Welcome to Lemire County, our new monthly look at the creator-owned work of one of our favorite comic creators, Jeff Lemire. Not only will this be a place for us to talk about his books but it will be a place for Lemire, himself, to be a part of the discussion as well.
This month, Brian Salvatore talks to Jeff about the end of “Royal City,” Rowan Grover continues his look at Doctor Jin Quon from the recently wrapped up “Descender,” and “Gideon Falls” artist Andrea Sorrentino takes us beat by beat through some of his process for “Gideon Falls” #1. Let’s dig right in!
So August is the end of “Royal City;” when you set out for the series you had talked about having a 20 to 25 issue run in mind for yourself. The series is wrapping up at number 14. Does that mean that you got more done in less issues? Did the story change? Or is this more of pause before coming back for something else in the future?
Jeff Lemire: The book kind of, I mean each project, every time you do any project things sorts of, your plans are great but when you actually get into doing something, obviously it takes a life of its own. I think I thought that this would be a much longer project and something I would be working on for a long time when I started. I thought that way. But the more I got into it I guess an ending just sort of presented itself that I liked and felt satisfied with. And it wasn’t quite as long as I thought originally and to be honest with you, I felt like after a year of drawing the book I just felt like I was starting to little bit run out of gas, too. Which surprised me.
I did “Sweet Tooth” which was 40 issues long and I don’t think I could ever do that again. I think I was at a different point in my career then or something because now I do find after about a year or two years of working on one project I really get hungry to do something new so it’s a combination of all those things. I felt like there was a satisfying ending, satisfied me creatively and hopefully the readers. And I was also kind of eager to move on and try something different. So all those things kind of combined and when we got to the, I guess it’s the third arc, it just felt right.
Now, again not the hold you to things you said in an interview two years ago but you had said eventually maybe this was a type of a property that you could maybe come back to in the future and tell more stories in this world. Having now gotten this story wrapped up to your satisfaction, do you still see that as a possibility or is this the end of the Pike family?
JL: I think you never say never. For now, I don’t have anything planned but I do feel like it is a thing where it’s been left open-ended enough that at any point in my life if I had a new story to tell with this family or in this town I could easily come back to it and kind of revisit it. And when that would be who knows? You never say never. Who knows? If I have projects that I thought were completely dead in the water and I’d never return to that, ten years later I find myself working on again like “Gideon Falls” or other things. You just never know what the future brings. I don’t have anything eminent, I have a couple of other books lined up that I want to work on next. I think I’ve left it in a way that hopefully it feels like an ending but it also, it’s kind of an open-ended story. You can kind of come back to these people at any point I would think and see how things have changed and how they’ve changed and that can be really interesting.
Continued belowI want to talk about the idea you mentioned about after about a year working on a project you start to get itchy for something else. Do you find that’s exacerbated by projects you’re working on solo where you’re doing the writing and the illustration or is that more of just a, after a year of any sort of creative project you begin to want to sow your wild oats a little bit?
JL: No, it’s more the thing I’m drawing. You know when you’re writing something it’s not as big a time commitment. I can work on multiple projects that I’m writing at any given time. Obviously I have several, I usually have several books that I’m writing going and you can kind of jump between them and keep yourself fresh and you don’t have to work on them each and every day or every week. But the difference when you’re drawing something is it just takes so much time to draw a comic every month that you kind of have to do it at least eight hours a day, five days a week of just drawing that same thing.
So it’s just a huge sort of time commitment and it can be pretty, especially on the monthly grind, it can be really grueling and kind of, it can be really exhausting. It takes a lot out of you so I do find it’s mostly the stuff that I’m drawing. Where after about a year or so of drawing the same things, I do start to need a change of pace, a break from something. I think with “Royal City” in particular was challenging because there’s not a lot of fantastic kind of elements to it. There’s a bit of stuff going on but mostly it’s kind of real people in real life sitting around talking. And after a year of drawing that I kind of got, I really wanted to get back to trying to draw something a little fantastic next time and have just something that gave me a little more freedom to go in different directions visually and try different kinds of things.
