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THE FIRST DECADE
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8 CSI & MORE:
TV at IDW C
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By 2003, having made the decision early on to leave
the cape-and-tights superhero comics to the established companies, and having made our first mark with horror, IDW was looking to expand our comic line in a new direction. At the time, a new crop
of cutting-edge, gritty television shows was hitting the
small screen and some seemed just perfect for adaptation into comic form. CBS’ CSI: Crime Scene Investigation was exploding in the ratings, and we wanted the show to be our first television-based comic. When he designed the Survivor trading card game, Ted worked with CBS’s licensing department. Armed with a novel two-artist approach (to approximate the look of the show’s forensic scenes versus the regular scenes), IDW landed the license. Eventually, the CSI franchise became so popular that it produced offshoots based in Miami and New York, and IDW would go on to produce comics for those shows as well. Max Allan Collins, Jeff Mariotte, Steven Grant, and Kris Oprisko scripted the various miniseries, with story ___________________________________________________ Opposite Page: CSI: Bad Rap flashback/forensic sequence. Art by Ashley Wood.
art provided by Gabriel Rodriguez, Renato Guedes, James Woodward, and Stephen Mooney, and forensic art by Ashley Wood and Steven Perkins. The next TV-based IDW title was FX’s The Shield–a show that had really captured Ted’s attention– starring Michael Chiklis and featuring the exploits of a rule-bending police squadron. Ted’s enthusiasm resulted in a quick deal and the appearance of The Shield: Spotlight, penned by Jeff Mariotte and drawn by Jean Diaz. When Jack Bauer and the CTU squad burst onto the scene in Fox’s 24, the TV world hadn’t seen anything like it since, well… CSI! Again, we tried to 109
10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1
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8 CSI & MORE:
TV at IDW C
H
A
P
T
E
R
By 2003, having made the decision early on to leave
the cape-and-tights superhero comics to the established companies, and having made our first mark with horror, IDW was looking to expand our comic line in a new direction. At the time, a new crop
of cutting-edge, gritty television shows was hitting the
small screen and some seemed just perfect for adaptation into comic form. CBS’ CSI: Crime Scene Investigation was exploding in the ratings, and we wanted the show to be our first television-based comic. When he designed the Survivor trading card game, Ted worked with CBS’s licensing department. Armed with a novel two-artist approach (to approximate the look of the show’s forensic scenes versus the regular scenes), IDW landed the license. Eventually, the CSI franchise became so popular that it produced offshoots based in Miami and New York, and IDW would go on to produce comics for those shows as well. Max Allan Collins, Jeff Mariotte, Steven Grant, and Kris Oprisko scripted the various miniseries, with story ___________________________________________________ Opposite Page: CSI: Bad Rap flashback/forensic sequence. Art by Ashley Wood.
art provided by Gabriel Rodriguez, Renato Guedes, James Woodward, and Stephen Mooney, and forensic art by Ashley Wood and Steven Perkins. The next TV-based IDW title was FX’s The Shield–a show that had really captured Ted’s attention– starring Michael Chiklis and featuring the exploits of a rule-bending police squadron. Ted’s enthusiasm resulted in a quick deal and the appearance of The Shield: Spotlight, penned by Jeff Mariotte and drawn by Jean Diaz. When Jack Bauer and the CTU squad burst onto the scene in Fox’s 24, the TV world hadn’t seen anything like it since, well… CSI! Again, we tried to 109
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______________________ CSI promotional postcard.
plug in as closely as possible to the feel of the show, using captions showing the ticking clock to capture the important element of time. The writing team of Mark Vaughan and J.C. Haynes provided the scripts for the original IDW comics. Renato Guedes set the bar high with his photo-realistic style in 24: One Shot and Stories, but the challenge was ably met by future 24 artists Manny Clark and Jean Diaz. Recently, Jack Bauer returned to the pages of IDW in Cold Warriors, by the creative team of Beau Smith and Steve Bryant. CBS’s Ghost Whisperer, the spooky Jennifer Love Hewitt vehicle, also morphed into an IDW comic. Perfectly combining IDW’s twin focuses of horror and TV-licensed comics, the Ghost Whisperer series was further enhanced by being written by a member of the television show’s writing team, Becca Smith, and her writing partner Carrie Smith. Elena Casagrande provided the art. • • • • Max Allan Collins Max Allan Collins, writer of numerous novels and comic books, film director, and overall man of many talents, talks with Kris Oprisko about his experience working on IDW’s CSI series. KO: Max, by the time we’d come in contact with you, you’d had a pretty successful and widely varied 110
career, and were coming off the success of seeing Road to Perdition hit the silver screen. But I believe the reason we first contacted you about scripting our CSI comics was that you’d written a novel based on the television show. Was that the case?
look of the show, and the almost jarring juxtaposition of styles really pushed the story forward. You were lucky enough to have Ashley Wood handling the forensic duties on those first three series. What did you think of the artists’ work?
