JOSH DYSART ON MAKE 5 WISHES

[MattBrady]

by Daniel Robert Epstein

It couldn’t have crossed many people’s mind that the co-creator of Violent Messiahs would ever be writing manga for teenage girls, let alone one that stars pop star Avril Lavigne. But that’s exactly what’s happened with Joshua Dysart. He’s teamed up with artist Camilla D’Errico to create the original manga, Make 5 Wishes.

The story, as the title suggests, is about a young girl, Hana, who is granted five wishes from a demon but when those wishes go wrong she meets her hero, Avril Lavigne, who helps her find the courage to conquer her own personal demons. The pairing may sound odd (okay, very odd), but then again, many of the great comic book writers have teamed up with musicians to help increase their audience. It’s happened with artists as varied as Neil Gaiman with Alice Cooper, Steve Gerber writing the Kiss Marvel Comics Super Special, and of course Aerosmith’s famed appearance in Shadowman #19. But it wasn’t the idea of working with Avril Lavigne that turned Dysart into a Sk8er Boi, rather it was Nettwerk Entertainment’s ambitious plan to employ digital distribution of Make 5 Wishes in Asia. We had a chance to talk with Dysart from his home in California.

Newsarama: First off – since the fit seems to be so…different, how did you get involved with Make 5 Wishes?

Joshua Dysart: I got involved because of artist Camilla D’Errico. When the company that’s packaging the project, House of Parlance for Random House, said they needed a writer, she requested my presence on the book. I’ve known her for years. I actually met her at San Diego Comic Con when she was young and her father was dragging her from table to table to help her launch her career and find out exactly what professional comic book artists do. We emailed one another occasionally. Then when the time came, she requested me so I was able to pitch them and they liked it.

NRAMA: What sold them on the guy who created Violent Messiahs?

JD: Well, what happened was that there was a serious time crunch on this project. It needed to be done immediately. I think the people involved in it were not exactly aware of the time it takes to produce good comics. So there was an immediacy about it that was pretty intense. They asked me to give them three story pitches and Camilla had a pitch as well. Over the course of 24 hours, I actually produced nine pitches so including Camilla’s, there were ten. I reframed Camilla’s pitch and found what was interesting about it to me and made it universal for the two of us. Then we presented it to them. It was Camilla’s pitch they went with, which was interesting. I had things like, two lesbians kidnapping Avril Lavigne and keeping her in a hotel room [laughs]. But in the end, it was really Camilla who had the sensibility that they needed.

NRAMA: So the stuff you were pitching them was too Dysartian?

JD: Well I might be exaggerating slightly. I’ve never heard the word Dysartian before, though…

NRAMA: [laughs] I just made it up.

JD: Some of them were definitely that. Now, keep in mind, what happened was that they didn’t just pick one pitch, as they intentionally meant to. They actually first picked three and then picked five. So several of my pitches made it through. In fact, I think I’m going to do one more for them that’s based on one of those pitches and we’re still talking about me selling the rights to another pitch. Camilla certainly understood much more than I did about what Avril wanted than I did. But having said that, her pitch was by no means soft. It was actually a very strong pitch that I thoroughly enjoyed writing. I value her as a collaborator. I think it was less that it wasn’t hardcore and it’s more that Camilla has ingested a lot more of the Manga medium than I have. It’s pretty much her dominant influence. Her mind went to that place much more readily than mine did at first.

NRAMA: Was Avril involved from the very beginning?

JD: Oh yeah, from day one. We didn’t have any ideas that pre-existed Avril’s involvement that we just tried to mold to fit Avril. The one thing I didn’t want to do was create an Avril-based universe narrative or anything like that. The only thing that was interesting to me was fan relationships and this cult of personality that exists around her. So every single pitch had in some way to do with the way people perceive her or the environment around her. That includes Camilla’s pitch as well.

NRAMA: If I had to guess I would say that one of the reasons you might be hesitant to take on a job like this, is because your fan base is obviously comic book fans. Were you worried that doing this type of project might lower your street cred?

JD: [laughs] Absolutely. The humble readership that I have expects a certain degree of honesty from me and the last thing that I wanted to be perceived as is as a corporate shill. In the past, I have stood very staunchly against corporatism, especially when it invades art. But there were also some other elements that ended up being very positive for me such as the digital distribution in Asia. That is an incredible aspect that was really a huge selling point for me. Also Terry McBride’s involvement. Terry McBride started Save the Music Fan, which has directly defended people at least one person in Texas who illegally downloaded music. He went and paid for her legal fees. I have a tremendous amount of respect for that action and that institution. So it was things like that that eventually made me acquiesce to it. But originally I was very concerned about how my readership would perceive me. Though I was also concerned about whether I was going to be happy doing the project personally. I’m very fortunate to be very busy right now. So it was also finding time for it. It turned out to be a 260 page graphic novel, essentially, when it was all put together. But my first primary concern was that I did not want to be a corporate shill and I still don’t.

