Comics Bulletin logo
Search
  • Columns
    Random
    • The Wild World of World Wide Web Comics

      Troy Stith
      April 25, 2005
      Columns, Comics Bulletin Soapbox
    Recent
    • The Full Run: Usagi Yojimbo – The Wanderer’s Road Part 2

      Daniel Gehen
      December 4, 2020
    • The Full Run: Usagi Yojimbo – The Wanderer’s Road Part 1

      Daniel Gehen
      October 30, 2020
    • Comictober 2020: DRACULA MOTHERF**KER

      Daniel Gehen
      October 27, 2020
    • What Looks Good
    • Comics Bulletin Soapbox
    • The Full Run
    • Leading Question
    • Top 10
    • The Long-Form
    • Jumping On
    • Comics in Color
    • Slouches Towards Comics
  • Big Two
    Random
    • Exclusive Marvel Preview: "Carnage" #3

      Troy Stith
      December 24, 2015
      Marvel Comics, Previews
    Recent
    • Retro Review: Detective Comics #826 Remains a Holiday Classic

      Daniel Gehen
      December 3, 2020
    • Stan Lee

      nguyen ly
      November 7, 2020
    • Collecting Profile: Jack O’ Lantern

      nguyen ly
      October 31, 2020
    • DC Comics
    • Big Two Reviews
    • Marvel Comics
  • Indie
    Random
    • Singles Going Steady 8/24/2015: Yee-haw and Abra Kadabra

      Troy Stith
      August 27, 2016
      Big Two Reviews, Dark Horse, Indie, Marvel Comics, Reviews, Reviews, Singles Going Steady, Valiant
    Recent
    • Review: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist

      Daniel Gehen
      December 14, 2020
    • The Full Run: Usagi Yojimbo – The Wanderer’s Road Part 2

      Daniel Gehen
      December 4, 2020
    • 4.5

      TMNT: The Last Ronin #1 Lives Up to the Hype (Review)

      Daniel Gehen
      October 29, 2020
    • Reviews
    • Archie Comics
    • Boom! Studios
    • Dark Horse
    • IDW
    • Image
    • Oni Press
    • Valiant
  • Reviews
    Random
    • 3.5

      B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: New Worlds #5

      Troy Stith
      December 9, 2010
      Reviews
    Recent
    • Review: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist

      Daniel Gehen
      December 14, 2020
    • Retro Review: Detective Comics #826 Remains a Holiday Classic

      Daniel Gehen
      December 3, 2020
    • 4.5

      TMNT: The Last Ronin #1 Lives Up to the Hype (Review)

      Daniel Gehen
      October 29, 2020
    • Singles Going Steady
    • Slugfest
    • Manga
      • Reviews
    • Small Press
      • Reviews
      • ICYMI
      • Tiny Pages Made of Ashes
  • Interviews
    Random
    • INTERVIEW: Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá Part 2: A Daytripper Retrospective

      Troy Stith
      October 14, 2015
      Dark Horse, Interviews
    Recent
    • Interview: Jon Davis-Hunt Talks SHADOWMAN

      Daniel Gehen
      June 8, 2020
    • Interview: Becky Cloonan talks DARK AGNES and Her Personal Influences

      Mike Nickells
      March 4, 2020
    • Simon Roy

      Interview: Simon Roy on His Inspirations and Collaborations on PROTECTOR

      Mike Nickells
      January 29, 2020
    • Audio Interview
    • Video Interview
  • Classic Comics
    Random
    • Frank Miller's Ronin Pt. 4: Eyes in the Darkness

      Troy Stith
      August 5, 2016
      Classic Comics, Classic Comics Cavalcade
    Recent
    • Countdown to the King: Marvel’s Godzilla

      Daniel Gehen
      May 29, 2019
    • Honoring A Legend: Fantagraphics To Resurrect Tomi Ungerer Classics

      Daniel Gehen
      February 15, 2019
    • Reliving the Craziest Decade in Comics History: An interview with Jason Sacks