Where you’d have the quiet character-driven stuff that I like to do but also you could kind of balance that with some more bombastic storytelling, too just to keep things kind of interesting. I did find this project in particular a bit challenging and that could be because I came off of, I did a graphic novel “Roughneck” and then this book back to back and they were both sort of very grounded, family drama so there wasn’t a lot of, visually there’s only so much you can do with that. So I think after four years of working on those two projects back to back I think I just sort of started to burn out a little bit.
Do you think that the personal more grounded nature of the book, had anything to do with that also because it is, even if these are not stories ripped directly from your life, there’s elements of everyone’s life somewhere in this book? Is the constant delve into the very real emotions that every family add to the exacerbation of the subject matter?
JL: Yeah, it did. It was kind of hard. You put a lot of yourself in all those characters, all your life. You can only go to that well so many times before it starts to wear on you as well and you’re puling stuff out that maybe, it’s not always comfortable. I think the subject matter does, again it does take a lot out of you. I do still in a way I felt at the end of this project when I finished the 14th issue, I felt like it had really take a lot more out of me than any other book I’d done so I guess there must be something there. It really kind of exhausted me.
Let’s talk about the illustration element of it. Because you know, like you said it is a relatively grounded book. There’s still some fun, sort of more otherworldly stuff that pops up in there. But how did you find the monthly grind of drawing a book like this? How did your approach to scripting it or your approach to just laying out the story change because you knew it was going to be a relatively standard cast of characters doing relatively standard things? Did that change the way you approach the book after you were a few months into it?
Continued belowJL: No, not really. I think the plan there or sort of the aesthetic that I kind of established beginning with something I tried to carry through so I kind of knew what it needed to look like. If anything it’s the water color, also I had a whole other kind of element of time, especially on a monthly basis it can get really grueling where you’re not must writing and drawing the book, you have to color it, too and it’s like this whole other stage that after about 12 issue so that I was threatening to not watercolor anything again. I do feel like that was also part of the exhaustion. I think that the next book that I do I’ll probably bring José Villarrubia back just to give myself a break and to work with someone again like him. And just to take that one extra element away because when you’re writing five or six books a month plus writing, drawing, and coloring one it’s a lot. I’m getting older, I can’t do what I used to do I guess I’m starting to realize.
That’s a horrible feeling that I know all too well.
JL: Yeah, I guess it’s one we all face. I got to start pacing myself a little more as I get older. Luckily my books have been successful enough that I don’t have to be doing quite as much as I used to. It’s good. It’s a good thing.
I wanted to talk about music for a minute here because when this book was announced I thought to myself, oh that’s the same name of that Canadian band that I love that no one else ever talks about. That’s a nice coincidence. And it turns out, no, you also like Royal City the band and the book was named after them. That was super cool as sort of frustrated musician and music critic that I also happen to be as well as a comics geek.
JL: Oh cool.
So what was it about the music of Royal City that inspired you enough to name the book after it? And you also kept this really cool Spotify playlist of songs that were inspiring you. In each book there was sort of songs to listen while reading it. There was just a lot of music connection to this. So I guess my two questions are, why Royal City? And also, what was it about this book, as opposed to other works you’ve been involved with that lent itself to that musical connection?
JL: Well I think there’s two answers. In general the music connection to the book was always really strong and it was a book that was inspired a lot by different music that I would listen to while I was working or writing stuff. But I think a lot of that that came from the fact that I was telling the story about kids growing up in the ’90s and I grew up in it so I that’s obviously when I grew up. I was a teenager, I was pretty much the same age as Tommy, the character in 1993 when he was 14 or whatever I think it was probably the same as me. So back then, when I’m telling stories about these characters at that time, music was such a big part of my life as a teenager, growing up in a small town. It was like kind of how I, along with comics, sort of my escape and my place to imagine and dream.
