On this episode of Ropes & Gray's Alumni @ RopesTalk podcast, private equity partner Carl Marcellino interviews #1 New York Times-best-selling novelist, comic book writer and musician Charles Soule, who was an associate at Ropes & Gray from 2000-2004. They discuss how Charles built a creative life while practicing as a lawyer. Charles shares his experiences working on comics for DC and Marvel, as well as publishing three novels, including some in the Star Wars universe. For anyone trying to improve their networking, Charles's description of how he broke into the comic book business is a master class.
Transcript:
Carl Marcellino: Hello, everyone—thank you for tuning in to the latest installment of the Ropes & Gray alumni podcast. I'm Carl Marcellino, a partner in the private capital transactions group, and I am delighted to be joined by Charles Soule, comic book writer, best-selling novelist, musician, and attorney. Charles and I worked together when he was an associate in the corporate department, from about 2000 to 2004. He joined right out of law school—right out of Columbia—and started at Reboul, just like I did. We stayed through the Reboul merger into Ropes & Gray, and then, in 2004 he left and went on to greener pastures.
Charles Soule: I would say "different pastures," not necessarily "greener," but I'm sure we'll address it.
Carl Marcellino: My first question was going to be, "How does it feel to be back in the New York office?" and then we realized that you actually hadn't worked in this office yet.
Charles Soule: It feels familiar, but obviously not familiar. This was a space that I spent a lot of time in over time, from being a summer associate at Columbia at Reboul, working at Reboul, working at Ropes, and then, I stayed in the legal profession until I fully left it in 2017. I consulted, and then opened my own practice, which enabled me to transition into those "greener pastures" we talked about.
Carl Marcellino: When you left, you opened a practice in immigration law. What drove your interest to start your own practice, in particular, in that space?
Charles Soule: I lived in Asia growing up for a while, and so, my major in collegewas Chinese—Mandarin—and I speak French as well. I had a solid base in multiple languages. I had done some immigration work as part of clinics and things like that in law school. I enjoyed it. It seemed like a very direct way to interact with a client in a way that the corporate transition work I was doing wasn't necessarily letting me do as much, and probably wasn't going to let me do for several more years, at minimum, of practice—all of which is fine, it's just a different type of practice area. I liked the idea of interacting with people directly. I liked the idea of enabling people to move around the world to different places—that's something that had been very formative to me. People are getting married, people are coming to the United States to do jobs that they're excited to do—there's extraordinary ability these days which lets you work with really cool people who've done amazing things in their lives. So, I was into all of that. I think the second reason was that I figured I would be the only person in my network who was doing immigration work.
Carl Marcellino: For years, you were the only immigration lawyer I knew.
Charles Soule: Exactly—if you had a question or you needed a referral, I would be the guy. That strategy worked very well. I built a very successful solo immigration practice and eventually had some staff by the time it all shut down.
Carl Marcellino: I know you always were a musician, you were writing, you were doing something, but there were always side projects while you were a lawyer. When you left, did you intend to build the practice and continue those side projects, or was it a means to give you more time where you could try to pursue those creative outlets more?
Charles Soule: I think that the reality of it is that if you want to be successful in an environment like Ropes, which is a top-notch, incredible provider of legal services across many practice areas, you need to be extremely dedicated to it. I was proud of the work I did at Ropes, and every time I did transactional deal work, I was very happy with it, but I knew that I wasn't really wired to be that guy. The question then became, "What am I wired to do?" For me, it was pretty clear that the thing that really got me going was creative work. My thinking was I would find a way where I was still doing law, but I was much more in control of my own schedule. If there was a time when I needed to pivot to spend three days writing something or doing something else—I had no idea what the next thing really would be—I would be able to do that. And so, I just started making those decisions on that day. The first decision was that it was really time to be in a different environment than Ropes & Gray, which was obviously nothing bad about Ropes & Gray—it's awesome.
