Spell Checkers Vol. 2: Sons of a Preacher Man

There are a few writers that I always look forward to interviewing, because they always surprise me. Jamie S. Rich is on that list. This week, while we discuss the second volume in Spell Checkers, Sons of A Preacher Man, his Oni Press collaboration with artists Nicolas Hitori De and Joëlle Jones, we also delve into the history of Rich’s cameos in comics (among other topics). In this latest Spell Checkers installment, the ladies of Spell Checkers (Jesse, Cynthia and Kimmie) have to deal with the murder of the student body president, the battle to find a new one and at the center of all the action: two brothers, who are new to the school. We also discuss the plans for the third volume in the series. Once you finish the interview, be sure to learn more about the project via Steve Sunu’s CBR interview with the whole Spell Checkers creative team, plus you can enjoy CBR’s 18-page preview of the book.

Tim O’Shea: How much stronger is the collective creative rapport between the three creators on this second volume?

Jamie S. Rich: Very strong. The first book is always a learning experience, not just in how we work together and what we need from each other, but in this case, it was also seeing how the material meshed, how Joëlle’s work jibed with Nico’s. Since I had a clearer notion of how they complemented one another, this time around I took a different approach to the flashbacks and made them almost their own story, letting Joëlle take the material darker by having it more about the new male characters that show up in this volume rather than just about the girls. I think it actually made the reading experience more cohesive, the two pieces meld in a more natural way.

Joëlle started closer to the end of production, so even though she had less to do, it became a race to see who would finish first, her or Nico. They can be pretty competitive. It was a close call. She kind of won, but nothing is every clear-cut in our universe!

O’Shea: How much of it was a compliment to your writing that Hitori de moved from Paris to Portland to work on this series?

Rich: He visited for the release of volume 1, we debuted the book at Stumptown two years ago, and he fit right in with Portland probably more than I ever did. His tousled hair, those hipster band T-shirts, smoking Lucky Strikes–he’s Portland indie rock all the way. So, the decision was really based on his desire to work within the same atmosphere that the book was written, to see how that would inform the comic as a whole. Also, we are hoping to move a little faster on the third book. The second one took about 18 months from printing volume 1 to printing volume 2, and we’re racing the clock to see if we can be back on shelves even sooner. Nico has already found a new work ethic, and he’s been impressed and surprised by the comics artists who live in Portland. I guess in Europe it’s more common for everyone to knock off in the evening, grab beers, maybe go back to work after. We tend to stay indoors and keep our heads down, and then go out for special events. I know he’s gone to life drawing sessions at Periscope Studios, and the release of Habibi has been a big deal here because Craig Thompson lives in town, so he got here at a good time.

O’Shea: Given that the core idea for this series had its start in a Joëlle Jones bar sketch, are you going to start paying Jones’ bar tab to foster more stories?

Rich: I can’t afford Joëlle’s bar tab. Is there a Costco pub or something? I need to start buying in bulk.

O’Shea: What prompted you to go more in a horror-tinged direction in this second volume?

Rich: When I had first pitched the book, I had a very complete outline for volume 1, and my representation at the time had suggested that I make a plan for the second and third comics to beef up its salability. I literally threw two ideas into an e-mail right off the top of my head, and those are the stories that stuck. The pitch for the second one was, “Twin boys come to school, one good and one bad, and Jesse gets involved with the bad one and Cynthia runs for class president against the good, and we discover they have hidden secrets.” That was all I had to go on.

So, when I sat down and started drawing up the new outline, I had to decide what those secrets were. It had to have something to do with magic, obviously, but what kind of magic? I thought about what was popular in teen-oriented genre fiction right now, stuff like Twilight, and basically made a list of what they were using and crossed those things off my list of what I could use. I considered doing a parody of the teen vampire trend, but I’d have had to dive in whole hog and read the books and stuff, and I just wasn’t interested in torturing myself. Instead, I looked at what was still available to me, and out of the available concept, what I chose–what the boys are really involved in–that dictated how the story flowed.

