Show notes
This week, I am honored to be interviewing Gene Ha, an artist on volume two of DC’s Black Label Wonder Woman: Historia. Ha is also the writer and artist behind the comic “Mae” and was one of the chief artists involved in his comic “Top 10.” You can hear our full conversation on Comic Book Herald’s “Creannotators,” on the podcast. But since some people prefer the ancient art of “reading,” we’ve also transcribed the interview below, talking with James about making the graphic novel. The transcription has been slightly edited for clarity. Read and enjoy! CBH: Hello and welcome to Comic Book Herald’s Creannotators. I’m Dave Buesing, founder and editor-in-chief of comicbookherald.com. For today’s interview, I’m excited to be joined by artist and storyteller extraordinaire Gene Ha, the artist behind Wonder Woman: Historia, Top Ten, Mae, from Oni Press slash Lion Forge somewhat recently and a whole host of others; we’re going to talk to Gene today about the comics work, including the most recent volume two of Wonder Woman: Historia, which is a big DC Black Label book. So, Gene, first off, thanks so much for joining me. How are you doing this morning? Ha: It’s good to be here. You know, as the old joke goes, comic book interviews give me a reason to wake up in the afternoon. It’s almost noon, but I have my coffee, so I am ready for the interview. CBH: You’re ready to go. Awesome. How are you recovering from slash feeling about what’s been a busy Con season, I’ve heard. I know I recently saw you at C2E2, at Terrific Con before that, how’s the Con season going for you? Ha: Let me see. So I haven’t gotten anything for most of the summer, before then it was Comic Con Revolution in California, then just the weekend before I did Terrific Con in Connecticut for the first time, which was an amazing small-medium sized convention but with amazing New York lead talent showing up all the time that I’d never seen at conventions before. Let me see, then I got C2E2 the next weekend, which wasn’t hard. The hard part was that I booked too many preshow sketch commissions, so I was working nonstop for two weeks trying to get all these done and just barely squeaked them in, but I got them all ready for pick up. CBH: Yeah. That’s definitely one thing that stood out to me as I’ve talked to more creators is how busy Con season is for artists a lot of times, especially on the commission front–which is a good problem to have, you know, you have people who want your work, I imagine. But it’s funny, I talked to Nick Dragotta–an amazing artist there as well–and just like “head down, gotta get these commissions done” during the Con. It’s pretty crazy! Ha: Yeah. The thing for me is that I hate doing the commissions during the convention because then I can’t talk to anybody and anyone who’s a regular artist has seen the famous art who is just nose down, facing their table just finishing up commissions the whole convention, which is kind of like “you know, you might as well mail them in. Why go to the convention to do that?” because you’re not going to experience the convention and they’re not going to experience you. CBH: Right. Yeah, that’s a tricky Catch 22. Yeah, sure. If you want to see the process in action. Well, good good. I’m glad you’re hanging in there with Cons. It’s been good, getting back out there and doing it, you know, as they’ve been available. So let’s talk a little bit first about Wonder Woman: Historia. So volume two is out now. This is the volume that you produced with Kelly Sue DeConnick. Volume one was with Phillip Jimenez and volume three is going to be with Nicola Scott. How did this project come about for you and how long has it been in the works? Ha: It came about because I was riding an airport shuttle from the airport to Heroes Con and the other person on the shuttle turned out to be the husband of Kelly Sue DeConick, who happened to know all the projects she was interested in. She wasn’t at the convention, and he said “would you be interested in working with my wife” and I said “Kelly Sue DeConnick? Hell yeah!” So, other than just knowing that she was on it, there was nothing else I knew and I just wanted to do the book. CBH: So this was just Matt Fraction on a shuttle and you just got to talking and there it is? Ha: Yeah. I was just like “hi! Do you happen to be in comics? Yeah, I happen to be in comics. Are you Gene Ha? Yeah! Who are you? Matt Fraction. Oh! We’ve never met before! Shake hands and like you know, my wife is interested in working with you some day.” So yeah, it was one of those conversations. CBH: Just total coincidence, but a perfect match. So, volume two is out now, like I said, as is volume one. People can check these out. Historia is, I think very different from what fans of a Wonder Woman graphic novel might typically expect in that it is intensely lore based, right? It’s about the history of the Amazons as a whole. It’s not a Diana story, at least not yet, right? It is, but it isn’t. What was the experience like for you getting acquainted with the project and working with Kelly Sue in terms of, like, the mission of Historia? Ha: My on-boarding process when it really got going was getting to read the first script that Phil Jimenez had worked on and then some of the art that Phil had been working on from those scripts. I should mention that the first thing is that if you match in how you’re going to retell the story of the Amazons, my assumption was that you would tell it from the ground. From the view of the women on Earth going through troubles