TOM SNIEGOSKI ON RAT TAILS & OWL BOYS

[MattBrady]

by Zack Smith

Tom Sniegoski is a name familiar to comic fans. He’s written dozens of comics ranging from Bone to Buffy, plus novels ranging from his own creations to tie-ins for Buffy, Angel and Hellboy. Best-known for scripting the Bone tie-in Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails, Sniegoski had a big hit last year with the Boom! mini-series Talent, co-written with his friend and frequent collaborator Christopher Golden. That same year, ABC Family adapted his book series Fallen into a much-hyped TV-movie whose sequel will air later this summer.

But Sniegoski may be poised for his biggest hit yet with Billy Hooten: Owlboy, a new series of younger-readers books that debuts in July. Illustrated by The Goon’s Eric Powell (with whom Sniegoski collaborated on Devil Dinosaur for Marvel’s Monsters Unleashed event), it’s the story of a young outcast who discovers a magic city where he can become a hero. Sniegoski took time from his incredibly busy schedule to tell us about Billy, his other projects, the really bad advice he gave Eric Powell about The Goon, and the possibility of another stupid rat tail.

Newsarama: Tom, I'd like to start by saying congratulations! You've really had a great year.

Tom Sniegoski: I have had a pretty good year! Actually, last year was good, and this year is pretty good too, so it's been two good years. It all kind of blurs together after a while.

NRAMA: Let's start by talking about Billy Hooten. What's the book about?

TS: Billy Hooten is about the geek in all of us. He's a 12-year-old boy who's absolutely fascinated with monster movies and comic books and action figures and anything that you could use to classify someone as a real genre "geek." He is that kid. So, he runs into some difficulties at school because he's the weird kid, I'm sure we can all identify…

NRAMA: [sighs] Unfortunately…

TS: Exactly! This is so much me growing up it's just not even funny. He happens to live in this house in Bradbury, Massachusetts, which looks onto a cemetery, with a big stone wall surrounded it. One day, while sitting in his yard reading a comic book, he hears this cry for help. And he heads into the cemetery, and finds himself drawn to this rickety old mausoleum that's been there for ever and ever, and there's all these legends about the family who owned it being witches.

And he enters the mausoleum to answer the cry for help, and finds this monstrous boar-like thing attacking this little goblin creature! There's this whole struggle where he winds up knocking over the boar-man, who accidentally knocks himself out, and Billy's just standing there, saying "Did I just do this?" And the little goblin-guy looks at him and goes, "You're the one. You're the one I've been sent here to find."

And you find out that the goblin is from this whole other world beneath the cemetery called Monstros City. It's existed for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, and this whole time, there's been a hero who protects this city, named "Owlboy." There was a tragedy long ago where their last Owlboy disappeared, and Monstros City has been without an Owlboy for years and years and years. And this goblin, who's almost like an Alfred to Batman – his whole family has been the assistant to the Owlboy, and he's the youngest and most recent in this line – he's decided to find the new Owlboy, and Billy is his chosen one.

So it's this crazy story of a 12-year-old boy who thinks he's just a geek who reads comics trying to wrap his brain around the idea that he could actually be this hero – a hero! So he winds up going to Monstros City through this entrance in a sarcophagus in this mausoleum, and finds the laws of physics work differently down there – he's fast, and strong, and even his crazy inventions he makes in his garage, his crazy ideas like the freeze ray he's made from an old air conditioner, the jetpack made from old fire extinguishers, all these creative ideas he has that don't work in the real world do work down here! He can build a robot! So he has a secret headquarters called "The Roost" in a tree in the middle of Monstros City and he has a mechanic who helps him make like, the Owlmobile or the Owlcopter…and he goes for it!



NRAMA: Sounds like a lot of fun.

TS: It's a blast, it's absolutely crazy. He fights all kinds of bizarre threats – in the second book, he's up against these horrible creatures called the Sassafras Siblings, this hideous brother and sister who want to become crime lords of Monstros City, because their families were always crime lords, and their families are in jail, so they want to pick up the mantle. And Billy's little five-year-old neighbor, this little girl, finds her way into Monstros City, and…you know how five-year-olds tend to break whatever they touch? That gets amplified in Monstros City, so her touch, which Billy calls "The Destructo Touch," is now at the point where if she stamps her foot, she can cause earthquakes, or touch a building a certain way and have it collapse. She, almost by accident, becomes a secret weapon to the Sassafras Siblings in the second book, and Billy has to pull her out before she destroys Monstros City.