MAC: I had done several CSI novels, and I wound up doing the first eight, as well as the first two CSI: Miami novels. Those books sold millions of copies, and for a number of years I was the sole writer on licensing for CSI. I wrote the novels, the comics, the video games, and even a series of puzzles. I was usually assisted by Matt Clemens, who is a frequent collaborator of mine–in fact, we've just sold a CSI-ish series of novels (Killer TV) to Kensington, and will share a byline.
MAC: Ashley did an incredible job–both artists did. I believe you guys came up with the notion of two artists, but I ran with it, and it was really, really important that the artists be startlingly different. I like all three of the CSI graphic novels I did for you, as well as the CSI: NY (Bloody Murder), but Serial remains my favorite. We were nominated for a Harvey [2004 Best Single Issue or Story] on that one.
KO: You quickly produced three CSI miniseries, Bad Rap, Demon House, and Serial. Which one came first? Was the idea for the first series something you’d been sitting on for some time, or did you come up with it then?
KO: Did you keep this two-artist method in mind as you produced the scripts? MAC: Absolutely. It was the engine of those stories– so important. The TV show really caught on, initially, not because of the characters–which frankly were relative ciphers for the first season or so–but because of the stylish, movie-quality presentation and production values. It was crucial that we somehow convey that. In the novels, I've used italics and sometimes bold-face to similarly evoke the show's dual style; but that is where the graphic novels, I think, were superior to the prose works. KO: What about the science part of it? You had Matt Clemens doing forensic research for you on the comics…
MAC: Serial was a story that I'd been kicking around with Matt for some time. It began as an idea I used to call "Jeffrey Dahmer's Greatest Hits," which was of a serial killer who replicated other serial killer's signatures. But that evolved into just doing Jack the Ripper, and the Ripper is a crime that has fascinated me for a long time–and of course it had wonderful possibilities for graphic novel presentation. Not long ago the original idea of a serial killer imitating other serial killers got its moment in a Criminal Minds novel I did, again with Matt's help: Killer Profile.
MAC: Matt did most of the science, particularly the forensics. He hangs out with cops, and became extremely friendly with several real CSIs, one of whom was essentially the Gil Grissom of the IowaIllinois Quad Cities. Matt has spoken at forensics groups and knows his stuff. But he also gets involved in the plotting, and for the prose novels does story treatments from my plots that are essentially short rough drafts that I flesh out into novels.
KO: One of the things I think we really got right with CSI was our two-artist method to render the story and forensic scenes. It captured perfectly the
KO: In Serial, the subject was a Jack the Ripper convention hiding a copycat killer. Did you enjoy mixing the historical and contemporary?
____________________________ The Shield promotional postcard.
MAC: I loved that. My reputation as a crime/mystery novelist is built upon historical crime fiction–my Nathan Heller series (True Detective, Stolen Away and so on) focuses on real crimes and mysteries that my fictional P.I. solves, the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Huey Long assassination, the Roswell Incident and so on. I wrote about Eliot Ness and his real cases in four novels about the Cleveland years, including my novel Butcher’s Dozen, which was the first book-length work on the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run. And of course Road to Perdition has a historical basis in the Rock Island gangsters John and Connor Looney, and the Capone/Nitti mob of Chicago. So doing the Ripper in this fashion was a great kick. And the two eras gave the artists something to really play with. KO: In opposition to Serial, Bad Rap and Demon House dealt with thoroughly modern issues–a rapper in one and an evangelical alternative to the traditional Halloween fun house in the other. Was the news of the day driving your thoughts on CSI plots? MAC: Bad Rap was a troubled project, though it came out all right. It was originally designed to be about the black music scene, and then the TV series decided to do that subject matter, and I had to rewrite the story as about a white rapper. It came together, but that was probably the roughest CSI job I ever did. We had a vaguely similar problem with CSI: NY, which originally was to be about vampires, 111
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______________________ CSI promotional postcard.
