Recently DC Comics announced two new series that seem to have a loose connection, THE GREEN TEAM by Art Baltazar and Franco with art by Ig Guara and THE MOVEMENT by Gail Simone with art by Freddie Williams II.
These two series have ideas that have come out of Occupy Wall Street. Art and Franco are best known for TINY TITANS, SUPERMAN FAMILY ADVENTURES, PATRICK THE WOLF BOY and their new upcoming AW YEAH COMICS. Seeing the guys writing a comic in the New 52 Universe dealing with money and greed, we had to find out more.
Comic Vine: We've heard the general premise for THE GREEN TEAM, what more can you tell us about the series?
FRANCO: How much money do YOU have? It's not enough, these guys have a ton more of it.
ART: If you were a trillionaire, what would you do to get powers? These guys have already thought about it and are working on it!
FRANCO: This is a group of teenagers that are emotional, in love, or at least they think they are, and live a life none of us can ever dream about and they're doing it in the DC universe.
== TEASER ==
CV: What aspects of the original DC 1ST ISSUE SPECIAL: GREEN TEAM wouldn't work for this new book, no matter how much you wanted to make it work?
FRANCO: All of it! With all due respect to Joe Simon and Jerry Grandenetti this is far removed from the time they came out with this.
ART: The basic idea is the same but everything else is all new. We took the characters and made them awesome and relevant to today's times.
CV: How did you guys get involved with this series?
ART: They had us in mind before we knew they had us in mind. Dan and Chris approached us about the series and told us that we were the guys they wanted for the book
FRANCO: They wanted our sense of humor and approach to story and they wanted us to take it to the extreme.
CV: You guys are known for your great and hilarious storytelling, how will that style fit into this series?
FRANCO: Yes, that's true, we're known for that.
ART: The humor is still there and we have a sense for writing young characters.
FRANCO: Yeah, us being 40 something year old teenagers we are able to fit right into the mindset.
CV: This is your first 'New 52' series, is there a sense of being constricted since you have to play by the established rules versus being able to do pretty much anything in TINY TITANS or SUPERMAN FAMILY ADVENTURES?
ART: We're approaching this the same way as we do with all of our comics.
FRANCO: Yeah, we figure we'll find out the rules as we go through this, but the good thing about our characters is with the amount of money these guys have, they aren't really constricted by any rules.
CV: Where does this book fit in with Gail Simone's THE MOVEMENT? Are they tied together or completely separate?
FRANCO: You tell Gail, if she wants to mess with us to bring it on!!!
ART: THE MOVEMENT? What's that? Her 99% will meet our 1% and then it'll be 100%. No, seriously, We're looking forward to a team up with Gail.
CV: Will the book focus on only the characters in the title or will other New 52 characters pop up? Is there any chance of other characters from the 1st Issue Special series, like Dingbats of Danger Street or Lady Cop, making their way into this book?
FRANCO: We're in the New 52 so they are bound to run into other people at some point. As far as who exactly shows up? You'll see when you check out the book.
ART: Anything can happen and we're planning on getting you to come back and keep checking out the book, after all, this is the same universe as Superman and Batman.
CV: The idea of money being able to buy anything, not just material items, seems to be the point of this book. However, poet Jennifer Lopez once stated "Love Don't Cost a Thing." So, you "Can't Buy Me Love" if it don't cost a thing. Will this be explored in the new series?
FRANCO: I'm more of a classic poetry guy, like RUSH says : "Big money goes around the world."
ART: I'd still go with the OJ's and Donald Trump "Money Money Money, MONEY"... There's just something about the Donald's hair.
THE GREEN TEAM #1 is on sale May 22, 2013.