DCA: Who is Clayton Tooley?

Clayton: A 31-year-old mild mannered tax auditor with a bad back and a bad attitude and too damned many comic books for his own good. Married for 6 years to the love of his life (or so he’s told) and living in a recently-remodeled home that is like that house in that movie…what’s the name…oh yeah, The Money Pit! An avid fan of all things science fiction and currently addicted to Halo 3, Clayton is a guy seeking solitude who can never get away from the one person who constantly begs for his attention--Erik Fromme.

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

C: Miamisburg, OH. Originally from Lavalette, WV. Just can’t live somewhere cool…but at least it’s not Pittsburgh or Buffalo.

What’s your background?

C: School and work from a young age, managed to achieve that elusive Masters Degree but declining the Doctorate and still considering the actual CPA License. Long history working in my family’s various businesses, got tired of bitchy employees and asshole customers, breaking away just months after graduate school to the great state of Ohio and work for the Federal Government, chasing my fiancé and just getting the hell outta West Virginia, which was a great place to grow up and amazingly beautiful, but soul-sucking at the same time.

What inspired you to start writing?

C: I like to control things and do things my own way, so writing my favorite characters was a great way to do that. I used to love writing really long stories culled from my thousands of hours of television and hundreds of books read as a child, and eventually found the computer and Internet Relay Chat simulation games, then PBeM sims (Horizon and Barracuda forever!) set in the Star Trek universe before being pulled into one called X-Calibre that changed my writing life forever.

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

C: Both, as I said before. I had a marvelous 8th Grade English teacher who inspired me, and that set off the spark for writing, even though I HATED English class…which is hilarious because now I’m a proofreader for two and a half fanfiction sites. I just like to see things read as smoothly as possible, make sense in and of themselves, and also provide a cohesive reading site. And OCDs.

What’s your approach to writing?

C: I spawn ideas all the time and bounce them off of people I trust to tell me if they suck (namely Fromme and my wife) and then work it out in my head well in advance of writing anything, and then sit down and lay it all out. Many of my favorite stories have started with a scene that I just had to tell and I built a story around that, which can work but only if that scene or image is important to you. I’ve also used songs as the basis for many good stories, since Country Music songs are stories in and of themselves, and adapting the facts to my characters while channeling that emotion (ok, angst usually) from the song really makes something that pops, I think. Anyway, structurally I write as much as I can until I’m sick of looking at it then send it to Fromme to go over, and hone it from there. Really helps to have such a long-term and trusted writing partner.

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

C: Mark Gruenwald is my all-time favorite comic book creator, editor and writer. His stories in Captain America, Quasar, Avengers, Squadron Supreme, Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Age…just all great stuff that spoke to me as a kid and influences my work to this day, especially USAgent, who he created after his great NEW Captain America story from the 80s. Other influences include Peter David, Stephen King, Dean Koontz and a slew of other writers whose attention to detail, storytelling talent and humor have big influences on my stuff.

Why fanfiction and how long have you been writing it?

C: I’ve been reading comics for 25 years and I evolved into fanfiction through my previously mentioned PBeM sims that led to X-Calibre, which was my first step using comic book and original characters, which was a hell of a lot of fun, especially creating my own Age of Apocalypse (which is where X-Calibre was set) Avengers team, one of my favorite series I’ve ever written. I also had an awesome Punisher and Kaine (Peter Parker) involved with X-Calibre (along with my original character Freezer Burn) that was just fun as shit to work with. I guess I’ve been writing fan-fiction itself for 8-9 years, since being directed to the just-starting Marvel Anthology by KC and proposing my first run of USAgent (after being turned down by Marvel X, which is funny since USAgent is now at Marvel Omega) which also led me to…

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

C: Finding out about Marvel Anthology and it’s sister site brought me to DCA, which kinda came out of another PBeM sim I was involved in called City of Heroes or something like that, where I created a guy named The Ageless Stranger, who I brought to DCA (hopefully soon to return!) before propping and starting my first volume of Supergirl, based on Peter David’s Linda Danvers character and her adversary/friend Buzz. The first title I read at DCA…ah, I dunno, probably Teen Titans by TC or Kelen’s early Robin, I don’t remember. I quickly became the proofreader of both MA and DCA and an Assistant EiC, so I read everything. Could have been Nightwing by Rich, also…miss that old man!

