Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

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Joshua Dysart
I make Valiant comics.
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Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by Joshua Dysart »

Hey everybody! I've gotten to know some of you at shows and to a person every Valiant fan has been absolutely lovely. Coming on this message board is a big step for me. I'm not sure if it's the right thing to do. You see, I think you guys should have a place to *SQUEE* and moan and exalt the books and their creators without said creators looking over your shoulder. I don't want to rob you of that.

So here's what I propose. I have no intention of reading any of the other threads. Not the discussions about my book, not the discussions about the other books. You're free there, you can say and speculate on anything you like everywhere else on this board. But if you want to talk to me directly, well this thread is the place to do it. The point is not to repress other discussion threads about the books, but to create a more intimate relationship between reader and creator.

So some quick guidelines for this thread...

1. DO NOT GIVE ME STORY IDEAS!! Writers hate it when you give them story ideas. It's my job to work out the direction of the book. If others are shouting out ideas on here too much then I'll have to bail for legal reasons. If, for any reasons, something I do is too similar to something suggested here, it could be very problematic for me. If it looks like a post is a story suggestion of any kind, I'll just skip over it unread.

2. Similarly, I will not reward speculation about the stories or the universe. Those questions will be ignored. :-) Sorry, you guys can do that on your own!

3. I'll occasionally be away for a while. I'm a little busy right now making the best comics we can under the deadlines we have, so please be patient, I promise I'll get to your question.

Cool!! That's it!! Other than that, ask me anything you like!

And thanks for all the support of Harbinger and Harbinger Wars. We're doing the best we can!

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betterthanezra
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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by betterthanezra »

Great to see you on the board (if only on this thread)

Having you a Valiant exclusive creator is a BIG plus in my opinion.

Everyone the board collectively thinks Harbinger is AWESOME!!!! So in that respect Welcome.I look forward to some insight from you.

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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by Elveen »

Josh it's great for you to join and open yourself to everyone. This will be a great thread to read.

BTW, I love Cronos. :thumb: 8-) :wink:

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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by Mandrakk »

Well welcome here :) ,it is great to see you on the boards 8-) ,and as the others have already said,Harbinger is just plain awesome :thumb: and Wars is great too :clap: especially considereding the fact that it is an"event"which are usually only good in one thing:Hype.
Also I love the Gen Zero characters,especially Tellic and Cronus,like the power sets.BTW is hard to come up with Original and compelling powersets for the characters given all the super powered characters out ther ?

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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by Burrito Boy »

No story ideas? That's gonna make it real hard to accuse you of stealing my idea about Faith becoming a lingerie model. :!:

Seriously, though, this is great. I've never had much interaction with professional writers so I'm looking forward to asking you a million questions. Or, you know, just hanging out. That's cool too. :D

Great to see you here and know that you want to intetact with the fans. But more importantly, it's nice to see another Josh. There aren't enough of us on this forum.

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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by greg »

Welcome to the board!

(Did anyone else read the topic title and think... "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash"?)

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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by BugsySig »

Welcome, Joshua!

Great to have you here with us. Justin Jordan stops by from time to time, so you are not alone here at least :D

I love Harbinger. I think you have done a fantastic job at reimagining the concept and characters, giving them more depth than was accomplished, in some cases, in the entire original run. So much so that I can barely choose a favorite (though Torque has a slight lead over Kris right now :thumb: ). We are all very glad you are exclusive to VALIANT!

So questions:

1. How many books do you think you could write for VEI while maintaining the current level of quality?
2. Harbinger has an extremely diverse cast in terms of ethnicities, body types, disabilities, etc. Is that a conscious decision on your part, or is there another process when updating/creating new characters?
3. Are you a fan of NAS?

Thanks for taking the time to chat with us. Best wishes and keep up the good work. :thumb:
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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by paradise »

hey Josh

this is Ed from Collector's Paradise (just in case you can't tell from the "user name")

Welcome to the forum, you will regret it, I promise :D :lol: :mad:

Can't wait to see what this thread will turn into, with this bunch facepalm

See you soon
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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by hawkeyeps »

Hey Josh,

Welcome Bro!

Sorry for all speculation, I won't say anything about Erica Pierce promise :hope: :lol:

I've never met you personally but you already feel like a friend, you have interacted with many of us on FB.

I always wondered why you weren't over here...we're your peeps!

I have great respect for your ethics even if I don't agree with every opinion, you are telling stories in the Joesph Campbell sense, creating modern myths. Sorry don't mean to blow smoke up your @$$ but I'm a life long lover of comics and this new Valiant era feels special, I would have to go back to Marvel's Ultimates/Civil War era to compare and the original Valiant before that.

