JOHN OSTRANDER INTERVIEW

John Ostrander is a well known writer for Dark Horse comics. He has written not only for the Star Wars universe, but several of his own original comic stories and for DC's Justice League and Marvel's X-Men, to name a few. He is currently the lead writer for Star Wars: Republic (Clone Wars comics) and has collaborated with the likes of fan favorite artists Jan Duursema and Brandon Badeaux.

TUCWS: Hello Mr. Ostrander, thank you very much for taking some time to talk to us. First off, can you tell us a bit about yourself? What motivated you to become a writer, and how did you come to work for Dark Horse comics?

John Ostrander: I'm a writer because I was a reader. I really love reading and I love stories and you often wind up wanting to do that which you love. I'd worked for Dark Horse before Star Wars; I've known a lot of the people there over the years. Specifically on Star Wars, Tim Truman was the writer at the time. When he went to work on a special project, he suggested me to his editor. And the rest, as the say, is hysteria. Or is it history?<g>

TUCWS: Before working for Dark Horse, what have you written? Have you always worked on comics, or have you written novels as well?

JO: I worked in theater before I wrote comics and have written a few plays, some of which were produced. I learned a lot about plot structure and dialogue from those days. I started in comics at a very late age, in my thirties. Never have written a novel but I'm contemplating one or two.

TUCWS: On many of your Clone Wars comics, and other Star Wars comics, I've noticed that you've worked with Jan Duursema a lot. How did you two come to meet and begin working together?

JO: Well, Jan is married to Tom Mandrake and I was working with Tom all way back in the GRIMJACK days so that's when we met, back in the mists of pre-recorded time. Jan and I had worked together BEFORE Star Wars, notably on HAWKWORLD at DC.

TUCWS: Can you describe a bit about how you and the rest of the 'team' work on an individual comic? What comes first, the story or the art, or both at the same time?

JO: Story, by necessity, comes first. Jan and I work quite closely together and discuss the story before we begin. I have to do a plot overview which is then approved by not only my Dark Horse editor, Randy Stradley, but Lucas Film Licensing (LFL) as well. LFL approves things at every stage. The overview, depending on whether it is for a single issue or a multi-part story, will range between 3 to 5 pages. Randy and LFL give their notes and then I break it down to a page and panel configuration, what happen in each panel, how it is paced and show it to Jan, since she has to draw it. She gives me her thoughts and comments (sometimes her version!) and then I script it, full script (which Jan also gets a look at; she knows SW so well that she is also my first line of "Does this make sense in SW?"). Then it goes in to Randy and LFL for approval; if there are notes, then I correct it. I'll make some final adjustments after Jan draws it, just to make sure the dialogue works well with the art. And we go back and start over on the next story. (Actually, I'm probably working on 2 or 3 issues at any given time in different levels of development.)

TUCWS: You've worked in several eras of the Star Wars chronology so far. How has the story changed from pre-Clone Wars to Clone Wars?

JO: Clone Wars is much darker. It's also more "immediate" in that, for the first time in a long time, we're not trailing the previous movie -- we're anticipating the NEXT one!

TUCWS: You were one of the first writers to work with the Clone Wars series, which encompasses comics, novels, a cartoon series, toys and magazine stories. How does that feel, and how do you think that the entire series is going so far?

JO: It was very exciting and a little intimidating as well; we were dealing with an almost mythic aspect of Star Wars. The Clone Wars had been referred to for so long and now that story was going to be told. Furthermore, the bulk of it was NOT going to be told in the movies -- George Lucas decided only to tell the opening and the ending. The vast middle was wide open!

It's also so massive that it's almost hard to get a handle on it. We decide early on (at Dark Horse) that we wanted to tell stories are characters set against a backdrop of war. Some of the stories would be directly involved; some might be more tangential. It was a given from the first that we weren't telling the WHOLE war; simply not possible.

How are we doing? I leave that up to others but it FEELS pretty good from this end and I'm proud of what we've done thus far and what we have in the planning stages. The fans, in general, have been very receptive and approving and I'm very grateful for that.

TUCWS: What type of research do you do to work on a comic, seeing how continually is a big thing among some of the fans? Do you have to cross reference a lot, by reading the other Clone Wars media that is out?

JO: Well, I've also been a fan since BEFORE the first movie came out. Maybe not as detailed as others but I've been there. Jan knows a lot of details and we have access to many resources including some not available to the fans. We try to work in references from other material as we become aware of it but we try not to center our stories on those elements. I've read SHATTERPOINT and I try to keep up with what is in the planning stages but it's not humanly possible, I think, to be aware of EVERYTHING and still get the work done. In general, we work in references and we get them right. I respect continuity but I won't be driven by it.

TUCWS: Most people that I've talked to have been Star Wars fans before they worked on Star War things. Were you a fan before you began to work? What is your favorite episode, and how do you feel that the new trilogy is shaping up?