      Mark Stack
      January 2, 2019
    • Classic Comics Cavalcade
    • Classic Interviews
  • News
    Random
    • This Week in BOOM! 10/01/14

      Troy Stith
      October 1, 2014
      News, This Week in BOOM!
    Recent
    • 2020 Ringo Awards Winners Announced

      Daniel Gehen
      October 26, 2020
    • BAD IDEA Announces 2021 Publishing Slate

      Daniel Gehen
      September 29, 2020
    • A Full Replay of NCSFest 2020 is now Available

      Daniel Gehen
      September 15, 2020
    • Press Release
    • Kickstarter Spotlight
  • Books
    Random
    • Interview: M.K. Reed Explores Facts and Legends About Dinosaurs (and Her Imagination)

      Troy Stith
      August 24, 2016
      Books
    Recent
    • Collecting Profile: Disney Frozen

      CB Staff
      November 22, 2019
    • Collecting Profile: NFL Superpro

      CB Staff
      August 31, 2019
    • “THE BEST OF WITZEND” is a Wonderful Celebration of Artistic Freedom

      Daniel Gehen
      September 15, 2018
    • Review: ‘Machete Squad’ is a Disappointing Afghan Memoir

      Jason Sacks
      July 31, 2018
    • Review: ‘Out of Nothing’ is the Antidote to Our Sick Times

      Jason Sacks
      July 23, 2018
    • Review: ‘Bizarre Romance’ Shows Rough Edges in the Early Days of a New Marriage

      Jason Sacks
      July 10, 2018
What's New
  • Collecting Profile: Batwoman
  • Collecting Profile: Daredevil
  • Collecting Profile: Floronic Man
  • Review of Cheetah in Wonder Woman 1984
  • Review: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist
  • Collecting Profile: Transformers
  • RSS Feed
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Contact Us
  • Write for us!
  • Visit Video Game Break!
Home
Interviews

Steve Niles: The Dust Settles on Arc One of this City

Troy Stith
March 11, 2009
Interviews

Steve Niles took some time out while getting ready for this year’s WonderCon to talk about City of Dust, which wraps up with issue #5 this week. Up to this point, Niles has thrown at us: robotic monsters, a futuristic sterile society, and plenty of questions about what’s going on in Philip Khrome’s world. Thankfully, Niles was happy to open up about the series and some of his thoughts on how he created Khrome’s story.

Troy Stith: How did this story originally come to life?

Steve Niles: I originally pitched the idea to Barry Levine like “how about something like Bladerunner with monsters?” All I wanted to see was a robotic Nosferatu.

TS: What do you tend to stay away from when approaching such an idea?

SN: For City of Dust, I didn’t want to get too technological, that’s something someone like Warren Ellis is really good at but I’m not a real ‘tech-head’. I wanted to keep it accessible to people. That was about the only thing I wanted to avoid in this series.

TS: Of course this isn’t your first horror book, how do you keep your monsters and characters fresh?

SN: With City of Dust I was able to look through a character’s eyes, who had no idea what monsters are. That’s part of the discovery. It’s kind of fun to write something where they don’t know what a werewolf is. I always compare it to Criminal Macabre because the attitude with Cal is “Oh, another damn werewolf” it’s like an old hat. This is just really fun and I was really surprised on how well it really came off.

TS: Issue #3 exposed the monsters as Bio-sapiens, what made you take the mechanical monster route?

SN: You know, it just started with the idea, and this is one of the frustrations with doing horror these days. There’s a lot of stuff you just can’t do. If I just did like let’s say my Cal McDonald character from Criminal Macabre, if he walked into a case and found somebody lying in bed with two puncture wounds in their neck, he’s just going to go “Oh he’s a vampire” like there’s nothing to it. But having this world where they don’t even exist, I got to have the fun of rediscovering that.

TS: We’re approaching the end of this first arc of City of Dust and we’ve already had the characters involved turned upside down, without giving away too much…how many more twists can we expect from the series?

