MattBrady
03-14-2007, 05:52 PM
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/AiT/BlackDiamond/cover_blackdiamond.jpg" border="0" align="right"><i>by Chris Arrant</i>
In a world fifty years from now, an elevated superhighway reaches from coast to coast. Born in the aftermath of heightened international terrorism, it was made after the U.S. government grounds commercial airline flights and needed an alternative way from people to get from point A to point B. But what the highway has become is something unexpected: a lawless blacktop governed by drugrunners, misfits and miscreants – while the U.S. has become more mundane and restricted, on the stretch of highway known as the Black Diamond anything is legal.
Enter Dr. Dan McLaughlin, DDS. Maybe the last profession you'd expect to be your lead in this comic-c<aaa>um-action-movie, his life is changed after his wife is kidnapped by would-be locals of the Black Diamond. So Doctor Dan takes a borrowed 1973 Mercury Cougar and puts the rubber to the road to rescue his wife in the lawless cross-country highway.
Created by AiT-PlanetLar publisher and writer Larry Young, he's got artist Jon Proctor riding shotgun on this six issue monthly miniseries. Originally scheduled for release during last year's convention season, the series hit some unexpected bumps in the road but has regained control and promises to burn up the highways and byways and land in comic stores this May.
<B>Newsarama:</B> <B>The Black Diamond</B> has been a long time coming; pardon the bluntness, but what took it so long?
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/AiT/BlackDiamond/BlackDiamond-4.jpg" border="0" align="left"><B>Larry Young:</B> Well, it's just one of those things. When Jon Proctor and I released <B>The Black Diamond: On Ramp</B> in July of 2005, the plan was to have the series start the next summer and debut at San Diego in 2006. Jon and I both had some things to deal with in our individual personal lives that put that a little behind that schedule, but I always had in mind it should be a summer project. So even though we both got our wheels back on the road pretty quickly, we still decided to make it a summer thing. So it's two years later instead of one. But that's just sort of whet everyone's appetite for it. Lots of other-media shenanigans, and <B>The Black Diamond</B> posters and copies of <B>The Black Diamond: On Ramp</B> showing up on [the television series] <B>The War At Home</B>, things like that. So <B>The Black Diamond</B> hadn't really stalled, so much as it was gathering strength for the onslaught.
<B>NRAMA:</B> Jon, you've described this book in another interview as "<B>Mad Max</B> meets <B>Cannonball Run</B> with a few twists". What made <B>The Black Diamond</B> something you wanted to sign up for?
<B>Jon Proctor:</B> Well, as I hope was conveyed in my original summation of the work, I have a long standing respect and connection with the origins I feel Black Diamond speaks to. The artistic appreciation of <B>Mad Max</B> as idea and aesthetic, combined with the childhood pop culture sentiment of <B>Cannonball Run</B> are, I feel, effectively paired to bring a new futuristic vision and fresh concept to the comic field, while still speaking to a shared zeitgeist of childhood memory and fascination. Larry Young is a visionary and he trusts my instincts. It's also nice to be a little under the radar of all the mainstream event oriented stories that have to look and be a certain way because of the continuity and the characters involved. I'm free to create in a vacuum which allows for things to blossom the way I see them instead of the way others want me to see them. AiT-PlanetLar is quietly steering the medium and evolving content in a way that the bigger companies can't usually afford to.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/AiT/BlackDiamond/BlackDiamond-8.jpg" border="0" align="right"><B>NRAMA:</B> The title <B>The Black Diamond</B> refers to a elevated cross-country highway. Have you done a lot of road trips traveling, and if so, how does that reflect back onto your writing here?
