“I think that comics today are better written than they have ever been in history. The quality of the writing is unbelievable; these are real writers with real stories to tell”.
Marc Silvestri, 2005
Marc Silvestri is a multi talented creator and CEO of Top Cow as well as being one of the premiere and most sought after artists working in the industry today.
Starting out as an artist with DC Comics, Marc soon moved to Marvel and achieved great acclaim in the late 1980s and early 1990s pencilling Wolverine and the flagship title, The Uncanny X-Men.
In 1992 Marc and six of the biggest names in comics sent shockwaves through the industry when they left Marvel.
Amid much hype and industry speculation, Rob Liefeld, Whilce Portacio, Jim Valintino, Eric Larson, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane and Marc Silvestri changed the comics industry forever as they formed Image Comics and ushered in a new era of creativity and interest in comics.
With his branch of Image Top Cow, Silvestri was directly responsible for launching the careers of some of the biggest names working in the industry today, both Dave Finch (New Avengers) and Michael Turner (Soulfire, Fathom) got their big break thanks to Silvestri and Top Cow.
Personally taking a hand in creating such hits as Cyberforce, Witchblade and The Darkness to name but a few, Silvestri has also worked with some recognisable names from a variety of media including the hugely popular Lara Croft character from the Tomb Raider games and movies.
Following a break from the drawing boards where he helped develop movie and game properties including the TV series based on Witchblade, Silvestri returned to his first love - art! Working with acclaimed writer Grant Morrison, he returned to the characters that launched him to comics superstardom years before in New X-Men.
Top Cow continues to be THE place for creators to find their voice as writer Mark Millar (Wolverine, The Ultimates) launched his creator owned Millarworld project, the hugely successful Wanted! with artist JG Jones, through Top Cow.
Marc’s current project, as well as overseeing Top Cow’s current line of titles, sees him pencilling Hunter-Killer with acclaimed writer Mark Waid and has a new ‘top secret’ project coming up, soon to be announced.
Marc Silvestri took time out to speak with Russ Sheath about the early days of Image, his career and all things Top Cow…..
Marc, how’s your week been?
My week’s been great! I don’t really get the luxury of taking long vacations so even Christmas has been short handed for me, but I did manage to take three days off to spend with my wife and our kids which actually are our dogs. We have an English Bulldog named Alice and a Doberman named Ronald and we spent our Christmas with them. They had a great time opening presents and so did we.
What interesting Christmas presents did you get?
This year was kinda funny. If you knew my wife you would realise her shopping is usually done by August and my shopping usually starts the third week of December. This year neither one of us did anything, we were just so busy. With my business I had so much to do and she was busy with what she does and we literally decided to go shopping together on the 21st December, pointing stuff out and saying that looks kinda interesting and then telling the person in the store or the mall, “hey, I’ll be back in five minutes”, so it was kind of a fun Christmas for us, we had fun pointing stuff out that we wanted and then opening them.
I got some good stuff, I got some work related items and stuff like that, nothing too elaborate. We spent more time on the dogs this year. We got them like ten stuffed animals which they tore through in a matter of hours so it was good, a fun Christmas.
What do you enjoy the most about being the head of your own company?
It’s a double edged sword. When I look back its been a natural genesis. I have been in this business for 25 years now. I started out with DC Comics way back in the day and quickly went over to Marvel and was with them for 10 years or so before Image started out.
With Marvel back at that time in the 80s there was a certain goal and that was to do the X-Men and work with Chris Claremont and beyond that there wasn’t really much to challenge you in comics. Once I had hit that point, there was really nothing left for me and I was contemplating leaving the business. I was interested in film and considering going into that because that is something I had been interested in since I was younger, and then the whole Image thing started up.
I had conversations with Todd (McFarlane), just before Image started and he proposed what he and Rob Liefeld were thinking. No one really had pulled the trigger but the idea was there, and having gone as far as I can with mainstream comics, I thought here is something interesting, having a chance to make my own mistakes in a big way (laughs).
