalco . . . and so many of the guys who have worked on it. And I think that continued right up through the end.

I know we were hit sometimes with [criticism] saying we were inconsistent with what came before . . . in most of those cases, I think you’re looking at cases of differences in interpretation and in my desire—since there had not been a Thor book for a while—to kind of re-present the [original] information to potential new readers. That’s what we tried to do every step of the way. It’s also important to note that every single writer who ever touches a character will reinterpret that character to some degree. While I tried to remain true to the foundation Stan, Walt and Tom DeFalco built, I probably sanded off a corner here or there or added an additional 2 X 4. Every writer does that.

RC: You know, when this interview goes out, obviously people are going to be digging through the archives for the first one and yelling at you and me again. Anything you want to bring up to re-cover from that first interview to stave off the anger?

Dan Jurgens: No . . . I think, eventually, some of those matters were cleared up (as to whether one character is "a thousand times more powerful" than another one, or whatever it might be). Most of that was addressed and cleared up at that time.

You know, the ebb and flow of the [Internet] boards—which, I think, gets very ridiculous at times—eventually (and I haven’t been back to those boards in, like, four months) finds a way to reconcile itself . . . in most of these discussions.

I think I was probably never more frosted than when I had a posting that I put on yanked by the moderator. At that point, I thought that was about as unethical as it gets. In my view, the concept of moderation has always been . . . to facilitate discussion, and to do so with an even-handedness. Their job descriptions are clearly different, because they are moderators with a very sharp opinion and a very skilled set of tools that they use to pick people apart in the process [of their duties]. And I thought when they yanked my post, "All right. I see this for what it is." And it forever put me in the position where I’m just saying, "Sorry . . . I can’t spend my time here anymore, because there’s no sense of . . ." (pauses).

RC: Respect?

Dan Jurgens: Right. And the funny thing is . . . I am not ascribing that to the fans.

RC: So, I’m guessing you’re not going to be going back to those boards?

Dan Jurgens: I haven’t. I will never say never; I am always mindful of the fact that there are a lot of guys there who read [the boards] for information and who genuinely want a place to express opinion about a book or a character, which I think is just fine. That’s absolutely the way it should work. I have always said, and will continue to say, that if you put your three bucks down on something I wrote or drew, you have a right to say whatever you want about it pretty much wherever you want. The only thing I ask is that if I then give an explanation as to why something happened, or why I did a particular thing . . . if you don’t like it, that’s fine. But at least accept it as true . . . accept it at face value. That sometimes doesn’t happen. You say what you say . . . and they [still] want to continue the debate, somehow.

RC: Well, I gotta say . . . there still are a lot of questions floating around . . . the most popular ones revolve around what you did with Darkseid and Doomsday in Hunter/Prey. That’s ongoing . . . and most people pretty much assume that the entire section of that interview was just me bothering and you just giving [intentionally] stupid answers, or something like that.

So, if you don’t want to get drawn into that again . . . I suggest you stay away from the board . . .

. . . because there are, at least, going to be people asking me why I didn’t re-ask those questions to you.

Dan Jurgens: You know . . . the other part of that is is that [Hunter/Prey] is something that I did ten years ago. And, so any answer I give isn’t even a hundred percent fresh in my head . . . "Oh, that’s right . . . I did that. That was page 35!"

While I understand that those stories still exist and I appreciate the fact [still] have interest in them, I feel that I have answered all those questions . . . and that it’s time to move on. (Laughs)

RC: Cool. Then I’ll just tell the people, "Those questions have already been answered." Unless you want to get into it [again].

After the interview came out, someone had put up an email that you had apparently written that showed a difference in the "fight counts" between Darkseid and Doomsday—between what you told me and what you told them. You know . . . that whole five out of ten/one out of twenty thing.

Dan Jurgens: When I say, "Give me X number of fights" and that "Character Y would win a preponderance of times" . . . if I say in once place 16 and another place 17, don’t hold me to it.

RC: What bothered people the most was when I asked you, if he had no preparation and no technology in a drag-out fight, would Darkseid lose every time to Doomsday, and you said "yes." That just . . . pissed people off.

Dan Jurgens: Oh, okay.

RC: Do you want to change your answer?

Dan Jurgens: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . .

No.

RC: So, Dan . . . remember when I wrote to you and told you I was working with an artist from Indonesia?

Dan Jurgens (happily): Yeah, you did.

RC: I wanted to ask you if this is the appropriate thing to do: I don’t have a publisher, obviously, but I work in publishing. I work in financial services publishing, so I work a lot with small press. I was wondering if I should use them to print up a limited run of 100 or 1,000 issues—everything, from cover to cover; inside-out—and then bring them to cons [to show editors]? Or is that unnecessary . . . I should just go to the local Kinko’s, print up some pages and pass them around?

Dan Jurgens: I think the more you can put together, the better off you’re going to be, for a couple of reasons: One is that it gives you the chance to present it as a complete package, which I think is always advantageous, I really do. They [editors] can see exactly what they’re getting in to. So, I think the concept of getting an entire issue together, and then printing it off is good because, not only does it give you more information to put into someone’s hands, but it protects you in terms of the copyright and trademark.

RC: That’s true . . . I could print it up and send off to the Library of Congress to get that [issue] on the record.

Dan Jurgens: Yep!

RC: Dan . . . you’re the best. Let’s talk soon.

Dan Jurgens: Sounds good, Richard.

RC: Take care, now.

Dan Jurgens: You, too. Bye!

* * * * *

Dan Jurgens never broke my arm. He didn’t curse my name, crank my house or shave my poodle. He defiled not my personal store of botulin nor my cherished collection Boys’ Life, ‘76-‘04. And I gave him that candy freely.

If he did any of that, however, it’d be worth it . . . if only because:

_Richard Caponetti

Paid for by the Committee to Re-Elect Ed.