Episode 156 - An Interview with JM DeMatteis

This week on Men of Steel, Case and Jmike sit down with legendary comics writer J.M. DeMatteis to talk about his incredible career and his thoughts on the Man of Steel himself. From Kraven’s Last Hunt to Justice League International and beyond, we dive into storytelling, spirituality, and what makes Superman such an enduring symbol of hope.

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Men of Steel Full Episode

Originally aired: October 24, 2025

Edited by Sophia Ricciardi Scored by Geoff Moonen Certain Point Of View is a podcast network brining you all sorts of nerdy goodness! From Star Wars role playing, to Disney day dreaming, to video game love, we've got the show for you!

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Outline

Introduction (00:00 - 00:10)

• Introduction and discussion about J.M. DeMatteis' prolific career.

• Discussion on writing styles (Marvel style vs. full script) and collaborative relationships.

Creative Origins (00:10 - 00:20)

• J.M. DeMatteis shares his creative origins and early career struggles.

• Breakthrough into comics through short stories and TV writing with The Twilight Zone.

Justice League International (00:20 - 00:28)

• His iconic Justice League International run with Keith Giffen.

• Creative chemistry with collaborators and evolution of their working relationship.

️ Marvel Runs (00:28 - 00:38)

• Discussion of Marvel runs including Maximum Carnage and Clone Saga.

• Perspectives on long crossovers and storytelling challenges.

‍️ Lesser-Known Characters (00:38 - 00:47)

• Work with less-known characters like Booster Gold and Blue Beetle in Justice League International.

• Character development freedom with lesser-known heroes and influence on DC Universe.

‍️ Superman Focus (00:47 - 00:57)

• Focus on Superman-related work, especially Speeding Bullets Elseworlds story.

• Discussion on Superman’s character, symbolism, and challenges in keeping him human.

Current Projects (00:57 - 01:07)

• Current and upcoming projects including the DeMultiverse Kickstarter series.

• Discussion on Spider-Man 94, prose novellas, and Batman: Caped Crusader animated series.

️ Writing Techniques & Style (02:00 - 02:10)

• J.M. DeMatteis adeptly switches between Marvel style (detailed plotting first) and full scripting based on collaborators and creative needs, emphasizing writer-artist synergy.

Career Path & Persistence (10:00 - 13:30)

• His early career involved overcoming harsh rejections and learning from editors like Paul Levitz and Len Wein, highlighting the necessity of a 'hard head and thick skin' in freelancing.

Creative Collaboration (24:00 - 27:30)

• The seminal Justice League International run was a product of rare chemistry and creative freedom between DeMatteis, Keith Giffen, and Kevin Maguire, elevating offbeat characters.

Classic Runs Reflections (22:00 - 30:00)

• He described iconic runs like Kraven’s Last Hunt as successful but unplanned monumental works, and underscored the importance of the artist in storytelling and the emotional core of heroism in Maximum Carnage.

Character Development (34:00 - 38:00)

• DeMatteis expresses deep intimacy with characters like Peter Parker and Ben Reilly, treating them like real people and always seeking fresh narrative insights in revisiting familiar characters.

‍️ Superman’s Core (48:00 - 54:40)

• Defines writing Superman as being 'in his heart' rather than just his mind, focusing on his decency, charm, and symbolic importance as cultural moral paragon and hopeful figure.

Modern Work & Industry Shifts (01:00:00 - 01:02:00)

• Embracing Kickstarter for creator-owned projects like DeMultiverse, balancing traditional publishing with creative independence and audience engagement. Discusses upcoming projects including a Spider-Man miniseries and involvement in animated shows.

Industry Insights (46:40 - 46:50)

• Reflects on evolving trends such as Elseworlds and multiverse storytelling saturation, and the need to refresh narrative approaches.

Fan Community & Legacy (38:40 - 38:50)

• Notes enthusiasm from younger generations discovering older works like Justice League International, reinforcing enduring appeal.

Transcription

00:01
JM DeMatteis
Hey.

00:02
Case
Hi.

00:06
JM DeMatteis
How you doing?

00:07
Case
Good, good. So thank you so much for coming on our show. Really, really appreciate this.

00:16
JM DeMatteis
Happy to do it. Happy to do it.

00:19
Case
Before we get started, do you. How should we address you? Do you prefer Mr. Damattaez?

00:25
JM DeMatteis
Do you prefer JM is fine, Jamie. Okay, yeah, that's fine. No, no misters, please. That's. Please don't. I beg.

01:02
Case
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Men of Steel podcast. I'm Case Aiken and as always, I'm joined by my co host, Jmike Folson.

01:08
Jmike
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show.

01:11
Case
Welcome back indeed. Today we are doing something a little different from our usual format of talking about a story or some kind of character. We have an interview. We are joined by the legendary comics creator, J.M. DeMatteis.

01:24
JM DeMatteis
Is here? I've wanted to talk to him for years. It's incredible.

01:32
Case
Well, it's. I mean, going off of years jam. Like, I was looking through your bibliography and I was trying to figure out like, well, what's the thing that I want to talk about most? Because you've been, frankly, writing comic books.

01:42
JM DeMatteis
My entire life and most of mine as well.

01:48
Case
So I was looking at it and I was like, man, there's that, there's that. Yeah, yeah, you know what?

01:53
JM DeMatteis
People have tried to like, interview me and go through my career chronologically. And an hour goes by. We're like in 1983. So it doesn't really work right. Well.

02:03
Case
And that's the thing. You're extremely prolific, but you've done plenty of huge things that are strictly Superman related, but also just tons of material. Like you worked on the Adventures of Superboy, the live action TV show. You were a writer for Justice League Unlimited. You have done tons of comics. We just talked about, actually the last episode, not the last episode. Two episodes ago. We just talked about Superman. Red Sun. Yep. So there's all kinds of material that is. Is super relevant to. To the show. But I wanted to start with sort of a weird question, which is I was just kind of thinking about this, which is you write a lot of stuff, like a lot of types of stuff, not just a lot of one format. And when you switch between formats, do you like, does your writing style dramatically change?

02:48
Case
And what I'm getting at is when you're doing comic books, do you ever do it Marvel style or is it full script?

02:54
JM DeMatteis
I do both.

02:54
Jmike
Yeah.

02:55
JM DeMatteis
I go back and forth between both, depending upon my whim. Really? Yeah, you know, I just. I've been doing on Kickstarter the past few years, this thing called the Demultiverse, where I launched like four new series simultaneously. We just last year did the second round. We've been kickstarting each new issue. So four new number ones and we did four new number twos. We'll go ahead soon and do four new number threes. Two of them we did plot first. Two of them were full script. It really depends who I'm working with, how I'm feeling. And also, people have a very distorted impression of what Marvel style is based on. The old stories about Stan Lee telling Jack Kirby, well, let's bring back Dr. Doom, and Jack goes home and does four issues of the story. As if that is not Marvel style.

03:38
JM DeMatteis
That may have been Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Marvel style, but Marvel style as it exists today, which even to call it Marvel style. It's plot first. My plots are very detailed, page by page, usually panel by panel, sometimes camera angle by camera angle. You know, lots of the suggest I have room to tweak the dialogue later, but I put in lots of suggested dialogue. You know, the psychological nuance, what's going on within the character's heads, all that goes into the plot. The joy of working that way is that I don't put in the final copy until I get the art. So they will draw the story from this detailed plot. And then in a way, the fun of it is I'm sort of collaborating with myself because things I may have laid out in the plot.

04:20
JM DeMatteis
Well, I wanted to do that on page three. It's going to work better over here on page six. Maybe I don't need that speech over there at all. Maybe I need to add something here so I get to play with the story and most importantly, react to the artwork. Because you give the same story, whether it's full script or plot first to five different artists, it's going to come back in five very different ways. That's why sometimes when people are working plot first and you get the artwork back and you thought some section was going to be really clear as the bell, you wouldn't have to write anything. You just most minimal dialogue or nothing at all.

04:53
JM DeMatteis
And suddenly you see that the art's not clear, which is why you get bits of dialogue like the guy running and, oh, I've just tripped over something on the roof and I'm falling. And why are they writing such obvious dialogue? Because it wasn't clear in the artwork. So you have to clarify it that way. Otherwise, a flip side is you get. You get artwork back where you Thought you'd have to write something in great detail and the artist hit everything that you asked for, and you just shut up and let the pictures tell the story, you know? But it's really the same thing with full script. I could give the same full script to five different guys, and things will come back differently, and you'll have to go in and tweak and do little things. So I really enjoy them both.

