MattBrady
11-27-2002, 05:26 PM
Jason Hall and Matt Kindt know when they’ve found a good thing – following up last year’s critically acclaimed Pistolwhip and Mephisto and the Empty Box, the two have re-teamed for this December’s Pistolwhip: The Yellow Menace, a return to the world and characters of the original two stories.
Virtually, everyone who’s still alive from the first two stories makes an appearance in The Yellow Menace, with Mitch Pistolwhip (former bellhop and now private eye) and femme fatale Charlie Minks play major roles, as does Jack Peril, the fictional hero of the RAO radio serial. The blend of the fictional into reality is only the beginning of the larger picture that includes Golden Age comics, murder, revenge, a social activist crusading against comics, and the mysterious “Yellow Menace.”
Newsarama caught up with the creators for a conversation about the new graphic novel.
Newsarama: First off, when did The Yellow Menace originate? Was it gestating while you were working on Pistolwhip and Mephisto, or did it come after, once those stories were done?
Jason Hall: As I always try to convey to people, Matt actually wrote the story in the first Pistolwhip graphic novel - and the story for Mephisto and the Empty Box was something I had in my head for a number of years, and it was a perfect fit for the "Pistolwhip world" we wanted to create and expand upon, so I wrote that and we released it at the same time. And I actually had most of the story that you see in The Yellow Menace planned out before Matt finished the art on our first two books. That's why a lot of my contribution to the first Pistolwhip graphic novel, radio dialogue/scripts, newspaper articles, creating Jack Peril and Isla, pretty much all sets up stuff for The Yellow Menace, especially Orson's story.
If you read those newspaper articles at the back of the first book, there's a quite a bit of foreshadowing - and, of course, Jack Peril was throughout the first book, on the radio and in comics and pulps - setting up that aspect as well. Plus, it was neat for me to get to expand on things established in the first graphic novel, like Charlie's past. The other major part of the new book, concerning "The Yellow Menace", came just a bit later -- when Matt suggested a cool name for Jack Peril's arch-enemy. Then all the other aspects of the new book that go along with the title - and the various meanings and levels that name/expression plays out on - fell into place. Of course, I don't want to give away what those are!
Matt Kindt: I was in a used bookstore and saw the title of a book The Yellow Menace sitting on the shelf, and thought that’d be a great name for a 40's super-villain type of character...which ended up working well for this story. We really have a ton of stories sort of floating around. When we first started working on the Pistolwhip stuff together, we started keeping a running list of ideas and storylines that we wanted to do in the "Pistolwhip universe". So we ended up with a couple pages of story ideas. Then we just decide which one we want to do next and "The Yellow Menace" was first up. The fun part is that a lot of our story ideas aren't sequential, so the next Pistolwhip story could very well take place 20 years before the events from the first book, depending on what we choose next. All of the future storylines are super-top-secret though...hand-written in a small notebook, hidden in a secret room in my basement.
JH: And I keep track of all our stories on a large timeline - when the events take place in relation to each other - so there's never any contradiction. It's important to me that it all actually does work out "right" - even if the reader may never even notice.
NRAMA: That said though, why return to the "world" of Pistolwhip? What’s the allure? Was it as simple as there were more stories to tell, or a deeper, more metaphysical itch that needed to be scratched?
MK: For me, it seemed like the first Pistolwhip book was an introduction to some core characters. And as I was writing it I thought, well if I spend one chapter on each character then that should really give the reader a lot of insight into who these people are. But as I was working on it, and now looking back at it…there’s just so much more. Pistolwhip just sort of scratched the surface. I love longer works, mostly novels, where by the end of it you really know who that character is. So much so that by the time the book is over you almost have the emotional feeling really missing a real person that’s left and isn’t coming back. Some recent books that come to mind that gave me that feeling are Adolf by Tezuka and Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. You get to the end of those books and you really want another one, or a sequel or something. So I’m hoping that’s what we can do with Pistolwhip. Unfortunately, in comics, it takes a lot more pages to create that than if we were writing a novel.
JH: Actually, it's not so much "returning" as the fact we never left. Personally, I wanted to tell a story that dealt with things on a very emotional level -- a story that maybe readers could connect with in that inexplicable way, the same way that I feel like I connect with certain movies, songs, books, and comics -- things that seem to touch my soul. I don't know if anyone will get anything out of it like that, but I hope so (and it would certainly be rewarding to hear that someone did). And I really couldn't wait to see what it was going to look like all drawn out fancy-like by Matt. But generally speaking, there's always more stories to tell in the "Pistolwhip world" -- and I think that's really one of the big appeals for both of us.
NRAMA: You both were working on The Yellow Menace after Pistolwhip and Mephisto came out and garnered acclaim - was there a fishbowl effect?
MK:Not really. If anything, it just made me more excited to dive into it. It’s the first work that, as I started working on it, I knew it was going to be published. That just ended up making me a lot happier while I was working, knowing I was working for a real reason, as opposed to the first book that, as I was working on it, I really had no idea what would happen to it. I imagined it being published but then I also imagined just stacking it in a drawer and forgetting about it after it was done, no one having seen it. Other than that, the feedback and reviews just served as great encouragement. The comics world is so small that there really isn’t too much of a “fish bowl effect”...which is my favorite thing about it. I end up making a lot of really great friends and people who are as excited about seeing my next effort as I am about seeing theirs.
JH: Since most of the story was already planned before the first books came out, it didn't really have an effect on the actual writing - though we're always in a state of constant amazement about the kind words and acclaim our books do receive -- and thankful! Of course, you worry whether people will like the new book as much, but if you think about that too much, that way lies madness, and since I tend to worry about things in general quite a bit, I suppose I must have gone mad a long time ago... I know we both just wanted to do the best job we could to make the new book even better than what's come before -- but that probably goes without saying.
