A little more on MODOK

On Sunday I mentioned a piece I had in the Erie Daily Times about Ryan Dunlavey and his MODOK:Reign Delay one-shot, the print version of the story that had previously run on Marvel.com.

As is so often the case with such articles, I asked Dunlavey a whole bunch of questions, and he gave me a whole bunch of answers, and only a relatively few fit into the allotted space. So I thought I'd post the whole Q-and-A here, particularly since I thought Dunlavey had some interesting things to say about topics that are relevant to your interests (since you're reading this on a comics blog).

My questions are in italics, Dunlavey's answers are in the normal font....


On your website, it says you freelance work in animation, graphic design and illustration…are comics your main, pay-the-bills gig, or do you do a little of everything?

I worked a series of full-time graphic design jobs for many years before going full-time freelance in 2003. I do a little of everything—I usually get 4 or 5 big jobs a year and lots of little illustration jobs on top of that. So far this year my big projects have been two flash animation jobs, this MODOK comic and re-designing a huge website. I like jumping around between different stuff, it keeps me from getting burnt out and having a wide range of skills comes in handy in this rough job market. Comics is the one thing I could do full time though.

Can you tell me a little about how MODOK: Reign Delay came about? Did you pitch the idea to Marvel, or did Marvel ask you to do something with the character? Did your Action Philosophers partner Fred Van Lente play any role?

About a year ago Marvel invited Fred and I to pitch for their original online comics line that they had just started. We didn’t know what format the comics were going to be in, but we figured we’d better do something funny, and MODOK was the obvious choice for a humorous lead. I wrote up a pitch that structured it like a sit-com, Fred revised it so it fit into the current continuity, we sent it in and it got greenlit pretty much immediately. Fred was supposed to co-plot it with me while I handled the script and the art, but then when it finally came up on the schedule Fred simply didn’t have time so I just did the whole shebang myself. I even did the coloring and the lettering—I’m greedy like that.

Can you tell me a little about the plot for the story? MODOK returns to his hometown of Erie and lives with his parents, but is there another reason why he’s in Erie, PA? Like, the proximity to Canada?

In the current Marvel Comics, The Green Goblin, Doctor Doom and some other super villains have been slowly taking over the world behind the scenes. In my story MODOK finds out about it and wants in on the action, but since he’s such a creepy, annoying loser the other bad guys don’t want anything to do with him, so they send him on the fool’s errand of conquering Erie where he can’t screw up any of their big plans.

MODOK’s such an egomaniac he actually believes his home town of Erie is an important piece in the world domination puzzle. I could have easily had it set in any other small US city like Ann Arbor or South Bend or whatever, but Erie is just a weird, funny place and from living there I knew it well enough that I thought I could get a lot of jokes out of it, and I didn’t have to do much research either.

Also, Erie’s proximity to Canada does indeed play into the plot. Even though it’s a comedy it’s still a superhero comic and I couldn’t just do 20 pages of jokes about MODOK’s giant head, at some point he was going to need a hero to fight. In the Marvel Universe heroes tend to gather in really large, metropolitain areas, and the closest big city to Erie is Toronto, which gave me the perfect excuse to use one of my favorite Marvel characters as the “villain”. (Canadian super hero “Box”, aka Maddison Jeffries, an obscure member of the X-Men) Plus the whole superhero trying to cross international borders to fight crime provided for some more gags.

Do you visit Erie very often now? Did your own experiences there, either in the past or more currently, impact the story at all? (This may be the only opportunity I have to seriously ask someone how much of themselves they put into a story about MODOK).

I have some aunts and uncles and a few cousins that still live in Erie but my immediate family doesn’t live there anymore so I don’t visit very often, maybe once every year or two. Erie’s a fine place but when I became an adult I decided it just wasn’t where I wanted to live my life. MODOK, by contrast, is thrilled about being back in Erie, where he gets free rent and his mom makes him pancakes on demand.

Marvel Comics are kind of notorious for being set either in New York City, or in made-up exotic places like Wakanda or Wundagore or Latveria or wherever, which is another neat thing about a MODOK-in-Erie story. Was the small world aspect of the Marvel Universe something you wanted to address through the setting at all?

Nope, I just thought it would be hilarious to get MODOK out of the standard sci-fi underground lairs we usually see him in—the classic fish-out-of-water situation never fails to generate the funny stuff.

This will be kind of an obvious, general question, but what’s the difference for you between writing and drawing your own story versus drawing someone else’s script?

Each has its own challenges. When I draw a story that I’m also writing there’s also a lot less words, because I know what storytelling I’m going to be able to get across with the visuals—the challenge comes from making sure I’m making writing choices that serve the story rather than just doing the easiest thing to draw. When I’m drawing someone else’s script there’s no cutting corners—I’ve got to stick with what I’ve got, and often I have to draw things I would never choose to draw on my own—this happens most often when I’m drawing non-fiction comics that I do with Fred.

You play MODOK for laughs in this story, which has been the default mode for the character for a few years now. Obviously, he’s a pretty goofy character in general, but do you have any thoughts on why MODOK has come to be viewed as such a comedic figure recently, where as other, similarly goofy characters still get played straight a lot of the time?