Carl Marcellino: So, you left. You had this practice, you were always a musician, you had your band, you did your performances, but you also then started writing. You had your own graphic novels—your own titles. Then, in 2013, it started to accelerate—that's when you started writing for DC and it took off. You got these opportunities to be on all these great titles, like, Swamp Thing, Superman/Wonder Woman, Daredevil, She-Hulk, and then all the Star Wars titles that the geek in me comes out. Strongman was your first published work. How did you make that happen?
Charles Soule: I looked at the zone of creativity, and I realized that—as you said, I was in a lot of bands, and I loved playing music—you need to be in a certain type of life to be able to really pursue that effectively. There are exceptions, but basically you need to be able to tour and you need to be able to be constantly rehearsing your band. I was married, I had my family—all those things were elements that were in the mix, and so, writing always seemed like something that could be done while maintaining the other things that needed to be done. I had actually written a novel before this—it was called The Land of 10,000 Things. I got an agent for that book—the agent took it out to the marketplace, and the marketplace didn't respond. It was a very crushing blow because I'd been working on that book for years, and I really thought it was going to be the first big, solid cornerstone in the building of my creative life. When it wasn't, I was like, "Wow, that was years of work and effort to do something I was confident in and was proud of. I don't know if I can do that again exactly that way. What's another thing I can do that seems to have, if not lower barriers to entry, certainly quicker, shorter barriers to entry?" So, I looked at comics.
There's a real meritocracy in comics that I don't know exists in almost any other creative field. You can just be good, be cool, and be around, and if you do that for long enough, you get noticed by the power brokers, and they give you a chance. When I say, "be good," I mean you need to write stories that are engaging, that you know the craft, you need to be able to draw comic art in whatever form is at a professional level for the story you're telling. By "being cool," you just need to be cool—you need to be somebody that people like to spend time with. The editors, it's a very close relationship with the people in comics. It's not a very big business. Then, by "being around," that was the key to those four or five years between leaving Ropes and getting my first thing published, because the place you need to "be around" is the events where comic book people are—and the events where comic book people are, generally speaking, are comic conventions. I started attending Comic Cons all over the country. There was internet stuff, too, and message boards, so I would go on those, interact with people, and make connections. Then, go to Comic Cons, meet up with those people in real life, and just start building a network. This was all pre-Twitter, so you really had to do it on a grassroots level. I did that and made lots of great connections with people at, just above, or just below my level in terms of trying to get in.
As people start to get elevated up that ladder, they bring you up—there are little, quick referrals—and so, it just builds and builds. You figure out, "For somebody at my level, if I can get five really good-looking pages of a comic, if I hire an artist, if I get a premise that's cool, I can give it to these 10 guys. If I'm lucky, one of those 10 guys will say, 'I'd like to publish this comic.'" You can't go to Marvel or DC with that, but you can go to publishers like Slave Labor Graphics (SLG), which was the company that actually published my first thing. There were a million things like that where I slowly and meticulously figured out where I could put a project, the kind of projects that person published, and what my return on investment was going to be, which was essentially going to be zero. I had to accept that and figure out how I was going to pay for it. In terms of a visual medium, comics are about as cheap as it gets in terms of presenting something that feels cinematic and can be as large as you want, but it still isn't cheap. My daughter, Rosemary, was little at that time, I was building the practice still, and I was very much like, "Is this where money should be spent?" I kept thinking I was just going to find my way through—I was going to do it until something very clearly told me that I was making a mistake, that the path wasn't going to be open to me anymore. When I got that first deal in 2008, I was like, "This is a sign. Now, I have a calling card because I am a published writer. I'm not just an aspiring writer." I was able to take that and start using that as literally a business card almost to other publishers who were the next couple rungs up the ladder and get myself introduced to them basically.
Carl Marcellino: Now, we go the next leap to 2013, with Swamp Thing. I feel like you made that happen. You had an idea, you found the right person to put it forth, and you waited for an opportunity. Just tell that story a little bit.
