Nick Pitarra Prepares To Drop A Bomb In "The Manhattan Projects" [Interview]

 

The Manhattan Projects is the hotly anticipated new book from the creative duo of The Red Wing, Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra. However, in terms of what the book contains, not much has been shown. You may have seen the set of exclusive posters designed for Comics Alliance, and perhaps even the not-quite-a-preview preview at Bleeding Cool, but you’ll most likely still be wondering what the book looks like inside.

With that in mind, we got in touch with Nick Pitarra, artist of the book, and while he didn’t give us any new images to show off, he did sit down with us for a nice, in-depth chat about some of the things readers can expect from the comic, as well as from himself as an artist. If you ever wanted to read a comic starring a drunk Einstein and insane versions of Feynman and Oppenheimer, you’re in luck.

Check out the full interview with Nick after the cut. The Manhattan Projects #1 is set for release March 7th, and the final order cut-off date is today, so make sure to get your pre-orders in to your shops before they close.

The Red Wing trade paperback cover

For starters, let’s take a small diversion backwards and just briefly touch on the Red Wing, which was your first major work with Jonathan Hickman outside of a few Marvel shorts. With the book collected in trade now, what are your thoughts on the completed work and the subsequent praise/notoriety attached with it?

If I’m critiquing myself, overall I think I did a pretty good job for my first time drawing an entire comic, much less an entire trade paperback. Some of my own personal crits were that I think I need to bring a little more life and character to the faces. I think that with it being a heady story in general, I didn’t really help it out by some of my character face structures being pretty close, so with the Manhattan Projects, I’m really working to give everyone a distinct visual look. I spent about a month after the Red Wing just working on character sheets with Jonathan and bouncing things back and forth with that.

Overall, I think it was relatively successful. Our sales were really good. I’m pretty happy with the art. I hate a lot of it just because I think I’m getting better. That tends to happen every couple months; I’ll look at my old stuff and not like it, but overall I liked the whole thing. It was very close to Hickman’s other indie stuff, really thought provoking stuff. And my art, it was good, it was semi-restrictive because I’m always not as crazy as I could be, just because I’m worried about being readable. But overall, I like it, and I’m sure in a couple months I’ll hate it more! But right now I’m ok with it.

Between Red Wing and Manhattan Projects, there are certainly a fair amount of thematic similarities in the approach to history and science, but artistically do you feel there are any similarities you drew the Red Wing and how you’re drawing the Manhattan Projects?

It’s still going to be a clean line-style book. People who know my art know the core of it is very Frank Quitely/Seth Fisher/Geoff Darrow/Moebius-driven type art. With this stuff, just going back to the character stuff again, I just worked harder on giving people distinct looks, and that boils down to just changing the shapes of heads. I showed my stuff to Chris Burnham (artist of Officer Downe and Batman Inc), and he was talking about how some of it was reminiscent of Mike McMahon and Cam Kennedy, and their stuff is very shape driven. Their guys are very boxy, and they work on a lot of 2000 AD stuff with characters like Judge Dredd.

It was interesting when Chris said that just because I like both of those artists a lot and I never, with my higher brain, actively try and draw like them, but I think that is what attracts me to their art. There is something kind of geometrical and wonderful about it, and with Seth Fisher’s work, which is how I used to draw very early on, his stuff is all perspective and shape-driven, plugged into a grid, and I draw like that a lot. I think that’s the major difference between the two. The first few issues I also inked a bit differently, with heavier Tec pens than I usually use, so we’ll see — I doubt anyone will notice that, as we’re probably going a bit too art-dork specific with this answer.

Overall, it’s pretty much the same. A lot more character with faces and bodies, and this book is a lot more character driven than the Red Wing, where Red Wing is idea-driven with a family relationship and time travel thrown in, and this is more about the historical figures. Hickman is doing a great job with the writing in giving everyone personalities, and that stuff is fun to draw if you’re drawing someone like Feynman, who is kind of prissy and has his hair spiked, or Einstein, who is a drunk, and General Groves who is over the top and extreme. Just drawing that, with that type of emotion, it spills over into the art with all the expressions.

An unused preview page for the book

The first time you ever chatted with MC, you mentioned that Manhattan Projects had been in the works for quite some time, at least since you were still in college. Given that, how has the project developed overtime since the original “Thunderbolts of science” pitch?