MK: Yeah...and when it comes down to it, we’re just big fans of comics so the ultimate goal is to create something that we’d be excited to buy and read.
NRAMA: Like Pistolwhip, the format for and feel of The Yellow Menace is quite distinct, almost dreamy and David Lynch-ian in some parts, while quite noir-ish and Raymond Chandler in others. With this blend of fiction and gritty reality a lesson to the reader, to never quite believe what they’re seeing?
JH: I'd hate to interpret what goes on in the book for anyone. I think readers will each bring something different to the story and get something different out of it. There's a logical reason for the "blending" of fiction and reality in the story, as it generally takes place in the mind. There's the "real" world that the regular Pistolwhip cast of characters exist in, and then the "fictional world" of comics, radio shows, and pulps that Jack Peril's adventures take place in, which the "real people" enjoy -- and that scenario isn't any different from our own reality. But, in the story, there are some emotional and ironic parallels between those two "worlds" that tie into what's happening in the story. I think it's definitely a book that people will enjoy reading more than once -- maybe even getting more out of it the second time through. We like to make sure our readers get their money's worth!
MK: It’s hard to really comment on that…but then I really think Lynch’s work is some of the most “realistic” work out there. I think something like xXx or The Rock are much more surreal than anything Lynch has done - ok...except for Eraserhead... I guess I’m really just too close to it so see it. I, and I think Jason too, just try to put all the themes and story elements and visual effects into Pistolwhip that I like, and I guess jamming all that disparate stuff together gives it a kind of strange feel. It’s funny though, because people that are close to me, like my wife and brother will read it and laugh because they can totally see me in the work. Stuff like the old diving suits…something I’ve loved since I was a kid and played with on those big 12” G.I. Joe’s...my brother and I had the diving suit outfit, so every time he sees that suit, it makes perfect sense.
Seriously, though, there is a lot more to Pistolwhip then meets the eye. There is definitely a “bigger picture”. I guess in hindsight it reminds me of reading Bone, you know? Remember the first year or two? It just seemed like this great harmless, light adventure and now look at it...it’s turned into something really big and amazing. Kind of like that reference to the giant Smiley Bone balloon that got loose a long time ago and then tons of issues later it comes back in a big way.
JH: We definitely both put a lot of elements into the Pistolwhip books that we find appealing -- it's everything we like rolled up into one nice package. But, at the same time, it's important to make sure that's not what the books are about. All that stuff is just icing on the cake of what is hopefully a good, enjoyable, emotional story. And we both love "hidden stuff", especially when it's actually leading somewhere -- so the books are subtly filled with various elements of that nature.
NRAMA: Hidden stuff aside for a minute, let’s talk about the realistic stuff. What kind of research did this story entail? Obviously, you had the time period set from the previous novels, but what about the phenomenon surrounding Jack Peril? Is he and his "aura" of popularity based on any Golden Age character?
JH: Jack Peril isn't based on any specific Golden Age character -- he's sort of an amalgam of that "aura" of popularity around those popular characters back then -- almost as if he were created by a corporation who did a lot of test research to come up with the perfect character that would appeal to the masses and make them a truckload of money. I'm a huge Golden Age fan - the original JSA are my favorite "superhero" characters, so I already had a decent knowledge of that era of comics. There's not really a lot of research done -- the "world" of Pistolwhip is really our own creation - that is definitely not the "real world", though mirrors it in many ways. So it lets us basically make up our own rules and history. And on a side note, Jack Peril was created a long time ago -- when I was in college, I made a short student movie where I played him in Chapter 9 of a non-existent 12-part movie serial. In it, I got hit by a car - for real - and rode on top of said car at 40 mph without being tied down, as I duked it out with a badguy through the passenger-side window! I may have to break out the costume for APE…
MK: Jack Peril was created by a large group of men in suits, sitting around a table and trying to figure out what would sell best to kids...Jack Peril was born. The ultimate power-fantasy -- wish fulfillment dream of children everywhere. Sales still weren’t up to the expected numbers so they added a young sidekick in an attempt to create something that younger kids could identify with. The lightning bolt is more than a costume...it serves as branding and a logo that can be slapped on comic books, books and cereal boxes. He’s really just the ultimate marketing tool!
JH: I'm actually wearing a pair of official Jack Peril undergarments right now! And I'm eyeing that official Jack Peril meat thermometer...
NRAMA: But just don’t use the two together. In the Pistolwhip world, you use many elements of classic noir, but at the same time, noir is a genre that can easily slip into self-parody with just a little too much internal dialogue from the gumshoe, overdoing the shadows and camera angles, or any other number of clichés. What's the secret to writing noir and keeping it believable?
JH: I'm no authority, but I guess the trick is maybe to not set out to write a "noir story" per se. For me, all that is sort of the window dressing for the heart of the story -- the emotional side. Each of the main characters, Jack, Isla, Mitch, Ray, and Charlie have their own story and each share similar emotions and sometimes life situations - though they all don't realize it - and when these characters are together in any combination, it's a lot different than from when they're alone. They tend to tell themselves lies of various degrees to cope with what's happening or has happened to them in their lives. And I think this story doesn't fall into that stereotypical "noir" category, but since it sort of exists in that "world" - just with a different spin, that unique combination probably helps a bit with avoiding the clichés.
MK: The “secret” for me anyway, was to set up some initial rules. When I first started Pistolwhip, I set up several challenges for myself. 1. No thought balloons. 2. No word balloons 3. No text boxes with exposition or voice-over and 4. No private detective office with a bottle of hooch in the bottom drawer of the desk.
It seems like simple things, and you won’t find any of that in Pistolwhip but it was really a challenge at the beginning to not use the voice-over or the exposition boxes as crutches. It really forces you to tell a story more visually...a challenge, but it really makes it more fun. And then I made Jason promise to adhere to those same rules - with a blood-brother type handshake - and he totally rose to the challenge, and got around some of them in sneaky ways!