<B>LY:</B> I think it's a pretty American thing, getting in the car and hitting the road. I love road trips, and I always have. The thing about <B>The Black Diamond</B>, though is that even though I get tagged by the "high concept" line alot by wags in the audience, my stuff really is sort of quiet and thoughtful. Warren Ellis wrote in his intro for <B>Astronauts in Trouble</B>E: "Your actual people sitting down talking about themselves, their lives and their culture, a quiet mindbomb in the centre of the more literal explosions. A David Mamet pause in the middle of a Michael Bay movie." And in addition to being extremely flattering, is a pretty apt way to describe the thought processes behind my stuff. I like the slam-bang, but I also like to strain to hear the whisper, you know? So there's a lot of car chases and gunshots and pretty girls and hard men and an ordinary guy in an extraordinary circumstance, and all, but there're a lot of characters philosophizing to each other, too. Just like you do on a long road trip. So just like Mimi and I make up stories and jokes and games and all to entertain each other when we're going from here to there in the car, Jon and I want to entertain you with a story, well-told, on the Black Diamond. Evoke the feeling of a literal journey as we take you through the narrative.
<B>NRAMA:</B> Delivering on the promise set out in your pitch, <B>The Black Diamond</B> has car chases. Jon, what kind of research did you do to make everything look right?
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/AiT/BlackDiamond/BlackDiamond-12.jpg" border="0" align="left"><B>JP:</B> Everything from matchbox models to Liquid Television episodes.
<B>NRAMA:</B> Drawing the car chases themselves, how do you go about making it as action-oriented as possible without sacrificing detail?
<B>JP:</B> Start with the details, then make 'em fly. You have to know how to catch the right moment with the action. Usually, it's the point right before the crash that is the most visceral to me. Sometimes detail isn't as necessary as composition so you have to be aware that people are turning pages to see what happens next. If you get too detail heavy everywhere you slow down that process. There's a dynamic at work here that changes syncopation at every turn. If you establish the detail for the scene in the beginning you are more free to speed up the storytelling in the latter parts by simplifying things to accelerate the narrative. It comes down to looking at the thing as a whole and deciding what to leave out and then drawing the hell out of the rest.
To me, the reaction to the action should be measured in quick beats and large art.
<B>NRAMA:</B> Although built by the U.S. government to handle traffic after grounding commercial flights due to terrorism, the Black Diamond quickly turns into the thoroughfare for the illegal and the rowdy. Can you give us a rundown of what it's like to ride the Black Diamond?
<B>LY:</B> It's a big, long town, basically, with its own rules and culture and economy and celebrities. One of the fun things about the project is a few of my pals are doing back-up stories set on the road, which we have in the back, called <B>Tales of the Black Diamond</B>. I loved the "Munden's Bar" stories in the back of <B>Grimjack</B>, back-when, and we had two-pagers in the back of the serialized <B>Astronauts In Trouble: Live From The Moon</B>. But I thought it'd be fun to just let people go nuts with stories about the up-top. It's funny, because everyone's been pretty respectful about "not treading on my universe" or whatever, and I tell them, "Go nuts! Anything goes! It's a highway that spans the country from San Francisco to Baltimore! Trust me, anything you think up can happen up there!" So everyone says, "Oh, I get it," and all of a sudden, there's ancillary stories about the guys who clean up wrecks, and quiet stories about a dude with bad luck with cars, and crazy stuff about the travelling preachers and the chuck wagons and the celebrity waitresses that just can't make it into the linear story of the guy trying to rescue his wife. But it certainly adds to the richness of the world. I love those sorts of extras.
<B>NRAMA:</B> Can you give us a taste of who'll be contributing back-up stories to <B>The Black Diamond</B>?
<B>LY:</B> Aw, if you don't mind, I'd rather keep those as surprises.
<B>NRAMA:</B> OK, moving on… Why are certain car types illegal on The Black Diamond?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/AiT/BlackDiamond/BlackDiamond-18.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/AiT/BlackDiamond/BlackDiamond-18_t.jpg" border="0" align="right"></a><B>LY:</B> Oh, you got that bit from the ad copy of the "illegal 1973 Mercury Cougar." It's not that there are certain types illegal up-top; it's that they're illegal on <i>the ground</i>. On the Black Diamond, anything goes, you can drive anything. I think Jon has put in every sort of car he's ever wanted to draw. There's armored pick-ups and Harleys and cherry Mustangs and whatever. Go-carts and Batmobiles. Anything you with wheels is OK.
<B>NRAMA:</B> OK, rephrasing my question a bit. What kind of things are street legal on the Black Diamond but not so off of it? How far can people go with their car modifications?
