Comic Book Movie had a great opportunity to sit and chat with the creators of the recently released
The Zodiac Legacy: Convergence, from Disney Press Publishing, by the legendary Stan Lee, Stuart Moore, Andie Tong, and Nachie Marsham (Editor Disney Publishing)—the first novel in a series of novels by Stan Lee—which is actually his first illustrated novel. To differentiate it from what we would call a graphic novel. The book released January 27th everywhere and they kindly sent me a copy prior to its release. Essentially, the book is beautifully illustrated with sections of art in between the chapters; which on their own make up for a fine graphic novel.
After reading through the first couple of chapters I was definitely enjoying the book. It tended more toward a pre-teen/young adult atmosphere and had a very family friendly tone. Which makes sense for something Disney would publish. Especially being written by the duo of Stan Lee and Stuart Moore.
The interview was setup like a press conference with various bloggers and media outlet correspondents in attendance. Unfortunately—I was only able to ask two questions as the moderator incorporated each of us in a round-robin fashion. But it was still a great conference and we all gained a variety of information and anecdotal background toward the creation of this great book.
Here’s the transcript of my two questions I was able to ask and I’ll provide a link below of the full interview session with the various other questions by the other interviewers and the introductions by principals on the project.
Moderator: "All right. So, now let's go to Manny from Comic Book Movie."
CBM Manny: "Hi. Good evening, guys.
Now—I see a lot of Stan Lee's signatures throughout the book which I thought were fantastic and almost immediately made me wonder if he was adding any other of his usual signatures. I received the book two days ago and started looking through it, I see Excelsior on one of the ships and I kind of chuckled, like: “Oh! There’s Stan's signature!” Right away it was one of the first things I noticed. And having read the first chapter, so far, I was curious how much more of Stan actually shines through in the book and how much of Stuarts writing shines through? I was very curious in terms of the signatures based on a lot of the works I’ve read for both of your stuff [comics and past books]."
Mr. Nachie Marsham: "On the Stan side, I think it's actually pretty light in terms of stuff like that, because it's so easy I think it would be a little bit of a trap. And none of this is actually coming from him either, which I was really excited about.
He wasn't trying to be super self-referential like, and then we'll have a kid from Queens in glasses in the background of one of these books or something like that. And I really appreciated that because when you're working with someone who's such a legend in the industry in the first place, I think there's a lot of ways where you could make it into a series of spot the Easter eggs from Classic Marvel stuff or from Stan himself or anything like that.
And so, you know, Excelsior notwithstanding, which I always kind of liked, and I think that might have been Andie actually."
This is a scan I made of the page from the copy of the book Disney Press sent me. It is not the higest quality scan but you get the point of my question from above.
Mr. Andie Tong: "I think that was me. Yeah."
Mr. Nachie Marsham: "But I think from Stan's side of things, that’s kind of the only bits you’ll see from that."
Mr. Stuart Moore: "Yeah.
I can't really answer the question how much of it’s me and how much of it’s him, because there was a certain amount of back and forth. I will say anytime you do a story like this, so much of the modern superhero genre is infused with the DNA of the stuff that he and his collaborators created in the 1960s.
So, I'm sure I've written superhero stories that owe more to him even than this one does in a lot of ways because it's just so much part of the mythology now. It's the language we use when we tell these stories.
And that's why it was interesting to take something like this and try and flesh it out, use the broader canvas that you get in prose as opposed to comics, where you’re kind of limited to 20 or 22 pages at a time.
It was a great experience. How much of it's him and how much of it's me, I can't say."
Mr. Andie Tong: "Design-wise, art-wise, I think I've grown up reading Stan Lee's comics. Spiderman is my favorite character. So, I think a lot of it--I don't know. When I'm drawing stuff, I've been influenced throughout my lifetime. I've been reading comics and drawing and all that.
So, yeah, a lot of it I would say is coming from Stan in a subtle way, I think. So, I try to create the characters as much as possible, but still blended with realism. I didn't want to go too much superhero. Nachie gave me the brief and we were pretty much to say, well, let's stay away from the superhero types for now, and given that brief I just kind of ran with it, and with the guidance from Nachie and all that, this is where we ended up.
And I think it works. I think it works very well. So, yeah, I've been influenced by Stan Lee quite a bit."
Moderator: "Great. Thank you, Manny. Okay."
A few other correspondents were given question time and eventhough my line kept breaking up I was able to get a second question in before the conference ended.
CBM Manny: "There we go. No longer muted.
So, one of the living debates about this subject at CBM is the perpetual Marvel versus DC argument. And because of that I was kind of curious about that title,
Convergence, especially with DC having their own confusing, convoluted comics where readers are still kind of confused about what convergence is. So, I'm kind of curious. Is
Convergence kind of like Disney and Marvel's way of a shot across the bow, kind of trying to organize the universe?"