Well, we had this approved — we could’ve done this probably about a year ago, but we wanted to do the Red Wing together first just to see if I could hit a monthly deadline and whatnot. Actually, the historical figure thing with me and Jonathan goes back to when he first had me work on Astonishing Tales. We originally had a small pitch that had Einstein in it that we had done maybe a page of or so? And then right after that Marvel had asked him if he had anything with historical figures, and he kinda revamped the whole thing. I don’t know if anything that I was doing spilled over into SHIELD or anything like that, but all of a sudden he was pitching an historical thing to Marvel and that turned out to be SHIELD. I was actually one of the artists that tested for that series before Dustin Weaver got it, but that’s originally when we started kicking around the idea of playing with historical figures, and specifically Einstein.

From there, I just finished school — I didn’t get any work from Marvel until last year on the SHIELD anthology — and right before the SHIELD anthology happened, Hickman asked me if I wanted to do the Manhattan Projects again. There was a lot of interest from publishers, so we knew we were good to go, and while we were waiting around we thought maybe we’d just do the Red Wing first, so that’s kinda where it all originated.

The ideas are — the Manhattan Projects specific focus was always there, I think that was always the title, but I hadn’t talked with Hickman enough to know any of the story, and even now when I get pages its always a surprise. I get 5-7 page chunks at a time, and it’s always interesting to see where it is going and how it develops, and it always surprises me. So that’s kind of the Manhattan Projects origin story.

I know with a lot of creator-owned projects, there are instances where one person in particular knows more about the story than the other. Without giving anything away, do you know the entire Manhattan Projects as it is?

I do know where some things are going, and some things I don’t. Some things are like… as far as story contribution, I’m working on a page right now where it says to draw Einstein pouring himself a glass of whiskey. There are small character moments like this where I didn’t want to draw him pouring a glass of whiskey, so instead I have a close-up of his mouth where he’s pulling out the cork for the whiskey bottle. Small things like that is what I’d say I contribute to the story, just basic illustration stuff. I know where we’re going with a lot of stuff or some of his big ideas, if we’re building up to an alien attack or if a certain door opens up later. There are some things in rooms that you might think are placed in passing, but he’ll say in the notes “that will open up to this later and be this, or that will leading to that later, so make sure when you draw it in the corner to note that.”

I know what things that I’m drawing now will lead into specific things later, so there is stuff that I certainly know, but I don’t know everything, that’s for sure — especially with smaller character moments. He might have someone say something or do something that defines the character more in a panel. Feynman, for instance in issue two, has kind of got this really awesome, really prissy personality, and I didn’t know we were gonna write him like that until I got the dialogue and the scene. So little things like that, sure, but in terms of over-arcing, I’m clued into a lot of that stuff.

An unused teaser for the book

I know you’re supposed to keep fairly tight-lipped about it, but for those still unsure what its all about, how would you describe the book and its premise?

Really, it’s kind of an over-the-top semi-absurd take on the Manhattan Project. For people that don’t know, the Manhattan Project was basically the government creating a program to build the atomic bomb, so it was a project paperclip where the government was after all these brilliant minds: Feynman, Einsten, Wernher von Braun, who is a rocket science and a nazi actually. They got all these guys together, and Oppenheimer, to build the atomic bomb, so our Manhattan Projects is all these characters and all these personalities — we’re taking tidbits from history and mixing and playing with it and having a good time with the characters. Einstein will be this drunken mean asshole, and Feynman’s kinda prissy. With Wernher von Braun, this isn’t even a stretch because he was an SS officer, but when he came to the United States, his record was expunged and he launched NASA. He was one of the foremost rocket scientists in the world. He’s in our book and he’s just an SS officer/Nazi.

There are all of these little fun facts that we’re always playing with that are cool. So it’s all the crazy stuff that’s not the atomic bomb, that’s what’s going to be in the book.

An unused preview page for the book

So obviously for Jonathan as the writer, there is his obvious investment and interest in rewriting history a bit, but what about for you? What is your past experience with science and history and Oppenheimer and the original singular Manhattan Project? How do you approach the historical element?

As far as all the science stuff, I don’t know a whole lot about all the history. Jonathan sometimes in his e-mails, he’ll reference stuff I’ve never even researched or known about. He’s definitely more of the sci-fi guy. There has been a few conversations on the phone where he’ll make a Star Trek joke or something, and he’ll start laughing about it and he’ll notice that I’m not laughing and say, “You know, if you had a little bit of geek in you, you’ll realize how god damn funny I am!” A lot of that stuff goes over my head! But I find little things here and there. I guess Feynman was a bit of a womanizer, for example, and I didn’t know that, but there are a few scenes that I’m drawing that play that idea up. It’s a lot of little things like that, where I don’t realize how smart he’s writing stuff until I go back and research it later.