So glad you are comitted to Valiant and Harbinger, you get to build a better universe than Marvel and DC how often does that opportunity come along?

Cheers,

HawK (christan anderson)

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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by bygranddesign »

WOW! Its AWESOME to see you on the board. I'm a huge fan of Harbinger and you are my favorite writer in comics right now. The renegades storyline BLEW me away and was a brilliant way to introduce every important character's back story (including Harada in #0) and push the storyline towards Harbinger Wars. Thank you so much for the incredibly hard work of bringing these characters to life ... and what a brilliant twist on Torque! You took this "classic" character and created something really quite unique with him! LOVE IT!

I have so many questions but many of them are very speculative in nature about 4001, Generation Zero, Rai ..etc .. I'll try, try, try to keep it more about the writing process and events that have happened already:

1) How far in advance do you have storylines mapped out in your mind when it comes to Harbinger?

2) I think you have done a brilliant job of fleshing out every important character in this book … but I especially love your depiction of Toyo Harada – i know he's the "bad guy" but he's also fascinatingly complex and a brilliant character study of someone with immense power shouldering the responsibility of trying to create a better world. It's his own twisted vision but it’s not without reason. Was it a conscious choice from the beginning to make Toyo a greater part of the book? To make him more complex and sympathetic? Who do you think is more important to this book – Peter (and the renegades) or Toyo Harada? Or is like the Yin and Yang and they are equally important?

3) (Hope this is not too speculative) Peter seems a lot more powerful and a lot more unstable then the original – was this done purposely to help feed into the speculation that he may be “The Destroyer” as foretold by the Bleeding Monk?

4) And how long will it take for Kris to get over that whole mind manipulation thing (to put it politely) and give old Pete another shot? :D

5) Feel free to drop any hints about whatever else you may be working on after Harbinger Wars. ;)
Last edited by bygranddesign on Sun Apr 14, 2013 7:28:05 pm, edited 4 times in total.

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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by Daniel Jackson »

Welcome to the board.

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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by swtor1091 »

Just want to say that i'm really glad your Valiants first exclusive writer your amazing and you got me into comics... for i had never read one until Harbinger #1. :clap: Thanks for getting me into such a great universe and i'll forever be in your debt... keep up the amazing stuff.

Joshua Dysart until Harbinger #200 :clap: :lol: :D
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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by kevinbastos »

Great to hear your voice. My daughter and I are great worshipers of Harbinger.

My biggest question...

How much influence do you feel from the original books? The stories are parallel-ish, but speaking only for me, the reverence to subject material, and great willingness to set a new path have been in perfect balance.

Thanks for dropping in.

And if you are willing to be grilled by an eager twelve year old girl about how to break into writing, you have an eager interview ahead of you.
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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by caniac »

Thanks for posting. All I have to say right now is Harbinger is one of the top books in the industry. You Rock!!!
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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by Brother Darque »

great work on Harbinger dude,

i really like how you built up Kris, in the original version she was just hot and good with kids and that's it. but the new version of the character is better. how she's smart, resourceful, and tough.

great stuff.

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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by lorddunlow »

So glad to see you become one of us! Thanks for the opportunity to interact with you!

First, thank you for the best character ever - the Bleeding Monk! He's so awesome!

Secondly, other than Harada , who's your favorite character to write?

Lastly (and most importantly), where do you stand on Canadians? As a fellow Josh, I hope you will join me in purging this board of evil Canadians such as MarkRoseHfx and Hawkeyeps. :kidaround:
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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by Chris Campbell »

Awesome thread. Awesome books. Gonna be fun to catch up on this thread.
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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by 400yrs »

Welcome to the hive mind! Thanks for your work on the Renegades arc. That's among the best character comic booking I've read in a while.
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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by arghh! »

Hi,

No questions right now, I just wanted to let you know I am enjoying your work!

Arghh! (Jim)

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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by caniac »

Oh yeah, welcome to the boards :thumb:
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Joshua Dysart
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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by Joshua Dysart »

Woah! What a response!! Okay, First, to everyone that had a kind thing to say about our run so far, you're all awesome! Thank you! I've read through all of these and I'm overwhelmed. I've only got a few minutes before I take off to see a movie with a friend, so I'll just get started answering your questions in the order in which they were posted. Forgive me if it takes a while to get to yours!

And thanks again for being so amazing everybody.
Mandrakk wrote:Also I love the Gen Zero characters,especially Tellic and Cronus,like the power sets.BTW is hard to come up with Original and compelling powersets for the characters given all the super powered characters out ther ?
Hey Mandrakk! Yeah, creating these characters was a bit of long haul. I went back to the drawing board several times and even as we're crafting the series I'm finding, sometimes mid-narrative, that some are far better conceived than others. I spent a lot of time trying to crack the powers from three different angles. I wanted the each power to either be visually (looks awesome drawn), conceptually (is philosophically interesting to contemplate) or narratively cool (could open up into more stories in the future). If I hit upon something that was more than one of these things at once, then we were off to the races. As you say, it seems that it's all been done with superheroes, and that's true. So often we take a new riff on an old idea. Which is what Harbinger is all about really.

