Talking Comics, Aliens and Parker with Paul Scheer [Interview]

Chances are you’ve probably heard of comedian Paul Scheer. One of the creators of the monumental Human Giant, Scheer is the star of shows like The League, Burning Love and NTSF:SD:SUV::, as well as host of “How Did This Get Made?” with June Diane Raphael and Jason Mantzoukas. But when he isn’t being generally hilarious, it turns out that Paul Scheer is actually quite an avid comic book fan, having returned to the medium (like so many of us do) after a period of absence only to find that the landscape is much different than he remembered.

Oh, and he translated a screenplay that he had co-written with Nick Giovannetti into a four-issue comic book called “Aliens vs Parker,” illustrated by Manuel Bracchi and published by BOOM! Studios. You may have seen that on stands last year. You may see it on a shelf again this week, as it is released in trade paperback form literally covered in praise by folks like Gerry Duggan, Ed Brubaker, Jason Mantzoukas, Rob Corddry and Rob Riggle.

So read on as we chat with Paul about the wide world of comics and where he fits in, both as a reader and as a creator. Oh, and we ask the number one question comic-reading fans of the League have been dying to know as well, of course, because how could we waste an opportunity like that?

I’m going to ask you what is pretty much one of my favorite questions to ask people, which is just: why comics?

Paul Scheer: Why comics? I feel like, as far as a creator doing it, it’s limitless. You can do whatever you want. And as far as a enjoyer — enjoyer? That’s not a word. [Laughs] I remember, my earliest memory of what I loved to read — and these aren’t, like, cool comics, but comic-strip comics. I loved “Peanuts,” I loved “Garfield,” “Bloom County,” “Calvin and Hobbes.” There was just something about a world in which you kind of created the voices for everybody, even though there was dialogue there. Then I got into comic books, and you get this chance to be the director, the actor, the everything — you set the pace, you assign the voices, you become the ring leader of this whole piece. I think it makes you more committed to this art form than any other, even reading a book, because I think the visual component of it just makes you more invested in every little thing.

So how long have you been reading comics? You said you read strips as a kid; how did your reading habits evolve from there?

PS: I started reading strips… It’s so funny, because no one reads strips anymore. That was such a big thing in my life, reading “Peanuts” and “Calvin and Hobbes” and “Bloom County?” It was huge. I had all those books and I would just read them all the time. Then I got into the classic Superman, and when I was growing up there were a lot of Star Wars comics, which were amazing for me because it was before they had written all those books and everything. You could kind of live and see these extra adventures of characters from Star Wars, which was, like, the next best thing to a movie for me. I think I started really reading comics roughly around the time, if you want a sign post, when Superman died. And he came back as four different.. whatever it was. [Laughs] But I remember having that comic book with the black armband. And I would read, back then I think were a lot of X-Men. I read a lot of X-Men in that time. But then it stopped for a long time, reading these books, and I would just read the occasional trade. I would pick up things like “Fables,” stuff like that.

But in the last couple of years, maybe the last five years or so, I kind of got really into it again. I think part of it is the iPad and all the amazing apps on there, and being able to bring stuff with me. There’s a part of me, and I’m not going lie to about it, but you look less nerdy when you’re reading it on an iPad. You could be reading anything. [Laughs] Sometimes I pull out a bag full of comics, and I’ll still go, I have two shops out here, but I feel a little bit more at ease and secure in myself reading comics on an iPad because I can bring it anywhere. I’m not just reading them in the privacy of my own home.

With that in mind, do you follow things like comic trends or what’s going on in the comic world via comic news sites, things like that? Do you think about how we’re moving more into that digital realm?

PS: Yeah, to a certain extent. I wouldn’t consider myself an expert on it, but yes. I listen to comic book podcasts, I read Comic Book Resources, sites like that. I really like it all. But my issue right now, my biggest issue — and I see this is an issue people are talking about, too — the pricing is pretty exorbitant for a thing you don’t really even keep, you know? And you’re not paying the manufacturing fee of actually printing a book or things like that. So I’m always surprised at how expensive the books are online sometimes.

