Carpe Noctem Interviews, Vol 3

by Carnell, Thom

  It was, so I did it in steps. The first person I brought on other than myself to write Chaos! comics was Philip Nutman. He did a four issue mini-series called Suspira and that let me kind of go through that withdrawal process of giving something away. But, to this day, I edit every single one of those comics. I give the guys on occasion my ideas of where it’s headed, the big master plot. I work with them on the outline. I work with them on the plot, the dialogue, the whole deal. So, I feel very involved. I also have a lot of confidence that these are the guys who deliver the goods. I mean, look at it statistically. Quinn, Nutman, Fisher, myself...some of the most dangerous guys in comics. I’m like the commercial guy, but I have the most dangerous people conceptually in comics. They’re a great group. We all understand the dark heart, you know?

  I was so happy when I saw David was brought on, I thought that it was a smart move. When I saw you bringing Hart on... I mean, Hart has an obvious talent, but he is a very dangerous man.

  It’s big balls. We’re a commercial company. We’re real popular. We have big market share and here we are, we bring on Hart Fisher, the most dangerous man in comics. But, here’s the game, he is a talented motherfucker. The Dead King is a real well written, exquisite guy. It’s like “working with an editor,” this guy is just great.

  I agree and I thought the move showed such balls, and yet such vision, that I wholeheartedly applauded it.

  I appreciate that.

  Tell me a little about your Countdown to the Millennium.

  Well, pretty honestly, I didn’t know this until about three years into it, but the first five pages of the first Evil Ernie comic set up, in part, the resolution of what’s going to occur. There’s two ideas we’ve always pursued. One is dark entertainment, horrific, supernatural, magical. The other thing is that we’ve always played with is the notion of the apocalypse. What cooler marketing opportunity is there than the millennium that’s coming and for us to really be able to get our rocks off? Probably more than dark entertainment, I just love end of the world scenarios. We’ve meshed the two. What we’ve done creatively is unprecedented in its scope because we know how it “ends.” So, it's something we’ve been building toward. We’ve warned people about this thing and it’s starting to go into high gear and we understand the outcome of every single solitary character, at least beyond “the end.” There’s a couple of things I can promise. You have these comic books [where there’s a] Crisis on Infinite Earth and the next day everything is OK. Then, it’s Final Nights and then everything is OK. The Secret Wars and then everything is OK. Let me assure you of a couple of things. It ain’t gonna be OK. We will mess with the status quo. We love our readers and I guarantee you we will be pulling the heart strings because characters people know and love, some are going to die. Here we are, we have a multi-million dollar comic book company and we are actually going to really fuck with the status quo. The idea will be that nothing is certain. The name of the company is Chaos! Be prepared. People you know and love, I’m not saying who, but terrible things could occur.

  So, you have a plan to the end, but you also have a direction for the survivors past that.

  Well, there will be a concept beyond 2000 called Revelations. What that looks like and what that means, I’m not going to shed too much light on. The game is, I guess we could be status quo. Everyday Lady Death could be in Hell kicking someone’s ass. The idea is to take these characters places. It’s sort of the bone I have to pick with some other popular comics is that it’s the same thing seventy-five issues later. We didn’t promise people status quo. We’re going to keep moving it.

  I’ll be a geek for a second... It’s like in Star Trek, once Spock dies and you bring him back from the dead, there’s no drama.

  That’s accurate.

  I’m compelled to ask this, and if you can’t talk about it, I understand. What can you tell me about the lawsuit filed by Nancy Collins?

  What happened with Nancy Collins ultimately is that Nancy sued us and, because of things that occurred on her end, we countersued her and filed a motion for early dismissal. At that point, she essentially decided to drop the case. No money was exchanged and that’s the status.

  Now, her contention was that your character resembled hers?

  Specifically, she had contentions around story and visualization, that the characters were similar. Hand to god, hand to any all mighty spirit, I never read her book. When the case started coming about, the material I was made aware of, I thought it was a bit of a stretch. I thought the whole thing was kinda kooky.

  So much of what you guys do seems ingrained in a hard, heavy music background. You can almost, as you read a Chaos! book, hear the music in the background. I’m curious to get your thoughts on the relationship between that kind of music and horror.

  You know, it’s interesting. It wasn’t even conscious. For me, once again, music’s right along with everything else. As Evil Ernie was being created, god knows [what was being played]. We started diversifying the palette recently. We have other comics that have other tempos and feelings. Chastity and Purgatori, clearly, are different feeling books. Yes, music is ingrained. Whatever music it is, in the first five years that people come to know us, it’s usually hard rock, anything that’s really driving, hyper-kinetic. I just say that’s an accurate assumption and now you start to see more diversification. If we were piano players we were playing a certain amount of keys and now, as we look towards the future, towards our next five years, we’ll keep a lot of what we do dark, but we’re going to play a lot more keys.

  For a while you were involved with Vlad Lucinda and Doomsday. Is that another direction you want to go in? I don’t know whether you want to be a record label or not.

