Check it out!

Dash just released his massive book, The Bottomless Belly Button through Fantagraphics. We talk about that and his fantastic web comic BodyWorld.

Please take the time to go read this! Dash is a super interesting guy and his work is really top notch.

This interview was conducted via e-mail this past week while Jason was traveling in Paris.

Enjoy!

It’s day two, fools, and that means my talk with North World creator Lars Brown is up for your perusal. I spoke to Lars about a month back and apologize to him for the delay in posting but think everyone’ll agree that the results were well worth the wait.

And for anyone who hasn’t yet seen Oni Press’ print edition of Brown’s first major North World long form story “The Epic of Conrad,” I should note that you can read most of it online right now at www.north-world.com.

Welcome to Indie Jones’ week of rad interviews. See, of late Dave and I have been making a lot of phone calls to a bunch of comic creators and professionals that are, well, radical. You can scroll down below to see Dave’s chat with Eric Reynolds about Fantagraphics’ move to exclusivity in the direct market with Diamond, and over at the Big WU, you can see my interview with Bone and RASL creator Jeff Smith. about his art show at The Ohio State University’s Wexner Center.

And from here on out, each day of this week, I’ll post another link to a new rad interview with another face from the world of independent comics, including talks with:

Tuesday: A young creator behind one of the more buzzed about new titles of 2008.
Wednesday: A brand new face to the comics scene.
Thursday: A mainstream superhero artist getting accolades for his indie web comic.
Friday: An acclaimed cartoonist bringing back a fan favorite series in a new format.

If all goes to plan, I think by the end of the week we’ll all learn about some cool comic books, and I’ll possibly teach myself to post before 10:43 pm and wean myself off my overuse of the words “rad” and “radical” (ah who am I kidding…there’s no such thing as overuse of those words).

– KP

So what does this deal mean for Fantagraphics? What’s going to be changing?

The very simple big change is that we will not be wholesaling directly to retailers as we have for as long as I can remember. That frees us up considerably here to do more things other than just pushing paper and invoicing. It also will improve the bottom line in so far as we won’t have to chase bad account. Which is unfortunately a problem more often than anybody probably wants to admit in this business. But that’s the real basic thing. The press release with the headline, “Diamond signs Fantagraphics exclusive,” it almost sounds a little more dramatic than I really think it is. But exclusive is almost as an amorphous term at this point in comics as graphic novel is.

Do you see this as a chance to change Fantagraphics’ overall presence in the direct market?

I do, yeah. The bottom line is that we’ve had pretty steady year-to-year growth, overall, for probably going on about seven years now. Since about 2001 I think. Not giant growth. In fact we had giant growth in the early part of this decade when we moved to WW Norton [Fantagraphics' book trade distributor]. Since then it’s taken on a much more normal pattern of growth now that Norton has been dealing with us for seven years. They’ve ramped up our sales really hard, really fast and then they’ve slowly tapered to a very comfortable level that we’re very happy with. The direct market on the other hand on the other hand has sort of consistently gone down throughout that same time. And you could argue why that is, whether or not the book trade’s siphon off the direct market or whether the direct market is just not meeting demand with supply and ultimately I believe it’s somewhere in between those two things. Being Fantagraphics, being a publisher with less than 1% market share in the direct market, being probably the largest publisher left that didn’t have some sort of exclusivity or contractual arrangement with Diamond really made it tough for us to penetrate the direct market in any meaningful way. We had less access to the sales information and where our books were going, and who was buying them than every other publisher in the industry that did have an arrangement with Diamond. And we frankly got a lot of crap for not serving the direct market better. I’m routinely on the CBIA [Come Book Industry Alliance] retailer message boards and I would find myself often in a position, over the last ten years, where you’re defending yourself in regards to the direct market trying to tell people that, “no we actually too value the direct market,” in a way that’s frankly sort of absurd to me. Why would we not want to sell books to a market that wants to buy our books? But my point being that there’s been this sort of weirdly contentious relationship with the direct market that I don’t completely understand myself, particularly since we’ve started to have more and more success in the book trade. And, you know our success in the book trade was very much something we desperately needed. It wasn’t something we were seeking out at the expense of the direct market. It was something we sought out because we needed it to stay viable, because we were not surviving on the direct market. So to make a long story short, I really do think this will solidify the way that we work with the direct market. It will provide us with better information and it will help retailers. It will help our authors. There’s really no downside aside from the more abstract concerns about whether you’re contributing to the increasing hegemony of corporate America in the comic book industry. And that’s a fair question, but on the other hand sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.