SN: I feel like we haven’t really explored the world all that much. I’m excited to get in there and really explore and get into the different things that have been hinted at and hidden from the people.

TS: I know Khrome’s world is an extreme case of sterilization, but did our current climate of “political-correctness” have a hand in the inception of this reality?

SN: It sure did. That’s the whole thing, I remember at one point stuff like censorship was something that was considered a conservative thing. Now with the advent of ‘PC’ we’ve got the ‘right’ and ‘left’ censoring, it’s really dangerous. That’s why I finally felt safe doing something as extreme as making everything from comic books to religion illegal. It’s no different than the way people treat music, video games, and movies being blamed for killing. What it comes down to is that human psychology isn’t as simple as pointing your finger at one of those things. As far-fetched as the world of City of Dust is, it really isn’t. You could see it in a few hundred years, just look what’s happened in the last fifty, what could happen in the next few hundred years, as far as us evolving as a society when the technology keeps growing. We as humans start to shrink and become all soft and squishy and we need all these things to protect us from bad ideas. I wanted to address these issues without being preachy, or really left or really right in my view. I just wanted to create this world that this was a possibility and you can directly see the dangers of it. And if anything, I say it is all our fault.

TS: Do you have any future plans for Khrome’s imprisoned father?

SN: Oh definitely, that’s why a lot of characters — although we lose a couple — but there’s just enough there that we can continue with. We’ll definitely be seeing more of the father because in the next sort of ‘phase’, there will be a certain amount of civil unrest.

TS: [Possible Spoiler] With the revelations made in issue #5 about Ajax, will Khrome ever be able to trust anyone in his dark city?

SN: That’s a big part of setting up the private detective, he never gets the girl. No, if anything we’ve created that he’ll probably go in the other direction, being very untrusting. At the beginning, he was a guilty character who followed every order he was ever given. Now, ending as a cynical paranoid character will be something that sticks with him for a while.

TS: How has it been working with Radical?

SN: It’s been great; they’ve been treating me great. They’ve been letting me do just about everything I want. I have great editorial assistance and guidance by Dave Elliot. My biggest single problem is that I take on too much work, so I’ll be writing three or four comics at once, and then I’m working on a movie and a video game and a novel. Then, when I come back to City of Dust it’s like “Where the hell was I?” Dave Elliott was always right there and able to get me back on task, that’s just a good editor. Radical has been fantastic that way. I also have a great editor at Dark Horse and DC.

TS: Did you choose Zid to do the art for this book or did Radical already have him in the wings for the project? I also noticed that the art team grew as the title went on, any reason that Brandon Chng seemed to become the main artist on the book?

SN: They let me pick him. That was one of the lures they used on me. They basically showed me all this amazing art they had access to. I had been going through this thing that we seemed to be losing so many great artists to videogames and movie concept art. If you look through an issue of Spectrum now, you can see there’s this style of art that never sees print, because they’re all used for concept art. I remember pointing at one specific image and saying, “I want to do a comic like that.” In a way, even though so much of it is computer now, it reminds me a lot of that old Men’s Adventure stuff — the fully painted style — no one was doing comics like that and I always wanted to do one in that style.

I think the art team change up is due in part to the fact that we’re using a studio. Which there is a studio look and they have a team working on the book so they’re
able to keep things moving. It’s very different for me, I’m so used to working with a penciler and inker, and they’re usually the same person. This has been a very different sort of process for me and it has really gone smoothly. I feel that the art has added so much to the story.

TS: Do you have any other books lined up with Radical?

SN: Oh yeah, things are going really good with them, so I just want to keep going. But at the same time I’m trying to slow down a little bit since I’m working on a lot of stuff.

TS: You’ve tackled quite a few monsters in your writing career, any monsters you haven’t done yet that you’d like to take on?

SN: I’ve always wanted to do something with werewolves, but we’ll see. I’ve had a couple different stories I wanted to try. My thing is that there are a lot of mainstream characters I’d like to get my mitts on. I’ve had a couple chances like the Hulk in some short stories and Thing and now I’m getting to do Batman. Stuff like that is really fun for me.

