George Gustines | New York Times
In this episode George Gustines discusses loving comics and spreading the word at the New York Times.
Topics include how George first got into comic books with the Superfriends, George Perez on Justice League 200, reading comics from the newsstand, movies and TV shows as the new gateway into comics, approaching writing at the Times as opposed to a comic news site, not looking like an idiot to comic fans, comics tackling real world events, not crying during Rebirth, getting dazzled, Darwyn Cooke, staying engaged at the Times after being there for so long, and what he’s reading!
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Transcription:
Matt: Kara?
Kara: Matt?
Matt: We’re back.
Kara: Absolutely.
Matt: We’re in HQ right now with a huge interview. You know the New York Times, you ever heard of that?
Kara: It’s the hometown paper.
Matt: It is the hometown paper, we’ll probably hear the sirens passing by both buildings during this interview. We have a special guest, long time writer, editor at the New York Times. George Gustines, welcome to the show.
George: Thanks for having me, this will be fun.
Matt: I think I’m most excited because I love local, in-person interviews. We are used to doing creator interviews over Skype. But we have a really local vibe to this. You work at the New York Times and you write about comics. But it’s not your main gig, it’s kind of like a side gig. You work hard to spread the word of comics at the times. What’s your story? How did you get into comic books?
George: It started as a kid. I always say my gateway drug was the Super Friends, the cartoon. Then at some point I guess in the 80s my sister bought me a copy of Justice League of America number 200. That was it, I was a goner. The George Perez art, all the heroes together and battling each other, I was hooked immediately.
Matt: What was the story of that issue? Was it just an excuse to get every character ever into the issue?
George: Basically. It’s a big anniversary issue. It’s the first one I read where it’s sort of like the old guard fights the new guard. Again, George Perez’s work is stunning. That issue had a conceit where each chapter was drawn by an artist associated with one of the two characters who was fighting. It was a master class in comic book art.
Matt: How did you collect, or how did you find, that book when you were younger? With me, it was kind of my mom would allow me to get a book at Pathmark in the spinner rack, or I’d find three packs at CVS. What was it like for you?
George: It was totally random. I think I was just dumb, I didn’t understand how it worked. My sister got this at a newsstand on, I’m pretty sure it was 100th and Broadway. It doesn’t exist anymore. I would get them randomly at drug stores and newsstands. Eventually I found a comic book store on the upper west side, and then I died and went to heaven. I was like, “I cannot believe this place exists.”
Kara: Yeah once you find the comic shop that you love it’s all over.
George: Right, and that was in the old days when they were pretty terrible. It’s the sort of unwelcoming owner, sub basement and dank, but it was still like, wow.
Kara: We’ve come a long way from the grumpy owner, dank basement kind of cliché stereotype. Aside from that, what do you think the biggest reason that more and more people are viewing comics as an accessible and approachable medium.
George: I think it has to be the movies and TV shows that have brought new attention to it. For a while, at the Times, I sort of had the comics world pretty much to myself, but as the movies started gaining popularity and being big box office successes, it sort of became a more legitimate industry to cover. We have film reporters covering that aspect of it.
I suddenly had more competition writing about comics in the paper as well. I’ve learned to find little corners of the universe that I can write about.
Matt: Writing for the Times as opposed to Newsarama or CBR, I feel like, and it probably is, the approach to that piece is vastly different. You are serving two different audiences really. How do you approach something like that where you are writing something about comics on the Times? I feel like 90% of the reading audience has no idea what a comic books is or how to even get into it. How do you process that?
George: I think you are totally right. Some of the Times audience is not familiar with comics. Some of my editors aren’t always familiar with comics. I have to balance defining everything so that the general reader will know what’s going on versus my not looking like an idiot to comic book fans when I have to explain certain things.
There is also the balance. I get jealous of columns on CBR or The Beat, or Bleeding Cool, they can cover things that I cannot. There is certain inside baseball comic books stories. They are pitched to me and as a fan I’m super interested and I cannot wait to read the issue, but if I go to my editor with it, they are just going to laugh at me and I cannot do it. I’ve got to save that for special occasions.
Kara: Yeah, there is a point. I hit that recently where I started getting in jokes in comics that creators were writing to each other that I only got because I was reading both works, but also following the creators on Twitter. When I saw the reference show up in the comics, I was like, “Oh, I’ve arrived.”
George: That’s great, you’ve graduated.
