BCL Interviews “Blood Syndicate: Season One” Writer, Geoffrey Thorne

The Black Comic Lords had the honor and pleasure of interviewing talented and successful writer, actor and screenwriter, Geoffrey Thorne regarding his upcoming work on Milestone Comics’ highly anticipated, “Blood Syndicate: Season One”, releasing on 5/10/22.  “Blood Syndicate”, like all of the revamped “Milestone: Season One” line, is a reimagining, rather than a continuation of the original series created by Dwayne McDuffie, Ivan Velez, Jr. and Trevor Von Eeden in 1993. To update the series for the 21st century, while remaining true to the vision and accomplishments of the original material and its fanbase, is not an easy task, but Geoffrey Thorne is more than a match for the challenge.

BCL: Were you a fan of the original Milestone run back in the 90’s when it originally came out?

THORNE: I own almost 100% of the original Milestone comic books, like yourself, probably. I’m short  on a couple of “Kobalts” and a couple of “Xombi’s”. That’s because they got snapped up fast, I think. Yeah, those are the only issues I’m missing. Some “Xombi” and some and some uhh…

BCL: “Deathwish”?

THORNE: “Deathwish”! Jesus Christ. “Deathwish”. Yeah. I got “Heroes”, I got all of them. I got all of them. I love that I wrote the first letter.  I think I was like 19, maybe 20, I guess? I don’t know how old I was, but I was barely grown, let’s put it like that. The first letter to any comic book company about anything I wrote [was] to Icon, okay? I just was like, “I can’t believe this”. If you could see me, you could see me dancing like… 

BCL:  So what was your favorite of all the Milestone books? 

THORNE: “Blood Syndicate”.

BCL: Okay, that’s good. You’re a genuine fan.

THORNE:  Yeah, man I loved all that…I mean, [let me] rephrase that. I like all of them, but “Blood Syndicate” was for Geoff.  “Blood Syndicate” was the one that they wrote for me to read because I was in that.  And then the spin-off books, “Shadow Cabinet” and “Star Chamber” didn’t get its own book but like “Blood Syndicate” got turned into–it gave us “Shadow Cabinet” and it sort of all turned into “Heroes” at one point. I was down for that whole journey, I was there. I got the “Wise Son” mini series. I got all of it like…yeah.

 BCL: Likewise.  Which character in the Blood Syndicate was your favorite? 

THORNE: Well mine actually was Kwai–just because the idea of this Chinese-Korean goddess chilling with basically a bunch of street gang members and thinking nothing of it like–like she’s cool with them. I was just like, “okay Kwai!” You know? And then after that, I don’t know. I would say probably [unintelligible] but what I was most interested in was DMZ because they never showed us his damn face! That used to drive me insane. And I liked Fade a lot.  I liked Fade a lot. I liked the way his powers worked, and I liked the idea that his powers were sort of eating him. Because one of the things that they do in a lot of mainstream comics is people get the powers and then they just sort of intrinsically know how to use them and they know everything about the powers and I’m like, “so tomorrow morning, if i could suddenly flame on, I know everything about flaming on?” No, you know? And there’s no downside, there’s no downside, right? So I like the idea that he had to…his fading powers was actually becoming a problem for him.

BCL:  Well you mentioned something that raises the question. You said one of the things that intrigued you was the fact that DMZ was never unmasked. Is that something in your run?

THORNE:  Umm, I actually asked either I think I asked Dwayne [McDuffie] or Chris[Cross] at some point, many years ago, that one. That, yes, they had always planned to eventually show his face and I was like, “please just tell me that he didn’t look like some kind of monster under there! Please tell me he looked cool”, and they were like, “you look cool, you look cool…you’re definitely not a monster”. DMZ does not appear in this first arc, so it’s not an issue yet, but Chris is going to–been doing nothing but redesigns on all these characters, so we’re going to have a massive redesign I’m guessing on DMZ, but he would come back masked, obviously.  Like, I’m not going to lose that, because that was a big fun part of the old “Blood Syndicate”.  When DMZ shows up, he will not show up with his face showing, so… yeah, he’s not trying to, he’s not trying to show his face.  But he’s not going to appear in the first six issues, so don’t look for him. 

BCL:  Alright, you mentioned ChrisCross. How is it working with an OG Milestone guy?

