Phil Hester has been shaking up The Darkness, pumping out one solid issue after another in style. Unless you’ve been living under a rock here at GEN and you still think Dick Grayson is Robin, you’ve probably figured out that The Darkness has become one of my favorite comics. Meeting Darkness scribe Phil Hester was an absolute blast. In between some good laughs, he gave me the scoop on the changes we’ll be seeing in Jackie and the book itself, the mysterious Foreigner and the even more aloof Sovereign, and even a little about War of the Witchblades and a few of Hester’s upcoming projects. What about Jackie proves difficult to write? How does Hester feel about the infamous Darklings? Sit back and find out.

Girls Entertainment Network: You’ve been putting Jackie Estacado through a lot lately. What kind of effect is that having on him?

Phil Hester: I sort of have a long, three-year plan for Jackie. I have a definite place I want to take him to and leave him. And I want it to be a place that’s definitely changed, but a place where he’s still recognizable as the Darkness wielder. That when somebody else comes on to write it, we don’t have to reboot everything and start all over again. And that’s tough to do with any character that’s a serialized character—to affect real change, but have a recognizable character at the end. And unless your character’s as iconic as Batman, that’s hard to get away with. See, you can do all sorts of things to Batman, but he’s still recognizable as Batman in the end.*[Ed. note: Unless you're Grant Morrison.] So with Jackie it’s tough, because he’s, you know, such a bad person. [Laughs] So your temptation is to make him good, and that’s my temptation, too. It’s like, I just can’t see how anybody who’s relatively intelligent stays bad. I think you grow—the more you’re around and the more you’re exposed to, you grow. And so, definitely with Jackie for me, he is growing. Not necessarily toward being a good guy or a hero, but at least to be more mature and realize more about himself and his relationship with the Darkness. But it’s definitely a two steps forward, one step back kind of thing. So he’s gonna show moments of clarity, and then he’s gonna backslide a little bit into his old habits, because that’s what he’s comfortable with. I’d like it to be sort of a realistic progression, and at the end of it there will be a real change, and I hope it’s one that people can swallow and one that makes sense to everybody.

GEN: … Because of the Foreigner and everything, he’s learning a lot about the Darkness and himself.

Hester: Right. And that’s an ongoing thing. The Foreigner’s sort of gonna be his ghost of Christmas future that’s sort of prodding him along and kind of revealing stuff to him. It’s sort of like almost like equal parts his mentor, and his … He’s testing him, you know, and if Jackie passes his test, and becomes what he thinks he can be, the Foreigner will succeed. And if he doesn’t, the Foreigner will kill him. [Laughs] So it’s sort of like, he’s either your mentor or your executioner. That’s a neat character to bring along, and we’ll be seeing more of him popping up.

“He’s either your mentor or your executioner.”

GEN: I think the Foreigner almost scared Jackie with what he revealed about his soul.

Hester: That’s something that because Jackie’s been around for, as a character, like fifteen years, people forget that in continuity he’s supposed to be about twenty-three, twenty-four. So he’s a young guy, and if you’re a normal person you’re figuring a lot about yourself at twenty-three, twenty-four years old. Jackie’s still … He’s been through a lot, but he’s still learning who he is as a man. So finding out new information about yourself that you didn’t exactly anticipate can really throw you off. I think the Foreigner’s been a good catalyst that represents that sort of discovery that he’s going through.

GEN: You brought the Darklings back!

Hester: [Laughs] Yes! Yeah, I was a skeptic about the Darklings. I was like, ‘These are stupid,’ you know. ‘These are dumb. And I don’t want to do these, I want to make mean Darklings.’ So I had mean Darklings at the beginning, and then made them go away from awhile because we had powered him down for a little bit. Then when he came back it seemed like the perfect way to represent that whole two steps forward, one step back kind of thing. So I treat them as a manifestation of his subconscious, and they seem kind of juvenile, you know? [Laughs] And it’s like, he’s probably got that in him somewhere. So it makes sense for them to come back that way, as the juvenile things again. And they’re almost going to be his outlet for that sort of stuff, so they’ll always be around in a way, you know … And every time I talk to anybody at this show, they say thanks for bringing the Darklings … [Laughs] So you were right, they’re back.

GEN: That splashpage at the end was very cool!

Hester: Yeah, it was cool! Plus, when you take something away, and then you do bring it back in a cool way like that, people are like, ‘Oh, yeah! Yeah, there they are!’ So … You know, it pays to do that once and awhile.

GEN: I can’t remember if it was the last issue, or the second to last issue, but Jackie was spying on the Sovereign. So are the Darklings going to tie into that, as well?

Hester: Yeah. Jackie realizes the Sovereign is not just a bad guy, he’s a bad guy who has a worldly empire, you know, a legitimate empire. And for him to take it down, he’s gonna have to get an organization, too, and the Darklings are gonna play a part in that. They can do things that normal henchmen can’t do. So they’ll be around.

“Jackie needed a Lex Luthor. He needed a villain.”

GEN: So Jackie is definitely getting ready to fight back.