What do you think of some of the other criticisms out there? Like stocking issues?

Well, there’s sort of this weird chicken egg relationship going on with some of the criticisms I’ve heard about people saying, “Well right now I tried to order Ghost World from Diamond and they’re telling me they don’t have it. This is screwed up, why are you going to work with these guys?” But that’s sort of the whole point. By doing this we can control our inventory levels with Diamond. We can have access to that data and make sure that they are constantly stocked. It’s very much incumbent upon us to look after them and make sure that they’re doing a good job, and to a certain extent it’s incumbent upon retailers as well to communicate with us if there are any hiccups or bumps in the road. But having every single item of Fantagraphics in stock, in inventory, available for immediate order at a better discount where you can combine your shipping expenses with other reorders you’re placing with other distributors—I guess I just don’t completely understand some of the fears, because some of this is just like nuts and bolts. It’s like, you have inventory in a warehouse, it’s in the system, you order it, you ship it and if there are problems you work them out and you hammer them out, but this isn’t rocket science. I feel like we’ve done such a good job on the book trade and the direct market’s definitely the place that have needed to be shorn up a bit, and if we can do that we’ve got all of our bases covered, and how can that be a bad thing? I feel like between WW Norton and the book trade and now with this relationship with Diamond in the direct market, we really have our bases covered as well or better than any other publisher in comics. We’re positioned to be well saturated in the pop culture specialty market and also the more book reading literary market and those are good things.

Hey, children!

I don’t know how many of you are spending your Wednesday afternoon’s hanging out at the Big WU, but for those of you that have other priorities in life, you should totally check out the intrepid Robert Taylor’s comprehensive coverage of Jeff Smith’s “Bone & Beyond” art exhibit at The Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts. Included are:

– A newsy report from the show’s opening weekend letting you know what all the fuss is about.

– A transcript of the live interview of Smith conducted by Scott McCloud.

– A fact-filled review of the show itself.

If that ain’t quite enough, the whole shebang comes with Robert’s photos (one of which is above), and later this week, I’ll be following up by talking to Smith about the opening and what else is going on with the show later this summer.

– KP

I don’t know if I could sum up in words how much I love this damn comic, and I don’t think anyone would care to read that anyway. But I thought maybe someone might want to read the two interviews I did with Schrab during the production of the final four issues (one was for the old site, the other for the mag’s Edge section), so here they are. The first interview took place just after the relaunch of Scud was announced in March of last year, and the second happened early this year in advance of the book’s February return. Enjoy.

PART THE FIRST!!!

WIZARD: Hey Rob! It’s Kiel from Wizard. Am I calling at a good time?

SCHRAB: I’m actually working on the Scud book right now, so I’ll be able to draw and answer any questions you may have.

How much dust did your drawing table actually have on it?

Schrab: Well, actually, I had to get rid of my drawing table when I first moved out here. So I’m doing it off of the kitchen table which is ironic because that’s how I did the first issue of Scud. So I’m drawing on the kitchen table again.

Considering Scud, with all your Hollywood commitments what was it that finally gave you the drive to say, “This year I’m going to finish it”?

SCHRAB: Well, here’s the deal. I’ll try to answer that as quickly as possible, which will probably end up being long anyway, but there’s a couple of things. I started working on the Sarah Silverman program. We did a pilot like a year and a half ago, and then we got picked up for six episodes and we started shooting them in the summer of 2006. At the beginning of the summer Image called me up and said, “Hey, would be interested in reprinting all of your Scud books?” I said, “Well, yeah. That would be great.” So I did a little digging, and I found all the pages because for some stupid reason all the original screens were burned up in Canada a couple of years ago. So there was a good chance that Scud was never going to exist again, but I tracked down all the pages and have been putting the book back together over the last couple of months.

I was talking with Image, and I asked if they would be interested in me doing another book because I have a bunch of ideas that I would love to do in another book. They said yes, that they would love it. They were very supportive, and it was very cool because I really think that no one gave a shit about Scud. I thought that everyone was like, “Whatever. Who cares?” Unfortunately, or well, fortunately for me, unfortunate for Scud, I had to jump right into Sarah’s show, and I was directing four out of the six [episodes]. So I did nothing but the show for the next six months. In October, we wrapped. I finished up editing all the episodes that are actually showing right now, and I had some free time. The two things that I had to do were to work on the “Heat Vision and Jack” movie script, which I don’t know if you know about that or not. Have you ever heard about that?

I’ve seen it on Youtube for sure.

