3 Story: The Secret Files of the Giant Man

Matt Kindt of 3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man, Super Spy, Revolver and My Greatest Adventure fame, announced on his blog today that Dark Horse is compiling several of his “Giant Man” stories from their anthology Dark Horse Presents into one volume, which will be released in April.

“These are short stories that take place during the same time period as Part 2 and 3 of my book 3 Story,” he said. 3 Story told the life story of Craig Pressgang, a man with a medical condition that caused him to grow into a giant.

In addition, the collection will include a sneak preview of a new ongoing series by Kindt called Mind Mgmt, which is set to kick off from the publisher in May. A profile by the Webster-Kirkland Times described it as a sci-fi/espionage series. Expect more details on it soon.

Peter Bagge's Reset

In the tradition of one-word titles like Yeah! and Hate, Dark Horse Comics announced a new project from creator Peter Bagge, Reset.

The press release from Dark Horse describes the book as: “If you could relive major events in your life, would you take a stab at making things better—and would your best attempts only make things worse? Or would you use your second chance to put your most twisted, perverted fantasies in motion? These are questions washed-up actor and comedian Guy Krause asks himself after he signs up to be the main research subject for a virtual-reality experiment.”

The first issue of the four-issue series comes out in April and features a variant cover from Matt Kindt, which you can see after the jump.

*****

Matt Kindt variant cover

1. What comic-related gift or gifts would you recommend giving this year, and why?
2. What gift (comic or otherwise) is at the top of your personal wish list, and why?

We’ve gotten back a bunch of suggestions, which we’ll run between now and the end of the week. So let the merriment commence …

Jim McCann

1. Exclusive 2011 Janet Lee Holiday Ornaments
Every year, Janet does about 12 ornaments, three sets of four. This year, she has done Hipster Animals, Scary Toys and Art Nouveau Angels. They are signed and dated, and at the end of the season, that’s it! She stops making them. I’ve been collecting them since 2007, and now our tree is almost completely filled with Janet’s art. You can buy them exclusively through her Etsy shop.

Oh, and if you’re REALLY nice, she MAY have a very limited Dapper Men ornament or two. Just ask!

2. This year, for myself, I’m going with a mix of Blu-Rays (portable Blu-Ray player, please, Santa!) and books. But the thing I’m REALLY excited for is the hardcover edition of the Complete Ripley novels, by Patricia Highsmith. Most people only know of Ms. Highsmith through The Talented Mr. Ripley (and classic film lovers through Strangers On a Train). There were actually five Tom Ripley novels, and the collection looks amazing. Why these books? My spouse recently Tweeted a quote from John Lithgow that struck me as a writer: “Duality, duplicity, truth and deception, good becoming bad and vice-versa are crucial elements of great storytelling.” Highsmith was and remains an unsung hero of mastering that, so I hope I learn something in the process!

Happy Holidays from the Dapper Lariosa-McCann household!

Jim McCann is the writer of Return of the Dapper Men and its upcoming sequel, Marvel Zombies Christmas Carol, Hawkeye:Blindspot and the upcoming Mind The Gap.

Matt Kindt

The Sixth Gun, Vol. 1

1. The gift I’d recommend would be The Sixth Gun trade #1 and #2. There are very few comics that are just good fun well-told stories. And even less that are also westerns. And it’s got a giant mummy. Seriously. I love it.

2. What I really want is for publishers to start bringing back comic book subscriptions. And I don’t mean iPad notifications. I want them to mail me single issues as they come out and wrapped in those brown kraft paper envelopes that are open on the ends.

Matt Kindt is the writer of the Robotman comic you can find in issues of DC’s My Greatest Adventure and artist on the Oni graphic novel The Tooth. He’s also the man behind Revolver, 3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man, Super Spy and the upcoming Supernatural.

Daryl Gregory

1. For the kids in your life, you can’t do better than the e-Comic. It’s as thin as a monthly comic book, with a folding screen that opens to allow two-page spreads. It’s high-res, so you can read word balloons easily while still be able to take in all of the surrounding art. The e-Comic comes loaded with every Jack Kirby comic, under a generous licensing deal with the Kirby estate. Plus, it only costs $25. When it’s invented in 2018, give one to every kid on your Christmas list, and SAVE COMICS.

Journey into Mystery

Until then, take the kids to a comics shop and buy them something great. My son highly recommends Journey Into Mystery by Kieron Gillen — it’s loads of fun.

2. I very rarely allow myself to play video games–nothing destroys writing time like a good game–but every Christmas I take a week off and do nothing but hang out with my family, eat and play with toys. I usually ask for one video game, and for that week I throw myself into it. Previous stockings have been stuffed with Battlefield 142, Company of Heroes, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal… and this year I want to play Arkham City. There, I’ve said it. Fortunately, it’s also on my son’s wish list, so I don’t have to use up one of wishlist slots I usually reserve for specialty beer. So you know what that means: Dad gets to punch the Joker while buzzed on Westemalle Tripel.

Daryl writes Planet of the Apes for BOOM! Studios. His novel Raising Stony Mayhall was named one of the best SF books of the year by Library Journal, and his short story collection Unpossible and Other Stories was named one of the best SF books of the year by Publisher’s Weekly. Daryl loves one of them better than the other, but won’t say which–it would hurt their feelings. You can reach him at darylgregory.com.

Jim “Zub” Zubkavich

Green Wake

1) There are a ton of great new comic titles to give/receive this year. High on my giving list are:

• 27 for music-loving friends
• Atomic Robo for people who crave action/comedy/pure joy
• Chew Omnivore Edition for dark-hearted humorous pals
• Green Wake for horror and mystery readers
• Return of the Dapper Men for fans of faerie tales and the fantastic
• The Sixth Gun for the western aficionado
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Ultimate Collection for Gen X-Yers
• Who is Jake Ellis? to the espionage-thriller reader
• and One Soul for the intellectual poet in your gift-giving circle.

See? Comics for everybody!

2) Original comic art is a unique and classy thing to give a comic fan and it’s always high on my personal wish list. Even less expensive options like a convention head sketch or random comic page original can make for a great show piece in the home of a fan. I have a lot of framed originals and they give the right touch of geek chic to my place. Getting an original from my favorite artists, new or old, is now something I look for throughout the year and Christmas is no exception.

Jim Zub is the co-creator and writer of Skullkickers from Image Comics and the creator of Makeshift Miracle, UDON’s online graphic novel serializing with new pages every week at www.makeshiftmiracle.com.

Jamie S. Rich

Petrograd

1. If you’re giving the gift of comics, than my cohorts at Oni Press have the two books from 2011 that I think have the broadest appeal and will get you the most mileage this holiday season. First, there is Petrograd, Philip Gelatt and Tyler Crook’s riveting alternative history of the assassination of Rasputin. It’s got danger and intrigue and Tyler is one hell of an artist. The handsome hardcover package has a lot of flair and though the $30 price point is totally reasonable, it would never occur to the person you’re giving it to that you were at all frugal.

Second is Ray Fawkes’ amazing One Soul. Ray has done an amazing thing here, using the standard nine-panel grid to tell the concurrent stories of 18 different people spanning the ages, separated by space and time. Though it’s possible to read each life individually front to back, the experience of reading each one moment by moment, cycling through all 18 on every double-page spread is exhilarating. One Soul is both emotionally moving and intellectually thought provoking, and despite all the formalist experimentation, a damn good read. Also another wonderfully designed, smartly priced hardcover.

More self-serving for me, and a higher ticket item, is the Madman 20th Anniversary Monster, coming from Image in just a few short weeks. I helped Mike Allred put this massive hardcover together, and I even wrote the two-page framing sequence that he and Jim Valentino drew to tie it all together. Mike has done a new story, there are 20+ all-new one-pagers from the likes of Matt Wagner, Darwyn Cooke, Patrick McEown, and all three Hernandez Bros., and also every pin-up we could get our hands on from the last 20 years of the series. Yes, that includes masters like Jack Kirby, Alex Toth, and Frank Frazetta, and also relative newbies like Joëlle Jones, Emily Carroll, and Chris Samnee. There are over 260 pages and the whole shebang is 11″ x 17″, the same size as the Wednesday Comics collection.

2. There are three items I would really like this Christmas. All of them are expensive collectors editions of material by artists that have been extremely influential on my creative development, but that I have yet to save the pennies to buy myself. They are:

(1) The Blu-Ray edition of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, bundled with the DVD of his second film The Magnificent Ambersons.
(2) The Smiths Complete–All of the Smiths albums remastered with Johnny Marr at the boards. I’d love the Super Deluxe box with the book and the dual version on vinyl and CD, but I’d settle for the straight CD versions, too. The music is the thing, and what I have heard of these new mixes is quite astonishing.
(3) The Who: Quadrophenia Director’s Cut: Super Deluxe Box Set: Okay, here is one where I have to have the massive version with the bonus 5.1 disc and all the books and such. Quadrophenia is like a religious experience for me. My first book, Cut My Hair, is named for a track on the original album, and so this new opening of the vaults is utterly essential.

Both the Smiths and the Who, as well as Orson Welles, helped change my artistic path when I was a teenager, and they still provide inspiration to this day.

Jamie S. Rich is a writer who regularly publishes through Oni Press, and quite often with the likes of Joëlle Jones, Nicolas Hitori de, and soon Natalie Nourigat and Dan Christensen. His most recent comic book release was Spell Checkers, vol. 2: Sons of a Preacher Man. You can read his sort-of kind-of frequently updated blog at http://www.confessions123.com.

