2013 Comic Book Resources Matt Kindt interview on "Manhunter" back-ups

Martians have a crippling vulnerability to fire, Jovians to water, Saturnians to oil, and mine would appear to be moving. I've done it many dozens of times, and like Post-Crisis J'Onn J'Onzz I've developed a resistance to the debilitating weakness, but it's still hell on my aging body. Luckily, will_in_chicago has found yet another Matt Kindt interview that sounds like the writer's speaking from well coached talking points yet still manages to come off poorly, and I'm just enough of a jerk to tear into him for it again. Hey, I've got less that an hour before this post is late and something very specific I want to cover before the end of 1/31/13, so you'll take what I got and like it.

First off, am I out of line in thinking that DC is quite the braintrust for scheduling all these interviews about the Manhunter back-ups without offering so much as a sketch or panel from strip artist Scott Clark? As far as I can tell, Scott has drawn the Alien Atlas exactly twice: on the Stormwatch cover I keep recycling, and a zombie version in Brightest Day. The banner at the top of the interview is a seven year old Al Barrionuevo drawing of the failed One Year Later Coneheadhunter revamp that was killed off two years later, zombified a couple of years after that, resurrected in a better received revamp, and yet still tossed in the garbage as part of the linewide DC revamp from a year and a half ago. Nothing promotes a book like readers debating whether the sales department is negligent, incompetent, or themselves debating the same about creative/editorial. I half expect to hear Koi Turbull will be taking over retroactively.

On to prejudging Matt Kindt without ever having read his work. I loved how from the first question, where the interviewer proclaims his favor toward the Martian Manhunter, Kindt sidesteps copping to his own tepid feelings. Terms like "underutilized," especially when you throw J'Onn into the context of a bunch of other DC characters with "potential," is a nice way of saying, "golly, someone like me could really make something of that mediocrity." Kindt also likes to push his anointment by Geoff Johns to be his Sholly Fisch, as if that were something to crow about. "I invented new techniques for demonstrating telepathy in comics that have attracted Hollywood attention, so DC's giving me work-for-hire wages to rip myself off on their telepathy guy that I have a passing familiarity with." It's like Johns is a director and Kindt is his special effects house instead of a fellow writer.

Kindt yet again makes comparisons to Superman, and in fact most of the piece as a whole could easily have been cut and pasted from any of the other interviews he's done recently. It's almost as unimaginative as foregoing plotting his own work in favor of reworking Johns' lead features. I think Kindt missed his calling as a political hack, he's so unerringly on message. Do you think there's still time to work out the rules for a Matt Kindt interview drinking game? How about the double speak regarding his making time to draw the Manhunter strip if someone asked him to but no one did and he wouldn't be a good fit and he doesn't have the time with his creator owned work anyway? There may have been an unintentional slip in there though, as he referenced the character's "natural form," a Post-Crisis conceit that hasn't been seen in the New 52 so far. Kindt says a Martian Manhunter ongoing series would be his dream project, which is the sort of thing you would expect to hear from a little known creator with a small body of work whose only other mainstream series so far was cancelled after less than a year with him on the job. I'm pretty sure his really real dream project would probably involve Batman, but that's not on the table, so let's show some enthusiasm for the one character he does have his hooks in, right?