THORNE:  I think you can’t do these books without Denys or Chris–one of the originators.  I think that even if I wasn’t involved, I think it will automatically lose authenticity. If the guy’s still here and he wants to do it, he should do it, right? Chris himself has said it’s been one of 20 plus years, almost 30 years, more than 30 years…and he said his artwork has evolved. So it’s fun for him to come back and sort of revisit characters that he drew in his youth and now apply all the skills that he’s got to it, right?  Plus Juan Castro’s in there, which gives it this sort of really nice flavor. The two of them together are a great unit. So I’m loving the new designs. I think everybody else is going to be very happy with them. And I’m letting him, I mean, I shouldn’t say I’m letting him…Normally when I work with an Illustrator, I’m–I wouldn’t say overly–but I’m very, very, very specific about how things look. I will even draw them and say, “like this, do a better version of this,” right? And with Chris, I’m just kind of like–unless it’s a brand new character–I don’t do photo references. I don’t. You know, it’s like these are his children. Let him do as he will. As long as it fits the story, I have no problem. 

BCL: So yes, it’s cool because you know in preparing for this, I looked at the the first issue [DC Comics] was good enough to share that with me and I was comparing that to Chris’s art on the original run and you can see the evolution of his… 

THORNE: Oh my god, yeah… 

BCL:…it HAS gotten better, which is saying a lot because…

THORNE:…I was, I’m a big one for picking out people when they’re in their first few issues and going, “oh, this guy’s going to be a star!” Chris is on my list right away.  So I’ve worked with him a couple of times.  He and I–starting with me, I tried to get Chris 20 years ago on an indie book. I tried to work with Chris on another thing I wanted to do and it just kept always falling apart.  Ironically, the first time we worked together was on a “Vixen” project for DC that he got going because on Twitter, I was mouthing off about how I figured a way to make Vixen really cool and he was like, “What? I would want to draw Vixen. I’ma call my editor,” and I’m like, “Chris, I don’t know you, and you don’t know what the idea is, what are you doing,” right? And he’s like, “too late, I already called her so…” and I was like, I thought he was clowning me, because I don’t really know him, except you know, through Twitter or trying to work together. But we’re not friends. He’s on the east coast. I’m on the west coast.  We know each other as professionals, right? I got an email from that editor, and the editor was like, “so ChrisCross tells me you have this great idea for Vixen.” I’m like, “I don’t know what he told you, because he does not know what the idea is, because I haven’t  told anybody what I did.” And he was like, “tell me.” So I did and we got a book out of it and I really like working with him. And there’s the same basic vibe like–he wanted to draw this character, I wanted to use this group called the Global Guardians. He’s like, “oh, I love them. And I’m like, “yeah, well you’re going to love this, because you’re going to be redesigning that. I don’t even care what they look like.” All i said was, “this one character has a mask with antlers and this other person is the wife of this other character,” and he was like, “cool I’m on it.” And he went crazy, and I think we got some really cool designs and a good nice workflow out of it and then, yeah.  Then he came in on “Green Lantern” to do a couple of issues…and that was all.  It’s always fun to see Chris. He brings his own flavor. You cannot mistake ChrisCross’ drawing for anything other than a ChrisCross drawing. He does cosmic, he does street–he can do it all. He is the perfect flavor for any Dakota comic book from my point of view.

BCL:  So with that in mind, I mean you have one of the original artists who you know–you have his art from back in the day. He’s updating it for the modern times. How do you balance when you’re trying to be creative with with the material, but you also have the source material, and you have a rabid fan following of of gray-haired guys like myself who kind of grew up with Milestone back in the day and you want to honor them and and keep them happy, so they’re not grumbling about, “back in my day/get off my lawn,” but you also want to make it new and fresh for the new generation? How do you balance that? 

THORNE:  It’s an interesting thing, because I am one of those guys, and I’ve made it known for years, I never thought Milestone was coming back. So my whole thing was always if they ever come back, you better let me have the Blood Syndicate. I don’t care who it is. I don’t care who’s in charge of it. I better get that call. That was…I’ve been saying that for decades. People are like “why are you talking about Milestone, that’s never coming back”. I’m like, “if it does, they better freaking call!” So things were different in the world in 1993. So if someone’s looking for like… we’re just going to continue like…for whatever the final issue of what Syndicate was, and “we’re just going to keep going from there”. Except it’s now. Well now doesn’t work like it did then. We didn’t even have the internet really back then.  AIDS was a giant thing that was rushing through all communities. Crack epidemic was still in swing in the Black community. A lot of things were true then, that are not true now. Right? So I’m not doing…I don’t do throwbacks. I always tell everybody up front. But the characters, the people, they should be basically the people you recognize. The powers they recognize, the way they are. If anything, we can flex more than they were allowed to flex back in the 90s, right? You read that first issue?

