"Duster" Bluster!

[Hogan's Alley]

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Dear fellow comics fan:

Nazis in Texas? A rural housewife taking them on in her cropduster? We
recently heard about “Duster,” and it sounds like a project so
audacious that it can’t be real. And it’s not quite real, yet. But it
almost is, and it can be with your help. We recently spoke with
creators Jay Lender (“SpongeBob SquarePants,” “Phineas and Ferb”) and
Micah Ian Wright (“Stormwatch: Team Achilles,” “Transformers”) about
“Duster,” its origins, their working methods and why they’re going
through Kickstarter to try to make the graphic novel happen.

HA: How did the idea for “Duster” originate?

JAY: Micah had a dream...

MICAH: I was at San Diego Comic-Con in 1995, and I awoke from a dream
where my grandmother had been fighting a plane full of Nazis who
crashed on her farm in West Texas carrying a secret cargo out of
Germany. The dream had stopped right at a particularly exciting
moment, and I was furious that I didn’t get to find out how it ended.
I closed my eyes and tried to will myself back to sleep, and for the
only time in my entire life, that worked. I got to see my grandmother
shoot Hitler in the face out behind the barn on the farm where I spent
my childhood summers, and that’s when I woke up. I went back to work
on Monday and told Jay about the dream, and he suggested that I write
it out as a script some day.

HA: Describe your collaborative methods. Do they differ from the way
you typically work?

JAY: “Duster” began life as a film script. Micah and I stayed in my
mom's house in Northern California for two weeks. She cooked while we
argued about “Duster”—we hammered out the themes, the characters, and
the basic bones of the story at first. Every day we added more detail
until the story made so much sense that it felt like it was telling
itself—the characters became real. You get to a point in a good
project where the characters tell you what they're going to do and say—
you don't have to wonder and it doesn't feel forced—that's how you
know you're onto something. By the end of the trip we had created a 40
or so page outline of everything that needed to happen in the story,
plus lots of the key dialog. Once we got home we divvied up the
outline and took writing assignments. I'd make 10 pages of script,
Micah would make 10 pages of script, then we'd sit down and rewrite it
together, making sure we were staying on point and that there was a
single voice in the writing. When it came time to adapt it to comics
we used pretty much the same method. One of us would take a section of
movie script, break it out into potential panels, change the action
description to panel description (and comics are a whole different
ballgame—everything needed to be rethought.) Then we'd get together
and workshop it until we knew it was ready to go to Jok [Coglitore].
When I work alone there's less need for pants.

MICAH: Yeah, exactly what Jay said. When you work with a writing
partner, if you make a decision, you’d better be prepared to justify
it, or gracefully back away if the other person hates your decisions.
Sometimes it can get heated, but even after we’ve spent an hour
shouting at one another, when we’re done, the work is always better
for it. Having Jay as a sounding board for my ideas and concepts
forces me to justify my ideas in a way where I might not challenge
myself if I was just writing something by myself. Similarly, I
challenge him on his work, and together we ruthlessly hunt and kill
all the weaknesses in our mutual writing. When you work on something
for a long time, it’s too easy to get lost in the minutiae, and forget
to see the big picture...having a partner who can step in and say
“This is horrible, rewrite it,” is essential sometimes.

HA: Jay, you're most associated with animation. What are the biggest
differences between working in animation and print cartooning?

JAY: Animation is much more collaborative than comics. As a director
in cartoons I get to be a bit of an autocrat, but I'm totally
dependent on the skills and judgment of literally hundreds of people
to get a cartoon on the air—most of them never see enough of the
project to know what they're making—like the old story of the three
blind men describing an elephant. Things inevitably get watered down.
In comics there are only a few people who follow me. Jok does
breakdowns, Cristian [Mallea] does finishes, Jok and Jorge do color. I
make notes, do drawings, things happen, it never feels like my work is
being executed by strangers. In comics I can make sure that everyone
who works on the project understands it and is passionate about it.
And even though I can't draw like Cristian, sometimes what I see on
the finished page feels a lot more like my work than what makes it to
the TV screen in one of my cartoons. What's odd about comics is that
consuming them is so active; I'm completely dependent on the reader to
get my characters' tone of voice, to feel the action, and to create
the pacing, so I have to use the tools that are available in the
medium to guide the viewer so he experiences the book the way I want
him to. I try to use line of action, sound effects and word balloons
to guide the eye where I need it. I use captions to provide
counterpoint and especially to control pacing.