05:30
JM DeMatteis
With full script, you kind of feel like, you know, you're getting it all done in the moment. It's like writing a screen, you know, not like writing a screenplay, because then the director comes in and messes around with it. So that's a bad analogy. You're. You're in control, where the playwright is like, yeah. But again, you know, it's all comics is art and story together. So anyone that puts too much emphasis on saying the writers are the geniuses behind the stories or the artists are, it's not either. It's that fusion of both. And if you don't have that balance and that magical chemistry between both, it's not going to work.

06:04
Case
Yeah, we recently were looking. This is not one of yours, but this was. We looked at the Superman vs the Amazing Spider man crossover, the first, like, big Marvel DC crossover. And there was a section that we got to where it was, like, very clear that just a panel was just not there. And that led us to suspect that there might have been a little bit of finagling going on, a little bit of plot first in that one. And it was just very interesting to hit a spot where it was just like, oh, yeah, they're definitely using a caption box to cover up an omission that probably at some point you could.

06:37
JM DeMatteis
Go back and look at the old Lee Kirby stuff. And you can see clearly in some spaces where Jack is telling one story and Stan wants to tell another one, and there's a bunch of balloons there talking about things that aren't there. Do you know what I mean? And that's also the fun of it, too. When I work with Keith, Giff and Keith would do the plots. And when Keith's plots were done as little mini comics, you draw them out, and then I would do the scripting. But what you learn is that through the scripting. And that's why I like plot first, because I get to do this with myself as well. You can write a whole other story on top of what's there in the plot. I would introduce subplots and character interactions that weren't there in Keith's plots.

07:19
JM DeMatteis
And because I was working with Keith, I always had the freedom to do that because Keith had no creative ego. And we just loved bouncing that tennis ball back and forth between us. But there's a lot that can be done just in the scripting stage to completely transform a story and add things that weren't there in the plot. I've also worked with people where I've dialogued their plots, and they hate it if you change anything. Which is why it was such a joy working with Keith, because I had the freedom to play. He'd see what I would do, and he would spin it and do crazy things that I didn't expect. I would do things he didn't expect. And between the two of us, essentially not paying attention to each other, we made something better than either one of us could have done alone.

07:57
Case
Yeah. No. Your Justice League run going into Justice League International is, I mean, it's famous and it's well loved, and it meant a ton to me over my life. So I just wanted to say give a hearty. Bwaha.

08:12
Jmike
See?

08:13
JM DeMatteis
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Couldn't happen without Keith. Keith. Keith Giffen was one of the single most creative human beings I've ever encountered anywhere. Not just in comics, but anywhere. Keith was just like an idea machine. It was amazing. Amazing. Amazing creative force. And an amazing person as well.

08:32
Case
Yeah. Actually, when I. So behind the curtains, the reason this interview is happening is that I know your daughter. And when I met her, I was actually.

08:39
JM DeMatteis
I know her too.

08:40
Case
I know, right? It's crazy.

08:44
JM DeMatteis
What a coincidence.

08:46
Case
I, I, I was actively reading, like, not literally the night that we first hung out, but like, while were hanging out over the weekend that we first met. I was reading the Legion of Superheroes five years later, Omnibi. And that was sort of a, a connection point because of it was by Keith. And one of the things that sort of dawned on me while I was reading this was just the wealth of material he was working on simultaneously at that point.

09:09
JM DeMatteis
Yeah.

09:09
Case
So just a true talent that is a huge loss to the community.

09:14
JM DeMatteis
Yeah, totally. Totally. I still, it's still hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that he's not here anymore, but.

09:20
Case
Why don't we, why don't we step back a little bit? I know we're not going to go too much chronologically throughout your career, but what was the driving force that got you into comics in the first place?

09:28
JM DeMatteis
You know, I was always creative as a kid. It's just who I am. I've often said, and it sounds like a joke, but it's really not. I am not equipped to do anything else but what I'm doing. If I had, if I had to survive in the 9 to 5 world, it would have been a disaster, an absolute disaster. I spent my whole childhood on the floor with paper and crayons, drawing. That was my thing when I was a kid. Then along came rock and roll, came the Beatles, and it blew my mind. I had to get. Had to get guitar lessons and I played in bands for years. And I'm a songwriter and a singer and a guitarist. And so that there was that creativity and writing was just something that always came naturally to me.

10:11
JM DeMatteis
You know, I was thinking about this the other day. I remember being like 7 years old or something and getting the Yellow Pages for those of you that remember what the yellow Pages was and opening it up and looking for a publisher for my novel. Now I'm seven years old, I haven't written a novel, but I decided I had to find a publisher first. So I just. I also remember being 14 years old and being on the phone with a friend of mine and saying to him, At 14, I will never have a job in the 9 to 5 world. I will not do that. I'm going to do something creative with my life.

10:40
JM DeMatteis
I just knew it, and thank God, you know, I think that's one of the reasons I was able to succeed, because I knew if I didn't do this, I would be in deep trouble.

10:51
Case
Was that vow fully taken up? Like, did you ever end up with a nine to fiver at any time?

10:56
JM DeMatteis
I occasionally did, you know, I would be playing in a band that I need some money, so I'd get like a temp job for like a week or two. There would be these jobs in the New York Times saying, get a job in publishing. You know, they needed somebody for two weeks to come in and do something and it'd be some horrible, miserable job, you know, that you do for two weeks. And that's the closest I ever came. I think I worked in a bookstore on and off for a while, but that's about it. Mostly in my life, I've made my living creatively, whether it was playing in bands. I was a music journalist and comics came along. And of course comics led to TV work and prose work and all these other things. So I've been very fortunate, very lucky.

11:32
Case
Now, when you say comics came along, speaking as someone who like it, frankly, it took me 10 years to actually finish, like writing My, like, first comic script it, like, and just now, like, trying to figure out how to publish it. Comics get, like, getting into comics has always been like a dream of mine. Like, but you make it sound like you stumbled into it. Like, where?

11:52
JM DeMatteis
No, no, I didn't stumble into it. No, no. You know, I always say to people, if you want to make it in the freelance life, you need a hard head and a thick skin and a really fierce will. Because the nature of the beast, even after doing this for 40 plus years, rejection is a huge part of the freelance life. It just is. Doesn't matter how successful you are, there are still always doors slamming in your face and disappointments. And if you don't have the nervous system for that, if you don't have the nervous system for not knowing 100% where that money's coming from tomorrow, you know, you can't do it. You have to want it really more than anything. And I just did. I wanted it more than anything. You know, I had two very practical goals as a teenager.

12:36
JM DeMatteis
I was either going to be a writer or a rock and roll star. So it gives you a sense of my nature, you know, go big or go home. Yeah. So really I just kept banging my head against the wall until I got through, you know, early. I remember being about 18 and I, I, I had never, I had no idea what a comic book script looked like. And I just wrote up some script of my own imagining in my own format and sent it off to Marvel thinking, you know, oh, this is probably going to be great, isn't it? And I got a letter back that just completely in, in, in the most unkind way eviscerated me. And just that alone could have been enough for some other person to make them go, I'm not going to do this.

13:21
JM DeMatteis
But to me it was like, okay. They didn't like that. Onto the next thing. And like a year later, DC Comics was doing an apprenticeship program where people could become a writer apprentices and artist apprentices. And I thought, oh, I'll try that. And I wrote a script and I sent it in. And I didn't get into the program, but I got some great feedback that I felt was really helpful. And the process went like that. And I knew a guy from Brooklyn College who was working at Marvel. He was selling stuff to Crazy Magazine, which was their Mad Magazine knockoff. He said, you should send them something. And I'm like, I don't know. Crazy, it's not my forte, but I sent them Something and I actually sold them something. Got a check with Spider Man's face on.

13:57
JM DeMatteis
It was very exciting and I thought that would open the door for me into the comic book side of things. But it didn't. So the what finally broke me in was I wrote up some more samples for dc. I sent them in blind and someone said, you know, well, you know, we're not going to buy. And one of them was actually a Superman story. So there we are, we've justified the whole conversation and whoever got the sample said, well, we're not going to buy a Superman story for some writer we've never heard of. But Paul Levitz is buying stories for what they used to call the mystery books, which were the anthology books, House of Mystery, Weird War Tales, House of Secrets. That's where people broke in those days.

