Entrevistas  /  Interviews

                 WRITER GEOFF KLOCK

                                                                                                                         by José Carlos Neves

  “A former Ph.D. student, Geoff Klock received his Masters in English Literature from New York University. He now studies literature as a night watchman in downtown Manhattan. “

This is the introduction to Geoff, at the back cover of his well received and today acalimed book “HOW TO READ SUPERHERO COMICS and why”   (Continuum, N.Y. ISBN 0-8264-1419-2).

About it, Joe Casey (Wildcats and Autmatic Kafka) had written: “A book like this is way overdue. I´m just glad someone finally had tha balls to write it”.

And proving that success doesn't spoiled him, Geoff kindly agreeded to reply the following questions in order our readers know him and his work best.

-First of, Geoff, please let’s begin with some “background”:

Where did you grew up and lives today? Marital status, sons and profession?

  I grew up in Texas, and presently live in New York City. I am not married but have been living with my girlfriend for four years. No children.

  As a child, did you spend a lot of time indoors reading? What? Comics only or mainstream literature also?

  As a child I spent a lot of time reading fantasy novels, starting with The Lord of the Rings. I didn’t get into comics (the X-Men) until I was 14. I didn’t read a lot of mainstream literature until I was 17, but then I began to reading canonical English Literature for hours and hours every day, to the exclusion of other activities besides movies and television. This is still mostly the case.

  How did you get started?

  I started reading because my mother encouraged it at a very young age. I started reading comics because I had seen the X-Men cartoon on television and liked the video game; when I got sick my mom brought me an X-Men comic book from the drug store were she got my medicine. I got hooked on them.

  What it is that attracted you to writing? What were your influences?

  I wrote papers on English literature in college. I was attracted to writing because I was good at it. My major influence, then and now, is literary critic Harold Bloom. Bloom has a purple style Christopher Ricks once called melodramatic that I just adore, and Bloom really understands how to project a personality into writing about art, how to make criticism what Oscar Wilde described as “the highest form of autobiography. Its a kind of writing that is beyond “mere accuracy.” Slovenian psychoanalytic philosopher Slavoj Zizek is my other big influence because of how he manages to combine such cultural luminaries as Freud, Lacan, Kant and Hegel with popular culture. I also admire the rationality and clear thinking of Stanley Fish.

  Why comics?

  I like popular American genre storytelling because when it is done well it is extraordinarily interesting how it manages to work navigate the very tight framework of Noir, Westerns, Spy Dramas or whatever. Superhero comics are also bizarre – just really bizarre and incestuous and unique. People like Grant Morrison don’t exist in film and television. And comics readers know everything there is to know about comics and operate on a kind of shorthand -- e.g. In League of Extraordinary Gentlemen they don’t need anything other than the word “Harker” to invoke the whole Dracula mythos, whereas the film audience requires this vast explanation. So on top of being stylistically bizarre, superhero comics are a genre dense with information. This makes for a lot of interesting things to talk about. But really superhero comics are just an obsession: you don’t really chose these kind of subjects; they chose you. It’s a form of falling in love.

  Do you continue reading them? Could you name titles, writers and artists do you appreciate today? Why?

  Reading more sporadically now, trade paperback collections rather than monthly issues. The Masters are obvious because there are so few: titles involving Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, Brian Hitch, Frank Quitely, John [Cassaday] ,Travis Charest, Mike [Mignola], Chris Bachalo. Why is too big a question to answer here but it’s all in my book How to Read Superhero Comics and Why (Continuum, 2002). Basically these folks have powerful, unique imaginations and know how to activate the full potential of what appears to most people to be a fairly ridiculous genre of storytelling.

  What about those from the past? Why?

  I only read comics from earlier eras because of the illumination they shed on the contemporary Masters. Alan Moore has taught me to value comics before 1980, and I appreciate it.

  What did prompted you to research and write your very elucidative book “How to Read Superhero Comics and Why”?

  I read superhero comics for years when I came across Harold Bloom’s poetics of influence, a theory designed to explain Romantic Poetry. I was surprised how much of it applied to superhero comics as well, how it explained so much of what was going on in contemporary comics. I was looking for a big project, because I like literary criticism, and thought other people might also be interested. The motto is Write what you know, and this is what I knew.

What about it’s feedback?

  Small and Internet based (Web Blogs and such) but what you’d expect. Comics fans love to complain about every little thing, but usually end by recognizing that the book is important, if strange. People disagree with me about a lot of things, but that is a positive not a negative thing.

  Any chance to publish it here, as an Brazilian edition? Who is your agent? How much would it cost us?

  You would have to take that up with my publisher, Continuum Books. I don’t handle that kind of thing.

  What are you writing today?

  A study of strange portrayals of historical writers in the works of such figures as Dante, Blake, Shelley, Swinburne, Yeats, John Ashbery and Anne Carson. This will be either integrated with or followed by a complementary study on strange portrayals of historical writers in such popular culture works as Reign, Dead Man, Kafka, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Dark City, and From Dusk till Dawn 3 (straight-to-video).