and then showing how this leads to their passion to want to form the Amazons and why they need to. And she did an amazing creative choice, which was she started from the god view point, from the female goddesses of the Greek pantheon, which I thought “how can this work?” but then you read the script and–well, I read the script. You guys can read the darn comic and you can see–It is amazing! It’s really powerful, and you can really feel their anger and fury and need to do something about the world that humans live in. And then towards the end, she moves to the human scale and it’s amazing how much of a shock it is going back to Earth again. So anyway, that’s the first thing that was an introduction to what I’d just seen. I can’t believe she pulled off this story in this script! And then peaking at Phil’s designs and layouts, the pages he often times had not finished, I’ve described it as Margaret Attwood writing a script for Stanley Kubrick and Alexander McQueen to film and design, and it was the most intimidating project I’ve ever jumped on board of. CBH: Really? Ha: Yeah, I know I would have drawn the script Kelly Sue DeConnick gave to Phil, but seeing how he did it, it was just like “this is insane.” And honestly, he only got done with volume one a few months before I did and he started way before I did. The amount of work he put into that book is insane! And I took forever to get mine done. A really good, well-known artist friend of mine said that essentially Phil has drawn beyond the level of human perception. It’s literal too! You can’t actually register all the details he put into that book! Like, there’s a scene of like a thousand vases floating through the air at different distances and they’re Greek vases, they’re all painted with figures and stories, and some are so tiny you can’t tell what the story is, but he drew them! They’re there. In detail. You just can’t see it with your human eyes. CBH: Yeah. That’s fascinating. And now an Eisner winning piece of work, right. It’s one room and story and Phil did win the Eisner for pencils. That’s interesting. So you got those images. You got those layouts and some of those designs as you’re already working on volume two. It sounds like you had a sense of what you were looking at in terms of like “wow, this is…I need to try and measure up to this” did you feel….like…I don’t know, how did that competition feel? Ha: I did not think that. I didn’t think “I need to measure up to this,” I told myself there’s no way I’m going to be able to do what Phil’s doing. There’s no way to be able to out-Phil Phil. So I had to figure out ways to simplify the drawings and the costumes a little bit, or at least how I drew them compared to how Phil did them, while also putting in things that are very Gene Ha to make up for me not being Phil Jimenez. But there’s no way I could out do what he did. CBH: Yeah. Oh, that’s interesting. So, that’s interesting that even at this stage in your career, you’re accomplished. You’ve won Eisners. You’ve done a lot of good work. I would have thought that something like some of your earliest works or Top 10 where you’re working with Alan Moore has that level of profile would have felt like a bigger challenge, but actually this–you say–is the biggest challenge you’ve felt because of that incredible kick off, essentially. Ha: Yeah. If the Phil Jimenez of 1998 had done the first issue of Top 10, I feel comfortable I could have done something keeping pace with what he did back then, and I am perfectly comfortable with saying that. If the Gene Ha of today or of 1998 had to draw the second issue of Top 10 after Phil Jimenez had put this level of work into Top 10 number one, there’s no way! There’s no way either of us could have kept up, when I was younger or me now. And Top 10 is famous as a detailed book, but Phil Jimenez went beyond Top 10 level by far. CBH: Yeah, yeah, no. It’s really something. So ton of respect there. That’s awesome. Ha: Oh yeah. CBH: So, in terms of your volume and in terms of what you wanted to do given that, you wanted to talk in the issue’s notes about your goals of putting the divine on the page, right? And you talked about how the perspective is that it starts with the gods actually, it doesn’t start with humanity. How did you approach this artistically and what are some of the details you’re proudest of in terms of how you represented what is a hard thing to represent because the divine is inherently unknowable in a lot of ways, right? Ha: So, there’s a scene in, I think it was page ten, where it’s Hippolyta on a horse, riding through a forest and the script asked me to show that Artemis is watching and following Hippolyta and she can actually feel over her shoulder that someone is following her and watching her. But that Artemis is literally not there bodily following her. And I had to figure out how to do that in storytelling, which created this first section of script I got and this created one of the big themes or tropes I used in how I was going to handle the divine in the Earthly world in the book. I stole a trick from the movie Midsommar where they put faces in the trees and inside the masses of trees and things like that and other elements in the background. But it doesn’t work very well in movies because the modern movies have cameras that slide left and right and go forward on rails and such that, but in comic book since it’s still images, this can work really, really well. So I was able to put faces into the trees, following Hippolyta and looking over the Amazons, even when