Paul Pope may be one of the few comics creators who is most widely known outside of the conventional comic book fanbase. He's currently on Gear Magazine's Top 100 Most Interesting People list, providing pin-ups for Spin Magazine and working on his second major book for Vertigo while finishing up an upcoming Spider-Man project for Marvel Comics.

In addition to providing a one page comic in the current issue of V Magazine, a glossy fashion magazine, Pope will also appear in the upcoming March/April issue of the magazine in a photo shoot of NYC artists, actors, and creators.

Very soon, the name Paul Pope may become familiar to a much wider audience.

Known to his sizable fanbase as the creator and publisher of the sci-fi comic series "THB," Paul Pope emerged on the comic book scene with a creator-owned book called "Sin Titulo," soon followed by another creator-owned work called "The Ballad of Dr. Richardson."

His 1996 book "Giant THB Parade" was nominated for Best Design and Best Single Issue from that year's Eisner panel, and Pope was instantly hailed as the next big thing, even literally declared to be "The Great White Hope" in the States, and "The Jim Morrison of comics" in France.

Pope recently spent five years at Japanese Publishing giant Kodansha learning the art of Manga from the same people who originally published "Gunsmith Cats" and "Blade Of The Immortal" although he never ended up publishing his ideas through them.

Instead, he returned to the States with a head full of ideas and an intense desire to put them onto the page, eventually distilling many of those ideas into a visionary book for Vertigo known as "Heavy Liquid." Pope began to venture further into the realm of Science Fiction.

Now, on the heels of that first Vertigo book, Pope prepares to return once again to the universe he envisioned in "Heavy Liquid" with a new set of characters in "100%," a new five-issue comic book set to debut in June of 2002.

Pope sat through two hour-long interviews with CBR News' Keith Giles to discuss his upcoming projects and to provide some insight into why he believes that modern comics must be destroyed in order to survive.

Keith Giles: Explain the title, "100%."

Paul Pope: I wanted to come up with a title that was more of a slogan. Like a really good rock album has a title which is open-ended to have different applications than to just describe the contents of the book. It conveys an attitude or communicates an affirmation of some sort. Like "Be Here Now" or "What's The Story Morning Glory" or "Northern Soul." Those have attitude. Anything that works well in another media, I think it's worth applying to comics as well. "100%" has a lot of applications depending on what perspective or emphasis you take with the book.

KG: I understand that "100" is sort of a running theme throughout the book. Can you explain that?

PP: I just sort of took a page from Eisner and tried to pepper the book with visual cues that relate back to one hundred. Things like, one hundred dollar bills, cases with a hundred things in them, keep showing up in the book so it adds a lot of layers to the reading of the book, if you're paying attention.

KG: Story wise, what would you say "100%" is about?

PP: I would say it's a graphic movie. It's pretty much about relationships, it takes place over a short amount of time and it's set in a pretty specific place, which is a future New York. It's the story of six people, primarily, who comprise three couples. Their lives all revolve around this, sort of, strange strip club in the future. So, it's the story of their interactions over like a two-week period.

KG: It's sort of in the same setting, though not a direct sequel, to "Heavy Liquid" is that right?

PP: Yeah, they call it the "Pope-a-verse." It's sort of the same imagined future New York City. So you'll see a lot of visual similarities to "Heavy Liquid" although it's, of course, a different story, not necessarily in continuity. But, to me, this world is so interesting, that I think as long as I'm able to do it, I want to return to this place in other stories. It's kind of an alternate New York.

KG: You've made a fairly purposeful shift in "100%" regarding the way you tell your stories, the types of stories you tell. Can you explain that process and why you made these changes?

PP: When I was working on "Heavy Liquid," and I don't feel this way when I do super-hero work, but I did feel this way with "Heavy Liquid," I felt very self-aware of having a few situations in that book that really seemed contrived. They didn't seem genuine enough. For instance, there's a page in "Heavy Liquid" where the character Cross is carrying the dead body of one of the gangsters up the stairs and he's dragging him by the foot and his head is thumping on the steps. I mean, it's a great visual, but as I was working on it, this started to bother me. I realized the story was full of gunfights and car chases, which are things I've actually never experienced…

KG: Which is a good thing…

PP: Right. But, I felt at cross-purposes because I wanted to do something that hit too many angles at the same time. So, I thought abstractly at the time that I'd prefer to do work that involved action sequences that were things I'd actually done before. I mean, not that I really want to fall down a stairwell to find out what it's like. (laughs)

KG: I hope not!