So, I think going back to that kind of feeling, music was such big part of my teenage life that it kind of felt like it had to be a part of these kids as well. That’s just what I knew. So that’s why I think music was almost another character in the book for Tommy as well it was a big part of his life. And then specifically that band Royal City. I’m not exactly sure why that band stuck with me so much. I used to work, before I was doing comics professionally, sort of about 15 years ago or whatever I worked as a cook in a restaurant in Toronto and I worked with a ton of musicians. I don’t know why, the particular bar slash restaurant I worked in it was sort of hit bed for indie rock musicians in Toronto. So the Royal City guys were always around there and I worked with one of the drummers from that band. A number of other band were kind of their contemporaries so I was sort of in that scene. That band always was one of my favorites back then and it was a great name, too.
Continued below
I was working in college radio at the time and we got sent the second CD, the one with the blue cover, that had “Daisies” on it. I had never heard them before and put it on and fell in love and it was one of those bands where, and I’m sure we all have those bands, like everyone of your friends is tired of hearing you talk about them because you’re kind of obsessed and no one else wants to talk about them. So I was super into the band and it had a pretty short run and then disbanded. So it was a really cool connection to realize that, just that there’s other fans out there, that was sort of pre-major internet stuff so you would discover band by yourself and it felt like you were their only fan. And that’s cool.
JL: I loved that about the time we grew up in. Presuming we’re in a similar sort of age group.
I’m 36.
JL: Yeah I’m like early 40s, so roughly the same. I do love that we got to grow up in an age before the Internet. Where it was like you could get into a comic book or a band and you could kind of feel like you were part of a special group and no one else, no one else knew about it. Now it’s like, you can’t really hide. Everything’s everywhere and you immediately find everyone who likes all the same stuff that you do. Which is cool, too but I kind of liked being the loner that I am, I always liked having that badge of honor of having comics or those bands that no one else in my school knew anything about.
Exactly.
One of my favorite parts about the book is the way that each character interacts with not just their past but specifically interacts with Tommy. And when we meet Tommy’s daughter, it sort of brings him into the present in a way that the book hadn’t done before. How important for you was it to give Tommy a tether to the current day? Or was that something that just sort of came about organically? Did you always know you wanted to bring Tommy’s story crashing into current day?
JL: No. I wasn’t sure. I had the idea for that character, a character who is his daughter but up until issue, whenever we kind of reveal it, I don’t know what issue it is, 10 or 11 or whatever, I wasn’t sure if she was going to actually be his daughter or not. I didn’t know if I was going to go that way. But then as I got there, it seemed that’s where the ending kind of came to me. Because it seemed like these people were haunted by versions of Tommy. Each had their own version of Tommy that they couldn’t reconcile with because he was gone. Even though he was real to them they were all stuck in sort of that one place and they couldn’t move forward because he wasn’t there and they could never reconcile the feelings and the guilt.
But as soon as she became real all of a sudden Tommy has, it’s almost like Tommy’s back through her. And now they have this real tangible human being with a direct connection to him again. And they can, through starting a new relationship with her, they can find sort of that peace that they never could before that, I guess I’m spoiling then ending of the book kind of, but that sort of was the ending that just seemed perfect all of a sudden. That’s kind of how things resolved the way they did and sort of how the story became more compact. Because that character became such a key. In a lot of ways she sort of the answer they were all looking for.
I was really surprised after going back, because I’ve been reading the book monthly then I went back a few weeks ago and re-read everything in preparation of this chat and I was surprised at how you essentially lay out four different scenarios for who she could be, and how effective that mystery was, even the second time I read it. Was there ever-
Continued belowJL: It’s probably because I didn’t know.
That’s what I was going to say.
JL: Well, I knew she was, the original plan was that she was his daughter and as I got closer I started to second guess it. So I started to lay in other possibilities and also you want it to be a bit of a mystery so either way it would work. But I started second guessing it and then at the end I decided to go for it and just stick with the original thought. I felt like it was probably the best one and I was over thinking things. It’s good to know that it kind of worked that way.
