CHRISTOPHER IRVING: How would you describe Chronos?

JOHN FRANCIS MOORE: Chronos is about our lead character, Walker
Gabriel’s sort of discovery of himself as he travels through the DC
Universe’s history. I think it’s a book of discovery and adventure, as
“sound bite” as that may sound.

CI: Of all of the characters, why Chronos? Why this old JLA villain?

JFM: I think that Chronos is just a great name for a comic book
character, and considering...a great name for a time-travelling
character. I thought it would be interesting to create a new character
called Chronos, who would not be a villain, but a protagonist of the
series. And could take the name of Chronos and still have a connection
to the original Chronos, The Atom’s old foe. I wasn’t looking to
completely abandon or ignore the Chronos that existed in the past, in
DC continuity.

CI: As far as DC continuity, the time continuity has become pretty
convoluted in the past ten years, at least. Have you had any real
editorial restrictions, or anything to keep in mind as you write these
time travel stories in lieu of Crisis and Zero Hour?

JFM: I have tried to avoid the big continuity-slashing events in the
book, at least at this point, because I didn’t want to make this book
about the DC Universe time continuity. I wanted to take advantage of
the continuity, or history that has sort of accumulated by virtue of
sixty years now, of DC Comics. So, I haven’t really been tied or
shackled by either of the big events, by the continuity of Zero Hour
or Crisis on Infinite Earths. I think probably the most frustrating
thing [with] writing a time-travel book, or a book that’s trying to be
as time-specific as possible, is that there’s a constant inspoken
revision of the origin points of the DC Universe characters.
Obviously, when there was Earth-1 and Earth-2, there was some kind of
an explanation of why Superman existed in the 1940’s, when he’s around
in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. Right now, Batman and Superman are probably in
their late twenties, which means that if Superman is thirty, he came
to Earth in 1969?
        Which is a much different world than depression-era Kansas. So,
there’s this kind of a transition, and it’s an unspoken one, and it
means that you can’t fix a date on when those characters existed. I
would love to do a story that very specifically put the early Justice
League in the 1960’s, at the time when they were actually being
written and drawn for the first time. I don’t know what the continuity
is for Justice League Year One, but it’s five years ago, or ten years
ago, at the very latest that the Justice League first got together. In
a way that’s really frustrating, because you know that the Justice
Society fought during World War II, and they’re constantly making
revisions in those character’s histories to explain why the Justice
Society members are around today.
        I think, as a result of Zero Hour, a bunch of Justice Society members
ended up turning as old as they were and dying. One of them, at least,
Alan Scott, who is the original Green Lantern and is now called
Sentinel, somehow looks like a thirty year old.
        I have a real fondness for the Golden Age characters, and I’m glad
they’re around for me to use, if it works in a story. But as far as
establishing specifics in time.
CI: What should we expect in the relative future for Walker Gabriel,
who do you plan on having him meet up with?

JFM: In the millionth issue, which is coming up, we find out what the
future is for Walker Gabriel, and for the City Out of Time,
Chronopolis, whose origin and it’s connection to Walker is the subject
of the storyline following the millionth issue. In the millionth
issue, we’ll see who Walker becomes in the far future, and we’ll also
see a number of time travelers from the DC Universe make appearances
on Chronopolis. We’ll see Rip Hunter, Brainiac Five...

CI: Will Waverider be in there?

JFM: Yeah, although I have to say that I’m not a big fan of Waverider.

CI: One thing I do have a question about is that in #2, there’s
Matthew Ryder with a ton of Linear Men. In Zero Hour, the Linear Men
only numbered six or seven, and the original Waverider from an
alternate reality was killed by Extant. Then, the DC Universe’s
Matthew Ryder became the new Waverider. Yet in #2, he’s Matthew Ryder
again, yet he is notably older since he has gray hair. Are you going
to explain that?

JFM: No. [Irving laughs] I don’t really care about that. The fact is,
I was looking at some of the Superman that Dan Jurgens wrote, that
Time and Time Again arc. I was looking at that and Zero Hour. He had
introduced Ryder as one of the Linear Men in that series, and I think
he appears in both series. Whatever that future is, when that
Waverider turns back into Matthew Ryder, I’ll leave that to him if he
wants to explain it. The origins and histories of the Linear Men have
only been sketched in by Jurgens. We know that at some point Rip
Hunter becomes a Linear Man, because there’s a Linear Man named Rip
Hunter, who is older, I think in his fifties or sixties [and] has that
signature cybernetic attachment.
        I’m hoping there’s a place in the next five months of Chronos where
we can find out that it’s Walker Gabriel who is responsible for
rescuing Rip Hunter from the Pre-Cambrian or Jurassic era that he
ended up in at the end of the Time Masters mini-series from the late
‘80’s.
        In the Legends of the DC Universe 80-page annual that’s being written
and drawn now, Dan Jurgens has a Rip Hunter story where he’s traveling
through time and gets rescued by the Linear Men. So, there’s a point
in which he obviously gets out of the past, and reactivates his Time
Sphere or whatever he travels in. So, I’m doing a framing sequence for
that annual, the seven or eight page stories in the book will be
framed by that Chronos sequence.

CI: Sounds neat. Is there any possibility of Walker meeting up with
his predecessor back when he was a JLA villain, or maybe any
superheroes?

JFM: Yeah, it won’t be in the first year, but I definitely had
intentions from the beginning to have Walker meet the original Chronos
while the original Chronos is involved with a conflict with Ray
Palmer, when he was still an adult, the Gil Kane era, before he became
seventeen years old. But mostly, you won’t see the original Chronos in
the book for a while. I think it was important to establish a
connection between the original Chronos and Walker and to let Walker
stand as the contemporary Chronos. They don’t have a familial
connection like Jack and Ted Knight.