Do you have a preference between digital and print now? Because it sounds like you still like print here.

PS: I like digital. I go to digital a lot because it’s easy, it’s more convenient. It’s on my iPad already. I remember reading all the New 52 “Batman” by Scott Snyder, and I was a couple issues in and, in one night, I can just go “Next one, next one, next one.” And I’d just sort of stumbled on it that night and it was great to have that immediate gratification until I was caught up. I love that ability to get it right there, or if I forget to go to the store it’s just there. I find stuff even more by just sort of scrolling through, I can experiment more like that.

I do love the traditional nature of the shop, though. I have two shops that I go to, one primarily, and every time I buy a book online I’m like, “Ugh, I should be going to the store and getting it there.” I feel like I want to support them staying open, I love that place, I loved it when I was a kid.

I find that interesting, because I think for many people comics was very much a collector’s hobby. And as someone who did grow up reading comics, it sounds like you feel maybe we’ve moved away from that mentality?

PS: For me, as I’ve gotten to become more of an adult, I don’t have room to collect all those books. It goes lower on my list. What’s drawing me to comics more than anything now is really just the content. I love reading the stories. I treat it very much the same way I treat books, when I buy a book on the Kindle or read a digital book. I’m there for that. Yes, I think I’ve gone away from the collecting of it. I used to have boxes and boxes of them, and I still have my favorites, but I would say 90% of the comics I have in my house are trades. I keep those, but I don’t really keep the singles anymore.

Can you give me a couple examples of some of the stuff you have been reading lately?

PS: Yeah, for sure! I’ve been reading (and I hope I don’t mess up the name) the new Ed Brubaker book, “Velvet.” I love “Velvet.” I’m a huge Ed Brubaker fan in general, but I’ve been really, really into that book lately. I got into “Guardians of the Galaxy.” I was never really familiar with them as a kid, but with the movie coming out and one of the women on my show (NTSF:SD:SUV::) Karen Gillan is in it, I figured I’d want to read about it. So I’ve been reading the new “Guardians.” I love reading “Saga.” I just read “East of West.” I like that new “Star Wars” comic that Dark Horse did, by Brian Wood, and I like that it bridges between the two movies. I was reading “Thor, God of Thunder.” And the Rick Remender “Captain America,” that was amazing. “Deadpool,” the one that Posehn and Gerry Duggan write. I’m not like 100% sold on the new “Astro City;” that was something that I used to really truly love. So, I kind of jump around a lot.

I kind of get the impression that you lean more towards creator-owned books than traditional superhero books now, is that fair?

PS: I think it is, yeah. I think I definitely follow people. I got into Scott Snyder doing “Batman” and I really like that, so that got me into “American Vampire.” Ed Brubaker is someone that I really like, and Matt Fraction — I usually check out what he’s working on. I definitely more creators, I don’t have an allegiance to certain characters. It’s not like I’m a die-hard Superman guy or I love Green Arrow. I kind of just bounce around a lot. That’s more my MO.

I think that’s a feeling a lot of modern readers have. There’s sort of a divide going between creator-owned books and superhero books, where a lot of people are getting sick of superheroes. I was wondering if you had any thoughts, as someone whose familiar with the trends — you pointed out the Death of Superman as a big hit at the time, but then he just came back — do you notice any particular trends that push people more towards the creator-owned?

PS: It seems to me, at least for me, Marvel and DC always felt pretty sanitized to me. Now I think there are people, like Ed Brubaker, he did that amazing “Captain America” run, and that’s how I found Ed Brubaker. Then I got locked into other things by him. Again, there’s probably better people than me to tell you this, but there’s a lot more outlets for people to do cool work and get that work out there, and when you have these people building a fanbase it’s easier to embrace the weirder ideas. Even with something like “Sweet Tooth” by Jeff Lemire, and now he does “Animal Man.” Now, some of the (for lack of a better term) “sanitized” books, Marvel and DC are letting them get a little bit weirder — or, if not weirder, at least with something that has more of an edge to it.

