Adam Gallardo: Besides being a writer, you are also an editor at Dark Horse. Can you tell us just what an editor does?
Scott Allie: The main responsibilities are finding projects and finding creators, and just overseeing the production of the book. With some books that basically means just getting the material in, getting it proofread, and getting it printed. With other books you have to direct the story line, direct the artwork, direct every aspect of it. Depending on what kind of book it is, if it is a licensed book, it's done in an assembly-line fashion with a writer, a penciller, an inker, a letterer, a colorist, who may not all know each other that well. The editor really has to hold the whole thing together. If it's a book like Hellboy, you've got one guy really running the show, and then you just put him in with the support team, the colorist and the letterer.
And then there are books like the ones P. Craig Russell does for us, where he writes it, pencils it, and inks it, and also supervises the coloring and the lettering, so that what I see the first time is pretty much final, and I just have to make sure that it prints okay.
So it really varies according to the projects and who you're working with, and I work on a really wide array of stuff. I work on books where I have little or no input, and I work on books where I have the stuff redrawn and colored and all that. So there's a wide range, and it changes from year to year as the work load changes.
AG: You're writing the first storyline for the new ongoing Star Wars series, Empire. What was the thinking behind introducing another ongoing title?
SA: Dave Land, Randy Stradley, and a couple other guys, and I were having a meeting talking about what interesting things you could do with Star Wars. And we came up with the idea of pitting Vader against Stormtroopers and the Empire. And it sounded like a really cool idea to me, so I thought it through some more and then pitched my idea to Dave Land, who at the time was still editing all the Star Wars stuff. He really liked my take on it, and I went over it with Randy and got it approved by Lucasfilm as a four-issue miniseries; just a stand-alone Darth Vader story.
We got started on this very early, and some time in the course of me writing the first or second issue, Mike (Richardson) and Randy decided that instead of just doing scattered Star Wars stories all over the place with no connecting tissue, we would start a second ongoing series. The original ongoing series is set during the time of the Prequels (Episodes 1-3), and we thought why not just do a series like that set during the time of the original trilogy (Episodes 4-6). Basically, we'll have two ongoing series. If a story is set during the original trilogy, it'll be published in Empire, which is the new monthly, and if a story is set in or around the time of the prequels, then it will be published in the Republic ongoing.
I think Randy came up with the idea to call the existing ongoing Republic, but he didn't know what to call the new one so I came up with Empire. And we thought about it and asked ourselves does that mean every story has to be about the Empire the way "Betrayal" is? And we thought, "No, of course not." Basically the Empire is this huge fascist government that is going to overshadow anything that happens in the universe, so even if the protagonists and the antagonists aren't Imperial characters, they are still going to be sort of under the ruling hand of the Emperor. The second story doesn't feature an Imperial character, but it's about the Rebels, and any story about the Rebels is really a story about the Empire.
AG: So does that mean there are going to be fewer or no stand-alone miniseries?
SA: There will be fewer. Basically the idea is we have these two monthlies, and the only other things we do will be the really special things. In the past, any good idea that we decided to do, we just did it whenever we could. Now Star Wars stories can be written with these two series in mind, both of which we have put a lot of energy into to make sure that they are really good. But then if something else comes up, like the Infinities project, or another Crimson Empire or Dark Empire, that sort of thing, those will happen on the side, as specials or miniseries. If we are going to do something with Anakin and Obi-Wan, the first idea will be to look at Republic and say, can we do it here, and if we can't, we ask if it's a big enough story to stand on its own. Similarly, if a story comes up with Luke Skywalker, its going to be a part of Empire, unless it's big enough to spin off as its own miniseries. So on the whole there will be about the same number of Star Wars comics every month, but now the majority will be within the Republic and Empire monthly series.
AG: Can you tell us briefly, what happens in the first Empire story?
SA: It takes place immediately before A New Hope, the original movie. It's about a group of high-ranking generals on Coruscant who are staging a coup d'etat, basically to kill Vader and the Emperor. These generals are bitter that despite their hard military work, the galaxy is run by the Sith, which is a closed caste of just two guys, and they have decided that's not what they want. They've cooked up this plot, which one of them has been working on for ten years. Finally when the Emperor sends Vader on a solo mission, the conspirators get the opportunity to set their plan in motion -- because they figure their chances are better if they can attack Vader on one front and the Emperor on another.