NRAMA: So it sounds to me like even if your fans do take you to task, you’re still going to be producing the work that you really want to produce, like Violent Messiahs and all of the other things you do. So the good outweighed the perceived “bad.”

JD: It did which was good because I did wrestle with it. I sat down and I dealt with the pros and cons. I’ve been broke a lot of my career, which is totally fine, but I’ve been in places and situations many times before where I would have to take whatever came my way. I’ve been really fortunate that I’ve projected enough of myself out into the world that really good things have come my way because if they didn’t, believe me, you would have seen my name on a lot of crap [laughs]. But here was an instance where I actually could afford to say no, so I sat down and really wrestled with taking the project and in the end the pros far outweighed the cons.

If you’re going to do a book on a music pop star then Avril is a good one for it. Avril Lavigne doesn’t use her body to sell her music. She’s not out there doing stuff that I think is completely ridiculous. She’s a decent role model for young women.

NRAMA: The digital download idea sounds fantastic.

JD: It is and that was a huge part of my involvement in this. This is the largest digital download we’ve done with comics. Plus the chance to be exposed to Asia was amazing because it is a very difficult thing to happen with western comic book creators. There’s a certain xenophobia in Japan against the western creator in certain mediums. Their comics are so popular and they’re so individualist. They created their own visual language and it’s deeply, profoundly affected the rest of the world, as we see by the viral spread of Manga. But in reverse it’s a very difficult nut to crack. So riding on the coattails of Avril Lavigne was advantageous for me.

NRAMA: Was it difficult to make her an integral part of the story?

JD: It wasn’t too bad, because Hana had to have an imaginary friend. So she’s like Jiminy Cricket. She’s her conscience trying to tell her to do the right thing. Hana is this spoiled rotten little girl but the adult in her is Avril Lavigne. Wherever that character needed to emerge, I just made her Avril. It was easy for us. Since it’s an imaginary character, I wasn’t really tied down to the genuine personality of Avril Lavigne, which was good because I have a very small understanding of what she’s actually like as a person.

NRAMA: Did you write this whole thing at once?

JD: I did. The time constraints were so intense. I had to go to all my other editors to rework my schedule. So I wrote this all in a huge flurry of writing.

NRAMA: So how many levels of editors and Avril and Avril’s handlers, did it have to go through?

JD: As far as input goes, Avril’s people were phenomenal. I will praise them for how little they came in and messed with our shit. The second volume gets pretty dark and there’s some violence towards children in it and we got no problems with them at all about that. I cannot tell you how many layers it had to go through. I imagine it went to House of Parlance and they went to Terry McBride and Terry McBride went straight to Avril. But that’s only me guessing, because I never saw any influence outside of the original core creative team, which is House of Parlance, Camilla D’Errico and myself. I wanted to make sure it was PG-13 so we were self-monitoring a lot more than we got corporate monitoring.

NRAMA: Did you feel like you slipped in anything that you felt was true to yourself?

JD: I do. Ultimately, when the book gets read to completion, I think that it’s very true to my aesthetic. I seem to be obsessed probably to the point of annoyance with loneliness and the repercussions of love and I think that’s very much in the book. Hana is very much a character that can stand alongside all of my favorite broken little people.

NRAMA: Besides the digital downloads, are you excited by the prospect of it being stocked at Virgin Records and possibly being sold at Avril’s shows?

JD: Yeah, the distribution aspect of it is insane. I’ve got a comic book coming out in the Conan MMO, The Age of Conan. I have a comic that’ll be packaged with the Konami Hellboy game. So these extra distribution avenues are really out of control. They’re so much bigger than the distribution that we’d be getting regularly. However, I don’t know if that’s as exciting to me, because it has nothing to do with my abilities as a writer or whatever. Yeah, it’s great to be exposed in these avenues. I do dig being handed out at live shows because I’m a big live music fan. But that’s not quite as exciting to me as the digital downloading, because I really feel like we can’t become vaudeville as a medium.

That’s really the thing I’m most jazzed about. I like working with [Avril Lavigne’s management company] Nettwerk. It comes down to, what is a comic book? I know Scott McCloud has gone over this much more aptly than I ever could. But a comic book has no motion and no sound but once you start digitally distributing us it’s very easy to add motion and sound. So these philosophical questions about the aesthetic of what a comic book is, is really interesting to me. To be able to work with the tech team and make sure that we maintain exactly what a comic book is as we move into this new realm is really important. So the other stuff is cool, but what’s important to me is definitely that aspect of the project.

NRAMA: Is this training you to do digital downloads of your own work?