Yeah, absolutely. I was going to ask you if there was a second, when you started doubting that, was there a second contender for whose kid she’d be?
JL: Well, it just would’ve been Richie’s. It made the most sense but that didn’t feel right either. I thought maybe Richie could find some piece discovering he had a daughter but that all didn’t feel right. It felt like it really needed to be, she needed to be this living link to Tommy. Because up until now Tommy was just a ghost and he was not there so it just seemed perfect. And that was always the original plan anyway.
Is there anything that you thought the series would do or get to when it had a longer outline? Or were you able to more or less check off all the boxes you wanted to hit?
JL: There was some stuff particularity with the character the father, Pete, who had the stroke. There was a whole other storyline where he would recover from his stroke and kind of, I would delve deeper into his relationship, his sort of secret relationship he had with another man and kind of get into that more. But it became sort of, logistically it didn’t make a lot of sense. I started to realize, this is a man who just had a stroke, he wasn’t, even if he came home he would need time to recover before driving around Royal City again and going on his own adventures again so timing-wise it just wasn’t working. So there was some stuff there that I wanted to get deeper into that I couldn’t. But you know that could be a story for the future, too. But mostly I think I have all the stuff I originally planned. Yeah, I think so.
When you look at the works of Jeff Lemire on the shelf you sort of alternate between these very personal stories and these stories that have these fantastical elements that still have a real grounding in the personal. You know, I think of something like “Descender” or “Trillium,” these stories that are more high concept. When you’re wrapped in something like “Royal City,” from the very beginning do you know this is going to be a grounded a story? This is going to be very simple with this family or is there the possibility that when you’re writing it that it’s going to take off in a different direction? I guess I’m wondering if, at the beginning of the process, you know this is how it’s going to end up, tonally?
JL: No, I usually know going in. The stuff that I do, like you said, it usually falls into one of two categories, it’s either sort of a straight genre piece like “Sweet Tooth” or “Descender,” which is always very character-driven anyway. Or it’s something like “Royal City” or “Essex County” that’s kind of more in the quote, unquote real world and I kind of know that going in. This book I kind of had some fun blurring the line a little but between those two things. But I didn’t ever think it would turn into a straight up super natural book. I always kind of knew that stuff would be the sort of layer beneath reality but it would never, we would never go fully into it. So, yeah I generally kind of know going into a project what the tone is, what the direction is. You leave yourself room to go with the story itself but you kind of need that. I kind of usually know the basic kind of shape of something, yeah.
Continued belowAnd so you know here at the end of “Royal City,” I know it’s always hard to judge your own work but are you pleased with how it turned out?
JL: It’s tough, man. I never like anything when I finish it. I always love everything when I start it and I have these huge plans and by the time I’m done, I hate it. And then usually two years later I look at it again and like it for what it is. So it’s like the weird mixture of not living up to your impossible expectations for yourself and then letting that pass and coming back to it and kind of looking at it for what it actually is-
So what you’re saying is I should call you back in 2020?
JL: Yeah, exactly. I am proud of it. I think it’s in some ways probably my most ambitious book. It was definitely the hardest to do. It was the hardest project I ever undertook. The most challenging creatively. I think I pushed myself in a lot of different places. Yeah, it’s not perfect but I’m proud of it for sure.
“Descender” came to an end last month, but from the ashes of its universe-shaking conclusion, “Ascender” arises to reclaim the comic stands in 2019. It’s fantastic news for Lemire fans and means plenty more opportunity to delve into the fantastic cast of this series, especially considering the time-skip between the two series. But for now, we continue to go back and look at the impact of Doctor Jin Quon, the dark horse and deceptively important part of Lemire’s sci-fi tale.