SCHRAB: Okay, cool. So the first thing that I said is that I have to bang out a draft of the “Heat Vision and Jack” movie. So I worked on that, and while I was working on that I was completing the putting together of all the books. I said, “You know what, I don’t have time to put together a new book.” I wanted to do like a new trade paperback. You know how Doug TenNapel was doing with Creature Tech or Earthboy Jacobus or Tommysaurus Rex? I wanted to do something like that, and I thought, “I don’t have time to do a ninety page book. I only have time to do kind of like a thirty or forty page book.” I said, “If I’m going to do anything, I have to do the last issue of Scud.” I thought about it for a while and I did an article [online], but there were all these people going, “Hey, I love Scud. I wish you would do the last book.” Then Shocker Toys out of the blue said, “Hey, we want to do this. Scud just got voted as one of the independent comic books that we’d like to have an action figure for.” I felt like the universe was asking me to do something.

The final blow was, and I don’t want this to sound like a big name dropping thing, but someone MySpaced me and told me that Kevin Smith was talking about me in his forum. Of course being the egomaniac that I am I have to know what people are talking about. So I go to his site and he said some very, very nice things. I met him a couple of times, and I never thought that I made any impression, but he was just like, “That was one of the coolest books, and I’m going to get out those books and read them again. They were always fun.” After that there was a ton of other people saying that they wished I would do another book. I said, “That’s it.” I posted on my website that I was going to do it, and I asked Image if they would mind adding another couple of thirty pages onto the end of this trade paperback. They said no, that they thought it’d make it sell good.

So, there I am. That’s my long story, but it was really basically something that I stayed away from for a while because I just was so involved in trying to make it work as a screenwriter and producer and director in town, and it’s funny because I’ve gone through a lot of valleys of unsuccessful years in the screenwriting business where I had all the time in the world to do another book, but just psychologically was not ready to conquer it. Right after I was done with the “Heat Vision and Jack” script I said, “We haven’t gotten picked up for anymore episodes so if I’m going to do it I better do it now.” There is a good chance with Sarah’s show, with the buzz that we’re getting, that we’re going to get picked up for another six. So I just dove right into it, and I’ve been drawing since January. Now, Sarah’s show has been on the air and has recently gotten picked up for fourteen episodes. So it was a case that if I wouldn’t have jumped into it like I did, it never would’ve gotten done. I think that was a big motivator – that if I didn’t do it now that it was never going to happen. Two days later, after I made the announcement that I was going to do it, Jack Black asked me to direct a music video of his, and I had to turn it down. I talked about that on my Blog. I said, “Yeah, I have to turn that down.” Everyone was like, “What?! Are you crazy? What are you doing?” I said, “I committed to doing this book and if I do this Tenacious D video I will be done with it the day that I need to be working on Sarah’s show.” Jack’s a friend of mine, and he was totally cool about it. He’s a Scud fan. He was like, “Hey, man, I understand. Don’t worry about it. We’ll work together another time.” So it wasn’t as stupid as it sounds, but that’s how committed I am to getting this book done.

I’m on page thirty-five of it right now. This book is going to be over forty pages long, and it’s epic. I haven’t drawn this hardcore in years – like a decade. It’s been like ten years since I’ve done this, and so I thought, “Can I even f—ing pull this off?” I will say with all humility that it is some of the best work that I’ve done, I think. Just getting out those pages and putting the book back together I really, really fell in love with it because I made the book when I was like 23. I’m 37 right now. I drew [the original] on my kitchen table, and when I drew it I had no idea that it was ever going to be close to being any kind of success. I mean, the fact that it got me out to Hollywood and there was a videogame and movie talk and TV talk for all those ten years, it’s like reading your diary. It really is like that. It’s totally something that you can see, like, “Oh, I was going through some s— there in that panel. I remember that day.” It’s cool. It’s really good to go back because I was really upset with myself for letting it go for so long. I really do think though that if I would’ve turned [the final issue] in the next month, like I was supposed to, it would’ve been a bummer. It just wouldn’t have been what it is now.