The opening sequence was the very first thing I wrote, and I loved the idea of starting with some very dark imagery–of a priest digging in a graveyard–and beginning the book with a totally straight face, only to push in and topple everything over within two pages. Right there, I had found my balance. Wicked horror skewered with wicked humor. And again, I used having two artists to my advantage. While Nico gets to draw some gruesome stuff in the final act of the story, Joëlle’s work could be straight out of an actual scary monster comic. In a way, I wanted to provide a larger platform to show the industry what all three of us are capable of, and also expand the idea of what the Spell Checkers series could be about. Anything goes!

O’Shea: As much as the book is horror, it’s also partially parody. How do you strike a balance between the two?

Rich: The plot I think really dictated that. I already had the separation between the two parts of the story, and essentially, they had to converge at one point. So, as benign as the “present” may have begun, it had to escalate to a point to where it and the past intersected, and when they did, the present had to be as gross as the stuff going on in the past, and the jokes had to be that much more outrageous. It was a lot of building up momentum.

The great thing about skewering genre, too, is that there are templates already existing. Parody is taking what is familiar and tweaking it for laughs. So, the whole teen romance thing, the misunderstood bad boy, the battle for class president–these are things we all know and love, and the fact that there are expectations and structures already in place, it makes it a case where having limitations actually is an asset. I have to color within the lines, as it were, but I can color with any shade that fits.

O’Shea: There’s a cameo by a teenage you and others in the book, as noted here . Is that your first book cameo?

Rich: For this series, I think. I might be in the party in volume 1, I don’t remember. But it’s not my first ever in any comic book, not by a long shot. If I remember correctly, my actual first cameo was in an issue of Grendel Tales when Edvin Biukovic made me a soldier. I was an assistant editor on the series and Eddy was late and it was the first time I learned that artists often suck up to their editors by drawing cameos of them. We are vain creatures, we fall for it every time. I still get at least one person at every comic book convention who brings up how much they loved the superdeformed version of me Chynna Clugston-Flores stuck in the margins of Blue Monday. And I am a full member of the supporting cast in Andi Watson’s Love Fights.

The cameo in Spell Checkers was actually called out in the script, I suggested Nico draw us all in there, and then he expanded it to include other friends and colleagues. I like to think of those Easter Eggs for the readers, and also to make it fun for us working on it. I avoided asking for anything similar in the book I am doing with Natalie Nourigat, though, because it would just end up being a bunch of characters from High School Musical.

O’Shea: What were some of the highlights from the recent signing at Bridge City Comics?

Rich: It was really just a nice little party for us and our friends. Ron Chan, Cat Farris, Patric Reynolds, and Emi Lenox all stopped by, as did a bunch of our other pals. Michael Ring runs a great store and has good people working for him, so it was a pleasure just sitting and hanging out. I bought a really hilarious looking stuffed Thor toy for Joëlle’s year-old pug, and then Joëlle made us go see Dream House and we haven’t forgiven her yet.

O’Shea: What are the future plans for Spell Checkers?

Rich: Volume 3 is subtitled Careless Whisper and it is set at prom. I looked at the first three books as basically a school-year-in-the-life. Sons of a Preacher Man begins at the end of the winter break, so that means volume 1 is the fall and volume 3 is then end of the year. I doubt I will be that strict about it in the future, but I thought about these first three in terms of, well, maybe these will be all we get to do, or maybe we’ll run out of steam and all move on, so this initial commitment should be something that feels like a complete narrative. The events at prom end up tying into things that happened in the first book and also in the second, the consequences of what the Spell Checkers have done will come knocking. It’s structured so that over the night, we see what happens to each of them individually, and then all the stories converge for the big finish. I’m pretty excited by it. In the script, I instruct Nico to look at both Tex Avery cartoons and Godzilla movies as reference for the climax!

That said, I don’t see us running out of steam any time soon. I have an idea for a fourth graphic novel and I am itching to write it. I also have an eventual end for the whole series that I think is pretty damn hysterical, but I have no immediate plans to implement it. Nico and I want to really build a Spell Checkers library. Like Asterix but cuter and bitchier.

O’Shea: Finally what else is on the creative horizon for you?

