Chris Visions Delivers High-Octane Art and More in “Dead Letters” [Interview]

You may not know the name Chris Visions yet, but by the end of the year you most certainly will. The extremely talented artist of the upcoming “Dead Letters” from BOOM! Studios, the latest member of the Out of Steps Art Collective is about to have a busy year. Not only does he have this great ongoing coming up, but Chris’ work can also be seen in the upcoming “Genesis” one-shot from Image, where he’ll be doing a pin-up in addition to a poster that he’s designing for NBC’s Hannibal Season Two finale.

But today we’re here to talk about “Dead Letters,” a new supernatural crime-noir ongoing from BOOM! in which a man named Sam Whistler wakes up in a room with no memory of who he is wearing a hospital gown with bandages on his arms. Oh, and some folks are banging down the door to the room trying to kill him.

We talked rather extensively about it with writer Chris Sebela last week in anticipation of the FOC, showing off the first exclusive pages anyone outside of Chris, Chris and BOOM! have seen. And today, we keep the “Dead Letters” train a-rollin’ with a chat with Chris Visions.

Read on as we talk to Chris about comics, letters, dead letters, candy skull masks and more.

So, I would like to talk to you about your book. The only problem is, of course, you guys are being totally super-secretive about it.

Chris Visions: Yeah! Yeah… It’s really hard not to say anything.

We’ll do our best, though. So, the first question I like to start out with when first talking to people is: why comics?

CV: Ooh. I realized it was deeply rooted in my childhood. A lot of it is nostalgia. I’ve been drawn to it I guess since I was a kid. My dad was kind of my first superhero, because he was a police officer. I watched Adam West Batman on television, and Green Hornet, the A-Team, and just seeing him go and pull a night shift and come home in his police uniform, it kind of drew me to superheroes. Then of course I got handed a box of them when I was a kid, and my mom sifted through all of them and threw out all the dirty ones. But, yeah, I’ve just been reading since I was a kid. I haven’t been able to get rid of the itch.

When did you first start illustrating?

CV: I’ve been drawing since I was a little kid. I think I got serious about it at a very young age. My mom was an artist, so she nurtured that in me. I first started illustrating when I was in college; I’d pick up a lot of freelance jobs online, or see where I could plug my work. I think that was around maybe 2006, I think?

Designs for Sam Whistler

What was the inspiration to get into illustrating?

CV: Stacks of Norman Rockwell books and JC Leyendecker when I was younger. Norman Rockwell was my mom’s favorite artist, so she passed that on to me, and I used to sketch out of history books and stuff when I was little. Cartoons were another venue; I’m a Disney kid, I watched a lot of those growing up as well. I just feel like, that was definitely what made me happy as a kid, and I wanted to keep that. So that’s why I’ve always been pursing this as an adult.

Interesting. Did you do lots of comic stuff before getting together with BOOM! for “Dead Letters”?

CV: Here and there. I dabbled a lot in doing pin-up work. I did some comics when I was younger; when I moved to Richmond, thats when I really dug deep and put my boot in it. A couple friends of mine, they put together something called the RVAnthology, because I think we were all trying to break into the industry at the same time and nothing was really coming up so we just decided to put out a book of our own. It was just a collection of short stories we put together. We printed it up and had a gallery show up here in Richmond.

How did that turn out?

CV: It turned out really well! We had a lot of support. It was really interesting trying to put together that amount of money, but the fruits of our labor were definitely ripe and good. I worked with other illustrators like Eric Pfeifer and Richie Pope, Nate Nelson and Julia Scott, who I think is in Maryland now. They’re all as passionate about comic books as I am, so it was great working with a group of people who had that drive.

And how did you get hooked up with BOOM!? Because the way you and Chris got together on this series is, and a lot of time you hear with creator-owned books that it’s done together from the ground up, but you submitted to BOOM! directly before meeting Chris Sebela?

