Ignition Press takes on the mind of Stan Lee in the original graphic novel Airwalker. Artist Danny Luckert has the pleasure of bringing the comic legend’s vision to life alongside writer Jeremy Haun; AndWorld Design completes the creative team on letters.
LUCKERT: My first, I guess, major book — because these things kind of work in levels —would be Regression from Image that I worked on with Cullen [Bunn]. That was the book that made me able to quit my full-time job and then do comic books full-time.
DESTITO: That must have been nice.
LUCKERT: I mean, it was one of those jobs that I loved, but I love comics way more. And then from there, I worked on Red Mother with Jeremy, and that’s how I met Jeremy. I’ve pretty much just been bouncing back between Jeremy and Cullen Bunn.
DESTITO: You work a lot with Jeremy; you work with Cullen. A lot of times you see those partnerships in comics because art and words, you have to have such a tight collaboration. How do you guys work?
LUCKERT: Both of them give me a ton of flexibility. Cullen kind of will just give me a character design with very minimum words, and then pretty much whatever I do, he goes, “Cool.” Whatever I do, it’s not my first time. I’m doing ten different versions for myself. And then he just kind of goes, “Cool.”
With Jeremy, there’s more of a back-and-forth. Then he’ll say, “Yeah, no, I like that. Maybe we could add this.” And then I’ll say, “Okay, maybe we could add—” So that’s more of a back-and-forth. Their scripts are fairly similar in the amount of detail. None of them go overboard with it. They both, I guess, give me enough to draw what I need and then let me do whatever. Like if I want to add a background character, you know, tying their shoe, it’s not like they don’t really get into that. It keeps it super interesting as the illustrator to kind of make backgrounds a little bit more interesting.
DESTITO: What about working with Ignition?
LUCKERT: Transformative. They’re amazing. Just in the editors, just Jeremy I’ve worked with for years, but even with this, to see him take on a leadership role is so cool. And he was an illustrator, then he’s a writer, then he’s doing this. It’s just very inspirational.
Ignition has been amazing. All of their books have been amazing. They’ve been super supportive in every single way. After I finished Airwalker, I jumped in on issue #7 of Murder Podcast because it was a flashback issue, so it kind of worked. They’ve just been super great. I would work with them forever, indefinitely.
DESTITO: What do you have coming up? Do you have anything you can talk about or tease?
LUCKERT: I’m not sure how much I could talk about it. I’m working with Cullen on something for Ignition. Surprise, surprise. It is horror, where Airwalker is a superhero story. How I’ve been thinking of the Cullen Bunn book that I’m working on next is it’s not like a slasher. It’s like a brutal horror story. I’ve been kind of thinking of it like Weapons, where it’s not particularly gory. It’s just brutal. It’s a brutal story. That’s the one word that keeps coming up. I would read the script, and every issue I read at least twice, I go like, “Jesus Christ.” I just whisper it to myself. I was like, “All right, I guess I got to do that now.” But I’m super excited about it. I think people are really going to like it.
DESTITO: Do you have a genre that you prefer to work in, or do you like to kind of mix it up?
LUCKERT: I like to mix it up. Horror seems to be my go-to, but I think that’s just the first book I worked on was horror, then the second one was horror, and now that’s kind of your thing. I grew up reading superhero comics. I’m a superhero kid. Working on Airwalker was then a lot of fun because it’s a superhero story. I’ve worked on another book with Cullen, which was Beyond Mortal and Jump Scare. Those were horror, but in like a superhero universe, so that was a nice mix. You get superheroes, and you get tentacle monsters and flying skulls.
DESTITO: Do you have a dream character that you would want to work on?
LUCKERT: Superman. Ever since I was 8 years old, when I don’t know what to draw, I draw Superman.
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