Joe Phillips: Terceron City is the place where old myths go to die.Everything you could ever imagine is there - high finance, old magicians,witchcraft, prostitution, monkeys, everything.
Rich DeLeonardo: Everything.
Bruce Costa: Monkeys?
Phillips: Monkeys.
Costa: Okay... Does this take place in the real world, so to speak?
Phillips: Yes. It's based on a lot of southern legends in the sense thatthere are parts of the country where indians say you shouldn't buildbecause bad spirits walk there - you know, a New Orleans kind of feel.Well, they built there, and the ground sank. So they just kept buildingso that over the years they finally got enough rubble underneath it sothat it would be stable. Now it's Terceron City.
Costa: And this is the place of the Babylon Corporation and itsmysterious CEO, Lamia Apocrypha.
DeLeonardo: She's power hungry. She's got power financially, she'sgetting it metaphysically now. She just wants power. I don't even thinkshe knows why anymore.
Costa: And in an effort to thwart Apocrypha, we have Allegiance.
DeLeonardo: They're like the Justice League, I guess. They're a teamthat has been brought together over the years. Their original purpose wasto represent anything good that they *could* represent in Terceron.They've always held high standing with the law. Now the city has degenerated around them. They're at odds withthemselves on whether to sink to the city's level or stay paragons ofvirtue that they try to make themselves be, to lead by example. They'reled by Intrepid, who is like a giant boy scout...
Phillips: Yeah - a Captain America, Superman-all-rolled-into-one kind ofa guy...
DeLeonardo: He's big into morality. He doesn't want to sink to thatlevel because that defeats the whole purpose of being there.
Phillips: And he's also the Heretic's son. The Heretic gave him theseviews years ago when the Heretic was a good superhero. His name [at thetime] was The Paragon and he was part of a big team. But as timeprogressed and his wife died he became bitter and sullen. He became theHeretic. He actually starts out as a part of Allegiance, but when hefigures out that his old arch-enemy is no good, he wants to kill him. TheAllegiance has to be better than that - they can't kill people. Theycan't use their powers for personal vengeance. They have to still toe theline and do things legally. But all the Heretic has left is his pain.He's a very driven man and realizes that it's more important for him tokill the person who killed his wife than it is for him to be part ofAllegiance. So he quits.
Costa: This "old arch-enemy" wouldn't be deranged, gender-bendingcriminal Mister Sister, would it?
Joe & DeLeonardo: [laughing]
Costa: Surely that is one of the greatest names ever devised anywhere,anytime, ever.
DeLeonardo: We hope so.
Phillips: We want people to be scared.
DeLeonardo: A long time ago, when Paragon was running around and had awife who was also a superhero (their Golden Age, the age of spandex andcapes), there was a big underworld - a mafia - around Terceron City. Itwas run by twins. They were very close and were constantly at odds withParagon; they were foils for each other. The underworld set up a trap forParagon and his wife. In the course of the explosion of the trap, thewife was killed and one of the brother-sister team was killed, but nobodyreally knows which one, because the other one went crazy, taking on bothpersonalities. He even talks to himself.
Phillips: He or she. We don't know which.
DeLeonardo: We just use "he" for convenience. It gets confusingotherwise. (Like it's not confusing now.)
Phillips: I'm hoping people will say, "Man, that Mister Sister, what acrazy idea!" You only see this in old carnivals, you know? The snakewoman with no arms and no legs, the half-man half-woman, the skinny guy,the strong guy. The sideshow has always creeped *me* out, so I thought avillain from a sideshow would creep a lot of people out. Hence MisterSister.
Costa: Back to the Heretic, according to what I have here, "He is a roguefrom an ancient brotherhood of religious assassins."
Phillips: That's correct.
Costa: Well that doesn't sound like a Golden-Age, spandex-wearingsuperhero to me.
DeLeonardo: Well, he quit them, too. That's when he was branded aHeretic. (He later takes that as his moniker.) His beliefs areconstantly at odds with institutions.
Costa: So first he's a religious assassin...
Phillips: Right.
Costa:...then he's a spandex-wearing superhero...
Joe & DeLeonardo: Right.
Joe [laughing]:...and now he's a bitter, old man.
