AdHouse: Nine Years Strong

In observing the nine-year mark, Pitzer also noted it is the publisher’s “MOST productive year to date”.

Action Philosophers

Action Philosophers, the comic book series by Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey, has been adapted for the theater by award-winning playwright Crystal Skillman (who happens to also be Van Lente’s spouse). The play has been acclaimed for capturing the flavor of the comics series’ comedic exploration of several world philosophers. Action Philosophers is currently in a limited run through October 16 (Thursday & Friday at 8 pm, Saturday & Sunday at 7 pm) at the Brick Theater (in cooperation with Impetuous Theater Group). Dunlavey recently took the time to share his thoughts with me via email on the comic series’ successful transition to the theater.

When you and Fred first developed Action Philosophers, did you ever envision it being adapted for theater?

Never. I arrogantly believed that it was completely unadaptable to other mediums and it would exclusively live and die on the comic book page, but Crystal Skillman, director John Hurley and the actors have done a fantastic job of proving me wrong!

Interestingly enough (maybe only to me) Action Philosophers originally came about when I asked Crystal to collaborate on a comic with me, but then Fred got to me first!

What was it like the first time you saw characters you draw and scenes you created be performed in the theater?

Easily the most surreal experience of my life, but also really exciting! Plato was the most shocking being much more of a caricature of the real-life Plato than the other philosophers that are featured in the play. He’s become our trademark character for the series so seeing him come to life was really, really cool. It’s both a big honor and very humbling to see goofy things that I may have just doodled in a few minutes thoughtfully brought to three-dimensional life by talented people.

Is it awkward or does it make you proud to see the stories in theater form?

Both! I sat through the first performance with my arms folded but with a big grin on my face the whole time. And the audience liked it! As an artist I very rarely get direct feedback like that, and it was a thrill.

How much did Crystal Skillman consult you while she was adapting the story?

Crystal solicited my input from the very beginning but I told her I preferred to not be involved and wanted to let her and John and the actors do their own thing. After the first run-through I offered a few informal suggestions on the staging and backdrops (which John was already planning to do as it turns out), but that was it.

In terms of the characters, who do you think have flourished the most in a theater setting?

Ayn Rand had such a dramatic personal story and I think comes across better in performance than it did in the comic – She’s a real-live super villain that you actually feel sorry for. Bodhidharma and Plato have done great too, thanks in no small part to the hyper-charged performances of Neimah Djourabchi and C.L. Weatherstone, respectively. They both sell those characters better than anyone. My son LOVED Joe Mathers as Karl Marx – mostly because of the fighting, and Joe’s experience as a fight choreographer really made it work. The all-philosopher brawl at the end and the surprise guest philosopher (I won’t spoil it for you) was amazing – it wasn’t something we did in the comic and it was far and away my favorite part of the play.

Now that you have seen the play adaptation, are there narrative elements you want to borrow and utilize in your next comic?

Nope, they’re totally different mediums and have a very different set of storytelling challenges. As director John Hurley astutely pointed out, in comics events are contained in their panels but theatre is fluid – actors and scenery have to move in and out of the stage. I’ve been drawing comics for so long that I have a hard time picturing any of my ideas occurring outside of panel borders. Plus, I’m a terrible actor. Comics 4 Life!

In general, why do you think your and Fred Van Lente work together so effectively as a creative team?

We’re both insufferable wise-asses. We were friends long before we ever did a comic together – the comfort level we both had with each other and our own confidence in our own abilities definitely helped. We rarely second-guess ourselves or each other and it’s very difficult for either of us to bullshit the other.

What’s on the creative horizon for you?

I just wrapped up the art on the final issue of Comic Book Comics – the 100% true story of the American comic book industry. The last issue talks about the rise of graphic novels, Japanese comics (focusing on Tezuka), the ups-and-downs of the direct market and digital comics. In stores any day now and yes, there will be a collected edition not long after that. I’m neck-deep into the art production of The Dirt Candy Cookbook, another non-fiction comic project I’m doing with chef Amanda Cohen, owner/head chef of Dirt Candy, an award-winning gourmet vegetable restaurant in New York’s Lower East Side. It’s part memoir, part cook book, part food theory – Amanda’s been in the trenches since the start of the whole foodie fad and has some amazing behind-the-scene stories of the cutthroat NYC restaurant culture, and we’re telling it all with comics! It’s fun stuff. We also use comics in the recipes to explain and demonstrate cooking techniques. It’s 200 pages! That comes out next summer from Clarkson/Potter – I’m really excited about it! Lastly I’m writing and drawing a fiction comic for a new publisher that I’m very excited about – anyone who liked the MODOK one-shot I did for Marvel will dig this too. Sorry I can’t tell more, it’s being announced at New York Comic Con. And there’s sure to be more stuff from me and Fred very soon, count on it!

