Creator Interview: Trent Kaniuga

Artwork: Trent Kaniuga

Since I just re-posted all of the reviews of "The Hammer Lane" mini-series, I figured now was a good time to re-post the interview I did with Trent Kaniuga back in 2009.  I felt really bad after doing this interview, because Trent was a helluva nice guy and he was convinced I hated his artwork after he read my reviews for his first three issues of Ghost Rider.  "Why did you want to interview me if you didn't like my work?" he asked, and I really felt like a gigantic asshole.  So I assured him that yes, I was critical of parts of his work, but I also liked quite a bit of what he'd done on the character, which I pointed out to him in those reviews.  You'll notice I was a little kinder to him in the reviews for issues 4-6.
Oh, and I totally cop to the fact that I was wrong about him missing deadlines on the series, another thing that made me feel like a first class heel.

As part of our anniversary extravaganza, Vengeance Unbound proudly presents a chat with the artist on Ghost Rider: The Hammer Lane, Trent Kaniuga!

1) Before we start talking about Ghost Rider, I'd like to touch on your older work and the comic that you're most associated with: namely, Creed. If I remember correctly, that was your first project as a comic artist? Even if it wasn't, it was still fairly impressive to have a successful creator-owned series at the start of your career. How did Creed get its start at Image?

Wow, that was a long time ago.  My very first comic was actually a book called "Deadbolt", and he was a really generic kind of a super hero, but with a strange religious twist.  I was 15 years old when it was published, and it didnt sell very well.  We used to go to malls in Elkhart Indiana and set up a table on weekends to sell our own comics. We'd get a free table  because Allen Stewart, the publisher would dress up as spiderman and run through the mall jumping at kids, singing and dancing to the spiderman theme song. I realized that I wanted to create characters that nobody would ever have to dress up as at a mall, so I made CreeD.  CreeD was first published when I was 17 years old, on cheap newsprint, and it got a lot of support from various distributors (back then there were 4), and it earned a lot of press.  Every publisher that I worked with on CreeD wanted multiple covers and new issue #1s, so the series is quite confusing. But Im putting all 20 or so issues together into an omnibus finally for everyone that ever got lost trying to collect the series.  The Image thing happened only after I did my run on Ghost Rider, which was my best selling book, thanks to the talented people that I worked with on that.
 

2) Ghost Rider was your first assignment at Marvel, correct? How did you get the job illustrating Devin Grayson's Ghost Rider series?

I was doing work in fashion in Los Angeles for a company called JNCO which was known for a very graffiti style culture, and they wanted to branch into entertainment.  So I made a couple of stories for them, and sold them into animation and merchandising before being fired for creating a show about homeless martial artists or something. Actually about 10 people a week were fired from JNCO, so I took it as a good thing.  I was just passing my portfolio around to people that I knew, and my old friend Joe Quesada called me immediately and said " I got a project for you!, what do you think of Ghost Rider?"

To which I responded "besides that he's a badass?"

Just because I was enthusiastic about the possibility, I stayed up all night and did that cover for the first issue of the Hammer Lane, and sent it out to the Marvel Editors and they loved it!  After that, he pretty much assembled the team.  It was really fantastic getting paired up with Devin and Danny.  I think we all worked well together, throwing ideas back and forth.  Devin was very open to including things that I just thought would be a lot of fun to draw into the series, and Danny made my pencils look incredible every issue.

3) When you came into the project, did you have any input on the plot or was that something already finalized by that point?

Devin had a really solid idea for what she wanted to do. The place where I had the most influence was in choreographing some of the action.  For instance, I asked her if we could have him get blown to peaces "terminator style", and we just... made it happen.  My tendency is to push things as far as I can go, until someone stops me.  Marvel never said "no" to this sort of thing so... it got into the final.

4) Was Ghost Rider a character you were a fan of? If so, what are some of your fond memories of the character? If not, did your opinion change once you got the job illustrating his book?

