An interview with Tim Seeley

Back when I was doing my After Awesome series, I mentioned that one of the true highlights of the comics that followed Moore's Awesome series was Bloodstrike, written by Tim Seeley. Seeley went back to the original idea of Bloodstrike--the government bringing back superheroes from the dead and sending them on suicide missions--and made it witty and fun. It was a great book, which unfortunately didn't last long. But what we did get was a wonderful read and featured an amazing two-parter featuring Suprema and Twilight, which is worth finding.

Seeley was nice enough to agree to an interview about the painfully overlooked series.

Me: Why did you want to restart Bloodstrike? Was it the concept, the character of Cabbot? It must have been important to you since you pitched it so many times (I think I heard four times)? Were you told anything you couldn't do or had to do in the series, or was it very hands off?

Tim Seeley: I think for me, Bloodstrike was always about the unlimited potential. As a guy who grew up on a steady diet of superheroes, action movies, zombies and slashers, I knew Bloodstrike could be ALL of those things at once, and scratch every itch I had. I wasn't given much in the way of restrictions.. Eric Stephenson just told me to 'do my thing,' which was so cool and trusting of him. Mostly I felt a need to respect the original concept and material, and gave myself a self-restriction. Looking back at it all, maybe I was too conservative given how out there PROPHET with Brandon and his crew went.

Me: What was the genesis of the Egyptian zombies? And what was your long-term plan for them? The series kind of ends with them wanting to take out famous politicians and even governments that kill in the name of God.

TS: Yeah, I had some really big ideas for those guys. I mean, a team of militant zombie supervillains is cool enough on its own, but having them be heroes in their own minds and philosophically in opposition to Bloodstrike was going to raise all kinds of questions about ideas of the afterlife and give me tons of material for story-lines had we gone on.

Me: Did you enjoy writing for Cabbot? You did such a nice job of humanizing him and even giving him an arc of developing feelings for Kendra, the poor sexually harassed tech, who you developed nicely, too.

TS: I loved Cabbot. I felt like Cabbot didn't get a lot of personality back in the original series, so I made it my duty to build him out and give him some flaws and desires. I wanted his arc to be about aging, having strong personal morals, and about living past your era. And, the idea was that he and Kendra wold be those two broken people, out-of-time in their own ways, who, against odds, would find something in each other.

Me: It seems like after the TPB, the next three issues were very superheroy, with the flashback to Slingstone and then the Youngblood girls. Was that intentional or it just sort of worked out like that?

TS: Bloodstrike never really got the Awesome Comics revamp that the other titles did, so I wanted to connect those to ideas of the Extreme Universe. Moore's Youngblood and Supreme are two of my favorite comics of all time. I thought the dichotomy of the 80s action movie world that Cabbot had come from and the 50s superhero world that Suprema and Twilight came from would be a great study in contrasts.

Me: What was the thought behind bringing Suprema and Twilight into the series? Moore's run on Youngblood hadn't been well-read and wasn't tied to previous incarnations of Bloodstrike or Extreme. How much did you need to research them (did you read the unpublished Youngblood scripts)? Was it fun to write for Suprema and Twilight? Did you like the Awesome run? Did you have any plans to tie in more from the Awesome days?

TS: Yeah, I've studied those Alan Moore scripts for years, and like I said, the Awesome books were treasures to me. Preppy, snooty Suprema is, undeniably, in my top 5 characters to write, ever. I would chuck some pretty plum assignments to write a book just about her, co-starring Twilight. So, yeah, I had a lot of ideas about bringing in more Awesome stuff, including, eventually incorporating The Goat from the unused scripts. And I wanted to do a flashback issue to the Slingstone days featuring young Cabbot, Waxman, The Fisherman and others on a street level mission.

Me: This is something I'm always curious about with comic writers... when you're doing a series and have a lot of threads going, do you worry about cancellation and leaving them all hanging, or do you just not think about it and write like you're going to be on the series for a long time? Was it a surprise when the series was cancelled? Was there anything you regretted not getting to do before you were cancelled?

TS: Yeah, I was under the impression I'd be getting a longer run, and wrote that way. I was really bummed out the series didn't catch, but I blame myself, and the fact that I wasn't SHOCKING anyone, which is what I think people were expecting out of those books. I was just writing good superhero stories for Gaston to draw beautifully. I wasn't trying to reinvent the wheel. I should have I guess.

Me: Do you mind if I ask about some of the loose threads? Was Tag someone before she was killed that was part of Youngblood? You seemed to hint at it, but we never found out.

TS: Yeah, I had a lot of plans for her, as I did for all the new members. I wanted to play this a lot like the New Titans series Marv and George did...giving each character a different genre backstory so we could play in every single sandbox.

Me: Were we going to see more of the original Fourplay and other original Bloodstrike team?

TS: Yeah, I had a big plan to show those characters and where they'd ended up, eventually putting them in conflict with the new team. I loved what Michel Fiffe did it with them though, so it worked out.

Me: Where were you going with the Battlestone and Cabbot? Were they just always going to hate each other or was there a bigger plan?

TS: I was going to get into their history more, and show why Battlestone was such a prick. But, I also wanted to show what motivated him to do good, because he had that in him too. Eventually I wanted to get into what I felt like Rob was always going towards with his Extreme universe stuff...this idea that superheroes weren't always necessarily inherently good, and that really, the most selfless of all of them was really Cabbot. We'd have seen that Cabbot was originally going to be the head of Youngblood but that he thought the institution was corrupt from the beginning, and that his ultimate punishment was being inducted into Bloodstrike. I dunno...it would have been pretty cool. You're making me all sad I didn't get to finish it!

Shameless plug

A friend and I have created a comic book called Miskatonic High. Five teens take on H.P. Lovecraft’s monsters and their small-town high school … They’re just not sure which is worse.

We launched it on Kickstarter a few weeks ago and completely crushed our goals. We'll be launching the Kickstarter for issue 2 in early April, which will be a great opportunity to get caught up on the first issue. You can find out more at miskatonichighcomic.com.