Trash Mutant Interviews (TMI): "Nightworld" Creative Team
You should probably know by now that "Nightworld" is one of my favorite new comics from Image (and in general, too). I made that pretty clear in my review of "Nightworld" #1. It's unique, harkening back to classic comics, and still keeping it minty fresh. Issue #3 comes out next week, but before that, I had the pleasure to talk with the majority of the creative team behind it - Adam McGovern, Paolo Leandri and Dom Regan. From pulp horror and deals with the devil, to KISS, Plenilunio and the future - check out what they had to say.
TRASH MUTANT: “Nightworld”, your brand new miniseries published by Image Comics, didn’t even conclude yet, but it’s already one of our favorite comics this year. It’s one hell of an offbeat read, seemingly inspired by everything from Silver Age comics, old school European horror cinema to classic tales of deals with the devil… and that’s just scratching the surface. It has all of this good stuff as its foundations, but builds something fresh and new on them. If you guys could sum the comic up in an “elevator pitch” for potential new readers, what would it be? ADAM McGOVERN: Nightworld is the classic monster-movie from the collective unconscious — the history of pulp horror and pop heroics beamed right to your brain. It’s classic trash-culture as good as you wish it was and as smart as you see things now! Seeing as you guys are from two different continents, how did the collaboration between you first start? ADAM: Séance! No, I wish. Paolo contacted me at The Jack Kirby Collector, a mag honoring the greatest commercial comics artist of all time, where I cover modern comics that carry forth his legacy. As worthy of Kirby as Paolo’s art was, I still had never seen anything like it. It was only a matter of time before we formed a superteam! Plenilunio, the melancholy demon wanting to reawaken his beloved, is the main character of “Nightworld”. He’s interesting both in terms of his design, as well as his character. How did this character first come to be? PAOLO LEANDRI: It's a meltdown of reference; in each of his four shapes you can see something you’ve already seen in past characters. In this shapeshifting you can see the attempt of man to change to adapt to any situation; he seems to also change personality during these transitions. ADAM: Paolo originally had three “aspects” designed for Plenilunio, the humanoid one, the batwinged one and the bestial hell-hound one; as you’ll see in Issue 4, there is a sea-monster one as well, and the completion of this quartet made me think of the four elements and even a profane version of the animals associated with the Four Evangelists. Plenilunio contains all of these traits, these possibilities for Being — uneasily — in one psyche. “Nightworld” is a four issue miniseries, but the world you guys introduced in it is ripe with potential for further stories, new volumes, spin-offs etc. Will this be the beginning of something bigger than just this first mini? If so, can you shed some light on what you have planned? ADAM: Paolo’s and my first comic together was Dr. Id, Psychologist of the Supernatural, a kind of shrink Doctor Strange. I asked Paolo to illustrate the first story, which I thought would be a one-time joke for a Dark Horse online comics competition. The contest was cancelled, but Paolo showed such imagination that it detonated ideas for a whole book’s worth of stories for this character. The same holds for Nightworld; I have ideas for at least 16 more issues over five or so miniseries, and Paolo has started to conceive of stories too — the plan is to alternate between miniseries that he brings to the table and ones that I do. Without giving away too much about how this current series wraps up and where it takes the characters (or who even remains living/undead), suffice it to say that my first one will explore whether extreme good is really an alternative to demonic evil, and Paolo’s will homage a kind of adventure writer we haven’t directly touched yet - Dante! If you were characters in your own comic and all made bargains with the devil, what wish would he have granted each of you, and what would be the catch? ADAM: I would have unlimited time to write the next 16 stories but all time around me would stop, with the world and everyone I know frozen. If I completed all the stories, I’d be allowed to return to the timestream of my loved ones. But being isolated in the time-bubble would drive me crazy, which is the source of my stories already, so I’d never stop writing and be trapped forever. PAOLO: Well, I’ve learned from Plenilunio that certain bargains never bring you what you expect; there's always some small print you fail to see in all contracts. Dom, I’ve read that the coloring for “Nightworld” has been done with pretty much no prior instructions, other than “Do what you think fits the comic best”. I love the colors in this book, feel like they’re a big part of its style and couldn’t have