NRAMA: Speaking of the writing, Jason - take us into the mechanics of writing the story a little. How, specifically did you do it? Was it a linear process, from start to finish, or did you have each character's arc set out, and you blended them all together?
JH: I'm pretty sure it was mostly a linear thing -- maybe "spherical" is a better word as, after I had all the characters' stories in mind and Matt's suggestion about the "Yellow Menace" name for Jack's nemesis, the whole story sort of came to me at once, beginning, middle, and end. Then it was a mad dash to get it all down before I forgot anything! So, while I had the whole thing in my head, I started from the beginning, but then I'd write down the specifics of various parts as they came to the forefront of my mind, then go back to where I had left off and continue on. I literally worked on it non-stop, because I needed to get it all out and I tend to be the kind of person who can't let myself do anything else until I finish the thing I'm working on. Nowadays, I have to literally force myself to stop working on what I'm doing at a specific time, so I can have time to spend with my wife, or watch a movie or read, etc. -- though I don't always stick to that plan as much as I probably should. I usually forget to brush my teeth or eat breakfast until the afternoon.
And since I also wanted to make sure it was going to be fun for Matt to draw, that had a bit to do with including the necessity for various art styles and narrative techniques within the story -- but more importantly, those things aren't just "window-dressing", they serve a specific purpose in the story and work on a variety of levels.
NRAMA: Over to you Matt - the frontispieces you provide in The Yellow Menace offer a wide variety of styles, from marquee poster to comic book and book illustration. Was any one in particular more challenging than the others?
MK: Painting is really hard for me as I’m really out of practice. I probably do 1 painting a year, since I got out of school, but I really enjoyed it. My wife is really the talented painter of us two though, which is why I begged her to help me out and she came through in a big way - she did the color movie poster. So the movie poster was the easiest one for me - thanks Sharlene! Other than that, the cover is really the hardest part. And I guess by “hard” I mean labor intensive…I do most of it in Photoshop and there’s a million layers to fiddle around with and the files get really huge.
Everything else was just a blast to do... I really liked doing the 1940’s style comic book pages. It such a subtly different way to draw, but the poses have to be so stiff and the inking so much more controlled that my inking hand really did ache after doing those pages. It really gave me newfound respect for a lot of the old artists/craftsmen like Jack Cole and Bob Kane, as well as the guys that ghosted his comic strips. My brother keeps bugging me to do a comic book that is all in that style. It’d be fun but I don’t think my hand could hold up under that kind of punishment...and it literally takes forever.
NRAMA: In terms of the collaboration itself, you two don’t live close to one another anymore, right?
JH: Right. I used to live where Matt lives in St. Louis -- and that's where I wrote the script for the new book, so that was all hashed out there. But then I moved right after that to the Great Northwest. But that didn't stop us from being in constant contact about the book as Matt was drawing it. He'd send me the pencils as he finished them for each chapter, and I'd send him back comments, etc. -- then we did the same thing with inks -- and then again with the final designed book. This book has gone back and forth across the country so much, we should have signed it up for frequent flyer miles. And while the script was pretty detailed, Matt added a lot of really cool visuals on top of that to the story, as well as a couple of new background characters like Marjorie the bellhop and Estle. There's also a nice little scene where Mitch is talking about being unsure of his "success" Matt put in there that I thought tied nicely into how he portrayed Mitch in the first novel. I genuinely think this book is Matt's best artwork to date -- I'm even having him make me big color printouts of those "frontpieces" so I can hang them on my wall -- they're just so cool looking!
MK: It really was a lot of constant going back and forth and Jason is a compulsive e-mailer so it was like we really weren’t miles apart at all. And my day job has an 800 number so we really don’t have to rack up a lot of long-distance bills.
NRAMA: Overall then, how long did it take to produce The Yellow Menace?
MK: I can pencil about a page an hour and then it takes me around two hours to ink a page. Just the art pages of the book probably take me six or seven months. I work a full-time job as a designer, so fitting that all in over a period of time along with other comic and art projects takes a lot of time-management. Then after the art is all done, it’s about 24 hours of straight scanning. Then laying out the book on the computer and designing the cover, etc. takes probably another month.
JH: I wrote the story/script over the period of about 3-4 months, I think -- and there were a number of months after that before Matt started on the artwork -- but with all the back-and-forth we did with the art at various stages, and little changes and tweaks, it really was a continuous process right up until about a few months ago. And we're just putting the finishing touches on the keen new promo items, so the process never stops. But I guess we were working on the book to various degrees for the last two years.
NRAMA: Were there any scenes that were hard to get out, either due to dialogue or other mechanics?
JH: Everything seemed to come pretty naturally. I think it's a fairly complex story that appears to be simple on the surface, so there's a lot to keep straight -- but that's half the fun. The visual mechanics of the "origin sequence" for Jack Peril and Orson Lang was probably the trickiest. We went back and forth on parts of how that was visually told, and on how many levels it would be told on -- and what we ended up with is a compromise that I think actually works the best.
MK: I’ll step in here and say the hardest page art wise - besides the origin sequence, which was hard and changed a lot, was the conversation between Isla and Ray at the café. There was a lot of dialogue and around a page to do it on, and my lettering style doesn’t lend itself to a lot of dialogue in a small space...but having them act it out with a cups and donuts ended up being a lot more fun then just doing talking heads. And I also asked Jason to do a whole issue of a comic - or chapter in this book as it turned out - that all takes place in a diner and he came through big. Unfortunately what I thought would be a challenge...well...it was a challenge.
JH: The Yellow Menace is a huge story, and we knew we couldn't go too crazy with the page count or Matt would be drawing for years. But I think it all turned out rather swell.
