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Texan Drew Edwards blended his love of comic books, horror movies, and psychobilly music and created Halloween Man, a hero to freaks everywhere.
Born on October 31st, every important event in Solomon Hitch's life happened on Halloween... Even his death. Reborn as a super-powered zombie and fueled by the power of the horror movie sequel, Solomon now protects the citizens of Solar City, Texas from otherworldly monsters as… Halloween Man!
Joined by his love, super-scientist and fashionable woman-about-town Lucy Chaplin, his randy sidekick Man-Goat, the bookish best friend Nickodemis and streetwise wizard Morlack, they fight a tireless crusade against evil in all its forms.
Halloween Man is a cult hit comic on the web and some of his greatest adventures will soon be collected in book form with the publication of Halloween Man: Superdeformed.
YourMomsBasement talked with some members of the HM creative team, including Nicola "Birds of Prey" Scott, about their involvement with the series.
So, how did you all start working on the Halloween Man comic and in what capacity?
JESSE FARRELL (colorist and letterer): My addictions had dragged me right into the gutter of human existence: the gutter. So starved was I for that elusive high that I was actually melting down and drinking crayons (a trick I'd learned in my youth to blank out the pain of grade school), I discovered a tattered, black and white ashcan edition of Halloween Man floating by me in the brackish streetwater. I lifted it to my reddened eyes; my fingerprints had left colorful impressions on the cheap newsprint. Soon, I found myself coloring pages, which I submitted to Drew Edwards (or rather his team of agents at Halloween Man Industries, LLC). Well, my story might have ended there had those good people not rescued me from oblivion.
Halloween Man saved my life. Halloween Man taught me to read.
RUSSELL HILLMAN (editor): Hi. I'm Russell Hillman, Editor.
I'm pretty sure that all three of us came on around the same time, or at least for the same story - it was late 2003, and Drew was trying to scare up some artists for his Christmas jam story, Faster Santa Claus! Kill! Kill! and had posted the script in the creative forum over at Millarworld. I was reading through the script, and two thoughts sprang to mind. The first one was "This guy is GOOD!", and the second was "Apart from his typing."
(Knowing Drew as I do now, I can tell you that he types about as fast as he speaks - which at times can be very fast indeed - and he comes up with new ideas even faster, so it's no wonder that his scripts are occasionally heavy on the typos.)
I offered Drew my assistance, and he accepted, so I went through the script and smoothed out a couple of the rough edges. Drew liked what I'd done, and asked me to take a look at another couple of scripts, and things snowballed from there.
As for what I do now - well, I often dismiss my contribution as minimal. My standard line is that Drew writes "A man enters the room" and I change it to "A man in a hat enters the room," but there's a lot more to it than that. I act as a sounding board when he's sketching out the plot, I cast a careful eye over the scripts, making suggestions for dialogue and visuals wherever they occur to me - but I don't want to suggest I'm anything approaching a co-writer. This is the house that Drew built, I'm just there to clean the windows (and occasionally suggest repositioning some of the furniture ).
I'm also one of the biggest fans of this book out there - the main reason I do this is so that I can read the stories before anyone else. Oh, and I'm a bigger fan of Man-Goat than anyone on the planet, probably even more than Drew. I can prove this with some kind of science.
NICOLA SCOTT (penciller): Yeah, like Russell said, I think we all entered Halloween Man Land on the same story, the X-mas jam. There were quite a few artists contributing pages, just one or two, and I seem to remember having pages 1 and 4. I was the first to finish, and Drew was happy with what I'd added, so he asked me to draw the epilogue, a last minute addition.
A few weeks later Drew asked if I'd be interested in drawing a three part story, Villain/ Icons/ Hero, and while working on that the opportunity came up to get a short HM story published and I ended up drawing that too. It was that series of events that kinda galvanized us as the core group. Obviously Drew writes faster than I can draw so the are many many stories penciled by other artists but over the years we've managed to build a pretty big body of work together.
You see tons of online comic collaborations that fizzle out after just a little bit of time. What is it about Halloween Man that made you guys want to commit to it? What engenders such loyalty? The characters? The concept? Drew himself?
RUSSELL: For me, it's a combination of all of those things. I knew Drew from the boards before I got involved, but that wouldn't have kept me around if I hadn't liked the characters... and they wouldn't have kept me around if they weren't in good, well-written scripts.
