Imagine this: You inherent a home from your late father. While cleaning up you discover a small notebook with numbers for “cleaners” and “decorators.” It’s hard to shake the feeling that these aren’t your average home beautification professionals. And after an unfortunate turn of events, you dial one and find out for yourself. This is where Cole finds himself in the first issue of “Little Black Book,” a four issues miniseries from AWA Studios. “Gatsby” artist Felipe Cunha returns to provide interiors, with colors by Marco Lesko, letters by Steve Wands, and covers from Francesco Francavilla. But scripting this neo-noir western thriller is Jeff McComsey.
McComsey is no stranger to AWA. His first work for the publisher was the sci-fi comedy “ET/ER” in 2019, which he followed with the Grindhouse flavored Beowulf riff “Grendel, Texas” the next year (with artist Tommy Lee Edwards). Then in 2022, he teamed with artist Mike Deodato for “The Fourth Man,” a rural murder mystery inspired by real events. With the final chapter of his latest epic due out June 12, we spoke to McComsey about the series, building a story like this, and a tiny bit about Pokémon. We’d like to thank him for his time.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
So your latest series is “Little Black Book?”
Jeff McComsey: “Little Black Book!” It’s funny, working on these things for so long. And then like… finally they’re out, right? This is a project I’ve been involved with, with AWA, for like… I don’t know, months and months and months and months. Obviously once the art starts, the writing aspect is pretty much done. But there’s still going back and forth, between looking at notes for the artwork that we get in, if there’s anything we want to change or anything like that. It’s funny when this whole process is finally over and the book is finally out.
And this going to be a four issue miniseries?
JM: Four issue miniseries! You know, this is actually the third four issue miniseries that I’ve done with AWA. I sort of unofficially– I never actually told Axel [Alonso, AWA Chief Creative Officer] or anybody like that, but I always wanted to make sure I did a trilogy of four issue miniseries. I still want to do some more. But I’ve very happy this is the third one. So yeah, it’s a four issue minseries.
Looking at a lot of the other stuff you’ve done, like “Grendel, Kentucky,” you sort of play with a lot of genre conventions. Looking at this book here, you have a neo-noir western thing going on…
JM: I usually call it– or at least I think of it as a small town crime. That’s sort of the overarching genre. And then we come at it from different ways. I feel like I’m lucky that’s the kind of story Axel likes, right? That’s job number one. If Axel likes it, we can get started. So luckily he is. And small town crime kind of stuff, you see that in film and television a lot. With comics, it gets a little under represented. There’s still stuff out there. I love most of it. Any of it I get my hands on. I feel lucky to have found a publisher who believes in that stuff and sees what I’m shooting for at least.
Most comic stuff typically takes place, like… New York
JM: That’s part of the fun part for me is coming up with other locations that are sort of unexplored. You think New York, or smaller cities, they’re very well tread. I like the idea of coming up with these little places all over the country that maybe you’ve heard of, maybe you haven’t. But you’re sort of allowed to make it all up. No one knows what Bedford, Pennsylvania looks like. Or what a small town in Utah looks like. So you have a little wiggle room. You have the aesthetics and you can kind of just have fun with it.
So you have the small town in Texas…
JM: It starts in Texas, but it quickly moves to Arizona. And actually, Western Texas-East Arizona… both look identical, right? That same type of country. That was a lot of fun. I’m a big fan of— sometimes I’m out and about and I hear an oddball name of a place, and I’m like “That’s going in my back pocket.” The first place the book starts out is New London, Texas, that I thought was a funny idea. The idea that Texas was like “Hey! We want our own London!” Which is kind of surprising.
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This is also a multi-generation story. You’ve got a father. You’ve got the son. And you’ve got the grandson too.
JM: One of the things I like about that kind of stuff too is… generations stories have always– something I’m always thinking about. How these things sort of pass down. I’ve love the stories about stuff fathers dealt with that they’ve passed on. Kind of the original genesis of this story about the things you sort of inherit from your father. Whether its stuff… it’s a literal thing in this story. It’s a little black book and all that implies. And we get genetics. There’s different things that we inherit from our fathers. That was sort of the original inspiration. So it was very much a generational story from the beginning. We were going to touch on different branches of the family.
And then you have the mystery of how bad the dad actually was. And all these “cleaners” and “Decorators.”
