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I didn't know that Munoz stuff.. I ran a Google search and found that bit though. Seeing in that virtually no one read those Ambush Bug comics, I don't think it is much of a big deal or anything... I can think of far worse examples of plagiarism/'homage', anyway.
Illustrating your point about him being 'difficult' as a person, here's a nice little interview I found:
quote: KEITH GIFFEN
Interview by Parrish Hurley
04/18/01
Back to Interviews Main Page
The following is a bio for Keith Giffen, taken from Vext #1, presumably written by Mr. Giffen himself:
"Keith and his family came to America in the early 1930s as they fled escaping the oppressive regime in Madagascar under the reign of Prince Gene Kelly. One of the founders of comics as we don't know them, Keith first joined comics in the 1930s where as a snot-nosed kid he helped cut up newspaper strips and paste them down on blocks of ice to be hoisted onto gigantic heat-sensitive printing presses. To this day, Keith still orders his drinks lukewarm.
Keith got his first break creatively in comic books when he suggested the first super-hero sidekick. The hero's name was Odysseus, and Keith suggested a partner named Norm. OK, so it wasn't a great suggestion, but it started the craze and Keith soon began producing all sorts of costumed comic creations: Don the Daring Dogcatcher, Plunger X, Captain Halitosis, and The Toe. None of them saw the light of day, but that didn't dissuade Keith, who kept on trying.
Keith became apprentice to comic legend Aristotle and learned drawing, storytelling and ice staking. Hey, it was a skill he could fall back on. In time, Keith came into his own. And as soon as he finds out what that is, he's going to use it. Until then, he's just going to have to keep on churning out books like this one."
Though this bio does tell you alot about Keith Giffen the man, it does not tell you about Giffen's true career. Keith has worked for almost every comic publisher that has existed for the last 30 years, and is probably best known for his work on the various Ambush Bug projects he's done for DC. Giffen's other memorable work includes the retooling of the Justice League of America and Legion of Superheroes for DC and his tough-as-nails creations Lobo and Trencher, the latter for Image.
Parrish Hurley:So you'll be contributing to Komikwerks?
Keith Giffen:Yeah, but I'm computer illiterate. I try to scan this s*** in and code it. When push comes to shove, I need help.
PH: What's the strip going to be? Something new? Something in the league of Spiderman, your last big project?
KG: I don't consider that a big project. My typical experience with Marvel: Sign on to do project. First issue - smooth sailing. Second issue - start arguing with editor. Third issue, halfway through quit-slash-or be fired. Wait two years, repeat.
PH: What's up with the editors? They seem to be taking more creative control.
KG:The words editor and creative, first of all, don't belong in the same sentence. Editors are pretty much ballast that weigh down books, with very, very few exceptions. I will qualify that by saying I was brought up in comics under guys like Julie Schwartz, Murray Boltinoff, Dick Giordano, Joe Kubert, Ernie Colon, and then I graduated to people like Andy Helfer and Tara Berger - EDITORS. I don't know what the hell these guys in the offices are now. They're taking up space and using oxygen that could be put to better use! The cult of the editor has arrived in comic books full-blown, and to me, the cult of the director is almost as insidious as the whole "director" thing. It's like - take a "Steven Spielberg film." Well, what happened to the writer, the cinematographer, and everyone else involved? Yes, the editor is taking more creative control, but I would say that maybe one out of every ten editors is capable of actually doing it. Now, I'm not going to name any names, but I work with some talented people, and then I work with some people if given a chance, I'd push into traffic.
PH: Well, what would you define the editor's job to be? What should it be?
KG: The editor's job is to understand the talent, understand the product he's putting out and realize that he doesn't have to personally like something that the public likes and facilitate the book, understand the basic that makes the book POPULAR. Right? Editors like Julie Schwartz would sit down, and they'd run over plots with you, and if you were at a loss for an idea they had one. It was more in their head than Mighty Power Rangers or whatever the f*** its called. They knew more than comics. They had probably been punched in a bar. They didn't live in their mothersâ basement -- they kissed a girl! All these things that are important to growing up. They were capable of handing you an idea that did not come from comics. They were well-versed outside of comics. You could say "Hemingway" and odds are they read one. Now you say "Hemingway" and they say, "Oh, didn't he pencil Teen Titans?" and you want to slap the guy. They were the touch point for talent and they had stables of talent. The only one who does any more is Andy Helfer. And Mike Carlin did, and he did it very well, when he was an actual editor. There was a stable of talent that was wildly loyal to them and would follow them anywhere they'd go - the editor also stands between the talent and the company, making sure that the checks were down on time and that the vouchers were there and taking as much pressure off the talent as possible so that the talent could do what they do best and that is be creative!
