Interview: Mike Carey On Sigil

Sigil. The word connotes the unknown, an arcane symbol representing mysteries from beyond our world. The Sigil was also the central concept of the CrossGen Universe, which existed from 2000 to 2004, in the form of a line of comics from the eponymous publisher. As a concept within the CrossGen Universe, the Sigil manifested as a symbol fused onto the bodies of various individuals known as Sigil-bearers, granting them enormous power. One of the central books in which the Sigil played a role was appropriately titled Sigil; a sci-fi space opera about a soldier in the far future granted this mysterious power. The series ran for 42 issues, but came to an end in 2004 with the publisher's bankruptcy.

But in an unusual turn of events, a subsidiary of the Disney Corporation quickly purchased the entirety of CrossGen's property with an eye towards making use of some of CrossGen's all-ages properties, which it did in a series of children's books featuring J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Ploog's Abadazad. But that was the extent of CrossGen's existence post-bankruptcy, until the Disney Corporation made another purchase; their acquisition of Marvel Comics. Both fans and professionals quickly realized the possibilities with Marvel now having access to CrossGen's library of well-remembered titles, which still retained a vocal following.

Given that, it seems almost inevitable that we would now to come to this point, where the CrossGen line is being relaunched under the banner of Marvel Comics. But don't think you know what to expect; this is a complete re-imagining of the CrossGen concepts, with an eye toward welcoming new and old readers alike. Helming the first book of the relaunch, the new Sigil series, is Mike Carey, known both for his work at Marvel on X-Men Legacy and his creator-owned series The Unwritten. I spoke with Mike to learn more about the direction for this new Sigil series, and what makes this universe ripe for relaunch.

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Matt Adler: How did you get involved with relaunching Sigil?

Mike Carey: Basically, editor Nick Lowe told me that Marvel was looking to relaunch some of the CrossGen titles, and he asked me if I was interested in being part of that. And we talked about a number of things, and Sigil was definitely the one that got me most excited, because I just thought the central concept was so cool and lent itself to so many interesting approaches. So I pitched some ideas, and we talked about it some more, and they commissioned it.

MA: How familiar were you with the CrossGen books prior to starting this?

MC: I read a lot of them back in the day; I didn’t read them religiously, I didn’t follow every title all the way through, but I picked up a lot of them, and I really enjoyed the ones I read, and I really respected and appreciated what CrossGen was doing, which was building a line around not super-heroes, but science-fiction and fantasy tropes and settings. I’m a huge fan of those genres in prose fiction and frequently it saddens me that it’s hard for a sci-fi or fantasy comic to find an audience and to sustain itself in the long-term. Obviously there are honorable exceptions to that like Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan, some of Chaykin’s work, the British comic 2000AD, and all of its various spinoffs, but the history of the medium is littered with sci-fi comics which although they were brilliant, just didn’t quite manage to get off the ground. So yeah, what CrossGen was doing appealed to me, and the idea of taking another crack at that did too.

MA: Did you ever have an interest in writing for them at the time?

MC: Well, they had the whole bullpen thing, didn’t they? So basically, most of their creators were working out of Florida. I’m a Brit and I have a family and it would never have been possible for me, even if they had approached me, which they didn’t, to make that move. I know later on in their history they sort of opened up, varied their model, and yeah, at that point, if they’d asked me to come in, I probably would have said yes.

MA: So what is it about the CrossGen line in particular that makes it worthy of a relaunch all these years later?

MC: I think that, as I said, the core is sci-fi/fantasy rather than superhero. And therefore, in a marketplace which is in some ways overcrowded, it has a unique selling point. I think the ways in which they interconnected various titles through the device of the Sigil was really clever and really interesting. To maintain that connective tissue, despite the fact that your books are working in so many different ways, and following so many different genre conventions, was quite a feat. They had some great books;  they had Ruse, the Victorian detective series, they had El Cazador, which we’re obviously referencing in our series; there was a lot of really exciting stuff going on.

MA: How did you decide which elements of Sigil needed to be changed for this revamp?