It was an opportunity I couldn’t refuse. A chance to really, as much as any of us can, control our own destiny. I had an opportunity to satisfy my curiosity and by nature I am pretty short on the attention span and I need a lot of flans to go around and stick my fingers into and to have some fun with. That was the appeal back in the Image days. Not only was I doing comic books, I’ll always be a comic book guy at the core, but there is potential to have some fun in other areas as well like animation. In the case of Todd McFarlane he always wanted to have a toy company and that was his dream. For me it was the chance to draw the things that I wanted to draw that weren’t in the Marvel or DC library things that, good or bad, I had a big hand in creating and I could control the destiny of.
The guys who originally got involved in Image all had an entrepreneurial spirit and a need to express themselves in the way that they wanted to - that was one of the early appeals. Security wasn’t one of them. If you were someone who was worried about a paycheque, that’s not something you would want to do, looking back it there were some months were none of us were sure what was going to happen.
The world of comics no longer allows for that freewheeling mentality, you had a lot of garbage coming out when the market allowed but it also gave birth to a lot of formidable talents that are working today. If it weren’t for those freewheeling days a lot of comics would still be written by the editors at the major companies which is what they were doing.
I think there was a revolution that Image started back then as it never had been done before. Back then, just because you worked on an icon book it didn’t mean you were able to go out and make an impact. There are guys you can look at as an example that tried that and fell down. The success of Image was the fact that there was strength in numbers - it wasn’t one guy who left, it was seven guys who left and I think the excitement of that era bought a lot of people into comics that, maybe, would never have been interested in being professionals and working as writers and such. The doors flew wide open for real talent to come in and kind of legitimise the industry a little bit.
I think that comics today are better written than comics have ever been in history, with a few exceptions. The quality of the writing is unbelievable; these are real writers with real stories to tell. I think Image had something to do with that, I hope it did.
Was it close to the line at times in the early days of Image?
Before the first numbers came out! Once they came out we realised ‘hey we’ve actually got something here’, but before those came out there was the risk that everyone was going to fall on their face and that we could never compete with Marvel or DC. It really wasn’t about the creators and was about what they had created. We were taking a bit of a risk, we didn’t know if the fans and readers were going to follow us to Image Comics.
Jim Lee, who was the most sceptical of the bunch and was doing the X-Men at the height of his career, well he kept doing the numbers trying to work out how many he needed to sell for him to make as much as he was on the X-Men. When he saw the first numbers for Rob Liefeld’s Youngblood, that was pretty much it for him, he was ready to go, full bore.
It exceeded all our expectations, even our lowest number that we could survive on wasn’t even in the ballpark, so it was full speed ahead, let’s go.
Does it almost sadden you to see that Image ethos or spirit diminished when you see the dominance of Marvel and DC at the moment?
Yeah, I think it should sadden everybody to a certain degree. On the one hand Marvel and DC are doing the better work than they ever have and it’s kind of like the American auto industry when the Japanese auto industry came in and showed everyone how it was done and how they could make inexpensive cars of a better quality. Suddenly everything got stepped up and in the early days of Image both Marvel and DC were sleeping giants, they didn’t take us seriously, that’s for sure. I think if they did, they would have done something over at Marvel to keep us there. Basically it was kind of ‘piss off and good luck to you’. Even in retrospect I would never do anything differently. I am so happy that Image exists and I am still happy that I have my own business.
For me and a lot of comic book fans Image central still publishes some great independent titles. They still have that spirit where people can go in there and express themselves freely and they should be commended for that and we will stick with that as long as we possibly can.
I think that because the market changed and shifted to make the issue of security an issue. A lot of comic book people are family people and they have families to support and have to make a living.
Back in the day of early Image there was stupid money being thrown around because the market place allowed it. You had a speculator market and a collectors market and there was a time where everybody and their nephew was publishing a comic book which had a fairly quick backlash. The Image guys knew those days were not going to last and that the bubble was going to burst at some point. I think the combination of the market falling and Marvel and DC waking up to the fact that there were legitimate threats out there when back in the early days we were strongest we were usually in the top ten comics. It was usual for us to launch something and it would come out No 1. These days you are not going to do that unless you are Marvel or DC and unless it’s got Batman on the cover its just not going to happen for you.