Charles Soule: The way that I went from Strongman to Swamp Thing was really just weaponizing that Strongman book in a way and allowing it to open new doors for me. Another big aphorism I use when I'm talking about this to people of how you network to get through a field is, "You don't hunt, you fish." If I were to say, "My entire professional future depends on Carl Marcellino. I'm going to make everything I can happen, and I'm going to get in front of him every chance I get"—that's "hunting." Whereas, if it's "fishing," you're just kind of around. If it's organic, you talk about your work, you introduce yourself, you learn about the other people, and you ask them about them. It's part of that whole "being cool" thing. But comics is a weird business that attracts very intense, focused people who either have every single thing that's ever happened in every X-Men comic memorized, or they are incredibly focused and diligent on drawing, or whatever their thing is. So, I just did an elaborate set of networking—figuring out who the editors were at the next rungs up. That eventually led me to an executive at DC, who asked me, "Have you ever thought about working at DC?" I thought that question was so bizarre, considering that's all I'd been thinking about, but I was like, "Yes, if the opportunity came up, if I was asked, I would love to do that." He introduced me to another editor, who said, "What would you do for Swamp Thing?" And so, I read all of Swamp Thing in a very short amount of time. I'd read a lot of it already, but I went through and did my homework. Then, I thought, "What hasn't been done? What would be the thing that would feel fresh? What would fit into the line right now?" I didn't wing it—I really researched everything that I thought would play to my strengths and would play to the strength of the DC line at that moment. Then, I just swung for the fences.
Carl Marcellino: Once you did Swamp Thing, it felt like, over those next three years, you were working for both Marvel and DC, and were doing multiple comics. Were there particular titles you sought out? Was it "playing it cool" still and letting opportunities come, or were you still as meticulous, trying to get yourself in front of certain titles, being able to do certain names over that time period?
Charles Soule: It depends. There are things I knew I'd be really good at. For instance, I knew I'd be pretty good at Daredevil because no lawyer had ever written Daredevil before. I was the first lawyer, and only lawyer, to ever write Daredevil—no one's done it since. I had an inkling that I would be pretty good at Star Wars, too, because I've loved Star Wars since I was little. Those two I did pursue at Marvel, but even before I had that opportunity, I was given Swamp Thing, which was amazing. Pretty soon after that, I got a book called Red Lanterns, which is like Green Lantern, but red. Then, they put me on a book called Superman/Wonder Woman. At the same time, Marvel called me up and they asked, "Have you ever thought about working at Marvel?" I said, "Well, yes I have." They offered me a book called Thunderbolts, to take over somebody else's run on that book, which I did. Then, I was offered a book called She-Hulk, which is another lawyer, so I started writing that.
At that point, I was writing five books at the same time, and I was a year in at this point from my first published work at either of these companies. If a comic is doing well, Marvel will do what's called "double shipping," so they might put out 16 or 18 issues in a year, which means there are months where you have to write two issues of that title for multiple artists—it just becomes this incredible juggling act. And because I was working for two companies that were in competition with each other, they didn't care that I had work at Marvel, or they didn't care that I had work at DC, so there were months when I had to write eight scripts. I was still practicing law at the same time, I was still running my immigration firm, and I don't know how I did that—I don't ever want to do it again. Even though I work really hard right now, at least I don't have the immigration law practice anymore. And so, it was a very, very intense time.
Right around 2014, Marvel came to me and said, "We have a project we'd like you to consider. It's called Death of Wolverine, and the artist is this guy, Steve McNiven." Steve McNiven is incredibly famous—he's an awesome guy. We've become very good friends in the intervening years. I don't even know what the equivalent would be—it would be like if they had come to me and said, "Do you want to work with Steven Spielberg?" basically in the comic space. It was really astonishing. Also, Wolverine had never died before—arguably he couldn't die—and so, it was clear that it was going to be a gigantic story. There's Death of Superman, there's Death of Wolverine—there aren't that many stories that do this. I recognized this as absolutely my shot into the A+ leagues of comic writing. But they said, "Charles, if you want to do this, you have to give up all your books at DC." They offered me an exclusive contract to work at Marvel, but because I was giving up work—they were asking me to literally give up income—I was able to negotiate a really good deal, which I did because I thought it was my ticket to be able to close the law firm. "If I can generate replacement income, not just for the DC stuff, but also for the law income," that was the goal. I signed that deal in 2014, and I continued working that hard for the next two years, and Marvel renewed my exclusive in 2016. I was like, "Now, I've got another two years of security, and I'm building into the other spaces of my writing career."