MC: I think we’ve kept almost nothing; we’ve kept the concept of the Sigil itself; we’ve kept the name of the protagonist. Apart from that, it’s a complete reimagining. We talked about many possibilities, including something that was closer to the original, but at a certain point, we kept coming back to this idea of having a teenage girl—teenage boy or girl—coming into the power kind of by accident. Most of the Sigil-bearers, it’s given to you by an outside power, and you’re trained in the use of it. This girl for some reason has it printed on her skin; she has it as a birthmark, and the power is kind of innate, inside of her, and she’s not quite sure why. And nobody else is quite sure why. But it means that her birthright is to be part of this war that she didn’t even know was happening. And it seemed like a cool way of opening up the world of the Sigil and the premises of the story gradually, as you see it through her eyes, through the eyes of somebody who is, to begin with, completely ignorant.

MA: So was making the protagonist a 16-year old girl from the present day an effort to make the story more relatable to readers?

MC: Yeah, that was certainly one of the things we were thinking of. And at a quite early stage, we decided that one of the features of the Sigil that we were going to be playing on very strongly in this mini is the time travel aspect. It allows you to move very freely through time and space. And we thought, there is a danger in that, that it’s kind of like an “anything box”, because you can do anything with it. There’s a danger of becoming too attenuated. So having a real world context that she has to keep coming back to, we thought was important. And also, the things that happen to her in the real world context, the crisis that she’s in when we first meet her, and the tragedies that are in her past, all turn out to be directly relevant to what she’s doing when she’s several centuries earlier fighting the pirates. Although she doesn’t know it, it’s already been impacting on her, this other world, this other context.

MA: What can you tell us about the two armies fighting this war that she gets drawn into?

MC: I’d prefer not to say very much at all, because as I say, we’re seeing it all through Sam’s eyes, and she knows very little about it. There is a side to which she seems to belong, and then there’s the other side. And there’s a sense in which the people she talks to would very much like her to see that in terms of absolute good and absolute evil. But within the scope of this miniseries, we definitely have a guy fighting on the other side who does some terribly ruthless things, and who has injured Sam very deeply. But we don’t know. We don’t know what’s at stake, we don’t know what distinguishes one side from the other; it’s hard to say. Apart from saying “My enemy’s enemy is my friend,” it’s hard to say who’s right and who’s wrong in this quarrel, and who started it.

MA: So she doesn’t get a clear picture as to what they’re fighting about right away?

MC: No, she doesn’t. She know what they’re fighting about in this one battle, and she knows what’s at stake in this battle and what she has to do; her goals become very clear. But the broader context remains unclear. And if we carry the story on, beyond this miniseries, one of the first things she’s going to try to do is to fill in those gaps in her knowledge.

MA: Is one of those secrets how this conflict can go on and not disrupt everyday life throughout human history?

MC: Yes, yes it is. And also, how it can possibly have gone on for as long it has, so many, many thousands of years, without reaching an outcome? There’s kind of an alternate history which has to be told.

MA: You mentioned there’s a guy fighting on the other side who has injured Sam very deeply, and it’s been revealed that there is a villain who is responsible for the death of her mother. Is that part of Sam’s motivation in getting involved in this?

MC: Yeah, very much. There’s a point in the second issue where if she wanted to, she could walk away. She could walk away clean. But she can’t, because by that time she’s realized that her mother’s life and her mother’s death were… her mother was also involved in this war, and was a casualty of it. And so she has a personal stake in it for that reason. But there again, there are a lot of things that aren’t immediately apparent; exactly how her mother died, and exactly who was involved in it.

MA: And why she wouldn’t have prepared Sam for this eventuality.

MC: Yes, yes indeed. Why she died without giving Sam the knowledge that would have helped her to protect herself.

MA: In terms of its powers, how much similarity does the Sigil Sam wears bear to the Sigil that we know from the old series?

MC: There’s a lot of overlap. We’ve customized it a little. The way we’ve done it, initially, she knows it can be used for transportation, that it can take her to different times and places, and she knows that it can be used as a weapon, and then we gradually, in the course of the four issues, open out other things that it can do. It’s a multi-purpose tool. It serves to identify friend from foe, it serves as a communications device, it serves as a weapon, it serves as a shield, it’s the ultimate transport, and it’s many, many more things besides. But again, we don’t know what the source of this power is and how come both sides seem to have equal access to it.