PH: With the way the major companies are "editing" their books now, as a result, what is the state or condition of the market now?
KG:What market? What market? Sales continue to plunge. If a title creeps up a bit in sales, they pop champagne corks. No one is making money publishing comics right now it's all in the ancilliary stuff, the toys. My personal opinion: Comics officially died about three years ago, maybe four years ago, I'm bad with time. That was the first summer sales continued to plunge, because summer was when you got that little spike in sales, that's the way the business ran. Also, at the end of the boom period when the comic book companies made it a habit of screwing eight-year-olds out of their allowances and totally f***ing over the comic book shop guys who were really taking a chance by gambling every month in the direct sales system of "Oh, if I can't sell it, I got to eat it." The market fell apart. It died right then and there and everything since then became this weird publishing version of Weekend at Bernie's - dragging around this corpse and saying "Look! It waved!" The corpse is getting rank. It's harder and harder to say to people, "Look, we're vital!" No, we're not vital. We're insignificant.
PH: Why is this?
KG:If I knew I'd be a rich man. We're being killed at the point of puchase, comic shop owners aren't willing to take risks any more. On a creative level, in the past, whenever a book was doing horribly, say, Swamp Thing's going to be cancelled, "Oh, let's give it to Alan Moore, see what he can do." Daredevil's gonna be cancelled, "Let's give it to Frank Miller. Frank, run with it for a couple of months, see what you can do." They took radical steps. They figured it's going to be cancelled anyway. You're not going to get that now. Now, as it gets worse, comics circle the wagon tighter and tighter. Let's put it this way: I volunteered to come back on board Lobo on a monthly basis. They'd rather cancel the book.
PH: Has there ever been an example of a book that was dying and they said "Let's give it to Keith" and then it took off?
KG: No. I've been asked to revive books that were already dead, Justice League being the most obvious. Oh, then there's Suicide Squad.
PH: What about DC's heyday in the early eighties with New Teen Titans and Legion of Superheroes? You had a lot to do with that.
KG: Back then it was fun. It really was fun to do. We had people in charge who knew how to be in charge and who were raised on more than comic books. It was more freewheeling then. People would get excited that George Perez came up with a new way of running a panel sequenceor. Trevor von Eden would come in and remind people that Alex Toth was still a strong influence. Wonderful stuff going on. Now it's all interchangeable, homogenized cogs. I can't tell the artists apart, these new guys. It's all one big eye.
PH: Within the first five or six issues of the Legion and Titans Baxter books, both you and George Perez quit. Then sales dropped.
KG: I did the [Legion] poster, I burned out. I thought, "I don't want to do this no more!" It wasn't a sudden decision. It was building for months.
PH: Then how about later, during the whole "Five Year Gap" saga?
KG: I knew where I wanted to start, there was a story I wanted to tell, and that was that the Legion's heroism would come through even in the bleakest of times. If I would have picked up right after Paul's run, which was a wonderful, wonderful run, I would have had to dismantle everything. But it's easy to be a hero when there's a wonderful future. What if your face was ground into the dirt? I wanted to start from the lowest point and build it back up. I wanted the five year gap because I couldn't bring myself to dismantle what Paul had done. I wanted to respect it. I wanted to say "This is Paul's Legion. He did a wonderful job, but this is the direction I'm taking it in. I'll fill you in as we go along." [The fans] were all on me during my run saying that after 30 years of the Legion, I'm invalidating Paul, this didn't count. My respect was mistaken for arrogance. I quit.
PH: I'm under the impression that you're not the biggest fan of continuity.