But the real challenge is trying to tell a story that introduces so many characters. I'll be honest, sometimes it feels more like solving a puzzel and less like writing. It's very hard on the artists as well. Hopefully we'll continue to keep the main action book (HW) hoping and can use the other two books to flesh stuff out a little more. We'll see how you guys like it.
Burrito Boy wrote:No story ideas? That's gonna make it real hard to accuse you of stealing my idea about Faith becoming a lingerie model.
Now wee there, Burrito Boy (I'm assuming your name is Josh!), there's a good idea I have to toss out because you mentioned it here. Thanks a lot! :-)
greg wrote:(Did anyone else read the topic title and think... "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash"?)
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BugsySig wrote: 1. How many books do you think you could write for VEI while maintaining the current level of quality?
2. Harbinger has an extremely diverse cast in terms of ethnicities, body types, disabilities, etc. Is that a conscious decision on your part, or is there another process when updating/creating new characters?
3. Are you a fan of NAS?
Hey Bugsy!

1. I'm not sure. I guess we'll find out my threshold. This is the first time someone's ever really given me an opportunity like this. I have two conflicting missions here at Valiant for the next two years. On the one hand I want to make HARBINGER the absolute best book it can be, to keep it growing and progressing and evolving. To do that right, I need to dedicated more time to it than I am now as we execute this crossover. On the other hand I take me job of growing the Valiant universe very, very seriously and I want to go wherever they want to send me to help achieve that. Where those two missions conflict, I'm not sure. I guess we'll find out. But I will say this. There's a disturbing trend in our industry where people confuse productivity with talent. In a perfect world I'd work on one book at a time. But comics is far from a perfect world. I've never, ever wanted to be like Bendis or Johns and have four books a month. It just sounds like a nightmare and I always see the work suffer. But I do believe in Valiant, and I know I'm going to have to work more than I ever have for the next two years to help them grow. They've invested in my voice and I have to show up for this.

2. Not really. I mean, I do want to create a book that looks like the world around us, and I live in a very ethnically diverse place (even my own family is ethnically diverse) so it's only natural that the book have some color in it, as it were. I'm very proud that we have more women than men in our core team, though. And once and a while, if we notice something being a little too slanted towards one representational group, we'll consciously correct. But we rarely need to to consciously do that.

3. I am! I love a lot of music. I listen to music more than I watch TV and movies (and about the same amount as I read). Though that might change with all the Cartoon Network shows on NETFLIX right now. :-) I listen to all kinds of music, but yeah, I love hip hop, and I love NAS. None of the Renegades are very representative of my believes or personality, but Peter's love of the man who's straight out of the dungeons of rap is one of the few places where we overlap.

Okay guys, thanks! I'm off to see a flick. I'll get back to this when I can! Please be patient with me!

Much love!

PS: Excuse any typos, I kind of tore through this without a reread.

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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by bribri »

Hey, Josh.

Dinesh made you do it, didn't he?

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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by Chiclo »

Joshua Dysart wrote:3. I am! I love a lot of music. I listen to music more than I watch TV and movies (and about the same amount as I read). Though that might change with all the Cartoon Network shows on NETFLIX right now. :-) I listen to all kinds of music, but yeah, I love hip hop, and I love NAS. None of the Renegades are very representative of my believes or personality, but Peter's love of the man who's straight out of the dungeons of rap is one of the few places where we overlap.
My wife and I had several days off together last week. We have watched so many of these - almost the whole way through Justice League and Cow and Chicken. I love some Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Lab and Johnny Bravo too. Ed, Edd and Eddy is going to make it into the mix eventually too.

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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by MarkRoseHFX »

Welcome to the board Josh and thank you for the brilliant work you've been doing on Harbinger. It's an amazing book and definitely my 100% favorite.


lorddunlow wrote: Lastly (and most importantly), where do you stand on Canadians? As a fellow Josh, I hope you will join me in purging this board of evil Canadians such as MarkRoseHfx and Hawkeyeps. :kidaround:
Dunlow one of these days i'm gonna make you choke on a box of smarties while I drown you in maple syrup and poutine gravy. :kidaround:
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Re: Hi, I'm Joshua Dysart...

Post by MarrowMan »

So glad to see you on the board Josh! Keep up the fantastic work. :high-five: :clap: :D
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