  Any chance that you write some comics also?

  If a major comics company wanted me to but I would give it a shot. But no, I am very bad at fiction, and very good at criticism and given a choice I would rather be a critic than any other kind of writer.

  What do you really think of super-heroes, this true ichon of american’s comics? Is there still space for superfolks, with steroided muscles exploding trough ridicule colorfull spandex uniforms, fighting each other in comics today? – other than for children, of course... (I explain that I am not criticizing, only trying to understand the true facination they exert over a lot of people, me included; I like to draw them, I like his aesthetics, and could not clearly explain this...).

  They have been around long enough, and still make money so I don’t think it is likely they will go away. People like Grant Morrison have been able to keep things fresh. As long as works like Flex Mentallo can be written, comics can still be powerful, unique and relevant.

  What will be the future of superheroes?

  I’m sure I have no idea, that’s a prediction beyond my abilities. I can tell you that The Ultimates and Mark Millar’s Ultimate X-Men combine a fresh look with what could be a mass appeal.

  What was the first comic by Alan Moore did you read?

  Watchmen.

  Did it had a special impact on you? Why?

  It blew me away, and (along with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns) put me on the path to writing my book. I realized that Moore and Millar were writing about superhero comics in the same way Cormac McCarthy was writing about cowboys in the Border Trilogy. I figured if people can write books on McCarty then I could write a book on comics.

  What do you think is his best work to date? Why?

  Watchmen. Because it matured the whole genre, made it into a place for sophisticated storytelling.

  What are your ideas about Watchmen’s innovations?

  For the full explanation of that I will have to direct you to the book, but basically it provided an example of how a single work could re-organize an huge number of genre elements, basically intended for children, into to a unique adult vision. All the great comics repeated this move in their own idiosyncratic ways. The best ones, like Watchmen, are those that we find most persuasive.

  And for From Hell, do you think it could be considered a history of the cradle to the 20^th century, with all its paranoia, conspiracy and corruption?

  That is certainly what it attempts. I don’t know if it’s totally successful, but the attempt is laudable and identifying Jack the Riper as the origin is interesting.

  Movies and mainly music can affect us deeply, rousing unexpected emotions. So it is Poetry. They can all transcend its limitations as a genre. What about comics? Could it have the quality also?

  Of course, and I think it has been done in the works of many of the writers and artists I consider Masters.

  Could you mention examples?

  Nothing here should surprise anyone: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, JLA: Earth 2, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Miracleman, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Morrison’s JLA, Doom Patrol and Flex Mentallo, Alan Moore’s America’s Best Comics (considered as a whole), Warren Ellis and then Mark Millar’s Authority, Planetary, Grant Morrison’s Marvel Boy, The Ultimates, Millar’s Ultimate X-Men, Brian Michael Bendis’s Powers, Grant Morrision and Chris Bachalo’s New X-Men: Assault on Weapon Plus.

  In your opinion, are culture and war the instruments of American supremacy over the world and how do you judge the neoconservatism of Bush Administration.

  I do think culture and war are the instrument of American supremacy over the world. President Bush and his neoconservatism scares the crap out of me. I think Bush is stupid and has a lot of bad ideas and supports a lot of bad ideas, and I think it is very dangerous that he is the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth. But I don’t know what to do about it.

  Could you tell us which writers, from the new generation, we should keep an eye on, as far as your opinion is concerned? Any titles to underline in particular.

  Anne Carson (a poet), author of the Autobiography of Red, is very talented. Mark Millar looks to me to be one of the best of the new superhero comics guys, especially on the Ultimates.

  Who do you rate as the most important writers of the past century.

  This is too big a question and my answer isn’t really going to differ from Harold Bloom’s big canonical figures, but just the list of folks I am familiar with (and this is in no way is exhaustive): Kafka, Freud, Proust, Beckett, Virginia Woolf, Wallace Stevens, James Joyce, Faulkner, Hart Crane, Borges, John Ashbery, Pynchon, Cormac McCarthy, Alejo Carpentier, Octavio Paz, Lorca, Pessoa, Luis Cernuda.

  What about Nowadays? What is seminal for you now.

  Romantic Poetry (those I am going to be writing about in my new book), Oscar Wilde, Emerson and Pater. Plus the movies: Tarantino, David Lynch, David Fincher, the Coen Bros.

  What places on the net do you visit most often?

  Apple.com/trailers for movie trailers;

the onion.com and Theonionavclub.com for movie reviews and other things. Salon.com and villagevoice.com for random information;  Amazon.com for books;  Imdb.com for movie information. And I am obsessed with all the stuff you can find by putting anything into search engines. I love search engines. I am always amazed that someone somewhere has put just about anything on the web. You put any line of poetry into a search engine and chances are the whole poem is online. Its great. 

Thanks, Geoff!