Carl Marcellino: That's when Star Wars was also kicking in.
Charles Soule: Yes, Star Wars was happening, creator-owned stuff was happening, novels were happening—all these things were happening. So, I closed the firm in 2016, and then, immediately reopened it again after the 2016 election because immigration kind of went bananas. There was a change of administration, and many immigration rules changed at the same time. I had many, many people calling me, saying, "What is happening? Am I going to be deported? What is going to go on?" So, I stayed open for about another year because I wanted to make sure I was serving my existing clients, like a good lawyer needs to do, and also, it just seemed like a responsible good-person thing to do.
Carl Marcellino: Then, you touched on your novels, so let's just go into that. In 2018, you published The Oracle Year—that was your first with Harper Perennial. They also did your second novel, Anyone. Then, you went into Star Wars with the Light of the Jedi novel, which was that first novel in the Star Wars: The High Republic series. Then, your most recent, which is my favorite, next to your true first, is The Endless Vessel, which is just awesome. The Oracle Year is a story of a regular guy, a musician in New York—I've always believed you were basing it on your own self—who wakes up from a dream, has a hundred predictions about the future, and then, it follows him through how he conveys those predictions to the world. Give me the process, the story: Where did that first come from?
Charles Soule: I started working on that book in the 2000s, at some point. If you look at what I was doing in the 2000s, it's when I was in that networking phase, trying to build it up, and make things happen. The thing I was most concerned about at that time was, "Is this going to work? What is my future going to be?" So, writing a book about a guy who knows the future just seemed very "hook"-y. This guy has these predictions—he knows 108 things that are going to happen over the next year. What does he do? What is his responsibility? He starts trying to get really rich, and he succeeds—that happens in the first couple chapters. He makes $4 billion by selling them to hedge funds. Then, he's rich, so what does he do next? And the story there is really what the book is.
I had signed with my Hollywood manager at that time, because I was starting to have projects that were viable, creator-owned projects—titles with characters that I and my artists-creators made up. Those can be sold and optioned to Hollywood to be made into film and TV, so I was starting to do that. My Hollywood manager said, "What else do you have besides comics?" I said, "I have this draft of a novel. Here's what it's about." She said, "I think that could be really good. Let me introduce you to my friend, Seth, who is a literary agent." I met Seth, and Seth was like, "This sounds awesome. Send it to me." I sent it to him, he liked it. He had notes, I did another draft, and then, he had another round of notes. I sat on them because this was when I was writing those eight books a month and stuff like that, and I just didn't get around to executing those last notes. We sat down and had coffee at New York Comic Con, this would have been fall of 2016, and he was like, "Why have you not gotten me this draft?" I said, "I'm just really busy, and I've been burned before. I don't have my hopes up." He said, "Let me be clear. If you get me those revisions, I will sell this book in two weeks." And so, I said, "Okay, you'll have them next week." I sat down, and I stayed up until 3:00 in the morning, which I was doing a lot those days, and got it all done. I sent it to him, and he sold the book in two weeks. It was incredible because that's where I started—that's what I always had wanted to do, is be a novelist. It was pretty great.
Carl Marcellino: When you were having your tour initially, reading the first chapter, I could see it—you were just in your element, you were a happy dude. The Star Wars book that you wrote, was that just a one-time project? Then, how was it different writing a novel in a universe that you hadn't created, versus one where you had?
