Joe Fludd is passionate about the comic book medium, science fiction, and more importantly science fact. He has a vision of worlds in which there are gay and straight super heroes and space faring adventurers. The word "no" is unacceptable to Joe, and his determination has led him to create the QUANTUM COMICS website. Joe wants you to become a F.O.O.Q.?that's Friend Of Old Quantum, so read on, True Believer!

GLA: Starting any project, let alone a project that wants to be ambitious is often a daunting prospect. In your first editorial you say what "madness" and "foolishness" to do a public project based on such a personal vision. Where did the inspiration and ideas for starting this project come from?

JF: Quantum Comics stems from an ambition I've had since high school. I've just gotten a little dizzy with the realization at how long the road has been from there to here, and everything that's happened along the way, including my own coming out. I started creating my own super-heroes and made my first attempts at universe-building when I was 14. I've now been out of the closet for fourteen years, and here we are at the launch of the comic book company that I envisioned way back when! October 11, National Coming Out Day, is my "second birthday". My own uncloseting took place on October 11, 1987-exactly one year before the day of coming out was instituted.

The "foolishness" and "madness" of doing comics based on a personal vision, to which I alluded in my first editorial, refers to the fact that building a business to communicate your own values is supposedly contrary to good business sense. Business isn't supposed to be personal; it's supposed to be about what "the people" want and what "the market" will bear. The commercial and the personal are supposed to be two separate things; you're supposed to sublimate what you care about to what the masses demonstrate they will buy. Yet time and again we see examples of people doing things they believe in, and prospering by it. So the wisdom of the business world is not infallible, though it likes to believe that it is.

Quantum Comics exists because I've always believed I have a place in the comics industry that I've loved since I was just a little boy, but outside of my collaboration with Andy Mangels in GAY COMICS, I haven't been welcomed to the party and I haven't been progressing professionally as I wanted to do. That, and the fact that in the last decade or more I've seriously grown to doubt that the party being given is one that I really want to attend! I've watched from the outside for many years as things in comics that I loved and believed in, which made me want to give my life to comics in the first place, have taken a very bad beating, creatively and commercially. The problems that nearly chased me completely away from comics have been mitigated lately, but the bad taste those years left will probably never go away. And more and more I came to the conclusion that the thing I'd had in mind to do since high school was the only thing I could do: take matters into my own hands and claim the place that I considered rightfully mine. It was just a matter of how to do it. When the Internet and E-comics came along, I saw the route to follow.

As for the two initial projects of Quantum Comics (as Yoda might have said, "There is another? "), I find that major ideas have a way of coming from more than just one place. The ENVIRONAUTS and ORION'S ARM are both the results of synthesizing and combining different ideas and inspirations. That's the way I often work, finding or creating relationships between things that have no apparent connection. In the case of THE ENVIRONAUTS, it was a convergence of several things. Firstly, I had long wanted to see a super-hero team composed of really handsome, studly young hunks. There had never been such a team. There had been teams made up entirely of super-heroines, notably a book called FEM FORCE that I think was from Americomics, but there was never an all-hunk team. I wanted to create one. Secondly, one of the prevailing themes in my stories is that of evolution?the evolution of life, of self, of society and civilization; the notion of moving forward and upward. It's something you'll see me touch on again and again in various guises. I was intrigued with the elegant process through which life has evolved through different environments, starting in the ocean and moving to the land, then some creatures acquiring the power of flight and taking to the sky, and finally man reaching out into space. Ocean, Land, Sky, Space: I wanted to do something to reflect this progression.

Finally, it will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that the comic book not of my own creation that I've always most wanted to do is The Fantastic Four. I should explain my special relationship with the FF, since I've gone on about it often enough. To some, my love of the FF is probably a curiosity. I can imagine people thinking, "The guy's gay and black. Why is he so into the FANTASTIC FOUR? It's about a nuclear family and there's nothing queer or ethnic about it!" Well, I've been a lover of science since I was able to speak. At an age when most kids are struggling with Dick and Jane and Spot chasing the ball, I knew the dinosaurs and the planets. I've always had an intense fascination with the natural, physical world, even from early boyhood. And here was this comic book that was not just about good guys fighting bad guys, but also about scientific exploration and discovery in its stylized, comic book way, and about wanting to know the secrets of the universe and life and space and time. It has always seemed to me that there is something inherently more substantial and meaningful about The Fantastic Four than other comics. It seemed to ask the kind of questions that I would want to ask. Reading the best adventures of the FF, I've always felt as if I were reading and looking at something that was created specifically and personally for me. That's why I take such a personal, proprietary interest in the FF. It's not just a comic book?it's my comic book. I'm the one Stan and Jack created it for! And I feel personally offended when I see it treated in a manner I consider unbecoming, or think it is being slighted or overshadowed by comics which, while they may be great and popular creations, can only be lesser creations in my mind. Even SPIDER-MAN. Even the X-MEN and BATMAN. Even?dare I say it?SUPERMAN and WONDER WOMAN!

Anyway, I had always wanted to do the FF, and I wasn't getting any closer to it or any younger, so I decided that if I couldn't get my professional hands on my comic book, I'd do the next best thing. I'd take the attitude, the mentality, that makes the FF the best comic book ever created and turn it into something that could have come from only me and no one else! I dovetailed this with the idea of the team of hunks and the ocean/land/sky/space idea, and the result was the ENVIRONAUTS.

ORION'S ARM is a different sort of synthesis. It started with STAR WARS. Though I think STAR WARS is the best thing that ever happened to Hollywood because of all the things it has made possible and because it's what finally got science fiction out of the back of the bookstore and put it front and center in popular culture where it belongs, I used to have certain problems with it. Of course, the ironic thing about STAR WARS is that I don't think George Lucas is really all that interested in science fiction. It's been pointed out that the story of Star Wars would play just as well with wizards and elves and castles and dragons and knights as it does with spaceships and aliens and ray guns and light sabers. Lucas, I think, is really into re-creating legends, myths, and morality tales of the past and dressing them up in the trappings of futuristic science fiction. I once suggested this to a STAR WARS fan and he looked at me as if he were trying to put me in a telekinetic strangle hold the way Darth Vader does. This taught me to beware of what I say to STAR WARS people! [laugh]

GLA: For those who may not know, Joseph Campbell who taught and wrote about mythology was interviewed by Bill Moyers for a series of PBS specials. During one, Campbell compares Luke Skywalker's story to the Hero's Journey.

JF: The problem I used to have with STAR WARS is what it seemed to be saying about science versus mysticism. Notice that it's telling the story of an ancient, noble religion that is overthrown by an evil, corrupt technocratic dictatorship, and the people of the galaxy must rise up and fight for their freedom. The good guys are the believers in The Force, which at first seemed like some kind of mystical hokum. In The Phantom Menace, of course, we learn that The Force is the result of a symbiosis with a microscopic life form that is hosted in all other life, a fact that just had me grinning because it is such a properly science-fictional mind-boggler! I didn't care for the seemingly implied message that mysticism is "good" and reason and science and technology are "bad"; I didn't think it was "science fictionally correct". So I had the idea of doing a galactic-conflict space epic that turned STAR WARS in reverse. Instead of taking place "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," it would take place right here, in the sector of the Milky Way where Earth is located, in the future. And instead of Lucas's "good mystics, bad technocrats" scenario, it would have the noble and scientifically enlightened people of the future battling for their freedom against an evil, tyrannical alien religion.

The other inspiration for ORION'S ARM is the movie LEGENDS OF THE FALL starring Brad Pitt and Aidan Quinn. If you've seen it, you'll remember that it takes place at the turn of century on the American frontier, and concerns two brothers, Pitt and Quinn, who love the same woman, and the ensuing conflicts this causes, with the First World War as the partial backdrop of the story. Now, as an aside, I've never understood why this woman puts a bullet in her head at the end of the flick. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, if you get to sleep with Brad Pitt and end up married to Aidan Quinn, your life has worked out pretty darn well. Anyone who claims two guys like that has no business asking Santa for anything, if you know what I'm saying. In fact, if you've had Brad Pitt and Aidan Quinn, Santa should come to your house and take things! [Laugh]

GLA: I'll agree with you about Brad Pitt.

JF: I was very taken in by LEGENDS and its story of Tristan, a young man with the spirit of a mythic warrior who always seemed too big for the world into which he was born. One day, in the other Quantum Comics universe (the oldest and most elaborate, which you haven't seen yet), I'll introduce you to another Tristan and his twin brother, and man, will you love them! The idea that struck me the first time I saw it was, "How would it be if someone took this story and translated it into science fiction?" I took the idea of reversing STAR WARS and merged it with the idea of sliding Legends of the Fall into the future, and from that came ORION'S ARM. At the time, I was more interested professionally in television than comics; I had put my comics aside and tried my hand at screenwriting. I had finished my Internship at STAR TREK VOYAGER and was looking for some other screen projects, and I decided to create an animated TV series. When the series proposal didn't fly, I thought, "Okay, I'll convert it to a comic book. That way, in any event, I won't have to write the gay part of the story in code." That was how ORION'S ARM started. And what is the name of one of its two heroes? Aidan! I love that name?

GLA: How have those sources influenced your two story lines and the characters in them?