I have to disagree with you, I think there’s more humor in superhero comics these days then there ever has been, across the board, even with the traditionally serious characters. Spider-Man has always been funny. Batman’s various and sundry villains and teammates are always making fun of him one way or another. Deadpool is Bugs Bunny with guns. Bizarro—who do they think they’re fooling? And you have great series like Incredible Hercules and Guardians of the Galaxy and Secret Six that dole out the funny and serious moments equally.

On the flip side, even the so-called goofy characters have their serious moments—MODOK was played as a deadly, calculating, manipulative evil S.O.B. in Fred’s Super-Villain Team-Up mini and more recently in Hulk. I think that’s one of the cool things about super hero characters and comics—the writer can choose to play things straight or satirical or somewhere in between and it still works. I think because MODOK’s design is so distinctively bizarre that it makes his humorous appearances especially memorable.

When you were originally doing the story, was the thought that it would eventually be something that saw print, or was the initial thought that it would just be for online consumption? Did creating a comic for that particular format/venue affect the way you wrote and drew it, as opposed to the way you might have worked on it if it were going to be a print-only book?

No one knew what the format was going to be once the story got the go ahead—ongoing, mini-comic, one-shot, weekly web comic or whatever—so I just wrote it like a standard 22-page comic with a cliffhanger ending, like a regular first issue of a series. Just before I turned the script in Marvel decided they wanted it to be a self-contained four-part story, five pages per part—so I just edited my original 22 pages down to 17 and wrote a new ending. It made the story a lot tighter, and the jokes are pretty much non-stop throughout, so I’m really happy how it worked out. I don’t know when or why Marvel decided to also do a print edition at a later date, but that was just a nice bonus for me.

Are online comics like this the future of comics, even Marvel Comics, or do you see both electronic and paper comics existing simultaneously as they are now?

Digital is just another format, another way for people to get the comics, just as trade paperbacks were introduced as a new format for reading comic books. Comic books themselves were invented as a new way of reading comic strips, and last time I checked those were still around. The greatest thing about digital comics is that it now puts publishing as a viable option for anyone who’s willing to just put in the time to actually write and draw—the cost barriers of traditional print publishing are virtually eliminated.

But still, there sure is a lot of angst about digital comics isn’t there? Anytime I hear someone bitch about how digital comics suck because they personally don’t like to read comics on a computer screen I just roll my eyes. It’s like saying you don’t like reading in bed, you can only read in a chair—I mean, who cares about your personal reading preferences really? Those kinds of reactions to digital comics really stem from the fear that companies might decide to only do digital comics instead of print altogether, so the reader would be forced to either read their new comics in a format they don’t enjoy or not at all.

There might come a time when you’ll only be able to get new issues of lower-selling series as digital only at first but in a paperback collection at a later date, but I think that's still a ways off, and the total elimination of print is still a long, long, long way off, at least not in our lifetimes. Really, it’s just another method of getting the same stuff—comics. One of the things Fred and I have done with our self-published stuff is to offer it in as many formats as possible—single issues, trade paperbacks, PDF, iphone. We don’t see a lot of cross-over with the audiences for each format—but more formats opens us up to more potential readers. I’d really like to see publishers start releasing digital and print editions simultaneously like how you can now get movies as a DVD or a download or on-demand on the same release day. More formats, more delivery methods equals more readers and that can only help comics.

Can you tell me a little about what you have coming up or in the works? There’s a more-than-complete Action Philosophers collection coming up, I understand…is Comic Book Comics still an ongoing project as well?

Comic Book Comics is still going strong—it’s a six-issue series. My scheduling got screwed up and I fell way behind (our last issue came out in February 2009) but we’re back in October with issue #4. Issue #5 is our All-Lawsuit issue—that comes out in March 2010, and #6 is scheduled for June. The Complete Action Philosophers comes out in November 2009—it’s all nine issues of the original series with the stories re-arranged in chronological order so it’s a complete history of philosophy starting with the Pre-Socratics and going the way through to the 21st century with Jaques Derridah. We’re also doing four new stories that will only be in the big collection—I’m in the middle of drawing the Auguste Comte story right now and it’s a beaut. I’ve got a three-page Diarrhea Dog story in the next issue of Royal Flush in October, I’m doing a page for David Hopkins’ One Night Stand anthology out in December and I’ve got some more work for Marvel in the pipeline. MODOK has gotten me excited about writing comics again so I’m trying desperately to schedule some time to return to Tommy Atomic, my long-neglected web comic.

Van Lente’s writing for Marvel. You did this story for Marvel. Are Action Philosophers fans going to get to see you guys reunite on a Marvel property any time soon? Any chance of a Plato vs. Hercules story?

I’d love to work on a story with Fred. Ultimately it’ll be up to Marvel, but I would say Spider-Man vs Ayn Rand is pretty much inevitable.

Nathan Hale on Rapunzel's Revenge

Having just heard from Rapunzel's Revenge authors Shannon and Dean Hale, let's now turn our attention to Rapunzel's Revenge artist, Nathan Hale.