Meanwhile, over at ContainsEggs, my pals find a way to connect writer/director/actor Christopher Guest to the NFL.

The Family Fang

So last week, I ran across an NPR review of Kevin Wilson‘s debut novel, The Family Fang. The premise of the book (adult children returning to the scene of an absurd childhood where they were unwilling stars in their performance artist parents’ pieces) fascinated me. So I contacted Wilson to see if he was game for an email interview, fortunately he was. As longtime readers know, I really enjoy interviewing novelists–to get a better understanding of their craft. In this instance, when I started researching Wilson, there was an added bonus fun factor. I discovered Wilson’s wife is respected poet, Leigh Anne Couch. Couch and I went to high school together–and in fact she was one of the kind classmates who supported me in our senior year, when my father died. In fact, a few years back, Couch and I almost did an interview about her work for this blog, but family commitments (aka the birth of their child) delayed the interview. Hopefully one of these days, we’ll get back to that interview. In the meantime, I am pleased as hell to discuss The Family Fang with Wilson–I get the feeling this is the first of many creative successes for Wilson.

Tim O’Shea: Frequently I talk to authors that speak highly of the cover design for their book, but you are the first author I know to get the cover tattooed on your arm. When did you realize you wanted to commit the piece to flesh?

Kevin Wilson: I knew pretty much the minute that I saw Julie Morstad’s artwork for the cover that I wanted to get the tattoo. I thought it would be cool to get a tattoo that was connected to the novel. Before Allison Saltzman, Ecco’s book designer, showed me the cover design, I thought I might get four sets of fangs on my forearm, but when I saw Annie and Buster, I knew I wanted that on my arm.

O’Shea: With a spouse as a poet, do the two of you ever spitball ideas off of each other when working creatively? Also, as people who use their personal lives (on some level) for fodder for your creative projects, is there ever a time either of you says: “OK, this? I don’t want to see this pop up in any poems or stories.”

Wilson: We will talk to each other about what we’re working on and she’s the first person I ask for help when I’m stuck but we’re both pretty solitary artists and we like to be inside our own heads, so we use our time together mostly to talk about TV shows we are watching or about food that we want to eat, the important stuff. As far as using our own lives as material, honestly, our lives are pretty boring. Most of the time, something happens and then we both try to decide how to make it more interesting for our fiction and poetry.

O’Shea: By setting the book partially in Tennessee and at least partially in the mid-1980s, what aspects of this era and location appealed to you in terms of exploring them in your story?

Wilson: Mostly it was a time period and location that I was familiar with, having grown up pretty much in the same place and same time. So it helped keep me from worrying too much if I had the details right. Also, the Fang family is so bizarre that they seemed to transcend time and place, so even when they’re in San Francisco in the 70’s or TN in the 80’s, it still feels like a fantasy world.

O’Shea: The Fangs are performance artists. Two fold question: Did you research performance art much before starting the novel? How challenging was it to map out these performance pieces and the logistics of them, without stemming the flow of your narrative?

Wilson: I didn’t research much beyond what I already knew and loved about performance art, which despite the ridiculous nature of the Fangs, is a form of art that I think is unbelievably interesting. For the performance pieces, I tried to think of them less as works of art and more as snapshots of the familial dynamics of the Fang family. So while I wanted the piece to be successful or interesting, I mostly wanted it to reveal something essential about how these four people interact with each other. So I worked from the kernel of how it mattered to the family and then tried to build a piece that would support that idea.

O’Shea: As mentioned in this recent Memphis Commercial Appeal piece, you regard Nashville-based novelist Ann Patchett as your mentor. How has your writing benefited from knowing Patchett?

Wilson: My writing has benefited simply by having access to a writer that I consider to be as close to perfection as you can get. I was a fan of her work before we ever met, so to be able to show your work to someone like Ann (and she read an early draft of this novel and gave me really valuable advice) is such a huge gift. But, more important than the writing, being around Ann has benefited me as a person. She’s shown me how to live a kind and good life while also making space for creating art.

O’Shea: Clearly you have found success with this new novel, going forward do you intend to focus mostly on novels, or do you still have ideas you wish to explore through short stories? Also, creatively when considering ideas you want to explore, how early in the process do you realize this is an idea best suited for a novel or a short story?