All I know is I like what I like, in terms of that I follow the authors that I like, and I’m going to enjoy that. Whatever they’re writing. It doesn’t even make a difference what they’re doing, it’s more the style and the tone that I gravitate towards.

Let me ask you — as someone who write for television and has now also worked on comic books as well, have you noticed that there are any particular similarities or differences between working for the two mediums?

PS: I think that you’re always going to find, no matter what you’re writing — whether it’s a screenplay, a teleplay, or a comic, you never have enough time, panels, pages, whatever to get across what you want to get across. The hard thing for me in this process was, I think when we started we want to make our story as funny as it was action-packed. When you want to hit a solid joke you want to have a strong set-up, but you need space for that set-up to hit and then you can have the punchline follow. A lot of it is just figuring out how to move around the dialogue in a way and keep the characters alive.

In TV, I’m used to writing a script and that’s one phase of it; then you shoot it and you have actors bring something new to it, and you’re re-writing as you’re shooting it while you’re on set. Then when you’re editing it, you’re writing it again. You kind of get these three chances to get it right each time, and a bunch of different people are collaborating and making it better. That’s always what I feel like is a cool process.

Comics, it’s much more isolated. You are essentially… You write it, then you work with an illustrator to get your story out, and that’s it. You don’t see how an actor would approach it, anything like that. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. Do you find that you have a preference to either of the two mediums at this point?

PS: What I love about comics is the ability to have a limitless budget. Everything I’ve ever worked on, you’re on a tight budget. Comics can do whatever you want, and it’s amazing to be able to have the craziest ideas. One of the reasons we did this as a comic was because we had written a script and felt like, oh, well, y’know, I don’t know if this will ever get made, or if it’s too expensive a movie. I think Nick and I both didn’t want it to die, so what would be a cool way to do this? And we both stumbled on the idea of doing it as a comic book, so we brought it to BOOM!. We were just able to execute it better that way.

One of the things I hate about this business, on the acting/writing side of it, sometimes you’ll work on things for such a long time and no one will ever get to see that because the financing falls through or someone doesn’t want to pick up the pilot to the series. I just did a show, I wrote a show for ABC and spent the last four, five months working on it — and now that’s it. It’s not going forward at this point. It’s sort of like, oh, ok, that just goes on a shelf? But the cool thing about doing this comic is that we got to do a version of what we had originally envisioned, and it was fun and it didn’t go to waste.

Did you find it at all difficult to translate your ideas from what you wanted as a movie into a comic book? Or was it a pretty natural transition?

PS: Probably the hardest thing that I found was in the dialogue. It’s sort of like, you want to make it as funny, you have to introduce the characters and have them be real and grounded and let them hit their jokes. I know how to do that more in television, and I had a harder time doing that in comic book writing. But I called up my friend Gerry (Duggan), and Gerry is brilliantly funny in comics, in “Deadpool” especially, so he was really good at being kind of our silent editor. He would go through each issue and point out we could do this, or we could do that, move that here, add an extra level here; those things are the things no one let us in on, and I’m so glad I had a friend who was involved. Even people like Ed Brubaker read it and was into it. Everyone was very helpful about what we could do to make it better, and that’s what I really appreciated about the process.

Whereas, I did an NTSF comic. I did it as a special thing for Comic Con, I just thought it would be a really cool thing to do for Comic Con. That was easier because the characters were established and I could just get into those voices, and the people who read it had an easier time getting on board.

In terms of the industry, it sounds like with Gerry and Ed looking over this with you and giving you tips, did you find the comic industry to be more welcoming of the places you’ve worked in, or even easier to work in than perhaps the film and television industry?