14:34
JM DeMatteis
They were little five to eight page twist ending, kind of supernatural, Twilight Zone kind of stories. And I just kept pitching Paul and pitching Paul, who graciously kept reading my stuff even when it was awful, until I sold him something. And that was the beginning of my career. That's like I said, hard head, thick skin. The very first letter that I got back from Paul, he tore my stories apart. He criticized my typing. I mean, like there was no stone left unturned. But he said, feel free to submit again. So in my mind all I really saw was feel free to submit again. And I am so grateful to Paul that he even read the stuff in the first place. It's amazing that he did and he took the time with me. But through those interactions that got me in the door, pretty cool.

15:23
Case
That's awesome. Now, jumping forward in your career, how did it feel then to then be working on the Twilight Zone TV show when it had its 80s relaunch, if that was sort of like a how you broke into.

15:36
JM DeMatteis
Yeah, that was the same kind of thing. You know, I didn't really know much of anybody out there and I used to, you know, write letters to people on TV shows and try to get through the crack in the door. And same thing I was reading an article about, oh, they're reviving the Twilight Zone. And I saw that Alan Brennert, very well known TV writer who had also done some comic book work, was one of the guys on staff. So this is back in the days, no email, back in the days of letters. You know, I sat down, I wrote him a letter, stuck it in the mail and he actually wrote back to me, allowed me to pitch to the show and eventually I sold them the story and that got me and that was the first TV script I ever sold.

16:12
JM DeMatteis
And for me, a kid who grew up just loving, if not actually living in the Twilight Zone, which I guess I pretty much didn't still do, it was a great thrill to have that be my first sale, to be part of the Twilight Sony. Obviously the 1980s version, not the 1960s version, right?

16:30
Case
No, but that's very cool. And it makes a lot of sense that you would have been given the opportunity by way of these short form stories that are really riding on the twists or on how well you can spin the narrative to surprise people. And that's very cool.

16:47
JM DeMatteis
It was a great way to learn also, because you had six or eight pages in these comic book stories to tell this story. And in six or eight pages you needed a strong plot and you needed a character arc. You know what I mean? You needed everything that you need in a giant novel. You needed to telescope down to six or eight pages. And it was a fantastic way to learn the nuts and bolts of how to write a comic book script.

17:08
Case
In that process, what would you say was the most important thing you learned there?

17:12
JM DeMatteis
Everything. You know what I mean? It was really in those days, honestly, that they were paying me anything that they were even going to print the stories. I didn't care. This guy at DC Comic Book Comics was letting me write this script and he was teaching me along the way. You know, I always say those early days were like comic book college for me. I worked with Paul Levitz. I worked with another wonderful editor named Jack Harris. Then I started working with Len Wein, you know, one of the legends of the business and who took a great interest in my work and became not just my editor, but my mentor and my friend. And then I worked with Jim Shooter at Marvel. All these guys were like my professors at comic book companies college.

17:47
JM DeMatteis
And it was just a fantastic way to learn and to get paid while I was learning. Now, obviously they saw something in my work or they wouldn't have kept working with me and paying me. But for me, it was just like when I see people that start out in any discipline and they already think they know it all. And I've encountered those people over the years where they ask for your feedback and then you give it and they. They basically tell you they don't really want it, they just want your stamp of approval. You know, I was just a sponge. Teach me, tell me where I'm wrong. Tell me how to do it right. I want to learn. I want to grow.

18:17
JM DeMatteis
I still remember Jim Schruted saying to me, you know, you're different than a lot of the guys I work with because you listen to what I say. And I'm thinking, you're the editor in chief of Marvel Comics. Why wouldn't I listen to what you have to say? I want to work here, you know, but there are people out there that are just sort of locked into their little narrow vision that they don't want to expand that vision. They don't want to learn. They don't want to grow. They just want to do it the way they see it.

18:41
Case
No, that makes a lot of sense. Certainly, as you said, hard head is part of the ingredients to go out there. And so a lot of people are probably not willing to really take in, or a lot of people who think that they have what it takes to be a writer probably are coming at it with that degree of stubbornness that isn't necessarily as open to advice into learning.

19:04
JM DeMatteis
Right. You need that hard head because you're facing rejection. You're going to get slammed into brick walls. That's why you need a hard head. You don't need a hard head to reject the people that are trying to help you.

19:12
Jmike
You know?

19:13
JM DeMatteis
Right. Maybe there's one guy in a million or 2 million or 5 million who's so brilliant when he walks in the door that he doesn't need to hear any of this. But that's not 99% of us, you know, the rest of us, you know, we all have a learning, a growth curve. You have to, because you walk in and. All right, just the simple thing about learning what a comic book script is, how it's laid out, how you. How you write the captions. When I started with Paul, he gave me a list of rules. It was like, no more than 35 words per panel, no more than 5.5 panels a page, because it was very strict, because that was a great way to learn. And I used to sit there and count every word in every caption to make sure I didn't go over.

19:53
JM DeMatteis
I would average out the panels on every page. Now, you've read Justice League. You know how I blather on in my dialogue. It's not just 35 words of panel, but it's like, you know, it's like learning a haiku or something. You learn in. In it with a very definitive set of rules. And that's how you learn the basics of the form. And once you learn the rules, as Paul said to me back then you can break the rules, but learn the rules. First.

20:17
Case
That makes a ton of sense there. I, I, I'm curious if you still have that sheet. I would love to.

20:23
JM DeMatteis
I do.

20:24
Case
I would love to see what that.

20:25
JM DeMatteis
I do. I will email it to you. I think I have, I think I scanned it because I think I, I put it on my website at one point. So I will, I will send that off to you.

20:33
Case
That, that would be fantastic because I'd love to see what, what the rules are.

20:40
JM DeMatteis
Those were the rules said, you know, it doesn't mean someone would say that to you today, but I'm saying it was a fantastic way to learn to not be able to have the freedom to run off at the mouth, to know I have to be as concise as possible to get this information across.

20:53
Case
Yeah, that's very cool in that regard. So you break into comics, you start getting more and more work, and then eventually you jump over to Marvel and you start a fantastic run on Spider man where I'm trying to get to Kraven's Last Hunt is what I'm trying to get to. Because that's a monumental work there, right?

21:16
JM DeMatteis
So they tell me.

21:19
Case
Did you know that it was going to be like one of, like the definitive.

21:21
JM DeMatteis
No, no, of course not. There's, you know, any, I always say, anyone that sits down and says, I'm now going to write a monumental work that will be remembered 40 years from now is an idiot. There's no way of knowing that. You just, at any given time, at least I can only speak for myself. You're just trying to write the best story you can write in that moment. That's all you can do. And if it hits with the audience and it gets reprinted and reprinted, well, that's the icing on the cake. But you have no way of knowing that I've written stories that I think are, this is a great story and it goes out there and sinks like a stone. It's still a great story, but it just didn't connect with the audience. Other things.

21:59
JM DeMatteis
You know, I think Craven is an excellent story, but I don't even think it's the best Spider man story I ever wrote, you know, but that's, it's not up to me. It's up to the story. And the audience has a chemistry and the audience chooses which stories are going to lock in that way. And so, you know, with Craven, it just happened. And it couldn't have happened for me if I hadn't written Moonshadow first. Moonshadow was My first book, big creator owned project that I originally did for Epic Comics and later we took it to Vertigo and added more to the story. But writing Moonshadow, I was able to step out of that Marvel and DC mindset of like, this is how you write comics and just write as if I was writing a novel. And that freed me up.

22:38
JM DeMatteis
It allowed me to find my voice as a writer in a way I never had before. And that freedom of approach, when I went to step back into the Marvel universe to work on Craven's last hunt, I think that's what allowed me to write that story in the way that I did, along with the fact that I was working with Mike Zack, who's one of the greatest visual storytellers to ever work in mainstream comics. But that goes back to what I was saying before, when you're working Marvel style. So Mike Zach is an impeccable storyteller. Everything I put in that plot is there on the page. All the surface emotions are there. I don't have to explain. I'm angry now, you know, because it's there on the character's face. The actions as they move from panel to panel are really clear.

23:19
JM DeMatteis
So if you look at Craven, 80% of that narrative is interior monologue. If someone else had drawn that story, I might have had to spend half the time explaining what's in the pictures. But with Mike, because everything was so clear, I was free to go deeper and deeper into the characters heads, which is my favorite thing to do.

23:39
Case
Yeah. Now we talked a little bit about Justice League and I'm kind of curious about this one. So I know that you were brought in after to script it from Keith. What. How did that process start? And then how. What was it like? Was that the first time you were like scripting from someone else's plot or had you been doing that for other people at that point?