This is the most fun I've ever had writing books. For me, it's about relaxing and letting go and getting in touch with my inner child, the crazy kid that I was oh so many years ago [laughs]. I'm having a great time. I hope people react to it, and to Eric's artwork, because his stuff is amazing!

NRAMA: How'd Eric become involved with the book?

TS: I brought him in to the project, to Random House. Their first question was, "Eric Powell, is he any good?" Than they saw his illustrations, that heavy pencil style that he does, and it just knocked their friggin' socks off! It's absolutely gorgeous!

NRAMA: How much story do you have plotted for these books?

TS: When I started out, I had four books plotted out. Right now, I have four books – the third book is a tip of the hat to 1950s monster movies and the old Kirby monster comics, which Eric and I paid tribute to in Devil Dinosaur. It's called "The Terror of Zis Boom Bah." The fourth book is my tip of the hat to teen superhero books called, "The Flock of Fury." Billy has to put together his own superhero team to defeat this all-encompassing evil that's menacing Monstros City.

So right now, it's four, but if they said, "Come up with another four," I could easily do it, and maybe even more than that! It really pays homage to a lot of different genres, science fiction, horror, what have you, and it's humorous, so it lends itself to all kinds of over-the-top scenarios.

NRAMA: Now, you and Eric have been friends for a long time.

TS: Yeah! I got Eric his first paid gigs, at London Night. You remember London Night?

NRAMA: Yeah, I'm from NC, they were published around here…

TS: Right, Everett Hartsoe's company. He had approached me to do some Razor stuff right after I had finished Vampirella. He gave me an open, "come up with a story and we'll do it," thing, and I had just done a signing in Tennessee for Vampirella where Eric approached me with his portfolio, looking all depressed [laughs]. He said, "Do you think I have a chance?" And just going through his stuff, my reaction was…"What do you mean you're not working for anybody?!"

NRAMA: And then The Goon became a huge hit…

TS: Oh yeah. Let me tell you the secret origin of The Goon: I remember Eric calling me and saying, "I want to do my own thing, my own book, and it's called 'The Goon!'" And he kind of paused, and I remember rolling my eyes and thinking, "Oh great, 'The Goon.' Great title, Eric! That'll grab 'em!"

NRAMA: [laughs]

TS: And this was the time, you know, when Image comics were super-hot, and characters were dark and gritty with big guns and things like that, so my mind was always going toward, what's going to get you a three-page story in Wizard, the big hook, you know? And he told me the story of what it was going to be, very simple, you know? And I remember yelling at him and going, "What are you, an idiot?! You don't want to do that!"

NRAMA: So you were waaaayyyy off-base there…

TS: Right, and it was because my attitude was, "Look and see what's selling, comic-wise, at this time," and The Goon just wasn't it! And if Eric was going to do something, I wanted him to have a lot of success and was going to get him the kind of attention that he deserved.

NRAMA: And he obviously got that…

TS: Yeah, the curveball was that he did it, first through Avatar, where he wasn't happy. Then everyone turned him down and so he self-published…and that's when I realized, "Oh my God! I can't believe I made fun of him and berated him! He's doing exactly what he wants to do!" It was a book created by someone who's giving 150 percent, you know? He was writing the kind of comic he wanted to read, and drawing the kind of comic he wanted to see. It was like a lightning bolt hit me in the head and I said to myself, "What an idiot! I didn't get it! I didn't see what he was doing!" And he's been doing it ever since. He's an absolutely amazing artist and a really good friend.

NRAMA: How did this project come about?

TS: What's interesting about it is that it came as a result of me looking at kid's comics in general. Some people have done great kid's comics, such as Jeff Smith's Bone and Mike Kunkle's Herobear and the Kid. But I realized just how lacking the industry is in just really fun younger-reader comics that everyone can read. I kind of envisioned something in my mind like the old Warner Brothers cartoons, something where everybody's going to get something from it, and (the marketplace) was just lacking anything like that.

Originally, I started to work on proposals to make Billy a comic…but with all the fits and starts with my career, I kept getting pulled away from it. Zach Howard (Shaun of the Dead) was going to do it at one point, and we were working on designs and a six-page story, but he got pulled from it too, and who can blame him? Finally, I changed it up a bit and did it up as a book proposal once I started getting more book work. The first people who looked at it…they just didn't get it! They kept giving me all these notes to change this and that, and it showed they didn't really get what I wanted to do with the story.

Then I met an editor over at Delacorte, which is part of Random House, and she was very interested in the concept. I sent it over to her, and it took a little while, but she finally got back to me and said, "I love this! And I don't want to change anything!" It was like, "Bingo! Finally, somebody understands my book!"

