MattBrady
11-18-2002, 10:04 AM
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI2_CVR.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI2_CVR_t.jpg" width="175" height="266" align="right" alt="CSI #2 cover" border="0"></a>by Alex Segura Jr.
Of all the properties making the jump from other mediums to comics lately, perhaps the one that raised the most eyebrows was CBS’ crime drama, CSI. A police procedural, focusing on the Las Vegas crime lab (hence, Crime Scene Investigation), the television series is grounded in the real world, and not known for its action or comic book-style adventure.
But that’s not stopping IDW Publishing, which will publish a five-issue miniseries begining in January. Along with the license for the property, the publisher nabbed a writer with some experience with the show: Max Allan Collins.
Collins, aside from being an acclaimed crime writer (including Road to Perdition, upon which the recent movie was based), has also written two CSI novels, among many other novelizations and adaptations of movies and television series. Newsarama caught up with the scribe to get some details on how the CSI comic will differ from the television series, the tricks of adapting things from other mediums and murders at comic conventions.
A quick bit of background for those not familiar with the show – the team of forensic scientists is led by Gil Grissom, an eccentric genius of an investigator, able to take leaps in logic that leave his other team members scratching their heads. Among the other individuals on the team, each has a specialty of sorts, ranging from genetics to crime scene interpretation and photography.
The rest of the team is made up of Catherine Willows, a former stripper turned criminal investigator, Sara Sidle, a young investigator specializing in material and element analysis, Warrick Brown, who specializes in audio and video analysis, and Nick Stokes, who specialized in hair and fiber analysis. The team has a support staff at the lab, and most often liaise with Vegas homicide detective, Jim Brass.
Generally speaking, the team is asked to investigate a case when a homicide has been committed, and from there, it’s their responsibility to gather evidence which will be used in the trial – if a suspect can be apprehended and charged. Part of the television series’ appeal has been its approach – giving a pretty unflinching portrayal of the work of a crime scene investigator to the science needed by each to interpret the data they collect.
Collins' story appearing in the miniseries – a murderer emulating the killings of Jack the Ripper while a Ripper convention is in town - was originally planned as another CSI novel, and even earlier as something totally different. When the chance came to integrate it into the new comic series, Collins went for it.
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI1p12c.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI1p12c_t.gif" width="175" height="266" align="left" alt="CSI #1, page 12" border="0"></a>"The story here was one I've wanted to do, in some form, prior to the CSI gig," Collins recalled. "I've thought for a long time about doing a comic book mini-series called Serial that was about a serial killer. I had kicked around an idea for a CSI novel to be called Ted Bundy's Greatest Hits in which each murder was a re-enactment of one murder by a famous serial killer - we'd do one crime scene each re-enacting Richard Speck, Bundy, Gacy, Dahmer, etc. When Jack the Ripper came into the mix, he kind of charismatically took over...and when the opportunity to do a comic book reared its head, the obvious graphic appeal of that ghastly case became perversely appealing. Plus, after From Hell, how else could I get to do Ripper graphic novel?"
While the main focus of the story will be on a serial killer re-enacting the murders of Jack the Ripper, like the television series, there will also be a secondary plot involving other characters running concurrently. "Grissom, Catherine and Warrick are on the Ripper case, fighting the ticking clock of more murders happening, with a secondary ticking clock being that at the end of the cycle, the killings will cease and the perpetrator will disappear," Collins explained. "Sara and Nick have the B plot, in which a strangled woman is found in a dumpster behind a casino; perhaps the two stories will dovetail, perhaps not. As they used to say on The Prisoner, 'That would be telling."
Though Collins has gained a higher profile of late with the release of a film version of his graphic novel Road To Perdition, it wasn't his work on that title that lead to IDW calling and offering the chance to chronicle the comic book adventures of the CSI team.
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI1p15c.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI1p15c_t.jpg" width="175" height="266" align="right" alt="CSI #1, page 15" border="0"></a>"My understanding is that [IDW’s] Beau Smith is a fan of my work - considers me sort of the father of modern crime comics," Collins said. "He knew that I was doing the CSI novels for CBS, and also knew I'd kind of quit comics, in disgust over the lackluster response to Road to Perdition's original publication. I think he thought my return to comics would make a good fit with CSI. To Beau's credit, he contacted me about this before the film version of Road To Perdition came out and earned me all sorts of unexpected attention.
"But it is true that CBS likes my work, and encouragement to use me on CSI licensing projects is flowing from that direction. I just did a CSI video game, due to that influence."
