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http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=145003
Didn't see a thread for it
by Vaneta Rogers
It's been hinted about for months, but now it's official. DCs Ambush Bug is coming back with a vengeance.
Or an argyle sock
And the bug's original creator, Keith Giffen, will return to the character, both plotting and penciling a six-issue Ambush Bug mini-series beginning in July. Writer Robert Loren Fleming will also return to the character to add dialogue for the mini-series, which promises to poke fun at all the Countdowns and Crisisiseses... er, um, Crises that have filled the recent DCU landscape.
The mini-series was hinted at back in December when Dan Didio's DC Nation column in the back of most DC comics said Giffen would "make a return trip" to one of his most popular characters "because Jann Jones kept bugging." Most fans guessed Ambush Bug right away, because DC Coordinating Editor Jann Jones has often stated publicly that she's a huge fan of Ambush Bug. Now it turns out that Jones, who already edits DC's new kids line, not only got her wish for more Ambush Bug, but now has the added job of editing the mini-series.
First appearing as a quirky Superman villain in the early '80s, Ambush Bug eventually turned to the side of good, but ended up becoming a wise-cracking annoyance to the more "serious" characters of the DC Universe. Beloved by readers for his humorous antics and often biting quips, Ambush Bug gained enough popularity to have two mini-series and several specials over the next decade by Giffen and Fleming, who poked fun at the comic book industry through stories that featured recurring characters like Ambush Bug's doll sidekick Cheeks, the Toy Wonder, and Argh!Yle!, his evil argyle sock, complete with a metal mask.
And as Giffen point outs, Ambush Bug never really went away, having made several cameo appearances over the years in various DC comics, even showing up in the pages of last year's 52 as a member of a rag-tag Justice League team, spouting out the room service order: "Send up a plot and three pages of dialogue right away!"
Newsarama talked to Giffen to get the scoop on the mini-series, but first we checked in with Jones to find out why her "bugging" was so persistent and how she's dealing with having to edit the craziness of the Bug.
Newsarama: Just right up front: What is it about you and Ambush Bug?
Jann Jones: [laughs] I know! What can I say? I have a thing for funny men in green insect costumes. What modern woman doesn't? My love for Ambush Bug is a direct result of a recommendation at my local comic book store. My friend, Mike Broder, worked there, and he knew I loved comics and I was a bit of an oddball. One week my Wednesday bundle was a little light, and I asked him for a good recommendation. He gave me a copy of Ambush Bug #1. He literally gave it to me for free because he knew I would come back and buy the rest of them, and he was right.
The book was everything Mike said it would be and more. It was funny, quirky, irreverent and kind of sweet in a weird way -- kind of like me.
NRAMA: Anyone who has seen or read about a DC Panel on which you've appeared can attest to your desire for a new Ambush Bug series. When you finally got the OK to do this project, what was the reason behind the approval? And why now?
JJ: This really is the perfect time for the return of Ambush Bug. We have had so many big events over the past few years; who better to give us a unique overview of them all than Ambush Bug?
NRAMA: What do you hope this brings to the DC product mix?
JJ: Simply, the return of Ambush Bug.
NRAMA: But this series going to be in DC continuity?
JJ: This six issue series will take us from Identity Crisis all the way to Final Crisis. We will see how the presence of Ambush Bug has affected the DCU in ways you could never imagine.
NRAMA: In a general sense, what can fans expect from this comic when it's released?
JJ: I can't reveal too much about the contents, but I can tell you that Keith skewers everyone and everything in the DCU. No event, character, writer or editor is safe. Because he has been such an integral part of the DCU over the years, he has unique credibility to satirize our work. It is guaranteed to be an equal opportunity offender.
Oh, and I can also tell you there will probably be panels of me looking bewildered and pondering my sanity for getting myself into this mess.
NRAMA: The editor of Ambush Bug is never safe! But as editor, have you been given a pretty free rein on what you and Keith can do in this comic?
JJ: I don't know about free rein... this book is kind of like that Kenny Roger's classic tune The Gambler "You got to know when to hold em... know when to fold 'em" kind of mentality. Keith calls me and says how about we do this? and how bout we do that? Sometimes I say "yes" right away, sometimes I laugh and say "yes", sometimes I say "Let me check with Dan" and then there are times when I say "oh dear lord, no." I am still amazed by how much he got away with in the original miniseries.
NRAMA: Was there ever really any doubt it would be Keith Giffen that you'd have do this? Why is Keith the right guy? And why him penciling this project in particular?
JJ: There was only one choice for Ambush Bug's triumphant return, and that was Keith. Without him, I wouldn't bother to do it. I wanted him to pencil this because he is an awesome artist. He's been so busy with doing layouts on 52 and Countdown, we haven't had an opportunity to see him pencil. I am lucky enough that he had time to do this. He was one of the first freelancers I worked with when I made the move to editorial. I assisted on the first issue of Lobo: Unbound and I assisted during the beginning of 52. For my first mini-series as an editor, it just seemed natural to work with him. Besides, everyone knows it's really Keith in the Ambush Bug costume.
Now let's turn to Giffen himself...
