Interviewing the greats

[url]http://www.tcj.com/the-walter-simonson-interview/4/[/url]

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“I Thought It Was Worth Doing, and That Was Enough”: The Walter Simonson Interview
BY Sean Rogers Jul 19, 2011

ROGERS: I was reading the World of Warcraft collections and one of the creators of the game was saying that that world was majorly influenced by your Thor run. Do you get that sense, of Warcraft or other things in the culture having been influenced by your Thor run at all?

SIMONSON: I got to know Chris Metzen, the guy you’re referring to. Chris wrote the introduction for the first volume and said some very nice things in there. We’ve met and he was a big fan of that stuff, which was very nice, and as a result I’m willing to take his word for it that it was kind of seminal in his development and his interest in fantasy. Which is very flattering. It’s very cool.

From the influential Manhunter. Click for larger view.

For the most part, I don’t see my influence in other stuff that much. I feel lucky to have had jobs all these years. For example, just in comics, I don’t look around and see a lot of Walter Simonson clones. I know there are several guys who’ve gone and become wonderful artists in comics who were influenced by my work early. Most of the time I don’t really see it. I think the only guy where I really looked and thought, “Boy, I see some of my stuff in his very early stuff” was Marshall Rogers. He did black and white jobs in the mid-seventies [in The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu]—a couple of girls, women with swords. There was a lot of [Howard] Chaykin and a lot of Simonson influence there. As Marshall worked out his own material over time I saw less of that. But mostly I don’t see myself in other people’s work. I just kind of do the work and put it out there. I’m hoping people enjoy it and I’m glad it’s influential on some folks, but I don’t really look at it and go, “Oh yeah, that’s a Walt Simonson right there.” I did see my stuff in the Thor movie, but that was not unexpected. [Laughs.]
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