(Above: The first sketch Nathan Hale did of Rapunzel, after discussing the project with Shannon and Dean Hale. Copyright Nathan Hale, of course; appropriated from here).

Nathan Hale is an artist and illustrator who has two children’s books that he’s both written and illustrated under his belt, The Devil You Know and Yellowbelly and Plum Go to School.

While his resume is full of illustration work and children’s books, this Hale also has an interest in comics, and some experience with creating sequential art. I was really interested in talking to him because, as long-time readers are no doubt aware, I spend a lot of time wondering about the space between children’s books and comics, and what gets defined as what. Hale’s now worked on both, as well as on a children’s book that’s something in between.

While a lot of his discussion of transferring from one medium to the other, and the process of creating the art didn’t fit in the final interview that ran at Newsarama last week, I wanted to share it here. So here’s the transcript of that…



Caleb: I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your relationship with comics in general. Did you grow up reading them, or
did you get turned on to them more recently? How avid a reader are you?

Nathan Hale: You're going to laugh at this, but the first comic I ever purchased was ACME Novelty Library #1 by Chris Ware. That was the issue with the little potato man (wait, no, that's #3, #1 is the first Jimmy Corrigan.) That was in '95, when Chris Ware was just rolling out his first Fantagraphics issues.

I didn't grow up reading comics. I hit prime comic book reading age in 1985, the same year the original Nintendo Entertainment System came out. I took the game route instead of the comics route. As a kid, I never drew superheroes, instead I drew Mega Man, Samus from Metroid, Simon Belmont from Castlevania, all the 8-bit era video game characters. I totally missed the boat on comics.

My girlfriend in high school loved Tank Girl. So I read and reread the paperback collections. A kid I knew had a Batman paperback called Arkham Asylum that had phenomenal painted artwork. I remember a panel where Batman plunges a shard of glass through his hand—totally blew my mind. I wanted to borrow the book, but he wouldn't let me. He brought it to our shared Biology class every day, so I'd just look at it over and over in class, I didn't read it, just stared at the pictures.

In high school I moved away from drawing game characters and moved onto my own drawing style, kind of a blend of Michael Whelan, the book cover illustrator, Storm Thorgerson, the Hipgnosis album cover photographer (the guy who did all the Pink Floyd photo covers, the man on fire on Wish You Were Here et cetera) and maybe a dash of Edward Gorey. But still no comics.

I went to school at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. The first week there, I went to the Bumbershoot Festival by myself. There was a big basement area set up with kiosks for local publishers, and Fantagraphics had a table. The ACMEs caught my eye right away. I bought four, the first four in the series. That night, I was so blown away, I went back and bought multiple copies (to mail home to my girlfriend) and a bunch of other comics. Eightball (this was in the early Ghost World issues) Land of Nod, and the first two (and only) issues of Al Columbia's Biologic Show. I was hooked.

A few blocks from the school was a comix store called Fallout. I went in there two or three times a week. Got into Jason Lutes, Peter Kuper, Charles Burnes (Blackhole #1 came out that year,) Adriane Tomine's Optic Nerve issues for D & Q started in '95, I went crazy for those. I also found out about Little Nemo in Slumberland. I ended up spending all of my income on comics (I was an art student, so it wasn't much.) I started doing short panel comics for the school paper, and paneling my illustrations for assignments. Did a bunch of Chris Ware rip-offs, before Chris Ware rip-offs became a cottage industry.

I moved to Montreal after a few years in Seattle and discovered French comics. Wow. I got really into the Dargaud and Casterman lines; Enki Bilal, Moebius, Sergio Garcia, Francois Bouc, Luc and Francois Schuiten. The drawing was sooo good. So much better than anything I'd seen before. The drawing was gorgeous! And the coloring was gorgeous! But they were way, way too expensive to collect, each hardcover issue running well over $20. I bought used a lot, and I still pick up French hardcovers when I can. I've since read back into Tintin and Asterix, if I had to say what I patterned Rapunzel after, it would beTintin. No whacked out panel bursts. Just clean, simple, story-based layouts.

Amazon keeps me in comics now. I don't have to plan my vacations around hitting underground comix stores anymore. I still collect Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes and the D&Q/Fantagraphics crowd, I'm collecting the Krazy Kat reprints and still tracking down Little Nemo hardcovers, as well as any french imports that look good. I'm also slowly getting into mainstream american comics. Hellboy and Walking Dead—Shannon and Dean got me into Invincible which has a great, super dramatic, but simple line style I really enjoy.
The only manga I've read are Akira and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind which are both so unbelievably amazing that I don't want to read any other manga for fear of being let down.

And that's my complete history with comics.


Caleb: Part of the reason I ask is that Rapunzel's Revenge doesn't at all
read like the work of people new to comics; you've never done any kind of comics work before this, have you?

Nathan: I've done panel-based projects here and there. I worked for a natural history display company in Missouri for several years doing murals and scientific illustration. And while I was there I ended up doing a lot of science comics. "Carbon 14 Dating! How Does It Work?" That kind of thing. My first picture book, The Devil You Know, is actually laid out in panels. But Rapunzel is my first straight-up comic.