possibly fitted Paolo’s art better. How did you approach working on the book’s colors? DOM REGAN: I did what I thought best for the artwork. I wanted to do something that was classic but modern so I decided early on to only use flat colors and rely on conveying emotional resonance and mood through the colors, rather than trying to show off with fancy Photoshop effects. I think that colors should complement the art not overpower it. My only indulgence was the occasional use of my “Kirby Brushes.” I'd made a whole load of crackle brushes a while ago and I use them for all kinds of effects. Let’s talk about Hotspot for a second. Without spoiling any of his backstory for new readers, let’s just stick to the basics and say that he’s a tracksuit-wearing speedster demon, who speaks in a combination of modern slang and the “daddy-o” slang of the ‘50s or swinging ‘60s. That probably should already be enough to say he’s the ‘sensational character find of 2014’. I usually try to avoid the “what was the inspiration for…” kind of interview questions, but in this case I would really love to know how the idea for this character blossomed. PAOLO: You know? I always have difficulty detecting where the spark that gives life to an idea comes from; I suppose that the book needed an energetic and sprinting counterpart to the broody and half-depressed Plenilunio. ADAM: Paolo endlessly surprises me as the series has developed; Hotspot emerged as we were preparing to do the first issue, and the very way in which he didn’t seem to fit the shadowy mood made him fit perfectly — devils want to live high (even though they’re low and not technically alive), and “imp” is a name just as associated with demons; they have fun and make mischief. There’s one particularly fun cameo in issue #2. The person in question is often mistaken for a bird or a plane, but comicbook readers will probably recognize the guy. It was really cool seeing him there, and the context he appeared in was very entertaining. Will we see more such “crossovers” in future issues? ADAM: Time will tell…”The Super” was my idea, the first Nightworld character that I created who has appeared so far. Paolo set up a kind of 99/1-pecent dynamic between The Empyre and its thralls so a working-class (super)hero made sense. I have some ideas for a literal, licensed, crossover with KISS, but who knows :-). In many ways we’re seeing the spirit of vintage characters reincarnated in the ones we have now — in the way you described Hotspot above you alluded to an, ahem, duo dynamic that might exist between him and our dark-blue-clad bat-like protagonist Plenilunio, so, many of Paolo’s and my influences may make an appearance more indirectly :-). Paolo, the inside cover of any “Nightworld” issue credits you for “pencils, inks, letters”, which is really impressive, especially on a monthly comic. Do you ever sleep? What’s your secret for getting all this work done, looking good, and being out on time? PAOLO: You raise a problematic issue: drawing comics takes a lot of time, it is quite difficult to carry on just in your spare time; if you are not able to become a professional and have to keep a “regular” job to earn a living it all becomes very difficult. So being fast helps! What do “Nightworld” fans have to look forward to in the future (after the 4th issue is released), both from you as a team and as separate creators? ADAM: Paolo’s dystopian cowboy Kid Luger has made his debut with an origin I wrote in the Magic Bullet comics newspaper, and of course his origin comes *after* his debut; Paolo wrote and drew a 31-page misadventure of the character that we’ve adapted to English together and hope to unleash soon. We’ve got a number of collaborations or adaptations in the works, and at the other extreme of subject-matter, on my own I’ve written an educational comic about Frederick Douglass’ escape from slavery for a U.S. textbook company. PAOLO: I'm planning to do a self-published book to sell through mail order, a low print-run of course. DOM: I look forward to working with Adam and Paolo on more Nightworld stories. But I've been cooking up my own strange comic strip myself as well over the last few years. It's a Pre-historic Sci-Fi Adventure story called People Protector Akay. Looking at it, you'd think it was about over-muscled things smashing each other about the head with blunt objects but it's really quite deep. No, really. And the colors are lovely. In the future I'd love to do this Celtic Cinderella story I've been thinking about and an alternative history/fantasy thing involving Ian Fleming and Rudolf Hess. And maybe something about the real-life Ray Palmer. He seems like an interesting guy. Thank you all for the interview! ____________________________________________
"Nightworld" #3 comes out next Wednesday, October 1st, so make sure to get it and we promise that you won't be disappointed! Also, make sure to Like the official "Nightworld" fanpage!
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