Ryan North is probably one of the most prolific self-made men in comics. Starting with a Building a career on a comic that has literally used the same exact artwork since 2003, North has established himself in both comics and literary circles over a variety of projects and has built quite the following thanks to quick wit, intelligent humor and quite the impressive body of work.
Ryan North is basically taking over the world, and we didn’t notice in time. It’s too late to stop him. It’s already begun.
So with “Adventure Time’s” 25th issue in stores now along side “Midas Flesh” #3, we thought now was as good a time as ever to catch up with Ryan and talk about his career to date.
Read on as we talk all about Ryan’s career in comics from “Dinosaur Comics” to now, as well as look at his creator-owned series “Midas Flesh” and his work on “Adventure Time” with Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb and his “To Be Or Not To Be” Kickstarter.
It’s, like, a whole retrospective thing.
The first question I have is just something I like to ask the first time I talk to anyone: why comics?
Ryan North: It’s the best medium, the most intrinsically fun way to tell a story.
I think your evolution in the medium is pretty extraordinary, particularly in looking at where you started and where you are now. In terms of where you are now, I mean, did you even think you’d end up where you are now when you started “Dinosaur Comics?”
RN: I didn’t think “Dinosaur Comics” would last the month. I figured I use up all my dinosaur ideas and I’d fall back to my next idea: “Astronaut Comics.” But then making a new template was a lot of work, so here we are, 11 years later. Also, dinosaurs are the best animals, the most intrinsically fun dudes.
Is it completely unprofessional and poor form if I just ask “Where do you get your ideas?” Because it’s a horrible question, but at the same time I’m a little curious.
RN: I was asked this question by my old school paper in a phone interview and I said I had a giant text file that I look at when I get stuck. In it are ideas, snippets of dialogue, things I want to explore: it’s a way to avoid getting writer’s block. That interview made it to print saying that I “had a giant textile” – like, this hanging rug on my wall that I look at for inspiration. That was SO much better than reality that it’s now canon.
I get my ideas from a rug on my wall.
From what I’ve seen of your work, you don’t appear to be too pigeon-holed to any one kind of profession — comic writer, “real book” writer, programmer, designer, etc. How do you find the balance between your various work?
RN: Most of these different things I do have the benefit that I can do them whenever – which means I can push things aside as I get busy with something else – and that they are mostly unrelated. Get stuck on a writing thing? Try programming, it’s a whole different way of solving problems! Programming sucks right now? Isn’t it great you can go write a story about talking dinosaurs instead?
So that’s my secret: do different things, so working on one feels like a break from the other.
Looking at what you’ve done in the past few years, between “Adventure Time,” “Machine of Death,” “To Be or Not To Be,” “Midas Flesh” as well… I mean, do you think you have a preference for any one kind of work? Because I think it’s obvious you like writing, but these books couldn’t be more different overall.
RN: They’re all different, but the strand that connects them is comedy, I think. My story in “This Is How You Die” (the sequel to “Machine of Death”) is a funny story. It’s called “Cancer”. BUT THERE ARE JOKES, HONEST. “Adventure Time” is fun and funny, “To Be or Not To Be” is comedy too (plus you get to kill dudes) and “Midas Flesh,” while dramatic space opera, also has jokes in it. It has to. My first drafts didn’t, and what you ended up with was this really dour story about people dying. It was a slog. I like consequences, I like things going wrong, but I also like books that are fun to read. So that’s as good a summary of what I do as anything: I try to write books that are fun to read!
Continued belowThat’s a great segue, actually: with “Midas Flesh,” this is your first creator-owned comic not done via your own publishing methods. Having now worked in professional comics with BOOM!, how are you finding the challenges of this new series?
RN: Oh it’s basically the same as with “Adventure Time”: I write scripts, my editor and I talk about them, then they get drawn into awesome comics. “Adventure Time” has been great because while there are other layers of editorial there – Cartoon Network gets a say in the scripts too, for instance – they have been amazing and have never said “No Ryan, you can’t do this”. So it’s been a great experience, and very similar to doing something creator-owned.
I think it’s interesting you mentioning that “Midas Flesh” almost wasn’t funny. As someone who clearly enjoys being humorous, why do you think it is that the book originally strayed from your usual bwa-ha-has?