Hester: Yeah. That seems to be the thing with him, he’s … You know, in the first arc when he said, “If you fuck with me, I fuck back.” That’s him. In a nutshell. Somebody fucked with him. And now that’s given him a drive to go get him back. And so he’s moved past almost like, you know, you can have this angst, and this inner turmoil, but when somebody’s after you, it gives you a focus to go back after them. And that’s a comfortable pattern for him, because that’s a mob pattern: to hit back. And it’s the wolfen’s pattern: to hit back. So he’s reliving a lot of that stuff. And he’s gonna hit back for about a year. [Laughs] As far as our book goes, he’s gonna be hitting back … And he’s gonna be back to, ‘What am I doing here? What am I about?’ So sort of my last year of the book is him and more stuff with the Foreigner, just figuring out, what’s his relationship to the Darkness? And is it one that’s supposed to be mutual, like a symbiosis of some kind, or is he gonna end it one way or another?

GEN: And the Foreigner said that …

Hester: Yeah, the Foreigner said that, ‘You’re a guy who can end it for everybody.’ And we’re figuring out what that means in our last year. What that’s gonna mean.

GEN: So where did you get the idea for the Sovereign?

Hester: Well, one of the things we talked about when they hired me at Top Cow was that Jackie needed a Lex Luthor. He needed a villain. And Jackie’s already an anti-hero, so his villains tend to not survive. [Laughs] When he beats them, he kills them usually. He’s not gonna put him in Arkham Asylum, he’s gonna chop his head off. So we wanted a character that Jackie can defeat—you know, visibly defeat in a book. But we always know he’s still around somehow. The Sovereign’s got all these manifestations where he can pop up back again. This next year’s Jackie’s sort of going around the world and cleaning out all this guy’s rat holes, and making sure he can’t come back at him. It’ll take him different places and put him in different positions that I hope are entertaining.

“He’s not gonna put him in Arkham Asylum, he’s gonna chop his head off.”

GEN: You were talking about Jackie being an anti-hero, and how it is very hard to write that in a way that is believable. What makes him worth writing?

Hester: There are certain things that are inalienable about him. Like, he’s charming. Okay, even when he’s an asshole, he’s charming, right? And he’s funny. And it’s not right, but that buys people a lot of good will. In the real world, you know a lot of charming assholes that you let get away with a lot of stuff you shouldn’t, because they’re fun to be around. And Jackie’s sort of that guy. He’s that … you know, charming asshole. And it’s almost like a Tony Soprano thing. Tony Soprano’s an awful, awful, awful person. But if you present him in a realistic way, and you let people see his inner life, they can identify with him. Because everyone feels like they’ve got a little slice of that in him, I think. Even if you don’t let it out, you’ve got it here inside of you somewhere. Hopefully if I just did a good of job of telling his story, people would be able to relate to him, and that’ll make him easier to side with. You know, you’ll get into his adventures more and keep the narration up on some level.

GEN: Speaking of relationships, will Jackie have any part in the War of the Witchblades?

Hester: No. Ron Marz and I are just at the very beginning of talking about a Witchblade/Darkness crossover for later that will really fundamentally change their relationship. Even more than it has been already. Like a real, real deep change. Because it’s always been sort of a will they, won’t they flirtation standard thing, and he’s gonna reach some decision about the way that’s gotta resolve itself. We felt it was crossover-worthy to figure it out that way. And that’s still all pending. Top Cow hasn’t weighed in on it yet; it’s just me and Ron kicking ideas around.

“But if you present him in a realistic way, and you let people see his inner life, they can identify with him.”

GEN: And it seems like War of the Witchblades will change their relationship. Because a character’s supposed to die, I believe.

Hester: Right, Sara changes. Sara’s been changing a lot in Witchblade. And even that tiny cameo she had in The Darkness recently, she was a jerk to Jackie. She’s always been cool to him, and she was outright hostile in that, and that’s different. Their relationship’s always gonna be in flux, but this crossover with Jackie is kind of a resolution.

GEN: So you have a new Darkness penciller!

Hester: Well, we don’t really have a new one—it’s Michael. And we’re gonna use Michael as much as we can. It’s not fair to say that he’s a slow artist, because he spends as much time at the table as any other artist. He’s not off playing Xbox. He’s at the board drawing. It’s just that his style’s really meticulous, so it takes him longer to work. I’m gonna do two issues myself. I’m gonna write and draw a couple issues. And then Nelson Blake did an issue, and Jorge Lucas is gonna do a few. And then we’ll get as many as we can out of Michael. He’s a really rare talent, so we’re lucky to have him as long as we can keep him. And anything that facilitates him feeling comfortable working on the book I’m all for, so if that means he has to take time off and come back, so be it. In an ideal world, he would be the artist every month and it would be really consistent. But since I can’t have that, I try to adapt the stories to the strengths of the artists that are coming on or not. Since I know I’m drawing a couple, I’m setting him in a swamp, and it has a swamp monster in it because that’s stuff I’m good at. And when I know Jorge’s doing an issue, it’ll be a crime issue. And when I know Nelson’s doing one, it’ll be a military one. So we try to play to each guy’s strengths.

GEN: Okay, that’s it!

Hester: Okay, thanks very much!

GEN: Thank you!

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