DCA: Who is Joe Grunenwald? Are you anything like they say you are?

Joe: Joe Grunenwald was born on a dark and blustery winter’s night in 1983. Trained by Tibetan monks in the ways of non-violence and transcendental meditation, he later rejected his teachings and turned to a life of crime. By the time he was seven, Joe had been in and out of juvie more than a half-dozen times. That was when he accepted Superman as his personal savior and finally got clean. He’s been sober ever since.

So, no, I’m nothing like they say I am. Or am I?

Which city and state is proud to claim you as an upstanding citizen?

J: I am a somewhat-reluctant resident of beautiful Dayton, OH. Roger Clemens once said that the best view of Dayton, OH was in a rear-view mirror as you’re leaving. I don’t agree with him on that point. That said, I’d move tomorrow if I could.

What’s your background?

J: Well, right now I’m in my cubicle at work, so my background is a window that looks out on the parking lot outside of the building, and, beyond that, a bunch of trees. That’s right, kids, Joe has a cubicle with a window!

My background is in English. I have a BA in English from Bowling Green State University, where I also minored in creative writing. The combination of those two things qualify me to edit professionally, or to work at McDonalds and/or Barnes & Noble. Thankfully I stumbled into the former, and I am currently working as a math editor for a textbook developer/publisher. Secret: I’m not even that good at math! Don’t tell my bosses!

What inspired you to start writing?

J: I heard that writers get lots of women. So far, I’ve not found this to be true.

What were the first stories you wrote? Where they for English class back in school or something you decided to do for yourself?

J: The very first story that I wrote was a Batman & Robin story. I wrote and drew a story in which The Joker escapes from Arkham Asylum on a rocket, and Batman & Robin stop him as he’s robbing a bank. It was high-concept stuff. I was in 4th grade, and it was a class project. The next story that I remember writing was a myth for an 8th-grade English class. It was basically a piece of ‘Greek Pantheon’ fan fiction. That was primarily prose, but I drew stuff for it and everything. It was about the origin of The Sun. It was…pretty bad. That was when I realized that I like to write, though. I of course still have both of those stories.

What’s your approach to writing?

J: You ask this as if I have one. My approach to writing is that I sit down with a blank screen, and if the story comes out, the story comes out, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I have a tendency to let stories simmer in my brain for a long time before I actually put them on paper/screen. I don’t like to revise and I don’t like to dwell once the story is out of my head. By that time it’s probably been replaced with a piece of West Wing trivia anyway. My approach, then, is probably not the best strategy in the world, but I feel like what comes out when I do write is organic and free-flowing and natural. Of course, I have no idea if it reads that way, but I try to write stories and characters that are real. Or as real as they can be, anyway.

Do you have any influences in fiction that have affected this approach?

J: I think ts eliot once said that he would write all day, and he would spend the morning putting a comma into a poem, and then the afternoon taking the comma out. Sadly (or thankfully), I am not ts eliot. I have influences on my style of writing, but not so much on the process by which I write. I’m a very dialogue-heavy writer, and for that I have several people to thank. David Mamet, Aaron Sorkin, and Brian Bendis are all huge influence on the style of dialogue that I use. They’re all scriptwriters of various sorts, and I could listen to their dialogue all day. Raymond Carver is probably the most influential fiction writer I’ve ever read. His minimalist style is fantastic. When I read “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, it literally changed the way that I read and the way that I write. I can’t sing his praises enough. As if he needs it. As far as comics and stuff like that goes, Mark Waid has been a hero of mine for years and years. He brings an element of fun and of respect for history without being chained to it to all of his stories. I also really like Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker. Their crime comics are amazing. I suppose I aspire to capture even a tiny little element of each of their work in my own. If I can do that, while also adding something that is my own, then I think I’ve accomplished something.

Why fanfiction and how long have you been writing it?