I did start doing a ton of research on the Manhattan Project, though, like Oppenheimer and all of the crazy and awesome things that were going on that you don’t even have to stretch in history. Oppenheimer used to get in trouble for trying to kill his friends! He used to get drunk and choke people and crazy stuff like that, and we’re definitely going to play on that with Oppenheimer to the max. There’s a lot of fun character things that are factual, but I’ll play up to the extreme, and for me when I draw I love character moments like that. That’s why I like to read comics, and that sort of absurd storytelling and crazy, over-the-top alien attacks, stuff like that — that’s the stuff you pick up a comic book for with its quirky weirdness that you can’t replicate outside of the book’s page, and that’s why I love comics. All of it, the character driven, fun over-the-top stuff is really cool.

And, of course, working with Hickman is the best. He’s been a giant supporter of my work, and he helps me with design and layouts and he’s sort of championed me getting work at all, so working on this is a real treat for me.

You brought up an interesting point: with average comics, most people come to them for the extreme-ness of it, so to say. Things like superheroes and people flying around and punching buildings. Yet with this, its birthplace is in science and cold, hard facts, and you might assume a book about a bunch of scientists calculating formulas and having meetings and putting together notes… you don’t think that’s the most exciting thing in the world. When putting together the book, specifically from a visual perspective, how do you translate that comic book nature to what is somewhat a non-comic book-y story?

I love all types of stories. It’s not like everytime I go to the movies, I have to see a superhero movie, you know? Yet still, that element of “fantastic” is definitely in the Manhattan Projects, really to the extreme. It’s really in the writing itself; I can’t give a ton away, but the crazy takes on everything are just a ton of fun, and a ton of fun to draw. On top of all these character moments and drawing these five or six different personalities, I’m getting to draw portals and aliens, drunk Einstein, helicopters, explosions and bombs. It’s super, super crazy stuff that’s also fun. The element of the fantastic or whatever you’d call the comic book thing, I think that’s just… it’s why I like to read. You want to be surprised, and I love the absurd and there is a ton of that here.

In terms of bringing that to the table and making that come alive, that’s why I love the clean line style, the Moebius style, the world-building style. You have all these characters and all these personalities in a room, but the artist has to draw them and fit them, build this portal or these steps they’re walking up. You have to make the environment live, so my part of selling some of the ideas is just being a quality illustrator and taking the time to authenticate it visually. Hopefully I’m doing that. I think I’m doing that pretty well, anyway. Sometime the deadline gets a little tighter and you have to do little tricks here and there, maybe an up-shot instead of a down-shot or something.

But as far as what I can bring to the table visually, I think the reason Jonathan likes working with me–  and I know for me, when I see clean line style guys like Chris Burnham, Seth Fisher or Frank Quitely, those guys ground absurdity. It’s cartoony realism. You get this cartoony, extreme stuff, but it happens in these fully realized three-dimensional environments, and from there it’s playing with characters and moving them around and adding a little bit of realism to sell the more crazy stuff that’s going on. Hopefully I do that with my art! We’ll see.

An unused preview page for the book

With a “character” like Albert Einstein, you say that name and everybody basically knows what he looks like, but other “characters” like Feynman or Oppenheimer are not as well known, and not a lot of people really know what they look like. So for you, both with the environments and the characters, how much research was involved for you when developing the world of The Manhattan Projects?

Oh, with the characters there was a ton, and I really battled with if I want iconic versions of the characters versus age-specific to the time when certain things were going on. Einstein was much younger than the older version, the white haired version everyone has in their heads. Lesley Groves is this over-the-top, extreme general, but if you ever see pictures of him, he has this very soft, doughy body. He’s kind of shaped like a tear drop. But he’s written in this sort of extreme way, pulling his gun out quick for action type of guy. I originally drew him — and I love the drawing — it was this very soft body, in a couple months he’d have a heart attack type of guy, and Jonathan came to me and said “this guy’s gotta be extreme!” Once Jonathan said that, I did a really hulked up versions of him, reversed it a bit, made him more of a triangle shape, a powerful form.

I kind of realized that, in people’s heads or from the reader’s perspective, they have these classic ideas if they know of Oppenheimer. Our Oppenheimer is much younger, he has a crazy 1940’s haircut, but for people who might’ve seen Oppenheimer, he has a shaved head with wrinkles on his face, so I went with the older version even though it’s happening at the wrong time for that. Since it’s a revisionist take and since everything is so over the top and crazy, the iconic romanticized versions of the characters work better, and are more fun to draw. I wouldn’t want to draw that really short mustache and the spiky haired version of Einstein, I want to do the white-haired Einstein. Feynman’s pretty handsome, and Yuri Gagarin, who is the Captain America of the Soviet Union since he’s the first man in outer space… we’re definitely taking more of a classic look to all the characters as far as fleshing it out, and I think that’s what I’m at the most proud of. It’s like I said earlier, from the Red Wing to the Manhattan Projects, making those type of artistic decisions and not necessarily being a slave to reality, but still grounding it to make it all believable.