The first idea presented to us about Quon here is that he’s one the path to redemption, not necessarily to a faction in the “Descender” universe but rather, within himself. In the fourth volume ‘Orbital Mechanics’, Quon reveals to Telsa that his ‘selling out’ of her was an attempt at protecting her life. By revealing her status in the UGC, it made her a powerful figure for Hardware to use, and not simply dispensable. We also see him consoling Tim-21 for his alleged murder of Tim-22. It’s the continued development of his unconscious attempt to operate as a father figure to Tim-21, trying to talk through any wrongdoings his creation may have done regardless of the emotional gravity they bear. We even get great couple-banter between Telsa and Quon, especially when reunited with Tim. The quips between them about the ‘new Tim’ bring a light-heartedness to the dark tone of this arc. But it’s important to note that they only work because of where Quon is at in his character development.
We still get a lot of Quon grappling with his messy, egocentric side in this volume, giving depth to his battle for redemption. When Quon, Telsa, and Tim-21 (now revealed to the audience as 22 in hiding) escape the Machine Moon, Telsa questions Quon as to the whereabouts of his mentor, Doctor Solomon. Quon refuses to answer, arguing that they need to rendezvous with Telsa’s father General Nagoki on the matter. He eventually gives way to her insistent pressing but continues to act bitter. It shows us that Quon not only needs approval and validation for his actions but that he still doesn’t take Telsa seriously as a smart and valuable individual. Telsa knocks Quon out and locks him away, where he stays for the rest of the volume, forced to watch as Tim-22 reveals himself and attacks. Being caged away makes him face his pathetic and helpless nature, especially when 22 says “You don’t care about her, anyway. You only care about yourself, Jin Quon”.
In the next volume, ‘Rise Of The Robots’, we start to aptly see Quon embrace his cold, robotic nature as well as becoming more apathetic to his allies. Watching Tim-22 discard Telsa into the depths of Mata’s ocean pushes Quon’s anger at his creation to the point of using his robotic arm to break free from his prison. Once free, Quon immediately beheads 22 before he can talk him out of it, noting that it is now the Creator who has become more like the Creation. Although this works well as a great punch-line and dramatic device, this sentiment rings true in a different sense. Quon uses his robot arm not only to free himself but to get back at 22 for attacking Telsa. It’s the first time Quon actively fights for a selfless cause, and he did so by embracing his robotic side, suggesting that this is the key to redemption along with discarding his more human tendencies.
Continued belowWe’re then shown Quon venturing out into Mata’s Ocean, armed in a diving suit, to rescue Telsa. It’s a beautifully isolated and solitary scene rendered by Dustin Nguyen, and we see some great visual storytelling here tying into Quon’s narrative. When Quon swims back to the vessel with Telsa, we’re shown a quick close up shot with Quon reaching out his left hand – his robotic hand – to clasp the side of the ship. Whether intentionally or not, it seems to convey subtly that through robotics, Quon is still steadily becoming more selfless. On the ship, after reviving Telsa (cleverly with the same method in which she initially knocked him out: electric shock), Quon immediately tries to apologize to her after explaining the situation. He’s interrupted, shot through the chest by the monstrous, mangled and still-alive Tim-22. After later being saved by Tim-21, it’s revealed that the shot severed Quon’s spine, a concrete symbol that being physically and emotionally humbled before robotic enhancement is key to Quon’s self-redemption.
In the final arc, ‘The End Of The Universe’, Quon is reunited with his mentor Doctor Solomon when Tim-21 brings them to the center of Mata. Lemire drops a shocking revelation when we see that Quon’s lower body has been completely restructured into robotics and machinery to allow him to walk. At the same time, a lot of emotional knots are tied. Quon embraces his identity as a pseudo-father to Tim-21, asking him to follow his wishes, saying “No one owns you anymore. The choice is yours to make”. Quon also acknowledges his troubled past and bad choices, one of the first times in the series he has addressed himself in such a way. On top of this, he notes at the end of this page that robotics ‘saved’ him. It’s a statement that works in the immediate sense, that it saved his severed spine and physical body, but also in the emotional sense in that he finally opened up about negative traits.