J: This is a hard question for me to answer. I’ve never really thought about ‘why fan fiction’. So I’ll answer the second part first. I’ve been writing fan fiction since I was in high school. I think what drew me to it initially, and what has kept me coming back to it, is just the characters. It’s fantastic to write something that is wholly yours and that you create from the ground up, but there’s also something so comfortable and at the same time exciting about writing characters that are already established, that have years and years of backstory that you can draw from. Part of what I love about writing The Flash is the relationship that Wally has with Magenta, Frances Kane. Yes, Wally is married to Linda and they are the happiest people in the world (seriously, in the whole world), but Frankie was Wally’s first love, and she went crazy. That’s got to have an effect on a guy, right? I would think so. So what effect does that have? I feel like, in the thirty years that they’ve known each other in the comics (she was introduced by Marv Wolfman and George Perez in The New Teen Titans #17), their relationship really hasn’t been explored as fully as it could be. So I want to look at that. It’s stuff like that, what is there that is interesting but that hasn’t really been looked at, combined with my love for the characters and their lives and seeing how they interact with each other, that keeps me coming back.

What brought you to DC Anthology? What was the first title you read at DCA?

J: I was brought to DC Anthology by a writing partner of mine. We were working on a sort of ‘Batman: Year One’ script series, like scripts for a TV series, and I’m not sure if he was approached by DCA or if DCA approached him about hosting the series. That series was fun to write, too, because he would write all of the Batman stuff and I would write all of the police stuff, which is really what I find the most interesting about the Batman universe. Gotham Central was my favorite comic for a while, if that gives you any indication. So we were working on that, but it quickly fell by the wayside, and that was when DCA’s Flash title opened up, and I leapt at that. The first title I read at DCA was the Flash title, naturally, because I wanted to see if and make sure that it was being done right (which we will come back to, of course). I’m very protective of Wally and Linda. Is that weird?

Do you have any work at another site?

J: I do not have any work at any other sites.

What was behind your decision to pitch THE FLASH as your first title at DCA?

J: As I said above, it had just come open when I arrived, and I looove The Flash. He is, easily, my favorite character in comics. Or I should clarify: I love Wally West. Also, the way that he was being treated before I got here was…I found it to be shabby. It lacked a certain…quality that I felt I could bring to the series.

Before DCA’s relaunch in 2005 your work on THE FLASH had to continue from Eddie Cazuro’s 18 issue run on the title. What was your approach in deciding what parts of his continuity you would honor and what to ignore as you created your plots?

J: My approach was pretty simple: ignore as much as possible. Eddie had a lot of good ideas, but his execution was flawed, and nothing ended up being very memorable. Obviously there were some things that just couldn’t be ignored – the baby, for one, and Jesse Quick’s stint as The Flash – but, for the most part, I wanted to get the series back to being about Wally and Linda. The series, in my mind, is really about them and their relationship, and everything else is just icing. If Wally fights supervillains, okay, but he goes home to Linda at the end of the day, and that’s what I like about him. So that’s what I tried to do when I came onto the series.

After the relaunch you had an opportunity to start fresh on THE FLASH and wipe the slate clean. Now that you were free from another’s continuity and able to go entirely with your own ideas why did you decide to carry over the idea of Linda Park getting pregnant and how does that tie into the rest of your work that’s now entirely original?

J: …Huh. I guess it never really occurred to me to do it any other way. Before the line-wide relaunch was even conceived, Erik and I had discussed my more or less re-writing what Eddie had written, so that everything was coherent and the work flowed into itself. So when I originally conceived the rewrite, I wanted to take the ideas that I liked from Eddie’s run and streamline them and make them make a little more sense. Sergeant Rock won’t be going into a high school to give kids guns in my series. So yeah, the pregnancy occurred because it was part of Eddie’s run and thus had to be there. I’m pretty happy with it, though. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I resolved the whole ‘baby Barry’ thing originally, and I’m thinking I want to go in a different direction with it now. I know where I was going to take it, but I think I can get there on a different route and it’ll be more interesting. Also, I think Eddie destroyed – destroyed – the character of Jesse Quick. I’ve always liked Jesse as a character with immense untapped potential, and I wanted to see if I couldn’t turn her around and make her less hated, if not even likeable. She’ll be getting the spotlight soon and it’s going to be interesting. Wally and Linda aren’t going away, but Jesse will definitely be stepping forward. So…I don’t know if I actually answered the question or not, but I wrote a bunch of stuff, so that counts, right?

