Comic Book Resources

Talking Comics with Tim: Matt Kindt

3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man

I'm a great admirer of Matt Kindt's work. Honestly, I'm an even bigger admirer of Kindt's ingenious nature. Case in point, for his latest book, 3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man (published by Dark Horse and released in late September), he has developed a Giant Man Mini Comic - Spy Capsule and Giant-Man 3-D Postcards. Before we get into our email interview about 3 Story, I have to reiterate what I said in last week's What Are You Reading that (in addition to checking out Kindt's latest work, of course) you should pick up Strange Tales 2 (featuring Kindt's Black Widow tale).  Here's a bit of Dark Horse's background on the tale (before stepping into the interview): "Craig Pressgang's life is well documented in his official CIA biography, Giant Man: Pillar of America, but the heroic picture it paints is only half the story. The continuous growth caused by Craig's strange medical condition brings a variety of problems as he becomes more isolated and unknowable. Told in three eras by three women with unique relationships with Craig, 3 Story follows his sad life from his birth to the present." Be sure to visit the Dark Horse site for a seven-page sample of the book. 

Tim O'Shea: A three-fold question of sorts (pun intended): Which came first, the idea to build your latest book as three stories in one, or the fact that the lead character was three stories tall in height or that you wanted to tell the story from the perspective of three women?

Matt Kindt: I wanted to tell the story from three different generations' perspective -- that was first. Then the idea for the title. I'm usually terrible with titles. It takes me forever to come up with something and then I usually go back to the working title anyway. Super Spy started out as my jokey working title and then it grew on me so I just left it. A friend accused me of naming it 3 Story so it would be filed on the bookshelf next to my other book 2 Sisters -- completely unintentional. But I'm thinking my next book might be called "4 Shadows". (kidding)

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Talking Comics with Tim: Todd Dezago

Mike Ploog's Perhapanauts cover

With the Halloween-themed fun we're having this week at Robot 666 (aka Robot 6)--it seemed like the perfect time to talk to Todd Dezago about the recently released Perhapanauts Halloween Spooktacular One-Shot (featuring stories drawn by the likes of Craig Rousseau, Rich Woodall and Fred Hembeck). Normally in an interview with Dezago, I would characterize him as one of the nicest folks in comics. But in the spirit of the Halloween season, I instead choose to characterize him as the most paranormal-fascinated person in comics. In addition to the one shot (with three stories in it)--we discuss other spooky topics like volleyball and iTunes. You are warned!

Tim O'Shea: Is it apt to say that Halloween is about your favorite time of the year, given your affinity for the paranormal?

Todd Dezago: Oh, Halloween definitely holds a special place in my heart, both for memories of Halloweens past and for the spooky, scary, creepy haunted element!

And I love that we were able to put together this fun and, hopefully, frightening anthology featuring very different artists on very different stories!

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Talking Comics with Tim: Jamie S. Rich

You Have Killed Me

Back in late July/early August, Robot 6 was fortunate enough to feature independent comics industry veteran writer Jamie S. Rich guest-blogging with the group--partially in promotion of his and artist Joëlle Jones' You Have Killed Me, the 184-page hardboiled crime graphic novel released by Oni Press in mid-July. Rich, an established writer of prose and comics, recently ran circles (in a good way) around some questions I shot his way recently about his latest book. Enjoy, hopefully as much as I did.

Tim O'Shea: Back in 2006 in an interview with Tom Spurgeon you told him (about You Have Killed Me) "12 Reasons was going so well, I think we had only been working on it a couple of months, but I didn't want to lose her to anyone else, so I asked her if she would work with me again and what she would want to do, I'd write her anything. She said she wanted to do hardboiled crime, and since I had the same passion for it she did, I jumped at it, even though it scared me because it was so different from what I'm known for. She's challenging me in incredible ways I would never challenge myself." Can you discuss what ways this story challenged you?