Do you have any work at another site?

C: I currently have West Coast Avengers at Marvel Anthology, as well as the first issue of X-Men Unlimited and portions of a couple Initiative books there (more on the way!), and strong plans to bring more Maverick to the site. At Marvel Omega I’ve got USAgent and various issues of Amazing Fantasy and Bring on the Bad Guy’s Anthology. At DCA I have both volumes of Supergirl, an Elseworlds story about Supergirl, an issue of Nightwing, contributions to the JLA Annual, two issues of Brave and the Bold, and two Dead Ringer miniseries that will be coming out soon in relation to Fromme’s GLAD (after editing). I also strongly want to get Roland back on the map at DCA in 2009, but that’s tentative right now, as well as the Wandering Man. TEASE!!!

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

C: Most of the other big guys were taken and I had no interest in them anyway, as at the time Supergirl was the only DC book I was reading. I loved it and just wanted to get my name out there, starting off with one-shots before launching the series, which honestly should be called Buzz – featuring Supergirl! Love that guy.

When you started on SUPERGIRL were you worried or intimidated by the fact that Linda Danvers was in the middle of a metamorphosis, especially when there wasn’t a clear resolution in sight? Did you feel that this transition forced you into a direction you may not have wanted to take to rectify that arc or did you feel that the transition allowed you to explore Linda and take her in a direction that if she were more established wouldn’t?

C: Not really because I saw it as a way to get away from what I thought was a played-out angle, namely the Earth Angel stuff, and get closer to the Supergirl I wanted, which was more a blend of Kara’s powers with Linda still in the driver’s seat, which is something I reached near the end of Vol. 1. I also wanted to do a Bizarro Supergirl story, yet also retain portions of PAD’s series, namely Buzz and Dominique, but also find something new. Volume 2 has started this progression, but has been hindered by many things, but hopefully will be back on track soon.

What was your approach to Linda/Supergirl? How did you decide on how to end that part of her journey and what would play a factor in that resolution?

C: Linda just felt real to me, someone who didn’t choose what she got but accepted it as both a blessing and a curse after Matrix saved her from her own bad decisions. She took a hell of a beating getting to where she was at the beginning of my story, and I gave her some more bad days, but she’s evolved into a better hero now even as she’s now heavily traumatized personally. I hope once I get to put on paper what I want to do for her, the evolution I’ve been trying to get to for these last several years is achieved and we get a good, strong and respectable Supergirl…unlike what the real DC has been giving us for 5 years, namely garbage.

In this circle Peter David’s SUPERGIRL from DC Comics is a well-respected title and comes highly recommended to anybody associated with DCA. At one time both of you were building towards the same goal of evolving Supergirl into what would become her ultimate definition. Did his ongoing work at that time stray close to any of your original ideas? Did any of his work influence any particular plot points you decided to avoid doing or were you confident enough that your ideas were different enough to avoid comparisons to PAD’s work?

C: Not in the slightest. I made a hard break with his storyline when I started, picking up soon after Supergirl had ‘fallen’ and told a portion of her trip my own way, but I didn’t want to tie it so much into mythology and religion as he did, as not being as knowledgeable or interested in it as he was. I wanted Linda’s situation to be more personal and mental, namely that she was the architect of her own situation and she had to achieve many different goals to realize that she had the power all along, not some over-arching deity; though that doesn’t mean that Wally or Beelzebub didn’t exist, only that she was her own worst enemy. The power that Supergirl has is formidable and accepting that you’re worthy of that when you have so many conflicting feelings about yourself, especially after the devastation of Dick and the Reverend’s deaths and the Carnivore’s attack, it just made sense to me that Linda needed a little ‘less-Super’ time. But she’s a true hero so eventually she overcame this and took a step forward…only to have the loss of her mother and sisters drive her two steps back.