<B>LY:</B> Naw, everything goes up-top. Down below, it's 2050 or so, and I figure everything fun will be illegal by then, including cars from 1973.
<B>NRAMA:</B> The lead character in this is <i>ahem</i> a dentist. Nothing against the profession, but you don't see much of Dr. Don McLaughlin's type in an action drama. Why a dentist, and what makes it interesting?
<B>LY:</B> Well, first off, I was trying to think of a profession that hadn't been seen in this sort of story. Everyone's a cop or an ex-soldier or mafia hitman or something. I worked in an orthodontist's office when I was in high school, making retainers and taking impressions and I thought, making an orthodontist the hero would be bad-ass. Sometimes it's just that easy. Then, there's tons of story reasons that makes this sort of thing interesting. He's such a stiff that his whole life is bringing order out of chaos. He's not just a dentist; he's an orthodontist. His mission is straightening bones. Imagine if such a guy, controlled in his emotions, by societal strictures, happenstance, whatever, gets thrown off the leash with a fast car and a cute girl. What's he going to do? That was the in for me, and I think that's what makes the story powerful. I don't want to give away the end of it, but I hope it doesn't surprise anyone that Doctor Don, while unaffected in major ways, is also not the same guy he was by the end of the story.
<B>NRAMA:</B>Who's behind the kidnapping of Don's wife?
<B>LY:</B> That's the big reveal from issue four. I hate to be coy, but without having read the first three yet, it wouldn't mean anything even if I told you. [laughs]
<B>NRAMA:</B> Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is your first full-color series coming out of AiT-Planet Lar. What made this project the one to be the first?
<B>LY:</B> I just wanted it to be in color. Jon Proctor's color sense is outstanding, and it be a stone cold shame if I made the guy work without one of the arrows in his quiver.
<B>NRAMA:</B> Jon, what say you? Why is coloring your work yourself so important?
<B>JP:</B> Because I'm a bad ass colorist.
<I><B>The Black Diamond</B> #1 (of 6) is scheduled for release in May 2007 from the publisher AiT-PlanetLar. It is available for pre-order from your comic shop with the Diamond order code MAR07 3085. For more information on the book, visit the publisher's website at www.ait-planetlar.com. </I>
In a world fifty years from now, an elevated superhighway reaches from coast to coast. Born in the aftermath of heightened international terrorism, it was made after the U.S. government grounds commercial airline flights and needed an alternative way from people to get from point A to point B. But what the highway has become is something unexpected: a lawless blacktop governed by drugrunners, misfits and miscreants – while the U.S. has become more mundane and restricted, on the stretch of highway known as the Black Diamond anything is legal.
Enter Dr. Dan McLaughlin, DDS. Maybe the last profession you'd expect to be your lead in this comic-c<aaa>um-action-movie, his life is changed after his wife is kidnapped by would-be locals of the Black Diamond. So Doctor Dan takes a borrowed 1973 Mercury Cougar and puts the rubber to the road to rescue his wife in the lawless cross-country highway.
Created by AiT-PlanetLar publisher and writer Larry Young, he's got artist Jon Proctor riding shotgun on this six issue monthly miniseries. Originally scheduled for release during last year's convention season, the series hit some unexpected bumps in the road but has regained control and promises to burn up the highways and byways and land in comic stores this May.
<B>Newsarama:</B> <B>The Black Diamond</B> has been a long time coming; pardon the bluntness, but what took it so long?
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/AiT/BlackDiamond/BlackDiamond-4.jpg" border="0" align="left"><B>Larry Young:</B> Well, it's just one of those things. When Jon Proctor and I released <B>The Black Diamond: On Ramp</B> in July of 2005, the plan was to have the series start the next summer and debut at San Diego in 2006. Jon and I both had some things to deal with in our individual personal lives that put that a little behind that schedule, but I always had in mind it should be a summer project. So even though we both got our wheels back on the road pretty quickly, we still decided to make it a summer thing. So it's two years later instead of one. But that's just sort of whet everyone's appetite for it. Lots of other-media shenanigans, and <B>The Black Diamond</B> posters and copies of <B>The Black Diamond: On Ramp</B> showing up on [the television series] <B>The War At Home</B>, things like that. So <B>The Black Diamond</B> hadn't really stalled, so much as it was gathering strength for the onslaught.