CV: Yeah. Well, actually, I owe a lot of thanks to a friend of mine, Rico Rinzi. We had been talking on DeviantArt for a while, and the one time I didn’t bring my portfolio to a comic convention, I think it was Baltimore, he gave me a lot of crap for that — which I thank him for. [Laughs] And he told me to get serious about it, and he really encouraged me. He gave me words of wisdom in how to approach it, and eventually that led to me talking with people over at BOOM!. I started doing covers with them, first for “Adventure Time,” and after a while we had conversations about what interested me and my work. I’m definitely drawn to the crime noir genre, or things that deal with that kind of subject matter like The Wire or The X-Files. They put me together with Chris and it’s been awesome.

I think this is kind of a unique situation, and Chris and I talked about this as well, but when you first read the pitch — and I know you can’t say too much about it — but what did you think of the ideas? What was it that drew you to “Dead Letters”?

CV: Oh, it was just great. It’s very rare that I pick up something and read it and feel such a connection with someone, or a platform where I can pour in a lot of my own interests. I think Chris and I have really connected and gelled really well. I can’t wait to hang out with that guy. He just likes a lot of the things that I like, and he also brought things to the table and has been schooling me on older movies. I just watched The Maltese Falcon off his recommendation, and the Long Goodbye; all these stories that he’s drawing from. For me, I’m drawing from a lot of stuff like Quentin Tarantino. Pulp Fiction is an all time favorite of mine. It’s just a nice marriage of our two interests.

From the impression that I got from him, and feel free to correct me since the book is so caged in secrecy, but it’s a semi-supernatural noir, right?

CV: Yeah, I think the first issue is really going to set the tone. Going back to what you were saying earlier about being drawn to the book, I thought it was really awesome that he was writing a very strong African American character. Me being black as well, it let me pour myself into the character and relate to that world. I think that’s really important, that we see more of this in our media.

Designs for Calli

Chris was absolutely singing your praises when we talked last week, and all the things you’ve brought to the book and developed and changed. What are some of the things that you are putting into the book that specifically appeals to you? I know Chris is obsessed with Weird Fiction and True Detective, for example.

CV: I’m also a huge fan of True Detective. I just watched the Hannibal season premiere last night. Me and Chris have gelled really well. I’m a huge fan of movies, I feel like I’m a bit of a movie buff or at least a growing one, so I feel like throwing nods in to films I like are interesting for me. When people read the issue, I try and throw a lot of easter eggs and things in there that are nods to things that are close to my heart, so I’m really excited about having people find those. I tried to make it as visually appealing as the story is, so I feel like adding things that will have the reader come back and read the book and have a new experience is really important to me. I think that just adds to the test of time to any piece of art that people come late to, or come back to and get something new. So I’m very much trying to treat the book like that.

And I think it’s interesting, because we’ve only seen the two pages of art so far. But they’re really interesting, dynamic and vibrant; they’re not just traditional sequential art. How did you develop that eye for storytelling and dynamics?

CV: I try to think about what’s really exciting for me. I love what Sean Gordon Murphy does with his panels, it seems like it has a lot of energy. Growing up and watching animation and loving animation, I’ve always thought that animation, films and comics are in the same family, but they always have their unique qualities. I try and blur the lines between those a little bit. So, just trying to make things exciting, make things new and not be tied down to what has been done before and challenge myself. I think that’s where it mostly comes from.

Is these big action sequences, in terms of laying out panels and designing the page, is that a challenge? How did you start approaching the pages in a “non-traditional” fashion?

CV: I just think rhythm and flow in comics are really important. I’m still, I think, trying to figure things out; I’m just getting started. But the way panels move into one another, I’ve never been a huge fan… There are people who can nail the traditional 9-panel grid, or boxed panels perfectly. I’m just trying to try out something new, see how it works. I don’t think it works all the time, sometimes it gets a little crazy, but I’ve been lucky enough to have a solid crew at BOOM! and with Chris, so if I send them something they can say if it reads really well or they can critique it and let me know what’s not working. I’ve come up with some stuff, but having that eye is important as well.

And what about in terms of set design? We havent’ seen too much, but the pages we have seen are pretty vibrant and interesting.

CV: Yeah, I’m pretty excited about people seeing the world that Chris has kind of created and I’ve added to and molded. It’s really hard not to say anything, but I think once the first issue hits, the tone will be set and you’ll know where you are. Every script that I get from Chris opens up another opportunity to make the world expand. He’s told me the barriers of it, and it’s very elastic and allows me to bring a lot to it. It’s just been very fluid.

