Frank Marraffino is the storyteller that Vertigo tapped to write its revival of DC’s 1960s to early 1980s Haunted Tank property. I was fortunate enough to catch up with Marraffino to talk about this new five-issue miniseries, set in modern-day Iraq. We also talked about some of his past work and influences.
Before starting the interview, here’s the core info on the Vertigo miniseries (the first issue of which went on sale on December 3): “The Haunted Tank is back in action, but this time it’s an M1 Abrams in modern-day Iraq! African American tank commander Jamal Stuart has his 21st century war ride in full battle rattle and is ready for anything – anything except the whistling-Dixie combat guru ghost who shows up uninvited!
Of course, this isn’t the first time the spirit of Confederate Civil War General J.E.B. Stuart has helped guide a tank. In times of war he makes himself available to assist his descendants in battle. Jamal Stuart, meet your forefather!”
My thanks to Marraffino for his time and Vertigo’s Pamela Mullin for facilitating the interview. Issue 2 hits the stands on January 7.
Tim O’Shea: War comics only seem to see in times of war. Not to say one is exploiting the war, but did you hesitate at embarking on a project like this?
Frank Marraffino: No, not at all. It just seemed like a pretty good story with plenty of complex dimensions worth exploring. Perhaps the fact that it addresses an ongoing war effort makes it a bit more relevant, but I think everyone hopes for relevance in their work. The Iraq War is a big important event that happens to contain all sorts of fascinating material. And you know, the earliest stories, epic poems, and ballads were all about war and warriors. One of humanity’s longest traditions is the telling of tales which celebrate the heroic spirit and memorialize fallen comrades. We’ve been weaving yarns about war for as long as we’ve had wars, and that’s a fairly long time. It’s part of what makes us who we are as a people.
O’Shea: In writing a comic set in 2003 Iraq, was there something about that particular phase of the Iraq campaign that made you set the story then?
Marraffino: Yeah – that’s when the war began, which is really the beginning of this story. Sure, the back-story goes back a century or more, but for our tank crew everything before March 2003 was just the pre-game show. How our characters perform and develop during the main event is what’s really important to them, and therefore to us also. And the ghost of Jeb Stuart doesn’t usually show up to help people out during peacetime! For full clarity of the big picture, it certainly does helps that looking back from the year 2008 we have a better sense now of how everything unfolded in 2003. The date differential allows us to comment (in a way that everyone can understand) on how easily one’s expectations about a situation can change so dramatically over time.
O’Shea: Was there any hesitancy to inject the issue of race (and Jeb Stuart’s role as a soldier fighting “the Northern Aggression” [aka U.S. civil war]) from Vertigo editorial?
Marraffino: Absolutely not. In fact, I have to imagine that’s part of the reason the book got approved! Since its inception, Vertigo has been known for its envelope-pushing titles that find new ways to examine us humans and our foibles. The dynamic between Jeb and Jamal may seem like a Hollywood-style high concept full of implied dramatic tension, but in that relationship there’s a lot of room to look at the very real ways that different people live and act and regard the world around them. Race is not the only issue that separates Jeb and Jamal. Actually, now that you mention it, I can’t remember any conversation I had with editorial where we spent any time hashing out the race issue. It was just accepted as the right direction for the book. It just made sense.
O’Shea: How instrumental was editor Brandon Montclare in developing/refining the nuances of the Haunted Tank miniseries?
Marraffino: There are a ton of important things that editors do but the most crucial is making sure that the books actually happen – and this version of Haunted Tank wouldn’t exist without Brandon. He brought both Henry Flint and myself into Vertigo, paired the two of us together, and allowed us to unleash our ambitions onto the page. Brandon also continually challenged me during the formation of the pitch to nail down and refine all the various details of the concept to help insure smooth sailing through the approval process – especially important because I’m unknown. To answer your question more directly though, it was supremely important to Brandon that the book not be so completely over-nuanced that it was inaccessible. For instance, I was interested in trying to convey that characters from very different backgrounds often don’t fully understand each other, even though they might think they do. More than once Brandon had to remind me that if the characters don’t understand each other, than it was possible that the reader wouldn’t understand anyone. The most extreme example of this was my misdirected desire for an Iraqi to curse in German! Talk about too much nuance!
