We spoke with writer Mike Kennedy about his work on this rollicking series, and he spilled the bat-beans about all sorts of things, including TwoFace's role in the mayhem, and the meaning of the term "Resurrection Engine.î Read on for a look at the hottest series on tap for August.
Shawna Ervin-Gore: Before we get started talking about your work on the upcoming Dark Horse/DC crossover Ghost/Batgirl, tell me about the other comics you've written.
Mike Kennedy: The first thing I did was a smaller - let me be pretentious for a second (laughs) - illustrated novella called That Chemical Reflex that was printed probably five or six years ago. It's all of three issues and it was published by a small press. But it was all prose with plates and illustrations facing just about every other page. I had some artwork by Dan Brereton, so that was good. It gave it a little bit of profile for the first issue or two, but not long after that the publisher folded.
SE-G: So since then you have come to Dark Horse to write a few issues of Ghost.
MK: Yes. I had met Chris Warner at ComiCon about twelve years ago. So every year we would hang out, and Chris knew my work. Eventually Chris wanted to know if I could help out with the writing on Ghost to free up his time since he was really getting swamped with editing and stuff.
SE-G: Do you write for a living, or is this something you do on the side?
MK: Actually, my main paycheck comes from work I do developing video games. Writing is my aspiration - if I could make a living doing the writing, then I probably would.
SE-G: How would you characterize your writing? Ghost is a comics series with a very defined tone - it's very dark and sort of sultry. I've noticed a very distinct difference between what you've written for Ghost and what Chris Warner has written.
MK: Right.
SE-G: So what kind of stuff do you like to write? How would you characterize your take on the story of Ghost?
MK: Ghost is really defined by the tone its written in. I kind of like that serious, pseudo-noir darkness, where every scene takes place at night. But the recent issues I wrote (issues 16 and 17) were very different than stories that are normally written for Ghost. They were still very dark.
SE-G: But they were a little more strange. Bizarre, really.
MK: Yeah. It was such a departure, but it really gave me a chance to write some very fun dialogue. We were able to turn Nemo into a wacky, Joker kind of guy for a while.
SE-G: Just to make sure our readers are up to speed here: This story arc is sort of a filler story that takes place before the current Ghost storyline. It's set during one of the times that she is transporting through time and space, and it partially explains how she has to enter Hell every time she teleports.
MK: Yeah, it takes place between pages 21 and 22 of issue 9, to be very specific..
SE-G: I really liked this story, because it's as if one tiny fragment of her life becomes a big adventure. In this story she finds that Nemo has constructed Hell to be a really sick and twisted version of her own childhood fantasy land, which he hopes will tempt her to hang out there a little longer than she might normally.
MK: Well, that is his hope, but if that doesn't happen, Nemo figures he can at least recapture some of whatever it is about her that he is so taken with.
SE-G: It's a really bizarre story, and this was also the first time Francisco Velasco did the art for Ghost.
MK: That really affected the tone of the story, too. As I was writing this arc, I was still picturing Ryan Benjamin's art. But the story turned out to be kind of fun, kind of tongue-in-cheek, and I wasn't sure if it would fit Ryan's typically very sexy art style. And once I saw what Francisco did with it, I thought "Oh, this fits perfect. It's awesome.î
SE-G: So, you are also writing Ghost/Batgirl. That must be a really cool project for you.
MK: Yeah, especially, in the sense that it gives us a chance to reach cross-over audience of fans of both series.
SE-G: Let's talk about what happens in this series. First off, it seems rather dark for a Batgirl story.
MK: Actually, I started writing this series before I had seen the first issue of Batgirl, so I based it mainly off of her appearances in No Man's Land. No Man's Land had its dark periods, so I was thinking along those lines and along the lines of going back to Ghost's tendency to battle adult criminals and the perverse underworld. Now that I've read the first few issues of Batgirl, it seems like it is skewed to appeal to a slightly younger audience, but hopefully this will be a good middle ground. Hopefully it won't be too jarring for Batgirl fans.
SE-G: I guess we should talk a little about the specifics of the story, which is called "The Resurrection Engine.î What does that refer to?
MK: Like most good crossovers, we're dealing with not only heroes from both DC and Dark Horse, but with each hero's respective villainous counterpart, as well. Everyone has their representative (laughs). On the Dark Horse side, the villains are Malcolm Greymater, Trixie, and Towering Chris who have been - or are about to be - in the regular series. With that in mind, "The Resurrection Engineî is a device that literally is capable of resurrecting the dead. Once you get to meet and learn more about Greymater, you find out that he is actually well over 100 years old, and is a civil war veteran who somehow got ahold of this device. He was dead and this device brought him back to life, and he has been prospering ever since. Greymater has been able to reverse-engineer the technology used in the resurrection engine enough that he can now use it to bring other people back to life as well.
The story kicks off with a bunch of missing bodies. People are beginning to notice that after certain disasters or accidents, bodies that should be left behind are just missing. They are not even being recovered, or they are being recovered, but they are being nabbed somewhere between where they died and the hospital. And this eventually starts to happen outside of Arcadia, specifically, in Gotham. Readers will discover that Malcolm Greymater has been taking the bodies, and bringing them back to life both to build up his army and to start working on this ultimate, grand scheme that he has planned.
SE-G: And this grand scheme is some sort of a societal model, right? His own sick version of Utopia.
MK: Yeah, exactly.
SE-G: So, we have villains from Arcadia slipping over to Gotham to steal bodies, and that, of course, attracts the attention of a few people in Gotham.
MK: Including TwoFace, Batgirl and Oracle.
SE-G: How is writing TwoFace? He is such an insane character, it must be a ball.
MK: Yeah, so far its been great. To be completely honest, I haven't read as much Batman as a lot of writers, but I've read enough to be really familiar with the characters. But if people are expecting the Tommy Lee Jones TwoFace, they are going to be really disappointed because this TwoFace actually will have some roundness to it - he's not going to be just some crazy guy who runs around and shoots people. The thing is, he is an interesting, complex character who has a real-world psychosis. He is schizophrenic, and he truly has multiple personalities. Half the time he is a decent guy. He is actually really cool and friendly, and you know, you can play poker with him and talk about girls and drink beer, but then - totally unpredictably - he will change and kill you. So, you know, I'm kind of exploring the good half of him that feels guilty about all this terrible stuff he does. Of course, this has been done before to an extent. I am not trying to assume that I am exploring entirely new territory with him, but most of the recent TwoFace stories I have seen seem to be using him sort of as a surface character. I want to try and get back under his surface.
SE-G: Part of what draws TwoFace to the weird events that are going on in Arcadia is that he's actually killed some of the people that Greymater is bringing back to life, right?
MK: Right. Again, he's gone off the deep end a time or two and ended up killing some of his own guys. And when the bodies of his pals turn up missing, he gets curious about what happened to them. Once I got into trying to figure out how these two series could fit together into one cohesive story, I realized that they actually share a lot of elements: They both have a sort of "moonlight and shadowsî feel to them, and there are a ton of seemingly secondary characters that are just begging to be developed. So this story won't be just about the main characters doing their thing. Both Ghost and Batgirl figure prominently, of course, but I actually want to give parts to all of these secondary characters who may never, ever appear in comics again. I want to make each of characters round enough where it feels like they are part of a very developed world in these four issues - like these characters had lives before issue one and, if they live through this, some may have lives after issue one (laughs).
Read Ghost/Batgirl, written by Mike Kennedy and featuring art by Ryan Benjamin. The first issue of this four-part series will be available August 30 at your local comics retailer.