That’s fine, and is completely understandable, it’s the nature of the game! For me, fortunately I started Top Cow when things were strong and that is what has allowed me as a company to weather the ups and downs and the bitter battle between the two giants Marvel and DC which sometimes we get caught in the middle of.
We are sifting through the wreckage and saying ‘hey we are still here and still alive’ as they are firing volleys at each other as they sign exclusive talent and getting the best in the business like Mark and Brian Bendis to work exclusively for them. It makes it tough for us, but I don’t plan on going anywhere. I’m still having a great time with my own business and it gives me the freedom to do things that I wouldn’t be able to do with the big two.
Marvel and DC have made some good plays and they did wake up, especially Marvel with the success of the first X-Men movie and with the Spider-Man franchise. These Iconic titles and even the non-iconic titles have a life outside of publishing and suddenly they went from a bankrupt company to whatever they are worth now. For every Elektra there is another Spider-Man waiting in the wings and one of the main reasons why they need guys in the fold is that they have new franchises coming up and they need guys to freshen them up.
Were you always prepared that the creativity and control you craved when you started Top Cow that it might take you away from pencilling and more into business?
There was always that risk, especially when we started growing and we realised the commitment that running a business really took. No matter how successful the business is, and there are times when all the Images partners’ businesses were so successful that they almost ran themselves and that can easily run out of control.
There is a grind. It is a business and quite frankly art and commerce do not mix. By nature I am an artist and am creative. I kind of became a business guy by default because of Image comics and part of that I found interesting but the other part of that is a huge headache. No matter where you are at and whether you are on an upswing or a downswing you still have headaches, they are just different kind of headaches and that was something I was not prepared for. Even in good times there are a lot of aspects of running a publishing company that were just not any fun, there is always something to worry about. It’s never a vacation regardless of the market place or whatever is going on with your business.
That did take away a lot of my creative energy and that is a downside. A plus side however is the fact that the creative energy is directed towards something I am really passionate about and is that much closer to me and something I have direct involvement, risk and benefit in.
Even through the hard times, it would be hard for me to not do what I do, even with the headaches. It was a surprise at how much it pulled me away from the comic boards and how much I wanted to get back to the comic boards, but at the time when Image did start there were times when I needed to take some time off. Jim Lee retired from comics for a while just because it’s a gruelling business. It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s something you can’t walk away from because it’s in your blood.
You find yourself needing a break just because of the pressure but after that break happens you find yourself going, ‘I really feel like drawing a comic book now, I gotta get back in there and do what I do.’
Despite other distractions like working on a TV show, or having some fun working on a video game or coming up with ideas for movies and things like that, at the core it always comes back to me that I do comic books and that’s what I am good at.
When I am drawing its pretty much full bore. My wife will back me up that the hours are pretty gruelling. If I spend a twelve hour days working that’s a pretty short day for me. It does get to you after a while, but you recharge the batteries and you are ready to go in there again. When I did the X-Men project with Grant Morrison I had a great time doing it and the book re-energised me to get back in there to hit the drawing boards.
Which leads nicely to your current project, Hunter-Killer?
That was an amalgam of a couple of ideas that I had sitting around for a while that by themselves really weren’t going anywhere, you find that happens a lot. Finally a couple of these ideas came together and as it happens Mark Waid was a really good friend of Jim Mclauchlan and Renae Geerlings and they would hang out and go Karaoeking together. I have never witnessed it, but I hear its quite something. I hear Mark has quite the voice on him (laughs).
As luck would have it Mark and I sat down together and talked about Hunter-Killer. He was ready to do something new and I was ready to do something new and when we started throwing ideas back and forth. It was one of those rare, magic moments where you really find a collaborator, someone that even if your opinions vary it doesn’t matter because you work so well together. I think when you have spirited conversation going from one end to the other that makes for a better collaboration and with Mark it’s a classic example of that, I love working with that guy.
With Grant Morrison, he had always been on a short list for me, I have gotten to a point in my career, and I am really thankful for this, where I can pair or be paired with the great guys in the business. Part of what draws me to special projects especially outside of Top Cow is some of the people I can work with, and what their take on an idea is.
With the Grant and X-Men project someone thought of the idea, “Hey do you want to work on the X-Men”?