plug in as closely as possible to the feel of the show, using captions showing the ticking clock to capture the important element of time. The writing team of Mark Vaughan and J.C. Haynes provided the scripts for the original IDW comics. Renato Guedes set the bar high with his photo-realistic style in 24: One Shot and Stories, but the challenge was ably met by future 24 artists Manny Clark and Jean Diaz. Recently, Jack Bauer returned to the pages of IDW in Cold Warriors, by the creative team of Beau Smith and Steve Bryant. CBS’s Ghost Whisperer, the spooky Jennifer Love Hewitt vehicle, also morphed into an IDW comic. Perfectly combining IDW’s twin focuses of horror and TV-licensed comics, the Ghost Whisperer series was further enhanced by being written by a member of the television show’s writing team, Becca Smith, and her writing partner Carrie Smith. Elena Casagrande provided the art. • • • • Max Allan Collins Max Allan Collins, writer of numerous novels and comic books, film director, and overall man of many talents, talks with Kris Oprisko about his experience working on IDW’s CSI series. KO: Max, by the time we’d come in contact with you, you’d had a pretty successful and widely varied 110
career, and were coming off the success of seeing Road to Perdition hit the silver screen. But I believe the reason we first contacted you about scripting our CSI comics was that you’d written a novel based on the television show. Was that the case?
look of the show, and the almost jarring juxtaposition of styles really pushed the story forward. You were lucky enough to have Ashley Wood handling the forensic duties on those first three series. What did you think of the artists’ work?
MAC: I had done several CSI novels, and I wound up doing the first eight, as well as the first two CSI: Miami novels. Those books sold millions of copies, and for a number of years I was the sole writer on licensing for CSI. I wrote the novels, the comics, the video games, and even a series of puzzles. I was usually assisted by Matt Clemens, who is a frequent collaborator of mine–in fact, we've just sold a CSI-ish series of novels (Killer TV) to Kensington, and will share a byline.
MAC: Ashley did an incredible job–both artists did. I believe you guys came up with the notion of two artists, but I ran with it, and it was really, really important that the artists be startlingly different. I like all three of the CSI graphic novels I did for you, as well as the CSI: NY (Bloody Murder), but Serial remains my favorite. We were nominated for a Harvey [2004 Best Single Issue or Story] on that one.
KO: You quickly produced three CSI miniseries, Bad Rap, Demon House, and Serial. Which one came first? Was the idea for the first series something you’d been sitting on for some time, or did you come up with it then?
KO: Did you keep this two-artist method in mind as you produced the scripts? MAC: Absolutely. It was the engine of those stories– so important. The TV show really caught on, initially, not because of the characters–which frankly were relative ciphers for the first season or so–but because of the stylish, movie-quality presentation and production values. It was crucial that we somehow convey that. In the novels, I've used italics and sometimes bold-face to similarly evoke the show's dual style; but that is where the graphic novels, I think, were superior to the prose works. KO: What about the science part of it? You had Matt Clemens doing forensic research for you on the comics…
MAC: Serial was a story that I'd been kicking around with Matt for some time. It began as an idea I used to call "Jeffrey Dahmer's Greatest Hits," which was of a serial killer who replicated other serial killer's signatures. But that evolved into just doing Jack the Ripper, and the Ripper is a crime that has fascinated me for a long time–and of course it had wonderful possibilities for graphic novel presentation. Not long ago the original idea of a serial killer imitating other serial killers got its moment in a Criminal Minds novel I did, again with Matt's help: Killer Profile.
MAC: Matt did most of the science, particularly the forensics. He hangs out with cops, and became extremely friendly with several real CSIs, one of whom was essentially the Gil Grissom of the IowaIllinois Quad Cities. Matt has spoken at forensics groups and knows his stuff. But he also gets involved in the plotting, and for the prose novels does story treatments from my plots that are essentially short rough drafts that I flesh out into novels.
KO: One of the things I think we really got right with CSI was our two-artist method to render the story and forensic scenes. It captured perfectly the
KO: In Serial, the subject was a Jack the Ripper convention hiding a copycat killer. Did you enjoy mixing the historical and contemporary?
