Suzanne Peelle of Fans of Science & Comics caught up with Jim Ottaviani a while back and conducted the most extensive interview of G.T. Labs' founder done to date...

OTTAVIANI: I write and publish true stories about real people who did (and sometimes still do) science. Depending on my mood and who I'm talking to...are you a historian?

OTTAVIANI: Good, then I can call my books biography. When I talk to historians I have to back off from that, since purists about the term will point out that I make up a whole bunch of dialogue and play with timing and sequence to try and aid story flow. "Historical fiction" may be the best description from their perspective -- something along the lines of Irving Stone or Leon Uris, perhaps. But biography works well as shorthand.

OTTAVIANI: I actually have two ways to answer the question. Here's the long version...

I started reading comics in the newspaper as soon as I could read. The front page of the Chicago Tribune Sunday section had Peanuts and Dick Tracy and Doonesbury at the time -- three strips with totally different sensibilities, and I loved them all. I have vivid memories of lying on the carpet in my cousin's house looking at the Sunday section of the Indianapolis paper and being baffled by Prince Valiant. And not just baffled by how someone could do such beautiful drawings. I couldn't understand how the people could tell what each other was saying -- there were no word balloons!

I didn't start reading comic books until I was about 13. I remember coming home from a bookstore and being enthralled by a Pocket Books collection of early Spider-man comics from the 1960s. I started reading it on the way home, and couldn't stop. It was the middle of winter, and I sat reading in the back seat in my parka as the sun set and the heat escaped from the car and my fingers slowly grew too numb to turn the pages. I was enthralled. (If you care to read a more complete version of this story, look for the forthcoming Spark Generators, wrangled by none other than Jon "Bean" Hastings.)

Fast forward to the early 1980s, when this sort of comic (action-adventure/superhero) was enjoying something of a renaissance. And at the same time, some of the best new comics artists and writers such as Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, Alan Moore, Matt Wagner, and Steve Rude were entering the medium. My younger brother introduced me to some of the good superhero stuff and from there I started branching out pretty quickly to the then-un-classifiable American Flagg!, Love and Rockets, American Splendor, and stuff like that. It was a great time to get seriously interested in comics, though I split my focus between comics and pursuing another ambition: to become a nuclear engineer.

In the process of getting a bachelor's and master's degree in that field and then working as a researcher and consultant to the electric power industry I learned plenty of science in class and on the job. Outside of class and work I enjoyed reading biographies of scientists whose discoveries I had learned about and used.

I'm pretty good at math, but pretty slow on the uptake sometimes, so it took me another 10 years to put one and one together and merge my two interests.

And besides enjoying comics, and wanting to work in the medium simply because of that enjoyment, I saw a need for them. Maybe it was simply my need for biographical stories about scientists, but that's as good a reason as any. Not to say that there isn't wonderful work in comics that has a biographical (or at least autobiographical) focus, but haven't seen much that's like what I do.

Sorry you asked? Here's the shorter version: I do comics about scientists because of Steve Lieber. We lived close to each other (shouting distance, in fact) for a number of years and used to meet for dinner, go to movies, loan each other books, talk about what we'd read, etc.. I had loaned him a copy of The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, and while we were discussing it he pointed out that a wartime meeting between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg Rhodes described briefly had great dramatic potential. When I asked him if he'd draw the story if I wrote it up as a comics script, he said yes. A few years and a lot of research later we had "Heavy Water", one of my favorites tales from Two-Fisted Science.

OTTAVIANI: Second question first -- I ask them. It's really and truly no more mysterious than that! I don't always hear "yes", but at this point I've started to hear it more often than "no". Plenty of folks do say no, of course, perhaps because they think I'm nuts, or they think I can't pay them what they're worth, or they don't have time. All of the above are almost certainly true! But enough folks like the idea behind the books and stories I'm pitching them that they're willing to join in.

