Interview: Greg Rucka Talks Lazarus And More (Part 1)
Shortcuts make long delays, but life makes longer ones. We spoke with Greg a few weeks ago, as the more attentive in our audience might have noted, but every party to that (very long) interview got caught up with things in the interim. Fortuitously, we’ve got this up just in time to beat the punch for Lazarus #5, and we now present to you the results of those talks. Because the conversation was so far-ranging, we’ve broken it up into three parts.
Greg was relatively circumspect with what he let slip, but be warned there are both some as yet unreleased images and some very mild spoilers of things to come. For those of you who haven’t read Lazarus #1-4, we recommend you grab a copy and do so now – as well as (if so inclined) our annotations for those issues.
This interview doesn’t just concern itself with the ongoing sci-fi epic as we also ranged over the contemporary politics that inform the comic, methods of ancient siege warfare and the role of art in a weary world. Part 2 will follow tomorrow, and Part 3 the day after that.
That’s enough chat! Enjoy!
Part 1 – The Politics of Lazarus and the Role of Art
David: Good morning, America!
Robert: Where to start? You guys have just come through a government shutdown for two weeks; you went without basic government services for a while and nearly caused the world economy to crash as you guys were downgraded…very, eleventh hour kind-of stuff. Did you see Lazarus kind of springing to life before you?
Rucka: [Laughs] I don’t know, you know? The political situation in the US is so broken it’s not funny. I mean it is horribly, horribly broken right now. It is not even merely not bipartisan, it’s ultrapartisan. It’s super-mega-ultra-jumbo-partisan now. And the whole thing is sickening and galling and appalling, but that said – I’m not sure if you saw this, but there was a report released a couple of days ago saying that the hole in the ozone layer is smaller. Not appreciably smaller, but hey, smaller, y’know?
David: We notice, because the hole is right above our heads.
Rucka: Yeah! So you’ve got to take the good with the bad, you know.
David: We’re not throwing any stones here. Our State Attorney-General just put indefinite detention laws in place and started forbidding group association for biker gangs – this is more a sign of the times, rather than us looking across the ocean and shaking our fists.
Rucka: Your new prime minister steadfastly maintains that climate change is a myth and that the fires that are burning in New South Wales are perfectly normal…
Robert: Even that’s an interesting distinction. He is as conservative a guy as I can see being elected in my lifetime, he trends the furthest to the right, but if he attempted to suspend our Medicare programme, the government would tear itself apart.
Rucka: But that’s because you have a population who see healthcare as an element of your quality of life. Whereas what’s happened in the US is that there has been a very concerted effort…there are really two things going on there. The first is general: I really believe there has been a very concerted and deliberate and calculated effort over the last…really, since the ‘70s, where the GOP decided that the way they were going to gain and hold control of the country was in particular by taking what had been a pretty reliably working class Democratic mid-West and breaking that base and convincing them to vote at every turn against their interests, and the way that they’ve accomplished that is by making people stupid.
Robert: Right.
Rucka: And I’m not joking. They have systematically and repeatedly gone after education and in the place of reason and critical thought, they have offered watered down and frankly in a lot of ways, I think you could argue blasphemous interpretations of Christianity to a base that hate it. And one of the biggest problems we have in this country right now is that a large number of the people who vote are ignorant and have been bred that way. And then there’s the segment of the population that has been convinced that being educated, being informed, being aware is in some way a character flaw.
For the rest, what they have done, is that the people who are out there trying to be invested and be educated and aware, they’ve been overwhelmed to such an extent that now apathy is something that is sold. So, these things have combined to create a voter base that, if they can be moved to vote are what we refer to as single issue voters, and they are single issue voters about things that don’t actually matter one whit in running a government and protecting a society. With regards to healthcare, we’ve never had universal health care, so you can take it away from us because what the hell do we know? They managed somehow to sell us a bill of goods saying that you’ll be somehow worse off when you have health care than if you didn’t. I mean, black is white, up is down, night is day, it’s absurd.
Robert: I’m always shocked by the theory that getting hospital cover will somehow make things worse.
Rucka: I was listening with my son the other day to a kind of humorous news radio show we have here, where they talk about items in the news and then they make fun of them, and they started off by making fun of the Affordable Care Act roll out and the glitches in the system. And my son Elliot, he said “I don’t understand, what’s the deal with Obamacare here? What are we talking about when we say that?” And the biggest failing the Democrats had was allowing the Republicans to take control of that phrase, and then use it themselves. To use it themselves was just stupidity of the highest order. It’s the Affordable Care Act. If I hate Barack Obama, I’m sure as hell not going to support something called Obamacare. But if it’s called the Affordable Care Act, well, I might support affordable care. But look – this is not a new game – this is a game that has been played forever. There was pro-choice vs pro-life…
Robert: Well, no-one’s going to call themselves Anti-Life, are they?
