DC Comics Necessary Evil – Exclusive Interview Pt.1

Greetings ladies and gentlemen, Viking here.  Today I have a very special interview with producer Scott Devine.  Scott has recently worked on Necessary Evil, a new documentary all about the villain of DC Comics.  This is part one of the interview.  If you don’t want to wait for the rest to show up though, you can go to the bottom of the post and listen to the whole thing.

Viking:  Scott, thanks for coming on.

Scott:  Thanks for having me.  A pleasure to talk and any chance to chat about comics, villains, all that stuff, I’m game.

Viking:  Absolutely.  Now before we get started, I’m pretty sure everyone knows what writers do, what actors do, what directors do but producer isn’t quite as descriptive of a title.  What exactly does a producer do?

Scott:  The term producer can be one of the most ambiguous job titles in the industry.  It can be a variety of jobs.  Certain jobs for one type of producer and certain jobs for another.  There’s executive producers, line producers co-producers, associate producers, all kinds.  For what I do on this project, producer is a little bit of everything.  Myself and the other producer on the project, J.M. Kenny, we’re in charge of everything.  We say we wear an infinite number of hats.  In regards to this project I wrote the proposal that myself and J.M. pitched to the studio.  Once that was accepted, we budgeted the project then we scheduled the project, we contacted all the potential interview subjects, we spoke to their representatives, tried to schedule things out.  We hired the crew that actually shot the interviews.  We just designed the look of the documentary, how the actual interviews themselves would look.  We conducted the interviews and then we worked with the editors who cut the project.  We’d work with graphics, we’d work with music, we’d work with legal, we’d liaison with the studio.  You name it we did it.  So with a project like this, you’re constantly spinning dozens of plates trying to keep them all spinning.

Viking:  So it keeps you pretty busy then.

Scott:  Yes, it sometimes feels like a non-stop job.  As soon as you finish one aspect it seems like there is another that needs your attention.  There are a lot of very long days, long nights, a lot of weekend hours and when you go home you still seem to think about it.  And a lot of times when I go home I’m reading comic books.

Viking:  Of course, especially when you’re passionate about the material.  I understand that you are an avid comic collector.

Scott:  Yes, I am a long time comic book geek.  And I use that term proudly!  Like a lot of people I started when I was a little kid and got out of it in my teenage years.  But in college I rediscovered comics and I basically haven’t missed a week in 25 or so years.  So my collection is somewhere in the neighborhood of 8000-9000 comics.  I have sold off a large number of those comics because I have now embraced digital distribution.  I still get some print but I also get digital copies.  So yes,  I am a proud comic book geek.

Viking:  I’m definitely a big fan of the digital too for the exact same reason and I’m a big fan of $0.99 sales.

Scott:  Those are good, I just wished they happened a little more often.  The thing I really like about digital though is that you can carry so many books with you.  I had 70-80 long boxes and if I wanted to read a certain issue it was a bit of a pain to go through and pull it out and make sure you’re handling it properly.  With the digital distribution you have it at your fingertips.

Viking:  As far as Necessary Evil itself, the timing is interesting to me  as it seems to be coming right on the heels of the Forever Evil event and it seems to be coming out on the same day as Arkham Origins.

Scott:  That is not a coincidence.  A couple years ago, DC launched the New 52 where they did a reboot of the entire DC line.  All the comics went back to issue 1.  Some of the characters were altered slightly.  Some of them had their origin changed, some had their look changed, certain books went away, certain books were added.  So it was really this really good reset to allow readers to jump on board and feel like they were getting on at a good launching off point.  So they started this and they got to thinking, we’ve redone the heroes, now it’s time to give the villains their due.  So it was decided that 2013 would be the year of the villain.  So all these things were kind of done in conjunction.  We’ve been working on this project since November of last year.  So we knew about the Forever Evil storyline and it’s actually near the end of the documentary.  But it was all meant to be done in conjunction.  So us coming out in conjunction with Batman Arkham Origins is wonderful.  The documentarry is part of the deluxe collector’s edition so if you buy the collectors edition of Batman Arkham Origins, in addition to a bunch of other things which are really, really nice you will get a copy of the Blu Ray/DVD of Necessary Evil, The Supervillains of DC Comics.  So it’s everything working together and it all comes down October 25th.

Viking:  And you can check out trailer for the documentary below.

That’s it for now.  Stay tuned as the rest of interview gets released in the coming days.  And again, if you can’t wait, the audio is available below!

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