Rich: I guess there is a joke around the Oni office that I own 2012. I have a futuristic romance with Natalie Nourigat that is nearing completion, and a weird crime book with Dan Christensen that will follow shortly after. He and I are already talking about turning that into a recurring series with the same character, too. Spell Checkers vol. 3 is in production, and Joëlle and I are mapping out various things with Oni, including a whole new project that is based on a concept she came up with. That girl is a genius, I tell you.

The most immediate material folks can expect from me, though, is the Madman 20th Anniversary Monster! hardcover coming from Image Comics in December. It’s a huge book, 264 pages, about the size of that Wednesday Comics hardcover. I’m helping Mike Allred put it together. In addition to every pin-up ever done of Mike Allred’s characters by another artist, the Monster! features 20 new one-page strips by a bunch of awesome comics folks, a new story by Mike, and a framing sequence I wrote, Jim Valentino pencilled, and Mike inked. I’m also hatching other plans with the Allred for material to follow that.

I’ve also got some short stories in the works. Christopher Mitten and I are contributing to the second Unite and Take Over anthology by SpazDog comics, a collection of shorts based on Smiths songs. And I just turned in my first story for a particular major publisher and I assume they will announce it soon.

O’Shea: Your reading pile is always fun to sample. What are you reading these days?

Rich: I really dug the Who is Jake Ellis? series from Image, so folks should look for that collection. Tonci Zonjic is awesome. Oni is putting out second volumes of Black Metal and Super Pro K.O., and everyone should buy those.

My friend Megan Levens’ webcomic Somewhere in Between is really getting deep into the story now, and she totally blew my mind this morning with her use of instant message windows as comic book panels, a really innovative approach to modern technology being portrayed in a comic. Look at the October 7th strip to see what I mean.

I’ve also seen Joëlle’s pages for the House of Night series for Dark Horse that starts in November, and they are sensational. People are really going to sit up and take notice. First issue is $1. Preorder now!

Spell Checkers: Son of a Preacher Man

Both writer Jamie S. Rich and artist Joëlle Jones point out that Oni Press has released information on the second volume of their graphic novel series Spell Checkers.

The second volume, which reunites Rich and Jones with artist Nicolas Hitori de, is subtitled “Sons of a Preacher Man” and is due in September. Here’s the solicitation text:

There are two new kids at school. Twin brothers–one straight-laced and buttoned-up, the other a rebel in a leather jacket–and they’ve transferred in with trouble for the Spell Checkers. Jesse finds romance, but for Cynthia, it’s rivalry. She and the good brother compete for student body president, while Kimmie tries to find out who murdered the last one. Dark magic is afoot, as well as dark humor, in the second mystical volume of Oni’s latest hit series.

Spell Checkers T-shirt

Here’s another item you’ll be able to pick up at the Oni Press booth, if you are so inclined … a T-shirt featuring the three stars of Jamie S. Rich, Joelle Jones and Nicolas Hitori De’s Spell Checkers graphic novel. Gotta give points for a Bradbury reference, y’know?

Spell Checkers

Soon after friend of the blog and writer Jamie S. Rich sent me an advance PDF of his latest Oni graphic novel, Spell Checkers (set to be released by Oni this Wednesday), he also offered me the opportunity to interview artist, Nicolas Hitori de. Getting to email interview Hitori de about his collaboration (with Rich and the project’s other artist, Joëlle Jones) was a chance I could not decline. Here’s publisher Oni Press’ official description of the book: “Three teenaged witches use their power for popularity, good grades, and the good life. When nasty graffiti starts showing up about them at their school, they first suspect one another. But when they start losing their powers, and their magical fetishes disappear, they realize this is an attack from outside their circle, and they must join hands (and wits) to defeat the usurper and her demon companion!” After reading the interview, please avail yourself of the 22-page preview from Oni.

Tim O’Shea: Were you a fan of Jamie S. Rich’s work before signing on to draw Spell Checkers?

Nicolas Hitori de: Totally. I discovered him in early 2000 when he was at Oni editing Chynna Clugston’s Blue Monday and their other publications. And I read his first book with Joëlle Jones, 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, and it really moved me because of the beautiful art and great storytelling. You Have Killed Me definitely solidified my status as a fan, and it still seems incredible for me to work with such talented artists.

