Breaking into comics is hard, but publishing your first ever effort at Image, the same home of legends like Robert Kirkman and Jason Aaron, is an accomplishment that may have needed a little divine inspiration. We were incredibly thrilled to be able to talk to the creators of Saints, the brand new book from newcomers to the industry. Writer Sean Lewis and artist Benjamin Mackey proved to us that they were the only team that could have possibly created this book and discuss a newbie’s perspective of the comic industry. Check out the end of the interview to see how you can score a signed copy of Saints #1.
SC: Saints opens back stage at a concert, can you talk a little about the music you both like and how it influences your work?
Ben: For me, I like a lot of bands that deal with religious undertones like Sufjan Stevens or Me Without You. They have these really great pseudo religious narratives where they’re not really clear as to whether or not they have “faith” in their religions. It’s kind of like they’re just constantly questioning things. It’s maybe not so much like there’s a direct influence, but there’s a mentality that this music has of being in this constant state of questioning and pealing back the layers behind religion. That’s something that I like to implement in the book in some way.
Sean: Well I grew up with an uncle who was in a death metal band and we lived in the same house together. I thought he was super cool so I used to go through his record collections all the time. Old school metal has always been something that has been present. I’m also a huge hip hop fan. I usually get drawn to musical styles that have some level of narrative storytelling. A lot of metal has weird Dungeons and Dragons lyrics in it and a lot of the urban lyrics of hip hop music does too. I like a lot of music that changes style and moves around. I listen to a lot of Death Heaven right now and a lot of this rapper named EL-P and Run the Jewels. So things where the dynamic shifts constantly, whether in music or in literature; those are like some of the biggest influences on me. Where you’re watching something where it’s really funny, and then you’re crying, and then it’s dark, and then it’s light. It feels more like life to me, so even the music that I listen to is a lot like that. I would encourage people to get the new Death Heaven; it’s excellent.
SC: My[Kaitlyn] Confirmation name is actually Lucy, which I chose because that is the name of a character in The Chronicles of Narnia. We’re sure that a lot more purposeful decision making went into which saints would be included in your book. Can you talk a little about the research that went into these characters?
Sean: Ha, well my confirmation name is Blaise (the first saint that we meet in the book). The original idea from the book is from Ben. He had been pretty obsessed with the saints.
Ben: So in college I was a painting major and I took a before-1400 art history class, and that got me really interested in western art history, which further solidified into medieval art and early Renaissance history. During those time periods you are just inundated with saints and you can’t escape them because they permeate art for hundreds of years. I studied abroad in Italy for half a year and that was even more full of constant saint exposure. They’ve taken on these iconic super-heroic proportions. I started thinking of about “Oh, what if these saints use their symbols and martyrdoms to inspire their super powers.” So St. Sebastian, for example, was martyred by a hail of arrows, so it became “Oh, what if he can grow these arrows out of his chest and then fire them at people?” Or maybe St. Lucy, because she lost her eyes, maybe she could have this saintly vision and extra-perception that she can tap into.
SC: Seems like a logical path of inspiration to us. We should take a moment to congratulate you both on publishing your first issue of your first comic ever! Issue #1 a solid opening for sure. How did you break into the industry?
Sean: It was kind of crazy and fast. Ben and I only met a year ago and we started talking and this idea came together. Basically we put the book together in about six months and we sent a pdf to Eric Stephenson, the CEO at Image…and he decided to do it.
SC: That’s incredible!
Sean: Ha, I don’t think it’s the typical story. We did a signing with some of the other Image creators the other day who asked how we got in. When I said, “Oh, well we just sent in a pdf,” they were like, “No, seriously, how did you get them to read it?” I don’t know. The timing, I guess, must have been good, but it was very fast. We sent it in, I don’t think expecting-
Ben: It was like our pie-in-the-sky
Sean: Yeah. It was like our reach school for college. You know, we sent off our SATs to reach school and prepared to look at others that we were probably going to be at.
SC: What made you guys choose Image?
Sean: I grew up reading comics but went away for a little bit until I got really obsessed with Jeff Lemire. I read Essex County and that was what brought me back into comics. When I heard that he was writing some books for Image, that brought me over to looking at some of their other work. I started picking up Saga and Southern Bastards. Working on this book, I started reading some more Image books and noticed that they’re doing some really intricate character stories and ours is definitely a weird character story. So then it just seemed like the right fit.
Ben: I didn’t really start reading comics until 6th grade when I started with the typical Marvel and DC books. Then I read Invincible from Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley and that totally switched my view of how you can make comics. It was so different and more real than Marvel and DC ones. That led me into all these other Image titles. Image has been one of my favorite comic book publisher every since then.
SC: We definitely think that once people expand their reading beyond what Marvel and DC has to offer, they realize that comics encompasses a huge world with a lot of variety.
Sean: I’m kind of amazed walking around [at NYCC]. I had no idea the breath of independent publishing and how many companies that there are.
SC: Going back to Saints. Will you be incorporating other beliefs and faiths into your story?
Ben: Yeah.
SC: “Yeah” is a perfectly succinct and clear answer.
Sean: Ha, well without going to deeply into it, that’s been a big conversation.
Ben: Even the stranger aspects of Catholic mythology. But we’ll be getting into Zoroastrianism and Gnostic Christianity and occult Christianity.
SC:Have you gotten any backlash from depicting certain aspects of Christianity?
Sean: Well the book only came out two days ago. My grandparents are constantly asking me about it. But in some ways that would be interesting because it would lead to some interesting conversations. Just in the sense, for me at least, religion is this fascinating thing that, whether you are religious or not, is such a huge informant on your life. So many laws and wars that people we know go off and fight are centered around religion. It’s this thing that, whether we want it to be or not, is part of our every day life. I think that there is so much room that if people were to get upset, I’d be like “good, let’s actually talk about it instead of being like ‘Well, I believe it and you don’t’ or ‘I think you’re crazy and you believe in fairy tales so I’m not going to deal with you.'” I’m curious about where you can get those pictures of faiths.
My grandmother is insanely devout and I think sadly thinks that this is going to get taught in Sunday school. Her son is a pretty militant atheist. For me, those are the heavily influences within my house.
SC: So this book is Christmas dinner.
Sean: This book is like every Friday night.
SC: Ha, well moving from family dynamics to your working relationship. Do you provide a really strict script to Ben, or does he have free reign to interpret your words?
Sean: Not too strict. I think we’re learning that not a lot of people create the book the way we do. I come from a fiction and playwriting background. So Ben and I break the story down together. So we discuss that “Oh, Sebastian and Lucy will end up here” and then for each issue I go and write like a 3000 word short story, like a really vivid Flannery O’Connor type short story. I send it to Ben and he adapts it into the panels. Then I don’t start writing language or narration until Ben gives me the panels back. It allows us both to really own the world. I get to give him emotionally where I think the scene was or how things were happening and how the characters live and behave, but then I get to see visually where the camera angles are. So I get to really interact with what he’s drawing.