<B>NRAMA:</B> Jon, you've described this book in another interview as "<B>Mad Max</B> meets <B>Cannonball Run</B> with a few twists". What made <B>The Black Diamond</B> something you wanted to sign up for?
<B>Jon Proctor:</B> Well, as I hope was conveyed in my original summation of the work, I have a long standing respect and connection with the origins I feel Black Diamond speaks to. The artistic appreciation of <B>Mad Max</B> as idea and aesthetic, combined with the childhood pop culture sentiment of <B>Cannonball Run</B> are, I feel, effectively paired to bring a new futuristic vision and fresh concept to the comic field, while still speaking to a shared zeitgeist of childhood memory and fascination. Larry Young is a visionary and he trusts my instincts. It's also nice to be a little under the radar of all the mainstream event oriented stories that have to look and be a certain way because of the continuity and the characters involved. I'm free to create in a vacuum which allows for things to blossom the way I see them instead of the way others want me to see them. AiT-PlanetLar is quietly steering the medium and evolving content in a way that the bigger companies can't usually afford to.
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/AiT/BlackDiamond/BlackDiamond-8.jpg" border="0" align="right"><B>NRAMA:</B> The title <B>The Black Diamond</B> refers to a elevated cross-country highway. Have you done a lot of road trips traveling, and if so, how does that reflect back onto your writing here?
<B>LY:</B> I think it's a pretty American thing, getting in the car and hitting the road. I love road trips, and I always have. The thing about <B>The Black Diamond</B>, though is that even though I get tagged by the "high concept" line alot by wags in the audience, my stuff really is sort of quiet and thoughtful. Warren Ellis wrote in his intro for <B>Astronauts in Trouble</B>E: "Your actual people sitting down talking about themselves, their lives and their culture, a quiet mindbomb in the centre of the more literal explosions. A David Mamet pause in the middle of a Michael Bay movie." And in addition to being extremely flattering, is a pretty apt way to describe the thought processes behind my stuff. I like the slam-bang, but I also like to strain to hear the whisper, you know? So there's a lot of car chases and gunshots and pretty girls and hard men and an ordinary guy in an extraordinary circumstance, and all, but there're a lot of characters philosophizing to each other, too. Just like you do on a long road trip. So just like Mimi and I make up stories and jokes and games and all to entertain each other when we're going from here to there in the car, Jon and I want to entertain you with a story, well-told, on the Black Diamond. Evoke the feeling of a literal journey as we take you through the narrative.
<B>NRAMA:</B> Delivering on the promise set out in your pitch, <B>The Black Diamond</B> has car chases. Jon, what kind of research did you do to make everything look right?
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/AiT/BlackDiamond/BlackDiamond-12.jpg" border="0" align="left"><B>JP:</B> Everything from matchbox models to Liquid Television episodes.
<B>NRAMA:</B> Drawing the car chases themselves, how do you go about making it as action-oriented as possible without sacrificing detail?
<B>JP:</B> Start with the details, then make 'em fly. You have to know how to catch the right moment with the action. Usually, it's the point right before the crash that is the most visceral to me. Sometimes detail isn't as necessary as composition so you have to be aware that people are turning pages to see what happens next. If you get too detail heavy everywhere you slow down that process. There's a dynamic at work here that changes syncopation at every turn. If you establish the detail for the scene in the beginning you are more free to speed up the storytelling in the latter parts by simplifying things to accelerate the narrative. It comes down to looking at the thing as a whole and deciding what to leave out and then drawing the hell out of the rest.
To me, the reaction to the action should be measured in quick beats and large art.
<B>NRAMA:</B> Although built by the U.S. government to handle traffic after grounding commercial flights due to terrorism, the Black Diamond quickly turns into the thoroughfare for the illegal and the rowdy. Can you give us a rundown of what it's like to ride the Black Diamond?