The Emperor has got word that there is a potential young Jedi on this remote planet, and he's afraid that this could mean a return of the Jedi, which obviously he doesn't want. He tells Vader you have got to go and find this person and then you have to kill him. And Vader, who senses something isn't right, suggests they send Stormtroopers or assassins. The Emperor baits him into going by saying, you know, if this is a young Jedi, it might be the offspring of some Jedi, or maybe the son of Skywalker ... and that kind of sets a lot of things in motion.
So Darth Vader is thinking that if his son is out there, what does he do about it? And while he has been sent on a mission to kill this kid, he is having a lot of thoughts about alternatives. He is thinking a lot about all the people he has betrayed in his life, like Amidala, Obi-Wan, and the Jedi -- there are flashbacks to a lot of Republic-era stuff. There are flashbacks to when he was young and he is reflecting on the good people that have been in his life and how he has betrayed them, and kind of deciding what he is going to do when he gets to this remote planet. And meanwhile, he's on a Star Destroyer full of Stormtroopers ready to attack him if they get a good chance.
AG: You're not a well-known Star Wars aficionado like Michael Stackpole, who knows Star Wars backward and forward. Did you find it hard to come up with a story and to populate it with Star Wars ideas?
SA: I think it's just a good story that you tell in the Star Wars canon. At the time the Star Wars movie came out, nobody suspected that there would be any kind of struggle between good and evil in Lord Vader -- he was strictly evil. But now that there are five movies out there, it makes more sense to look at him as sort of a tragic, struggling figure trying to decide between good and evil but choosing evil.
It's called "Betrayal" because Vader really betrays himself, because he decides that... No, no, I don't want to give that away.
Vader ultimately betrays himself in all of this because he is more loyal to other things than he is to himself. I really wanted to make it a Star Wars story, not just a science-fiction story featuring a lot of Star Wars characters. Of the five movies my favorite is The Empire Strikes Back, and one of the great things about that movie is we saw all these different worlds. There's also a lot of hand-to-hand combat, and space combat, and so I wanted to get all of that into my story. I think a lot of times the Star Wars stories don't get enough of that kind of cinematic drama. So I watched all five movies over and over again to try to get a sense of what really made them tick. Of course I saw the movies as a kid probably forty times. But this time I went through to really say, what's missing from Star Wars comics, what's missing that will make the comics feel every bit as big as the movie? This is the sort of thing Randy and I have been talking about a lot.
So, there are scenes of Vader fighting dozens of Stormtroopers, Vader takes on some bounty hunters at one point, we will see Coruscant in a lot of detail --we will see a lot of areas of Coruscant that have never been seen before. We'll spend a lot of time on a Star Destroyer going to these different planets; there is a fight between the Star Destroyer and a couple Rebel ships that Vader decides to go after. We'll also see a lot of the political workings of the Empire --without getting bogged down in the politics, but at least get an idea of its structure, and about how the different Grand Moffs, like Grand Moff Tarkin, interact with the Emperor. We'll see the installation of a new group of Stormtroopers. And it ends with a really big conflict between Vader, the Stormtroopers, the Emperor, and the conspiring Moffs.
I really think of this as a basic Star Wars story. It has what I think a Star Wars story needs to really make it appeal to the fans of the film. It can't be one of the films. It can't create a big turning point in everybody's life. Obviously, the story doesn't end with Vader killing the Emperor, but, without a big revelation like Vader admitting that he's Luke's father, it is as much of a big, cinematic Star Wars movie as I could make in a 96-page comic book.
AG: So you mentioned that you're showing us things we've never seen in the universe, and it seems like a series like this depends on us seeing things we've never seen before. But Lucasfilm seems very strict about continuity, about what you can and can't do. How were they to work with in terms of -- say -- if you wanted to do your thing, were they open to that? Did they have ground rules?
SA: It wasn't so much ground rules as it was working together putting in a lot of time and effort making this right. In the series the Emperor needs to meet Vader, he needs to meet the main antagonist, Grand Moff Trachta, he needs to meet with all these different guys, at one point or another in the throne room. And one of the two climaxes of the story takes place in the throne room. Lucasfilm had a lot to say about how we should design the throne room. But their involvement wasn't to tell us, "No, you can't do that," and "No, you can't do that either." It was to tell us how it should be. We went back and forth, and between Chris Cerasi at Lucasfilm and me and Ryan Benjamin, the penciller, I think we all came up with stuff that we're happy with.