Ben: It’s been great. Having the short story to work with, I get filled with so much more than what a basic script would give me. I’m filled with these emotions and tones that would seem sort of distant in a script. They inform color pallets and how characters would carry themselves and expressions. A lot of the subtle undertones come through by working with the short story that Sean gives me.
Sean: And vice versa. It does two things. A 3000 word short story would be like a really long comic book. So some of the editing naturally happens. The pacing gets better and tighter from what Ben has done. Some of the angles or panel breakdowns help me realize that “Oh, I only need these things” because it’s so much more clear. It’s been a nice give and take on that way of finding the book in that trade.
SC: What about the character designs? Did you collaborate on those?
Sean: We talked about what we thought they would look like.
Ben: We were always on the same boat. I think that we had the same idea about who a character is. I would come with a sketch and Sean would be like “that’s what I was thinking!”
SC: So Sebastian rocking the traditionally “Jesus look” was discussed and premeditated?
Ben: Well for Sebastian, his design has a historical precedence. If you look at paintings of St. Sebastian, he looks a lot like that. Over the years he’s turned into this gay icon. That was something that we wanted to reflect in the popular culture that’s been assumed around his precedence and bring that into the comic book world.
SC: Since you are both newcomers to the industry, we’re wondering if you have come across a “club mentality?” Do you feel on the fringe?
Sean: So far people have been really cool. We were just talking about that. Even other companies have been so supportive. The people that we’ve met at Image have been really lovely. To be honest, I haven’t met a ton of other creators yet, but the ones that we have had been really inviting.
I work primarily in theater, which sometimes has a collegiate atmosphere, but there definitely can be some club mentality. I’ve found the comic world a bit more supportive, overall. Just in terms that I’ve been surprised how much other publishers have told us that they hope our book does well.
SC: Leave the competition to DC and Marvel.
Sean: Which seems so smart. There’s been a lot of mentality that, well if you guys do well, we all kind of do well, which is so nice to hear. I’m used to it being like “well, your show is opening against our show, so I hope your show dies.”
SC: As far as the big two are concerned, do you have a dream project that you’d ever do?
Sean: Right now Saints feels like a dream. We met doing a play, so we’d be painting the set while talking about this. So the idea that it went from that to we’re here at Comic Con is insane.
SC: Is this your first convention?
Ben: Oh, yeah.
SC: You guys started big. Have you been able to walk around at all?
Sean: They told us it was big, I didn’t know what that meant I guess. Thursday I was here and able to. Today’s been really overwhelming.
*It should be noted that Ben and Sean were talking to us at the Image booth where Robert Kirkman was doing a signing across from the Marvel stage where, at the same time, the Daredevil cast was trotting out and also next to Viz Media where Naruto dominating the Con . It was the nexus of hell.
SC: Ok! So tell us about Saints! What can we expect in issues to come?
Ben: I think right now there’s still a lot of world building that we’re doing. We’re starting to see these dreams in the first issue that are cryptic and mysterious. We’re going to see those starting to have more grounding in what’s going on in the plot. You’re gonna see a lot more growing of the characters and interactions with one another and how they relate.
Sean: Plus the growth of the threat. One of the things that you were asking about with faith, you’ll start to see emissaries of other breakdowns of Christianity first. What they want to use the saints for or what they want to do to the saints starts to become really apparent. That’s coming up really soon and heading toward some big face-offs.
SC: We were really interested in your diverse cast. Blaise is half-Irish/half-Mexican and Sebastian is, as you mentioned, a gay icon.
Sean: It’s funny. I was just talking to some people at another booth and they mentioned the same thing. Maybe it’s coming from theater, but it wasn’t really a choice. It just feels like the world to me. You look around Comic Con right now, and that’s all you’re seeing. I’m glad people are responding to that, but I didn’t expect it to be something that would even be a noticeable entity in the book.
SC: Are you familiar with the #lighten up story by colorist Robert Wimberly concerning editorial notes to lighten the skin tone of a mixed-race character? Welcome to the industry, we guess.
Ben: Yes, I read that story.
Sean: So there’s almost like a literal white-washing of characters. In theater, especially, but I guess this is always a conversation. In comics, is there more of a championing for representation and diversity?
SC: Oh, for sure. You’ve entered the industry at a really interesting time. It’s a really good time for a book like Saints to come out.
Ben: I’m just happy because I’m a nerd about saints and that’s like a weird thing to be. I didn’t think anyone was going to like saints as much as I do.
SC: Ha, well that might be true, but I think you’re getting some of us there.
Ben: Ha, well I think Sean has made it more approachable and getting people to nerd-out about saints.
Sean: It’s been helping me deal with Catholic school in a whole different way.
Me too, Sean. Me too.
We want to thank Ben and Sean for taking the time to talk to us and for signing a copy of Saints #1 for us to give away! For a chance to win, follow @SAINTScomic and send them a tweet to let them know @sub-cultured sent you! Saints #2 will be out November 4th.
Kaitlyn D
Content Editor
Amidst the flurry of panels and people that is New York Comic Con, we carved out time to speak with several creators, including one of our faves, Justin Jordan (John Flood, Dark Gods, Luther Strode). His table was nestled between other notable creators, and littered with merchandise from his Walking Dead meets The Thing title, Spread. I was lucky enough to sneak him away for a few minutes to discuss his projects, and the industry!
SC: Let’s start with the easy ones. What are you currently reading?
JJ: Ah, what am I currently reading? Wicked + Divine…It’s going to look like a whole list of Image stuff. It’s going to be Wicked+Divine, East of West, Bitch Planet, um, I just read Diesel from Boom! or Archaia, I don’t remember which it is, it’s one of them, but it was very cool. I liked that a lot. There was something from Marvel I really liked a lot….oh, it was Weirdworld!
SC: Weirdworld was definitely different, haha. Do you have a character trope you would like to put your own twist on, like for instance, is No (a character from Justin’s creator owned work from Image, Spread) actually a hero on a heroes journey?
JJ: -laughs- No’s journey is not actually a hero’s journey per se. He is a hero, but the journey he is going through is not the Campbellian kind of thing. Like, yeah I mean, I like to do that in general, but there are a lot of characters that I think I could do interesting stuff with like that. Things that’d be good with like, Kingpin from Marvel and stuff and I would like DC to let me do a Bane comic, cause I think there are ideas to do with those characters that I’ve never seen done that are still true to the central core of the character.
SC: Do you think you write better in the mini-series format or on ongoing ventures? Is there more freedom doing ongoing, or…?
