An Interview with Duane Swierczynski

Tuesday, Jun 03, 2008 at 9:33am

Duane Swierczynski is a rising force in both crime fiction and comic book writing. His latest novel, Severance Package, has just hit the shelves, and he was kind enough to answer a few of my questions through e-mail.

CG: First off, thanks for several sleepless nights. Each time I started one of your novels I wasn't able to put it down until it was finished. Was it a conscious decision to compress the time frames of your narratives to a matter of days -- or in the case of Severance Package, hours -- in order to create that sense of urgency?

DS: That’s awesome for any writer to hear -- thank you. I have a lot of fun playing with constraints; time and otherwise. In every novel so far, I’ve given myself one or two little rules, just to see if I could stick to them. In The Blonde, I decided that I didn’t want anyone using guns. In The Wheelman, I wanted a character who couldn’t speak. (Which, granted, makes dialogue a little tough.) There’s a similar limitation in Severance Package -- did you notice it?

You didn’t?

(Oh well. #[email protected] it.)

CG: Recently you left your position as Editor-in-Chief at the Philadelphia City Paper. Was it a hard decision to give up the day job?

DS: I miss my colleagues, and the crazy stuff that comes out of locking a bunch of creative minds in a room for extended periods of time. But I’m really happy to finally be able to tackle my true love full-time: writing fiction, be it novels or comics. Plus, I don’t have to wear pants as often.

CG: Your last three novels have all been set in Philadelphia. What makes your home town such a great city for crime fiction?

DS: I have a complicated love/hate thing going on with my city. My main characters tend to be outsiders -- people who end up here by mistake, or who are forced to be here because of a job. It’s fun to look at the city through their eyes.

CG: You've got a very eclectic body of work behind you, from your non-fiction (The Big Book O' Beer, This Here’s a Stick Up), your crime novels, and now your work at Marvel Comics. How did you get your start as a writer?

DS: By being bad at math and science. Instead of paying attention in high school, I would write these little horror stories to make my friends laugh. In the middle of my junior year of high school, I wrote a horror novella as a gift for my best friend, and his reaction to my shock ending convinced me that I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.

CG: How did you come to work for Marvel Comics? Did you approach them as a fan, or did they come after you?

DS: Neither, actually. I was emailing a bit with Ed Brubaker -- one of my favorite writers ever since I read his brilliant graphic novel Scene of the Crime -- and at one point he asked me, "Hey, you ever think about writing for comics?" Ed introduced me to his editors at Marvel, Axel Alonso and Warren Simons, and we started kicking around ideas. Now I’ve been dying to break into comics since I was a kid, and the whole time I was thinking: Lower your expectations, Swierczy. This is never going to happen. Much to my shock, it did.

CG: You've worked on Moon Knight, Cable, Iron Fist, and now at New York Comic Con, it was announced you're doing a story arc on The Punisher. Is there still a character you're dying for a crack at?

DS: Well, my son is named Parker, after both the Amazing Spider-Man and the Richard Stark anti-hero. So…

CG: DC does lots of cross promotion with authors like Brad Meltzer when they venture into comics work. Will we see any sample chapters of Severance Package in issues of Cable or Iron Fist?

DS: No sample chapters, but there will be a cool Severance Package ad in Cable #4, and there’s a cool Cable ad in Severance. (Marvel and St. Martin’s work together like a dream -- I feel like I’m a kid in a family where both parents genuinely like and talk to each other.) I think it’s cool that 40 years from now, somebody might pick up a battered copy of Severance and smile over the ad, much like I smile when I see cigarette ad inserts in paperbacks from the 1960s and 70s.

CG: Greg Rucka 's Queen and Country comic has spawned novels; any chance of you doing the reverse and bringing CI-6 to comics yourself?

DS: I’d love to pull a reverse Rucka someday. But I feel like my plate is full right now with Cable and Iron Fist. Then again, whenever I finish a novel, I usually have two or three sequel ideas pop into my head. Maybe graphic’s the way to go with those…

CG: What do you feel has been the biggest difference in your writing approach between your prose and comics work? Or between your crime fiction and interactive mysteries?

DS: Everything comes from the strange little story machine in my head; with comics, though, I’ve had to learn how to focus on the visuals a lot more. In novels, I’m kind of in the Elmore Leonard school -- less is more, when it comes to description. You can’t do that in comics, of course; an artist has to know what you have in mind.

CG: You've got a love of the old crime pulps; which author do you think it is a crime more people aren't reading today?

DS: Oh, there are a bunch of ‘em: Wade Miller, David Goodis, William McGivern, Day Keene, Gil Brewer, Dan J. Marlowe. Even guys like Donald Hamilton, who were huge back in the day, are sadly forgotten by most thriller lovers. I am glad that publishers such as Hard Case Crime and Stark House and bringing so many of these guys back -- but there are so many more, waiting to be reprinted.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions Duane. Best of luck with Severance Package.