PP: You know what I'm saying? There's a certain authenticity you want your story to have, which by the way, is the reason these stories are set in New York because I live in New York. I know what these street corners look like.

KG: And you based a lot of the interactions between the characters in "100%" on things that have actually happened to you first-hand or to people you know. Is that right?

PP: Exactly. Exactly. I noticed this too with a lot of the comic writers I've met, that they're really great storytellers. If you get a guy like Warren Ellis, for example, he's a great storyteller, or Gaiman, or Kyle Baker. If you sit these guys down they tell hilarious stories, and I thought, this is what makes these guys such great writers is because they're great storytellers. If you get a guy telling you a story about his wife, he can do it with a certain attitude and it makes a very engaging story. There's dramatic tension, climax, resolution, maybe a moral is learned at the end of it, and I thought I needed to do something similar to that.

In my own life, I think I've lived through enough interesting stuff that I think it's worth re-telling. Of course, in this case, it's cloaked in a veil of fiction. Or maybe there are interesting stories that I know, first-hand, happened to other people, my sister for example, or a best friend or what have you. I wanted to take these elements and weave them together into a believable story. That's why "100%" deals so much with relationships. Despite our interest in comics, on a day-to-day basis you're mainly interacting with other people and I think that's something that's a really great avenue for interesting subject matter for stories.

KG: That's actually one of the first rules of writing; to write what you know, rather than write about something you have no idea about. Truthfully, most beginning writers don't follow that rule because it's more fun to write about what we see in the big screen, like car chases and gun fights, things they don't really know and have never really happened to them.

PP: Exactly. Your own life seems so mundane. You want to sit down and write about exciting people in exotic places and you don't really see your own life in that way.

KG: Your writing has been inspired by more near-future style science fiction writers like Phillip K. Dick and William Gibson, rather than the typical comic book brand of sci-fi which deals more with the Space Opera end of the spectrum.

PP: In an effort to become a better writer, I was really trying to get into the short story form. I started reading the works of the great short story writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Jack London, one of my all-time favorites, Mark Twain, primarily American writers, though not necessarily. So, my interest in short stories lead me to read science fiction, for different reasons really. Entertainment being one of them. It's so fascinating to see how some writers are really able to forecast coming events in society. Like "The Iron Clad" by H.G. Wells, who imagined a twentieth century war involving what he called the "Iron Clad" but what we would now call a Tank. So, then I decided to try to go beyond that, to see what might happen in our future.

KG: Did you read that article about the forecasting of future technology?

PP: I saw it but I haven't had time to read it.

KG: I was fascinated about this company whose sole purpose seemed to be to sit around and try to predict when holographic pets will be developed.

PP: Like what sorts of things do they talk about?

KG: Some of it is what you'd expect, but a few of them were pretty cool like video tattoos that you could place under the skin, like a chip, and it would be a little animated holographic video loop.

PP: Oh cool. You know, one of the preview images from "100%," the one of the girl putting the dot on her skin, is sort of a future projection as well. I imagined a character who was always wearing light sensor, or light pollution, indicators and they function sort of as sunglasses to protect her vision. She works in a strip club so sometimes there are really bright strobe lights. It's just basically wearable technology. I like it also in a visual sense because I'm really attracted to Kabuki artists and Japanese prints and things, the whole idea of like a mask. And let me throw this out there too, there's another layer of "100%" that I want to talk about too. The six characters in this book I thought of as a superhero team. They're all classic genre stereotypes.

KG: Even though this isn't a superhero book.

PP: Right. I'm thinking of them as being superheroes, in a sense. Like, they all have different costumes or uniforms. John, the busboy, has sort of a little logo on his chest and he wears these Hercules armbands. He's got a costume and the other characters have a costume, they're almost like the X-Men or something.

In fact, a friend of mine was checking out the first two issues and he commented that it was like Kirby's "Fourth World" on a day off, and that's exactly what I was going for. It's like "The Forever People" or something, like classic Kirby-style superhero teams.

