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AA: In your career you've written comics, screenplays, and television episodes. Where do you see yourself going next? What excites you as the next stage in your writing?
BKV: I love working with actors and musicians and what have you too much to ever leave movies or TV. Still, I like to think I’ll always be a comics writer who sometimes works in film and television, and not the other way around.
AA: What has been your favorite medium to work in so far?
Why?
BKV: They all have advantages and disadvantages. It depends on what kind of story you want to tell. I love all kinds of writing, whether it's books for children or radio dramas. Not a huge fan of beat poetry, but never say never.
AA: In an interview I read, you stated that you prefer doing creator owned work. Has that held true working on Lost? How so?
BKV: I love writing creator-owned comics, but only after I spent five or six years using other people's characters to learn how to be a writer. I think you have to earn the right to tell your own stories in any medium, and if you're going to be an apprentice somewhere, why not start at the top with Lost, where I have the privilege of being the least talented guy in a room of amazingly gifted writers.
AA: I read about some of your early work on Marvel, where you would write the dialogue for a comic that someone else had already drawn, basically fixing mistakes or taking over from someone who was fired from or had left a job. Has any of your work on LOST paralleled this kind of process?
Meaning, have you ever felt that you have been just writing the dialogue to someone else's story? How is writing for LOST different? (Please don't take this as me saying you should do more comics and less TV, I just thought the parallel was interesting. I know I would jump at the chance to write for a series like LOST.)
BKV: No, there's almost no comparison between comics and television, and certainly no comparison between being a 19-year-old kid racing out dialogue for an overdue issue of Ka-Zar and being a writer/co-producer contributing stories to a hit show that values great ideas from any and all members of its creative family.
AA: What is your next comic project going to be? Or at the very least, when do you expect us to be able to see it?
BKV: I love serialized storytelling, so I’d definitely like to write another ongoing series, but probably not until after Tony Harris and I have wrapped Ex Machina… which is still going strong for you displaced Y readers looking for something new to read.
For now, I’d like to try to get a few more original graphic novels off the ground, since many of the new ideas I happen to be passionate about right now are more self-contained.
And since the strike started, I've actually been developing a few new things. One is a movie, one is a prose novel, one is a television thing, and one is a graphic novel… really more like three graphic novels. They're all in various stages of development, and some may never see the light of day, but I'm really excited about all of them.
In nothing else, forcing myself to work in other mediums that I don't really understand or feel comfortable in yet has always pushed me to be a better comics writer.
Thanks for the great questions,
BKV
Thanks Brian and good luck in your future endeavors.
Be sure to check out Y: The Last Man's final issue which is due out January 30th.
AA: In your career you've written comics, screenplays, and television episodes. Where do you see yourself going next? What excites you as the next stage in your writing?
BKV: I love working with actors and musicians and what have you too much to ever leave movies or TV. Still, I like to think I’ll always be a comics writer who sometimes works in film and television, and not the other way around.
AA: What has been your favorite medium to work in so far?
Why?
BKV: They all have advantages and disadvantages. It depends on what kind of story you want to tell. I love all kinds of writing, whether it's books for children or radio dramas. Not a huge fan of beat poetry, but never say never.
AA: In an interview I read, you stated that you prefer doing creator owned work. Has that held true working on Lost? How so?
BKV: I love writing creator-owned comics, but only after I spent five or six years using other people's characters to learn how to be a writer. I think you have to earn the right to tell your own stories in any medium, and if you're going to be an apprentice somewhere, why not start at the top with Lost, where I have the privilege of being the least talented guy in a room of amazingly gifted writers.
AA: I read about some of your early work on Marvel, where you would write the dialogue for a comic that someone else had already drawn, basically fixing mistakes or taking over from someone who was fired from or had left a job. Has any of your work on LOST paralleled this kind of process?
Meaning, have you ever felt that you have been just writing the dialogue to someone else's story? How is writing for LOST different? (Please don't take this as me saying you should do more comics and less TV, I just thought the parallel was interesting. I know I would jump at the chance to write for a series like LOST.)
BKV: No, there's almost no comparison between comics and television, and certainly no comparison between being a 19-year-old kid racing out dialogue for an overdue issue of Ka-Zar and being a writer/co-producer contributing stories to a hit show that values great ideas from any and all members of its creative family.
AA: What is your next comic project going to be? Or at the very least, when do you expect us to be able to see it?
BKV: I love serialized storytelling, so I’d definitely like to write another ongoing series, but probably not until after Tony Harris and I have wrapped Ex Machina… which is still going strong for you displaced Y readers looking for something new to read.
For now, I’d like to try to get a few more original graphic novels off the ground, since many of the new ideas I happen to be passionate about right now are more self-contained.
And since the strike started, I've actually been developing a few new things. One is a movie, one is a prose novel, one is a television thing, and one is a graphic novel… really more like three graphic novels. They're all in various stages of development, and some may never see the light of day, but I'm really excited about all of them.
In nothing else, forcing myself to work in other mediums that I don't really understand or feel comfortable in yet has always pushed me to be a better comics writer.
Thanks for the great questions,
BKV
Thanks Brian and good luck in your future endeavors.
Be sure to check out Y: The Last Man's final issue which is due out January 30th.
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