Linda wasn’t the only character subject to the same sort of transition. Her companion in her journey to find herself was the ex-demon Buzz. What was your approach to Buzz and understanding his voice and motivations?

C: Buzz is never a challenge (though I’m sure Ed finds my crash-and-burning of the speaking patterns of a real Englishman horrendous!) as he is every bad impulse a person can have rolled into someone who spent 2,000+ years engaging in every one to the utmost. Loosing his demonic nature and finding that he had, GASP, emotions and a conscious and morals was terrible for Buzz, because he had a hard time separating his past from his present. Plus, he doesn’t feel bad for most of what he did, as he was what he was, but what he did to Linda and girls like her…that really started to bother him a lot, and facing his mirror-image in Sunnydale really shook him up. In a way, obtaining a portion of his previous powers back (i.e. teleportation) was a big set-back for him, as it leaves a part of him thinking he CAN go home again one day, where the rest of him being human now isn’t certain if it wants to go back, or even if the good ol’ days were really that good. Plus, how could he turn his back on Linda and Fred now?

How did their mutual and personal voyages affect their relationship and their own personal growth? Would what they achieved have been possible without each other?

C: Oh, they hate each other and always will! But unfortunately for both of them they also love each other and always will! They absolutely would not be where they are if they didn’t push each other to greatness and at the same time pull on the coattails of the other to keep them from getting too far away. It’s Yin-and-Yang, plusses and minuses, just like any relationship, whether it brother and sister, husband and wife, parent and child…sometimes you help, sometimes you hurt, but you always are there, regardless. Circle of life.

Before we move on, I have to bring up the arc “Sidetracked In Sunnydale”. How did you come up with the idea to bring Linda into the ‘Buffyverse’ and more importantly why? What did either of their worlds have in common to make this story feasible?

C: Angst, great characters and demons interacting with super-humans. Buffy and Angel are two of my favorite shows ever, and the idea of mixing those characters with the traveling Buzz and Linda was just too much fun to ignore. At the time I had Linda’s angelic nature still a part of her, so she was cancer to vampires which was a fun way to show Buffy up a bit, but her power levels were not on a scale that would intimidate Buffy or her crew, mainly since she’d just handled Glory and returned from the dead. And getting the chance to write Spike and Buzz interacting, Giles, Oz, Faith, Lindsay, Lorne, etc, etc, etc, was just too much goodness to avoid. I think it came out very well and is my favorite arc from Supergirl.

Linda’s redemption came with a pretty steep price. After everything she’s been through what drove you to further change her world by killing her mother?

C: It just felt right and I never considered her NOT dying. It was a great way to resolve the Earth Angel storyline as well as my Bizarro Supergirl story, and help cement the changes I’d wanted to make with Linda that involved the spirits of Matrix and pre-Crisis Kara. Fred was always the more interesting of Linda’s parents, and I had an idea for his growth in Volume 2, as well as Mattie and Cutter, so Sylvia unfortunately had to pay the price. Given the scope of the series at the time and Volume 1 ending at the relaunch, it was the only honest way for it to go. Besides, my cast is pretty large as it is with some strong characters, and I felt the five I have now (Linda, Fred, Buzz, Mattie and Cutter) had more interesting stories to tell than Sylvia caring for two kids.

In the first issue of Volume 2 it’s pretty clear Linda took the death of her mother rather hard and cut herself off from the rest of her friends and family. Why take her on another journey and how is this one different than the last?

C: It’s not so much a journey as it is a retreat. With her power level firmly established, and after having been Linda more than Supergirl for years and having her emotions destroyed as much as she did, Linda had to hide herself for a while to recover. Her time as Supergirl will be important later when she faces some pretty daunting situations (including a ‘revealing’ discussion with Two-Face on the nature of duality, a slobber-nocker with Maxima, and possibly some more personal loss of her family at the hands of Kadaver) and either has to embrace her human half and the pain it brings, or sacrifice it all to just be Supergirl. Its different than when she was looking FOR Supergirl…she now has to decide how MUCH Supergirl to be.