We lightly touched on this earlier, but with Red Wing versus Manhattan Projects, how do you approach the pages differently now? Has anything major changed for you in your work habits between the two books?

I’m always experimenting. Something I do to keep my juices flowing is always buying new inking supplies. I think I inked the first issue all in brush pen, but it was a very tiny new brush pen so it was really close to my microns. But there are a few instances when the brush pen loosened up and so the inking got a little different. I experimented with my buddy Joe Eisma (Morning Glories), and he sold me his old Cintiq tablet, so I practiced doing a few digital roughs, or doing roughs digitally and printing them out and then inking on top of that, and that was something new I tried just for speed purposes just because the Manhattan Projects is ongoing.

Pretty much it’s all the same, though. Even if you work digitally or like I always do, just drawing on a giant drafting table, you still find the vanishing points. I’m realizing there’s really no shortcuts to work with either way, you’re going to have to draw the stuff out and build the world correctly when you’re working. Other than that, I spent time doing character sheets for all of the characters, so there are probably just twenty pages of character sheets and redesigns. On Red Wing, I just drew the characters once and went with it. With this, I realize more of the importance to nail down the characters before I start drawing, and it makes things faster. I’m more worried about the expression than I am the structure, so that part has been really valuable and is something I’d request on any project from here on. Just a couple of weeks to really iron the look of things down before we start.

Pretty much drawing is drawing, though. Pencils and ink and blue line pencil and grids and perspective, all of that.

An unused teaser for the book

Do you do any digital work for the Manhattan Projects at all, or is it mostly all just pen and paper?

It’s always pen and paper. I’d say I’m about 85% pen and paper, really. Digitally, I have the Cintiq now so I feel like I should use it, so I started using it just for roughs to give to Jonathan, and if he has tweaks he’ll send it back. As a time saving element, I printed the roughs directly onto the board and penciled on top, so there are a few different pages that are multi-colored — a light pink with blue line on top with lead on top and ink on top.

Really, it’s just me doing the exact same thing. It’s just faster that I don’t have to print out the rough and lightbox it up. It might save a couple of hours for each page, and over a course of a month or two it’ll save me a lot of time and give me more sleep. But I’ve also noticed, when it’s crunch time like on the pages I’m working on now, it’s just faster not to fool around with the Cintiq. It depends on my time and learning curve, because there is definitely a learning curve when it comes to working digitally that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with yet, but it’s something that all artists should explore just to stay viable and see what other techniques are out there.

I’m not at all anti-digital or against guys that do all their work digitally. I love doing everything by hand and doing all the grinds by hand. When you build the grids by hand, I’ve found you bring a new life to things, because while you’re building the grids and plugging in things and adding counters, you’re so invested in the drawing that it’s hard not to put a poster up on the wall, and it’s hard not to add in a crooked globe or a calendar. When you start investing that much time into backgrounds, you really sell the environments better.

Generally speaking, I enjoy drawing stuff on the board better, but with Manhattan Projects being ongoing, we have to be aware of when we ship and making retailers happy and readership happy, so I’m trying to balance it out in terms of being a productive artists versus an “artist’s artist” who doesn’t want to draw anything wrong. Hopefully I find a balance.

A while ago you shared on Multiversity the construction of the page from the Red Wing with the pilot flying through time and degrading, and it showed off the collaborative process between you and Jonathan quite well. As this is your second major series collaboration with him, how would you say the collaborative process has grown between the two of you with this and your work on the Red Wing?

It’s pretty close to the same. On the Red Wing, about once or twice an issue he’d do something like what I shared with you guys about the deteriorating pilot. For me, Jonathan brings this wonderful, very strong design sense, and I think what I bring is something formed and detailed that can sell the craziness of it all since the drawings are so fleshed out. When we work together it’s always cool because it’s something that visually is striking by itself, but it’s also brought to life in the details. He’ll do things like that sometimes, which helps when you pace out a scene and someone turns their head and I think the camera can’t necessarily swing all the way up or above, but Jonathan wants things to look visually interesting. I know that one of my big crits on myself is that I’ll tend to talk down to a reader where I think things need to be A, B, C with the shot selection, whereas Jonathan will go A, X, F, W with his selection. Sometimes he’ll give me a new panel layout and I’ll just think, “Man, how am I going to fit this in to the pacing of the book!” There are little creative, fun back and forths we have there.

We have a very comfortable working relationship. He’s really down to earth and he knows kinda “how it is” since he’s an artist too. He’s pretty protective of my ego, too. He never says anything really horrible about my work, but I’ve definitely had to redraw a page or two before. It’s really easy to see if you crap something or if you invested a ton into something, so he works that balance with me very well. He’s protective of me in how he guides me, but I’m pretty hard on myself so it doesn’t come up too much overall. There are definitely a few extras that we can add in now, though, as far as character sheets that didn’t go through, or there are a couple splash pages that I added in issue one — there was a fight scene in one panel, and I thought, “man, we should really do this in a two-page spread,” and that got turned into two splash pages. The first one I drew, he didn’t like the angle, so I drew the splash page two or three times, and since I suggested it anyway, I laugh because man, I just gave myself a lot of extra work by suggesting this!

That stuff is the stuff I love, though, the creative back and forth, and I’ve never run into a situation where he suggested something and it didn’t work out for the best. I appreciate his guidance with all of that.

Given your inspiration with artists like Frank Quitely and Moebius, when it comes to assembling a splash-page fight scene like you mentioned — when it comes to pages like that, and putting all the little details together, how do you go about assembling the minutae of it? If you have twenty or thirty characters fighting on page, how do you pick what’s in the foreground, what gets less details, etc?

For me, things like that always came very naturally. The reason I draw like Frank Quitely, or in that vein, that Moebius vein, is because when I first saw Frank’s work, there was such honesty to it. I think honesty reverberates through everything I like about storytelling and art and the people that I meet. When you look at Frank Quitely’s art, it’s very observationally driven: the tags are hanging out, the fat guys are slouchy and not just circles. There is a level of care and attention to detail that’s so subtle and so observant that it just comes naturally, and that spoke to me in leaps and bounds. What he sees in people spills onto the page and I’m working towards being able to draw what I see in people. Everything as far as detail just comes naturally. If someone is slouched, or when they speak and their head is turned, there is something there in the drawing of these natural things that happen, and with artists I don’t like, that level honesty is never reached in their work. When people photo-trace, it completely steals everything that I love about art and everything that I love about storytelling.

Moebius has this wonderful quote: “Artists don’t draw reality, they encode it.” That is my mantra for art. Everything should be encoded, and the way Quitely encodes things is just so wonderful and is done at such a high degree of efficiency that it’s just amazing.

When it comes to adding details, I can’t not add details in. There are panels where Jonathan will delete some backgrounds because he’s like, “you’re just cluttering this because you won’t stop drawing!” and I definitely have an issue in terms of overdrawing as opposed to underdrawing scenes. All of that comes from the basis of what I think good world building and storytelling is.

The Manhattan Projects #2

I know its a longer series, but last we discussed it you had mentioned plans for at least 15 issues. Has that changed at all? Are you hoping for more?

Yeah, it’s 100% going to be ongoing. Our pre-order sales are really strong right now and I don’t want to work on anything else, and I know Jonathan is really 100% about it. We verbally committed to about three trades, about fifteen issues, but I’m onboard for way more than that. As long as the sales are good, which all indications show they are, and as long as I can hit my deadlines, which right now I am, I’m in for at least 15 issues if not more. Hopefully more.

It sounds kind of crazy… back in the day, 15 issues was more a maxi-series, not an ongoing, but by today’s terms it’s almost ongoing as things get cancelled and this or that. But yes, three trades for sure. We originally committed to just doing single trade stories, but when Red Wing wrapped, I think Jonathan talked to Robert Kirkman about how ongoings have a validity to them, and have reciprocating sales. One trade promotes the other trade promotes the other trade, that kind of stuff. So Jonathan wanted to make it a little bit less compressed and more decompressed, and I’m ok with that. I love longer form stories. I’m reading Sweet Tooth right now, which I love. I read Pluto recently, which is completely decompressed and you get all of these wonderful character moments that you don’t get when stuff is too crammed together.

So for me, it’s the type of storytelling that I like, it’s all character-driven which I like, and it’s big fun crazy stuff to draw. It’s not at all talking heads, and if it is, it’s stuff that is specifically there to give you a funny moment or give you a bit that fleshes the story out more. It’s not talking for the sake of talking. I can’t imagine working on anything more fun right now.

I’d also like to say hi to my friends at Ten Ton Studios, which is the message board I’m on a lot, and hi to some of my art buddies that have been helping me out on Skype — Ryan Stegman, Joe Eisma, Aaron Kuder, Charles Paul Wilson, Kevin Mellon, Tommy Patterson, those guys have been helping me out with my art and giving me guidance and I really can’t thank those guys enough.