JJ: I don’t know about freedom, but there are struggles that go on. One of the few things I am still not happy with me as a writer is that in an ongoing format is making sure the flow is there. When I’m working with just six issues, I can get everything planned out fairly precisely in a way that satisfies me, but the ongoing, it’s a bit softer. I know that probably isn’t bad for the reader, but as a writer it’s not what I’d want it to be.
SC: For those of us who follow you on social media, your comic making, back end/”how the sausage is made” posts have been enjoyable and informative. Have you thought about doing that as a blog?
JJ: I could do that. I don’t know that there’s enough stuff there, you know what I mean? I don’t know how much I can get out of doing it, which is why I just post things. I want to do more of them as I think about them.
SC: They’re interesting! From a retailer’s perspective, we don’t get to see that part of comics, so it’s helpful, even. For instance, your $9.99 trade post in particular, was eye opening.
JJ: I was actually talking to someone earlier about that. That in particular though, the dynamics of pricing and your audience and stuff is something that if I wanted to go into detail about it, I could tell you about it for hours. There’s so many variables, right? It’s hard, because you’re essentially winging it on them [the trades].
SC: What can you tell us about “the comic formerly known as Crawl”?
JJ: Well, I’ve got an art team on it, and we have some of the character stuff. My intention right now, as we are at NYCC, is to …I’ve done a twelve page preview of it, which is also going to serve as the pitch, but what it actually is, is part of the backstory to the actual book itself. It takes place about ten years before what is going on in the book. I’m pretty sure when the book is greenlit, and if I’m allowed to do so, I intend to release that for free online, before the book comes out. By design it is meant to show you what the book is about. It has all the elements, and then, if that happens, it will also run as back matter in the book itself. That way you don’t have to go online to get it.
SC: Back to Spread real quick. Is that your first foray into the genre of body horror?
JJ: I mean yeah, you can probably argue that Luther Strode has some body horror in it, given how grotesquely people explode in that. But…yeah, I like body horror a lot. I am as anybody who has read Spread will probably know, I am a big fan of John Carpenter’s The Thing, but there’s also stuff like in Japan, like Uzumaki, Parasyte, and fucked up 80’s horror movies like Society, I don’t know if you’ve seen it.
SC: NO. Definitely going to add it to my giant list of stuff to watch, though! Is there something you’re terrified to touch, horror wise, or would you consider yourself desensitized?
JJ: I don’t know that I’m desensitized. I do know there’s some stuff harder for me than others…I was going to say it’s a weird fear, but I’ve got a thing for amputation. An amputation phobia, probably because I’m diabetic, so that’s a thing that’s on my mind. Anything with losing limbs tends to get me, but I do still put it in my books, but it is a thing that personally wigs me out. There is stuff in Spread, not necessarily body horror, but in issue 12 which is out in January, it’s Molly’s story. There’s some experiences that she has had that I found genuinely hard to write. It’d get to a point where I was like, alright I need to walk away from this for a moment. Teeth shit also bothers me.
SC: You’ve worked with several artists over and over again, do you tend to give them free reign when they get your scripts? Are you more of a strict outline kind of guy?
JJ: My general policy is … I write full scripts but I rarely, very rarely have a strict panel outline in mind, for instance. I will tell them, these story beats need to happen, but even then if there’s something that doesn’t need to happen, then I’ll have them tell me. If they want to add panels, or change the panel rhythm, that’s all cool cause artists have a better sense of laying out a page visually than I do. That’s the fun part of comics.
SC: Right now, comic diversity is a major thing. Will you be creating a character in the future who doesn’t necessarily fit the mold?
JJ: Well, No is a half Korean gay man, so yes! No, I do and by design, I don’t advertise it, except obviously for this interview. It has to be the right person for the book, but in as much as I can, I work with…I wanted to work with a woman who wasn’t American, who wasn’t white, so for Deep State, I worked with Ariela Kristantina. For Crawl, the art team is all from the Phillipines, and half of them is women. I’m trying to work with a more diverse group of creators. Not just because I think there needs to be more diversity in the industry, but because it ends up with a fresher, better product. As a white whitey white white guy, I think that adds some creativity to something that didn’t have that in the beginning.
Spread is currently out in trade paperback form (it is gory, but fantastic), as is The Strange Talent of Luther Strode, The Legend of Luther Strode, and Deep State! Stay tuned for other interviews from the NYCC floor!
Leia Calderon
Editor
@ladyvader99
Ivan Brandon (Viking, Wolverine, Men of War) is a huge talent over at Image Comics. His current series, Drifter, is a stellar scifi project with long-time collaborator Nic Klein (Thor, Captain America). The series has earned praise for its world-building and beautiful artwork as well as favorable comparisons to genre-giants like Frank Herbert’s Dune.We consider ourselves incredibly lucky to have interviewed the elusive Brandon this year at New York Comic Con about Drifter, Hispanic Heritage Month, and the changing comics industry.
SC: One of the most interesting aspects about the world building in Drifter is the hybrid society that is created by the human presence on an alien planet. How do you pick the recognizably human elements to form your world and how do you decide to create something new? Basically, when do you use trucks or when do you use land-speeders?
IB: Some of it is practical and some of it honestly is gratuitous and what we think is going to look the coolest. A lot of the point to this world and the way it functions is that it is sort of kneecapped in a lot of ways. It has limited capabilities. We don’t want every single character to have the ability to cross of the entire planet at will. They don’t have fuel sources; they don’t have other things.
Some of it is that you’ll just absolutely need something for a scene, so that will justify it. But we are trying to keep the means limited. We’re trying to keep a real cost for people as far as in terms in achieving their personal tools.
SC: Do you think that “kneecapping” is necessary for the space western genre? Does there need to be recognizable modern or premodern human elements to reference but also limit the capabilities of the characters?
Well you know, here’s the thing: The western stuff is sort of incidental. Or not incidental, but the point of the western is really less about the genre or shtick and more about the idea of us figuring out colonizing a planet untouched by humans. You wouldn’t send Donal Trump there, so what kind of people would be sent there? We wanted sort of dirty scifi, people with dirty hands and people who are there to get into the nitty-gritty and not there to live in a fancy apartment.
SC: Related to that idea, we were wondering if you could talk about your villains. The wheelers are terrifying but so too was Father Arkady. Which do you think is a scarier concept and why?
IB: I think Arkady is terrifying in a different way because he embodies a lot of what the story is about: transplanting society without the constructs of society. So, when you transplant the church and its beliefs through a lot of distance and a very damaged person, that’s a very terrifying idea and it clearly leads no where good.
The idea of the wheelers is, especially in the second arc which is largely about the wheelers, important because they are sort of the alpha species and it’s the first time humans have to interact in an environment where they don’t lead and they’re not the alpha predator. So that’s sort of a very humbling thing; humans are not very used to humility in this day and age. It’s not something that is built into our culture right now. I think the depths of that are more terrifying because people have no concept of what that will lead to.
