Rune in the Ultraverse: An Enlightening Conversation with Barry Windsor-Smith
After leaving Valiant, Barry Windsor-Smith signed up to join the crew over at Malibu’s Ultraverse, co-creating (along with Editor-In-Chief Chris Ulm) Rune, an other-worldly vampire living on Earth.
Barry Windsor-Smith: I don’t mean to be flippant, but why not? They’re
a good company; they’ve got a lot of good stuff going for them. I like all the people that I’ve met there
so far. The Ultraverse sounds like a good idea. I got talking with them. I’ve
been talking with everybody since I quit Valiant. I’ve been talking with Dark Horse’s Mike Richardson; I’ve
been talking with Jim Lee at Image. In the case of Malibu, it was just one of
the groups that I was talking to, and Chris
Ulm had a concept in mind...I
can’t remember the original title. We
discussed it, and we changed the title
to Fuzion. It was about a group of kids who were experimented on without their
knowledge, back in the ‘60s or ‘70s. These four
disparate kids were an attempt to make super soldiers, that sort of a thing, by scientific means
they were given the power of cold
fusion. The power only works when all four of
them are in the same spot at the
same time. It’s actually a lot
more interesting than that. I’m not describing it very well.
RJS: When you say “…in the same spot.” How close do they have to
be to each other?
BWS: When they touch;
I think it’s all down to physical contact. If they are separated, there is no power. This was
all done in secrecy, when they were kids, and they don’t know what
happened to them. Their past lives
have been eradicated. They’ve been put into different lifestyles
and kept separate until the power can
be harnessed by the bad guys. That
was the original concept. That concept still stands, but we
added a great deal to it because I picked
up on the fact that one of the bad guys was named Rune and that he was a 10,000-year-old vampire, floating around in the background. I said, “Heck, why do
we have a 10,000-year-old vampire floating around in the background? Let’s bring him up
front here. He’s interesting.” So, from that initial talk with Chris, we developed
an entire plot and storyline based around this character called Rune. A bizarre, evil-looking guy, who sucks blood
and all that sort of stuff, as vampires have a tendency to do. There is more to it than that.
Rune is a dying creature. He’s not earthly,
for one. I don’t think we’ve sorted
out where we want him to come
from— outer space, or another
dimension — we’re certain he isn’t human. He is in the process of dying from some alien form of cancer. It’s explained in the first
storyline for Rune. He is in search of
power that will sustain his life. This is how he comes in contact with the kids, who are not
adults, these four characters from
this clandestine thing called The Fusion Project. That’s basically
where the interaction comes from.
RJS: What is the title of title book going to
be?
BWS: It was Fusion, but now it’s going to be called Rune. We’re calling the three-page format introductory series, which appears in each October Ultraverse issue, Rune. We’ve got a plot, we’ve got character drawings, we’ve got personalities worked out, and all this other stuff, but as I’m working on it, which is always the case with me, I change things as I go along. I’m directing the story, and I see something about this character that didn’t occur to me before, that I could add to, or take away from, or get rid of entirely. When I’m working on a project, it’s very much in a state of flux. Something I can tell you on Thursday, might be old news by Saturday, because I’ve already thrown it out, or I’ve added something by Sunday morning that changes the whole direction of the damn thing. This is basically the way I work, the way I’ve always worked. There is nothing written in stone at this moment. As I stage the stories, who knows what is going to happen.
RJS: So, it’s starting in October as a back-up feature?
BWS: Yes.
RJS: ln all of the Ultraverse books?
BWS: In all of the Ultraverse books, yes. It’s 11in all. So, the Rune story will be coming out as a
back-up in each of those
books, and it will run for 11 issues,
in different titles all the way
through until we’re done w:tth the story.
RJS: It’s part of
the Ultraverse?
BWS: Yes, this is definitely
Ultraverse stuff.
RJS: You will be writing and drawing on Rune?