David: And I’m not sure ‘Pro-Choice’ works much better as a label in that sense either. Everyone likes life and choice – it’s a debate between pro-abortion being legal vs. abortion being illegal. Terms have been co-opted.
Rucka: And the terms have changed the nature of what that debate is about. Every government does this on one level or another – it’s not new. It’s never been new. I imagine in the next few weeks a story is going to break about the NSA wiretapping your government.
Robert: [Laughs] I don’t think they need to bother. We probably tell them everything they need to know.
Rucka: It’s funny. I know a guy, I believe he’s out of the army now, but when he was in the service he used to do some work in intelligence, and he posted a note on Tumblr saying there was a sign up in the office saying “there are friendly countries, there are no friendly intelligence services”: WELCOME TO POLITICS, MAN! That’s the way it is. I mean, look at the Merkel response – on the one hand, it’s reprehensible, but on the other hand it’s very sweet to think that not everybody does this. But every world leader gets an intelligence briefing every morning.
David: There are other elements in play. If I was German citizen, and I remembered a time before a certain wall came down…this is definitely going to hit a hot button.
Robert: Absolutely, and that ties us back into Lazarus, actually, because that’s one of those things that can become subtle background until you think about it – you theoretically live in a Western liberal democracy, and the idea that a rival government is tapping your phones can be relegated to something that’s not terribly surprising.
David: Blasé, even–
Robert: Do you think, to the extent that Lazarus has kind of “devolved” from our world to the one on the page, that there’s more of a risk of a subtle, creeping investiture of power into oligarchies, or that it’s more of a risk that you’ll get jackbooting thugs walking down the street locking people behind bars?
Rucka: I think you get to jackbooting thugs…you don’t get there over night. You get there with subtle things and consistent movement. You know, the timeline for issue 4, it’s all about the one incident that sort of kicks off the decline and fall of the US and ultimately morphs into the consolidation of Carlyle power at least west of the Mississippi. Y’know, it’s a flashpoint event, but it’s a flashpoint event that hopefully comes across in the timeline as the result of years and years of —
Robert: –subtle little steps?
Rucka: Yeah.
David: It struck us immediately on reading it that this had to be a system that rotted from within, where the subtle checks and balances had fallen away unmourned for this to be able to play out.
Rucka: Yeah, and I think there’s an argument to be made – you know, you read it and it looks like Monasterio is the good guy in that narrative, and Walker is the bad guy in that narrative, but the fact is Monasterio has to have been pretty much bought and paid for too. And if we want to talk about bought and paid for government, we’re living in it now. One of the things that’s been sold in the press and the moment is that there is this bipartisan conflict and no-one can agree on anything, but in fact they can agree on one thing and that’s they want to be rich and that’s what they’re there in Washington to do, and nevermind governance.
Robert: There’s something very telling when John Oliver was running the Daily Show for a while and he came to Australia to do a series of segments on gun control. He was speaking to what I understand is the equivalent of the chief whip for the Democrats, the person who ensures people tow the party line. He was talking about what is the chief responsibility of any politician, and the first thing the guy said was “get re-elected” and there was this kind of awkward pause as he realised he’d said that before passing legislation or any kind of governance –
Rucka: Before doing your job, you have to worry about keeping your job?
Robert: Exactly! That’s exactly it, and he hoped to go back and redo the take but, of course, they said we’ll just keep the tape where you said what your first instinct was. And I think that’s the point, whenever it becomes a job by which you’re trying to earn an income, and get a sinecure going forever…
David: And when it starts to belong to a protected class as well—
Rucka: Yeah.
Robert: Greg, one of the things I’ve seen on your bio is that when you’re not being censored for any official bio you get upset with people not paying more attention to the world–
[Rucka laughs]
Robert: –but obviously there’s issues everywhere with journalism turning into –pabulum is the word I’d want to use. Do you think that fiction has more of an import for educating people about their world now that journalism’s letting us down?