23:58
JM DeMatteis
I think I had done it once or twice. You know, I remember there was a Spider man story that Denny o' Neill had plotted and I dialogued and maybe one other time, something. But this was different because this became an active collaboration. But in the beginning, the way it started was, you know, originally I think, you know, they thought Keith would write the book himself, but Keith hadn't. Keith, as great as he is, as a plotter at that point, didn't feel that he. He didn't have the confidence to go ahead and do the scripting. I think he was more than capable, honestly, but he didn't have the confidence at that point. And Andy Helfer, our editor, one of the best editors to ever sit behind a desk at DC Comics. I had worked with him on the end of the previous Justice League.

24:36
JM DeMatteis
I wrote the last six or eight issues where we wrapped up that Detroit Justice League sleep. So he wanted to bring me on to script Keith's stuff. And I'm reading Keith's plots and I'm thinking, this guy doesn't need me. I really fought with him for the first six months or so. You don't need a couple. You don't need me. You don't need me. And then I realized, oh my God, I'm having such a good time working on this book. My, my fear was that this is so easy and effortless. There something must be wrong, you know. Then I realized, oh no, wait, it's easy, it's effortless and it's good and I'm having fun. I think I'll stick around.

25:04
JM DeMatteis
And the next thing I knew, it was five years later of Justice League Europe, Justice League Quarterly, all these spin off miniseries, all these other projects. Justice League consumed my life for like a good five years there. And it's just, we just naturally, you know, in the beginning there's always a little self consciousness. How far can I go with the script? How far can I push this? And then I saw that Keith andy gave me lots of leeway to play through the scripts. Keith's plots were brilliant and he was always surprising me with his amazing ideas. And he gave me all the freedom I needed to do what I wanted to do. And we just got into a rhythm together.

25:38
JM DeMatteis
And, and of course we also had, in the beginning, first year and a half, we had Kevin McGuire who was perfect for that series because it depended so much not on superhero action, but on character interaction. And Kevin does acting on the comic book page better than anybody in the history of comics as far as I'm concerned.

25:55
Case
Oh yeah, his faces are just amazing.

25:57
JM DeMatteis
I always say, if Kevin had not been drawing that book in the beginning, we might not be talking about it today. Was the right group of people that Andy pulled us together. And Andy was a great editor. He knew when to restrain Keith because Keith left to his own will, go as far out into the far reaches as anyone. And he also added, you say to me, just write as much as you want. If you. If there's too much dialogue on the page, I'll just cut it back. So I was free to just blather on. And it all somehow worked. But I always say the joke of it was you know, we did that for five years. But same thing as you said before. We're not thinking, oh, this is a great book. We knew it was very successful at the time.

26:32
JM DeMatteis
People liked it sold well. But once the gig was over. It was just, you know, as a freelancer, you're just moving on to your next gig. You're not looking back thinking, what a great achievement I just concluded, you know, or anything like that. You're just like, how am I going to pay the rent next month? And so we didn't come back together again for 10 years till we did. Formerly known as the Justice League. Right.

26:52
Case
Which I wanted to bring up just because I love that. And I can't believe it's not Justice League. Yeah.

26:57
JM DeMatteis
Yeah. And that's when we all kind of went. And this is true. It took us 10 years later to go, so this is really good, what we do together. We should really keep doing this. And we did. Especially Keith and I did many more projects together. We did several more projects with Kevin along the way. I'm working on a project with Kevin right now for Dark Horse, for the Minor Threats universe that Pat Noswal and Jordan Blum have created. So that was the first time we kind of went, this is really good. Let's keep doing it. And the longer Keith and I did it, the looser it became, the more, you know, if Keith and I would discuss a story, then he'd go and do the plot and he'd change everything. And by the time I got the plot, I didn't. It was.

27:34
JM DeMatteis
Had no relation to what he first told me, and. And I was free to do the same thing with the script. And it just always worked it with Keith. It became like a mind meld. If I didn't even need. On some level, I could have. I could sit down and Write a Giffen DeMattea story right now. Because Keith lives in my head. Do you know, there's a certain space I would get into when we're working together. And it brought out a certain aspect of my personality and my writing that didn't come out otherwise. So, as I said before, kind of we came together to create something together that we couldn't really do individually.

28:09
Case
Yeah. And it created something that has stood the test of time. There's so many reprints of it. There's just wonderful stuff. Regarding the I Can't Believe It's Not Justice League era, whose decision was it to have Fire and Mary Marvel have. Have this sort of like, kind of like Sisterly bond in it or like.

28:27
JM DeMatteis
I think that came from Keith. That was there in the plot. Yeah, that was there in the plot. You know, the other funny thing about that formerly known as was we hadn't done it for 10 years. And my fear going in was, I don't know if you've ever seen these like, TV reunion movies where like, it's like 20 years after, you know, Andy of Mayberry or whatever, they get the whole cast back together and usually it's just awful. And that was my fear, is that were going to get together and it was just going to just fall apart and be like a terrible TV reunion movie. And I remember being maybe four or five pages in and realizing, oh, I'm having more fun than I ever had with this and this is just great. And it just took off from there.

29:02
JM DeMatteis
But it could have gone the other way.

29:05
Case
Well, as far as things that live rent free in people's heads, the scene of Mary Marvel beating up Captain Atom is always a scene that I'm going to remember just because I am a gigantic Shazam fanboy.

29:18
JM DeMatteis
Yeah, that's one of the things from the original Justice League because we had Captain Marvel in the original, in our original JLI issues and there was some rights thing that we couldn't keep him around for more than X number of issues, so we had to leave the book. But we could have. I would have kept him around forever because I love that split of the fact that he was played at that point in time he was in an adult body, but he was basically a kid. And we played him like a very innocent kid in this super body and he was great. To have someone like that playing off Guy Gardner was just perfect.

29:51
Case
Yeah, Captain White Bread, right?

29:52
JM DeMatteis
Yeah, Captain White Bread. Exactly. Exactly.

29:56
Case
So moving on or circling back to Marvel and I'm sorry for just jumping all over the place.

30:01
JM DeMatteis
No, no, it's okay. Jump wherever you want to jump.

30:03
Case
I want to talk about Maximum Carnage for a moment there because I think even though it's a Spider man book and not a Spider man or not a Superman thing, I think that the thesis of it, at least as far as I understand it really fills in like, is the archetype of that. We try to talk about a very optimistic one in the long run of it that a, that even in the face of like just truly vile evil, Spider man doesn't give in to being like a Punisher style vigilante in that moment.

30:35
JM DeMatteis
Right. Has, Right.

30:36
Case
It has this sort of like the. Where he comes through it all is.

30:43
JM DeMatteis
He.

30:44
Case
He truly is a hero at the end of the day, that he really defeats. He defeats Carnage and doesn't give up on his morals.

30:51
JM DeMatteis
Yeah.

30:51
Case
And I always thought that was such a great just distillation of the superhero on paper right there.

31:01
JM DeMatteis
And.

31:01
Case
And what. How much of that is. Is you. Because. Because there were a bunch of writers on Maximum Carnage. But I believe you wrote the last issue, right?

31:10
JM DeMatteis
I. It's been so long, I don't know, I couldn't tell you. I think maybe Tom DeFalco and I wrapped it up. I. I think I wrote maybe the last regular issue and then Tom did some. There was. Was there a Spider Man Quarterly or something where they wrapped the story up with a longer story? I. But you know, it was the 90s. I don't remember.

31:29
Case
It's been. It's been a little while for me too. But it stands out because like back, I mean 99. Okay. So again, part of this is child of the 80s and 90s. So like that is a comic book that's always just going to stick out for me. But it had, you know, a huge amount of cultural cachet. Like we often talk on the show about how things that spin off into other media often are remembered really well. It's one of the. And it had a video game that while not the most successful video game, I probably bought it just in terms of the amount of times I've rented it back in the day.

32:01
JM DeMatteis
And again, that's another story that's been reprinted again and again over the. The years. It. And actually they just put out. It's coming out I think next week. The Spectacular Spider man omnibus of my work with Sal Buscema. And it's got all our Maximum Carnage chapters in there as well.

32:16
Case
Fantastic.

32:17
JM DeMatteis
So, yeah, so yeah, I mean my favorite. My favorite thing in. In all of Maximum Carnage because I had some problems with it as well, which we don't have to get into. And it's the problem with a lot of these crossovers for one thing that they just go on too long, you know. But there is a scene where basically Spider Man's had the crap kicked out of him. And it's like, I think I can't remember whether it's like a 9 or a 12 panel grid of Spider man kind of crawling through the dirt. They're in Central Park. I think getting closer to the camera in the last panel, you see these boots. Then you open up to this beautiful Sal Busamet double page spread and it's Captain America reaching out a hand to Spider Man.