Ryan Cody

Bone

1. The one comic related gift I always recommend is the Complete Bone by Jeff Smith. My children read it cover to cover at least once a year. Jeff Smith’s epic is a great read, fun and adventurous for any age group. For adults I would recommend American Vampire, it’s been my favorite book this year as I catch up on it. You can also never go wrong with Hellboy. A more unique gift for a comic or pop culture fan would be original art. Full size comic pages look gorgeous framed and hung and there is probably artwork out there to fit all budgets.

2. I don’t usually buy a lot of comics myself, but I’d be more than happy to get some original art, or a nice sketchbook or two from my favorite artists. An original Sean Murphy, Cory Walker or Mignola page and I’d be one happy camper Christmas morning.

Ryan Cody is an artist and writer whose past credits include ICARUS, Jesus Christ: In the Name of the Gun V2 and Villains. See more of his work at http://super75comics.wordpress.com/

Be sure to come back tomorrow for more suggestions!

B.P.R.D Hell On Earth: Russia #1

Hello and welcome to What Are You Reading? This week our special guest is Dark Horse assistant editor Jim Gibbons, who I spoke to about his new job on Friday.

To see what Jim and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below …

*****

Brigid Alverson

Snarked

Top of my stack this week was the first issue of Roger Langridge’s Snarked! His remained Walrus and Carpenter are con men with hearts of gold, and while neither of them is too bright, the Walrus has a certain practical ability to get things done. So when Princess Scarlett and her baby brother, Prince Rusty, are in danger because of scheming by the palace advisers, none other than the Cheshire Cat himself points her toward the rascally pair. It’s good, old-fashioned comedy with a familiar storyline and gentle humor that both children and adults can relate to.

I also enjoyed the second issue of B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: Russia. I feel like this is a very muscular story that sort of grabs you and drags you in. Kate Corrigan and Johann Strauss are in Russia investigating some sort of icky problem, and the plot moves along briskly in this issue with a bit of exposition and a nasty case of possession. There seem to be several strands to the story, and it will be interesting to see how Mike Mignola and co. tie them all up.

With the third volume of their Archie Archives, Dark Horse has found their formula — minimal front matter (this one features an introduction by Archie Comics president Mike Pellerito but no other historical information) followed by a solid collection of vintage comics. Volume 3 features comics from 1943 and 1944, and in addition to the odd look of the characters — Archie has prominent buck teeth, Jughead looks like one of the Dead End Kids and seldom opens his eyes‹there’s the strangeness of wartime Riverdale, where goats run freely and people worry about ration points. A bit of background on these comics would have been nice; a number were inked by Janice Valleau, whom David Hajdu highlighted in the opening pages of The Ten Cent Plague as an established comics artist who left the field during the dark days of the 1950s.

Tim O’Shea

Sweet Tooth

Sweet Tooth #26: I hate to agree with my pal Dugan Trodglen, but I suspect he is right when he feared writer Jeff Lemire’s involvement in the new DC52 would negatively impact the quality of this book. I am a huge fan of guest artist Matt Kindt, but this first installment of a three-issue arc bored me immensely, no matter how effectively Kindt drew and painted the story, Lemire’s script was heavy on narration and less engaging than what I come to expect on Sweet Tooth.

Huntress #1: Remember the whole new DC52 and how everything is starting from square one (unless you were connected to Batman [and were not Barbara Gordon])? Well Paul Levitz was writing Huntress in the late 1970s (albeit Helena Wayne back then) and Levitz is writing her again more than 30 years later. Way to shake it up, DC. I bought
this book against my better judgment because I have enjoyed artist Marcus To so much in the past. Huntress going against Italian organized crime…again. Yippie. Won’t be back for issue #2.

Action Comics #2: So Rags Morales and Brent Anderson split up art duties on writer Grant Morrison’s second issue. Anderson’s Lois Lane is distinctive (in a good way). Just wondering, am I the only person that tires of Kryptonian dialogue that no one understands? Small quibble, I promise. The book continues to be a fairly interesting read, though clearly rehashing the same Superman ground we’ve seen before. A great deal of the new DC52 smacks of high-end Elseworlds so far, but for now it’s selling quite well of course.

Thunderbolts #164: Modern day pseudo-Thunderbolts trapped in 1943 Austria along with the Invaders provides for some hilarious faux wholesome period dialogue (Boomerang saying “Aw, shucks” for example) from writer Jeff Parker. Artist Kev Walker looks immensely stronger on art (unlike last week’s complaint) when inked by Terry Pallot. Really hoping next week I will not have to stare at another Marvel house ad touting an Avengers Solo book launching October 2010 (really nice attention to detail, gang).

Hulk #42: Wonder what happens when Thunderbolt Ross starts dabbling in foreign policy as the Red Hulk? Nothing that makes Steve Rogers happy, but it does make me content (as well as set up the foundation for some interesting guest stars) in the first installment of the “Hulk of Arabia” arc. With the series increased publishing schedule, there’s no way that artist Gabriel Hardman can draw every issue. So I was pleased to see that Patrick Zircher’s artistic style (while not exactly like Hardman’s) in this issue is not a jarring transition to a style that clashes with Hardman.

JK Parkin

Ready Player One

I was traveling for the past couple weeks, visiting family and friends in Texas, which meant I had some down time to catch up on some reading — mostly on my iPad. Considering it’s setting and subject matter, I think Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One was written specifically for me. Dystopian future (check), virtual reality (check), a street-smart teenager (check) and more ’80s references than you could roll a 20-sided dice at (huh?). The story is set in a future where the real world is something everyone wants to escape from, but luckily there’s a virtual reality world, OASIS, that’s filled with various planets, quests and avatars of all kinds for someone like our hero, Wade, to dive into. Wade’s a poor kid in Oklahoma looking for a break, and when the creator of the virtual reality world Wade pretty much lives in dies, the kid goes on a quest to solve the riddle the guy left in his will. Fans of the old Atari game Adventure will remember the three castles you had to find the keys for; James Halliday set up a similar quest in the OASIS, and whoever can find the three keys, open the gates and solve the puzzles within will not only get the guy’s enormous fortune, but also control of the OASIS. Halliday was raised in the ’80s on John Hughes movies, TV sitcoms, video games, comic books, Dungeons & Dragons and Rush songs, and all of that comes into play as Wade tries to solve the puzzle before anyone else — including a shady corporation who wants control of the OASIS. Just following along to see what references Cline would throw in next was fun, but what really made the book was the main character, an underdog you can’t help but cheer for.

On the comic front, I downloaded a few on the road, including the first two chapters of the new Ultimate Spider-Man and the last two chapters of X-Men Schism. I haven’t read any USM since maybe the second or third story arc; I was always good with the first Peter Parker and never felt the need to follow the second, despite the fact that the book was well crafted. But I was curious enough about Miles Morales to see how they’d introduce him, and after reading the first two issues I can say I’m hooked, at least for a few more issues.

As for Schism, while the series read like a prologue to the upcoming X-Men relaunch, i.e. it didn’t feel very self-contained and didn’t introduce a lot of surprises, I dug some of the elements of it. One the new Hellfire Club, and second, Jason Aaron’s Wolverine. I never read his take on the regular Wolverine series, but I think I see some trades in my future. And I’ll at least be checking out the first few issues of Wolverine and the X-Men later this year.

Jim Gibbons

The majority of what I end up reading is directly related to my work as an assistant editor, but here are a few things I’ve been enjoying in my spare time…

The Coffin

Mike Huddleston’s work on Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s The Strain has been consistently blowing me away, so I’ve been checking out a bunch of Mike’s other work. I recently read the Phil Hester penned The Coffin after hearing Guillermo del Toro give it a personal recommendation at Comic-Con—that’s a pretty good pedigree as far as I’m concerned. It’s a very enjoyable and really great looking read about keeping souls on earth after death in robot “coffins.” Up next, I’ll be delving into Huddleston’s The Homeland Directive written by Robert Vendetti. I’ve flipped through it and the art looks phenomenal. I’m psyched to jump into that one.

B.P.R.D Hell On Earth: Russia #1 was an amazing first issue. Tyler Crook is really hitting his stride and I’m super excited to see how the Bureau interacts with their Russian counterpart. Given, B.P.R.D. is one of my favorite comic series of all time, so… not a hard sell for me there regardless.

Based on what little I’ve read, Green River Killer is shaping up to be one of the best graphic novels of the year.

In the realm of superheroes, I’ve been enjoying Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force. It’s much preferable take on the X-Men’s wetworks team than some comics in recent years, as far as I’m concerned—a lot less angsty and a lot more fun. Plus, the Age of Apocalypse nostalgia they’ve been throwing in there seems directed specifically at readers like me who grew up thinking AoA was one of the best things to ever happen in comics.

I’m always working my way through a few massive archival books. Right now I’ve got bookmarks in Marvel’s gigantic Howard the Duck Omnibus and the Jack Kirby’s Eternals Omnibus. And if I do things right, I’ve always got unread Stan Sakai comics around. Right now, I’m trucking through Space Usagi and starting up Fantagraphics’ beautiful Usagi Yojimbo omnibus. Sakai’s an absolute master, so I always aim to have some of his work on hand.

The Tooth
Written by Cullen Bunn and Shawn Lee; Illustrated by Matt Kindt
Oni; $24.99

Equal parts Hellboy and Hulk, The Tooth is the story of a young man named Graham Stone who inherits a spooky old estate from his grandfather, Ezekiel. While looking over the place, Graham discovers a room full of “occult esoterica,” a collection of dangerous artifacts that Grandpa Zeke spent a lifetime accumulating. Unfortunately, Graham doesn’t understand how unsafe the stuff really is and grabs an amulet designed to control a mystical, yellow tooth.