MA: You also mentioned that the pirate ship El Cazador will play a role in this mini; what made you decide to bring that series into the mix?

MC: I really, really wanted to write a pirate story! (laughs) And it seemed like a cool way to bring it in. It comes back to my being a sucker for strong female protagonists; El Cazador had a very cool female pirate captain, Lady Sin.  And I thought it might be nice to have Lady Sin in the mix, playing off against this young girl, and to some extent helping her come into her legacy.

MA: Are you hoping that if this series does well, you might get to do an El Cazador spinoff series?

MC: Well, I’d love to play more with the CrossGen Universe, with the properties of the CrossGen Universe… yeah, it would be cool to go back to El Cazador, it would be very cool to tell more stories about Sam, to get to carry the Sigil story on. There’s lots and lots… we’ve talked about where we would take it if it became an ongoing, or even if we just had another mini. There’s lots of things still to be revealed, lots of ideas that we’ve got for Sam’s character arc.

MA: Just speaking as a fan, I’d love to see Steve Epting draw El Cazador again.

MC: That would be very cool, wouldn’t it?

MA: So will we see any other eras in this miniseries, besides the present day and the 17th century?

MC: Briefly, yeah, there is some time-hopping… there’s a little in issue #2 and there’s a lot in issue #4. But the two main settings are present day and the late 17th century. Those are our two main platforms.

MA: Leonard Kirk is your artist on this book; have you followed his work before?

MC: Yeah, both in the DC Universe and more recently on Captain Britain and MI13. He’s an amazing artist, and the work he’s doing for Sigil is jaw-droppingly beautiful. These great three-masted ships… there are two ships in the story, there’s the El Cazador and there’s a British merchantman, the Red Harvest, and they’re very different ships, and they look very different, they look very authentic. He’s realized these settings with amazing care and with amazing skill, and every page just gives me a huge thrill when I look at it. I’ve just been looking at some pages from issue #2, which take place on the other ship, the Red Harvest, and I was chortling with glee, because they’re so good.

MA: To what degree will these new CrossGen books form a universe? Are they closely connected?

MC: To begin with, they’re not connected at all. The possibilities clearly exist. The Sigil is the connective device par excellence. So they could crossover. But we haven’t as yet even talked about that possibility.

MA: Do you think there could ever be a crossover with the Marvel Universe? Would that work?

MC: Hmm… would it work? Yeah, I don’t see why it wouldn’t. If you go back in time a little to the ‘80s, it used to be quite common, didn’t it? Even in sort of the most mainstream and hardcore of superhero books, to occasionally have… I mean, I can remember an arc where the X-Men crossed over into Conan the Barbarian’s Hyborian Age.

MA: The Transformers were part of the Marvel Universe once too.

MC: As was Rom The Space-Knight! So it’s possible. I don’t see why that couldn’t happen.

MA: How far along are you in discussions to go beyond this miniseries?

MC: We’ve talked a lot about where we would take it, but obviously it’s going to depend on the books finding their audience, it’s going to depend on the critical response. We’re ready to run if people want these stories. We would love to tell them.

MA: What else do you have on your plate these days?

MC: Oh man… well, apart from X-Men Legacy, which I’m having the time of my life on at the moment, with the Age of X, and with the stuff we’re planning for issue #250 and beyond, and The Unwritten, which is still doing very well at Vertigo… those are my only two monthly books. I’ve just finished a novel, which is not in my Felix Castor series, it’s a different kind of novel altogether. I can’t say too much about it, but it’s kind of a departure for me because it has no supernatural or fantasy elements in it at all. I’m co-writing a novel with my wife and daughter at the moment which I’m very excited about; putting the finishing touches on the X-Men Destiny computer game; I’m writing a movie screenplay which is now in its last draft; I think that might be everything.

MA: So lots of leisure time then.

MC: Yeah, yeah, I just sit around, bouncing tennis balls off the wall.

 

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Matt Adler wonders if anyone else remembers the short-lived CrossGen book "The CrossOvers".