B Clay Moore Talks Savage New Series
By Matt Conner
B Clay Moore has his first original Valiant property launching in November, and he’s talking to Bam Smack Pow about it! Savage is going to have a child fighting dinosaurs!
Bam Smack Pow: Hello! Thank you so much for talking with us. We’ve been loving Valiant’s work for a few years now and are excited to see what you have coming up with Savage! Was Savage your idea, or were you approached with the suggestion to write it?
CLAY MOORE: It was based on an idea of mine that I discussed with Editor-In-Chief Warren Simons. Warren later gave me a ring and suggested we develop the idea for Valiant. A lot of creators seem to intentionally steer away from creating new concepts for existing universes, but I love it.
The series has been promoted as following the lives of a celebrity couple who crash on a mysterious prehistoric island and the son who is born there. The cover has a boy by himself. Does the title,Savage, relate to the boy, the island, the story, or something else?
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All of the above! The father in the story is Kevin Sauvage, a world famous soccer/football star. Naturally, he’s acquired the nickname “The Savage” along the way. Eventually, that title is applied directly to his son.
But, certainly, the environment of the island is also best described as “savage.”
Cover by Lewis LaRosa
Your previous work includes the crime series Hawaiian Dick and superhero work including JSA stories and Superman at DC. How do the tones of those series compare to the tone you’re hoping to set in Savage?
Savage shares more with my creator-owned work than any previous work I’ve done for, say, DC.
And, really, that’s a testament to the faith Warren and Valiant have invested in the project. One of the things Warren had to hit me in the head with for me to finally understand he meant it was, “We want you to treat this more like a creator-owned book.” Meaning, that I should worry less about hitting the standard notes intended to please editorial, and cut loose a little bit, letting my imagination take the story where it wanted to go.
With the editorial input from Warren and Tom Brennan, we’ve put together a book that fits nicely within the Valiant world, but still stands on its own legs.
More to the point, I’ve always enjoyed creating stories that revolve around strong central protagonists, and Savage is that. Once I understand who he is, I know exactly how he’s going to respond to what this world throws in his path.
This is the biggest completely new property to hit Valiant since Divinity. In this first limited series, can readers expect to see established Valiant characters, or is this self-contained?
Without giving too much away, it’s essentially self-contained, but firmly a part of the Valiant Universe.
You’re working with Clayton Henry and Lewis LaRosa for art. How do you handle writing for two such different artists?
Let me start by pointing out that they’re very different, but also extremely talented artists. Lewis is an absolute fanatic for dinosaurs, and his knowledge of them is pretty remarkable. So at the very least, I know what he LOVES drawing, and have done my best to give him the chance to flex his muscles there. And what he’s doing on the book is definitive in that regard.
Clayton can do a little of everything, and his style has proven to be well suited for the scenes that focus more on the family and establishing environment. But, he nails action sequences, too. Hopefully it all comes together fluidly.
The preview pages are gorgeous but don’t seem to have a lot of need for dialogue when it’s a boy fighting a little dinosaur. How much of this miniseries is going to be silent pages? What challenges does that present for you as a writer?
Weirdly, a lot of the short stories I’ve written for various anthologies over the years have been silent or nearly silent. It’s actually very easy when you think visually and have complete faith in your collaborator. In this case, I gave Lewis visual cues and let him go to work.
There won’t be massive silent passages, but the art is certainly strong enough to tell the story without word balloons cluttering it up.
Variant cover by Guedes
Your first Valiant project is a brand-new stand-alone, but now that you’ve got this one down, are there existing Valiant books you’d like to try writing?
Actually, my first Valiant story was a standalone issue of Bloodshot (Bloodshot #24) a couple of years back.
The thing about Valiant is that the core concepts are all so strong. It would be fun to tackle almost anything in the line, or tell stories involving any of them, but I do love creating new concepts.
It doesn’t hurt that Valiant has assembled a core of unique voices and unleashed them on their properties. I ran into writer Matt Kindt just after Savage was announced and he gave me a “welcome to the family” hug. It’s fun working for a publisher in whom creators feel personally invested.
Even if Matt’s beard is scratchy.