JF: Naturally, a major thrust of The ENVIRONAUTS has been how to do FANTASTIC FOUR stories without imitating THE FANTASTIC FOUR. I've set the whole thing up in a very calculated way. The FF's origin takes them on a space flight; the Nauts go for a submarine ride. The FF are bombarded by cosmic rays; the Nauts run afoul of alien biotechnology planted in the ocean. Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic, is a thirty-to-fortysomething WASP; Lucky Vega, a.k.a. Lucky Star, is a 22-year-old Mexican-American, and they have different powers, but they have a lot in common, notably a superhuman command of science and knowledge. Ben Grimm, the Thing, is the prisoner of his own powers, his monstrous body creating a barrier between himself and the world. Lionel Marshall, Landmass, is kind of a prisoner of society, an intelligent, urbane (as opposed to just "urban"), upper-class black kid disconnected from the African-American masses, separated from the world by barriers of race, class, and because he's gay, sexual orientation. Sue Storm Richards (Invisible Girl/Woman) and Johnny Storm (the Human Torch) are sister and brother; Trey Blaisdell (Cirrus) and Roger Blaisdell (Aquarius) are brothers. The series will have a "Dr. Doom" (of course), a "Thing vs. Hulk" clash, a "Frightful Four", a "Beehive and Him" story, a "Super-Skrull", a "Sub-Mariner" (who's gay), and in the long run a "Galactus", "Silver Surfer", and "Negative Zone," but they won't be imitations of the material from The FF. And it will have other things that the FF doesn't have.

A supporting character in THE ENVIRONAUTS is Draco Rex, the dragon-winged and gay warrior Prince from a dimension outside of time. Draco, who will practically steal any story in which he appears, is not going to be content to remain a supporting character; eventually I'm going to have to take on some help and give him his own book! But we'll just have to look forward to that. There is definitely a Jack Kirby influence at work in Draco as well; he is the Quantum Comics counterpart of Thor!

Aside from its film derivations, there are things in ORION'S ARM that remind me of what was probably Jack Kirby's most personal creation, the comics of "THE FOURTH WORLD": THE NEW GODS, THE FOREVER PEOPLE, and MISTER MIRACLE. And of course, the lead character in this saga was named? Orion! This, however, was not intentional. When I tested the concept with some friends of mine, one of them observed that the characters and set-up reminded him of the New Gods, and as I thought about it, I realized, "You know, he may have a point." Still, unlike the very deliberate and very calculated translation of THE FANTASTIC FOUR in THE ENVIRONAUTS, any similarity between ORION'S ARM and the FOURTH WORLD saga is a wholly unconscious thing, as if one side of my brain didn't know what the other was doing!

The citizens of my Solar Republic, our space-traveling descendants, are not unlike the gods of Kirby's planet New Genesis, beautiful, noble beings possessed of awesome scientific knowledge and technological power. They have cast off war and violent conflict as a means of solving their problems, but if threatened, they are capable of bringing vast power to bear. They'd really rather it didn't come to that, though. The NEW GODS had organic computers they called "Mother Boxes" that connected them with The Source, an all-powerful but unknowable something that the New Gods worshipped. The people of the ORION'S ARM future have computers made of single molecules that are found almost everywhere in their world; any one of these molecular computers is as powerful as the one aboard Picard's Enterprise on STAR TREK. This is an extrapolation from the predictions of real science, by the way. Computers evolve more compactly and more powerfully with every succeeding generation.

The Orion's Arm cast most reminds me of Orion's buddy Lightray, and of the Forever People, a set of characters in whom Jack presented a very interesting dilemma. What do you do when you're a conscientious objector, but your conscience won't let you stay out of the war? How does a pacifist battle his foes? This was a situation that Jack looked at in various ways. Lightray's solution to this problem was to transform his foes' technology, or whatever resources were at hand, into ways of turning their hostility back on them while protecting innocents. The Forever People also tried to protect and help mortals, but when the time came for actual battle, they used Mother Box to call Infinity Man. And then, of course, there are the villains-Lord Lector Harrow, Vicelord Grent, and the bodiless nightmare, The Abyss. When I was searching for exactly the right name and title for Harrow, I was seriously tempted to call him "Pontiff," but that would have brought nothing but trouble! [Laugh] A search of Roget's Thesaurus delivered the title "Lector" as an alternative, so I went for it. There are things about Harrow, his master, his followers, and his enforcer that remind me of Darkseid and Apokolips from Jack's books: Harrow and his obsession with eliminating all free, rational thought as a means of doing away with science are like Darkseid and his quest for the Anti-Life Equation, which can cancel all free will except for that of its user. And The Abyss, which swallows and extinguishes all other intelligence, could be called a kind of living Anti-Life Equation. The Abyss manifests itself in craters on planets, from which its red eye-lights shine forth, like a dark version of the fire pits on Apokolips. And the sadistic Grent, who lives only to serve Harrow-well, he's the cousin of Darkseid's right-hand man, Desaad!

The question expounded on in ORION'S ARM is that of how much you have to change, and what you may have to sacrifice, to triumph over what's trying to destroy you, and how true to yourself you can remain in the process. It always comes back to the central proposition that will open every issue, the line from Nietzsche: "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you!" I stumbled onto that in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations one day, and it just struck me as the perfect "hook" for the whole ORION'S ARM story. Every situation we'll encounter in the 52 issues of the series (yep, the whole thing will be done, except for a last special to tie up loose ends, in 52 issues) will somehow plug into that quote.

One important thing that informs the whole ORION'S ARM structure comes not from comics or Hollywood, but from my reading of nonfiction science. On my "About the Creator" page at the Quantum site, I list Dr. Carl Sagan as one of my heroes, and that he was. Dr. Sagan believed that the scenarios of space warfare that we see in science fiction are not realistically possible; he argued that any species capable of taking its violent conflicts off its own planet would not survive to leave its planet in the first place. This is an idea supported elsewhere in other science books I've read, notably HYPERSPACE AND VISIONS by Dr. Michio Kaku, and THE MILLENIAL PROJECT by Marshall Savage. HYPERSPACE is about theoretical physics and the "superstring" theory that may be the unification of all the physical forces of nature. VISIONS deals with the consolidation of computer science, quantum science, and life science and projects it into the future and our creating a new life for ourselves in space. It's about our becoming active participants in nature and the universe, rather than the recipients of their whims. THE MILLENIAL PROJECT is about the precise steps by which mankind can successfully leave Earth and create that new existence, spreading life from Earth throughout the galaxy. VISIONS and THE MILLENIAL PROJECT were particularly important in the development of Orion's Arm.

In the writings of Michio Kaku, I came across what are called "the Kardashev civilization types". This is a set of graduating categories to measure the advancement of space-traveling or space-capable civilizations. A Kardashev Type 1 civilization is one that has successfully overcome all internal political, religious, social, and economic divisions and learned to harness the entire energy resources of its home planet. This is the way we leave the nest; it is our ticket to the universe. At Kardashev Type 2, we are utilizing the energy output of whole stars, we can travel the galaxy at will, and we no longer know death by natural causes. The United Federation of Planets in STAR TREK is Type 1, going on Type 2, and this is where we also stand in ORION'S ARM. At Type 3, we are harnessing the energy of entire galaxies and have evolved into something incomprehensible to a Type 1 civilization and probably a Type 2 as well. The Q in STAR TREK must be Type 3. But notice what the two keys to this evolution are. One: the utilization of energy. Two: at the very outset, overcoming all divisions within your own species, including war as a means of settling conflicts. In adapting the Kardashev civilization types to ORION'S ARM, I imagined a universe governed by the principle that space can be explored and colonized only by one's best possible self and only in peace? and then I invented couple of dangerous exceptions to the rule that gave me my villains and the conflict that would drive the series!

By the way, in case you hadn't guessed, Earth as we know it here in the "real" world is a Kardashev Type 0!

THE ENVIRONAUTS, which is a very classical super-hero book, and ORION'S ARM, a cinematic space opera done in comics, are two very different creations, but they have one thing in common, and this, too, goes back to Jack Kirby. A lot of Jack's work was about humanity in the context of things that are bigger, more powerful, more awesome and mysterious than humans are. Jack's stories, especially in The FANTASTIC FOUR, were always asking, "What's out there?" Jack wanted to know that, I think. He wanted to know what was out there and what this universe in which we live is made of. And like any good storyteller, he took his best guesses and turned them into stories. Wanting to know what was out there, he answered himself with the Watcher and the Stranger, and the Silver Surfer and Galactus, and the Negative Zone and Ego the Living Planet. I wouldn't presume to compare myself to the King except to say that I, too, want to know what's out there, and I take a huge delight in very imaginative answers to the question that somehow address the scientific realities of what we actually know. And, like Jack, I'm always anxious, restless, and impatient to create the next wondrous thing. THE ENVIRONAUTS and ORION'S ARM afford me a chance to indulge that impulse in two different ways-one, by establishing a surrogate FANTASTIC FOUR, and another, by building an imaginary future with people who are still human, but maybe just a little closer to the New Gods than we are today.

GLA: How do you think your work would be different if the comics team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had never existed or of they'd written a JUSTICE LEAGUE clone like Martin Goodman the publisher had commissioned?

JF: Oh, that's unimaginable! I mean, I've wondered about that myself, and I can't even conceive of it! I don't even know who I would have wanted to be or what my sense of purpose in life would have been without Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. And Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. What kind of person would I have been? What would I have wanted to do with my life? I try to imagine that person and I can't see anyone that I would recognize as? well? me!

Without Stan and Jack and everything they did and made possible, I don't know if there would have been anything really to hold me in comics. Unlike most gays who read comics?or at least this is my impression from my years in gay fandom?what was coming out of DC Comics during my formative years just wouldn't have done it for me. I always loved DC's characters. In fact, I'm one of those fans who usually found the "second tier" of DC's cast?the Flash, the Green Lantern, Aquaman, the Atom, Hawkman?more interesting during the Silver Age than Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman. But honestly, I may draw the ire of DC fans by saying this, but in retrospect I find much of what DC was doing just too frivolous and campy for my liking, compared with what Stan and Jack and company were doing at Marvel at the same time. Without the incredible vision and creative power of the team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, backed up by Steve Ditko, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, John Romita Sr., Gene Colan, and their peers, I don't believe super-heroes could ever have had the hold over me that they've had, and I would never have developed the perception of super-heroes or of comics that I have. I would have been like the typical boy who reads comic books when he's a kid and then drifts away as he gets older. I've known so many of those, and so many others who only dabbled in comics and never took any of it to heart. Comic-book dabblers really bother me; they're so half-hearted, so incapable of committing themselves. I could have been one of those without Stan and Jack.