Newsarama: From your seat, h did this project get rolling? Was this something you pushed for?
Keith Giffen: No! No! It wasn't even my idea to put Ambush Bug in 52 -- that was the big four. I pretty much figured the character had run its course. And with comic books being taken so seriously... I mean, look at this fervor over Spider-Man's marriage being dissolved by internal decree. Comics are taking themselves so seriously; I just figured the Bug had a nice little nostalgic twang to it.
And out of the blue -- and I really mean out of the blue; I was not expecting this -- Dan DiDio and Jann Jones called me up and said, "You want to do Ambush Bug? Six issues?" And I was like, "You're really asking?" [laughs] And they said, "Yeah!"
Apparently, they kind of agree with me.
NRAMA: Agree with you?
KG: Yeah. They brought it up that comics are taking themselves way too seriously, and it's time to thrash them around a bit and remind people why comic books are supposed to be fun.
So my next question was, what are the "thou shalt nots?" I mean, with Ambush Bug, there have always got to be "thou shalt nots."
NRAMA: The things you cannot get away with for the sake of humor. The untouchable subjects, right?
KG: Well, where shouldn't we go, or if we go there, we're going to have a fight? And I only got two! Don't do any thing libelous, which is like "duh!" And don't directly attack an individual creator.
NRAMA: Oh, so Keith... that means you can't go after Rucka. [laughs]
KG: Oh, now, I can't avoid that!
No, but I think certain people would know I was kidding. Greg Rucka would know I was kidding. Geoff Johns would know I was kidding. I think any of the guys on 52 would understand. But the point is that we shouldn't make fun of them as individuals. So, for example, we can make fun of something like a Shadowpact story, but we shouldn't be making fun of Bill Willingham.
NRAMA: The person.
KG: Exactly. And that was it! Other than that, anything that DC has done is open game and we're diving into it head first. Bob Fleming is coming back from ... well, whatever you call it: Semi-retirement, exile, whatever. And he's dialoguing the books, so we can have the original Bug team steering this along.
NRAMA: You had mentioned in our last interview with you that it's feeling like a reunion at DC with people like Jim Shooter on Legion and John Ostrander on Suicide Squad. It sounds like you and Fleming are among that reunion.
KG: Yeah! Well, the original idea was that they were going to just hand me Ambush Bug and let me run with it. And when I sat down and started working it out, my sense of humor tends to skew dark and has a little bit more of a harder edge to it than Ambush Bug had. One of the key ingredients that Bob Fleming added to the Ambush Bug character was that heart, that almost lunatic innocence that I think appealed to a lot of the fans. So it just made sense to bring him on board so it's the Ambush Bug that people remember instead of the Ambush Bug seen through my hostilities. Then again, Bob and I get along great. I've never lost touch with Bob through the years. It's great to be working with him again, especially on a character that we had so much fun with.
I don't know if everyone realizes this, but when we do Ambush Bug, I pencil out a page just like a silent movie. And I hand the pages to Bob, and then I refuse to talk to him about them. I don't put liner notes -- nothing. He gets these pages cold. And then he layers things over the top. People find that hard to believe because the pages are done in a way that there's a weird synchronicity, and they think, they had to have talked about it. But no, we didn't. And that's pretty much the way it's working now.
NRAMA: He at least knows the plot though, right?
KG: He knows the basic plot. He'll know the basic thrust of the plot, but if all of the sudden he turns the page and there's a complete diversion from the story, it's up to him to roll with it and try to figure out how to work it in.
Ambush Bug started out very linear. And as it went on and on, it started breaking up into almost, like, Mad Magazine segments that very loosely held together. And I see no reason to completely give up that format. That said, it's not going to start off that way. It will start more linear as we re-introduce his cast of characters: Cheeks the Toy Wonder, and Argh!Yle! the Sinister Sock, and others.
NRAMA: Oh, Bug fans will be thrilled to hear they're back. Who else is in the series that you can tell us about?
KG: Anybody in the DCU we want! And that's something we never really got before in Ambush Bug. There were always, you know... "Don't touch this. Don't touch that. Oh, no, don't do that to that character. Stop making fun of this guy. We're trying to do something with this character and make him serious: Don't jerk him around." But here we've got carte blanche. Anything that we want to touch in the DCU -- be it Superman or Sinestro Corps or Green Lantern Corps or stuff that's happening in Final Crisis!
NRAMA: And this will come out around the same time as Final Crisis, right?
KG: Yeah, Final Crisis will be fun because we'll actually be poking at it while it's running.
NRAMA: When you say it's loosely held together except the up-front premise -- what is the up-front premise? How is Ambush Bug coming back?
KG: He's never really been gone. He's just basically reintroduced into a storyline.
NRAMA: But this would be a good issue for somebody who has never read an Ambush Bug issue before?
KG: I'm approaching it from the fact that the character has existed, but there might be people who aren't aware of the character. So there will be little diversions into who is Ambush Bug? And we'll lie about his origin again.
NRAMA: [laughs] Lie about it?
KG: Every time we tell his origin, it's different.
NRAMA: Is that because he just can't remember?
KG: Mmmm... that could possibly be part of it. An unreliable narrator lives within the Ambush Bug books.
