SPECTATORS - Part 96
Plus, BKV interviews writer Pornsak Pichetshote!
Does “Presidents Day” have an apostrophe in it, or is this a “Tortured Poets Department” kinda situation?
Brian here, and however you spell it, I trust my fellow Americans all spent this special day celebrating beloved commanders in chief like Ohio’s own Warren G. Harding, who enjoyed time with his mistress in a White House coat closet while his poker buddies were busy heisting the U.S. Treasury. Thanks for keeping my kids home from school today, sir!
Speaking of former presidents, ghostly protagonists Val and Sam just bid farewell to one, and in today’s installment of Spectators, artist/co-creator Niko Henrichon and letterer Fonografiks give us a sense of where the hell our curious tale is headed next…
Such lovely work from Niko, who inks/paints each of these pages by hand on huge pages of luscious, high-end paper:
If you’d like to own that Teddy-tastic page of Spectators, good news, Niko has offered to give it away to one of you generous members in The Tower. All paid subscribers at the monthly or annual levels are automatically entered in these random drawings, so if you haven’t already joined us, maybe today’s the day?
But if you just can’t wait to have an original Henrichon framed on your wall, you can always purchase Niko’s artwork directly from his trusted reps at Essential Sequential, which is having a new “drop” of select pages from Spectators TODAY.
Sounds like this will be Niko’s last offering for a while, and I anticipate any remaining pages will get scooped up quickly after Spectators eventually appears in print, so don’t miss your shot.
And starting today, you Tower members get an additional 15% off any/all Niko artwork (using a secret code that I’ll attach at the end of today’s dispatch), so if you’re a fellow original art collector, membership at Exploding Giraffe really does pay for itself.
In last week’s Tower chat thread, we were discussing what everybody’s been watching, and sounds like a lot of you have been digging the new Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which I’m eager to check out (right after I finish watching every documentary about cults ever made; currently transfixed by Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God).
Anyway, our intern Genesis the Exploded Giraffe offered to send some random commenters a few of these limited edition (today’s the last day you can get this particular design on stuff) A Nighttime Smoke totes from The Official Saga Threadless Shop:
First up, Elaine W. wrote:
I am in the full swing of the Oscar Death Race, just like every year. This week I finally saw Poor Things, which I ADORED. I laughed, I cried, it was better than Barbenheimer.
I have about four movies to go, plus some shorts. Luckily I managed to see Godzilla Minus One before its unceremonious yanking from theaters, and I’ve seen Robot Dreams thanks to a flexible morality.
Greta Lee should have been nominated for Past Lives. Carey Mulligan should not have for Maestro. And 20 Days in Mariupol is the most important documentary feature in years.
And Jeff L. suggested:
This past weekend, I watched the last three episodes of the first season of MONARCH: LEGACY OF MONSTERS. For me, it started as a background watch that I tune into when a Kaiju would appear (which they would do with suspiciously Ultra-man like predictability) for 5 minutes at the end of the episode. Around midway through the run, it took an odd turn from “Oooo… Monsters” to being a pretty compelling multi-generational family drama/caper story (with Monsters) largely powered by some unexpectedly thoughtful acting choices from Wyatt Russell, his dad Kurt and (especially) Mari Yamamoto. If you talk to Mr. Fraction anytime in the near future, please extend my compliments.
Good call, Jeff. I haven’t spoken with benevolent evil genius Matt Fraction in years, but like you, I’ve been blown away by what he and his team have done.
Another great creator I haven’t talked with in way too long is Pornsak Pichetshote, who I’ve known since his editorial days at DC/Vertigo, but who you might know best as the writer of critically acclaimed comics like The Good Asian (read the killer first issue here).
His latest blockbuster is called Man’s Best, and you can sample a captivating preview RIGHT NOW:
Recently, Pornsak was kind enough to send me the rest of that terrific first issue, and you know what that means he received in response…
BKV SABOTAGES PORNSAK PICHETSHOTE WITH TEN AWKWARD QUESTIONS
1) Pornsak, congrats to you and your team on this very impressive debut, which already feels like it has something new to say about the old “talking animal” genre we both love. In all of fiction, who is your LEAST favorite talking animal?
