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Jason Aaron: The Deluxe Interview - Part 2 |
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Written by Caleb Monroe
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Monday, 01 January 2007 |
Welcome to Part Two of our deluxe column-spanning Jason Aaron interview, brought to you by a partnership between this column and Elton Pruitt's Running Up That Hill. Part One appeared yesterday and covered everything from Jason's Marvel Talent Search win in 2002 to pitching and scripting The Other Side to what's in the water in Kansas.
Part Two covers...well, this is it. So read it and find out. Then be sure to go out and get your own copies of Scalped #1 and The Other Side #4, both of which hit stands today (because of the holidays new books will actually be in stores tomorrow).
What’s the first comic book you bought?
In the summer of 1979, I picked up two of those 68 page dollar books that DC was publishing: Adventure Comics #464 has a very cool Jim Aparo Deadman cover and World's Finest #258 has a Neal Adams cover that has Batman transformed into a giant bat and choking the shit out of Superman.
What were some of your early writing influences, and what are some of your current ones?
My earliest influences were Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was the first book I ever read on my own) and William Golding (Lord of the Flies is still one of my favorite books). In college, I got big into a couple of other Williams: William Blake and William Faulkner. Current influences include Cormac McCarthy, James Ellroy, Elmore Leonard, David Simon, Grant Morrison and Paul Schrader.
How did pitching Scalped differ from The Other Side?
With Scalped, I wasn’t emailing an editor out of the blue. And I also had a better idea of how to put together a professional looking pitch. I still suck at it though. I’m not at all comfortable writing one-page pitches.
What’s the best part about having a book (books, as of today) of your own in stores? Is it like you expected?
The best part is that people are reading (and hopefully enjoying) my work. The second best part is that editors are now calling me, asking me to pitch to them, instead of me having to chase after them.
For creators who are like you and have their first or second project already out there, being published, what advice can you share about promoting their work and getting it into the hands of readers?
Working with Vertigo, you have DC to handle the promotion for you, so I’m still learning about that whole side of the business. Right now, I feel I have a pretty good online presence: a blog, a MySpace page for myself and for The Other Side, and I post on message boards quite a bit. But what I really need to work on is getting known by retailers, so they’ll be sure to order my books.
Would you say you spend more time creating Scalped and The Other Side, or promoting them?
I spend tons more time creating.
Did you learn any lessons on The Other Side that affected the way you worked on Scalped?
For the most part, I was writing them both at the same time.
You work with Cameron Stewart on The Other Side, and R.M. Guéra on Scalped. Has working with different artists made any difference in the way you script for each of them?
Most definitely. I stuck to mostly four and five panel layouts with Cameron and he poured all kinds of amazing detail into those pages, but Guéra seems at his best doing seven, eight or nine panels on a page, so Scalped has become pretty dense. And I think I’ve been really open with both guys in terms of letting them go their own way with something if they want, but Guéra has taken the most advantage of that. With him, sometimes my job is to layout the emotion and the mood, and he’ll break down the action. Then I just come back and layer on the curse words.
Can you describe your creative process on Scalped?
With Scalped, I had the concept from the get-go, but it took us awhile to iron out all the details. I jumped around to different points in the story, trying to decide where to begin, and I combined a couple of characters to get our main guy. At this point, I have seven issues written and the series plotted to around issue #30, when the shit really hits the fan. In those first thirty issues, we'll meet tribal cops, meth addicts, greedy officials from the BIA, practitioners of Jeet Kune Do, the Dawg Soldierz, the Burn Victims, an FBI agent named after Warren Oates' father, a two time Soldier of Fortune Combat Knife Champion, a brutal Hmong street gang, a Heyoka who talks to his horse and the sheriff who presides over the largest drunk tank in the United States.
I can usually write an issue in two weeks, but I like to take longer with it when I can, because my best scripts seem to be the ones I get to think, re-think and re-think again.
Where would you like your comic career to be a year from now?
A year from now, I hope to be seeing Scalped #12 on the shelves, that’s my main concern. And if everything else pans out that I currently have in the works for 2007, then I’ll be working in a variety of different genres for an array of different companies.
Where would you like to see your comic career five years from now?
If I still have a career in five years, then I’ll feel like the luckiest son of a bitch on earth. Beyond that, I’d love to be able to maintain a balance between creator-owned work like The Other Side and Scalped, and more mainstream, work-for-hire projects. In other words, I want to be Brian K. Vaughan.
What would you say is the #1 mistake you see aspiring comic creators making?
Probably trying to break into the industry by pitching yet another superhero retread.
What’s the best advice you could give someone looking to break into the industry?
Find that one original idea, the one you were born to write and that you’re dying to read. Obsess about it, dream about it, lose sleep over it, work on it every spare minute of the day. And then don’t listen to anybody else when they tell you it’s shit.
What are you reading right now?
In terms of comic books, I’m loving Casanova, DMZ, The Exterminators, Loveless, Grant Morrison’s Batman, Garth Ennis’ Punisher and anything Ed Brubaker writes.
In terms of book books, I’m reading Without Reservation: The Making of America’s Most Powerful Indian Tribe and Foxwoods: The World’s Largest Casino, which is an absolutely fascinating read.
What advice would you share with other aspiring comic creators about balancing comics with other aspects of their life, like family or friends?
It’s tough. I have a wife and two kids, including my 19-month-old son who I stay home with during the day. It’s hard to maintain a real schedule. I kind of have to work whenever I get the time. It’s 1:55 AM as I type this.
Any final advice on the life or craft of writing in general?
“Just write, motherfucker. Just write.”
That’s what I used to keep written above my computer. I’ll also pass along the words of my late cousin, the novelist Gustav Hasford, who in a letter to the U.S. Customs Office said, “I needed this ton of books and papers so that I might steal my ideas from the widest possible range of sources, the secret of good writing.”
Do you have any current or upcoming projects other than The Other Side or Scalped that you’d like to plug?
Yes, I have several things I’d like to plug, but unfortunately I can’t talk about them yet.
Thank you, Jason!
And now, because I forgot to get you anything for Christmas, here's a 3-page preview of Scalped #1:
Caleb Monroe bought Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #16 when he was 11 years old and it was all over after that. You can learn some more about him here.
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