Jamie S. Rich: Well, most immediately, it required some real plotting. Relationship stories like what I had previously been known for don't require as much careful planning, they have a natural flow, peaks and valleys that are tied to the rhythm of real life. It's often unpredictable, less structured, and there is no definite resolution beyond whether or not these people stay together. In a crime story, you have something that happened, and the discovery of how it happened has to be detailed and lead to the revelation of the truth or the punishment of the criminal. You can't just have a random stranger suddenly emerge and say, "Oh, yeah, this homeless drifter did it." I mean, you could, but a lot of people would call you out for cheating, that's not a good story. For You Have Killed Me, I had to concoct a trail for Antonio Mercer, the private detective, to folloq, and each step had to kick up new dirt and I had to keep all of that dirt ordered, even when false or a red herring. There are expectations of that kind of plot. Just as Chekhov said if there is a gun in the first act, it will go off in the third, if you need a gun to go off in the third, you might have to think about having it show up in the first. There is far less left to chance.

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Talking Comics with Tim: Nick Tapalansky & Alex Eckman-Lawn

Awakening

Awakening creators, writer Nick Tapalansky and artist Alex Eckman-Lawn, are two storytellers eager to get the word out about the return of their project (which recently returned to the market from an 18-month hiatus as its publisher [sorted out business challenges [as explained here]). As announced in late September, Tapalansky and Eckman-Lawn are in the midst of a four-stop tour to generate support and interest in their Archaia hardcover horror book, Awakening. The tour opened on October 10 and in the course of this email interview, the details of the remaining dates are revealed (including this Staturday's stop at Upstate Comics). The story "takes place in the once-peaceful city of Park Falls, where a series of gruesome murders and missing persons has put the town on edge, and Cynthia Ford, known as the town 'crazy,' finds retired police detective Derrick Peters and relates to him her belief about what’s going on. Her explanation: Zombies. Unable to ignore Cynthia’s information, though not sharing her beliefs, Derrick and others in the town explore the mystery as weeks turn to months and the death toll rises. Could Cynthia be right or has she finally gone insane?"

Tim O'Shea: During the 18-month publishing hiatus, was there ever any point you wanted to give up on the project or you always believed it would come back?

Nick Tapalansky: I don’t think we ever even considered giving up on it. Besides already having so much blood invested in it, the story is one which I’m really excited to tell since it’s been percolating in my mind for the last five years. It was just a matter of being patient and seeing how everything resolved itself at Archaia.

Alex Eckman-Lawn: No way! There were some scary days in there, but I don’t think we ever once discussed giving up on the book. It was always, “How can we make this happen?” and luckily for us, all we really had to do was wait it out.

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Talking Comics with Tim: Nevin Martell

Looking for Calvin and Hobbes

Over the past few months, I've been introducing my son to the wonder of Calvin and Hobbes, the nationally syndicated comic strip that ran from 1985 to 1995. So creator Bill Watterson was already on my mind, when I gained access to a preview of Nevin Martell's Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip. The book aims to trace "the life and career of the extraordinary, influential, and intensely private man behind Calvin and Hobbes". In this new email interview, Martell and I get a chance to discuss the ground he covers in the book and the folks he got to interview in his pursuit.

Tim O'Shea: You did some advanced marketing of the book a few months back by releasing the first chapter of the book for free upon request. Did you find that helped generate buzz for the project?

Nevin Martell: The free chapter giveaway turned into an insane bonanza of buzz, which, frankly, I was totally unprepared for. My publishers told me that super successful versions of this kind of promotion in the past had garnered a couple of hundred requests. But then the offer got written up by BoingBoing and NPR, not to mention a slew of comic-related blogs and the Twittersphere, so suddenly I had hundreds of requests pouring in. Since I was initially answering all these requests individually, it turned into three days of hitting reply, attaching a file, writing a quick note, and then repeating. Ultimately over 4,000 people requested the chapter, which just blew my mind. Actually, my mind is still blown.

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Talking Comics with Tim: Dustin Harbin--the Sequel Interview

Dustin Harbin

A few months back when I interviewed Dustin Harbin regarding this year's HeroesCon, I made a mental note to follow-up with Harbin in another interview, where we could just discuss his creative projects/process. This interview was conducted via email several weeks back. Late last week, Harbin let me know that while he's remaining as Creative Director at Heroes Aren't Hard To Find and Heroes Convention, he will be reducing his hours at the store and has "gone full-time with cartooning". My thanks to Harbin for another interview, I'm happy to say this one was even more fun than the last.