Who does understand the significance of the collection is Caleb King, evil mage and one-time arch-nemesis to the late Ezekiel Stone. But when King gets rough with Graham, the supernatural tooth forms a humanoid body and grows to fightin’ size in order to protect his new… well, “master” doesn’t seem like the right word, but the relationship between Graham and the Tooth is hard to define.

Graham doesn’t command the Tooth, but it is attached to him, sometimes quite literally. In between battles with King’s monsters, the Tooth shrinks down and implants itself in Graham’s gums. Graham acts as a reluctant host for the creature who in turn defends the young man. The relationship between the mild-mannered protagonist and the uncontrollable monster brings classic Hulk comics to mind, while the Tooth’s occult origins and the evil wizard who seeks to exploit them are reminiscent of Hellboy.

There’s also a great supporting cast worthy of the comics that influenced The Tooth. Graham is engaged to a woman named Beatrice who’s trying to figure out what’s happened to her fiancé. She partners with Sheriff Turnbull, the only law in the small town where the story takes place, and as her relationship with Graham becomes unfamiliar and strained, her relationship with Turnbull begins to feel easy and comfortable.

Beatrice is no damsel-in-distress though. She’s not someone to be used as a pawn in the conflict between Graham and the man who’s hunting him. She’s her own woman and capable of defending herself to a certain point. The Tooth owes some of its tone to the Hulk, but it’s not simply an analog for those comics. Turnbull is neither General Ross nor Jack McGee. He’s only interested in solving crimes, not hunting monsters. It’s Beatrice who worriedly drives the investigation into Graham’s affairs. In many ways, she’s as much the hero as Graham.

That’s all for the good. The Tooth wouldn’t work if it simply mimicked the material it’s paying homage to. That would shatter the illusion that it’s a reboot of a real comic series, an illusion that everyone’s worked very hard at creating, from drawing fake covers and ads to writing fake letters pages and Bullpen Bulletins-style articles. It’s a successful trick that brought back the joy I felt as a kid when I’d discover a new comic.

The story in The Tooth is almost entirely self-contained. It certainly leaves room for more stories to be told about these characters, but no one’s going to come away from it feeling like they have to buy anything else to be satisfied. And yet, the letters and editorials create a history that begs to be explored. The introduction speaks of “die-hard Tooth historians” not needing to worry about the series’ new direction because it includes “connections aplenty to the past – including occult icons such as Ezekiel Stone.” Letters pages refer to past stories and characters in ways that make me want to dig through some back issue bins. I know next to nothing about them – they don’t appear in this story – but I’m hoping future volumes include the return of the Voodoo Queen or a fiendish plot of Dr. Torment. If they don’t though – if this volume is all there is – that’ll be okay too. It’s almost as fun to make up your own Voodoo Queen and imagine the kind of trouble she might have caused the Enameled Enigma.

Still, I really want to see Bunn, Lee, and Kindt take another turn at it.

From "Super Natural"

If you were to go back in time three years ago to take a look at all the year-end lists that highlighted 2007′s best comics, no doubt you’d find Matt Kindt‘s Super Spy on many of those lists. The book consisted of 52 short stories — or was it all one big story? — that detailed the lives of spies during World War II.

Now Kindt is working on a follow-up of sorts to Super Spy that jumps into a different genre, the paranormal, and stars the ghosts of Houdini, Amelia Earhart and even a character from Super Spy, among others.

“I really focus on each one of them as they interact with each other and examine their past to sort of uncover the mystery of their life — rather than their deaths,” Kindt said. “Is that vague enough? I really don’t want to give too much away.”

Kindt did give a few things away, however, about the project.

JK: From what I understand, Super Natural is a “sequel” of sorts to Super Spy — or at least they share a common character, correct? What else can you tell us about the new book?

Matt: It’s basically my take on ghost stories. I’m not a big fan of super natural stuff at all — I really do want a sort of rational explanation for everything — or at least for there to be a rational explanation behind it, even if I don’t get it. So that’s pretty much what this book is — a way for me to figure out a way to tell a super natural story that satisfies me. It’s set in the 1950s and includes a dead character from Super Spy (I won’t say which one), Houdini, Amelia Earhart, Morgan Earp and a teenage girl … all ghosts. But 90 percent of the story is sort of flashbacks to their life, with the ghost parts being more of a way to show how they examine their existence and try to figure out why they’re ghosts at all.

From "Super Natural"

JK: One of the things I loved about Super Spy was how fast it moved, as it was told in short vignettes, as well as how non-linear it was … it fit the “spy” theme very well, as the reader unraveled the missions and motivations of the characters. Are you taking a similar approach to Super Natural, or does the subject matter call for something different?

Matt: It’s not quite as convoluted. Each character will get there chapter and it’s told slightly out of sequence and with overlapping timelines but only because the nature of them as ghosts is such that they lived during drastically different time periods. So the teenage girl was a huge fan of Amelia Earhart, but Morgan Earp has no idea who she is. The chapters will also be slightly longer — I think there’s only 6 or 7 chapters — making up the 270 pages of story, so it’s a little less vignette-like.

JK: What kind of research did you put into the book, given its historical nature?

From "Super Natural"

Matt: A lot. I read a lot of biographies of the main characters who were real to get the period details right and to just get some ideas. My writing is pretty organic so I had to sort of go with what was known about these people and see where that lead me. It’s so much easier to make up characters from scratch.

JK: In addition to creating your books, you also design them as well. Have you thought about the design of Super Natural, and what it will look like when published?

Matt: Yes — it really has to serve as a companion piece to Super Spy and also differentiate itself. I’ll still probably have some sort of see-through, x-ray cover like I did on Super Spy — which seems to fit the theme of Super Natural pretty well also. The cover is usually the last thing I do though — I like to wait until the book is done and I really know it backwards and forwards and see what it is. By then the cover has usually just come together in my head and it’s a matter of putting it together. There’s nothing like thousands of hours of work to make you focus on a cover.

From "Super Natural"

JK: Super Spy was released online before Top Shelf published it. Will Super Natural appear as a webcomic first as well?

Matt: Well, maybe. I’m not sure. I’m designing it to work as a book first and foremost but I wouldn’t rule out seeing some special extra on-line content that would dovetail with the print version.

JK: From what I understand this is actually the third part of a trilogy — Super Spy, Super Natural and I think you’ve mentioned before that the next one will be called Super Computer. Can you tell us anything about your plans for the third book?

Matt: Right now, the third book is pretty vague. I have a general idea and several characters from Super Spy and Super Natural will be key players in it — basically it’s going to be a sci-fi book with time travel and set in the 1960s. I wanted to hit every genre so when that’s done all I’ll have left is my fantasy book…

Night of the Hunter, by Matt Kindt

Top-of-the-line DVD house the Criterion Collection is no stranger to comics. In addition to employing the likes of Adrian Tomine and Jaime Hernandez to draw covers for classic films from around the globe, they’ve also recently received rave reviews for their deluxe rerelease of Terry Zwigoff’s stranger-than-fiction documentary Crumb.

Touchez Pas au Grisbi by Scott Morse

Brute Force by Scott Morse

But Criterion’s Cartoonist Employment Program goes even further than that. Criterion’s Erik Skillman has commissioned several comics artists to create posters for its upcoming Criterion Cinema film festival during the All Tomorrow’s Parties New York music fest on September 3-5. (Of course, ATP itself has some comics bonafides — The Simpsons creator Matt Groening has curated two of their festivals.) That’s Matt Kindt of Super Spy, 3 Story, and Revolver fame doing Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter above; visit Scalped/Wolverine artist Jason Latour’s blog for his take on Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show, and scroll down to see Scott Morse‘s posters for Jacques Becker’s Touchez Pas au Grisbi and Jules Dassin’s Brute Force. Meanwhile, Jamie S. Rich notes (via Criterion Cast) that Scott Campbell will be providing art for the festival as well, specifically for Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider. The festival takes place September 3-5.

And while you’re at it, why not check out some comics-friendly features on the Criterion website, such as lists of Top Ten favorite Criterion Collection releases from cartoonists Mike Allred, Jaime Hernandez, and Seth, Omega the Unknown writer Jonathan Lethem, rock poster artist Frank Kozik, and animator Bill Plympton? Comics and movies: together at last!

Revolver

It’s never boring when I get to catch up with writer/artist Matt Kindt about his creative and marketing process–as well as the film, Donnie Darko (and a range of other topics–including video games, Crisis on Infinite Earth and learning how to drive a stick shift). Had I known we could have talked while at a baseball game (this will make sense once you’ve read the interview), well I was crushed (OK not crushed, but I’m finding out next year if Kindt is partial to major or minor league baseball–and we’ll plan our next interview accordingly). Although I was fortunate enough to read an advance black and white preview of Revolver (his new graphic novel for Vertigo “a tale of two worlds — and how both test a man to his limits”), I’m looking forward to this Wednesday, July 14, when I can buy the book in its final form. While we all wait, enjoy this interview.

Tim O’Shea: How much advanced layouts, given the conflicting narratives that you maintain throughout the tale, did you have to set up at the project’s outset?

Matt Kindt: I lay everything out well in advance. I don’t pencil any pages until the entire thing is layed out. Especially with a book like this where I had a hard page count, meaning I couldn’t go over my page limit, I had to be very precise with everything, including where the page-turns would be for certain big reveals, etc.But I really do that with every book – I don’t start penciling anything until I’ve figured out the entire book.

O’Shea: Again, given the complexity of the book, how concerned were you when the book’s editor switched from Bob Schreck to Joan Hilty?