____________________________ The Shield promotional postcard.
MAC: I loved that. My reputation as a crime/mystery novelist is built upon historical crime fiction–my Nathan Heller series (True Detective, Stolen Away and so on) focuses on real crimes and mysteries that my fictional P.I. solves, the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Huey Long assassination, the Roswell Incident and so on. I wrote about Eliot Ness and his real cases in four novels about the Cleveland years, including my novel Butcher’s Dozen, which was the first book-length work on the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run. And of course Road to Perdition has a historical basis in the Rock Island gangsters John and Connor Looney, and the Capone/Nitti mob of Chicago. So doing the Ripper in this fashion was a great kick. And the two eras gave the artists something to really play with. KO: In opposition to Serial, Bad Rap and Demon House dealt with thoroughly modern issues–a rapper in one and an evangelical alternative to the traditional Halloween fun house in the other. Was the news of the day driving your thoughts on CSI plots? MAC: Bad Rap was a troubled project, though it came out all right. It was originally designed to be about the black music scene, and then the TV series decided to do that subject matter, and I had to rewrite the story as about a white rapper. It came together, but that was probably the roughest CSI job I ever did. We had a vaguely similar problem with CSI: NY, which originally was to be about vampires, 111
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___________________________________ Previous Page: CSI: NY–Bloody Murder. Art by J. K. Woodward.
but because vampires had been done on the original CSI, we had to shift into werewolves. Demon House grew out of the great documentary Hell House, about Christian evangelical Halloween spook houses that attempt to scare kids straight. I thought the possibilities were strong there, and I think we did well with that subject matter. KO: When CSI branched out into the other franchise series, Jeff Mariotte and I handled the scripting of the CSI: Miami books. I believe this was due to your heavy schedule on the Vegas books, or do you remember it differently? MAC: I was never offered those comics. I would have loved to keep going, but the truth is, CSI grew into those three franchises and it was inevitable that other writers would be brought in. The only place I think it's really hurt is the novel series–when one recognized writer was doing the novels, they had an integrity that bringing in a lot of writers, no matter how good, can't achieve. For eight novels, I was doing a real series of novels that built an audience and had a certain credibility.
______________________________________________ CSI: NY–Bloody Murder flashback/forensic sequence. Art by Steven Perkins.
KO: You contributed the script for 2005’s CSI: NY Bloody Murder, our only series based on that show. How big a difference did the setting make to your plots, or can a “CSI story” be plugged into either locale? MAC: I think some premises can work on any of the shows. But we really did start with New York–I wanted to do a monster story that dealt with the sewers and also with Broadway, a Phantom of the Opera riff. I was pleased with that one, and the artist did an incredible job. KO: How about a dream location for a future CSI spin-off, if you had your druthers… CSI: Muscatine? MAC: I tried to convince the powers-that-be to allow me to create a CSI spin-off for books only–some city that they weren't planning to do, in particular a midwestern city. Matt and I developed something of our own that so far has become only a short story (published in the recent anthology At the Scene of the Crime) called “Heartland Homicide,” which is basically CSI in Des Moines, Iowa. So you're close! • • • • 113
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___________________________________ Previous Page: CSI: NY–Bloody Murder. Art by J. K. Woodward.
but because vampires had been done on the original CSI, we had to shift into werewolves. Demon House grew out of the great documentary Hell House, about Christian evangelical Halloween spook houses that attempt to scare kids straight. I thought the possibilities were strong there, and I think we did well with that subject matter. KO: When CSI branched out into the other franchise series, Jeff Mariotte and I handled the scripting of the CSI: Miami books. I believe this was due to your heavy schedule on the Vegas books, or do you remember it differently? MAC: I was never offered those comics. I would have loved to keep going, but the truth is, CSI grew into those three franchises and it was inevitable that other writers would be brought in. The only place I think it's really hurt is the novel series–when one recognized writer was doing the novels, they had an integrity that bringing in a lot of writers, no matter how good, can't achieve. For eight novels, I was doing a real series of novels that built an audience and had a certain credibility.