  Sure, we’re looking at it. Those were wonderful clandestine get-togethers and they weren’t wholly planned on our part. We really know how to tell stories in the paper medium and they’re successes. We would look for something like that in the future, but we’re not doing that right now. God knows, the Purgatori soundtrack is some of the most outstanding pieces of work. Vlad Lucinda is one of the most talented people I’ve ever met. This guy should be doing major motion pictures and I hope for him for that for the future.

  Is there any truth to the rumor that we may be seeing some Chaos! characters on the big screen?

  You bet. In fact, that’s what I’m doing out here in Los Angeles. I’m talking to the studios about just that. I have nothing to report except to say that, after salvos of meetings, there’s keen interest. There’s a real supple team in terms of our lawyers, our agents, our public relations firm all who are aligned around us and the studios that we met. I don’t have anything conclusive I could reveal, but I could tell you that, god knows, there’s a lot of interest. I can tell you that my primary focus, in part, is that I’m bringing in other writers to focus in on getting the motion pictures made.

  Just for the sake of discussion, who are some of your dream casting choices?

  It’s funny. I don’t have too much attachment to that just because of the nature of this business. You start with someone and three months later that person isn’t available. Let’s say certain things come to my mind. Here’s the dream cast, and I don’t know if this goes to Hollywood standards, but Fairuza Balk as Chastity would be the coolest thing. She’s like the hottest. Forget it, I can’t even begin to describe that. It would just be so cool, man. She would just burn that screen up. I think she is absolutely terrific and mesmerizing. For characters like Doctor Pryce and Evil Ernie, I’d look at a guy like Nick Nolte or Brian Dennehy. I guess right now I’m thinking about Denise Richards or Mary Young in Evil Ernie. I think Evil Ernie should be an unknown. I think a great Lady Death would be Nicole Kidman or Kim Basinger. Hey, I’m shooting high. Those are some thoughts that come to my mind. Fairuza Balk...

  Yeah, baby... [laughs] What projects are you and Chaos! working on now and what can we expect from you in the future besides the Countdown to the Millennium?

  What’s coming up i
n the fall is incredible actually. We’re launching Purgatori by David Quinn and Al Rio as an ongoing monthly series. She’s a wonderful character. Some people have called her a typical vampire, but I think what’s wonderful about this character is that she just has no apologies for her anger. She’s not this fluff, demure vampire. She’s just a bitch among other things. Chastity, our fun-loving vampire assassin, returns in October in a mini-series. Cremator, the guardian of Hell, gets own series. This thing is two years in the making. It’s epic. I’m not underselling this when I tell you that it’s one of the biggest comics I’ve ever seen in terms of scope and scale. It’s amazing. The same colorist who colored Dead King colored it. A guy name Leonardo Jimenez wrote it and is drawing it. It will literally take him a year and a half to draw five issues. We’re on the third issue as we speak. It’s an astounding piece of work. Smiley the Psychotic Button gets his own holiday one shot in December. This fall will be the first time in Chaos! history that we have all our guns blazing. We’ll have simultaneously Lady Death, Evil Ernie, Purgatori, Chastity, Smiley, and Cremator all out at the same time. We’re huntin’ for bear now. In the last year, we’ve done so much in the area of increasing our capacity without sacrificing our quality. It’s just going to make us that much more scarier. I mean, in the comics industry, we can be described as that black sheep in the corner. “Who are those people who draw insurmountable crowds? What are they?” These are the super hero guys looking at us saying, “What is that?” It’s going to get so aching for these guys. You can’t deny that it’s here anymore because we’re firing off every gun at once. More cool Chaos! with the quality people have come to expect. More fun, crazy products, god knows, we’re actually releasing a Purgatori cat’o’nine tails whip. A line of jewelry with Alchemy Gothic. More toys. More three dimensional stuff. Cool apparel. We just keep doing what we’re doing. We just keep increasing our capacity and our ability because people groove on it. I guess we have something to prove which is this is viable entertainment. It’s important entertainment. This type of entertainment has more in common with what’s going on in the mainstream clearly than what the average comic has going on. How many movies can you make about a guy who wear his underpants on outside? It’s just peculiar. I understand how it’s peculiar, but the stuff that we do, as an example, is much more in alignment with where the pop culture is heading anyway. I don’t see too many shiny, happy things cookin’. I just see darkness on the horizon and we’re going to be there to greet it.

  Historically it’s always been that way around every turn of the century. People start rolling over darker things and they’re willing to take chances. It seems like it’s such a great time for you. Is it good being Brian Pulido today?

  Yeah, it’s a real groove, man. I’ll tell ya. It’s fun. I only say that after a lot of trials and tribulations and personal crap. I am the guy who made Evil Ernie, but, I’ll tell ya, my average days are a pretty mellow time these days. I have a lot of responsibility, but I have a whole different relationship with all this stuff. In my past there are nine catastrophic illnesses and deaths of family members, dark days. I’m sure there will be more dark days to greet me, but I just have a different perception on how to tackle them and that’s not to tackle them at all. They are what they are. Don’t go make it mean too much. The comic industry is in its doldrums, but our mindset is we’re a very excited company. Internally, when you go to Chaos!, you see, authentically, people are fired up. We look toward a one per cent improvement every day as opposed to a fifty per cent improvement overnight. So, yeah, it’s a blast. It’s a real groove. I’m probably having more fun at this moment in time than I’ve ever had. I’m more challenged. I have more responsibility, more capacity, and becoming more global. So, it’s paradoxical. You’d imagine it’d be tougher, but, actually, it’s getting easier. I’m in an inquiry. I’m ongoingly in business education at night. I’m looking at going to summer film school next year for fun. So, I’m very excited about life. I’m having a blast.