So what would have become of me without Stan and Jack, and hence without comics? Now that I think of it, I believe I would have had a saving grace: my brothers and my older sister, who provided me with my intro to science fiction and horror. When I was very young, it was kind of a critical moment in popular culture. Several important things were happening, only one of which was the beginnings of modern Marvel Comics. This was also when the classic horror and science fiction films of the 30's, 40's, and 50's had just been sold to television, and my brothers and my sister would dutifully sit me down in front of the TV to watch them. The difference was, what they did for entertainment, I quickly took to heart. And this, too, was when THE TWILIGHT ZONE, THE OUTER LIMITS, and STAR TREK began. So, a lot of my strongest childhood memories are of Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster and the Wolf Man and the Mummy. And THEM! and THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (I was terrified of Gort!) and THE BLOB and CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. I remember shuddering at the Control Voice taking over your TV on THE OUTER LIMITS, and seeing the great episodes of the first STAR TREK when they were brand new. And you couldn't have convinced me that Rod Serling wasn't God!

Of course, that was also the time when my fate was basically sealed. In the midst of all that came the syndicated TV series THE MARVEL SUPER-HEROES, which was essentially a badly animated but absolutely thrilling Marvel comic book adapted for television, with Stan Lee's scripts performed verbatim and the art of Jack Kirby and the other members of the early Bullpen crudely animated. I was instantly hooked on Iron Man, Sub-Mariner, and the Hulk, and I wanted to be able to summon the super-heroes at will and not have to wait for 4:00 in the afternoon Monday through Friday on Channel 10! As it turned out, my brother Jack knew how to draw, and I got him to show me how he did it, and from there I was on my way. I was intimidated at first by Captain America and Thor, the other characters who headlined The Marvel Super-Heroes, because I didn't feel comfortable drawing them (Shellhead, Subby, and Greenskin were a lot easier for me!), but that didn't last. That show warmed me up for SPIDER-MAN, which was on ABC Saturday mornings, and after him I decided to give The FANTASTIC FOUR, which was also on ABC, a try. I didn't know what to make of the FF at first; they all wore the same costume except the one who was a walking pile of bricks! But the other shows were no preparation for the FF, which I was later to learn was what had made the others possible! And then I started reading the actual FANTASTIC FOUR comic book, which at the time was right at the peak of Stan and Jack's collaboration (issue 62), and it was just about a religious experience. There was no turning back from that; I'm still feeling the mental shockwave all these years later! Reed's soliloquy from my first FF comic is one of the selections on the Quantum Comics Quote page, as a matter of fact.

But anyway, back to the question, I think that without comics, I still would have had the influence of my older siblings and the Hollywood movies and TV series, so I think I would still have had an interest in imaginative fiction. It just would have been channeled in a different direction. I don't know if I would have been moved to start drawing or become an artist if I hadn't had the MARVEL SUPER-HEROES show, but I think I still would have wanted to be a writer?a science fiction writer. I think I would have gone in the direction of being a novelist, TV writer/producer, and screenwriter. I would have gotten my sense of direction and purpose in life mainly from Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry, and my professional interests would have gone primarily into film and TV. So, I would still have wanted to use my imagination for a living, but my primary medium would have been different. Of course, I'm still interested in film and TV anyway, as well as comics and the Internet. I may in the long run turn out to be a multi-media guy after all?

What if Stan and Jack had followed Martin Goodman's directive to the letter all those years ago and created a clone of THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA? Hmmm? that's a really interesting one, isn't it? Of course, what you have to remember about THE FANTASTIC FOUR is that Stan and Jack set out to do super-heroes in a way that they had never been done before?more humanized, more fallible and conflicted, more individualized and distinct in personality. This was what put Marvel Comics "over the top" to begin with. If they had simply emulated the Justice League the way it was being done in the early 60's, that element wouldn't have been there and Marvel would not have had a distinctive "feel" and "voice" from DC, so there would not have been the creative revolution in comics that there actually was-at least it wouldn't have come from Marvel! Then again, it's hard to imagine it coming from anyone else either?

And also remember, Stan and Jack actually couldn't give Goodman what he was asking for, because the JUSITCE LEAGUE was made up of heroes who were already established stars outside of that book, and Marvel at the time didn't have an established cast of super-heroes. The only way they could have emulated the JLA would have been by doing what I'm doing with the Environauts?that is, translating the themes and iconography of DC Comics into something of their own. Interestingly enough, that's exactly what Roy Thomas did at the end of the 60's with the Squadron Sinister/Supreme, which is the JLA in "Marvel drag"! In that event, they still would have had to make the creative leap to bring about the humanization of super-heroes that started with the FF, but that wouldn't have been a part of the "program", so to speak. And you'll notice that when Stan and Jack finally did create the book that Goodman originally commissioned-namely, THE AVENGERS, which was built out of the cast of Marvel Comics from 1962 and '63, they still didn't use the DC/JUSTICE LEAGUE model of storytelling; they used their own FF method!

GLA: Aside from Lee and Kirby, what other comic creators influence you?

JF: Ah, my other heroes in comics. That reminds me of a funny story. In the early 70's, fandom was coping with the trauma of Jack Kirby leaving Marvel Comics for DC, breaking up his collaboration with Stan. It was our equivalent of the breakup of the Beatles-and it happened at about the same time! Well, a little while later, along came an artist named Rich Buckler who signed on with Marvel. At first, Buckler worked in his own style-but then they gave him the FF to draw, and he started doing something that made people sit up and take notice. He altered his drawing style so that it resembled Jack Kirby's-and even took to swiping drawings and poses from classic Kirby books! In fact, if you really know Jack's work, you can look at Buckler's pages and identify exactly which Kirby drawings and covers he utilized. "Yes, that Galactus is from FF 49, page 3, panel 1, and that one is from the cover of FF 74? " When Buckler started doing this on The FF and fans liked it, they also gave him Jack's other big book, Thor, where he did the same thing. The inking of Joe Sinnott, Jack's best inker who had done the majority of Jack's most important issues of The FF, only reinforced the effect. Well, for me, much as I had loved The New Gods et al, this was the next best thing to having Jack back at Marvel.

What happened was, Buckler had this art assistant named George Perez who started getting work of his own. And one of the first things they gave him was a FANTASTIC FOUR spinoff, THE INHUMANS. Now, when I heard the Inhumans were getting their own book, I naturally assumed they were getting Buckler to draw it. I was thoroughly dismayed when I opened up the first issue and found it drawn by this Perez character, who I thought was just a nobody! "Who is this clown? Give me Buckler!" [Laugh] I ignored the INHUMANS book at first because I was so annoyed by this Perez guy. Then they put Perez in a place where I couldn't ignore him?THE AVENGERS, which ranked with The FF and SPIDER-MAN as one of my main comics. Because I wasn't about to ditch THE AVENGERS, I had to deal with him. And once I started paying attention to the offending upstart, my eyes opened to some remarkable things.

GLA: You weren't taken by Perez's artwork when you first saw it? Knowing how appreciative you are of his work now it seems incredible to me that you didn't feel that way in the beginning.

JF: The first thing that hit me was all the detail! I'd never encountered a comic book artist, not even Kirby himself, who drew in such detail! In every scene, every shot, every panel, every costume, George Perez drew everything-everything! He left nothing out! Every window and brick and cornice! Every control and component on every machine! Every bit of rubble and debris in a battle scene! Every leaf in the vegetation! Every button and seam and pattern in people's clothes! He took the kind of care with character designs with which other artists might cut corners! And the approach he took to the characters, his way of drawing, made them look more than just powerful and colorful and dramatic. George was one of the first artists, I think, who actually made super-heroes beautiful. Not only that, but he loved working with super-teams and large numbers of characters. He was fearless! No multitude of characters could intimidate him. Give him a story with a dozen Avengers, and he'd say, "That's all?" He'd jump on that story and render every character as an individual, with his own physical characterization and body language. He even drew chest hair on Wonder Man, and straight male comic artists usually ignore chest and body hair on leading men! I was amazed, even awestruck. I hadn't been so completely captivated by anyone's work since Jack Kirby.

And then there was his use of panel layouts and camera angles. Even where he left blank space- which was scarce-he somehow managed to make it look like a big production. And he would mix it up with low-angle shots and high-angle shots and wide shots and spans across the width of the page, all done it that amazing detail. George became the artist I watched with the greatest interest. Whatever he did, I couldn't wait to see what he came up with next which was a lucky thing, because the next job they gave him was THE FANTASTIC FOUR itself! And his FF was the best since Jack was there?better than Rich Whatshisname! In no time, George went from being the upstart pencil-pusher I resented to my favorite of all.

And he just kept getting better and better. I followed him from Marvel to DC for his work on The JISTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and THE NEW TEEN TITANS. It was with The Titans that he started pushing the envelope on new character designs as well. He did everything better than everyone else, and he just kept surpassing himself with every story. Next year, we're finally going to get to see George do the project he was destined to do?THE AVENGERS VS. THE JLA-and I can't wait! More than 25 years after I thumbed my nose at his work on THE INHUMANS, I still think "Mr. Nobody" is the best of all of us.