There weren't any huge compromises there, because Chris Cerasi really wanted to see new and exciting stuff just as much as we did. For example, in issue three is the installation of the Stormtroopers, and I wanted to do it in a kind of grand military fashion. But there were a lot of other things that had to happen in that issue. I did it in about three or four pages, and it's pretty much a military procedure, which I don't think we have seen much of before. But when a series of movies and a series of comics and novels and everything is so focused around two military forces, the Rebels and the Empire, it seemed to make sense to do that.
The other climax of this comic takes place on a world we have never been to before. The piece in the middle of the book takes place on a planet that was in a recent comic. So, you know, it ties in. I stayed away from Tatooine because I think that has been done enough, but the story ties into a lot of established stuff. I went through the Star Wars Beastiary to try to pick out some interesting animals to put into it, and we have one of those creatures in a big glass tank on Coruscant. That was the kind of stuff we pulled out to make it really feel like Star Wars.
Ryan is a huge Star Wars fan, and he was so excited after Episodes 1 and 2. So he has been super faithful to the look of everything. And that allowed him to design a lot of stuff.
We have all these Grand Moffs and lesser Moffs that are going up against the Emperor. And I thought the problem with the Empire is that everybody looks the same. It's like doing a story about Nazis -- everybody is going to be wearing the same suit, everybody is going to have the same hair color. And I thought that was sort of a bummer. Like, it's too bad that I'm stuck in that milieu, but that will be fine. And then Ryan starts putting these character designs together and the guys just looked great -- they don't at all look like they were just photocopied out of a Star Wars style guide.
There's one enormous general that in my descriptions of him I was referring to Marlon Brando in one of his recent movies. So Ryan made him gigantic, but he also gave him a very interesting look beyond that. He's not just a fat guy in an Imperial uniform, he is a real weirdo. Brian Horton designed the main antagonist, Grand Moff Trachta, and he is real outlandish looking. So, it all kind of fits with Star Wars designs. It all looks like something that would be in the original trilogy, where you have just the most incredible art direction I have ever seen. But it kind of pushes what the Empire looks like, especially if you are on the capital planet. And we get a lot of underground Coruscant stuff which I am more and more fascinated with. I almost wish that we'd done more of that.
AG: Do you see yourself doing another miniseries?
SA: Yeah, actually, Ryan and I are both pushing for that because there is one character that he designed for the series who originally I thought was going to die in issue three, but it turns out he doesn't die, and he lives through the whole thing. Ryan and I both loved this guy, he just looks great, and he's a fun personality to write, and he is a very fun character to draw. We have already talked to Randy a little bit about maybe following up with him and giving him another confrontation with Vader down the road. So yeah, to deal with some of the situations that have been set up in "Betrayal," I would really love to return to do more with some of the characters.
The most fun thing about writing Vader is that now we know that even back during the time of A New Hope, even back when he didn't know that Luke was out there, it is safe to say that he had some conflict about his connection to the Emperor. In The Empire Strikes Back, why else would he have been so ready to suggest to Luke that they turn against the Emperor. It took him a lot of decision making at the end of Return of the Jedi, but if he was willing to kill the Emperor there was probably a certain amount of conflict in him from the very beginning. And so even at the end of Episode 2, we understand him as this somewhat weak and yet powerful kid -- he just never knew how to deal with anything. So writing Vader like that, still showing him as ruthless -- he does some really ruthless things at the close of the series, showing that he has those two sides ...It would be really fun to write more about him, and that is what I like to do, and Ryan loves drawing him.
I'd like to work with Ryan some more, because it has been really interesting. It has been a whole new experience working with him, because I generally write in a very different way. I tend to favor a high-panel count per page, with lots of detailed action, but Ryan draws big, intricate pictures that tell the story in a much different way.
AG: You mentioned Ryan Benjamin is going to pencil it, who is the rest of the creative team?
SA: Curtis Arnold's inking it, Dave Stewart's coloring it, Michelle Madsen's lettering it, and Brian Horton's doing covers.