Rucka: It’s funny, because that is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I believe for better or for worse that it doesn’t really matter what the narrative is. It doesn’t matter if you’re just doing an issue of Spider-Man or Lazarus or Pretty Deadly or Sin City, when a writer puts art out into the world, they are making a statement. They can make the statement negligently, they can make an abdication of that responsibility, but the fact of the matter is that we are responsible for the words we put out there, and I really believe we have to be aware of it, and we have to consider it. I am not a fan of the David Mamet school which sort of says that the purpose of art is art and nothing else. There is no point in me trying to deliver a narrative that provides a sense of catharsis simply for the sake of catharsis.
David: Right.
Rucka: My job first and foremost is entertainment. I have to tell a story that engages and that ideally the audience will invest in and wish to pursue. Now, if through doing that I can take the opportunity to shine a light into certain dark corners that I feel need some attention, I am doing my job. But in particular, in this modern age, we are so inured to being played, being advertised to, being sold to – our senses for that are very acute, and if we feel we’re being lectured to, one of the first things we do is shut it down. And I feel that’s a very natural sort of defensive response. I don’t know, given the horrible state of journalism right now, I would argue that yes, it is perhaps more important than ever that those of us in fiction use the small soapboxes we’re on to try and point and say “Hey, look – this”. That being said, there are people who aren’t going to read Lazarus because they’re going to say “Oh, that Rucka’s a liberal pinko, and he hates capitalism, and I disagree with everywhere he’s coming from.” [Laughs]
Rucka: In point of fact, there are certain things in the world of Lazarus, that are actually better now than in the real world today. The environmental crisis of the world as a broad thing: much reduced. There are certain areas where it’s absolutely going to be a toxic dead wasteland, but for example when 80% of the populace is no longer using fossil fuels the atmosphere is going to get better.
Robert: One of the things we noted, I think, in our first set of annotations, is how much life outside the Carlyle complex matched third world conditions. I don’t mean weird apocalyptic third world conditions you get in the Walking Dead or Jeremiah. I mean, if you took a plane to Uganda, that’s pretty much what you’d get, give or take.
Rucka: Yeah. Especially when you’re looking at Issue #2, and Forever is going through the marketplace, Michael and I were talking and that’s looking at India subcontinent stuff, and the have-nots, they pretty much have nothing.
David: There’s something meaningful in looking around the world, be it in India, or Brazil or if you go to the worst-off Aboriginal communities here in central Australia –
Rucka: There was a story I saw yesterday, I can’t remember exactly where it is, I want to say in Virginia – there’s a community where their poverty index puts them on the same level as poverty in Delhi. You know, it’s everywhere.
David: Exactly. The visual language, the language comics speak in, has been employed in Lazarus in a way that gels with my experience with poverty, and this takes us out of that realm where “science fiction” is a label for rocket-and-ray gun adventure-fantasy and takes us into that realm of something that may display both entertainment and social awareness.
Rucka: It’s the first time I’ve thought of it this way, I suppose, but economics is a science. And I am in no way an economist, but in a sense we can call it a form of science fiction as well.
David: There’s a big tradition of science fiction working in that kind of “soft science” space – you get writers like Philip K. Dick or even Kurt Vonnegut who take the social conditions of their time and predicted forward based on that, rather than find a single impossible thing on which to hang their hat.
Rucka: Well, one of my favourite sci-fi novels is Haldeman’s The Forever War, and while the scaffold of the novel is very much hard science, the socio-economic stuff he explores is really the fascinating part.
Robert: It’s something that I gravitate towards on some level, because I’m not really a scientist. Science is something that I find very interesting, but I trended towards the humanities after 10th Grade, which means after a certain point, scientific speculation goes past the basics and might as well be magic. I can’t tell, beyond a point, without research whether it’s as academically rigorous.
Rucka: It’s interesting, because the further along we’ve progressed with the project, the more and more I find myself trying to educate myself better and to understand multiple sciences better than I ever did. Because I’m not a scientist – I mean, here I am, coming up on 44, and I wish to God I had stuck with that stuff I found so difficult, that I had instructors who were able to thread that needle, who were able to explain to me that what’s going on with mathematics is that you’re learning a language. I mean, if I’d had an instructor tell me that calculus was a language, my approach to that would’ve been so different.
David: I know that for me the thing that finally allowed me to “get” calculus was reading through Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle.
Rucka: [laughs] Thank you Neal Stephenson! The funny thing is with Ender’s Game coming out…I went to a private college prep for five years, and the Headmaster at the school when I started gave me Ender’s Game to read. There was an application process and we had a talk, and he gave me the book and said “I think you’ll really enjoy this”, and it’s stayed with me ever since. I still have Ender’s War on my shelf.