SC: Further speaking on terrifying creatures: Will “the bear” make another appearance?
IB: Not in this arc.
SC: Well we are definitely excited for what is to come in Drifter, but we’re always interested in artists to share the behind-the-panels process. We know that you and Nic have worked together before and we were wondering what your process with him was like. Do you give him a strict outline or a general concept to work with?
IB: It’s sort of somewhere in the middle. At every stage of the planning process Nick and I are talking about everything. A lot of the major story stuff, which I can’t explain because it would spoil the entire story, came from Nick. At no point am I dictating things to Nick; he’s involved and making decisions in the story. Before I script anything, we’ve decided more or less what is going to happen. Obviously the script itself lends to the organic process of writing a script and things will change and diverge while the characters can be sort of hard-headed and do what they want regardless of what Nick and I have decided.
In terms of what the actual layout is for art, I try to give him as specific an idea as I can. If I have a very specific visual I will give it to him, but there is always a disclaimer at the front of my scripts that will say “absorb it as if you were looking at reference, and then discard it and do something better.” I always say that the ultimate performance of the story is all Nick, the artist. For me to tell him to draw exactly one thing is silly because Nick knows how to better express within his skill-set. For example, issue #9, which is the last issue of the second arc, is 34 pages long because Nick literally added ten pages of expanded a sequence that he made so huge. It was sort of unfathomable to me until I saw it.
Occasionally, of course, I will go back and look at it and be like “I don’t think you caught the emotion of this character,” or whatever it is. We can go back and forth a little bit. But the ultimate performance is Nick’s.
SC: Are you two planning any future projects?
IB: We’ve got a couple years left on this. We’ll probably be doing this until somewhere around issue #30-ish. After that, yeah. We had a little lapse between Viking and this where our schedules didn’t align and it’s definitely my goal going forward to never have that lapse again. Nick and I have such a great working relationship with a great symbiosis. We’re very different people. We have very different tastes and very different perspectives. Somehow, in an odd-couple way, they just sort of complement each other to hopefully build something that is unique and fun.
SC: Have you read any of the other space westerns that are out like Copperhead or East of West?
I’ve read some of East of West; I haven’t read any of Copperhead. Unfortunately, just like everyone, I have this crazy stack of books in my office that just gets taller. I know that there’s a few things going on and even by some other publishers. From what I can tell from those two particular books is they’re much more about the western genre than mine is. I try to sort of stay away from anything that is even incidentally similar because I don’t want to gum up the works of my own brain and where I am headed. I almost don’t even like to accidentally step on the same idea at all. I almost don’t want to know.
SC: What are you reading right now?
IB: My favorite book right now, period, is Southern Bastards. That’s my number one favorite book. No coincidence, my favorite book before that was Scalped. I think Jason Aaron by himself is a phenomenal storyteller but Jason and Letour are a real great team up.
I enjoy Sex Criminals a lot. I’m looking at the wall behind us [at the Image booth] I really like Supreme Blue Rose and Bitch Planet. Bitch Planet has a really cool story: When I was at a signing in San Francisco, my mom came, which she never does. I don’t see her all that often because she lives in San Francisco and I live in New York. At some point, my mom says “What is this Bitch Planet? How do I read it?” And literally, I did another signing the next night and when I got to my table there was a stack of Bitch Planets with a little post-it note that said “For Ivan’s Mom.” The shop had provided all these issues, which is pretty awesome.
SC: Did she enjoy it?
IB: She loved it. But, I also loved Deadly Class. I think it’s literally pound for pound, though we don’t have a Watchmen going on right now, the best and most diverse line up in history.
SC: Absolutely, Image has been closing on the big two and its diverse range of books and creators have a lot to do with that.
IB: I didn’t even just mean Image! I meant in general. It’s the best time for comics that I have ever seen.
SC: That segues a little into our next question. Do you think that there is still an insider club mentality in the industry?
IB: This is a discussion that has been going on a lot recently and this weekend. As a Latino guy, it’s important to me. But I think that the insider club is less about deliberately trying to keep anybody out than people’s personal subconscious bias. Look, on the very basic level, I think people as a society are sort of taught that your leading man, or character rather, is a blonde–well look, I’m predisposed to even say man. But your leading character is a blonde, straight, white person. I think even for Latino, Black, or whatever, your brain is predisposed to see those things. You know, I grew up in a neighborhood where everybody mostly spoke Spanish, so I didn’t grow up in that culture at all, though you still watch it on TV and you read it in books. So your brain immediately being like “This guys name is name is Jack,” or whatever it is. So you have to go out of your way to be like “No no no, that doesn’t make any sense.” It’s a conscious effort, even for people of color, to write characters that are not the stereotype of the white guy saving the day.
So I don’t think there’s a boys club that is intentionally keeping people out. I think people have a certain level of familiarity. I do think that we have now a time where people are more open, for good or bad reasons, I’m not sure. It’s one of those things where it’s hard to judge because sometimes you think well, they’re only reacting to a public outcry. But that’s sort of how history changes and you can’t really judge the steps but what comes of it. You’ll never know why anyone did anything and maybe most of it was for the wrong reasons.
SC: So do you think call-out culture helps or does it hurt the conversations that need to be had?
IB: I say it’s somewhere in the middle. I dislike the idea that we lump everyone in the internet to one person, first of all. I think that there are a lot of people that haven’t been given a voice, culturally, and now people do have a voice. Now there is a situation where there are some really good things that are happening and also some ugly things that happen. For a weird sort of lazy culture that we’re in that is very internet-centric and sitting on the couch on devices, this is our revolution. Revolutions are not tidy. They can be very unpleasant; there are very ugly steps to revolution. I think the conversations are all worth having, though they don’t all go the way that I’d hope that they would go. They get very ugly where people on both sides get shut off to win an argument. That’s not the most productive way to go forward but just that the conversations are happening at all is a huge step. Any lasting change tends to be very slow and incremental. I think this will go that way and it’s going to baby steps, and as long as you’re pointed in the right direction, those changes are going to be positive. And it’s happening faster now than I could have ever imagined. You’re not overnight going to shift a very male-centric business and comics by default is not a very progressive world. It’s been a world has had Stockholm syndrome. It’s been a world that has been about forcing people to buy whatever you told them to buy forever.
There are obviously pockets of people that are progressive and have been thinking on different terms, but it’s not been a culture that is very focused on forward thinking. I think the beauty of it though is that it is the perfect medium for it because it is the most agile. If I wanted to make Drifter about politics, next month I could. Within three weeks I could make that choice. It is the best conduit for that because you can really make really quick and smart changes with the medium. I’m optimistic. Everyone that I’ve spoken to, even people that are bristling and are skeptical of things- hey, I have white friends that are confused by things, you know? But I think everyone, for the most part, has got their heads in the right place. It’s a work in progress. But I do believe it’s a good thing and it’s worthwhile.
