Interview: Fred Van Lente on ‘Action Philosphers’ Tested by Philosophy Professor
Fred Van Lente is the New York Times bestselling author of Incredible Hercules
(with Greg Pak) and three entries in the Marvel Zombies series, as well as the American Library Association award-winning Action Philosophers. His original graphic novel Cowboys & Aliens (co-written with Andrew Foley) is being adapted into motion picture form by Dreamworks and Universal, starring Daniel Craig. Van Lente’s other comics include Comic Book Comics, MODOK’s 11, X Men Noir and Amazing Spider-Man. Wizard magazine nominated him for 2008 Breakout Talent (Writer). Comics Should Be Good named Fred one of the 365 Reasons to Love Comics. He’s been called “one of the most idiosyncratic and insightful new voices in comics.”
With the release of the even bigger (4 superheroes added and the original heroes now arranged in chronological order), The More Than Complete Action Philosophers by Fred and his partner-in-crime, illustrator Ryan Dunlavey, from his very own imprint, Evil Twin Comics, back in November, I went back and re-read the Philosophers’ stories I’d reviewed about a year ago. Being a Philosopher, myself, and therefore the very curious type, and always looking for new ways to connect with my undergrads, I sat down, keyboard-to-keyboard, and had a chat with Fred about this latest incarnation of his intrepid endeavor.
ComicMix: To start off with the basics and the obvious but perhaps not-so-obvious, why Philosophy in Comics?
Fred Van Lente: They used to do an anthology every year for the Small Press Expo (SPX) in Bethesda, Maryland, which Ryan Dunlavey and I go to a lot. One year the book’s theme was biographies. Ryan wanted to submit a story, and I volunteered — well, more like bullied my way into writing it, because Ryan originally asked my wife, Crystal Skillman, who’s a playwright.
I had been reading a lot of Nietzsche, just for fun (because that’s how I roll), and it occurred to me a funny, short comics bio of Nietzsche would be just in the wheelhouse for Ryan’s style.
CM: So then that begs the question, with your inspiration being the very cerebral Nietzsche, why “Action” Philosophers?
FVL: For the past couple SPX’s, I’d been writing little mini-comics for us to sell out our table with my buddy, Harvey Award-winning artist Steve Ellis.
They were satires of different kinds of comics; for example, we did a strip called “Rightwing,” about a conservative superhero published by the Republican Party: http://www.fredvanlente.com/rightwing.html
And the following year, we made fun of Jack Chick, the famous religious tract publisher, by doing an evangelist strip for HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu (this one’s become pretty big on the Internet): http://www.fredvanlente.com/cthulhutract/
To continue the trend, I thought it’d be funny to pretend there were action figures of philosophers (interviewer’s note: there are!), and so we did the Nietzsche strip in the style of a little comic you’d get bundled in with your Nietzsche action figure. Hence the title, “Action” Philosophers.
The punch line is we got rejected from the anthology but found we enjoyed doing philosophy comics. We did a couple more for a start-up magazine that never started up, and eventually we got a grant from the Xeric Foundation to self-publish our own AP comic … and here we are today.
After an infinite number of delays, the Wonderful White-eye Webster will be swinging his tunes on Broadway at last.
Yesterday, BOOM! Studios joined the growing number of companies to add the rank of Chief Creative Officer to their mastheads. Mark Waid, the publisher’s Editor-in-Chief was named CCO with Matt Gagnon promoted to Editor-in-Chief. Marvel also formalized C.B. Cebulski’s talent scout role by naming him Senior Vice President, Creator & Content Development of Marvel
While much attention has been given to Marvel Studios’ ramp up to production on Captain America: The First Avenger and the recasting of Spider-Man, 20th Century-Fox has been making great strides towards repopulating Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Students.
The 2009 
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The new Spider-Man has been cast… and yes, it’s Garfield.
New York, NY – June 28, 2010 – Marvel Entertainment, LLC announced today that it has appointed Jeph Loeb as Executive Vice President, Head of Television, a newly created division of Marvel Entertainment. In this new role, Mr. Loeb will work alongside Dan Buckley, Publisher & President of the Print, Animation & Digital Divisions, Marvel Worldwide, Inc., to translate Marvel’s popular characters and stories to the television medium, in both live-action and animation formats. In addition to these responsibilities, Mr. Loeb will oversee the development and distribution of live-action, animated and direct-to-DVD series. Mr. Loeb was previously a Marvel-exclusive Eisner-Award-winning comic book writer and an Emmy-nominated writer for his work on NBC’s Heroes. The announcement was made today by Alan Fine, Executive Vice President, Office of the President and Chairman of Marvel Studios’ Creative Committee, and by Mr. Buckley, to whom Mr. Loeb will report.
All right, I’m finally sick and tired of this.
Tip of the hat to friend of ComicMix, Missy Andersen, for linking us up to this lil’ piece of joy. Seems the hard working Viennese/Croatian design collective For Use/Numen created an astounding installation perhaps inspired by the famous wall crawler. Or it has something to do dancing, and choreography, and packing tape. Either way, visit the 