Tim O'Shea: How much are you paying Tom Spurgeon to pimp your work? Seriously, Spurgeon praises many talented storytellers, but he seems to be your number one fan. Did you buy him a lot of meals when he came to HeroesCon in 2008 or what?

Dustin Harbin: I remember having to argue with Tom just to be able to bring him a water: I tried hard to buy him a drink at the hotel bar, but he was leery of my seductive ways. I think Tom is like a lot of us--he's a passionate advocate for people he thinks deserve wider recognition. I'm not basing this just on the very VERY kind attention he's showed my comics so far, but he's the reason I discovered Richard Thompson's work, who you'll agree Tom is an even more vociferous a supporter of. I don't know what attracted Tom's good feelings, but I'm incredibly grateful for them.

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Talking Comics with Tim: Mark Waid

The Unknown: The Devil Made Flesh

Any regular readers of What Are You Reading? likely know how much I enjoy Mark Waid's writing. So when Waid made himself available for a brief email interview regarding BOOM!'s The Unknown: The Devil Made Flesh, the first issue of which goes on sale tomorrow, I jumped at the chance. As I found out in this interview, Waid and I share a love of research. My thanks to Waid for the interview, and please be sure to check out CBR's five-page preview of issue 1 here. As detailed at the preview: "Back by popular demand, Mark Waid brings another installment of the world’s greatest detective! With only six months to live, Catherine Allingham’s condition is terminal. But nothing will stop her from trying to solve even more mysteries. It’s international suspense and hair-raising macabre as time runs out for our detective."

Tim O'Shea: It was years ago and in a different corporate universe, but as a fan of your run on Ruse, I have to ask--is Catherine Allingham a creative descendant of Emma Bishop to some extent?

Mark Waid: Ha! Man, someday, I've really got to go into hypnotherapy and see if someone can help me remember which prototypical Sarcastic Genius became the template for my scientists and investigators. Actually, Emma's more tender than Catherine. Catherine has no time for tenderness.

O'Shea: What was the appeal to mixing a spiritual quest with scientific exploration?

Waid: The appeal was in making an attempt to use science to answer (or at least approach) the great metaphysical mysteries. Detective fiction is full of excellent gumshoes who can tell you whodunnit. I wanted to get more into the impossible questions; a detective's only as interesting as the challenges she faces.

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Talking Comics with Tim: Tim Hall

Excerpt from current Uplift the Postivicals

I almost renamed the feature Talking Text-Comics with Tim for this week's interview with Tim Hall, but I thought better of it. Hall's project, Uplift the Postivicals, is ambitious, oddly engaging and unlike anything else that ACT-I-VATE has featured over the years. Hall's ACT-I-VATE bio covers everything you need to know before jumping into the actual interview: "Multimedia writer and journalist Tim Hall has been a champion of indie and DIY comics since 1995, when he first began publishing such future stars as Dean Haspiel, Josh Neufeld, Nick Bertozzi, and Sam Henderson (and many others) as part of the New York Hangover newspaper. His stories have since been put into comics form by Rami Efal, Josh Simmons, Michel Fiffe, and as part of Nick Bertozzi's award-winning Rubber Necker series. He is excited to take his writing to a new level at ACT-I-VATE with 'Uplift The Positivicals,' a freeform column of stories rendered as text images. His most recent novel, FULL OF IT: The Birth, Death, and Life of an Underground Newspaper was called a 'Best of 2008' by literary journal decomP and features wicked cool cover art by ACT-I-VATE co-founder Dean Haspiel. Tim lives in a small town in northern Illinois with his wife and son." My thanks to Hall for the interview.

Tim O'Shea: Uplift the Positivicals is described as "Text-based comics, fontasies, soul sutras and shredded prose, rendered in bold, binary alphabetics." I'm not sure where to start with that engaging mouthful, so I'll be
selective in my curiosity--what do you mean when you use the term "fontasies"?

