You all know The Omega Men writer Tom King. The author spoke to Man Cave recently about the other best book DC publishes, Grayson, which he writes in collaboration with Tim Seeley. And then last week we previewed The Omega Men #3 with some badass pages that you can’t read without demanding to read the rest.
But let’s say you don’t know King’s name. He’s a DC Comics intern turned CIA analyst turned novelist turned DC Comics writer, and when not writing stories of super-spies, he examines cultural and religious clashes in this high-tension book beautifully illustrated by Barnaby Bagenda.
Lucky for you, he’s back to talk about that same issue of The Omega Men #3, out today in comic shops of discriminating taste everywhere, and boy are you going to want to read it, not only because it’s a great title, but this issue turns everything on its ear. Even if you’re a fan, you’re going to want to have read this issue before we get down to brass tacks–which in this book, probably go under some infidel’s thumbs until they give up the Omega Men’s location.
We also got into storytelling technique in comics and art in general, whether religions can coexist, and how his time in the CIA affects this title. Oh boy, this is gonna be good…
[MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD]
Man Cave Daily: You’re using this nine-panel grid, you’ve talked about your Alan Moore influences, but it seems to me less like this comic’s happening in the connections that happen in the gutters and more in how big a jump you can put between them. Have you thought about that differential? “How far can I take this panel and still have it be connected?”
Tom King: Yeah, no, that’s all I think about. [laughs] That’s literally my obsession. What happens between gutters and how do I do this pacing to make it work, and how many words do I need per panel to make the eye linger…I think about that pretty much 24/7. And I always think I can do it just a little better if I study someone. “Oh, there’s a trick they used…”
The nine-panel grid is especially important for Omega Men just cause there’s so much exposition but I don’t want the readers to be aware of any of the exposition…so to do that I have to control the beats really precisely.
If you look at old Marvel comics where the writers didn’t have any control of the beats, there’s tons of exposition because the writers have to add so much to catch up with the art. I wanted to avoid having those explanations. The nine-panel lets me get across a ton of information without you being bored to death by long encomiums.
MCD: Do you ever worry you’re overpacking a story?
TK: With exposition?
MCD: Not even exposition, just when you’ve got that many panels.
TK: I worry about every single panel I write, yes. That’s how I approach…It’s funny with writing. You can’t write scared. That’s my motto. When you have an idea come to you, and you’re like “Oh, nobody’s ever done that before, that’s crazy,” that’s when you start writing.
But when you’re actually writing, when you’re actually at the keyboard, you should be incredibly scared. You should have that fear.
That satisfaction when you think a scene is going in one direction and it veers in another, more interesting one.
That’s actually why I like Kyle Rayner as a character. I know that’s a weird transition, but…he’s the one Green Lantern who was chosen because he has no fear. He is scared, he does know what’s coming, but he still has to act.
MCD: There’s a HUGE change in this story in a kidnapping that’s the complete opposite of what it seems and the Omega Men’s leader is revealed. Are we seeing her hand in the first two issues before this? Does she have a master plan here?
TK: Yes, the Omega Men have a huge plan here and Kyle’s at the center of it. Obviously the reader doesn’t know it, but ha ha, I do. That plan plays out over the first 12 issues. You find out what it is and what its results are by the first 12.
It’s like one novel, and that’s the central mystery: why did the Omega Men kidnap Kyle? What is their plan for him? Why are they taking him from planet to planet as they go along? And you start to see that unfolding here where Kyle thinks he’s got a fellow prisoner in there whom he can relate to and in fact it’s the leader of the Omega Men with her own plans of what their relationship is supposed to be.
MCD: Are they grooming him for sort of a Homeland situation?
TK: I can’t say that, man!
MCD: Yeah, but I have to ask it.
TK: You’ve got to read it. I mean yes, of course. [laughs]
MCD: When you have an insurgent movement like this, there’s often a central figure who’s a true believer, who’s really intelligent, but also kind of creepy, loopy. Was that something you were keeping in mind when you were fleshing out the Princess?