BCL: Yes.

THORNE: Wise Son ain’t nobody’s softy, you know. But the kind of Muslim man he is can be more nuanced because people now are more familiar with what that even means, right? Back then, you had to do it a particular way because it was easy to identify sort of an NOI-type of brother because of his gear. You could go, “oh I know who he is, and I know what he’s about.”  But Islam and even Black Muslims are so varied now, that I felt like there was space there to do a journey. He decides he’s a Muslim–what does that mean? What kind of Muslim are you going to be? What do you think Islam is, person who just decided in your early 20s, “now I’m a Muslim”? What does that actually mean? So we’re going to track that.

BCL: That was one of my questions. Which portrayal of Islam are you going to do? The NOI, the 5 Percent, the traditional…?

THORNE: The fun is, it depends on how much I’m allowed to play with that character in that regard. But the point is, he’s going on a journey. I feel a story is boring if you start a person and they’re just, “well, let us go save the day now that we have superpowers,” you know? Hannibal is a complex man and he has a lot of stuff going on in his life. One of which is he’s trying so hard to be a good man and part of his trying to go hard to be a good man is he’s going to adopt Islam, but he adopts it out of complete ignorance of what it actually is. He meets multiple Muslims in the Middle East and they have an idea of it. He’s seen Nation of Islam people in his growing up years, right? So who is it that informs his Muslim nature? He doesn’t even know when we meet him. He just says the first rule of Islam is, “you declare you’re a Muslim–you’re a Muslim,” right? “I declare I’m a Muslim–Allah is God, and Muhammad is his prophet.” Okay, you’re a Muslim now, but that’s not the end of it, that’s just the first step.

BCL: More than just the Five Pillars. That’s actually an interesting take on it because, in essence, you’re kind of having him do the journey Malcolm X did, but in reverse. Because what actually…

THORNE: [Jokingly] “What? How dare you?: What do you mean Malcolm X? What?” No, yeah. 

BCL: It’s cool, because he actually converts to Islam while he’s away in the Middle East and then comes back, whereas Malcolm did it the other way around.

THORNE: That’s exactly right and you’re going to see people over the course of the book deal with what they know of characters like, “I know you from the old days, why are you acting like this now? I know who you really are.” People trying to tell you who you are is going to be one of the things and how everybody’s going to be basically buck against that, “you don’t tell me who I am, I tell you who I am.

BCL: It’s also an interesting take because when Malcolm went to to the Middle East and saw other Muslims that were blond-haired, blue-eyed Muslims you know, “I can be a Muslim and have someone that looks like a a white man and consider him my brother based on that faith,” and you’ve got Wise Son starting with seeing people that are different looking than him in that faith and then coming home, It would be interesting to see where you go with that.

THORNE: Well he’s also a homophobe still. He’s not cut and dried when we meet him.` He’s not settled in whatever. He’s a person on a very strict, very serious journey. When you see what’s going on with him in issue two, you’ll very more understand the journey he’s on, because in issue two you get more of a hit on Wise Son’s life. Issue one is really introducing us to Fade and sort of Tech Nine and his relationship together, but issue two is much more about Wise Son and you’re gonna see what I’m talking about in terms of the journey he’s on and where he came. What are his roots? Why he is, the way he is.

 

 

 

BCL: You mentioned Fade Wise Son and Tech Nine, what are the other members of the original lineup we can expect to see in Season One? 

THORNE:  Well you see Flashback already, she shows up in issue one. In my first interview I did say for sure Kwai would not show up. Then after that, literally as soon as that interview was [over] I was like, “yeah but wait a minute. There is a way she could show up for the first arc. So we’ll see if they let me do it. So she might show up, in some form. You will definitely see most of the Syndicate arrive by the middle of the arc. You will definitely see Third Rail at some point, you’ll definitely see Brick House at some point. I’m going back and forth about when to place Boogeyman, but he’s going to show. I’m trying to say Masquerade’s showing up for sure. I think that’s the Syndicate.