Tim Hall: To be honest, I wrote that description before I had written a single column, so I really screwed myself, didn't I? First I had to map out my narrative territory and get people used to my style and hopefully into the characters. I'm now in the process of incorporating concrete poetry, typographic elements, visual writing and the like into UTP. The challenge for me is to tell a story using words in different ways, without relying on design per se. That's a long-winded way of saying that if I ever figure out what a fontasy is I'll be sure to let you know!

O'Shea: For this story, how did you go about selecting this font in particular?

Hall: I was looking for something bold and condensed that wasn't too overbearing. My primary goal was to make UTP readable on iPhones, while still packing enough info on each panel for desktop readers. I'm leaning more toward the portable devices, and actually just made the template slightly more widescreen.

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Talking Comics with Tim: Vito Delsante

FCHS Vol. 1

This November, writer Vito Delsante's collaboration with artist Rachel Freire, FCHS: Volume 1, will be released by AdHouse (Diamond Order Code: SEP09 0568). As described at the AdHouse site: "Do you remember high school?  All the fun and trouble you used to get into?  All of the sex, sports and alcohol that was your Senior year?  It's time to go back! Join Hector, Kennedy, Jules and the whole gang at FCHS as they begin their last year of high school.  Will they be ready for 'the real world' when it's all over? Will they all make it? Archie meets 90210."  Delsante, who has written for a number of publishers (including DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Dynamite Entertainment, and Simon & Schuster), was kind enough to do an email interview with me. In addition to discussing FCHS, we discuss his experience working at Jim Hanley's Universe, as well as some of his other upcoming projects.

Tim O'Shea: FCHS got its start at the Chemistry Set, how did the publishing arrangement with AdHouse come about?

Vito Delsante: A mini comic. Seriously! Rachel and I attended MoCCA two years ago and at that point, we had about 21 strips on the site that we turned into seven 3-tier pages. We were handing them out to just about anyone who was interested, with the thought that we'd bring some traffic back to Chem Set. Chris [Pitzer, AdHouse Books publisher] got one and a few weeks later, right before Comic Con Intl., he e-mailed us and asked if we were interested in doing a book. I think, in the back of my head, I was hoping to get a few publishers interested in FCHS, but when Chris offered, we jumped at it. Rachel and I are big fans of AdHouse, and to be a member of that family is a very good feeling.

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Talking Comics with Tim: Christopher Yost

Red Robin 4

By now most folks will have read Red Robin 4 (which was released on September 9), but if it's still in your reading pile from this past week please make sure to read it before reading this interview with series writer Christopher Yost. (Consider that your official spoiler warning.) In addition to discussing the events of the issue, we delve into the plans ahead for the book and the life of Tim Wayne (formerly Drake), as well as the premiere of the new series artist Marcus To as of issue 6.

Tim O'Shea:  Issue 4 is now out and had a fairly big reveal in the hunt for Bruce Wayne. This has been building up for four issues, did DC tell you exactly how they wanted the reveal to occur--or did they give you some creative levity to structure the reveal in your own way?

Christopher Yost: [Editor] Mike Marts and I had been talking about this from day one, and it was something that I wanted to do from the start. Tim's incredibly smart, incredibly driven... if there's evidence and clues out there, he's going to find it. And as you saw, he did. We still haven't revealed what put him on that road, of course... but I knew I wanted to tie Red Robin into the end of Grant's Final Crisis super-early on.

But to answer the question, DC has given me nothing but freedom and creative levity. It's pretty great.

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Talking Comics with Tim: Shawn Martinbrough

Luke Cage Noir

I first took notice of Shawn Martinbrough's work during his and Greg Rucka's run on DC's Detective Comics back in the early 2000s. While his storytelling skills were great then, they've only improved over the years and can currently be appreciated in Marvel's Luke Cage Noir miniseries, set in 1930s Harlem (Issue 2 was released on September 2; Issue 3 will be out on October 7). Actually, I've wanted to interview Martinbrough since 2007 when he wrote How to Draw Noir Comics: The Art and Technique of Visual Storytelling, so we discussed that book before moving on to his current Marvel work, as well as his upcoming Studio Museum exhibit on Luke Cage.

Tim O'Shea: How did your How to Draw Noir Comics book come into being?

