SE: Alan, I know you've done a lot of great work with DC in the past--and Dark Horse, too--but I don't recall you writing anything for Superman.
AG: I don't believe I have. Let me ask my wife . . . No, it seems I've never written for Superman before (laughs).
SE: You must write more than I can even imagine.
AG: Yes, probably. So this is a first.
SE: Is Superman a character you have enjoyed reading about? Would you consider yourself a fan?
AG: Oh, sure. I generally like all comics, and I go through periods where I like some more than others. And I go through periods when I read Superman and periods when I don't. read them. For instance, the Death of Superman--that one I read. I tend to lose interest occasionally until something really fascinating comes along. Which is not fair of course, on the writers and artists, but it's impossible to read everything.
SE: Of course.
AG: I also don't read the same comics all the time--it depends on how I feel. But for extended periods I'll find myself reading lots of Superman, and then I'll leave it for while.
SE: But you've obviously got a good handle on the character. You've written him very well in this Terminator series.
AG: Well, thanks. When I was a kid, the only good comics you could get over here (in the U.K.) were mainly Superman and Lois Lane titles. I grew up with those.
SE: Your version of Superman is very compelling. You seem to have given him more emotion than some of his other writers have lately.
AG: Yeah, I agree. It is easy, with someone as powerful as Superman, to forget that there is a heart beating underneath it all. So I thought this was a good opportunity to show it off. The guy has seen a lot of tragedy during the 60 years of his publishing existence, and I think it has been hard for him to show anger at mankind. He has basically dedicated his life for humanity, and it's very difficult in this story to see what will become of our future. It upsets him very much.
SE: You've created a very intense Superman, and I think this series parallels one of the coolest things you did with last year's Terminator series Death Valley.
AG: What's that?
SE: Well, one of the things that really made that series work was that you put the potential for compassion into one of the Terminators. In essence, you created a character who questioned everything that it essentially was built to accomplish. And similarly, in the series, you put Superman into what might be some of the most heartbreaking moments of his career.
AG: Oh, I would like to think so.
SE: I mean, Superman has seen life on earth and he knows that humans are capable of horrible things, but he has never seen them so completely degraded as they are in this future that SkyNet is attempting.
AG: Oh, correct, he hasn't seen anything like this. I really do think that it would have quite a big effect on the guy. It has made him real angry. And I think that is precisely how he would react. I won't go into any of the story by telling what exactly happens, but hopefully the readers will appreciate this emotion and compassion in the character.
SE: It certainly seems to push him to some of his own limitations as a compassionate being. So let's talk about this technique. I don't know if this is something you have used in a lot of your other writing--and it certainly doesn't read as being formulaic in any way--but you seem to have an element in your technique where you like to test characters to the extreme. In Terminator: Death Valley, it came across very subtly--it was just kind of this underlying thread throughout the series that one of the Terminators was questioning everything he was seeing. And his questions were leading him toward certain conclusions. It seemed like this robot assassin was actually very uncomfortable with his mission.
AG: My original idea for that--and I think that it changed over time from my very first proposal for that story--I think had that Terminator develop what we would call "rational self-consciousness" by the end of the story, which would have led to him disobeying SkyNet and refusing his mission.
SE: That's a remarkable thing to consider writing into a Terminator series.
AG: Well, that is probably also why that exact thing didn't happen. But I played around with the concept and did manage to work that into the story to a certain degree.
SE: I guess we can't start feeling sorry for these guys, but I think the technology we are led to believe SkyNet is capable of developing would eventually raise these questions at some point.
AG: And when you are dealing with a robotic or android character like a Terminator, it isn't capable of emotion. You have to got to get the emotions from elsewhere. The Sarah and John Connor situation is very emotional-- this woman wants to keep her son alive. And she has got to keep him alive for the sake of all of humanity--it is a double edged sword. And it stands to reason that some of this emotion would be evident even to her assailants.
SE: I also thought your handling of that was believable If you can suspend your disbelief long enough to get into the rest of the concept, it certainly could follow that these machines that are capable of computing information would start wondering the "why" of things. For instance, why is this woman so eager to protect this child? And you even touched on the concept of "why do humans bury their dead?" It was a very creative Terminator story but it followed rational thought.
AG: And similarly, this episode with Superman shows what we may call the "human face" of Superman. He's not really human, but he has immense empathy for humanity as a whole. Then comes the crushing disappointment of what the future is like . . . so he is dedicated to changing that future, which is all I will say of the rest of story. You know, I wrote a series of Judge Dredd stories where I created a female bionic Judge called Anderson, and Anderson was basically the same as Dredd except she had a sense of humor. And after the first couple of series involving her, my fans said it was difficult to remain interested in what was really just a female Judge Dredd. So I gave her a human face, which Judge Dread did not have, and that made her phenomenally popular over the next three of four series. So I developed something that fans were not expecting, and it really did work.
SE: With all of the emotional implications, there is also something so full of adrenaline about this story. In general, that's why Terminator books are fun to read . . .
AG: You know, I think that is one of the things about the whole idea of the Terminator. It is so relentless, they never stop. They just keep coming at you, which probably was done best in the first movie. But I think I've done that here, as well. We'll see.