TS: What can we expect from Steve Niles in ’09?

SN: Right now I’m working on getting the sequel to “30 Days” moving along, we’re having pretty good progress with that. I’m always trying to get other movie titles going, from Criminal Macabre to Wake the Dead, but boy it’s hard to get movies made. I just keep slugging away. I just recently — I guess you can call it a panic because I was worried about the SAG strike — picked up a videogame job, which is turning out to be a lot of fun. All I can say is that it’s for a franchise game and I guess I can say it is a part 3 of something. This video game company is really fun to work with. I’m doing a novel with Simon and Schuster. And Kelly Jones and me are just wrapping up Gotham After Midnight, so we’re going to think about what our next project is going to be, but definitely something for DC. Keep Criminal Macabre going — the usual assortment of stuff. Too much stuff, I’m just exhausted listening to myself. But I’m lucky right now, especially in LA, to be working, so I’m not complaining. Part of my reason is that I’m incapable of saying no. After 20 years of people saying no, I just can’t do it. I get to do what I want and I have a lot of fun with it.

TS: Thank you for taking the time to do this interview and have a great time in San Francisco.

SN: Ahh thank you so much.

 

Steve NilesTroy Stith

Share On:
Tweet
Marvel Month in (P)Review: February/March 2009
The REAL Identity Crisis

About The Author

<a href="http://comicsbulletin.com/byline/troy-stith/" rel="tag">Troy Stith</a>
Troy Stith
Publisher Emeritus
Google+

Jason Sacks has been obsessed with pop culture for longer than he'd like to remember. Jason has been writing for Comics Bulletin for nearly a decade, producing over a million words of content about comics, films and other media. He has also been published in a number of publications, including the late, lamented Amazing Heroes, The Flash Companion and The American Comic Book Chronicles: the 1970s,1980s and 1990s. Find him on Facebook and Twitter. Jason is the Publisher Emeritus of Comics Bulletin.

Related Posts

  • Picks of the Week: June 10, 2015

    Justin Giampaoli
    June 8, 2015
  • Singles Going Steady 10/14/2014: Aliens, Batman, Earth 2 and More

    Jamil Scalese, Jason Bud, John Yohe, Michael Bettendorf, Myke Ladonia, Richard Zom, Ryan Scott
    October 13, 2014

Latest Interviews

  • Interview: Jon Davis-Hunt Talks SHADOWMAN

    Daniel Gehen
    June 8, 2020
  • Interview: Becky Cloonan talks DARK AGNES and Her Personal Influences

    Mike Nickells
    March 4, 2020
  • Simon Roy

    Interview: Simon Roy on His Inspirations and Collaborations on PROTECTOR

    Mike Nickells
    January 29, 2020
  • Interview: V.E. Schwab on revisiting Red London in The Steel Prince

    Stephen Cook
    March 13, 2019
  • Interview: David Foster Wallace and Hellblazer, words on Wyrd with writer Curt Pires

    Stephen Cook
    February 27, 2019
  • “The Night Has Teeth” An Interview with Sarah deLaine, Artist of Image Comics’ “Little Girls”

    Jason Sacks
    February 26, 2019
  • Interview: Caitlin Kittredge talks the future of Witchblade

    Daniel Gehen
    February 12, 2019
  • Interview: Andy Nakatani and the Future of Weekly Shonen Jump

    Daniel Gehen
    December 19, 2018
  • INTERVIEW: Todd Matthy talks robots, princesses, and bridging the divide with storytelling

    Stephen Cook
    September 13, 2018
  • INTERVIEW: Gallaher & Ellis discuss THE ONLY LIVING GIRL

    Daniel Gehen, Thea Srinivasan
    September 7, 2018
RSSTwitterFacebookgoogleplusinstagramtumblr

Comics Bulletin is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for website owners to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com, audible.com, and any other website that may be affiliated with Amazon Service LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, Comics Bulletin earns from qualifying purchases.

All content on this site (c) 2018 The Respective Copyright Holders