 

BCL: So what about new members?

 

THORNE: There are going to be new characters. One of the things that’s going on in Paris island is people have super powers. Because they changed the nature of the Big Bang,

that opened up me a way to give people superpowers that did not exist at previous Milestone. So I know people are woofing about why wasn’t it exactly the same way and there are two answers to that. One, is that wasn’t up to me. I came in on book four, so I didn’t have any input into that, whether I liked it or not. Personally I think it’s fine to update it.

BCL: I agree. I mean, there’s some members of the Black Comic Lords that are–specifically one of my partners–who’s like, “oh, you know I like the gang aspect of it,” you know, “back in my day we had it and we liked it”. I was like, “well, you know having it as a Black Lives Matter exposure is timely for what’s going on today and kids today can identify more with that than Bloods and Crips.”

THORNE: That’s correct, that’s correct and you notice in the first issue I did not use–I was a little bit concerned about using “Bloods” because it’s more known what that is now than it was back when it first came out. But you’re locked into certain things. But the idea is we have our own gangs and you can look at them and sort of go, “Oh, okay. He means this group in the real world,” or he meets that group in the real world and that’s fine, but you can’t actually join the Blood Syndicate–there’s not like a recruiting poster for gangsters. 

BCL: My favorite character was Tech Nine. 

THORNE: Tech is Captain America to me. Tech got killed way too early. 

BCL: I didn’t want to ask you that question. I was hesitant to ask you that question, but can you tell us if Tech Nine’s gonna make it…

THORNE: I don’t wanna–-no.  You know what, I’ll tell you, but don’t tell people. Here’s my official answer. I cannot tell you who’s gonna live and who’s gonna die. Tech will not die early, but anyone can go in this book, okay? Now the real truth is [REDACTED].

BCL: Tech’s power set it was…We talk about in this space all the time, the fact that you have legacy characters and unoriginal characters and just Black face versions of other characters. Tech was original. His power set was just…

THORNE: His power set is crazy, right? The fun part is, this is a perfect thing about the modern times. Back in the day, all Tech could come up with was Tech-9s, AK’s, some kind of pistols, or Beretta, whatever. There are no young adults who did not play Call of Duty, or Ghost Recon or any of those. Or, Halo. So if he gets the power to make any weapon he can think of, he can think of a whole lot of weapons now. Things that don’t exist, things that can’t exist, they can exist when he wants them to exist.

BCL: So you’re going to go more in depth in the background with his powers and you’ve already mentioned he can basically create anything in his mind. Is that going to be his power set?

THORNE: Yeah, it’s going to be his power set. Well he can create any weapon he can think of. With each of the characters, we’re going to explore partly, well again, I say explore.  It isn’t a TV show, so I don’t have a lot of space to like–here’s a really cool long scene where two characters just talk to each other and sort of work out their problems and feelings and stuff. Generally, you have a couple of pages of that here and there, but these are comic books. There’s got to be a lot of action. But what we will explore, is these are people who don’t know how their powers work. They don’t know what affects their powers. They have a basic understanding of what they do, but whenever they try to push the envelope, weird stuff happens. So for instance, the way it’s set up is , we get the strong impression that Tech and Wise got their powers overseas, right? So they’ve had a little bit of time to work out what they can and can’t do just privately, wherever they were. But how much of what they know they can do can they do? We never saw Tech try to create a tank. Is there a reason he can’t create a tank? I don’t know.

BCL: What about making something that doesn’t exist, like a phaser or something. 

THORNE: Well he did that in issue one. He has an anime canon thing that he just instantly has. What is that thing on his arm? Well you don’t want Tech Nine mad at you, let me put it to you like that. The same thing with…I’m a very big believer in trying to come up with weaknesses at the same time as the powers. I don’t like people just being able to do any old thing and there’s no drawback, there’s no consequences. Whatever. So there are things that are good about his abilities and they’re going to be things that are going to cost him eventually. We we won’t see most of that an issue in the first arc, because the first arc takes place over about maybe 36 hours. Basically they get off the bus and it’s on. 

BCL: Like, bam! You’re in the middle of the gunfight.

THORNE: You’re home now, let’s go! But yeah, there is that aspect of it.  