Kindt: I wasn’t concerned with the book as much as I was just hoping that Bob Schreck would be okay and happy and then just a little nervous meeting/working with Joan only because I’d never really had a good long conversation with her before. But Bob ended up good and happy and Joan ended up being a fantastic champion of me and the book so in a way I ended up coming out ahead on the deal by getting to work with both of them.

O’Shea: Am I crazy to say that — to a very limited extent– this book reminds me of Donnie Darko? That’s not a slam, what I mean is that once you read the book, you want to go back and look at it again to see what you might have missed on the first readthrough?

Kindt: No – that’s great. And it’s definitely my intent. It’s a fine balance though – I want you to be able to “get” it on a first read through so I try not to make it intentionally obtuse or confusing where you’re having to decipher a lot of things to just figure out what’s happening. I think that takes you out of a book when that happens.

But what I did want to do is put some extra things in there that you don’t notice the first time but after you get the meat of the story you can go back through and pick up on some other little subtleties. I think the page numbering text-scroll is one of those threads too where you can pretty much ignore it, but hopefully ou’d go back again and read it and get that extra layer of story.

What I hate is a story where it all hinges on some twist and once you get the twist then there’s no reason to revisit the work again. Donnie Darko is great in that way because you get this sort of crazy twist but the first 90% of the film is still so enjoyable that you want to see it again because it’s just good. Where something like The Sixth Sense is maybe good for two viewings – one to be surprised, and two to see it with open eyes. But I tried to make Revolver into something that isn’t so much about a twist but about these characters making some choices that we can all kind of relate to.

O’Shea: In our previous interview we discussed your affinity for diagrams, how the hades did you fight the urge to not execute a detailed aerial view of San Francisco [which you referenced in the publication Revolver (within the book Revolver)]?

Kindt: You crack me up! Well, I don’t know. I had so much I wanted to pack into the story that there just wasn’t a really good place for it – I actually have a detailed drawing laying around here somewhere, so I didn’t really fight the urge to do it – I did it – but I didn’t think it fit for some reason at the time.

O’Shea: How insane did you drive yourself when you decided to make the footer of the page (where the page numbers are shown) also be where you provided a statistical news crawl throughout the tale. Did you strip those in after drawing the pages? On a related note, why did some of the pages not have the news ticker–is there a message in their absence?

Kindt: It did drive me crazy. And it was one of those ideas I’d had after all of the art was completed. Credit to my editor Joan for letting me dump a bunch of extra stuff on her at the last minute to edit. I felt a little bad about it but once I had the idea, I couldn’t NOT do it. The hardest part was keeping each piece of text relevant to the page it appeared on and also incorporate the page numbers. Short answer is yes, it drove me crazy. Some of the pages without the text were simply design decisions where the art went full-bleed and I didn’t want the text running over it.

O’Shea: On page 36, there’s a flashback torn strip of Sam learning to drive stick shift from his late father. In trying to convey the flashback nature, when did you arrive upon the decision to try to pull off the look of a textured tor piece of paper (and how the hell did you pull it off so well)?

Kindt: Well, I don’t have a lot of flashbacks in the book so I just wanted to set it apart from everything else to keep it from being visually confusing. And I loved the little flashback mini-story – which is actually an autobiographical piece – me and my dad trying to teach me to drive a stick shift.

O’Shea: Color is crucial to the shifts in narrative, how did you decide which portion would garner certain colors?

Kindt: All of the color shifts are based on the two different world’s that Sam occupies. I was calling them Earth 1 and Earth 2 in my script as an homage to Crisis on Infinite Earths which I loved growing up. But I really felt like if the main character was going to be shifting his realities, the reader really needed a visual clue so we could follow him.

O’Shea: I cracked up when I read your description of the book in a CBR interview earlier this year: “I was limited to 160 pages, so it’s a pretty snappy book.” You do realize that you fit more story in 160 pages, while others may take 250 pages or more to fit all that you get into your story.

Kindt: Ha – yeah, actually it’s closer to 190 pages. I originally started out at 160 pages but then requested 30 more so that I could fit it all in. And to Vertigo and my editors’ credit they were pretty flexible.

I don’t know what to say really – the characters end up being kind of real to me and every one of them has a back story and history that I’ve also got in my head – but at the end of the day you can’t just branch off into everyone’s back story without losing the main narrative so I have to pick and choose what to show and hope the rest just sort of gets in their subconsciously.

I’m also not really a fan of big decompressed stories – which I think is the case with a lot of manga storytelling where they’re telling a pretty short story over 36 volumes. You end up flipping through those pages so quickly and reading it like a magazine instead of a book which just isn’t as satisfying to me as a reader and an author. I like to spend a little more time on each page and slow down the reading process a little bit.

O’Shea: After a day of working on pages, when you have to step away to clear your head and get a fresh perspective–what kinds of rewards do you give yourself for the hard work? What do you do for non-storytelling fun?

Kindt: Well, my wife jokes that I have at least 3 birthday parties every April for my birthday – which usually involve go-carts, paintball, and baseball games spread out over a few weeks. But on a regular work day I usually play with my daughter, and then read, watch movies, and play xbox until I can’t keep my eyes open.

O’Shea: For future interviews with you, will I expected to feed you a meal–as happened in this recent Toronto Star interview by Corey Mintz? I love how you described it in this tweet:”Easily my favorite interview ever-cleverly disguised as the most awesome 5 course meal ever…”

Kindt: Yes. Or we could go to a baseball game and talk about comics or go to the pool or pretty much any of my birthday-type activities. I think it’d actually be kind of funny to do in interview on xbox live while playing Call of Duty or Left 4 Dead, y’know? Deep questions and answers followed by screams and profanity as I get shot from behind. I don’t think that’s ever been done…

O’Shea: As far I’m concerned, you are one of the best creators in terms of marketing your work. What quirky items are you developing for Revolver?

Kindt: Well, I think the Revolver convention promo thing is going to involve squirt guns. That’s all I can say right now….

O’Shea: Anything else I should give you a chance to talk about?

Kindt: Can’t think of anything – I Twitter and Facebook and blog and website all the time so you can catch up to me on all of that stuff. I’ll be at SDCC next month and NYCC in the Fall as well. Other than that…I’ve got four new books coming out in the next two years so I’m going to be pretty busy for a long while.

Revolver by Matt Kindt

Happy Sunday and Happy Fourth of July, as we once again delve into what the Robot 6 crew are reading this week. Joining us as our special guest this week is Jeff Lemire, creator of Sweet Tooth, The Nobody, The Essex County Trilogy and Lost Dogs, and the writer of the Atom strip in Adventure Comics and the upcoming Superboy series.

To see what Jeff and the Robot 6 crew are reading, click below …

*****

Chris Mautner

Blackest Night

DC sent me a copy of the new hardcover collection of Blackest Night, so I finally got to see what all the fuss was about. Honestly, the best I can give it is a shrug of the shoulders and mere “eh.” It’s neither so awful to merit my scorn, nor good enough for me to endorse or recommend on any level.

The basic concept is sound. Killer even. Utilizing the basic “superheroes versus zombies” angle gives you the opportunity to offer a commentary on the nature of the industry to recycle and reuse their properties until they become bereft of all vitality and charm. On another level, you can examine what death actually means in a world where people with god-like powers can not only survive horrendous disasters but come back from the dead seemingly at will. What meaning or power would death hold in such a place? At the very least, you should be able to pen an entertaining, slam-bang horrorish thriller.

Sadly, Geoff Johns and company do none of the above. It’s just one gigantic set piece after another that never really gels into a collective whole. Part of the problem for me is that I really don’t care much for Ivan Reis and company’s art. To me it’s emblematic of the worst of that post-Image, post 90s style, all over-rendered musculature, gritted teeth and PhotoShop tricks. Their habit to constantly provide one enormous, densely packed splash page sequence after another really annoyed me as well. I understand that kind of momentism is what the kids crave these days (“Oh boy, here’s where all the DC heroes come to kick some zombie ass! Look, there’s Starfire in the far right corner! I wish I could buy a poster-sized version of this!”), but it severely interrupts the story’s flow and really doesn’t make for very good comics. It’s as though Reis is more concerned with making things look cool than with making things look good.

I didn’t have any trouble following the story, despite all the hardcore DCU references, nor was I put off by the “superhero decadence” scenes like Firestorm’s girlfriend turning into a pillar of salt — it’s part horror story. That stuff comes with the territory. And I did like how Johns opted to use second and third bananas like Mera and Atom to help save the day. There was something charming about that. Ultimately what really, truly bugged me was Johns constant need to remind us — in captions and dialogue — just how awesome all these second stringers were. Every other sentence uttered by the cast seems to be a love letter to Flash or Green Lantern. Did Johns forget about the “show don’t tell” rule? I felt was like I was constantly being elbowed in the ribs by Johns and Reis while trying to read as they shouted at the top of their lungs, “This is awesome isn’t it? Isn’t this awesome? This is so awesome!” No guys, it really wasn’t.

Tim O’Shea

Not to go borderline jingoistic on the Fourth of July (particularly for our international readers) but my favorite reads of this week involved Steve Rogers.

When I was a kid in the 1970s/1980s, Marvel captured my interest with the multiple super teams, The Champions, The Defenders and, of course, The Avengers. Ed Brubaker’s approach on the Secret Avengers (issue 2 came out this week) reminds me of the 1970s teams, with heroes you normally would not imagine teaming-up: Moon Knight with Valkyrie, for one example, or Beast and Sharon Carter. And I’m really happy to see how effectively Brubaker is utilizing Carter, after her using her too often (not always) as a plot device or prop during his Cap run.