JM: That’s one of my favorite things about bad people in stories. Or really any character in stories. I love hearing about badasses or whatever from other characters. Instead of directly telling the reader these things, I like the idea that we’re getting it filtered through a character that we like. So the first job is to make that character believable. We have to listen to what they have to say, then we’re intrigued by how they characterize other characters. I know it sounds goofy, but I love when we get told something by one character. And obviously it can be a little telly-not-showy sometimes, but I like how they word their opinion of these characters. It sort of gives us an impression of both characters. How they view this person. And how this person is. Both of those things impact the story.
Even just looking at the first issue, you build the mystery. You talk about the badass. And we get little glimpse like… yeah, this guy probably sucks a little bit. He doesn’t seem that bad yet.
JM: Yeah… we don’t know the extent of it yet.
He is letting his kid play with a gun… to be fair though, Pikachu did have it coming.
JM: You know, it’s funny, I remember specifically writing that scene, and he says “Eat shit,” something else. It was something from my childhood. I had myself and say “Okay, Jeff. What he’s going to be talking about when he was a kid will be completely different.” So I had to put my thinking cap on and figure it out. I have two kids. They’re eight and ten. And I find that… I also teach at art school. Those are 19 to 21-year olds. And that whole generation loves Pokémon. They are deep in Pokémon country. I feel like that covers a twenty-year spread.
I feel like it’s more universal too. Full disclosure. I’m based out of the Kansas City area. Down the way is Topeka, which at one point was renamed “ToPikachu.”
JM: Nice! I’m so jealous of Pokémon. Because it’s printing cards and it’s just like printing money, man. I’m fascinated by the whole thing. And also I like the artwork. I’ve never really played. I’ve just sat on the sidelines and enjoy a bit. I think I was a year too old to catch the original Pokémon craze. I remember it, I was just a little too old at the time.
You’ve built this family dynamic. You’ve built this mystery on top of it. The one thing that popped in my head while reading this is: How are you going to solve it in four issues?
JM: That’s where a lot of the fun comes in. Four issues really isn’t– there are times when you write and go this is a lot. But it’s relatively straightforward. There’s not a lot of time for asides. It makes the writing process a lot of fun in terms of making sure, I hate to use the expression, there’s no fat on it. Everything that’s in there is sort of germane to the story and feels appropriate. It moves where its supposed to move. There’s nothing where its like “Whoa! What happened? Am I missing something?” Keeping the reader in the know as you progress the story. One of the things I really like about working with Axel and [Michael Coast, AWA senior editor] is sort of all the stuff we do before I even start scripting issue #1. Especially working with an outline. Making sure that outline is razor sharp.
Continued belowAnd when that outline is sort of good, like looking at it at-a-glance, I know I can turn that into a tight four issues. If I sat down and typing up issue #1, it’d be a nightmare. Like… no way in hell. It wouldn’t make sense, or dovetail, or end in four issues. It’d be almost impossible. And really, after doing three of these I’ve realized there’s sort of a… I don’t know what you want to call it, almost like a rhythm to these things. What the first issue has to do. What the second issue has to do. What you need to have sort of established before the third issue. What the last issue actually does. Your ending technically-sort of isn’t in the last issue. I mean… those are the last scenes. But the set up for that is critical. The set up in issues #2 or #3.
It’s a lot of fun. As much as I would like to write like twenty issues of this, doing the four issues– also that comes down to different artists that I work with. They have schedules. They have certain holes in their schedules. “Hey! Can you work on this indefinitely?” is not something a freelancer is ever going to fully give. So with scheduling and I that stuff, I do like the four issues. And I do think they make pretty tight little stories. And also too, I like that AWA– when they’re done, they get collected as little graphic novels or whatever. I think they do like $10 or $12 for them. They’re really affordable. I pick up $10 books if I see them. It’s almost novel. Like “Ooo! I want that! That’s worth $10!” Any that’s short of $20.
Was it the same procedure for all the books you’ve done so far?
JM: Mostly yeah! The only really big difference with this one– I did a book between “Grendel” and this one called “The Fourth Man.” And that one when I wrote the outline, a lot of the dialog was coming to me fully formed. I would say 85% of the dialog was in the outline. And this one, the motivation of everybody– there’s something that happens with a story when it’s working, characters are doing things and it feels like psychology. It’s not because it’s contrived, and they have to do this to carry the story forward. You set these kinds of things up, and they’re reacting naturally to these things. That takes a little while to get it right there. One of the things too with an outline that Axel and Mike might suggest is “Hey! The scene you’re ending on issue #2 on? Why don’t we actually make that the first scene of issue #3 instead?”