BCL: Will Flashback deal with the same struggles with drugs she dealt with back in the day? 

THORNE: She will not have the same struggle, but speaking to how their powers impact upon them, one of the things that I think Ivan Velez, Jr. did start to get at in the original, was part of the reason that she has this drug problem. If you’re the person who can jump back in time and warn everybody, then every time anyone dies, or gets hurt, it’s your fault, right?

BCL: It’s PTSD.

THORNE: Yeah, right. So the more that happens, the more responsibilities it takes on and we’re playing her as a minimum of three years younger than all the other guys, so she’s still–at most, she’s in her older teens, whereas everybody else is in their young twenties. So she’s a kid essentially, in a lot of ways. What happens, the events of this story–big stuff’s happening on Paris Island. Stuff no one’s ever heard of, or seen before, and she’s in the middle of it.

BCL: You know it’d be interesting to deal with sort of mental health issues and depression every time she uses her powers it’s like this basis for PTSD reinforcement. I  just thought that was kind of interesting.

THORNE: Yeah and a lot of that will come up in arc two as well, because the fallout from what happens in this first, they’re calling them “Seasons”, the fallout that happens in this first arc, believe me, they’re going to have more on their shoulders than less at the end of this. It’s going to be a whole different game.

BCL: So we’ve already seen Rocket in issue one. What other Milestone heroes can we expect to see?

THORNE: I don’t know specifically, because of the time factor that we will see anyone else sort of–whoa! Wait a minute. Icon might make an appearance. I don’t think we’re going to see Hardware this time around only because I don’t really consider Hardware a superhero, I think of him more as a vigilante. He’s got his own thing going on, but he could show up theoretically. There’s a big event that happens in the later two issues which would sort of require attention but I have to check with what’s going on in the “Hardware” book to see if he’s available to be present for it.

BCL: Is there gonna be an epic crossover-storyline thing?

THORNE: Well, the thing that they did in the original Milestone was the “Return of the Mothership” and a couple of other things. No one has discussed anything official with me yet. We’re doing a lot of setup. But what happens at the end of this issue, at the end of this arc will change some of the face of how the Dakotaverse works. People inside the universe, not the audience, people inside the universe are going to have some very big opinions about what’s going on at Paris Island. So, I’ve definitely laid it out. If Reggie and Denys want the line–if they want the whole company–to sort of push in a particular direction. I’m definitely giving them some pieces to play with in this arc. Definitely doing some stuff that if you want to have a sort of “Endgame” type of fight, you could definitely take these chips and stack it up. But also remember, if they’re smart, that wouldn’t happen for a couple of years. You want to build up to it so it takes people like, “Oh boy. Oh boy! Here we go! Oh damn, here we go!!!”

BCL: You want to marinate it, not like… 

THORNE: Yeah you want to give them a little big fights, a little bit. It’s like a video game. You have some level fights, but you got to build up to the boss fight.

BCL: So Reggie already did that at the end of “Icon and Rocket” run, in that last issue. 

THORNE: Yeah, yeah, yeah! He’s setting some stuff up. So there’s things I don’t know and I purposely don’t know. I really want this book to be about Paris Island and the way Paris Island works and I think Reggie and Denys both wanted that as well. So unless I write something, and they they see all the scripts, so unless I do something that is straight up contradictory of some–you know, if I’m doing something that steps on the toes of an existing story, and I hope I’ve not. I’ve read all the stories, so I hope I’m not doing that, or I hope I don’t ever do that. But they’re letting me do it because we’re trying to make Paris Island its own thing. Like the place you could feel. It’s not Dakota City proper, it’s the difference between, I don’t know, Manhattan and Queens? I don’t know. Manhattan and freaking Red Bank, New Jersey. You know what I mean? So we wanted it to feel like that. So the events that happened in this book definitely will have repercussions in the other books, but not until the end of the arc.

BCL: Is there going to be a change in how these members got their powers?

THORNE: Yes, there’s definitely some shifting of that. Some of them got their powers in the crowd situation with the gas. But one of the things that’s going on at Paris Island is we have, “you weren’t there, though. So how do you have powers?” 

BCL: Exactly. 