It’s also pretty apparent that her father and friends have managed to move on without her, or at the very least filled the void she made in her absence. What drove the decision to make Fred more of a vigilante with Buzz as his accomplice?

C: Pain and hunger for justice. Fred has been a cop his entire life and over the last few years has seen some crazy shit happen in his city and in his personal life, and he’s seen that in the world they all live in, with meta-humans, aliens, etc, that black and white as envisioned by the Law…isn’t so black and white. And he needs something he, a normal human, can strike out at and achieve, some measure of meaning in his life after loosing his wife, unborn children and his only daughter, and stopping true HUMAN evil is something he knows he can do.

Buzz is involved because him and Fred were both abandoned by Linda and they were all the other had. Despite his inner desires, Buzz knows he can’t simply fall back into his demon days and really doesn’t want to…but his returned powers give him a bit of a desire for inflicting pain, which is what led him to join and perhaps inspire Fred’s vigilante justice, as he gets a bit of a thrill from dumping these bastards into the purgatory dimension. But like any addict, especially one who can’t recognize what he is, it’s going to backfire on him.

Any hints about what the future holds for SUPERGIRL?

C: Ah, I’ve revealed a lot above, but in the two current arcs we have alternating issues of Supergirl in Gotham looking for Dominique, the half-demon daughter of Buzz who killed her mom, but finding more and less than she bargained for. Fred and his group will have a small window of time to find a kidnapped Mattie before Kadaver makes her his next victim, but when their ace in the hole (i.e. Buzz’s teleportation power) is taken away, what chance to they have in The Kaverns of Kadaver?!?! After that, family reunion time and then a cross-reality swap with the Elseworlds world I created for Supergirl showcasing a future where Supergirl died fighting Doomsday and her and Buzz’s son becomes Superboy!

In the first issue of SUPERGIRL you introduced a character named Roland or otherwise known as the Ageless Stranger. He then went on to star in two issues of the anthology THE BRAVE & THE BOLD. In 3 issues he had 3 very different missions, yet they all had the same goal of imparting some sort of knowledge onto 3 very established fixtures in the DCAU (Supergirl, Oracle and Batman). Is Roland’s role in the DCA to act like some sort of cryptic sage charged to put wayward heroes back on the righteous path, or is there more to him?

C: There is more to him. While it appears that Roland did these things to help these heroes, which he did in part, he had an ulterior motive for doing so and that’s kinda his thing. Roland is plugged into the world in ways that are not obvious at first, and he’s constantly trying to juggle many different angles to achieve what he believes is true Justice, whether it seems that way to anyone else or not. His motives are always in question due to his methods.

What inspired the enigmatic Roland and why did you feel he’d be a good fit for DCA?

C: Honestly, the Gunslinger from Stephen King books was the primary focus and I first started thinking him up after reading Wizard and Glass, as should be obvious from the first imagery I used for Roland as a ruthless cowboy. I am fascinated by the civilizations of the past and Roland comes from the very earliest, a land called Gilead, but his own origins are not necessarily tied to that land though that is where his heart will always lie. I thought he’d be a good fit for DCA because he was new and unconventional and unimpressed by the wonders of the DCA world. I wanted to shake things up while adding something interesting, at least in theory.

How did you plan on not just making Roland different enough from his source material, but more a character of your creation to avoid comparisons and possible accusations of ripping off Stephen King, especially now that he’s in comic form by, ironically enough, Peter David?

C: I know, it’s a circle with me, huh? And I did not rip off Stephen King as my Roland and his have nothing in common but the name and penchant for dress, but as I admitted it was where my thoughts began. I’d rather think of it as a homage to the Master, but you won’t see any Ka Tet’s or other Dark Tower imagery, though he will have quite the bro-mance with Anthony Drake.

