William Katt and Chris Folino interview pt 2

Hey folks, it’s superhero here.

OK, out there in comic land: below is my Part Two interview with the heads of Catastrophic Comics, William Katt and
Christopher Folino.

You may know Mr. Katt from,
among many other things, the ‘80’s hit TV super-hero comedy THE
GREATEST AMERICAN HERO. Mr. Folino is no slouch, however, as he’s the
writer and director and producer of the indie film
GAMERS.

Together these two have combined to form a
comic company known as Catastrophic Comics. Catastrophic Comics has
been responsible for the terrifically dark super-hero comic known as
SPARKS and will be teaming with Arcana Studios to revitalize THE
GREATEST AMERICAN HERO in the pages of a six issue mini-series comic soon.

Let’s dive back into the
interview.

superhero: How did you end up wanting to
create a comic book company? How did you get into comics?

WK: I always loved comics
when I was a kid growing up. Every Saturday, some friends and I would
race down to the local drugstore. When they used to have newsstands at
drugstores. Five and dimes. We’d sit on the floor all Saturday morning
and read comic books. I never lost my love of that and I’ve been a
storyteller my whole life. Since I was fourteen. I had dinner with my
mom last night and she pulls out an old notebook of mine. All these
stories that I’d written. Poems and stories and songs…I’ve been writing
all my life. I never stopped that. I wrote in college in writing class.
I was a music major and an English minor. I always told stories. I’ve
written ten screenplays and several plays. A few of them have been
lucky enough to get made. Comic books was just another medium. I came
up with a story originally for MYTHOLOGY WARS. Which was a book we’ve
done. I thought it would make a great animated feature. I talked to
Chris about it. He thought that I was wrong. That it sucked. But he
said maybe we could turn it into something else. So we talked about a
comic book, an outline for a comic book. That’s when we launched off
into that.

superhero: Do either of you currently read comics?

WK: Oh, yeah, I’m a huge fan of DMZ.


CF: It was kind of cool we had
Eric Powell who was right next to us (at Comic-Con) from THE GOON. I
don’t know how many trades of his I have. Brubaker, I think I’ve read
everything by Brubaker. It’s too much money spent on comic books. Too
much money spent. It’ll be real fascinating to see THE WATCHMEN.

superhero: Why is your company called Catastrophic Comics?

Why go with pamphlets instead of graphic novels?

CF: Catastrophic Comics, it was really
funny, because Derek (Derek McCaw, their publicity and marketing guy)
and I were having fun with his (William Katt’s) last name and I’ve
never seen Bill Katt look so disgusted. We were trying to add his last
name to, you know, Catastrophic with a “K” as well as some other
things.

WK: Catatonic
(chuckles).

CF: We just talked,
Catastrophic makes sense. Just the normal spelling. Because if we fail
at least we put it in our name. We got a wonderful logo designed.


WK: Love our logo design. It’s
the atom bomb. We went through four or five different graphic artist to
come up with that. We were just knocked out by that.

superhero: So why go with pamphlets as opposed to graphic
novels?

CF: The thing with SPARKS that we wanted to
do was…it was kind of an interesting move. MYTHOLOGY WARS, Bill really
wanted it to be perfect when it comes out. We wanted to have the right
artist for it.

WK:
It’s been a challenge.

CF: A
real challenge. So SPARKS, JM Ringuet, who’s doing all of the
illustration. It’s amazing. He’s on time, he set the bar for
everything. Now it’s a real dark story and we just figured we might as
well release that one. It’s going to be a little one but we want to get
the credibility of the fact that we’re able to release the book. We’re
going to be doing something original and we’re going to be doing good
stuff. We’re not going to back down from stuff that’s dark. If we just
came out straight with THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO they would be looking
at us and saying we’re cashing in. Which is not even the case because
we had the plans for MYTHOLOGY WARS to come out first. We’re looking at
Sparks and saying, “OK, this is hard business.” You pay for the artwork
and you pay for the printing. You look at
things…

WK:: There’s very little
profit margin, if any.

CF: Yeah,
it’s really interesting about Comic-Con, too, because we found at
GenCon we had an item which you could sell for twenty bucks and you
make your money back like that! But when you have a three dollar an
issue book it’s kind of insane because you have to do it for the
fanbase. You have to build up the fanbase. You have to. THE GREATEST
AMERICAN HERO will definitely be another single issue thing. It just
has to be. Maybe with MYTHOLOGY WARS, especially since we’re an
independent company, we’ll look at that. Maybe building on four issues
and making it into a graphic novel. But the whole plan was, what Bill
wanted was to get the respect of the whole industry. We’re trying.
We’re trying to make sure that everything that we do, THE GREATEST
AMERICAN HERO, SPARKS, MYTHOLOGY WARS, has our stamp of approval.


WK: One of things that I
noticed and that was mentioned among a lot of friends of mine at
Comic-Con…Comic-Con is, in my estimation, in my humble estimations…I
don’t know it’s just my subjective opinion…it’s kind of lost its focus.
It’s not about the fans anymore. It’s about a marketing strategy for
the studios. I think that the fans are being led down a path that’s not
in their best interest. It’s not about the fans anymore at Comic-Con.
Now it is a little bit at some of the other places. Dragon Con is a
fabulous con. It’s in Atlantic City. For me it’s the best con in the
country. Chiller is a great fan convention. There’s a number of them.
Comic-Con has changed. We’re not going after the big films and whatnot.
We’re just trying to establish some credibility with fans. We’re trying
to create a groundswell and know that the fans can come and read our
books and know that they’re going to be there every month. That the
stories are going to be compelling. That the artwork’s going to be
good.

superhero: So what is SPARKS?

CF: One last thing we haven’t talked about
with THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO. We also have the rights for animation.
So we’re going to be doing six four minute animated shorts. We’re going
to do like lost episodes of season one and season two. We have the
original cast doing the voices and go into production in about two
weeks. That’s something that we’re hoping to deliver on. You know,
because it’s Stephen J. Cannell, it’s Bill’s former boss, so we have to
impress him on every single front. Their friendship’s at steak.


WK:
It’s kind of a litmus test for Steve too because we want to make sure
as he’s making the feature film that there’s still a large fanbase out
there that’s going to be receptive to re-launch this.

superhero: What is it that you think the comics can offer
that a film or TV show can’t?

WK: I think it’s more personal. It’s one on
one. You know what it is? It’s creating the mythology, creating the
myth. So that it will precede anything that you see later on in film or
on television.

CF: THE GREATEST
AMERICAN HERO, too, some stuff holds up some stuff doesn’t. Obviously
the flying part, the stunts will work better. But the kids (his
students), with all due respect, it’s a little freaky. The guys who
wrote the original series are looking over it to make sure that
everything in the comic book will remain faithful. But the one thing
that’s going to be nice is that we’ll be able to go into storylines
that are bigger with bigger explosions, too. Honestly, even if you got
the rights to do a TV show it’d be a very big production to
do.
Stay tuned for part 3