Matt: That takes a lot of hard work. One moment that stuck out in one of your pieces where you referenced Newsarama. You had to pause to say, Newsarama, a comic centric blog about comic news. I think that encapsulates it. Where you are reading a piece of work maybe about Faith from Valiant, and you are trying to gauge, how do I write this for someone who has never read a comic book, doesn’t even know it’s 22 pages.
It feels like a lot of work must go into that, just to try to grab them to the point where maybe you’ll love comics if you give this a shot.
George: You’re right, but it’s certainly gotten easier and it depends on the story. I’m trying to think … When Marvel introduced the Muslim Ms. Marvel. There is not a lot of defining you have to do there. People get right away why that’s a big story.
Or Ta-nehisi Coates on Black Panther. I did not have to explain a lot. In fact, when Marvel pitched it to me, I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but I didn’t really know how big he was. I pitched it to my editor saying, “oh, Marvel is giving me this, maybe I can have a brief?” They were like, “You’re an idiot, this is a story. Write it.” It’s like, “Okay, great!”
It was incredibly popular. It was probably one of the most popular pieces that I’ve written for the times. It’s like, oh, who knew?
Matt: I was listening to … I cannot remember what podcast it was. It wasn’t Love + Radio, it was something else where people tell stories about how their friendships have changed over the years. Whether due to people getting mixed up into certain things or people getting famous and rich and shifting their priorities.
At the end of the episode, I didn’t realize it, but it was about that Black Panther writer, Ta-nehisi Coates. He was the one that had shifted into celebrity. He was having this conversation with his friend about how his life has changed since then. I was like, holy crap, what a weird six degrees of Black Panther that I just experienced.
George: That’s amazing.
Kara: That’s definitely a book that I’ve been able to just casually name drop and normal, non-nerdy people are like, “What? That exists?” I’m like, “Yes!”
Comics have a history of tackling real world issues or events. Good examples from recent years would be Barack Obama showing up in Spider-Man or any of the 9/11 issues. How do you think those kinds of works translate for comics readers versus non-comics readers? For non-comics readers, do you think that those are good gateways for discovering and understanding comics?
George: That’s a huge topic, so let me think. I always wonder when Obama was on the cover of Spider-Man, I think that was the issue you mean. I think there were lines down the block at Midtown comics. It’s exciting to see non-comics fans come out for something like that, but I always wonder how many of them stick around. I think a lot of them think, “Oh, this is going to be worth $1M, let me buy it. They probably published 500,000 copies. It’s not going to be worth $1M, and they are not going to probably read another comic.
Other things like the Spider-Man 9/11 issue I thought was great. I think the fans needed to see the hero Spider Man and the other heroes react to that. I’m not really sure if it has a lasting impact. But even this weekend Jim Chueng posted an image of the two Young Avengers, the gay Young Avengers, Wiccan and Hulkling in reaction to Orlando, which I thought was really nice and moving.
Then DC posted a picture of Superman, and his shield was a rainbow flag behind them. It’s great moments, it helps unify the fans.
Matt: When you were reading comics over the years, do you have specific moments in your life when you felt more connected to a story, or it resonated with you on an emotional level that you always hold in a special place? That comics were able to do that for you?
George: I’m trying to think. In the past, I’m not sure. There is certain books I still have. I’ve gone very digital lately. I got rid of a lot of my single issues and trade paperbacks, but the ones that still mean a lot to me I’ve kept. I grew up a Teen Titans fan, so I have the big hardcover collected editions there.
More recently, Rebirth, I got an advance copy of it, and I have to say, I got choked up a little bit when Kid Flash was saying goodbye to Flash, and it looked like he was going to die. I think I intentionally did this, I paused, It’s like, "Okay I have to do some work.” But it was really hitting me. It was like, “Wow, they are really going to just … ” I thought it was going to be a nice goodbye. It was nice that they twisted it and he actually came back.
Kara: Yeah, as soon as they grabbed each other’s hands I was like, “Oh my god.” I also choked up at that. I was like, “I shouldn’t feel this nostalgic but I do.”
Matt: As a reader I wonder how … The Rebirth Issue, the DC Universe Rebirth issue was great, and I’m excited to see the rest of that, but I wonder how they are going to weave that into the regular monthly issues. Or we might need to wait for a monthly event for, “Okay, now let’s get into what we talked about for this issue.” I’m super fascinated by that, because I don’t think they have a big event planned. I wonder how they are going to do it.
George: Right, that’s exactly what I worry about. They’ve sort of set up this hopeful tone of the DC Universe. I think I just have to give up on continuity. I cannot be obsessed with it anymore.
