by AHWA
MF: For you, what are the three key elements to a good comic?
CR: Pacing: not just the speed of the story, although you have to step in quick and work the body fast in comics. It’s a brief medium. But also, comics display complicated relationships between time and space. How much time takes place in a one panel page? Four? Nine? The gutters between panels are infinite spans of eons or Planck Scale yoctoseconds. The comics I like manipulate narrative flow from panel to panel, page to page, start to end. Anyone can create a storyboard and call it comics. But I don’t want to see a paper movie. I don’t want to see a failed TV pilot told in the boring four/four time of six panel grids. To create something memorable, you’ll need to engage with the medium and slash time, warp space. Comics are a beat, comics are music and you want to dance, not limp.
Art: I mean, you have to have it obviously. But a good artist’s very style is in service to the story. Would Eldritch Kid been the same if I had a Manga penciller? Good comics are a combination of interests and skills the team brings to bat and if a writer can’t find ways to bring out the best in the artist, you’re not dead but you’re hobbled. Art style is a communication all its own.
The Bass: Lettering and Colouring are sometimes invisible, especially to people new to the form. But if you have bad lettering, garish or weak-sauce colours, inking that’s messing your lines, bad design, all the rest of it, your comic will suffer.
The writer is the singer and the artist plays lead guitar but without the drum, the bass and, hell, the tour manager, you’re going to have a pretty bad band. Those less prominent aspects of comics absolutely make or break a book. The devil is in the details …
MF: Your latest graphic novel The Eldritch Kid: Whiskey and Hate has a lot of elements working together that move the story forward. Unique characters, racism, friendship, an ancient mythology, a changing world, cowboys, and, of course, zombies. There is a lot there. How do you balance all that to produce a meaningful story?
CR: All that stuff, all the monsters and sorcerous Frog-Gods and ghosts with masonry nails for teeth and horrific images of Civil War prisons and rune-forged Colt Peacemakers and blood all over the shop … all that stuff is cool, right? I think so. But at the end of the day, those kinds of big ideas aren’t worth a good goddamn unless you’ve got something to say.
With Eldritch Kid, I wanted to talk about two men, specifically men, who were outside of their society. Deracinated, somewhat apostate, violent, dangerous, outcast men, one of whom is a victim of prejudice and a culture that has no use for him; another who is lionised because of the morally hateful things he has done, then ask questions about how and why such men could become friends.
At the end of the day, if you have a story that’s about something, be it an idea, a theme, a relationship, an argument, you’ll be fine. Everything else is just the cool stuff. Cool stuff is great and all but nothing that was just cool stuff ever stayed with a reader or latched on to the inside of the skull.
MF: The Eldritch Kid is a multi-novel series. What inspired it? Without giving too much away, can you give me a taste of where the series is headed?
CR: Had a dream. I dreamt about the Kid. There it was, a story just ready for the telling. Plus I wanted to write a story about all the great themes you find in a Western. Friendship. Alienation. Violence. The crushing horror of history if you’re on the bad side of it. Loyalty. Guns. Blood. All that stuff. And I’m Australian. America is just movies to me, man. I can approach its history in ways I cannot my own.
What’s next? Bone War will deal with the hilarious history of early American paleontology as well as Satan Dinosaurs. After that we might move into the Ozarks for a bit of hillbilly feuding, then deal with a devilish Rail Baron in Enginescream Angel, and it all comes to a head in Mexico in Silver Smoke Mirror.
MF: You have written for some huge projects, including Star Wars. Being involved in something like that must have been a huge buzz. How does it compare to creating your own projects from scratch?
CR: Look, working for Star Wars had its moments. I mean, it was great to write a bit of dialogue for Darth Vader and poke a bit of fun with cannibal Viet Cong Ewoks. But at the end of the day, I think you’d have to have far more attachment to the Echo Chamber that is Geek Culture than I do to get really excited about that stuff. I’ll admit that it’s pretty fun to know that you contributed to some vast story that has its own uniquely terrifying hold over the cultural imagination. But the corporate structure means you’re dealing with suits who use blood-curdling terms like ‘I.P Management.’ I’m not that comfortable in those environments.
Besides nothing compares to the pride or satisfaction of your own work.
MF: Can you tell me a bit about some of the projects you’ve competed from scratch? Dunwich, in particular, with its use of the Cthulhu mythos, might be of interest to our readers.
CR: Dunwich, which was a long time ago, was the first comic I ever wrote. Hellhammer Douglas Holgate on pencils. It was about a kind of eerie pagan fatale sex-murderer and a mad sorcerer-physicist who try to rework the operation that led to the terrible events of The Dunwich Horror. It was a kind of criticism of the unambitious boring mainstream ‘horror’ of ten years ago, when the dreary show-off likes of Scream were up and running.
It was well-intended and shows potential but Douglas and I were both learning how to put a comic page together and I can’t look at it without wincing my way from panel to overwritten panel. I should have just pinched from Mike Mignola liberally. We’re both happy to be wallowing in super-violent deathless history monsters in Legio Ex Mortis for the moment and indulging ourselves with guts and swordplay.
