Relationships are hard. Interpersonal dynamics of any sort require work to maintain — Ben Affleck took a lot of shit for saying his marriage was work, but he was right. A myriad of different factors can destabilize a dynamic between people at any given moment: ego, money, miscommunication, and on the list goes.
Unless you’re Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing.
The comic writing duo, collectively and colloquially known as “Hivemind,” have worked on major properties including, but certainly not limited to, Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Trek, and Thunderbolts. That’s not to mention their creator-owned work, like the new horror comic You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive, which is akin to Marvel’s Runaways meets M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. And right now, their work on the 2022 one-shot Batman: One Bad Day: Clayface is part of the DNA that makes up Clayface — the latest production from James Gunn’s DC Studios and the current #1 movie in America. These are the kinds of projects that most writers would kill to be a part of. And, at every step, this pair has done it together.
In a profession where it often feels like a Battle Royale-style competition to land a paid gig, how and why do these two decide to work together?
The answer dates back to 2005, when the pair met at the University of Southern California’s famed film school. Lanzing remembers being on his very first film set and passing by a sound guy, David Server, talking about the Avengers. After doubling back and clarifying if he was, indeed, talking about the comic, the pair hit it off. Not long after, Lanzing went over to Server’s place to hang out, where he met Kelly, who was Server’s roommate. “We met briefly and became friendly,” Lanzing says. “I was definitely — let’s say — a little more hubristic back then,” Kelly states. “I think I was a little bit high on my own supply and wasn’t really quite as engaging with other folks as much.” Kelly went off to Ireland to study abroad and “came back and discovered that this guy, [Lanzing], was still in our lives. I really thought it was going to be a short, summer fling.”
The trio would pile into a PT Cruiser lovingly nicknamed “The Beast,” because it would “growl anytime you tried to gas it,” and trek down to local comic book shops Golden Apple or Meltdown to pick up new issues for the week. The trio would then go to a greasy pizza place, read their books, and talk about them. “Because we were all film students, we’re breaking apart the story,” Kelly says. “We were really doing our best to effectively just be passionate nerds within the space. Once you spend enough time with someone and see their real passion for something, it’s hard not to start to bond. Once you start to see that passion in someone’s eyes and understand what they care about, that’s how real relationships are built.”
That shared passion for comics and storytelling became the foundation of a creative partnership that has since spanned decades, dozens of titles, and now a major Hollywood film — proof that the best professional relationships are often the ones that start over pizza and a stack of single issues.