TK: Yes, absolutely. She’s the real true believer. She comes from this culture
–I stole it from ancient Sparta. This isn’t in the [Frank] Miller book [300]–the Spartans had slaves who outnumbered them extremely. The way they taught their children the slaves” place in their world, they’d have summer camp where they’d go and they’d slaughter the slaves. They’d kill them and the children would have to learn “Either these slaves are animals or you’re a killer. So you have to think of them as animals.”
I basically stole that and gave that culture to Kalista. She’s raised from six on this planet. She lives in her culture as princess and the heir of the throne to this culture that’s sort of halfway between the Alpha and the Omega. They originated in the Alpha empire but they were kicked out for having their religious beliefs and put on this planet, told “If you can rule this planet, you can live safely.” And so because they were put in that position they had to kill tons of people, these natives of this planet. From the age of six she’s been killing these people. And what that does to a person to be raised like that…
If you at all recognize the humanity of the natives, if you at all think that “These people that I’m slaughtering, that my father’s making me slaughter, that the Alpha empire’s making me slaughter…if they’re humans, if they’re real people, what does that make me? And what does that make what they’re doing to me?” It can create a really interesting human being, and that’s who Princess Kalista is.
MCD: That’s what she’s doing that to herself but then Tigorr lays it even thicker on her…is there dissent in the ranks? Does everyone support–they’re going along with the plan but do they agree with how she chooses to do this?
TK: It’s very interesting, because Kalista, as you see–basically, she’s Wolverine, she’s violent, she thinks that’s the answer. Whereas you have Primus who’s essentially her beau or boyfriend, who’s the non-violent leader, the Gandhi or the MLK of this universe. And the two of them teamed up makes for automatic tension.
Each Omega Man has a different perspective on this whole thing that’s based on their background. Broot’s background comes out in issue five, then the other three characters, Scrapps, Doc, Tigorr will come out as well. Each of their background influences how they’re part of this plan and how they might actually rebel against it.
RELATED: Grayson Writer Tim Seeley
MCD: Are we going to see Kalista’s year of living like a wolf? The Spartan thing where they sent you out to live like a wild animal?
TK: Yes, not for the first twelve, though. You’re going to see more and more…that’ll come after the first 12, Kalista’s origin. You’re going to see a lot more Kalista in issue four though.
MCD: You’ve already got the next five years plotted out of this book. You’ve got novels.
TK: Everybody hates this, so I’m not an original person saying this, but when an author goes in, Lost-style, sets up a bunch of mysteries and they don’t know the ending, “I’m just going to keep stringing you along,” that’s stupid for the reader.
I set up a mystery and the mystery will be solved by issue 12. It’s one novel. I come from writing novels and I want to write that way. The central aspect of what this is about will be solved by issue 12, and then there’s a new dilemma that comes after that.
It’s incredibly plotted out. You have to. There’s just so much to get in. You have to be tight. It’s a galactic war in 20 pages.
MCD: I know you’ve said you’re not doing an allegory for current political climates, but you do come from an intelligence background. What ideas are you trying to explore? I’ve got to say, any experience like that, there must be some point where you’re thinking of what that does to people and how it affects their personalities for years to come.
TK: Oh, absolutely. I can’t say anything directly but I can talk about emotional and thematic content–
MCD: I’m not trying to pry state secrets out of you. I’m just curious what idea you’re exploring that even you don’t know the answer yet.
TK: This series has a lot to do with religions clashing and how different people have different views of what utopia is. That has to do a lot with my time overseas and being from my own religious background and living in an atmosphere with people of a completely different background. Seeing the world in such a different perspective that we can’t almost live together peacefully. That idea of this clash of religions, this clash of empires, this clash of history that i used to be part of and play a very small role in, is the central theme of the book.
We counted. There are nine panels. Everything’s good here.
MCD: When you’re asking this much of an artist, so much crystallized action, what boundaries are you putting on yourself so you’re giving him room to work in this very tight grid?