Shawn Martinbrough: My friend and colleague Joseph Illidge mentioned that I should pitch an art instruction book based on my art style. I approached Jackie Ching, an editor at Watson Guptill who was also a friend and colleague about the concept. She was very interested and suggested I create a proposal. I turned around a proposal for “How to Draw Noir Comics: The Art and Technique of Visual Storytelling” within two weeks and shortly after it was approved by the higher ups.

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Talking Comics with Tim: Joshua Hale Fialkov

Tumor

This interview with Joshua Hale Fialkov (creator of the acclaimed Elk’s Run from a few years ago and current noir work at Archaia, Tumor [which reunites Fialkov with his Elk's Run artist Noel Tuazon]) took an interesting route before finally getting here. The initial interview started as a suggestion from Johanna Draper Carlson back in October 2008 (thanks, Johanna) and was intended for my pop culture blog, Talking with Tim. Fialkov was more than game to do the interview and we completed the initial interview in late 2008, right around the time I signed on to contribute my comics interviews to Robot 6.  So, savvy, yet disorganized guy that I am, I set the interview aside--and promptly misplaced it. When news of Fialkov's Tumor (available here for Kindle and here for free for those of without Kindles) started making the rounds, I realized my mistake and  tracked the emails down. I contacted Fialkov (offering my sincere apologies)  and he was kind enough to entertain new questions about Tumor. So please note, after the initial Tumor discussion, the interview moves on to the initial 2008 interview, which while it is understandably dated in some aspects, much of it is still quite engaging and relevant. My thanks to Fialkov for his understanding and for his time both in 2008 and 2009.

Tim O'Shea: How pleased have you been with Tumor's Kindle sales? How much has the story's word-of-mouth been boosted thanks to the website?

Joshua Hale Fialkov: Well, just using our placement in the ranks on Amazon, the fact that a Kindle only comic book can get up to be the 8th most ordered graphic novel on all of Amazon, including print, is pretty damn amazing. I think there's a lot of reasons that we're up there, including that we're giving the first chapter away for free, but, still, that says to me that there's an audience for comics on the device, and it's one that in some ways may soon rival the audience for print comics. At least, for those readers who use Amazon to get their fix. My whole career has been built on a lot of goodwill, and from the support of friends and fans with big mouths and wide audiences, and, frankly, in a niche business like comics, that's really how the whole thing works. What I hope to do is go the extra mile to really reward my readers, first with what I hope is excellent content, but secondly by giving them access to the stuff over on the website, including behind the scenes material, and special features that not only enhance their enjoyment of the book, but hopefully show them a side of the process they haven't considered. To that end, there's a healthy amount of traffic who make it over to the site every time we release an issue, so, I know that in some respects, it's working.

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Talking Comics with Tim: Elaine Lee

Starstruck #1

When I got a look at IDW's first remastered issue of Elaine Lee and Michael Kaluta's Starstruck, I immediately wanted to talk to Lee about the story's return. In doing the email interview, I wanted to get an idea of the creative processes involved (for the comic, as well as related theater and audio productions) and some of her thoughts regarding the remastering of the work. My thanks to Lee for her insight, as well as IDW Special Projects Editor Scott Dunbier and IDW's AnnaMaria White for helping make this interview possible.

Tim O'Shea: Back in the 1980s when you and Kaluta originally developed this comic, it seems like you were among the first to attempt a multimedia concept--You were able to take a play and adapt it to a comic book. How challenging was it to pull off, given that you were taking comics into seemingly uncharted territory?

Elaine Lee: I guess we weren’t really thinking about taking comics into uncharted territory. We were just thinking about telling the story we wanted to tell and having a good time doing it!

We never tried to adapt the actual play. The action of the play takes place on two ships out in space, over maybe a day’s time. Not enough scope for a comic series. And any play has much more dialogue than even the wordiest comic, so it wouldn’t translate very well. But in the play, each character had a big monologue, wherein he or she described events that happened in his or her past. We first envisioned Starstruck as a series of vignettes that related these stories from the characters’ pasts. Later, we would add the material that linked all these events together.

