Interviews

Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir

By LJ Douresseau
June 20, 2004 - 10:36

Marvel's defunct Tsunami line wasn't such a bad thing after all. It did introduce a wider audience to the comic book work of husband and wife writing team, Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir. Originally, screenwriters, they caught the attention of astute readers with their mini-series from Oni Press, SKINWALKER, a fast-paced, suspense thriller that Oni eventually collected in book form. That book landed the couple the gig for the Tsunami relaunch of NEW MUTANTS.

This past spring saw Marvel's "Reload" event in which the company gave many X-Men related titles a fresh start and also introduced new series. Nunzio and Christina direct one of those new titles, NEW X-MEN: ACADEMY X, born from the ashes of New Mutants. Several weeks ago, Nunzio and Christina answered questions about the old series, the new series, and about their new Oni Press published graphic novel, ONCE IN A BLUE MOON, so we have Mr. Charlie #33:

If I understand this correctly, New X-Men: Academy X will be different from New Mutants because this time the students will be expected to prepare to be X-Men, whereas the first time around they were just students at a school designed to deal with their special needs. If that's the case, why the new direction, or was this going to happen anyway, so why not take advantage of a title change and a new number one issue?

ND: A bit of both. We had always intended to make a lot of the changes that are coming in the book. It was not going to be as pronounced, as we weren't planning to change school policy. But we wanted codenames, costumes and some of the pressure of being the new generation of X-Men to come into our book, and we had intended to start working those elements in with the third arc.

So when Marvel said, let's shake things up for the reload and told us about the new headmasters, we amped up our plans. Once we showed our plans, it was Marvel who said, let's really try and promote this with a new #1. Are the #1 and the "X-Men" in the title a ploy to get more readers? Absolutely. But we appreciate Marvel making every effort to get this book read.

The main thing that first caught my attention in YOUR New Mutants was how you dealt with teenagers and the trials which they go through with the added burden of mutant powers. It seems as if once the new mutants started hanging around the mansion and encountering X-Men, the book lost its focus.

I thought that New Mutants, at least early on, could have been that book that would appeal to the readers buying manga at Books-a-Million and such. Is the idea of non-super hero mutants just not something that both Marvel and the fans can deal with? Or was the book never meant to be the teen drama that it at first seemed to be?

CW: The book's still a teen drama. That's not going to change. But these are kids with powers and the question of whether or not they'll use those powers as superheroes seems like a natural part of the drama given the universe they live in. As for the book losing focus, the first four issues were slower than we would have liked. And that's not the book it should have been. Once we got all the kids to the school, I think things came together much better.

Is Academy X going to be like the early Lee/Kirby X-Men where the X-Men were students AND X-Men and sometimes circumstances just forced Prof. X to send his students on a mission. Are they X or are the X-wannabes? Without having to rehash something you've probably said many times, what characters make up your book and how do they fit into the kind of stories you're going to tell or what you see as Academy's direction?

ND: For lack of a clearer term, they're X-wannabes though not all of them want to be. This is not a book that includes field missions. There are X-Men at the mansion for that. These kids are training to use their powers. For some of them, this is the coolest part of school - the Danger Room, the costumes, all of it. For others, it's an added complication that makes their hard-to-deal with teen lives even worse. And for at least one of them, it is all wrong. Being an X-Man is not even remotely what this student has in mind.

CW: The cast is made up of our kids from new Mutants - Josh Foley, David Alleyne, Sofia Mantega, Laurie Collins and Noriko Ashida. Dani Moonstar is still there as a teacher. Rahne and Shan are also still there. Cyclops and Emma Frost are now part of our regular cast now as they are the headmasters of the school. And you'll also get a chance to see a lot of the other students at the school.

I'm assuming that Randy Green is the series regular artist? At what point did he come on board, and how did that change how you approached what you were doing? Or are you just doing your thing regardless of who the artist is?

ND: Randy was going to be the regular for the third arc of New Mutants. Since that was going to be the arc with the introduction of training costumes, Randy did a set of costume designs for the characters. And that, in turn, helped us get the relaunch with the new name - Marvel loved what Randy had done. So he had an immediate impact. As for how he's changed our style, Randy is collaborative in nature and we have tried to open our process up to him. We want him to be a part of plotting the individual issue breakdowns, so that he can have a say in pacing and the like. We've also offered him the ability to let us know what he wants to see in the book, long term. We made similar offers to Keron and to Carlo, but so much was changing with the book, and deadlines became factors, and neither of those guys got to enjoy the collaborative process as much as we hope Randy will.

So far I've found that the artists with whom you've worked distracted from your storytelling because they were so...unpolished? Do you sometimes find that something in the art is disconnecting from the story you're trying to tell?