______________________________________________ CSI: NY–Bloody Murder flashback/forensic sequence. Art by Steven Perkins.
KO: You contributed the script for 2005’s CSI: NY Bloody Murder, our only series based on that show. How big a difference did the setting make to your plots, or can a “CSI story” be plugged into either locale? MAC: I think some premises can work on any of the shows. But we really did start with New York–I wanted to do a monster story that dealt with the sewers and also with Broadway, a Phantom of the Opera riff. I was pleased with that one, and the artist did an incredible job. KO: How about a dream location for a future CSI spin-off, if you had your druthers… CSI: Muscatine? MAC: I tried to convince the powers-that-be to allow me to create a CSI spin-off for books only–some city that they weren't planning to do, in particular a midwestern city. Matt and I developed something of our own that so far has become only a short story (published in the recent anthology At the Scene of the Crime) called “Heartland Homicide,” which is basically CSI in Des Moines, Iowa. So you're close! • • • • 113
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_____________________________________ Previous Page: CSI: Miami–Thou Shalt Not. Art by Renato Guedes.
Jeff Mariotte Jeff Mariotte, ex-WildStorm and ex-IDW Editor-inChief, is a multi-talented author and bookstore owner. He’s penned innumerable comics and novels, including many for IDW, as well as writing wellreceived novels based on the Angel and Charmed franchises. Here’s Jeff and Kris on his work on CSI, The Shield, & 24… KO: Jeff, your first foray into the world of CSI comics was with your Thicker than Blood one-shot. Were you a fan of the show before the assignment, or did you need to do some research first?
_______________________________________________ CSI: Miami–Smoking Gun flashback/forensic sequence. Art by Ashley Wood.
seem to run into backlogs in the lab, but fundamentally they're using technology that real crime labs (with big enough budgets) use. So I wanted the science in my CSI-related comics and novels to be real, too. I've always done the research on my own, using forensic science books and online sources, and sometimes calling on experts for advice, but I can't afford a research assistant. KO: Other than Thicker than Blood, set in Vegas, you also wrote Smoking Gun, which was a CSI: Miami one-shot. What made a bigger difference in the two series–the location or the characters?
JM: I had been watching the show, but when I approach a tie-in assignment, whether it's for books or comics, I have to watch it in a different way– taking a lot of notes about character details and details of the world as it exists in that fictional reality. So I did do research on those aspects before digging into the script.
JM: Mostly the characters, but I think they reflect their location. Vegas is the cool city, filmed in blues and greens, mostly at night, and focusing on Grissom's night shift. Miami is a hot, sultry daytime city, shot in yellows and reds. Miami is also less of an ensemble show–it's about Horatio Caine and his team, but it's definitely Horatio at the forefront. In the original show, Grissom is the team leader but the show is more about the whole team. I tried to make the comics reflect that.
KO: Speaking of research, what about the forensic parts? For his books, Max used a forensic research assistant. For the CSI: Miami books I wrote, it was the complete opposite–I completely made up 100% of the science. What was your approach?
KO: Max & I discussed how unique IDW’s two-artist method was in approaching CSI. Your first comic, Thicker Than Blood, featured art by Gabriel Rodriguez and Ashley Wood, two amazingly talented artists. How was that experience?
JM: The science on the shows is real–it's accelerated, happening faster than in real life, and they never
JM: Yes, those two artists did a great job bringing their respective sections to life, and I thought Ted’s 115
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_____________________________________ Previous Page: CSI: Miami–Thou Shalt Not. Art by Renato Guedes.
Jeff Mariotte Jeff Mariotte, ex-WildStorm and ex-IDW Editor-inChief, is a multi-talented author and bookstore owner. He’s penned innumerable comics and novels, including many for IDW, as well as writing wellreceived novels based on the Angel and Charmed franchises. Here’s Jeff and Kris on his work on CSI, The Shield, & 24… KO: Jeff, your first foray into the world of CSI comics was with your Thicker than Blood one-shot. Were you a fan of the show before the assignment, or did you need to do some research first?
_______________________________________________ CSI: Miami–Smoking Gun flashback/forensic sequence. Art by Ashley Wood.
seem to run into backlogs in the lab, but fundamentally they're using technology that real crime labs (with big enough budgets) use. So I wanted the science in my CSI-related comics and novels to be real, too. I've always done the research on my own, using forensic science books and online sources, and sometimes calling on experts for advice, but I can't afford a research assistant. KO: Other than Thicker than Blood, set in Vegas, you also wrote Smoking Gun, which was a CSI: Miami one-shot. What made a bigger difference in the two series–the location or the characters?