I always loved the Johnny Blaze character, but not so much Danny Ketch.  Something about "touching a magical demonic gas cap that turns him into the spirit of vengeance" didnt seem cool to me.    

The concept of the Ghost Rider character is very iconic, and creates great situational dilemmas. I think that Ghost Rider can either be REALLY badass, or really cheesy, depending on how its handled. When I was a kid, there was a comic book shop down the road, run out of a guys garage called "poor boys comics".  They had piles of old Man-thing comics and world war 2 propaganda books as well as piles of old $0.25 Ghost Rider books... and that was my first introduction to Ghost Rider.

5) Now, I'm going to try and ask this question as gracefully as possible, so please bear with me. While I remember the reception being fairly positive when “The Hammer Lane” was first released, history does not seem to have been kind to it. A lot of Ghost Rider fans, particularly those who frequent internet message boards, hold a very low opinion of the work you and Grayson did on the character. Why do you think that is? Do you see those fans' opinions on “The Hammer Lane”as being unfair to the work?

Nietzsche said "All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity".  Maybe this book needs time to really grow on people, to see that we were doing things that had never been done with the character before.  Of course, I can only speak for the pencils.  And also, I feel that I could do a better book now, as Ive grown exponentially as an artist.  From that perspective, you could look at any artists early work and tear it to pieces (excluding Picasso).  I see this as an interesting look into the history of the development of my work.

To be honest, Im a bit suprised... this is the first time that Ive heard anything negative about the series. (Although I dont google my own work all the time).  The book was in the top 10 selling books for every issue of its release.  Wizard Magazine posted me in the top 10 artists during its release.  I could quote countless positive reviews you know, but I dont want to keep you up all night. 

 I think that when a character has been around as long as Ghost Rider, its always going to be difficult to satiate every member of your audience.

6) I do remember clearly that the series encountered a lot of missed deadline problems while it was being released. Did you have trouble keeping with the book's monthly deadline, or was the book's lateness due to some other factor unrelated to you at all?

This is also news to me.  From my perspective on the pencils, I never once got a phone call about the deadlines.  Im a professional, and Ive never once missed a deadline on any project.

7) Not long after your mini-series wrapped up, I remember reading about a sequel being in the works by you and Devin Grayson called Ghost Rider: Redux (in fact, I think I even remember a cover you drew for it, an image of GR holding a scythe?). What happened to this project, why was it never realized?

The internets like to skew the truth with these kind of things.  Its an interesting place to experiment.  That image was drawn over at a friends house just for fun.  I wanted to put together a 1970s funkadelic stylized  version of Johnny Blaze as a stunt motorcyclist, living like a rockstar, and pitch it as a story, but I only ended up posting the picture on my own website.  In the vastness of interspace, truths and unrealities began to form around the image, when in reality is was simply an homage.  I really enjoyed drawing Ghost Rider, and would have loved to do more.

8) I ask this in every interview: what did you think of the Ghost Rider movie?

I'm just pleased that they didn't give Ghost Rider that orange afro that they showed before its release.

9) What are you up to these days, any new projects on the horizon?

I'm currently a Sr. Concept Artist at Blizzard Entertainment.  I worked on World of Warcraft and am currently creating character and environment designs for Diablo 3.  In comic books, I am collecting every issue of CreeD into an Omnibus, currently titled CreeD: Omnichronos, and I am developing a new comic book series that I dont know how I will be humanly capable of drawing on top of everything else.  Unless of course I cut a deal with the devil.

10) Trent , thank you for taking the time to do this interview with me. Any last words for all the Ghost Rider fans out there?

When I was a boy, my step father used to tell me the worst jokes, and terrible terrible limericks. He'd get a little drunk and spout them out almost at random.  He'd say, with such a serious, thoughtfull tone...

"Trent...
There once was a man from new grass-
Whose balls were made out of brass-
in stormy weather, he clung them together-
and lightning shot out of his ass."

To this day, Im still not really sure what the hell he was talking about.

 Thanks again to Trent for taking part in this interview!