She signed me for two books, which are the ones coming out this month, and I've just been signed for two more!

NRAMA: Congratulations!

TS: Yeah, they told me they were so excited, they said, "We don't want to wait for the numbers! We want to do another one NOW!"



NRAMA: You've got the next part of Fallen coming out. How involved are you with that?

TS: Not as involved as with the first movie. The first one I was seeing all the scripts and things, and the second one, they got new producers, and they seem to have gone off in a new direction with my characters. So the final four hours of Fallen will be very different from the first two, but I'm okay with that. It's the nature of the beast, you know?

NRAMA: The first one did very well…

TS: Yeah, the ratings were terrific! They were ecstatic!

NRAMA: I remember watching the first one at SDCC last year…and then it got to the end and it said, "Next summer…" I was like, "Wait, what the--?!"

TS: That ticked off a lot of people. They were not happy. But at the same time, I think that maybe the network didn't realize what they were getting themselves into! Like, maybe halfway through filming, they realized they had something special on their hands! They really did an amazing job of bringing my books to life, a phenomenal job. But I think they made this movie, expected it to be a throwaway, but then they saw the dailies and saw how well it was turning out! They had the rights to my other Fallen books, but they hadn't started production at all. I'm not sure how it's going to air, if it's going to be as movies, or as movies and then some hour-long episodes, but it is going to air in August, after Comic-Con. (August 3rd, 4th and 5th!)

NRAMA: I also wanted to talk about Talent, one of my favorite minis from last year…

TS: That was an amazing experience. It's funny, because Chris Golden and I had originally written it as a TV pilot, almost as an exercise. And it got shopped around…then 9/11 happened.

NRAMA: Oh my God.

TS: Yeah, here's a story that starts with a massive plane crash, then the main character is suspected of being a terrorist…no one wanted to look at anything involving that. We just put it in a drawer, and a few years later, Chris was talking with Ross Richie over at Boom!, and he was like, "Hey, do you have anything you'd like to do as a comic…?" Chris called me up and asked about Talent, and I said, "Hey, it's still in a drawer…" Just a few months later and Paul Azaceta was drawing it.

NRAMA: Wow.

TS: The nice thing for me and Chris was that we have a good manager, and he got this in the hands of quite a few people. The week the comic book came out, a bidding war started at every major Hollywood studio! [laughs] They were like, falling all over themselves for this, and it was probably something they all had in their hands three years ago. We were cracking up, it was a riot. Even our manager thought it was a riot: "Where were you three years ago?! You could have had this for a song!" Universal wound up winning the option, and they just hired a screenwriter.

NRAMA: Good luck with that. So what's next for you?

TS: I've got two adult mystery novels coming up. The first is called "A Kiss Before the Apocalypse," and I think it's the best thing I've ever done. I just wrapped on a sequel, and I'll be doing revisions over the next few months.

I'm also working on a new series for Simon and Schuster called "The Brimstone Network." It's in the tradition of the pulps, Doc Savage and the Shadow and all that, about an ancient organization called the Brimstone Network, designed to deal with supernatural threats to humanity. And one day, when everything seems copasetic and calm, and everyone has their guard down, a powerful supernatural threat strikes and the organization is wiped out. And the leader, who had always thought that this could happen, executes his contingency plan, where his son, hidden at birth, must assemble a new Brimstone Network. This kid, maybe 12 years old, has been hidden away in a monastery in the Himalayas, and he's summoned by this Frankenstein-type character called "Mr. Stitch," who's made up of all the best agents who fell in battle for the Brimstone Network over the years. He and the kid go off into the world with this vast supernatural menace chasing them, to recruit new members. They go after a 13-year-old girl who's a werewolf, and a handicapped boy who has advanced psychic abilities. There's one who's the equivalent of pilot, who can access doorways to other dimensions. It's a three-book series, and I'm almost done with writing the first one.

NRAMA: Are you going to do some more comics?

TS: I'd love to! There are a couple things in the works. One thing I've set aside for myself is that Jeff Smith wants to do some more Big Johnson Bone. He wants to do two more tall tale stories, and collect them with Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails in a hardcover.

NRAMA: Wait – there could be more Bone comics?!

TS: I know! I saw Jeff and his wife, Vijaya, at the New York con, and the first words out of his mouth were, "When are you going to write those?!" And the first words out of my mouth, were, "When are you going to have time to draw them?!" I think he's at a point now where he's finishing Shazam, and as soon as an opportunity arises to write those two scripts, I'm sure we'll sit down and figure out a schedule.

Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails was such an amazing experience – when you get a phone call from Vijaya saying, "Hey, Tom, this is Vijaya. Do you want to write the Bone prequel?", it's like winning the lottery! To be the only person to write these characters in the Bone universe besides Jeff is such a privilege.

NRAMA: With all these projects, what's your schedule like?

TS: Let me tell you – I am up at 5 a.m. every morning. [laughs] I usually start doing some work before I nudge my wife out of bed and get the dog walked. I work seven days a week, even Saturday and Sunday, I'm still up at five to get caught up with something. These past couple of months have been insane, because I had to have the first draft of the Brimstone Network book done, then the third Billy Hooten book done, then the second Brimstone Network book done! My schedule, up until January 2008, is like non-stop.

But it's great. Like I said, I'm having such a great time, and I really hope that people enjoy Billy Hooten. Chris Golden just read the first book and loved it. It'd be great if something that was that much fun to write could become something that kids really enjoy. That would be the best.

[skeletorjr]

I am all over this like stink on a monkey. I can't wait until my kids are old enough that we can read this together!

[Mike Thompson]

Sign me up as well. This looks to be something great for me to share with my band of third graders.

[Lonewolf]

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GODOH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GODOH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GODOH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GODOH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GODOH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GODOH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GODOH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GODOH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE

That just made my year seriously!

Plus, ERIC POWELL AND SNIEGOWSKI!?! HOLY PERFECT COMBINATION. That art work is beautiful, seriously, I just ordered EVERY BOOK of it ever from my LCS. But ...

NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE NEW BONE

[Sluggo]

This sounds really fantastic. I'm really into a lot of the "kids" books these days. I just read the first of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan, entitled "The Lightning Thief" (highly recommended for fans of Greek Mythology and Harry Potter). I'm also interested in reading the Bartaemus Trilogy and the Artemis Fowl.

It's interesting to me that most of the great fantasy/adventure stories being published today are coming from the "children's" section. Although I suppose that's always been the case. Tarzan and Lord of the Rings were considered children's fare when they were first published, too.

This also reminds me that I need to get caught up on The Goon. I lost track along the way and need to pick up a few trades. Great book.

[Jed Saxon]

Nice. New "Bone". Especially since I haven't read those other "Rat Tails" yet.

[vbartilucci]

Well, here's MY money...

[CitC]

Are these prose novels with some illustrations by Powell? I thought it was a GN at first. This sounds great though. I am also glad that Powell is doing some art for younger reader books. I think his style would be very popular in Elementary classes.

[KevenGardner]

Tom Sniegoski (notice I spelled it right ) could easily be the nicest guy in comics. On top of that, he's a damn fine writer. Buy one of his books---you won't be disappointed.

[Amazing Red]

New Bone baby, hell yeah!

[Charlie Hustle]

Powell is just a beast.

[Comic Mom]

Owlboy = Gimmegimmegimmegimme!

And more Bone tall tails? Man, it doesn't get much better than that.

Originally Posted by Sluggo

I'm also interested in reading the Bartaemus Trilogy and the Artemis Fowl.

The first Artemis Fowl book is being adapted into a graphic novel that will be released this fall by Disney/Hyperion.

[mrhelm]

Strange that his still excellent run on Vengeance of Vampirella goes unmentioned, but an otherwise great interview.

I'll be checking out Owlboy for my daughter, and I can't wait to see a sequel to Stupid Stupid Rat Creatures...

[batlash]

I can't wait. Eric Powell is one of the past things to happen to comics and illustration in years. Decades, practically. And the Billy Hooten books themselves sound great too.

[mikey_danger]

Absolutely GORGEOUS work! Definitely going to check this out!

[Blackbeard]

Okay... who do I give my money to?

I can't wait to read Tom's new projects!

[xomanowarfan]

This looks fun. I really like the art style. Glad to see newsarama giving props to a book like this.

[Grant Bond]

hmm...this looks pretty good

[CitC]

I sort of feel like I'm the only one not getting it. Is this a prose novel with Powell's illustrations or a graphic novel?

[batlash]

Originally Posted by CitC

I sort of feel like I'm the only one not getting it. Is this a prose novel with Powell's illustrations or a graphic novel?

It's a prose novel with Powell's illustrations. And that's a good thing at my house because my kid loves Eric Powell's work and is eager to read the books based on the fact that Powell is illustrating.

[CitC]

I think it sounds great either way - I was just looking for some confirmation.

Thanks.