Writer David F. Walker made his first major splash in comics as the writer of Dynamite Entertainment's "Shaft" comic book based on the eponymous detective in Ernest Tidyman's novels, and made even famous by the blaxploitation movies starring Richard Roundtree in the lead role. But for most comic book readers, Walker entered a whole new arena this week with the release of "Cyborg" #1 from DC Comics, the debut of an ongoing series starring the cybernetically-enhanced Vic Stone, a character created by George Perez and Marv Wolfman during their seminal 1980s "New Teen Titans" run. With the character now a member of the Justice League and with a solo film on the schedule from Warner Bros., "Cyborg" is easily the biggest project of Walker's career.

Ahead of the book's release, Walker visited the world famous CBR Floating Tiki Room at Comic-Con International in San Diego to discuss a number of topics with Jonah Weiland including his "Cyborg," his lengthy journey to writing mainstream comics, societal change and more.

David Walker Seeks the Man Inside the Machine in DC's "Cyborg"

In the first part of the conversation, Walker discusses living in Portland before Dark Horse and other major players were there, the industry heavyweights who finally encouraged him to make the leap into telling his own stories and redefining what it means to be an "overnight success." For a character first introduced in 1980, there's a lot about Cyborg that doesn't work as well today as it did 35 years ago. Walker discusses what he's doing with the character to make him work with the times he's living in and the role technology plays in the book. He also talks about living in an era of mass social change, and how social media and other technology has changed the face of revolution.

On the difficult task of making Cyborg relevant for modern readers 35 years after his introduction:

David F. Walker: I'm looking at a lot of key things like the fact that he's actually really young. We forget how young he is. He became Cyborg when he was about 18, he's only about 22 or 23 now, so I look at that in terms of, "What's it like to be 22?" I remember being 22 and thinking I knew everything in the world and then discovering by the time I was 32 that I didn't, so there's that. There's the relationship with him and his environment. He's different than a lot of other characters in the DCU because he doesn't have a secret identity. Vic Stone and Cyborg, they're one and the same.

Then a lot of it is just about building relationships. I think the most compelling characters in comicdom are compelling because of their supporting characters. With Batman it's the relationship he has not only with Alfred, but with Commissioner Gordon. Cyborg doesn't have a lot of that so it's building that, and it's really how do you define who you are when everybody looks at you and thinks you're something else. Everybody looks at him and they see this metal thing. They don't know what he is. That's what we go through in life, all of us, is that we're defined by our outward appearances. I'm wearing my dashiki, you're wearing your Hawaiian shirt, some people aren't necessarily going to take us seriously, and then we star talking about quantum physics or the economic crisis in Greece and we start breaking it down, and people are like, "Well wait a minute, how do you know this stuff?" It's like, "You shouldn't judge a book by its cover."

On the series using technology as a metaphor for change:

Part of what we're dealing with in the storyline is the evolution of Vic's technology, which is really just a metaphor for change. And we are living in a world right now where change is happening at such a rapid pace and people are freaking out. The world -- their world -- is changing and they freak out. Whether it's dealing with marriage equality or whatever it is, there's people that are like, "Oh my god, my world is coming to an end right now." No, it's just changing. Change is the most inevitable aspect of our existence.


In the second part of his conversation with CBR TV at Comic-Con International, writer David F. Walker discusses learning how to read from comics and how the medium can be a tool for social change. He also discusses his work on Dynamite Entertainment's "Shaft" comic book, highlighting some of the research he did for the series and what lessons it contains for readers.

Walker Promises A "More Badass" Shaft in The Character's Comics Debut

On whether comics offer readers anything meaningful beyond entertainment:

I learned how to read with comic books. That statement in and of itself, you and I are literate, articulate people because of comic books. No one can take that away from us and we can't deny the impact that the medium has. I don't necessarily want to read every single comic being some sort of political [tool] or some sort of statement, but "March" is a brilliant book. If I was dealing with, say, a young person and wanted to teach them about the Civil Rights Movement, I'd just as easily turn to that as I would maybe a documentary like "Eyes on the Prize." It's just as relevant. And there's things that you can throw in a book, like with "Shaft" I threw in some historical references, and I had people saying to me, "I didn't know about" -- spoiler alert, part of it deals with the building of the original World Trade Center, and I had people say to me, "I didn't know anything about it." They assumed the building had been there forever until it fell on 9/11. This one person was saying, "I did all this research on it after reading what you wrote," which was a major score on my part because that's what I wanted. I'm fascinated by that building, I used to pass by it all the time. The history of that building is so fascinating, so incredible, but most of us don't know it.

So comics can introduce us to it, whether it's something as simple as the concept that "with great power comes great responsibility" -- all of us live our lives that way, or a lot of us live our lives that way, and here that was Stan Lee and Steve Ditko giving us that really simple philosophy in life that has carried so many of us. ... That relationship between text and image is integral in how we learn. At some point it's dismissed, and we're finally getting back to that point where you see school libraries have graphic novels and manga and trade paperbacks. There's nothing you can't do with the medium so we should explore it.