MICAH: I agree with Jay, but I would point out that while comics is
MORE authorial than movies or TV—or videogames, which is the most
collaborative medium out there, sometimes to the point of making
things horrible— unless you’re drawing your book yourself, and
lettering it yourself, and coloring it yourself, and printing it
yourself, you still have partners and they still see things
differently than you do. That’s one of the things I love about making
comics...when I get Jok’s roughs back, I realize that he sees the
world in a completely different fashion than I do, and it’s that
frisson between my story and his layouts, or between my dialog and
Cristian’s inked line that creates something new. Comics is much more
authorial than movies or TV or videogame writing, for sure, but you
still have collaborators, even if there’s one two of them instead of
70. Guys like Darwyn Cooke or Daniel Clowes who can do it all start to
finish—and who actually take the time to do it all start to finish—
well, I worship the singular focus that it takes to create comics in
that way, but I can’t draw, so I have to find partners, and mixing
those multiple visions is what makes comics exciting for me.

HA: What sort of homework was required to achieve the level of period
authenticity you're bringing to the project?

JAY: To the best of our knowledge no female cropduster ever fought
Nazis in Texas, even when it would have been fashionable to do so, but
we've done our best to make sure that we stick to the facts within
reason. We were careful to use period airplanes, like the Boeing
Stearman, which Jo flies at the beginning of the story, and the
experimental Junkers JU-90 bomber which our Nazi villains arrive in.
We tried to use period detail when possible, like the old-style Dr
Pepper refrigerator chest and Divco milk truck in Part 3. When we
don't provide reference for Jok and Cristian, they do their own
research, and we've been incredibly happy with the gritty results. All
that said, we're not doing a historical recreation, we're making a
fable about the time. Story and mood come first, which is why the
cotton gin in part 6 will end up being a little more horrific than an
actual period cotton gin...which was still pretty freaking horrific.

MICAH: As more and more people upgrade to high-speed internet, the
amount and size of images available on the internet has begun to
blossom. When we started the book, we were lucky to piece together 25
photos of a Stearman Kaydet biplane for our artist...but nowadays with
sites like Flickr and Pinterest, we can spot something Cristian and
Jok need, then instantly post it to our Pinterest visual reference
board and they can be drawing it perfectly within five minutes. That
was very helpful when it came to the vehicles and clothes of the era.

HA: Even though you, Micah and Jay, created all the characters and
their backstories, did any of the characters begin writing himself or
herself?

JAY: Maybe my favorite moment in the writing process had to do with
Gideon, our shell-shocked sheriff. He hates violence and aggression
and is constantly working to minimize conflict—he's the brake pedal to
Jo's gas pedal. We knew that at some point we'd have to reveal what
happened to him in the war to make him behave that way. We dreaded
getting to the part in the outline that said "Gideon tells his sad,
sad story." It's easy to write a miserable war experience, but we hear
so many such stories in movies and comics and on television, how do
you elevate it to something that feels like it can transform a life?
We had no idea. When we got to that part of the script, we just
started talking about it in the first person, and when we reached the
end of his story, that THING—the one that profoundly changes Gideon—
just popped out. In his voice. Neither of us knew where it came from.
An incredible experience.

MICAH: Meanwhile, Horst always wrote himself. He reached out of our
brains, grabbed the keyboard and typed it all out for us. The bitch of
it was translating it from the German.

HA: Why did you choose to go the Kickstarter route, rather than a more
conventional path through a publisher?

JAY: “Duster” is an odd bird, not just in comics, but in media in
general; a period action piece with a female lead? What's THAT? We
found that a lot of people just couldn't see the project in their
heads so we figured we'd do it ourselves, then riffle the pages in
front of their noses so they could see it and say, OH! THAT'S what it
is.

We started this project a long time ago and our artists have been paid
straight along. All that money—and it's no small amount—came out of
our pockets. Quite simply, we chose the Kickstarter route to pay
ourselves back without having to get on someone else's schedule or
sacrifice editorial control. If we reach our goal, Kickstarter will
pay for everything to date. Then we'll find a publisher.

MICAH: Right. “Duster” is a big risk for a mainstream superhero comics
publisher and the direct market comic stores who mostly cater to that
product. We did the math and realized that we’d either have to sell
individual issues of the book (and maybe not get enough orders to
complete the six chapters) or we'd have to sell 30,000 copies of the
trade paperback just to break even, which is just impossible in this
day and age. But by going directly to hyper-motivated consumers on
Kickstarter, we make it possible for us to break even on the book’s
art costs solely by doing this limited-edition hardback. Then we can
approach mainstream comics publishers and distribute through Diamond,
just like everyone else...but not go broke doing that. We’re not self-
publishers. We don’t have the patience or the skills that a real
publisher brings to the table. Given how little money is available to
alternative comics creators in the direct market, I think you’re going
to see this model become the norm for indy comics.

We don't want to spend our time making spreadsheets and calling
printing companies; we want to make more comics! And Kickstarter has
really helped us raise awareness, so a year or so from now when the
big-label printing of “Duster” hits Previews, there will be a ton of
happy readers out there evangelizing the book for us, like Kurt Busiek
and others have done. That makes more sense than going in cold.