God, that’s a GREAT question… I mean, the movie animals that left me the most traumatized by far were those from Peter Jackson’s Meet the Feebles, his R-rated take on a sleazy version of the Muppets. If anyone’s hearing about it for the first time here, I’ll save any details and let you discover it for yourself, but please know… I’m sorry.
It’s pretty much the polar opposite of everything comic book genius Jesse Lonergan and I are doing on MAN’S BEST, which is Homeward Bound in space, following three emotional support animals on a spaceship as they travel an alien landscape to rescue their human crew. It asks where the pets we go to for hope go when they need hope. Written for adults, but accessible to all, it’s got Jesse drawing the cutest cats in cat mech and rocket-packed bulldogs, but despite that, it’s some of the most personal writing I’ve done yet. So yeah, the complete opposite of R-rated sleaze…
[“R-rated Sleaze” is going to be the name of my next production company. - BKV]
2) Does MAN’S BEST have a planned ending? Have you written it yet?
I have! The series is 5 issues, and I have one last pass to do today on the fifth issue before I turn it into my editor. The Homeward Bound nature of it all means the series needed a clear beginning, middle, and end to really land everything.
3) When editor Will Dennis and I were looking for an artist to collaborate with on PRIDE OF BAGHDAD, I learned how few comic artists are truly great at drawing animals, much less animals that feel both “real” and expressive. Like Niko Henrichon, Jess Lonergan is definitely one of those rare creators. How did you two first connect?
Our editor Eric Harburn deserves all the credit for hooking Jesse and I up. I was a huge fan of Jesse’s from his Image comic HEDRA, but I never would have thought he’d be open to working with other writers, because when you can make a comic as great as HEDRA, why do anything differently? But Eric had heard Jesse was open, and I clearly benefited from it.
I just want to say, I’m honestly SO excited about working with Jesse. I’m such a fan of his. Which I know is what people say when they’re promoting a new book, but really… I think he’s one of those once-in-a-generation cartoonists in his unique use of the grammar of comics. If you’re familiar with his work, you know what I’m talking about, and we’ll explore more of it, the deeper we get into the series.
4) Speaking of our old friend Will, can you reveal any dirt from your time at Vertigo? What was it like to help edit that notorious diva BKV?
Unfortunately, all my anecdotes involving notorious rapscallion BKV have him acting frustratingly charming. I fondly remember a dinner where we were sitting next to each other after you had finished writing Ultimate X-Men and were trying to lose weight. You quoted Mark Millar who said comic writers gain a pound every time they type the word Cyclops, a tidbit I love dropping into conversation whenever I get a chance.
I also have pleasant memories of people in the office talking about how it was impossible to reach you during the day, because you were nocturnal, and slept during the day, so you can do your writing uninterrupted during the night, was that right? Or am I misremembering? I’ve always wondered what transitioning to daylight work hours was like for you, since I assume the kids now make it hard to be fully nocturnal.
[Brian jumping back in to say that I’m mortified that I a) probably butchered Millar’s accurate observation about the health-ruining effects of mutants on writers, and b) had the audacity as an inexperienced young freelancer to tell senior editors at Vertigo not to bother me until after 4pm because I was sleeping! A longer story for another day, but yeah, my first television gig is what finally shifted me back to a “normal” schedule with you other poor daywalkers…]
5) You have so many impressive IMDB credits! Why the hell are you still slumming it in the disreputable industry of comics??
I’m sure you can relate, but I get the most joy from making comics. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing TV, but it’s also where most of my headaches and rising blood pressure comes from. But like Don Draper said, that’s what the money is for. But it just feels like people are taking more risks to say more personal things in comics, and because comics is such a dirty, disreputable industry the people in it are mostly here out of love, which means you encounter a lot of lovely people as you make them.
6) Seriously, any exciting Hollywood developments you’re able to share?
So much of it is shrouded in secrecy, but I think I can talk about how I’m adapting my Image series THE GOOD ASIAN as a TV show with MRC (the studio behind my mother’s favorite show Ozark) and James Wan’s production company Atomic Monster as well as my managers at 3Arts Entertainment. The studio seems keen on the pilot I wrote, and we’ll be shopping it around to networks this year. I think I can say that?