We have a couple images of the character designs, and there’s the lead character and he has the hospital gown and the bandages on his wrists, and I imagine that that was the easiest design to do that you probably can’t go into any further…

CV: Yeah… Man! It’s difficult. I feel like I can say, he doesn’t stay in the hospital gown. We took a lot of different approaches with him throughout. There’s maybe 7 or so different takes on the character, and they all have their own rules based on the times of his existence. So.

And there’s also this woman, I believer her name is Calli. And her design is incredibly interesting. She has the face tattoo and the whole coat and outfit. Where did the inspiration for her design come from?

CV: Chris brought her to me and described her personality, and said she had that candy skull face paint on. After that, you know, anybody who is going to walk around with a candy skull on their face is kind of a wild card, and he just gave me full reign to try and go wild with her, or pull back in for things that best suit her character. We just had an exhibit at the VMFA, and it had a costume exhibit. It was really interesting walking through that, and you’ll have a video screen with Martin Scorsese talking about how important Bill the Butcher’s costume was, or seeing the Dick Tracy costumes in person. It definitely set a tone for letting me know how important the costumes make the character, and Chris has set up a palette that’s really nice to draw from.

And it looks like there’s also a bit of Spanish influence there, a sort of Day of the Dead vibe?

CV: Definitely. She’s not a white character. We have some hispanic origin in there, and I think we’re still kind of figuring some things out but I definitely wanted to have a diverse cast considering where this takes place — and I feel like that’s all I can say. But, we both think it’s very important to have strong female characters. With Calli, I maybe went a little too scantily clad with what she had under the coat, and Chris reigned me back in. He didn’t want to go too far, and I think that was really important. So having strong female characters, strong minority characters, that’s what makes me really proud about this book.

It’s an interesting point, though. There’s a big discussion in comics lately about the people that are under-represented in comics, and I think it’s great that this book in particular is going to do its best to change that, that you guys are actively looking to bring in different types of people rather than just the “standard” white guy or whatever.

CV: Yeah, I think it’ll add to the dialogue of making comics diverse and bringing in a larger audience. I don’t think it’ll rectify all the wrongs or change the world in that sense, but it’ll definitely add to the solution.

And it sounds like this is a pretty important aspect of the book to you.

CV: A little bit, sure. Yeah. I mean, that’s all I can really say. The place that the book takes place in, I think it’ll be a very important thing for people to see, but… Well. You know.

So what kind of research did you do in preparation for the book? Obviously we talked about Calli’s candy skull and the costume exhibit.

Designs for Calli

CV: I’ve been doing a ton of research. I usually will have, like, a movie playing in the background while I’m working, mainly just to keep the mood. But also, with the research that I’ve been doing online and trying to look up the origins or weapons… and sadly I don’t think I can go into detail about certain elements, I think it’ll be easier to understand once the first issue drops which is I think four weeks now. But it’s definitely diverse. The world we’re creating is expanding. The concept art that I did at the beginning was just the tipping point of what is called for with the story. But it has been really exciting to push and pull from my love of supernatural, the occult, X-Files, which is, like, a childhood favorite of mine, and other genres and TV shows that I really love.

And you had mentioned earlier you were enjoying True Detective as well?

CV: Absolutely, yeah. That dirty South, gritty darkness that lurks in the woods kind of reminds me of home. I’m from Lexington, Virginia, and it’s very much a backwoods area that has a lot of that stuff, people in their pick-up trucks going to high school, things like that. It’s a nice spin on it, and I see that that trend is definitely flooding out to other TV shows, but it still stays fresh and I love it.

With shows like that, True Detective or evening Breaking Bad, the landscapes, the setting, all these very visual elements become more important. Do you find that its maybe easier or harder to get that same feeling in a comic book?

CV: I think the challenge is there. I don’t necessarily know everything about what goes into making a TV show. It’s easier when you have so much control in front of you. The digital platform, the internet, having these things in media now doesn’t make it easier to follow an inspirational guide. But I do love that the quality of storytelling, visually and through words, is becoming very strong in television. With comics, I feel like its always been there. I think comics have kind of been the inspiration for that. The color palette in Breaking Bad, where the first episode Walter White is in the car wash and sees the lady in green, and queues like that had been used in, like, Unbreakable, where M. Night Shymalan was just paying homage to comics. Lots of movies have been pulling from comics for that, and I think that’s exciting.

