Wasted Space #9 Featured Interviews 

NYCC ’19: Hayden Sherman on “Wasted Space,” Creative Constraints and Sci-fi

By | November 11th, 2019
Posted in Interviews | % Comments

New York City Comic Con may have happened close to a month ago but Multiversity Comics’s coverage of the East Coast’s largest comics and pop culture event is just getting going. Multiversity sent 14 of our staff to the event this year for interviews, panel reports, and more so expect lots more to come over the next few weeks. This way, even if you couldn’t make it yourself, you can still see the con through our eyes.

Hayden Sherman has been making a name for himself these last few years in the sci-fi realm. From working with frequent collaborator Sean Lewis on “The Few” and “Thumbs,” Michael Moreci on Vault’s “Wasted Space,” Christopher Sebela on “Cold War,” and Adam Glass & Olivia Cuartero-Briggs on “Mary Shelley: Monster Hunter,” he’s shown a great versatility and energy in his art. And that’s what we chatted about at NYCC! So strap in, and thanks again to Hayden for taking time out of his con to have a chat.


You’ve been working with Sean Lewis and Michael Moreci for a good while now, on a few projects, right? 

Hayden Sherman: Yeah, yeah. Sean Lewis, especially since “The Few,” back in. . .I think the first issue came out in 2017. So, about a year longer than I have with Mike, but both of them for a while.

Can you tell us a little bit about the scripting process from both of them, like how you received scripts, how different they are, and then how you end up translating that into your work? How collaborative are they? What’s the process? 

HS: On one hand, it’s fairly similar and there’s a lot of trust between us, where there’s not a whole lot of back and forth. It’s more, they do their part, they write it and everything, hand it to me, trust me to do the art and everything and then when I give that back to them, then we go off to lettering. Maybe a couple of script revisions with Sean. But the main differences between them are, Sean doesn’t lay out everything per page or per panel, he just has a maybe six or seven page script that is the entire 20 to 50 page issue that we’re working on. It’s all the dialogue with internal thought and everything, reads more like prose. Then I take that and turn that into individual pages, figure out where I want page turns. It’s a lot more a lot more storytelling involved on my part.

On “Wasted Space,” there are breakouts for panels and scene directions and all of that sort of thing that you would usually expect. Which is great, because honestly Mike can clearly see how he wants his scenes to play out. And it’s very easy to see how it all works before I even have to do anything on the page. But both of them are great, very different.

Is sci-fi one of those genres that you really love working in?

HS: Oh, yes.

A lot of your projects have been in that, or has it just been the type of projects that you’ve found so far? 

HS: Honestly, very much both. I love sci-fi very much, raised on it. Dad showing me Star Wars, Blade Runner, Alien, just raising me on it, flesh and blood. And then after “The Few” and “John Carter,” which were my first two books that I was doing simultaneously, going off of those, I think Mike found my work on “John Carter” and he was just like, oh, more sci-fi stuff. And other people saw that, and they’re like, oh, more sci-fi stuff. And it just kept going and going and going, which I’m very grateful for. I’ve gotten to play around in a couple of others genre spaces but, love sci-fi.

Are you the artist and the colorist on “Wasted Space,” or just the artist? 

HS: I do all the penciling and the inking on that. Jason Wordie is the colorist. For “Thumbs” with Image, I pencil, ink, color, and letter that book. For “Mary Shelley Monster Hunter” with AfterShock, I pencil, ink, and color that one. So I do as much or as little as they’ll let me.

Continued below

Do you enjoy doing the whole process? Is there ever a time that you’d love to just do straight up creator-owned work where you’re doing everything, where you are a cartoonist extraordinaire?

HS: Actually, there’s a book I’m working on right now that hopefully we’ll be able to announce more fully in the future where I am doing everything up to the writing. More stuff on that forthcoming. But I do really enjoy having, like in “Wasted Space,” having Jason Wordie on coloring, Jim Campbell on lettering. It lends whole other aspects that I would never be able to bring to it and fleshes out their world in a way that I just couldn’t. I’m very, very grateful for that.

When you were working on “Thumbs,” I think in a previous interview, you had said that you went with the simplified color palette to make the world pop more. Do you find in books that those sorts limitations are beneficial? It completely depends on the book, obviously but. . .those kind of constraints, do you find them artistically fulfilling? 

HS: I do, I think. It’s funny because originally “Thumbs” was supposed to be more full color, I guess fairly traditional. And then the more that I did that, the less it felt like it made sense. The way that I like to work is pretty limited color palette for things like color, like “Cold War,” and very silly for “Monster Hunter,” and other such books. I think limited palette can really contribute to a mood or a general feeling, an aura that the traditional color palette of full color can’t quite, at least for me. I enjoy giving myself limitations and seeing where I can get through for that.

What’s your process then for creating a book? I’ll take two different examples: “Mary Shelley Monster Hunter,” and “Wasted Space.” Is the process any different between the two? And if it is, how do you approach that? 

HS: The process isn’t too different. The main distinction in “Mary Shelley” being that I do the coloring on it but otherwise, with the way that both of those are scripted more fully, and the way that I go about laying them out and everything up to that point, it’s all fairly similar. The only difference that comes in the techniques that I use for each of them. For “Wasted Space,” especially issues 1 through 10, I drew them all at print size and only use brush to make them. Whereas “Mary Shelley Monster Hunter,” to get the feel of the book right, I drew that at 11×17, more traditional page size, using a slightly wider range of tools. Honestly, it goes with the feeling of the story of the time. Now coming into “Wasted Space” volume three, I’ve changed up the tools again, increased the page size to keep it feeling fresh for me, and hopefully the reader.

What are some sci-fi books that inspired you? 

HS: Off the top of my head, “Loan Sloane,” by Philippe Druillet. It’s hard to think of one book to pin down, but definitely “Dark Empire”, volumes one and two, which are drawn and painted by Cam Kennedy, whose work is just drop dead gorgeous. Mike McMahon. . .Oh, there’s so many more. A lot of them tend to be French or British illustrators from like the 80s and 70s. There’s an era there of just experimenting with color and line and just going wild and sometimes a little bit batshit that I love. I love seeing just the weird experimentation.

Do you think you’d ever want to work in that page size?

HS: Absolutely. And actually, that’s something I’ve seen Image do. They publish magazine size. Actually, DC’s starting to do that now with their Black Label stuff. So it is coming more prominently to the States. It’s always fun to change things up.

Do you think the European style of the page affects the story? Or do you think it’s just purely in the static pitch?

HS: I think it can affect this story. I think on some level it is definitely goes as far as the aesthetic. But then I think of these beautiful spreads that Philippe Druillet will just span across these massive, almost square, two page spreads that he has going, and how in a more thin rectangular American page, you can’t quite get that same level of breadth. So it does definitely impact the story. It’s hard to say.


//TAGS | NYCC '19

Elias Rosner

Elias is a lover of stories who, when he isn't writing reviews for Mulitversity, is hiding in the stacks of his library. Co-host of Make Mine Multiversity, a Marvel podcast, after winning the no-prize from the former hosts, co-editor of The Webcomics Weekly, and writer of the Worthy column, he can be found on Twitter (for mostly comics stuff) here and has finally updated his profile photo again.

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