they don’t realize that someone is watching them. And there are various and complex ways that this happens. CBH: And you use this multiple times. Ha: Yeah. There’s a scene later in the book where a group of Amazons, the second tribe, are leaving the ruined building where they’re living right now and as sunset falls, and you’ll see that there’s no goddess in the first two panels. They’re almost identical but in the third panel, the sun just cracks below the horizon and there’s the sunburst and a flock of birds flies over and suddenly Artemis is there. But also, in the background on the ground, instead of in the sky, there’s also a statue of Artemis and it’s a really unusual version of Artemis. It’s the one that looks like it has a hundred breasts on it, but it’s the Artemis of Ephesus, so I had two versions of Artemis watching that scene. CBH: That’s cool. What did you enjoy the most about diving deep into Greek mythology and then trying to reflect those characters and some of those stories? Is that something you were already relatively familiar with or was it all kind of new to you? Ha: Because I love Thor and Thor cartoons and comic books and stuff like that, that lead me to just loving all the mythology I could get my hands on and later I became a Dungeons & Dragons player as a teenager and then I got the book Deities and Demigods: The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Source Book. So I just though mythological gods are wonderful and just so much fun. But the great fun of following on Phil–it’s intimidating following on Phil’s volume one–but also the great joy of it is how insanely–again, how Alexander McQueen-esque–brillant his takes on the gods are because they are not what you’d expect as a traditional interpretation at all. Even with the very pop culture DC comics interpretations of them. He just twists them. He takes the essence of who they are or what aspect of those gods he and Kelly Sue want to emphasize and they just twist it into something totally new and different, and it’s just fascinating. The goddess of magic, and I’m sorry, I’m horrible with names, even the names of goddesses (Transcriber Note: The Greek goddess of magic was called Hecate), but the goddess of magic where she’s the three-headed twisted one-hundred arms and bound inside of metal thorns character. I would never have imagined that way of representing that goddess, but damn does it work! CBH: No. Yeah, it’s really cool. And this issues opens with, I think, the seven primary goddesses, right? And you get a visual and kind of what their deal is. Ha: Yeah. We have a double-page spread with the six goddesses who aren’t Hera and then we have the double-page spread of just Hera. So yeah, all seven of them. I should also mention that in this I’m not following so much Greek myth, I was doing deep research into literally Alexander McQueen and other fashion designers for the divine realm but then I was researching into actual Greek history for the Earthly realm. And just a lot of weird details like “what do chamber pots look like inside of Greece?” and weirdly–or maybe not–it’s really hard to find just ancient Greek chamber pots, so I just threw in an ancient Roman one and hoped I did not annoy anybody who’s an ancient Greek chamber pot archaeologist or something like that. CBH: Yeah, yeah. Like the scholars and the archaeologists. Ha: Yeah. Like “what does the front door of a Greek house look like inside of a big city?” and I was like “oh, I didn’t know that detail was there.” They usually had like a square cross section wood post carved with a face of I think it was Hermes on it and a little penis symbol kind of in the middle of the post. An erect penis. So if you look very carefully at one of the scenes in one of the constantly Greek populated city near the end of the book, you’ll see a house with this weird post on the front and that’s what that is. CBH: Wow. Okay. Yeah, what a detail. And that honestly ties into and reflects the gender conversation that is happening throughout Historia, right? So, I think one of the pages that is the most striking is that there’s a double page splash with Hera lamenting the lack of equal rights for women. Basically, in the past, in the future, basically throughout all time, and there’s a background of this powerful image of all these inspirations and historical figures and moments. How did you determine who to chose there, how to include them, what went into that particular moment because it’s very striking? Ha: Okay, I should say one of the great things about working with Kelly Sue DeConnick–and it’s a huge compliment–is that she’ll both throw out incredible graphic ideas at you on how to handle a scene–she doesn’t require you to do it quite the way she says in the script, she trusts you to find a creative solution that’s better if you feel that it’s better and…
Full show notes at the publisher 
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
. We discuss how they are adapting the Great Gatsby and their implementation of science fiction, plus their take on Mantis’s story for Marvel Voices.
, 
, 
, and much more!
and 
. We discuss his writing process, his favorite past works, and his thoughts on the impact comic have had in his life.
t.
and I’m joined by Harry Kassen! We’ll analyze the work in depth, so expect spoilers! In its incredibly inventive 8 issues, The Black Monday Murders is a remarkable (to be completed!) tale of magic, murder, mystery, money and the secret history of wealth!
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
