DC Entertainment is relaunching Vertigo this August to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the beloved mature-readers imprint. Seven brand-new titles are on the way, and one of them is Goddess Mode by Hugo Award nominee Zoë Quinn and Spider-Gwen artist Robbi Rodriguez. Goddess Mode takes place in a future where a powerful A.I. fulfills humanity's needs, but there's a secret digital world that lurks beneath everyone.
After the DC Vertigo panel at New York Comic Con, CBR chatted with Quinn about what it's like writing her very first comic series.
CBR: What was it like hearing fans react to the Goddess Mode preview during the DC Vertigo panel?
Zoë Quinn: It still hasn't hit me that this is a real thing yet. I feel like I've somehow stumbled into one of those situations where it's like, I must have gotten into a car crash last year and this is some really cool coma that I'm going to wake up from at some point. I'm just as surprised and as excited as a lot of people, I think.
Something that I'm really loving about the creative process is getting back art from Robbi and [colorist] Rico [Renzi] is like, "Oh my God! That looks so cool! Are you serious?! That came out of us?! Ahhh!" It's given me feelings that I haven't had since back when I was in shitty riot grrrl bands like 20 years too late as a teenager. It's like that cool kind of jamming back and forth. I love it.
CBR: What's it like writing your first comic and seeing that artwork bring it to life?
Quinn: It's really cool, it feels like sending messages in a ball back and forth to each other. It's really neat to start learning his style, too. I can tell when he's having fun with a page, and I'm like, cool, I want to feed more of that and figure out how to speak his language. Going back and forth with Robbi has been really fun because we're both old punk weirdos, so it's like making references Siouxsie and the Banshees and shit like that. Or like, Madonna from a specific era. Pulling from music influences that we share for character design stuff and having that shared language has been really fun.
It's a really refreshing change of pace from games, where it takes years to ship anything. And it's like, I'm not going to have to wait years and years and years to talk about what I'm doing? I love it.
It sounds weird coming from me of all people, but I'm looking forward to looking at the reactions online. But the art looks so cool, I'm so stoked about it. And it's really nice that this project has such talented people on it. I can talk up my collaborators all day because I'm just so dang proud of them.
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CBR: The solicitation has been out and you've had opportunities to talk a lot about Goddess Mode, but what's something you haven't had the chance to say about it that you'd like to share?
Quinn: That's a really good question. It's hard because I still haven't been able to summarize what I'm trying to go for here in one sentence. It's like, "Hey, how about for my first comic we build this whole world? And we have to build this tech stuff which is a whole thing, and a whole magic system. And then we also have to make characters." So, it's like there's so much in my head at any given time that I'm still trying to figure out how to distill it and make sense, but the thing that I'm really trying to get home is that this is fundamentally a story for anybody who's like, "Everything is on fire, I don't feel like I can do anything. What do I do? I'm afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing or making things worse. I have bills to pay. How can I go out and fight something? I feel so powerless, I feel so lost. I feel so confused." It's like yelling, "same, let's not let that stop us and figure out how all of us, as kind of broken people, can get together, build some coalitions, start some dialogues, have better communication, and get our shit together before the world ends." I'm not even saying I have an answer for that, either.
I think as an author every character ends up low-key being some kind of self-insert. Whether it's some piece of you, like fear or anxiety or hope, it's a mix of all the different things I feel about that; different ways of arguing with myself, and also just different personality types I've seen within my time in activism and trying to work with people I don't see eye to eye with. Or people that I've been wrong about and needed to learn from, and also putting my own feelings into characters... not even trying to necessarily forgive myself, but trying to make sense of everything that is the messy, complicated business of trying to come up with a version of the world that hasn't existed yet. And I'm not talking about the futuristic stuff, I'm just talking about a hopeful world that's kinder to everybody, that's merciful... that we don't necessarily have the roadmap for, but I feel like a lot of people have the different pieces for.
I'm not sure how to get everybody to work together but, damn it, I'm going to try. And damn it, I know a lot of good people who are trying, and I know a lot of people who are afraid to try but don't know where to start. I just want to say it's okay to try, it's okay to fail. Let's figure out a way that we can fail without burning ourselves into small, tiny piles of ashes that get blown away.