JM: I had been watching the show, but when I approach a tie-in assignment, whether it's for books or comics, I have to watch it in a different way– taking a lot of notes about character details and details of the world as it exists in that fictional reality. So I did do research on those aspects before digging into the script.
JM: Mostly the characters, but I think they reflect their location. Vegas is the cool city, filmed in blues and greens, mostly at night, and focusing on Grissom's night shift. Miami is a hot, sultry daytime city, shot in yellows and reds. Miami is also less of an ensemble show–it's about Horatio Caine and his team, but it's definitely Horatio at the forefront. In the original show, Grissom is the team leader but the show is more about the whole team. I tried to make the comics reflect that.
KO: Speaking of research, what about the forensic parts? For his books, Max used a forensic research assistant. For the CSI: Miami books I wrote, it was the complete opposite–I completely made up 100% of the science. What was your approach?
KO: Max & I discussed how unique IDW’s two-artist method was in approaching CSI. Your first comic, Thicker Than Blood, featured art by Gabriel Rodriguez and Ashley Wood, two amazingly talented artists. How was that experience?
JM: The science on the shows is real–it's accelerated, happening faster than in real life, and they never
JM: Yes, those two artists did a great job bringing their respective sections to life, and I thought Ted’s 115
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__________________________________ The Shield: Spotlight. Art by Jean Diaz.
idea to use two artists in that way was brilliant. I had never seen that done in any other comic. KO: You also handled the writing duties on The Shield: Spotlight. This property was a world apart from CSI, subtracting the science and adding a whole heap of grit. As a pretty mild-mannered guy yourself, was it hard to get in character to write the tough-as-nails and just-this-side-of-the-dark-side character Vic Mackey? JM: Not at all. I had been a fan of Shawn Ryan's work since his days as a writer on Angel, so when The Shield debuted I was right there watching. It turned into one of the most intense shows in the history of TV, and I've never missed an episode. Getting the chance to write that miniseries (which is, to this day– and the series ends next week, as I write this–the only licensed fiction based on The Shield) was a dream come true. I'm a pretty flexible writer, with a wide range–to me the most important thing in writing any tie-in is matching the original property's tone and voice, whether it's a TV show like CSI or a comic 116
____________________________ 24: Stories. Art by Manny Clark.
book like 30 Days of Night. I'm good at that, which I guess is what has made me a busy and successful tiein writer. KO: Moving on to 24… the initial release, One Shot, was a project you edited. (I also must point out that you helped a lot in the behind-the-scenes editing of my ideas that would result in my two CSI: Miami miniseries.) This was at the very beginning of the 24 franchise at IDW. Can you give us some insight into the early work that went into producing those books? For instance, did you choose the creative team of Vaughn/Haynes (writers) and Guedes (artist)? JM: The idea to do 24 comics came from Jeff Vaughn and Mark Haynes. They were huge fans of the show and pitched me their idea, and I thought their story worked really well with the set-up of the show. I brought Renato Guedes on board after seeing some of his photorealistic work, and I thought he'd be a great match. The hardest part of the book was trying to figure out how to make the time sequence work– on the show, an awful lot happens in any given hour,
and the only way to really approximate that would be to do the comic as a 24-issue maxiseries. That wasn't an option, unfortunately, but I think we did a good job of faking it. KO: OK, last question. Although all three franchises are great in their own ways, was there one in particular that appealed to you more than the others? JM: I still love CSI and CSI: Miami–in fact, I just had a CSI: Miami novel and a CSI DVD game come out, and I'm working on a CSI novel. So my connection to those shows is long-standing, and I really admire and appreciate the people I work with on those, at CBS and at the shows. And I had some great experiences working on those comics–attending a CSI DVD commentary taping session with creator Anthony Zuiker and Gary Dourdan, visiting the CSI: Miami set and hanging with David Caruso, Emily Procter, and Khandi Alexander. The one not-so-great experience was signing 10,000 copies of Thicker Than Blood in about four days–my shoulders still ache when I think about it!