But we're just having fun. I mean, OK, Superman was rocketed away from Krypton and blah blah blah... we know that story. And there's always something coming up that makes for a strange origin story in comics. I mean, when we did Ambush Bug, half of the characters that are out there now didn't even exist. So going in and thrashing around and peeling back the edge of the carpet and showing us where some of the dirt was swept under, it's fun!
We'll also be trotting a lot of DC characters out into the spotlight again. And they're characters that I'm sure DC would pretty much rather the fans would forget about. But we just rejoice in them.
NRAMA: Can you give any examples of something you're trotting out again?
KG: Oh, well two come to mind right away. Whatever happened to the Green Team? And whatever happened to the Glop from Outer Space?
NRAMA: Oh, it almost seems cruel to bring back a character called the Glop. [laughs]
KG: The Glop from Outer Space was a Wonder Girl villain. He was this big blob from outer space that ate rock 'n' roll records. And I thought, well, there's got to be a follow-up story, because they don't make rock 'n' roll records anymore.
NRAMA: The Glop is starving!
KG: [laughs] But basically, the premise of the six issues is that we're going to try to zero in on each of the six DC events. We'll start with Identity Crisis, then working our way through Countdown to Infinite Crisis, Infinite Crisis, 52, Countdown to Final Crisis, and Final Crisis.
NRAMA: Well, that's a tongue twister. That's a lot of crises.
KG: Yeah! Thematically, I'm hoping that the issues will feel like lost issues from each one of those series. In this issue of Ambush Bug, it might be who killed Jonni DC? But that might only be eight pages of story. The rest of it might just be us thrashing around. It's very much like stream of consciousness. If I feel like drawing it, I draw it.
NRAMA: And Bob Fleming may not know why you drew it, but he makes it work.
KG: Right!
NRAMA: But these are going to be stories that take place during the recent series of "crises."
KG: I guess it does take place over a period of time, but keep in mind that in Ambush Bug, time is really, really fluid. If we're making fun of something that happened in Infinite Crisis and I come up with a good Monitor joke? Screw it! It goes in there.
NRAMA: Is Lobo going to show up in Ambush Bug?
KG: No. No, Lobo is not going to show up in Ambush Bug. There are a lot of characters that people might guess are going to show up in Ambush Bug, but no. It's going for the easy gag. And I'm kind of sick and tired of Lobo at this point. If I'm going to have to handle Lobo again, then I'm going to have to handle him on a complete reworking of the character from the ground up. I don't want to deal with this space vigilante riding on his bike anymore. I'm tired of that concept.
NRAMA: There's been some hinting by Dan Didio that the character will be showing up this year. Are you saying you won't ever write him again?
KG: No. I'm saying that if the time comes when I deal with Lobo again, one of the conditions would be a complete reworking of the character from the ground up. I don't want to do the character that you know. I've told every story I want to tell with that character. I'm sure there are hundreds more entertaining stories that can be told with that Lobo character, but I'm not going to be telling them. It's like Justice League, when DeMatteis and I decided to leave Justice League -- we didn't leave because we were tired of the book; we didn't leave because we thought the book couldn't go anywhere; we left because all the stories we wanted to tell with these characters, we had told already. It was just, you know, I don't want to do this no more.
NRAMA: How does it feel to pick up the pencil again?
KG: More fun than I thought. And maybe that's because I'm dealing with a character that I know so intimately. Maybe if I'd been penciling an issue of, I don't know, Superman or something like that, it might be a little bit more of a grind. But Ambush Bug lends itself to the way I put the pencil to paper, so I'm having a lot of fun with it. My hand's cramping up because I'm not used to it, but I'm having a lot of fun with it.
And Allen Milgrom is on the inks. Al knows exactly what to do with my pencils. I did an alternate cover for Action Comics that was inked by Al, and he's got this nice, fluid approach that will soften some of the edges. And if we can't have [former Ambush Bug inker] Bob Oksner [who passed away last year], I'm glad we've got Al working on it. Milgrom is one of these inkers who deserves better recognition than he's gotten for his work.
NRAMA: Dare we harp on the question of timeliness now that you're pencilling? We've certainly talked about late books a few times. Are you on time?
KG: Uhh... I'm going to say, "yeah." [laughs]
They gave me a huge window, realizing that I do have other things I'm doing besides pencilling. So it's not going to be a problem.
NRAMA: Any final thing you want to tell people about Ambush Bug?
KG: This book is just free-willing fun. It's the kind of book that just reads... what? It's for enjoyment. There's no deep meaning to Ambush Bug. There's no hidden agenda or anything like that. It's just goofy fun. And keep in mind that since we did the Ambush Bug way back when, there have been a lot of other books. We've got Major Bummer, Lobo's been out there, we had the Bwahaha Justice League, Marvel's got She-Hulk -- so it's not like Ambush Bug is unique. A lot of this stuff we did in Ambush Bug back then has been done again since then. So this series will also be about finding a unique way of approaching the character again without losing the charm, without losing the heart that the character always had. It will be a fun series, and I'm having way too much fun doing it.
Didn't see a thread for it