There are times when I'm reading one of those scripts, and I come across a scene or a character or a line of dialogue that almost feels like it was written for me. I stick around because I'm a fan, pure and simple.
JESSE: Drew has compelling personal style; onetime when my work was late he had a couple of "cowpokes" come over and "explain" what the "dead" in "deadline" really means to uppity Yankees like myself.
NICOLA: To start with, for me, it was definitely the characters. I didn't quite get it at the beginning but I knew I loved it. By the time Drew asked me to do the three part story, he and I had been communicating a lot more and were really starting to click. I'd also started chatting and flirting late nights with Jesse and it just seemed that we were all pretty jazzed about what we were working on and where it might go.
It was during that prep time for Villian/Icons/Hero that I went back to all the work previous artists had done and started really trying to define all the characters for myself. I was having so much fun and we were all really starting to gel.
So, let's get into the characters a little bit. Who's your favorite? And which character do you feel you made the greatest contribution to?
JESSE: Who's my favorite character? I've always been partial to Popeye.
RUSSELL: I make absolutely no secret of the fact that my favourite character is Ron Rollins, Man-Goat. When I read through a first draft of a script, I will actually cheer if he says his catch-phrase "The Power of a Man-Sized Goat!" - I honestly am that easily pleased.
Now Ron isn't the most admirable of guys - he'll drink you under the table, fight someone else over the table and then shag the barmaid on the table - but he's a stand-up guy and he's got Solomon's back. While I'm not like him in any way, he appeals to the most basic blokeish part of my brain. The main thing to me is - he's fun. He's Hercules meets Volstagg, with Ben Grimm's sense of humour and Ralph Dibny's sense of shameless self-promotion.
I don't know that I've made a greater contribution to any one character, just little moments here and there. I know that I've helped Drew develop more of a back story for Ron, but that's for a couple of upcoming projects. There's a story where we get to meet another of Ron's relatives (we've briefley met his father, Lord Pan), and something I'm actually writing myself (with much assistance from Drew) - THE SECRET ORIGIN OF MAN-GOAT.
NICOLA: For me, I suppose it should be Lucy but I actually had a slower time getting her right than any of the others.
It's actually Halloween Man himself, Solomon. After reading through some previous stories, and the scripts I was about to start on at the time, I starting to think of Sol as quite sexy, despite his disfigurement and undeadedness. He has a hard as nails facade and a soft gooey center. There was that brooding, swarthy quality that drives girls wild so I just drew him sexy. In fact I think that would be my greatest contribution. He's not Uba, just your everyday, swaggering around kinda sexy. And I gave him a jack 'o lantern baseball shirt!
Let's look at the short story "Necromantic" that you all worked on. While it's got your expected Halloween Man monster bashing, it also explores the relationship between "Solly" and Lucy. And it reads like it might be more personal story to Drew than your regular Halloween Man romp. What was the genesis off this story and your involvement? Why do you think it was important to tell?
NICOLA: Necromantic was one of those stories where there's character development and is quite essential to understanding who Solomon is, so I think Drew wanted his core group on it. It is a very pure and simple telling of Sol and Lucy's history and illustrates why they are such a strong couple. I think it's one of the best things Drew has written.
RUSSELL: To tell you the truth I don't really recall much of the creative process on that one - it may even have been one of those ones that came through to me fully formed, ready for final checks. When I came on board, Drew already had a whole load of scripts in various stages of development that he sent over. He's always quite a bit ahead of the stuff that you see as far as scripts are concerned - I'd say that if every script that I've edited so far was drawn, there would be enough to last at least a year.
As Solomon and Lucy's relationship is a vital part of the story, it was important to show how they met and what adversity they have to go through in their daily lives. It's not easy being an undead monster hunter with half a face, or being the girlfriend of one - for some reason, people seem not to like having Solomon around. He's kinda icky looking, and he tends to show up whenever weird stuff is going on. The fact that it's not usually there because of Solomon, and that he's actually the one that saves people's lives from the weird stuff doesn't seem to matter to them. They want the safe, clean-cut, normal looking superheroes, the Sentinels of Justice. To them, he's just as bad as the monsters he fights.
