Odds are, you probably know Ray Fawkes as the guy over at DC who works on “Constantine” and “Trinity of Sin: Pandora” and “Batman Eternal”, and if that’s the case, that’s totally fine.
But you’d be missing out on the work that makes Fawkes one of the most exciting creators in comics today.
His graphic novel work in which he writes and draws highly innovative, metaphysical stories like the Eisner-nominated “One Soul” is some of the best and most unique cartooning you can find in the industry today, and we really can’t get enough of his work. Now, his follow-up to “One Soul” – “The People Inside” – is coming from Oni Press in August, and thanks to our friends over there, we have an exclusive first look at a bunch of pages from the book and a conversation with Fawkes about the book, why he can’t help but experiment with the comic book medium, and more. Thanks to Oni for sharing a look at it, and please, pick this book up. It’s very, very good. Check out a solicit below, and enjoy!
A new original graphic novel from the Eisner-nominated cartoonist of ONE SOUL! This ground-breaking new book looks at the lives and relationships of 24 individuals in a way only the medium of sequential art could. Relationships change, grow, and end but the one thing that always remains is the people inside who define both ourselves and our liaisons.
Ray Fawkes: The honest truth is that I began working on The People Inside almost the very minute that One Soul was out the door. I was drawing early diagrams in my notebook while going through lettering edits on One Soul – and while The People Inside has evolved radically from those days, it’s really…it’s just that I’ve completed it three years later. So this is the right time, because this is when it was ready.
The People Inside needed to be next because I realized, as I was working on One Soul, that there was a subject I dearly wanted – needed, really – to tackle and didn’t have the time or space to do it properly in that volume – and that was the subject of human love. So I broke it out into its own piece, and it became The People Inside.
This book is another haunting look at the progression of people’s lives, like One Soul was, and uses a similar design as that book did with each person taking up a space in the paneling of the story and their story progressing continuously in that one space. But the relationship wrinkle makes it feel compelling in a completely different way, and by the end ties everything together in a truly beautiful way. What made this such an attractive subject for you as a creator, and when you originally developed it, did you know you wanted to follow a similar format to what you did with your previous effort?
RF: Yes. Originally conceived, The People Inside was going to follow a very different format, to tell the truth – but I wrestled with it for months until I realized that I already had the tools to tell the story the way I wanted to – the tools of simultaneous “four dimensional” storytelling established in One Soul – and that with one additional layer of panel manipulation – I could convey exactly what I wanted to in this book.
The power of the Comic Book medium is so amazing, to me – the incredible array of choices we have when deciding how to make a story unfold on the page can be overwhelming, and choosing the structure for books like One Soul and The People Inside was a very meticulous process – one of asking myself: How do I want “time” and “place” to look on the page? How can I tell these individual stories and the greater story they assemble to represent all at once? How can I illustrate the meaning that I’m seeking to express, considering the depth of the subject, and my hopes for revealing my own feelings of awe and anxiety about it? What can I convey with the shape of the panels on the page, and their position, and their relationships to the words that accompany them?
Continued belowAnd can I do it in a way that fully utilizes, to the best of my ability, the unique properties of the medium? God, if you’re writing a comic book, make it something that can never be as good as it is if it’s translated into any other medium. Otherwise, what the hell are you doing as a comic book creator. At least, that’s what I say to myself.
RF: It’s crucial. Absolutely crucial. I mean, look, there’s a time and a place for telling a strictly conventional story, and keeping within well-worn parameters. I’m aware of the fact that an experimental piece will lose some readers from the get-go, just like high-minded poetry will, and just like speaking your actual honest thoughts and trying to put something heartfelt or ugly or bittersweet will.
But all of my literary and artistic heroes, all of them tell stories that are heartfelt or ugly or bittersweet or honest, and many of them are experimental or high-minded or outright pretentious and I love and admire their work, and was forever changed when I read it. I aspire to honour their fearlessness and intelligence and the only real way to do that is to try and match it.
Rather than telling character centric stories with your graphic novel work, you instead use your work to explore the interconnectivity of the human spirit. What makes that more fertile ground and appealing to you as a storyteller, rather than traditional plot/character oriented stories?
RF: As I say above, there’s a time and a place for more traditional, plot & character oriented stories, and I create my fair share of them. Those books are where I try to tell the best possible stories in that manner. One Soul, The People Inside, and, God willing, forthcoming projects are where I explore another aspect of our being, and flex another part of my creative mind.