Although his character arc has come full circle, Lemire still uses Quon cleverly in the story, or more specifically, his relationship with Telsa. When the team contacts Nagoki about their predicament, we see Quon actively disagreeing with the General, something directly contradicting his stance two volumes ago. Telsa herself even acknowledges this change, stating “Oh please! What, you’ve suddenly decided to grow a conscience?” showing a situational reversal. Telsa tries to turn Tim-21 into the UGC in spite of Quon’s beckoning, but it’s through his provoking words, “You’re just trying to convince yourself that you’re doing the right thing”, and Tim’s emotional pleading that Telsa manages to come back. Not only has Quon changed significantly in his own character, but in his relationship with others too.
With “Descender”, Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen show that not only have they created a well-realized and interesting sci-fi universe, but also developed complex and beautiful characters with compelling story arcs. Jin Quon may not have been at the front line of the book the entire time, but chart out his entire arc and you’ll find something interesting. Lemire and Nguyen have transformed him from the pathetic, despicable fool that kicked off the end of the universe to the machine-man hybrid now redeemed, brimming with selfless energy and paternal emotion. Here’s to hoping “Ascender” continues to masterfully tell a beautiful, character-driven tale.
We at Multiversity are thrilled to be sharing this artist’s commentary from Andrea Sorrentino, artist behind “Gideon Falls.” In the first, of what we hope will be multiple installments, Andrea lays out some decisions he made about the first issue of that Image series.
Andrea Sorrentino: Working on first issues is always an interesting artistic experience because you usually start to set the approach and the general look you want to give to the series. This is perhaps even more true with a brand-new series where readers don’t know what to expect, and you’ve got to give them a showcase of how the series will look. Because of this, many pages can become defining moment from the series and are worth a bit more thought than usual.
Pages like 1-3 or 10-11 (pictured below) are important because they represent the first look that the readers will have of both Norton’s city and Gideon Falls, and they’ve got to give the right amount of information to let a new reader understand the mood and the atmosphere of each of these new locations:
Continued below
Anyway, the sequence I want to focus on today is the meeting of Norton and Dr. Xu in her psychologist’s studio. The sequence is itself very slow-paced as it’s a conversation where we start to know more about Norton’s obsession with looking for wooden pieces and nails all around the city.
For my first approach to page 17 (the first page of this sequence), I went with these six vertical panels. I had the feel that putting things in a grid would help me to convey the feel of a kind of “ordered” and rational place. It’s a moment where Norton’s problems are analyzed, and we try to find a logic within them – so, at first, it sounded like a good idea to me:
But, looking at the final results, I had to a admit that I found the page a little too busy, and it wasn’t giving the mood I was looking for at all, so I decided to try another route. I understood that what I needed was, instead, a sense of peace… comfort zone for Norton to escape to the madness and dirt of the city outside, so I decided to go with widescreen panels. This kind of layout let me play with the pace a little more, and it also gave me to use the negative space much better – to create a feel of a big empty clean space where everything is calm and peaceful:
I’ve also asked [Gideon Falls colorist] Dave [Stewart] to go with bright colors inside the room to enhance even more of the contrast with the dark mood of the city:
As for the double-page spread, here’s what Jeff’s script said about it:
I often take these kind of indications from Jeff as a basis to try to build something that is not necessarily the same of what’s in the script, but keep the idea of what we want to show.
Here, to be honest, I wanted to keep the focus on Norton and the way he’s interiorizing this obsession of his. The idea behind this double-spread was: maybe we know some person on the street who’s having a stressful moment or has some kind of paranoia and we can’t really see it from outside. But inside? Probably that person is folding in on himself, shouting out or crying. That is what I tried to convey. The way Norton lives inside himself while he looks calm and (almost) rational from the outside.
And then I decided to add the results of his search as Polaroid pics scattered all around the page. I liked the idea because scattered Polaroid photographs are something we often commonly associate with a paranoid and obsessive research of something. There’re many examples of this in other media too:
Thanks for joining us in Lemire County. We’ll see you back here next month for more on Jeff’s creator owned projects.