There are many other stories to be told about Lucy and Solomon's lives before Solomon died - some of which are already written, some have yet to be written, and others that exist only in Drew's head to inform other things. One day you'll find out about Solomon's parents, for instance, and why he came to work for his girlfriend Lucy Chaplin's family. Then there's Lucy's first experiments with super-science, or the various encounters between Lucy and Man-Goat's fathers.
Even if it weren't for the important relationship stuff, I'd love it just for the big panel of Solomon and Lucy fighting the clockwork vomit monkeys. That's super tight.
JESSE: I don't have an actual answer yet, I just have to tell Russell how much I am hating on him for that.
May all your hats be super tight, Russell!
RUSSELL: So they fit well and don't blow away in a strong wind?
Thank you Jesse.
I put super tight in there just to be annoying. Please change it to liquid awesome... unless you really want super tight to stay there...
JESSE: No, no... Keep super tight. It's the new "awesome." All the kids say so. Don't you want to be relevant?
RUSSELL: Rarely if ever.
What have been some of your favorite moments working on Halloween Man and working with each other?
NICOLA: Being so far away keeps me feeling pretty out of the loop and I haven't had the chance to really do much corresponding over the last couple of years. All I can say is that I do giggle to myself quite a bit as I get to draw some pretty outlandish things thanks to Drew's scripts.
RUSSELL: This goes back a couple of years. Wizard World Texas 2005, final day. Drew and I had spent the whole weekend selling comics, and doing fairly well. Then this girl walked by, and I pointed her out to Drew.
"See the bird over there with the tattoos? The psychobilly lookin' girl?"
"In the Munster Koach t-shirt? We have GOT to sell her a book!"
"Yup. She's our audience personified. If we can't sell to her, we're doomed."
So she came by. And she started to look at our wares. Drew complimented her on her t-shirt, and we started to give her the soft sell. What the book was about, the influences, why this comic had pretty much been written for her, and she had to buy a copy.
She wasn't sure. 2 bucks, 2 books? Ennnh.
So we switched up to the harder sell. Filling her in on all the background details. Who Solomon was, who Lucy was, what brought them together and what kept them together. Her boyfriend was getting kinda wound up, and she still wasn't biting.
She walked away.
We carried on selling books and chatting, and every so often, one of us would say to the other:
"Damn, why couldn't we sell to Munster Koach Girl? I can see us struggling to sell to (*points*) that guy or that guy, but she looked like she was BORN to read Halloween Man!"
It REALLY grated on us.
So much so that we decided to take some direct action.
I can no longer remember which one of us was the idiot that came up with the idea, and which was the idiot that agreed, but we scoured that entire convention floor until we found her. Then we approached her, and made our offer.
"Earlier on, we tried to sell you on our books, and you wouldn't go for it. Now, we're so ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that you'll like them, we're not only going to give you them, we're also going to GIVE you 2 dollars to take them off of our hands."
Her boyfriend looked bemused at the transatlantic weirdo squad that had effectively just hunted down his lady. She told us we were nuts, but she still took the books.
And the 2 dollars.
THAT is how far Drew and I have gone to get this comic into people's hands.
JESSE: Russell's answer is now my favorite thing about Halloween Man.
Halloween Man: Superdeformed will be available at your local comics shop in the near future. Meanwhile, check out the new www.HalloweenMan.com.
Posted by YourMomsBasement at 12:00 PM
interview by the YMB Staff
How did you get involved in Zuda and what was the working relationship like? How involved was DC Comics?
Kwanza, my editor, asked me to pitch the story. I found my artist and my own letterer, and submitted the finished project. There was very little editorial guiding or input, which is awesome, in a way, but really - it lets me stand or fall on the merits of our strip.
How do you plan on crushing your competition at Zuda?
I plan on crushing my competition with exceptional art, compressed storytelling, a fun concept, and a few other things.
How different has it been working on an online comic as opposed to a printed one?
When you are writing a standard comic, every right-handed page is supposed to give the read incentive to turn the page. With Zuda, literally every screen has to give the readers an incentive to click further. As a writer you have to adapt your strip to the new reading rhythm of the format. I have 8 screens, or literally, 4 full-sized comic pages to get my readers' attention. How many comics can you name off hand that get a reader's attention, reveal essential plot and character information, and are enjoyable by page 4? It doesn't happen often in the era of decompressed storytelling.
Where did the concept for High Moon come from?
For over a decade I've wanted to do a Civil War tale with werewolves, HIGH MOON was an extension of that thinking. The title and details came to me over three years ago, in a dream, when I was dying. Seriously.