32:54
JM DeMatteis
And, you know, Captain America embodies all those things you talk about that are there in Superman. And that was sort of the turning point of the story when Captain America entered it, you know, because here's. Here's Peter. He's doing his best, and that's Peter's thing, you know, he'll always do his best, but he's flawed and he will screw up and things will go wrong, but he'll keep trying. And then Captain America is there as far as the embodiment of all those qualities, and Peter reaching out a hand to lift him up. And I purposely wrote it that way because Sal is one of the best Captain America artists ever in my book. So to get that double page spread of a sale, Captain America was just like, fantastic. It's one of my favorite Sal pages of all time.

33:32
Case
Fantastic. Yeah, I remember the panel, and it is truly just awesome stuff.

33:40
JM DeMatteis
Sal. Sal, phenomenal storyteller. And I think our work on Spectacular is. It was one of those things where, you know, I always say, you can't create just the way you can't create chemistry between two people. You meet somebody, you can't force that chemistry and force yourself to like them, even if they're the nicest person on the planet. You just have chemistry with someone or you don't. And it's the same thing with a writer and artist. You can have a great writer and a great artist, and you put them together on the page and it doesn't work. And with Sal on that run from the first page, first panel, something clicked and it was just fantastic working with him on that. We just. Same thing. You get into a mind meld and you just understand each other and you flow together.

34:20
JM DeMatteis
I love working with him. And I'm so happy. I've been waiting literally decades for them to finally collect this stuff. And I got advanced copies of this omnibus last week, and it's just beautiful. I'm so happy about it.

34:33
Case
That's so cool. I can't wait to see that in the store and pick that up.

34:36
JM DeMatteis
Yeah.

34:37
Case
Shifting from Maximum Carnage to maximum Clonage. Okay. I don't really have much to say about Maximum Clone. Talk about a run or a crossover that went on too long.

34:48
JM DeMatteis
Yes. And I put on my parachute and jumped out about, I don't know, a third of the way through.

34:54
Case
But I always appreciated that you have championed Ben Reilly, a character that I have.

34:57
JM DeMatteis
I love Ben. I mean, a lot of great, you know, the clone saga, actually, it's Funny, it did go on too long, but there was a lot. And it went on too long. Not because of the creators, but because the marketing said, this is a big hit. Keep it going. And kept going and going and going. And then when it came to the end, from what I gather from the folks that were working on at the time, you know, nobody in the position of power could agree on how they wanted it to end. So it was just a lot of. A lot of struggle there for them, the guys that working on the books at the time. But you had great characters like Ben Reilly and Kane. There was a lot of great stuff in those stories.

35:33
JM DeMatteis
And I got to do some of my favorite Spider man stories. I did a miniseries with Ben Reilly called the Lost Years.

35:38
Case
Yeah.

35:38
JM DeMatteis
Which I think is one of the best things I've ever done. I did Amazing Spider Man 400 with the death of Aunt May. I think one of the best Spider man stories I've ever done. There was a lot of great stuff in there. So whenever it was three years ago, when Marvel called and said, hey, do you want to do a story with Ben Reilly story set right in that moment when he took over the Spider man identity, I didn't. I didn't have to think about it because I. You get to know these characters in a very intimate way, to the point where, as crazy as it sounds, or if you're a writer, then it won't sound crazy to you. They're not characters, they're people.

36:11
JM DeMatteis
I've often said I know Peter Parker better than I know some of my friends because I know every thought in his head when I'm writing him. And the same way with Ben, I got to know Ben so well. So to write that series was like, oh, Ben Reilly, I haven't seen you in a few years. Let's sit down and have lunch and catch up, you know, and. And you get to know them again and all, you know, those friendships where you haven't seen somebody in five years and you start talking and instantaneously you pick up where you left off before. That's how it was with. With that Ben Reilly series. I just had a great time with it.

36:38
Case
Well, I just wanted to thank you for that as a giant Ben Reilly fan. When I saw the more recent Ben Reilly book that came out a couple of years ago, I was like, thank God. Snapping back into that era for the.

36:51
JM DeMatteis
Character was, yeah, I loved it. I loved it. And that we got to work in a little crack where we didn't know there were stories to be told that hadn't been told before. Marvel has done a bunch of these sort of retro stories in recent years, and I've done, I don't know, working on what may be my fourth Spider man miniseries in the past three or four years right now. But if you just do it as a nostalgia piece, it's useless. The story has to mean something. You know, just to go back. Let's go back to the old days and recapture that. You know, that's like, okay, I'll go listen to a record I liked when I was 12. That's not what you want. You want something fresh, some new insights into the character, some new depth. And that's what I've.

37:29
JM DeMatteis
I've tried to do. I did with that. With that Ben Reilly series and all the other minis that I've done since then. You want to go back? I did one called Shadow of the Green Goblin last year, and it took place within the first couple of weeks of Peter becoming Spider Man. And it's like, okay, let's really look at that. Let's see where Peter was. Let's see where Norman Osborn was. Let's see where Gwen and Harry and all these characters were, and show them in a light that maybe we haven't seen before. Because if you can't find something new to say, then you shouldn't be saying anything that.

38:00
Case
Yeah. Especially now with the availability of so much material just in the DC and the Marvel apps, for example, you can go back and read those books. I keep being astounded at the number of fans that I find online that are in their teens or 20s who are deeply invested in books from the 80s and 90s.

38:20
JM DeMatteis
Yeah. I'm always astonished. I was just at San Diego Comic Con for the first time since 2005. It was quite a trip. And I'm doing a signing, and these two girls come up, and they look like maybe at most they're 20 or 21, and they're dressed like Beetle and Booster from JLI, and they are completely into this stuff, you know, so obviously, you know, the whole new generations of fans are finding this older material and taking it to heart. It's. It's an amazing thing.

38:50
Case
Yeah. We should pause and just note that J. Mike is a gigantic Booster Gold fan.

38:54
JM DeMatteis
Yep.

38:55
Jmike
It was gonna come up. It was gonna come up. I was waiting for it.

38:58
Case
J Mike, I've been doing a lot of the talking. Do you have any Booster Gold questions or anything else you want to throw?

39:03
Jmike
Oh, my God. Well, I mean, because it's. The series is Coming up. Was that on the max soon, I hope. Super excited for it. But, like, what was it like? Like pinning the stories and coming up with ideas and stuff for that series. Plus, I see Dr. Fate behind you, too. He's also another one of my favorite characters.

39:19
JM DeMatteis
Yeah, they just collected my Dr. Fate run, just came out last month. And another one I've been waiting years for them to collect. You know, with the characters kind of going back to what I was saying about Ben Reilly, it's really about following the characters, you know, Keith and I didn't sit down and say, let's put Beetle and Booster together and kind of make them the Abbott and Costello in between. You know what I mean? If we had thought about it consciously, it probably wouldn't work. But there were a couple of scenes where they were together and Keith set up some really fun situations and I got them talking to each other and there was something there on the page that we hit it off. Yeah, exactly Right. They hit it off. So we followed that. They led us. We didn't lead them.

40:00
JM DeMatteis
You know, I, I, I, I, I, I hesitate to admit this, but before I worked on jli, I had no clue who Booster Gold even was. I knew the character existed. I'd never read the story, so I would follow Keith's lead in the plot. And, and we developed basically our version of Booster, you know, and I've never heard a negative word about it from Dan Jurgens. So God bless him for liking what we did, you know, because it's his character, that we wouldn't have been able to do anything without Dan Jurgens. Right. But the same thing, the characters let us through. And years later, maybe like, I don't know, 10 years ago, Keith and I did a run on the regular Booster Gold book and suddenly. What was the robot's name was? Skeets. Right.

40:40
Jmike
Yeah.

40:42
JM DeMatteis
The whole time were writing jli, Skeets was never there. Right. I didn't notice because I didn't even know who Skeets was, you know, so here we are, like, you know, 20 years later, and suddenly I'm writing, oh, who's this? Oh, he's been there since the beginning of the character. I didn't even know. Yeah, but it all seemed to work out. It all seemed to work out. And, you know, it's a great thing because, you know, when Booster Girl started out, he was a fairly, you know, he was a semi successful character, but he was certainly wasn't a big gun at dc. I think in jli, we elevated, we Elevated him. So he became more well known.

