Today in the first half of a two-part interview, we sit down with young writer Paul Allor. Paul has an issue of the TMNT Micro-Series out tomorrow starring Fugitoid. Before that, however, he got his start making his own comics via his anthology “Clockwork,” a book featuring a series of five-page shorts with a bevy of incredible artists attached. So in today’s day and age, where making comics and getting them out there is easier for burgeoning creators, we thought it’d be interesting to talk to Paul, who used his collection of stories to help launch his career into writing a story involved with one of the biggest franchises around today.
With that in mind, we have paired the interview up with one of the five-page stories from the anthology, “Another Life” with art by Ben Dewey.
Read on to find out why Paul loves comics and the challenges/rewards of self-publishing.
So Paul, why don’t you start by answering the easiest question in the world: why comics?
Because they are awesome.
I think what draws me to comics is the fact that if offers limitless potential on a limited canvas. In print comics you’re working, in many cases, with a finite canvas. A set number of pages and space, there to contain a series of static images and accompanying words (though that part is optional). Given the spatial limitations, every picture must count, every word must carry its weight. Everything has to mean something. And it all must flow, from panel to panel. It’s not enough to create beautiful images and craft clever lines, you must do everything above, while also telling a compelling story, one that moves naturally and logically panel to panel.
It takes practice, it takes skill, and it takes discipline. But when you do it right, the cumulative effect can be so, so powerful. Your static images and printed words can be transformed in the readers brain into a cohesive whole, a story that makes them laugh, cry, get pissed off, feel sick to their stomach, and on and on.
There is no other medium like comics. Nothing else even comes close.
What is your secret origin in comics like? Were you always been a comic fan, or did it develop later in life?
Definitely later in life. I had some exposure to comics as a kid, like everyone else, but I never really latched on to them. I never had that gateway — the friend who read comics, the first trip to a comic book store, the eye-opening story that changes everything.
Instead, my gateway came five years ago, at the age of 28. A coworker knew I was a Joss Whedon fan, and bought me a copy of the first Astonishing X-Men trade. I loved the book, but I also loved the medium behind it. I was just absolutely entranced by the storytelling style and the vocabulary of comics. I started reading other comics, and as a writer, I very, very quickly realized, “Holy Hell, I want to do this. I have to!” I know Shadowline publishers Jim Valentino has talked about how, for some people, comics feels like a calling. That’s very much how it felt for me.
Granted, I’m just starting out in my career, so maybe people will read my stuff and say, “It wasn’t a calling, it was a wrong number!” We’ll have to wait and see.
I find it interesting that you mention the “comic calling” hitting you like lightning, so to say. Before you focused in on comics, how different had your plans been in scope?
Man, that’s really interesting. And the answer is, very, very different. I have a Master’s Degree in Public Management, and my day job is working for my municipal government, in economic development. I live in a mid-sized city in Indiana, so if you’ve ever seen Parks and Recreation, it’s a lot like that, but slightly more absurd and significantly less funny.
Before I discovered comics, I was satisfying my writing itch with a little bit of prose work on the side, but I wasn’t making any real efforts to get it published. My heart wasn’t in it. The sad truth is, I’d pretty much given up on being a full-time fiction writer, even though that had been my goal, in one way or another, for as long as I can remember. Life had beat me down, as it so often does to people.
Continued belowI honestly don’t know if I’m talented enough or lucky enough to be a full-time comics writer (I do know I’m hard-working enough, so that’s one out of three), but I can’t imagine this not being some part of my life, even if it’s just putting out self-published comics for the next fifty years, while also holding down a day job.
Last year you self-published a comic entitled “Clockwork,” which features 12 five-page short stories in one anthology. Where did the idea to do a book like this come from?
Yeah, it’s kind of an unusual format. About two years ago I took the comics writing class through Andy Schmidt’s Comics Experience, a company that offers classes and workshops to aspiring creators (since then, I’ve been brought on as Comics Experience’s Book Club manager).
Every student in that class writes a five-page comic, over the course of the class. Andy’s contention is that if you can write an effective, compelling, well-crafted five-page story, then you can do the same for a 22-pager.
For a few years before that I had been working on my comics craft, but not publishing anything. I didn’t want to put out the first thing I wrote. Instead, it was really, really important to me that I develop my craft, and get to the point where I felt that I was at an acceptable level of craftsmanship before I put anything out there for public consumption. So I was working on these 22-pagers, writing a whole bunch of minis and one-shots, for years, and honestly, I felt like I was kind of floundering.
So after this class, I really latched on to this idea of five-page stories as a way to sharpen that craft, a way to explore different facets of storytelling. My first thought was just “work on five-page comics to get better.” It wasn’t until a bit later that I was actually pretty happy with a lot of the things I was coming up with, and that it might be good to collect and release them.