KG: This is back to the idea of their being layers to "100%" rather than just being a simple story you take at face value. There's a lot more going on that you may not notice the first time you flip through the book. You're leaving us clues of various sorts to find within the pages.

PP: Yeah. Like the character Daisy for example. She's intentionally a character I based on the Vertigo character Death. It's a girl with a certain look and these special markings on her face. Not for any love of the character Death, I just thought it would be interesting and challenging to create another Vertigo character with that sort of face paint. Plus, that's my parody of Vertigo. It's supposed to gothic and I wanted to play with that. The boxer, Haitous, is based on a cross between The Hulk and Frankenstein, which if you think about it are sort of the same character to begin with.

KG: Talk about the art direction in "100%." You took some risks with this one and I want to know why you did the things you did.

PP: You know, it's funny. I actually had to fight to get a black and white book. I never thought that that would happen because it's less expensive to publish a black and white, for one thing. But, I actually had to make a case to the editors to get this book in black and white. My thinking was, as I was researching the trajectory of sci-fi, and reading Phillip Dick and Heinlein, I was also looking into things like "Flash Gordon" and "Little Orphan Annie" and other newspaper strips, and I was loving them so much. I noticed that they didn't need to be in color to get its point across. I loved the challenge of that. Plus, having studied with Kodansha in Japan doing Manga and being a fan of Manga in black and white I realized I liked it very much.

So, when Vertigo gave me the contract for "100%" and said, "Here ya go, you can do whatever you want" I thought, if they really mean that, then when that cover says "100%, Paul Pope" that's another layer to the book, that's as real as you can get. Whereas there are places in "Heavy Liquid" I can point out to you and say there were compromises, or road blocks I set up for myself ahead of time thinking that the book would appeal to this subsection of the comics community or whatever, with "100%" I wanted to give people what's real.

KG: You really went beyond the standard black and white though.

PP: If I look at the medium that really moves me, along with sci-fi, and newspaper strips, is the early silent film era. I love it, I love the pantomime of it, I love the opera, I love the speed and pacing, the gesture. There's a kind of a beauty in the early cinematography where they haven't quite got the technology to a point where they're able to master the archival qualities, so now we have these old distressed prints that are very grainy. So, I've always been very attracted to that look.

I think because "100%" is a future story, and because it's a romance I thought it would serve it well to make it look like this artifact that came from the future, but it has this old quality to it so it comes across looking like an old Louise Brooks film or Valentino or something.

KG: That's a fascinating dichotomy there. It's a science fiction, futuristic setting, but it's portrayed in an old distressed silent film format.

PP: I've gotta say that the guy I'm working with, Loughriege, does coloring and separations for me and we really work well together. He and I have come up with a really good working method for creating something that, I guarantee you it's not going to look like anything you've seen before.

Knowing where black and white comics have gone in the last few years, hopefully this is going to be something that will be seen as a new approach. In the same way that "Heavy Liquid" used the two color printing process to achieve somewhat different effects, in fact, I think it's the most successful thing about "Heavy Liquid" is the overall look of it and the atmosphere that comes because of it.

KG: I have to ask you to talk again about what you mean when you say that "To save comics, I had to destroy them."

PP: This whole thing started because I have this essay that Picasso wrote in his twenties, I think right after his cubist period, and he states this basic concept I find very fascinating. He was challenging painting conventions by trying to break down what was known and understood and established; the rules at that time. To destroy in order to create space was his basic idea. I thought that was a very powerful image that sort of leveled the playing field. So, I adapted that notion into the destruction of comics. I became the "Comics Destroyer." In order to save comics, I had to first destroy it.

KG: And by that you mean, take whatever risks, challenge the conventions of comics to this point, to create something new and different and exciting, no matter what it takes.

PP: Exactly. I'm willing to throw out conventions that worked before, but may not work in the future in order to take it somewhere else.

KG: Let me get your opinion on something. I recently read an article in Tripwire UK where the columnist was declaring the death of spandex comics and the beginning of a new era that dealt with other themes. His main point was that, as comic fans and creators have grown up, they've taken the characters that they loved when they were younger and they've tried to make them grow up. His comment was that this was like creating a "Bob The Builder" that dealt with more mature themes and it doesn't work. What's your perspective on this?

