Comics and Prose: Brad Meltzer Goes Both Ways
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on August 15, 2006 Sign up now!
by Calvin Reid, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 8/15/2006
In an effort to promote an author to both prose and graphic novel readers, Hachette and DC Comics are teaming up to excerpt the first chapter of The Book of Fate, bestselling novelist Brad Meltzer's new prose thriller, in the first issue of The Justice League of America, a relaunch of a popular Superhero comic book serial that will go on sale August 16.
It's an unusual effort for an unusual author, says Warner Books publisher and v-p Jamie Raab. "It's an experiment. He's got a big following from his work on DC's Identity Crisis series and his prose novels are bestsellers. But his book audience hasn't read his comics and comics fans haven't really read his novels." Raab says Hachette will reciprocate with spots for DC Comics titles in future Meltzer paperbacks.
Meltzer is the bestselling author of five novels; his newest, The Book of Fate, is due out in September. He is an equally popular writer in comics. Indeed, Identity Crisis, a critically acclaimed superhero murder mystery starring Superman, Batman and the Flash, was as big a media and bookselling event as his prose novels.
A lifelong comics fan, Meltzer calls the excerpt an effort to break down artificial walls between categories and maybe smash a bit of literary snobbery as well. "A reader is a reader," says Meltzer in an interview from his home in Florida. "If we can bring any new readers over, then it's a plus. People can like Beck and Motown. A good story is a good story, whether it has pictures or not." Meltzer says he got the idea for the excerpt when he noticed his comic book fans showing up at his prose book signings with copies of Identity Crisis. He was even forced to split the message boards on his Web site into one for comics and one for novels after his comics fans began to dominate the single board.
"I noticed that 40-year-old men who haven't read a comic book in years and suburban housewives into thrillers were both picking up Identity Crisis," Meltzer says. "Identity Crisis has no series continuity; anyone can pick it up. I just wrote the kind of book that I write. No one realizes how much comics books have influenced my novels," says Meltzer. Whether he's writing comics or prose novels, Meltzer says, his books are focused on "American heroes"--he spent a week each with former presidents Bill Clinton and the elder George Bush to research Book of Fate, a thriller involving a presidential aide. "If you read the first chapter of Book of Fate, it reads like a 32-page comic book and if you read JLA, it's like reading my novels. It's about making readers care about the characters."
DC Comics v-p of marketing John Cunningham says the effort just illustrates developments in the reading marketplace. "We see a merging of markets. People in this business think that if consumers read one thing, they won't read something else. But those lines are breaking down. The popularity of graphic material is growing and cross-pollination is possible and inevitable."
Meltzer emphasizes that this experiment in cross-promotion is another step in the acceptance of comics as a mature literary medium. "Is Alan Moore's Watchmen a lesser work because it has pictures? Somewhere along the way, comics began to get serious literary reviews," he says.
He continues: "Snobbery toward comics is being attacked, and the lit snobs realize that comics readers have a voice. The San Diego Comic-con is successful because everyone realizes now that they have to court comics geeks like me. It's about the revenge of the nerds, and it feels fantastic."