JD: I would very much like to probe further and deeper into the whole implications of digital downloading of comic books. We’re either futurists or we’re vaudeville.

NRAMA: Well, people are doing it now, illegally.

JD: Exactly, so it’s just got to be done. As far as my own work I never really understand how commercially viable I am. I don’t really see myself as commercially viable especially, because right now we’re dealing with a medium that is filled with early adopters and virtually nobody else. So if we want to move beyond this early adopter group, which are the people who will run to it just because it’s techy, then we’re going to have to attach ourselves to things like Avril Lavigne. We have to plant the seed. For now, we have to remain on the edge of pop culture and let it push us forward. Then eventually, maybe we can get to that place where the work itself stands out. But right now it’s just such a new thing so these big names are our Trojan Horse.

NRAMA: I found an interview someone did with you on a manga site and you mentioned you had seen some negativity about Make 5 Wishes in their forums, what were those negative aspects?

JD: There has been some concerns from the manga purists here in the west. I can’t read the message boards in the east, because of my limited language abilities. But that’s just me doing damage control because those people are not our audience. Somebody who throws up their hands at the name of Avril Lavigne is not going to pick this comic book up. But there are some valid concerns about art as commercials and that’s part of what people are concerned about. Technically, this is a commercial for Avril Lavigne. However, the people involved are not comfortable making commercials for pop stars so we did everything we could to make it about the phenomena of fame and hopefully we changed that perception of what commercial art can be.

NRAMA: Well, there are people out there who love Elvis Presley’s movies but they were really nothing but commercials for him and his music.

JD: Absolutely. In the end it’s all about execution, especially as the world becomes more and more corporatized and those of us who are relatively fringe have to continue to make a living and operate in a more and more corporatized world without totally selling our souls. We’ve got to find ways to commercialize without trivializing.

NRAMA: I actually really liked the Van Helsing [Beneath the Rue Morgue] one-shot book that you wrote [drawn by J. Alexander].

JD: Thanks, I get that a lot. People are shocked that they dug it.

NRAMA: Yeah, it was so much better than the movie.

JD: We get that a lot too. J. Alexander is awesome and anytime I get to release myself of being pretentious and up my own ass, it usually makes for a better comic book. If anything releases you from being pretentious, it’s having to write something to do with that movie.

NRAMA: But it’s interesting that it’s so much better than the movie. The concept of Van Helsing is very much a comic book concept like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Was it the idea of this Van Helsing character that you got excited about it?

JD: Absolutely. Like you said, the potential of Van Helsing is phenomenal. The monster hunter is one of our great comic book and pulp icons. It never gets old. It’s like space opera, everybody wants to do it. Not only did the concept excite me and not only did I have a blast with it, but [Dark Horse editor] Scott Allie intended me to write an ongoing series and I was totally jazzed for it. I didn’t care how bad the movie was, to do a monster hunter like that, month in and month out was amazing. I sent in a lot of really weird pitches like aliens in the Himalayas and all this other ____ that we were going to get to eventually because it was supposed to be a monthly book. But then the property fizzled once everyone saw what the parent property was like.

NRAMA: So you also did the Hellboy comic which is being packaged with the game and a Monster House comic. Is it that once you do one of them more start rolling in?

JD: I think so. Scott is responsible for all of this. Scott’s been really awesome. Even Monster House, which eventually was published at IDW, Scott put that deal into play. The Monster House people, [director] Gil Kenan and his management, pulled it from Dark Horse, but kept me, which is flattering. Even though it put me in a weird political situation because Scott is my boy. But I ended up sticking with the project, with Scott’s good graces. I think what Scott is doing is trying to build my cachet because he believes in me and he keeps getting me work.

Check out the official website for Make 5 Wishes here.

[Scorned1]

Damn, those are mighty fine looking pages.

[RoiVampire]

where is spidertour02 already

maybe his head exploded at all the avrilness of this article

[Doombug]

Originally Posted by RoiVampire

where is spidertour02 already

maybe his head exploded at all the avrilness of this article

nah, you mean paulski.

[JSS]

"starring avril lavigne"? indeed...

[Ravengregory]

I have no idea what to think about this...but Josh is a damn fine writer so....

[Uchiha_Prodigy]

Why is everything being called manga these days? Seriously, if its made by American creators, its not manga. Why cant we just call it a goddamn comic book? What's so hard about that?

[tsd08460]

http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/manga/m5w.html

[Ace]

I actually found this to be one of the more interesting interviews I've read in a long time, to try to see just how someone like Dysart ends up doing something like this.

[KingMattress]

Good art but... Why?

[Nate-Earth 2]

Strikes me as a bit goofy. And extremely egotistical on Ms. Lavigne's part, haha. Again, great artwork, but abit on the goofy and "the point is...?" side.

