Leave Your Spandex At The Door 07.30.04: Ultimate Elektra chat with Mike Carey about

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Welcome to the 35th instalment of Leave Your Spandex @t the Door.

Between pressing postgraduate schedules, tumultuous maters of the bleeding heart and spending two weeks comatose in a drunken stupor following Greece’s win in Euro 2004 (yay!) the column has been on even more erratic schedule than usual. As you’re reading this I’ll probably already be in a beach somewhere in bubbling Greece, scantily clad under the sizzling sun, but the next installments of the column will be going online on a slightly weekly schedule, as I finally catch up with my review pile from Bristol festival.

Speaking of it, Bristol festival was a unique and unforgettable experience for me, as it was the first time I came in contact with the people behind the pages, in person. Without a doubt, the guy who made the greatest impression on me from that trip is Mike Carey. I had emailed Mike ahead of time so I knew he was also attending, and had spotted him in the crowd during the awards ceremony. As if that night hadn’t dazzled my puny Greek brain enough, mike had to deliver the coup-de-grace when he approached me in the bar, after having recognised my name during my short presenter stint in the UK Awards earlier that night. Dave could hardly contain me for the rest of the night, as if I wasn’t already too far gone. Over the next two days I got to chat a bit with Mike, and he agreed to do an interview to talk about his soon-to-be-released ULTIMATE ELEKTRA mini-series from Marvel Comics.

Marvel was kind enough to give us several pages from the upcoming first issue to preview. You can see them at this url.

Without further ado, I give you Mike Carey, acclaimed writer of LUCIFER, HELLBLAZER (the Londonner version), MY FAITH IN FRANKIE, THE FURIES and a certain Greek-blooded assassin.

Manolis: This is the second Ultimate Elektra mini-series after Greg Rucka’s ‘Ultimate Daredevil and Elektra’ mini, a year ago. Does your story pick up from where Rucka’s left off? What do readers need to know before they pick this up if they haven’t read the first mini?

Mike Carey: Yeah, my story takes up very shortly after Greg’s, with Elektra and Matt still in their first year at Columbia University in New York. You don’t need to have read Greg’s mini, but if you have read it then you’ll see some of the things that happen there having consequences here. We open with Elektra’s father in a desperate situation financially. He’s lost his business when his shop burned down, and his insurance is refusing to pay out because they suspect a fraud of some kind. He has to go to relatives to borrow money, and that’s when things really start to go bad. Because the relatives in question, Leander and Paul Natchios, are heavily involved with organised crime.

Basically, though, the set-up is very clear and we cover everything that you need to know right there in the story. It’s clear that there’s been some kind of chemistry between Matt and Elektra, and that that’s now all over and done with – but the feelings are still there, and it’s hard for either one of them to leave it alone. They circle each other, trapped in a kind of painful approach-avoidance conflict that never resolves. That’s the background. The story takes the relationship on, and also moves Elektra further along in her personal odyssey, which in some ways is predictable but in others contains some surprises.

Manolis: Can you tell us, without giving too much away, what happens in this story?

Mike: Well, Elektra tries to help her father get out of this hole he’s dug for himself. He’s taken a loan from the cousins, Leander and Paul, and now they more or less own him. But when Elektra goes to meet these disreputable relatives, instead of persuading them to cancel her father’s debt she gets drawn into some of their schemes herself. And these guys are powerfully connected, which means that she ends up playing in a league that she’s far from ready for.

Meanwhile Matt is doing a Summer internship at a New York law firm, and he meets a minor mobster – a guy named Cullen – who’s trying to turn state’s evidence. And it turns out that Cullen works for Leander and Paul Natchios, so Matt unknowingly comes back into Elektra’s orbit.

From there it gets complicated and ugly and very, very dangerous.

Manolis: This is your first non-Vertigo project, fresh out of your exclusive contract. How did you become involved in this project?

Mike: The short answer is that I asked. I’d already talked to one or two of the Marvel editors at San Diego in 2003, and I’d gotten the impression that they might have some work to offer me. So when the DC exclusive lapsed (by mutual agreement) I called them up to see what was available. I pitched for two or three things, but this was the one that caught my imagination the most and this was the one I was ultimately offered.

The slightly longer answer is that this is part of a deliberate policy that I’ve been pursuing for about a year now. I love writing Lucifer and Hellblazer, but I’d been feeling a little uneasy that I might be getting typecast as horror fantasy guy, and that this might eventually rebound against me. So I was making a conscious effort to pitch and to try out for different kinds of material. Hence My Faith in Frankie, and hence also the various superhero projects that I’ve taken on in the DCU. Doing a mainstream superhero book for Marvel is a long way from my usual stamping grounds, but as I’ve said elsewhere I grew up reading superhero stories and I still get a huge kick out of them. I really wanted to do this.

