Chris Roberson has got brains, and he uses them to write comic books, short stories and novels. One of those comics – I, Zombie – was even turned into the clever new TV series iZombie on the CW network. The story has changed, and not insignificantly, but Chris Roberson is pretty zen about it. And in this CraveOnline interview from Emerald City Comicon 2015, you will find out why.
But you will also learn more about Chris Roberson’s next comic book, Black Bag. The six-issue mini-series debuts this fall from Legendary Comics with art by JB Bastos (Night Trap), and chronicles the story of a suburban housewife who takes a side job as a government assassin. We stood awkwardly in the middle of the convention floor at Emerald City Comicon to find out more about the project from Roberson himself.
Check Out: Emerald City Comicon 2015 Cosplay Gallery – Day 1
CraveOnline: Black Bag is a cool idea.
Chris Roberson: It was an idea Legendary had. They came to me. I think Thomas Tull originally did the idea, and Bob Schreck called me up. But essentially it was about a woman kind of going through something like a mid-life crisis. She has… I hate the term “housewife,” but she married a guy and then subordinated her ambitions to his in order to help him achieve his goals.
I think so, yeah. But she has the opportunity because of her somewhat complicated backstory to become a super spy assassin for the United States government.
That’s quite an opportunity! Do you have to send away for that? How does that come about?
It’s being in the right place at the right time. So she maintains kind of a double life. Her husband doesn’t know about her real job. It uses being an assassin as kind of a metaphor for becoming an adult and figuring out how everything works. But yeah, she travels around the world having adventures and killing bad people.
What does her husband think she’s doing this whole time?
He thinks she’s a photographer. The covert agency for which she works has set her up [with]… she has a background in photography as a student, so they set her up with a cover as a fashion photographer. That’s the excuse for why she’s always traveling at weird times and is away in other countries, when in actuality she’s there killing somebody.
When they gave you the idea was it just a logline, or was it already pretty fleshed out?
They had done a treatment a while back that was more than skeletal. There was some meat on the bones. But it was not fully baked, so one of the things that they asked me to do [when I] came on was to help develop it. So the basic structure of the idea was there in what they gave me, but just drawing on the experiences of friends of mine and people in my family, I felt like I was able to layer in a little more subtext and metaphor to it, but also figure out the mechanics of how it worked.
What was the first thing that came to your head, about what you could contribute to this comic?
Well, really, “lady super spy” is a little bit my wheelhouse. My first comics gig was doing a Cinderella mini-series for Vertigo that spun out of Fables, and that was a female kickass super spy. I’m always really comfortable writing strong, smart ladies. That’s kind of my bailiwick.
That’s a good bailiwick to have. Also: good use of the word “bailiwick.”
Thank you.
Check Out: Emerald City Comicon 2015 Cosplay Gallery – Day 3
Thank you. Now that iZombie is on TV, what’s that like for you? Are you watching the episodes going, “Oh, they screwed this up?” or are you enjoying it so far?
We were lucky enough [that] they kept us informed throughout the process. When they finished the pilot script they sent me the script. We got to visit the set. But this January they sent us rough cuts of the first four episodes, to me and to Mike Allred the co-creator, and it was such an enormous relief that it doesn’t suck. Because I was going to have to say nice things about it, because it’s in my best interests monetarily to do so. But I absolutely love it.
I’m not precious about my stuff at all. And in comic terms, I explain it like, their character is the Barry Allen to my Jay Garrick. So they took the basic title and the concept and the core personality and then built another story around it. Marty Nodell creates Green Lantern, then somebody else does something different with the idea, but Marty Nodell’s still the guy who came up with the idea for the Green Lantern. So this is a very different version of an idea that we had, and I think it’s great!
The original comic book series has ended. Are there any thoughts, now that the TV series is out, about maybe doing more or revisiting it in some way?
I don’t know.
Would you be interested?
If the circumstances were correct, yes.
What else is coming up for you?
I’m doing a couple books at Dynamite. I’m writing Doc Savage over there. And the rest of it is I’m doing some really, really cool work-for-hire license gigs at Dark Horse that haven’t been announced yet. So they’re incredibly awesome…
Is it brand new stuff, or stuff that they already have that you would be moving onto?
Yeah, more of the latter. Me taking over a couple different projects that I am a huge fan of. That will probably be announced later this year, I would imagine.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
