Philip Kennedy Johnson has become one of the most prolific and popular writers in the comic industry with memorable runs on Superman/Action Comics and Alien and a current Incredible Hulk title that is bringing the horror and monsters to Marvel’s behemoth. Kennedy Johnson has no intention of slowing down at this point however, as he is set to take over Batman and Robin (issue #14 with artist Javier Fernandez) in October as part of DC’s new All-In initiative.
We spoke to Kennedy Johnson about his past, current, and future comic work in this exclusive interview from TerrifiCon 2024.
So how have you been enjoying your current run on the Incredible Hulk, and getting to work with all of these great monsters?
Phillip Kennedy Johnson: Getting to write the Hulk has been such an honor and a complete pleasure. I’ve been a huge horror nut my whole life and just getting the opportunity to tell a Hulk story in the horror vein has been just a dream come true.
The hardest part of the gig has been how not to ape all Al Ewing’s run because I just loved it so much. I decided that what I was going to do was to turn away from the Cronenberg black science stuff and pivot more towards a Mignola-esque folk horror. And also to probably go harder than they had gone before. It’s like, let’s see how hard we can go. But it’s just made the book a dream come true for me as a fan of books like Hellboy and Hellblazer and of course, the Incredible Hulk himself. It has just been a huge pleasure.
Now when you’re planning it out, you obviously have this whole playground to choose from. Who were the monster characters that you’re like, oh, I got to put this one in here. Did you currently have a whole lineup of monsters that you are ready to roll out?
Kennedy Johnson: Yeah, some of them, some of the ones that I knew I wanted to use are forthcoming, so I shouldn’t give them all away, but their are ones that I was really excited to use such as Brother Voodoo and I had a story for a Ghost Rider that I wanted to tell. I really wanted to tell the story with the War Devil, that was actually my first Marvel story ever, and it wasn’t about a monster exactly. It was kind of a story about PTSD in which PTSD is kind of an African folk tale. I made up this myth about this African creature from, you know, millennia ago, like the first hunter of men. And when I came on the book, I started thinking about ways I might bring that out again.
And if you’re doing Southern horror in the Marvel Universe, Man-Thing has to show up of course.
Kennedy Johnson: Yeah and I really wanted to use him. The difficult element about Man-Thing is that he is kind of tethered to one place. I’d love to bring Man-Thing back again. I would love to do another story with him attached. I’ve just got to figure out how to do that and not take him out of the Everglades.
Right, he doesn’t travel well. As far as your Superman run, what was your approach to that character?
Kennedy Johnson: I mean, that story was too easy. I have such a clear vision of Superman in my mind that I just could not wait to get it on the page and not every Superman I’ve read has fit into that mold in which I see him. But as soon as they gave me the yes on that, man! And I wasn’t looking for that book. I was pitching much smaller, like much more small ball stuff, and they were like, why don’t you do Superman and Action Comics both?
I could not wait to get started. I was like, okay, I know exactly what I’m going to do. I know exactly who Superman is. I know how he talks. I know how he thinks. I just, I had such a clear vision for that character. It was just such an honor. I mean, those, the Christopher Reeve’s movies, you know, are not perfect, but his depiction of Superman is, in my view. I just wanted to see a very similar version of that Superman, but in a much more modern, scarier context. You know, I want to use that Superman, but in the context of this gigantic sprawling space epic, where we see him facing the biggest, scariest villains I could think of. It was just such an honor to tell that story.
Telling a Superman story to me, he carries a real weight in a way that almost no other book does;
like you’re making a philosophical statement about who we’re supposed to be as human beings and what we’re supposed to do with our lives and what we can strive to be.
You will soon be writing a Batman and Robin comic for DC’s All-In initiative. You go from Superman to Batman and Robin. So how is the approach different?
Kennedy Johnson: Well, those two guys were my heroes growing up. They represent two very different power fantasies, but I needed them both as a kid. I love the idea of the guy who puts himself toe-to-toe with God, just from sheer force of will, but a Batman story should also be about him being the world’s greatest detective. I don’t want to write a Batman story that’s just bruises are slugging it out. You know, that could be any book.
So, with the Batman book, I wanted to do a detective story with a real murder mystery to be solved. I think it’s a really creepy villain that we haven’t seen before, but also that takes us through his rogue’s gallery. And also, like selfishly, I identify really strongly with him as a father.
My son and I are best friends and I get to tell a father’s story. And it’s very different from the Superman one that we get. Superman is like the ideal father. Batman is broken. He’s not been parenting; he’s been recruiting and training soldiers. It’s such a different take. He doesn’t know how to be a father, or a son, really and his son has a lot of the same weird hang-ups. Telling that story is really rewarding and I have a lot to say.
As a big horror fan, you probably had a lot of fun writing Marvel’s recent Alien series.
Kennedy Johnson: Yes. I’m the biggest Alien fan. For me, writing alien was about bringing as much Giger into it as possible. For me, there’s no alien without H. R. Giger’s vision. So I wanted to bring as much of that iconography in as I could. I poured over Giger’s non-Alien work as well, and tried to find ways to bring in other elements of this work into the story. I also really love all the different elements that make Alien stories what they are. The idea of the company, the idea of the androids, and the weird triangle relationship between humanity, the android, and the alien.
It’s a weird almost like sibling rivalry that you can see between the three and it’s like they kind of recombined those same ideas into a much deeper, more meaningful story about the concept
of the creation of life and where we come from. I wanted to try to ask some of the same big questions with all the elements that work in an Alien story.