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No one in comics has had a career as unpredictable as Rick Veitchs.
Hes done perverse underground comix like his self-publishedTwo-Fisted Zombies.
Hes done straightforward superhero fare likeAquaman.
Hes done abrasive satire like the War on TerrorlampooningArmy@Love.
Hes done trippy dream-journal comics likeRoarin Ricks Rare Bit Fiends.
Perhaps most notably, hes put out a number of comics breaking down the very notion of the superhero.
And then theresThe One.
What were the origins ofThe One?Well, its a little bit complex.
I first started conceiving of it in the early 80s: 83, 84.
That was part of it.
The other part of it was the political situation at the time, which was freaking everybody out.
Reagan had showed up, and the whole era of detente just got pushed aside.
He started making a lot of noises about war with the Russians again.
If I recall correctly, you had already read some ofAlan MooresMarvelmanat that point, right?
A lot of people recognized it, but didnt quite know how to make that work.
I think Alan and his partners were the ones that first pulled it off, withMarvelman.
Along those lines, what do you think made the mid-80s particularly germane for that kind of experimentation?
The old method of distributing comics, the mom-and-pop stores, on newsstands, had collapsed.
Not only was I doing superhero comics, but I owned the material moving forward.
It was a pretty fantastic thing at the time.
But you could talk about sex, and you could have people in bed together.
It couldnt be, like, X-rated, but it could be R-rated, which was fine.
When readingThe One, youll see that we never used the word fuck.
That was a thing which some people didnt like, Im afraid.
Here was McLuhans people talking about it in that way, so I thought, Lets explore that.
What if this thing does really transform us as a species, what would it be?
I moved in that direction.
Archie Goodwin editedThe One, right?Yeah, Archie.
He totally got it.
Even though he was an old-schooler, he totally got it.
It was seen as, Run of the mill book, not that great.
Its like music, you know?
It stands as it is, I think.
I assume you feel your hopes have been scuttled.Yeah.
Gorbachev and those guys, there was going to be glasnost and everything.
And, Hey, maybe we were past this nuclear war thing!
But its all back again.
Now weve got Trump, and hes threatening the North Koreans, and the North Koreans are threatening us.
The specter of nuclear war is once again in our hearts and minds.
Im not sure how many people are taking it seriously, but I kind of do.
One of the things is the rise of nationalism and fascist thought.
The superhero is kind of like a fascist art form.
He is a fascist fantasy.
It breaks my heart that these issues are still being struggled with today.
On the other hand, we live in an age in which were going to be physically transformed.
Science and medicine are changing what it means to be physically human.
Thats part of thinking about superheroes and why theyre important now.
Its a way the culture sort of feels its way into its own future.
The other aspect that Im perturbed about and I hopeThe Onecan stand against is the corporate control of superheroes.
Its a subtle way of directing peoples energy and creative flow into these preformed archetypes, if you will.
I dont know if youve been to any Comic-Cons lately.
Sure, of course.
Theyll be like crowding the aisles of these shows.
What I dont like about it is theyre not expressing themselves with images that come from themselves.
They are dressing themselves in these prepackaged, corporate archetypes, and Im not sure where that all goes.
I think, as a creator, I want to stand against that.
I want to do superheroes that break that open.
Youre also bringing backBrat Packat IDW.
I had never read it until I was getting ready for this piece.
Im curious, is there more that you would want to change inBrat Pack?
The edition that IDW plans to do will have extra material in the back.
A lot of neat stuff Ive got stashed away.
It should make a really nice hardcover edition.
Did you really get a letter from NAMBLA thanking you forBrat Pack?
I heard that somewhere.Yeah, yeah, it was some guy thinking I was supporting child molesting.
It made me wonder what I was doing, too.
At the same time, that absurd vision is part of what Batman and Robin are.
Society has always sort of suspected that thats what was going on between Batman and Robin.
The Onefeatured a number of backup comic strips with crudely drawn characters in strange situations, called Puzz Fundles.
Will they be reprinted, too?Absolutely.The Onecould not exist without Puzz Fundles.