It probably helps that my deadlines are (usually) pretty loose, I pay up front (that is, I don't ask people to work for free or for possible royalties somewhere down the road), and that I can offer just about all the photo reference they'll need to do this unusual material (work with a librarian, get reference material!) Which is also an attraction, I think -- it's not the same old stuff you see in comics every day.

Regarding who I ask, I'll pick a couple of examples from each book to illustrate. Sometimes the artists come pre-packaged: "Heavy Water" is an instance of that. Steve's naturalistic and expressionistic work, most recently on display in Whiteout, is perfect for such a dramatic story. For "Safecracker", I specifically sought out Bernie Mireault for it, and knew I could make the book go once he agreed to do it. His work just knocks me out. I couldn't possibly be a bigger fan of an artist's work than I am of Bernie's.

More often than not, rather than having preconceived notions of who should do what, the right choice presents itself while writing. Take the Rosalind Franklin story in Dignifying Science as a for instance. I wanted a great deal of reader identification with Franklin, so someone with a very appealing cartoon sensibility seemed best. That's Steph Gladden. For the Crick perspective in that story, someone with a very elaborate line made sense, so I asked Donna Barr to take part, and for Watson a more expressionistic style seemed appropriate -- enter Roberta Gregory. Maurice Wilkins' perspective was, I think the hardest. His point of view needed to be the most similar to Franklin's, since I see him working under many of the same strictures as she did, and from the research I did their temperaments weren't too far apart. So the style had to be clean, but not quite as cartoon-y as Steph's. Because he's the least sympathetic character, though, I wanted to have that clean and precise style tempered by a lot of heart -- and that's something that Linda Medley excels at in her artwork.

For Fallout, I return to Bernie and Steve for extended sequences. Bernie provides the bridge between longer sections, and offers the right balance between humor and gravity. Steve is doing a more stark and raw part of the story, and I expect the style he works in will reflect that. I also have the great good fortune to have Eddy Newell whose gritty and straight-ahead style are perfect for the European segment he's illustrating -- you can see his model sheets at the Fallout section of the site. Vince Locke (who can draw anything), and Jeff Parker round out the lineup. Vince you probably know from Sandman and his own series Deadworld. You may not know Jeff's work yet, but I'm confident you'll look forward to more once you've seen what he can do.

OTTAVIANI: A lot.

(Certainly more than I put into that reply.)

Oh...you want a serious answer? Well, I spend a great deal of time reading about scientists, and about science. Keeping up with this sort of thing is an integral part of my day job (librarian), was paramount in my previous day job (nuclear engineer), and is something I enjoy anyway.

The nuts and bolts of the process has been different for each book: Two-Fisted Science was simple. Because it focused on physicists, I had the entire basic framework ready the moment I started working. Dignifying Science came from a concept rather than specific stories, so I need to do a lot more reading and research (and discarding of ideas) to make it happen. The current book is not so much a collection of short biographical pieces as it is a long story, so it's more along the lines of fiction than the previous two. Because of this I've worked even harder than in the past to verify timelines and facts so that I could subsequently do more fooling around with them.

OTTAVIANI: In the trade paperbacks (I've done a few single-issue comics as well, but I don't know that I'll pursue that route any longer) seem to end up with a progression of theme from beginning to end.

Dave Van Domelen (of "Dave's Rants" fame, over there in one of the older Internet neighborhoods called the Usenet) pointed out to me that Two-Fisted Science is multi-layered...in a multi-layered way! To paraphrase him, you can consider "Full Circle" and the "Heavy Water" as the inner-most layer, since they both deal with freedom of thought versus the demands of those in power. Donna Barr's prologue and epilogue are layers since they deal with the conflict between science and beauty (which isn't really a conflict, as some of the quotes I scattered throughout the book indicate). Finally, there's the front and back covers, in which the two main players in the creation of the atomic bomb, Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, muse on the beauty of science. On the front cover Einstein, via his jab at the ugly (in his eyes) quantum theory, insists that science ought to be beautiful and on the back Oppenheimer simply states that science, all of it, is beautiful. In the quote I selected and the explanatory material I included, Einstein also reminds us that despite what happened to Galileo, science and religion aren't enemies unless they choose to be. His belief that science should be beautiful reflects his faith in a God who would not create an ugly world.

