Brett Matthews

Sure, he’s tackled a Western before, together with Joss Whedon on Firefly, but ask Brett Matthews to talk about The Lone Ranger, and he’s a man possessed. Arcane lore starts to bubble up, along with a deeply personal connection to the character and his mythology. Along with the connection and knowledge, of course, comes a great respect for the character, and a desire to see him done correctly, and well.

Sounds like Dynamite Entertainment found the right guy to be writing the September-debuting Lone Ranger ongoing series, with art by John Cassaday, Sergio Cariello, and Dean White.

Wednesday, we’ll be talking with the art side of the series, and today, we caught up with Matthews to talk lore, legend, and the Lone Ranger.

Newsarama: The Lone Ranger seems to be a character that virtually everyone knows, but many people couldn’t tell you how they know of him. What is your first memory of the Lone Ranger, and how does that influence your writing in the book?

Brett Matthews: The Lone Ranger is pretty much the only thing I can ever remember my father loving that wasn’t baseball. So, growing up, I was probably aware of it a lot more than the average person my age. The radio plays. The old episodes. They were around and available. I’d take them or leave them at the time, but they made an impression. My earliest memory — and it really is one of my earliest — is of my father taking my older brother and I to see the Eighties remake. We’re talking about a guy that didn’t get excited about any movie ever, and it was all he could talk about leading up to the day. I remember that... and the depths of his disappointment after. It might have been rage. But even that flawed version, there was something there. And when the William Tell Overture finally hits in that movie, I got it. I understood how this could be a thing you could love.

All this influences my writing in that they’re my experiences, which always influence a writer’s work. In a lot of ways, I’m trying to reconcile what I always got about the character and what I never did into a take both loyalists and newcomers can appreciate.

NRAMA: The solicit information would lead one to believe that we’ll be seeing a different take on the Lone Ranger than we’re used to. What can you tell us about this incarnation of the character?

BM: Honestly, I don’t know how different it is. I guess if you go looking for differences, sure, they’re there. And they always are, and they always will be. That said, we’re really trying to do something very true and faithful to the mythology of the character. And by that, I mean the mythology as a whole, both the well-trod and less so.

One thing I’ve learned is that a lot of people aren’t familiar with how diverse the mythology is. They know the black mask... but they don’t know how many iterations of it there have been, or where the mask itself comes from. Or maybe they know the powder blue and red outfit... but don’t realize that’s just the most common visualization of the character, and that there have been others. Or they know Silver, but maybe not so much his origin.

Take The Lone Ranger’s accepted first name — John. That wasn’t something from the radio plays, from the inception of the character. Back then, The Ranger’s real name, very simply, was Reid. But eventually the need for a first name arose and one of the novels gave it to him and over time it became accepted canon. That’s how big, iconic and important characters like The Lone Ranger evolve — creators take what they need, and try to leave a little more than was there when they arrived. And every once again, it gets to be too much, and you’ve got to clean house.

There’s a lot of that in The Lone Ranger’s history, and I’m trying to fit in as much as I can and be as loyal to the character as possible while at the same time having it all make sense and something to say, pressing on. Because really, that’s the point. After all, if it weren’t, The Lone Ranger and Tonto would still be riding double...

And somewhere out there in the far-flung, some hardcore Ranger fans get that joke. And I don’t want to ignore that. I really want this series to work for them.

NRAMA: So what about Tonto?

BM: Very important character. Not a stereotypic take. Will not exist just to get his ass kicked or require saving. In a lot of ways, I see him as John Reid’s mentor, not the other way around. Not yet...

And he’s more than a little scary when he wants to be.

NRAMA: Q: Can you share any story details with us?

BM: It’s very much an origin story, set in a historically credible West rather than a sanitized one. It’s the story of a boy becoming a man becoming a legend, which is not such an easy or rapid thing. Or at all what he sets out to do, but that’s life.

You will see many familiar elements — from the show, the serials, the radio plays — in a manner which seeks to unify them while paying the proper, and often overdue, respect.

Which isn’t to say that we’re playing it safe, because very frankly we’re not. What it is to say is that we know where these things come from, that we love them very much, and that we care about where they’re going. In short, we all know where the character ends up - and absolutely, the character of the comic will one day become the hero so many know and love — but he’s not there, yet. And this is the first of the many stories that could happen between those two points.

NRAMA: John Cassaday is attached to the project as the sole cover artist, has there much interaction between the two of you in terms of bringing the book to life?

BM: John’s a very good friend and is actually the one who got me involved in the project. He was in town and we were having some drinks and talking about it. One thing led to another. It all happened very fast...

I bet there are a lot of Cassaday stories, begin like that.

More seriously, John is indispensable. His love for the character is absolute, and his take is a breath of fresh air and lined up very closely with mine. I consider this project every bit as much his as mine or anyone else’s, though he’d be too modest to tell you that himself.

Oh yeah, and his covers are his usual exceptional work. Ho-hum. You look at them, and in one moment you fundamentally understand what we’re doing and the tone of the book. The cover to the second issue gives me chills every time I look at it, and serves as a touchstone.

NRAMA: Having written comic book and television scripts, how much difference do you find between the two?

BM: I do more feature work than the other two, but the challenge is and will always be the same — to tell a good story. The methods and tools at your disposal, often the circumstances of the thing differ a bit, but there’s no great difference, at least to me, on the page. It’s you alone in a room staring at a blank screen and trying to get what’s in your brain and your guts out onto it. You just love the thing you’re writing as much as you can, and then try to express it the right way. Do that, and hopefully others feel the same.