O’Shea: What kind of research did you do to ensure your portrayal of Iraq was accurate?
Marraffino: Hoo boy, I looked into all kinds of stuff. Regarding the country, there was the general history of the Middle East and Iraq specifically; the capabilities of the Iraqi military and other fighters who joined in the defense against American forces; the religious, sectarian, social and economic divisions inherent in the Iraqi population; and even the terrain and topography. I also wanted to get a handle on the U.S. side of things so I read up on the Operation Iraqi Freedom battle plan, tank warfare, and how different soldiers carried themselves during this war and others. With research also into the Civil War and Jeb Stuart, I had all sorts of spicy ingredients hat were useful for creating quite the pungent bouillabaisse that is Haunted Tank.
O’Shea: Did you give any thought to the fact that Jeb fought in the civil war and some folks have considered the war in Iraq to ultimately be a civil war of its own. Is there any implied juxtaposition with those shared themes?
Marraffino: Very good point. You’ve hit upon a crucial element of the series here, and this early into the release schedule, I feel I should say only that in response.
O’Shea: Was that your or Henry Flint’s idea to have the scene where the soldiers were writing messages on the munitions?
Marraffino: I had read about soldiers doing that but Henry does overflow with ideas, from the look of the characters and the paraphernalia that they carry around with them to additional emotions or actions that appear on a page. There are a number of specific items from the actual Iraqi conflict that Henry wanted to incorporate – and the story was better for it! So look out for the Iraqi Face Cards Deck and the camel spiders! It’s only because Henry mentioned them that they made it into Haunted Tank.
O’Shea: Speaking of Flint, how crucial was his artistic style and approach to this type of tale? What values or aspects do you appreciate most about Flint’s work?
Marraffino: Everything about Henry Flint is crucial to this book. He’s changed-up his style slightly to perfectly suit this book, but it really is his approach that makes every aspect work so well. No one will appreciate as much as those of us who worked with him on this just what Henry Flint means to this book. On the surface the book looks great, but it’s really the mechanical engineering that Henry is doing underneath the surface that gets Haunted Tank firing on all cylinders because Henry is a master at storytelling. I’m talking about the storytelling that he does with his visuals – the choice of page layout and panel progression; the details he includes inside the panels that convey additional elements which occurred between panels; the facial expressions of characters, especially when they’re reacting to something said off-panel; certain visual cues that connect the unspoken dots; and subtle design elements he’s chosen that subconsciously alter the entire experience. Henry has put a lot of thought into the best way to convey information to the reader. So much so that Haunted Tank is a great read when you look at his art alone!
O’Shea: DC has a rich history of war comics, do you think it’s a good harbinger for the miniseries success that Joe Kubert provides an alternate cover for the first issue?
Marraffino: Absolutely! It would be hard to imagine much of the pantheon of DC war books without Joe Kubert’s involvement. I think it’s safe to say that his contributions have lead the campaign to keep the home fires burning in the hearts of fans who after all the years still very much want to see more of these characters. But really, any book can benefit from a Joe Kubert cover – he lends class and gravitas to any project. And I might repeat that notion in regards to the other great artists who have given their unique talents over to this series. Paul Pope’s cover is a crazy dynamic explosion. Mike Kaluta’s cover is a dreamy caress. Shane Davis’ cover is deadly serious yet slyly subversive. And Henry Flint just might have them all beat with his instantly iconic image of Jeb and Jamal back-to-back and ready to go head-to-head. A good cover can really make a comic stand out. A great cover sometimes keeps the book memorable long after the story has been forgotten. With this collection of cover artists, Haunted Tank has more than a fighting chance to win both of those battles – and maybe the entire war.