Caleb: How did you become involved with the project? Did Shannon and Dean
come to you, or did the publisher pair you guys together?

Nathan: I had just moved to Utah and joined the same online writers group as Shannon. I had one picture book out, and another on the way. Shannon was asking for donations for a Christmas book give away, so I sent her a copy of my book, The Devil You Know. She saw the panel layouts and asked if I had any interest in graphic novels. We got to talking and found out that we shared a publisher (Walker and Bloomsbury were under the same roof.) When she mentioned her Western-themed Rapunzel, I begged her to let me submit sample art to be considered along side the manuscript and they took them both.


Caleb: Was the fact that they were also named "Hale" factor in at all?

Nathan: Nope. Well, maybe the publisher thought it was cute and kept us together.


Caleb: Can you tell us a little bit about moving from children's books to a graphic novel? Children's picture books seem to fall somewhere between prose and comics, in terms of a picture-to-word ratio. Was it a big adjustment to drawing every single action instead of a picture per page or so?

Nathan: I loved having so many pages to deal with in Rapunzel. I've never done a picture book over 32 pages. Storytelling real estate gets really tight in a picture book. You do get a bigger area to work on, and you can focus more on the illustrations in a picture book—really work them over. But I don't mind switching back and forth between picture books and comics. When you get tired of one, the other is a lot of fun.


Caleb: I've only read one of your previous works (Yellowbelly and Plum Go To
School), and that was fully painted, and done in a rather photo-realistic style (well, the children; the monsters still looked like monsters). Can you tell us a bit about the process for creating the art for Rapunzel's Revenge? Did you use pencil and ink? How did you arrive at the more stripped down style?

Nathan: I hope one day I'll get to do a painted graphic novel. But right now, and for Rapunzel, time was a major factor. It's a little funny, when we signed up for Rapunzel, Shannon and Dean had never written a graphic novel, I'd never illustrated a graphic novel, and Bloomsbury had never published a graphic novel. We were babes in the woods. I honestly thought I could bang out the whole book in four months. I really did. It ended up taking closer to sixteen months and absolutely destroyed my ongoing freelance work schedule. Yellowbelly was actually done during Rapunzel. It was a wild time.

Aside from time, again it was the Tintin approach. I knew we were doing something that would be read primarily by first time comic readers. I wanted it to be very clear. Didn't want any illustration showboating or paneling tricks popping the reader out of the story. I've talked to librarians and women in their seventies who say it's the first time they've ever read a comic book—"And it was so easy!" they say. Gateway drug. Creating a gateway drug.

I used pencil and ink—colored it in Photoshop. The stripped down style wasn't too hard to do. I have a lot of styles I use in my portfolio—in fact every project I do tends to have a different style than the last. Drives art directors nuts.


Caleb: How closely did Shannon and Dean work with you on character design? Were they very involved with the details of each character's look, or did you have pretty free reign in terms of what they looked like?

Nathan: When we were putting together the submission packet I did tons of character studies and location sketches. Brute came from a sketch I did for the Sheriff character. We did a lot of work on the main characters. I did several Jacks. He started as a curly haired blonde guy. A lot of the minor characters I just made up as I went.

Caleb: Do you have any characters that you particularly enjoyed drawing, or were there any that were a particular challenge?

Nathan: Brute was probably my favorite outside of Rapunzel herself. Mother Gothel I kind of wish I could go back and redraw. She's a little too obviously evil. When Rapunzel finds out her step-mom is evil it's, er, not really a surprise.


Caleb: I understand you're already working on the sequel. What can you tell us about it at this point?

Nathan: Okay, here's the main thing about the sequel. I drew Rapunzel at 100% finished size. Those panels are 1/1. I didn't know that most comics were drawn at a much larger size than the final print. With Calamity Jack I'm working at 200% which is making an enormous difference in drawing quality. So Jack’s going to look way better than Rapunzel—I'm kicking myself for drawing Rapunzel at such a tiny, hand-cramping size.

The sequel takes place in the city, and I'm having a lot of fun doing all of the cityscape/industrial scenery. It'll have a very different look from Rapunzel's sandstone world.


Caleb: In the future, do you foresee splitting your time between picture books and graphic novels?

Nathan: Yes. The picture book market has been in a huge slump for the last decade, really dragging along. Graphic novels, on the other hand are totally swallowing kid lit whole right now. That said, I've always loved picture books, I'm contracted to do two when Jack's finished (hopefully in December.) And I'm going to watch those two books closely—if they don't do well, I'm going to give picture books a little break. And focus entirely on graphic novels. I've got four graphic novel manuscripts in various stages of completion, ready to launch at publishers as soon as Jack is finished (Again, hopefully in December. Tick tick tick...)

Shannon and Dean Hale on Rapunzel's Revenge

A couple weeks back I read a knock-out graphic novel by a bunch of people all named Hale whose work I was unfamiliar with, Rapunzel's Revenge, which I reviewed here. I've since learned quite a bit about all of these Hales, and their work, and interviewed them for Newsarama.com. You can read the piece here.