MK: Exactly...I think it’s really a lot easier to be creative sometimes if you put contraints on yourself by creating little sets of “rules” to follow, like the “no thought-balloons” thing or having a limited page count. It really ends up acting as a kind of guard against being totally self-indulgent.
NRAMA: While you were working on this, Mephisto was optioned - did that affect the writing at all? Did the thought, "this could be a movie too" enter either of your minds, and therefore have some kind of impact on the work?
JH: It didn't have an impact on the writing because it was written before that happened. We're glad the movie option happened, and it would be great if the movie is made and it gave more attention to our books, but we don't really have that in mind when making our books. We like to make comics for the sake of making comics and The Yellow Menace book is a good example of that, as it uses the the comic book medium to play with the different forms of storytelling. If somebody wants to make a movie out of the new book, or the first graphic novel, we're not going to turn them away -- we appreciate the attention and interest, and there are a lot of benefits that can come from all that -- but we don't make comics with the intention of them being turned into movies.
MK: After all the legal-wrangling and contract-reading stuff was over I didn’t really give it a second thought. To me, the whole Hollywood “scene” is so far removed from the work I’m doing that it really took up very little of my thought-time. I’m more concerned and thinking about future comic projects then anything else except my wife. Although that ends up being the thing that people ask about most so it’s hard not getting excited about it, even though I’d much rather talk about new comic projects. But people always bring it up and then I end up doing “dream-casting” of who would play Mitch and Charlie and Mr. Vogel, etc.
NRAMA: Loss and moving on seems to be a big theme in the book, as both Orson and Isla seem to come to terms with their lives. Was this a personal part of the story for either of you?
JH: It's weird. There really isn't anything in my life, at least that I'm consciously aware of, that all of that stems from -- but those themes really appeal to me for some reason - they also played a large part in Mephisto. Like I mentioned earlier, my favorite songs, movies, and books all invoke a certain feeling in me -- touch my soul in a certain way -- and they mostly all tend to deal with somewhat forlorn feelings. I can't really explain the allure of that for me, though I'm sure some shrink would be happy to take my money to tell me! However, I feel there is an equal amount of "hope" that comes across in this book, so I think it all balances out nicely.
MK: I think everybody experiences a sense of loss in some form or another, from parents to friends and lovers...it’s happened to everyone. There’s a lot of personal stuff in there, I think, from both of our lives and I think we draw on that indirectly. And it’s kind of an unspoken rule of thumb for me that for a story to be really good, someone has to be killed, or at least die.
JH: Yeah! Some of my favorite stories involve the main characters you've grown to love and enjoy reading about dying or getting killed. I hate it when it happens, but I love to hate it, if that makes sense. It gives things a sense of "reality" -- and while it makes me sad, I think part of me likes that feeling, which may all tie back into why those themes appeal to me in the first place.
NRAMA: Along with the theme of loss, The Yellow Menace also offers up some commentary on comics' critics of the time, with Dr. Loom standing in for Dr. Wertham, blaming comics for the morel decay of children. Did you research any of Wertham's "research" to come up with Loom's material, or did it just come naturally?
JH: A combination of it coming naturally, with a bit of research to see the specific examples he used from various comics so we could play off those. Loom isn't supposed to "be" Wertham ("any similarities to persons living or dead is purely coincidental"), but serves as an ironic commentary on that important part of comics history. And not to worry, we've personally approved our new book with the official "Pistolwhip Comics Code" -- so it shouldn't make readers too sex-crazed or murderous...maybe.
MK: Most of the “real” research came from the source…Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent book...pretty much everything you could want to find to criticize or lampoon is in there. It was almost too easy to find material in there. I also looked at tons of comics from that time period...stuff by Jack Cole and a lot of the EC comics. The art is so detailed and crazed at times, it’s amazing that it’s sixty years old.
NRAMA: In the story, Isla, Ray, and Orson's arcs seemingly come to a nice close in a manner with this book, yet Mitch and Charlie have unresolved issues - is this your way of saying, "Tune in Again, Pistolwhip Fans!"?
JH: “Tune in again" for sure -- there are almost an infinite amount of stories for us to tell in this "world" -- but whether or not those will focus on Mitch and Charlie, it's hard to say. Many things in life go unresolved. But I'm sure we'll see them again. I definitely want to do more with Isla and Ray, and we don't always plan to tell stories that keep moving forward -- we'll be jumping around the "timeline" a bit, I'm sure. Then there's minor characters we've seen like Detective Copper, Trixie, Slappy Johnson, the list is endless -- and all these bit players are potential stars of future stories. And we've talked about doing stories in other time periods, still in the same "universe" -- I'd even like to do one in the far-future! And with what we've got potentially planned for the next book, many of these could come to light. But most importantly, we hope people will tune in for Pistolwhip: The Yellow Menace when it hits the stands this December!
MK: I see Mitch and Charlie as sort of the core characters but really only because the whole thing started with their stories. But really there are tons of characters we want to touch on and Mitch, Charlie, Ray, Isla are all really kind of common threads that we’ll probably weave through future/past stories to hold it all together, but they’re definitely not the only focus. Mrs. Dalloway has a great back story that I’d like to get to as well as Estle - the boat repairman, and all the ones that Jason mentioned. But for sure, hopefully there’s that lure of “what happens next” to these characters while still maintaining a satisfying and self-contained story. And hopefully the reader can take something away from each individual story line but then also be confident that there is definitely more to it...that these characters are still “living” off the page and that things will happen to them. It’s not like Spider-Man, where 40 years can pass and he’s still relatively the same person he was at the beginning. Hopefully Pistolwhip will have a different kind of edge...the fear that, like “real life”, anything can happen to anyone at any time.