O’Shea: Your past work has been in France, how much of a challenge was it to collaborate on an American-based project? Were there adjustments you had to make?

Hitori de: They’re many challenges. It was my first comic and English isn’t my native language, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t really have any problems working on it because Jamie’s script is so well written. The communication was also quite easy, thanks to the internet and to Joëlle & Jamie, who were both understanding with my poor English. Maybe the only real bother was the time difference, but that wasn’t really anything.

O’Shea: Creatively, how did you decide the way you approach Cynthia’s eyes (they disappear) in certain scenes?

Hitori de: The gray-toned disappearing eyes is a classic graphic code in manga. It’s usually used to show how mysterious and dangerous characters are. As the typical manga-style is well known for being cute and childish, I find it interesting to use a lot of mainstream anime symbols for these three haughty girls, creating a funny gap between the images and the crude dialogue.

O’Shea: Was it your idea to use gray tones on your pages (while Joëlle Jones flashbacks scenes were in starker black and white)?

Hitori de: I can’t deny my manga influences and I like how some Japanese artists uses gray tones as a narrative tool. Also, I haven’t mastered black and white the way Joëlle has. Jamie and the Oni press team gave me complete freedom on this project and were absolutely open minded to all my ideas. It was a real pleasure to work under such conditions.

O’Shea: You really execute some interesting panel layouts on certain pages, was that something you and Jamie discussed doing or was that totally your idea?

Hitori de: Jamie’s script was actually very clear with panel description but I was free to draw the panel layouts by myself. I think panel arrangement is especially important for the storytelling, it gives the book rhythm and establishes atmosphere. I’m heavily influenced by cinema and I always try to think of the page as a movie storyboard. I also like how dynamic manga pages are, with big twisted panels and characters coming out of them.

O’Shea: Had Joëlle completed the flashback scenes before you started your part of the first book? Did her take on the characters influence how you drew them?

Hitori de: We both started the pages at the same time. Joëlle had done the first quick sketch of the girls and I had to redraw and personalize them with my own style. I just asked her about some references like the magic dolls to maintain a story coherence. As her pages are flashbacks to when the characters are in their younger teens, and even before, their physical appearance and clothes don’t have to be entirely compatible.

O’Shea: The Spell Checkers project is a commitment to three graphic novels, how intimidated were you when taking on such a long-term project?

Hitori de: Three 150-page graphic novel are sure intimidating but, it’s also a exceptional challenge and opportunity. This kind of long-term project allows us to develop characters and stories and to work on this large a number of pages also enables my artwork to improve. I’ve read the second volume script and I can tell you that I sincerely can’t wait to start drawing it. It’s going to be grand.

O’Shea: Looking over your work on this project, are there certain scenes that were your favorite to draw?

Hitori de: I love the whole book but some scenes were funnier to draw. I especially like when Jesse is outside on the bench by the baseball field because I made it a kind of tribute to classic manga scenes where the girl is having romantic thoughts while clouds roll by in the background, except this time, she’s hatching a scheme. The big party double-page was also pretty amusing to draw with all the teenagers partying everywhere.

You Have Killed Me

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

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

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

The other is just the notion that one must approach a thing he or she loves with a healthy respect. It’s hubris tempered with humility. I look at the tradition of great crime stories, and I have to think I can somehow be a part of that tradition, and yet, it wouldn’t suit me to denigrate it. To succeed at that bold bid to join the ranks, we had to rise to meet the quality of the pioneers who led the way. There are plenty of examples of mistagged so-called noir movies, for instance, that don’t do that. Last year there was this film called Dark Streets that was a lot of empty style, operating with just a surface notion of a jazz-age tale. Or you see these things come out, I can think of a couple of recent comic book examples but shouldn’t name any names, that are jokey about it. As a lifelong smartass, I can tell you for a fact that using ironic winks as the building blocks for your story is about the easiest thing you can do. It takes no skill, and it’s easy to get by doing it. It’s also very hard to be memorable, and that kind of material fades. We wanted to make a book that sticks around.

O’Shea: Do you have some dialogue lines just pop in your head and you store them to use down the road, or do lines like “You homicide cops, you have it lucky.” just pop up naturally in the creation of the story?