JO: I think it's because the art department at Star Wars Insider had seen my work for Star Wars Roleplaying. Then the phone rang.I've been a fan, as I said, since BEFORE the first movie (AKA Episode 4 "A New Hope") came out. I saw the novel in paperback, bought it and read it and thought it would be interesting if they could get maybe a third of it on the screen. You have to remember, this was back BEFORE Star Wars revolutionized movies and SF on screen. Those kind of special effects being described didn't seem possible. Little did I know that the movie would EXCEED the book

Which is why that first movie will probably always be my absolute fave. I mean, if I have to choose. It was so fresh, so different, and TOTALLY unlike ANYTHING I had ever seen on the screen before. I have nothing to which I can compare it. Nothing will ever replace that first viewing.

TUCWS: Among some of the fans, Aayla Secura and Quinlan Vos are your 'Trademark characters', ones that you created and have used a lot, particularly Quinlan. How did each character come to be?

JO: Before we did our first story, TWILIGHT, Jan and I sat down to figure out WHAT we wanted to do. So far as we knew, we were hired for the ONE arc. We wanted to tell a story that would incorporate everything we liked about Star Wars. For example, we felt that the Prequel era needed a good rogue, such as Han is later, only someone who definitely wasn't Han. We also wanted to create our own LEAD characters for a couple of reasons; we didn't want to go tripping over current continuity or continuity problems. We wanted characters that, at least for the moment, we could control. And we felt that, if we did our jobs right, the characters might prove popular enough for us to come back and do more stories with them.

I LIKED the concept of the amnesiac hero. The hero doesn't know any more than the reader does; that helps create reader identification. Also, it raised an interesting question -- if you didn't KNOW you were a Jedi, if you didn't consciously KNOW your training, would you still be a Jedi? Worse, would you be in greater danger of going to the Dark Side? We wanted the hero to have a padawan that he was also searching for her and the idea of a TWI'LEK padawan seemed cool; the twi'lek females are so often taken just for eye candy. What if one was as capable as she was beautiful? We figured the fans might go for THAT!

Jan has eyes like an eagle. We decided our main character would be taken from the background of Episode 1. She spotted the guy she anted to be our Quinlan sitting in the background at a table for maybe a second and drew him ACCURATELY from that! Amazing!

Originally, I thought we would have Aayla die at the end of TWILIGHT but Jan's daughter, Sian, protested and said they needed more cool female Jedi in Star Wars. We listened and agreed and that's how it all started.

TUCWS: How was it to see Aayla Secura on the big screen in Attack of the Clones, and how do you feel about having her back in Episode III?

JO: Too cool for words! I mean, c'mon! ANY fan would be mad excited to have a character they created wind up in the actual film, right? I'm no different. I'm glad they like her well enough to bring her back but. . .well. . .knowing that a lot of Jedi don't get out of Episode 3 alive. . . <sighhhhhhh!> Gonna be tough to sit through.

TUCWS: In Republic 49, Sacrifice, you don't start the Clone Wars off with a battle, but an intelligence mission where Quinlan has intercepted plans for a Separatist Attack on the clone factories on Kamino. Why did you choose to go with this type of story?

JO: Originally, we were going to start Clone Wars with issue 50, which was set to be large size and the battle of Kamino. Then things got change and the preceding storyline, HONOR AND DUTY, got cut from 4 issues to 3. They wanted to go with the Clone Wars an issue sooner. Okay, made sense. But not another battle when we were going to be doing that with Issue 50. I didn't want to undercut that issue. So I planned 49 to set up 50. Also, we hadn't seen Quin and I wanted to establish what he was doing at this time. So doing a spy story seemed a cool thing to do.

TUCWS: Quinlan has had his own little back-story of the Clone Wars, where he's sort of the Grey Jedi, working in the shadows, behind the scenes. We see him intercept plans in 49, then get arrested for supposedly selling other codes to the enemy in 54. If you play with fire, you'll get burned, so is that what Quinlan is about to find out, that playing in the shadows can lead to shadows?

JO: Quin thinks he's in the shadows still. He denies being Dark Side. Is he just in denial? Is he right? Oh, the suspense! And if you think I'm going to kill that by blabbing here, OH you are so wrong!<g>

TUCWS: For Republic 59, you guys take a short break from Quinlan and Aayla, and focus on Anakin Skywalker, in one of the finer Clone Wars comics. We see Anakin is still wrestling with his inner demons. How was it to pair Anakin with a Tuskan Jedi? Would this have been a point of possible redemption in your eyes for young Skywalker?

JO: What better way to dramatize that turmoil than to pair him off with a Jedi whose whole appearance is Tusken? Bound to bring up everything in Anakin and that's the point of stories, I think, or one of them -- to put characters into situations that reveal them as characters.