JH: Yes! Anything can happen - especially when you're dealing with two creators who like it when characters are killed in stories - and I think that's the greatest part about us creating and having this large "world" to tell our stories in. The possibilities are endless...
Virtually, everyone who’s still alive from the first two stories makes an appearance in The Yellow Menace, with Mitch Pistolwhip (former bellhop and now private eye) and femme fatale Charlie Minks play major roles, as does Jack Peril, the fictional hero of the RAO radio serial. The blend of the fictional into reality is only the beginning of the larger picture that includes Golden Age comics, murder, revenge, a social activist crusading against comics, and the mysterious “Yellow Menace.”
Newsarama caught up with the creators for a conversation about the new graphic novel.
Newsarama: First off, when did The Yellow Menace originate? Was it gestating while you were working on Pistolwhip and Mephisto, or did it come after, once those stories were done?
Jason Hall: As I always try to convey to people, Matt actually wrote the story in the first Pistolwhip graphic novel - and the story for Mephisto and the Empty Box was something I had in my head for a number of years, and it was a perfect fit for the "Pistolwhip world" we wanted to create and expand upon, so I wrote that and we released it at the same time. And I actually had most of the story that you see in The Yellow Menace planned out before Matt finished the art on our first two books. That's why a lot of my contribution to the first Pistolwhip graphic novel, radio dialogue/scripts, newspaper articles, creating Jack Peril and Isla, pretty much all sets up stuff for The Yellow Menace, especially Orson's story.
If you read those newspaper articles at the back of the first book, there's a quite a bit of foreshadowing - and, of course, Jack Peril was throughout the first book, on the radio and in comics and pulps - setting up that aspect as well. Plus, it was neat for me to get to expand on things established in the first graphic novel, like Charlie's past. The other major part of the new book, concerning "The Yellow Menace", came just a bit later -- when Matt suggested a cool name for Jack Peril's arch-enemy. Then all the other aspects of the new book that go along with the title - and the various meanings and levels that name/expression plays out on - fell into place. Of course, I don't want to give away what those are!
Matt Kindt: I was in a used bookstore and saw the title of a book The Yellow Menace sitting on the shelf, and thought that’d be a great name for a 40's super-villain type of character...which ended up working well for this story. We really have a ton of stories sort of floating around. When we first started working on the Pistolwhip stuff together, we started keeping a running list of ideas and storylines that we wanted to do in the "Pistolwhip universe". So we ended up with a couple pages of story ideas. Then we just decide which one we want to do next and "The Yellow Menace" was first up. The fun part is that a lot of our story ideas aren't sequential, so the next Pistolwhip story could very well take place 20 years before the events from the first book, depending on what we choose next. All of the future storylines are super-top-secret though...hand-written in a small notebook, hidden in a secret room in my basement.
JH: And I keep track of all our stories on a large timeline - when the events take place in relation to each other - so there's never any contradiction. It's important to me that it all actually does work out "right" - even if the reader may never even notice.
NRAMA: That said though, why return to the "world" of Pistolwhip? What’s the allure? Was it as simple as there were more stories to tell, or a deeper, more metaphysical itch that needed to be scratched?
MK: For me, it seemed like the first Pistolwhip book was an introduction to some core characters. And as I was writing it I thought, well if I spend one chapter on each character then that should really give the reader a lot of insight into who these people are. But as I was working on it, and now looking back at it…there’s just so much more. Pistolwhip just sort of scratched the surface. I love longer works, mostly novels, where by the end of it you really know who that character is. So much so that by the time the book is over you almost have the emotional feeling really missing a real person that’s left and isn’t coming back. Some recent books that come to mind that gave me that feeling are Adolf by Tezuka and Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. You get to the end of those books and you really want another one, or a sequel or something. So I’m hoping that’s what we can do with Pistolwhip. Unfortunately, in comics, it takes a lot more pages to create that than if we were writing a novel.
JH: Actually, it's not so much "returning" as the fact we never left. Personally, I wanted to tell a story that dealt with things on a very emotional level -- a story that maybe readers could connect with in that inexplicable way, the same way that I feel like I connect with certain movies, songs, books, and comics -- things that seem to touch my soul. I don't know if anyone will get anything out of it like that, but I hope so (and it would certainly be rewarding to hear that someone did). And I really couldn't wait to see what it was going to look like all drawn out fancy-like by Matt. But generally speaking, there's always more stories to tell in the "Pistolwhip world" -- and I think that's really one of the big appeals for both of us.
NRAMA: You both were working on The Yellow Menace after Pistolwhip and Mephisto came out and garnered acclaim - was there a fishbowl effect?
MK:Not really. If anything, it just made me more excited to dive into it. It’s the first work that, as I started working on it, I knew it was going to be published. That just ended up making me a lot happier while I was working, knowing I was working for a real reason, as opposed to the first book that, as I was working on it, I really had no idea what would happen to it. I imagined it being published but then I also imagined just stacking it in a drawer and forgetting about it after it was done, no one having seen it. Other than that, the feedback and reviews just served as great encouragement. The comics world is so small that there really isn’t too much of a “fish bowl effect”...which is my favorite thing about it. I end up making a lot of really great friends and people who are as excited about seeing my next effort as I am about seeing theirs.
JH: Since most of the story was already planned before the first books came out, it didn't really have an effect on the actual writing - though we're always in a state of constant amazement about the kind words and acclaim our books do receive -- and thankful! Of course, you worry whether people will like the new book as much, but if you think about that too much, that way lies madness, and since I tend to worry about things in general quite a bit, I suppose I must have gone mad a long time ago... I know we both just wanted to do the best job we could to make the new book even better than what's come before -- but that probably goes without saying.
MK: Yeah...and when it comes down to it, we’re just big fans of comics so the ultimate goal is to create something that we’d be excited to buy and read.
