An interview with Devin Grayson
A Shameless web exclusive
By Shane Dingman
Continued from page 3
How has the industry changed since you started? You have suggested your enthusiasm waxes and wanes depending on a bad day, could you describe the kind of day that really gets Devin Grayson down (without incriminating yourself or others you still work with!) and the kind of day that makes up for it all?
It’s changed a lot, no question. Primarily just that the people I initially worked with have now all moved on. I’m still in the Bat-office, but it’s a whole new Bat-office, and even the DC administration is different, all the way up to Paul Levitz.
A bad day is anything from 24 straight hours of writer’s block to a call from an editor explaining that the story line we’ve been discussing will have to wait because there’s a new crossover event coming down the pipeline an “I don’t have information for you yet but it will effect the next script so don’t write anything until I get back to you at which point you’ll probably have two, maybe three days before it’s needed. Oh, and on your other series? Yeah, the artist is behind, so we’re going with a fill-in guy — no one you’ve ever heard of — and we need two scripts from you by the end of the week so both artists can start ASAP.”
The thing that gets me down the most is when someone drops the ball but doesn’t apologize or take any responsibility for it (like an editor not noticing a huge art mistake until we’re proofing the black and white and it’s way too late to change it) or, worse yet, when someone you have to work with, be it an artist, an editor, a fellow writer, or a publishing company higher up, locks you into working on an idea you hate. Another bad day is picking up a comp copy of a book I’ve supposedly written and recognizing less than two sentences in it, or, as happened to a good friend of mine, being instructed by an editor to do something, doing it, having people hate it, getting blamed for it, and then having the editor leave you hanging out to dry for it without evening mentioning to other editors who now won’t hire you that you were working under his orders to begin with.
A bad day is noticing a really stupid mistake in your published work. A bad day might start with an e-mail from a well-meaning fan who, apparently unaware that you don’t read message boards, is writing to tell you that you shouldn’t be down about the horrible things they’re saying about you on them because not everyone believes them (believe me, I wasn’t feeling down about it until you just reminded me that that’s still out there!), and ends with office politics over which you have absolutely no control. A bad day is when an artist you’re speaking to for the first time calls you “sweetheart” or you get interrupted in a meeting 14 times by guys with louder voices and less socialization in compliance than you. A bad day is working really hard to accommodate another writer’s storyline only to have them totally run roughshod over your work and the work of your friends.
A bad day is the day after that day when your editor gets back to you to tell you there’s nothing anyone can do about it because the uncooperative freelancer has the benediction of someone more powerful than your editor. A bad day is the day after that when that freelancer is lauded in the industry press or fawned over by fans that don’t realize that he’s behind all the stuff they hated in the other books. Or, today for instance, a bad day is the day after you’ve panicked and sent an artist a half-finished script, and you’re sitting down to finally finish it when you realize you’ve made some horrible mistake on page three which you can no longer change (since the artist is already busily drawing page five) so, feeling like an idiot, you have to throw away your outline and come up with some genius idea for fixing your own messed-up story before anyone notices you tanked it.
A good day, though, is a day spent writing, which is what the days consist of 90 percent of the time. A good day is learning something new about a character you love, or finding yourself in love with a character you’ve just met. A good day is getting art back on a project that looks better than what you were imagining. A good day is coming up with a great idea for something new, or finally putting the finishing touches on something you’ve been working on for months. A good day is when the four-year-old across the street asks you if you could please give a letter to Superman for him, or the next day when you get to hand him an actual response. A good day is being interrupted from your EQ game by a call from Jim Lee asking if you’d be interested in maybe writing an EQ comic.
A good day is spent smoking a joint with one of your favorite TV stars that you’ve just met at an awards ceremony where you’re both being recognized by the queer community for honest and inclusive work. A good day is asking the businessman next to you on the plane if he’s familiar with Batman after he’s inquired about what you do for a living and rather snarkily followed up with “anyone I’ve ever heard of?” A good day is telling your best friend you’d be happy to take her daughter to the zoo because it doesn’t make any difference to your editor whether you write your script at two in the afternoon or two in the morning. A good day is getting a call from an editor offering you work you didn’t even solicit for. A good day is when your first comic appears in the stacks or when your first novel hits the shelves of your favorite bookstore. A good day is meeting another creator you’ve always admired and genuinely liking them. A good day is getting through a whole eight-hour meeting without once being treated as anything other than one of the guys. A good day is standing in the middle of a comic convention in Northern Spain watching a total stranger who doesn’t speak your language grin at you and hold her index finger up against her head like bat ears. A good day is talking to a fellow freelancer on the phone and reminding them why they put up with the bad days.