41:18
JM DeMatteis
And then Dan came back to the character and did great work with him, and Jeff Johns did great work with him, and suddenly he became a major character in the DC universe. So that's the fun thing about comics, too. That's one of the reasons why I think JLI worked and. And I like working with more obscure characters. When I did Defenders from Marvel, when I first started there, almost every character in the book. Book was a B or C level character, because then no editor is going to come marching into your editor's office and complain about what you're doing with that character, because nobody cares. You get to take these characters and make them their own. So in the beginning, although it was probably disappointing, I know Kevin McGuire talks about he got the Justice League gig.

41:55
JM DeMatteis
He thought he's gonna be writing, drawing Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Flash, all the classic characters. He didn't get any of them. You know, we had Batman. That was the only one we had.

42:04
Case
Well, he had a Green Lantern, and we had a.

42:07
JM DeMatteis
But not the Green Lantern. But it was the greatest gift they could have possibly given us because then we got to take these characters and make them our own, and no one cared. And Denny o', Neil, thank God, allowed us to have Batman and was. Was not upset with us at all by what we did with him, you know, but. But, you know, it would have been a very different book had we gotten all the A list characters, because basically all those A list characters were starring in their own books. They were very important, and we would have had every other editor breathing down our necks the whole time.

42:35
Case
Yeah. Now, why don't we shift actually into some Superman stuff since this is a Superman show. I wanted to thank you again. You've written so many things that I have huge emotional reactions to. Superman. Speeding Bullets is a book that I was obsessed with from a concept standpoint. But the first AD I saw for it, and when I understood that it was an Elseworld, where Superman landed at what the pitch was, where Superman lands in Bruce Wayne's or at the Wayne Manor and is adopted. And so Bruce Wayne is never born. And thus Superman grows up as Batman. Yeah.

43:12
JM DeMatteis
Yeah.

43:13
Case
1. I just want to thank you for it because, like, I even have video of me at, like, 9 talking to my friends, like a home video. And I'm just like. Because I'm a little, like, neurospicy little boy being like. I just wouldn't shut up about comic books. So I was talking about, like, oh, man. I like, I can't wait to get this one comic. It's so cool. It's such a great premise. Like, and just like gushing about this thing in a home video, like a home movie, where it's supposed to be just like. And so forth. But how did that idea come up? Because that's. It's such a cool. A cool.

43:43
JM DeMatteis
You know, I think I was just pitching Elseworld's ideas and it just seemed really obvious. I found out like 25 years later that they had done some little story years before, like what they used to call imaginary tales, you know?

43:56
Case
Right. Yeah.

43:56
JM DeMatteis
With a similar premise. I had never read it and I just thought that's like the coolest idea to merge these two characters and see what would happen to. Because it's. It's a test of Superman's essential nature. Right. All the things you're talking about, who Superman is, to put him through this terrible trauma, to have him become this dark character. And, and really with my feeling with Superman is no matter how much you try to twist him that way, he'll always bounce back to his essential nature. Which is why by the end of that story, he's Superman.

44:27
Case
Right.

44:27
JM DeMatteis
He's not Batman anymore. Because that's not who he is. Even with the trauma of witnessing his parents death and all the things that he went through, his essential nature is vastly different. And he will always. He will always be Superman in the end.

44:42
Case
Yeah, that's. Even though in the story itself, Lois's. Lois Lane is like. I can't imagine any other scenario creating Superman.

44:50
JM DeMatteis
Right, right, exactly. You know, it's funny, around the same time I pitch them an idea that they turned down and I understand why. That I thought would have been really interesting, which was what if the rocket landed in the deep SM Deep south and it was found by a KKK family and Superman had been raised.

45:08
Case
I understand why they didn't.

45:10
JM DeMatteis
Now in the end, again, his nature would have restored itself and he would have taken them on, you know. But I understand why they rejected it.

45:17
Case
Superman smashes the clan from within.

45:20
JM DeMatteis
Exactly. Exactly. You know, I guess you don't want to. A white hooded character with an S on his chest would have been a bad look. No. Yeah.

45:28
Case
Although it would have been a cool story. Yes. Although the episode we're recording tomorrow is on supreme, the Return and Alan Moore did do a Confederate flag version of the character.

45:37
JM DeMatteis
Oh, really? Okay, well, there you go. There you go. Yeah. Speeding pulse was. It was a lot of fun. It was one of those stories that just kind of flowed out and was. And Eduardo Barreto did the art and just did a. A beautiful job with the art. And last year, McFarlane Toys put out a speeding bullet Batman figure, which is sitting over there in my office, which is great.

45:57
Case
Yeah, I love the sort of fused design of the character. Like a little bit of the Pentagon shape to the bat symbol and all that very cool stuff. So actually, this brings up a question I have. So the 90s seemed to be the era of Elseworlds. Was there, like a general call for Elseworld submission concepts? Like, it just, like the idea rolled out. There was that one year where the annuals were all Elseworlds, and then it just seemed like there were just a ton of Elseworlds. And then. Then it kind of died off around, like the 2000s. Was there not. I guess, not the 2000, I guess, like, closer to 2010. Was. Was there, like a call for writers to submit those kind of things? Like, how did that process work?

46:35
JM DeMatteis
You know, I honestly don't remember. I. All I remember is that I had the idea and I pitched it. You know, it wasn't like someone said, oh, do you want to do an Elseworlds? Or it could be that they did. It was a long time ago. But my memory is that I just. I had, oh, what a cool idea. Idea. Let me pitch this. And they said, sure, let's do it. And off went. You know, the funny thing is, so. So maybe the else worlds died off, but then what came in is all this, you know, multiverse parallel universe stuff, which is all basically Elseworlds. Let's go to this universe and see this version of the characters. Let's go to that universe to the point where it's been done to death.

47:03
JM DeMatteis
I think at this point, I. I think we need to take a breath and lock up the multiverse for a while, you know, because it's been in, like, every comic book and every TV show and every movie a hundred times over now.

47:14
Case
Yeah. And even when it's you as well, like in your Justice League Unlimited comic run that happened recently, where we had like, the wonderful moment of the two Supermen meeting each other and just like.

47:22
JM DeMatteis
Yeah.

47:22
Case
Immediately vibing. Because it's just like, oh, yeah, you're Superman.

47:27
JM DeMatteis
I'm Superman. Right, exactly.

47:28
Case
Exactly.

47:29
JM DeMatteis
Yeah. That was. That was really fun to return to Justice League Unlimited and. And it was. It was great. I keep hoping that they're going to revive that show and. And bring it back because it was such a. Same thing. When you talk about, you know, when. When that show was coming out, it was popular, but I've seen in the years since, it's taken on this. This glow. You know, people really look at that show as, like, a peak of Justice League storytelling. And I think it's one of the best versions of the Justice League in any medium, Comics, movies, whatever. And it's not because of me. It's because of the, you know, Bruce Timm and all those guys working on that show. I would love to see it come back. We were. We were secretly hoping that.

48:04
JM DeMatteis
That maybe that miniseries would be a door in and they would adapt that. You know, it would be a great story for a revival of that show. Despite the fact that I just said, I'm sick of the multiverse, I'll write that story.

48:16
Jmike
Oh, man, if the JLU came back, that'd be amazing.

48:19
Case
Yeah, yeah. That's definitely a soft spot for a lot of people, but my age and younger who grew up on that show.

48:27
JM DeMatteis
And speaking of Superman, my first episode of that show was for the man.

48:30
Case
Who Has Everything, which is just a fantastic episode.

48:36
Jmike
Oh, man.

48:38
Case
So here's a question going, like, down the barrel of Superman stuff. When you're writing Superman, like, the way you say, you know Peter Parker better than, you know, some of your friends, like, how. Like, how in the head of Superman do you get. And like, what. What is sort of your writing process for a character like that?

48:53
JM DeMatteis
It's interesting as you say that, and I never thought about this before, so you'll get answer I never gave before. With Superman, I'm thinking, I'm not in his head. I'm in his heart. It's. It's a different quality. There is some essence of Superman that I think we all intuitively understand, and. And it's to be found in the heart. That's one of the things I loved about the James Gunn movie. I just. It really. It got the heart of Superman.

49:18
Jmike
Yes.

49:18
JM DeMatteis
It really got it just. Just right. Because I'm thinking of working on that Justice League Unlimited series, which. Which ended up being called Justice League Infinity, where I think, in retrospect, we just should have called it Justice League Unlimited Phase 2 or something. And there's a scene where he's in one of these parallel worlds, and it's basically a bunch of Neo Nazis in the park, you know, and. And it's like Charlottesville was a chart, you know, with all the torches and the whole thing. And. And his first response is he gets really upset and then instantly thinks about something his father said to him about, you know, the struggles that people go through and what brings them to these moments in their lives and reaches out to them with compassion and that.