Robert: That copy?
Rucka: Yeah, that copy. It’s stayed with me through the years. He has long since passed away, but that book is still with me.
Robert: Are you going to go to the movie? A lot of people are talking about boycotts, for example.
Rucka: I’m not going. I really do believe in voting with your dollars, and regardless of the fact that Card has been paid, regardless of the fact that there are many, many people who have worked on the movie who virulently disagree with his views, my money, in some sense would be going into his pocket. He has not separated himself from the product. It is a meagre protest, but it’s the same reason I won’t pay to see Mel Gibson in anything. Y’know, I’m a Jew, and I’m not going to give him my money.
David: Yeah, sure.
Rucka: I wish that wasn’t the case. And I say that, not ten minutes out from talking about my own politics. I’m sure some people will respond negatively to Lazarus, others believing that you need to separate the artist from the art.
Robert: It’s funny, I read stuff by people whose political views don’t accord with mine – but there’s a point where those views will cross over from…I don’t think irrational is quite right…maybe vile? I mean, vile is a strong word, but you sometimes reach a point where you’ve stepped outside of seeing decent human behaviour the way I see decent human behaviour. And talking about Mel Gibson, or say, Roman Polanski films, there comes a point where you say “This is a code of conduct that I can’t endorse at all, I can’t step into your shoes for this conversation. You’ve stepped outside of the realm of what I think is the human baseline.”
David: For me, I think there’s a point where the art becomes a statement that becomes politicised. Sadly, there’s probably not going to be a movie made this year that doesn’t have a virulent homophobe working on it in some capacity. I’m certainly not going to boycott them all, so the issue is: what associations is the film hanging their hat on? What is the statement they’re willing to make by associating themselves with these people and these positions?
Rucka: And Orson Scott Card is actively seeding propaganda. He’s a propagandist for a hate movement. It is interesting because it’s where you can slide very easily into the arguments of, people can believe what they want to believe, and you live your life and I live mine, but I don’t actually believe that. There are certain things where I go “No, you believe this thing is wrong. It is demonstrably problematic and dangerous.” [laughs] And it’s not a live and live situation then. And this is the biggest problem I have with particular the Tea Party movement, that kind of archconservativism, that comes back to this lovely umbrella in the US of individual responsibility, that “people have to do it for themselves” and so on. And that comes down to a breach of the social contract.
Robert: I think even if you want to call yourself a libertarian, or what have you, and say “I want to be as independent and as unregulated as I can possibly be”, even if you accept that, “as unregulated as I can possibly be” doesn’t mean completely unregulated. There are elements that are part of living in a society that the social contract calls on you to, if nothing else, to do no harm.
Rucka: Right! But I would argue that iterates even further. I live in a city. I live in a city in the United States. And my quality of life, and my ability to maintain my life is entirely supported by the fact that I have roads, and running water, and power, and security and support should an emergency arrive, and that the people who do the jobs who allow these things to happen, and who are educated by that society. And sure, I may never need the road outside my house repaired, I’m damn well going to need the roads that the fire truck drives down to be in good working order. Educating our youth, all of this ties together! Really, I loathe and detest this argument that in particular is foisted on the American populace over and over again that we provide too much, that we make it too easy, that people are taking advantage of the system. Is there waste in the system? Of course there’s waste in the system. Are there flaws in the system? Of course there are flaws in the system – there are human beings involved!
Robert: I absolutely agree.
Rucka: [laughs] We can keep agreeing with each other, but we should probably talk about the book some more.
Robert: [laughs]. You’re right. We could probably get angry about politics for the next couple of hours—
Rucka: [laughs]: And see, that’s the thing. I saw somebody did a write up of the panel we did in New York, and I got out at the start of the panel, Michael’s not there yet, David’s not there yet, and I check my phone. I’m getting all these messages about the horrible stuff happening in Syria and you can feel the temperature just drop, and the happy muttering just fades into silence, with sixty people just staring at me saying “Wow, you are like trademark buzzkill, aren’t you, Rucka?”
Robert: “We’re here to party, man! What are you bringing us down for? There’s a guy over there and he’s dressed like the Hulk! Can we talk about him?”
…
This seems like as good a place as any to take a break. Check back in with us tomorrow for Part 2 of this interview, where we dig more deeply into the world building of Lazarus and talk a little about how Forever Carlyle reflects (and rejects) the archetypes of heroic characters.
