Interview with Ron Marz

It’s no secret that I’m a Ron Marz fan, so I felt incredibly fortunate to be able to sit down with him and discuss the controversies that surrounded the beginning of his run on Green Lantern. During his tenure on that title, he not only had to deal with fans that were angered by Hal Jordan’s departure as Green Lantern, but he also faced accusations of misogyny from the website, Women in Refrigerators. Still, despite all of this (or perhaps because of), Ron is an incredibly kind and insightful person. Please enjoy this interview.

Popgun Chaos: How do you see Kyle Rayner and why was he so popular when he came out?

Ron Marz: Truthfully, It’s kind of hard for me to see the forest from the trees in this situation because it’s like judging my own work, but I think he was somebody at the time who was new and different in a major role in the DC Universe. I think a lot people felt like that was an avenue into the DCU where there wasn’t one like that previously. Kyle was a brand new character who was experiencing the DC Universe for the first time, so he became a kind of proxy for new readers to get into the DC Universe as a whole.

PC: I remember when the Hal Jordan left being Green Lantern and then there was Hal’s Emerald . . . um . . . whatever it was –

RM: It was initially “Hal’s Emerald Attack Team” but they decided to change it to a more politically correct version of “Hal’s Emerald Advancement Team.”

PC: See, I thought that it was “Attack” but then I was doing research and I kept finding “Advancement.”

RM: It was originally “Attack” but then they decided to portray themselves as a kinder and gentler obsessive fan.

PC: So, what was your experience with H.E.A.T. and the front they presented?

RM: To my knowledge, it wasn’t anymore than a few dozen of guys that thought it would be cool to kick up a fuss. It’s hard to tell because everyone blows things out of proportion, but I was told that it wasn’t any more than 70 something members which included me, Darryl Banks, and the editor Kevin Dooley which they gave us honory memberships at one of the conventions.

PC: I had heard there were a lot of upset fans and wild rumors of death threats during that time.

RM: This was in ’94 or ’95 and so this was before internet fandom and certainly nothing even resembling what it is now. So this was a period when feedback came mostly from letters to the editor sent by snail mail to DC. So we got stacks of actual letters written people who were in favor, some violently opposed and some that said that everyone that worked on this story should die. To my knowledge there was only one that was serious enough that it had to be turned into the police.

PC: Why do you think fans get so worked up over comic characters?

RM: The God’s honest truth is that I have no idea, but everybody gets wrapped up in something. Everybody has something that takes up their focus. I probably get way too interested in what happens with the New York Giants every season, but I think that comics tend to produce a bit more obsessiveness because it is an ongoing relationship with the readership. It’s not like a movie that comes out and then goes away and people move on to something else. Because comics form a relationship with a reader for years, I think it leads to a sort of heightened obsessiveness that we see.

One of my artist friends made the analogy that for some people comics become a religion because they go worship at the shrine every week. They go to the comic store every Wednesday to get their fix. It takes up a lot of time of what they are thinking. It becomes an all consuming thing that gives them something to do.

I think the nature of fandom is terrific, by and large, there are such loyal fans for what creators do, but something that relationship crosses the line.

I think a lot of times because of the Superfans (the over the top fans) because they have a long term relationship with characters, those relationships become far more important than relationships with real people. There is a certain segment of fandom where the characters are more important than the people working on them. There’s a segment of the audience who has a long term, vested relationship over the characters, and feels a great deal of ownership over the characters – probably more than the creators. When you’re on this side of the fence, you come in and you understand that yeah it’s tremendously satisfying to do this job, but it’s still a job. I don’t own Green Lantern at the end of the day and in the end, they are going to do what they want. I know where to draw that line where this isn’t a person, it’s a product, but I don’t think those Superfans have that mechanism that draws that line for them.

PC: What is the role of the writer when editorial decides the fate of characters?

RM: It depends on the writer and the character. In my case, the decision to remove Hal from the lead role wasn’t mine, it was from editorial. These sort of severe decisions are really rare for those things to come from a creative team, those decisions come from editorial because they are the caretakers of the characters for the company that owns the characters.

Looking back now, I’m frankly kinda shocked that I was allowed to develop the new Green Lantern as much as I was. I was given a couple of page of an outline of what was going to happen to move Hal off stage, but after that was left up to me, Darryl and Kevin to figure out how to develop him.

PC: What do you think is the biggest misconception that fans have about the industry?

RM: I don’t know that there is any one thing, but obviously, the fans don’t have any idea how the process actually works. There is more knowledge of that now because the barrier between fans and creators is much thinner than it used to be with the internet, but I don’t think the fans have a sense of the specific mechanics of how this works. The stuff comes out every Wednesday and I don’t think there is a thought given to how it comes out or how it’s made and really, they don’t really need to know that. If the fans expect their books to be there Wednesday, that’s the only thing that really matters. By and large, many fans realize that when a book changes it isn’t a personal thing. The exception is the Superfan who can’t see past themselves. They are by far in the minority, but they take it as a personal affront when a book is two weeks late because somebody got sick or there was a death in the family, but those are the ones that get personally offended.

If I had to give one answer, I don’t think fans understand how expensive it is to produce a comic. Just in creative costs for a mid-range book, it’s $15,000 or $20,000 and fans don’t realize that.

