Eric Shanower Interview
April 2007

Eric Shanower is the Eisner award winning writer/artist on Age of Bronze, which is an ongoing series (Published by Image Comics) that tells the story of the Trojan War, from beginning to end.  Shanower has also worked multiple times with Ed Brubaker, who he considers a good friend. 

Interview conducted by Christopher Hoerdemann

How did you go about making a comic rooted in historical fact not dry, and heavy handed? Did you have to alter some historical events in order to spice things up a bit?
Age of Bronze isn’t really rooted in historical fact. It’s rooted in Greek mythology—which may have a basis in historical fact but is certainly not history. Homer’s Iliad is the oldest version we have of an episode of the Trojan War and at it’s most basic it’s a thrilling story that isn’t dry or heavy-handed. Of course, there are portions of it—genealogies of the characters and repetitions of speeches—that many modern readers do find difficult and boring. But that’s where Age of Bronze can be useful. I certainly am creating Age of Bronze for a modern audience, seeking to tell the story in a way that readers of today will find engaging. I have made some changes, such as eliminating the supernatural elements of the story. But I refuse to dumb it down. I don’t really need to spice anything up—the traditional story is full of sex, violence, greed, drama, betrayal, conflict, and all sorts of interesting stuff like that. It’s already a great story. All I need to do is present it all as interestingly and clearly as I can.

You are the writer, the artist, the inker, and the letterer on Age of Bronze. Other than the amount of time it takes up, I would assume that having total creative control over your own creation would be a positive. Am I correct?
Yes, you’re correct. I’m sort of a control freak, so I prefer to do it all myself. Give me all the credit and all the blame.

The amount of research you did for Age of Bronze is astonishing. How much research would you say goes into one page of the comic (on average)?
It’s difficult to break down the research by page. There are basically two areas of research. One is sources of the story. The story of the Trojan War has been told many times in many different ways over the last 2800 years, so there’s always more source material for me to find. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to collect all the different permutations of the story. When you consider all the different forms the story can take: literature, art, dramatic works, music, you can see that there’s just no end. The second area of research is the archaeological research for the settings, costumes, and props. Age of Bronze is set in the 13th century BCE and basically encompasses two Late Bronze Age cultures, the Mycenaeans in Greece and the Hittites in Turkey. When you consider that scholars spend years studying just certain aspects of these cultures, you can see that I’ve set myself quite a task. Fortunately I like doing research. I started doing research for the project in 1992. Age of Bronze began publication from Image Comics in 1998. I’m still doing research and I’m sure I will continue until Age of Bronze is over. There’s always something new for me to discover.

   

You are writing some larger than life characters in Age of Bronze. Which one is your favorite to write, and why?
Actually I’m trying to bring all the characters to a human level, to make them only as large as life, not larger. That’s one reason I’ve eliminated all supernatural elements. I want the story to seem like it could have happened in real life. I don’t have a particular favorite character. The ones I like the best are the ones who develop over the course of the story, the ones who have paths to follow. These include Achilles, Helen, Hektor, Menelaus, Agamemnon, and Odysseus. A lot of the secondary and minor characters are there to fill story requirements. For instance, at the end of the story Aithra is going to be pretty much the same person she was at the beginning. Same for a lot of the minor Trojan princes such as Polites and Mestor (although many of the Trojan princes won’t make it to the end of the story alive). It’s not so much particular characters I enjoy writing, but episodes. For a long time I was really looking forward to writing my version of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia. That ended up becoming issues #17-19. I also liked writing Achilles’s attack on the island of Tenedos which turned up in issue #20. Now I’m looking forward to the Achaeans first real attack on the Trojans. That’ll be next issue, #27. I’m also looking forward to the death of Troilus, the betrayal of Palamedes, Achilles meeting Hesione, and especially the final sack of Troy. It’s fun to write scenes with a lot of drama swirling around, no matter which characters are taking part. Scenes with humor are fun to write, too.

So far, you've finished about twenty some issues.How far into your rendition of the Trojan War are you at this point?
I’m currently working on issue #26. That’s about one-third through the story.

Do you have an idea of when the series might be finished?
I think it will run about 75 issues. But that’s just an estimate.

The idea of chronicling the complete story of the Trojan War is a very ambitious one. When you began the project, where you already aware that you would be working on this for quite some time?
Yes, I knew it was a big project. I wouldn’t have started it if I thought I didn’t have enough enthusiasm to complete it. But the project sort of took me on rather than the other way around.

   

Unlike some stories, people know how the Trojan War ends. How are you going about making the story interesting even though people already know the outcome?
Most people know the beginning and the end of the Trojan War story. But a lot of the middle is unfamiliar. That’s where I hope that readers are experiencing something new. And even though most readers know how it ends, they haven’t seen MY particular version of the end. And I think history has proven that the story of the Trojan War is strong enough to be told over and over without people getting tired of it.

Which character in the series is your favorite to draw? Why?
I don’t have a particular favorite character to draw. I really like drawing the main characters, pretty much the ones I mentioned above when you asked about writing: Achilles, Helen, Hektor, Agamemnon, Odysseus, etc. I also like drawing Thersites, the ugliest of the Achaeans. I actually like drawing all of the characters who take active parts in the story. However, drawing lots of people in background crowds gets a little tedious.

Have you thought about, when the series is done, going back and doing a "director's commentary" type of thing so that you can show people how almost every detail in this story is researched, and accurate?
The thought has crossed my mind, but it doesn’t seem like something I’d be much interested in. I’d rather let someone else do all that work. It’s also really difficult for me to remember the story sources of a particular episode after I’m finished drawing that episode. All the sources sort of mush together into one version in my mind. I’d have to keep a list of sources or go back through my notes to figure out where a lot of the material I’ve used originally came from.

   

When I met you in person, you consistently referred to yourself not as a comic book artist, but as a cartoonist. Is there a reason for that? What, in your opinion, is the difference between the two?
A comic book artist doesn’t necessarily write the material. Since I both write and draw my major comics projects, I call myself a cartoonist.

You are going to be working on Age of Bronze for the foreseeable future, but do you have any other smaller projects you’re working on as well?
Yes. I’ll be doing a short story for an Uncle Scrooge special next year. I’ve written the script, but I have to finish Age of Bronze #26 and prepare the next Age of Bronze graphic novel before drawing the Uncle Scrooge story. I have a few other potential comic book jobs, but it’s too early to mention them in detail. Two other projects recently published that I drew pages for were Harlan Ellison’s Dream Corridor Volume Two, published by Dark Horse, and Fables #59, published by DC/Vertigo.

Okay, give readers a few reasons why they should buy Age of Bronze.......
There’s a reason the story of the Trojan War has lasted through so many centuries—it’s a good story. I don’t dare claim that Age of Bronze is the best version of the Trojan War story, but it’s a version that’s easily accessible to a modern reader. The characters are exotic. The females especially have cool hair and clothes. But they all are caught in a crisis that’s larger than all of them and they’re very human in their struggles to cope and get what they want. Also, I hope the art is nice to look at.