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INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN COLDEN of FISHTOWN FAME
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Thanks to
Kevin for such an in-depth interview regarding his
EXCELLENT graphic novel
FISHTOWN. He spent a good amount of time answering my questions and I hope that you all enjoy the Q&A.
1. Where did the idea to create FISHTOWN originally come from? What made you want to tackle such a heavy story?
I’ve always thought that the medium of comics is great for tackling heavy emotional stories, and in the last decade or two there have a been a number of particularly affecting memoirs and dramatic stories that have come out of our corner of the storytelling landscape. But in my mind, we’ve never really ventured all that far from the template that Art Spiegelman set up with Maus two dozen years ago – the marriage of heavy themes and cartoony drawings.
I had come across the actual story of the Fishtown murder during research for another project, and was fascinated and saddened by the brutality of it. It stuck in my head and I had the idea that if I told this story, I could flip the standard of graphic novel memoir storytelling on its head. The intent was to create some kind of Capote-esque hybrid non-fiction graphic novel to try and humanize a life experience that (thankfully) few of us can imagine experiencing, and do it in a way that would make it emotionally real. I attempted to achieve that by using completely subjective storytelling.
So I guess I saw it as a chance to poke a hole in our culture’s current desensitized view of real-life violence through art.
2. Did you work with an Editor at all to shape the story? Or were you left completely to your own devices?
I mostly did it on my own. There was feedback from the online community at ACT-I-VATE, but the story was laid out years before it was ever published there, so the site feedback didn’t affect the core story directly. However, the fact that it was going to be read by a large audience informed a few changes, like the last-minute decision to change the character names, and the initial removal of some of the nudity that I later put back in.
My wife (cartoonist
Miss Lasko-Gross) did help me edit the dialogue, and worked as a sounding board which she always does. We both sort of act as in-house editors for each other, which is a pretty valuable tool. It makes my actual editors jobs easier. There was no official editor on the content, but for the print edition the IDW editors aided in the overall design and production of the book.
3. Why the use of spot-colors instead of full color? Especially since FISHTOWN was published on the web first?
Initially, the book was going to be full-color, and the color saturation levels were going vary as an indicator of time. I did a batch of pages in full color, but due to the way the printing process works the variation of saturation wasn’t clear, so it defeated the purpose. That, coupled with time issues and my lack of coloring skills at that point made me rethink my approach, and it seems I made the right decision. It’s often pointed out that the queasy color scheme sets the tone of the book.
4. Why did you publish the story on the web first, instead of in print?
A few reasons. I remember the situation being that the book had been rejected by nearly every publisher twice, though I may have missed one or two in my rounds. I had noticed a movement towards long serialized stories on the web, had cofounded an online comics collective called The Chemistry Set and had had some success with that. So by the time Fishtown came out, I had experience in the online realm. Since no one else wanted it, it seemed like a no-brainer.
In the meantime I had sent off a submission to the Xeric Foundation for a grant to print the first issue, expecting a rejection. To my surprise, I won. I wanted to both print it and serialize online due to my experience and having a cultivated a small fanbase there. But due to the way the rules were set up at the time, I couldn’t do both, and I declined the money award. In retrospect, it may have looked like a solidarity play for webcomics, but it was really just that I knew how to promote an online comic better than I knew how to promote a print comic.
5. Has the web first, print second method worked well for you? Are there positives and negatives to working that way?
That’s a a tough question to answer. I spent so much effort promoting the serialized version of the book, that by the time it hit print, I think it was old news and had worn out its welcome. Also, the book was released at the end of 2008, and the economy had just shit the bed. In my decidedly biased opinion, as a book with as much buzz as it had, that won the Xeric and later went on to garner an Eisner Award nomination (Best Reality-Based Work), it had all the makings of a massive hit. There may have been a lot of people reading it online, or borrowing copies, or reading library copies; I don’t actually know! That might be the big negative.
6. In regards to your process, do you work from a full, detailed script or from a synopsis? Was the entire work completed before you began serializing FISHTOWN on line? Did you rework aspects of the story or art for the print edition?
I always work from a screenplay-type script broken down by page. This makes it easier to play around with storytelling from a visual angle. I think I had about 30 pages or so done when we started serializing, though the script had been finished almost two years prior to that (I wrote it in under a week). The last 70 pages were completed very quickly in a period of about three months – I was still working full-time, which is why I consider that timeframe quick – before the end of 2007, largely so I could secure the print contract.
I reworked a lot of dialogue, and tightened up at least one panel on each page of the book. The differences are subtle, but in a book with a lot of subtleties, it make a difference.
7. Who are some of you influences? And did ANY work in ANY medium have an influence on FISHTOWN directly?
In comics, my primary influence is Bernie Krigstein, and I think his work shows up all over in my own. Especially in Fishtown. Also in regards to this book, Dave McKean’s Cages informed the storytelling pace and the use of distinct panel grids, line weight choices, and the two-tone color scheme.
Two filmmakers were a big influence on the book, one of whom is Stanley Kubrick (everyone lists Stanley Kubrick as an influence, I know…) largely for his deliberate use of dialogue and elegantly composed shots, and Gaspar Noe’s film Irreversible, which had opened my eyes to the way shocking images become even more shocking when devoid of stylization.
But most of all, the time I spent in theater influenced the storytelling choices in the book. Conventional wisdom says that comics and cartoons, by their nature, are simple deconstructions of nature and the tendency is to tell stories in the comics medium in a melodramatic way. It’s effective. What I was trying to do was let my characters act. The interview sequences – a good third of the book – break two standard conventions of comic storytelling. The first is that repetition is boring, the second is that second-person storytelling doesn’t work well in comics. However, those are two standard conventions of theatrical drama, and by writing the script as if it were going to be performed on stage, and then letting the emotions do the visual work, I was able to break one or two taboos – I think, anyway – effectively.
8. What are you currently working on? Where can people find more of your work?
Right now, I’m finishing up the last pages of my next full-length book I Rule the Night, which was part of the Zuda Comics website and is now available digitally through DC Comics on
Comixology.com or Comixology’s iPad/iPhone app. It’s frustratingly tricky to find, unfortunately, as its not actually available directly through DC’s app due to age restriction issues (
https://comics.comixology.com/#/series/4988). It’s still serializing, but new issues will become available there for the foreseeable future.
I also collaborated with Joe R. Lansdale and John L. Lansdale on an adaptation of Robert Bloch’s Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper, which is available as trade paperback in store right now, and I created an illustrated edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales that will be coming from IDW in late November.