Mr. Nachie Marsham: "Man, let me tell you. It's a complete coincidence. It's part of what Stuart was talking about earlier in terms of the difference in production speed between books and comics.
We’ve been talking about this one for a few years now. And in terms of a book title, it actually in some weird snake eating its own tail kind of way, we were talking about, you know, originally I think it was the first book. We were just going to call it The Zodiac Legacy.
And we were looking for a title, title. And this was after Stuart's first draft had come in. And the whole opening scene kind of took place with this convergence of these powers, and Maxwell trying to access all of these powers, and Jasmine’s sabotage Maxwell's trying to take the Zodiac powers, and Steven getting powers from there."
And basically everything got kicked off from that first giant kind of set piece in the first act of the book during the convergence. So, we were talking about it internally. We were like, oh, that totally holds together. And that sounds great.
And then, a couple of months ago, or however long it was. I think it was one of the people on the sales teams here was just kind of like, hey, DC’s new brand is called Convergence. And I was like ‘we're not changing anything!’ because I think we had already printed the book by then. It was too late. But, yeah, it was a total coincidence."
Mr. Stuart Moore: "Yeah.
There's a convergence in the movie Thor: The Dark World too. So, it's common enough."
Moderator: "All right. Great. Thank you."
CBM Manny: "Thank you!"
About the Book
Twelve magical superpowers
One sinister conspiracy
One unlikely hero.
Stan Lee presents a brand new, magical, super-powered adventure! When twelve magical superpowers are unleashed on the world, a Chinese-American teenager named Steven will be thrown into the middle of an epic global chase. He'll have to master strange powers, outrun super-powered mercenaries, and unlock the mysterious powers of the Zodiac.
About the Creators:
Stan Lee (as if we needed explanation as to who Stan "The Man" Lee is...) He is known to millions as the man whose Super Heroes propelled Marvel to its preeminent position in the comic book industry. His co-creations include Spider-Man, The Avengers, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four, as well as hundreds of others. He introduced Spider-Man as a syndicated newspaper strip that became the most successful of all syndicated adventure strips and has appeared in more than 500 newspapers worldwide. Stan currently remains Chairman Emeritus of Marvel, as well as a member of the Editorial Board of Marvel Comics. He is also the Chairman & Chief Creative officer of POW! Entertainment, a multimedia entertainment company based in Beverly Hills, CA.
Stuart Moore has been a writer, a book editor, and an award-winning comics editor. His recent writing includes Civil War, the first in a new line of prose novels from Marvel Comics, The Art of Iron Man 3 (Marvel, with Marie Javins); and THE 99, a multicultural super hero comic from Teshkeel.
Andie Tong has worked on titles for various franchises, including Tron: Betrayal, Spectacular Spider-Man UK, The Batman Strikes, Smallville, Wheel of Time, TMNT, Masters of the Universe, and Starship Troopers, working for companies such as Disney, Marvel, DC Comics, Panini, Dark Horse, and Dynamite Entertainment, as well as commercial illustrations for numerous advertising agencies including Nike, Universal, CBS, Mattel, and Habsro. When he gets the chance, Andie concept designs for various companies, and also juggles illustration duties on a range of children's picture storybooks for Harper Collins. Malaysian born, Andie migrated to Australia at a young age, and then moved to London in 2005. In 2012, he journeyed back to Asia and currently resides in Singapore with this wife and daughter.
I waited a bit of time to post this interview due to the various news announcements on the website; especially everything involving Spider-Man, Diggle, Arrow in general, and other related heavy news from last week. But here is a LINK to the full transcript courtesy of Disney Press. I have been thoroughly enjoying the book. There are some plot holes and issues with a few characters and their development. However--that said, I think because this is a series of books, we will get to see those holes plugged in neatly as new books are released and the story unfolds. So to those random reviewers out there complaining about these minor issues...have some patience. The concept is solid and my kids are enjoying the read with me. Because it's (mostly) family friendly, to be loosely defined by individual parents; I'm having fun with the storyline and the main characters. I also absolutely love Andie Tong's artwork. I may do a full In-Depth review of the book when I finish reading it.
Be sure to get yourself a copy wherever books are sold. there's more information about the series at DisneyZodiac and they have a ton of free giveaways, including a free copy of the book, archival ebooks pertaining to the series and an original character sketch by Andie Tong. You can follow Disney Hyperion on Twitter and be sure to use #ZodiacLegacy
By @EmanuelFCamacho
Editor, Staff Writer | CBM