TUCWS: In the same issue, Hett makes several comments that Anakin was much like a Tuskan, as which he thought and acted like one. Is it possible that Hett is showing Anakin what he really is, a Tuskan, angry and wishing for revenge?

JO: When he made those comments, I don't think Hett knew about Anakin's slaughter of the Tuskens. OTOH, his Tusken upbringing would make him actually more comfortable with the concept of a blood-feud and a blood price. He feels a connection with Anakin that Anakin desperately wants to deny.

TUCWS: In Republic 61, you and your team take another break from several things, and work on the political side of the war, in the Senate. Bail Organa is the main character. Organa is the future foster parent of Leia Organa. This is a bit of setting up for Episode III, but also for A New Hope. Again, how was it to play with this new character.

JO: Actually, that was a lot of fun. This is someone we "KNOW" from hearing about since early Star Wars but was only shown in Episode 2 and not especially fleshed out. I thought it would be interesting to give touches of that here and especially to make connections that blossom later in ANH. Makes it more fun for everyone, I think.

TUCWS: In 61, there was an attack on Coruscant, which claimed Finis Valorum's life. The reaction to this attack, and of Bail's attack, is to create a security bill that Bail thinks, infringes on the rights of the Republic. This to me seems a bit like the Homeland Security Bill, created right after 9-11. Did you have this in mind when you wrote this story? How do you feel about it?

JO: It's not specifically about our Homeland Security Bill. It's as much about the Nazi rise to power or the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in the early days of the Vietnam war. It is more about that almost universal tendency of some politicians (especially dictators) to use and manipulate tragic events to their own political ends. History is rife with examples.

TUCWS: We also get to see some more hints of Palpatine's power and reach over the other Senators. He's clearly looking for power, and getting it. Valorum tells Bail that the Senate is crazy to give Palpatine that much power, and is clearly one of the few people who sees this. This is a common theme in some works of literature. Did you have any particular place that you got this idea from?

JO: It's inherent in the Star Wars scenario, I think. SOME people had to see the dangers and be prepared to speak out about it. Valorum, given his own hostility to Palpatine, is inclined to see the dangers. Really, I was just doing what I call "fair extrapolation" of the given events.

TUCWS: Skipping gears again, we see that the four Jedi comics are tied in closely together, almost showing Quinlan's fall from grace. Quinlan is working for what he thinks is right, but doing it the wrong way, very much like Anakin/Vader will be doing. Do you think that this is a common way to fall to darkness? It's similar in a way to Lord of the Rings, where the user may try and do good, but would eventually use it for themselves.

JO: I think that very few villains in the real world think of themselves as "evil". They either justify what they're doing or it never occurs to them to try. Terrible things are done by people who believe that they're doing right, sometimes.

TUCWS: You are one of the few EU creators/influencers that actively interacts with the fans (via message boards). What keeps you so motivated in dealing with fans and our quirks about everything that's good or amiss regarding our favorite sci-fi series?

JO: I enjoy it. I'm a fan, too. Maybe not as intense as others, but I'm a long standing fan. As a writer, I know what I INTEND but it's useful and interesting to see how people actually READ the stories I write. I've often said, 'If you want to know what a story is about, don't ask the writer. They know only what they MEANT to do."<g>

TUCWS: Have we given you any good ideas?

JO: It's not so much specific ideas as tones and whether or not the stories I've been doing are effective in the ways that I want them to be. I got plenty of ideas, I got plenty of stories -- what I need to know is whether or not what I'm doing is WORKING for the fans. It's important.

TUCWS: How far has Quinlan fallen so far? Is there any way for him to recover? What is in store for him soon?

JO: That's sort of the Big Question, isn't it? And if I told you what's in store for him, it wouldn't be a surprise, would it?

TUCWS: So far, what has been the most enjoyable experience working for the Clone Wars comics? What has been your favorite issue to work on so far?

JO: My fave issue is always the one I'm currently working on. My best experience has been working with Jan as we take Quin through the twists and turns his life is taking.

TUCWS: What is coming from you soon? Can you tell us any thing about your future Clone Wars issues?

JO: I could but then I would have to use my Jedi mind power to wipe your mind. <g> See? <gg>

TUCWS: We all love the great writing tips that you give it. We heard that you have some kind of course that you teach in comic book writing. Will you ever have an online version of it?

JO: I've posted mini-lectures from time to time. I think that's probably as close as I'll get although who can say for sure? I've learned that 'No" or 'never" are words you often wind up eating.

TUCWS: Have you read anything from Episode III? If so, how is it, and what can we expect?

JO: If I had, I wouldn't be able to tell you. You see, I LIKE working on Star Wars and would like to continue to do so. <g> Anyway, not only did I sign a contract not to disclose, I also gave my word.

TUCWS: Thank you very much for talking with us! We all look forward to reading what you have in store for us next!

Conducted by Andrew Liptak, August 2004.