We're Taking Everyone Down With Us #1 by Matthew Rosenberg and Stefano Landini hits shelves today, and everyone is talking about it! Ahead of its release, Kieron Gillen (The Power Fantasy) sat down with Matt to discuss the new series, its sharp humor, and its genre-blending take on espionage. They also dive into Matt’s creative process, shaped by personal reflection, and how he balances character-first and idea-first storytelling. It’s a phenomenal chat, so please enjoy. Kieron, take it away.
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I listen to your podcast, Matt (And am amazed how every episode you manage to get a better guest - it's pretty startling). One of your go to theories is British writers tend to be idea first and American writers tend to be character first. "This is a story about a girl who, etc" Through that filter, how do you see We're Taking Everyone Down With Us?
I was wondering if I'd ever meet our listener. It's a pleasure.
As for our book, I guess the "character first" answer is that it's the story of a girl and her robot friend on a quest of self-discovery and revenge, and learning if those two things can coexist. The "idea first" answer is that it's about the moment in someone's life where they become an adult, whether by choice or by circumstance, and how that moment will shape every action and every relationship from that point on.
Really I tend to make books that help me try to answer questions I'm struggling with about my own life at the time. But what I'm finding is that spending a year or two focussing on finding answers tends to raise a lot more questions. The charitable view is that everything I make is in conversation with the previous work. The less charitable take is that I keep tackling the same ideas over and over. We'll see what the audience thinks I guess.
Actually, this hits one I'm curious about. When I was doing my own Decompressed back in the day, it was actually part of my process for preparing to do WicDiv. Listen to it again, you can see me basically trying to figure things out and using my peers as a sounding board even as I interviewed them. How does Ideas Don't Bleed impact your own process? Does it?
I think doing the podcast is the natural extension of reading my peer's work in hopes of improving my own craft. I'm trying to figure out approaches to writing and having a career in comics that do and don't make sense for me. In some ways I grew tired of the idea of studying writers I love to become a better writer myself. Pulling apart an Alan Moore script can only get you so far. I can't make my brain work like his, I can't make it do what his does, but I can train it to do a (pretty paltry) impression of him. And I see that a lot, and maybe am guilty of it sometimes, and it sucks. At a certain point we have to accept that writing comes from our own internal voice and trying to mold that into something else will always be disingenuous. So in part I turned from studying the work to studying the people themselves a bit. I am sure I'll get to the same place, that improving the work only comes from improving myself, but for now I'm having fun trying to figure out why people's brains make the stories they do.
It's a genre set up - daughter of a mad scientist! robots! Hunted by a superspy organisation! - but its presentation is almost entirely non-genre. Apart from the ironic fake-out opening, we're looking at these scenes and treating them in that more grounded mode. People's emotions are rawer. You downplay. The robots are shot in a quotidian mode. The book feels real. What's the goal?
It comes from me being fascinated by spy stories. I grew up on James Bond, Ethan Hunt, and Jason Bourne, where spies were just superhero proxies, and I still love them. But as I got older I discovered John le Carré, and Graham Greene, and Greg Rucka's Queen & Country. It felt like a revelation to make a spy story more grounded, more realistic, which is hilarious if you think about it. My entry point for the genre, like a lot of people's, is absurd. I knew I wanted to do a spy story, but one where I tried my version of blowing up the James Bond idea, which is going in the other direction. I wanted to take the grounded characters, the realistic emotions, and the normalcy of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Quiet American, but lay it over the most absurd parts of Moonraker. And once we started playing with that idea, I realized it can't really be about the spy. It has to be about the people whose lives he impacts. It's a fun world to explore because you arrive at these very real, very human problems but sometimes your solution is hidden lasers and evil clones.
It also is a really fucking funny book. Especially when the stuff with VEIL comes in, the book hits an ironic playful place. The "I guess I did..." sequence was, I suspect, when I solidly thought the book is going to do great and folks will love it in the "we love Hawkeye/Sex Criminals" way. How does one balance the tone? It's a book which hits the funny-yet-emotional indie film sort of aesthetic in comics, if you see what I mean.
To me, finding humor anywhere and everywhere is the most human trait. I've seen people in the darkest moments of their lives say the funniest shit. I've seen truly evil, awful people be hilarious. Humor is one of the most universal forms of communication we have. So I try to put a bit of humor in everything but it's the stories where I need real emotional connection with the characters or I need to go someplace really dark that I lean into it the most. Obviously you run the risk of cutting tension or stepping on raw moments, but I think if you're mostly honest with the emotions you know what you do and don't want to ruin with a dick joke.
Can we talk a bit about the team - it's a really striking coherent book. How does it? Titov's rocking some really interesting palette choices. There's bold moves from Hassan. And still - if I was told it was actually Landini doing it all, I wouldn't be surprised. It's strikingly coherent. How much was that the goal? How much is that the goal generally?
100%. I am really lucky to get to ride everyone's coattails on this one. I definitely don't feel like it all being coherent is always the goal. I always think of a creative team like a band. There are definitely books where it's fun to have people act like virtuoso talents, soloists, playing off each other. Charlie Parker and Miles Davis standing shoulder to shoulder, right? But I don't think that is where Stefano or I shine, or wouldn't be on this book at least. Sometimes you just need to understand the world needs Ramones as much as it needs Led Zeppelins. We work well in step with each other, and we wanted colors and letters and design to stand with us. Roman came in keeping the colors very flat to accentuate Stefano's clean lines, but making the pallette wild to add more depth. And Hassan is really one of those versatile talents who can play well with anyone. He saw what we were doing and he adds style and class to it, makes it playful when it needs to be but plays it straight just as much. It really is a joy to get to watch the team build everything.
Want to talk about the personal side of this? The emotions seem really to the front her. Without wallowing, it feels a book powered by these big emotions. Is it?
I talked a bit before about focussing on a theme until you suddenly discover you have more to say on it, and that is the case here, but there is another part of it. This is probably a good example of 'you can never stand in the same river twice' but when Tyler Boss and I started making What's The Furthest Place From Here? that was me coming to terms with the approaching death of a family member. The core idea for that book came from imagining a life without them. And it's something we're still exploring and reckoning with in that book (as I shamelessly whisper that volume 4 is out now), but now I'm on the other side of that loss. It's no longer theoretical and I get to look back and realize I was so fucking wrong about so many things. Well, maybe not wrong at the time, but I'm a different person standing in a different river. I've spent a long time telling this story about moving past the memories that haunt us and the pain of loss, and now I'm telling a story about how moving on scares the hell out of me and the absence of all that is the real loss.
You will definitely include the part where you said this book was funny, right? That feels like we should maybe put that in bold or increase the font size. Yes it's a book about death and loss, and finding out who your family is and who you are to them, and being forced to discover who you were meant to be and who you wish you were. But it's also about sad robots, and foul-mouthed children, and vampire apes, and we are trying to make you laugh, really. I promise.
We're Taking Everyone Down With Us #1 is out now.