Do you think that the comic medium is still pushing past what a movie or a TV show can do in that regard?

CV: Absolutely. I think movies, in a way — and I don’t want to take anything away from them — but I feel like they’re maybe just catching on to what comics are doing. Especially with the comic book movies that are constantly coming out. The market is, like, flooded and saturated with them now. I think with comics, there is probably going to be a change or shift in them, especially as new artists come to the medium and add new diversity. I feel like that’s constantly going to be setting the tone, and movies will be adapting to that as well.

So it sounds like, and you’re a self-proclaimed movie-buff, but it sounds like with this book you want to take what television or movies are now catching up to comics with and then push it to the next level.

CV: Yeah, a little bit. I think it’s a nice give and go between the two mediums. Just some of the things you do with pacing in cinema in a two hour movie, you have to really break down and reconstruct for a 22 page comic. But it’s definitely effective, and what I’m doing, I feel like I’m just kind of sitting on the shoulders of giants trying to do this thing. Just learning from other people, great storytellers like Mike Mignola or Jim Lee, RM Guera, people like that have really brought this into comics before and I’m inspired by that and adding my own two cents in.

And what do you find the major challenges to be with comics in that regard? Since comics are often static images done sequentially.

CV: It has its minuses and plusses, but I feel like the audience really brings a lot of what comics don’t provide to the story. In a movie, you have the score, you have the two hour span to do something, and with comics, a panel could be looked at for five seconds. But with the easter eggs and stuff I’m trying to drop into “Dead Letters,” I’m hoping that people will just enjoy taking the time to read it and enjoy the story and getting immersed in it. I think comics really don’t have limits on them, or at least I haven’t found them. I’m excited about all the possibilities, and I don’t feel like I can speak too much to it because I haven’t been doing it too long but I’m just excited about exploring the possibilities. I don’t think there are many limitations.

Speaking of easter eggs and stuff hidden in pages, I mean, this is a mystery book. So obviously, storywise or text-wise, it’s probably very easy to hide the mystery, but since your side is very visual, is it still relatively easy to hide aspects of the book that influence the mystery, or give clues to the reader?

CV: I feel like it, yeah. Its been really nice being on this side where Chris might tell me what’s coming up in the next issue, he’s already told me everything that’s going in the entire arc. I’m in the middle of issue 2, so there are things that I can slightly hint at, but I try not to hint at too much. I think its, again, like the draw with True Detective, everyone has a theory about who the Yellow King is. It makes for an interesting journey along with the story, and I think we’re going to provide a little bit of that as well.

In terms of the give and take with the reader, and obviously the first issue is not out yet so maybe this isn’t a question you can answer yet, but is this give and take something you’ve found easy to work into the book?

CV: A little bit. The guys at BOOM! are really enthusiastic and also very much helpful in critiquing and letting me know whats going on with the book and whats reading. Plus, you know, occasionally I’ll have friends who come into the studio and they’ll peak over my shoulder and see what’s working. It’s cool seeing they’re excited what I’m doing. Even in black and white form, they’re like, “Oh, is that this person?” and they’ll get really excited. I think the give and go is very much on a small scale right now because, again, the first issue hasn’t hit the market, but I’m really excited just to see what the feedback is going to be. I think that’ll help me see what’s working and what’s not.

So far, I guess you’re on issue #2 but you know what’s coming, how is the working relationship like between you and Other Chris so far?

CV: Oh, it’s been awesome. He’s usually always just a text away. We can just sit and talk about what we’re watching with True Detective or what videogame we’re playing right now. All those things, I think, are building blocks to how we tell stories and how we gel with each other. I bring the art side, he brings the story side. I’m not used to having this actually fluid relationship with someone like this, but so far its been amazing. I feel really lucky. Eric at BOOM! was the one that had asked me what subject matter interested me, and I’d dropped in crime noir, and he’s the one who said he had this script I might be best suited for. As soon as I picked it up I was like, who is this guy? This is amazing!