Let's see, other favorites? A few years after George Perez came John Romita Jr., whose father's work I had loved on SPIDER-MAN. My brother and I were both big Romita fans. I must have first discovered John Jr. when he came aboard as the artist of IRON MAN. At the time I thought, "Well, there's something interesting about this guy's work. Maybe he's not as good as his Dad, but I can't remember Iron Man ever looking this good, even in the 60's." John Jr. became an "artist to watch"- and I did, month after month. With him on pencils and Bob Layton on inks with David Michelinie's scripts, I think IRON MAN really became one of Marvel's top books. Even now, I think that team did the best stories Shellhead has ever had. I loved the sleek, shiny style that John Jr. and Bob brought to that book; it had never looked so high-tech and sexy and sophisticated-just what you want to see in the world of Tony Stark! I have to admit that when they first gave John Jr. The X-MEN, which I think was the 1980 X-MEN Annual, I didn't think he was a particularly good fit for that book. And later, when he got The X-MEN as his regular assignment, he was following Paul Smith, an artist whose work had really excited me with its very clean line quality and elegant-looking figures, and I thought John Jr. was a bit of a comedown from that. I mean, Smith had come in the wake of the marvelous Dave Cockrum, who had designed the new X-MEN in the first place, and Cockrum had both followed and preceded John Byrne, whom I'll get to in a minute. And I thought, "Well, maybe John Romita Jr. is great for IRON MAN and THE DAZZLER, but this is The X-MEN?a book that was my second favorite series at the time.

This estimation of John Jr. didn't last long. As he went on with THE X-MEN, his work became more interesting to look at. I started to see some of the sexiness that he'd brought to IRON MAN coming through with this book as well. And his drawing technique, his way with composition and perspective and body language, was getting to be more sophisticated all the time. He was gradually becoming even more of an "artist to watch" than he'd been with IRON MAN. And every new project he took on, he just kept getting more interesting. I found myself starting to admire his work more and more, through THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, following in his Dad's footsteps. to the New Universe book STAR BRAND and on into DAREDEVIL, a book that I started buying not because I was that interested in the story, but because I loved seeing what John Jr. was doing. One of the things I was beginning to notice, and we're approaching the time in my life when my closet door blew off, was that his leading men, Peter Parker in SPIDER-MAN, Ken Connell in STAR BRAND, Matt Murdock in Daredevil, were better looking than those of other artists. This guy-who is a heterosexual, mind you, actually had a knack for drawing super-heroes who were genuine heartthrobs. His Star Brand was sexy! His Daredevil was sexy! Peter Parker/Spider-Man had never been sexy before, but John Jr. made him that way and still kept him in character! Now that was "Amazing!"

What I also started picking up on in John's work was that he was able to do with atmosphere and mood and texture what George Perez did with detail. There was a rich, textural, tangible quality to his pages and scenes that made you want to linger over them, as if you could actually feel what he was drawing. I found this really fascinating. It all came to a head when John returned to IRON MAN for about a year for a storyline written by John Byrne and inked by Bob Wiacek, "Armor Wars II". It was here that he really started bringing it all home: the sophistication, the sexiness, the texture and feel. And it was here that he added another dimension that put him over the top. His work got powerful. And I mean powerful in the way that Jack Kirby and George Perez are powerful. You could feel the mass and weight of the figures. You could feel the force of the action. I'm really surprised that "Armor Wars II" has never been collected as a trade paperback. At least from a visual standpoint, these are the best Iron Man stories ever done. These books are just breathtaking! This was when John really "arrived" for me and became the only serious rival to George Perez. And he still is.

John Byrne has always fascinated me. I've never quite understood how he's able to do the thing he does. He has two great artistic influences who are 180 degrees apart in style: the super-powerful, super-dramatic Jack Kirby, and the quasi-lifelike Neal Adams. And Byrne is able to take these two styles and make them work together. The effect of Byrne's style, when he's really at the top of his game, is wonderful to look at, but it's always just puzzled me that he's able to pull this off. When he first took over The X-MEN from Dave Cockrum, which was at the end of that wild "Xavier's Dream" storyline that introduced the Shi'Ar and established Phoenix, I thought Byrne's work looked nice, but a little stiff. But he very quickly started to grab me, and for a while he was my second favorite artist after George. I was especially pleased that Byrne had this really beautiful-looking style and a sense of character design as good as Dave Cockrum's. I loved the original ALPHA FLIGHT, and the Black and White Queens in the Hellfire Club storyline, and Mystique's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. While THE FANTASTIC FOUR was still my favorite book, The X-MEN had become the book that I found most visually exciting. And then they gave Byrne THE FANTASTIC FOUR, which he penciled and wrote and inked!

Byrne's issues of THE FANTASTIC FOUR are almost as dear to me as those of Stan and Jack. Byrne demonstrated this intuitive understanding of what the FF really is and what makes it tick. With his heavy Kirby influences, he was able to bring back the really classic FF attitude including the FF uniform the way Jack originally drew it, with the wide black collars on the shirts. Len Wein and George Perez had previously tried to restore the original FF uniform, but the artists who followed George dropped the ball with it. Byrne picked it up again, and for some reason, when he did it, others started following through with it as well. With Byrne, the FF started to have a look and feel strongly reminiscent of the Lee and Kirby days. I was ecstatic! Even when he reversed the colors of the uniform and replaced the Thing with She-Hulk, I could accept it (though the change of uniform colors took some getting used to) because it still felt like the classic, vintage Fantastic Four.

Following his FF, Byrne did something that I had never experienced in all my years of reading comics. He turned SUPERMAN into a book I wanted to read every month. As I mentioned earlier, I had always loved DC's characters, but never been able to get behind the way their books were written and drawn the way I did Marvel's books. I really got into DC when they got a "talent transfusion" from Marvel and their books took on a Marvel-like look and feel and sound. I would have paid no attention to THE NEW TEEN TITANS if not for George Perez and Marv Wolfman. It was their work that put TITANS in my Top three. I thought George's WONDER WOMAN was one of the most ingenious things I've ever read, and visually, of course, it's a masterpiece nothing else can touch. What a phenomenally gorgeous and marvelously clever run of issues! And Byrne's SUPERMAN was the Superman I'd always wanted to see?a version that was true to itself, but also had the depth and power and majesty of the best Marvel comics. With Byrne, I felt as though Superman were finally getting the treatment that he deserved.

Let's see, other comic artists I love? Of course, I mentioned Paul Smith earlier. There's also Marshall Rogers whom I miss terribly. His Silver Surfer was the best since Kirby worked with the character in The FF. Also, Colleen Doran, and Kevin Maguire. Oh, and Steve Rude, another disciple of Jack Kirby! And Barry Windsor-Smith. His stuff is very elegant looking.

GLA: Whose work outside of the comics industry do you most admire?

JF: Artists outside of comics? My favorite is the late Patrick Nagel, who first came to public attention as the illustrator for the Advisor section of Playboy. I love the very spare and refined quality of his drawings of women. You know, a lot of other artists, in and out of comics, would visualize women in very lascivious ways. You know, turn them into real sexpot-looking drool-bait. But Patrick Nagel was able to express his, how shall we say, obvious admiration of women in a way that was very smart-looking, very civilized and elegant. I can pay the highest possible compliment to Nagel's work by saying that his pieces actually make me almost enjoy looking at women in different states of dress. He did his subjects in a way that was at once both realistic and graphically extracted, that is just really lovely and fascinating. My only regret about Nagel is that he didn't work more with male subjects. I have his collected works in hardcover and it includes a scarce few shots of men, and from those few drawings it's easy to see that he would have been as brilliant with male physique art as he was with women. It's really too bad. I feel the same way about the work of Alphonse Mucha as I do about Nagel.

I used to have it in mind to try to become "the gay Patrick Nagel". I tried my hand at male physique art of a non-super-heroic nature?just beautiful guys in the buff and semi-buff. And what I found was that my super-hero instincts kept getting in the way of what I was trying to do. I couldn't keep to just doing contour line drawings, and I couldn't bring myself to omit chest and body hair, which just worked against the Nagel attitude I was trying to evoke. I think the actual "gay Patrick Nagel" is another African-American Joe who comes from comics, Joe Phillips, who does those gorgeous "Boys Will Be Boys" calendars and greeting cards. I have both of the calendars and I'm looking forward to seeing his work collected in books; I think it's really outstanding. My hat's off to Joe for being able to pull this off. He's not really a Nagel any more than I am, but his very clean and beautiful portrayal of a very innocent sort of young male sensuality is the closest thing we have.

When I was a senior in high school, my art teacher was one of a rare breed: a fine arts instructor who appreciated imaginative art. She used to point out the paintings and sculptures of Michelangelo and call him the original comic book artist. She'd say that his sculptures looked like super-heroes out of costume! And I came around to seeing what she meant. Take a look at his sculpture of David sometime. That kid looks like he's trying to decide what costume to wear for a tryout for the Teen Titans! [Laugh] Michelangelo's David is one of my favorite works of art. Discovering it in college was one of the many mental hints I dropped for myself on the way out of the closet. And his ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is, I think, the forerunner of the Jack Kirby double-page spread!

The surrealist painter Rene Magritte, whose paintings sometimes appeared in OMNI magazine, is another artist I love. His peculiar combinations and juxtapositions of images remind me of the opening titles of the 1980's TWILIGHT ZONE and the current OUTER LIMITS. Looking at Magritte is a real head trip; it's very fascinating stuff.

GLA: When did you first have the germ of the idea for each of these worlds?

JF: Where did my worlds initially come from? As you've no doubt observed, there's not a single answer to that question. Obviously, the very powerful classic comic-book sources are there. And obviously, there's also a great deal of influence from Hollywood and the mass media and popular culture outside of comics. The problem I often hear people expressing is that of "Where do you get your ideas? Where do ideas come from?" My best answer to this, which to some must seem counterintuitive, is that it's more difficult not to get ideas than it is to get them. If you think about it, the reason is precisely that we live in such a media-saturated, idea-rich culture.

GLA: Did one idea lead smoothly to another?