THORNE: So there’ll be that aspect of it absolutely. When I told them what I thought, why people have powers on Paris Island, they were like, “that’s dope!” so I was like, they said that a lot and I was really surprised, because I was like, “you’re gonna let me do this?” They’re like, “Yeah, man. That’s crazy. Go do it!” So, like, “okay!”

BCL: “Blood Syndicate” was decades ahead of its time…

THORNE: Very much.

BCL:…in representing the LGBTQ community. In this new run, Fade is already out.  What was the impetus in the decision making on that?

THORNE: Two things. One, in the 90’s and I mean, I have to say this exactly right, because I myself obviously am not queer, but as a Black man, it is impossible to look at all of the horrible things that are still going on and not compare them to how bad things were when I was young. Things were–cops are doing stuff to me as a teenager that they don’t do now. Partly because people have cameras on them all the time, but it’s easier in some ways. The same thing for the queer community. There are a whole bunch of things about being closeted about–who you get to hang out with. This is a very long-winded way of saying this. Times have changed and they’ve changed in a lot of ways for the better for that community in specific. AIDS was ripping that community apart. When the ideas for the “Blood Syndicate” came out, the United States had just spent a decade ignoring them and letting them die and making an effect for themselves. That’s not happening now. We have TV shows, we have movies, we have talk show hosts, we have rappers, we have all of these people that just like, “you know what? This is me. This is me. I’m not even in your face about it. I’m just not hiding. The queer people I know, they’re just people I know and I know a lot, so they’re just people. I  know there’s that part of them, but it’s not like they pull up in their shirt and have a superhero shirt on underneath. If somebody confronts them, they deal with it. But they’re just living, so a lot of the self-hatred while it exists…There’s plenty of kids that live in horrible situations. Absolutely are being treated horribly. We can name certain states that are trying to make it even worse for them. My feeling is, I’m not certain I want to, and frankly I’m not empowered to, discuss the level of subtlety and depth of a self-hating queer person and then also make them behave badly because of their self-hate. Masquerade comes to mind in particular. I’m just not going to be writing a trans character who gets the power that solves their problem without drugs without any sort of anything I can just be what I was always supposed to be. I don’t think that person’s walking around full of self-hate anymore. I think that person is walking around being what they were intended to be, so that character, of all of the characters, will be the most significant change from the original.

BCL:  It really is a testament to how times have changed–where that’s not necessary anymore.

THORNE: That’s correct. We’re getting a huge backlash–when I say “we”, I mean decent human beings–are getting a huge backlash from certain quarters because they’re unhappy with the strides that that community in particular has made over the last 30 years. I’m not unhappy with that, so I’m going to show people behaving the way they should behave. It’s not like–I mean I put a homophobe in the book as one of the main characters–It’s not like these issues are not going to come up. It’s just these are people who are not taking any shit. There’s nobody taking any shit. There’s nobody going, “oh I’m sorry I’m gay. Oh, I’m sorry I love,” none of that. None of that. Nooonne of that. Hopefully people understand the implication. Fade in particular. He only just got these powers like within a year of the time we’re meeting him. That means all the way up until that, he was just out being Fade. He’s not having it. These are tough people. These are not–no one on Paris Island is standing back from the line. There is nobody who if–that’s the one characteristic people of Paris Island have. You better recognize–people on Paris Island…

BCL: There are no softies on Paris Island.

THORNE: I am, who I am. Don’t tell me what to do. If I could come up with a logo, or a slogan for everybody–you know, it’s like the boogie down Bronx or whatever. It’s like Paris Island has a personality. Regardless of your ethnicity, regardless of your class, people know you are from Paris Island by the way you walk. This is prior to superpowers. So just add in superpowers and there’ll be some…Oh! There’s this thing I did with Fade too. Fade was also sort of long suffering always pining away because he loved Tech. Tech was gone, and we never were sure if Tech was bi or if he sort of, also loved Fade like all of that stuff. It was cute and it worked for the time. It’s very cutting edge, because it was something you hadn’t seen before in comics and it sort of talked about something, but I’m not writing the sort of gorgeous queer man pining away for the straight boy he could never have. I’m not writing that.

BCL: I thought it was a more interesting statement that Fade and Tech Nine could have a perfectly platonic relationship, but have one be gay, and one be straight and that be normal…

THORNE: Yes!

BCL:… to have a friend who’s straight and you’re queer, or bi and that not be a big deal.