Costa:...a floor wax *and* a desert topping. I'm just trying to keep mynotes straight here, guys.
Phillips: Surprisingly, when it's all read together if flows from onething to the next really quickly.
Costa: Speaking of the story, where do we head? Where does this group ofcharacters go?
DeLeonardo: It's all a question of responsibility. You've got themembers of Allegiance who feel that they have a responsibility to thepublic and to setting examples for the next generation of citizens.You've got the Heretic who's responsibility is to his wife and ending thereign of terror of a madman [madperson(s)]. You've got Apocrypha who'sresponsibility is to herself. Everyone, in the pursuit of theseresponsibilities, finds that they're at odds with each other. The Hereticlearns a lot about what he's really responsible for and what he justassumes he's responsible for. He thinks he's responsible to avenge hiswife's death, but then he finds out that he's really not. There's a lotmore out there than avenging her. His wife's dead and the world continuesto change. He's a part of that change in one way or another. That's whathe's really responsible for. I don't want to give everything away...
Phillips: Right. The Heretic changes in the course of the book. Wewon't say what happens, but his views change. As far as the future of the book goes, we're thinking of a seriesof miniseries. Each time the Heretic will have another set of problemsbased on his beliefs. So the Heretic will learn to redefine himself ineach miniseries. It's gonna be kind of fun. For example, he now has a new belief system from the firstminiseries. The next thing that happens is that the ancient CainBrotherhood of assassins comes to get the Heretic's son. It's anassassins-passed-down-through-the-generations kind of thing. TheHeretic's son [Intrepid, leader of Allegiance] is of age and, since theHeretic could not live out his commitment, they come to get his son.Intrepid, being one who believes in honoring an agreement no matter whatit is, is sort of brainwashed into it. It's sort of a father/son storybut with a religious zealot overtone.
Bruce [laughing]: Of course! One of those!
Phillips: If you think about it, as far as stories go, if you can makesomebody's emotions change, then you've got a good story. It's not,"Well, this guy got in a car and he drove down a street!" That's neat,but it's not a story. If this guy believed in something or lost somethingor something personal happened to him, you can feel it regardless ofwhether you like him or not. I think that's one of the things that Richlikes to do in the stories. There's always some kind of emotional changein the character which prompts an emotional response with the reader. Ithink that's gonna make it more memorable than the fact that "panelthree's really cool," you know.
Costa: Joe, are you painting the covers?
Phillips: Yeah. I decided to do the cover paintings instead of thetraditional pen and ink stuff because that's what I want to do. I want tobe a cover painter. So, I figured, I'll do my own book! I wanted to give it that feel that it was something old andhistorical. I wanted to have those pulp covers from the old dime storenovels. I think that by painting the covers I'll get closer to that feelthan if it was just that super-slick computer coloring stuff.
Costa: Are you doing it in acrylics, or...
Phillips: Actually I'm doing it in colored pencil on colored paper. Itlooks like it's on canvas and done in oils, so it has a real immediacy,kind of a sketchy quality to it. It's not super clean, but it's got a lotof good emotion.
Costa: What else should we know about The Heretic?
DeLeonardo: We're doing a model kit of The Heretic, too!
Phillips: And the cool thing about the model kit is that I sculpted it.So it'll be the first model kit sculpted by the artist who did the comicbook. That'll be kind of groovy.
Costa: Who's doing the model kit?
Phillips: A model company called Fashion Victims is actually making thekit, I'm sculpting,it, and the people who molded the Bernie WrightsonFrankenstein kit that's out now are doing the mold work for me. It lookspretty nifty.
Costa: Is it going to be launched simultaneous to the first issue?
Joe [laughing]: Theoretically! It's kind of hard to draw a comic bookand do a sculpture at the same time, but the release date isNovember/December for the model kit - in time for Christmas! Since thebook will be on time (here it is July and we've done two issues already)we'll also be doing other promotions - posters and standups, hopefully.And when we go to book signings we're gonna have a guy dressed up in theHeretic outfit running around scaring people. But not Mister Sister[laughing]!
Costa: Sounds terrific - a larger concept, too. A series of miniseries.
DeLeonardo: That's what we're hoping for.