How did you link up with your artist, Steve Ellis?
I had met Steve several times over the course of various conventions and such, but when we started talking at the New York ComicCon about werewolves, the project just developed naturally.
What more can you tell us about the main character, "enigmatic drifter" Matthew Macgregor?
He's not a drifter, so much, but that element is certainly part of his character. He's really more loosely based on Marshall Matt Dillon from Gunsmoke than anything else. As a character, Matt is very stubborn, 'an unchanging man in a changing time' is I believe how I pitched him. His favorite book is 'The Prince,' and some of his other character traits and details can be found over at the High Moon Production Blog.
What else can readers look for from you? Any past work readers can seek out?
I have another project with a mainstream company, that I totally can't talk about yet. If you like what you see in HIGH MOON, drop by my website: DavidGallaher.com for other projects. And if you like what Steve Ellis does with HIGH MOON, you are going to love THE SILENCERS and CRIMSON DYNAMO.
Zudacomics.com and High Moon go live today, October 30th!
Posted by YourMomsBasement at 12:00 PM
the first one -- the previous one -- the next one -- the most recent one
Posted by YourMomsBasement at 12:00 PM
by Ash Aiwase
Is Black Diamond #4 where all hell breaks loose?
Oh, yes. Actually, this one was pretty fun to do as it's what I like about comics as a form: that the words on their own can create a nice little story, and the pictures on their own can tell a tale... but put the two together and it's where comics shine.
Plus, in this one, everyone dies, with two more issues to go.
What's the process between you and Jon Proctor like? Is it collaborative or directive? How much back and forth goes into each issue of Black Diamond?
I just give Jon the script, and he works his magic. I've worked enough art director jobs and production management and paste-up stuff that the last thing I want to do is tell somebody how to be creative. I think in the whole six issues, I've only asked him to tweak two things. The art is all Jon... the way I figure it, he's not telling me how to write, so I'd be a chump if I told him how to draw.
Where did you find Proctor, anyway? I think the only thing I've seen him do was Gun Theory with Daniel Way.
Jon sent me an email with some sample pages, and I really responded to his illustration style. I like guys who don't look like anything else in comics, and ol' Jon sure is unique. Anyway, I sent him back an email that is basically the inside front cover narration and asked if that sounded like something he might like to help me bring into the world. He was pretty enthusiastic about it, and we started up.
From a publishing perspective, have you and Mimi noticed anything different about publishing a monthly or semi-monthly book?
As opposed to doing stand-alones? Sure, I'm a lot busier doing six ads and six covers and writing six solicitation copy slugs and doing all the attendant marketing. But there's also a steady cash-flow that has retailers ordering more of the backlist. So, it's a pain in the ass, but that's what the kids want. Now, sure, anecdotally, there'll be people who wait for the trade, but that's just a delivery option. And it's getting so the audience is about split in two. I'm telling you; there are folks who have picked up BLACK DIAMOND not even knowing who we are, and there are folks who have said to me to stop wasting time and just put the thing out as a trade. Well, from my perspective as a creator and a publisher, doing both allows us to reach both ends of the chain, you know?
The format of each Black Diamond issue - main story, plus text and back-up - was that influenced in any way by the "Fell" or "Slimline" format?
Not at all. If anything, it was influenced by the ASTRONAUTS IN TROUBLE floppies we originally produced, where we had main story, text pieces, and back-up stories; but back in 1999, in those halcyon days of yesteryear, we just called them “comic books.”
Where have you been finding all the guys for those back-ups, anyway?
Just as I find anyone; folks pitch me stuff, I want to work with them. Someone has a good idea for something and lets me know; someone just strikes us as if they know what they’re doing. People helped me get a leg up into comic books, and I like to do the same. Nothing makes me happier when someone who we’ve published makes a career out of it. They know who they have to thank when they put their head down on the pillow, and that’s awesome.
When is The Black Diamond trade coming out, anyway?
It's not on the schedule yet, but it's a good bet I can put one in your hands next summer at San Diego. Tentpole action at its finest, right?
Jon Proctor's cover aesthetic - not unlike Becky Cloonan's approach to the Demo covers - has given Black Diamond a unified look on the stands. Does Diamond's new barcode mandate change the approach that you and Jon are taking to covers?