SC: Our last question, because it is Hispanic Heritage Month and we are trying to highlight Hispanic creators, could you name a few of your favorite Hispanic artists?
Well I should say it loud enough because we’re sitting next to Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba who are friends of mine, so definitely not them. Paul Azaceta, who is doing Outcast is doing phenomenal work right now. It’s tough because things come in waves when people are working and then not. And sometimes in comics there are sort of hired artists who are not necessarily part of the vision of the thing, so it’s hard to make it like “oh, this is a Latino comic” just because of a name.
SC: Speaking of: your last name is Brandon?
IB: The answer to how I got that name as a Latino is that it just takes one man– we live in a patriarchal society– to screw up the names of the entire country. About four generations back I had a grandfather that was not Latino, though we continued Latino on both sides and Cuban on both sides. You only need one person to get married to a non-Latino person and the name is changed for everybody. Both my parents were born in Cuba. I’m the second oldest person of my generation born in this country.
SC: We struggled to find colorists, by the way, though we did highlight Maria Victoria Robado.
IB: No colorists? Now I’m gonna be thinking about this.* Oh but of course Paolo Rivera, who is Mexican, is phenomenal. Joe Quesada is obviously a really great artist. Eduardo Risso is easily one of the top ten humans in the business. Raphael Albuquerque is obviously a very talented guy. It’s a good time and the level of talent and enthusiasm and energy coming out of Brazil specifically right now. I’m blanking right now, it’s a good list, I just wish there were more people on it and more women on it.
*Check back for our “Highlighting Hispanic Creators pt. 3” post to see the laudable hispanic colorists that Ivan sent us!
SC: Hopefully in the future
IB: It’s slow and steady. We’re at a time now where people who had been sort of tentative about it are becoming more confident and feel like it’s a time where they might try. I have a lot of friends, non-white male friends, who love comics but are very skeptical about touching, creatively, having anything to do with it. Those people are really starting to get a sense, not that there’s going to be a utopia, but there’s a chance that they can do something unique and new, and that they might be welcomed to some degree.
SC: That’s really encouraging, we’re sure, to Hispanic talent who are trying to break into the industry. Can we hope for any more news about Drifter?
Nope, none. At the end of each arc we try to do a teaser image. Nick did the teaser image for the third arc. I wish I could send it to you because it’s really ominous.
SC: Well you could send it…
No such luck, guys. We want to send out a big thanks to Ivan Brandon for taking the time to talk with us. Issue #8 of Drifter is available right now and the first arc has been published as a collected volume. Be sure to catch up before the second arc wraps up in issue #9 and stay tuned for our other interviews from the floor of NYCC!
Kaitlyn D’Agostino
Content Editor
@deadrabbit92
Though a novelist at heart, London born author Richard K. Morgan has quite the resume, having taken a dip into different corners of the writing pool. In addition to writing the story for 2011’s Crysis 2 for noted video game publisher, Electronic Arts, Morgan has also gone a few rounds with Marvel’s spy extraordinaire, Natasha Romanoff, and is currently penning a fantasy trilogy starring a gay protagonist, a surprising rarity within the genre. We hopped on the chance to discuss these things as well as his current project, a digital gamebook of his 2008 fantasy series, A Land Fit For Heroes.
Kimi Britt: At what point did you make the decision that being a writer was something you wanted to do for the rest of your life?
Richard Morgan: Well, early enough that I can’t really remember making it! J K Rowling has a nice way of putting it – she said once in interview that ever since she was old enough to understand that there were people who made their living from writing stories, that was what she wanted to be. Same for me.
KB: Were there any specific works or authors who were some of your early inspirations?
RM: I think there was always a pretty even divide between my SF and Fantasy inspirations and then the stuff you could best designate, I guess, as hardboiled. Growing up, I was a huge fan of Michael Moorcock and Poul Anderson, with a side order of Bob Shaw. But at the same age – rather alarmingly – I was also tearing through Ian Fleming’s Bond and Leslie Charteris’s (original, written in the twenties and thirties) Saint books. Then, in the late seventies, just as I was hitting my teens, I came across William Gibson’s early short stories in Omni magazine and – wow! blam! critical mass! Because, of course, what Gibson had done in those stories was synthesise an alloy of exactly those two genre strands I loved so much – hardboiled noir and the finest speculative SF. I knew instantly that this – this! – was the kind of stuff I wanted to write myself.
KB: What rituals or habits did you adopt when you first started writing, and are they still prevalent in your everyday routine?
RM: Truth is I’m not good at ritual, and the way I write – exploratory, improvised, and painfully slow! – doesn’t lend itself to particularly good working practices. What I did in the early years was just dedicate every available hour of downtime I had to writing, whenever I could and wherever I was. And to be honest, that hasn’t changed all that much even now – it’s just that these days, with no day job to distract me, I have a lot more downtime available, so I get more done!
KB: With novels, comic books, and video games in your repertoire, you’re like a triple threat of the literary world. Was there ever a dramatic difference between these genres during the creation process? Are the three vastly different?
RM: Oh fuck yes – game writing and novel writing are about as far apart as it’s possible to get as creative processes. As a novelist, you’re intensely solitary; you sit in your room and type, you sit in your room and type – usually for a year or more, with no – or at best minimal – feedback until you turn in your draft. Game writing is the exact opposite – it’s intensely collaborative, team-based, fast and modular. You spend a lot of time in meetings, going back and forth to ensure you get a good fit with the other components of the game, and you tend to work in chunks – a cut scene script, a character sketch, a set of situational lines – and you get feedback – good and bad! – on those chunks very fast. You send an item out, get it signed off – or not! – and you’re done with it, so on to the next chunk. Also – this is more an attitudinal thing than a process issue – as a novelist, you know that what you’re writing is the whole thing, whereas in game writing, the work you do is essentially just a support framework for the main gig, which is the gameplay. You could write the finest game storyline ever, the best and sharpest in-game lines in the whole wide world, but if what you’ve done doesn’t gel with the rest, or worse still actually gets in the way of the gameplay, then you’ve failed. That’s a suitably humbling thing for a novelist to take on board.
Comicbook writing, I guess, is something of a midpoint between those two extremes – what you’re doing is the main gig, but it’s a main gig you share with the artist; comparing it with game writing, it’s like the difference between being the bass player in a four or five piece band and being the guitarist in one of those guitar and female vocal duos like the Kills or Mazzy Star. There’s a lot more conscious structuring involved than in novel writing – or at least than in the way I write a novel! – but it’s still largely about uninterrupted flow the way novel work is. If writing a novel is jazz, then writing a comicbook is perhaps more like rock and roll or the blues.
