Award-winning novelist and screenwriter John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, American Crime) has been involved with several big projects since he began writing comics. His first project for DC Comics, The Other History of the DC Universe has been met with critical acclaim, and his Future State: The Next Batman mini-series was met with enthusiasm by fans, selling out at comic shops and demanding a second printing a short time after being released. Now, Ridley is about to tackle another iconic DC superhero: Superman.

Ridley sat down with CBR to discuss writing the opening story, which features art from Clayton Henry, in the six-issue anthology series Superman: Red and Blue, which will feature stories illustrated in the iconic red and blue hues of Superman's suit. In this revealing interview, Ridley also speaks about drawing on personal experience in his writing, his reason for choosing to not title his story, and the deeply personal experiences he draws upon when writing his stories.

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CBR: If I'm not mistaken this is your first time writing a Superman story, correct?

John Ridley: Absolutely. This is my very first Superman and a very exciting way for me to start off writing about him.

CBR: What was it like to write the World's Greatest Hero?

Ridley: I'm enjoying myself now professionally, maybe more than ever. I've always loved comic books and graphic novels, and it was great to be able to write The American Way. It was humbling to be invited to write The Next Batman. The Other History of the DC Universe has probably been the most rewarding experience in my professional career. So that was all good, because I got to do these things that I literally dreamed about when I was a kid.

At the time I was asked to write a Superman story, the things that I was writing were coming from a real perspective about race and demographics. And that was fine and great, because those were things that I really understood. Those are the things that I like writing about in television, film, books, and graphic novels, to just give a little bit of perspective, a little reality check in the things that I was doing. But then, I was asked to write a fairly pure Superman story, and to step out of the things that I use to make my writing distinct, urgent, and necessary. And it was like, 'Okay, can you really step up and write one more story to add to the great canon of one of the greatest characters ever created? And do something not necessarily monumental, or game-changing, but adds to Superman?' That was a little daunting.

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CBR: You've already been given the opportunity to write Batman and now you've written a Superman story. What kind of mark would you like to leave on these iconic characters you're getting the chance to write?

Ridley: A very personal one. I really wanted to try to imbue into this story one of the first comic books that I remember reading back in the day, [Bob Haney and Ross Andru's] World's Finest #192 and 193. I remember, as a kid, reading them and thinking that they were really raw, certainly for that time period. And it was about Superman being lured to a state that was ostensibly under Soviet domination. He has his powers taken away, and he's put in a prison camp where he's tortured and beaten, and I remember thinking as a kid that this was not wish-fulfillment or a hero story. This story was sort of a contemporary dealing with communism from an American point of view story, and it was a story that felt raw. It felt like it was dealing with the real issues of humanity, like the people's lack of civil rights, incarceration and punishment. I remember, even as a kid, being so interested in the Civil War, slavery and the notion that blacks were freed at that time. Even as a kid, I understood that notional freedom and actual freedom are two different things, and this was a powerful telling of that.

And so now, I had an opportunity decades later to revisit that experience that Superman went through, and I have the opportunity to tell a really personal story that's less a Superman story and more of a Clark Kent story. I got to explore what happens when somebody really has to reconcile a trauma in their life, to finally move past something that made them feel so very human. It made Superman more relatable to a real person. This was a return to a story that really shaped my perspective on storytelling and comic books, and was personal for Superman as well in that it wasn't just another story about him being the most powerful person in the universe, but having to be a man and what it was like for him, for maybe the first time in his life, to realize that when it comes down to it he's still just flesh and bone.

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CBR: So instead of focusing on the vast power of Superman, you instead chose to focus on a moment in his life when he was the most vulnerable. Is there a particular reason other than what you've already said about why you chose to go in that direction?

Ridley: What makes heroes most interesting to me, is when you can see their vulnerabilities and their humanity. To me, just as a writer, one of the things that's really challenging, whether it's film or TV or graphic novels, is that sense of false jeopardy, when you just know nothing's going to happen to this hero, so you go through the entire story and end up essentially where you began. You know Bruce is not going away, Clark is not going away, Diana is not going away, Oliver is not going away. They just can't you know, people love them, they sell comic books, they sell t-shirts, they sell mugs. So you get it, you know you have to write these stories that are exciting, but they have to remain. But for me as a writer, irrespective of whether it's comic books, or TV or movies, it dissipates some of the storytelling when you have that false jeopardy, you get that cliffhanger at the end of a book, and you know everything's going to turn out all right.

So for me, anytime that you can see heroes, as people where there's pain, where there's loss, where there are things that they can't control, where they're made to feel human, where they doubt themselves, there's an element of real-life in there. Now, I understand that so much of comic books is about wish fulfillment, and I don't want to take any of that away, but part of wish fulfillment to me is not about being so super that you're impervious, but being so human that part of being extraordinary is just getting past some of your own fears and anxiety.