KG: I think continuity is destroying comics. I'm a big fan of consistency. If Ben Grimm is grumpy and Reed is an egghead and Johnny's hot-tempered and Sue is Sue, that's the way they are. But do you think I could give a damn about where Thor was last Thursday at 9:00? "Oh, he can't be in your issue of blah, blah, blah, because in my book, he's in outer space!" So? Do all these issues have to take place at the same goddamn time? Do I really need an entire issue to figure out why sometimes Captain America's stripes didn't extend around his back? I mean, come on! At the end of the day they're comic books. They're disposable entertainment. The idea is to read a comic book, roll it up, stick it in your back pocket and go out and play softball. And you know what? When you get laid, stop reading them! And then if you like the format, or the art, you can come back. When a kid gets laid, we lose him, because he no longer needs that male adolescent power fantasy that we trap him in. We are not meant to be double-bagged and hermetically sealed and kept forever. We are the toilet paper of the publishing industry.
PH: You say that so proudly.
KG: I am proud. I am extraordinarily proud of it. You know what? I love signing comic books at conventions that come to me from a kid and that comic looks like he's been cleaning latrines with it. Because that means he pawed it and went through that thing and got into it. People come up, and I say I will not take it out of the plastic bag. You take it out. I used to drive people crazy, because they'd come up, "Oh, I've got the whole entire mint set of Legion of Superheroes and Keith's gonna sign them" and then as I sign it I fold the corner of the cover and they scream "Oh, no! Don't fold it!" What? Are you going to sell it? Are you taking advantage of me to jack up the value? Are you using me as a whore? By the way, what's your name, I'll personalize it. Then you see their eyes roll in their sockets. Comics are not savings bonds, for God's sake. They're a quick fix entertainment. The ideal comic takes as long to read as it takes to take a dump.
PH: I was a kid reading avidly between, say, 1979 and '85. My favorites were the obvious ones: New Teen Titans and X-Men. Suddenly the market was saturated with several versions of the good books - I lost interest.
KG: How many Batman titles are put out a month by DC, how many Spider-Man books does Marvel have? There's got to be something else you can do besides another f***ing Batman book! Maybe it's me. I mean, I'm on the wrong side of 40, but I know I'm working for the kids. My, son, he'll look through a bundle I bring home, and there's not a single comic there that he'll read.
PH: How old is he?
KG: He's 17. From 12 on, he's never picked up a comic book! How does he put it - "Superman is Grandpa's hero, the X-Men are your heroes, even Spawn is your hero. I don't want something with your fingerprints on it. When are you going to do something for me?" Well, never, apparently, because both companies have put a moratorium on any new ideas! What kind of business can thrive without new ideas?
PH: What about the independent companies - Image, Valiant. What was going on there?
KG: I don't know. I worked with Image, I was tossed out, they never had the decency to call me up and say why. As for Valiant, I was there when it was Acclaim, I kind of rode it down, it was a weird time, there were a lot of people fighting for control, but again, I don't know. There's some good people up at Image and a lot of good people at Valiant or Acclaim. With Image, I don't know, but with Valiant, I don't think anything was done with malice. I think maybe it was miscommunication, the sad state of the marketplace. If youâre in middle school, junior high, you're going to get beaten up on the playground if you're reading comic books. Comic books have gone back to nerddom! What's the next step for comics? Hey, you know what? I don't know!
PH: What are you working on now?
KG: Pulling a paycheck whereever I can. That sounds crude. I meant it to sound crude. I love doing the storyboards for animation. I like taking comic book assignments - It's in New York, it's kind of local, and I know I'll get paid! It's called supporting your family and putting a roof overhead. I take on assignments that excite me, to tell a story that I really want to tell, and I take assignments that are just there, and that's what you fall back on. And you know how to be professional. And there are a couple of things now that I'm looking at that look like they are going to be fun to do. Just please, God, let it be fun to do!
PH: Such as what?
KG: Well the Justice League stuff I think I can have fun with and the Rose and Thorn project. I'm also doing a graphic novel for Vertigo, a horror one that I think should be a lot of fun. Comics used to be a job where I'd sit down and say, "My God, I can't believe they're paying me to do this." They're paying me for my hobby. Now it's a job. And I think a lot of the talent out there would agree with me.