RN: Well, at its core it’s a very serious story: there’s this weapon of mass destruction, King Midas’s body, which can turn entire worlds to gold. It’s already destroyed one, and it’s been forgotten there, but now it’s being rediscovered and used again. And Midas’s body is so dangerous and so deadly and can kill a planet in an instant, and those themes kinda lend themselves to a Very Serious Story about How This Is Bad. That was the easiest way to tell the story, my first kick at the can.
But like I said, I didn’t like that story, and I wanted to read a story about friends who are not all sad and shouting all the time instead. It was more of a challenge, you know? Don’t change anything about the Midas flesh, but tell a better story with it. Something fun to read. And once I went down that path I ended up really enjoying hanging out with Joey and Fatima and Cooper The Talking Dinosaur In Space, and I think the book’s way better because of it.
What I like about the book is that a couple issues in and it already seems pretty vast in its cast and setting; I’d dare say it’s your biggest book in scope. In terms of the world building aspect, what have you found the most challenging?
RN: The biggest challenge for me was building the bones of the universe, the structure you hang the rest on. Once you’ve got bones that makes sense, you can flesh them out pretty easily, saying things like “Oh of course, since the Federation has a history of taking over worlds they’d use some of those dominated populations in their military, but not in high-ranking positions. So the captains and above should be human but those beneath can be anything.” And that’s a really great way to build that world up! You never mention it directly, but it’s there in the details if you want to look for it.
The artists, Braden and Shelli, have been a great help with this too. I’d do things like write “Cooper sits in his chair” and then they’d be like, “Wait, what does a chair for a dinosaur look like? What’s the most comfortable way for a dinosaur to sit?” and build stuff around that. It’s always great to see what they do with my scripts.
It’s funny: the earlier drafts of “Midas” are pretty embarrassing, because characters would be called “Navigator” and things like that: I was still sketching in what this universe looked like and who the people in it where. The name Sluggo is from those early drafts – a placeholder name for a slug-esque alien – but I loved it so much I kept it.
Having worked with Shelli and Braden on Adventure Time for a while now, how has the creative process changed for working on your creator-owned books?
RN: It’s basically the same, but there’s a lot more things to be straight-up invented in Midas, so Braden and Shelli get to do a lot more character design and set design and stuff. And often they’ll come back to me with something I hadn’t imagined and I think “wow, that’s way better than what I was thinking of, I’d better not tell them that or they’ll realize I’m not good at this” so I nod and say “Yes, this is precisely what I had envisioned, thank you very much.”
Continued belowThe name of the ship in the story, the Prospect, comes directly from Braden. I was still calling in “the hero ship” in my scripts when he suggested it and I was like, wait, yes, that’s perfect! So since there’s more things to invent in “The Midas Flesh,” we’ve got to have more filling in those blanks together.
If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about your work, and I hope this is a fair assessment, it’s that you’re a fan of classical storytelling. What is it about these older stories that you feel is missing from modern day?
I find classic stories really interesting in what they tell us about the people telling them, and how that changes to how we approach them today. The story of King Midas everyone knows: wishes everything he touches turned to gold, then he can’t eat or hug his daughter and he realizes there’s downsides. Be careful what you wish for. The end, bam.
But that’s not actually the whole story! Midas has a second adventure later on where he ends up with donkey’s ears, and his barber knows this embarrassing secret, and he has to tell someone so he digs a hole in the ground and whispers it there. Later on grasses sprout up from the hole. The end. It’s this whole crazy story and it’s really no wonder we all stop the King Midas story with the golden touch and don’t continue on to The Time He Ended Up With Donkey’s Ears, But His Barber Knew About Them Because He Cuts Midas’s Hair! It’s so far removed from what we consider a good story today. I kind of love it?
Anyway when “The Midas Flesh” concludes be sure to look for my next series, “The Midas Ears.”
Having “updated” now two classical stories — that of Midas and “Hamlet” — is this something you’d like to do more of in the future?
