What happens when you get two Missouri-raised comics icons together over the phone? You get a Missouri-raised comics blogger posting about it.

The Comics Journal has an awesome interview up with former Bat-editor and Green Lantern/Green Arrow writer Denny O’Neill and current Invincible Iron Man writer Matt Fraction up, in which they talk about deadlines, the direct market, editors, and a whole lot more.

Here’s a highlight of this lengthy piece of essential reading, in which they discuss their seminal takes on Tony Stark, the Invincible Iron Man:

O’Neil:
Yeah, well, the first Iron Man story I did was a fill-in and Dave Michelinie had established the drinking problem in the continuity. I opened on Tony having a dream that he’s in the Iron Man suit, but he’s drunk and then you turn the page and he’s waking up, saying, “Wow, what an awful dream.” Steve Ditko did a great job on the rest of the story but we ended up having Marie Severin drawing that one page. There are people who think that heroes should never have serious flaws. I don’t think they should be jerks, the word “hero” is from the Greek “to serve and protect” and I think that has to be element of it. But, having a guy overcome something like an addiction or a terrible flaw seems to me to enhance his heroism and I think Gruenwald’s boss was of that school or something like it.

We — Mark and I — if we had to do it again it would be six issues shorter. I think we did stretch it too far. There were a couple of other glitches but, basically, it was pretty successful and we got a lot of praise from rehabilitation organizations. So, what’s Tony’s drinking situation these days?

Fraction:
Well, he’s onto a bad patch, but I’ve written him as being, basically, a dry-drunk. I don’t know that I want to get him drinking again, but I want to show him not asking for help — that’s been a big deal for me — and so this has been him as an arrogant, headstrong, “it’s OK, I can keep it together, I can fix everything” — coming from that sort of place. So, he’s learning the hard way that that is not, in fact, the case.

Check out the rest of this awesomeness by clicking here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 1:23 pm and is filed under News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.