Now, all three of the creators—writers Shannon Hale and Dean Hale, and artist Nathan Hale—are actually writers, which makes them the easiest people in the world to interview, especially when they're talking about something they want to talk about, and especially-especially for these sorts of "Q and A"-style interviews.

So I ended up with around 4,000 words total, and, even trimming what little fat was there, that was still a lot of words to have to cut out to fit in a 1,200-word space or so. Since the magic of the Internet gives us infinite space to fill with infinite words, I thought I'd post the transrcipts here on EDILW. If you've already read the Newsarama interview, you might want to just skim this, but here is far greater detail about the process of creating Rapunzel's Revenge. I'll post the transcript from writers Shannon and Dean Hale here, and then post that from artist Nathan Hale later this evening.

While Dean and Shannon Hale's names might sound new to a lot of us in the comics world, Shannon Hale is a pretty well-known name the world of young adult literature. She's written Newbery award winner The Princess Academy (juvenile fiction's version of the Eisner), The Book of a Thousand Days, and the "Books of Bayern" series, which began with The Goose Girl (which I'm told by a youth librarian of my acquaintance is the best book ever). She recently wrote her first book for adults, Austenland and then teamed up with her husband and life-time comics reader Dean on the script for Rapunzel's Revenge, and its already in progresss sequel Calamity Jack.

Here are Shannon and Dean Hale on comics, collaborating, their Marvel and DC pitches and why Rapunzel's a red-head...



Caleb: I was wondering if you guys could tell us a little about your interest in and relationship with comics prior to writing a graphic novel: Did you guys grow up with them, or get turned on to graphic novels later? How avid are you as readers or fans?

Shannon: I grew up unaware of comics except as a boy thing. As a teenager, I stumbled across a friend's brother's collection of X-Men and devoured them, but didn't know how to get anymore. Eventually I became a comics fan by marriage and now read about 3-4 graphic novels or trades a month.

Dean: I'm a longtime addict—I think comics were like 35-cents when I started. I distinctly remember convincing myself the switch to 50 cents was okay because the math involved in figuring out how much three to six books would cost was easier. I mostly buy trades now, though.


Caleb: Shannon, you’ve certainly had quite a bit of success with prose fiction. Why did you decide to do a graphic novel at this point in your career?

Shannon: A few reasons—First, I wanted to collaborate with my husband Dean, who has always been a part of my writing behind the scenes (acting as an in-house editor, brainstorming with me during outlining phases, et cetera). As he's a life long comics fan, doing a book in this medium seemed the obvious choice.

Second, as I traveled around doing book events, I kept meeting those kids who weren't readers. Their sister would eat books for breakfast, but a 300-page tome of words was too intimidating or uninteresting to capture their interest. I longed to have a book I could give those readers, one they could get hooked into quickly, feel their confidence as a reader swell, and go on to keep reading. Graphic novels are so good at that. We've ignored the needs of visual learners too long. It makes me very happy to see more graphic novels for young readers out there.

Third, I get bored easily. I like to challenge myself as a writer to try new genres and storytelling styles. I was intimidated and terrified of writing a graphic novel, and that was the only reason I allowed myself to try.


Caleb: Dean, what’s been your personal experience with writing before? This is the first book you’ve published, isn’t it?

Dean: It is my first book, unless you count the short story I contributed to the Young Adult romance anthology, First Kiss, Then Tell. Seriously. I've always wanted to tell existential horror stories, and that was my first published work. Though...now that I think about it, I may actually have been on track with the existential horror....


Caleb: Can you guys tell us a little about the genesis of the project? Where did the idea for a story about Rapunzel set in an Old West kind of environment come from?

Dean: Really, it started with "hair-as-weapon," I think. That idea may have even briefly predated the identification with Rapunzel specifically.

Shannon: I don't think so. That's funny, the true origin may be lost in the perling gray mists of time...

Dean: So it was Rapunzel first, hair second. I can believe that.

Shannon: I think it started with us wanting to collaborate, combining our passions and strengths—mine, fairy tales, yours, superhero comic books.

Dean: Right. I always wanted to write comics, but never had any excuse to believe anyone would let me.

Shannon: And it turned out, I would let you!

Dean: Woohoo!

Shannon: I'm such an indulgent wife. Really, Dean is so smart and talented, I knew if we collaborated we'd come up with something fun and different. We started to brainstorm fairy tale characters we could turn into comic book superheroes.

Dean: Right. And my instinct, first, was to go dark. Do something about the woodsman in little red riding hood. Something bloody and disturbing.

Shannon: Of course it was. You should go read his blog at dreadcrumbs.com to get a peek into his wonderfully, absurdly morbid little mind. But I'd been writing for young readers and loved the fans and wanted to stay here. There are lots of great comics writers for adults—but I wasn't seeing a lot of great comics for kids.

Dean: And I thought that writing something that was kid-friendly didn't have to be adult-unfriendly. A lot of the comics I read as a kid were that way.