Naw, all that did is make sure we don't do any more floppies. I think we'll see PREVIEWS getting thinner because of this, though, and more webcomics and POD things appearing.
Really? Why's that?
Well, because it costs so much more money to slap the UPCs on for monthlies. For us, why bother? Just do OGNs, as we already have the infrastructure in place.
Speaking of Demo, it was announced a few weeks ago that the publishing rights to Demo have reverted back to Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan, and the name "Vertigo" has been making it around the rumor mill. Any comment?
Nothing other than of course I wish B&B the very best of luck with it. They know no one other than Mimi and me would have greenlit that one, and they started a nice big avalanche with it. It's awesome.
People forget that the first graphic novel we published that I didn't write was NOBODY, an Oni book. And we did CHANNEL ZERO, an Image book, and SKY APE, a Slave Labor book. JOHNNY DYNAMITE was a Dark Horse book, and SHATTER was done originally by First. We'll have a former DC book out before the summer, if all the Is get dotted and Ts get crossed. These things all slide around for various reasons. Although I'm pretty sure if Karen Berger asked me to do ASTRONAUTS IN TROUBLE as a DC/Vertigo book, even I'd say yes. It's the difference between MLB and Triple A ball.
You mentioned Johnny Dynamite - what's this about a Dick Wolf (Law & Order)-produced television show? There's a pilot being shot, and it's going to be all greenscreen?
Pretty cool, huh?
There's also a Couriers movie in production, right? I remember hearing that things were moving forward during San Diego Comicon, are there any new updates on the status of the movie?
If you read my interview on Ain’t It Cool News:
…you’d see we don’t like talking about this stuff until it’s all in the hopper. I’d hate to be saying this is shooting before the strike and then end up like Eddie Murphy in STAR TREK IV. Sometimes shit just doesn’t happen, and you look silly talking about stuff before it’s a done deal.
It's been five years since True Facts. How do you feel about the way the landscape of self-publishing and promotion has changed with the rise of the webcomic, social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, and DC's new Zudacomics line? Were you to write the same book today, what would be different?
Even though it's our fourth best-selling book, I'm not sure there'd be a need for that kind of thing, today. As you note, all the information and access to a potential audience is out there already and in use by folks in their regular day-to-day. If I were to tackle such a thing, I think instead of telling everyone where the signposts are to get them from on step to the next and encourage 'em along, I'd probably start further along the process and instead of devoting a chapter on how to write press releases and where to send 'em, say, I'd probably start off assuming the reader was hip to that or at least knew how to use google, and spend more attention on stuff like hand-selling and such.
Is it true that Jason Aaron originally pitched The Other Side to AiT/Planet Lar?
I seem to remember our former creative exec Ryan Yount bringing me the paper pitch on Aaron’s Viet Nam tale, but it’s not exactly an AiT book, is it? And, c’mon, this sort of stuff happens all the time, people bringing projects around to likely candidates to see who will bite. I know [artist Cameron Stewart] wasn’t involved at the point we saw it, because I’d have a clearer memory for it…
I haven’t seen the Vertigo version, but I’m sure it’s excellent, with Cameron involved.
So how's Walker? What's parenthood been like for you and Mimi, and do you see it changing the way y'all do business at all?
Man, he’s the coolest. Being a dad really agrees with me. It doesn’t really change our way of doing business so much as making us more efficient, you know? I have to schedule my time a little better now that there’s a little dude counting on my attentions. And it certainly has made my idea of what a Big Deal is change dramatically. Dealing in funny books, there’s a whole lot of prima donnas and people with inflated senses of entitlement and whatnot. Not everyone, mind you; not even most. But there’s a whole lot more than you run into in the granite-cutting trade, say. And, I gotta admit, when I was a younger man, I’d ride a few horses and put ‘em away wet, if you know what I mean, and because you’re from Austin and have drunk a lotta Lone Star, I know that you do.
But, now? I gotta kid, man. Somebody has some crazy-ass demand or pitches a fit about something? No problem. I can deal with whatever you wanna throw, as long as my kid is still breathing, you know? My kid is happy, and healthy, and drawing breath? Everything else is dealable. No worries.
What's next on the AiT roster? What books are coming out after The Black Diamond?