JF: Ideas are all around us all the time; they're as apt to come to you as you are to find them, if you keep yourself open to them. I read magazines and watch television (a good thing to develop for yourself is the ability to recognize good television, which requires that you not just watch passively, but study television and learn as much as you can about how the medium and the industry actually work) and go to movies and listen to music. I'm a great devotee of jazz. And as much as I can (but not as much as I'd like), I read books other than comics. I'm always on the lookout for interesting scientific books; you never know what great idea you're going to find in one of them. You'll remember from earlier on the nonfiction science reading that went into ORION'S ARM. Now that I think of it, the idea of using cyanobacteria or blue-green algae to create new life forms that is the basis of the origin of THE ENVIRONAUTS also came from The Millennial Project.

There are a few ideas to which I can probably point to one specific original source. Draco Rex is one. In a Barnes and Noble bookstore, I once came across a book called WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN, which is all about the fact that thousands of years ago, people characterized God as a Goddess, and in the religions of the female God, snakes were sacred animals. Being both a sympathizer with feminism and a lover of reptiles (I kept Iguanas in high school and for about sixteen years I had a Boa Constrictor), I knew this idea of snake-revering Goddess worship was a great story or series waiting to happen. In developing that one, I also touched on the idea of dragons having been real and the fact that dragon myths occur in every culture that has ever existed, and the idea that there could be an alternative quantum reality in which the killer asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs missed Earth and the Age of Reptiles never ended. But it started with the idea of Goddess worship and sacred snakes.

Well, anyway, the launching point for THE ENVIRONAUTS was the inspiration to do a surrogate FANTASTIC FOUR, and for ORION'S ARM it was a thematic reversal of STAR WARS and the science-fiction translation of LEGENDS OF THE FALL. With THE ENVIRONAUTS, the development process started with picking out character names and designing a uniform which went through several "drafts" before I was satisfied with it. The breakthrough was giving them tank-top uniforms, and I credit the International Male and Undergear catalogs for that one. There was also a process of coming up with a specific look for each of the four boys, and I spent a lot of time going through my magazine and photography book collection to get the right "model" to "play" each of them. A couple of times I decided to "recast" a certain character; the Aquarius and Cirrus we ended up with are not the first ones that I cast in the "roles", but they are the perfect fit for what I envisioned.

There was also a very careful process of deciding exactly how much FANTASTIC FOUR material I would use, and exactly how I would re-conceptualize and re-create it so that it was not just a pale imitation of a classic. I think there must be something of Disney's THE LITTLE MERMAID in the Aquarius/Nerelle relationship. Nerelle strikes me as a somewhat Disney-quality heroine. That is, she reminds me of Disney characters like Ariel and Belle and Jasmine and Pocahontas.

I wanted to have as much of the series written in advance as I possibly could. I have the plots for about twenty issues ready and notes for issue 26 to somewhere in the high 30's to low 40's, and I know the direction of the series up to about issue 75 and perhaps further. The first issue is in the thumbnail-sketch stage right now, except the cover, which is the group image of the boys with their powers on that is on the Quantum Home Page.

ORION'S ARM took a somewhat different development track because it wasn't always going to be a comic book. It was, as I mentioned, originally going to be an animated TV series. I started with master character and ship designs for the show, which evolved into the designs you can see at the Quantum site now. (The original RSS Orion's Arm was a different-looking ship than the way it ended up, and Connor Swift originally had shoulder-length hair.) I saw the show as running for four seasons of 13 episodes each, so I wrote plots for 52 TV episodes, which are now going to be 52 issues of the comic book. The first issue of ORION'S ARM, or I should say the official version of it, I drew a first issue that I decided wasn't satisfactory, so I decided to start again from scratch, is also in thumbnails. The first issues of both series will be extra-sized-whoppers at between thirty and forty pages long. Following that, the issues will be the standard 22 to 24 pages, except for ENVIRONAUTS issues 4 and 25, which will both be double-sized. After that, every twenty-fifth issue of Nauts will be double-sized, and ORION'S ARM will wrap up with a double-sized grand finale for issue 52. After that, there will be a single-issue ORION'S ARM special that will tie off some of the loose ends that I won't have room for in issue 52; specifically, it will be the finale of a backup series called SOJOURNER: A TALE OF THE ORION ARM that will occupy the back five or six pages of ORION'S ARM starting in issue 6. SOJOURNER is about the effects of the conflict of the main story on a gay couple who find themselves in a rather awesome and daunting situation. It will be the equivalent of "Tales of Asgard" in Kirby's THOR, or "The Young Gods of New Genesis," "Lonar of New Genesis," and "Young Scott Free" in the FOURTH WORLD books.

GLA: How has the progression from that point to now been?

JF: The progression of ideas in the respective series worked pretty smoothly, as a rule, except for some of the details in ORION'S ARM. At first, I had a bit of a problem figuring out how the people of the future and their alien friends, who had sworn off war for many generations and were not inclined to fight, were going to find it in themselves to resist Lord Harrow and The Conversion. My friend Billy (who gets to be the sounding board for everything-best friends have privileges) thought I should reveal that there were cryogenically frozen 20th-Century soldiers on Earth who would be thawed out and help the Solar Republic find its moxie, but I decided that was too "Buck Rogers" for what I was trying to do. [Laugh] What I eventually hit upon was the idea that human aggression had not really gone away; it had just been channeled into benign directions, specifically, the spirit of competition. I'm not really a sports fan except that I love watching men's gymnastics and diving, but I reasoned that the same drive that compels us to overcome a competitor or an opposing team on the playing field could be the source of the spirit that would enable us to stand up to our foes in a peaceful galactic civilization. That's where the character of Lonn Astarte came from; he is the voice of man's competitive spirit as Aidan is the voice of man's pride. Lonn is also the gay presence in the story.

The other problem I had with ORION'S ARM was an internal logic problem. My future civilization had this miraculous technology with which they had the power to manipulate matter at the level of molecules and re-shape and perfect the human body, but they used it only to a limited degree. Why didn't they use it to evolve themselves beyond anything we know as human? I couldn't ignore this problem; it kept nagging at me until I finally came up with an answer. If you look at the "Universe of Orion's Arm" page on the site, you'll see that it describes a period of future history called the Nanogenetic Conflict, which I implanted in the backstory for the specific purpose of providing a reason why future humans are still so? human! It also gave me an historical progression and context into which to place Aidan and Connor, and the springboard for the SOJOURNER story, as you'll see when we get to that point.

GLA: Were there any elements meant for one series that you found didn't work in it but worked in the other?

JF: I wouldn't say there was any concept that wouldn't work in Environauts that I had to transfer to ORION'S ARM or vice versa. I had a very clear picture of one as a straight-ahead super-hero book and the other as a comic book space opera, and I've had no need to swap ideas back and forth-mercifully! Of course, in creative life, you inevitably find yourself marrying and divorcing a lot of ideas. I didn't really have to "wrestle" with anything beyond what I've described above, but there were things in both books, I think, that I decided to cut or change as I went along in the development. Lucky's last name was originally going to be Castillo, but an acquaintance pointed out that "Vega" is Spanish for "star", and I couldn't resist the idea of Lucky's heroic name being a translation of his real name.

The method of space travel in ORION'S ARM was going to be a bit different, too. As I originally saw it, interstellar travel could be accomplished only by special people who had a special "sensitivity" to space and time, and they had to be specially trained. Whatever world had the most of these trained "sensitives" would naturally have an advantage over others. Saige Astarte was going to be one of those people, and in my initial concept she would have the ability to open miniature wormholes just large enough for people to pass through, by striking a metal bar against a special type of crystal in a way that would set up a particular harmonic. I discarded this whole idea as being too "Frank Herbert" for my liking. Also, there was also going to be this mysterious, handsome blond character who had come from parts unknown in space, who had an artificially enhanced memory. This person was going to know something about virtually everything there was to know; he'd be a walking Encyclopedia Galactica-except he'd have no memory at all of who he was or where he came from. I liked the idea of this character being able to tell you chapter and verse about everything in the known (and unknown) universe except for himself, but I eliminated him because he'd just end up making things too easy for our heroes. Where's the fun of putting characters in cosmic jeopardy when there's someone in their posse who can always tell them exactly how to get out of it? [Laugh]

GLA: Did you have to wrestle some with the concepts? If you did, which won? The concepts or you?

JF: The one instance in which I wasn't in complete control of the story was the creation of Draco Rex. He wasn't originally supposed to be there; my story didn't call for him at all. The third adventure of THE ENVIRONAUTS was going to be about a villain named Cerastes who came from an alternate world where reptiles ruled Earth, and a heroine named Serpentyne who came from a culture of Goddess-worshipping, snake-revering time travelers. THE ENVIRONAUTS, with Serpentyne's help, would stop Cerastes from conquering Earth as he had once done in the past, creating our dragon myths and phobias about reptiles in the process. Well, I had this story all set up, and about halfway through the plot, at the point where Serpentyne enters, I found she wasn't alone. There was someone else with her?this muscle-and-fitness-magazine type with dragon wings who turned out to be her brother. I hadn't consciously called up this character; he just appeared spontaneously, hurled himself into the story, practically took the thing over, and developed a mutual Jones with my gay Environaut, Landmass! I'd never had the experience of a character appearing without my willing it and stealing the show, but there was Draco, and considering the creative power he exerted, I wasn't about to try to un-create him, so I decided to work with him-a good call on my part, because he's a terrific character whom I think gay readers will love. So there you have it: Draco Rex, the character who willed himself into being!

GLA: Every creator runs into some kind of challenge in bringing their idea to life. What were the challenges that presented themselves to you n creating not just the two series, but also the idea of Quantum Comics as a website?

