“I mean, explain to me ‘Superman Returns,’ ” the Kansas City-based writer said. “It’s a three-hour movie, and Superman doesn’t throw a punch. His powers apparently are to lift things, physically very heavy things. I mean, the movie was a nightmare — just bizarre.”
Nonetheless, Fraction has a vested interest in this weekend’s “Iron Man” — he’s scripting a new comic-book series called The Invincible Iron Man based on the character. Fraction landed the gig at a Marvel Comics editorial retreat last year in New York.
“They said, ‘OK, the (Iron Man) movie’s coming, and we’re going to do this book. What do we do?’ ” Fraction recalled. “I just started to throw ideas out, and about two years’ worth of stories came very quickly. Eventually, the editor in chief came up and tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘OK, you got it.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, great, sweet.’ ”
Fraction’s just one of a group of rising Kansas City area comic creators who are writing or illustrating some of the industry’s most iconic characters — the Flash, Wolverine, Superman and Batman among them — and some of the most innovative new series. Fraction figures that more than a dozen working comic creators in their 20s and 30s live in the Kansas City area.
“It’s a point of trivia almost, like, ‘Well, what’s in the water out there?’ ” Fraction said. “If we were bands and making albums and this was Seattle in 1990 — sure, it makes sense. But comics? What? It’s just a weird kind of coincidence.”
Still, word of Kansas City’s accidental collective continues to spread through comic fandom.
“Recently someone online referred to the Kansas City creators as the Midwest Mafia,” said comic artist Tony Moore of Mission, who draws the supernatural black comedy The Exterminators for DC/Vertigo Comics.
“People know about us because we’re always hanging out together at comic conventions,” Moore said. “At home we try to have cookouts and stuff, and get together as many of the guys as we can. We’ve become pretty social.”
It never takes long for comic books to come up.
“There’s always water-cooler talk,” said Kansas City comic artist Nathan Fox, who draws Dark Horse Comics’ Pigeons From Hell, based on the Robert E. Howard horror tale.
“In terms of comics, you need that constructive criticism and honesty,” Fox said. “Even though when you get together, it’s just socializing and talking about your kids and stuff, we bring art to show each other and kind of go over things. There’s a lot of respect, because everybody’s very open.”
Comic writer B. Clay Moore of Shawnee — who authors the tropical detective yarn Hawaiian Dick for Image Comics and Superman Confidential and JSA Classified for DC — is glad to be part of the club.
“These aren’t guys who just want to write the same X-Men story everybody else has seen,” he said. “It’s a collection of guys with really unique voices.”
Award nominees
Certainly the quality is there. Fraction and writer Jason Aaron of Prairie Village have been nominated for the 2008 Eisner Awards — the Oscars of the comic-book industry — in the category of Best New Series: Fraction for the Marvel superhero book Immortal Iron Fist, and Aaron for his American Indian crime comic, Scalped, published by DC/Vertigo.
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