I must admit that I still have great affection for Rose and Nathaniel, our two cruel protagonists and their reckless madness-for-kicks thrill-seeking lifestyle and their doomed attempt to inoculate themselves to the underbelly of the universe. Vague plans for them to go fungi hunting in Vermont are written but the publisher ceased operations and the rights to them are murky—but more importantly, I think my relationship with Lovecraft, one of the primary literary figures in my life, is different now I’m in my advanced dotage.
MF: What other projects do you have in the pipeline?
CR: Wrote a novel which some agents are looking at, cross fingers. Unmasked, 80 page supervillain noir graphic novel out at Xmas 2012. Karnak, a modern reimagining of Carnacki the Ghost-Finder. Legio Ex Mortis, the walking dead amok in Roman Britain. Writing another novel. More stuff I can’t talk about without looking the goose if it falls apart.
MF: You’ve also written for the gaming industry. Can you tell me about that?
CR: Wrote for The Secret World MMO, for Sacred 3 and currently am working with an indy developer called Silver Nova Software.
Games are fun and Secret World certainly suited my sensibilities, at first, as a writer. Conspiracies and murderous secrets and para-history. But I was very disappointed in some of the senior creative types in the gaming industry. It was all other people’s ideas. It was all stuff they’d seen in the movies. Without getting onto a whole boring discussion about originality and authenticity … why bother working in the creative arts if you’re just pinching? At the end of the day, it’s just as much plagued by suits and marketing goons as any ham-fisted Hollywood satire.
I will say, I very much enjoy the collaboration with people I normally would have nothing to do with. I’m not a computers guy so discussing narrative synergy with mad Russian programmers and professional musicians and fashion designers is certainly fascinating and a rare treat.
MF: Most of the comics put out by the larger publishing houses, even those based in Australia but distributed internationally, seem to be dominated by US or generic locations/settings. Is there scope for Australian writers and artists to produce comics with a uniquely Aussie feel and have their work appeal to publishers that distribute more widely?
CR:
The problem with setting things in Australia is you immediately limit your audience. It shouldn’t but it does. And in a market that’s hostile to new works, limiting your audience seems a bad idea. It’s not a question of Australia being unsuitable for adventure comics. Anyone who read Southern Squadron in the 80s will have fond memories of Werewolves from Erskineville. I have plenty of ideas for Australian stories but I’m just not certain how well they’d sell. So they remain in small press, a place I’m happy to keep a foot in.
The vicious intersection of commercialism and art where only the cruel survive!
But I like writing about America and other ludicrous worlds, anyways, so I never really worry about it.
MF: Who are some of your favourite comic authors, and why?
CR: I just like the guys that everyone likes. Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis are the three guys I return to over and over. Just glancing up at the bookcase, those names appear over and over. Jack Kirby overpowers me. Mignola as a writer/artist. Ann Nocenti is always great. Kate Beaton. Evan Dorkin. On it goes.
MF: Who are some of your favourite comic artists, and what is it about their art that inspires you?
CR: The famous guys are Jack Kirby, the master of action comics. He’s an acquired taste but when you get it, you’ll shiver with how damn good he was. Alex Toth. Broody master of shadow and drama. Leonardo Manco and Guy Davis with their sketchy, cranky, restless lines. J.H. Williams and his stunning formalism. Frank Quietly and his shimmering electricity. Steranko’s pop formulations.
Locally, I like Douglas Holgate, Scott Fraser, Paul Abstruse, Emily Smith, Gary Chaloner and more besides. I’ve been away from the local comic scene for a while and am delighted in discovering the new guys who have turned up in my absence.
MF: What is your favourite comic series and what makes it so special to you?
CR: The terrifying Sophie’s Choice! My go-to pick is The Invisibles. Violent, funny, sexy, trippy, horrific, pessimistic, optimistic, an actual occult tome mixed with glamorous murders and questions about freedom and magic and lies and authority. If you haven’t read it, you’ll love it. Close runners-up are sinister, aristocratic Tomb of Dracula and the masterful Lone Wolf and Cub. Reid Fleming, World’s Toughest Milkman. Herbie the Fat Fury. Preacher. Stop!
MF: If you could work on translating any prose novel into a comic series, what novel would you choose to work on and why would you chose it?
CR: Let’s set the bar high! Gravity’s Rainbow!
Well that’s it. The inaugural Pix and Panels inked and captioned. I guess, if you’re reading this far into the column, it kept you turning the page or scrolling down. Big thanks to Christian Read for taking part. Cheers, mate! You can find out more about Christian’s collaboration with Michael Maier, The Eldritch Kid, at www.eldritchkid.com, and purchase it at gestaltcomics.com/store. And if you haven’t already, head on over to page 65 of this edition and read about the new vampire mythology and the secret history of vampire-human relations in the second installment of Allure of the Ancients: The Key to His Kingdom. Greg Chapman’s images are awesome!
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Mark Farrugia is fascinated by the interaction of words and pictures, and the flexibility it provides storytelling. He is the writer of the Allure of the Ancients comic series published in Midnight Echo.