A ratings powerhouse, various factors combine to make CSI a viable property, both on the screen and in other media. Among them: A good timeslot, cast and a premise that connects with a strong fan base, Collins said. "Several major crime-novel series about forensics have taken off in the last half dozen years, and of course there's Silence of the Lambs and all the Hannibal Lecter stuff that's flowed from it," Collins said. "William Petersen, with his Manhunter credentials, is a perfect actor to tap into that vibe.
"On one level, I think CSI is the natural successor to The X-Files - it too, is a stylishly shot show about detectives with flashlights in dark rooms. Instead of paranormal activities, though, CSI looks at bizarre occurrences and explains them with rigorous science. Like The X-Files, CSI has a fan base that taps into science-fiction enthusiasts.”
Of course, logica can’t explain all of CSI’s success. "Some of it is luck,” Collins continued. “The show had a great time slot - right after Survivor. The cast, which is filled with charismatic actors, clicked; and Petersen has always been terrific, I always thought he should have been a major movie star. I'm really happy for his success."
Speaking of his novel work first, as with any kind of adaptation, taking material from a television series and converting it into prose brings with it a number of challenges. CSI, being a very detail-oriented drama, has its own quirks.
"CSI is one of the hardest properties I've dealt with," Collins said. "It breaks many rules of storytelling - for example, I have to deal in sometimes excruciating detail with all of the crime scene procedures, whereas in any other crime/detective story I'd do, we'd either leave when the crime lab guys show up, and learn what they found out later, or just focus on the most important, significant clues.
"The creators of CSI have been shrewdly stingy about telling us anything about the characters - every little tidbit of characterization is seized upon by starving fans. That said, the characters are well-drawn and interesting, even fascinating, though I credit the actors with a good share of that."
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI1coverwLOGO.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI1coverwLOGO_t.jpg" width="175" height="266" align="left" alt="CSI #1" border="0"></a>But Collins isn't totally alone when working on the novels and books. "I have a lot of help on the CSI novels and the comic book," Collins said. "My assistant on the CSI stuff is Matt Clemens, a writer I've frequently collaborated with on short stories. Matt has written true-crime material, so I hired him to do all the forensics research; a big fan of the show from the first episode on, he helps plot, too."
While the details of the investigation provide a challenge, there are also some characters in the series that need special care when adapting them out of the television series, most notably, the team’s leader. "Grissom is a tricky character, by the way. I try to avoid doing extended sequences in his point of view. As with Sherlock Holmes or Spock, we don't want to be inside his mind...we prefer to experience eccentric characters like that from without. We savor their enigmatic qualities."
Adapting the series into comic form may even be more difficult than turning it into novels, since the show isn't action oriented – something that comics are known for. "The comic book may actually be slightly harder to do than the novels," Collins said. "Again, this is a show whose premise does not lend itself to traditional crime/detective storytelling. The vast majority of the action, the violence, happens offstage, and appears only in re-enactments. The detectives rarely draw a gun and I think two shots have been fired on the show."
Still, there are some definite advantages within the comic medium. Advantages Collins says the creative team is working on. ”In one sense the comic book has an advantage over the novels," Collins said. "The show leans heavily on visuals, and in a comic book we can take advantage of that bent, which we are doing by using a separate artist on the re-enactments and forensics material, making that stuff more expressionistic. The show has great art direction and cinematography, which the comic can ape more easily than a prose work."
"What the novel has over the comic book is room to develop interior characterization - CSI fans seem to love what the novels do with making Catherine, Warrick, Sara, and Nick rounded characters with lives away from work," Collins said. "A novel is interior; comics, like movies, tend to be exterior. The comic moves faster, like the show; and there's some tricky pacing, because the story is divided into five issues. My comics writer instinct says we have to do action in every issue, which is certainly not like the show...so that takes some finesse."
The interaction between the characters is something Collins says comes naturally through the writing of each story, including the miniseries. “I don't know how they do it on TV, but I never really think about the specialties of the characters and right to that; I think more about the way the characters will interact," Collins said. "Grissom seemed natural to be a Ripper buff, so he needed to be central to that storyline; just for resonance, a woman needed to be part of the mix, and former stripper Catherine can identify with these poor women – hookers - who are being victimized; and Warrick adds a nice detached quality to these grisly crimes, than the more emotional Nick would. Pairing the two younger players on the secondary case lent a nice generationally compatible vibe to the proceedings. So their specialties only come up as necessary as the story develops.