Vertigo's always been a label that experiments with new stuff and forms of subversion. To me, the subversive thing for 2018 is still having hope. It's so easy to be ground down by everything, and I think that's how we lose. I'm trying to, in a meta way, be like, "No, let's not give up! It's fine that we're all super fucked up!" We are all super fucked up, even when we're super not supposed to say that. We want to have all the answers, and we to see people that look like they have all the answers, but we are all super fucked up and we can't let that stop us.
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CBR: You've talked about the messages you're trying to tell readers and the world you're building, but what's it like choreographing the action scenes?
Quinn: I love it! I love going back and forth with Robbi on it. I love designing magic powers that, to me, are a little bit self-indulgent but in a way that I think is relatable. Like, one of the girls has magic headphones that when she puts it on, she phases out of existence and nothing can interact with her.
CBR: That would be nice.
Quinn: Right?! There's a character who can be in many, many places at once and do a bunch of stuff at once. There's a character whose power is knowing what the masses are thinking and feeling. My main character's power is garbage, and figuring out how to choreograph and represent that, and all of these things do have computer science double meanings. I think people that are savvy to that stuff will be like, "Oh, I see what you did there," and everyone else will be like, "That sounds cool."
I think in one of my notes for the first issue -- and I hope this is okay to say -- is that it should feel like burying somebody in a grave that they dug for you. I get weirdly abstract with it because I trust Robbi's instincts. He's really, really, really good at just stunning action sequences and, collaboratively, I do like the series of trust falls. Like, this is the feeling, I trust you to get us there. You know what we're trying to do. If you agree with my decisions, awesome! If not, I'm sure you're going to come up with something even cooler. It really does have that band feeling to it. And then seeing Rico come in with the stunning colors and having a Sandman letterer is so cool.
CBR: So, your name is going to be not only on a comic book for DC, but for the relaunch of Vertigo.
Quinn: No pressure!
CBR: None whatsoever! What does it feel like to know that you're working on something that'll be published by DC and people will eventually hold a comic with your name on it?
Quinn: I'm going to give you the optimistic answer and the while-I'm-working answer. The optimistic answer? Holy shit! Really? That's so dope! I can't believe that, I'm honored. I don't know what I did to deserve that. I really want to live up to it. I'm working my ass off to really prove that I belong here. To earn my place, to do the work, to dig deep and do right by my collaborators, and do right by the people who believed in me enough to get me there in the first place and give it the best shot I've got.
The less optimistic answer in the middle of writing? It's like, oh fuck! This is such a big deal! Oh no, oh no, oh no! I wish I had something small that no one in the world would see so I could make all the fuck ups in there, but that's also against the spirit of what I'm writing about too, you know? I'm trying to write about mercy and forgiveness and not being perfect. I take a very Hermione approach to learning any medium, in which case it's like you don't even want to see what my desk looks like now. I do not half ass anything. I'm all ass, all the time.
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CBR: What are your hopes for this new franchise?
Quinn: Oh God, you said the "F" word! That's so much worse than the "F" words I've said!
I have three volumes very clearly in my head that I hope to God people want and we get to do. One of the new things about comics that I'm trying to be okay with is it's episodic. It's got that format as opposed to games, where it's like that's it, bye! I really want to be able to tell the full story and I've got it set up in a way where I can build stories on top of that because I've done all this heavy lifting right out of the gate in building this world.
Everything is there deliberately, even if it doesn't seem like it at first. I have so many plans, so much so that my collaborators poke fun at me for overthinking things, which is totally legitimate and I'm totally glad they call me on it. My hope for this is that I can at least tell the full story with the big moments I see in my head.
I know the first time I see a Goddess Mode cosplayer I'm going to cry in such a loud, obnoxious way that it'll be audible from space. If I see a cosplayer I'm going to lose it.
CBR: Is there anything else you'd like to say to the CBR community about Goddess Mode?
Quinn: I really, really, really love writing comics. I really want to write more and I am so happy to be here. Hopefully, everybody else is as hyped about this as I am, and I want to do right by everybody. I don't view comics as a weird side detour. I'm not here as a tourist, I'm here because I love this medium and I'm really honored to be part of it in such a big way right out of the gate, and I want to do right by that and I'm taking it very seriously.
Goddess Mode #1 goes on sale Dec. 12.