Wilson: I want to do both. I like what each form allows you to do in terms of telling an interesting story to the reader. Sometimes it takes a long time before you figure out whether the idea is a story or a novel. I wrote a novel before this book that failed, until I realized it was a story and then I wrote it as a story and it turned out so much better. And the Family Fang started as a failed story about a brother and sister who play Romeo and Juliet in a high school play and it wasn’t until I figured out a larger, more interesting narrative that I realized it could and should be a novel.

O’Shea: Not many novels get such resounding praise (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, NPR, NYT, Washington Post), every novelist hopes for some praise for the work, but has it blindsided you just how much praise the book has garnered?

Wilson: I think people have expectations, realistic ideas of what will happen, and then they have hopes, fantasies of what could happen in the best of circumstances. So I had those two ideas and was prepared for either of them to happen. And then the reviews came in and people seemed to like it and I felt like perhaps I had not created a good enough fantasy for what would happen, that the reality of the situation outstripped my fantasy of what could happen. It was amazing.

O’Shea: Maureen Corrigan’s NPR review enjoyed a number of the book’s aspects, including the “loony summaries for Buster’s novels”. When concocting the summaries, were there any in particular you were more proud or most enjoyed developing?

Wilson: Those are basically books I wish I could write. They are the books I am not equipped to write, stylistically, so I gave them to Buster instead. I was a little disconcerted when Buster newest novel seemed to be the plot of The Hunger Games. I was very sick about that, but then I read the trilogy and felt like they were different enough to proceed.

O’Shea: As a comic book journalist I would be remiss if I did not ask (given your affinity for comics), if Marvel or DC came calling, would you ever consider writing for them–is there a dream character you would love to tackle?

Wilson: Everyone wants Spider-Man or Batman, but I’d like to try Aquaman for DC, a character that doesn’t really have much to do most of the time, despite being an inconic character, and I’d like to try Sub-Mariner for Marvel (I have a thing for handsome water-dwelling superheroes, I guess), who is so complicated and fun and just kind of a supreme jerk. Ms. Marvel is another Marvel character that I think is really wonderful but she doesn’t get enough to do.

O’Shea: Question in the borderline fanboy realm, how much of a blast was it to do a reading with musician Aimee Mann?

Wilson: It was very much like dying for a few seconds, seeing what heaven is like, and then coming back to the land of the living. It is so disconnected from my regular life, that it just didn’t seem all that real.

Everywhere Logo (by Andrew Wendel)

The latest installment in my ongoing effort to cover the creators of ACT-I-VATE continues this week with my interview of writer Chris Miskiewicz regarding Everywhere. Everywhere is an anthology series with a unique foundation that is discussed in our opening question. My thanks to Miskiewicz for the interview.

Tim O’Shea: In a few words, could you tell our readers the premise of The Everywhere Anthology?

Chris Miskiewicz: You wake up to find that millions of a single species have appeared EVERYWHERE around the world at the same time. It’s basically The Twilight Zone meets an Animal Disaster B-Movie Feature where each episode features a different animal disaster drawn by a different artist.

O’Shea: What motivated you to initially develop Everywhere, and how did it land at ACT-I-VATE?

Miskiewicz: The Everywhere Anthology came from a drunken conversation with artist Andrew Wendel who co-created the concept with me.

We were pitching a period piece to Vertigo Comics that was reference heavy and he got burnt out on drawing 1920’s Manhattan. So, we were at a bar and he said something about wanting to draw “some crazy shit.” “Like what?”  I asked. “Like anything. Like a Plague of Animals running everywhere through the world.”

We starting laughing about it and by the end of the week I had four episodes scripted. It was just too much fun to write these random non-related disaster tales as opposed to the longer fiction I was doing.

Once I had finished the first few scripts I shot them over to Dean Haspiel to get his opinion. He read them and came back immediately with a phone call saying, “This is an ACT-I-VATE comic.”

I met with Dean and Mike Cavallaro to talk about how we’d do it, and then I formally pitched the series a few months later with several finished episodes and it was approved.

O’Shea: Is this your first writing for comics?

Miskiewicz: Yes. Everywhere is my first published comic. (Even though my desk is overflowing with scripts.)

O’Shea: Are you a full-time writer or do you have a day job?

Miskiewicz: I’m a full time writer with a day job. I work as an Actor. I recently finished episode 4 on the new season of HBO’s “Bored to Death” and had a small part in “Please Be Normal” directed by Haik Kocharian, staring Sam Waterston. I tend to call myself a Wr-Actor as a joke. Writer/Actor…sometimes it’s funny.

O’Shea: How vastly different is this effort than your other creative writing pursuits?