Shannon: True! Really, my goal was the same as it is with my young adult prose novels—write a book that would please me now and please my younger self as well. My internal reader feels 12 half the time anyway. Hmm...we could really go on forever, couldn't we?

Dean: Yes...let's see...um...Old West! Right. I don't think we originally set out to do a western, but it seemed like a fitting place for someone with whip/lasso

Shannon: I love the archetypes of the Old West, the real Hollywood-style storytelling. I didn't want to write a story that could be a prose novel—I wanted to write a story that could only be a graphic novel, otherwise why use this medium? The majestic landscapes, the big-as-life scenarios, the people from all different lands, the journeying, the action, it all feels so visual, so colorful. This was the place I wanted to set our new Rapunzel loose, this was a place worthy of a graphic novel.


Caleb: Shannon, you just sort of addressed this, but I was wondering if there was something that lent this character or this story toward the comics medium versus prose in your mind; could this have been another novel, or did it need to be a comic?

Shannon: I never want to write a comic that could have been a novel (or vice versa). It's so much more fun to see Rapunzel whip those braids and lasso those bad guys than to describe it. And I think the setting deserved to be visual.


Caleb: Also, I was curious if collaborating with another writer is somewhat easier with a graphic novel, where you’re dealing with fewer words, than a prose novel?

Shannon: I've never collaborated with a prose novel. The paucity of words probably makes it easier, just because there's less to have to rewrite. Because I would say it's always more work to collaborate than to work alone. It takes longer, the going back and forth. The payoff is the fun of working with someone you love and how the synchronicity creates a story that wouldn't have been born otherwise.


Caleb: How was it working not only with another writer, but with another writer you happen to be married to? Does knowing each other so well make it very easy to write together, or does it actually present challenges?

Shannon: We're still happily married. That's the true test. I don't think I could collaborate with someone I don't know well. I'd be cautious and anxious about stepping on their toes, afraid to say I didn't like the direction they were going. With my husband, we've already gone through the polite stages and moved on to reckless honesty. That's one reason why I like to be with him more than anyone else in the world.

Dean: Though really this question is more of a Shannon one, I do have to say that if I had tried to do this all by myself, it never would have happened. Not because of Shannon's "connections," but simply because I would never have gotten off my butt to do any work.


Caleb: This was also sort of addressed already, but why the Old West setting? Was it a matter of Rapunzel’s weapon-ized hair suggesting the environment, or did your hometown/home state lend some inspiration?

Shannon: It definitely started with the hair. I think originally I was set on Rapunzel and Dean wasn't so sure. I said, "She'd be in a fairy tale version of the Old West—a vigilante hero!" And that's what swayed him to my side. I think living in the west definitely helped. We know the landscape, the sagebrush and tumbleweeds, the spectacular red rock country of southern Utah. It was home turf for us and for the artist, and so easy to channel.

Dean: It's odd—I've never really been a western fan, in comics or otherwise, but it certainly felt right for this story. I think we wanted to do that Stranger-Comes-Into-Town-And-Helps-The-Oppressed thing from the beginning, and westerns seem to do that best. Which is to say, Shannon didn't go for my after-the-bomb Rapunzel as The Road Warrior pitch.


Caleb: How involved were you guys in the visual look of the characters and the character design? Did you guys give Nathan very specific details on each character, or just broad strokes?

Shannon: We gave broad strokes, I think. Nate's a true team player, and we talked often, but the visuals were all up to him. We only interfered or requested changes in the pencilling stage if the direction he was going seemed to compromise the story, which was rare. Nate caught our vision of the story from the beginning and amped it up, making it better.

Dean: I remember we had a pretty specific idea about the kind of world this was taking place in, even through we don't really see much of it beyond the western area the story takes place in. It was important to us that the landscape of characters not be overly homogenous.


Caleb: This Rapunzel’s a redhead. I never much gave thought to Rapunzel’s hair color until I saw this comic, and realized that every cartoon or coloring book I’ve seen with her before had a blonde Rapunzel. Given how important hair is to the historical character and your version of her, was the color of the hair important too?

Shannon: Well, I'm a redhead... I always feel a little sheepish about having redheaded characters, so I called her "strawberry blonde" just to give her a little more spice than the traditional blonde Rapunzel. But then talking with Nate, we all realized, why hold back? Why not go deep red? With that much hair in all those panels, the red was so beautiful.


Caleb: How did you guys choose Nathan Hale as the artist? I understand you started by compiling a list of comics artists you really liked, and trying to find someone with similar qualities. Who are some of those artists?…And did Nathan Hale being named “Hale” as well factor in?

Shannon: We intended to write up a list of artists to propose to our editor, because the selection was her call. But once Nate sent us some sample drawings, we didn't want anyone else. And neither did our editor. He was dead-on from go.


Caleb:I noticed on your website that you guys had originally thought about doing a graphic novel with either DC or Marvel, and had even selected a young DC heroine to work up and submit a proposal for. I don’t suppose you’d let us know which character if we asked? Is it someone your average person on the street might recognize, or a more obscure character?