50:00
JM DeMatteis
First of all, I think that's my favorite Superman scene that I've ever written anywhere. But it also is the essence of the character. You know, he's not. His first instinct is not to punch you in the face or drop a building on your head. His first instinct is to find that door in. Because he is some characters. You know, Peter Parker is an inherently decent person, but he has a lot of flaws, and he's a. He screws up and he has to pick himself up again. I think for Superman, he's inherently so decent that it just comes natural to him. You know, it's just. It's just baked in there. I think the problem. The hardest part with Superman is to keep him human and not just have him be a symbol, because he is a symbol.

50:41
JM DeMatteis
I. I feel like periodically, you know, down through. Through history, we. Our collective unconscious as a species, we create these symbols that we need. Whether in the old days, you know, it might have been the gods that people dreamed up, you know, And I think collectively, we all needed to dream Superman, to dream. Sort of the best of us rising up out of our collective unconscious. This symbol that. That means that you can go all around the world. Even people that have never read a comic book will see that. S. They know what it is. They know what it means. And the. The challenge is to also remember that he's human. And I think that's what James Gunn got really nailed so well in that movie. He was all the things we love about Superman, but he also was. Was his.

51:28
JM DeMatteis
Was human, you know, and he makes that speech at the end. He said, that's my greatest gift, is my humanity. And I always said that, you know, Superman's greatest power, you know, isn't that he can, you know, punch you and knock you across the world. His greatest power is his inherent decency. And also, I think, especially in the movie versions, his other greatest power is that he's so damn charming. You think about Christopher Reeve, you don't remember that he's, like, got all these powers. It's just he's so charming and decent, you know, and his charm is a very important part of what the character is. Now all these things evolve, you know, every decade gets a slightly different Superman. And if you look at the early. The early Superman stories, he was more like a rough and tough, you know.

52:11
JM DeMatteis
James Cagney, 1940 kind of character, but he was still fighting for the right things. My favorite Superman story probably of all time is the one, and I'm going to get the details wrong, but. But he was really upset that there were all these slums in Metropolis and. And. And. And he was still sort of viewed as an outlaw. So he gets the army after he clears out the slum so there's no people there. He gets the army to chase him into these slums, and they're like, dropping bombs on him. So they completely destroy the Metropolis slums so that they have to come and build new housing for these people. Now, I don't think logically that would really work that way, but what a great story. What an essence of that version of Superman is. Like, I want to help these.

52:48
JM DeMatteis
These poorest of the poor, the most oppressed of the oppressed, and I'm going to get these idiots in authority to destroy this so they can build new housing for these guys, you know?

52:56
Case
Yeah, I remember that story. It is. Yeah. I remember thinking, logistically, that's not how it would go, but.

53:02
JM DeMatteis
Right, right. But you know, you buy into the fantasy. You know, you buy into the fantasy and it's. But it spoke to the essence of what the character was at that time.

53:09
Case
Yeah, no, it's the sort of revolutionary figure of Superman in his earliest incarnation. And then, of course, we. He transforms, like you said, every decade we get a different Superman. He becomes more of a law and order figure. Especially when the comics code, like, really, like, came into play. And then. And now I feel like we are getting back into that more revolutionary type character. I think, especially starting with, like, Grant Morrison's new 52, that. That I think, like, really, like, galvanized people into. To sort of seeing the character again.

53:37
JM DeMatteis
Right. And the whole theme of the James Gunn movie, which is that, you know, we live in a. You know, once upon a time, to be the good and decent guy was corny. But in a time like this where we're dealing with a world where people seem to revere arrogance and cruelty and stupidity, to be the decent guy is the outsider. To be, as they say in the movie, be the guy. That's the punk rock stance, you know, to be. To be decent, to be moral, to treat people with kindness and compassion, that's the revolutionary stance, you know, and. And that's the essence of all the best of these characters. I think Superman embodies it. Captain America embodies it. Peter Parker embodies it in his way. Peter Parker, I think, is more relatable than Superman, you know, Superman is always.

54:20
JM DeMatteis
No matter how we try, he's a little bit up there. Peter is right on our level, you know, he's right here with us. But we need Superman. We need that symbol. It's really important. I feel like, you know, maybe 10,000 years ago, we dreamed some other thing, some other essence of some being that symbolized that for us, you know, but now this is what it is. It's Superman. And maybe, you know, 500 years from now, there'll be something else that embodies that thing. But it's almost, it's. It's almost as if it's the same when I say God, lower G. God, you know, he just comes in different forms, and we. Or we project different forms onto him. But, but we need that symbol in our lives, and we need Superman.

55:02
JM DeMatteis
We need what that means to all of us, not just individually as comic book fans, but collectively as a culture.

55:08
Jmike
Yeah.

55:08
Case
Like, we need a moral paragon for us to actually look to.

55:11
JM DeMatteis
Exactly. And, and right now, certainly when we look to our authority figures, it's really hard to find anyone that could come even within 10,000 miles of that, you know.

55:20
Jmike
Yep, yep. Yeah.

55:23
Case
Oh, the world. The world. The world is what it is.

55:27
JM DeMatteis
Yes, it is. And it will change. I, I, I like Superman. I am, I am an optimist. I'm an idealist. And I believe that as at, as ugly as things seem right now, things will change.

55:40
Case
Well, that's an optimistic stance, and one that I hope is true.

55:45
Jmike
Yeah.

55:45
JM DeMatteis
And, well, that's the other essence of Superman and it's the essence of Peter Parker and all these characters is hope. You know, as a writer, I'm more than willing to dive deep into the darkness and crawl through that dark tunnel filled with broken glass. But I don't want to leave my readers there in the tunnel with the broken glass. I want to come out of the tunnel and back into the light. Light, which is what, for all its flaws, what Maximum Carnage was about as well, you know, because that's how. That's what I believe about life in general, and that's what I want to communicate. I don't want to leave people in a place where they, you know, the feeling of life sucks and it's just miserable, and it's all we can do to survive.

56:22
JM DeMatteis
I don't believe that there is more to our lives than that, and I want my stories to communicate that.

56:27
Case
Yeah, that, and I feel like you've done a really good job in having those elements of your stories. Come, come through like it's always been. I don't want to say everything you've ever written has been uplifting, but like there's always an optimistic beat to it.

56:41
JM DeMatteis
Yeah.

56:42
Case
And I've always appreciated that. Looking back on your career, what is the work that you're the most proud of?

56:48
JM DeMatteis
Frankly, you know, when you've been doing something for like 40 plus years, it's hard to. I did something on my website a while back where I listed like 10 or 15 things that are my favorite things that I've ever done. And if anyone wants to dig around on my website, they can find it if I was going to pick my absolute favorite things. And again, my favorite thing doesn't necessarily mean it's the audience's favorite thing. It doesn't even necessarily. It means it's that it's the best thing, but it's the things that mean the most to me that I feel encapsulated. What I try to do. One is Moonshadow that I did with John J. Muth, which is my first creator owned series, which Dark Horse just put out a new edition back in May, which I'm beautiful edition.

57:28
JM DeMatteis
Another is Brooklyn Dreams, which is my autobiographical graphic novel that I did with a wonderful artist named Glenn Barr. And the third one is one that most people have probably never heard of, which is called Abadazade, which was a fantasy series I did for Cross Gen, if anyone remembers CrossGen.

57:44
Case
I remember CrossGen and by the time.

57:46
JM DeMatteis
The ink was dry on the contracts, Crossgen was already sinking into a swamp of bankruptcy. We didn't know it at the time, so we got through three, we wrote four issues. I did, I worked with an amazing artist, Mike Plug, one of the best artists ever work in comics. We did four issues. By the third issue, the company was gone. Long story short, Disney came along and bought Cross Gen in order to get a Batizade. We did. We turned it into a book series that was half prose and half comics. And the same thing happened. We did four books and by the third book they pulled the plug on the series.

58:19
JM DeMatteis
So one of the reasons why it means so much to me is A, it's one of the best things I've ever written, but B, they just truncated it and stopped it before I could finish the story. So there's a part of me inside that is still like just waiting to.

58:31
Case
Explode with that because I never got.

