Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, dan abnett, dynamite, entertainment, green hornet, mark waid

Mark Waid On Wrapping Up His Green Hornet Run

Published Sun, 25 May 2014 15:00:41 -0500

Mark Waid is wrapping up his run on the Green Hornet for Dynamite with issue #13 and with issue #12 shipping this week. Dan Abnett had a chance to ask Waid about his run on the character and how he had learned about the hero in the first place.

DAN ABNETT: Let me start by saying that, growing up in the UK, Green Hornet was a mysterious thing we'd all heard of but never seen. The toymaker Corgi did a wonderful die-cast model of his car, Black Beauty, which me and my friends all desperately wanted even though we had no idea what it was all about. Did you grow up a Hornet fan? Is it part of your childhood mythology? Or did you come to him late?

MARK WAID: I grew up a fan, though not a superfan—I was introduced to the Hornet by the short-lived 1966 TV show, but I was only four. My father got me into old-time radio, though, and once I heard some of the character's earliest exploits, I was very intrigued.

DA: How similar to the original incarnation is this? Have you tried to re-invent, or have you tried to be pure?

MW: I've tried very much to stay pure to the mythology while at the same time honoring some of the changes to the mythos that Dynamite's put in play previously (like Britt Reid's father no longer being alive). But with these things, I always find that the truest path is the one that began with the character's original incarnation. I try to live by a writer's variation on the Hippocratic Oath, I suppose.

DA: Tell me about this issue in particular. It seems like a finale in every sense of the word. Is it as dramatic and game-changing as it seems?

MW: Hugely. All along, the Hornet has been playing a high-stakes game by posing as an underworld figure, but he's always been clever enough to pull off the masquerade without having to cross certain moral and ethical lines. This time, cleverness finally takes him only so far.

DA: Can you say something about Ronilson's work?

MW: What a treat. So expressive, so detailed, and very good at capturing the era. I appreciate Ronilson's storytelling and would gladly put the team back together in the future.

DA: What appeals to you most about the character? Is it his green-ness or his hornet-esque-isity, for example? No, seriously… he's one of the few properly noir/pulp adventurers left in that undiluted sense. Is that the appeal? Is it the crime aspect? The powerless superheroics? The era?

MW: It's all those things, but mostly the triple-identity angle—the fact that the Hornet's working both sides of the street between the cops and the mob and has to be careful in ways that other costumed heroes never had to be. I love the idea that the Hornet is constantly forced to stare into the abyss and skirt right up to darkness without succumbing to the temptation to go too far. Because as we've seen repeatedly in this run, he doesn't always succeed in maintaining the high ground.

DA: Will we see more from Green Hornet and Mark Waid? If so, where are they going next?

MW: No plans immediately, but I don't feel "done" with him yet. In the meantime, Dynamite's giving me the chance to explore some of these same themes with another character…but that's revealing too much. Stay tuned.

DA: So… Batman and Green Hornet. Both crimefighting heroes, both with no actual superpowers, both with REALLY cool wheels. Clones or very distinct? And, setting aside Batman's sheer popular longevity and cultural icon status (though Hornet predates him), which one is cooler? Which one brings the most atmosphere?

MW: Okay, it's hard to make the argument that Batman's not cooler…but I'm with you in that as much of a hodgepodge of influences as Batman drew from, I've no doubt that, like the Shadow, the Green Hornet ABSOLUTELY informed Bob Kane and Bill Finger when they created Batman. Particularly the car. ESPECIALLY the car. Without the Black Beauty, Batman might be riding around town on a bicycle, I dunno.

For more information on Mark Waid's final issue of The Green Hornet, click here.

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