I Thought You'd Never Ask: Ron Marz

I'm back with another installment of "I Thought You'd Never Ask." No introduction this time, but if you missed the inaugural edition of this column with Phil Hester, I highly recommend checking it out.

This week's victim is one of my closest friends in the business and probably the creator most associated with Top Cow after Marc Silvestri and Michael Turner - Ron Marz. Ron is a model of the hard working writer, a real professional with true integrity, and one of the more collaborative writers I've had the pleasure of working with. He's also worked on virtually every major character from Marvel and DC including long runs on Green Lantern, Silver Surfer, and Top Cow's title Witchblade (which I publish). He was one of the principal writers behind Crossgen, including my favorite Crossgen title Sojourn and also co-created Samurai: Heaven and Earth at Dark Horse Comics with artist Luke Ross as well as Dragon Prince with Lee Moder. You can actually get two Witchblade trades written by Ron free from our friends at InStockTrades.com or read an issue free online HERE. His latest issue, Witchblade #134 will be in stores next Wednesday, January 20th and you can check out a preview HERE. You can also find him on Twitter, dropping knowledge bombs on the internet, @ronmarz. Lastly, and this is important, Ron Marz appreciates a good mojito and that makes him a stand up fellow in my book of drinking buddies.

Filip Sablik: From our conversations I know you are almost as enthusiastic about music and sports as you are about comics. How does music play into your writing? Do you put on specific music to suit the story as you are writing or let the music influence what you write?

 

Ron Marz: I always listen to music when I'm working. Silence distracts me, as weird as that sounds. My tastes are pretty eclectic, so I could go from Nine Inch Nails to Mozart to Johnny Cash to Dylan to Springsteen to Modest Mouse. I'm not really into rap or what passes for country music and pop music these days, but that's about it. What I listen to at a particular time really has more to do with the mood I'm in, rather than a specific mood I'm looking for in the story. This morning's playlist was Paul Westerberg, Neko Case, the soundtrack from "Once" and an Indian music sampler, while I was writing a gun battle. For me, it's really more about shutting out the outside world. The music works as a cocoon, so my head is fully into the story.

 

FS: Do you usually listen to albums straight through from beginning to end or just shuffle around songs on playlists? And if you could name one band from the last decade that's under-rated and more people should be listening to, who would it be?

 

RM: I do both, depending on my mood. My favorite band right now is The Gaslight Anthem. It's a Jersey band, so they're telling the same kind of blue-collar stories you might get from Springsteen, especially the stuff on "Born to Run" and "Darkness on the Edge of Town," but it's a little more raw. It's like Springsteen and Petty had a love child, and the Ramones and the Clash are the seedy uncles that hang around. A lot of the songs are stories, with characters who are very real and identifiable. That kind of stuff provides inspiration for me. It might not be the same kind of story I'm writing, but there's an emotional resonance. The stories touch you. And that's what I'm trying to do. That's what any storyteller is trying to do, touch the audience in some way.

 

FS: Huh, hadn't heard of those guys yet. I'll have to check them out. You rarely lead me astray. Switching gears a bit, how would you describe your process when you approach writing a new story? Are you a plot driven writer or do you tend to create stories more organically by letting the characters lead you? Do you start with a big picture arc and work in, or start with a single scene and build out from there?

 

RM: I usually have an outline, something I've written previously that gives a brief sense of what's going to happen in an issue. Just a paragraph or so per issue. That's really written for the editor ... uh, YOU most of the time ... for approval, but it's a starting point. When I start the script for an issue, I almost always have at least one scene in my head pretty concretely. Very often it's the opening scene, sometimes it's the closing scene, more rarely something in between. Sometimes it's even just an image that I know I want to have in the issue. I build from there.

 

Comic storytelling is really an exercise in fitting your story into the available space, in both the macro and micro sense. Your overall story has to fit into the 22 pages of a standard comic, or whatever page count you're working with. That's the macro. The micro is the individual page, how much information you put on each page, how you plan the page turns so they pull the reader through the story. So the pacing of the storytelling is paramount.