NRAMA: Like Pistolwhip, the format for and feel of The Yellow Menace is quite distinct, almost dreamy and David Lynch-ian in some parts, while quite noir-ish and Raymond Chandler in others. With this blend of fiction and gritty reality a lesson to the reader, to never quite believe what they’re seeing?
JH: I'd hate to interpret what goes on in the book for anyone. I think readers will each bring something different to the story and get something different out of it. There's a logical reason for the "blending" of fiction and reality in the story, as it generally takes place in the mind. There's the "real" world that the regular Pistolwhip cast of characters exist in, and then the "fictional world" of comics, radio shows, and pulps that Jack Peril's adventures take place in, which the "real people" enjoy -- and that scenario isn't any different from our own reality. But, in the story, there are some emotional and ironic parallels between those two "worlds" that tie into what's happening in the story. I think it's definitely a book that people will enjoy reading more than once -- maybe even getting more out of it the second time through. We like to make sure our readers get their money's worth!
MK: It’s hard to really comment on that…but then I really think Lynch’s work is some of the most “realistic” work out there. I think something like xXx or The Rock are much more surreal than anything Lynch has done - ok...except for Eraserhead... I guess I’m really just too close to it so see it. I, and I think Jason too, just try to put all the themes and story elements and visual effects into Pistolwhip that I like, and I guess jamming all that disparate stuff together gives it a kind of strange feel. It’s funny though, because people that are close to me, like my wife and brother will read it and laugh because they can totally see me in the work. Stuff like the old diving suits…something I’ve loved since I was a kid and played with on those big 12” G.I. Joe’s...my brother and I had the diving suit outfit, so every time he sees that suit, it makes perfect sense.
Seriously, though, there is a lot more to Pistolwhip then meets the eye. There is definitely a “bigger picture”. I guess in hindsight it reminds me of reading Bone, you know? Remember the first year or two? It just seemed like this great harmless, light adventure and now look at it...it’s turned into something really big and amazing. Kind of like that reference to the giant Smiley Bone balloon that got loose a long time ago and then tons of issues later it comes back in a big way.
JH: We definitely both put a lot of elements into the Pistolwhip books that we find appealing -- it's everything we like rolled up into one nice package. But, at the same time, it's important to make sure that's not what the books are about. All that stuff is just icing on the cake of what is hopefully a good, enjoyable, emotional story. And we both love "hidden stuff", especially when it's actually leading somewhere -- so the books are subtly filled with various elements of that nature.
NRAMA: Hidden stuff aside for a minute, let’s talk about the realistic stuff. What kind of research did this story entail? Obviously, you had the time period set from the previous novels, but what about the phenomenon surrounding Jack Peril? Is he and his "aura" of popularity based on any Golden Age character?
JH: Jack Peril isn't based on any specific Golden Age character -- he's sort of an amalgam of that "aura" of popularity around those popular characters back then -- almost as if he were created by a corporation who did a lot of test research to come up with the perfect character that would appeal to the masses and make them a truckload of money. I'm a huge Golden Age fan - the original JSA are my favorite "superhero" characters, so I already had a decent knowledge of that era of comics. There's not really a lot of research done -- the "world" of Pistolwhip is really our own creation - that is definitely not the "real world", though mirrors it in many ways. So it lets us basically make up our own rules and history. And on a side note, Jack Peril was created a long time ago -- when I was in college, I made a short student movie where I played him in Chapter 9 of a non-existent 12-part movie serial. In it, I got hit by a car - for real - and rode on top of said car at 40 mph without being tied down, as I duked it out with a badguy through the passenger-side window! I may have to break out the costume for APE…
MK: Jack Peril was created by a large group of men in suits, sitting around a table and trying to figure out what would sell best to kids...Jack Peril was born. The ultimate power-fantasy -- wish fulfillment dream of children everywhere. Sales still weren’t up to the expected numbers so they added a young sidekick in an attempt to create something that younger kids could identify with. The lightning bolt is more than a costume...it serves as branding and a logo that can be slapped on comic books, books and cereal boxes. He’s really just the ultimate marketing tool!
JH: I'm actually wearing a pair of official Jack Peril undergarments right now! And I'm eyeing that official Jack Peril meat thermometer...
NRAMA: But just don’t use the two together. In the Pistolwhip world, you use many elements of classic noir, but at the same time, noir is a genre that can easily slip into self-parody with just a little too much internal dialogue from the gumshoe, overdoing the shadows and camera angles, or any other number of clichés. What's the secret to writing noir and keeping it believable?
JH: I'm no authority, but I guess the trick is maybe to not set out to write a "noir story" per se. For me, all that is sort of the window dressing for the heart of the story -- the emotional side. Each of the main characters, Jack, Isla, Mitch, Ray, and Charlie have their own story and each share similar emotions and sometimes life situations - though they all don't realize it - and when these characters are together in any combination, it's a lot different than from when they're alone. They tend to tell themselves lies of various degrees to cope with what's happening or has happened to them in their lives. And I think this story doesn't fall into that stereotypical "noir" category, but since it sort of exists in that "world" - just with a different spin, that unique combination probably helps a bit with avoiding the clichés.
MK: The “secret” for me anyway, was to set up some initial rules. When I first started Pistolwhip, I set up several challenges for myself. 1. No thought balloons. 2. No word balloons 3. No text boxes with exposition or voice-over and 4. No private detective office with a bottle of hooch in the bottom drawer of the desk.
It seems like simple things, and you won’t find any of that in Pistolwhip but it was really a challenge at the beginning to not use the voice-over or the exposition boxes as crutches. It really forces you to tell a story more visually...a challenge, but it really makes it more fun. And then I made Jason promise to adhere to those same rules - with a blood-brother type handshake - and he totally rose to the challenge, and got around some of them in sneaky ways!