KB: Your sci-fi novel, Altered Carbon, is currently being developed for a movie adaptation. As the author of the source material, how much input do you have on that project?
RM: Generally speaking, when you get a movie deal, you take the money, hand the property over, and that’s about it. It’s rare for a novelist to be involved more deeply than that unless they’ve specifically held out for that involvement contractually, and I never have. My feeling is that when you give your book to someone to turn into the a movie, you need to be comfortable about getting out of the way and letting them work. Sure, you could always jump in and ask to learn the whole exciting process of moviemaking along the way, but is the best place to get that work experience really right bang in the middle of some seasoned film professionals’ attempt to turn your novel into a blockbusting movie? That said, the people I’m dealing with in this case – Laeta Kalogridis and Mythology Entertainment – have been really great about keeping me abreast of the process. And the way the contract is structured – this is something that was offered without my asking for it – once the movie is greenlit, I’m invited to come aboard as creative consultant, which should be a lot of fun.
KB: Some book to movie translations leave fans of the original work less than satisfied with the experience. Are you apprehensive about this prospect or does it feel like a natural progression?
RMl Yeah, there’s really nothing much you can do about that. What fans (and writers!) have to understand is that the movie is not the book, and never can be, it has to change in order to work, to live and breathe in such a radically different medium. What you’re aiming to capture is not the thing itself, but the spirit of the thing. And you’ve got to have faith in the people who’ve taken on the work of making that transformation happen (or at least be sanguine about it, if you’ve sold big for what you suspect will be a pretty crappy product :-) ). Like the old James M Cain quote goes – “People tell me, don’t you care what they’ve done to your book? I tell them, they haven’t done anything to my book. It’s right there on the shelf.”
In my case, I have every faith that the people who are working on Altered Carbon really want to honour the spirit of the novel, and however much my control-freak tendencies might pop and sizzle, I just have to let them get on with the job.
KB: With the influence you had on Black Widow’s characterization and how well the Avengers is doing, do you feel like she is accurately portrayed?
RM: Absolutely not, but what can you expect? I’ve said this before at length to Charlie Jane Anders over at Io9 – the Widow exists as an adjunct of a money-spinning superhero franchise catering to the tastes of 12 to 14 year old boys (and men who’ve somehow managed to grow up and retain a 12 to 14 year old boy heart). As such, she’s the epitome of unthreatening femininity grafted onto a pornstar’s T&A chassis and imbued with a set of plug-and-play boy-hero fisticuff character tics and reflexes. There’s nothing in that for women, nothing much in it even for genuinely grown-up males. The Widow I wrote for Marvel back in the early 2000s was her own woman, older, seasoned, hard as nails and unapologetic about it, centre stage in her own story. And let me tell you, that story flew like a fucking brick – the broad Marvel fanbase hated it. They didn’t like this genuinely empowered (and therefore genuinely feminist) female protagonist, and they voted with their wallets. The arc did disastrously low numbers by Marvel standards. So am I surprised by the version of the Widow that’s now emerged in the movies – hell, no! Just immensely saddened.
KB: Given the chance, would you ever want to return to continue her story?
RM: Are you fucking kidding! I’d love to. Writing Natasha, really letting her breathe, was a total blast! I’d jump at the chance to build a movie around her that did the same things Homecoming did. But there’s no way that’s ever going to happen. Don’t get me wrong, Marvel were great to work for; very professional, very supportive of what I was trying to do, and they really went out on a limb by letting me run with the character for a second arc when the first one had sold so dismally. But in the end, they killed the series for one very simple reason; it was a losing proposition – an expensive auteur project (I mean, we had Bill Sienkiewicz aboard, for Christ’s sake!), and doing dismally downward-spiralling numbers. By contrast, the version of the Widow you see in the movies is pulling in tens of millions of fanboy dollars. I mean, do the math – there’s just no way anyone’s going to let me within a mile of Natasha ever again! :-)
KB: Since you’ve had experience writing for both readers and gamers separately, the idea of bringing your dark fantasy series A Land Fit For Heroes to Steam, iOS, and Android as a gamebook is definitely intriguing to someone who enjoys both. How will a digital gamebook differ from the more traditional “Choose Your Own Adventure” type stories currently available? CYOA stories are typically made for a younger crowd, yet your series offers plenty of mature and controversial themes. Will these remain, and if so, how will they engage the player and the choices they make?
RM: That’s a question I’m not really qualified to answer – I never read the CYOA books back in the day, and I haven’t accessed any of the newer content either (these days I’m so busy I barely have time to read books or play games of any sort, let alone explore whole new formats!)
But my understanding from the brief the guys at Liber Primus have given me is that the vast majority of this stuff is YA-level in content. Land Fit for Heroes is avowedly not – it’s very much an adult fantasy, with adult themes and characters, and it’s as grim as anything I’ve ever written, which is saying something. So there’s that. :-)
KB: How closely will the gamebook follow the existing story? Do players who have previously read the original have an advantage over newcomers to the series?
RM: The story in the gamebooks runs parallel to the main narrative in the novels – there’s some faint crossover with my characters in that some of them will make brief cameo appearances in the gamebook story, but the narrative thread itself follows three entirely new characters, and their adventures are disconnected from the storylines in the trilogy – though what they do and go through will be shown to have influence on the overall turn of events detailed in the novels. What this means for readers who’ve never read my stuff is that they’ll get a different initial angle of entry into my universe; but that won’t disadvantage them in any way as far as the gamebook story is concerned. And of course, if they’re curious about the wider world of the fiction, they can always go off and buy the trilogy after.
KB: What other projects are you currently working on?
RM: I’ve got a new novel up on the blocks at the moment – it’s a return to the universe of my 2007 novel Black Man, but set a good hundred or more years after the events of that story, and on a recently colonised Mars rather than on Earth. It’s called Thin Air and features another genetically modified cast-off protagonist, though a somewhat different and more down-at-heel one than Carl Marsalis in Black Man. I’ve gone right back to the noir wellspring I used in my Takeshi Kovacs books with this one – first person narrative, mean streets, corruption from high to low, a crime no-one wants solved and enemies at every turn. Feels good to be back behind the wheel of one of these!
KB: What sorts of media are you consuming in your spare time and would recommend?
