Today we’ve got an interview with the creator and writer of one of our favorite new books – Vertigo’s I, Zombie – as Chris Roberson talks to us about how he got into comics, working with Mike Allred, and the creative process behind this series. Chris is a really talented guy who has done some phenomenal work in the past year for Vertigo with both the aforementioned I, Zombie and Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love, and if you haven’t picked up his work yet you have no excuse: it’s only a dollar for the first issue of I, Zombie. Plus, it has artwork from Mike Allred…how can you pass that up?
Check out our talk with Chris after the jump, and thanks so much to Chris for chatting with me.
With a successful career as a prose writer and as a publisher, why did you decide that you wanted to pursue a career working in comics?
Chris Roberson: To be honest, I only got into writing prose in the first place because I couldn’t figure out how to break into comics. All I wanted to do when I was a kid was write comics, and it remained one of my primary goals through adulthood, but breaking into comics is HARD. It is much, much easier to sell prose short stories, and even to sell prose novels, than it is to get a foot in the door with a comic publisher. I had a great time writing novels and short stories, and don’t doubt that I’ll do more at some point in the future, but for the moment I’m just glad to finally be doing the job I’ve wanted to do since I was eight years old!
What kind of influence does Clockwork Storybook have on your work? Were they all basically willing you to write a comic or two?
CR: I was in my late twenties when we started Clockwork Storybook (“we” being me, Bill Willingham, Matt Sturges, and Mark Finn), and though I’d been an aspiring writer for at least a decade by that point, it wasn’t until our weekly meetings started up that I feel like I really came into focus as a writer. For a number of years our primary focus was a shared world, which was featured first in a monthly webzine and then in a series of novels and short story collections, and the discipline of writing a new short story every month was invaluable to me. Even more invaluable, though, were all the discussions about craft and genre I had with Matt, Mark, and Bill. In all honesty I don’t think I’d be half the writer I am now without those guys.
CWSB is still around, or around again if you like, only it’s been reborn as a mutual aid & admiration society, with loads of new members. The focus now is on those craft and genre discussions. We share our experiences with the business side of things, too, and as much as possible try to help one another avoid making the same mistakes we have.
And in a very real sense I wouldn’t even *have* a comics career if it wasn’t for Bill recommending me to Shelly Bond at Vertigo, so you could say that Clockwork Storybook is the MOST important influence on my writing there is!
As a number of our writers noted, there seems to be a lot of different influences in your work. Where do you derive your aesthetic form from?
CR: This will sound like a trite answer, but it’s the truth. My aesthetic derives from every book and comic I’ve ever read, every TV show and movie I’ve ever seen, every computer game and RPG I ever played, and on and on. I can cite all sorts of *conscious* influences that are preeminent (the novels and short stories of Michael Moorcock and Philip José Farmer, the comics of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, specific series like Kurt Busiek’s Astro City, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, and James Robinson’s Starman) but if I’m honest my work is probably just as influenced by old Hanna-Barbera cartoons and episodes of Doctor Who.
Continued belowI think I was lucky in that some of my earliest influences (the aforementioned Moorcock, Farmer, and Moore, as well as writers like Tom Robbins and Jorge Luis Borges) were all about mixing their *own* influences, and thought nothing of blending “high” and “low” culture, the popular with the profound. If I’ve consciously taking any one thing from them, it’s that I shouldn’t neglect *anything* that has influenced me, but to find a way to fit all the different elements together in what is hopefully a new and interesting way. It’s up to the reader to decide if I’ve succeeded, but worst-case-scenario I’m having a ball in the attempt!
How did you develop I, Zombie?
CR: After finishing the scripts for Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love, I was desperate for more work, and so pitched idea after idea for new series to Shelly Bond at Vertigo. She hated all of them without exception. Finally, in a last ditch effort, I asked if there were any moribund DC trademarks that they were interested in reviving as Vertigo series. She gave me a short list, and told me not to worry about the original concepts, but to come up with completely new ideas that could fit those titles.
I came up with several, but the one that I liked the best was for the title “Gravedigger.” The pitch was completely unrelated to the DC war comic from the 1970s of the same name, but was about a zombie girl who didn’t want to hurt anyone and so got a job as a gravedigger in order to get a fresh supply of brains. Shelly liked the basic idea, as did Karen Berger, and I worked it up as a full proposal. Along the way Mike Allred was attached as the artist, but he didn’t want to do it if the book was work-for-hire, and so Shelly asked me if we could just change the name and make the book creator-owned. I said yes VERY quickly, and here we are.
When you were developing it, how difficult was it for you to create something involving zombies and monsters that was fresh…at least conceptually?
CR: Well, I think that all of these ideas have been played with at least a time or two by other writers before, but my hope is that we’ll put our own, fresh stamp on them. The basic thought process was this: starting with the assumption that zombies need to eat brains (which is a relatively recent addition to the myth, but one that resonates with the public these days), the question to answer is *why* they need brains? Why do vampires need to drink blood? Was there one solution that solved both questions?
In issue four of iZOMBIE we present my Grand Unified Theory of Monsters, in which the mechanism behind all of the various supernatural creatures that appear in the book is explained. The basic idea is that everybody needs something, and what they need defines what they *lack*.
Was Mike Allred involved in the original creative process? If not, how did he get involved with the project? There seemed to be a lot of classic Allred touchstones in the book.
CR: Mike was brought onboard fairly early, but after the basic structure of the book had been worked out. Most of the main characters had been conceived, but were fairly unformed, and it wasn’t until Mike joined the mix that everything about them gelled.
