CARLA SPEED MCNEIL TALKS FINDER AFTER GOING TO THE WEB

[MattBrady]

by Michael C Lorah

Carla Speed McNeil has been self-publishing Finder since 1996. In 2005, she ceased printing standard Finder comics, opting for the less cost-prohibitive option of web serialization. Finder continues to generate new print trade paperbacks, compiling story arcs from print comics and webcomics.

With eight collected volumes in print and available via Diamond, Finder’s become one of the leading lights of self-published comics. It chronicles (most of the time) the adventures of Jaegar, a Sin-Eater of the Ascian tribe, and his place in the layered, fictional society of Anvard (among other city-states and cultures). McNeil describes Finder as “Aboriginal sci-fi,” which seems as good a description as you’re likely to find about a series that is often as intent on exploring the complex relations of various clans and caste-based societies as it is focused on examining the inner workings of its protagonist (who will often fade out of a story all-together if there are bigger things to uncover).

McNeil has also illustrated various work-for-hire projects, including an arc of Greg Rucka’s oft-praised Queen and Country series (from Oni Press) and an issue of Warren Ellis’ Apparat comics line.

We talked with her about her plans for Finder and her work in comics.

Newsarama: Carla, despite your popularity on the internet, there are a lot of folks to whom your work is still an unknown. Can you give us a quick overview of Finder?

Carla Speed McNeil: Ouch.

The common main character of Finder is Jaeger, an aboriginal detective. He can ninja himself into any situation and has no concept of minding his own business. Since he doesn't belong to one of the big families who run the settled areas of this world, he has no good place in the justice system, and so has no recourse to the cops if he uncovers something that needs fixing. Since he's a sin-eater, or ritual scapegoat, he's not comfortable with his tribal people either. So he's always on the outside even though he can get inside anything, be it a locked door or a tight-knit family or a gun emplacement.

Sin-Eater puts him back into the domed city Anvard, back with Emma, ex-wife of an old friend. The problem is the old friend is Brigham Grosvenor, his former army superior, who's not as out of the picture as Jaeger had thought, and now appears to be dangerously crazy. Jaeger is torn between love and loyalty to both Brigham and Emma, not to mention their three kids. A true-crime story.

After Sin-Eater the series steps back from Mr. Angst quite often, allowing him to become a potent background character in other people's stories. Marcie, the youngest child from Sin-Eater, steps to the fore in Talisman, which most people find is the easiest book to get into. Jaeger reads a book to her that no one else can read, not even her; she spends years trying to recreate that book when it goes missing. It's about being a book nerd, loving a story. Dream Sequence, which is more like a horror novel, stars Magri White, whose job and sole purpose in life is to imagine and maintain an elaborate fantasy world inside his mind, so that millions of people can jack into his skull and visit it, like a virtual DisneyWorld. Voice gets back to Rachel, the oldest sister from Sin-Eater, trying to win herself a place in her family's power structure. Five Crazy Women and The King of the Cats star Jaeger.

That wasn't quick. Ah well. I like to think that the fact that it's hard to sum up (which sometimes makes it tough to sell) makes it good for the reader. There's always something else for the reader, same as there's always something for me.

NRAMA: You once referred to the standard Finder comics as a form of advertising for the eventual trade paperbacks. Since you stopped publishing in standard comic form a few years ago, have you noticed any difference in trade paperback sales? Any reader complaints?

CSM: Trade paperback sales have gone blithely on as if nothing had changed. They didn't skyrocket, they didn't plunge -- but every week when I post new pages, my Paypal inbox starts going 'ding.' When I was publishing issues this only happened every other month.

The issues did make money above their production costs, but they didn't make enough to fund further advertising on their own, to buy ads and such. They did make excellent giveaways at conventions, so I'll be putting together a new single-issue annual each summer. The giveaways are the world's best advertising. Like a longish movie trailer, the issues caught people's interest.

NRAMA: How does working for the web affect your storytelling? You no longer need to pause storylines at the end of an issue (heck, you don’t even have to publish at a standard comic size!), but you need to have enough hook to keep people coming back to the website, right?

CSM: Against all better advice, it actually hasn't affected my storytelling. I always did try to make each page a 'beat' of the story, a little unit of its own. But now that I have the freedom to make each chapter as long as it wants to be, I'm opening the layouts more, letting establishing scenes get more elaborate. Whereas before I would only spare a one-sixth panel for an establishing shot, now I'm more inclined to show a whole aerial shot of a street scene in half a page.

NRAMA: When the online serialization is complete, what is the name of the next Finder book going to be?

CSM: The current book is called Voice, which will run till July of next year.

NRAMA: That’s a year away! How long is Voice going to be?