RM: Not a whole lot of spare time to burn right now, I just moved from one end of the country to the other and I’m snowed under with busted deadlines. I am listening to quite a lot of music while I work, though; currently bingeing on 2 Cellos, Health and Cold Specks. And I just discovered an up-and-coming singer song-writer called Isaac Gracie whose single Last Words would make an awesome playout for a movie of my novel Market Forces. I just finished reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, which I’d say is required reading for anyone interested in what’s happening to America at the moment and made me tremble with a father’s rage, and I’m now burning through John Horner Jacobs’ The Incorruptibles which is a superbly fresh-feeling mash-up of fantasy, alternate history and western adventure, the first of a trilogy whose second instalment, Foreign Devils, just came out – I’m running to catch up here! I’ve also been catching up on missed SF movies like Chappie and Ex Machina (both of which I guess I’d recommend seeing but neither of which in the end quite lit my fire) and more noirish fare like Scott Cooper’s Out of the Furnace and Dennis Lehane’s The Drop (both of which are awesome must-see triumphs). Still, sadly, waiting for someone in SF movie making – well, apart from George Miller, that is – to combine the vision and imagination in the former two with the close focus grit and commitment to human realities of the latter. In gaming, I’ve been making do with obsessive replays of The Last of Us, Max Payne 3 and Far Cry until there are enough good games out there to justify the expense of acquiring a next-gen console. At which point, I imagine I’ll be trying Bloodborne.
KB: Finally, where can you be found in various corners of the Internet?
RM: I keep a website at richardkmorgan.com where I try to find time and inspiration to blog at least once a month, and I’m on Twitter as @quellist1. Come on over!
Richard K. Morgan is the acclaimed author of The Dark Defiles, The Cold Commands, The Steel Remains, and Altered Carbon, a New York Times Notable Book that won the Philip K. Dick Award in 2003. A Land Fit For Heroes will be available on Android and ioS, as well as a PC version of the gamebook for Steam in the coming months.
By featuring traditional art by Matt Huynh as well as animation, sound effects, music, and video clips, the comic is not only a unique experience but an educational one. It is an example of an internet exclusive medium that needs to be looked at closer and utilized more for storytelling in the digital age. By adding interactive elements not unlike a computer game but still firmly rooted in its illustrative roots, you add additional atmosphere, immersion and context to the piece. A perfect intersection between mediums it allows easy audience (reader) engagement in a highly distractable culture in it’s ability to inform.
For “Artist Spotlight” we were not only able to view and experience this fantastic comic, but were also able to talk to Matt about the project and about his body of work as an artist.
I’m an illustrator and cartoonist from Sydney, but I’ve been living in Brooklyn the past few years. My work draws as much from South-East Asian ink painting as it does the Western superhero comics that I grew up on! I’ve worked across animation, performance, murals, packaging, advertising and editorial, but my first love was comics.
I’d love to do a superhero comic one day. Having that particular genre so saturated in the wider media today allows for greater subversion, particularly with playing in the toybox of existing worlds, characters and conventions. The breadth and possibility for content and voices in comics is much more exciting to me at the moment though.
I noticed while experiencing The Boat and then looking at your work on your website, you state that your style is informed by ink brush painting, or sumi-e and shodo. Where did those influences come from or what brought you to those art forms?
It snuck up on me a little! I grew up in a not-so-devout Buddhist household and although we weren’t very into ritual and ceremony, ink paintings and calligraphy were part of the hodgepodge household decor which I mostly ignored because I was immersed in Western comics as a kid. I taught myself how to draw by following the direction and weight of brush strokes across the pages of superhero comics. I grew up with a little bit of the stereotypical first generation parents’ emphasis upon academics and intellectual achievement, so when I started my little rebellious exploration of art and spirituality, I was introduced to the ideas of dharma art and brush art as meditative practice in local monasteries.
What do you enjoy doing most with your art?
There are ideas about putting ink onto the page as a joining of heaven (the blank page as a sea of expansive possibility or ‘ma’), earth (inspiration or thought) and human (the act). In other words, to be open, consciously and intellectually engaged, and physically energized and connected to making the work. Every stage is really integral and healthy to encourage other. Just physically keeping my drawing hand moving and my eye exercising keeps me out of my head enough to be open to discovering the unexpected. It helps to think through an idea on the page with the medium itself rather than coming up with an idea abstractly in my head about a hypothetical visual and trying to adapt it into physical ink on the page. Ultimately, pulling a brush balanced with ink is simply very sensually satisfying in the most direct way. It’s just animal hair, pulp, carbon and water!
SBS contacted me about adapting Nam Le’s story into an interactive comic. I usually don’t work from other people’s source material because comics can be such a laborious and engaging task, especially with such harrowing material. However, the content, artistry, influences, resources and collaborators enthusiastic to work on a comic that was progressive and innovative was a big incentive for me. Nam Le is an astute writer dealing with themes and a moment in history I am very personally engaged in, and working with the team at SBS offered a chance to work with top notch sound design, animation, production, archival footage and programming to take the presentation of comics online to a new level.Australia is also enforcing abhorrent and regressive asylum seeker and boat people policies that has made clear to me, and my peers, how lucky my parent’s generation were to have a government with a comparatively open hearted, empathetic and compassionate policy. It is urgent to bring stories of some of the most vulnerable people and characters back into a debate that is being told by big media outlets and political pr spin from a world away.
The leadership role of an artist is to be fearless. There’s overt censorship and then there’s the more insidious, subtle pressures that erode the confidence of young artists wishing to engage in humanitarian, activist and political issues. If an artist is worried about paying rent, they’re going to find it difficult to take a risk, speak out, or just draw attention to themselves. I would love to see more young artists and students represent their own stories and experiences in their work, including their client work. A lot of mainstream media feels regrettably forgettable and impersonal, the most obvious example being the lack of diverse roles and stories. I would loathe to think that myself as a daydreaming young aspiring artist, would grow up, finally become an artist, be in a position to communicate and work with a bigger megaphone, only to be afraid to speak up and show myself.
I’m very engaged with the act of making the work to transform myself, whether it is overtly investigating my personal history, looking at experiences from different angles, investigating and teaching myself more about communities or connecting with others by telling their stories to new audiences. Hopefully the artefact or evidence of that process is transformative for audiences too!Despite my best efforts, it’s difficult for me to depart from recurring themes of identity – particularly migration, abandonment, rebuilding, inexplicable loss and absence, race and power. These same ideas run under all my stories and art, whether they’re historical recounts or Gothic fiction, but working in different modes lets me grapple with these themes from new perspectives.For example, I did a comic about my parent’s time in a Malaysian refugee camp. Their recounts were always cursory and romanticized, making it difficult to look directly and objectively at a part of history they’ve long left in the past and aren’t eager to revisit, but it let me empathize with them, not least as a very young couple in love and learning to raise a family in extraordinary circumstances.Then I The Boat based on Nam Le’s short story. Having the benefit of another writer’s research and experience into the same moment in history and involving the same locations and even character types, let me look much more directly at a very personal part of my family’s identity with the benefit of being remove with ‘fiction’.
Would you like to do more interactive comics of this nature in the future?