Meanwhile in Captain America 607, it’s interesting to see how the Bucky and Steve Rogers dynamics are shaking out–as shown in this issue. Aw hell, who am I kidding–Steve Rogers is going around in one of Nick Fury/SHIELD’s flying cars! It’s panels like that which make me love comics.

Saving the best for last, Karl Kesel is writer, penciler and inker on Captain America: The 1940′s Newspaper Strip–originally developed for Marvel.com’s Digital Comics Unlimited Service. This is the first of three issues in a limited series. In an afterword of the first issue, Kesel wrote: “I’ve often wished I had been born 50 years earlier so I could have written and drawn an adventure strip, and I finally got my chance. I have to say: it’s the hardest, most satisfying job I’ve ever worked on. And I could do it for the rest of my life.” Good news, Kesel, I would read them as long as you were producing Cap tales.

Tom Bondurant

Well, you know already that I liked Wonder Woman #600 pretty well. Subsequently — and thanks to Amazon.com, ha ha — I read the first collection of Diana’s “Mod” period. These stories come from Denny O’Neil and Mike Sekowsky, with Dick Giordano’s inks distinguishing them from, say, Sekowsky’s JLA work. Basically they read like the comics equivalent of a late-’60s spy knockoff. Not nearly as bad as “The Girl From UNCLE,” but more like O’Neil and Sekowsky wanted to do Emma Peel and couldn’t decide how “serious” it should be. In fact, towards the end of the book Diana has already returned to Paradise Island to fight gods and monsters alongside her Amazon sisters — never mind that when the Amazons left our plane of reality a few issues earlier, they made it sound like they were never coming back. The rest of the book is similarly uneven, almost to the extent that it doesn’t connect at all to the familiar status quo. Still, I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the experiment, mostly to see how far afield it got.

Unknown Soldier #21

Both Madame Xanadu and Unknown Soldier had fine standalone issues this week; and both with guest artists, too (Marley Zarcone on MX, Rick Veitch on US). It’s already too late for Unknown Soldier, but perhaps it will do well enough in trades to warrant the occasional special issue or OGN. Madame Xanadu, however, has definite crossover appeal, especially with main-line superhero readers like myself who enjoy the occasional Phantom Stranger or Martian Manhunter guest-shot. The latest issue doesn’t have anything like that, but it’s still an excellent little fantasy/horror tale set in the early days of the Civil Rights movement. I really wish DC would promote the heck out of Madame Xanadu — it’s consistently among the best books in the publisher’s lineup.

Meanwhile, Action Comics #890 probably doesn’t need much more promotion, but if future issues are as good as this one, it too deserves to be one of the publisher’s top sellers. New writer Paul Cornell and returning artist Pete Woods bring us the continuing adventures of Lex Luthor, now busy trying to unlock the secrets of Oan-type power rings. By no means has Lex been driven to do good by his involvement in Blackest Night — instead, he’s in full-on megalomaniac mode, and that’s what makes the book so enticing. In a way, Lex’s quest for this particular knowledge makes him a good reader-identification character, because what semi-serious DC fan hasn’t wondered how the rings really work? (Notwithstanding Ganthet’s DIY sequence in Green Lantern Corps, that is.)

As far as phone-book collections go, I’m working my way through Brave and the Bold Batman Team-Ups Vol. 2 and Essential Captain America Vol. 4. Finally, while buying some short boxes (better for the aging back) at the comics shop today, I picked up the Muppet Show: Treasure Of Peg-Leg Wilson collection, and can’t wait to read it.

Sean T. Collins

Two anthologies and a lackluster manga for me this week. Click the links for reviews…

not simple by Natsume Ono: Ludicrous melodrama and coincidence mar this manga about a broken family.

Shitbeams on the Loose #2: Fun if not light-the-world-on-fire material from the altcomix edge.

Closed Caption Comics #8: A thrillingly dark and dirty anthology by the CCC collective.

Jeff Lemire

Atari Force #1

1. Atari Force: Gerry Conway and Jose Luis Garcia Lopez: Amazing art and some really fun Sci-fi concepts. This is a really overlooked gem from the 80′s that still holds up to other great team books of the day like The New Teen Titans and The Legion of Superheroes. I wish DC still owned the rights so I could pitch a revamp!

2. Tumor: Joshua Hale Fialkov and Noel Tuazon: A really great graphic novel in both concept and design and in it’s execution. Tuazon’s washy, loose art is a perfect fit for protagonist Frank Armstrong’s increasingly diluted state of mind. He has a brain tumor, but he has to finish on each case before he goes…great read!

3. Revolver: Matt Kindt: Matt’s debut Vertigo GN is awesome. His art has never looked better and the post-apocalyptic concept of a man caught between two world’s (literally) is perfectly explored with Matt’s trademark sense of cleverness, great characterization and amazing art. Also features the coolest page numbers EVER.

Crogan's March

Since starting Talking Comics with Tim in 2009, I have made a frequent effort to not interview creators more than once. But as I am well into my second year, I’ve decided to ease that self-imposed restriction. Thus why I tapped Chris Schweizer again (after last year’s discussion) to do an email interview regarding his second installment in the Crogan Adventures chronicle, Crogan’s March (Oni Press). In addition to discussing the adventures of French Legionnaire Peter Crogan (circa 1912), the SCAD Atlanta professor pulls back the curtain on his creative process as well as his plans to participate in Free Comic Book Day in Atlanta (he has a 10-page Crogan Adventures story in the Oni Press Free-for-All). For my money, Schweizer is one of the good guys in the Atlanta comics scene and I appreciated the chance to interview him about his latest book. Once you read the interview, be sure to check out the 26-page preview that Oni has posted.

Tim O’Shea: Which character look did you come up with first–Sgt. Ludlow’s ears or Captain Roitelet’s chin?

Chris Schweizer: Originally, the two characters were one in the story, and that one was a short, barrel-chested moustached guy with a shaved head. As I was writing, though, I started to realize that I could use the officers to showcase the two different primary motivations for colonialism. Once I started writing Roitelet, I fell in love with him – he was so much fun to do. I plan on him popping up again.

Keelhaul's Fop

Roitelet’s design was actually cannibalized from an earlier design – much earlier, actually – a strip called Keelhaul that I had in my college newspaper, the Murray State News. There was a character named Fop, who was based on a friend of mine (I still tend to base characters on friends), and he looked a lot like Roitelet in the face. I made the hair blonde to better play off the fair-haired dashing hero of early 20th century adventure lit ideal, and changed up the body a bit, but the core of the character comes from Fop. Since I wasn’t ever going to do anything with Keelhaul again, I thought it okay to steal, since I was stealing from myself and only a handful of Kentuckians had ever seen the original.

(Note – after answering this question, I looked for some old strips, and although in my own head I was completely ripping off my own design, there’s actually much less similarity between the Fop character and Roitelet. [See a sample of the strip above.])

For Ludlow, there was a British character actor in the sixties named Harry Andrews, who would often play military officers. I liked the juxtaposition of his big ears which would be nerdy were it not for his gravelly forcefulness. I used them as a jumping-off point for the design, and pushed it a bit more.

O’Shea: In a recent interview with ACME Comics, you mentioned your affinity for Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe, would you agree that Gonick’s work may somewhat informs what you’re doing with the Crogan Adventures?

Schweizer: Not directly, in that I don’t use those books much for research, and while his storytelling approach definitely colors my humor comics and my nonfiction stuff (as well as my Christmas cards), it doesn’t have much influence on my storytelling style for my fiction projects.

That said, the Crogan Adventures would be much different were it not for the Gonick books. I’ve been reading them since I was probably ten years old, and one of the things that most captured me was how each period in history directly plays into the next, intricately interwoven in a cause-and-effect tapestry, and how you can’t really understand a period without being informed about those which precede it. It’s what got me nuts for history, excited about the periods that I once thought were boring because they directly inform the periods I thought were exciting. And, in studying them, I realized that THEY were exciting of their own merits, too.

A big goal with the Crogan series is to showcase where in relation to each other all of these genre periods fall. The old west is separated from the rise of modern cities, with cars and electricity, by geography more than by time. The Napoleonic Wars end only twenty-one years before the battle of the Alamo. This is the sort of thing that got me excited about history, stuff I got from the Gonick books, and it’s what I hope will get others similarly excited.

O’Shea: You deal with death in this book to a certain extent, did you hesitate having that be part of the book (given that it’s for teen readers) or for historical accuracy did you always intend to acknowledge the risk of death in this setting (1912: French Foreign Legion)? {First spoiler warning, skip this question if you wish for the story not to be spolied}

Schweizer: I’ve never wanted to shy away from death in these books because I think that narrative plays an important sociological role for children in helping them encounter and deal with emotions they hopefully won’t HAVE to deal with in their “real” life – terror, vengeful anger, grief. By giving them the opportunity to feel these emotions in a safe and structured setting, stories help kids to be accustomed to these emotions and thus better equipped to deal with real-life situations that may evoke them. Also, these are adventure stories, and the time periods in which I set them were violent. These things necessitate the characters being at genuine risk of life and limb, and I have no qualms about including them; I simply try to handle it tastefully, so as to not make it visually inappropriate for any age group.

Crogan’s March Spoiler (here’s your second spoiler warning, folks, skip this answer if you wish for the story to remain unspoiled): Peter Crogan’s death was calculated, in that I wanted to establish early on in the series that just because a character is the protagonist doesn’t mean he’ll survive his story. Hopefully, this will create a genuine concern for the protagonist’s safety in all future Crogan books (and Vengeance, if folks read that one second). I may never kill another one, but it sets a precedent that I might.