Shannon: When we first wanted to collaborate, traditional childrens book publishers weren't doing graphic novels, so we looked to Marvel or DC. This was where Dean's massive knowledge of comics came in handy. Tell it, baby.

Dean: First I wanted to reboot Power Pack, making that horsey guy that gives them their powers turn out to be a skrull. And then, yes, they were going to turn out to be skrulls. Or half-skrull. It never went that far. It all seemed too complicated in terms of continuity (as we can see now in Secret Invasion), so we went with Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld. It seemed more clearly to piggy-back on Shannon's rep with girly stuff, anyway. I had most of the original 12 issues from the 80s in my boxes, so we re-read them, wrote a pitch for a new six issue series and a script for the first. We had an artist we knew sketch the first couple pages, and then sent it all into Oblivion at 1700 Broadway. Needless to say, nothing came of it.


Caleb: What can you tell us about the sequel you’ve mentioned, Calamity Jack? Is this the same Jack? Will it pick up where Rapunzel’s Revenge left off, or deal with his colorful-sounding background as glimpsed in this book?

Shannon: Yes, he is the same Jack. The story is split into four parts: Part 1 tells Jack's story from childhood to when he left the big city to go Out West. Part 2 starts after the end of Rapunzel and tells...well, I hate to spoil it. But it's an urban story, and more caper than Western. And it just might be bigger, badder, and more fun than Rapunzel. We've seen a few scans of Nate's art and it's AMAZING. I'm so excited about it.


Caleb: Shannon, I take it the fact that you’re doing another one means you enjoyed doing a graphic novel. In the future, where do you see your writing going? Are you going to split your time between prose and comics? Do you plan to do more books for an adult audience, like Austenland, or focus on young adult readers?

Shannon: I loved writing these graphic novels and would definitely do another, if we thought of the right story. I don't want to force it. And I don't think I want to do it alone. I have a lot of respect for this medium and I don't feel well read enough to jump in solo. Dean keeps me honest. Right now I'm writing a young adult fantasy (the fourth in my Bayern series) and another book for adults ala Austenland. Next up is a science fiction trilogy. There's that whole easily-bored thing I battle...

The Apocryphal Superman: Humorist Mark Russell's look at a hero who's less super and more man

Superman is the first and most well-known superhero. Everyone knows all about him, how his parents sent him to earth in a rocket ship to escape the destruction of Krypton, and how he’s dedicated to fighting for truth, justice and the American way.

And how much Superman enjoys bowling. That his worst enemies include Lex Luthor, Dr. Simius, robot criminals, leopards and circuit judges. That his best friend is Aquaman, but that they’re currently not speaking to one another over a disagreement regarding democracy versus monarchy. And, of course, that Superman once turned a yellow Labrador retriever named Ketcham into Superdog using Kryptonian science, but he had to put him down when he proved to be a greater menace than the crimes they fought.

Sound about right? If not, you obviously haven’t read Mark Russell’s The Superman Stories, a self-published, 48-page prose parody about Superman. It’s a comedy, but an existential one—Russell purposely, even gleefully gets most of the details of Superman’s fictional life wrong, from the name of his best friend back in Smallville to Superman’s growing problems with loneliness, alienation and anger management.

It’s a comedy and a parody, but it’s also a story of existential panic and, by tale’s end, a story with an important lesson about human nature. And Kryptonian nature. And Kryptonian/canine hybrid nature.

Or, as Russell puts it, it’s a novella “kind of about Superman suffering from stressed cop syndrome.”

Russell calls Portland, Oregon home, and, when not working at his day job, is a cartoonist and humorist, who self-publishes The Penny Dreadful. His work has also appeared in McSweeney’s and Too Much Coffee Man Magazine, but in the wake of the release of the new Superman story that is Superman Returns, I wanted to know more about his super-work.

Can you tell me a little bit about the origin of The Superman Stories, and why you chose to explore Superman like this as opposed to some other superhero. Is this sort of look at Superman’s life inherently funnier than it would be if you were dealing with, say, Batman or Spider-Man?

Other superheroes may or may not be funnier source material, I don’t know. The reason why I’ve latched onto Superman is because he is so powerful and iconic.

I got the idea to actually to start writing The Superman Stories after watching an episode of the old George Reeves TV show. It was about these mobsters who got the bizarre idea to dress up like robots in order to rob banks.

I immediately thought, “Bad idea. If Superman thinks you’re a robot, he’s liable to tear your head off without realizing it’s just a costume.”

It occurred to me that while Superman has all these godlike physical powers, his power to make good decisions or understand what’s going on around him really isn’t any better than yours or mine. Which is a scary proposition, if you ask me. This disparity kind of lies at the heart of a lot of the problems Superman encounters in the book.

The note at the beginning refers to “the good-natured people at DC Comics.” Have you ever had any interaction with anyone at over the existence of The Superman Stories?

I have not. In fact, I put that bit of appeasement in there in hopes of avoiding such contact. Kind of like how someone who comes face to face with a man-eating kodiak might pet it nervously on the head and say, “Nice bear!”