<B>LY:</B> It's a big, long town, basically, with its own rules and culture and economy and celebrities. One of the fun things about the project is a few of my pals are doing back-up stories set on the road, which we have in the back, called <B>Tales of the Black Diamond</B>. I loved the "Munden's Bar" stories in the back of <B>Grimjack</B>, back-when, and we had two-pagers in the back of the serialized <B>Astronauts In Trouble: Live From The Moon</B>. But I thought it'd be fun to just let people go nuts with stories about the up-top. It's funny, because everyone's been pretty respectful about "not treading on my universe" or whatever, and I tell them, "Go nuts! Anything goes! It's a highway that spans the country from San Francisco to Baltimore! Trust me, anything you think up can happen up there!" So everyone says, "Oh, I get it," and all of a sudden, there's ancillary stories about the guys who clean up wrecks, and quiet stories about a dude with bad luck with cars, and crazy stuff about the travelling preachers and the chuck wagons and the celebrity waitresses that just can't make it into the linear story of the guy trying to rescue his wife. But it certainly adds to the richness of the world. I love those sorts of extras.
<B>NRAMA:</B> Can you give us a taste of who'll be contributing back-up stories to <B>The Black Diamond</B>?
<B>LY:</B> Aw, if you don't mind, I'd rather keep those as surprises.
<B>NRAMA:</B> OK, moving on… Why are certain car types illegal on The Black Diamond?
<a href="http://www.newsarama.com/AiT/BlackDiamond/BlackDiamond-18.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/AiT/BlackDiamond/BlackDiamond-18_t.jpg" border="0" align="right"></a><B>LY:</B> Oh, you got that bit from the ad copy of the "illegal 1973 Mercury Cougar." It's not that there are certain types illegal up-top; it's that they're illegal on <i>the ground</i>. On the Black Diamond, anything goes, you can drive anything. I think Jon has put in every sort of car he's ever wanted to draw. There's armored pick-ups and Harleys and cherry Mustangs and whatever. Go-carts and Batmobiles. Anything you with wheels is OK.
<B>NRAMA:</B> OK, rephrasing my question a bit. What kind of things are street legal on the Black Diamond but not so off of it? How far can people go with their car modifications?
<B>LY:</B> Naw, everything goes up-top. Down below, it's 2050 or so, and I figure everything fun will be illegal by then, including cars from 1973.
<B>NRAMA:</B> The lead character in this is <i>ahem</i> a dentist. Nothing against the profession, but you don't see much of Dr. Don McLaughlin's type in an action drama. Why a dentist, and what makes it interesting?
<B>LY:</B> Well, first off, I was trying to think of a profession that hadn't been seen in this sort of story. Everyone's a cop or an ex-soldier or mafia hitman or something. I worked in an orthodontist's office when I was in high school, making retainers and taking impressions and I thought, making an orthodontist the hero would be bad-ass. Sometimes it's just that easy. Then, there's tons of story reasons that makes this sort of thing interesting. He's such a stiff that his whole life is bringing order out of chaos. He's not just a dentist; he's an orthodontist. His mission is straightening bones. Imagine if such a guy, controlled in his emotions, by societal strictures, happenstance, whatever, gets thrown off the leash with a fast car and a cute girl. What's he going to do? That was the in for me, and I think that's what makes the story powerful. I don't want to give away the end of it, but I hope it doesn't surprise anyone that Doctor Don, while unaffected in major ways, is also not the same guy he was by the end of the story.
<B>NRAMA:</B>Who's behind the kidnapping of Don's wife?
<B>LY:</B> That's the big reveal from issue four. I hate to be coy, but without having read the first three yet, it wouldn't mean anything even if I told you. [laughs]
<B>NRAMA:</B> Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is your first full-color series coming out of AiT-Planet Lar. What made this project the one to be the first?
<B>LY:</B> I just wanted it to be in color. Jon Proctor's color sense is outstanding, and it be a stone cold shame if I made the guy work without one of the arrows in his quiver.
<B>NRAMA:</B> Jon, what say you? Why is coloring your work yourself so important?
<B>JP:</B> Because I'm a bad ass colorist.
<I><B>The Black Diamond</B> #1 (of 6) is scheduled for release in May 2007 from the publisher AiT-PlanetLar. It is available for pre-order from your comic shop with the Diamond order code MAR07 3085. For more information on the book, visit the publisher's website at www.ait-planetlar.com. </I>