Manolis: This is your first collaboration with Marvel’s wonder-boy, Salva Larroca. What does Salva bring to the table? He was also the original artist on the first mini, does he have any input on the plotting process?

Mike: First and foremost, Salva is a brilliant visual storyteller. He creates vivid characters and he builds a superb stage for them – and then when the action starts he handles movement and pacing better than almost anyone. I couldn’t ask for a better collaborator on this.

Salva doesn’t play a direct role in plotting the story, but he inevitably brings his own unique spin to the telling of it, not just in the action but in the handling and placing of character beats. As you say, he’s drawn these characters before and he’s already got a very sure feel for them. I always get more than I ask for.

Manolis: How closely do you adhere to Marvel ‘616’ continuity? How similar is Ultimate Elektra compare to the original? Given free reign, who would you rather write?

Mike: Well, this is an Elektra who’s almost unburdened by continuity. As with all Ultimate characters, she’s another riff on the person we know, and therefore we’ve got some sense of where her life is going to take her. But really all we’ve had so far is a couple of snapshots – one from the very start of her career and one from much later. The big issue is how she gets from A to B, and the answer to that isn’t going to be at all straightforward.

How similar is this Elektra to the regular Marvel Universe one? Well, she’s a passionate, open, basically good person who gets twisted around by circumstances and by flaws in her own nature until she becomes something that she never wanted to be. That tragic riff is the core of the character for me, and obviously we’re keeping it. Her personal circumstances are completely different, and the story takes place at a much earlier point in her life, but we’re staying true to the essence of the character and exploring the same issues that have always surrounded her in regular Marvel continuity.

Manolis: You had mentioned in conversation, during the Bristol festival, that you write Elektra as a Greek-Cypriot instead of Greek. What led to this distinction?

Mike: I wanted her family to come from a background of turmoil and violence. I’m sure I could have found the right referent in mainland Greece, but I was already aware of Cyprus as a place where political divisions spill over sometimes
into violent conflict. It seemed an obvious beat to go for. Having said that, it’s only mentioned once in the story – it’s a passing reference, not an important plot element.

Manolis: Elektra has made an appearance in Ultimate Spider-man ,where we saw her working as an assassin for the Kingpin. Will this story fill the story gap between Elektra’s origins and her current status?

Mike: Not really, no, but it does show us her first meeting with the Kingpin in Ultimate continuity, and in some significant ways it moves her closer to what she will later become. You have to remember, though, that this is Elektra in her late teens, still relatively unscarred by experience. Okay, what happened between her and Trey Langstrom in Greg’s mini has had a profound effect on her, but she’s still a young girl figuring out how the world works. We don’t aim to take her all the way from that position to “killer for hire” within one story. What we do have is some events and some decisions that are going to bring her to a crossroads.

Manolis: Do you remember what was the first Elektra story you read and what your reaction was to the character? What is your favourite Elektra moment?

Mike: Of course I do! It was Daredevil#168, when she first appeared. And my initial reaction, along with everyone else’s, was “Whaaaaaaaaat?” It was a very audacious trick on Frank Miller’s part, plucking this character who we’d never seen before out of his hat and saying “oh yeah, she was the most important person in Matt’s life once…” But having brought her in, he took her from strength to strength, defined her and made her such a hugely important part of Daredevil continuity that she ultimately escaped from it altogether and became a protagonist in her own right.

My favourite moment? When she refuses to kill Foggy. It was around about #179 or #180 or thereabouts, just before Bullseye fights with her and murders her. She’s been given Foggy as a target, and she gets the drop on him and is about to kill him. She says something like “Look away. This won’t hurt.” But then he recognises her and says “You were Matt’s girl, in college.” And suddenly she’s all tangled up in what she used to be and she can’t go ahead with it. She tells him to get out and he runs like hell. It was very painful and very moving: it showed the core paradox of the character, that Elektra is a good person shaped by events into something dark and horrible that she was never meant to be.

Manolis: Elektra is often referred to as one of comicdom’s hardest characters to relate to and, therefore, to write. How have you connected to her and how do you manage to get in the mindscape of someone like Elektra?