Miskiewicz: It’s short content meant for the web, so there’s a quickness to the pacing of an episode that took a bit to get used to. It’s a Horror-Parody so there’s a fine line between it being completely silly, or total action. I’ve written a novel and several screenplays, but this series is probably the closest thing I’ve done to television writing, and by that I mean the quick beats.

O’Shea: Can you break down the collaborative effort when you did the installment with photocomix creator Seth Kushner? Was it vastly different than the collaborative process in the other Everywhere installments?

Miskiewicz: Working with Seth Kushner was an absolute pleasure. Seth’s known about the project since the very beginning and was a huge help in getting me in touch with a number of artists he knew from his GraphicNYC interviews.

As far as the nuts and bolts went, it was the same as every other episode. We agreed on the shots, who we’d cast, and the locations. Basically, everything an artist would do in breakdowns/roughs, but with people. I’ve worked in film in different capacities since college and this episode was just like putting any shoot together. Once it was shot the rest was on Seth, and I think he rocked it.

I truly feel that Seth Kushner is pushing the boundaries of what you can do with photocomix. I’d even dare to say that Seth is currently the pioneer of that field. We hit it off really well and are in pre-production on another photocomix project.

O’Shea: Dean Haspiel serves as editor on Everywhere, how has he helped to improve the stories with his editorial input?

Miskiewicz: Dean has edited four or five of the episodes so far, and each time he does the episode comes out better than I could have hoped. Beyond being an artist/writer/content maker, he’s got a natural talent for editing a piece and shaving it down to a clear point. I’m lucky to have his oversight on this project.

O’Shea: With the Worms chapter, when the pipe unloads worms on one of the characters, it made me laugh out loud–right before the horror aspect kicked in. Had you hoped to go for a comedic note to throw the reader off, or did I misread that scene?

Miskiewicz: Nope. You got it right. Like I said, there’s a tongue in cheek aspect to the whole anthology and Worms Everywhere was hysterical to make. Rick and I had about twenty emails going back and forth about how we’d do that story. Then Dean got involved and there was about twenty more.

Worms was the most collaborative effort for the series so far. We had three endings when Rick came back with a, “Got it! Starting now!” reply. A day or two passed and I emailed him “Which ending are you going with?” he replied, “Moo Hoo Ha Ha.” So, I had no idea.

Then, he emailed me the story a page at a time, just to kill me. Just to make me bust while waiting to see which ending he went with.

Rick Parker is a total gentleman, and it was a pleasure to work with him. I’d jump at the chance to do so again.

O’Shea: Some of the installments are in full color, while others in black and white. Do you defer to the artist’s preference on if it is color or b&w or do you make the decision partially based on what mood you are hoping to establish with your story?

Miskiewicz: A little of both. I have an idea in mind, and then I speak with everyone to see if what they’re thinking is what I’m thinking. The script usually changes a bit after they do their roughs, and then we figure out what will work best thematically to set the tone. In the end they’re drawing it so I tend to defer to whatever is easiest and most exciting for them to do.

O’Shea: Can you talk about some of the folks you’ve already worked with on Everywhere (and what qualities you appreciated about their art)?

Miskiewicz: Andrew Wendel has been there since the inception. I’m a huge fan of his art. Andrew has an eye for detail that’s just amazing.

Rick Parker, always a gentleman, had me busting up every time he sent a page.

Bobby Timony did Bunnies Everywhere. I like Bobby a great deal and always dug his artwork in “Night Owls.” We joked about doing an episode for a few months and eventually chose bunnies because he owns a gigantic bunny. (Really. It’s the size of a dog.) Once we agreed on the script Bobby had it finished in two or three weeks. The guy is a pro. Since then we’ve been goofing off on a Frankenstein idea.

O’Shea: Can you talk about some of the future chapters that are on the horizon and what readers can look forward to reading?

Miskiewicz: Okay, in no particular order:

People Everywhere by Nick Abadzis is going to add a wonderful tone to the series. I think people will like People a lot. (That’s a random sentence)

And Nick’s a friend of mine, so, its just cool to finally be working with him.

Kittens Everywhere, by Maurice Fontenot might be the funniest episode of the series. Maurice is currently known for Ghost Pimp. Kittens stars the real life British rock band, Big Linda on their way through London during a Kitten apocalypse. I personally know the members of Big Linda, contacted them about it, and got the okay to use their logo/likeness. Maurice just finished inking the episode. It’s just amazing.

Butterflies Everywhere

Butterflies Everywhere is beautiful. It’s just beautiful work by newcomer Kate Mc’Elroy, who had a back up story in Vertigo’s Fables 100. I feel like she’s really going to stand out when this goes live.