 

The method that works best for me is to break down the overall story into individual pages, just a line or two of what happens on each page, to get the pacing right. Once I'm happy with that, I break down each page into panels. This is where the story can start to write itself, and go off in directions I hadn't planned. Sometimes you just have to hang on and see where it takes you, revising as you go. Once the breakdowns are done, I plug in some first-draft dialogue, so the artist has directions for what to draw, as well as who's going to be speaking. Then once the art is drawn, I go back in and do a second draft of the dialogue for lettering. So I guess I start with the big-picture stuff, and by the time we're getting ready to send the issue to press, I'm fretting over literally a word here or there.

 

 

 

FS: Another thing you are kind of known for is sharing your personality and opinions with your fans. Recently on Twitter you addressed the issue of illegal downloading of entertainment and specifically comics. It's clear you have a very defined outlook on this problem. Do you think it's something as an industry we can stop or even reduce or is it a matter of the toothpaste being out of the tube and we have to figure out a way to work around it?

 

RM: Obviously you can't ever stop it, because for some people, having no real possibility of getting caught is an excuse to do something they shouldn't be doing. But I do think it can be reduced, both by making it clear that it hurts publishers and creators, and also by eventually making as much content as possible available legally.

 

To me, the chief culprits, or "assholes" as we refer to them in my house, are the guys scanning the comics and uploading them. They're the real thieves, because they're distributing something they have no right to distribute. They're taking someone else's property and giving it away to an unlimited number of people. The audience who downloads that content is party to the theft. Whether it's comics, music or movies, it's a dick thing to do. I guess I'm fairly militant about it because this is how I make my living, this is how I feed my family. Publishers pay me to write stories, the publishers print those stories to make a profit and stay in business. If the audience is going to steal those stories rather than pay for them, the publisher doesn't stay in business, and I don't feed my family. Eventually, the whole thing breaks down. The internet is a great tool to reach the audience, but the owner/creator of the material has to be the one who decides how to distribute it, whether it's going to be free.

 

I don't think it's a complex question. It's a very simple moral/ethical choice. If something is not yours, you shouldn't take it. Just because you CAN do something isn't reason TO do something. I've heard all the arguments, like comics are too expensive, and downloading will force publishers to offer more online content, or "I have to do it to keep up with all the storylines." That's all just bullshit that translates into "I want it," which is not a valid reason. A 2-year-old who wants something just takes it, because a 2-year-old doesn't know better. But we're all supposed to learn the "if it's not yours, don't take it" lesson in kindergarten. "I want it" doesn't mean shit. I want January Jones to serve me Bananas Foster while wearing a French maid outfit, but that ain't gonna happen either.

 

The vast majority of people would never walk into a comic store, grab a stack of books, and walk out with them. Very obviously, that's stealing, and you'd get busted for it. But some of those same people don't hesitate to download a stack of books that are being distributed illegally. And we're talking mostly about superhero comics, because that's what the U.S. market depends upon. Superheroes are about the good guys doing what's right. And yet a bunch of people illegally download their adventures. "Blackest Night," based around the Green Lantern mythology, is huge for DC right now. Green Lantern is all about the hero's willpower. And yet people who are downloading it don't have the willpower to pay for the content instead of steal it. The irony would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

 

 
FS: What's the one question you've always wanted an interviewer to ask, but you've never been asked?

 

RM: I don't think I've ever been asked if I wanted a raise. Did you want to be the first?

FS: Um, no. No, I don't think Matt Hawkins (my boss) would be too happy about that one. Plus I'm pretty sure I know the answer to that one...

Filip Sablik is the Publisher of Top Cow Productions, Inc. He’s been in the business for nine years and just officially entered his thirties. Occasionally, he does a bit of writing and drawing. He loves comics.
Top Cow Productions, Inc. was founded by Marc Silvestri, co-founder of Image Comics. Top Cow currently publishes its line of comic books in 21 languages in over 55 different countries. The company has launched 20 franchises (18 original and two licensed) in the industry’s Top 10, seven at #1, a feat accomplished by no other publisher in the last two decades.