NRAMA: Speaking of the writing, Jason - take us into the mechanics of writing the story a little. How, specifically did you do it? Was it a linear process, from start to finish, or did you have each character's arc set out, and you blended them all together?
JH: I'm pretty sure it was mostly a linear thing -- maybe "spherical" is a better word as, after I had all the characters' stories in mind and Matt's suggestion about the "Yellow Menace" name for Jack's nemesis, the whole story sort of came to me at once, beginning, middle, and end. Then it was a mad dash to get it all down before I forgot anything! So, while I had the whole thing in my head, I started from the beginning, but then I'd write down the specifics of various parts as they came to the forefront of my mind, then go back to where I had left off and continue on. I literally worked on it non-stop, because I needed to get it all out and I tend to be the kind of person who can't let myself do anything else until I finish the thing I'm working on. Nowadays, I have to literally force myself to stop working on what I'm doing at a specific time, so I can have time to spend with my wife, or watch a movie or read, etc. -- though I don't always stick to that plan as much as I probably should. I usually forget to brush my teeth or eat breakfast until the afternoon.
And since I also wanted to make sure it was going to be fun for Matt to draw, that had a bit to do with including the necessity for various art styles and narrative techniques within the story -- but more importantly, those things aren't just "window-dressing", they serve a specific purpose in the story and work on a variety of levels.
NRAMA: Over to you Matt - the frontispieces you provide in The Yellow Menace offer a wide variety of styles, from marquee poster to comic book and book illustration. Was any one in particular more challenging than the others?
MK: Painting is really hard for me as I’m really out of practice. I probably do 1 painting a year, since I got out of school, but I really enjoyed it. My wife is really the talented painter of us two though, which is why I begged her to help me out and she came through in a big way - she did the color movie poster. So the movie poster was the easiest one for me - thanks Sharlene! Other than that, the cover is really the hardest part. And I guess by “hard” I mean labor intensive…I do most of it in Photoshop and there’s a million layers to fiddle around with and the files get really huge.
Everything else was just a blast to do... I really liked doing the 1940’s style comic book pages. It such a subtly different way to draw, but the poses have to be so stiff and the inking so much more controlled that my inking hand really did ache after doing those pages. It really gave me newfound respect for a lot of the old artists/craftsmen like Jack Cole and Bob Kane, as well as the guys that ghosted his comic strips. My brother keeps bugging me to do a comic book that is all in that style. It’d be fun but I don’t think my hand could hold up under that kind of punishment...and it literally takes forever.
NRAMA: In terms of the collaboration itself, you two don’t live close to one another anymore, right?
JH: Right. I used to live where Matt lives in St. Louis -- and that's where I wrote the script for the new book, so that was all hashed out there. But then I moved right after that to the Great Northwest. But that didn't stop us from being in constant contact about the book as Matt was drawing it. He'd send me the pencils as he finished them for each chapter, and I'd send him back comments, etc. -- then we did the same thing with inks -- and then again with the final designed book. This book has gone back and forth across the country so much, we should have signed it up for frequent flyer miles. And while the script was pretty detailed, Matt added a lot of really cool visuals on top of that to the story, as well as a couple of new background characters like Marjorie the bellhop and Estle. There's also a nice little scene where Mitch is talking about being unsure of his "success" Matt put in there that I thought tied nicely into how he portrayed Mitch in the first novel. I genuinely think this book is Matt's best artwork to date -- I'm even having him make me big color printouts of those "frontpieces" so I can hang them on my wall -- they're just so cool looking!
MK: It really was a lot of constant going back and forth and Jason is a compulsive e-mailer so it was like we really weren’t miles apart at all. And my day job has an 800 number so we really don’t have to rack up a lot of long-distance bills.
NRAMA: Overall then, how long did it take to produce The Yellow Menace?
MK: I can pencil about a page an hour and then it takes me around two hours to ink a page. Just the art pages of the book probably take me six or seven months. I work a full-time job as a designer, so fitting that all in over a period of time along with other comic and art projects takes a lot of time-management. Then after the art is all done, it’s about 24 hours of straight scanning. Then laying out the book on the computer and designing the cover, etc. takes probably another month.
JH: I wrote the story/script over the period of about 3-4 months, I think -- and there were a number of months after that before Matt started on the artwork -- but with all the back-and-forth we did with the art at various stages, and little changes and tweaks, it really was a continuous process right up until about a few months ago. And we're just putting the finishing touches on the keen new promo items, so the process never stops. But I guess we were working on the book to various degrees for the last two years.
NRAMA: Were there any scenes that were hard to get out, either due to dialogue or other mechanics?
JH: Everything seemed to come pretty naturally. I think it's a fairly complex story that appears to be simple on the surface, so there's a lot to keep straight -- but that's half the fun. The visual mechanics of the "origin sequence" for Jack Peril and Orson Lang was probably the trickiest. We went back and forth on parts of how that was visually told, and on how many levels it would be told on -- and what we ended up with is a compromise that I think actually works the best.
MK: I’ll step in here and say the hardest page art wise - besides the origin sequence, which was hard and changed a lot, was the conversation between Isla and Ray at the café. There was a lot of dialogue and around a page to do it on, and my lettering style doesn’t lend itself to a lot of dialogue in a small space...but having them act it out with a cups and donuts ended up being a lot more fun then just doing talking heads. And I also asked Jason to do a whole issue of a comic - or chapter in this book as it turned out - that all takes place in a diner and he came through big. Unfortunately what I thought would be a challenge...well...it was a challenge.
JH: The Yellow Menace is a huge story, and we knew we couldn't go too crazy with the page count or Matt would be drawing for years. But I think it all turned out rather swell.