HA: How did a comics legend like Howard Chaykin come to be involved?

MICAH: I first met Howard in 1993 or so when I attended my first San
Diego Comic-Con. He was there giving a panel talk called “Howard
Chaykin Teaches You How To Make Comics”—he was mostly working in
Hollywood by that point and hadn’t been doing much in comics except
for “Power & Glory,” if I remember correctly. I learned more about
genre writing from that 90-minute panel than in every writing class
I’d had in college. Three years later I had moved to Los Angeles to
work in television, I was standing in line at the Fatburger in Burbank
on my lunch break, and I turned around and standing before me was
Howard Chaykin. I introduced myself, we started talking, and I just
made sure I continued to cultivate the relationship. Howard is
brilliant and opinionated, and I’ve learned more about how to, and not
to, make comics from Howard than I would have thought possible. He’s a
fantastic resource, a tough critic, and when we decided to do this
book, he was nice enough to lend us the use of his name and provide
some art.

HA: What do you see as the creative advantages of print cartooning as
opposed to animation? I imagine you see "Duster" as a movie in your
heads, so how does what you envision translate to what you capture on
Bristol board?

JAY: Comics and film are both very visual, but there are things that
you can do in movies that just don't translate well to comics because
they require movement. Some are broad, like showing something turn
slowly—that's hard to do with a single panel, and using two panels for
that is a waste in most cases. And there are little things. I can't do
a shrug or an eye-flick or a lot of facial expressions that require
small changes to be registered by the viewer. The loss of that kind of
subtlety, which is taken for granted in movies, requires some fancy
dancing... or a caption... or a thought balloon. Sometimes a great bit
of dialog from the movie version of the script would be left out
because it was non-essential and would have required two panels to
show the required attitude changes. In one scene Horst makes a crude
bomb timer out of a match, an alarm clock and a strip of sandpaper—in
film the design, motion and sound would make it crystal clear, but
we're not sure we pulled it off in the comic. We'll see!

One of the things I love about comics is their ability to combine
visuals with words. Aside from the graphic beauty of that combination,
there are also incredible advantages: we get instant insight into
people's heads with a thought balloon—contrast this with the
cringeworthy "thoughts" in David Lynch's “Dune.” We get the awesome
power of captions to control pacing and provide counterpoint and
insight into thoughts and actions—the equivalent done well in Billy
Wilder's “Double Indemnity,” not so well in the original cut of “Blade
Runner.” We get to unleash our inner Stan Lee. Everybody should.

MICAH: I had this conversation with Howard once. I mentioned that his
Vertigo book “American Century” was the first comic I’d read in years
where people used thought balloons. Most current books used (and still
use, 10 years later) long-winded internal narration captions, all of
which derive from “The Dark Knight Returns,” which was published
almost 30 years ago. That book killed thought balloons, so why was
Howard using them in his new book? Didn’t he know they were out of
fashion? “They’re out of fashion because most people are stupid,” he
replied. He explained that comics has a very limited toolset, and if
you aren’t willing to use one of the few tools that we do have just
because it’s a tool that’s out of fashion, you’re only limiting your
ability to create good comics.

I took that to heart...and I’ve noticed over the years that some
creators haven’t. There’s a tendency in this field to be ashamed of
our genesis as an art form as being “For Kids!” and the reaction many
creators have is to “Adult It Up!”—as if making superheroes grim and
gritty makes them more mature, or having Spider-Man’s friend contract
AIDS means they’re addressing current topics in an adult way, or
having Batman ramble on to himself in voiceover caption after
voiceover caption like a leather-clad Philip Marlowe means that it’s
not just a comic book about a psychotic billionaire in a rubber suit
who beats up poor people. And thought balloons? That’s only good for
Archie or Richie Rich comics! That’s for kids! I’ve seen people say
the same thing about sound effects lettering. Lots of comics today
don’t do it. Why? Is including an indicator that sounds are occurring
in the sequence somehow less realistic than the human beings drawn
next to that onomatopoeia on the page? No. It drives Jay CRAZY when
artist won’t use motion lines to direct the eye...there’s a current
trend in comics where all panels look like posed photographs without
any motion lines to indicate direction of action... but if I wanted
posed photographs, I’d go read Sports Illustrated. Use the tools. Tell
a great story. That’s what we’ve tried to do with “Duster.”
___________________________________

You can find out more about “Duster,” see some finished pages and
learn how to help make the project a reality at
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/propagandist/duster-the-graphic-novel.

We want to note that Hogan’s Alley has no vested interest in Duster,
apart from wanting a worthy project to succeed!

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[Hogan's Alley]