Sturges & Enge: Talk About Fantastic!

Part One of an interview with Matt Sturges, author of the forthcoming fantasy Midwinter,is up on Newsarama. He talks about his comic book work – Jack of Fables, Shadowpact, Blue Beetle, House of Mystery, etc… – as well as his long association with Bill Willingham and Chris Roberson.

It wasn’t until I was in college, when my friend Chris Roberson, who is now a novelist and is also the guy who’s writing the new Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love mini-series this year, was the person who introduced me to comics. And the things he liked at the time were Legion of Super-Heroes and all the stuff that would become Vertigo. And because the Legion of Super-Heroes, at the time, made no sense to me, I sort of went for the Vertigo stuff.

Not that I didn’t learn to love superheroes, but for a beginner, the Vertigo type stories were more self-contained. This was the late ’80s, so this was when a lot of great stuff was happening in comics. One of the first things I read was Watchmen, followed by Sandman, then everything Grant Morrison was writing at the time. So those were the books that really formed my sensibilities about what comics could be and should be, and the potential of what you could do in a comic.

Meanwhile, James Enge, whose Blood of Ambrosewe publish in April, is on Rogue Blades talking about the character of Morlock Ambrosius, and the short story “The Red Worm’s Way,” which forms part of the backstory for the novel and appears in the anthology Flashing Swords Presents: The Return of the Sword.

I did a little fencing in high school, so I have some sense of how some parts of a sword fight might work. On a couple of occasions I’ve walked through part of a fight, just to have a sense of whether the footwork was possible. But I try not to over-identify with my viewpoint character: my job as the storyteller is very different from his.

Both are very interesting guys, set to make a spalsh in fantasy when their respective novels debut in just a few short weeks. Hmmm. Maybe they should read & interview each other?