It’s interesting how BOOM! does their line-up now, because I’ve heard of this with a number of different people now, that they’d send in a script or art samples and BOOM! will find the appropriate partner. It’s an interesting way to get creator-owned comics done.

CV: It’s definitely a testament to their taste and who they’re willing to put together. I think it’s very smart management on their part. Chris Rosa and Bryce Carlson, I got to meet some of these guys up at NYCC this past year, and it was cool putting a face with who I’d been talking with. You can tell these guys are just energetic about putting out a good product.

So this is your first, big, creator-owned ongoing?

CV: Yeah, it’s my first series. I did some work with Radical Publishing before, on “Freedom Formula,” and they were nice enough to bring me in and get me started when I was really young. And I was a hot mess! But they worked with me, and I got to do the last three issues for them on that series. The artist had dropped out, so I filled in. Edmund Shern was also a good guy to work with, he’s the guy who wrote the story and he was really kind in helping me get my start.

Is there anything in this book that you’re particularly hoping to push your own limits or your own artistic habits?

CV: I’m just pulling from a wealth of references that Chris has provided. It’s on a large scale, so its been really nice to see that I can just pick what I want to put in the book and see if it works or not. Most of the time, maybe 98% it has. It’s just really a great platform for me to explore putting myself in that main character, and also just setting up the stage. I look forward to being more specific about this soon as well, I know I’m being very vague. It’s just a great platform to be on right now, and it has a lot of possibilities and lets me be as creative as I want. I think the challenge is keeping that intensity high, having that translate to the final product.

And this is, for crime-noir, supernatural-noir, is there anything about this genre that you’re looking forward to exploring or deconstructing and putting your own definitive spin on?

CV: I’m just excited to see how much I can put in there without it detracting. I sometimes put a documentary on in the background, I think the last one I may have watched was about the occult and Hitler and him trying to take over the world, so there’s little occult things that have windows or opportunities that come into the story and its great being able to take those things and put that in there. It’s an interesting chance to make this book as personal as possible.

See, it’s frustrating because you bring up stuff like that documentary and I really want to ask more, but I know you won’t tell me anything! [Laughs]

CV: I’m really sorry! Chris and I have our tumblr online, and we put up a lot of our influences. So it’s kind of like, in a way, telling everyone what the book is about without telling everyone what the book is about. And some things we have to hold back since we know the first issue hasn’t come out yet. I’m just really excited and really want it to get here, because I think Chris has just come up with something really original that also draws on… I think he did an interview and mentioned The Twilight Zone, and we hadn’t really talked about that in depth but Twilight Zone was something that I grew up on as well. A tradition in my family was to gather around the TV and watch the marathon on New Years, so. There are things like that, things like Twilight Zone, X-Files, Maltese Falcon, all of this is adding to the pot to the story that we’re telling, and once it comes out it’ll be a lot easier to have a conversation.

But at the same time, y’know, we sort of get inundated with all the details of a spoiler before a story even comes out, like with trailers having all the pivotal scenes of movies. So it must be nice to hold back and not say anything.

CV: Oh, it is. I encourage you not to watch any clips from Hannibal before you watch the first episode, because, like, I sat there and we watched the first episode last night, and the majority of the show was just clips they had released already. And I was like, man, I wish I’d not done that to myself. I think that, especially with trailers that come out, they just tell you the whole story before you actually get to see the movie, so guess I’ll just save my 8 bucks. So it’s nice to hold back, but it’s also extremely frustrating.

So all things considered, what are you hoping that people will get out of or from the first issue?

CV: I think it’s just a fresh story. I’m excited to see people excited to see the fresh take on something, while paying homage to some subject matters that are so ingrained in our culture or have been overlooked. The story itself has a lot of throwbacks to the flair of the story; we pull a lot from the 70’s and the fashion sense, there’s other movies that are older as well that I get to pull from like Maltese Falcon or Long Goodbye where you have a definite flavor in your mouth when you see it. So hopefully that will reach a wider audience, both people that are older and people maybe younger who think it looks fly.

The FOC of “Dead Letters” was last week with Diamond Order Code FEB141035, but if you bug your retailer maybe they’ll hold you a copy. “Dead Letters” #1 hits stores in April.