JF: This has been a year of learning for me. To create Quantum Comics, I had to become more computer literate than I had previously been, and learn to use a number of technologies that were new to me. I had to get a new computer, a color printer, a scanner, a CD burner for storage of graphic image files, which I'm sure you know are voracious consumers of disk space, and a digital drawing board. The tale of getting the digital drawing board and then getting the thing to work was a saga in itself! It arrived in the mail from the manufacturer, and only then did I discover that it had a 9-pin serial plug that wasn't compatible with my 15-pin serial port. So then I had to go out and find an adapter for the thing, and I installed it and its accompanying software (one thing I've learned?for every piece of hardware there is an accompanying software) and they didn't work! So I still couldn't use the board! I ended up calling the manufacturer of the adapter, who told me?oh joy! that this particular adapter was known not to work with this particular drawing board, and I had to get one of a different brand! So I had to return the adapter that I bought and get one of this other brand-which was still the wrong one! So I had to return that one and get the right one, and I installed the software for that one and? it didn't work! In the end, I had to spend about 45 minutes on the phone with technical support for this company which doesn't have toll-free tech support, mind you, and get this adapter to work properly and get my digital drawing board communicating with my computer! Finally, at long last, it worked, and it felt like the sky was opening up and the angels were singing. And I'm not a religious person, mind you.

I also spent some weeks with how-to books on learning the two main software programs I used to create the site, Photoshop 5.5 and Dreamweaver 3 and 4. There were times I was afraid I wasn't going to get Photoshop to work, either. For some reason, when I first set up to do coloring with layers, I couldn't get anything from the Photoshop painting and drawing functions to appear on the screen. I exchanged a number of e-mails with Gay League members who were more fluent in computer coloring than I was, and I'd also had the good sense to start buying the comic artists' trade magazine Sketch, which has a regular computer coloring feature department in every issue. Pooling all the information I had at hand, I finally figured out how to get Photoshop to do what I wanted it to do, and I was at last able to start coloring the art that I had spent weeks and weeks creating for the site.

Dreamweaver afforded me a few headaches at first also. It was a while before I figured out exactly the right way to construct the pages. At first, I had them all done in layers, which created page files that made the computer run so slowly that I thought I'd have to shoot either myself or it. At length, some mental lightbulb went off and I figured out how to use the tables function correctly for page layout, and so I scrapped the original versions of the pages and did them again in tables. And don't even get me started on the time I had getting the finished site to upload correctly to the remote server and display on the Web correctly. By the time I was at this stage, the attack on New York City had taken place, the World Trade Center had been destroyed (this was only a few days after our Manhattan Gay League Convergence, to boot), and get this?the power systems on my computer and my CD burner died at the same time! Did you ever get the feeling the whole world was going mad around you? The stress of all this made me literally, physically sick. I was bedridden for about half a week before I finally got the computer back from the manufacturer?lucky break, with no data or programs lost because it was only the power system that crashed, and got the site to upload, and even then I hadn't done the external links properly and I had to reprogram them. What a bloody mess!

GLA: How did you meet those challenges and what did you learn about yourself in the process of working with and through them?

JF: To tell you the truth, I'm not a patient person. I used to be, I think. I don't know where my patience went. Maybe it's become the casualty of years spent without a real career and no one wanting to give me a real, substantial, meaningful professional chance. Maybe coming to the final realization that I have to take matters completely into my own hands has just taken its toll. Whatever it is, I'm just not a patient guy; I want it NOW. The word NOW has become one of my favorite words in the English language; I love NOW. Not "at this time" NOW. I'm pretty much in love with MORE and BETTER. too, but I'm crazy about NOW. Every setback I've faced on the road to getting Quantum Comics on line has had me thinking, "Joe, you've taken on too much this time. You've tried to go too far and now it's turning around and biting you. You should have known. It's not going to happen." But I've refused to capitulate to my inner nay-sayer, and you know why? Because I think I've learned one great lesson about creative life, and that is that if you're going to be a gifted, creative person in this world where gifted people are most often not valued and rewarded as they should be, you have to have a certain toughness of mind. I defy anyone to be a gifted, creative person in this perverse, unjust, unrewarding world without cultivating a certain toughness of mind, and just see how long they last.

And you know what else? Not only am I impatient, I'm as stubborn as all get-out. Seriously, I couldn't have created the things I have and stuck to my guns the way I've done if I weren't basically a stubborn, willful, single-minded excuse for a human being. The experience of Quantum Comics has taught me, I think, that if you're going to try to be a visionary, the only way to go is stubborn, willful single-mindedness. It's been a validation, a personal validation. Now that I finally see Quantum taking shape, I think it says to me that I've made the right call. I'll bet Gene Roddenberry was stubborn and single-minded too. In fact, from everything I've heard and read of him, he must have been.

GLA: Being both artist and writer how do you balance the two?

JF: How do I balance my writer self and my artist self? Precariously. [Laugh] No, seriously, my two halves seem to be closely related, each one in some way playing the riffs of the other. When I write, I write in pictures, very visual language. When I draw, I draw not to reproduce an observed reality (Goodness knows!) or just to make a picture, but to create something that I will use for the purposes of telling a story. My two halves get along pretty well, actually; the writer half knows there are times when it must recede and let the artist take over, and vice versa. It's a pretty harmonious inner relationship. "Reality as we know it" and I don't really get along very well; I'm always transforming reality into something that I want or need it to be. Certainly there is an element in ORION'S ARM of re-making the world as I think it should be. My writer and artist selves are both on board with that.

GLA: Where do your drive and determination come from? What happens when you have trouble getting past some obstacle?

JF: I think a part of what makes me as determined as I am is simply that there are things I want to see happen, and I've learned from observation of the state of the art in comics that I can't count on others to make them happen. Other people want to do things their way or in what they think is the most commercial way. Not to be disrespectful to anyone else in my profession, but I honestly think I am the only person in comics who thinks the way I do. No one else would be interested in doing the kinds of things you're going to see from Quantum Comics. I'm doing this because I understand that only I can, would, or will do it.

Also, I think the drive and determination comes from the simple knowledge that, damn it, I belong in comics making a significant and meaningful contribution, and if people won't let me do it the traditional way, then fine, I'll take another road. The fact that I have not been invited to the party does not make me any less a professional or any less worthy than anyone else for whom the golden gate has been opened. This is mine. It is my place. It is my manifest destiny. It is what I was meant to do. And not only will I not take "no" for an answer, I will delete the word "no" from the language unless I am the one saying it. I am J.A. Fludd, and no one else is capable of the things that I am. I will have this and I will do this.

GLA: On your site you mention that these comics will not resemble the super hero norm of Good Guys vs. Bad Guys. Instead your focus will be on larger issues which impact on humanity as a whole. How are you planning to translate your ideas on these issues into the comics medium?

JF: Oh, I should have been clearer about that. I didn't mean that Quantum Comics won't be about conflicts between good guys or "heroes" and bad guys or "villains". In fact, the Environauts and the other heroes of their world will always have villains to battle. What I was getting at was a matter of scale and scope-the difference in scope between something like BATMAN or DAREDEVIL and a book like THE FANTASTIC FOUR or THE AVENGERS. What I was getting at is that I'm not really that interested in comics in which the villains are from the worlds of crime or the criminal underworld, or the bad guys are grotesque criminal psychopaths. It's not that such adversaries will never appear; it's just that by and large they will not be as important as larger conflicts that deal with the mysteries of the universe and the direction in which humanity is headed. I have, for an example, an Environauts story coming up in which the villain is an inner-city drug dealer who has acquired super-powers, and another whose villain is a deranged stalker who's using the telekinetic powers he's acquired to get close to the TV ingÈnue whom he's obsessed with. But these are actually meant to be "little" stories that will help us get better acquainted with the Environauts as people.

During that same arc of Nauts adventures, this will be between issues 13 and 21, there is one particular story that I'm especially proud of, because I consider it the perfect model of what I want a Quantum Comics story to be. It seems that after the alien invasion of the first four issues and the origin of the Environauts, the world is trying to adjust to its new reality, the fact that extraterrestrial intelligence is real (it tried to come in and take over, after all!) and that there are people with superhuman powers in our midst. And two different movements have appeared in society. One of them declares "Earth is for humans!" and we should take any measures necessary or possible to safeguard against any other invasion, even to the point of banning or restricting space-related technologies. The other thinks the sheer fact that we know we are not alone in the universe is something miraculous to be celebrated, and that further alien contacts, if any, should be welcomed because they can bring humanity to a new state of unity and enlightenment. It's kind of a religious thing.

So, in the midst of this, it seems that Lucky Vega's company, the high-tech company he inherited from his father, has been funding the work of this one particular scientist who has been devising a new technology for SETI, the real-life Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and this guy is now being picketed by the anti-alien people, who are being counter-picketed by the aliens-are-our-saviors people. And Lucky decides that for the time being, this project should be shut down until the world has a chance to catch its breath and adapt to the way things are. Well, our scientist friend is livid over this because it's yet another example of "the tyranny of the masses"-the fact that our higher intellectual interests and pursuits must so often capitulate to the will of the common, anti-intellectual masses. He's had to deal with this all his life and he's sick of it. So, he engages in an unauthorized experiment after Lucky has shut him down, and it results in his becoming a superhuman villain with a power against which the Environauts are defenseless!

Meanwhile, there are other things going on with the team. Lucky himself is feeling the weight of the huge responsibilities placed on his 22-year-old shoulders. He misses the carefree days when he and Roger were just two college boys hanging out and playing together. He wonders for the first time in his life if it wouldn't have been better to be "just a regular kid", and not a super-genius turned super-hero. And Roger is back to playing peacemaker, the same as he did at home when he was growing up, except this time it's with Trey and Lionel, because Lionel has come out to the others and the heartbroken Keilani has dropped out of sight. Trey is terrified that because of Lionel's uncloseting, he'll never see Keilani again and have a chance to tell her how he feels. He calls Lionel on it, and Lionel accuses him of homophobia, so there's this tension within the team right when this awful villain is on the loose.

