Matthew Sturges is Ready to ‘Run!’
Matthew Sturges talked with Comic Book Resources about Run!, the series replacing Blue Beetle on his schedule. The unscheduled title spins out of events from Final Crisis and will focus on the villains. Sturges previously worked with DC’s foes during Salvation Run and he addressed the possible connections.
“No, it’s not connected to Salvation Run in any way,” he explained. “A friend of mine half-jokingly suggested the tagline, ‘This time there’s no salvation,’ which actually works well on a couple of levels. It’s also not connected to The Flash, which is something that people might have guessed, given the title. What I can say is that it’s part of the Final Crisis aftermath. It shows what happens to one of the characters from Final Crisis after the dust settles, and his rise from being a complete nobody to being one of the most powerful super-villains on Earth.
Sturges, who also cowrites House of Mystery with Bill Willingham, went on to say, “It’s very different in tone from a lot of things I’ve written before. It’s very fast-paced, very action-oriented. It’s ruthless, both in terms of pacing and subject matter. Our protagonist is not a nice guy, and the narrative definitely makes the most of that. What you’ll find in this book is a lot of the wicked kind of stuff that I would have done more of in Salvation Run, if I’d had more room to play around. I sharpened a lot of metaphorical knives writing Salvation Run that I never got a chance to stab anybody with.”
He says he likes writing heroes and villains, and having worked with both, he said, “I’m a fairly paradoxical person; part hopeless romantic and part die-hard cynic. When I’m writing Blue Beetle, I have to fight to keep things from getting too ugly and too negative, and when I’m writing Run!, I have to fight to keep things from getting too nice. One great thing about bad guys is that, like the jester in the king’s court, they get to say the things that the good guys aren’t allowed to say. They get to make the tasteless jokes, mock people, and revel in absurdity; all of which lends itself to snappy dialog and funny moments. That’s one of the things that makes writing Jack of Fables so much fun, by the way – he’s a villain who, in his own mind, is the romantic lead. He’s the perfect character for me to write.”
The miniseries will be illustrated by Freddie Williams III (Robin). “I’ve been dying to work with [him] since I first saw his work on Robin a couple of years ago,’ Sturges gushed. “He’s just the right guy for the job.
After Run!, the writer will work on a new DCU project the details of which he refused to divulge.