CSM: Two pages a week for a year, plus fifty pages at the time of this writing-- allowing for squash and stretch during production, the story part will be about 150, 155 pages. Then allow ten pages for footnotes and whatever else.

NRAMA: You’re soon to publish a new edition of Sin-Eater, which was originally collected in two separate trade paperbacks. Why the new version?

CSM: Several reasons. I always wanted to do a fancy hardcover with all the bells and whistles. Seemed like a good tenth-anniversary sort of thing to do-- I was doing ashcans way back in '95, but my first issue sold through distribution was in the fall of '97. That story needs to be in one book anyway. Last-- I printed the first TPB back in the day because people who came to my table at cons were getting option-paralyzed. I had eight or nine issues, and they'd get stuck. “Which one should I start with? Oh, just gimme the first one.” Before I hit eight issues, they'd just pick up the stack. After that point, the price started climbing too high-- and once you've decided not to buy them all, it's easier just to buy one. So sales dropped. I printed a TPB and boom, everybody's happy. Buy one big book and don't worry. Hand out the first issue for free to the reticent. Well, when I hit seven TPBs it started happening again-- fewer and fewer people were willing to throw down cash for the full run of books, and who could blame them? So it's time to start combining. Make some big chunky books that actually feel like novels. If I can read the whole thing in the tub, it's not a novel.

NRAMA: Will there be any changes from the original? Re-touched pages?

CSM: Nothing retouched. I'd love to redraw (and rewrite) the whole thing, but that's a tar pit from which I would never emerge. Some insectoid archaeologist would have me on display a thousand years from now. “We just made this amazing find! Apparently she drowned herself in her own ink. This species was just too dumb to live.”

That said, I am including one of the 'lost' issues, issue #22. Fight Scene has never been collected into a TPB, because it was one of my few stand-alones, and it didn't fit in thematically with any of the books printed since it was drawn. It does fit in with Sin-Eater. I will be adding a scene to that one, or rather returning a scene to it that wouldn't fit in the single issue. This will be a big showdown between Jaeger and Brigham, way back in their army days.

NRAMA: Will the hardcover be a different trim or style than the original volumes? And do you plan to (or hope to) eventually release the other Finder books in hardcover?

CSM: The hardcover will be digest-sized for the book trade. Torn between printing an oversized coffee-table book and printing something that's easy to stuff into a bag to read on the subway, I chose the latter, and to make the latter as elegant as I can manage. Someday I might rethink the coffee-table book idea, but right now I'm a reader by nature.

I'm trying on other combinations for size. Talisman and Voice would fit nicely into a volume called Three Sisters, given that the main characters of Talisman and Voice are Marcie and Rachel Grosvenor, respectively, from Sin-Eater. Of course, I'd have to come up with something new for Lynne, the middle kid. But yeah, I'd like to do the others in hardcover as well. I love hardcovers, I love bookbindery. If I had clone slaves, I'd do 'em all by hand.

NRAMA: Being a New York guy, I prefer subway-sized reading myself, too. I love the End Notes in each of the books. Discovering the “rules” that enforce much of the characters’ behavior is a wonderful treat. How much time do you spend just developing the bylaws of the society in Anvard? Do you have extensive notes to help you keep it all straight?

CSM: No, just a big ol' head. That's what keeps it interesting for me: can I introduce this new idea into the framework? Will it disrupt something else? If it disrupts something else, will it lead to a new story or just undermine the structure of an existing story? Whenever something hits me, “Oooh that would be cool/horrible/funny,” I paw through the old books to think about how it would fit in.

In Sin-Eater, for example, the three Grosvenor kids were originally all girls. Somewhere around issue #4, it occurred to me that it could make sense for the middle kid, Lynne, to be a boy being raised as a girl. She had a potentially gender-neutral name, she was drawn as if she was about ten, and skinny, so she didn't look particularly male or female, but most of all, if there was this twist to her character, she would make the social context of her parents' mixed marriage concrete. She'd be stuck in a tug-o-war between her stolid, macho dad's family and her Hollywood drag-queen mother's family. Her mother's family all appear to be women. They play it up that way. Since Dad would expect to leave the raising of the kids to Mom, and Mom wouldn't see anything wrong in dressing all three kids in pink, the son couldn't help but struggle between their expectations. It sucks to be the middle kid.

I dug deep to make sure I hadn't put anything in the first four issues that would really keep it from working. It did work and it's fleshed out the realities of those two clans much more than just talking about it could.

NRAMA: Finder’s such a distinct and unique comic series, with a sense of world-building that feels more archaeological than science-fiction. I wonder what you consider the major influences. Do you have an anthropology background at all?

