Paul Levitz On His Mysterious New Valiant Title, The Visitor
by Gary Catig
Recently, Valiant Entertainment announced a new sci-fi mystery series based off their character, The Visitor. This new version will be written by Paul Levitz with art by MJ Kim. At New York Comic Con, Levitz sat down with Comicon.com to discuss the upcoming title.
Gary Catig: For our readers who aren’t familiar with The Visitor, could you just tell us a little bit what it’s about?
Paul Levitz: Nobody is familiar with this version of The Visitor because the only thing that carries forward from the 90’s version is the name and the fact I thought the 90’s version had a very nice sense of place. It was very definitively set in L.A. and this one is very definitively set in New York. Other than that, there’s nothing from the original you need to know or that will help you in the slightest.
GC: You’ve had a prominent career in comics as a writer and you’ve worked with many different characters. I know you were given carte blanche to work with this version of the Visitor but what exactly attracted you to this project?
PL: I’ve known Fred Pierce, who’s the publisher at Valiant, for decades. We’ve been friendly so it’s a fun chance to work together and play on something. Having carte blanche to play with something is always fun. The Visitor is a good name and the Valiant mythology is interesting and complex and had some space in it where I could come up with something that touched on their history and mythology but in subtle ways that didn’t immediately require you to know anything. And hopefully the readers will enjoy that.
GC: You’ve stated before how a version of the Visitor appeared in the universe before. Yours isn’t even connected to the 90’s one. You touched about it a little bit on it but are there any other aspects of this character that you drew inspiration from for this series?
PL: From the first run? Not really that I’d talk about it at this stage. You might eventually see a little parallelism in something but it’s nothing obvious.
GC: You’ve stated that this series will connect with the mythology of the Valiant Universe. How will the reveals affect the universe as a whole? Is this a self-contained story or is there a lasting impact moving forward?
PL: Well, I hope that there will be more to tell of this story in the future so in that sense I hope there will be stuff moving forward beyond the six issues. The connections hopefully enrich the thing for a long time Valiant fan. They’ll learn something about the Valiant Universe that they didn’t know before but I don’t know if it will have ramifications for other Valiant titles. We’ll see that over time.
GC: How much research did you do within the Universe? It’s more nuanced your tie ins to it so what extent did you go?
PL: That’s something I was really able to lean on the editors for. I read, I don’t know, six or twelve different trade paperbacks of Valiant books to get a sense of material and get ideas. I also turned to the editors who really told me how things fit together and spotted things that might be problematic in how what I wanted to do fit or didn’t fit.
GC: MJ Kim is a rising comic artist. She was a recent Russ Manning nominee. How is it working with her and what does she contribute to this title?
PL: MJ has a terrific visual style to start with but also, specifically for this title, she’s a New York resident. She’s very passionate about getting her scenes and locations accurate. We’ve done location visits together. She’s bounced around I think on the tops of buildings to get angles and viewpoints. She really brings a tremendous richness to the New Yorkness of it.
GC: In the 90’s series, it took a while for them to reveal the identity of who the Visitor was. Will readers at least have that kind of payoff at the end of this miniseries?
PL: I sure hope the payoff is a lot better than the 90’s series if I did my job right.
We would like to thank Mr. Levitz for taking the time out of his show to speak with us about his upcoming book. We are also grateful to Valiant for coordinating everything and providing the opportunity. Put your pre-orders in at your local comic book shop and don’t forget to pick up the first issue of The Visitor on December 18, 2019.
