Chatting with Cornell.

Paul Cornell is one of the top Brit writers working in comics today. He’s worked on Captain Britain and Fantastic Four but he’s best known for writing Dr Who. Paul is now an exclusive writer for DC comics and last year he was given the reins of Action Comics. Instead of writing Superman, he focused on his arch rival, Lex Luthor, with artist Pete Woods, sales unexpectedly doubled. A regular at conventions, I spoke to Paul at Nostalgia and Comics where he was doing a signing with Knight and Squire artist, Jimmy Broxton. We had a quick chat about writing for TV and a robot Lois Lane...

How would you compare writing television scripts to writing comics?

Well there are similarities but it’s about movement in television, you can talk about, you can say “he walks through the door and calls from the other side.” A description like that in a panel would drive a comic’s artist batty! What is exactly the image you’re trying to convey? What am I supposed to draw? So it’s about freezing moments in time, being very specific about what they are.

There’s all sorts of technical things, they’re both about limitation, television is about the limitation of budget and comics is about what you can ask sensibly ask an artist to draw and how many panels you can fit it into. They’re both about compressing words into the smallest word count possible and leaving visuals to director or artist. There are a lot of subtle differences.

You mentioned once that your Dr Who storyline, “Human Nature” is the Superman 2 of Dr Who do you think that kind of plot device is successful amongst writers as it was used in Thor recently?

It’s a very old trope; it’s the Christ story, its King Arthur, Merlin it’s “Hero with a Thousand Faces.” It’s a very Campbellian story. The original book of “Human Nature” I consciously thought nobody’s ever done that with Dr Who if I do that with Dr Who it’ll probably work and it always works!

With Knight and Squire do you think the American readers understood British culture?

The ones who liked it really got off on it there are quite a few Anglophiles in the American comics reading public. I suspect they found the richer the slang the better. I recently had to translate for DC editor, Katie Kubert sent me a temp sheet, a letter col which was made of British slang got to translate it into slightly better English slang!

When you began working on Action Comics why did you choose Lex Luthor?

I didn’t choose Lex Luthor he was given to me. That was the assignment “would you like to write Action Comics with Lex Luthor?” I thought fantastic. There seemed to be a wonderful space to play in because the expectations were lower. There’s a very obvious way to do that book which we didn’t do and it gave me all sorts of opportunities also, I love Lex I’m fascinated by him so that immediately appealed to me.

Who is Robot Lois?

We’ve explained her now. Towards the end of the run, where we see how she came to be she’s a creation of Brainiac but she is very much her own robot and I hope she appears in the future.

Did you enjoy working alongside Stan Lee and what was that like?

An amazing man, just blown away by his energy and his enthusiasm. He’s the same age as my dad, he’s eighty nine. We did a panel in San Diego at noon; he was ten minutes late and apologised for being late because he had emergency dental surgery at 7am! And that evening, he was taking a MTV film crew from bar to bar, that is incredible! And it’s all fuelled by a genuine passion, he’s a great salesman but behind the scenes he’s a very precise editor. It’s a combination of those two things really I think if anything he’s undervalued and so humble.

Special thanks to Paul Cornell.

Posted: 11/5/2011
Categories: Comics / Conventions

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