"For example, in the novel CSI: Cold Burn I send Grissom and Sara to a mountaintop hotel to teach a conference, where they are snowed in and have to deal with a crime scene minus the lab and their tech gear. I could have paired anybody with Grissom, really, but the idea of sending these two was irresistible, since a relationship keeps threatening to happen between them."
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI_CVRalt.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI_CVRalt_t.jpg" width="175" height="266" align="right" alt="CSI #1 - photo variant cover" border="0"></a>The comic series will aim to give readers an "episode" of entertainment with every issue, Collins said. “Each issue has a cliffhanger of sorts. Each issue is designed to be an 'episode' with a beginning, middle and end. A mini-series has its own rhythm, so I never really thought about commercials breaks and so on, or making the comic ‘feel’ more like the show."
In an effort to match the special effects of the television series, the comic will try and add an expressionistic approach to how they show the forensic aspects. “We're using two artists [Gabriel Rodriguez for the story, and Ashley Wood for flashbacks and forensics], and the forensics and re-enactments are done more expressionistically than the main storyline," Collins said. "For one thing, we're going to see several of Jack the Ripper's murders re-enacted, which is strong medicine in any medium."
At times, it may seem that the characters take a backseat to the story on the television show. As long as the characters are strong, though, it shouldn't be a problem translating the series into the comics medium, Collins noted. "If you have strong, well-delineated characters, plot and characterization are intertwined. I shoot for that."
Despite his comments about the strengths of all the characters, Collins admitted that one character in both the novel and comic series sticks out as his favorite. “I am partial to Grissom, because he is quirky and enigmatic -- dedicated to his work and to justice, but with the people skills of a concentration camp guard," Collins said. "All of them are fun to write, though; I just keep the image of the actor in my mind, hear their voices, and go. In my heart of hearts, I consider Catherine the main character...She's Captain Kirk and he's Spock. But don't tell Billy Petersen."
If successful, the first comic miniseries may lead to other sequels. But Collins isn’t about to spill on the details of any upcoming comics-specific CSI stories he’s developing…well, except one.
"I have several book ideas on the back burner, but I'm not going to tempt the fates with the comic book," Collins explains. "If God and the fans allow it to be successful, I will come up with something. What about a murder at a comics convention?"
Of all the properties making the jump from other mediums to comics lately, perhaps the one that raised the most eyebrows was CBS’ crime drama, CSI. A police procedural, focusing on the Las Vegas crime lab (hence, Crime Scene Investigation), the television series is grounded in the real world, and not known for its action or comic book-style adventure.
But that’s not stopping IDW Publishing, which will publish a five-issue miniseries begining in January. Along with the license for the property, the publisher nabbed a writer with some experience with the show: Max Allan Collins.
Collins, aside from being an acclaimed crime writer (including Road to Perdition, upon which the recent movie was based), has also written two CSI novels, among many other novelizations and adaptations of movies and television series. Newsarama caught up with the scribe to get some details on how the CSI comic will differ from the television series, the tricks of adapting things from other mediums and murders at comic conventions.
A quick bit of background for those not familiar with the show – the team of forensic scientists is led by Gil Grissom, an eccentric genius of an investigator, able to take leaps in logic that leave his other team members scratching their heads. Among the other individuals on the team, each has a specialty of sorts, ranging from genetics to crime scene interpretation and photography.
The rest of the team is made up of Catherine Willows, a former stripper turned criminal investigator, Sara Sidle, a young investigator specializing in material and element analysis, Warrick Brown, who specializes in audio and video analysis, and Nick Stokes, who specialized in hair and fiber analysis. The team has a support staff at the lab, and most often liaise with Vegas homicide detective, Jim Brass.
Generally speaking, the team is asked to investigate a case when a homicide has been committed, and from there, it’s their responsibility to gather evidence which will be used in the trial – if a suspect can be apprehended and charged. Part of the television series’ appeal has been its approach – giving a pretty unflinching portrayal of the work of a crime scene investigator to the science needed by each to interpret the data they collect.
Collins' story appearing in the miniseries – a murderer emulating the killings of Jack the Ripper while a Ripper convention is in town - was originally planned as another CSI novel, and even earlier as something totally different. When the chance came to integrate it into the new comic series, Collins went for it.