In the pre-reboot DCA Roland was explored randomly with a few one shots and later established firmly into the fabric of DCA as a legitimate character with a massive Secret Files & Origins that various authors were invited to, and did, collaborate on. Will we be seeing those stories return to the post-reboot DCA?

C: Oh yeah, it’ll all most likely return, especially the Secret Files which is one of my favorite things ever, not just what those wonderful writers added with their stories, but also the wrap-around story I wrote about Coy, the future Wandering Man, who I will have at DCA again as well. If they get to where they were or take the same route may not be the same as before, but you’ll see it all again, starting most likely with Dead Ringer, the mini-series that really started Roland’s roll.

Will future tales of the Ageless Stranger continue to be a series of one shots and guest appearances or will they be more sequential and overlapping like a real series with recurring characters?

C: It will likely continue as a series of one-shots and minis, with guest stars galore, because Roland’s not a sequential story character. His stories will bounce from era to era as needed, and his appearance, motivations and desires will always be in flux. But…if I do my work correctly…there will continue to be a chain of events beneath all the manure that will expand and tie the continuity of the Ageless Stranger together and always keep finding a new nugget of a Truth Bomb to lay on those who need it.

Speaking of guest appearances in pre-reboot DCA the Ageless Stranger was a major recurring character in the GL: Anthony Drake series. It almost appeared as if Roland and Tony shared some sort of special bond, when it’s been shown that Roland has no special bonds to anybody. Why Tony Drake, who is also another original character to DCA? Can we expect that relationship to return to post-reboot DCA?

C: As an original character, it was initially easier to tie the two together in this strange way as a way to develop both characters, as myself and the writer/creator of Anthony Drake (Erik Fromme) are good friends and long-time writing partners and we just had fun playing with it. I actually wrote the first Dead Ringer miniseries completely without telling Erik anything about it, fearful the entire time about how he’d react to it, but not only did he love it he made it better by using Roland to his own best interests in a great story about dead relatives and the Ghost Road, which was great. The two characters had established a middle-ground of respect and suspicion that is comical and heartfelt at the same time, and as the Ageless Stranger and SCU both re-establish themselves at DCA I hope we can find that perfect place again.

Any hints about what the future holds for the AGELESS STRANGER?

C: His true origins as a Seeker of Justice will be revealed, as well as his ties to not only Earth but other planets in the galaxy. His home, The Keep, will be explored, as well as the indentured murders and other scumbags who work for him within the keep. Coy will make his own mark on the world as he tries to fulfill his contract with Roland and escape his suicide, and lots of other DCA moments will be touched upon by this enigmatic figure.

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

C: Well, I’ve already stated how much I like the Anthony Drake character, so if it wasn’t for my love of his wife and daughter I’d stab Erik right in the throat to write him. Other than that, I’d have to kill and eat Jamie Primas’s brain to even begin to write such a whacked-out series as Dr. Fate, and I wrote an issue of Nightwing once that I really enjoyed…so Steve or Nate, watch out!

Any other author you’d like to see do a fill-in issue on SUPERGIRL to see what they’d bring to the table?

C: Ed Ainsworth because not only does he have great ideas and good story-telling chops, he might actually be able to write Buzz with the proper accent and dialogue for the first time in his DCA life. I half-ass that so bad it’s not funny…poor Buzz deserves so much better…

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

C: Drake and Nightwing, but TC’s Titans have always been great, and Damned (David Brasher) has never written a book I didn’t dig the hell out of, and Starman looks to continue the trend. Nate’s Batman grabbed me in his first issue, and I’m really excited by the coming returns of Green Lantern, Justice League, Flash and all the new series’, including Challengers of the Unknown, which Ed is bringing his Wonder Woman A-Game to as well. And Superman has had a great run to date as well, including a fantastic trip to heaven. Yeah, Heaven…go figure.

Well, thanks for your time Clayton, do you have anything to say or plug before you go?

C: Good things are on the horizon for DCA…get on the bandwagon now!!!