  David Mack

  David Mack is another artist who I’d long been a fan of. His KABUKI series was – and remains – an example of cutting edge art and writing. David is also someone who is a staple at cons and a helluva nice guy. So, when the opportunity to not only have him in the magazine, but to do a cover came up, hell yes I jumped at it. What interested me most about people like David was always the Process; how they go from blank page to finished product. I was especially interested in David’s Process because his watercolor art was so different from everything being done in comics at the time. Happily, David was very open and forthcoming and the resulting interview was illuminating on several fronts.

  The television screen crackles to life with the soothing voice of a female announcer giving up-to-the-minute weather information. As the image becomes clear, you see the ceramic countenance of a mask staring out at you, its eyes far wiser than the polished surface would have you believe. It is with this innocuous image that one of the most intelligently written and consummately refreshing books, Kabuki, begins its tale of obsession and desire, violence and retribution, of a woman’s coming of age and the realization of who and what she is. It is a story that easily holds its own beside the likes of Frank Miller’s Elektra, Billy Tucci’s Shi, and Mike Grell’s Shado for its beauty in art styles and the intelligence of its writing.

  I first met Kabuki’s creator, David Mack, at a comic convention, sitting quietly behind his table and drawing. There was a small gathering around him, fans of the series mostly, the bulk of them only too happy to impart their individual take on the book and, most importantly, its characters: the haunting Kabuki, the jealous and tyrannical Kai, and, of course, the ubiquitous masked women who make up the Noh. David Mack was polite and interested in what these people had to say, for it is obvious from the first few panels of the story that Kabuki is a project very near and dear to its creator’s heart.

  ~*~

  Is drawing something that you've always done?

  Yeah... I can never remember not drawing.

  Even then, was all of your drawing story-based?

  It’s funny, I’ve never been limited to drawing, even from the time I was very young... I’d always make things out of milk cartons, build castles and boats out of boxes, and all kinds of things like that. At the same time, drawing was part of that because you’d end up cutting out people and drawing them. I had my own fantasy world made out of garbage. My brother and I would sit around and play with characters and stuff. I guess that sort of developed into some writing, in a sense. When I got more academically involved in writing and art in high school and college, I saw comics as a way to unify a lot of my different interests.

  What writers and artists have influenced your work?

  I’ve pretty much been influenced by, in some way or another, anyone I’ve seen. In college, I got a BFA in graphic design, so it opened up a whole world of graphic designers and commercial artists as well as having to take years of the history of art at every level. So, I’ve tried to learn from every part of that, whether it meant looking for the best of a particular person and seeing how they solved a problem that I could learn from or by realizing that I don’t want to go in that direction at all. To list their names would probably go on forever. Actually, a lot of film makers have inspired me.

  You’re not the first person to have said that to me.

  I always site my acknowledgments in the back of the book... Someone I’ve mentioned several times is Akira Kurasawa, who happens to be [a person] most famous American directors site as their biggest influence. Also, I can relate to David Lynch, and David Cronenberg I enjoy a lot.

  Let’s talk a bit about Kabuki. What spawned the story and how much research went into the writing of it?

  When I decided that I wanted to do comic books, I was in high school and competing and winning stuff in art and writing contests. I was trying to apply for college, so I sent my portfolio to all these different places. In the process, I decided I liked to do all of t
his: sculpture, photography, I liked to draw every single thing and tell stories. It seemed like a comic book was a way to incorporate all of these things into one medium. I did a very large comic; the first one I ever did. It was like fifty or sixty pages. I used that as a piece in my portfolio. I [figured] any college where I’d get in free and they’d pay me money, that’s the one I’m going to go to. So, once I was in college, I started designing a little bit of the character. Actually, the summer before I designed some costumes. While I was in college, [during] the first semester, I fell into this international crowd because, in some of my drawing classes, there was a Japanese fellow who happened to be an instructor in karate and judo. At the time, I was participating in the karate program, so, we started hanging out more and more. That was very much a jumping on point where I got more and more interested in the culture and got to experience the more idiosyncratic side of the full Japanese sub-culture. I would help [the Japanese students] with their English and their homework and they would help me with things. I took the Japanese language there and got my brother interested as well. He’s also a teacher in Japanese and still goes to school in Japan. It steam rolled. I got all these different references from all these different angles. One of the things I wanted to portray was not any stereotypical level. I wanted to show some of the seedier side that is not normally seen and a lot of the idiosyncrasies that most people don’t associate when they are doing cardboard cut-out ideas of what Japanese culture is.