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI1p12c.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI1p12c_t.gif" width="175" height="266" align="left" alt="CSI #1, page 12" border="0"></a>"The story here was one I've wanted to do, in some form, prior to the CSI gig," Collins recalled. "I've thought for a long time about doing a comic book mini-series called Serial that was about a serial killer. I had kicked around an idea for a CSI novel to be called Ted Bundy's Greatest Hits in which each murder was a re-enactment of one murder by a famous serial killer - we'd do one crime scene each re-enacting Richard Speck, Bundy, Gacy, Dahmer, etc. When Jack the Ripper came into the mix, he kind of charismatically took over...and when the opportunity to do a comic book reared its head, the obvious graphic appeal of that ghastly case became perversely appealing. Plus, after From Hell, how else could I get to do Ripper graphic novel?"
While the main focus of the story will be on a serial killer re-enacting the murders of Jack the Ripper, like the television series, there will also be a secondary plot involving other characters running concurrently. "Grissom, Catherine and Warrick are on the Ripper case, fighting the ticking clock of more murders happening, with a secondary ticking clock being that at the end of the cycle, the killings will cease and the perpetrator will disappear," Collins explained. "Sara and Nick have the B plot, in which a strangled woman is found in a dumpster behind a casino; perhaps the two stories will dovetail, perhaps not. As they used to say on The Prisoner, 'That would be telling."
Though Collins has gained a higher profile of late with the release of a film version of his graphic novel Road To Perdition, it wasn't his work on that title that lead to IDW calling and offering the chance to chronicle the comic book adventures of the CSI team.
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI1p15c.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI1p15c_t.jpg" width="175" height="266" align="right" alt="CSI #1, page 15" border="0"></a>"My understanding is that [IDW’s] Beau Smith is a fan of my work - considers me sort of the father of modern crime comics," Collins said. "He knew that I was doing the CSI novels for CBS, and also knew I'd kind of quit comics, in disgust over the lackluster response to Road to Perdition's original publication. I think he thought my return to comics would make a good fit with CSI. To Beau's credit, he contacted me about this before the film version of Road To Perdition came out and earned me all sorts of unexpected attention.
"But it is true that CBS likes my work, and encouragement to use me on CSI licensing projects is flowing from that direction. I just did a CSI video game, due to that influence."
A ratings powerhouse, various factors combine to make CSI a viable property, both on the screen and in other media. Among them: A good timeslot, cast and a premise that connects with a strong fan base, Collins said. "Several major crime-novel series about forensics have taken off in the last half dozen years, and of course there's Silence of the Lambs and all the Hannibal Lecter stuff that's flowed from it," Collins said. "William Petersen, with his Manhunter credentials, is a perfect actor to tap into that vibe.
"On one level, I think CSI is the natural successor to The X-Files - it too, is a stylishly shot show about detectives with flashlights in dark rooms. Instead of paranormal activities, though, CSI looks at bizarre occurrences and explains them with rigorous science. Like The X-Files, CSI has a fan base that taps into science-fiction enthusiasts.”
Of course, logica can’t explain all of CSI’s success. "Some of it is luck,” Collins continued. “The show had a great time slot - right after Survivor. The cast, which is filled with charismatic actors, clicked; and Petersen has always been terrific, I always thought he should have been a major movie star. I'm really happy for his success."
Speaking of his novel work first, as with any kind of adaptation, taking material from a television series and converting it into prose brings with it a number of challenges. CSI, being a very detail-oriented drama, has its own quirks.
"CSI is one of the hardest properties I've dealt with," Collins said. "It breaks many rules of storytelling - for example, I have to deal in sometimes excruciating detail with all of the crime scene procedures, whereas in any other crime/detective story I'd do, we'd either leave when the crime lab guys show up, and learn what they found out later, or just focus on the most important, significant clues.
"The creators of CSI have been shrewdly stingy about telling us anything about the characters - every little tidbit of characterization is seized upon by starving fans. That said, the characters are well-drawn and interesting, even fascinating, though I credit the actors with a good share of that."
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI1coverwLOGO.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI1coverwLOGO_t.jpg" width="175" height="266" align="left" alt="CSI #1" border="0"></a>But Collins isn't totally alone when working on the novels and books. "I have a lot of help on the CSI novels and the comic book," Collins said. "My assistant on the CSI stuff is Matt Clemens, a writer I've frequently collaborated with on short stories. Matt has written true-crime material, so I hired him to do all the forensics research; a big fan of the show from the first episode on, he helps plot, too."