Well, I hate talking about stuff that’s not signed, but we’ve contracted for Tony Lee and Paul Peart-Smith’s next, DODGE AND TWIST, which is OCEAN’S 11-meets-OLIVER TWIST, and the GEARHEAD guys, Dennis Hopeless and Kevin Mellon’s next, CUPID. We’ve got two books by Shannon Denton and one by Omaha Perez in the hopper, I think, although anything can happen as we haven’t signed paper yet, and of course the four books I’m working on. Those aren’t ready to announce, but I think it’s safe to say Josh Boulet, the artist on the BLACK DIAMOND #4 back-up will be drawing one. He’s a hot talent, man, and I’m gonna make him famous.
What's the status on the Astronauts in Trouble movie?
There's always something going on with the astronauts. Who doesn't think embedded reporters on mankind's return to the moon isn't a
going concern? The thing's been optioned three times, and I'm sure it's out there in the consciousness. I sure do get a lot of atta-boys
on that subject. Meetings are being held; the moon is being discussed.
Did I hear you say something about Roger Corman?
I'm not sure I can talk in public about that. Meetings are being held; emails are being exchanged. PROOF OF CONCEPT is being looked at
by interested parties. My MTV STAR TREK special is being screened. Love is all around.
Thanks for your time, Lar. Happy Birthday from all of us at Your Mom's Basement!
Posted by YourMomsBasement at 12:00 PM
the first one -- the previous one -- the next one -- the most recent one
Posted by YourMomsBasement at 12:00 PM
by Mike Collins
1. For people unfamiliar with you can you give us a little background on who you are?
I'm always tempted to make up a fake life when I get this sort of question--it seems the perfect spot to make myself mysterious and interesting. Except then I'd lose track of the web of lies and make a fool of myself, and no one wants that, although it would be entertaining.
I was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, played a lot of stickball (badly) and learned lots of Spanish curses from my neighbors (now largely forgotten). Went to public grammar school and private Jesuit high school, where I lost religion. Then a few listless years at Rutgers University getting a largely useless English degree (but damn I had fun) and then. . .well, like most people, there follows a long period spent at a white-collar job wherein nothing much happened.
I started publishing my own zine, The Inner Swine (www.innerswine.com), in 1995 and I'm closing in on the 50th issue. At its height TIS had a circulation of about 1000 and had national and international distribution, believe it or not. These days we're down to about 200 and almost all our distribution is out of business.
I'm happily married with three cats living in Hoboken, NJ, which means I made it about 5 minutes from the exact spot of my birth. I'm strangely proud of that.
2. The Electric Church is a very different book from your previous novel Lifers. Why did you decide to write a science fiction novel?
Sci Fi came first, actually. When I was a kid I read pretty much any mass market paperback with a Darryl K. Sweet cover Del Rey Books could push into the bookstore, and all my early work (meaning when I was 11-18 years old) was Fantasy or Sci Fi. The original version of The Electric Church was written in 1990 or so.
Then I started reading more broadly and my writing followed; Lifers was written in 1997 and eventually published in 2001. You can now buy a copy for a penny on Amazon. Go ahead! It might be fun.
3. The world of "The Electric Church" is interesting. There aren't any seperate countries. Everything is under one unified System. Can you give us a primer on this world and how it comes to be?
Hmmmn...I could, but I purposefully left that murky in the story. I hate it when stories have their characters lecturing on and on about how the world got to be the way it is--it's like Broadway Musicals: No One Behaves that Way. I mean, the USSR dissolved not so long ago and changed the world I live in, but I do not go around pondering it in any detail, if at all, and it never comes up in casual conversation. So why should my characters spend half the book teaching you what happened in the world?
And I *like* that. It leaves a lot of the pieces up to the reader. There'll be clues, snippets here and there, but it's up to the reader to figure out what happened, or invent what happened. Too much information or explanation works against the story.
But here's the short version: The world unified under a single government, theoretically via treaty and agreement in the sense that no war was fought, but it sparked worldwide resistance--riots, revolts, etc. Almost as soon as it was formed the unified world was on the verge of collapsing, and in desperation The System Security Force was formed, funded, and given a very loose and wide charter. The SSF--the System Cops--brutally restored order and have kept the System of Federated Nations secure ever since.
4. Obviously TEC is set in a dystopian future as others have mentioned. What is the allure of using a broken world as a setting?
