We’ve often been avid fans of Nick Spencer’s work here at Multiversity (obviously). Having started the site around the same time his comics first started being released, we’ve had the unique change to watch Nick’s career grow as we ourselves grew up as a site, often chatting and supporting his various endeavors. And with Nick about to have his five-year anniversary in comics and with three books announced at last week’s Image Expo, we thought it was a great time to sit down and have an extended chat with Nick about his work.
Today, in the second installment of our three-part interview series with Nick Spencer, we focus on the second of his announcements: “Cerulean,” with Frazer Irving.
Lets switch over to “Cerulean” with Frazer Irving, which — if my understanding is correct — is that it’s a post-apocalyptic, sci-fi thriller?
NS: Post-apocalyptic to me always… I think that has certain of connotations. We’re certainly a couple of stages past that part, I guess. This is about the last survivors of Earth. Something bad happens that means there’s no longer anyone living on Earth. And this book is about the remnants of humanity, they’re shot across space and have their consciousness uploaded into a ship, and when they land millions of years later on an inhabitable planet, their consciousness is downloaded into new bodies. They start life anew on this planet that ends up having lots of mysteries of its own, and in addition to that, as they’re attempting to build this new world and this new civilization, they’re bringing along with them the ghosts of the old one. It’s very much about the attempts to build a better, new society that won’t make the mistakes of the last one — but the baggage that they brought with them keeps intruding and they’re still just inherently human, so there’s lots of questions. Are they doomed to just repeat the same mistakes? That really complicates the efforts to start anew.
One thing I was curious about — Whatever happens that causes everyone to leave. There are certain books that come to mind for me, that I might throw out the term post-apocalyptic and be kind of right while mostly wrong? It’s that idea where “something” happened and it is never really said; “Walking Dead” is a great example, where something happened — and then zombies.
NS: Right.
Is this is a similar kind of idea, where you’re not too interested in what it was that caused the crash? Or is that kind of a key factor in the rest of the book’s own mythology?
NS: It’s a huge factor. I’ll be a little cagey here, but the book is very much about not being able to let the past go. The past factors in, big time. It’s not as simple as “Yes, it happened, now we’re moving on.” We’ll be going back and spending a lot of time on it.
One thing that I will give away is that this is very much a dual-structure book. You’ll go back to Earth and see some of the things that happened as we build up the new world. You’ll see a lot of the old one.
I think earlier you had mentioned, you kind of have this predilection for science fiction, and obviously this sounds like a very sci-fi heavy book?
NS: Sure. This one is a lot more in what you might call my wheelhouse. There is a lot more that’s a little familiar here. There’s long-form mystery aspects, it’s certainly a science fiction story, and the dual-structure of flashbacks of whatnot… These are my favorite toys. It’s a little different because for as much science fiction as I’ve written, I have never done a “space thing.” And that seemed crazy to me. It’s a funny thing, because weirdly enough, I get asked about that a lot. It’s a recurring thing, “Are you ever going to do something in that part of the genre?” So it was always kind of in the back of my head that I’d like to do my version of that kind of story.
And this was the most like “Morning Glories” that I’ve had since in terms of the book coming so fully formed. This is one where I had the idea for it and within the day I had most of it, within the week I had pretty much all of it. It was very immediately thrust upon me, and I hate to do the vaguespeak on so much of this one, but the folks that I have shared it with think it’s my best overall pitch to date, pretty universally. So that’s a little nuts to me, and a little high pressure, to actually make sure that the book lives up to that. It was nice to have one of those immediate lightbulb moments again, where you may not get one of those again.
Continued belowI think what I like about it, I imagine that the book has more of a grunge aesthetic to it, right? Because it’s sci-fi, but it’s also about rebuilding civilization. So that’s pretty much a blank slate for you and Frazer having building blocks to do whatever you want.
NS: With Frazer, he’s such a visionary. Nobody’s stuff looks like Frazer’s, you know? He has such a unique and distinctive voice. He’s the perfect guy for this book, because if you want to give people a world that they’ve never seen before he’s who you call. He’s so unconventional and inventive, and his visual imagination is awe-inspiring to me.
With this book I’m working looser, we’re doing it sort of plot-style in bits and more than anything trying to find ways to let him innovate and go crazy on the page, to do the scenes in the most visually impactful way. I want this to be a visual-first book in large part, and to let the art carry it. I think some of the layouts that he’s got planned are just… they’re going to knock people out. I’ve never seen these things before. The way that he thinks about the world, he just puts so much imagination into making sure that nothing looks like what it looks like on Earth, and that’s just so exciting. It gives us so much stuff to play with; he’ll come back with an aesthetic idea and I’ll riff a story idea off of that. Frazer is amazing, is the point there.