Kara: If you like the story you like the story, and if not …
George: Exactly. I like that Aquaman proposed to Mara. It sort of restores that, but the Titans are sort of screwed in this continuity. I’m hopeful for what they are going to do with them, but it’s fine.
Kara: To be fair, the Teen Titans lineup is always kind of weird and has time displaced, or universe displaced people on it.
George: That is true.
Matt: Isn’t the Legion also like that?
Kara: Oh yeah, well they are completely different century.
Matt: That one maybe more so. Spoilers.
Kara: Supergirl sometimes pops in, Superboy used to pop in all the time. They would come to our time and somehow their time wouldn’t get screwed up. Comics everyone.
Have there ever been any comics creators that you met for story, or just on your own time, where you were just completely dazzled?
George: Plenty. The first one was Paul Levitz because I did the big story on the gay bashing issue in Green Lantern that Judd Winick wrote. It was my first news story for the paper. I didn’t really know what I was doing, so it was a learning experience all around. I got to interview Paul at DC’s offices.
I came prepared with my list of questions, very tough questions. Then at the end of the interview I immediately geeked out. It’s like, “Oh my god. I love your Legion of Superheroes, it’s amazing to be here.” It’s been a lot of that.
Matt: Did you pitch that article? What’s that process like back then and then now? How do you work that?
George: Sure. I owe a lot to the publicist at DC at the time. I had written a short essay about buying comics. Whenever my husband and I travel to a new place he finds a comic store. I hate to fly so this is how he gets me to go somewhere new. He’ll find a comic store for me to visit. DC noticed that piece, knew the Winick story was coming up and said, “Oh, maybe you could do something on this.”
I pitched my editor, he said yes to my surprise, and it took off from there. Once that piece ran, other companies noticed and they started pitching me stories. It’s been great. I have sort of a learning curve with them trying to figure out what’s a Times story and what’s a Comics website story. That’s always a tough balancing act.
Matt: Do you have a personal favorite one that you pitched that you were able to get as a Times story in particular? Or is there one that you felt like the work in pitching really exceptionally paid off?
George: This hopefully doesn’t sound weird. I think my proudest byline is the recent obit on Darwyn Cooke. I was blown away by his work, gone too soon, really tough piece to write. I thought it came out really well, they gave it great play in the paper, and I lot of people noticed it. I thought it was a nice tribute to him. What little I could do to honor him, I was really happy with that.
Matt: I feel like New Frontiers should be given out at schools just as part of the syllabus.
George: One of my favorite stories ever.
Matt: It’s just so timeless.
Kara: He was one of the first artists that I knew by name from comics, because I was just very conscious of how much I loved that art style. I was like, “Oh, okay, this was drawn by Darwyn Cooke, let me see what else he’s done. I discovered New Frontier around the same time that I discovered some of the work that he’d done on Catwoman, who’s one of my favorite characters. Just anything that he drew to do with any of the DC characters I was like, "All of it, please, yes, mine.”
Matt: You’ve been at the times for so many years. How do you stay excited being at the same place? I know you’ve shifted between different areas, but how do you stay engaged being at the same place for so long?
George: I think that’s the big thing. I’ve been there 26 years but my job has changed probably every year to two years. Different departments, different responsibilities, the paper has changed a lot. There is no getting bored there. You just never know what’s going to come up, and there are so many opportunities. Obviously I’ve been really lucky to write about comics, that keeps it fresh. It’s a great place to work.
Kara: You were saying earlier that you’ve mostly switched over to digital with your comics, I assume because you are reading so many. Do you have some favorites that you are currently reading?
George: I resisted digital for a long time, but once I finally did it the art is spectacular, it’s obviously so convenient. Now it’s hard for me to read a print book. Favorites, I love Walking Dead, I love Saga. Other than that, I think it’s pretty random. I read a lot of galleys of books that are coming out. I’m current with the monthly comics and I’m sort of reading ahead to look for story ideas.
Matt: What do you usually read on? Do you read on an iPad, a tablet, or a phone?
George: Yeah, on my iPad.
Matt: God bless. Isn’t it great to just lay in bed and read comics on an Ipad?
George: It’s crazy, it’s fantastic.
Matt: What a world we live in.
Kara: Fine, you do that with your iPad. I’ve got my HDX Kindle Fire.
Matt: Sure, we love Amazon products as well. Well George, I appreciate you taking the time out, it was a treat to hear from the other side of so to speak the industry of people that try to spread that love to a whole other audience. Obviously we appreciate the work you do.
George: Thank you very much, it was a lot of fun.