PP: I think that, first of all, I tend not to take people seriously who say "This is dead" or what have you. I'm not here to proclaim the death of anything, I'm only here to destroy it.

I don't think superhero comics are that brittle actually. I think they're more pliable than that, more like a green twig that can bend in any way it needs to. I think superhero comics are a form of storytelling, I don't think it's a true genre. It's a way to address some pretty big questions like good versus evil, dynamic human action, courage, heroism, things like that. I don't there's anything inherently wrong with them, but since it's a fairly popular form of comics in the States it gets practiced by a number of people, a lot of them, who only have mediocre ability and from that you get mediocre results. But, I think I would liken Superhero comics more to a ship. It's only as good as its Captain. That's my answer. The superhero stuff I've done is stuff I've believed in. In fact, in the future I'm doing a "Tangled Web Of Spider-Man" issue coming up for Marvel and they're letting me write and draw and it's a story I really believe in.

KG: So you'll be doing this Spider-Man story completely on your own?

PP: That was my condition. I sat down with Bill Jemas and he asked what I wanted to do and I said, "I want to write and draw" and that may change in the future, but right now that's certainly the standard I'm working for them under.

KG: So, the door is open for you to work on more projects for Marvel in the future?

PP: Sure, it's just a matter of finding the right project.

KG: So, will there be a sequel to "100%" somewhere down the line?

PP: You mean, "200%"? (laughs) Actually, I have talked to Vertigo about wanting to do another story set in the same universe, but I can't really talk about the direction that would take just yet.

KG: But, that is something you'd like to do?

PP: Oh, definitely. Yes. It's pretty much a for sure thing. The entire proposal is in. They're just waiting on me to write up a 1500 word plot summary for the story so they'll know where it begins and ends. The marketing people are behind it, the editor is behind it, so it's pretty much all there. But, it will be a thematic sequel, or a visual sequel, but involving totally different characters. The more I get into this future city, the more I'm starting to realize there's quite a bit to it. To me it feels like a real city. It doesn't feel like it's boring or repetitive to revisit this place. It feels like the more I explore this place the more I see there are layers and layers to it.

KG: It's seems that this city you imagined for "Heavy Liquid" and "100%" has become its own character.

PP: Yeah, it is. There was a review of "Heavy Liquid" that they did in Publisher's Weekly and I thought they said the strongest part of the book was that I had created a palpable sense of atmosphere and that the subject of the story really was New York City, rather than the nominal science fiction storyline. It's got it's own visual story. That even helped me understand the story a little better! So, I've been thinking more about that as I've been working on "100%" I've sort of stripped out all of the supernatural elements and cliché elements such as gunfights but it's far from a boring story.

KG: Oh, I totally agree. I've only read the first two issues and I'm pulling my hair out to see what happens next.

PP: I knew it was possible. I love the challenge of it. Like, a new comic coming out from a major publisher in black and white where there's an ensemble cast and nobody dies, nobody gets punched, nothing explodes, nobody can fly, nobody gets shot, but it still succeeds at telling a great story.

KG: None of the typical Vertigo conventions like Horror or violence….

PP: Well, I think there is Horror in "100%" but it's more about encroaching doom. In fact, I went into "100%" with a very carefully thought out political backdrop to the story. The book isn't about politics, but if you read it carefully, there's a lot going on there sort of based on a projection of the world we live in. I imagined sort of a dystopia where people were more secure but less free. Here we are today and that's become something even more important to write about.

KG: You're one of the few creators who both writes and illustrates equally well. Could you imagine yourself ever only doing one or the other?

PP: Oh sure. I like how Jeff Smith ("Bone") puts it, to him a cartoonist writes and draws so his list if pretty small. I think that is a very pure way of expressing just one person to the other. In the case of self-publishing, even the publishing. It's a really special thing. On the other hand, Axel Alonso, my editor at Marvel on "Tangled Web," made a very good case to me for working with other people. He said, "You're going to have a long career. You should think about at some point, if the story's right, drawing somebody else's story. Or writing one for somebody else to illustrate if the right project came along." I think that's a very good case and also, I think I'm too young to really know ahead of time all the right and wrong things to do that's why I'm open to experimenting. I've talked to Brian Azarello and he and I want to work together if the right project comes along. I know it will eventually.