CI: Okay, then we should go on about your career. I understand you did
some American Flagg for Howard Chaykin?

JFM: Right, I wrote and did some coloring on the last year of American
Flagg, which was American Flagg: Volume 2, which was not quite the
last hurrah for First Comics, but pretty close. That was in ‘88, and
was the first comic that I wrote, and had a writing credit on. Though
I worked as Howard’s art assistant on The Shadow and the original Time
Squared graphic novels and was working in the studio with Howard when
Howard assembled a team of artists to produce American Flagg under his
editorial and art direction. Flagg was a great first experience, it
was really fun. We got to do a lot of stuff and we were all working in
the same place, Mike Fosburg and Richard Ory and Tony Van Derwall, and
Howard. There was a really good energy between the five of us in doing
the book.

CI: Have you ever thought about collaborating with Howard on another
project at any time?

JFM: Howard and I were screenwriting partners for a number of years,
We wrote a number of episodes of The Flash TV show on the year it was
on. Howard and I are just doing different things. If something came
up, I’d be glad to work with him again.

CI: Actually, about The Flash TV show, I still catch it when I can on
reruns...

JFM: I look at it and I go “God, it really looks dated, in a way,”
which is surprising because, at the time, I thought “Wow.” The art
direction on the show was really excellent and we described it as
“Batman Lite.” Sort of a post Anton Furst/ Tim Burton era movies. But
it was great...to use the Warner Brothers lot.

CI: Why do you think the show had so much trouble picking up ratings?

JFM: For one thing, the show was never in the same place, week after
week, which was really unfortunate for the show, because I think there
was a core audience that might’ve grown, but the show was never on in
the same place.

CI: They just couldn’t keep up with the fastest man alive, I guess.

JFM: Unfortunately, they planned The Flash, on Thursday night, which
at the time was against Cosby. The initial thought was that Cosby was
losing ratings, so “we’ll  put something that will appeal to people
who don’t watch Cosby.” Unfortunately, Fox had that same idea with The
Simpsons...Now The Simpsons was a juggernaut then, and that was that.
So, CBS tried something that they hadn’t tried since, I think, the
‘50’s, which was program an hour show over the hour, which meant that
it was going to be from 8:30 to 9:30, which was very odd. The other
thing in that second half hour, which nobody knew...was going to
become a big hit, was Fox’s Beverly Hills 90210. “God, it’s a bad soap
opera about Beverly Hills high school kids, this isn’t going to last,”
little did I know.
        The other reason I think The Flash didn’t succeed [was] I think The
Flash might have succeeded had it been a syndicated show. But, at the
time, Warner Brothers, as a studio, didn’t want to make syndicated TV
shows, they only wanted to deal with the networks. So, it wasn’t even
an option for the series. I think that, had it been, it might have
been around for another year at least. The other thing is that The
Flash was  a superhero show, and that kind of limits your market, I
think for television shows.
        With the exception of Superman and maybe Batman, who are iconic, I
don’t know that the general public really has any interest in costumed
heroes.

CI: Also, about Doom 2099, looking back on that, how would you rate
the entire project?

JFM: When I look at my stuff, I always see the weaknesses, but I think
that Doom 2099 had some really interesting stuff going on in it. I
think that it suffered from the limitations of it’s artists, but I
think that the first...year was really good. As it goes, I think that
the first year of Doom and maybe Spider-Man, on the 2099 books were
both surprising because they were better than anybody expected.

CI: Were you with Doom until the end?

JFM: I did the first two years of Doom, and then Warren Ellis did
about another year, where he, in typical Warren fashion, killed off
all of my supporting cast. Actually, he...did a really great run year
on the book. Then, I did that last two issues, which was not the coda
that I’d want it to be.

CI: How would you end it?

JFM: I think that what happened was the book ended, but the characters
were put in this big blanket book called 2099: World of Tomorrow.
Unfortunately, what was decided with Joey Cavalieri, who was the
editor at the time, was let go at Marvel, and the remaining books were
given to four different editors, was that there was some sort of
apocalyptic flood, that destroyed most of the planet. It didn’t allow
the book to actually have an ending.
         I felt very frustrated with The X-Men 2099, that the book was being
canceled, I’d done almost the entire three years on it, and didn’t
have a chance to finish it in a way that I would’ve finished it. It’s
sort of like I had to leave things hanging, and had to incorporate
this inane global flood.

CI: Could we have a bit on X-Force, real quick?

JFM: X-Force is going through some changes, because Adam Pollina is
leaving the book. I like working with Adam a lot. He’s such a good
artist, and he’s gotten so much better, and he’s enthusiastic, and
he’ll be missed. Jimmy Cheung will be taking over the book, at least
as of this moment, and there’s a bunch of changes and some new
characters that will come in. Nothing’s been completely worked out, so
I hate to be enigmatic, but I honestly couldn’t tell you for certain
myself.

CI: How do you think the book has changed since it’s Liefeld days?

JFM: I think that the Liefeld years, the book was  a lot of in your
face, “sturm und drang” action I think at the expense of exploring the
characters. Fabian [Nicieza]’s era really changed that, and I think
that my year or so with Adam, we decided to explore who the characters
are as 18 to 19 year old kids on their own. I certainly don’t think
that Fabian or Jeph Leob ignored the character of the book’s heroes. I
think the year I did with Adam, we got them out of their costumes, and
into civilian clothes for a while. It just seemed like it was time for
a break, and I think Adam was interested in drawing people in real
clothes in comparison to people in superhero clothes.

CI: It was a definite change in pace in comparison to the other X
titles.

JFM: Yeah, and I think after Adam leaves, you’ll see the book get back
to some of the more overt superhero aspects. We’ll see the characters
in costume more and my hope is that it’ll be a weird and fun book, so
we’ll see.