The Bible is one of the greatest selling books of all time. Now imagine how much more it might of sold if it was a pulp influenced comic with Jesus super kicking people written by Joe Casey and drawn by Benjamin Marra. “JESUSFREAK” is just that. – – a graphic novel released this March from Casey and Marra. The story will follow a young Jesus as he tries to find his place and purpose in the world. To learn more about the series we were able to speak to creators Joe Casey and Benjamin Marra at this year’s NYCC’ 18.
If someone comes in your booth, what’s the pitch for “JESUSFREAK?”
Benjamin Marra: Young Nazarean carpenter …
Joe Casey: Coming to grips with the strangeness of his life, in first century Israel. It’s historical fiction. It’s a violent time.
A lot of upheaval, politically, socially. We delve right into it. And there’s this lone figure that’s trying to make sense of it all, and he’s got a little bit extra. He’s got a little bit of extra sauce going on.
Oh you mean that Jesus. Something that interests me is you guys talking about kind of the merging of the two and by that I mean, the man. I think where a lot of people might focus on that myth, or on the back end of his career, you guys thought to focus prior, this is the man. What interests you the most about that aspect of Jesus, versus, churches and all that jazz?
JC: Well, I mean let’s just say this. If the historical Jesus was a real guy, he still did some pretty amazing shit for the time. And if you buy into at least the high points of his story of his life, that he was a guy that was a shit stirrer, and he paid the ultimate price for it. That’s an interesting story in and of itself. No, we don’t get that far into his story. That’s already been told, a lot of times.
But, even if that is true, the journey to get there, just the kind of man that would put himself in that position, knowing what the consequences were, knowing what was at stake, that’s dramatic and interesting in and of itself.
So that’s a component of the story we wanted to tell. What kind of guy puts himself into that situation? What does he go through to get to that place? And, because we’re dealing with a comic book story, we go further than the historical facts and what we researched. Because, again, that’s the story we wanted to tell.
So we add a little bit of surprise to it to kind of make it interesting for us, and hopefully for the reader as well.
Right. And it seems modern, kind of, I guess, in the time period we live in, focusing on someone who’s resisting, rising up and …maybe not in the way we see today. For both of you telling this story means doing a lot of research. Even from the art end, are you doing a lot of attempting a historical look of what you might have seen then?
BM: I’m mostly interested in just capturing the feeling of what it might’ve been like around that time. So, Joe sent me a ton of architectural reference, which is really helpful, because that, for me, informed kind of like how … All the figures are pretty much things that I can come up with on my own, but the feeling of the architecture in the background, giving everything a sense of place, I feel like was the really critical aspect for me to nail down.
I also just wanted it to feel like, I really wanted you to know what type of day it was. Where on the planet everything is taking place. Where the sun sort of was, in relation to the location. So heavy shadows and everything feeling really hot all the time was really important to me.
I noticed, even in the ashcan, what I’ve seen is a lot heavier lines than your normal stuff?
BM: Yeah. I was experimenting with some new tools that … I’m heavily influenced by 1970s comic book artwork. So I wanted to really use the tools that were being employed at that time for different comics and comic book magazines and things like that. To give it that kind of feel required me to really use the right tools.
Continued belowI think when I first heard about the series it seemed like a good fit then finding out that it’s pulp-inspired it seemed fucking perfect. The two of you nail that feeling all the time. In addition to the historical research, are you looking back at those pulp comics? Are you drawing a lot from that to tell this story, or is it kind of ingrained in you guys at this point?
JC: I think it’s both.
BM: Yeah.
JC: It’s stuff that’s in our DNA as comic book guys. But there are definitely things that we explicitly say “Hey, let’s do this” or “Let’s do this technique” or “This moment should feel like this.” Now, we don’t want to say, exactly, because we like the idea of people who know that stuff, then pick it out. That’s kind of the fun of these kind of projects. So it’s definitely deliberate, but it’s also the reason we wanted to work together and do this. We share that in common, we have those influences. So we knew it was gonna come out, but we tried to be explicit in certain areas.
What has been the most interesting thing that’s come out of the project for you guys? And you both to me are prolific in comics and the shit you’ve done is crazy.
BM: Well, nowhere near what he has done over the years.
But in terms of quality, a lot of it’s really good. Is there anything interesting that came out of it you guys didn’t expect when you began the process, especially when working together?
BM: I feel like this whole project was a bit of an experiment for both of us. Joe employed a different sort of method for writing the book. I don’t even know if you’ve used it before.
JC: I have a little bit.
BM: Oh, you have?
JC: Yeah.
BM: And then I was sort of working in a different sort of style. I still think that you can see that it’s my hand. But for me it was quite a departure, the way I was working. I’m usually used to just working from this six panel grid, and Joe’s really breaking things up where every page is kinda different. But I was trying to work a little bit faster to give a little bit more of an impressionistic feel to the inks. And that was something that was very different for me. A lot of my work is very carefully drawn. This type wanted to really be thrown down, and to sort of look back from those comics from the 70s that were really being produced on a tight deadline, in a furious sort of chaos field storm.
JC: There’s two experiences to a piece of art. There’s the experience that the artist has, the different experience that the reader has, in this case.
And I think I mentioned this to you, to do this probably about, maybe, three years ago? Four years ago?
BM: It was a long time ago.
JC: I said “Hey, look, here’s an idea”. And then it took a while to develop. But he’s learned once we got into it, we kinda tried to bang it out to a certain step. Because that’s the kind of experience you can have. You can curate your own experience with creating. You can say “I’m gonna take five years to do this” or “I’m gonna try to do it in two months”. Each one produces its own kind of working experience. So from the way that I wrote it, to the way that Ben drew it, to the way that we’re packaging it, putting it together, it’s all the experience that he and I wanna have. And now it’s getting to the point where it’s gonna be the experience that the reader has. Which will be its own thing, which I’m curious about seeing.
Both of you are very familiar with putting out these standalone stories. So it’s gonna be what, 64 pages?
JC: Yeah.
Does that help, in that sense? I mean, versus it being twenty issues of a story? Does it help to kind of get that feel? Both of you have worked kind of heavily in that, like putting out those. Is that part of a format you really enjoyed, telling that like one concise story?
Continued belowJC: I think that the market is starting to go that way, especially for things that aren’t sort of the Marvel/DC assembly line kind of a comic.
BM: How many ongoing series are you writing, though, right now?
JC: Right now only one.
BM: Oh, is that right?
JC:: Yeah.
BM: Oh, okay.
JC: At least one that I’m active on the treadmill doing.
So, I think these kind of … The attention span is obviously chipped in the audience, over the last ten years. And I felt like it was something that, again, to the experience of making it, psychologically we needed this to know there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Not in a bad way. But that kind of “done in one” puts a certain kind of pressure on you when you’re making it that reflects in the work. And I wanted that pressure, like I said. And we could’ve done a six issue miniseries, we could do anything. But I chose this for two reasons.
One, at the time, Ben hadn’t been published in the high-end format yet, but now several things have come out since then. So I wanted people to see his work in that context. But this kind of single story, it puts on a certain set of parameters when you’re making it that I wanted us to work on. And I think when you see the book it has that kind of feel to it that something that wouldn’t break up into chapters does not have, or has a different feel.
This is not anything I’ve ever done before, both in concept and execution. But it feels different for some reason. When I look at it now I don’t even think about the two years we spent developing it and doing it. It just has this kind of weird energy to it. But I’m psyched that people will now finally get to see.
How is it managing this story? When I think of both of you, I think of a managed chaos of absurdity. You guys really get the medium and where you can take it in both the sense of having fun and being absurd. And I think both of your books are generally just like love letters to comics, and they’re really fun, and they can go anywhere. But then kind of having this grounded historical element, even in the ashcan, there’s like a lizard person …
JC: I mean, spoilers!
So how are you guys kind of merging that for this story? I mean, how far did you want to take it? Did you find yourself trying to reign yourself in, or was it pretty clear from the beginning, like you had it A to B and how you were going to get there?
BM: For me, I don’t really even think about that. To me, it’s just whatever makes sense. So when Joe has a talking lizard show up, I’m like “Yeah, of course there’s a talking lizard, you know. This is the story we’re telling. Whatever.” But I dunno, do you feel like there was a conscious sort of balancing act that was going on?
JC: I think it is a balancing act because you don’t want something to go too far in a direction that doesn’t represent your own tastes and your own needs to put out a certain kind of product. You know. So it is a balancing act because … you just don’t want it to go too far in any one direction. The thing that we’ve always done in our work, individually and together, is the ethos that in comics in particular, everything worked because the artist. So anything that Ben draws is gonna be in his style, and so you can almost accept any-
BM: It’s a part of that world that I’ve created. So, it’s in that world, you’re gonna take it. You’re gonna accept it. Hopefully.
JC: We want people to take this at face value. Don’t read too much into it. Obviously it’s great when a reader brings their own shit to something. It makes it more interesting. But we’re not trying to encode anything. We’re just telling what we think is a cool story. Telling it in a cool way. And that’s kind of it.
Continued belowWhat can readers expect? Scratch that one. What do you hope readers take away from their reading of it?
JC: Two things: Entertainment, and an appreciation of craft. That’s all I ever really want anybody to get out of it really. That’s what I get out of them. Anything else, to me, is on them. And that’s cool. But I know what we’re trying to bring. And that’s it, is those two things.
BM: I just hope that they have a good experience with a well-told story. That’s pretty much it. But any reaction would be good.
JC: Listen, if they have an experience, you’re ahead of the game.
BM: Exactly.
JC: I don’t know how many I’ve read for the site doing reviews, where I read it and I’m like “What was that?”. There’s a good, a bad experience, and then, you don’t want them to have the middle, where they’re just like-
BM: No, the difference is the …
JC: The death of art.
What are some challenges or threats Jesus is gonna face in this title?
JC: The character that we’re portraying doesn’t quite know what’s happening to him, of course. Something’s happening, he just doesn’t know what it is yet. So there is an inner journey that occurs … that’s not unlike any sort of Joseph Campbell heroic journey. It’s very much like that, actually. So … there are external threats because of the times that he lives in. What he is going through is very much counter to the politics of the time, and the socio-political vibe of the time. This is the time where your beliefs, and what you choose to put out in the world, is life and death situation. So there’s Roman soldiers with swords, ready to cut your head off. There’s that aspect to it.
Then there’s the subtext of does it mean to come into your own, knowing that the further you go into yourself the more at odds you’re going to be with the world around you, even though you have a greater goal in mind? And, to me, that’s the journey of any artist who wants to put their soul out to the world through their art, through their creations. There’s gonna be resistance that’s gonna be met with indifference. Whatever it is, are you going to push through, are you going to keep going? That’s kind of the emotional arc of the story. So there are challenges all over when it comes to that.
That’s good, wasn’t it? I just pulled that out of my ass.
I know.
BM: Yeah, it was great.
You dropped the ashcan for the series here at NYCC. You guys haven’t laid it out in that kind of pulp, comic-y look? Is that something you guys have designed … This story’s gonna be hardcover?
JC: Yes.
BM: Yeah.
Have you designed it in that sense? Is there gonna be the ads, the back covers, stuff like that in the final product as well?
JC: Well, let me say this: I don’t like giving away too much about the actual book. It’ll be its own experience. The ashcan and the eventual book are two very different pieces of media, and we treat them as such. The eventual hardcover will be in bookstores everywhere, hopefully. The ashcan is exclusive to New York. It’s meant to provide a certain kind of experience. It’s meant to evoke those old image ashcans from the early 90s. There’s been poster inserts, and the credit page is obviously an homage to the era.
So we’re not presenting the actual material for the book in any sequential order. It’s very much a cut and paste method of presenting just a taste of what’s in the eventual book. So we took great pains in the ashcan with its own thing. Hopefully people won’t think that that is the book, just in smaller focus. It is not, I promise you. The book itself-
It’s colored too, right?
JC: Yeah, yeah. But the book is a much fuller, much more immersive experience. The ashcan’s just like a taste.
So no conversion therapy?
JC: No, no. Although I’m a real fan of that John the Baptist actor now, so that may carry over. ‘Cause it worked out really great.