PS: If you have an idea, it’s relatively inexpensive I think to get a comic going. You can make your ideas more of a reality. I think it’s harder in film or TV, where you have to get money and there certain things you can do and certain things you can’t. We were really embraced by the comic community, I think because Nick and I have been fans of it. I look up to a lot of these guys and I’m a huge fan of them, so it was really great. I felt like, yeah, everyone was very welcoming in the community, and it was great that BOOM! allowed us to do it.

For me, anyway, you’re doing it purely for the love of doing a comic. I’ve thought of doing NTSF as a comic book, because this is neat so let me try and do it, but I think it’s more about the creative fulfillment here than anything else, and being unencumbered by notes or anything like that. A lot of times, dealing with studios, people who are giving you money, they want to put their two cents in. In the comic book world, you don’t have to deal with that. I mean, of course, I’m not writing a Marvel character that has major arcs that I can’t subvert or something like that, but dealing purely with the creator-owned stuff, the more creator-driven comics, it’s great.

OK, so, I have a couple questions were submitted to me to be asked to you, so I’m going to throw them your way if that’s alright.

PS: Yeah, sure!

First one here is, I think between your work on Human Giant, The League, NTSF, everyone is familiar with our off-beat sense of humor. So if you were going to adapt a comic for a movie or a TV show, which do you think would best fit your style?

PS: So I can take a mainstream comic that exists and adapt into a TV show? That’s a good question… Going back to “Astro City,” that was a thing for a long time where I thought, man, I would love to take “Astro City” and make that into a cool show for HBO or something like that. It’s such an interesting world, the world in which superheroes exist and criminals exist but it’s a real city around them. They’re not always heroic or even super bad, you could see a guy who is made of metal sitting at a bar drinking, and that world to me was just so visually fun. I know that Heroes had elements of that, but I think “Astro City” could be the most fun to explore from a comedic point of view and you can get some cool dramatic storylines out of it.

I also, the other thing that I’ve always talked about — and I’ve tried to actually get it going, is “Damage Control,” the Marvel comic about all the guys who did repairs after the huge battles. I like that idea of a really grounded superhero world and having fun in that.

One of the worst questions to have in an interview, I think, is, “Oh, if you could just write for Marvel or DC what would you write,” but I think “Damage Control” is kind of an amazing answer.

PS: That’s the one that always pops up in my head as something I’d like to do.

What comics have you read and then wondered, “How did this get made?”

PS: [Laughs] That’s good. You know, it’s funny, I don’t really read that many shitty comics? But I do have one that I will tell you, I bring it around with me every now and then. It’s a
Michael Jackson comic book. It was written after his death and it’s kind of, like, this biography of Michael Jackson. And I’m just like, who is for? I have it, it’s amazing, there’s this picture of Michael on the front with a big autograph across the front of it, but this is just one of the craziest things I’ve ever read. You see him in Heaven… it’s just bizarre.

That’s Bluewater Productions. They do all kinds of books like that.

PS: I saw it and was just like, I have to get this. It’s hilarious. Sometimes I bring it out on stage when I’m doing stand-up because I just can’t believe this is something that exists. [Laughs]

The last submitted question that I have for you is, in the context of the League if you can get put your Dre hat on for a minute, how fast do you think NFL SuperPro would go in a draft?

PS: [Laughs] First? I would say he would be my first-round pick.

Do you think that would be the equivalent of kind of cheating, though? It certainly would give you an unfair advantage.

PS: It definitely does, but look, that’s what fantasy football is all about: lying and cheating to your best friends. [Laughs]

Excellent! So, looking towards the future, I’m going to assume you probably have other comics and things you’d like to do?

PS: Yeah, you know, there’s definitely… Gerry and I have talked about it a couple times, but I definitely want to do it again. I would love to work with different publishers, and it’s interesting — it’s a weird world that I don’t know much about, you know? I think I’m still kind of feeling my way through it all. Nick and I had so much fun writing this, I would love to try and do something again. It’s been really, really fun.

The trade collection of “Aliens vs Parker” goes on sale this week at all finer shops.