I love this story because it touches on so many of the points in the "Big Questions" that are part of the Quantum Comics mission as described on the Web site. The reaction of humanity to the reality of extraterrestrials; the relationship between exceptional people and individuals who, while they shouldn't be thought of as "lesser" people, lack the special gifts that others possess; the question of the rightful place and role of science in the world; the issue of how to live with diversity-it's really a model of a lot of the things I want to say. So you see, it's not just about costumed crime-fighters and costumed crooks; there are bigger issues, larger questions, that I'm always trying to address.

The origin of "The Big Questions" is interesting; it's another thing that comes from my personal heroes, in this case, Dr. Carl Sagan. I had just seen the film version of his novel CONTACT, which instantly became my favorite movie and has only become number two this year because of A.I. I came away from it with a lot to think about: the ancient antagonism between faith and reason, our simultaneous need to know we're not alone in the universe and fear of what might be out there, our conflict of priorities when it comes to space exploration, how much I resented Jodie Foster for getting to sleep with Matthew McConaughey and go to Vega? [Laugh] It's not that I don't normally think about these things, especially the Jodie Foster/Matthew McConaughey bit [laugh] but this time it prompted me to start thinking about my own work.

I contemplated the stories I had in development as they were at the time, and it occurred to me that I might have been leaning a bit away from the goals that I had once set for them with the influence of Gene Roddenberry and Dr. Sagan and OMNI magazine. I thought that maybe I was getting so much into the "heroes vs. villains" aspect of my storytelling that I was forgetting the other aspects that I wanted to bring in from outside of comics-placing super-heroes into a scientific context, using super-heroes as a metaphor for the transformation and evolution of the self and to talk about the direction in which humanity and society might be evolving, things like that. And that's when I sat down and drafted the Big Questions, and began using them as a touchstone for everything I was doing. It's not that the "hero versus villain" structure will be absent, clearly it will always be there, but I wanted it to be informed by some bigger themes.

GLA: Are you concerned with being able to attract and keep those comic fans that are primarily interested in what's considered the traditional concept of the super hero genre in order to get your ideas to a potentially larger audience?

JF: The supposed problem of holding the attention of comic fans who prefer traditional comics is really not a problem for me at all. In my opinion, no such problem has ever existed, or if it has, it hasn't been a prevalent or widespread problem. On the whole, I think there is plenty of evidence that traditional comics for thinking people do work. Every so often, THE FANTASTIC FOUR has a renaissance and is rediscovered. THE X-MEN at its best, in the Cockrum/Byrne years, was one of the biggest successes we've ever seen. George Perez's Wonder Woman and the Kurt Busiek/Perez Avengers did huge business. I consider all of these "thinking people's super-hero comics". Quantum Comics is my own stab at the same thing, from my own science-minded, gay-inclusive perspective.

Now, if I could just get some closure on the Matthew McConaughey issue? [Laugh]

GLA: A couple of issues you want to address relate to how humanity would be affected with the knowledge that we are not alone in this universe, and how do the exceptional and the common learn to have respect and value for one another. These two questions seem intertwined to me in that if we don't have respect for one another how could we not fear first contact with alien life forms, but if there is first contact would we then learn to see the worth and uniqueness of the individual and our different cultures and then come to see our potential capabilities? Without giving any spoilers away, what are your personal opinions on those two questions?

JF: The question of how man will learn to accept aliens when we can't even deal with differences within humanity itself is one of the oldest questions in science fiction. It would take a more learned scholar of SF than I am to identify where this question even began; it may reach all the way back into ancient mythology. But as long as human prejudice persists, the question will be relevant.

The conflict between "exceptional" and "common" people is one that I find very personally significant, and one that I think any gifted person can relate to. For most of what I'll call my adolescence, for want of a better word, I had the regrettable experience of being the only dedicated comic-book fan in the crowd, and it's a sense of isolation I wouldn't wish on anyone. One of the places where it is best illustrated, at least for me, is in the opening number of Disney's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, where we first meet Belle. And the first thing we learn about Belle is that her looks live up to her name, "beautiful," but she has a very strong inner mental, intellectual life framed by literature and thoughts and ideas that the mundane townspeople around her can't comprehend.

Belle and the rest of the community are forever at odds. There's no one with whom she can share the things she's always thinking and learning, and the townspeople can't understand why she isn't more interested in getting shagged by the conceited, macho he-man Gaston and marrying him than in all those silly things she's always reading about. Belle lives in a different world than everyone else. Any thinking person, and especially any creative person, can understand her experience perfectly; when I first heard her sing, "There must be more than this provincial life!" I thought, "Sing it, baby, you're singing my song!" And of course, that line, which has become one of my personal maxims, is on the Quantum Comics Quote Page. It's hard to be a thinking person in a world that doesn't value intelligence. It's hard to be a creative person in a world where the exercise of your gifts isn't supposed to be a priority. The problem of the scientist/villain in THE ENVIRONAUTS story that I described above is a variation on this theme.

Ultimately, of course, the gifted and the common have to live and function in the same world, so they have to have some kind of relationship. The question is how to make that relationship a constructive and positive one. In super-hero comics, the answer to this question is that the super-hero, who generally possesses powers that set him above and apart from the masses, uses them nobly to protect and help those not as gifted, and in return the masses adore and love the super-hero. One of the great things about Marvel Comics is that they introduced ambiguities into this set-up. On Marvel Earth, the same populace that worships the Fantastic Four, honors Captain America, and depends on the Avengers also distrusts Spider-Man, fears the Hulk, and hates the X-Men. In the long term in Quantum Comics, a question I'm going to have to give a very serious examination is how constant the adoration of the public will be if the super-hero is publicly known to be gay.

One of the principles I'm working with is that super-heroes represent a class of people who come to be more revered and worshipped than movie and TV stars, rock stars, and professional athletes put together. When the Environauts go out in public, people at the very least point and stare and whisper and think lustful thoughts at them-but in general, the boys find themselves mobbed by screaming admirers of both sexes; it's a scene comparable to the panic that the Beatles used to cause. And everyone wants a piece of them. Aquarius has to field TV and film offers when it comes out that he wants to be an actor; he's soon inundated with business cards and scripts. People want them for all kinds of merchandising. PLAYGIRL magazine wants to do a spread, Lucky agrees, only with the understanding that they'll do swimsuit shots but no full-frontal nudes! And for Landmass, there is a rising conflict over the knowledge that he's doing all this while serving the assumption that all of the Nauts are heterosexual; he feels as though he's offering himself to the public under false pretenses. He feels like a liar and a hypocrite, and he has to decide whether keeping up the charade is worth it and must confront what it will mean to the team?and their admirers?if he doesn't.

The conflict of how we'd react to alien contact when we can't deal with human differences is touched on, briefly, in CONTACT, in the sequence in the White House. There's an evangelist type, ironically played by Rob Lowe, who insists that the aliens' message must be suspect because they demonstrate no belief in the Judeo-Christian God! I love the colossal presumption of this stance that creatures from thousands of light years away, who are the product of a distant planet with a totally different biosphere, who possess the means to transmit a method of interstellar travel to other worlds, must be viewed in the light of suspicion because they are not Christians! It's so outrageous and so consistent with reality! Some people actually would think that!

You know, many years ago, I heard of some religious-fundamentalist types taking exception to big-budget science fiction movies like STAR WARS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, and E.T. (the latter of which, you may know, has been compared with the story of Christ) on the grounds that the "miraculous" but secular things portrayed in these films could work to undermine people's religious faith. Well, at the time, I thought, "If people like that are going to protest a science fiction movie, how would they feel if super-heroes were real and they had to live in the same world with Superman or the Fantastic Four? That would just drive them nuts, wouldn't it?" Dr. Carl Sagan, in Pale Blue Dot, the sequel to Cosmos, spends a whole chapter talking about what he calls "The Great Demotions", or how religion set up man as occupying the center of the universe, with everything else constructed around man for man's benefit, and how science has systematically, relentlessly knocked man farther and farther from his exalted position at the center. This is the reason why science and religion haven't gotten along. People don't like to be told they're not at the center of the universe. It hurts. It's scary. And any contact with aliens, no matter how benign, would stir up this pain and fear that we're not who we want to believe we are.

This issue is relevant to the conflict between gays and heterosexuals too. People are always using religion to justify the ostracism and worse of gays. The mythical Old Man in the Sky is supposed to have ordained that the only true love is that of man and woman, and the only true family is that made conjugally by man and woman. The mythical Old Man in the Sky said, supposedly, that his blessing is for that way of life alone; anything else is an aberration to be cast out-or worse. When gays assert their rights, it's as if they're saying, "No, you've got it wrong; everything you believe about yourselves is wrong. The world was not made for you alone. What's different from you has the same right to be here as you do." It's another Great Demotion.

Scientifically speaking, there is a case to be made for other living intelligences in the universe. As a scientific fact, we have found the chemical elements of life, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, everywhere we have looked in space. Everywhere! There are even places far from Earth that have shown evidence of the presence of water. And we know from the study of our own planet that life is incredibly tenacious and adaptable and can exist in all kinds of conditions. The question becomes, if it can exist in all kinds of conditions, can it evolve to a higher form in all kinds of conditions? There is no definitive answer to that, or at least none that we've found. I'd like to think that there are other intelligent beings out there; in fact, the evidence we've seen thus far makes me say there must be. I hope to live to see myself proven right. At the moment, there is no such proof-and I say this with full knowledge of the prominence of UFOs and little grey aliens in our present-day mythology. I've become skeptical to the point of boredom with the subject of UFOs and alien abductions. When you see the TV documentaries on it, it's always the same thing: the same photographs and videos that don't really prove anything, the same testimonies that may be misapprehensions of natural events or human psychology and so amount to hearsay in the end.