The relationship between Wally and Linda gets a lot of praise for how genuine and heart felt it is. How do you manage to create such a real relationship between them?

J: I don’t know, honestly. I’ve never been in a relationship for more than a month – though that’s not true, the one I’m in now is almost three months old, so that’s a new Joe record – but I’ve had a lot of really great examples around me. My parents are still extremely close and affectionate. They do everything together and they’re still obviously very much in love. My brother has been married to his wife for over ten years now, and I look at how he and his wife are and they seem like they just have fun together. I think that’s really important for a good relationship, that ability to have fun and to just enjoy being with the other person. Wally and Linda definitely have fun together, and they definitely enjoy being with each other, but they can also have that serious conversation that has to be had when the time comes for it. They’re very honest with each other and – in my mind, anyway – they clearly have great love for each other, but also great respect. I don’t know. It’s complicated. I mean, how does anyone manage to have any sort of relationship? Dumb luck, maybe. I’m glad that people respond to their relationship, though, as it’s really the core of the series in my mind.

Any hints about what the future holds for Wally and THE FLASH?

J: Wally’s days as The Flash are numbered. Linda’s days as a pregnant woman are also numbered. Strangely, those numbers are the same. What does it all mean? And how does Jesse Quick factor into it all? You’ll find out soon! Hopefully. Also, Mxyzptlk’s girlfriend returns. With a vengeance!

You’ve just started on your second title for DCA: JUSTICE LEAGUE. How did you decide on who the main cast would be for the book? What roles where you looking to fill and what dynamics where you looking to exploit?

J: I basically picked characters that I either liked or that I wanted to like. I looked at what was interesting about the characters and what I thought I could make work when put next to other characters. The line-up, for those that don’t know, is Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Martian Manhunter, The Atom, Zatanna, Black Canary, and Green Arrow. Green Arrow, of course, being Connor Hawke, The Atom being Ray Palmer, and The Flash being first Wally West and then Jesse Chambers. I wanted Superman because he’s Superman. I wanted Wonder Woman because I don’t know that I really get Wonder Woman, and I really want to. I loved Greg Rucka’s run on her series, and I want to see what I can do with her. The Flash is my guy, of course, and I love the sort of ‘elder statesman’ thing that J’onn J’onnz brings with him. The Atom is the smartest guy in the room, even when Batman’s there. Batman is more intuitive, so it may seem like he’s smarter than Ray is, but Ray Palmer is the smartest person in the DC Universe. Zatanna is just fun to write for, plus I wanted to bring in someone with a magic background because I think that’s something that should be explored in the context of ‘How do the others respond to these powers?’ Black Canary was one of the League’s founders, and I really like Dinah, and I wanted to use Connor Hawke because a) he’s a legacy character who doesn’t really seem to focus on the legacy as much as Wally does, and I wanted to play them together, and b) I want to see him interact with Dinah, this woman who is more or less his age but who was in love with his father for a long time. I really picked the characters that I did because I want to put them in a room together and watch them interact. That’s what’s interesting to me. I think you’ll be surprised by how Wonder Woman and Black Canary interact, by how The Flash and The Atom interact, and how Superman and Zatanna interact. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

How does writing a team book differ from writing a solo book?

J: I write very dialogue-heavy stuff, and it can be a challenge to make sure that everyone gets a chance to speak, for starters. I don’t want you to forget who’s in the room. But also it has to do with getting down everyone’s voices. I think I’ve finally gotten Ray Palmer’s voice down. I came to J’onn’s pretty quickly, but Ray’s took some time. Also, Plastic Man is in the first arc, and I really took to him quickly as well. I don’t want to waste any of the characters that I have to work with, but I also don’t want to get in too deep with them to the point that I either lose their individual voices or they become cookie-cutter ‘Hero A and Hero B fights menace X’ stuff. It’s sort of like Mark Waid’s approach to Brave and the Bold. I want each character to shine.