The pseudonym you used for the Puzz Fundles strips was Rick Grimes.
Ive never run into him.
Id love to ask him that question.
If anybody knows, Id love to hear.
Ill have to ask him about it sometime.
I guess thats a question Ill have to ask [IDW editor] Scott [Dunbier].
I hadnt even thought ahead.
Thanks for the warning.
Oh really?Yeah.
The things we could get away with in the old days!
Its obvious where its from, but without using the exact same phrasing.
Got it, okay.
I didnt do the compare and contrast closely enough.Hardly anyone notices, except the Beatles lawyers.
What were the origins of that?My friend Tom Yeates and I are liberal progressives.
Both of us started looking into some of the questions about the 9/11 incident.
They wanted to do a comic.
They put up the money and hired us to do it.
We relied on their expertise about which issues that we should focus on, which questions.
I guess going even further back, the roots of it are that I grew up in the 60s.
I tend to not believe the story that the government gets behind on some of these things.
Im naturally suspicious about it, and the 9/11 collapse of those towers leaves so many questions.
Id love it if they would go back and reinvestigate what happened.
Even to a relative of a victim, that makes sense, I think.
Few creators have your range of genre and style.
Is writing something like your dream-journal comics a fundamentally different experience from writing, say,Aquaman?
InAquamans case, its your editor at DC and the publisher at DC.
At the same time, I cant help myself.
Pieces of myself end up in there.
Symbolism thats important to me will end up in those things.Aquamanwasnt a great project for me.
I was really sick at the time.
One of the reasons I took it was to get health insurance.
Im not really fond of that particular project.
Id like to forget it actually.
Thats much more exciting and creatively fulfilling than doingAquamanis ever going to be.
That was originally done with Jim Lees company, [WildStorm].
Lee sold his company to DC.
We had three months of stuff already finished.
In Alans case, I think a lot of those promises got broken.
In my case, they were pretty decent to me.
They drew me back into the fold.
Like I say, I got sick and I needed health insurance.
I was in my early 50s, and that was a thing that cemented it for me.
Do you think youd ever go back and do mainstream superhero work again?It depends on the terms.
Its all cementing into place.
It isnt a plastic medium anymore, if that makes sense.
I would love it if DC would publishSwamp ThingNo.
88 [the Jesus issue] and allow me to finish that whole graphic novel.
I mean that would just be awesome.
Im the guy who did it.
Have you stayed in touch with Alan Moore at all?Oh yeah, yeah.
We talk all the time.
Its been fantastic working with him.
Its been sad seeing some of the shit hes had to deal with, because of his stardom.
Hes a lovely guy.
Im quite fortunate to have worked with him.
DC just introduced two Americas Best Comics characters into their mainstream universe: Tom Strong and Promethea.
Will yours and Alans character, Greyshirt, do that anytime soon?
Or is he safe from the corporate clutches?I dont think its safe.
Im not sure yet.
I havent really dug into it.
I hope they dont, I really do.
I think its not good, how they have treated Alan and his creations.
I wish, especially … Actually, I probably shouldnt say anything.
Other than to say, I wish theyd leave Alan alone and let him be creative.
On a completely different tack, how do you get into dream analysis?
Theres a way out here, of my depression.
It helped me get back on my feet, center myself.
It was a really fantastic experience.
What was the commercial success?I started a company with my partner Steve Conley focusing on educational comics.
Its called Eureka Comics.
Weve had a number of projects at McGraw-Hill.
Were actually using comics to create classroom materials, educational materials.
Ive been doing that for about five years now.
I have a go at do one or two panels each evening on a completely separate project.
Ive got one going right now, which is going to be likeThe Spotted Stone.
Im about 25 panels into it.
You have a single panel on a page.
I just like that whole idea.
What do you think comics as a medium can do that other mediums cant?
Whats special about comics?Well, they synthesize the mind.
Thats why you get a buzz when you read a comic.
One side of your brain processes the words, and one side processes the image.
That I think is the power of the medium, right there.
Everything else, any other medium can handle.
But the comic has a certain experience that, at its best, no other medium can duplicate.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
