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Interview
with Shon C. Bury Part 2
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back to part 1 ISO: Were there any other new villains you created and planned on introducing? SB: Honestly I didn't really think too far past the second story arc I was developing that brought back Force Commander… ISO: In the toy line he was the "good" version of Karza, his opposite. Good/evil, the armors were black/white…but in the comic he always ended up being the bad guy, the Prince who was the evil brother of the Princess. What did you plan for him? SB: I was going to keep him evil, I liked the idea of having the two major threats, because really…Karza can't show up in every damn issue…you don't need Darth Vader in every episode of Star War…oh wait, yes you do…(laughs) but to get back to the question before that: new villainous threat, that's what the K'Lar were. The alien race they fought in the first story arc. Chris Claremont himself told me "The K'Lar are too cool for the Micronauts", which tickled me to death!
SB: That was the threat, that they were destroying Homeworld and it got the group back together, and was such a big threat that they had to reanimate Baron Karza to help them fight it! It's all about internal conflict, and how do you juice it up more? By putting their greatest enemy on the team. |
 image from issue #1 page 1 |
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ISO: You had even more internal conflict planned by bring back Cilicia and the Acroyear fleet to help save the day at the end of the third issue, and setting up a scuffle between her and Acroyear and their son… SB: One thing you probably noticed was that I made him quite a bit older than he was in New Voyages, and the editor had a hard time with that at first. But I repeatedly pointed out to him that this was a retrofit, were refitting continuity. What gives you more dramatic potential; a 6-month old baby or a 14-year old son that may or may not be loyal to his father? I think the answer was obvious. I had a face-off between Acroyear and his son and had Acroyear maim his son's sword arm, which I thought was very significant. I mean, they're a warrior race; it's like a Klingon not having use of his sword arm. Story potential…the kid's gonna grow up incredibly embittered and next thing you know he's going to have a cyborg arm and become Shaitan's right hand man…
ISO: …and then the Narrion character… SB: …Rann's psionic duplicate created to battle Rann after he turned evil…that was all building up to the third story arc that consisted of the state of Homeworld after all the destruction that previously occurred. The battle between all the Royals and the people who could potentially rule Homeworld, the upper class in floating cities, the possible rebellion. It was ripe for civil war, and fermenting within that you had the Enigma Force. I was laying tons of seed for this in the second arc, the third arc was going to be about the Enigma Force, spirituality and civil uprising, social strife and the difference between the "have's" and "have-not's", and how this bizarre force related to all that and worked through the whole Microverse. I don't think I had a solid plot worked out, but all these subplots would have converged in the third arc. |
 image from issue #3 page 32 |
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ISO: So a lot of story would have taken place in the Microverse and on Homeworld. Would your Micronauts have ever traveled to Earth and interacted with the "big" people? SB: No, absolutely not. As a matter of fact at the end of the third issue one of the things I did by way of defeating the K'Lar, was have this psychic wall wrap itself around the Microverse and seal it permanently. And the reason why I justified that is because nobody in editorial or me personally wanted to have anything to do with the stuff that went on in the New Voyages. We wanted to completely ignore that 100%, so how do you go about doing that? Well, at the end of New Voyages they all jumped through the Prometheus Pit and they are reborn, right? So I thought that would be a perfect opportunity, especially since the Marvel universe is all about alternate realities and such, to jump over to the Microverse at say three doors down from where they jumped through the Pit. So basically it was an alternate universe. ISO: One of Michael Golden's biggest complaints about working on the book was that he was constantly forced to "superhero-ize" it, because if it was a part of the Marvel U, it had to take place in the Marvel U. And that meant adding superheroes. Were you ever a victim of this edict? SB: No, I was never given those types of directives. It was a totally different type of editorial atmosphere there by the time I was on the book. Really, the only reason why you should be forced to do that is to help sagging sales. Although it does have some logic behind it, it is definitely old school comic logic that may or may not stand up on it's own today. It was unfortunate that they had to go through that cuz every time the Micronauts came into the Marvel Universe they were like 6" tall… ISO…um, 3 ¾" tall… SB: …right, right yeah (laughs) it was just ridiculous, although I thought the X-Men/Micronauts crossover was cool, generally speaking within the book itself. But crossovers never worked…and they almost learned their lesson with New Voyages because it was almost straight up "sci-fi", but the dry kind…the space opera was what Michael Golden was hoping for and it was the space opera I tried to bring back with the re-vamp. Touhy was always supportive of anything I did…for instance I had just turned in issue #5's script and I told him it only took me like 4 hours, and his response was "Yeah, never take any longer that 4 hours to write a script, this is fantastic!" ISO: When you went back and did your research did you have any favorite classic stories? Favorite artists? |
SB: Well Michael Golden was my guy, always been a huge fan of his. In terms of stories, um…it's been forever since I read them at this point, but I remember having the sense of the first 8 or 12 issues being what I focused on, all the rest of the stuff I can kinda let slip through the cracks. Anything to do with the concept of the Body Banks I was really intrigued by. That's where the real villainy lied. ISO: So when the axe fell were you pretty disappointed to say the least? SB: Of
course…I had left my day job for the first time since starting to
write comic books professionally, I had a mortgage…my guaranteed monthly
paycheck was now no longer guaranteed. I think they let me continue
to dialogue whatever book hadn't been dialogued by that time but I
wasn't allowed to write any more scripts. I stopped at issue #5…and
that was a nice income because I can write a non-dialogued script
rapidly. Issue #4 I wrote in 7 hours, issue #5 I wrote in 4 hours,
so the money can add up quick.