But, sometimes I'm not always satisfied with the results of collaborating. I penciled that issue of "Batman: Turning Points" that Greg Rucka wrote and I didn't know ahead of time who was going to ink it. It was kind of strange because I wound up putting a lot more work into the pencils because like if I'm drawing like a table, I already know what's on the table so I'll draw that in when I come to ink it later, which to me is really the joy of comics. The inking is a very pure expression in the art process, but when you're working with someone else you have to be like a Director. If you want something on the table, you better draw everything you want on there ahead of time. Now, Claude St. Aubin, the inker on "Batman: Turning Points," is a really good inker, I was very happy with what he did, but I'm just used to more of a swashbuckling approach to my art. My ink line is like a sword going across the page and working with someone else felt like a dagger or something strange.

KG: Let me ask you about "THB," your self-published science fiction comic. When can fans expect the next issue?

PP: I've got 36 pages of one sequence done, a little five page short story which is done, and for the main storyline I've got about 19 pages done so I guess that will eventually be "THB #7." The way I try to work it, I try to make my work for hire stuff, (which is funny if you think about it that I call my Vertigo stuff 'work for hire' when it's completely my story and my art), but when I do work for hire I always try to make sure my creative time is sort of spent between the two. I have this vision of how I want "THB" to work. Since I started re-publishing "THB" in like 1999 or early 2000, I've put out five huge issues, about three hundred pages of comics and I feel very good about that. It's very uncompromised work and it's a story I really want to tell. I guess at this point fans are asking, "When's the next 'THB' Annual?" (laughs) But the way I see the story arc it usually ends up being an annual in about a hundred pages. Would you rather I put out a bi-monthly with 18 to 24 pages of story? My answer is no because when ultimately this thing is done it's going to be a perennial like "Dune" or "Akira," something epic. It's something I really honestly care about the most which is why it's something I publish myself and have complete ownership of. Luckily, the readership for "THB" has always been there. The fans are great. But, right now it's still mostly a small audience because, even at this stage of the game, I think a lot of comic book fans don't really know who I am. That's all going to change when "Tangled Web" comes out. It releases about the same time as the Spider-Man Movie so I know it will reach a much bigger potential audience than anything I've ever done before.

KG: Right. Pretty much the way that fans went back and discovered the creator-owned works by Bendis and Mack due to their work on "Daredevil" and "Ultimate Spider-Man."

PP: Exactly. I'm doing a page for Spin Magazine in their next issue, it's a Ramone's piece and that's pretty big. The word is getting out there. The plan is to get all these different things to converge together and create this comfortable space where I can work on "THB." I mean, comfortable in the sense that I don't have to sit down and worry about page rates or deadlines.

Yesterday was a hell of a day. Late last night I end up on this French Bistro on First avenue drinking with my girlfriend and there's another cartoonist at the bar, surprisingly, so we start to talk. This is a guy who is turning down a chance to work on "Spider-Man" out of his concerns for how Ditko was treated. It became this sort of arcane conversation between two comic book monks at a bar at one in the morning. But, this is a guy who is completely unwilling to consider working in comics, a guy who's got some serious chops, but he's taking more of the fine art approach. Even though he's a comic book fanatic, he's completely unwilling to work with editors or within page constraints, or time constraints…now, why did I bring that up? (laughs) Oh! When I work on "THB" versus my work on "Spider-Man" or "100%" I wouldn't want to trade that experience really. I loved working on Batman, but it's a completely different type of industry or type of work than doing it yourself.

KG: We didn't talk about the romance aspect of "100%" yet.

PP: It really is a romance comic, but this isn't like "Young Love." This is a graphic movie and the three relationships are at different stages. You've got the young, hot, sexy couple, in their twenties. Then a fairly older couple, Boxer and the club manager Strell. Then you've got Kim and Eloi, the artist and the bartender, and they're kind of at the point where they're ready to get serious with somebody emotionally. Whereas John and Daisy aren't. They're still really motivated by their underwear, you know? Hopefully, it's a look at three different kinds of relationships.

KG: You really take this story on several twists and turns as well. It's like "Magnolia, The Comic." In the beginning we start out with a murdered girl's leg filling the first page and we get the sense that we're going to be involved in a murder mystery of sorts, but then you twist things just about the time we think we've got the clues figured out.