I just posted about this on my blog, actually--the thing is, utopias or even balanced worlds are *dull*. Just as happy people are dull. Pain, suffering, rot and brokenness are *interesting*. Your characters have to have something to strive against, and with a broken world there's just endless opportunities to explore dark, rotten areas.
5. The hero of TEC is one Avery Cates. A Gunner, a muderer and an all around bad guy. Except he lives by a code that sometimes seems to get in the way of his chosen profession. He's also pretty funny. What can you say about Avery?
I love Avery. I love beating him up, smacking him into walls, shooting him, and breaking his heart. Avery would be an accountant or a mechanic in a sane, peaceful world, but to survive in his insane, unstable one he's learned the profession of violence, and learned to repress his gag reflex, but he still hates it on some level--and yet enjoys being a bully, on another. I think that's the allure of the character--he feels bad about being a bad man, but he glories in the power being a bad man grants him.
6. One thing I noticed early on is that you mention to certain major events, like the riots, but offer little detail. Why did you decide to go this route?
See my answer above--this was a conscious decision.
7. Did you intend for the book to be sort of a social commentary about the haves and have nots? I found Avery refering to himself as "old" at 27 and meaning it, to be pretty telling. To him someone in their 50's is ancient. Avery talks about the lack of healthcare for the poor throughout the book...
Not a commentary, really, as to have commentary you need a POV and a purpose. The world is envisioned as nightmare version of where the world might be heading--economic collapse on a global scale, with the world split between those who have power and money and the 99% of the world who don't. Of those 99%, a small number can aspire to be cops or elite service workers of some sort, but for the most part people are living grinding lives of desperation.
Avery's age and his obsession with it is one of the ways I introduced clues to the world's condition without going into info-dumps or soliloquies. He's 27, refers to himself as old, and whenever he encounters someone older than about 30 he's shocked and amazed. There're also some small references to children being as much of a threat as adults. The idea is definitely that lifespans have shortened, due to living conditions, starvation, lack of healthcare. But again, it's never stated explicitly.
8. You have created some terrifying villians in the Monks themselves. Particularly one that has a score to settle with Avery, Barnaby Dawson. What can you tell us about the Monks themselves?
They're happy fellows, for the most part, singing songs of fellowship in the streets and dancing a little soft-shoe...
The idea for a Monk stemmed from a bit in Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" wherein an Electric Monk, a labor-saving device that believed things for you, malfunctioned and started believing wild, crazy things. Like almost everything I read, I started to think immediately on how to steal this great idea, and after an evening spent drinking Peach Schnapps I decided that what the Monk needed was more murderous intent, crazy pseudo-religious babbling, and weaponry.
9. You have also created a wildly memorable character in "King Worm" Richard Marin, head of Internal Affairs. Marin shines through as someone not thrilled about the current system he's one of the top dogs in. Where did he come from?
That's a harder question. This was one of those times when your subconscious plays tricks on you. From the get-go Marin was odd, though I didn't decide on his actual nature until the story was close to completion, at which time it became perfectly obvious and, having been filtered through my booze-soaked brain, pure genius.
Marin's sort of the perfect bureaucrat in a way. Always smiling, always a little bit "off" so you can't feel comfortable with him, always holding the power of life and death in his cold, strangely dry hands. He actually may be my favorite character in the whole book, and someday we'll see more of him.
10. At the end of TEC, you note that Avery Cates will return in "The Digital Plague". What can you say about your next book?
The Digital Plague should be out in May/June of next year, actually. Let's just say that if you think Avery Cates gets his butt kicked in TEC, you will be weeping for him in TDP.
There's a background story about the universe Cates exists in, of course--I don't see it as a static world where it'll always be the same, things are shifting. Again, a lot of it is in the background and has to be sussed out, but big things are coming, and a lot of the transition is in this second book.
11. Your book was chosen as one of the launch titles for Orbit in the US. What's that been like?
Well, it's interesting to have so much publishing muscle behind you. My last book was published by the tiniest of tiny publishers and the marketing team was me, my wife, and my Mom. Things went about as well as you can imagine.
Everyone is so excited about Orbit entering the US market--I've literally have people go from Listening Politely to Rabidly Interested in my book just because they hear that Orbit's publishing it. To have that kind of clout behind you is intoxicating, and I've started walking about with a crown and a T-shirt that says KING OF ALL SPEC FIC. Is that wrong?