Someone said on my site, and I think that it was really, really cool – my site is going crazy right now. Everyone is like, “Oh, my God! I can’t believe you’re doing it. Don’t f— it up.” All of that. All of the great stuff that I was like, “God, I never really, really thought we made as big of an impact as we did.” But I guess that we did. It’s just cool. I’m happy that I’m going back. It is fun to do. I didn’t want it to be like when people look back at my career and go, “Yeah, the ‘Heat Vision and Jack’ and Sarah’s show. He did Scud although he never finished it.” I just want to close the book on it. I really do think that if I would’ve closed the book ten years ago, it wouldn’t be as good as it is now. I think that a fan said, “I really doubt that there would’ve been this much love for Scud back in 1998.” I had to go away for a while, and I had to hibernate, and I had to come back to it. My personal life was in the s—tter, and this new career was taking off, and there was a breakup in my company, and there was just so much anger and pain and fear going on in my life that if I were to finish it, it would’ve been a very unsatisfying conclusion. This way it’s a celebration of what has proceeded it. So I think this is probably the best way that this could’ve ever happened.

Obviously, in terms of how the book looks and how the story beats work out, you’ve had this ending in mind since that last kind of cliffhanger issue, right?

SCHRAB: I had it in mind, and like I said, it would’ve been a dark, depressing bummer of an ending. My life has changed so much now that I don’t want to end something on a bummer. Scud was a book that was known for being fun and funny. Why would you want to end it on a dark note? I want to end it good. I want to close the book. I want to do justice to all the characters that people have loved and just do it right. I want to have fun. I don’t want to be bummed out about it. So, it’s based off of a lot of stuff, but I’m hoping that people, when they read this, will go, “Oh, he’s a better storyteller than he was ten years ago. He’s using what he’s learned over the last ten years of writing ‘Monster House’ or ‘Heat Vision and Jack’ or Sarah’s show, and it’s actually paid off.”

Before I even started writing scripts and stuff, while I was doing Scud I was really not very savvy when it came to structure. Now I think I am. So hopefully people will see that. That’s what I’m hoping. Of course they might read it and go, “Ah, I liked it better when it was all stream of consciousness and crazy.” [Laughs] There will be that no matter what, but right now I’m digging everything that I’m doing. I’m really, really happy about it.

As Scud went on through from the first issue into the twenties, there were different things about it along the way that changed, but with the whole “contracted to kill God” cliffhanger, you couldn’t ask for a better structure to finish up with a last issue.

SCHRAB: In looking at it, I’m really drawing from everything that came before it. It’s not going to be something that’s just going to be a stand alone thing. It’s going to be something that I’m creating especially for everyone who reads the seven hundred pages prior to it. It’s totally like a cinematic structure where just before your third act you have your ultimate bummer. Like, “Sh–. The Death Star is on the way. We’re screwed. What are we going to do?”

“Well, we’re going to fight. We have no chance of winning, but we’re going to do it anyway.” That’s where Scud is right now in this last issue, which I think is great because that’s how it was in the very, very first issue. He never had a chance. He was screwed. I think that’s Scud’s superpower – Scud doesn’t fly, and he doesn’t have a batarang, but what he is, is this character that’s completely screwed but always figuring a way out. He doesn’t give up, and I think that’s really the best quality of that character. Every issue is like, “Holy sh–! I am screwed. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

At one point I was trying to do a series with MTV, which was actually pretty cool. That’s the closest that Scud ever got. We had an animation studio all set up, and we were casting voice talent. Ron Pearlman came in and auditioned for the voice of Spider God. That was like one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me. I was like, “Oh, sh–. Hellboy is here.” It was great because he came up to me and said, “Hey, this is a long time coming for you.” I was like, “You know my book?” He said, “I don’t read comics, but my kids are big fans.” I was like, “You just made my life. That is awesome.” What I wanted to explore with the MTV series was that Scud’s character was going to be like, “Are you kidding me? Every turn of the corner I’m going to be screwed even more as if there is a sign on my back that says, ‘I’m going to blow up if I do what I’m built to do.’” I think that’s just such a great idea. It’s a great thing because who doesn’t feel like that – “Are you kidding me? I have to pay these bills? This credit card thing is killing me, and I have to clean up the house and go to work?!” I mean, everyone wakes up everyday, and they’re behind on everything. I feel like Scud is a great representation of that, albeit sort of super surreal and crazy and wild, but it is something that I think everyone feels. It’s like, “I can’t win. There is no way.” But he always does, and the reason that he always does is because he’s like, “Screw it. Well, if that’s how it’s going to be lets just keep on moving forward, and I’ll figure it out. I don’t know how, but I’ll figure it out.”