Does this influence the type of plots you create?

J: At heart I’m a character-driven writer, and if I want to have that character-driven stuff, I have to make sure that the plot allows for that. You have to figure that a lot of what the League does is just hang out in the Watchtower on monitor duty. They’re not a proactive team. When the aliens show up, they kick ass, but until then, they hang out and talk and exercise and do other team-type stuff. There will be an element of that in all of my stories, but seeing as I do like to have those character moments, the types of plots that I work with will generally be smaller and use two or three Leaguers at a time. I’m taking a very ‘Justice League Unlimited’ approach to this. The characters I listed above are my core characters, but you might see others, too. Animal Man is a must. As is Ambush Bug. The plans for Ambush Bug in Justice League are pretty great, actually, if I do say so myself. Jamie and I plotted a story that is just ridiculous and fan. You’ll know it when you see it.

Being a team book how do you decide which characters get the spotlight at certain times and what relationships to focus on? Unlike THE FLASH there’s more to think about than just the dynamic between Wally and Linda.

J: I think what I like about it is that it is more than just Wally and Linda. I love them, but I want to see what else is out there, too, so if I can put Superman and The Flash in a room and see how they interact, I’m going to do that. I could really write a team-up series, Brave and the Bold-style, with The Flash and __________. Wally is an adventurer, an everyman, a veteran hero, he’s really everything that I could possibly want in a character. The Flash and Dr. Fate story that’s in Brave and the Bold was a lot of fun to work on, even though I really did that after the fact as it was originally a Jamie and Eddie creation and I just rewrote the Eddie stuff, but that was still really fun to play with how Wally and Hector interact. Anyway, getting back to your original question (he said, having veered entirely off-track), I really think about what dynamics are going to be interesting, and that’s what goes into the team-up choices. A Green Arrow/Black Canary team-up is in the offing, and it’s going to be fun, especially given the threat they end up facing. That story is affectionately called “The Man Who Sold The World”. Taken from a David Bowie song, yes, but wholly appropriate for the story.

Another part of what I want to do is tell completely odd-ball, almost ‘Silver Age’-y stories. High concept stuff, but that comes at you really fast and spins your head around. I should mention that Grant Morrison is one of my heroes, too, just for how imaginative and cerebral his stuff is. So the first story arc is relatively straight forward, but the stuff after that could get a little weirder and just more fun. I want this to be a fun series.

The JUSTICE LEAGUE has gone through a lot of variations in format, style and its roster in both print and television. Did any of these different series’ influence the style of League you’ve assembled and your approach to the title as a whole?

J: As I mentioned before, the ‘Justice League Unlimited’ model is one that I really like. Part of what I loved about the JLU series is that things happened on that series. In the comics universe they have all of these things to juggle and worry about – marketing and what’s going on in other series and stuff like that. Nothing ever really changes in the DC Universe. JLU was uninhibited by other titles, it didn’t have a strict continuity that it had to fall in line with. They do whatever they wanted. I think that we, as fan fiction writers, often try not to stray too far from what has been established in the comics, when really we should do that. We don’t have corporate masters to answer to. If I want Linda to gain superspeed tomorrow, I can go ahead and do that. I won’t, but I could. If I want to kill off Plastic Man, I can. I won’t (probably), but I can. We could kill Superman and actually have him stay dead! We can do anything, and I think we need to embrace that freedom to just create. So I want things that happen in JUSTICE LEAGUE to matter, is really what I’m saying, but also not to be inhibited by what Fromme is doing in his books or by what Ed Ainsworth is doing in his books. Sure, it’ll follow a continuity, of course, but it also won’t be beholden to it. I wouldn’t kill Superman without the permission of whomever is writing that title, sure, but part of why I picked characters that don’t have their own series is so that I can make changes to them if I want to. I want what happens in JUSTICE LEAGUE to have some sort of an effect on the rest of the DCA Universe.