CSM: Oh no, nothing official. I just grew up gnawing on National Geographic and Scientific American. I was just getting bored with the science fiction section of the bookstore right around the time my favorite science teacher gave me Stephen Jay Gould's The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History, and I found that nonfiction could fire my imagination in ways that fiction doesn't. But I'm a terrible scholar. I'd far rather make things up as I go along, letting a little reality in from time to time to keep things moving. I'm strictly an armchair anthropologist.

NRAMA: You’ve illustrated a handful of other projects beyond Finder, most recently and notably Queen & Country and Frank Ironwine for the Warren Ellis-written Apparat line from Avatar. How do you choose non-Finder projects?

CSM: Uh, so far I haven't. They've chosen me. If I had more sense, I would have shopped myself around more, because all my side projects have been great fun to work on. I hope to do more.

NRAMA: How long do you intend to continue creating new Finder stories?

CSM: Finder is something I hope to work on all my life. There may be years that I take time off, start something new, do something not set in that world. But I made a point of taking Jaeger off center stage early on, so that if I run out of things for him to do, or if I let him grow old and die, that there would still be room for other characters to step up. That's why I chose the title Finder: it could stretch to describe any main character. The world, the setting, is as much a character as any of the people, and it remains the table on which my face-cards are played. I might build more tables, more worlds with different rules, but Finder as a series of novels is a constant for me.

Part of the reason for this had to do with the way comic shops work: pull lists. Between Finder issue #14 (end of Sin-Eater) and Finder issue #15 (beginning of The King of the Cats), I did two issues of Mystery Date, based on a series of short stories I ran in the anthology Mythography. They sold very well. But Finder issue #15 didn't. It took me three more Finder issues to regain the sales I lost. For years afterward, people told me, “Oh, I thought you'd quit publishing!” Folks who liked Finder for the most part didn't know anything about Mystery Date, and people who picked up Mystery Date thought it had dropped off the face of the earth, as so many small titles do. Even though MD was written and drawn by the same person as was Finder, even though it came under the same publisher's listing, not many people got both because the title was different. Series title matters. So everything I've done since then has been a subtitle under the Finder series title. That works better for everyone.

So-- I may step away from that world if it gets too tightly defined for a sparkly new idea to fit in, but I'll have the next Finder novel in the back of my head for a long time to come.

Finder: Sin-Eater hardcover edition goes on sale in late July and will be available at the Lightspeed Press booth at San Diego Comic-Con. The current storyline Voice can be read at Lightspeed Press.

[Greg McElhatton]

Finder is one of those fantastic books that everyone should be reading. If they're unconvinced, head on over to her website and read online (for free!) the first chapter of Talisman or Dream Sequence and they'll see just what they're missing.

[Jack Assen]

Finder is a wonderful, wonderful book. It's a little bit sf, little bit fantasy, little bit psychological drama/thriller... strange and beautiful, and surprisingly cohesive. It's well conceived and extraordinarily characterized, rendered, detailed (the footnote pages are often like reading entirely new stories!). What more can you ask for? If you haven't already, and anything above sounds even slightly interesting, try it out. It's better than it sounds (and I say that thinking it sounds pretty good).
This is one of those books that I'll be picking up, even though I have the single issues AND the trades already. I'll buy it just to support Speed and add my two cents to help her continue making this book.
Of course my comic shop has had a terrible time getting the trades in... not sure if it's them or Diamond, but after a year of not getting the recent trades, even though I special ordered them, I ended up buying them directly from Lightspeed. This is one of those books that was hurt when Diamond upped their sales quotas a few years back, I guess.

One other thing... about these "convention season annuals," how can those of us who don't go to the cons get them?

[Cray_ws]

I've read a friend's copy of the first trade and I loved it, since then I've had it on my 'buy list' but have never got around to actually purchasing some Finder trades. With the news of hardcover, I will definitely be getting it.

[AlexLothos]

Carla is a fun woman at conventions and she does great work. Looking forward to more Finder!

[loupgaroukid]

I'm one of those throwbacks who prefers single issues to collections, but being as my Finder issues are sadly few and far between, TPBs it is. Finder is great immersive world building, and what I love about comics and sci-fi (though the purty art helps too)

[Papercut Fun]

I SO want to like Finder but I can't get into it. I've tried the first GN twice and I get a halfway through and then just give up. Not sure what the problem is...but I end up hopelessly lost. I gotta be really in the mood and then just dive in again I guess.

[Jamie Coville]

Finder is one of those really, really, great series. Every time I read a trade, I go into a blissful sense of peace and just casually flow through the story. No other book has that effect on me.

See you in Toronto Carla.