Mike: I don’t find her hard to relate to at all. Her essential dilemma is actually a very recognisable one – the dilemma of “where does the dancer become the dance?” We all do things that are questionable from time to time – things that make us feel uneasy, or don’t sit right with our own personal morality – and we all tell ourselves that we haven’t changed by doing them. We see the core of our personality as unchanging and enduring. But then gradually we realise that you are what you do – that every act you perform becomes a part of you, and that your personality accretes and hardens around you as a result of all the choices you make.

So Elektra is someone who has become trapped in a personality, a role, a situation, that has done terrible violence to her psyche. She’s made every choice willingly, knowingly, but the aggregate effect of all those choices is that she’s become a sort of beautiful, elegant monster. And on some level she knows it. That’s my take on her, anyway, and I don’t find that at all difficult to relate to – even though in my case it was high school teaching that I went into and was changed by, rather than, say, murder.

Manolis: And now, if you would be as kind as to put on your 411Fanboy fightin’ hat:

Elektra is Marvel’s most formidable female fighter (or maybe we could even make it overall?). Who would you send after her if you wanted her taken down? :D

Mike: Mazikeen. It’s hard to say how that fight would go, but it would be a lot of fun to watch.

Manolis: Would whipped cream be involved? And if so, how?

Mike:Whipped cream, chocolate sauce, crushed nuts…

Ow. Maybe *not* crushed nuts

Manolis: You’ve been a participant of ”the Hypotheticals’ in past eyars, so you’re familiar with the concept of Earth Dave. It has come to be, that on Earth Dave, Mike Carey is the #1 Wizard Fan favourite writer (Apparently, it’s already 2005 on Earth Dave ;) ), and August is declared ‘Carey month’, a special cross-company event, where all the titles you’re writing crossover into each other: How would you plot for the four-part Hellblazer-Lucifer-Elektra-Frankie-Eggmen storyline and how would these characters to each other? :p

Mike: Heh.

Well it would start with Lucifer getting pissed off in some way with the gods of Godtown and going in all heavy. Jeriven’s dad from the Frankie mini is Mobor, a living mountain, so he gets up and starts slugging it out with Lucifer, but neither one can put a dent in the other. So eventually Mobor says “Look, this is getting us nowhere. Lo, let us choose human champions and let *them* beat the crap out of each other for a while.” And Lucifer agrees. So Mobor chooses Frankie, and Lucifer chooses Elektra, which says a lot about their different approaches to this conflict. And it ought to be cut and dried except that Elektra then falls for Kay, who after all is comics’ cutest lesbian. And Kay refuses to date her if she kills Frankie.

So the Eggmen…

I can’t do this. My fragile hold on sanity is slipping.

Manolis: Let’s break the Fourth Wall for awhile and say that you are living in the Marvel U. and the kingpin has just awarded you with a night out with Elektra (lord knows what despicable acts you were up to to earn this). How would the night go? ;)

Mike: It would be over by nine thirty pm, when Elektra broke my collar bone for trying to slip my arm round her or something. Why are you torturing me like this?

Manolis: Just one more and you’re free to return to Mrs Carey!

You’ve mentioned in the past that you’re interested in exploring new genres with your writing. After horror, romance and now superheroics what is next on your plate? Do you have any more projects with Marvel you can announce ( or hint at? ;) )

Mike: What’s next? Well, I’m working on a martial arts rom-com, which is certainly a new one on me. It’s set among the Korean community in Los Angeles, and I think it’s one of the strongest things I’ve ever written. And then there’s another first, which is an adaptation of a novel to comics form. I’ve had a huge blast with that: it raises entirely different issues to writing a story from scratch, and on an intellectual level it’s been fascinating and fulfilling. Both of those projects are for DC.

No more Marvel projects that I can actually announce. All I can say is that we’re talking. And that working with the Ultimate team – Ralph Macchio, Nick Lowe, Mackenzie Cadenhead and John Barber – has been a wholly positive experience. I’d love to do it again. So we’ll see what we’ll see…

Manolis:Thanks Mike, it’s been a blast doing this!

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Coming up in the following weeks: A LYS@D Avengers Disassembled tie-in with a twist, reviews for indy comics ‘FUTURE QUAKE’, ‘TOZZLER 2′ and ‘Sam119′ and a special tribute to the best comic of the new millennium before it signs off.
As always, I’m waiting for your comments through email or in the official LYS@D discussion thread.

Manolis Vamvounis
a.k.a. Doc Dooplove

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ah, the good old Dr Manolis, the original comics Greek. He's been at this for sometime. he was there when the Comics Nexus was founded, he even gave it its name, he even used to run it for a couple of years. he's been writing about comics, geeking out incessantly and interviewing busier people than himself for over ten years now and has no intention of stopping anytime soon.