For anyone who loves Top Cow Comics’ Witchblade and Darkness series the name Ron Marz is synonymous with those titles. A comic book author of the first caliber, Marz lent his talents to everything from Silver Surfer to Batman/Aliens to Green Lantern. It was during his “Emerald Twilight” story for Green Lantern that Marz drummed up some controversy by turning the beloved Hal Jordon into a mass murderer in order to clear the path for Kyle Rayner.
These days Marz is the mind behind the new Top Cow event series Artifacts, a twelve issue series destined to change the entire Top Cow universe forever. What are the 13 Artifacts? Who is Ron Marz and how does his personal belief system factor into what he writes? I got the skinny on this and so much more as I sat with Ron Marz to explore Artifacts and beyond.
[Editors Note: This interview took place three days before San Diego comic Con]
CRAVEONLINE: How long ago do the 13 Artifacts story arc start to take shape?
RON MARZ: I don’t think there’s one specific answer to that because this thing has evolved over the last few years to the point that we felt there was a story big enough to tell. Somewhere during my Witchblade run we decided to have 13 Artifacts because it’s a spooky number and we’d figured out that nine of ten had already been revealed. That was the first time we nailed down an actual number. As I started to build that mythology a little bit it became a natural lever to bring everything together.
CRAVEONLINE: What’s the concept behind Artifacts?
RON MARZ: The two-sentence pitch is basically there are 13 Artifacts in the Top Cow universe with the Witchblade, The Darkness and the Spear Of Destiny among them. Those 13 artifacts are obviously powerful entities in their own right but if you bring them together it will mean the end of the world.
CRAVEONLINE: How much of the relationship between Jackie Estacado “The Darkness” and Sara Pezzini “The Witchblade” will play into the 13 Artifacts story arc?
RON MARZ: That’s really the core of the story. Personally as a writer I’m not that interested in a lot of explosions and fights if there’s not some sort of character arc and a real heart to the story. Yes there will be big action set pieces and battles between different factions, but the heart of the story is that Jackie and Sara have this child together. In issue one the child disappears and it becomes about them trying to get their baby back.
In a larger sense it becomes about what would you do for your child? What would you risk? What would you sacrifice? It is a big action story with lots of Michael Bay explosions but really if that’s all that you’re offering up in your big crossover story who gives a shit? The emotional center of it all is Jackie and Sara discovering the answers to those questions about what would you do to save your child. The answers they come up with might not be the same answers. That will be what ties all these issues together.
CRAVEONLINE: How hard is it as a writer to plan something that is this epic and still keep a heart to it?
RON MARZ: Usually I’d say it’s not that big a deal, it’s just my job. [Laughs] In this case yeah it’s a pain in the ass because you want to keep coming back to the emotional core of the arc but you’re not doing a 22-page story with two characters. You’re doing thirteen issues worth of story with all the Top Cow characters. It’s a balancing act between doing the emotional stuff and doing the eye candy stuff people expect from a big crossover series. I’ve done a few of these before so I’ve had some practice in walking that line.
CRAVEONLINE: Why did you decide to bring back Tom Judge and what will his role in the whole story be?
RON MARZ: We wanted to bring back all the characters that had something to do with an artifact and Tom Judge has The Rapture even though his character has been in Hell for five or six years. He was obviously going to be included but as I started talking with Michael Broussard, my artist on the first four issues, really expressed an interest in drawing Tom and having him be a bigger part of the story.
I think any writer worth his salt caters to the whims of his artist as much as possible. I mean we didn’t toss everything out and make it a Tom Judge story, but within reason we tried to push Tom to the forefront and as a storytelling device he turned out to be really useful. The fact that he hasn’t been in the midst of all the Top Cow characters for a while now kind of made him dramatically useful because he’s an outsider coming into this situation.
CRAVEONLINE: Does Tom help define the story?
RON MARZ: Well this wasn’t intentional but it worked out. We tend to think of the artifacts as having some sort of one or two sentence or even one or two word description of their powers and the one we always use for Tom Judge is hope because part of The Rapture’s power is to instill hope and Hope is the name of Jackie and Sara’s daughter. Some things just fall into place.
CRAVEONLINE: Are you excited to working with Michael Broussard again and why did you choose him for the first four issues?
RON MARZ: It wasn’t really my choice, though I was totally on board with it. Top Cow is a fairly small shop, almost a mom and pop store compared to Marvel or DC and even Dark Horse. They publish a lot of books every month and have a large staff, but Top Cow has a handful of people and we do a handful of books. So everything is a fairly collaborative process. Those guys trust me not to break the toys that I play with or at least have a good reason why I’m breaking them. It was just a case of Michael being able to leave his monthly work on The Darkness and us being ready to do Artifacts. We were at the right place at the right time.
Michael started out really good, I wrote his first solo job, which was a Marvel/Top Cow crossover and he came out fully formed. He’s gotten consistently better over The Darkness run and I think his stuff got even better with the Artifacts run. He was absolutely the right guy for this.
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CRAVEONLINE: What other artists will be working on Artifacts?
RON MARZ: I can’t tell you (laughs). I think we’re going to announce the artists on the second arc at San Diego Comic Con but I’m not sure.
CRAVEONLINE: Are you going to the Con yourself?
RON MARZ: Unfortunately so.
CRAVEONLINE: Not a fan?