ND: I don't want to badmouth any of the artists we worked with. There was one, in particular, who clearly reached a point where he didn't care. He probably didn't like the way we were telling the story, but he shouldn't have let it affect his work and it did. Other than that, I don't actually have complaints about individual artists. My complaint was always that the shift between artists was jarring and didn't allow the book to take shape as easily. New Mutants had 13 issues and between them, there were four pencillers. That's not counting the plethora of inkers. So from issue to issue (and in one case right in the middle of an issue) the whole feel of the book on a visual level would shift. If that doesn't force readers to disconnect on some level, I'm not sure what would.

Is this new direction more Marvel's choice or did you really want this? Was the restart needed because New Mutants was drifting towards cancellation?

CW: As far as we know, New Mutants was never drifting towards cancellation. Mike Marts and Joe Quesada really liked what we were doing with the book. We had conversations with Mike about where the story would head once Cyclops and Emma took over the school and we fleshed out the story we have for our first arc of New X-Men (only then it was the third arc in New Mutants). As a vote of confidence, Marvel wanted to then relaunch New Mutants as New X-Men and make it higher profile. They really believe in these kids we've been developing. And it was on the strength of our characters and on the really cool designs Randy Green did for costumes that Marvel made this choice.

Tell us the story behind your new novel, Out of the Blue.[Actually, the title is Once in a Blue Moon, ljd]

CW: ONCE IN A BLUE MOON is a fantasy story about a teenage girl who falls into a childhood storybook. Once there, she discovers her destiny is to save the kingdom from an evil wizard by finding and riding the last of the mighty dragons. It will be released as an original graphic novel and hopefully be the first of many.

Is there a central theme or idea behind this story?

ND: The central idea is that magic really exists, if you want it. But with it comes responsibility. You can't just have a destiny to go into a magical world and enjoy yourself. If you have the privilege to have a magical destiny, you're going to have certain responsibilities. Aeslin has to accept both - the fun sense of magic, and the grand sense of destiny.

How did you connect with Blue Moon artist Jen Quick, and how does she fit in with what you want to do with the story?

CW: We found a website online that had Jen and several other artists. We really liked her work and when we mentioned her to James Lucas Jones, he had seen her stuff as well and agreed to contact her. I used to dream of being in my favorite books. Is this story one either of you has wanted to tell for a long time? Have any other works (yours included) influenced the story?

ND: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE is a favorite of mine. I wanted to open a door and find a portal to another world. So, a part of me has wanted to tell this story for a while. More recent influences have been the SUIKODEN series of Playstation RPGs, the manga INU-YASHA, the movie DRAGONHEART, and "Buffy The Vampire Slayer." I know, that's a diverse set of influences. From Suikoden, we drew certain cues for the type of magical world we wanted Aeslin transported to. In those games, there is an order of Knights who ride Dragons. From Buffy, we took the sense of a teenage girl who wants nothing more than a normal life finding out that she is Chosen to do something magical, and the struggle that entails. From Dragonheart comes our perception of the noble Dragon - not a new idea when Dragonheart came out, but the best representation we've seen. And from Inu-Yasha came the realization that this type of coming of age tale for a girl is told often and well in manga. We took cues from Inu-Yasha and Fushigi Yuugi on how to do this story.

Did you create this book with a particular audience in mind? Would you describe it as "age appropriate," a term that seems to say "general audience for comics" better than "all ages?"

CW: We weren't trying to target a specific audience. It was simply a story that appealed to us. However, we are certainly aware that it should be "age appropriate." We want it to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible.

Does the story feel like a fantasy epic that's heavy with text, or is it very much like a comic book - very visual with lots of panels, maybe being closer to manga?

ND: It's definitely written in a manga style. We actually keep the panel count lower than our other comics. And we let the pictures do more of the work. There's less text. No captions, no thought balloons. We want it to be as visual a book as possible.

If this volume becomes the first of many, is Aeslin going to revisit the same kingdom or is she going to travel to many other lands? I don't know why I'm thinking (as I type this) of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Are you planning on exploring the elements of fantasy fiction the way Gaiman did? I guess I'm asking you to share some future tidbits if you want to.

CW: There's only one world Aeslin goes to. But in subsequent volumes, she'll explore different parts of that land. She's got to rescue the kingdom and she's only going to be able to do it piece by piece. Each volume will be a new adventure, but all working towards one larger goal. We figure we'll be able to have lots of fun this way because each new section of the world she goes to can be an entirely different environment. If in one volume she goes to a port town, we can tell more of a pirate story for that book. And in another volume, she could visit an underground city and we could tell more of a dungeon type story. It leaves the playing field wide open for us.

THANKS, NUNZIO AND CHRISTINA. Visit Oni Press at www.onipress.com for more info on all of Nunzio & Christina's series and graphic novels from the publisher, including Once in a Blue Moon and the summer release, THE TOMB.

If you are a comics creator or publisher and you want to talk or have material for review, hit the clickable name link to contact me. Holla!

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12