In Dignifying Science, I realized what the stories were telling me earlier on, and did some nudging here and there before the book was complete. The book starts with Hedy Lamarr, who was trapped by her status as a screen star and sex symbol. Because of that status she was actively discouraged from pursuing her interest in invention. It ends with Birute Galdikas, who chose how she would live her life fairly early on, and does her life's work almost completely on her own terms. In the middle we have Rosalind Franklin, who was thwarted by her gender, but made conscious choices about her life that both helped and hurt her scientific career (and, I suspect, her peace of mind.) Wrapping these are short pieces about Marie Sklodovska Curie: an optimistic prologue adapted from a letter she wrote before she achieved her fame as a scientist, and a somewhat darker epilogue where she reflects on and deals with the price of that fame.

Fallout is a new case entirely, since unlike the other books it isn't a string of related, but nonetheless separate and self-contained anecdotes. As a result, I've read so much more for this book than any others, and I've worked more from primary sources than ever before. I spent the Monday after last year's San Diego comic convention in the University of California-San Diego library doing research, in fact. (Someday I'll get to the zoo!) The very first thing I saw when I opened the very first archive folder I wanted was a signed letter from Niels Bohr, my physics hero. The mojo was as strong as holding the original for the classic EC comics cover of all time. (You know the one: it's the Crime SuspenStories by Johnny Craig that would have been in poor taste if the "head was a little higher so that the neck could be seen dripping blood from it and moving the body over a little further so that the neck of the body could be seen to be bloody.") Ahem, anyway, I spent a pretty cool and productive day at the Geisel Library. Yeah, that Geisel...the original cover art to "The Lorax" was in the display case right outside the Special Collections section. Aren't comics (and libraries) swell?

OTTAVIANI: As I mentioned at the beginning, I tiptoe along the tightrope and try to structure things so they read as stories (on a large scale most people's lives really aren't very story-like) while remaining true to the facts.

Sometimes the facts are hard to come by -- back to "Heavy Water", one of my favorites from Two-Fisted Science, is a good example. Nobody really knows what Bohr and Heisenberg talked about during their walk in the woods. In cases like that I'll spend a lot of time thinking about what people probably said, and what probably happened, and try to figure out what I think actually occurred. If I can convince myself I can then make the story sound authentic. But there's a chance I'll unconsciously err on the side of drama, even if what I write reads as truthful. So one of the dangers of the process is that you start to believe your own theories and conclusions, and they may be wrong! Nobody has called me on any errors like that yet, though, so maybe I'm convincing more than just me.

OTTAVIANI: People like me, I guess. Or maybe like parts of me.

To illustrate what I mean by that, I'll reference something Art Spiegelman has said: I've heard him speak a couple of times, and he says that when he lectures to audiences that are predominantly Jewish, he talks about comics, and when he lectures to comics fans he talks about the Holocaust. On a more modest scale, that's what I aim for.

So in other words, I hope readers of a scientific bent who wouldn't otherwise look at comics will find entertaining stories about familiar (and perhaps unfamiliar) historical figures. My stories try to give a human context that's missing when folks learn the equations that bear the scientists' names. I hope comics fans, on the other hand, will discover intriguing characters that lived real lives beyond the ink on paper they get with my books. If they want to find out more, I provide references and notes at the end of the stories that will point them to biographies and other pieces on the featured scientists. One of the nicest compliments I get is when somebody tells me they sought out, read, and enjoyed one of the books they found out about in my bibliographies.