That was the beginning of my own personal journey because I never did comics before Scud. I mean, I didn’t know anything about the comic book business. I read very little comics. I just was a big fan of movies, and I loved to draw, and I wanted to do it. So I said, “Well, I need the book, and so I’ll have to make the book. Once I finish the book I’ll figure out how to get it on the stands.” And by the end of the book I did. I really think that’s the most inspirational thing that I could give to people. Anyone who is out there thinking, “Oh, I don’t know how to do this.” Just take one step forward and keep going. By the time you’re finished with it you’ll know how to do it. That’s really like my big sermon to everyone. Just jump into it. You’ll figure it out.

I don’t want to sound like a big kiss a– here, Rob.

SCHRAB: Please do. I never get that. [Laughs]

Well, Scud came out when I was in middle school.

SCHRAB: How old are you?

I’m twenty-five.

SCHRAB: Twenty-five. Okay, you’re perfect. You’re the perfect Scud age. This is something that I didn’t realize when I was doing the book. I started the book when I was twenty-three, and I did the book until I was twenty-seven, and in that entire time I just assumed that all Scud fans were my age. Most Scud fans were when you were a fan, in middle school at like twelve and fourteen. So, now, I think the reason that Scud is having this rebirth – and it happened in the last couple of years where I started getting more fan mail and people coming to my site and asking to buy some books or a t-shirt – it’s retro now. It’s totally how my generation would be really into “Star Wars” or “Land of the Lost” or something like that. Guys like you are digging into it and trying to find it, like, “Remember that thing? Did it really happen? Scud The Disposable Assassin.” So it is retro, which makes me feel very old, but at the same time it made me feel good because it felt like, “Wow.” I was so isolated because when you’re working on a book, you’re basically staring at a page every single day for ten to twelve hours a day for five years. And you really are shut out from the rest of the world. At the occasional convention you get to meet the fans up close. It’s all exhausting and in your face and a couple of rotten apples screw it up for everyone else.

When I was first reading the book a friend and I ordered t-shirts and whatnot, and I think that his mother called you. I recall this specifically because there was something that she didn’t understand on the order form, and she called the number, and I think that you answered. She said, “I need someone in customer service.” And you said, “Lady, I’m a guy in one room here.” To us it was amazing. We were like, “Oh, sh–. He’s just a guy?”

SCHRAB: [Laughs] Oh, yeah. Everyone assumes that there’s a big skyscraper with a Fireman Press logo on the top of it like I’m this big corporate guy or whatever. No, I’m just like you guys, and I’m drawing at the kitchen table like a lot of kids were. I had a drawing table for a while, but it just took up too much space, and I wasn’t drawing enough anymore, so I had to get rid of it. Now I have the kitchen table again. So I think it works out. It’s poetic.

I tried doing a couple of things. Like I did a Scud blog. I’ve been doing these video blogs sort of documenting the whole making of it, and Doug TenNapel came over, and we just kind of went through my process of making a comic book page. It’s just one guy doing all of it. Then in 1995, ‘96 we started dealing with Oliver Stone’s company and had big dreams of having a Scud movie out. Then we drove out here in hopes of being a part of that, and they said, “Oh, no, no. Comic book people don’t write movies. Screenwriters write movies about comic books.” We were like, “Well, okay.” Then in an effort to prove them wrong we wrote a spec script, and it got handed around, and one of the people that looked at it was Robert Zemeckis’ people. And that’s how we got the “Monster House” gig. We wrote “Monster House” back in 1998, ‘99 and it took all of about ten years for it to get made.

Did you get to go to the Oscar ceremony?

SCHRAB: No. We were not invited. I was like, “Eh, we’re not going to win.” There is this whole prejudice against mo-cap technology. I was like, “We’re not going to win. It’s going to be ‘Cars.’” It’s interesting that “Cars” didn’t win, but I’m glad that we didn’t go because it would’ve been embarrassing to have been all dressed up and gone, “We didn’t win.” Then people would’ve gone, “Why are you here?” We’d be like, “Ah, whatever.” I had a lot of drawing to do anyway. I don’t think that I ever watched it. I didn’t even watch it on TV.

Once this issue wraps are you going right back into production soon on the next season of Sarah’s show?

SCHRAB: Yeah. “The Sarah Silverman Progam,” the new ones will hopefully start airing in October. They’re about to do a marathon with “The Sarah Silverman Program” in the next couple of weeks, but so far everyone loves the show and it has been doing really, really good. Right now it’s getting kind of sticky because I’m supposed to be reading scripts and meeting with writers, and I’ve been doing that. My girlfriend has been reading scripts to me while I’m drawing, and occasionally I have to do a lunch where I have to meet a writer or something like that. We’re re-staffing the show, and then by the end of this month, we’ll have offices and we’ll be writing scripts and I’ll be shooting in May. Hopefully if I can get the book done in the next week or two, it will be like a month before the Scud book comes out. I’m trying to get it out for ComiCon [International in San Diego]. That would be the best, but I don’t even know if I’ll be able to go to ComiCon because I’m going to be knee deep in shooting. I’m going to try. I want to.