I’d love to explore more with interactive comics, particularly with an original work created specifically for the digital space and this particular medium.The Boat presented such a huge challenge. It is already enough of a dilemma to adapt source material into the comics medium, but on top of that we had to research and design a new online presentation for comics from scratch, and then introduced disciplines beyond comics into the presentation – footage, animation and sound design. This project gave me a chance to explore the greatest boundaries of interactive and then make some choices about how to tell this one, particular story, but there are so many opportunities for story telling left on the table. We didn’t even use color!The opportunity to make work specifically designed for interactive comics itself, and free from source material, whether that’s history or an adaptation from another medium, would expand the possibilities for what a creator could do with interactive comics.I also toy with the idea of another adaptation, to make a work that is more about the transformation of the work itself. Where the point of the adaptation itself is its departure and possibility for change, rather than its similarities which can come across as a bit of a cerebral, tick-box exercise.
I’m currently working on some animation for rock concert projection, illustrating a short story collection, and putting together posters and projection for an arts festival! An exhibition and more writing is further down the pipeline, always being chipped away at.
Thank you to Matt Hyugh for taking the time to answer our questions. It was a huge honor.
Max Eber
Staff Writer
max@sub-cultured.com
@maxlikescomics
A few weeks ago I met with some of the folks at Zenescope Entertainment at Wizard World Philadelphia. You may know them from their core titles in the Grimm Fairy Tales universe. They’ve been a mainstay here in the Philly area for 10 years now, and you can’t really talk comics in Philadelphia without including Horsham-based publisher Zenescope. I got a chance to speak with co-founder Ralph Tedesco about their 10th anniversary and how the company’s come up over the last decade.
Tushar Nene: First off, congratulations, 10 years is a huge milestone. So now 10 years in, if you look back at what your mission or your idea was back then and look at that versus where you’re at now – how do you match that up?
Ralph Tedesco: “Hm… Different! Wow that’s a good question, you stumped me early! We didn’t really know I don’t think, we first just set out to make a comic book series, we were never going to make more than a couple titles initially. And we had also thought about doing creator owned and finding a publisher such as Image – at the time I think there were other creator owned typed labels out as well back then that we considered going through. Then it kind of just took on a life of its own and started to evolve into more of a publishing company and doing more titles, and we realized after a year or two we had something special going on. And we decided to expand and try to compete in this market. And 10 years later, I can’t complain. Of course you want to be competitive and being a top 3 publisher is hard, I mean you have Marvel or DC and other great publishers out there. So I guess we’re happy but never satisfied.”
TN: A lot of your success over the last decade has come from the Grimm Fairy Tales universe, which has a lot of popular titles drawn from a lot of familiar Grimm characters. What is it about that universe that makes it work for you – or where that draw comes from?
RT: “It just seemed like it made sense – when we first decided to publish Grimm Fairy Tales the first series, we just had a simple idea. The original fairy tales are dark and twisted, wouldn’t it be cool if we went back to the roots of the originals and added our modern twist to it and make it different, you know? It was simple – it was The Twilight Zone meets fairy tales. But then once we did that and had a positive reaction and started selling copies right away we thought hey this was something we could do with other public domain characters, and public domain stories like Wonderland. It kind of made sense to say since we’re going this way with a lot of our titles, let’s just create a universe that’s interwoven like Marvel has their universe and DC has their universe, right? So I think again, it was initially not planned, then a couple years in we started realizing it made sense, and it just became very… I guess natural, it was a natural evolution. And then we said hey this fits like Robyn Hood – let’s reinvent her as a badass archer and she’s female. Let’s reinvent Sinbad – and then it became really fun. Let’s reinvent all these characters that people know and then add new characters to these worlds that we invented, and it became our world.”
TN: I was here last year talking to Pat Shand about BAR Maid. You have a couple of titles like that are completely outside of the Wonderland universe – you guys have any plans for more stories that aren’t a part of that core?
RT: “We do that now and we’ve done that for a while – not every story we want to tell fits inside the Grim universe so we always expand outside of that. For example we’ve done stuff like Monster Hunter Survival Guide, The Waking, Fly.”
“I think a few titles a year we like to just kind of say hey, not everything needs to fit into this universe – only if it makes sense and it works. Of course Grimm fans and the fans of the universe want to see more universe stuff, so it’s a harder sell I think sometimes – I think sometimes it takes a bit more marketing and a little bit more hey, if you like our main titles in the Grimm universe take a chance on this stuff outside the universe.”
TN: You’re also known for a lot of racy art on your covers, and you have a lot of racy variants. So when you bring back a character like Robyn Hood in your universe as a badass archer and there’s these sexy variants of her, how do you feel about that and what kind of reaction do you get from readers?
RT: “One thing we realized early on, if you read our books the interiors are not really sexualized, there’s not a lot of risque going on inside of the books. The covers – we will do variants that are sexy. I mean it sells books – unfortunately that’s what the market said. What we started doing was doing some variants and we’ll have some sexy variants and non-sexy variants – I mean I think the people that complain about some of the covers don’t read the books a lot of times, because we have made an effort to really make sure – our titles have never been about anything to do with sex or being over the top for the sake of being over the top. They’re about telling good stories. So the people complaining about the covers probably are the people that don’t read the books. Fair enough, but at the same time we feel it’s a minority that are up in arms about it, so we don’t worry about it too much.”
TN: So literally, you’re saying don’t judge a book by its cover?
RT: “Haha right, don’t judge a book by its variant cover. That’s the best I can say it. I mean we have a ton of female readers so that’s what’s cool, we have a lot more than I think some other companies do – I’m not saying it’s a majority of readers – I don’t think there’s a majority of female readers in comics unfortunately, but it’s growing. A lot of female readers have come to us and said Hey my boyfriend took me to a comic book store and I didn’t want to be there, and I saw your titles on the shelf and I love your stuff. Most of our characters are female leads and they take care of themselves. Yeah there’s variant covers that have a sexier vibe to them, nothing pornographic that I feel is overly suggestive – especially now as we’ve evolved we’ve been more conscious about that. And then we have covers that are just plain badass and cool, so there’s something for everyone.”
For their 10th anniversary they’re publishing 6 10th anniversary one-shots based on their titles, from Snow White to Van Helsing. Tedesco said these are meant to be new reader friendly oversized double issues that someone new can jump immediately into, and are coming out with new titles later this year’s at SDCC. Some of the new titles? One for one of their newer more popular characters, Baba Yaga, and Aliens vs Zombies, described as just a mash up of different genres.
So in the Philly Area, Zenescope continues to grow both their company and their core Wonderland universe with more titles on the horizon. You can check out more of what’s going on at Zenescope at their blog here.
Tushar Nene
Staff Writer
@tusharnene