O’Shea: In the “Thanks to” back pages of the book, you thank Hunter Wook-Jin Clark for meeting you in the early morning at the local (for you and me, that is, given we’re both Atlanta-based) Majestic Diner to iron out plot challenges. Can you give folks a glimpse of how some of those sessions in the diner went? And I’m curious, that’s a diner (around since 1929) with a hell of a lot of character (and characters) did anybody ever chime in when you were talking to Hunter?

Schweizer: No, mostly because we were there in that quiet time about an hour after the bars close but two or three before the early risers make there way out. I wrote down one of our more illuminating conversations afterwards, but it’s long and consists of nothing but spoilers. I was trying to nail down the exact ending, which was mostly formed but lacking specifics, and Hunter, who recently did the art for The Return of King Doug, helped me with articulating those specifics.

I’ve put the transcript online – you can read it here, but remember, if you haven’t read March yet, it’s all spoilers.  (End spoiler section)

O’Shea: From pages 143 to 159, major chunks of dialogue take place in absolute darkness. Some of the pages you don’t even have dialogue or sound effects. Without giving anything away, page 157 is an absolute black panel, nothing else. Page 158, the darkness is split into three distinct panels. How the heck did you decide to take a narrative risk like that and how much (if any) editorial pushback did you get?

Schweizer: Page 157 is the only splash page I’ve ever done!

The cave sequence stemmed from two challenges – I’ve never been strong with depicting form through lighting rather than line, and this forced me to address that shortcoming, and I wanted to see if I could manipulate the reader in a suspenseful way in the same manner as a film. To me, monster movies are scary only until you see the monster, and the imagination can conjure up things far more terrible than can a comic artist. The black sequences are my attempt to do this, to stretch out and create that suspense. It seems like it would be a really easy sequence – there’s no drawing – but that doesn’t mean I didn’t spend as much time on it as I did any other page. In one instance, I realized after doing the waking episode that I needed one more black panel than I had originally put in there in order to get the pacing right, and ended up redoing about four pages as a result.

[Oni editors] James [Lucas Jones] and Jill [Beaton] didn’t give me any flack about it – it’s not like I was trying to reach a page count by cheating (the book is actually about forty pages longer than I originally told them to expect), and they could tell what I was doing. I did get flack from my students, who call ‘em “Schweizer Boxes,” and tried to include them in as many assignments as possible for the week or two following their execution.

O’Shea: What was the hardest scene for you to execute to your liking? In terms of historical accuracy, which was the hardest element to research?

Schweizer: There are two scenes in which Crogan goes pages without talking. I try to keep my characters paired up as often as possible, so that one can always be narrating to another, but sometimes the protagonist is forced by the story to be alone, and in these instances I invariably fret over whether or not the audience is going to be able to tell what’s happening. In my thumbnails, sometimes even in my pencils, I write stilted monologues (“if I can just… get this chain…loose…”), trying to make sure that wha’s happening is clear. But by the time I get to inks, my confidence in the audience’s ability to figure it out with just the acting overcomes my concern, and I ink it without these. It’s really, really hard to let go of that, though. I’m so reliant on dialogue.

In terms of historical stuff, finding out how the different pre-WWI North African tribal system worked was really tricky. Not much of it ended up in the book – very little, actually, which is always frustrating considering how much time and effort went to trying to track it down all of it – but it does inform certain things, so it was worthwhile.

O’Shea: In the pursuit of historical accuracy, how do you make sure you don’t get so bogged down in the accuracy that it does not derail the rhythm of your storytelling?

Schweizer: By doing all the research beforehand. I read as much as I possibly can, try to get as much of a feel for the period as possible, and then simply write a story. By this point, I hopefully know the period well enough to know what will or won’t be right, and little details that I picked up along the way stick with me and inform the plot. But at this point it becomes all about story; I don’t have to start tailoring things around certain facts I find, the facts are a part of it from the beginning, the same way as if I were writing a story taking place in my hometown while I was in high school. It becomes peripheral. The location and period are a part of it, yes, but only insomuch as they allow for the story to take place. I hope that makes sense.

O’Shea: Are there certain scenes that you look at and realize they benefited from the feedback you get from beta readers at SCAD Atlanta?

Schweizer: No one really “read” the book, except my wife Liz and my editors. I gave out a few copies of early chapters to a few folks for feedback – Matt Kindt was especially helpful in a couple of spots where off-panel balloons weren’t really clear as to whom they belonged – but mostly it was just showing people the drawings, out of sequence. Pat Bollin, who did a Resurrection story recently and is drawing a book called Ciudad, helped me out in a few places. For some reason, I hadn’t drawn in the inner line of Ludlow’s ears for a big chunk of the book, and he pointed this out, that they looked like weird tumors. I’d made Walad’s – that’s Arabic for “boy,” he doesn’t really have a name – I made his eyes grotesquely big in later scenes when in earlier ones they’d been little dots. Lots of scenic stuff. He’s a grad student, too – our students are a sharp bunch. We all help each other out on our work.

O’Shea: In a recent post at your blog, you wrote: “I definitely prefer the Crogan series to be in black and white.” Simple question, why is that your preference?

Schweizer: I feel like there’s less distance between what I’m doing on my drawing table and the reader. Color adds a sort of middleman, and for me comics are as much about the art form as they are the stories. By putting my stuff out in black and white, without tones, it’s a story, yes, but you can also look at it to see technique and process, should you choose to approach it that way. Most of my favorite comics are in black and white, and I try and get my hands on as many black-and-white, non-toned versions of color comics that I like – the Calvin and Hobbes Sunday Pages OSU catalog, the Russ Cochran EC box sets – for this reason.

O’Shea: Care to talk about your plans for Free Comic Book Day?

Schweizer: There’s a ten-page Crogan Adventures story in the Oni Press Free-for-All, which also has stories from Matt Loux’s Salt Water Taffy and Ray Fawkes’ Possessions. It should be available at any shop participating in Free Comic Book Day. I’ll be doing signings that day at Criminal Records and at Oxford Comics, both in Atlanta. So far, no one in Atlanta has come close to measuring up to the type of FCBD that’s put on by other folks in our general vicinity (I’m thinking especially of Acme Comics in Greensboro and Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find in Charlotte), but we’re hoping these stores make a real event out of it. There are so many comic fans here and so many comic creators here, it’s a shame that no one has been successful at bringing the two together in a meaningful way.

I’ve spent the last couple of years doing signings at Heroes, where they have hundreds of folks coming in all day for signings and sketches by ten, fifteen different artists. This year, I’m giving ATL a try because I’d like to see that sort of thing done here, but it’s on the shoulders of the retailers to properly organize and promote it. I’m optimistic, though, which is why I’m staying home this year.

Jeff Parker

Lava Men!

I’m excited by a NEW GRAPHIC NOVEL from Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover that is coming out from Top Shelf this year, that I don’t think I can name because they haven’t formally announced it yet. But really, those two names and a full length work should be all you need to hear to know I’m right.

What I’m most excited about that I’m involved with comes out in just a few weeks, it’s AVENGERS VS. ATLAS from Marvel, where I think my collaborators Gabriel Hardman, Elizabeth Breitweiser and I have really gelled. Even if you’ve never read an Agents of Atlas story, I bet you’ll enjoy seeing the original lineup of The Avengers back on the scene.

Or you’ll at least want in for the LAVA MEN.

Jeff Parker writes a whole bunch of great comics for Marvel, including all the Agents of Atlas projects and Thunderbolts. He also helped us out last year with our Robot Love posts at Valentine’s, in a post titled I ♥ learning from comics. Tim O’Shea also interviewed him about Underground earlier this year, along with artist Steve Lieber.

Paul Pope

First of all, I am excited about turning in Battling Boy, my next major graphic novel, to be published in 2011 by First Second Books. Battling Boy has been years in the works. I have a lot of faith in this project. There is a bunch of stuff related to the potential film which I would like to discuss–but can’t as of now. Same goes for the book. I have spent most of 2009 engaged in the film and book productions of this story. But the book is coming regardless of whether or not a film is made, and I am putting a lot of love into it. I hope the readers really get into it.

I am proud to say that Wednesday Comics will be collected as a large oversized book in May 2010. My 12-page “Adam Strange” strip– a tribute to heroes of yesterday like Flash Gordon and Cap’n Easy– is featured in this DC Comics special HC edition.

As far as American comics go, I am probably most excited about Sam Hiti’s new project, Death Day. He is a top cartoonist, and his latest project is full of force and menace.

I am really curious to see the Kick Ass film and the Scott Pilgrim film. I wish the creative teams on these films the best of all possible successes.

I am excited to see new work from Dustin Harbin and Kate Beaton. These are two talents I feel deserve as many new readers in 2010 as they can get, both are excellent and both have their best days ahead of them.

Paul Pope is the creator of many great comics, from 100% to THB. He has a blog that we like to link to a lot. I believe Battling Boy was also the most-named project for 2010 by the folks I contacted for this post.

Matt Kindt

Revolver

I’m really looking forward to the new series by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt from Oni called The Sixth Gun. It looks to be a crazy horror/western and I’ve had the unique privilege to see some of Hurtt’s art for the first few issues and it’s some of his best work. I’ve never seen a writer/artist team work as well together as they do together and gives me hope that writers and artists maybe can work to make something greater than the sum of the parts. Here’s a link.

As for a project I’m excited about — I’m looking forward to my first Vertigo graphic novel “Revolver” coming out this summer. Here’s a link for that.

Matt Kindt is the creator of Super Spy and 3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man, which Tim talked to him about earlier this year. We also ran one of his stories from Super Spy: The Lost Dossiers earlier today.