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ISO: So where did you go from there? SB: I worked on a bunch of stuff, mostly fill-in work. I did a Power Pack mini-series, a Superman Adventures fill-in over at DC, an Impulse fill-in, some work for Acclaim, a Turok video game adaptation…and then created a property called Nio with an artist I'm still very close friends with named Joe St.Pierre, but left the biz by year 2000. I had a good run between '95 and 2000, but by '96 the industry tanked and I was only a year in and hadn't made my fortune like everyone else (laughs), but I managed to get myself a lot of work which I was thankful for. SB: Another deciding factor for me leaving was I wanted to go back and get my college degree, and I was really getting tired of being a "professional" proposal writer. Everyone wanted a proposal out of me but proposals don't pay much money. So I got sick of that and wanted to do other things, other types of writing; screen writing, poetry that kind of stuff. |
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SB:
I wanted to play with that kind of stuff
creatively. I started getting involved in the Seattle poetry community
an ended up getting on a few non-profit boards for poetry festivals and
magazines. So although it didn't pay any money that was ok, I had a day
job and was rewarding for a good long time creatively. With poetry every
line, every comma, every dash, all the white on the page…you become fully
responsible for that. You just don't get that kind of satisfaction with
comic books…one of my greatest accomplishments though was on Superman
Adventures. In the script that got approved Superman didn't punch anybody
in the face, not a bit of violence at all during the entire issue. Until
the artist got a hold of it and he decided that Superman had to hit somebody…
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ISO: So what are you currently up to now? You're back in the business… SB: Yeah, I am back. When I took a hiatus I didn't even read comics for about 3 years, but in about 2004 I began hitting the comic shops again finding myself looking through the stands but didn't see anything I wanted to pick up. But then I started getting back into it a bit more, a first love sorta thing. Right now I run a talent agency called Sequential Studios that I joined up with in 2005, which helped me ease back into comics. I started thinking about all the properties I developed outside any companies independently on my own and thought maybe I could just do a trader-owned book, do everything myself. We exclusively worked with Brazilian artists, and became somewhat of an artist agent in a way. I have access to a huge talent pool to get my own books together now, and Sequential Studio's is slowly and surely turning into a company called Space Goat Productions. |
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SB: One of the creator-owned projects I'm working on now is a book called Nox, Nox is the Latin word for "night". It's quite literally a modern day telling of Joseph Campbell's "Hero Cycle" put in an urban setting. It's very much about these urban guys that live in Seattle that are probably too over educated and too aware of the process they are going through, and as they go through that process they point out all the different aspects of the hero cycle as they go through it. "Oh, here is the threshold crossing, this is the Wiseman you meet at the gates", that kind of thing. All said and done it's a 130 page graphic novel due out in July through Atomic Pop Art. And through a sequence of events I am now the publisher and editorial director there. I multi-task like a son-of-a-bitch! (laughs)
SB: I have another book coming out through APA after Nox is published which has a title that makes me smile every time I tell someone what it is; it's called "Lance Hunter, Monster Hunter at Large". It's Buffy the Vampire Slayer on a motorcycle John Wayne's Searchers. It's about an orphaned boy raised to roam from town to town hunting and killing monsters. He's a very shy kid when he's around people, but a vicious warrior when he's up against a demon, monster, or the occasional warlock. If you love Gothic horror, action-adventure, crazy monsters, road-trips, and sarcasm, you will love Lance Hunter... |
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