[kalorama]

I would assume the point is no different than that of any other pop culture product: To entertain an interested and willing audience.

[flutegirlrockz]

Hey they have made comics with rock stars (Kiss, Alice Cooper ect) and wrestlers ( Kevin Nash, Undertaker ect) so this is more of the same thing. They are just trying to get young females interested in comics which is good right.

[EmeraldGuy32]

I think the comparing of this to the Elvis movies is perfect. It's a commercial, but damn do I love me some Elvis movies! I don't think I've heard a single Lavigne song before (in fact, I had to wiki her just to find out who the hell she was) so I'm not sure if this book is for me. On the other hand those were some great preview pages and I own just about everything Josh has done. So we'll see.

[Revolver]

So, in summary:

NRMA: Dude? WTF?
DYSART: $$$$$$$$$$

[Nate-Earth 2]

Originally Posted by flutegirlrockz

Hey they have made comics with rock stars (Kiss, Alice Cooper ect) and wrestlers ( Kevin Nash, Undertaker ect) so this is more of the same thing. They are just trying to get young females interested in comics which is good right.

Well, I guess I would say the point is not to get girls into comics, but rather to appeal to the teenage girls that already read manga, as opposed to comics,and probably listen to Ms. Lavigne's music, since this is being touted as an English language manga, apparently.

[New Way]

Doesn't it have to be made in Japan for it to be considered Manga?

[Nate-Earth 2]

Originally Posted by New Way

Doesn't it have to be made in Japan for it to be considered Manga?

Well, ideally, i suppose, but with the mainstreaming of anime and manga in the last decade, stuff that obviously has manga influences visually is usually called manga. I don't really agree with it, myself though, but, thats the way it is now i suppose.

[MattBrady]

Originally Posted by Revolver

So, in summary:

NRMA: Dude? WTF?
DYSART: $$$$$$$$$$

sure, if you ignore everything he said, and put in your own pov, he does say that. amazing.

MattB

[Revolver]

Originally Posted by New Way

Doesn't it have to be made in Japan for it to be considered Manga?

IMO, yes.

Manga is Japanese comics; if it's moe-style and not from Japan - it's not manga. The important factor here is that manga isn't specifically deformed giant-eyed big-headed covered-in-sweat-bubbles characters (moe-style) - Japanese manga naturally covers a range of styles. Moe is probably the most common because it's cheap and fast, as they like getting books out the door as quick as they can.

(Not to mention 99.9% of any Western-origined "manga" I've read get all the sociological cues skewed - juvenile misconceptions birthing bizarro renditions of Japanese/Eastern manga archetypes.)

[Kolimar]

Not a bad idea for a story. Excellent idea, from a commercial pov. D'Errico's art looks pretty good.

[AuH20]

Originally Posted by EmeraldGuy32

I think the comparing of this to the Elvis movies is perfect. It's a commercial, but damn do I love me some Elvis movies!

Thing is, with Elvis movies, Elvis actually sang and you could hear what he sang.

With Avril comics, hearing her music is probably not going to be part of the experience.

Not that that's a bad thing. If only more pop singers released more comic books and fewer albums...

[spidertour02]

Originally Posted by RoiVampire

where is spidertour02 already

maybe his head exploded at all the avrilness of this article

Bwahahahaha!!! Actually, I didn't look at the front page this morning.

And why did I immediately jump to mind? I would think the order goes paulski>spidertour02>everybody else.

Oh, and I may love me some Avril, but no way in hell am I buying this.

[paulski]

Originally Posted by Doombug

nah, you mean paulski.

Both of us, I imagine, seeing as how we're the resident Avril junkies round this place.

And I wonder if this blew spidertour's mind as much as it did mine when I read it:

"It was Camilla’s pitch they went with, which was interesting. I had things like, two lesbians kidnapping Avril Lavigne and keeping her in a hotel room [laughs]."

I think Josh's pitch would sell better, frankly. I mean, I'd buy about 20,000 copies myself...

[Drew Geraci]

Originally Posted by KingMattress

Good art but... Why?

Originally Posted by Nate-Earth 2

Strikes me as a bit goofy. And extremely egotistical on Ms. Lavigne's part, haha. Again, great artwork, but abit on the goofy and "the point is...?" side.

Why not? I don't know much about her besides her breakout hit, "Complicated", but I think it fits her image well. She's of the age where she probably grew up on Manga (and perhaps, proudly so), and that's encouraging news for the comics industry.

She's a much more legitimate entertainer than say, Jessica Simpson. I think it's a cool idea, particularly in a "Manga" format. Looks like good art and story, too.

Why all the hatin'?

Also, I may be ignorant on this point, but what is the proper term for American-made Anime/Manga-style comics? Just calling them comics doesn't describe the style they're going for.

Drew
www.drewgeraci.com