Save up to 75% on your new comics at Mailordercomi








Marvel Comics T-Shirts & Posters




Return to the Continuum home page

Clicking on images provides larger ones.
Heroes Save the Cheerleader T-Shirt
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2007

SUPERMAN DOOMSDAY'S LAUREN MONTGOMERY

SAN DIEG0 -- The Continuum continues its series of stories on Superman Doomsday with an interview with director Lauren Montgomery.

The interview was conducted just prior to a public screening of the film at Comic-Con International.

Following is an edited transcription:

The Continuum: The movie was broken into three parts for the directors. Which one were you?

Montgomery: I was the middle section, Act B.

The Continuum: Tonally and logistically, how does the transition work between directors?

Montgomery: We pretty much all work on it simultaneously. I think Brandon (Vietti, who directed the first part) started maybe a week before I did, but we're all working on it at the same time.

Luckily, we're all in the same building, so we can just go to each other if we have a question. And we have meetings to catch up on start. And before we even start, Bruce (Timm, producer) gives us his rundown of what needs to be addressed in the script, what we really need to focus on and what we're trying to get across.

So we all have a pretty cohesive idea of what needs to be done. It's just a matter of getting it done and hooking up the smaller details, like where is Lois' desk is relation to Clark's desk. (laughs) We actually had to make some changes. I had to make him change his section because I had Clark across from Lois and he had Clark behind Lois. And I was like, "No, no, no, we need to do it this way!"

The Continuum: You came from this after Legion of Super Heroes?

Montgomery: I directed Legion of Super Heroes for the first season. Prior to that, I had storyboarded on the entirety of Justice League Unilimited. And of course, I had done some storyboard work before that, but my first directing job had been on Legion.

The Continuum: What are you working on now?

Montgomery: After Doomsday was finished, I accepted a job with Avatar, just storyboarding again. I was already with Avatar by the time Legion started up again, so I wasn't able to return. But Brandon did an excellent job directing in my stead. He's really done a great job this season on Legion, and they've done a whole new spin on the series with new designs and it looks great.

The Continuum: Do you have a preference for the DC Comics characters?

Montgomery: I do. I'm more familiar with them than most other comic-character universes, like Marvel or Image. I think it was because I was more of animation fan as a child more than an actual comic-book fan, so the characters I became familiar with were mostly the characters who had cartoon series, which, when I was growing up, were Batman and Superman. And then Justice League.

The Continuum: So that must have been a kick to work on Justice League?

Montgomery: It was. It was awesome. I grew up loving Batman. I watched it every day after school. And then Superman came on, and I loved that. And then Superman and Batman Adventures and then Batman Beyond and then Justice League. I was in college at that point in time and so after I graduated, I loved Justice League but I never thought I was good enough to work on it. And then I ended up being able to work on it and it was like, "Whopee!"

The Continuum: The middle part of Superman Doomsday is after the big fight with the emotional stuff, so you probably didn't get to do a lot of action?

Montgomery: Not a whole lot of action. But actually what ended up happening is I ended up pulling a lit bit of double duty. In the section I directed, I mostly handed out a lot of the storyboards, and I did a few key scenes myself. Whereas in Act 3, there was so much action, and Bruce was very familiar with my boarding style because I worked with him on Justice League, he wanted me to handle a portion of the final fight. And so because I had given out a lot of my Act B to other people and just purely supervised a lot of it, I was able to storyboard the fight scene.

So, I directed the mostly emotional section and then I ended up storyboarding a pretty big fight scene toward the end.

The Continuum: Which did you like better?

Montgomery: I honestly liked the emotional stuff better just because there's more connecting with the characters and the drawings are a little bit more interesting to me, the facial features and getting the expressions right. Action's fun, but it makes my head hurt trying to think of new moves. With everything I've done, how can many ways can you throw a punch?

I like getting to know the characters and I find you do that more through the emotional scenes.

The Continuum: Were you familiar with the "Death of Superman" story from the comics?

Montgomery: No, I really wasn't that familiar with it. I had heard of it. I know that they killed off Superman at some point in time and I know he was killed by a big rocky monster guy. But I really didn't know that much about it. So reading the script was kind of new to me. I was hanging on every word, trying to figure out what was going on. It was really cool.



E-mail the Continuum at RobAlls@aol.com



Return to the Continuum home page


Copyright © 2007, The Comics Continuum