12. What's reaction to TEC been like so far? After reading it I was happy that someone had pointed it out to me. I think it's the kind of book that fans of writers like Richard Morgan and Jon Courtney Grimwood would enjoy.
Mainly it's been very positive--which is amazing. And the interaction with people who have read it is amazing. This new Internet world we live in is great--there was a time when if you wanted to contact an author you could either send a letter to their publisher and probably get a form letter in response, or you could do your detective work, track down their house, and get arrested. Nowadays you just send an email and BAM! You can actually get into a conversation. Having someone email me that they read my book and loved it--and that person not be my Mom--is absolutely amazing.
When I was a kid and I wanted to contact an author, it was just about impossible. This year, when Scott Turow picked my story "Ringing the Changes" for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories, I was able to glean his email from his web site and send him a thank you note, to which he responded. If that ain't progress, I don't know what is.
13. Aside from your next book what else can people expect from you Jeff?
Well, I have a short story appearing in the upcoming issue of GUD Magazine (www.gudmagazine.com) and a story appearing in the debut issue of the newly revived magazine The Whirligig (www.whirligigzine.com) which will be bowing at World Fantasy Con in November.
I'll also be attending World Fantasy Con, so if you're going, come by and buy me a drink. Or two.
And there's always a new issue of The Inner Swine on the horizon--our motto is "Misinformed Opinion. . .Bad poetry. . .STYLE."
Posted by YourMomsBasement at 12:00 PM
the first one -- the previous one -- the next one -- the most recent one
Posted by YourMomsBasement at 12:00 PM
the first one -- the previous one -- the next one -- the most recent one
Posted by YourMomsBasement at 12:00 PM
by Mike Collins
If there is one think Mike Mignola is good at it's creating an atmosphere of gothic horror. With his new joint effort with novelist Christopher Golden he takes the dial and cranks it to eleven. "Baltimore, or the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire" is a dark book. It starts out with a British Army unit being ambushed in a German forest and only gets darker from there. Ancient vampires, demonic bears wearing human skinsuits and a monster in a lake are only some of the horrors present in Baltimore.
The story opens with Lord Henry Baltimore as he leads his Army unit across a German forest hoping to catch the Hessians unaware. Things go horribly wrong as you would expect and Baltimore and his unit are ambushed. Baltimore himself is shot in the leg and in a ditch of dead bodies. He winks in and out of consciousness seeing what he thinks are kites on the battlefield. He realizes with horror that these kites are actually bats which are now feasting on the dead.
Baltimore, in a panicked frenzy, attacks a bat with his bayonette and unleashes a series of events that spiral the world into darkness. As retribution for the wounds given to him by Baltimore the vampire breathes into Baltimore's wound poisioning him and sending a plauge known as the red death across the world.
From here we meet three people who were a friend to Baltimore through different periods in his life, a sea captain that brought him home from the war, the battlefield doctor who amputated his leg and a childhood friend. They are drawn to a pub in a walled in, fortress like London. The book changes it's narrative pace here in following these three men as each recounts a tale of a paranormal event in their lives. This is probably the only complaint I have about the book. I think it's a dangerous thing to leave your title character for the better part of the novel.
After we learn who these men are and why Baltimore has chosen them to come, we learn what has happened to Lord Baltimore. Told by journal entries, we get one of the big set pieces of the novel. Baltimore, carrying harpoon and by my count at least five or six different guns takes out a vampire horde in a Romanian church. It's like a more gothic version of the oepning scene from the first Blade movie and it is a dandy. Swords, harpoons, axes and all manner of guns are used as Baltimore shows that he himself has become something more than human.
I found the finale to be a bit of a letdown. There is anoter big action set piece but when Baltimore finally catches the vampire he has been pursuing the length of the novel it's anticlimatic to say the least. I do like that Mignola and Golden left themselves room for a sequel. Lord Henry Baltimore is a well thought out and written character. I wish he had more screen time in the book.
Mike Mignola's illustrations that span the length of the book are beautiful. They are stark and expressive. The book itself is wonderfully oversized with rough pages and a cover that is as good as anything Mignola has done in recent memory. Despite my desire for a better ending I would still readily recomend this book to fans of horror fiction or fans of either writer. The book is strongly written and has some very memorable settings and character. It's well worth your time if you are a genre fan to give it a read.
Posted by YourMomsBasement at 12:00 PM