PP: Page one literally begins with a murder and it's a shot of a leg wearing a tennis shoe. We begin in a place you expect a Vertigo comic to begin, with a crime, and a sexy woman's leg. Of course, it's a corpse's leg. We quickly run away from that presumption of what a Vertigo comic should be. The crime is really the catalyst that sets up the events of the story. Many of the characters have a response to this murder, but quickly you see that it's not the murder that's the point of the story. It's not a Who-Done-It.

KG: But, then, even when we leave that murder behind, we have a character with a gun and they're living in fear because of this and later in the book we see a woman's head in someone's bag at a club. Are you teasing us with these images of impending horror?

PP: It's all intentional. Throughout the book there's a repeating visual image of a woman's leg upturned. It does appear throughout the book. It deals with perceptions of women and what that might be in a future world and what that means for people who are insecure with their relationships. So, there is a lot of that. The murder is the most extreme thing. That event is an example of one of many events in this hostile world that the characters live in. I like that because that's the backdrop for this romance. Even in this sort of dystopian world, which, I think is not that different from the world we live in today. Fast forward about thirty years and I think this what New York might look like. It's not "Blade Runner." It's something American, something urban. Like the calamity we're living in today. They're still trying to find a place for themselves.

KG: The sense of it is that, this is still our world. The core of the book is still something tangible. It feels like the world we live in and people we could even know today. The technology may be a bit more advanced in certain areas, but deep down the characters here are just people like you and I.

PP: That's where "THB" and "100%" have a lot in common because deep down they're still stories about relationships. "THB" is really about youth and the struggle between authentic life and freedom of movement, even though it's setting is on Mars. "100%" is a similar story but it's based on a world that's closer to the world we live in right now.

KG: I think this is why Hollywood can't seem to make a good science fiction film lately. They still think they have to spend two hundred million on special effects and a big name star and a big name director and then, somewhere as an afterthought is a script. But, that's not true. One of the best sci-fi films I've seen is "Gattaca" where there's almost zero special effects.

PP: Oh, that's a good one.

KG: Yeah, and it's just because it's a great premise and it makes you think.

PP: You know what good science fiction can be like? It can be like a protest. It can be like a folk singer like Dylan because it's really about the world we're living in today. I mean, no one wants to be lectured to, telling them how to live. But, one of the great strengths of the science fiction form is that you are able to make commentaries about the world we live in today, even as you tell a story about an imagined world.

You know I was talking to Jeff Smith about something like this and in some ways "THB" and "Bone" are very similar stories. I know how "Bone" is going to end, in fact, he better give me credit down the line when all's said and done because I've helped him work out some problems in his story and he has done the same for me on "THB" as well. In fact, Jeff is the reason I started writing more about HR's Dad.

Anyway, Jeff and I were talking and he made the statement that he's really committed to fantasy and I'm very committed to sci-fi. And I think it's really a good thing to be known as a sci-fi writer who does comics, or a comics author who uses sci-fi. That was something he and I agreed on a few years ago and I think now that I've really started to put out more things you can really look and say that there is, overall, a sci-fi bent to the work I'm doing.

KG: You really can tell that you've got a love for the genre. In fact, it was when I was reading "Heavy Liquid" for the first time that I kept thinking, "Man, I wish this would be made into a film!."

PP: Well, it might happen some day. I'm at the point where every few months I get a new phone call. "Heavy Liquid" got a few offers, but the furthest anything I've done has gotten is "Escapo." There were a couple of pretty solid offers for that. At one time even Tim Burton was looking at "Escapo"…

KG: That would've been huge!

PP: That would've been fucking amazing! Of course, you can't get too excited because they've got like twenty-five films in development and then only one of them gets made so you can't get your hopes up. But, "Heavy Liquid" had a couple of offers and I think eventually that really will happen. Especially as more of my work gets out there.

Still, one of the beautiful things about comics is that they leave you alone. You turn in the work and you're finished, you don't have to deal with all the "Yes Men" or "No Men" out in Hollywood.

KG: Would you be interested in releasing an art/design book in the future?

PP: Yes, I'm interested in doing an art book! I think this book, which would be an art catalogue, will come, probably after the splash made by "100%" and the 2002-2003 "Spider-man/Catwoman: Axis of Evil."