PC: How do you think the internet has benefitted fandom and how has it damaged it?

RM: I think benefit is that it allows for a two way conversation on how things are done and it has given instant feedback. Frankly, much of that is a two-edged sword because the anonymity of the internet leads people to be much less polite than they would be in person. By far, they are more rude and demanding and that sense of civility you see at conventions is gone. I think there is that simmering undercurrent that just isn’t good for anybody. I think it leads to bickering and demands and I just think it casts a pall over everything.

Thank God the internet wasn’t what it was when I wrote Green Lantern because people lose their minds over inane, meaningless shit and with that major of a change, I dread to think about what it would have been like.

It’s the fact that people are sitting in their basement or their bedroom or at Starbucks and they are having these hissy fits on the internet and this stuff would never happen if they were in the same room together. To me, that’s the most unfortunate aspect of the internet is that the sense of civility is lost on the internet. That sense of anonymity and that sense of trying to be the cool kid by looking down your nose at everything isn’t terribly healthy.

I think if I could change one thing, it would be that. There are people who have been hugely critical of me on the internet and then they come up to you at a convention and they want you to sign your books. These are the same people who say that you’re a misogynist and that you must have hated your mother which can’t be further from the truth. I’ve been blissfully married to the same woman for almost 20 years now and I’ve had a wonderful relationship with my mother, but the fact that someone would say that about you without ever meet you and then to turn around and have you sign their books is a little baffling, but I don’t think that there’s an answer for that for the most part.

PC: What were your feelings on the Women in Refrigerator’s website?

RM: I think where there’s smoke, there’s fire and if you’re looking for portrayals of women in comics that are less than flattering, you can find a shit load of them. If that’s your particular axe to grind, you can go find plenty of examples just like you could find examples in movies, on TV and in novels and anywhere else in the entertainment industry. As society has matured, so has that sort of stuff. I think there is a validity to a point, but I think it’s less out of this misogynist point of view where comics hate women, but it’s that traditionally, most of the comic heroes are men because these are power fantasies for 14 year old boys, at least that’s what they used to be. Frankly, Batman, Superman and Spider-man are always going to be there, so the only way to inflict emotional pain on these characters is to put their significant other in danger and that is why we see Lois Lane tied to the railroad tracks all the time. I think each person has to decide whether this is an insidious, misogynistic plot or not.

For me, having Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend killed and stuffed into a refrigerator was not in any way, shape or form intended to be about harming a woman, but it’s about Kyle learning that people around him were going to pay the price for what he was doing. Some people are going to say that “you’re using a tragedy to a female character to have an effect on your male character.” Well, yeah, I was. Shakespeare did the same thing with Romeo and Juliet. People care about their significant others. That’s a trope in all fiction. People are going to ascribe to that scene whatever they want to it. If you’re going to be looking for horrible things happening to women in these things, then you’re going to find them, but if you go into it looking for similar things happening to men you’ll find an equal amount, and probably a greater amount. To me, it was a process of cherry picking the events to prove their point. Not that their point was invalid in the first place, but I think it undercuts your point to cherry pick your evidence whether you’re right or wrong.

PC: I’ve actually been thinking making a counter argument called “Moms in Ovens” which is in reference to Kyle’s mom being killed at the end of the run. I know she wasn’t really killed but –

RM: Actually, she was intended to be killed.

PC: I kinda figured.

RM: How all that went down was that the editor said that we had to cut off all of Kyle’s relationships on Earth because we wanted to have valid reason for him to be in space for the beginning of GL: Rebirth. So, he wanted to kill off his mom and I thought that since it was the same character, doing the same thing that it should be even worse. So, the book was written, the book was drawn and the book was literally days away from going off to press. Then, the . . . let’s say . . . the Powers That Be got cold feet about it so we had no time to change the art, so we had to make up a half-ass excuse by saying “Oh, it was just a mannequin just to mess with you” which I thought looked incredibly ridiculous, but that’s what work for hire is like. Sometimes you’re put in the position of having to follow the marching orders.

PC: I remember when I read the “mannequin” line that it just smacked of eleventh hour addition.

RM: Eleventh Hour and 59 minutes.

PC: With “Moms in Ovens,”  I want to point out all of the parents that have been killed in comics to prove the point that “Women in Refrigerators” is ridiculous, because that is just the nature of melodrama that characters die or have terribly things happen to them.

RM: If you’ve already reached your conclusion and you look back to find evidence to support your conclusion, then it’s damn near easy to prove anything. These tropes don’t just happen in comics, but in fiction in general. If you want to, you could sit down with the complete works of William Shakespeare and point out the same issues.

PC: I saw that you are going to have a column at Comic Book Resources soon. How did that come about?

RM: Honestly, it’s because they asked me. I think their attraction towards asking me was because I tend to speak my mind. I don’t like to give the press release answer or the politically correct answer. I’ve been doing this long enough that I’ve seen all aspects of the business, but frankly, I don’t know what I’m going to write about.

PC: Cool! I really look forward to it! Thank you so much for sitting down with me for this conversation.

Be sure to check out the Moms in Ovens Project! It begins here!