Evan Dorkin

I’m looking forward to IDW’s King Aroo collection, their continuation of the Dick Tracy and Little Orphan Annie series, the long-delayed fourth volume of Walt and Skeezix from Drawn and Quarterly, Melvin Monster vol 2 and Thirteen Going on Eighteen from D&Q’s John Stanley Library, DHC’s new Harvey reprints and their Trump collection, new Yotsuba volumes from Yen Press, new Blackjack volumes from Vertical, anything by Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, a number of recently announced Fantagraphics reprint projects (a Toth collection, the pre-code horror collection, the Jack Cole collection, the Dick Briefer Frankenstein book, etc), as well as Popeye vol 5, Captain Easy vol 1 and Prince Valiant vol 2. Anything DC reprints of Jack Kirby’s that I don’t have. Mostly, work by dead people.

Since you asked about our own projects, I’m anxiously awaiting the Beasts of Burden hardcover collection Dark Horse will be publishing. It will collect all the material Jill Thompson and I have done on the series to date, going back to the first short story from 2003 and finishing up with the recent limited series. Other than that I’ve got some Bart Simpson comics I wrote and drew coming out next year from Bongo, I’m writing two comics for Dark Horse which should be pretty nifty if all goes well, and I’m hoping to get something of mine finished up for SLG to publish next year. Not holding my breath on that, though.

I’m also hoping things will work out so we can manage to attend TCAF next year.

Evan Dorkin shares information on his comics, like Beasts of Burden, and Milk & Cheese, over on his livejournal. He spoke with Tim O’Shea about the former back in July in an interview Tim still raves about.

C. Tyler

Most excited about in the world of comics:

San Diego Con, July 2010. I’ll be there as a guest. Last time I was there: 1988.

Most excited about personal:

Book II of my trilogy. “You’ll Never Know: Collateral Damage” is due out Fall 2010.

Earlier this year Tim O’Shea spoke with C. Tyler about the first book in that trilogy. She may have had the best opening line of the year in one of his interviews.

Dustin Harbin

Elephant Adventures by Dustin Harbin

COMIC-WISE, WHAT ARE YOU MOST EXCITED ABOUT FOR 2010?

Oh man. I have to say, I’m still kinda starstruck over all the stuff that came out in 2009, much of which is still on my to-read pile. As I’m finishing up Tardi’s YOU ARE THERE I’ve got FOOTNOTES FROM GAZA and ALEC: THE YEARS HAVE PANTS piled up on my table. How can you top a year with all this plus ASTERIOS POLYP? Oh wait you asked about 2010–

The very first thing that comes to mind is my fervent hope that the third volume of MOURNING STAR comes out. I’m at the point where I anticipate new Mourning Star volumes with the same sweaty zeal as POPEYE; it’s monstrously exciting to see genre comics being done in a fresh way by a young creator–the idea that something can be well-written and funny and adventurous and dramatic all at the same time is sorta rare in American comics, if you think about it. I’m glad that manga is finally starting to rub off on American creators in a deeper way than just drawing everyone to seem vaguely catlike.

Also: DEATH DAY, by Sam Hiti, currently being serialized on his site in massive chunks will see its first book collection in 2010, which will almost certainly be near the top of a ton of end-of-year lists in a year’s time. So amazing, Sam Hiti is easily the MOST undersung cartoonist working today. OH! And speaking of Sam, his stylistic antecedent Paul Pope is finally releasing BATTLING BOY this year I think, ZOMG. I’ve seen some of these pages, and they’re pretty face-melting. This is like a kids’ book you wouldn’t necessarily want your parents to know you were reading, full of monsters and violence and gods and all the stuff that’s usually bled out of this sort of thing.

In my own world, in 2010 I’ll be starting a long cartoon memoir project called THE DHARBINS, which I’ll be serializing on my site. I’m still working out the somewhat surprisingly complicated plot–surprising mainly because my life isn’t particularly complicated, and it originally happened very much in order–but in the meantime I’ve been trying to flex my cartoon muscles with a bunch of one-off and short-series cartoon exercises, which I’ll be collecting this year in my first color special.

I’m also one of the organizers of the yearly Heroes Convention, which of course I’m professionally very excited for, this year maybe more than ever–besides a ridiculous profusion of guests like Ben Templesmith, Brian Bolland, and Guy Davis, this year Indie Island will be swollen to the gills, including a bunch of first time guests from the webcomics world, including Kate Beaton, Ryan North, and Christopher Hastings. It’s going to be like Tron in Indie Island this year for sure.

In addition to all the cool stuff Dustin mentioned above, he also spoke with our Tim O’Shea this year for Talking Comics with Tim. Twice.

C.B. Cebulski

Personally, I’m excited about the release of How to Break into Comics the Marvel Way in March, which has been a long time coming! I think they’re going to be great comics that offer wonderful insight into how Marvel works and what we’re looking for from up-and-coming comic creators who want to work for us. Plus, it will feature original stories by some of the world’s best and brightest new artists who were the finalists of ChesterQuest, my international talent search.

Overall, with the world getting increasingly smaller thanks to the Internet, I’m looking forward to seeing more and more new writers and artists making their debut in any of the growing number of ways comics are released in this day and age. There are so many new voices just waiting to break out in 2010 and I can’t wait to discover their work!

C.B. Cebulski works for Marvel as a new talent scout and has written a fair share of comics himself, like X-Infernus, Loners and Wonderlost. You can follow him on his blog and on Twitter, where he’s been known to offer advice to aspiring creators.

Faith Erin Hicks

Brain Camp

In 2010, I’m most looking forward to continuing down the rabbit hole that is Naoki Urasawa’s comics. Pluto will be ending in March, I think, and 20th Century Boys will continue on for many more twisty volumes. I find Urasawa’s comics thrilling in a way no other comics are … and by now all my friends are completely sick of me breaking into conversation to talk about how freaking awesome he is. I’m contemplating starting some kind of support group. For some reason he hits my storytelling sweet spot at this moment in time, just like Jeff Smith did with Bone when I was a teenager. I’m thrilled I have many more Urasawa comics to read… blessings upon the Japanese comic making machine that forces him to churn out 1200 pages a year! I feel terrible for the guy’s wrist, but you can never have enough Urasawa. I’m also looking forward to seeing what else Viz Signature publishes, as I’ve very much enjoyed Children of the Sea, Solanin, What a Wonderful World! and Ooku, all published by them.

As for something of my own that I’m looking forward to in 2010, my first graphic novel with First Second Books comes out in the fall. It’s a middle grade horror/comedy/coming of age graphic novel called Brain Camp, written by Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan with me on art duties. I’d never before drawn someone else’s script, which was both challenging and rewarding. I saw my artwork improve a lot over the course of the book, which was encouraging… although I’m still nervous to see what the reaction will be. Like me, nice comic reviewer people, like me!

I’m also planning to finish up drawing my second book for First Second in June, which I both wrote and drew. It’s called Friends With Boys. It’s a semi-but-not-really autobiographical story about a homeschooled girl entering public high school, and her gang of large hairy manly brothers. I’m just finishing up Christmas break with my family, and every year my brothers seem to get larger, hairier and manlier… I think they’re part Sasquatch. Anyway, I’m really thrilled that First Second is publishing this book, and I hope people will like it. Here’s a drawing of the main character, Maggie.

I’m also hoping that SLG Publishing, who published two other graphic novels by me, Zombies Calling and The War at Ellsmere, will be able to publish my long running webcomic Ice… provided I finish the sucker and all the stars align. Fingers crossed that the Small Press Comic Gods will be kind to us in 2010, and we’ll be able to make that happen. Hey comic folk, buy a book by an indie publisher today, they do awesome stuff!

I’m excited for 2010. It seems like over the ’00s we saw an amazing diversity of new comics being published, both online and offline, and I got to read them all and be a part of that. I sound like a total sap, but there’s a richness to the comics world now that I really love… I feel like I can find comics written FOR me, which is amazing. I hadn’t really felt that in the 90s, when I was a kid interested in comics and not sure what to read. I can’t wait to see what the ’10s bring us. GO COMICS! (Imagine me throwing up a couple of pom-poms here.)

Faith Erin Hicks is the creator of Zombies Calling and The War at Ellsmere, both available from SLG, in addition to the new projects she mentions above. She helped us out back in February with a post titled “I ♥ Anticipating Comics.” Follow her on livejournal.

Randy Lander

I’m excited for a lot of comics-related things next year, but the big ones are actually probably the movies. I wasn’t huge into Kick-Ass the comic, but those trailers for the movie are a blast, and I’m especially excited to see Iron Man 2, given how great the first one is and how slick that first trailer looks.

I’m also excited for STAPLE! 2010, the independent media show that I’ve been helping to put together (and co-sponsoring) for several years. This year our guests of honor include Guy Davis, who is one of my top five favorite artists of all time, plus Andy Runton (Owly) and Chris Schweizer (Crogan’s Vengeance) and a huge selection of other creators as well. It’s always a good time, and seems to be getting bigger and better this year, and I can’t wait until it’s March and time for the big show again.

Happy New Year!

Randy Lander is the owner of Rogues Gallery Comics & Games, which you should visit if you’re ever in Round Rock, Texas. He can also recommend some good places to get Tex Mex in the area.