O’Shea: How did you transition from writing noir/horror comedy manga to this relaunch of Haunted Tank?
Marraffino: In a way, Haunted Tank is just a different type of noir/horror comedy. War has its own horror, with humor often used to defend against it. And in Haunted Tank we do employ noir in the strictest French definition of the word… But seriously, the formats and expectations of the two different books really did dictate a lot of the approach I took with them. The Dark Goodbye may have been one of the most Western-styled books from Tokyopop, but certain manga guidelines were definitely followed, like when I was told by my editors that I was using far too many words on the page – the idea being that the 160-page experience shouldn’t be bogged down with over-weighty word balloons that would slow the reader. I think if the same approach was used on Haunted Tank then most comic fans and especially Vertigo readers would feel ripped-off. People still expect and enjoy a complete reading experience from their 22-page individual issues – what Heidi MacDonald calls the “Satisfying Chunk.” To succeed at that meant re-thinking just how much information to include in each panel, on each page, and in each issue, and how to do it in a way that still made the book feel like an effortless read.
O’Shea: Anyone that reads your earlier Dark Goodbye work and this current Haunted Tank miniseries sees a common link: your penchant for witty dialogue. What writers and/or stories have influenced your ear for this kind of dialogue?
Marraffino: More than any particular writer, I find that immersing myself completely in specific genres really helps me build not just the voice of the characters, but of the story itself. So for the hard-boiled horror of The Dark Goodbye, I drowned myself in the angry clipped staccato found in film noir and Raymond Chandler novels, and imagined that set against the indecipherable poetical hoodoo so commonly uttered by characters in H.P. Lovecraft’s work. Those two speaking styles instantly clash and as they crash together. For Haunted Tank I watched a whole bunch of video diaries by soldiers and read lots of Jeb Stuart’s letters and field reports. Guys in the modern military often have a brisk and bawdy banter going on. Juxtaposing that kind of talk against Jeb’s Southern gentlemanly pomp might immediately seem witty even without any effort on my part. But the artists play a huge role in how I get into this stuff. The Dark Goodbye was set to be a lot more serious before I saw Drew Rausch’s hilarious character design of the main character blind drunk with an eyeball in his drink. And Henry does such a good job at expressing the characters’ anger and frustrations that it would be wasteful not to have them bickering about something.
O’Shea: I’m curious if your past work as head projectionist for the Radio City Music Hall has had any influence on how you approach storytelling?
Marraffino: Yes! The most immediate effect of working in a place like Radio City is that you’re exposed to tons of incredible stories, many due to the exaggerated larger-than-life nature of the building and the shows which take place there. It’s a pretty good sampling of all the directions possible for how stories can began and build and bluster and ultimately conclude. But also, the thing about working with a bunch of gruff stagehands is that you learn quickly that as an audience they don’t have much patience for flowery over-nuanced discourse. They’ll take their stories with short declarative sentences, thank you very much. So it’s a good lesson in attention spans, or the possible lack thereof.
O’Shea: Is there anything you’d like to discuss that I neglected to ask?
Marraffino: I’d just like to mention that the medium of comic books, at least mainstream American comic books, is very much a collaborative team effort, and it’s been amazing to find out first hand just how exciting it can be at a major publisher when the team is made up of aces who think nothing of leaving it all on the field, so to speak. I’m the rookie of this team and all the veterans in the line-up have really made me feel welcome and also excited to be suiting-up every day. Bob Schreck, who Brandon works with, made a killer suggestion about issue #1 that improved the whole issue greatly. The rendering and light-sourcing work that Lee Loughridge has done on colors has added a deep dimensionality and a rich lushness to the proceedings. Travis Lanham’s font choices and balloon placement easily endear the eye to every page. And I haven’t even begun to know all the other players who work in different departments but are crucial in fielding the team. With the talent available and willing to pitch in, you really begin to believe in all that might be possible.
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