Rich: It’s a little bit of both. My brain is often working ahead of what is on the page, anticipating what is coming. I know, for instance, there is a line about lollipops that I wrote long before I got to the part in the story where it would fit. It came to me while I was thinking about other things and I had to write it down and file it away. Often, I either have a separate documents of random notes like that, or I might even have pages at the end of the manuscript where notes are laid out in a certain order, and when I reach them, I join those pages into the larger script. In fact, I have a leftover file from You Have Killed Me, the stuff that I never joined up with.

Other times it just comes from being in the scene. I feel a writer has to be willing to let things happen. Sometimes the worst lines are the ones I force, where I plug a hole where I know something snappy will do the trick. In the romance stuff, it actually comes when a character first meets his or her love, and trying to find something to describe that feeling. In Cut My Hair, it was something like how Mason wanted to jump in the air and bounce the moon off his head like a soccer ball. I remember that coming very easy, and some of the lines that came in later books landed with just as much ease, but sometimes it was a tough thing, trying to find something like the moon and the soccer ball, and it ends up like one of those millions of TV shows where the pilot is passed out and a person with no experience has to land the plane. I am the guy in the control tower trying to talk the line into existence, bring the metaphor in for a landing, step by step.

I don’t specifically recall writing Mercer’s line about homicide cops, but I think that’s just one that came with the scene. It’s late in the book, so by then I could really “hear” the voices of all the characters, and the writing had become like a conversation between them and me. Most of Spell Checkers is written that way. Like a good conversation in real life, one statement prompts a logical response.

O’Shea: Of the characters you wrote for this story, can you think of one or two characters who had a role that expanded beyond your original expectations when you first started building the tale?

Rich: The bartender was originally a one scene guy, then it became two, he was the natural person to give Kane a heads up that someone was looking for him and so he stuck around for that. Then he re-emerged again when I needed some kind of transition, and it felt right to have him both advocate a certain humanity on behalf of the crook, but also to ask Mercer to retain some of his own. It serves a very good purpose, I think, in that it shows Mercer making a tough choice. It also fit the emerging themes of family and the ties that bind, and Mercer’s hard reaction to the same.

The doctor is the only other one, even though like most of the side characters, he only gets one scene. That scene became more meaningful than I had anticipated, both for myself and Joëlle, whose reaction to it was what actually made me realize there was something deeper there. She said she took special care in how she designed his look, because for her that scene was rather tender. She viewed Doc as Mercer’s only real friend, he was lonely except for that. He might get along with Tynan, the head police detective, but it’s adversarial and Tynan expects something from it. Doc comes to Mercer to help him because he believes Mercer deserves some compassion.

O’Shea: In terms of the structure, you and Jones utilize chapters for the story. You rarely see that in graphic novels. What motivated this choice?

Rich: Honestly, it’s just the way I think. Just about everything I’ve done, be it prose or comics, has had chapters, including Love the Way You Love, which had the issues of the series but also chapters in each issue. I just think that using a chapter-based structures causes the authors to think more in terms of units and natural breaks in the story. It also gives the reader a moment to pause and adds impact to a scene. Like when a chapter ends with Mercer being knocked unconscious, it’s much nicer to then have a page of nothing after, and we pick up with him when he returns home, having come out of the blackout. It’s another tool we can use.

O’Shea: What is the advantage of writing a period piece–and on the flip side what are the challenges to writing a story in a different era and making sure you don’t slip in modern day elements by accident?

Rich: I suppose the advantage is you don’t have to worry about being current. You don’t have to fear your story becoming outdated really fast. If you think about movies from the 1980s and 1990s that dealt with emergent computer technology and virtual reality and the like, they look hokey now, we can’t imagine how anyone ever thought that tech would take such turns. Whereas at the time, they may have seemed cutting edge.