OTTAVIANI: Well, I don't know about large, but yes, I do have readers who have never set foot in a comic book specialty store. The books sell to book stores, libraries, and directly to teachers and educators. The coolest sale I've made is to the Nobel Museum in Stockholm: The email came from out of the blue one day, and I think my jaw literally dropped. (When my father-in-law, a professor of entomology in Arizona, heard about this his jaw dropped too. "I've been publishing for years, and waiting for the Nobel people to get in touch. Guess I'm dong the wrong kind of research.!") Anyway, I think the Nobel Prize folks like the books because the medium is such an unusual one for presenting science. My contact there is fascinated by comics, and appreciates the research that goes into what I do. The visual aspect is particularly attractive to them, and as a result they plan on making the books part of their display and having them in their gift shops for their Jubilee Celebration next year.

OTTAVIANI: Not specifically, no. But there's no reason why comics couldn't (or shouldn't) get more attention from academia. I know one person who's using my books in her research, and her colleagues are jealous. Which is too bad -- they should study what they enjoy too. Heck, studying usually leads to greater enjoyment! I know the more I learn about the technical aspects of comics storytelling, the more I enjoy reading comics for pleasure. To illustrate what I mean, here's a quote I used in Two-Fisted Science. It's from Richard Feynman, most readers' favorite character in that book:

So if academic folks want to study comics and add to the body of knowledge of why and how they work as a medium, that's great. It only adds.

OTTAVIANI: Besides reference materials I just mentioned, I also write complete and detailed scripts that try to work out most of the storytelling problems in advance. Before doing a final draft I typically illustrate my scripts in stick figure/thumbnail form so that I'm sure that what I've asked for is actually draw-able. Sometimes I even send those along for the artists to look at -- or to laugh at -- if they want.

It's their show once they have the script, though. Many of the artists do have their own ideas on storytelling, and many of those ideas are as good or better than mine, which should come as no surprise. All I ask is that they tell me about 'em so I can try and articulate what I was trying to get at in my script. If I can explain what I had in mind (but maybe didn't describe well in the script) and why, it may end up looking like what I envisioned in the first place. If I can't explain why I want something a certain way then I can't very well say "my way or the highway"!

And sometimes the changes come right out of the blue with no discussion. So far that's worked out great. Rob Walton's story in Two-Fisted Science is a good example. He took my pacing and dialogue and threw out everything else. The result was ten times better than how I wrote it.

Whatever happens, when the artists finish the stories I get the pleasure of seeing them through somebody else's eyes. It's a lot of fun.

OTTAVIANI: The usual suspects, I suppose. Comics the artists I've worked with have done, of course: Concrete, Desert Peach, Whiteout, Patty Cake, Finder, Naughty Bits, Castle Waiting... Other titles on my pull list at the local store include, Louis Riel, Bone, Astro City Kane, Akiko, Age of Bronze, Cerebus, Acme Novelty Library, Eightball, Palookaville, Berlin, Xeno's Arrow, and pretty much the whole ABC line. As far as minis go, I never miss Rachel Hartman's Amy Unbounded, and anything by Sean Bieri, Pam Bliss, Warren Craighead, Matt Feazell, and Brian Ralph. And whatever else catches my eye. And folks who don't put out regular books (Will Eisner, Joe Sacco, Jim Woodring) make a visit to the store a treat when something new from them comes out.

Wow. Looking back on this list it's no wonder I haven't gotten around to fixing the roof. I read a lot of comics.

OTTAVIANI: Given my publication pattern, you can read this as either self-serving or as putting my money where my mouth is: I think trade paperbacks are the way comics will go if they're to survive.

Myself, I love the serial format. I like reading a chapter of Transmetropolitan (forgot that one a few minutes ago) or Top Ten, getting to the cliff-hanger ending and waiting a month or two for the next installment. I can bore you to death on how wonderful the old adventure strips like Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon, Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy, and Buz Sawyer were, and how I wish there was some way to bring them back.