If Michael and I were influenced by anyone working in comics, it would’ve been the European artists, like Moebius and Enki Bilal, whose work was appearing in Heavy Metal at the time. And in fact, Starstruck was published in Europe before it was published here in the States, serialized in magazines in France and Spain. They weren’t publishing much unusual material in the US at the time. But we always had an American sensibility and both the play and the comic were greatly influenced by old American science fiction movies and TV series, the stuff that came out between the forties and the sixties, from the old Buck Rogers serials and Rocky Jones Space Ranger, to Star Trek and Lost in Space, Queen of Outer Space and Barbarella. We lifted themes, archetypes and settings from classic sci-fi and tried to drop into them flawed characters with real human problems.

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Talking Comics with Tim: Michael J. Hayde

Flights of Fantasy

When Mark Waid concedes someone knows more than he does on a subject (in this case the 1940s ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN radio program), it gets my attention. Both at his BOOM! blog, as well as a review at Amazon, Waid wrote in praise of Michael J. Hayde's 536-page book, Flights of Fantasy: The Unauthorized but True Story of Radio & TV's Adventures of Superman. So I tracked Hayde (a self-described "writer and researcher of radio & television history") down to discuss his book in an email interview. In the interview, we also discuss his upcoming interview (tomorrow [August 28] at 11:30 PM [EST]) with Howard Margolin for Margolin's show Destinies: The Voice of Science Fiction over WUSB-FM.

Tim O'Shea: How satisfying was it when Mark Waid (popular comics writer and current EIC of BOOM Comics) wrote: "I’m as big a fan and student of the 1940s ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN radio program as anyone alive, and I thought I was the expert. I was wrong. Added bonus: I learned GOBS from Flights of Fantasy about the 1950s television show...The book is well-written, well put-together, detailed without being mind-numbing (YMMV), and a testament to stupendous research."

Michael J. Hayde: That was a HUGE thrill! I didn’t know Mark personally, but people who did were plugging the book simply because he liked it. He wrote in his review for Amazon.com that he’d been researching the “Superman” radio show for 30 years. That’s about 27 years more than me. That I was able to uncover things he didn’t know doesn’t speak badly about his research, but about the sorry state of accessible information about the radio show. Very little material was available, so some bad guesses were made by a few historians and authors over the years. Anthony Tollin, the historian for Radio Spirits, tried to correct some of these myths in the booklets that accompanied the audio box sets back in the late 1990’s, but they didn’t reach a wide audience. Just last year, a radio-themed book mentioned a “limited regional run” of “Superman” radio shows during 1939. That’s a myth. The four episodes that have been cited as “evidence” of such a run were audition recordings that never aired. Superman’s radio debut was during the week of February 12, 1940, period.

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Talking Comics with Tim: Phil Hester

The Anchor

Writer Phil Hester is clearly enthused about his new creator-owned collaboration with artist Brian Churilla on BOOM's The Anchor. Not all creators are game to discuss the mechanics of the craft, and I was pleased when Hester was game. In addition to mechanics, we get to discuss the series ([Pre-Order at Your Local Comic Shop by August 25, 2009 {Today}; Diamond order code: AUG090716] set to launch in October).  As detailed at the BOOM! site: "THE ANCHOR. Holy warrior, unholy war. Freak of nature, beast of burden, hulking outcast, medieval prize fighter, Viking raider... God's leg-breaker. One thousand years ago a hulking outcast sought refuge in the crumbling ruins of an ancient monastery and offered in return the one thing he had to give - his fists. Transformed into an immortal warrior monk standing at the gates of Hell itself to keep our world free from its invading armies, The Anchor is mysteriously tricked into centuries of slumber. But today, this holy warrior rises to battle all the unholy monsters unleashed during his slumber." Be sure to also check out this preview of issue 1.

Tim O'Shea: What attracted you to working with BOOM! on this project, as opposed to pitching it to other companies?

Phil Hester: In all honesty, we pitched it a lot of places at once, and though other publishers made us offers BOOM! was the only place that saw our pitch and said "yes" without reservations. Also, they have a good reputation with retailers and fans, and among pros they're known as a publisher that will hustle their collective ass off to get your book in front of eyes.

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