When it came to slang and things, I had to keep myself in check, had to consider what the characters were saying. I also had to consider certain social issues, some of which I decided to not get into, like Kane being black. I let that just be an unspoken part of the story, as this wasn’t the right place to examine it without derailing what was happening. Given Mercer’s background, though, as a child of immigrants and new money, I could see it being more important later. But even that we only hint at for Mercer in You Have Killed Me. A writer has to pick his battles and know what suits this outing, maybe let the reader fill in more. In some ways, I like the imposed structure of the time period, it makes me think in ways I might not otherwise, keeps me from falling back on my own tricks. One of the more disappointing scenes in Inglourious Basterds was the big preparation for the climax when Tarantino tosses in a David Bowie song, and it completely destroyed the mood he had otherwise created. He had been doing so well, he had gotten out of his box, and then he climbed right back in. Hell, I remember arguing with Chynna Clugston about her soundtrack choices for Blue Monday. She had a specific time frame in mind for the series, but then she’d toss in a Supergrass song that wasn’t even recorded when she was in high school, and we had a disagreement over whether or not she could do that. Granted, years later in Love the Way You Love I would steal the same idea of a sort of specific timeframe, since the book allegedly happens at the same time as Cut My Hair, and I ended up breaking that in much the same way she did. But we were also both dealing with the immediate past, whereas Basterds and You Have Killed Me were both much further back.

O’Shea: I agree with you regarding Inglorious Basterds, but the moment that first derailed the storytelling for me was the scene introducing Hugo Stiglitz–complete with 1970s logo. Did that scene bother you as well?

Rich: Hugo Stiglitz was another sequence that bugged me. I liked the sequence itself, but yes, the logo and the voiceover were too self-indulgent. Maybe if we had stories about all the other Basterds in a similar vein, then it could have worked, but it was like an idea he brings up and then drops. The second voiceover sequence was bad, as well, particularly since all the info had kind of been explained in the dialogue immediately prior.

O’Shea: Not every book you work on warrants an art exhibit of its own. How pleased were you when the Art Institute of Portland and Meltdown Comics both hosted an “Art of Joelle Jones” exhibit–and how did that come together?

Rich: Leslie Waara at the Art Institute was fan and she actually got in touch with me for it because they had an open show month and thought maybe it would be interesting to bring a different kind of art into the space. It was very flattering and really neat to see comic art showcased in that context. The Meltdown show came out of that. They saw the news about the gallery display and asked if they could get the show when it was done. Given that they are, of course, one of the best-known and respected stores in the country, and that the shop is in a primary market like Los Angeles, we jumped at the chance. I’m still sad that the arrangement time didn’t allow for me to go down there and be there for the opening night, but hopefully we’ll get a chance to visit the store some other time.

O’Shea: Speaking of the art, can you select a favorite page? (For me, it’s the page in chapter 6 when Mercer is looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, as he draws a bath for himself–and his image slowly disappears over three panels, while steam fills the room)

Rich: I like that page. In my head, I originally saw the next page as even better. Mercer wipes away the steam and in the reflection, the bathroom is the one that Julie disappeared from, and not his own. It was all kind of complicated, though, and when Joëlle thumbnailed it, she saw it wasn’t going to work and went for the full-page instead. She was right, it was overly ambitious and cluttered. Comics writers sometimes have to remember that just because they can see something in their head, it doesn’t mean it can be effectively communicated in a drawing.

For me it’s probably page 63, though. That’s the page of original art I kept from the book, it was the turning point page for me in the writing, and Joëlle captured it exactly like I imagined–sometimes what I see in my head can be effectively drawn, and sometimes I can even effectively communicate it. It’s the page where Mercer is looking at the race track and amidst the blur of the horses, he sees the woman he is looking for, the missing girl, only to have his gaze diverted when he hears the scream of someone discovering another dead body. It’s both a great looking page and an example of writer and artist being in sync.

O’Shea: I love the quirky elements you insert in a story-for instance how (and/or why) did you come up with your use of almonds for this story?