Do you think the fact that these are prose stories in a little black and white ‘zine instead of comics-comics helps differentiate them from their Superman?

I think so. I’m approaching Superman as a literary character rather than as a comic book character. And legally speaking, I think my work constitutes parody and thus is protected free speech, but I’d hate to have that opinion tested in the expensive battlefield of jurisprudence. It’s never really been a big ambition of mine to become a First Amendment martyr.

What about fans of Superman’s? Have you had any negative reactions from that quarter?

I get a few people who are irritated by the liberties I’ve taken with the Superman canon. You know, someone who wants to argue about whether or not Superman keeps extra capes around the house, things like that. But most people seem to understand that mine is not a traditional depiction of Superman.

It occurred to me when reading that note that if Superman were a real person, one wouldn’t have to be so careful about potential legal repercussions—it seems much easier to parody real public figures than fake public figures, even though someone like Superman or Mickey Mouse are much more popular and well-recognized than someone like the president or the pope.

Well, for one thing, Superman is somebody’s intellectual property whereas somebody like, say, Abraham Lincoln is not. You can write a book accusing Lincoln of being a serial killer who made time machines out of the buttocks of his victims. Nobody’s going to sue you. But also in terms of the public’s imagination, I think it’s easier to make a sacred icon out of something that’s obviously fake.

Would you be able to pick Krishna out of a lineup if not for the fact that he’s blue? Christ spent most of his time talking, and said some wonderful things, but would anyone care if it weren’t for his magic tricks? The less real a figure seems, the easier it is to make an enduring icon out of them. And once such an icon has been established, you mess with it at your own peril. Write that book about Lincoln and write a similar one about Mickey Mouse and see which one gets you the most angry letters.

As you noted in your introduction, there are some pretty big differences between this Superman and traditional Superman lore, like there not being any Clark Kent, for example. Were these differences all more or less conscious ones on your part, or did some just stem from ignorance of the minutiae of Superman history?

I did embarrassingly little research. I worked largely from my memories of Superfriends cartoons, old comic books and the black and white TV show. Most of the differences between the Superman of my book and traditional Superman lore result from the fact that I’d simply forgotten so much. And this was partly intentional. I didn’t want to do much research because I wanted to avoid being too tied down by the holy scripture, if you know what I mean.

One difference which was entirely intentional was the lack of a Clark Kent alter ego, which never made much sense to me. Britney Spears could put on a beekeepers’ outfit and she’d still get mobbed by fans the second she stepped out the door. The notion that a world famous and damn near omnipotent guy like Superman could put on a pair of glasses and a bad gray suit and simply melt into the crowd just struck me as ridiculous.

I’m currently at work on a sequel and there’s a part about how Superman once tried to forge a separate identity in the form of Clark Kent, but it was a miserable failure. Kind of like when Garth Brooks tried to perform under the name Chris Gaines. Nobody bought it.

It seems these differences only add to the humor of things too—like, it’s just inherently funnier to hear a couple having a discussion about their relationship, and Lois referring to her partner as “Superman” instead of “Clark.”

Yeah, that too. There’s also a brief moment in the sequel where his parents tell him that calling him Superman makes them feel weird.

I was struck by how deep things get in The Superman Stories, like Superman’s lecture from a circuit judge about the nature of evil and the bits with God and Heaven and Hell near the end. When you began the project, did you see it as something that would occasionally get existential, or did it start out as a sort of a gag thing and veered that way on its own?

As a boy, I grew up on Superman comics and the Bible. It was easy to get them mixed up. Just as God always seemed like a superhero to me, Superman has always had these deep theological and moral implications.

Does being all-powerful make you worthy of veneration, even if you do some crummy things? If you have absolute power, is it better to use that power to make things right, or to refrain for fear of becoming a tyrant? I’m not sure that I have a snappy answer, but those are the kind of questions I wrestle with when I think about Superman, God, politics or the law.

You wrote in your introduction that as a kid being punished at recess, you’d wish Superman was there to secure justice for you. Having thought about what Superman would really be like if he were real, do you now find yourself glad there is no Superman? Would we be better off with or without Superman, do you think?

I think we’re probably better off without Superman. He’s certainly better off without us. As much as he might like us at the moment, eventually he would get sick and tired of human beings. I feel that way sometimes and I am one.

Superman would go through periods of depression, despair and cynicism, as we all do. And during those times we’d just have to hold our breath and hope he didn’t do anything rash.

Of course, if I found out that there was a comet hurtling towards Earth from which only Superman could save us I might very well change that answer.

You mentioned that you’re working on a sequel? Can you tell me anything about that?

Superman’s relationship with Lois Lane undergoes some changes. Lex Luthor starts working out in order to compensate for his lack of hair. The supernatural storyline continues. God, who sees Superman sort of as the popular, good-looking, varsity-quarterback son he never had, asks Superman to take Jesus under his wing in hopes that Superman’s manliness and derring-do will rub off on him a little.

To get a copy of The Superman Stories, you can send $4 to Mark Russell at 3148 SE Salmon Ste #C, Portland, OR, 97214, or click to powellsbooks.com