I draw a very distinct line between pre-royalty talent and post-royalty talent. The pre-royalty talent knew we weren't going to get rich; we did it because we loved it. We loved doing it, we loved the story, we loved the comraderie. Post-royalty talent: There's a sense of entitlement, a "I'm here for the back-end" thing. "How much is this book expected to sell, and what will my royalty split be like?" We never even thought in those terms. Now it's "Give me the special project" or "Don't put me on the monthly book!" Back then it was get on that monthly book, dig in , and start competing. You don't think there wasn't any rivalry going on between Marv and George and me and Paul when Legion was jockeying to catch up to Teen Titans back then? Sure there was! Now that's died.
One of the best little fueds I worked up was with Rob Leifeld, who was always getting smacked by people, and undeservedly so, as far as I'm concerned. He understood the idea of putting a joke in a comic, I'd make some reference to Leifeld women, right? He'd come back and zap you in his book, and then you'd zap back. We had this nice little thing going on. I'd jerk around with him, he'd jerk around with me, and of course, people had to blow it out of proportion. "Oh, they hate one another!" We were just trying to have fun, just trying to keep this fun. That's all. I'd put "Rob Leifeld's a jerk" in graffiti in my book, and everyone's "Oh, Keith hates Rob!" It was an opeing for Rob to put in his next book "Keith is a hack!" This has been a comic book vision since I don't know when, and it's all falling apart.
PH:So when did the fanboys become fanboys?
KG:I don't know. I just blinked my eyes, and there they were. When I came up with the saying "Bite Me, Fan Boy" for Lobo, I thought it was very out of left field. I never would have had it printed, had I known it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are just too many of them, it seems, supporting what is left of the comic book industry. It scares the p*** out of me. I used to say, "Well, your comic book fans are crazy, but at least they're not Trekkies. Well, they are now!" Comic books and jazz are two uniquely American art forms. The one thing they have in common is that once every ten years both are pronounced dead. In this case, I think, the comics died on us for good. My son says he's not going to spend three bucks on a Spider-Man comic and get one twentieth of a story, artwork you have to decipher, stories you can't follow (besides Spider-Man's married so it's like the adventures of my parents) when he can go to the video store, rent the Spider-Man game and actually be Spider-Man.
I tried the whole nine panel grid per page in Legion of Superheroes, you know, if the kid is going to spend a buck-fifty, give him more bang for his buck, give him two issues worth. Stupid me! Hassle hassle hassle, editor, hassle hassle company...
Now there are these web sites that are dragging the luggage of all these dead comics to the Web, only to be rejected by whole new audiences.
PH: What about sites like [Komikwerks]?
KG:I'm optimistic about web sites that come out honestly. You know what [Komikwerks] is? It's all "Here's your voice, put it up here, have fun, it's your hobby, you're not making any money at this." Other sites are "We'll put it up and charge people $2 to get in and make money." No you won't, because the only sites that people will pay to get into are porno sites! And Penthouse is already doing the porno comics and they're doing it much better than anyone else.
But yes, I'll contribute to [Komikwerks], once I get my act together, on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. One week it might be as crude as a Peanuts strip, another week it might be as difficult as a Kirby drawing. I don't know if I'll follow old characters - I can't do Ambush Bug anymore because I made fun of Warner Bros., and they won't let me do it anymore, and I can't do Punx anymore because I made fun of Acclaim!
Trencher I own lock, stock and barrel. DC and I have a copyright trademark share on Heckler. I've never been one to really own characters like they were my children, because someone will always come along and have a better idea, so let them do it. I can do Chigger and the Man, insult a whole new generation of women! That was meant to offend more than almost anything I've done. I did Lobo as an indictment of that whole genre, and he wound up being the poster boy! So I've misfired a couple of times.
Whatever I do next, or specifically [for Komikwerks] will have a more humorous bent - I'm hoping to do something like a cyber version of Mad Magazine. I may fail dramatically, but I'll have succeeded for trying, and again, the onus of having to make money off of it is removed!
But you know what I really want to do? I want to do Superman stories where Lois is still trying to figure out who Superman is. You know why? Because Charlie Brown never kicked the f***ing football.
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Thanks to Keith Giffen for his time. We just wish he'd learn to open up, and share what's really on his mind...
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