ComiCon is almost for movie people now.

SCHRAB: Yeah, it is. I don’t go for comics anymore. I just go to pick up movies and see what’s happening. Like, Brian Posehn, who’s in Sarah’s show, just did The Last Christmas with Image. He was there last year, and I went to hang out with him, and then he’s in the “Fantastic Four” movie this year. So he’s probably going to be there, and hopefully I can go with him. Most likely I’m going to be shooting episodes. We got picked up for fourteen, and I’m going to try and shoot at least seven, which is going to be crazy. I want to do that just because I feel like that will be the best proof that I can direct a feature. People always go, “Well, you’ve never directed a feature before.” “No, but I directed a half season of a television program which is harder.” When we were doing the first six, I would be like, “Okay, in the morning we’re going to be shooting episode two. In the afternoon we’ll be shooting episode four, and then I have to pick up this one scene in episode six. And also I’m in preproduction for another thing.” So you’re working on like sometimes three different stories at the exact same time, and you’re doing notes on another script. So in a lot of ways it’s harder than a feature script. That’s the goal.

And the “Heat Vision and Jack” screenplay is waiting for approval, or where is that?

SCHRAB: Yeah, we’re still in the first draft stage. It’s like right now everyone is onboard, and Jack wants to do it, and [Ben] Stiller has his own personal project, but he’s saying he loves it and he wants to do it. I just have to get the right script and make sure that everyone who wants to be involved with it has the time to do it because Jack’s doing a movie like every other month, and he has a kid now. So he’s going to be picky with his free time especially now after going on a world tour with Tenacious D, but again, he’s like, “Just get me a script, and I’ll figure it out because I want to do this.” Dan Harmon who co-wrote it with me and has also done a lot of Scud books – he’s doing a show with VH-1 right now based off of Channel 101. Have you heard about that before?

I understand the concept.

SCHRAB: Yeah. So VH-1 – we pitched them a TV version of that, and Dan went off to do that, and I went off to do Sarah’s show. So there is going to be that which is coming out at the end of this month which I’m not having to much to do with. I had a bunch of stuff at the beginning and pitched, but that’s kind of like Dan’s show. So between him having his show and me having my show we’re spread kind of thin, but we love “Heat Vision and Jack.” We’ll make it work. My first goal is just to get the Scud book done.

Is it going to be one giant volume with every issue, or is it going to be broken into pieces?

SCHRAB: It’s going to be one big honkin’ book, the bible of Scud. It’s going to have issue one through twenty one in one big book. We finally put together the dummy book of it and this thing is thick. I was like, “Holy cow, this is a lot of work.” It almost brings tears to my eyes. I was like, “This is five years of my life here and plus the last three months.” It’s a thick book, and it’s got it all in there and one of the spin-offs that I did – I don’t know if you remember the character Drywall. I did a spin-off with him kind of telling the origin of that character. I threw that in there too because I really loved the book, and it was kind of integral to the ending. I wanted to put that in there as well. So it’s all the Scud books, plus the new Scud book and plus one of the spin-offs. So it’s going to be a beautiful book. It’s going to be one of those things that if you like you never read Scud it’s going to be a good, good thing because it’s the whole thing. It’s everything.

I’m sure that there are people out there to for whom it’s a legend, that they’ve only read about it on the internet.

SCHRAB: Well, it’s really hard to find too. I mean, we stopped selling it years ago, and then recently with the screens being all burned there was a good chance that Scud was never going to exist again. So this is a big deal, and Image is totally bad a– for doing this. I mean, they came to me, and they said, “Hey, would be interested in doing this?” I was like, “Well, if there’s enough interest for you guys to be interested then yes.” So we’re going to make it happen.

PART THE SECOND!!!

WIZARD: You originally announced the return of Scud as one story in a trade of the entire series. Now it’s a four-issue mini. How’d that happen?

