CBR: NYCC EXCLUSIVE: Giffen & Jurgens Make the Leap to "Superman"

[CBR News]

Writer/artists Keith Giffen and Dan Jurgens give CBR News the exclusive scoop on their plans for "Superman," which they take over from George Perez with issue #7 next March.


Full article here.

[hellacre]

We're trying to keep in mind just because he puts on the Superman costume doesn't mean he's not still Clark and vice versa, when he takes it off it doesn't mean that Clark's not still Superman. If we can nail that, we're set!

That is the crux of it. Superman/Clark/Kal should be a complex,multilayered character but he is one man. Great interview. Makes me feel a little more optimistic about the Superman title. While # 1 wasn't a bad comic, it just wasn't a great comic. I hope between them and Morrison we can get some great stories.

[sethysquare]

Wow. im so excited

[DarkKnghtJared]

I was hoping that Giffen would be writing and Jurgens would be drawing. Jurgens is a solid artist, nothing to write home about but okay, but I never found his writing all that inspiring. Even the current JLI, which is the best thing I've seen him write, is kinda just "eh."

I hope he can surprise me, though. Then again, I was hoping that Perez would surprise me, so...yeah.

[sethysquare]

I was hoping that Giffen would be writing and Jurgens would be drawing. Jurgens is a solid artist, nothing to write home about but okay, but I never found his writing all that inspiring. Even the current JLI, which is the best thing I've seen him write, is kinda just "eh."

I hope he can surprise me, though. Then again, I was hoping that Perez would surprise me, so...yeah.

Thats exactly what is happening

Giffen: It's a lopsided partnership, but we're always going to have our fingers in each other's business here. We tend to co-plot, we talk on the phone extensively about Superman -- who is Superman, who is Clark Kent, where do we want to take the book -- and we kind of bang out a loose structure for the villain, the first issue, where we want to go. I write it up in script form. Dan then does -- he calls them breakdowns but everyone else calls them full pencils -- but he goes in and as far as I'm concerned pencils the book based on the script. He knows and I know he has the liberty to alter a scene, open something up to make it more dynamic, shift the paradigm around. Then when the pencil pages come to me I take a final spin through. Lots of time I'll be deleting word balloons because an expression on a character's face means that word balloon is not necessary, and then it goes off to the inker. So it's a real homogenous process.

Giffen script, Dan pencils, Giffen touch up

I think the source blog reported it wrongly

Giffen: I'm not going to tell Dan Jurgens how to draw; that'd be insane, and the artwork is completely Dan.

[DarkKnghtJared]

Oh! Well, very good then!

[turtlefood]

i skipped Perez's issues but i'll probably give issue #7 a try.

[Doctor Who]

This would be big news if the images did look weird and this wasn't another title given to one of Dan Didios old boys.

[El Sombrero]

Zero interest. I almost feel like DC is purposely putting older (IMO dated, stale) creators on this book. Action Comics is worlds more interesting.

[upmiddowntown]

Can someone explain to me why the change so soon?
Was this planned from the beginning?

[Mambazo]

Keith Giffen: I don't think "Superman" is going to be unique, I think most of the books will have new teams coming in on #7 because these are almost built to be six-issue story arcs.

I am very VERY concerned by this.

[El Sombrero]

I am very VERY concerned by this.

Yeah, I...hope that was kind of a random comment without much to back it up. I will be extremely let down if a bunch of the books I am buying have creative switches after six issues. If anything I think they should go the opposite direction and let creators have LONG (like, 50 issue) runs. 50 issues sounds like a lot but it's really only four years, and you can build so much with that amount of time.

[Ntikrst]

Eesh, well that sucks for me, I got plenty of Jurgen's Superman art to look at already. Seeing as I don't care for Action's creative team now or Superman's team later, I'll have to find something else to look forward too.

Just announced at NYCC (which we'd know about if anyone was posting coverage) Geoff Johns and Gary Frank are doing a back up feature in Justice League called The Curse Of Shazam!

http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2011/10...cs-the-new-52/

That'll do nicely!

[sky dog]

Frankly, I enjoyed Perez's first issue of Superman and would have liked to see him continue indefinitely. I liked that it was more or less a self-contained story with subplots that could be weaved through the following issues. I didn't find it overwritten, I liked the art...

That being said, I like Dan Jurgens and Keith Giffen and I'm interested to see what they do with the character. I would have thought, with the relaunch allegedly being planned so far in advance, that the creators they started with would be in control for longer than six issues. So far I'm not seeing much difference in terms of preparedness. We're one or two issues in and there are fill-ins all over the place, creators leaving books, and a sense that the stories going forward haven't been as well thought-out as we may have been lead to believe.

[Theozilla]

Zero interest. I almost feel like DC is purposely putting older (IMO dated, stale) creators on this book. Action Comics is worlds more interesting.

You know...Morrison is around the same age as Giffen and Jurgens and all three of them started their career in comics during the 1980s. The only difference is that Morrison is a Scot and was part of the British Invasion of comics and has had more widespread success while Giffen and Jurgens are American and have more moderate success.