TK: Man, that’s a good question. Whenever somebody says that they don’t have an answer, right? [laughs]
I’m doing the layouts on the nine-panel grid, so where each picture is on the page, I do that so I can get the beats utterly correct.
Barnaby adds a lot of where the perspective is and how to pull it out. He’ll push back and the editors will push back and say “No, Tom, you’re getting too stuck up your own anus here, you have to go away from here.”
I get obsessed with triptychs–I get obsessed with one, two, threes–first action, second action, third action is the climax. You have to get out of that. I also get obsessed with symmetries constantly. The omega symbol itself is a symmetry, so I put a ton of symmetries in the book. So the editors will be like “No, Tom, give yourself a little more freedom to move here. It’s not about structure, it’s about story.”
Barnaby always brings it back to that story, that heart, and I’m grateful for it.
Very Hegelian, that.
MCD: So is editor Brian Cunningham reining you in?
TK: [laughs] No, God, they’re giving me an insane of freedom. Andy Khouri and Brian are editing it together. Andy’s coming from…he’s like the rebel who joins the empire. He was from the outside. He was a critic for 10 years. His goal was to shake it up. “I want
make comics that are insanely exciting and take risks.” The two of us have that in common.
Not to mention I’m half-Jewish and he’s half-Palestinian and we’re writing a book about religion, and it’s just like an insane…he makes the best editor on this book, because he’s like “Okay, we need to push it here, pull it back there.” The conversation…I love these editors.
…what writer doesn’t say that? “I hate my editors.” No, I love my editors. I actually mean it.
MCD: What are you gaining when you stick with this fixed POV for so many shots?
TK: You’re gaining quietude. You’re gaining the reader to take a breath and appreciate it. This one has those eight-panel grids with a fight that are all the same. I stole that from an old Steranko issue.
It’s kind of like the effect when a camera is held in one place in a movie. At first you don’t notice it. Then you do. It makes it…what’s the right word for it? It makes you wonder if they can pull it off. It makes it a little more exciting, a little more different. It surprises you.
MCD: I started off asking “How far can we take this panel to that panel?” But when you’re in that one place–yeah, in comics you’re always forcing a perspective on somebody, but here there’s less for the reader to flood in. It’s almost like “Hey, this is how it’s going to play out.” You’re not spinning around the 180-rule and mapping the scene. You’re forcing them to look at it.
TK: Well comic books are like jazz, right? You have your bass line, you have your classic song, and then you go away from it and come back to it.
The tension in storytelling is when you come away from that bass line, and then you come back to it, the relief is what makes the story great. That’s the high you get is the relief from the tension. Build the tension, let it go, build the tension, let it go.
So what a nine-panel grid does is it allows you to be like “Okay, simple, simple, simple, simple, crazy,” so that crazy hits you harder than if it’s just crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. Or, if you want to do crazy, crazy, crazy, simple then that hits you harder. It’s about making those contrasts between that.
And it also allows you to do cliffhangers inside pages and outside pages. So you can have three panels that are cliffhangers that go to the actual next level, so it forces your eye to move.
I’ve…spent a lot of time thinking about this crap.
MCD: Does it play like music to you when you look at it? Are you hearing a rhythm as you look at it?
TK: Yeah, and I’m trying to do something where if you look at the first 12 issues, all the panels do something that I don’t think anyone’s done before. That’s kind of vague. So…having control over it, having control over the grid helps me do that, give the reader an extra reward at the end. And it’s also thematically consistent with what the story is.
MCD: Is your story arc shaped like an omega symbol?
TK: [laughs] You’ll find out!
Brendan McGinley is editor round these parts when not writing comics or Cracked columns. You can say a neighborly hello to him on Twitter @BrendanMcGinley. You’d probably enjoy his supervillain comic Heist, if you’re a fan of tarnished souls and brutal retribution.
Crime pays.
You know what was cool? That time Brendan interviewed Grant Morrison.
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