One thing that very much stands out to me about Frazer’s work is that he often picks a color-palette and sticks to it. This book, with the title “Cerulean,” is that color going to be a large recurring element in the series, much like the morning glories in “Morning Glories?”
NS: Yes. [Laughs] Yes. That’s all I’ll say about that.
OK. Well, you and Frazer have collaborated in the past, as he does all the covers for “Bedlam.” You said you had the idea and then it fully formed, but what’s changed since you brought it over to Frazer?
NS: Oh, it’s a thousand times better now. Being a writer, my story stuff was very much focused on the characters and the premise and plot stuff. I was thinking about it in terms of that, and really when I thought about the world I thought of a world not that different and not that interesting — which is a good example of how worthless writers really are, how we get entirely too much credit for the books with our names on them. Frazer took the premise, he loved the premise and was really excited about all of it, but then he said, “Ok, here’s what a flower looks like here. This is what happens in the atmosphere, here’s what a mountain looks like.” And before you know it, you’re in a completely different kind of story; before you know it, this is so much more impressive.
I get weird about some conventional lines that get used by comics a lot, like I tend to hate when people say “Comics are a visual medium.” It annoys me because, well, film is a visual medium too. That doesn’t mean Annie Hall would’ve been better if a giant dragon swooped down on the city at the end of it. Or, “The best thing about comics is that we have an unlimited budget.” I could draw you a graph of the quality of films versus the size of their budgets and I don’t think it would end up charting the way you apparently think it would, you know? I always kind of cringe when I hear that stuff because, well, just because you can do that doesn’t mean that you should always. This book, on the other hand, is the best living proof of the valid parts of those statements. Frazer is able to do a world that’s completely unlike anything you’ve ever seen before with no limitation, and it’s just going to feel so foreign. It’s going to feel so other-worldly. That, in and of itself, is going to become such a huge part of the story and how you think of it.
Continued belowThat’s what I get really excited about. I get really excited that people are going to open up the book and visually it’s going to look different from anything they’ve seen anywhere else before. It sounds like a lot of hype, but I see this stuff and I’ve never come across anything like it before.
One thing I forgot to ask earlier. We talk about Game of Thrones as an influence for “Paradigms,” but with “Cerulean” — I certainly have my ideas of what it might be influenced by, but for you, what is it that inspired you, or do you take thoughts from?
There is less direct influence on this one, I think. I’m very back and forth. You know me, I’m never afraid to kind of bring up my influences in a way that I think maybe a lot writers are a little nervy about doing; I tend to wear them on my sleeve and like that. Especially in comics, I think it helps condition the reader as to what they’re going through, and it gives them a context to work from. This, there’s not one thing that I could point to and say, “this is like that.” Some of it is stuff that I think now is very much associated with me, at least structurally. I think it’s going to feel a lot like a Nick Spencer book, whatever that means. The dual-narrative is not all that far removed from what you see in “Morning Glories” in terms of the flashback/present day structure. There are a lot of stuff that I won’t talk about yet, but people will definitely who is writing it.
Beyond that, I wanted to do a good, polished, classic-feeling, hopefully smart, maybe even a little pretentious, science fiction story. I think of Solaris, I think of Sunshine. I wanted to do idealistic science fiction. I didn’t want to get too far out. One of the things that we establish is that it took the ship millions of years to get there, and we try to think of what the ship would be and how it would make that trip, but there’s no wormholes, there’s no beaming to light speed. We try to think things through to as reasonable extent as you can within fiction. Just because we could go completely crazy doesn’t mean that we did.
I do find that it’s interesting that you bring that up, because I had thought of Kubrick.
NS: Oh, yes, definitely. I’ve used Kubrickian in reference to this a couple times, and I think Frazer lends to that as well. When he came on board, I thought, “you know what he can really do…” and my head went to the “2001” of it all. So yeah, I think that’s not a bad comparison point. At the same time, I should say that this is a story where I’ve got some defined characters in mind, and the emotional journey isn’t that different from what you see in “Morning Glories” or even “THUNDER Agents” or elsewhere in my stuff. It’s all character-based stuff, so it’s not entirely detached from that soap-operatic character-driven style that I tend to lean towards.
I tend to get the general impression that this is maybe… Obviously, I’m a big proponent of “Morning Glories,” I’m very vocal about that. but it sounds like “Cerulean” is your next big mystery series in that vein? At least more so than “Paradigms.”
NS: I think that that’s right. I think that there are a lot more mystery elements to this, certainly. It’s a little different for “Morning Glories.” The structure of the mystery, the nature of the pay-offs — that kind of thing is very different. But it has a lot of long-form mystery elements. Again, whereas “Bedlam” or “Paradigms” might be me reaching outside the comfort zone, there’s a lot in this one that is very much working within it, which is also nice. It’s good to challenge yourself and try new things, but it’s also good to keep doing what works for you and what you really enjoy. It was a bit of getting to do both here.