I've gotten so that I hear the subject of UFOs come up and I think, "Yes, yes, very nice. Come back when you've got a new story, okay? ?" I think there are other intelligences out there. I'm just not convinced that they are constantly coming here as casually as someone from New York would nip off to Cape Cod for the weekend!

If first contact with another planet comes, it's not going to be all celebration, not if it comes at the present stage of human development. People like me will celebrate it, because it will validate many years of sober, scientific speculation and the kind of faith that is unique to science. But I think it will also accentuate and heighten a lot of the tensions and divisions that already exist in human life.

GLA: Some of your characters now and presumably in the future are gay or Latino or African American. Do you have any concern that people will be critical that there are gay characters at all or that there aren't enough of them or not enough ethnic diversity?

JF: The possibility of critical reactions to the gay presence in Quantum Comics is a very real one. It's one that I've given due consideration, but also one that I've decided can't be a factor in my storytelling decisions. I'm prepared for it if it comes, but I'm not prepared to change any of my story plans in that event. Those characters that I've identified as gay will remain gay and nothing else. They will not be straightened, rendered asexual, or reduced to token, marginal figures. They will be starring players alongside their heterosexual peers and will have storylines specifically about them.

Have you ever noticed that gays are the only people in the world who go "flaunting their lifestyle"? Everyone else lives and loves, and dates and falls in love, and marries and has families and spends a fully experienced lifetime in the world-but gays "flaunt". I am convinced that there is a strain of thought in our society that believes that if gays are seen to live openly and equally with heterosexuals, then suddenly droves of people will stop marrying the opposite sex and stop having conventional nuclear families, and the way of life that has been the prevalent human experience for thousands of years will just disappear?POOF!? in a twinkling. As if by magic, the validation of the rights of 10 percent of the population of Earth will just erase the way of life of the other 90 percent. And the children, goodness knows, if the children are exposed to the awareness of anything other than heterosexuality, they will be changed into little gays and lesbians as surely as if they'd been bitten by a vampire! "We must protect the children!" the homophobes cry. What they're really shouting is, "We must protect ourselves from the ones we fear, and we'll use any weapon and any shield conveniently at hand. We're such cowards, we'll even hide behind children and use them as a weapon!" This protect-the-children foolishness is such a crock, it makes me angry every time I hear it. Such cowardice; they're worse than bullies. Even the most vicious bully won't hide behind someone weaker while he's shaking you down.

And yet, this is the kind of irrationality that any initiative for gay awareness, gay rights, or gay pride must face. Fear, irrationality, unreason-these are the things we're going to have to erode. These are the things we're going to have to wear down, year by year, generation by generation, until gays become the full participants in the world that they should be. It's not about taking anything away from anyone. It's only about taking what is ours, the same as everyone else has what is theirs. I can think of nothing more just than that.

I'm prepared to face any charges that there aren't "enough" gay characters and that those that do appear are not "gay enough" whatever that means. There are those among us who've argued from the beginning of the TV series WILL AND GRACE that Will (Eric McCormack) isn't "gay enough" and that he and Grace should be written out of their own show, and the whole thing thrown to Jack. It reminds me of how some blacks, in both reality and fiction, are accused of not being "black enough" because they don't look and speak and think and behave and live in a certain way. If you don't conform to someone's particular perception of "blackness," you'll get pulled over and cited by "the Black Police". I'm ready for this, on both the gay and ethnic fronts. In fact, if you read the Quantum Visual Database entry on Landmass, you can pretty well intuit that I've anticipated this kind of thinking and have made allowances for it in the material itself.

Some people will, I'm sure, be a little dissatisfied that I'm working in a mainstream but inclusive manner rather than making my cast(s) predominantly gay or ethnic. One fan-friend of mine in the GLA who, like me, is both gay and black, has already raised this issue, and it's a natural thing to bring up. Of this, I can say that I could have worked mostly with gay characters or mostly with characters of color, but then I would have been limiting the appeal of my work. This, I think, is a realistic and commercial consideration. Even I, Mr. Personal Vision, know that in some regards you have to think commercially. I could have worked that way, and I'm sure in doing so I would-as Lily Tomlin's Ernestine might have put it-"reach the party to whom I am speaking". But I might not reach much of anyone else. I honestly think that the best way to broaden the mainstream is to work within it and push outward, rather than by staying outside of it and pulling and tugging at it. You can't reach the alternatives by excluding the alternatives, and you can't reach the mainstream by excluding the mainstream.

As a matter of history, much of our popular culture has been either lily-white or jet-black, with so little interaction of the races that when it occurs it seems remarkable. Or it's my perception, anyway. I am probably going to spend my whole career arguing the point that the races and the sexualities must coexist and must be shown to coexist, because I think a lot of people don't get it, or don't want to get it. There is, I think, still a belief in some quarters that you should live your whole life in a box that is defined solely by your race or religion or sexual orientation or whatever. I think the best life, the life of real quality, is a life lived with differences, even though such differences can be painful and aggravating and even scary. Boxes are no more fit living spaces than closets. I don't want to live or work in a box any more than I do in a closet. The only boxes permitted in Quantum Comics are panel borders on comic pages! [Laugh]

GLA: You mention romance as one of the elements you're incorporating in your work here. So, this begs the question of will there be any gay romances in the future to attract gay readers?

JF: Gay romances? oh yes, there will be gay romances. Perhaps you've guessed that from things I've already said, but you may very well expect that you will see gays in love in Quantum Comics. In Environauts there will be the story of Landmass and Draco Rex. You'll have to be patient and wait for it, but when it kicks in you'll have a nice payoff?with a twist! As for the nature of the twist, you'll just have to wait and see. Also, Draco's sister Serpentyne is a lesbian. And as new heroes enter the world of the Nauts in the future, you'll observe that there will be gays among them too. Ahead of us lie the World Champion, Wonder Boy, Cetus, and the Charger, all of whom are either gay or will bring unique twists on gay themes. Over in Orion's Arm, I don't dare reveal what I have in store for Lonn Astarte; it's too good! And of course, there will be the accompanying tale of SOJOURNER, with its gay lovers who bring new meaning to the expression "star-crossed". And one thing I promise?anything that you would see with heterosexual characters, you will see the equivalent thing with gay characters. Straight couples will kiss explicitly and so will gays. We'll follow straight couples into the bedroom, where you'll get to see basically anything you'd get to see on ALL MY CHILDREN or GENERAL HOSPITAL, and we'll do the exact equivalent thing with gay couples. Count on it.

GLA: Will there be tension between gay and straight characters?

JF: Tension between straight and gay characters is always a possibility; in fact, as I described above, it will figure a bit into the dynamic of the Environauts, and come to a pleasing and ironic outcome! I wouldn't expect any such friction in Orion's Arm because of its setting in a future where race, sexual orientation, and sometimes even species are a non-issue, but since my super-hero material is set in the present day, it's something I can't rule out. In fact, in Orion's Arm there will be a flashback sequence that shows how Aidan and Saige got together, after Lonn made a pass at his rival Aidan with a sizzling kiss, and Aidan calmly said something to the effect of, "Thanks, Lonn, but no thanks," to which the unabashed Lonn said, "Then would you like to meet my little sister?" [Laugh]

GLA: Or gay aliens?

JF: You know, for some reason I've never gotten around to the idea of gay aliens. But when I was developing ORION'S ARM, one of my friends off of whom I bounced the concept pointed out the potential of Connor and Lorlo as "slash" characters, which is why I added the concept of the Renorran Wur-Natharrh, the ceremonial "marriage of best friends" into which the two of them have entered. I thought it would be something that gays would seize upon in the subtext and run with. What would gays do without subtext? I'm looking forward to seeing how that's received.

GLA: How do you think a gay alien culture might express itself?

JF: Anyway, the notion of a gay alien culture is a really fascinating one, and one that I hadn't really pondered for whatever reason until now. I can imagine some alien species that looks upon the lack of experience of same-sex intimacy as an aberration. They don't care whether you end up living gay or heterosexual, but it's looked upon as normal to have at least sampled a liaison with someone of your own sex, and if you haven't, they find it curious and wonder what's wrong with you. "You mean you're a healthy male and have never been with another male? Why not? What are you waiting for?" I think of this because I remember interviews that Gene Roddenberry gave late in his life in which he expressed regret at never having had a same-sex relationship. He seemed to wonder if he'd perhaps missed something.

GLA: What one thought would you like people reading this to take with them?

JF: I think if there's one thing that I'd like people to get out of Quantum Comics, it's just this: I want people to raise the level of their thinking. I want people to aim higher and think higher, about themselves and about the world around them. Don't wallow in the dirt; don't stoop down! Reach up! Always, always reach up! Raise the level of your thinking! That's what I'd like people to take away from anything I might have to offer them.

When I was in art school, I first had the idea that I would like to be someone who brings a greater awareness of comics and the super-hero genre to the general public, someone who helps to broaden the base of fandom and introduces people who've never read comics to our art form and what makes it so special. I'd still like that. I think that's part of why I've brought in so many influences from TV and the movies and mass popular culture outside of comics to my work.

And at the base of it, I'd really love it if I could bring some young fan some of the same feeling that I first got when I was first discovering comics. Nothing would make me happier than to know that some young fan sitting at his computer was calling up the latest adventure of the Environauts and feeling the way I felt when I first met the Fantastic Four, maybe even having that as the beginning of a lifelong adventure. If I could have that, I think I'd really feel as though I'd given something back to the medium I've always wanted to be a part of. I really hope that happens one day.

Thanks for asking all these great questions!

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