Rob Williams took questions from fans in a Comic Book Resources Q & A this week and divulged his feelings on many things, including Marvel's decision to cancel two titles he's writing right now, "Ghost Rider" and "Daken: Dark Wolverine."
Williams admitted that he took the cancellations personally, but he kept his response professional.
"Of course I took it personally. You're enormously invested in the books you create, in terms of the amount of time and energy you put into your stories, the emotion you put into them, your career, the money it brings into your household (creators have mortgages to pay, families to feed, etc.)," Williams said.
"With any book you buy, there's an awful lot of the personality of the creators in those pages. So when a book gets cancelled, you do take it very personally. And while you can look at how tough the market is right now and examine the sales figures -- and 'Daken: Dark Wolverine' and 'Ghost Rider' were both still outselling an awful lot of very good comics -- you still find yourself asking, "What could I have done differently to bring in new readers?" You feel responsible for their cancellation to an extent, even though I've written a lot of material in 'Daken' and 'Ghost Rider' that I'm proud of."
According to Williams, Marvel bosses liked his work in those series, but a writer just has to accept that these things happen. And besides, the comic book industry's a scary place right now.
Williams likes darkness in entertainment. He said it's great when a story makes an audience love a character before making the character do something horrible. Storylines in shows like "Breaking Bad" and "Boardwalk Empire" came to his mind. Dark characters are easier to make compelling than grittier characters are.
"God bless people who can write a really compelling Superman -- that's hard to do. You know that character's going to do the right thing, whatever. It's in their DNA. I think we all get affected by the pure altruism of a good heroic act, and that's something that gives you faith in human beings. It's why we love those noble characters. But the nuanced, grey area characters offer more dramatic scope, I think," Williams said.
Williams promised good finales ahead for the series' endings, but there won't be any Daken / Ghost Rider crossovers. He said he'd love to write the Hulk someday, but he poo-poo'ed the idea of writing X-23: He's already written Wolverine's offspring, and he's not in the mood to do it again. He hinted that he had upcoming Marvel projects on the way but couldn't talk about them in detail.
For more of what Williams had to say, follow the link below!