RN: Well, I’d never actually considered myself as an “updater of classic stories” until now! “The Midas Flesh” and “To Be or Not To Be” are two very different stories. “Midas” is about taking the premise and treating it as seriously and scientifically as we can, and exploring that with dinosaurs in space. “To Be” is about taking the story of “Hamlet” and blowing it up, making it as big and as fun and as crazy as possible. Change the medium of the story from play to choose-your-own-path gamebook and see what happens to it.
But both of these I think are attached to my love of big-idea scifi, where you say “if this one thing was different, what would happen?” and then explore that idea. What if “Hamlet” was a choose-your-own-path book? What if Midas actually happened in the real world? And I don’t foresee those types of what-if questions ever getting old for me.
So, I’d like to ask about your Kickstarter experience a bit. I really like my copy of “To Be or Not To Be,” and I think the success of your Kickstarter was rather incredible but obviously it’s not the case for everyone. Can you tell me a bit about what the challengers were for you in the process of getting your book made and delivered? (It seemed rather painless a procedure.)
RN: Haha, I’m glad it seemed painless. We had more than our fair share of challenges but got through it alright with very little impact on the timeline or the final product, which was always my goal. The best one was that I said “Sure, I’ll sign every copy of this book!” when the Kickstarter launched, and when it finished a month later I had over fifteen thousand books to sign. Fifteen thousand!
I ended up flying down to the warehouse in Austin and signing for a week straight. The first day I signed about 4000 books, and I tweeted about it someone sent me the link to the Guinness Book of World Records, and it turns out I’d broken the previous world record by more than double. AND I WASN’T EVEN TRYING. On my way home that night I saw a “World’s Most Interesting Man” ad on a bus, and it said “He’s broken world records… without even trying” and that was pretty great. I LIVED THAT BEER COMMERCIAL.
Continued belowIt’s not official though because if you want a Guinness World Record you have to pay for their referees to fly down and watch you and put them up in a hotel, which is why a lot of “records” now seem very publicity-stunt related: that’s when someone’s willing to pay to make it official.
Having gone through the process, why do you think it is that other Kickstarters fail or hit roadblocks?
RN: I think a lot of people fall down on not communicating clearly what’s going on AFTER the Kickstarter has ended. We had an issue where we didn’t have enough Plush Yorick skulls come in when they were supposed to, and rather than cover it up we just said “Hey, we’re gonna be about 400 skulls short, so if we could get 400 volunteers we’ll send you an extra free micro squishable toy NOW, and the skull later too” and we had all the volunteers we needed in an hour. People who wanted to wait got a prize for doing so, and our thanks, and those who didn’t still go their skull on time. Treat your backers like you’d want to be treated yourself is key, I think. It cost some money to send out those extra plushes, but I’d rather do that and have 15k happy people than not do that and have 400 really unhappy people who got ripped off through no fault of their own.
Is doing another book on Kickstarter something you’d like to try again somewhere down the road?
RN: I promised I’d write a sequel, and I’m about 11k words into writing it (“Romeo And/Or Juliet”) right now, so probably! I had a lot of fun with it.
Having done a large amount of work in both the prose and comics medium, do you think by now you have a preference? Or are you pretty much just up to work with whatever is best?
RN: I think comics is the most intrinsically-fun print medium. Prose is great, but there’s something that comics has that’s like a pleasure shortcut. It’s the same way movies are inherently fun: that experience of watching pictures move is enjoyable in its own right, so putting a great story and visuals on top of that only helps. Comics hit that same “This’ll start out fun, now let’s see what we can do to make it EVEN BETTER” point for me.
I think that’s part of the reason people tend to think prose is more serious than comics, which can be looked down as juvenile. Comics are fun to read, which makes people suspicious!
So it seems to me that you’re a big proponent of literature (I guess obviously, right?), but do you think that there needs to be more done to encourage reading? Or rather, what should we be doing, do you think?
RN: I think comics do that well, actually. You can start on comics and think “Oh wow that was a great comic, I want to read more of this!” and rather than seeing the movie adaptation, maybe pick up some prose books by the same author, or something starring the same or similar characters. Reading IS fun, but books don’t look fun to someone inexperienced. They look like work.