7) Do you have any advice for comics professionals hoping to transition into film and/or television?
I’ve never written a film, but I have a lot of thoughts on the difference between comics and TV. After leaving Vertigo, where I was a comics editor at for 7 years, I became a television exec for DC, helping start their Arrowverse universe of shows amongst other things, and it really gave me the chance to read at a lot of TV scripts by both comics and TV writers. Personally, I’ve come to believe that while TV and comics are certainly similar, they run on different things. In my opinion, TV runs on emotion, while comics runs on conceptual thinking. That’s not to say TV can’t have tons of cool concepts in it, or that comics can’t be emotional, just that it’s easier to get to emotion on TV because you have actors and music, while it’s easier to throw up a lot of cool concepts in comics, because the reader controls time as they read one so they can stop and linger on every cool idea they’re introduced to in a way they can’t on a TV show. So I find comic writers who go to TV can fall into the trap of forgetting to really mine and make a meal of the emotional moments of their scripts – the bread and butter of TV – because they’ve gotten used to having stories filled with a lot of concepts and story moves. While I think TV writers’ comics scripts can be kind of thin of conceptual thinking when they’re transitioning to comics. I feel like a lot of TV writers can fall into a trap of writing a comics scene where little happens by the standards of comics readers.
8) Conversely, what about advice for Hollywood creators planning to make the “reverse commute” into comics?
This is less about craft, but I strongly believe if you’re a Hollywood person making an income through TV and films, I think you can afford to pay your artist a page rate AND give them back end. I’ve talked to a lot of writers who think well, if I’m shouldering the financial risk, why are they getting equal compensation, and that mentality doesn’t take into account how an artist working on your book is most likely taking a year-plus of their life that they can’t work on anything else, while you can work on multiple projects, so they’re also taking a pretty huge risk working with you and should be compensated for it. Thinking about things that way has a huge ripple effect on the quality and experience of artists you get. Todd McFarlane once said he can sell a comic drawn by Michelangelo and written by his dog, but not a comic written by Shakespeare and drawn by his mother. Todd might be a little biased, but I do agree with him.
[100% agree with all of this.]
9) Feels like everything is kind of awful on our planet at the moment. How are you?
God, I never know how to answer that question, do you? I want to say all right, because I can think of many, many people who are doing worse. But then I immediately think, what kind of monster am I to be doing all right? I guess where I’ve landed is to think globally and act locally and try to take care of the people around me as best I can to maintain some kind of sanity.
This is going to sound like me shilling – and maybe it is -- but a lot of MAN’S BEST sprung from trying to process how awful everything is. The story is very much about how to maintain relationships and friendships during crisis, and at the emotional core of the book, it’s about three characters that feel so small in a world of huge problems and obstacles they barely understand and how they find hope and protect the ones they love. It’s just dressed in the language of cat mech and bionic golden retrievers.
10) Wait, you’re in Los Angeles, right? What’s your #1 favorite restaurant? Want to hang sometime?
I am in Los Angeles! Right now, I’m obsessed with Mae Malai Thai House of Noodles in Thai Town. They make the best Thai boat noodles. It just opened a few months ago, and I’m convinced I’ve got six months before a food influencer discovers it, and I’ll have to start waiting an hour for a table. It’s happened to a few of my favorite Thai spots, so I’m trying to go as much as possible before that happens. Brian, let’s go get boat noodles! My treat!
It’s a date, Pornsak!
EDITED TO ADD: I stupidly forgot to say, MAN'S BEST will be at your local comic shop on March 24, and final order cutoff with your local retailer is in on 2/26, so if you want a copy (you do), please tell your shop when you stop in this week!
Thanks so much for the thoughtful responses, as well as for generously offering a couple of rare signed “ashcans” of Man’s Best #1 to a few of you randomly selected Tower members.
If you’d like a shot at winning one, just let us know: What’s YOUR least favorite talking animal from all of fiction?
My non-fictional dog Milkshake and I are off to see what Los Angeles’ latest deluge has done to the neighborhood, but then I’ll see you in the comments, and/or back here next week for more free Spectators.
Peace,
BKV