While the details of the investigation provide a challenge, there are also some characters in the series that need special care when adapting them out of the television series, most notably, the team’s leader. "Grissom is a tricky character, by the way. I try to avoid doing extended sequences in his point of view. As with Sherlock Holmes or Spock, we don't want to be inside his mind...we prefer to experience eccentric characters like that from without. We savor their enigmatic qualities."
Adapting the series into comic form may even be more difficult than turning it into novels, since the show isn't action oriented – something that comics are known for. "The comic book may actually be slightly harder to do than the novels," Collins said. "Again, this is a show whose premise does not lend itself to traditional crime/detective storytelling. The vast majority of the action, the violence, happens offstage, and appears only in re-enactments. The detectives rarely draw a gun and I think two shots have been fired on the show."
Still, there are some definite advantages within the comic medium. Advantages Collins says the creative team is working on. ”In one sense the comic book has an advantage over the novels," Collins said. "The show leans heavily on visuals, and in a comic book we can take advantage of that bent, which we are doing by using a separate artist on the re-enactments and forensics material, making that stuff more expressionistic. The show has great art direction and cinematography, which the comic can ape more easily than a prose work."
"What the novel has over the comic book is room to develop interior characterization - CSI fans seem to love what the novels do with making Catherine, Warrick, Sara, and Nick rounded characters with lives away from work," Collins said. "A novel is interior; comics, like movies, tend to be exterior. The comic moves faster, like the show; and there's some tricky pacing, because the story is divided into five issues. My comics writer instinct says we have to do action in every issue, which is certainly not like the show...so that takes some finesse."
The interaction between the characters is something Collins says comes naturally through the writing of each story, including the miniseries. “I don't know how they do it on TV, but I never really think about the specialties of the characters and right to that; I think more about the way the characters will interact," Collins said. "Grissom seemed natural to be a Ripper buff, so he needed to be central to that storyline; just for resonance, a woman needed to be part of the mix, and former stripper Catherine can identify with these poor women – hookers - who are being victimized; and Warrick adds a nice detached quality to these grisly crimes, than the more emotional Nick would. Pairing the two younger players on the secondary case lent a nice generationally compatible vibe to the proceedings. So their specialties only come up as necessary as the story develops.
"For example, in the novel CSI: Cold Burn I send Grissom and Sara to a mountaintop hotel to teach a conference, where they are snowed in and have to deal with a crime scene minus the lab and their tech gear. I could have paired anybody with Grissom, really, but the idea of sending these two was irresistible, since a relationship keeps threatening to happen between them."
<a href="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI_CVRalt.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://classic.newsarama.com/Other_Publishers/CSI_CVRalt_t.jpg" width="175" height="266" align="right" alt="CSI #1 - photo variant cover" border="0"></a>The comic series will aim to give readers an "episode" of entertainment with every issue, Collins said. “Each issue has a cliffhanger of sorts. Each issue is designed to be an 'episode' with a beginning, middle and end. A mini-series has its own rhythm, so I never really thought about commercials breaks and so on, or making the comic ‘feel’ more like the show."
In an effort to match the special effects of the television series, the comic will try and add an expressionistic approach to how they show the forensic aspects. “We're using two artists [Gabriel Rodriguez for the story, and Ashley Wood for flashbacks and forensics], and the forensics and re-enactments are done more expressionistically than the main storyline," Collins said. "For one thing, we're going to see several of Jack the Ripper's murders re-enacted, which is strong medicine in any medium."
At times, it may seem that the characters take a backseat to the story on the television show. As long as the characters are strong, though, it shouldn't be a problem translating the series into the comics medium, Collins noted. "If you have strong, well-delineated characters, plot and characterization are intertwined. I shoot for that."
Despite his comments about the strengths of all the characters, Collins admitted that one character in both the novel and comic series sticks out as his favorite. “I am partial to Grissom, because he is quirky and enigmatic -- dedicated to his work and to justice, but with the people skills of a concentration camp guard," Collins said. "All of them are fun to write, though; I just keep the image of the actor in my mind, hear their voices, and go. In my heart of hearts, I consider Catherine the main character...She's Captain Kirk and he's Spock. But don't tell Billy Petersen."
If successful, the first comic miniseries may lead to other sequels. But Collins isn’t about to spill on the details of any upcoming comics-specific CSI stories he’s developing…well, except one.
"I have several book ideas on the back burner, but I'm not going to tempt the fates with the comic book," Collins explains. "If God and the fans allow it to be successful, I will come up with something. What about a murder at a comics convention?"