I was like, “Why? Whats the appeal”? And the reply was “Well, it’s with Grant Morrison”! “Ok sign me up”!
The creator side of me says “Yeh, I like that, that’s appealing to me, Grant Morrison, future X-Men, after the apocalypse, giant robots and evil Nightcrawlers, sign me up”!
“Now whats the other part of that deal”?
I always have to look in two directions at the same time. It will please me creatively, but you know what, I have a business to feed. I have artists and editors that I need to keep supplying with work and I have a brand that I have to maintain, so, “what’s the deal that goes along with that”?
“Well, we can do some crossovers!”
“Ok, what are those crossovers”?
Once you get through all that, then I can go back to the excitement of working with Grant Morrison and now, I can have some fun.
He is a great writer and there are few guys out there that can pull off the storyline he pulled off, and he was one of those guys where I had always wanted to work with him and he is who he is, Let him tell me the story and I’ll draw it.
I am a very collaborative guy and I have become more and more collaborative over the years, having my own business and being concerned about what we put out not only as Top Cow, but what I do personally. It’s important to me to be really involved with a writer, either sitting down or talking over the phone. Once those meetings are done and we have had our conversations about what we are going to do …I let the writer go write and I don’t bug them.
How I work with Mark Waid is that we sit down, we get excited, we talk about the story and the things we want to hit whether thematically or with the character, the drama, the trauma or whatever and then I let him go write. I then get the script back and I’ll draw it.
Hunter-Killer is ongoing. I’d love to keep doing it, unfortunately I got off to a bad start when I broke my ankle. I slipped on the kerb and broke my ankle in four places. I still have eight titanium screws and a metal plate that will be in there forever and I have a sexy little limp when I walk, but it’s amazing how much it interferes with what I do. You wouldn’t think being an ankle injury it would think it would interfere with sitting in front of a table and drawing.
The stories themselves I am enjoying so much and are the kind of stories Mark and I want to tell and are the kind of stories everyone can relate to because they are universal. There are conspiracies everywhere, good or bad, but you know what? There is a reason for it!
I was always fascinated with the people who really make the decisions. The people that we don’t know about, are they for the greater good or not?
You see something in the headlines and you find out in our comic book world of Hunter-Killer what that really means. That’s the fun we are having with the whole concept.
In the future I have another special project lined up, but I can’t talk about right now. It’s another one of those projects where there is an opportunity to work with somebody and the concept is appealing and it’s hard to resist… It’s one of those where I kind of go, “Damn, I gotta do it”!
Cyberforce is coming back, are you excited about that?
Ron Marz and Pat Lee are working on it and I think it’s a great pairing for the subject matter. I think fans of both Ron and Pat are going to be pleasantly surprised at the passion they are tackling this with, and for me it’s something that really means something to me. It’s what started this whole second phase of my career fifteen years ago and it required people with passion to come in and say this is what we would like to do with it, what do you think?
Ron Marz has a track record and he has some great ideas for Cyberforce and I think Pat Lee is a natural for the subject matter and the stuff that I have seen so far I’m really enjoying. I am doing some covers for it which is fun for me personally. Pat has put a new spin on the designs and I got a kick out of doing those Cyberforce characters that I created years ago but with Pat’s designs. They are more contemporary and I have had a good time doing those covers.
One of the things that has struck me about Top Cow is that the associations you build that have achieved great success, for example with Eidos with Tomb Raider and with Mark (Millar) with Wanted! Are you always on the lookout for organisations to ally yourself with and associate yourself with?
Partnerships are very important, especially for a company our size. We are not going to go out and bankroll a video game, we are just not going to do that. We are in partnership with some wonderful people doing The Darkness game and from what I have seen it’s blowing me away completely, it’s beautiful. It’s a next generation platform and they are doing an amazing job. Those games cost millions of dollars to develop and they cost the same as a good sized movie a few years ago. It boggles my mind how much these things cost, but you can see it there on the screen, that’s where that money goes.
So, you have got to partner yourself with the right people and hopefully we can do that in comics or other media and we are always open to creators wanting to have more control over what they are doing. That’s where Image came from and we are real sensitive to that and want to maintain that spirit.