58:32
JM DeMatteis
To finish the story. I actually wrote a novel that came out I guess 2010 called Imaginalis, which was born out of the. The grief of not getting to finish that story. So those three are really special to me. But my work with Keith is really special to me. I look at that. All of a piece. My work on Spider man, all of a piece, and so many other different projects that I've done. You know, I've been lucky enough to work with some of the best artists in the business and. And just do projects that are really deeply meaningful to me. All my stuff for Vertigo, so many things. So, I mean, we could just talk about my favorites for an hour. Yeah, but those three are probably the top of the list.

59:09
JM DeMatteis
And right now, I have to say, working on this demultiverse project where I'm launching all these new series at once with all, you know, all these different wonderful artists, has just been one of the creative highlights of my whole career.

59:22
Case
Yeah, I've been happy to be able to back the Kickstarter on that.

59:26
JM DeMatteis
Oh, so that's. God bless you. You know, the Kickstarter thing is really interesting because it, like, you know, the wall between creator and audience is gone. So every single person that backs that Kickstarter is really important. So when I say God bless you, I really mean it.

59:39
Case
You know, how is shifting from working in, like, traditional publishing to something like a Kickstarter kind of format?

59:47
JM DeMatteis
It's exhilarating, and it's also really hard work. Luckily, I had a partner in this, my friend David Baldy, who was TV writer and producer and with a lot of experience and also with a business mind that I do not have. So I don't think I could have done this Kickstarter on my own because there's a lot of work that goes into it. Not to mention the month that the Kickstarter is running when you have to basically drop all shame and flog mercilessly on social media. Because what I learned was, you know, I think I'm just being so shameless and just, oh, I can't. Can I post again about this thing? And then a month goes by, you know, when it's all over and someone says, oh, you had a Kickstarter? I didn't know that. You know, there's a lot of work that goes into.

01:00:26
JM DeMatteis
The creative part of it is just pure joy. I mean, I worked with so many great artists on this project and it was just fun. And David has been a great partner and. And a great creative voice to bounce off of. But, you know, there's a lot of other work that goes into a Kickstarter, but it's Yours, you know what I mean? It's you and the audience going on this journey together with nobody else in between. And that's very exciting.

01:00:47
Case
On that note, do. What is the timetable for the next wave of things? Like what have you got coming up?

01:00:54
JM DeMatteis
Yeah.

01:00:55
Case
That people should be.

01:00:55
JM DeMatteis
Oh, just what I'm working on.

01:00:57
Case
Well, specifically Kickstarter, but moving on to like right from there.

01:01:00
JM DeMatteis
We don't have a definite timeline for the next round of the Multiverse books, but there will be. There will be the next round of Demtiverse books and I'm very excited to plunge back into that other work. I've got a Spider man miniseries coming out next month, Spider Man 94, which is kind of like the Justice League Unlimited series. It's the, it's the next season of the. The 1990s Spider man animated series. Yeah. So that's. That's been a lot of fun. I know there's other things and I'm blanking on them. I just finished a novel that will be out. I've. The past few years I've been working with the company called Neotex and I did two novellas for them, one called the Excavator, one called the Witness that I think are absolutely two of the best things I've ever written.

01:01:39
JM DeMatteis
And it's been great to get back to writing prose again. And so my latest novella grew into a novel. It's called Dark Future. I really think this is one of the best things I've ever done and that should be out either by the end of the year, early next year. So I'm trying to think the De Multiverse, the novel, Spider Man. I. Oh, and I've been working for the animated Batman Caped Crusader show. The second season should be coming along soon. I have an episode there and hopefully there will be more to come for that show. It's been really fun. You know, obviously I've done a lot of animation work over the past 20 plus years or so and this is a lot of the same folks that worked on Batman the Animated Series, but it's another reimagining.

01:02:20
JM DeMatteis
It's sort of Batman as 1940s film noir. And I don't know if you saw the first season on when it came out on Amazon last year. If you haven't, check it out. It's a really fun show and they just build on that with the second season. And so, yeah, so there's always, you know, it's always, you know, so for me to be working on a book, to be working on animated project, working on comical projects for those classic characters. Working on my own characters. I like to bounce back and forth between these things that. That's the reason why I still do it after all this time because it's still challenging and it's still fun and I keep it diverse.

01:02:54
Case
Well, on that note, I don't want to. We've been an hour. I don't want to keep you too long.

01:03:00
JM DeMatteis
If you have like one or two final questions. I'm happy to wrap up that way. Or if you're done.

01:03:04
Case
Well, no, I just wanted to. As the Superman movie did. Thank you. Give your website. Where should people find the stuff that you're working on?

01:03:16
JM DeMatteis
Website is JMD. Did I just mispronounce my own name? JFD Matthias.com I'm on Blue Sky a lot. I have. I am not on Twitter X anymore. I have dumped that. You can find me on Facebook as well and a little bit of smattering on threads, but mostly on. On, on Blue sky and my website. So you can always find me there.

01:03:40
Case
That's. That's so wonderful. J Mike, do you have any last minute questions for JM before we go?

01:03:46
Jmike
Thank you for making Booster Gold so awesome.

01:03:50
JM DeMatteis
You're very welcome.

01:03:51
Case
The relationship between Booster and Blue Beetle is definitely a thing that has sealed the character in many of our hearts.

01:03:58
JM DeMatteis
Yeah. Yeah. No, I love those guys. Same thing. They're not characters to me. I know those guys. I love those guys. I would hang out with them on a Saturday night. There are certain characters you can enjoy, but I don't think I would want to hang out with Bruce Wayne on a Saturday night. I don't want to be hanging out with. With Reed Richards on a Saturday night. Beetle and Booster. Absolutely. Absolutely.

01:04:19
Jmike
You know, yeah, I used to work with kids not too long ago and like what's a good character? I'm like, well, let me tell you about Booster Golden. You'll love him.

01:04:28
JM DeMatteis
That's great. That's great.

01:04:31
Case
So yeah, thank you again. We. We have our own plugs to get into. J Mike, where can people find you and follow you?

01:04:37
Jmike
Oh, I am also not on the X anymore. I am on Bluesky at J5 Bluesky Social. I'm there. I occasionally respond to Case and his questions and things sometimes. And we're also in the Discord.

01:04:49
Case
Yeah, the Discord is a great place to find us the certain POV Discord. You can find a link to that in the show notes for this episode or on our website certainpov.com as for me, you can find me on the Discord, you can find me on the Blueski at Case Aiken, you can find me on Instagram where I'm holding on to dear Life to my AIM screen name from high school, which is Quetzalcoatl5Q u e t z l c o a t l 5 because I was pretentious in high school as well.

01:05:15
Jmike
Got that down packed.

01:05:17
JM DeMatteis
Weren't we all? Weren't we all?

01:05:20
Case
We also have some people to thank in addition to jm, who is wonderful for being here. But we have a Patreon running now and that has been going really well. So if you want to come and support the show and keep the lights on here, check us out@patreon.com cpovmedia but in the meantime, we have our executive producers to thank and that is Micah McCaw, Carter Howlett, Sean Muir, Lee Greger, Memento Young, Logan Crowley, Joe Mastropiero, Casey and Nancy Aiken, Adam Santer and Keith Letinen. If you want to be an awesome person like them and sign up, we would really appreciate it. We're putting out advanced clips of the episodes before they or before each episode drops. I'm doing two essays a week, one on a nerdy topic of my choice and another one on a D and D related thing.

01:06:06
Case
So those are all fun things to check out. And we're continuing to develop more stuff for people on the Patreon, so that would be really cool to check out. You should also check out our YouTube channel if you're not watching this on YouTube right now, because that has been going really strong. It's, it's grown exponentially in the last couple of weeks. We are really hitting it off in really great ways and very excited to do new content there. So check that out. That's also certain POV media on YouTube. Check all of that out. JM thank you again for coming on. This has been a wonderful time talking with you.

01:06:40
JM DeMatteis
Oh, my pleasure. My pleasure.

01:06:42
Case
And listeners, until next time, stay super man.

01:06:53
Jmike
Men of Steel is a certain POV production. Our hosts are J. Mike Full and Case Aiken. The show is edited by Sofia Ricciardi. Our logo is by Chris Bautista and episode art is by Case Aiken. Our theme is by Jeff Moonan.

01:07:14
Case
Do you have a comic book you just can't stop thinking about? One that stuck with you years later on Trade school, guest hosts get the mic to talk about a graphic novel that changed the way they see the world or just made them fall in love with comics. All over again. In just five to 15 minutes, you'll hear stories about the stories that real people love the most. Trade School a short form ongoing series about the comic book trade paperbacks we love and why we love them. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. CPOV certainpov.com.