_________________________________ 24: One Shot. Art by Renato Guedes.
But if I had to pick one it would be The Shield. There were some initial problems on that miniseries, but they were easily solved. I got to interview Shawn Ryan, Michael Chiklis, and CCH Pounder, which was fun. And as I mentioned before, there have been lots of CSI tie-in products, but only one for The Shield, which I think makes the Spotlight miniseries a little more historic and special. It's a close call, though. Put it this way–on the walls of my office, where I'm sitting now, are a signed 8”x 10” glossy that David Caruso gave me on my set visit, and a poster of Tommy Lee Edwards's cover to The Shield: Spotlight #1 signed for me by Shawn Ryan and Michael Chiklis. I've written a lot of tie-in comics and novels over the years, but those are the only two that have those sorts of things hanging around me when I work. So they're both (and by extension, the original Vegas CSI too) very important to me. IDW
117
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__________________________________ The Shield: Spotlight. Art by Jean Diaz.
idea to use two artists in that way was brilliant. I had never seen that done in any other comic. KO: You also handled the writing duties on The Shield: Spotlight. This property was a world apart from CSI, subtracting the science and adding a whole heap of grit. As a pretty mild-mannered guy yourself, was it hard to get in character to write the tough-as-nails and just-this-side-of-the-dark-side character Vic Mackey? JM: Not at all. I had been a fan of Shawn Ryan's work since his days as a writer on Angel, so when The Shield debuted I was right there watching. It turned into one of the most intense shows in the history of TV, and I've never missed an episode. Getting the chance to write that miniseries (which is, to this day– and the series ends next week, as I write this–the only licensed fiction based on The Shield) was a dream come true. I'm a pretty flexible writer, with a wide range–to me the most important thing in writing any tie-in is matching the original property's tone and voice, whether it's a TV show like CSI or a comic 116
____________________________ 24: Stories. Art by Manny Clark.
book like 30 Days of Night. I'm good at that, which I guess is what has made me a busy and successful tiein writer. KO: Moving on to 24… the initial release, One Shot, was a project you edited. (I also must point out that you helped a lot in the behind-the-scenes editing of my ideas that would result in my two CSI: Miami miniseries.) This was at the very beginning of the 24 franchise at IDW. Can you give us some insight into the early work that went into producing those books? For instance, did you choose the creative team of Vaughn/Haynes (writers) and Guedes (artist)? JM: The idea to do 24 comics came from Jeff Vaughn and Mark Haynes. They were huge fans of the show and pitched me their idea, and I thought their story worked really well with the set-up of the show. I brought Renato Guedes on board after seeing some of his photorealistic work, and I thought he'd be a great match. The hardest part of the book was trying to figure out how to make the time sequence work– on the show, an awful lot happens in any given hour,
and the only way to really approximate that would be to do the comic as a 24-issue maxiseries. That wasn't an option, unfortunately, but I think we did a good job of faking it. KO: OK, last question. Although all three franchises are great in their own ways, was there one in particular that appealed to you more than the others? JM: I still love CSI and CSI: Miami–in fact, I just had a CSI: Miami novel and a CSI DVD game come out, and I'm working on a CSI novel. So my connection to those shows is long-standing, and I really admire and appreciate the people I work with on those, at CBS and at the shows. And I had some great experiences working on those comics–attending a CSI DVD commentary taping session with creator Anthony Zuiker and Gary Dourdan, visiting the CSI: Miami set and hanging with David Caruso, Emily Procter, and Khandi Alexander. The one not-so-great experience was signing 10,000 copies of Thicker Than Blood in about four days–my shoulders still ache when I think about it!
_________________________________ 24: One Shot. Art by Renato Guedes.
But if I had to pick one it would be The Shield. There were some initial problems on that miniseries, but they were easily solved. I got to interview Shawn Ryan, Michael Chiklis, and CCH Pounder, which was fun. And as I mentioned before, there have been lots of CSI tie-in products, but only one for The Shield, which I think makes the Spotlight miniseries a little more historic and special. It's a close call, though. Put it this way–on the walls of my office, where I'm sitting now, are a signed 8”x 10” glossy that David Caruso gave me on my set visit, and a poster of Tommy Lee Edwards's cover to The Shield: Spotlight #1 signed for me by Shawn Ryan and Michael Chiklis. I've written a lot of tie-in comics and novels over the years, but those are the only two that have those sorts of things hanging around me when I work. So they're both (and by extension, the original Vegas CSI too) very important to me. IDW
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