THORNE: That’s what it is. Well that’s the glue. That’s why I love Tech Nine. He’s that dude. He’s the guy who can walk into a place that’s about to be a bar fight and have everybody sitting down drinking within a few minutes.

BCL: Right.

THORNE: Together. If he didn’t exist, Hannibal and Carlos wouldn’t have two words to say to each other, right? But because he exists, the three of them are friends. Hannibal’s a jerk–he’s a jerk and he’s a freaking homophobe, but Tech keeps him in check. Fade is not playing with him either. “You talk all the smack you want, I’m gonna give it right back to you and I’m better at it,” so, you know, that relationship will evolve. [But] it has to start somewhere, to go somewhere. So I’m happy with that. I think what you don’t say about these characters, but what you just see in their relationship with each other–like stuff I’m writing right now–there’s a couple of things. It’s almost like a family. If anybody ever stepped up to Fade to harm him, Hannibal will be the first, or second person in line to put you on your back. He’s like, “if I want to make fun of him and treat him poorly. That’s between me and him. But your ass better take two steps back!” So these are complex relationships and everyone who’s grown up Black…I’m just gonna make it as real as I possibly can within the constraints of superhero fiction. These relationships are complicated and they overlap in weird ways. But Fade’s gonna have a boyfriend. He’s gonna have a love interest. A straight up, real love interest, who is…I don’t know if you can say part of the Syndicate or not, but…these characters need lives around them. They can’t just be, “here we are, the Blood Syndicate, running around beating people up,” they gotta have lives. So, you can see already Flashback’s kind of all up in Tech Nine and she’s way too young to be having those feelings for that man. It’s not like anything’s gonna happen, but she’s got a big crush on her older brother’s best friend. Just weird, stupid, stuff will happen and there’s going to be lots of secondary characters that weren’t in the first one, because modern comics allow for that. So, yeah.

BCL: One last question, because the Black Comic Lords, we ask this question of everyone we interview. “What’s on your pull list?”

THORNE: My pull list? Well, let me pull up my old–because I don’t go to the store anymore because of COVID, so let me pull up my Comixology. I’ll tell you I’ll look right at it and tell you. I was literally just looking at some comics too. I will read to you off my list. I got “Batman Beyond: the White Knight”. I got “Death of Justice League”. I got an X-book, I’m going to say “X-Men”? Yep, “X-Men” #10. “Wonder Girl”. “Strange Academy”. “Nightwing”. Let me see if there’s anything that people might not expect. Oh, I picked up that “World’s Finest”. Oh, I’m reading “Adventureman”.  Uh, what’s that, the Dodsons? They’re doing that. Yeah, Terry and Rachel Dodson and Matt Fraction did this book called “Adventureman” for Image that’s crazy and it’s freaking beautiful to look at. What else have we got in here? What else do we got in it? There’s some good stuff in here. People will get mad at me if I say that one. Not trying to get any heat on me. I got enough as it is. I was reading “Justice League: Incarnate”. I really like that, but it’s over. I got a bunch of stuff in here. A lot of it’s indie stuff.

BCL: You mentioned “Death of Justice League”.

THORNE: Yeah. 

BCL: You know, you gave my dude John Stewart a hell of a power up. 

THORNE: [laughs]

BCL: How did you like the way that–uh, who’s the writer on that…? 

THORNE: That would be Joshua Williamson.

BCL: Joshua Wlliamson! How did you like how Joshua Williamson had dealt with [the power up]?

THORNE: Well they contacted me after they got underway and they’re like, “what’s going on in your book? Editorial said you did some stuff to John, “and I was like, “Yeah, a few things.” [laughs] They were like, “Is he still a Green Lantern?” I was like, “No” And they were like, “What is it?” So I told them and I was very pleased to see how they played it, because I’ve already seen a couple of commentaries about, “Wow! They took John out fast!” And I’m like, “Yeah, the Spectre took John out. The Spectre!!! You know who beats the Spectre? God!” I thought they played it appropriately. He came in gangbusters. He was about to solve everybody’s problem and then the bad guys had a bigger gun than he had and I was like, “yep, that works for Geoff,” so I’m good with it. I don’t know exactly what they’re doing, but the two writers that are sort of dealing with that part of it, they both contacted me–after the fact–I didn’t know any of it, until it was announced But they were like, “Oh, right. There’s this whole other thing going on in the “Green Lantern” book we better check,” so, yeah. But that’s only part one of John’s journey. So we shall see with the “Emerald Knights” what happens.