In terms of the Allred touchstones in the book, most of those were there from the beginning, long before his name was first brought up, and I think the reason is that Mike is such a HUGE influence on me. I’ve been a fan of his work since Grafik Musik days, and I’ve devoured everything he’s done in the years since. Maybe it was the fact that Mike continues to reexamine issues that obsess me that drew me to his work in the first place. Either way, I think that was one of the main reasons that Shelly Bond first suggested that he might be a good fit for the book. It was fate, I tell you!
Continued belowWhen you’re scripting an issue, how much does knowing that Mike is your artist affect your writing?
CR: Um, a LOT? When I script an issue, what I’m actually doing is imagining how Mike will ultimately draw it, and then describing *that* back to him. It’s this weird feedback loop between my personal conception of Mike that lives in my head and the *real* Mike out there in the world. Of course, the final stuff is always much, much better than I’ve imagined, which only goes to show that the reality is better than the conception in this case.
Gwen is a remarkably charming character, and someone who immediately makes the gruesome concept palatable. How important was it for you to make her “Gwen Dylan: Zombie with a Heart of Gold”?
CR: When I was first starting work on these early issues last year, I went back and watched a lot of TV series that covered similar ground, or had similar narrative structures, and one of the things I noticed was the tendency to make strong female characters, for lack of a better word, “snarky.” It just seems natural, for the strong and independent female protagonist to have a sense of humor, and to comment sardonically on the world around her. Unfortunately, if the writer isn’t carefully, that kind of snark can come off very quickly as “unlikable.” Sardonic humor tends to alienate the audience unless it’s leavened with humanity, and I think series fiction thrives or fails in many cases on the likeability of its protagonists.
I’d already done a draft or two of the first issue when I made this realization, and when I revisited the script I saw that I’d made all of the same mistakes I was finding in these television shows. Gwen was too arch, too ironic, and she just came across as an unlikable shrew. I went back through with the knives out, cutting anything that came close to snark, and started again from the ground up. Then I did it *again*, just to be sure.
The fact that some readers have still reacted to her as being too snarky and arch suggests to me that I was right to be worried, and that if I *hadn’t* made those changes she would have been *completely* unlikeable.
The supporting cast is remarkably original, with Ellie the Teenaged Ghost and Spot the “Were-Terrier” being introduced so far. Why fill the cast with other monsters, and will we get an explanation as to why Eugene is so diverse in their populace? Last time I went there, it was more laden with college students than attractive zombies.
CR: We will absolutely get an explanation as to what causes all of these other supernatural creatures in general, but the explanation for why they seem to happen more in Eugene, Oregon than elsewhere will have to wait a little while.
Speaking of Spot…what exactly is a “Were-Terrier”, and why did I feel the desire to throw a tennis ball when I saw the panel in which he was revealed?
CR: Werewolves are humans who once a month are overcome with the urges and appetites of wild animals, right? Well, a were-terrier is someone who once a month is overcome with the urges and appetites of a well-behaved house pet. He gets an extra bowl of dinner at night and goes to sleep on the couch.
In the first issue, we’re given a couple of potential villains to choose from, as it looks like the vampire populace is perhaps a bit more malicious and Gwen may have a couple of monster hunter types to contend with. Will they be part of a more overarching plotline, or are they something else altogether?
CR: Yes, and yes.
While reading it, we picked up on a bit of Allred’s mod, retro vibe as well as more of a pulp vibe and a horror feel AND a bit of a sitcom feel as well. Tonally speaking, how difficult is it to balance this book and not lean too far in one direction? To me, the varied feel helps because it gives a little bit of something for everyone.
Continued belowCR: I used to worry a lot about giving the reader what I thought they wanted, but realized after a while that it was a waste of time. These days, I just put in all of the things that I’d want to see in a book, and trust that there are enough people like me out there who might be interested in reading it. In terms of balancing the tone, I really just change to something else before I get bored, because if *I’m* getting bored writing it then the reader is definitely going to get bored *reading* it.
This isn’t your first time working with Vertigo, but it is your first creator-owned work with them. How has that relationship been while launching this book?
CR: My experiences with Vertigo from the very first moment have been terrific. I couldn’t ask for a better editor on this book than Shelly Bond, and everyone there (Angela Rufino, Karen Berger, Pamela Mullins, et cetera, et al.) have been fantastic.
My wallet thanks you for the $1 cover price to the first issue. How important do you think it was for this title to launch at that lower price?
CR: It wasn’t my decision, but I supported it one hundred percent! I think that Vertigo’s recent habit of one dollar books as “jumping on” points are a brilliant idea (one that BOOM! Studios also used recently when launching Irredeemable, as I recall), and I wish that more publishers did them.
What has the initial response been like from fans?
CR: The response has been unbelievable so far. I have been HUGELY enthused that readers have liked the first issue. I just can’t wait for everyone to see the next few issues, which I think are even better!
How far do you have this title planned out?
CR: I have plans mapped out that could run for YEARS. And I’d already written up through the first eight or nine issues before the first one even came out. It’s too early to say how long the book will go, but at this point I’d be happy to keep doing it as long as they’ll let me.
As a person native to Austin, why did you settle on Eugene, Oregon as your location?
CR: That’s all down to Mike Allred. He used to live there, and thought it was make a terrific setting for the book. Having seen how he draws the place, I can’t argue with him!
Here’s an important question for any Austinite: South by Southwest or Austin City Limits?
CR: I have a six year old daughter, so my personal answer is “Tivo.” Or “Netflix.” Anything I can enjoy at home on the couch after my kid has gone to sleep!