Comics are fun too, but they LOOK fun right off the bat, and that’s their advantage. If people want to use comics as a gateway drug to encourage more reading (of both comics, and non-comics), I’m all for that. There’s lots of educators out there who do this, who use comics on reluctant readers, and I love that. I’m pretty sure the people out there who think comics (as a medium) is inherently juvenile and disposable are dying of old age (or retiring) (that works too).
So, “Adventure Time”! 25 issues! How are you feeling about that? When the book started, had you thought about getting this far down the line?
RN: I hadn’t thought about any of that! All I wanted to do was make the best comic I could. The first page I wrote was the first page of the comic – it’s that scene where Finn and Jake are actually filming the Adventure Time TV show opener, and we get to see it from a new perspective – and once I had that done I thought “Okay, yes, this can work. This can actually be a rad, fun comic.” It was great that the first page worked out so well because I was instantly confident enough to write the rest of that first issue and twenty-four more. No problem!
Continued below
My favorite thing about the “Adventure Time” book is how often you and Shelli and Braden play around with structure, whether it be the first person issue or the choose-your-own adventure issue. How do you guys collaborate to create these more singularly-focused issues?
RN: We have a chat at first and then I go and write the craziest things and they totally make it work. We did an arc where Finn and Jake were inside BMO, and they came up with a whole pixel-art style to fit it. It was amazing the way they could pull that out of their hat and make it work effortlessly. For the choose-your-own-path issue I gave them a heads up it was coming, and – unusually for me – gave them page layouts too. I felt like I needed to show them how the boxes fit together because explaining all those crazy arrows with just words would have been MADNESS. Utter madness. Then they had the idea of making the arrows linking choices be different colours, which probably saved the comic from being an unreadable mess.
So yay, collaboration! They’re terrific and I say this all the time, but they really elevate my scripts and make them way better than I even imagined them when I was writing.
Looking back on the first issue, how do you feel about the book’s growth from something that seemed like it’d be an arc-based adaptation series into something more open, more fun, dare I say even experimental? It’s like the Lego Movie of comics.
RN: I always wanted the comic to feel essential: not something cheap or cynical, but something that could stand on its own AND fit in with the show nicely. I’ve had a few people congratulate me on getting a TV show spun off from the comics, which is amazing and hilarious and I guess says I met that goal for at least some people?
Another thing I like doing with comics is showing people how amazing and flexible the medium is. The nice thing about writing all-ages comics is that some of your readers will be young, and for some of them this may be their first comic. Their first comic ever! How exciting is that? And so I feel like if their first comic can blow their minds, can show them things they haven’t seen before, well – that’s all the better. And maybe that’ll make them want to start telling their own stories with this terrific medium, now that they know some of the magic tricks it can pull off! The first-person issue, “no speaking” issue, choose-your-own-path issue, and other things like that all come from this place.
“Adventure Time” is one of the few comics that I think really nails the (literal) All Ages aspect, which is something that is sometimes tacked onto books like a “for kids” afterthought. Given the success that the “Adventure Time” comic has had, do you feel like there’s more room for All Ages material? Is that something we even need?
RN: Oh sure! For me I draw a distinction between “all ages” and “for children”: for children tends to be, well, baby books: stuff that we think a child would enjoy but OBVIOUSLY no adult could see value in. And too often that results in books that are juvenile, in the worst sense of the word. But all ages means everyone’s invited! And that’s a book, like the Adventure Time show itself, that everyone can enjoy. It doesn’t talk down to anyone. I love that!
And I think there’s lots of room for all-ages material, for sure! There’s plenty of comics aimed to a mature audience these days, but much less all-ages stuff. Sort of the opposite of what it was like in the 50s, you know? And I think if anything the “Adventure Time” comics have shown that there are people into that sort of thing, that there are people who will buy a dark and gritty story but also the one that takes place in a place called “The Candy Kingdom” at the same time. And anything that results in more comics – and more people reading comics – is a-okay in my books!
Continued belowHow far are you guys looking into for the future of the book? Will the fun ever end?
RN: The fun will never end, Matt. It’s adventure time!
“Adventure Time” #25 and “Midas Flesh” #3 are in stores now. You can also find “To Be Or Not To Be” at all good bookstores (or online), and “Dinosaur Comics” is still updated regularly.
