By Zack Quaintance — Veteran comics editor Joseph Illidge (perhaps best-known for working on Batman during the No Man’s Land story in the late ‘90s) has a lot going on these days.

Specifically, Illidge has a trio of interesting projects he’s working on this year. He’s currently the editor-in-chief of Heavy Metal, the influential sci-fi/fantasy magazine, which is undergoing a bit of a resurgence, one that has seen the publisher pushing out a varied and robust line of monthly comics, as well as dabbling in prose publishing, too. Illidge also has a new multi-media venture called Illuminous, which is teaming with 50 Cent’s G-Unit Film and TV and Color Farm Media on a film adaptation of a comic penned by Christopher Priest. And if all that weren’t enough, Illidge himself has written a biographical comic about Sly Stone for the new anthology We Can Funk, which is live on Kickstarter now.

Illidge recently made time to talk about all of these exciting projects with us, and you can check out highlights from our conversation below…enjoy!

INTERVIEW: Joseph Illidge Talks Illuminous

The first project we discussed with Illidge was Illuminous, a multi-media company in the works for some time and unveiled recently with the announcement that it would be partnering on a live action film adaptation of the 1997 comic Xerø. That series was published by DC Comics, and it ran for 12 issues, written by Christopher Priest with artwork by ChrisCross. In Xerø, main character Coltrane Walker is a professional basketball player who is recruited to also serve as a clandestine government assassin. Walker is Black, and the book involves him disguising himself as a white man with blonde hair and blue eyes to gain access to spaces where a Black man might not be welcomed.

What makes this new adaptation possible, Illidge explained, is that in 2016 the rights for the character reverted from DC Comics to Priest. Illidge told us:

“Xerø is the first project for Illuminous, and it really speaks to the kind of projects the company is going to do, taking comic books that have an audience or had an audience, that are special gems that went mostly unrecognized, and partnering up with G-Unit and Color Farm, finding the right major partner in another form of media, whether that’s live action film, live action TV, or animation. It’s to really get it to the larger global audience. Xerø is perfect for that because it’s a unique situation where the series was originally published by DC but all the rights reverted back to [Priest] a few years ago. That’s the model and how the company is going to start. Right now we’re working on more projects like that, and we’ll talk about those once they’re announced.”

As for Xerø, Illidge also discussed how the ideas around race make it well-suited for the world of 2022, despite first being published 25 years ago:

“Xerø was a story that was really ahead of its time when DC published it in 1997. Where entertainment is, where our world is — really, now is the perfect time for a story like this to get to a larger audience and to put a distinctive slant on what we consider the superhero genre but is very much also the spy genre.”

Priest is best-known for writing one of the most influential runs of Black Panther, as well as a recent run of Deathstroke, a much-loved comic by me personally. Illidge said Priest is a perfect partner for this new venture:

“[Priest] is really one of the most thoughtful writers we have in comics right now. For him, what is always important is the level of plausibility. So, there are so many spy stories out there, but when you really get down to how government works, how organizations work, it usually comes down to just a few people can activate somebody…that level of detail is part of what he’s known for in his stories.”

On Heavy Metal’s New Big Bad Origin Comic, Entropy

In addition to the film adaptation of Xerø, Illidge is also continuing to serve as editor-in-chief of Heavy Metal magazine, a position he took over in 2021. Illidge is working with Priest in this capacity as well, specifically on the forthcoming comic, Entropy, due out in July. The book, which will tie into a shared universe with the publisher’s flagship character Taarna, will enable Priest to write with inherently more freedom than the work he’s done for publishers like Marvel and DC.

Illidge elaborated on what inspired Heavy Metal to bring Priest in, and why he’s a fit for a book like Entropy (more on that below):

“When a lot of people talk about Priest in the industry, the first thing they talk about is Black Panther. What really appealed to our CEO was Deathstroke, the idea that you could write a villain story and you could make it plausible and you could make it compelling. Priest’s Deathstroke was nominated for an Eisner, which really spoke to how unique and special it was, that it was recognized at that level. Bringing [Priest] in, then it was a matter of, okay, what’s the right project. We’d relaunched the Taarna series, and Taarna is the flagship character of Heavy Metal from the 1981 animated film. We were thinking about the opposite number to Taarna, what is the being that is her mirror image in the Heavy Metal multiverse. It was from that germ of an idea that we started working with [Priest], and came up with what is going to be Entropy, a five-issue series coming out in July.”

Entropy is a sort of take on Green Lantern, on a character given great cosmic powers. While you can only extend the idea of a human being given this great far in a corporate IP-driven story, Illidge explained that Heavy Metal has no such shackles, and that Priest can take this premise and “go all the way with it.” The resulting book will be a great villain origin story, one that stands on its own but also ties in to a larger tapestry for readers familiar with the new run of Taarna.

Generally speaking, Illidge said the work he’s doing as EIC of Heavy Metal is part of a grand tradition started by one of the most influential sci-fi/fantasy/horror publications, and he’s working to bring in thoughtful creators in keeping with his own point of view on comics and stories:

“The thing about the comic book industry is that there are so many talented creators out there. For any editor, you have to have a particular point of view, and that point of view, that approach, is what helps define the books you put out, how you make a contribution to elevating creators, elevating stories, and elevating points of view. Going back to where I started in the industry at Milestone, going back to my time working on Batman during No Man’s Land, it’s really about finding creators who are distinctive — they have a distinctive point of view and they have a distinctive artistic style.”

Heavy Metal, he continued, has a long-standing obligation to be daring, to be freer than stories told with corporate-owned familiar IP, and as its editorial leader, he intends to make sure the new books reflect all of that.

On the Kickstarter Comics Anthology, WE CAN FUNK

The last project Illidge discussed with us is a historical comic he’s writing about Sly Stone for the new Kickstarter anthology, We Can Funk. This work comes after Illidge co-wrote with Hanibal Tabu last year’s Prince-adjacent graphic novel MLPS Sound, published by Humanoids. On his story for We Can Funk, Illidge is re-teaming with MPLS Sound artist, Meredith Laxton.

Whereas last year’s book was historical fiction, the piece in We Can Funk will reflect actual history. Illidge said:

“Doing MPLS Sound and having Prince in there, there was really a responsibility for myself and Hanibal Tabu — we were the writers — and it was having to immerse ourselves in the Minneapolis sound movement to understand how it not only changed music but changed culture as we understand it…that kind of historical fiction was a really interesting and heavily researched project. For We Can Funk, it’s going to be real history, a real story about Sly Stone. It’s going to be a different approach, but the same responsibility to making sure the story rings true. Funk is such an important part of music history.”

While all of the multi-media and editorial is more than enough to keep Illidge busy, he said he jumped at the change to revisit the world of funk music, to help tell its influential and often-under-discussed history in comics. Being this busy is, in other words, a great problem to have.

Back WE CAN FUNK on Kickstarter now!

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He has written about comics for The Beat and NPR Books, among others. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.