I think that just as a person in the real world, we've gone through a year of fear and anxiety, but as we come out of it, we see that the people who are really extraordinary are the doctors, the nurses and the delivery people who brought us our food. Before we dismiss them as nobodies we need to realize that they're heroes. So to me, that's part of the storytelling. And that was a big reason why I think that story, even when I was a kid, was compelling to me: because it was different than a typical Superman story. The stories that are interesting to me are the stories where you get why these characters are human and can see that humanity. To me, that is interesting and that is the challenge. It's not a challenge when Superman can do anything, but it becomes a challenge when he can't do anything, but still chooses to do the right thing.

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CBR: I noticed that vulnerability is a recurring theme in your stories. You exposed the vulnerability of Tim Fox in The Next Batman, and even in the story you wrote for Wolverine: Black White and Blood #3. Why is this particular theme one that you find so interesting?

Well, they say write what you know, and I don't know science fiction, and I've never had superpowers, so I can't write those things. But I do, just as a person, understand vulnerability, and I think I understand that duality, where the perceptions of other people are not equal to how one sees themselves. And it's kind of a blessing and a curse.

The folks at DC look at me, and assume I can write a really good story so they give me their best characters, and I appreciate that. As somebody who's worked very hard, you appreciate when people believe in you, but as a person, you wonder if you can really do it. You wonder if you're going to embarrass and humiliate yourself, and you maybe don't see yourself as being the writer they think you are. But I've been given the job and I have to go work hard and pull it off. So I understand that sense of vulnerability, I understand that duality between the mask that people give me as a writer, and the question I ask myself about being able to pull it off and be the person they expect me to be.

The person that my wife and my kids see is different from the person who's out there in public. So I get that feeling. It's like the ending of the Wolverine story I wrote, when Logan realizes that having mutant powers isn't going to save the day, and he has to make another choice. And you know, I love it in that story. I love it in this Clark story. I was really humbled when my editor told me that it was one of the best Clark Kent stories he ever read. And I appreciate the way he said that, calling it a Clark Kent story instead of a Superman story. And as a story about Clark Kent, it reveals something that maybe other people didn't know.

But to your question, yes, vulnerability and humanity, the smallness in people that sometimes makes them the perfect person for the job or better than other individuals - those are the things that are interesting to me as a storyteller, irrespective of the space where I may be telling the story.

CBR: Is there a particular reason why you chose not to your Superman: Red and Blue it a title?

Ridley: I typically don't title the work that I do within larger bodies of work. I feel like within the body of a work giving an episode of a TV show a title is a kind of overthinking it a little bit. I really like minimalism, both in writing and execution. And I feel like giving a very grand title to one small piece of a larger work that you just hope and believe is going to be good on its own is a little much.

When I started writing some of the shorter stories that I've been writing, in particular, in the DC Universe, and even for Marvel, I would turn the work in and they wouldn't have titles and the editors would say they really needed titles. And I certainly wouldn't fight it. For a lot of the titles, I would tell the editor that I didn't have a problem with them giving it a title, and they would do it. But I had a little more history with the editor at DC, and when I explained my reasoning, he agreed to run it without a title.

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CBR: There's a great line in your Superman: Red and Blue story: "It's easy to move on when  you're the victimizer and not the victim." What was the inspiration behind that quote?

Ridley: That is my perspective about the prevailing culture in this country. When bad things happen to people who are traditionally marginalized, there's this feeling of okay, we get it, it was wrong, let's just move on. You can see that just over the last year or even in this year with the things that happened on January 6. There are a lot of people who are like, okay, yeah, we get it, it's bad, let's just move on. But it's like, no, you can't just move on, there are things that need to be worked through and things that need to be acknowledged and dealt with.

It was very important for me to represent that for Superman. Even though we see him as Superman, he needed a moment where he couldn't just move on from it. With trauma, sometimes we have to look at it, and that's okay. Whether it's societal trauma, whether it's personal trauma, I think sometimes in life, we feel like we have to be happy today. It's great if you can be happy, I wish happiness on everyone every day. But sometimes we have to slow down and go, 'OK, today's not a good day and this is why. Let me deal with that. And let me work my way through it.' It's okay to hurt, you know, that that's a natural human thing.

Hurt and trauma and regular and normal emotions. They need to be acknowledged. we need to understand that it's never good when people hurt, but it's okay to hurt because that's an acknowledgment that there is something going on that people need to deal with, and we need to help people deal with that hurt, trauma, or whatever they're going through.

Superman: Red and Blue features stories by John Ridley, Clayton Henry, and others and will be available on March 16th from DC Comics.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misidentified the artist of Ridley's story. That has been updated in the preceding.

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