SCHRAB: Actually, it happened in the middle of the summer when I was at the peak of my working on Sarah’s show. I called Joe Keatinge from the PR department at Image and said, “Joe, I feel like I’m in trouble here because I’m making this book way bigger than you guys thought I was going to be doing it. I was worried that you guys are not going to want to publish it or something like that.” I was stupid in a panic going, “I don’t know if I can get this done because I’m working on the show,” and he goes, “Well, how long is it going to be?” I said, “Like over 100 pages.” And he goes, “WOW! I thought you said it was going to be 30 or 40.” I said, “I know, I know…I’m really sorry.” I don’t know why I was apologizing, but I felt like I was doing something wrong. [Laughs]

I got an e-mail from Eric Stephenson who said, “If the book is that big, let’s make it a four-part mini series. And we’ll put that out before the big collection of the whole book.” I thought that would be fun to do because it would get Scud back on the stands again. I could actually have issue #21, 22, 23 and 24. And I started going, “I could probably get Doug TenNaple and Jim Mafood and Dave Hartman to do covers.” And I’d just at San Diego at the last Comic-Con met Ashley Wood. I said, “I’m a huge fan of yours,” and he knew of me and loved Scud. I said, “How’d you like to do a cover?” And he said, “Sure.” He did this beautiful cover that seemed so perfect. Everything kind of fell into place.

And as I looked at the book that I’d already done, I said, “You know, this kind of divides up really nicely into four issues.” It didn’t happen on purpose, but every 30 pages or so there’s a nice little cliffhanger there to bring it around. It felt like the universe is telling me something, so here we go.

In looking at the original series, did you have any desire to go back to your old pages and pull a George Lucas?

SCHRAB: Go back and do a special edition? [Laughs] My friend Mike Chillian who is helping me out is sitting there with a ruler, and he’s going to snap my fingers every time I try and go, “Well, we could redraw that.” You know, Scud is a book that I find very personal, and I’m very proud of it. I’m also very proud of where it started and where it came from. So to redraw or clean up something – not necessarily clean up, but to redo history would be the wrong thing to do. I want that big collection to be a time capsule so you can read issue 1 to issue 24 and go, “Wow! Look at how much the art has evolved. And the storytelling’s involved.” There’s a lot of stuff in those books I’m kind of embarrassed about and some jokes that are pretty dated, but you know, it’s a time capsule, and I’m going to keep it the way it is.

Now, when we’re scanning it into the computer, some of the original art got yellowed and a little bit destroyed, so there will be some cleaning up on it. There’ll be that, but I can’t – first of all, the book’s going to be 800 pages long, so I can’t “clean it up” as much as I’m doing with these last books. It’ll be “Scan it into the computer, mess with the contrast enough to make sure it’s as good as it ever was and get it off to Image as soon as possible.”

You jumped right into the series getting back to the long-standing cliffhanger and then paying homage to the first issue. As the four issues go along, did you want to do a “greatest hits” of characters from the book’s past?

SCHRAB: Yes and no. There was a lot of storylines that never got concluded. Scud’s story never got concluded. His sidekick Drywall – his story never got concluded. There’s a lot of little things here and there that I wanted to wrap up or at least address. So there’s a lot of greatest hits going on. Everybody’s favorite characters are coming back. I think there’s not a whole lot of new stuff in there. Everything’s a lot more mature. I’ve learned so much over the last ten years in terms of writing, character and structure, and I wanted to take all of that and put it into these last four books. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. It’s kind of like your Return of the King of Scud. It’s pretty epic and big, and that’s what I love about it.

Coming back to Scud after spending years pitching screenplays in Hollywood, is it weird to start comics again in the middle of your most productive phase as a screenwriter?

SCHRAB: I know! It’s weird because “Monster House” was nominated for the Academy Award and the Golden Globe, and Sarah’s show had the first and second season this year. It’s going really great, and you would think during those years where my career wasn’t doing so great in Hollywood, I would have jumped back into comic books, but for some reason, I got a rush of success and kind of felt invincible and said, “I’m going to tackle that thing that’s been in the back of my head for so long. I’m just going to do it.” It’s kind of like, “Let’s see how much I can take?” I pushed myself to the limits this year doing the show and Scud at the same time. But I lived through it, and I think it’s some of my best work yet. I think I might be kind of a masochist – a workaholic where I just want more and more and more. And Scud was going to be a huge project. You can’t get bigger than that.

You always wanted to do a Scud movie. With your Hollywood experience, has your idea of what that movie is changed?

SCRAB: Well, Scud the comic book is different than Scud the movie or even Scud the TV series. At one point I was trying to do a series with MTV, which I thought was going to go over well. I got a tremendous amount of control, and I think I perfected a lot of the stuff that I wasn’t so happy with in the original book story-wise and structure-wise – not tone-wise. The basic beats were there, but I thought it could be done better, and it had to be, for TV, structured differently.