And despite its odd, almost accidental origin, I do want to say that I think Clockwork is very effective as a book. I like to think of it as a celebration of comics storytelling in its various forms. I’m extremely proud of it, and love when new people discover and enjoy it.
What can you tell us about the first thing you wrote pre-class? How has your writing changed and evolved since that initial writing attempt?
Well, I wrote a lot of stuff pre-class. I did a count one time, and I wrote almost 2,000 pages of comics before I felt my craft was at an acceptable level to try publishing something. And the vast, vast majority of that was before I’d taken the Comics Experience class.
The stuff I did at first was pretty dreadful. Really loose, without a good understanding of structure, or of how to use the comics medium to its full potential. Too much exposition, bad panel descriptions, too much packed into each panel. All in all, I think it was pretty typical of a lot of people’s first attempt at comics writing.
The later stuff was better. I think by the time I took the Comics Experience class the main things I still didn’t handle all that well were structure, and using the potential of the comic-book format to its fullest extent. But I think I was getting better at pacing my stories; I was writing better, less exposition-y dialogue; I was learning what could go in a panel; and most importantly, I was starting to find my voice and starting to get good at grafting character-driven stories with heart on to big action set pieces and wild genre fun, which I think is one of my big strengths.
One of the last things I wrote was a story called “The Rejects,” which I think is pretty strong. I still plan on doing something with it. I also have a story called “Rural” that I really like, about a small-town meth cook who gets in way, way over his head (I think I started it before Breaking Bad launched, and thankfully there are virtually no similarities other than “meth cook” and “in over head”). The idea behind it was to launch a series of crime minis set in one community — kind of like Criminal — but set in a small Midwestern town and the surrounding countryside. Other than that, pretty much everything else I wrote will remain on my hard drive. I may occasionally strip-mine the for ideas, characters, bits of dialogue, but that’s about it.
Continued belowAnd none of this should be construed as me saying, “I spent several years practicing my craft and now I’m totally awesome.” I think I am a much, much better writer than I used to be, but “better” is a relative term. I’m still nowhere near where I want to be. I’m still working on my craft on a daily basis, still just trying my best to become a writer who will be worthy of a reader’s precious time and hard-earned money. I suspect I’ll still be saying the same thing several years from now. Heck, I hope I’ll still be saying the same thing several years from now.
When crafting a compelling five-page narrative, what do you find are the challenges of telling a compelling story in such a confined space?
Basically the same challenges you have in all comics, but amped up considerably. How to formulate a clear idea and a clear story; how to structure your story as effectively as possible; how to make sure every single moment truly matters; how to establish character and provide a good ending in finite space. You know… stuff.
There’s a lot of intentional experimentation in the book. Many of the stories are straight ahead narratives, but some play with time, with alinear storytelling. There’s one where every page features a different narrator, and another where we’re locked inside the jumbled memories of a man who’s about to be executed. Each story brought its own set of challenges, which is one of the things I loved about writing it.
With each short comes a different story, each falling into a different genre. For you personally, where did all the various stories collectively come from?
If you mean inspiration-wise, I’m honestly not sure. That’s always been a tough one for me to answer. I will say that I wrote a lot more stories than the twelve that appear in the book. I mean, obviously your first twelve ideas won’t be your best twelve ideas, right?
I do think that even though the stories cross genres so much, that collectively they do start to feel like part of a whole. There’s a lot of stories dealing with time, with repeating patterns, with character who are stuck in cycles. That’s kind of where the name Clockwork comes from. And I definitely think that with the diversity of stories in Clockwork, if you like the book, chances are you’ll like the rest of my stuff. If not, you probably won’t. It’s a pretty great representation of who I am as a writer.
Each short also comes with different artists. How did you get in touch with everyone who worked on the shorts, and what was the process of sussing out which short you would do with whom?
I got in touch with them pretty much the old-fashioned way… shoot an e-mail, introduce myself, say what I’m doing, ask about availability.
Well… I guess e-mail isn’t the “old-fashioned” way. That’d probably be telegraphs or Pony Express. Maybe smoke signals.
But as for figuring out what short would work with whom, a lot of it was just a matter of trying to match up style and story. Ben Dewey, who writes the popular Tragedy Series online, had a real sense of fun and wonder to his stuff. It was perfect for the space-pirate saga that opens the book. Jesse Hamm’s stuff has this restrained, classical feel to it (while also being quite gorgeous), which worked perfectly for my tale of a lovestruck robot.
I also tried to go against type. My friend Aaron Houston is awesome at building fantasy world, and working on dynamic fight scenes. But when I looked at his art, I also saw a real talent for small moments. So I asked him to write the book’s closer, an intimate, humanistic story about a death row prisoner looking back on his life.
And other times, you just look at someone’s art and think of the story, and it’s like, “Yup… perfect.” That’s the way it was for JM Ken Niimura on “Warlord, “and Brett Weldele on “Mercy Kill.”