Charles Soule: That's actually an interesting thing.One of my other many jobs is I'm a creative consultant at Lucasfilm. After all of the work I did writing comics for them, they brought me on as a person who helps talk to them about projects and future things that they're doing, which for a Star Wars guy, that's a super cool gig. One of the really key things that set that up for me was—I guess this would have been summer of 2019—a publishing executive at Lucasfilm named Mike Siglain, who's one of the best people in the world, reached out to me. He said, basically, "I'm putting together a team. I'm putting together a crew. I think you should be part of it." The idea that he had was he was going to build out an entirely new section of the Star Wars timeline that had no Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader in it—all it really had was Jedi, and then, we could do whatever we wanted. He took the five of us, five writers, and he flew us to Skywalker Ranch in California, and he said, "Go: What do you want it to be?" That turned into Star Wars: The High Republic, which is this incredibly successful new Star Wars that started in January 2021 with my novel, Light of the Jedi, which kicked the whole thing off, and debuted at #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list. That was incredible, because it was in a preexisting world, but it was also a world that I had created with my four friends, Cavan Scott, Justina Ireland, Claudia Gray, and Daniel José Older—we all did it together. I had to adhere to the rules of the way the Force worked and things like that, but The Republic was different. The bad guys are different—you've never seen them before. It was very free, especially the first project, I was able to make up lots and lots of things. Now, there's a TV show called Young Jedi Adventures, which it's a cartoon show for kids on Disney+ that uses spaceships that I made up—I didn't draw them, but I conceived of them. There's a show for grownups called The Acolyte, which is coming out in June on Disney+, which is set in this era, and all of the Jedi wear the uniforms that we all came up with. It's just incredible.
Carl Marcellino: With Anyone and with The Endless Vessel—two books that are both wonderful and, in some respects, quite complex universes—you could just go into so many different directions with the stories. The Endless Vessel, you can be writing things throughout history about different aspects of that story. Is that a next step for you? Are you going to do more in those universes?
Charles Soule: I did write a side sequel to The Endless Vessel, which will be out any minute, called Chronicles of the Lazarene. It's a short novel, but I did do that, and I really enjoyed it. I definitely think there's a lot to be done on Anyone, but it's also about what the market is looking for. Anyone is in development as a TV show, and there's been several drafts of the script, which have gotten quite good. If that happens, then I think it would be stupid not to explore the idea of writing more in that world.
Carl Marcellino: Do you still write all the time? What are you writing?
Charles Soule: I do. I wrote the first book in that whole Star Wars cycle, Light of the Jedi, and when I did that, I agreed to write the last one. It was a neat idea to bookend the two things, and so, I'm writing the first and the eighth. I've already started writing that eighth book, so that is the next big novel project to wrap up, which I'm excited for.
Carl Marcellino: Have you been involved in that along the way, with all the other authors of the other six books?
Charles Soule: Yes, it's all very tightly knit. That group of five has become super close. And because it's been too much to write, some other writers have been brought in. We're close with them too, but the original five are a really tightly knit group. Actually, my daughter and I did a kid's book. The Star Wars people at Lucasfilm asked me if I wanted to do a kid's book, and the idea was, "I'll do it with Rosemary," who was 16 when we wrote it. It's a book about overcoming fears for little kids, like little Jedi—fighting fear is the big thing Jedi are supposed to do. It was great to work with her, because she could remember what it was like to be afraid of the dark, or whatever the thing was, in a way that was a little more remote from me. It was just a cool thing to do. We've done signing events. We just did an event at a school on Tuesday up in the Bronx, for a New York reading initiative. We went and read the book for a bunch of first-, second-, and third-graders, and they had a lot of questions about light sabers, Yoda, and things, and it was about the most adorable afternoon you could think of. It was great.
Carl Marcellino: That's great. Thank you, Charles, for joining me today. It's always a treat to reconnect with you, but from the Ropes & Gray perspective, it's always a treat to reconnect with our alums. For all of our alumni out there, please visit our alumni website at alumni.ropesgray.com to stay up to date on our alumni and get the latest news about the firm and our lawyers. Thank you very much for tuning in.
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