Rich: There wasn’t a lot of thought given to that, it shows up in the first couple of pages and is part of a sense memory of the woman that Mercer loved and that he is now being hired to find, though here the sister of that woman is wearing her older sibling’s perfume, which was meat to play with his head. I chose almonds because I both liked the smell and it’s also got deadly connotations, a similar scent being a signifier of cyanide. So, for the readers who pick up on that, it’s meant to make them think of the ex-lover as poison. If it didn’t have that connotation for a reader, that was fine, too. I couldn’t have Mercer make a point out of it, it would have been too obvious and maybe too self-aware for him, as well. I tried to approach the narration where he describes the smell as a stream-of-consciousness narration, just as it appears in the book. It’s like a long monologue, really, and each detail flows into the next and there are themes recalled, clues revisited, a parallel to the mystery itself. I largely thought to do that because it would help me avoid the narrative cliche, and I also thought it was something that you could only do in comics. You can’t write that kind of narration in prose, it would be too disjointed in this kind of story. Turns out you can do it in the movies, though. Matt Damon’s narration in The Informant! is quite similar, even coming around to enter reality when the monologue runs out.

O’Shea: Given our shared appreciation for film, would you say certain movies helped inform (not necessarily influence per se) the tale?

Rich: Most definitely. Again, it’s the nature of genre to look back at the foundation of said genre, to discern the tropes, etc. For me, the movies really influenced the rhythm of the writing as well as the visual thinking. I often suggested the light sources and how we might use shadows based on shot compositions from movies like Laura and Out of the Past and movies by Siodmak and Fritz Lang. At the same time, I thought about crime comics like Sin City and The Spirit and It Rhymes with Lust. I thought about Blacksad and Union Station by Parks and Barreto, The Damned by Bunn and Hurtt and Benkei in New York. Milligan’s Human Target is a favorite, particularly for the main character, and of course Sandman Mystery Theatre.

Joëlle was actually the one more schooled in detective fiction, in the prose side of things, and we talked a lot about the expectations of the style. She had specific things she felt were important, such as Mercer getting clocked all the time. Every other chapter or so, someone has to knock him out. That makes him punching that mouthy cop really cathartic. I love how she drew that. POW!

O’Shea: Any chance Jones and you may do another tale with Mercer?

Rich: We’d like to. It’s a matter of timing. I actually wrote a script in the months You Have Killed Me was being prepped and printed. I’ve been sitting on it, only Joëlle has it. It gets into some of those issues of class and race I mention above, gets into Mercer’s past, and it also establishes who may be the regular cast, including return players. But nothing is set in stone yet. If Joëlle reads it and decides she hates it…well, if we do another book and it’s nothing like what I just said, that’s likely what happened. Ideally, I would like to do a series of Mercer books, four or five, but it’s going to be at least a year before Joëlle even has time to consider it, so we’ll really just have to wait and see.

O’Shea: Is it too early to start teasing folks about your upcoming Oni project, Spell Checkers (which has you working with Jones and Nicolas Hitori de)?

Rich: No, the cat’s pretty much out of the bag on that. In fact, I’m actually writing the second volume of it right now. A good writer is always one step ahead of his artists, so I can’t let Nico finish volume 1 without a script for volume 2 waiting for him. We have mapped out three books with Oni, and the first will come out in April, likely debuting at the time of the Chicago Comic Book and Entertainment Expo, which we all have tentative plans to attend, including Nico flying over from France. We’re all really excited about the book. It’s a rude high school comedy with magic, about three teenage witches who quite literally rule their school. They are mean girls with actual power, even if no one actually knows that they are using magic. Kimmie, Cynthia, and Jesse are wild children with abilities that exceed their learned social behavior, who have been able to do whatever they wanted since elementary school, and so they know how to manipulate the system and have a good time. In the first book, however, someone challenges their rule by spreading dirty graffiti about them, and it may be part of a magical curse.

Joëlle is drawing flashbacks that will give us the back story to these girls, while Nico draws the here and now. He’s really talented, and though Joëlle and I came up with the central characters, he’s really a full partner. We didn’t want to go ahead with the book without her drawing it unless we found just the right person, and he is it.

His coming on board has given Joëlle the space to draw the Dr. Horrible one-shot from Dark Horse and do two issues of Madame Xanadu, which I believe are #19 and #20, January and February, so there will be lots of work from her leading up to Spell Checkers. I’m also in the planning stages with Mike Allred for a Madman special next year, featuring a new story by him and three short stories with talent we’re excited by doing their fresh takes on the character. I have already recruited two awesome people. That should be on its way in the summer or thereabouts.