BWS: In the case of
Rune, I’m plotting the story,
but Chris Ulm is doing the scripting at the moment. That’s to say that things can change at any given time, but that’s
the layout right now. I’ve done three stories so far. I’ve done an awful lot of
ad material for it too. It’s a pretty intriguing character. Very much a
Barry WindsorSmith character.
RJS: What makes him a Barry
Windsor-Smith character?
RJS: He’s going to be the central character of this series?
BWS: He will certainly be the central villain, without a doubt. A central
character? Not quite sure. The
installments, starting in October, are all about Rune. When we blend Rune into the Fusion
storyline, it will be an ensemble cast. The way I like
to do things is to see which characters come to
the fore. Who does the most talking?
Who is going to have the most action
on stage, as it were. Rune will be a major character,
like Dr. Doom is the
major villain for the FF, or something like that.
RJS: Don’t you think it’s unusual to name the book
after the villain?
BWS: What isn’t unusual? I don’t know that the one should follow any form of previously planned...
RJS: it’s easy to
get your readers .to identify with the hero, it’s not so easy to identify
with an anti-hero, to make the villain a sympathetic character,
is like making a movie about Hitler,
and showing him as a sympathetic
character.
BWS: This answer isn’t right
on the money, but, if you went to see
a movie about Hitler, you would know what the
outcome was, and know about the character before you went there.
Let’s say, the Terminator — the first Terminator — the Terminator was the villain. I think that’s a
reasonable effort at
explaining my decision there.
RJS: The analogy works very well, so you’re
making him quite the unhandsome
character...
BWS: He’s actually very ugly indeed. It’s a test of my own story-telling skills. If you look at Wolverine, he’s not exactly Patrick
Swayze.
RJS: What about naming the series after the villain?
BWS: I think it’s acceptable that the series is named after the villain. The villain isn’t attractive, but he’s dynamic, vicious, and evil beyond description. Being inhuman, he has no scruples whatsoever. The weight humans carry around, even the bad guys, simply comes from an entirely different perspective. Again, not unlike the Terminator, now that his name has come up. He has arms and legs, but as I say, he’s vastly distorted.
RJS: How is it that he came
to Earth?
BWS: I haven’t the foggiest. I know it’s going to dawn on me or Chris at some point. Then it’s, “Of course! That’s what we were trying
to think of!” So, we’re leaving that go until the right idea pops into
one of our heads.
RJS: Getting back to you coming ever to Malibu,
why was it that you left Valiant?
BWS: Obviously I’ve been asked this question a thousand times. There was a
whole period there, when my lawyer advised that I shouldn’t speak about it. I did temper
myself very well. It’s a long story. I
wasn’t happy at Valiant. That you can certainly
quote me on.
RJS: Let me ask you
this: Did it have anything
to do with Jim (Shooter, founder of Defiant) leaving? Did things get worse after Jim left?
BWS: It had nothing whatsoever
to do with Jim leaving. The company
changed radically when Jim left, or was
forced to leave, rather. The intention
was to change it for the better. I was there as an executive for about a year. I guess I just
felt like a fifth wheel there, to be honest. I was their best writer, and their best artist. That made me feel out of
place.
RJS: Going from the creative to the
business end of it. Was that upsetting to you? Would you
rather be...
BWS: Obviously, I would rather be a creator. If I was an executive type, I would have been an
executive a long time ago. It’s just not
my cup of tea. Being of the aesthetic nature, and also being an executive, I would have liked to
have had more control of the quality of the work. I spent a year there,
basically, teaching the younger members of the team how to do what they do, trying to teach
the colorists the theory of color.
RJS: ls this the only project you’re working
on for Malibu at the
moment?
BWS: It’s a big enough project it should be the only.
One I’m working on. Yes, it’s the only one I’m working on. I’m working
on the first 30-odd pages in
the first three installments, and then
the first three or four books of Rune I’ll be producing. We’ll take it
from there. That’s where the contract takes me,
so we’ll see as we go along. I’m certainly having a
good time with the people at Malibu. They’re very nice folks indeed.
I’m enjoying their company.
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