For example in the case of Wanted! If it becomes a hit in other media which we are hoping it does, feature films or something like that, and the more success other independents have outside of the comic market, the more likely we are going to have the big talent breakaway from the security of the big two. The more success we have at Top Cow outside of comic media the more it will be able to help us show people, ‘look you can do anything in the comic industry you want to it doesn’t have to be through Marvel or DC’. We are focusing heavily on the video game industry, television and movies right now to show them that and there are other ways to get their stuff out there.
Many former Top Cow artists have gone onto great success, for example Mike Turner, Dave Finch and Joe Benitez, how does it make you feel knowing that you nurtured those guys and bought them into the industry?
Well that’s one of the side benefits of Top Cow that I didn’t really count on when we first started and I didn’t really imagine how it would effect me in such a positive way personally. I have taken on the pleasure of mentoring the people you have mentioned and I feel a real sense of satisfaction that maybe part of the Top Cow legacy as the years go on is that these guys that have bought so much pleasure to comic book fans, whether with Top Cow, Marvel or whatever. Early on at Top Cow had something to do with that and I’m real proud of those guys.
With Dave Finch, I’m a fan! For pure drawing ability I think he is one of the best guys the business has ever seen and when he wants to he can draw rings around anybody. His stuff is just brilliant and he is a great guy to boot. I wish him all the success in the world, maybe someday we can do more work with him at Top Cow I would love to see that.
After all these years doing what I do, that’s become one of the most gratifying parts of it and the fact that the studio is kind of a working school. You have an environment where the competition is friendly, all the criticism is constructive and it’s all to the benefit of that individual as an artist and a creator.
Hey, I wish that everyone would stick around forever, but I also realise that doesn’t happen in the real world because people need to grow and do what they need to do. I wish everyone all the success in the world because I am a firm believer in never holding anybody back because I don’t appreciate it when people try to do that to me.
Were there any lessons you hoped to install in those guys when they were under your stewardship?
I never strove for a house look. If you happen to draw like me you happen to draw like me, but;
Number One: Draw better than me! Go for it, I want to see that.
Number Two: I really want that person to find their own artistic voice, I like to have some variation in the studio.
If you look back through the history of Top Cow and the guys who drew there, whether they are still there or have moved on, there really was some variation and a number of styles that weren’t just the ‘Image style’ or whatever you want to call it. These were guys who really found their own voice and I have always tried to install in people, do what you want to do but just be the best you can possibly be at that. Find what your skill set is and really concentrate on making that skill set the best it can possibly be. I tell them right off the bat that you have got to love this business and that it’s going to take over your life. You’re a comic book guy and you’re an artist, be prepared that you have to put in the hours because this is a business that requires that!
As an artist, creatively you are going to be inspired to work maybe ten percent of the time, but if you want to make a living you gotta figure a way to fill up that other ninety percent with work production and getting it out there, otherwise you are going to starve to death and draw three pages a year.
I stress right away that it requires a real sense of dedication and professionalism, you need a thick skin and you always need to want to get better. I use myself as an example in that I have been doing this for many years but the thing that keeps me going and want to draw more is the fact that I can get better. I still look back at pages I did just a few years ago and cringe and I try to challenge myself that way.
What’s coming up with Top Cow for 2006?
We have the on-goings with Hunter-Killer, Witchblade and The Darkness. We also have Darkness / PITT with Dale Keown. I’m a huge Dale Keown fan, the stuff is beautiful and the pages are wonderful, that’s really cool stuff.
We have the special thing we can’t talk about just yet coming out as well.
Outside of comics, we have The Darkness video game which is going to be early 2007 or late 2006. We also have The Darkness movie in development, the Wanted! movie in development and a couple of TV shows we are pitching around and working on.
The Witchblade Animated Series is coming up and it will be premiering on primetime television in Japan in the Spring and we hope to get it in the US on television as well. The stuff that I have seen from that is really cool, is defiantly a different take on Witchblade, but it’s still Witchblade…it’s Witchblade anime!
We have a lot of good stuff coming up!
We really appreciate the fan support that we have, we know they have choices to make for their dollars and we are happy that they choose a Top Cow comic book when they don’t have to. We are still having a good time and hopefully it seems like there is a comeback of an interest in comics and we thank everyone for supporting the industry whether they are buying from us or Marvel or whatever, as long as you are buying comic books that’s a good thing!