MK: Exactly...I think it’s really a lot easier to be creative sometimes if you put contraints on yourself by creating little sets of “rules” to follow, like the “no thought-balloons” thing or having a limited page count. It really ends up acting as a kind of guard against being totally self-indulgent.
NRAMA: While you were working on this, Mephisto was optioned - did that affect the writing at all? Did the thought, "this could be a movie too" enter either of your minds, and therefore have some kind of impact on the work?
JH: It didn't have an impact on the writing because it was written before that happened. We're glad the movie option happened, and it would be great if the movie is made and it gave more attention to our books, but we don't really have that in mind when making our books. We like to make comics for the sake of making comics and The Yellow Menace book is a good example of that, as it uses the the comic book medium to play with the different forms of storytelling. If somebody wants to make a movie out of the new book, or the first graphic novel, we're not going to turn them away -- we appreciate the attention and interest, and there are a lot of benefits that can come from all that -- but we don't make comics with the intention of them being turned into movies.
MK: After all the legal-wrangling and contract-reading stuff was over I didn’t really give it a second thought. To me, the whole Hollywood “scene” is so far removed from the work I’m doing that it really took up very little of my thought-time. I’m more concerned and thinking about future comic projects then anything else except my wife. Although that ends up being the thing that people ask about most so it’s hard not getting excited about it, even though I’d much rather talk about new comic projects. But people always bring it up and then I end up doing “dream-casting” of who would play Mitch and Charlie and Mr. Vogel, etc.
NRAMA: Loss and moving on seems to be a big theme in the book, as both Orson and Isla seem to come to terms with their lives. Was this a personal part of the story for either of you?
JH: It's weird. There really isn't anything in my life, at least that I'm consciously aware of, that all of that stems from -- but those themes really appeal to me for some reason - they also played a large part in Mephisto. Like I mentioned earlier, my favorite songs, movies, and books all invoke a certain feeling in me -- touch my soul in a certain way -- and they mostly all tend to deal with somewhat forlorn feelings. I can't really explain the allure of that for me, though I'm sure some shrink would be happy to take my money to tell me! However, I feel there is an equal amount of "hope" that comes across in this book, so I think it all balances out nicely.
MK: I think everybody experiences a sense of loss in some form or another, from parents to friends and lovers...it’s happened to everyone. There’s a lot of personal stuff in there, I think, from both of our lives and I think we draw on that indirectly. And it’s kind of an unspoken rule of thumb for me that for a story to be really good, someone has to be killed, or at least die.
JH: Yeah! Some of my favorite stories involve the main characters you've grown to love and enjoy reading about dying or getting killed. I hate it when it happens, but I love to hate it, if that makes sense. It gives things a sense of "reality" -- and while it makes me sad, I think part of me likes that feeling, which may all tie back into why those themes appeal to me in the first place.
NRAMA: Along with the theme of loss, The Yellow Menace also offers up some commentary on comics' critics of the time, with Dr. Loom standing in for Dr. Wertham, blaming comics for the morel decay of children. Did you research any of Wertham's "research" to come up with Loom's material, or did it just come naturally?
JH: A combination of it coming naturally, with a bit of research to see the specific examples he used from various comics so we could play off those. Loom isn't supposed to "be" Wertham ("any similarities to persons living or dead is purely coincidental"), but serves as an ironic commentary on that important part of comics history. And not to worry, we've personally approved our new book with the official "Pistolwhip Comics Code" -- so it shouldn't make readers too sex-crazed or murderous...maybe.
MK: Most of the “real” research came from the source…Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent book...pretty much everything you could want to find to criticize or lampoon is in there. It was almost too easy to find material in there. I also looked at tons of comics from that time period...stuff by Jack Cole and a lot of the EC comics. The art is so detailed and crazed at times, it’s amazing that it’s sixty years old.
NRAMA: In the story, Isla, Ray, and Orson's arcs seemingly come to a nice close in a manner with this book, yet Mitch and Charlie have unresolved issues - is this your way of saying, "Tune in Again, Pistolwhip Fans!"?
JH: “Tune in again" for sure -- there are almost an infinite amount of stories for us to tell in this "world" -- but whether or not those will focus on Mitch and Charlie, it's hard to say. Many things in life go unresolved. But I'm sure we'll see them again. I definitely want to do more with Isla and Ray, and we don't always plan to tell stories that keep moving forward -- we'll be jumping around the "timeline" a bit, I'm sure. Then there's minor characters we've seen like Detective Copper, Trixie, Slappy Johnson, the list is endless -- and all these bit players are potential stars of future stories. And we've talked about doing stories in other time periods, still in the same "universe" -- I'd even like to do one in the far-future! And with what we've got potentially planned for the next book, many of these could come to light. But most importantly, we hope people will tune in for Pistolwhip: The Yellow Menace when it hits the stands this December!
MK: I see Mitch and Charlie as sort of the core characters but really only because the whole thing started with their stories. But really there are tons of characters we want to touch on and Mitch, Charlie, Ray, Isla are all really kind of common threads that we’ll probably weave through future/past stories to hold it all together, but they’re definitely not the only focus. Mrs. Dalloway has a great back story that I’d like to get to as well as Estle - the boat repairman, and all the ones that Jason mentioned. But for sure, hopefully there’s that lure of “what happens next” to these characters while still maintaining a satisfying and self-contained story. And hopefully the reader can take something away from each individual story line but then also be confident that there is definitely more to it...that these characters are still “living” off the page and that things will happen to them. It’s not like Spider-Man, where 40 years can pass and he’s still relatively the same person he was at the beginning. Hopefully Pistolwhip will have a different kind of edge...the fear that, like “real life”, anything can happen to anyone at any time.
JH: Yes! Anything can happen - especially when you're dealing with two creators who like it when characters are killed in stories - and I think that's the greatest part about us creating and having this large "world" to tell our stories in. The possibilities are endless...