Little things like that. The sort of note or tone you’re leaving those issues on or starting the next one on are really important. Those things make really big impressions on the reader. How that issue ends is going to dictate whether I pick and read issue #3, or whether I’m going to read issue #4. So that stuff is super important, making sure it all feels right. And just knowing when to end a scene. I feel like that’s a really big important thing. Getting out of there as soon as you can. Leaving a little intrigue, if that’s what you want. Not answering all the questions. There are times in a story where you absolutely have to answer all the questions. There’s also times where it’s better to raise a bunch of them initially to get people interested.
How close did you work with artist Felipe Cunha?
JM: He’s great! Felipe is one of those guys who– I’m also an artist. I draw stuff too, so I feel that sort of helps me make these scripts sort of artist-friendly, I guess. For lack of a better word. I’ve known Felipe for years. We’ve never worked together directly. I was the editor-in-chief of… it was a historical zombie graphic novel called “Fubar.” It was a bunch of different stories. And I worked with a ton of different writers and artists. Felipe just happened to be one of them way, way back in the day. And then I had sort of seen his stuff when he was doing “Gatsby” for AWA. Like I had seen his stuff, but I hadn’t seen his real, real new work. And I was just blown away by it. And it was right about the same time we were thinking about “Who do we want to partner up with for this book?” So it was perfect.
Continued belowHe’s an artist’s artist. What I think is sort of the hallmark of a professional artist, what I think makes a good professional comic artist, is consistency. These characters look the same from panel to panel. And it sounds simple, but it’s really, really difficult. Or keeping characters on model. Felipe is really good at that. Just in terms of drawing comic panels, a close up on a character’s face, okay, cool, we know what he looks like. Sometimes these characters are this big on the panel. How do you still make us know that this is this character? All that stuff is really simple nuts and bolts stuff, clarity stuff. Felipe is really good at that. So as soon as we started working together, I was super pumped. And the biggest sort of heartbreak with these projects is… every Monday morning, I’m getting ten pages from Felipe. It’s very exciting. And then it ends. It’s always a bummer.
Felipe’s great. And actually, I got to… we did a podcast, and he was on. So I finally got to talk to him as a person a little bit. It’s mostly just been email when we’ve been working on this.
You had mentioned that you’re an artist. And you wanted to make the script artist-friendly. How much of the details were in your script versus “Hey Felipe! Make this look cool! Draw me a big house?”
JM: Because I’m an artist, and Felipe is a Brazilian artist, and this is a story that takes place in the U.S., and some of that stuff… it has a specific look to it. So something like houses, things like that, I will go and find references for him. Houses are great, because you’ve got Zillow. All kinds of stuff like that. I will literally find a house and send a link to it. You can move around it. Bathroom. Living room. There’s a billion pictures on it. There’s really good resources.
We talk a little bit about that in the beginning, sort of “casting.” Like “who do we see these people as?” Just to borrow a little bit of that whether it’s like a hairstyle, body language, or whatever. The big thing, I think, with giving good references is he knows the characters that we want, so we establish that kind of stuff. A lot of my notes are just like… as a writer and artist, I guess I’m very conscious of what I’m asking if there’s a “Hey, can you redraw this?” Rarely is it like “This whole panel needs a redraw.” These are really tiny adjustments I might give. And that’s really on the occasion where it’s “Hey! We need to adjust this a little bit.”
I think the big sort of thing that I think about when I’m writing with my artist’s brain is comics are all about the juxtaposition of text and image. Being careful there’s a balance there. There’s a time where you want more text. There’s a time where you back off the text and let the visuals carry it a little bit. There’s even a time where there can be no text. Sometimes I get the feeling when I read some other writers that they’re worried about leaving a page with no text. Maybe the editor, they don’t quite feel like they’ve earned it. But those things can be just as important as walls of text and stuff like that. The thing that makes us appreciate those text balloons a little more is when we have those quieter moments. Just knowing I’m not letting down by keeping my mouth shut in these panels and letting the art carry it.
“Little Black Book” #4 (of 4) will be available on June 12. It can be purchased from AWA’s website, and anywhere physical or digital comics are sold. You can learn more about Jeff McComsey from his website.
