The Man Behind the Top Cow Curtain: Matt Hawkins

Matt Hawkins is the President and COO of Top Cow Comics (The Darkness, Witchblade, Artifacts and Pilot Season) and the writer of Lady Pendragon, several Pilot Season titles and Top Cow's upcoming hit: Think Tank. Despite being one of the busiest men in comic books, he was kind enough to answer a few questions for our humble blog. He and Marc Silvestri (The Darkness) have also created a revolutionary Kickstarter project. Their idea is to give away the first five issues of the newly rebooted Cyberforce (a fantastic superhero team from the early '90s) for free in an attempt to get some non-comic readers into the stores and hopefully getting some brand new long term comic fans (like the best drug dealers, they give out a sample and get 'em hooked). So, please donate anything you can to this awesome cause by going HERE.


What are three facts that the average fanboy does not know about Matt Hawkins?

I love peanut butter, have a Masters in Physics and much prefer brunettes to blondes.

What exactly does your job consist of as President & COO of Top Cow?For one day only, we are giving you a time machine. What changes would you make to Top Cow during your tenure that you never got a chance to do?

I run the day to day business operations here at Top Cow overseeing all of the company business.  I write the checks and do the movie and TV pitches.  I review and comment on all the legal documents and deal with the government and try to prevent them from taking too much of our hard earned money.  On the time machine thing, there are half a dozen projects that I would not do, but none that we passed on that I would!  Some things never turn out quite the way you expect.  I think I would also work harder, earlier (98-2002) to get better writers like we have today.

 How did the concept of Think Tank come about?

I was reading a manual for a weapon system called Metalstorm.  It's a weapon that shoots 30,000 bullets a second.  Basically a wall of bullets whose purpose is to be mounted on the front of Naval vessels and other areas to destroy incoming ordinance (missiles, whatever).  In this manual as a footnote it also says that this weapon is "good for crowd control."  I stopped and stared at that for about 2 minutes flabbergasted and then started writing some notes in a notepad.  I know some dudes that work in Think Tanks and have visited some of them.  They are pretty cool.

 What is your writing process when creating a new story? At what point do you start the actual script?

I tend to write plot first then write the dialogue after the artist does the work.  If I had the time I'd write full scripts, but I don't, so I can't.  For me I'm still pretty old school, I write outlines and a lot of notes in yellow legal pads and try to figure stuff out that way.

 We were huge fans of the Pilot Season title Theory of Everything, but it came in second place. Any chance we’ll see anything from that?

Nick Nantell and Dan Jinks brought that to us and they are active TV producers and have plans for it.  I think if they get something going on the TV front then the answer is 100% yes!  If not, dunno.

Where will the comic book industry be economically in 2013? Better or Worse than in 2012?

Better.

Why do you believe in Comic Books?

Because comic books are awesome.  I think there are still a LOT of people that read comic books that just don't pay for them anymore.  The torrent sites get enormous volume of downloads. Our whole Cyber Force Kickstarter venture has been designed specifically to address that and try and get more people into comic book stores. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/620244384/cyber-force-returns