Jack Ketchum
Interviewed by Mark Farrugia
Over the past three decades, Jack Ketchum has forged a reputation for writing hard-edged and controversial horror. Delving into the darker side of human motivation and behaviour, Jack’s fiction is always confronting. His work isn’t for the squeamish, that’s for sure, and emotion is always at the forefront of his writing. Readers will either love or hate his stories. Some critics have accused him of appealing to the torture-porn market but the graphic content is usually there to emphasise a desperate situation or the complex emotions of characters and is always integral to the story.
Jack Ketchum is a four-time Bram Stoker Award winner and a recipient of the World Horror Convention Grand Master Award. He is perhaps best known for his novels Off Season and The Girl Next Door, both of which have been adapted into films. Jack recently talked with Midnight Echo’s Mark Farrugia.
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Mark Farrugia: Thanks for agreeing to talk to Midnight Echo, Jack. Can you tell me about what you are working on at the moment?
Jack Ketchum: Thanks for inviting me. I’m teaching a month-long writing class at LitReactor, and Lucky McKee and I are working on a filmscript based on our new book together, I’m Not Sam. Just finished a long story with him too. We’re having a lot of fun.
MF: I’ve read that as a child you tended to like activities that didn’t require you to socialise too much. As an adult have you embraced or rejected twenty-first century social media?
JK: I’ve gotten much more social as a grownup than I was as a kid. For one thing, nobody picks on me anymore. Unless you count a handful of critics. I’ve got a webmaster, Kevin Kovelant, who handles my website but I check in on the message board weekly and comment there. I hit MySpace pretty much every day, and my friend Josh Jabcuga translates my entries there onto YouTube, plus I send him stuff directly. I’m all for social media. Hey, they start revolutions and sell books. What’s not to like?
MF: Do you feel writing is your way of communicating with strangers?
JK: Sure. Writing’s a bully pulpit, among other things. But hell, I go to bars, I go to conventions and festivals. I talk to people on the street!
MF: You are probably best known for your novel The Girl Next Door. To me it’s a book of contrasts. The perspective and point of view make the novel very readable, but the content is disturbing. It deals with adult themes, but is told (retrospectively) through the eyes of a child. Was providing these contrasts a conscious decision on your part and your way of dealing with a difficult topic?
JK: Very much so. For me, The Girl Next Door is part memory-play of growing up and first love in the 1950s and 60s, and part a fictional treatment of reportage on a very dicey subject—child abuse. There’s actually a kind of sweetness about the first part which, I think, somehow throws the second into even more stark, hard-to-take relief.
MF: This kind of sweetness you talk about comes from the story being told from a child’s point of view. But it’s not the victim’s point of view that moves the story forward; rather it’s that of an initial perpetrator and later observer of the abuse. Both the victim and abusers are children. What is it about a child’s perspective that makes that story so much more real and disturbing to the reader?
JK: David is never the perpetrator, he’s a watcher. His guilt is by association and the fact that he never does anything to stop what’s going on, much of it instigated by other children. He’s the ‘innocent Nazi’. Ruth’s the kids’ Hitler. We don’t like to think of children being capable of this kind of violence. Or that they sometimes feel so powerless that they can’t stop the violence. When you were a kid, how powerful did you feel? We don’t like being reminded of that either.
MF: The Girl Next Door is based on a true story. How conscious were you of keeping true to real events but at the same time also being respectful to all victims of abuse? How did you reach a balance?
JK: Know a little bit about child abuse first-hand from seeing it when I was a kid straight through into my adult life. Abusers are bullies and I fucking hate bullies. So it was easy to see and write that part of it. As to the victims, as a writer you have to imagine them with all the respect and love you can muster. And then that translates onto the page. I’ve had death-threats over this book. But far more often I’ve had people tell me that they were abused as kids, and that I not only got it right, but that reading the book was a good experience for them, that in some degree it was healing. That’s most gratifying indeed.
MF: How is Jack Ketchum different from Dallas Mayr? Is your pseudo
nym a way of keeping your writing life separate from your personal life?
JK: Ketchum was initially a ploy to get published. Strictly practical. When I left my job as an agent I still had contacts in the publishing world, and about three years into my magazine-writing career I decided to do a novel, Off Season. So I recommended this guy, Jack Ketchum, to Judy-Lyn del Rey at Ballantine Books, masquerading as his potential agent, to get it off the unsolicited shit-file. She bought it quickly and I came clean about the deception. She didn’t mind. But then the book was so violent I thought I’d hide on this one in case it upset my family—use my own name on something gentler. It didn’t upset them at all. But the novel sold so well I figured, keep it, readers out there might be looking for another Ketchum. Stephen King outed me as Dallas in his introduction to The Girl Next Door, but up until then I was still in the phone book under my own name, which was nice. But today it’s still a practical thing. You develop something of a name, it’s wise to keep it. All my friends and most of my readers by now know who I am. But we’re not Jekyll and Hyde, Ketchum and me. We’re writing partners.