Six Questions with Kurt Busiek

[Van Plexico]

The second installment of Six Questions, posted today, features none other than Kurt Busiek.

www.avengersassemble.us/

[The Night Phantom]

Thanks, Van! (And Kurt!)

Now I’m curious about a hypothetical Kurt Busiek’s Machine Man...

[von Bek]

Thanks Van and Kurt Busiek (the guy who brought me back to the Avengers after good 10 years not reading them!)

Now, in which issue of Iron Man did detective Plexico show up?

[Yellowjacket]

nightphantom said:

Now I’m curious about a hypothetical Kurt Busiek’s Machine Man...

Hmm, why would he choose this character? Isn´t this character an quite arcane one? But I have to admit, I know Machine Man only from the late TIO issues when they battle against Ultron (Ultron-12, I think). In this issues Jocasta dies.

I just checked in the net and learned that Machine Man seems to be a creation of Jack Kirby, but all of his runs were quite short lived. Maybe these Kirby issues are the reason?

[Van Plexico]

I think Kurt introduced Detective Plexico in IRON MAN (vol. 3) #6. I'm not exactly sure, though. I don't have the issues handy.

It was near the start of the storyline that involved the finding of the Whitney Frost (Madame Masque) body. Later on, Roger Stern used him again after taking over for Kurt.

As for Machine Man, I started reading the original (Kirby) series with #2 (just like I did with Moon Knight-- I guess someone was buying all the #1 issues off the rack before I could get to the grocery store!) Though I think he initially showed up in Kirby's anthology book, "2001: A Space Odyssey" (the series).

It was typical Kirby of that era. As (I think) Joe Quesada (??) said, Machine Man works better as a wondrous robot guy in a "normal" Earth world, rather than as just another super-character in a world full of heroes. That was the way Kirby used him initially, and it was pretty cool.

[Shiryu]

Going back to this topic, I can actually see Busiek becoming a novels' writer. In his stories there are a lot of text boxes, wrote in a good descriptive, narrative way, like most novels are.

Interesting enough, in the audio interview he mentions David Gemmell as one of his fav writers, and he also happens to be one of my favs ;D

[Van Plexico]

I have no doubt Kurt will be a successful novelist before too many more years have passed. His writing (pacing, characterization, style, etc) is more perfectly suited for it than most comics writers, if not all of them, working today.

Bendis, on the other hand, should be writing screenplays. For nice, loooong movies. I seriously think he'd be quite good at it. And if comics were all 120 pages long, he'd be good at writing comics, too.

[dlw66]

I don't buy Ultimate Spider-Man off the racks -- I read the collected tpb's when they come out. Bendis' style works extremely well in that format because it does gain the continuity that is lacking in NA from month to month. It is a much easier read. I also think his writing is more akin to so-called "art house" films -- stuff you'd see on the Sundance or IFC channels here in America. Maybe that's the new wave or style, I don't know...

[Shiryu]

admin said:

Bendis, on the other hand, should be writing screenplays. For nice, loooong movies. I seriously think he'd be quite good at it. And if comics were all 120 pages long, he'd be good at writing comics, too.

May be he would be very good at graphic novels or very long sized stories, who knows.