Articles: Interview: Mike Wieringo (11/25/2001)

S Kleefeld:First of all, let me congratulate you on getting the art duties for the Fantastic Four. Your name has been buzzing on the internet as a possibility for a little while now, and I know many people are excited to see you finally on the book. If you don't mind and have a few moments, I was hoping to ask you a few preliminary questions for my web site.

Mike Wieringo: Thanks for the encouraging words about my taking over the art chores on FF. I'm pretty nervous about working on such a big title -- but I'm very excited as well. On to your questions...

SK: To my knowledge, you've only done one Fantastic Four related book before, and that was a bit unusual: issue 13 of the Heroes Reborn line. The Thing was entirely absent, and the "Torch" in that story was actually Burnout from Gen13. Would it be fair to say that your upcoming FF will be little, if any, resemblance to that team?

MW: I was thrilled when Wildstorm asked me to draw issue 13 of the Heroes Reborn Fantastic Four -- and very disappointed when I found that it wasn't the entire true team. I missed being able to draw Thing and the Human Torch (Ben Grimm is a favorite character of mine) -- but I was happy to be working with James Robinson on something because he's one of my favorite writers. The story was really quite a good one in the final examination of things, so I've got no regrets. I think I can confidently say that there won't be any elements of THAT particular take on the FF in Mark Waid's and my work on this title.

SK: Now you actually get a little prep time before having to actually work on the FF, right? You're scheduled to do several covers before you start as the regular penciller. Do you think that will be a good indication of what your take on the FF will be, or do you think you'll still be getting the feel for them at that point?

MW: I wanted to make sure with editor Tom Brevoort that I got some "prep time" before I started working on the book so that I could spend a lot of time sketching all the FF characters to get a feel for how I want to draw them going into the book. Every project I've ever worked on I've had to go into cold and get "my feel" for the characters I'm working on as I go along. If you look at any book I've worked on for any particular amount of time, the main characters don't look at the end of my run much like what they looked like when I started. It usually takes me 3 or 4 issues to get a good feel for a character -- and I'm hoping I can avoid that this time. As for the four inter-locking covers for issues 51-54 -- I think they may be close, but I haven't spent all that much time working on the FF's look at this point, so it's a good start, but I'm hoping to refine it more.

SK: I realize that it's still very early for you to talk about this yet, but are there any things you think your unique synergy with Mark Waid will bring to the FF?

MW: Mark is an incredible writer with a wonderful feel for character and emotion. I think he's going to bring that to the FF family -- and that's one of the things that is intergral to the book. Not only are the Fantastic Four a galaxy-spanning "super team", they're also a family, with all the trials and tribulations that families go through. I think that Mark is the perfect writer to fuse that with the cosmic-level high concept action that is the other half of the book. He's very adept at that as well. As for me, I'm just hoping to keep up with him and meet his level of quality and commitment.

His scripts made it very easy for me to work on Flash with him -- I could instantly identify with the characters he was writing and that was why I think fans took to our run on that book so readily. The biggest compliment that Mark every paid me was when he told me that he felt as though, looking at my pages, it seemed as though I had read him mind and put his visuals down on paper. I just hope we can bring that to the Fantastic Four.

SK: That's all I have for now. Thanks very much for your time. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing your take on the FF.

MW: Thank you, Sean.

Take care.