Have you ever been in a suit of alien armor and flew across the sky? If you watch the movie short ZOOM SUIT you might well feel as though you have. And there is a comic book that will also present the stories of finding of an alien suit of technology and the story of the whirlwind wearing that suit begins. John Taddeo is jumping into the suit, of sorts by bringing the short movie and comic to world. This is an interview with him.
AN:You have been a retailer, a talent, a publisher and fan. Tell us if you will why you love comics.
John Taddeo:Escape. The rest of the world goes away and for 22 pages you're in another world. Like a video game junkie, the house could be burning down around me and I wouldn't realize it. I remember my mother would have to yell to get my head out of a comic.
AN: What comics do you currently read?
John Taddeo: At 10 years old I was reading every book published by DC and Marvel. I would carry grocery bags to peoples' cars for tips and then go buy comics. I never had enough money, so the books I was less interested in owning I would read in the store. I was there so often the owner gave me a job.
Since leaving Marvel in 1995, I've had to tone it down a bit, but I still read all the Spider-Man titles, all the X books, everything Superman and Batman, Teen Titans. Dude, I read a lot of comics. I can go on for a while here . . .
AN: Somewhat famously you pursued both the Acclaim and CrossGen defunct properties. Do you believe that the stable of either of those properties is viable or, did you want to sow those properties which do have some recognition with many new properties?
John Taddeo: I don't think they're viable under the "Universe" concept. In my humble opinion, bringing back the entire "Valiant Universe" would be a costly error. CrossGen probably would be even worse.
AN: If the companies went bankrupt using those properties, what would the goal be to start new with them?
John Taddeo: If I had CrossGen I would have done one limited series, probably Sojourn or Ruse. Definitely Ruse if Mark Waid was willing to write it. I spoke to Ron Marz and I'm pretty sure he would have written Sojourn for me if I owned it. In either case, a commitment to make one spectacular four issue limited series.
For Valiant, there was an A plan and B plan. The A plan was to do two 48 page books simultaneously, The Black Book and The White Book. For the black book, the team I was trying to line up was Jim Shooter and Barry Winsor-Smith. I had some communication with Barry's camp, but had not spoken to Jim. The White Book Team was Bob Layton and David Michelinie. Bob's a good friend and knows the fans would love to see him on a Valiant title, so I think there was a great chance there. The deal was a straight split 1/3 to Shooter/BWS a 1/3 to Michelinie/Layton and the last 1/3 to the Humane Society - A true "For the Fans" project.
Option "B," in case I couldn't align the planets, was a four issue X-O Manowar limited series with Bob and other key creators - likely many of the guys you'll see on Zoom Suit.
AN: Will the AMERICAN POWER book you licensed to publish ever see print? If yes when and, what is the goal for that? Are you politically inclined with it?
John Taddeo: There may be a book in the very, very distant future that features some familiar artwork that never saw print, but it definitely won't be American Power. As for the politics, I'm extremely interested in public service, but not political commentary through comic books.
Zoom Suit takes advantage of my strengths. I write action and pop culture well. I don't manipulate politics.
AN: Zoom Suit has a mystery of a crash at Roswell and Alien visitation, action with superior futuristic technology, and humor. What inspired your creation of the property?
John Taddeo: I've been writing my own comics for as long as I've been reading them. I wrote the first version of Zoom Suit at age 12 inspired by the cover to Iron Man #118 by Bob Layton.
When I saw Tony falling at terminal velocity I wondered if he dies, who would find the Iron Man suit. The idea of a super suit falling from the sky and being found by a kid intrigued me. After 20 years of revisions you'll see Zoom Suit in April.
What kind of publishing plans do you have for the comic?
John Taddeo: Zoom Suit is awesome. We've gotten a fantastic response to the story and the artwork is by some of the biggest names in the whole business. The entire book is printed in millions of metallic colors, a process called MetalFX. Coast Paper Turgeon upgraded all the paper, the cover is heavier than most trading cards. Datachrome printed it in staccato which utilizes double the number of dots per line, it's super high res. Juan Campbell at Datachrome has referred to it as a "Super Premium" comic book.
However, we did make one critical error.
The comic biz traditionally works like this, you get the orders from shops and you print to order and some extra for reorders. We couldn't follow the traditional path because we wanted to show retailers the quality of the job.
So in December we took a guess at how many we thought we would need and went to press. The books are printed so we can't go back to press and it looks like there aren't going to be enough. Zoom Suit will probably have to be allocated.
AN: You've made a short film from ZOOM SUIT and it has done very well, are you attempting through that to transpollinate the mediums, that is, introduce film fans to a comic concept, and vice versa?
John Taddeo: The exposure at festivals and on our site at www.superverse.com has brought many people that left fandom back and definitely continues to lead new fans to comic shops. We receive e-mails daily asking where Zoom Suit is sold. We use the Diamond Comic Shop Locater to let them know the location of their nearest comic shop.
I didn't plan for it. I just wanted to tell an interesting story, but anything that expands the hobby in a positive manner is fine by me.
AN: What visuals do you draw inspiration from on ZOOM SUIT? Iron Man? X-O Manowar? ArmorX? Darkhawk? FUSED?
John Taddeo: Zoom Suit has been in theaters since April of 2005. I started the animation process in May of 2004. The script is very close to what it was when it was nearly published at Big Entertainment in 1995. Finally, it was originally written as a "What If . . ." around 1980.
The only book that you named that existed when I wrote Zoom Suit was Iron Man, but you don't have to be in a metal suit to be an inspiration. Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Shogun Warriors, Starblazers, Secret Wars . . .even Cinderella.
The "feeling" of Zoom Suit is probably much more like Ultimate Spider-Man than any of the armored books. It's a very interesting story, very well planned, with a ton of plot twists. Every time you think you have us figured out, we're going to twist you.
AN: How did you gather all the great names for the comic, like Billy Tucci, Bob Layton, Gene Colan and Bart Sears?
John Taddeo: I was working for Marvel around 1991 or '92. We were doing a trade show -it may have been the Javits Center or Philadelphia. Don Daley (then editor of The Punisher) and Fabian Nicieza were doing portfolio reviews. They asked me to "close" the line.
Now I didn't know this at the time either, so they expla
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