Sunday, May 15, 2005

This Interview Is Good - Dave Richards with Paul Jenkins

Dave Richards contributes a good news interview with Paul Jenkins here.

What I enjoyed about the interview was that while I really am not that interested in Jenkins' new projects, the interview really did not come off as fawning, which is always good.

In addition, I cannot chastise Richards for not asking "tough" questions because, well, really, what "tough" questions can you give to Jenkins right now?

That is the difference between a "news" interview and a "discussion" interview.

In a news interview, the key is to get information across, while a discussion interview is to critique and challenge said information.

The most controversial thing he is doing is this "Mythos" project which I, for one, think just sounds utterly, bizarrely superfluous.

And, as it is a news interview, the key point is to get across the idea of Mythos so everyone ELSE can decide that it is bizarrely superfluous.

The same with the Sentry mini-series.

However, in the Sentry section, not much is given out, as Jenkins gives no real info except "there's going to be an Earth-shattering" secret revealed (as opposed to a "Internet-breaking" secret). But as it is tied into a future New Avengers arc, it is to be expected.

Next, Jenkins tells us some interesting facts about how writing for a video game differs from writing for comic books. I liked that. Always good to learn something new. And that is one of the most important things about a news interview - have the reader be more informed than the reader was before reading the piece.

Finally, Jenkins shills for some series he is doing with Humberto Ramos that looks amazingly inappropriate for Ramos' style of art (even painted Ramos art).

All in all, this is what I like about a news interview. It demonstrates that the projects being discussed do not have to be interesting for a good news interview, just so long as the information is being distributed in an expressive manner, which was the case here.

I dug it.

I guess I should find a good example of what I consider a good "discussion" interview later...hehe.

2 Comments:

Blogger Tegan O'Neil said...

Well, if he wanted to ask Jenkins some tough questions, he could ask Jenkins about some of the hinky things that went on at Tundra during his editorial tenure. There are definitely some serious questions there, from the (admittedly) very little I've heard.

5/16/2005 07:17:00 AM  
Blogger Brian Cronin said...

Yeah, Tim, and if it was a "discussion" type interview, then that would be a good idea.

But this, like I said, is more of a "news" interview, whose purpose is to just get as much info about a creator's projects out of the creator so that the readers have stuff to work with.

In addition, what stinks is that I am pretty sure I read an EXTENSIVE, extremely frank, interview with Jenkins about Tundra (I mean, like, three interviews' worth of material devoted just to talking about Tundra), but I cannot find the interview NOW!!!

5/16/2005 01:58:00 PM  

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