I have been lucky so far that everything that I have written for Dark Horse, Dave's colored -- he's my favorite colorist. Dave is a Cherokee Indian who lives up in Alaska, and he's worked with me on everything I've done, we're really close. Brian lives down in Southern California, and we've done a lot of work together. We are going to be doing more stuff. I was really glad to get him. He works for a video-game company as a character designer and an art director there, I think. So I brought him on for "Betrayal" mainly to design the villain. I wanted to have him design the bad guy so that he'd look every bit as interesting as Vader, and that was probably Brian's biggest contribution to the story. Even more so than the covers, because designing the main villain defines the look of the book in a big way. His characters and character designs are fantastic.
And then I was looking through some of Ryan's old work, to get a sense of how he tells a story, and in the Ghost comics he did for us there was a character that looked a lot like Trachta. It didn't look exactly like him, but had some of the same sort of features and augmentations that Trachta has. Once I saw that, I knew he'd be perfect for the series. I wanted a real mean Emperor, and Ryan does these real craggy, nasty-looking people, and so I knew he would do the Emperor real well.
AG: Do you find yourself approaching comics differently as a writer than you do as an editor? Or as a writer do you put everything in a comic that you want to see as an editor?
SA: Yeah, as a writer I try to make the comic do everything that I would like the comic to do as an editor. The best experience I have had in assembly-line comic books so far was on the Buffy stuff with Tom Fassbender and Jim Pascoe. Those guys had never written a comic before they worked with me, and we just took our time at first. They are great writers and have written great books -- a couple of novels -- and they are some really talented writers with imaginations that I really respect. They really have a knack for looking at stuff and taking it apart and figuring out how to do it themselves. So we went through Buffy looking at stuff like that. If I couldn't write this thing myself, I would want Tom and Jim to write it because they write a comic exactly the way I want a comic written.
Most of the time I don't get that out of a writer that I am working with. Working on something like "Betrayal," it's great because at least in my head I am doing it exactly the way I want it to be done in all the stuff I am working on. I like the way the characters come across -- there is a certain level of characterization that I want to see in a comic that I don't always see in comics. There is a dramatic element that I think makes a story resonate more, and I don't usually see that in comics. So we're trying to do that in "Betrayal." In the comics I edit, I'm really sensitive about the storytelling and the way color aids storytelling and amplifies it. There are a lot of mechanical things about the way a comic works that I really try to push into a comic when I'm editing. When I start working on a comic that I'm writing, I have a different opportunity to do that.
I'm able to get out of Ryan just the kind of visual storytelling that I want to see, but I also know that he is working on the kind of character-driven plot that I'd like to see him working on. When I'm editing a book it's not necessarily the story the way I want it told. When I work with writers that I really like I let them do it their way for the most part. Like Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza, who just took over the Buffy monthly. They do things a lot differently than I do, but what they do has been proven. Whereas with Tom and Jim, we were doing Buffy just the way I wanted Buffy to go. Now that Scott and Fabian are doing it, they take it in another direction, and they're doing their own thing, and you know, that might be a better way of doing Buffy. But I have to distance myself slightly because it's not so much my comic as it was when Tom and Jim were doing it.
So, with "Betrayal," it's just the way I like to see a comic happen. The art that Ryan is doing and the inking Curtis is doing is just great, it looks so exciting, it's so much fun. It's super dynamic, and I know that when you put Dave on top of that it's going to look great. The story really skips along, and the artists have brought something great to it.
I am not a particular fan of sci-fi; if there is a genre that I am interested in, it's definitely horror comics. Except for Star Wars, there's never been any science-fiction stuff I cared about, unless it is really dark like Alien or something. It's not the genre that excites me, but the characters that excite me, both Vader and some of the supporting characters we've made up.
What excites me is never really the genre, but the way it's pulled off. I don't read superhero comics much, but if Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale are doing Daredevil, I'll read it, because I love what they do. If they do Daredevil or if they're doing Smurfs, I would want to read it, because they bring something great to it, and that's definitely how I pick what I read. And I try to make it how I pick what I edit, but you know you only have so much control over that.
Star Wars: Empire #1, a 32-page full-color comic written by Scott Allie, with art by Ryan Benjamin and Curtis P. Arnold, and colored by Dave Stewart will be available in comics shops on September 4.