Graeme McMillan

I’ve managed to somehow lose touch with a lot of the weekly comings-and-goings of superhero comics in 2009, but I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t curious about seeing the new “Heroic Age” status quo of the Marvel Universe and post-Blackest Night DC Universe, if only to cynically see how long this latest version of bright, positive, optimistic superhero status quos will last. Being a sucker for DC books, I’m also looking forward to both the conclusion (conclusion-ish?) of the long-running Superman plots from the last couple of years with the “War Of The Supermen” crossover, and Grant Morrison going bat-guano crazy with The Return of Bruce Wayne, but both come with a very quiet, very small print “Oh Please Do Not Suck I Want To Like You So Bad” trailing along behind. Can I say that I’m genuinely excited about Girl Comics without the internet jumping up and down? Never mind my misgivings about the title and the whole “2010, Marvel Remembers Women Exist!” branding; ignore the gender of the creators involved and, man: That’s one of the most talent-filled anthologies around.

What I’m maybe most looking forward to are new books from people whose work I’ve come to love recently: Scott Pilgrim 6, obviously (And the movie, too), but also James Stokoe’s Orc book at Image, and the unseen King City second half by Brandon Graham. Hope Larson’s Mercury has me very excited, as does the rumored possibly maybe new possibility of new Casanova. Is Paul Pope’s Battling Boy coming out this year, as well? If so, then I’ll be first in line for that and then some. I’ve read the first issue of Joe The Barbarian, and it’s got a lot of potential – Morrison’s script is a little rough, but it’s a stunning looking book; Vertigo’s made a quiet comeback over the last couple of years, I think, and between Joe The Barbarian and Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba’s Daytripper, they’re coming out with some great stuff that not enough people are paying attention to.

Really, though, I’m looking forward to things that I don’t know anything about: Something that’ll knock my socks off without me seeing it coming. Come on, 2010. As Pat Benatar once said, hit me with your best shot.

Graeme writes about comics and other things over at io9.com, and recently contributed to our What are you reading? feature. And of course he used to blog with us back when we were at Blog@Newsarama, so he’ll always be family.

Super Spy: The Lost Dossiers

Sean T. Collins worked with the folks at Top Shelf to get this one for us, and I was really stoked to see it when it came in. Matt Kindt‘s ingenious Super Spy came out back in 2007, and in March of this year Top Shelf will release a supplement to that ground-breaking work, titled Super Spy: The Lost Dossiers. It’ll include deleted scenes, standalone stories, 3-D comics (ohhhh!) and much more.

Here’s Top Shelf’s top-secret dossier on the book (actually, it’s the solicitation info, so it’s not TOO classified):

SUPER SPY: THE LOST DOSSIERS by Matt Kindt
– $12.95, 96-Page Full-Color Graphic Novel, Young Adult, ISBN 978-1-60309-043-8
– SHIPPING MARCH 2010!
Couldn’t get enough of the critically-acclaimed and Eisner-nominated SUPER SPY? Curious what all the fuss is about? Have we got a book for you! Creator Matt Kindt has pulled out all the stops to make this an unforgettable supplement to (or first taste of) his 2007 opus. What’s inside? Deleted scenes! Standalone spy stories! Sketchbook pages! 3-D comics! Full annotations! Diagrams of spy gadgets and keys to unlock hidden secret codes! Toys and stories for you to cut out and assemble! It’s like a secret spy activity book for grown-ups! PLUS: illustrations, photos, and commentary from Matt explaining the real-world spy origins of his stories and techniques! Don’t just read this book…. USE it!

Check out a complete, standalone story from the book after the jump!

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)

O’Shea: In a recent post right before SPX, you wrote: “sold out of 3 Story last weekend at Windy City Con but should have a whole new stack of books for SPX”–did you sell out there as well?

Kindt: No — came close — but I had a LOT more books for that show. But I think I sold even more at SPX which was a great show.

O’Shea: I love your penchant for diagrams in the midst of your storytelling, at one point in this book you diagram a bullet as it enters a man’s eye and exits out his neck. What motivated you to make that storytelling choice? Later in the story you utilize architectural plans. Did you do those yourself–and if you did, did it require a great deal of research to get it just right?

Kindt: Someone asked me about the bullet diagram thing and if it was a reference to the JFK “magic bullet” which might be kind of true. In my storytelling I really like to just break down a moment sometimes — and show every second of that key moment. So that was just one kind of way of doing it. Instead of showing him just slump over. Bullets do crazy things and bullets are terrifying to me — it’s such a careless and horrible thing to fire a bullet because they can bounce of and around and pass right through you and you don’t even feel it or paralyze you. So by breaking that all down and showing the path of the bullet, to me it helps focus on this really horrible thing instead of just glazing over it.

With the architecture — I did a little bit of research and then built some blueprints based on a bunch of reference I’d pulled — I had an idea of the shape and size of the thing. I liked the idea of his home being a sort of extended upside-down ship in the middle of this field. I think the blueprints came from this idea I had of wanting to do a scene between them that was really just talking about their sex life but do it in a way that sort of protected the characters’ privacy at the same time.

O’Shea: Can you explain your affinity for the Cold War era, given that it is seemingy the backbone of your story? I place the middle of this story around 1963 (feel free to correct me here) a full 10 years before you were born.

Kindt: Other than World War II, the Cold War was the other great time period for spies — great gadgets, great cars and clothes. And a lot of history happening then. Civil rights, JFK, Vietnam starting. Lots of material and themes there to tap into.

O’Shea: You were very selective of when you stepped away from full color storytelling into small 8-page b&w snippets every 20 pages or so (it seems). How did you decide what parts warranted that unique treatment?

Kindt: Most of that I had built into the story as the threads that tie the action and sections together. I had a LOT of back story and things I wanted to get in to the main narrative and a lot of things that I ended up just pulling out of the book completely. So those sections serve that purpose but I also like the idea of making the book feel a little like a scrapbook or a secret file that you’re picking up and trying to put together the pieces of this story.

O’Shea: In college, Craig’s room-mate is Ray Cool, an African-American student. As far as I can tell, Ray is the only African-American in the story. Is this a subtle (or maybe just subtle to me) effort on your part to emphasize that the two are kindred spirits as outcasts of sorts, given the 1960s and the Civil Rights era?

Kindt: I’d accept that interpretation. That character is actually a sort of amalgamation of a few real people — friends of my parents during the 60s so he can be that be he’s also just very kind of real in my mind.

O’Shea: I love the nuances of pop culture you use in the story. For example, one WWII era letter to Craig’s mom quotes the Andrew Sisters’ Shoo-shoo Baby? How did you come up using that song in particular?

Kindt: I listen to a lot of music — and jazz from that era is just really great. I had another 10 pages or so in the book that I took out that went into Craig’s shoes and a lot of symbolism with these empty shoes and the feelings that his mother got from seeing his shoes and then his wife and daughter. So kind of a silly pun almost by using that song.

O’Shea: Any chance you would consider creating a sequel Secret Files of Giant Man (along the lines of this separate story)?

Kindt: I would love to. Usually with my books there is so much work put into it that I use everything and everything I did ends up in the book. With 3 Story, it was a little different. The ending and the different little moments were really delicately balanced and I had a lot of extra story pages and ideas that I just pulled out of the book so the story beats would be a little more “poetic” and have a unique rhythm to them. So there are whole subplots and other aspects to Craig’s life that I would love to put together somehow.

O’Shea: Speaking of that short story, I loved the rare instance of him underappreciating the size of something in the Louvre, but what was the thinking in choosing that particular art piece?

Kindt: That was my reaction to that piece when I first saw it. Only in reverse. That had always been one of my favorite paintings but I’d only seen reproductions in textbooks, etc. and they were always 2 or 3 inches big. So when my wife and I tracked it down at the Louvre it was literally a shock — that painting is huge in person. Large than life size. Just crazy big. So I thought it would be funny for him when he got there to not be as impressed.

O’Shea: You used 1960s magazine style ads as storytelling elements in a few pages, How did you come to decide to attempt that (it really worked with the one on page 88) experiment?

Kindt: Initially as I was writing it I knew he would have to make money somehow and product endorsements and advertising seemed like a simple easy fit. Then my next thought is that it would be fun to put ads inside the book so when you flip through it, it looks like there are real ads in the book. I did a ton of fake ads (again, didn’t use even half of them) and as I was putting them into the story and writing the fake ad copy it seemed like a waste. If the ad copy is just cheesy 60s ad copy then it’s kind of a waste to read it let alone write it. So I thought I’d slip some more subtle character dialogue and scenes in there so they ads wouldn’t just be filler. They’d be integral.

O’Shea: Of the three women that tells Craig’s story, who do you find that you feel you executed the most effectively in the book?

Kindt: I think the mother and the wife are probably the most fleshed out and real to me — but only because the daughter is still trying to figure it all out. Trying to figure out who her father was and who she is. The narrative trick there I suppose is that her thoughts and dialogue at the end really end up becoming the Giant Man’s. Most effectively then? I don’t know — they all kind of serve their purpose I suppose.

O’Shea: What do you care to tell folks about your other upcoming projects–Revolver (Vertigo); The Tooth, a fun 70s style comic with Cullen Bunn (Oni); and the Super Spy sequel, Super Natural?

Kindt: Those are the next three books I’m working on. Revolver will be out Summer 2010 and The Tooth is going to be starting up on-line first for free (in November) and then packaged in book form in 2010 as well. Super Natural — still writing and re-writing it and whipping it into shape. It sort of sat on the shelf for a year or so as I finished up 3 Story so now I’m getting back into it and trying to make it a worthy follow up to Super Spy. We’ll see!

Super Spy

Matt Kindt shares some sketches on his blog for a new Super Spy project he’s working on. He’s been a busy guy, as he’s also doing a new book with Cullen Bunn and Shawn Lee called The Tooth, he’s about to start drawing a book called Super Natural plus he has the graphic novel Revolver coming out from Vertigo next year. You can also find a Black Widow story by Kindt in Marvel’s Strange Tales anthology.