What interests do you have outside of comics?
Anything in the creative field interests me. I don’t have a lot of hobbies, I don’t have time for them apart from hanging out with my wife and the dogs. I go to parties with her, she is a spokesperson for Trashy Lingerie, a company here in LA and on the web at www.trashy.com so I get to go to some of those, and if I am not hanging out with her I am here with the guys at the office.
Creating comics is pretty much my life. It’s not just something you can just put away at the end of the day, it never leaves you! I’m made up of paper and ink, that’s what I bleed. If I can come up with an awful quote then “I bleed ink”! It’s true, you can never get that out of your system.
What is the single image that you have produce that you love the most?
I have to say that the double page spread of the sentinel in the New X-Men book meant something to me. Although I tell people who ask, the first five pages of the book I would warp into one page! It was me coming back from kind of a hiatus, feeling energised and kind of looking at those five pages and saying those five pages are better than any pages I have done before. The way I told it, the way Grant wrote those pages and the way I felt I interpreted the pages, they really re-energised me and those are among my favourite right there. I can kind of look at those pages and that double pager specifically and it re-launched my interest in drawing comics again.
strong>What’s the last movie you saw?
The last movie I saw was, and it actually was a very good movie, Finding Neverland, my wife and I watched the DVD of that just recently.
The last movie I saw at the Theatre was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I just really liked that film. Those were the last I saw that I really liked.
Last CD you bought?
Beck’s new CD.
You recently announced that the Magdalena movie was in development, can you tell us a little about that?
We are working with Gale Ann Hurd and Scott Rosenberg on that right now. We have worked with Gale Ann Hurd before and she has a great track record and she understands this material and was involved with producing the Terminator - you really can’t go wrong with that. Gale is a real force of nature and it was the only pitch meeting I have ever been in where she ordered margaritas for everybody and this was at her office!
She believes in the property and the concept and I think now, with the Da-Vinci Code coming out and the success of the Passion of The Christ, she believes that the time is right for a superhero themed religious epic, if that makes any sense at all.
We are dealing with grand themes and belief issues and that all wraps up in the guise of a superhero flick. Obviously she is not a superhero like Spider-Man is, but she has abilities and powers and we are going to have a lot of fun dealing with questions of faith in an action adventure movie. I think that hasn’t been done yet and we are really excited about it.
Having already achieved so much, what’s left on your to do list?
Just more of the same. I love to create stuff and I can’t stop doing it.
I take 40 minute showers because while I’m in there my mind is just going and I’m thinking about a new idea. My wife says all the time, “Will you get the hell out of the shower” and I reply “I’ve got a good idea honey so I’ll wash my hair one more time” (Laughs) that’s really what drives me.
I’m not one of those guys who can continually do five or six pages a week, that’s just not going to happen. The work will look like it for one thing and I won’t be doing anybody any favours. I won’t be happy with what I am doing, I won’t be proud of it and I don’t think the readers will enjoy it as much. I do the most that I can and I love to do it and I look forward to working with certain creators and new creators coming up. You never know when the new Brian Michael Bendis or Mark Millar is going to pop up and I would love to work with those guys.
There is still a lot of stories with Mark Waid and Hunter-Killer I want to tell and I have some new ideas along with the movie, TV and video game stuff. The Darkness video game is really exciting for me, it looks unbelievable, I think fans of the Darkness are going to love it and I think people who don’t know what the Darkness is are going to love it. Developing that movie is going to be fun too. Anything that keeps me creative, I dive right in!
A huge thanks to Marc for taking time out to do the interview and to Bridget for all her help in coordinating things.
Top Cow can be visited on the web at www.topcow.com
Hunter-Killer by Mark Waid and Marc Silvestri is published monthly by Top Cow and can be found wherever comics are sold.
Original Marc Silvestri art can be found at www.marcsilvestriart.com
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Russ Sheath is 31 and lives and works in Devon, in the UK.
Currently studying for a post graduate teaching qualification, Russ has worked as a manager in comics’ retail and spent time defending his nation as a member of the regular and reserve armed forces.