Any hints about what the future holds for the JUSTICE LEAGUE?

J: Superman dies! Or not. Also, four words: Golden Age Ambush Bug.

In honor of the 2005 relaunch you decided to write the COUNTDOWN TO INFINITE RELAUNCH starring Ambush Bug to poke fun at the reasons behind the relaunch and an old issue you did called the AMBUSH BUG PATERNITY SPECIAL. What’s your fascination with Ambush Bug?

J: He’s fun! That’s really what it boils down to. Most comics are all ultra-serious anymore, and I like a good drama as much as the next guy, but I also like to laugh, and Ambush Bug makes me laugh. Ambush Bug was the first comic that I encountered that really made me laugh hard, I mean crying on the floor with laughter. Uncontrollable, side-splitting laughter. The point of COUNTDOWN TO INFINITE RELAUNCH was to poke fun at the ultra-seriousness of comics, and to sort of close the book on the pre-relaunch DCA and to open the door to the new work.

It’s important to point out that Ambush Bug remembers everything about the pre-relaunch DCA. I think that makes him a little more interesting. Ambush Bug is also just the avatar that I use when I want to mock myself or others. He will show up more than you want him to and at the most inopportune times. And you will love him for it. Ambush Bug is great and while I’m not a great fan of a lot of what DC is doing lately, everyone should run out and buy AMBUSH BUG: YEAR NONE. It’s wonderful, and I want there to be more Ambush Bug comics, so let’s make sure that this one sells! Buy two copies, one to keep and one to give to a friend! Then tell your friend to buy four copies, one to keep and three to give to friends! Eventually the pyramid of people who buy the new Ambush Bug series will be so huge, DC Comics will have no choice to be make Ambush Bug the star of ACTION COMICS. Sorry, Superman, but your time has come and gone.

Is Cheeks alive?

J: Is Cheeks alive? I’m sorry, I’m not at liberty to answer that.

Is there anybody on site you’d have assassinated in order to take over their book?

J: Honestly, not on DCA. Everything that everyone is doing is great stuff. I’m happy to be on THE FLASH and JUSTICE LEAGUE. You’ll have to pry THE FLASH out of my cold, dead hands, I think. JUSTICE LEAGUE, I think I’ll be on for a healthy run, but FLASH is definitely my baby.

As for people I’d like to have assassinated on general principle, that list consists of Geoff Johns and Dan Didio. Those guys are #!@$ing idiots.

Any other author you’d like to see do a fill-in issue on either THE FLASH or JUSTICE LEAGUE to see what they’d bring to the table?

J: I’d like to see Tobias Christopher do a fill-in issue of THE FLASH at some point. Perhaps even Erik Fromme. But only after Jesse Chambers becomes The Flash. I want to see them treat her with the respect and dignity that she deserves yet has not received from this group in the past. As far as JUSTICE LEAGUE goes, I’m looking forward to working more closely with Jamie Primas. He brings a real energy with him that I enjoy and can sort of feed off of. He makes my work better. And if he wanted to write a solo issue or two, I think he’d be really great at that. Other than that, I want to hop on the Justice League train and stay on it for a little while before I think about passing it off to anyone else.

What are some of your favorite titles or characters at DCA (besides your own of course) and why?

J: I really like Fast Track, and I wish he was still around. TC did a hell of a job creating that world and fitting it into the DCA Universe proper, and I really enjoyed that series. I also really enjoy Erik Fromme’s SPECIAL CRIMES UNIT series, and I hope to see more of that soon.

Is it hard to be as awesome as you are?

J: It is, but I think I pull it off with a degree of aplomb that few others could match.

Well, thanks for your time Joe, do you have anything to say or plug before we’re done?

J: I think I’ve schilled enough for one day. Time to go take a nap and watch cartoons…I mean, write stuff!