BCL: Well, we’ll see what happens. One last thing. I’d be remiss and my boys would be totally upset with me if I didn’t tell you how much we all appreciated your “King In Black: Black Panther” That was the best…

THORNE: Oh, thank you so much.

BCL:..we talk about it all the time. Best one-shot of Black Panther ever done. I have all the Black Panthers…

THORNE: Wow! That–I am humbled, thank you. 

BCL:…so I can tell you from experience, I know what I’m talking about. That’s the best one shot I’ve ever read.

THORNE: I loved–any chance I can write T’Challa I will take it.

BCL: You might have seen a tweet in which I messaged Marvel exactly on that point and told them.

THORNE: Well, I  pitched them, but the thing about pitching them is two things. One, I’m not one of the “cool kids” so I don’t get the extra juice that a “cool kid” might, where they go, “You want to do what?” Now, okay, Hickman? “Go do whatever you want to do.” I don’t get that. But also, a lot of the stuff I pitch, like even with John Stewart, it takes years to wrap it all up. It might go in a direction that the movies don’t want to go. So they’d be like, “that’s cool, but the movies are doing this,” and they don’t say exactly what that is. They never tell you. That’s another thing. Working for Marvel is like working for the CIA. They tell you exactly what you need to know and no more than that. But they will say, “yeah, we can’t do that, because this character is going to be in movie X and we already have plans for how they’re going to go, so it doesn’t even matter what your plan was, because it’s not going to be what we’re doing.”

BCL: We appreciate what you’re working on now with the “Blood Syndicate” and I hope what you put together will be used in any of the Milestone movies, or cartoons, or whatever.

THORNE: Oh, dude. I hope so. I mean, I know Reggie’s got plans. He’s got plans on top of plans, so I’m hoping that they don’t forget that I also run TV shows when it turns around to do that stuff. But for now, I’m not even thinking about that. Really, honestly, truly–you know this–as a fan of the original Milestone. There was a lot of contention about what was ever going to happen with Milestone. Would it come back? What form would it come back? That’s a whole other thing. But I advised Dwayne when he was here. He was going to give them the Milestone 1.0 character to DC. I said please don’t do that. He was like, “Why, Geoff?” I was like, “because what you set up makes them equal. When you put them into the DCU, Icon can never be better than number two to Superman, no matter how well anyone writes it. No matter what story you give him. The company cannot let him be bigger than, or equal to Superman just for economic reasons. I’m not even saying there’s a race question involved. And that’s true of all the Milestone stuff. So unless they’re going to be on their own Earth…Then he’s like, “Don’t worry, I will be there to look after him. I’ve thought about all the stuff you’re saying and I agree with you, but I’ll be there. That’s part of the deal.” And then of course, he died, right? And you saw what they tried to do the first time around when they tried to integrate these characters into the regular DC universe. It was exactly what I said it would be. It was terrible, right? And they brought in some of the original writers and creators, but those writers and creators were hamstrung by Editorial who would not let them do what they knew how to do. So those books all crashed and burned 

BCL: The way DC is doing it now is the best way to do it. I love that Reggie even addressed Superman in his book and said, “yeah they kind of exist, but you know–we’re killing them.”

THORNE: Well I like that if they have to be part of the multiverse, that’s fine. That way this is a world where those things could have happened, but didn’t and this is what happened instead–all of that’s cool for this era. That was a very smart call and I feel the same way probably as you guys do. I’m happy it’s here and more than anything I’m doing with those books…I knew Dwayne. He was a friend of mine. Not as good a friend as I wish he would have been able to become, but he was a friend of mine. Nothing I do…the only editor I’m worried about is Dwayne. The only story I’m worried about telling is, “would Dwayne like this? Would Dwayne like that?” I feel that vibe from pretty much everybody and that’s how I’m rolling. So hopefully, we’re gonna get a book out that if Milestone started today without any backstory, that this would be the one we would do. That’s what I’m trying for.

BCL: That’s what’s up man. That’s what’s up. Thank you very much for your time. 

THORNE: My pleasure, my pleasure. Anytime. 

BLOOD SYNDICATE: SEASON ONE #1 hits stores and is available digitally on May 10, 2022.