RON MARZ: I’ve been going to it for fifteen out of the last twenty years and it used to be a lot of fun. Now it’s grown so far beyond any useful size or sanity level that I’d rather shoot myself in the face than go.
CRAVEONLINE: Is it all marketing now?
RON MARZ: It’s certainly not a comic show anymore and I don’t begrudge the convention that because it’s more profitable to chase the Hollywood dollars. It’s been very successful but you get the idea that they’re not really interested in dancing with the girl that brought them. I think everybody should go once and if you like it go back and if not move on.
CRAVEONLINE: Back to Artifacts. Since the Free Comic Book Day Artifacts #0 there’s been a lot of debate over who the narrator was and if it was friend or foe. Will there be a hint on that in Artifacts?
RON MARZ: People who pick up Artifacts will find out who the narrator was but not in the first issue and probably not in the second issue either. They always think when you have a big event series it’s good to have some kind of mystery to pull the readers along and this will be part of that.
When that person’s revealed I think there will be a lot of debate over whether that person is a hero or a villain. People can draw their own conclusions but I always feel the best villains are, in their own minds, the heroes of their own story. Dr. Doom doesn’t think he’s a bad guy, Magneto doesn’t think he’s a bad guy and those characters are always more compelling.
CRAVEONLINE: It seems that balance is an important theme to your work, is that a true statement?
RON MARZ: Conceptually I think characters are more interesting if they’re made up of shades of grey instead of straight black and white. I try to have a balance within the characters. For instance, Sara is a New York City Detective and a mother but she’s done some things that may be not pure evil but not the nicest of actions. She’s made some choices that are pretty harsh. Jackie is a mob hit man murderer drug dealer and yet for most of the stories he appears in he’s the hero. He has a stricter code of honor and is a lot better guy that a lot of the characters around him don’t.
I’m always interested in the balance of good and evil and the balance of what motivates characters. Since Artifacts is such a huge story arc we’re going to have people landing on different sides of that balance. In most crossover stories the good guys end up on one side and the bad guys on the other, it’s Secret Wars. What happens in Artifacts is people will choose side but it won’t be broken down by who is a good guy or bad guy.
CRAVEONLINE: Aphrodite IV is back for Artifacts. Is she just here for this or does she have a brighter future at Top Cow?
RON MARZ: How can I tell this without making anyone angry? She plays a fairly large role in Artifacts, definitely in the first issue. With her you’re dealing with an android and there’s that shades of grey thing again because she’s doing what she’s told because she believes in the orders. That might not carry all the way through thirteen issues.
CRAVEONLINE: In a lot of these crossover events the only resolution is to push the reader into another series. Will Artifacts have a full resolution to it?
RON MARZ: Yes, we’re not going to do thirteen issues and do it just as bait on the end of a hook. We’d like some other projects to come out of this but Artifacts will have a clear and definitive ending. It’ll be more definitive for some characters than others. We don’t normally engage in the 36-part epic crossover stuff like Marvel and DC because we don’t have that range of books and frankly we don’t want that range of books. We’re more focused on releasing a certain amount of books and making them good.
CRAVEONLINE: Is this going to be a hard storyline for those just getting into the story to become involved with?
RON MARZ: It better not be because then I didn’t do my job properly. I’m a big proponent of being able to hand somebody a comic that they can sit down and read. You shouldn’t have to be steeped in twenty years of continuity to understand what the hell is going on in any particular book, especially when it has a giant number one on the cover. If your book has a one on the cover and you hand it to somebody and they say “what the f*ck is this?” you’ve failed.
The easiest thing in the world is to preach to the converted because it’s easy. For a lot of titles, it’s not valued to bring new converts into the arena. That’s one way to do it but it’s not anything I’m interested in doing. I want to be able to hand the first issue of Artifacts to my friends who don’t read comics and have them understand what’s going on and who the characters are. To me that’s my job.
CRAVEONLINE: Were there any characters you hadn’t visited for a while that you were excited to write for again?
RON MARZ: Tom Judge turned out to be a lot more interesting than I thought he was. I understand what the allure is. Even in the office, Phil Smith is managing editor and he’s a huge Tom Judge fan and I thought to myself okay but why? As I’ve been writing the character I’m finding there is a lot more to him than I originally thought. The other aspect that I’m really enjoying is that the Top Cow Universe has this duel nature where you have the supernatural side of the universe, which is Witchblade, Darkness, that kind of stuff. Then you have the more sci-fi side like Cyberforce or Hunter Killer. I really like when those two side rub up against each other. We keep a pretty tight reign on keeping those two crossing over but there will be a decent amount of that in Artifacts.
CRAVEONLINE: Will all the Top Cow characters be in it?
RON MARZ: Well, not the creator owned stuff like Berserker or my Dragon Prince books are off to the side. Everything else is in like Necromancer, a lot of the Cyberforce characters, the Hunter Killer character.
CRAVEONLINE: Anything else going for you outside of Artifacts?
RON MARZ: Well I’m continuing on Witchblade. I’m continuing on Magdalena, Angelus is close to wrapping up. Then I have the Velocity series wrapping up. After that I’m going to take a deep breath and sit in the corner for a while. Phil Hester and I are going to do a Firebreather/Dragon Prince one shot fight book with an artist named Saumin Patel. I’m also bringing by black and white ashcan book Shinku to series next spring as a monthly color book.
For more on Ron Marz and Artifacts check out:
http://www.ronmarz.com