But that fell through like things do out here. But Scud is a hard sell for a feature film because it’s set in this futuristic, surreal world and you’ve got this lead character that is a robot. There’s a certain dollar amount that studio’s see when you’re talking “future” and “robot.” They’ll say, “Well, it can’t be a guy in a suit. It has to be a CG character. Now you’re talking every time it’s on camera, it’s an effect. So the price goes up and up and up. Now you’re talking a character that kills for money. Even though in the comic it works, in a movie you have to set it at a certain rating. It can’t be rated R because you won’t make your money back, and it can’t be rated G because then what kind of story are we telling? So it’s this complicated thing. Right now, my thing is that I just want to concentrate – Scud is going to stay a comic book for now. Right now, I have no major plans for going out and pitching it. It’s weird. If some Robert Rodriguez comes along and says, “Hey, look what I did with Frank Miller. You want to do that with me?” I’ll never turn down a chance to direct something that I think is cool. But that’s a big if. I do think Scud is a difficult sell. After ten years of trying to get him off the ground as a TV show or even a video game, it’s a tough sell. But if Scud never goes passed the comic book, I would be completely satisfied because I finally concluded it, and I concluded it on my own terms. I’m really happy with how it’s concluded.

No matter how many comic movies get made, the comic is the real thing to fans. Everything else is ancillary.

SCHRAB: Right. And a lot of us judge a comic book movie on how close it is to the original material – like any book. It’s like a novel getting as close to the original material as possible. Doing a movie based off a comic book is hard – especially something like Scud because it was a sequential story that had a different one-shot episode every issue. It didn’t necessarily have a huge arc. That’s why I think it would be better as a TV show because it was created to be a series. Every month, he’s got to kill a target to keep his primary target alive. It was basically my way to go, “How can I have a robot fight a monster once a month?” That was my formula.

And in all the times it was tried to make it into a movie, it never really felt like that basic premise because it really wasn’t made to be a one-shot thing. It was made to be a series. That’s why I was looking forward to the MTV series so much, but it is what it is. It’s hard to get an animated TV show off the ground too. To do an animated show that competes with Japan where they have these great action sequences – it’s harder to do here for some reason. And for me, being a director and a writer and producer, it’s hard for me to give up control of especially something like Scud. In the animation world, you need an animation director. I’m a live action director. They’re not going to let me direct it. So that’s problematic for me because I don’t see anybody doing a better job directing Scud than me. And that’s not necessarily ego. I’m sure there are other people that could do it, but my first question would be, “Why?” I’m a director and writer. I want to do it. We’ll see what the future holds.

I noticed you have a Deviantart page. It seems you’ve been drawing more than Scud there lately. Do you have new ideas for comics?

SCHRAB: Oh yeah. Now that I’m done with the book, I’ve got the bug again. I’d like to do another comic. Scud’s kind of tied up. I’m not the only owner on it, so I only own 50% of it. So the business person in me says, “I should do another property which would be solely me.” I got a bunch of ideas. It’s hard for me since I just cleaned up my apartment, which was wall-to-wall pages and stuff to go, “Hey! Let’s make a mess again!” But there’s a bunch of stuff I want to do. I’m getting more attention as a director now because of Sarah’s show so I’m pitching movies now and writing stuff.

That’s a good problem to have.

SCRAB: Yeah, it’s a good problem. I can’t do anything now because of the strike, so I’m kind of on hold. Depending on how long the strike goes, I may pick up the pen again and do something.

Everybody say, “Thanks, Rob!”

THANKS, ROB!

In case you hadn’t heard, there’s a very in depth showcase of Bone creator Jeff Smith’s comics work opening up this weekend at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio on the campus of The Ohio State University. I can’t make it down for the opening, but luckily I got the chance to talk to the curators behind the exhibit Lucy Caswell & David Filipi. The pair were extremely nice and got me really excited for the show (fingers crossed I’ll make it before they close up shop in August), and you can read the interview the big WU.

For anyone in the Ohio area, I highly recommend heading down and seeing the exhibit. All the info for the show can be found here. If you can’t head there just yet, worry not. We’re having the intrepid Robert Taylor stop in to review the show, talk to all involved and snap as many photos as he can, so check back to the blog next week for all the details!

ALSO: Vaneta Rogers talks to Smith about the show over at Newsarama.

So, please go look at that before you read about the new Secret Invasion tie-ins or whatever.

The cartoons are really quite good, and they make you think: