What with the Eisner-award nominated Jack of Fables under his belt, and a menagerie of other greats like House of Mystery, Blue Beetle, Final Crisis and now JSA, Matthew Sturges really is one of the greatest comic book writers today.

SHARP OBJEX was lucky enough to catch up with the man himself to talk inspiration, imagination, and even a little bit about his novels, Midwinter and The Office of Shadow.

SHARP OBJEX: Where did it all begin? Was there a wake-up-and-that's-it kinda moment in deciding a career in comic book writing, or perhaps it's always been a dream of yours?

Matthew Sturges: There never was a time when I thought I would be a comic book writer. I always assumed it was one of those jobs that special, magical people did. My biggest hope was that I'd write a novel or a few short stories and maybe someone would publish them. But by the the time I actually did get into writing comics it was at a time when I'd almost completely given up on writing. I didn't get serious about writing as an attempted career until I was in my late twenties; before then I'd struggled as a musician for a while and then got all wrapped up in the Internet boom. It wasn't until after the bubble burst, and I had to take a stream of progressively more sucky programming jobs that my need to jump ship into a profession that didn't make me want to slit my own throat propelled me to make a stab at it. But like I said, I was despairing even after that. My first comics job, writing Jack of Fables with Bill Willingham, couldn't have come at a better time.

SO: Looking at your projects in general, it's almost too easy to categorise them under the 'Fantasy' genre, but just what does 'Fantasy' cover? How would you define this mysterious genre, and why do you feel that your work fits in there (if, of course, you agree with that statement)?

MS: It's true that most of what I do is fantasy; it's what I've always been drawn toward. When I was younger, I was always more interested in something if it has some kind of sfnal or fantasy element. I was very into Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek, and horror, too: Stephen King, that sort of stuff. If it had some kind of strong counterfactual basis, I was there. I think the reason that I've ended up doing so much fantasy rather than science fiction or horror, is just that I'm better at it. It's pleasant to write because all of the research is mainly done in your imagination rather than on paper. And I sometimes find writing straight ahead horror a bit disturbing; my imagination easily gets carried away with itself and I can freak myself out at times.

I was working on a story once, a ghost story to be precise, and I was up late at home alone doing it, and I got so into it that I actually had to stop writing at a certain point. It all started to seem a bit too real and I was seeing ghosts out of the corner of my eye. I never did finish the thing.

SO: Could you tell us a bit more about your involvement with Fables and how it progressed to Jack of Fables? Was the spinoff always intended?

MS: My involvement with Fables began with Jack of Fables. Bill Willingham and I had been in a writing group together, just before Fables got started. Then we'd all gone our separate ways. I kept up with both Bill and with Fables; it was my favorite comic despite that fact that Bill was writing it. And because we'd worked so well together during our writing group days, I guess it seemed like a natural fit to Bill when he and our editor Shelly Bond came up with the idea for a spinoff. Bill wanted it to be something different from the parent book, and thought having a co-writer would give it a different feel. And that's certainly how it worked out; Jack of Fables is definitely a horse of a different color, to say the least.

SO: Of course then there is House of Mystery, a truly imaginative series, although I do believe there was an original run years back with this title. How much did you rework this?

MS: The original title was a straight-up horror anthology, part of the surge of horror comics that came out in the 1960's. It ran for quite a while, somewhere around thirty years. If there was a conceit at all, it was that there was a queer little house called the House of Mystery, and its caretaker was a lanky sociopath named Cain who would, from time to time, introduce the stories, much like the Crypt Keeper in Tales From the Crypt. That was pretty much the long and short of it. It had a sister book called House of Secrets, which was presided over by Cain's shlub of a brother, Abel.

Anyway, from time to time Vertigo Comics will revamp an old property to sort of keep it alive, and it was House of Mystery's turn, as it were. We thought it would be fun to do a horror anthology; the problem, though, is that anthologies typically don't sell very well. That's how we hit on the idea of having an ongoing story that would hopefully keep readers coming back month after month, but still get the anthology feel by having short stories illustrated by different artists each month.

SO: Within the House of Mystery the payment for food and drink is to tell a story, thus the more stories told require more stories within stories.  Is there a limit to your imagination?

MS: There doesn't seem to be, at least not yet. Most writers have a notebook or a computer file filled with those odd little random ideas. Usually there's something in there that can be turned into a House of Mystery tale. One of the things I did in setting up the premise was include a bunch of different sorts of characters; by virtue of their existence they can provide launching points for stories if I get stuck.

One of my favorite characters for this purpose is Jordan Mayer, the NYU film student who has simply awful ideas for movies. He tells what may be my best story for the book, one called "Jordan's Movie Idea with the Gorillas and Shit," which is basically him explaining the plot of an utterly nonsensical film that he dreams of making someday, with gorillas and zombies and ninjas and pirates and dinosaurs and evil twins and time travel. The whole thing takes place over three pages and, as illustrated by David Hahn, it's beautifully insane. It's sort of a jab at the mashup mentality of a lot of today's genre pop culture. If zombies are good, why not zombie pirates? Why not?

Anyway, there are several characters who exist for that purpose. Unfortunately, I had to kill a couple of them recently. It was painful, but it had to be done.

SO: All of your projects have featured a wide range of artists.  Do you get any sort of decision as to who illustrates your writing?

MS: It's very much a collaboration with the editors, Angela Rufino and Shelly Bond. They know lots of artists, and they know who's available when, so they shoulder a lot of that. I have a standing list of artists I'd like to work with, some reasonable gets, and some that are pipe dreams (I'm looking at you, Mike Mignola). But between us we've managed to assemble an astonishing array of talent. Gilbert Hernandez (a personal hero who I never dreamed would illustrate one of my stories), William Michael Kaluta, Neal friggin' Adams...the list is impressive. Though I have to say that the one that made me the happiest was Sergio Aragones, whose strips for Mad Magazine were one of my favorite things when I was a kid. Getting to work with him was a real treat.

SO: Ok, so we know your quite the story teller.  Who are your favourite story tellers? What comes top in the 'literature you like' pile?

MS: I realized recently that Frank Herbert has had a huge impact on me as a reader and a writer, specifically the Dune novels. I tend to reread those books all the way through once every couple of years. They're just so competent and big and believable. I've never really managed to believe that the universe he created isn't actually real.

I'm a huge fan of Gene Wolfe's. His Book of the New Sun might be the greatest science fiction novel ever written. That's another one I've reread. Second to that might be Ursula K. LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness or Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.

Interesting that in the above list is lots of sf, given that I'm mostly known for writing fantasy. I don't actually read much fantasy, though I'm not in any way opposed to it. But if you parse some of those books a bit further, you'll see that some of them, especially Dune and Book of the New Sun, are probably more fantasy than science fiction, though the have a lot of sfnal trappings. I respect hard sf, but it doesn't really engage me, and I've never attempted to write it.

As for comic books, I pretty much think that Alan Moore and Mike Mignola hung the moon. If I could be half as good as either one of them, I'd feel pretty smug.

SO: You have your novel Midwinter as well. Can you elaborate on it a little for us? I've read that you describe it as a sort of “dirty dozen with elves." Obviously these aren't conventional fairy-tale elves?

MS: No, they're a little rougher around the edges. They're far more human the way I portray them; still a bit mysterious, and with a strong sense of propriety (and, you know, they're magical and all) but with a more human range of emotions and a much greater variation in types.

The Dirty Dozen With Elves thing is a pretty good explanation of the setup, although it spins off in its own direction pretty quickly. In short, it's the story of a group of inmates in a prison in Faerie who are set free to go on what's very likely a suicide mission for Queen Titania. Meanwhile, the Seelie Kingdom of Titania and the Unseelie Empire of Mab are gearing up for a war, and our heroes find themselves caught up in that. There's a bit of a love story. I like to describe it as a slightly subversive sword-and-sorcery epic fantasy. I'm a bit leery of some of the conventions of the genre, so I tend to take a bit of an ironic distance with it. This distance infuriated some readers of Midwinter, but others liked it. I always thought it was a pretty good book.

SO: What is the progression with this? Do you see expansion with Midwinter, or is it a stand alone piece?

MS: It's a complete story, but I'm by no means done with the world or the characters from Midwinter. I've just recently complete the "sequel," The Office of Shadow, which is a spy thriller with elves. (Every book in this world will ultimately be ____ with elves. Braveheart with elves. Die Hard with elves. Pee Wee's Big Adventure with Elves. Give me time.)

The Office of Shadow is a different beast than Midwinter, though it takes place in the same world and shares some of the characters. Unlike the first book, which follows many of the conventions of epic fantasy, this one plays out more like a spy novel that happens to take place in a fantasy world, though the climax and resolution are pure fantasy. I don't think it's much like other things out there at the moment. It's also probably the best thing I've ever written, which I say with whatever measure of objectivity I have about my own work; which is to say, not much.

SO: If you could work in collaboration with anyone who would it be?

MS: Collaborating is hard. I've enjoyed collaborating with Bill Willingham, and I have another collaborator named Dave Justus that I've been working on some things with, but it can be an exhausting and frustrating experience. If I were to pluck one of my favorite authors out of the ether to work with, I'd probably be so overwhelmed that I'd just let them come up with everything and I'd end up as a glorified typist.

SO: Do you see any of your work being transported into any other mediums like film? I've heard rumours of a Fables TV series -- do you think that will work?

MS: With that sort of thing, the proof is always in the pudding. A Fables TV series has the potential to be spectacular, but I don't know anything about that one that's actually in the works. I personally always thought that Midwinter would make a great movie, and I think Office of Shadow would as well. The comic books, maybe not so much. House of Mystery would make a terrible movie and an only slightly less terrible TV show. But it's never really a consideration. Thinking in terms of viability in other media is the job of people who understand that sort of thing; I just write comic book scripts and try not to worry about it.

SO: In the publishing world, prospective writers are warned of a land full of rejection and criticism. Do you have any words of wisdom that will inspire courage and hope?

MS: The trick is understanding that criticism and rejection are part and parcel of a career in writing. Almost nobody is immune. There are a very few utter geniuses whose work comes out of their brains pre-perfected, but for the rest of us, there's always failure, both creatively, and careerwise, whether it be in the form of scathing reviews, haranguing editors, or simple rejection. Speaking from experience, I pitched about a million and six comic book ideas to Vertigo before I was offered the job doing Jack of Fables. I learned something from each one of them, and I kept going.

But ultimately, I think the field of writers is mostly self-selecting. Most of the writers I know are people who'd be writing anyway, even if everything they wrote ended up in a drawer somewhere. The criticism and rejection certainly stings (although I find it does less so as time goes on), but it's just something you power through because you're going to keep going no matter what. If you're easily dissuaded by criticism or rejection, then you're not going to get very far anyway, so the question is kind of moot. The only advice I can give is that overnight successes are rare and rejection is nearly universal. I am, at this point, a fairly successful comic book writer, but I have ideas that get shot down all the time. You just have to keep going.

SO: Have you ever had any ideas that were shot down that you genuinely feel deserved a chance? Do you care to share with us any such failed endeavors?

MS: There were certainly ideas that deserved to die; I can remember some of those. But there are a few that I think really would have been good. But once it's over, it's over. I find that I never look back at those failed pitches. If it was good, then I put the ideas back in the hopper and then pull them out later for something else. If it was bad then I just let it die.

I'm sitting here trying to think of one that I thought really ought to have made it, but honestly by the time you go through the pitching process and ultimately have something shot down at the highest level, you kind of end up hating it, regardless of how much you were in love with it at the start. There's the whole notion in writing of killing your darlings; you can't get too attached to some bright idea, because there are all sorts of things that can make that bright idea unworkable. Again, you just have to pick up and move on.

Mini Quiz:

Fave film of all time: Don't have one. Never have. I almost don't understand the idea of having just one film that's your absolute favorite. I like all sorts of films for different reasons.

Can't live without: My MacBook. Couldn't live without it.

Fave quote: I don't have one of those either, but I read one recently that I really liked. It's by Marianne Williamson, but was quoted in a speech by Nelson Mandela: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us."

Top 3 bands on your playlist: The Beatles, Imogen Heap, and maybe Crowded House

If I wasn't writing awesome comics, my plan would be: Either go to culinary school or write incidental music for TV. I haven't decided which.

SO: Finally, what's next in Matt Sturges-land?

MS: Comics, comics, comics. I've got Jack of Fables and House of Mystery still going strong at Vertigo. In the DCU I'm still doing the Blue Beetle co-feature in Booster Gold, I've got JSA All-Stars that just launched, and I'm taking over The Web as of issue six. At some point I'll be writing a third novel. I've always got all kinds of stuff on deck waiting to go. We'll just have to see what pops up next!

SO: Thanks Matt, it all sounds pretty awesome!

You can read Matt's blog here: http://matthewsturges.com/wordpress/

And read the first three chapters of Midwinter here: http://pyrsamples.blogspot.com/2009/03/midwinter-by-matthew-sturges.html