But it appears folks like me are in the minority. Newspapers stopped supporting adventure strips many years ago, just as they stopped supporting serialized novels (the work of Charles Dickens, as a for instance) many years before that. Comics stores appear to be approaching that point too: The $3 comic is clearly a hard sell to the general public, and it's even becoming a hard sell to comics fans.

This is not news. But it does lead me to trade paperbacks, which I find inherently more satisfying. They have the added bonus of being able to appear along side of, or at least near, prose novels in more traditional bookstores.

OTTAVIANI: Assuming you mean comics about subjects other than scientists, or characters other than my own, the answer is "yes and no." Or "it depends." Or "I'm not sure." I've played with some ideas that don't involve scientists, and I've written up plots for a story or two involving an established character or two. I've even done complete layouts for an adaptation of a play, just as an exercise. But nothing serious, and nothing likely to get published any time soon. I don't have any ambition to write for Marvel or DC, or anything in particular I'd want to say with (or do to) one of their characters. And where that's concerned, my indifference is no doubt an excellent reflection of their publishing intentions!

FS&C: It's been a few years between Dignifying Science and Fallout. What have you been doing?

OTTAVIANI: Watching a lot of TV.

Just kidding -- we don't have cable, and live in a dead zone for the regular networks, so I don't actually watch any TV at all. I've written a comic for the Orangutan Foundation, working with Anne Timmons again. It focuses on Roger Fouts, a scientist who has taught orangutans American Sign Language in the wild. That should come out some time in the spring of 2000. After that we'll see -- I did a couple short story ideas for other peoples' anthologies (Spark Generators, mentioned before, Occupational Hazards and the EXPO 2000 anthology for the CBLDF). And I've been working on Fallout. This is a very different book than the others. Not only is it much longer, it also holds the focus on a relatively small group of characters.

OTTAVIANI: Well, the not-so-secret origin of my first trade paperback Two-Fisted Science, stems from Steve Lieber and I discussing Richard Rhodes' book. So, the topic has always been there in the background of what I do. Further, it's a fascinating story, as it signals the beginning of "big science" (hello Laurie Anderson) and the death knell for the age of innocence, if you will, as far as scientific morality goes. The main characters in the book, Oppenheimer and Szilard, are both misunderstood, and I wanted to present them and the conflicts they dealt with to a new readership. Finally, and I forget who said this (I think it was in the context of films), nobody agrees on art, but everybody likes to watch stuff blow up.

Seriously, though, the final reason is I've been looking for a way to sort out my own thoughts on what the atomic bomb meant and means. I have a masters degree in nuclear engineering, but taking the scientific path towards the problem (called "technically sweet" by those who worked on it) is only one route. So writing this helped me find another route.

OTTAVIANI: That there are few villains. Groves thought Szilard was one. Teller thought Oppenheimer was. Many thought Teller a villain. I don't agree 100% with any of those views. The closest I come to agreeing on a single person who shoulders a lot of blame for how things turned out is Teller. But even there, I don't see him as evil. Merely broken by his early experiences. That doesn't mean I don't wish he had less of a hand in the course of U.S. weapons policy and development. I do. But just as you would never want to use a damaged part in a complex and dangerous machine, I wish Teller, who I consider psychologically damaged, wasn't part of what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. (Ike, himself a grizzled veteran and what most would consider a hawk, warned against this complex in his last address as president. It's interesting that Kennedy, who has the rep of a great peace-nik and dove embraced it wholeheartedly in his inaugural. Check out the Great Speeches of the 20th Century to hear this fascinating study of contrasts.)

OTTAVIANI: Well, we'll have to see. I'm still too close to the whole thing. So I don't know -- but I'm excited. The artists involved are all terrific, and I can't wait for folks to read the story as seen through their eyes. That's the single biggest bonus of writing for comics. The script goes out as a relatively cold and lifeless thing, looking more like a set of instructions than anything else. And in the hands of an artist it gets transformed into a story. What could be better than that?