Alligators Everywhere by Chris Sinderson is also going to be a blast. It’s set in Vegas with a great Rat Pack flashback scene.

Whales Everywhere by Ashley Quigg is our next episode, and it’s got a great indie feel to it.

And I’m very excited about Bats Everywhere by Dennis Calero. It’s a great military story with lots of action twists, and millions of BATS!

Dennis just started and I can’t wait to see what he does.

O’Shea: Are you hoping to publish Everywhere as a collection at some point, or are you content with the online audience you have garnered with the stories?

Miskiewicz: I’d love to see this in print. I know what’s coming, and it’s going to make a great anthology book once it’s all together. I suppose there could be a digital download as well, but that’s still a bit away.

Overall I’ve been pleased and surprised by the attention the series is getting. My inbox has been exploding when a new episode goes up. It’s been a really positive experience.

O’Shea: Creatively what’s on the horizon for you?

Miskiewicz: I have a pretty full plate at the moment between upcoming film projects and creator owned properties that I’m developing for comics. I’ve also just finished my first novel, Allergy Season and am getting ready for everything that comes with trying to find a publisher.

I’m co-writing/producing a live action web series called, Secret Identity alongside Director Christopher Piazza, and Comedian Zachariah Durr.

And then a second web-series entitled “The Adventures of Shakespeare & Watson, Detectives of Mystery” staring theatre actor David Blatt and myself as Shakespeare & Watson.

And then I’ve written the screenplay for a science fiction photo-comic graphic novel with Seth Kushner entitled “Complex.” Seth, Dean Haspiel and I are the writers on it. It’s a very ambitious project. We’ve begun casting actors and pre-planning the shoot. When it’s shot Seth is going to go crazy warping thousands of images into a 140-page book.

And after these things, well, just a hell of a lot more typing.

This year, at a panel discussing comedy, Dorkin mentioned Kliph Nesteroff, a show business historian with a few websites (including Classic Television Showbiz) . When Dorkin mentioned that Nesteroff posts obscure videos that would have me staying on the website way too long, I doubted him.

Then I ran across this 1958 conversation between Hy Gardner and Steve Allen, which includes a link to a Allen op-ed Village Voice piece . Yes, Dorkin is right,  I will be spending a lot of time reading up

Art by Dean Haspiel (script by Stan Lee!)

So, a few months back, when I interviewed Troy Wilson about Panels for Primates, he talked about a big name creator having recently turned in a script. He would not tell me the person’s name, but merely said, the person was  ”Big, though. A dream come true.” I had no idea that by big, he meant Stan “The Man” Lee. And to see that pal of the blog, Dean Haspiel got to work with Stan on this charity effort was equally delightful. The new installment, featuring Lee and Haspiel launched today. Go. Read. Consider donating to Primate Rescue Center (and make sure to mention Panels for Primates).

Here’s some additional info to consider when checking out the story: “Other prominent contributors [to Panels for Primates] include Fred Van Lente (Cowboys & Aliens), Mike Carey (The Unwritten), Rick Geary (Treasury of Victorian Murder series), Stuart Moore (Namor: The First Mutant), David Petersen (Mouse Guard), Colleen Coover (Gingerbread Girl), Faith Erin Hicks (Zombies Calling), Carla Speed McNeil (Finder), and Roger Stern (The Death and Life of Superman). In all, 56 generous creators from seven countries have donated 127 pages of all-new material for the cause.”

But there is a bonus Talking Comics with Tim, a blast of a discussion with witty and insightful artist Stuart Immonen over at Robot 6.

In other Edmondson news, he recently tipped me off to a band called FOUND that composed music inspired by OLYMPUS, Edmonson’s project with Christian Ward.

In addition, there’s this song by Piano Player, also inspired by OLYMPUS.

Red Plains: Ranger War: Chapter 1 Avail. for free download

Back in 2009 I interviewed writer Caryn A. Tate about her webcomic, Red Plains. More recently she has decided to go the digital route with the Red Plains property. She was kind enough to recently do an email interview on the recent creative and logistical decisions she’s made regarding the series. My thanks for her time. Here is how the site is described: “Red Plains is more than a simple ‘shoot-em-up’. Influenced by film noir, the classic pulps, true crime, and, most importantly, the authentic Western lifestyle and history as lived and researched by its author, Red Plains is the real deal.”

Tim O’Shea: What was the final benefit to you that spurred your decision to explore digital distribution as an avenue for Red Plains?

Caryn A. Tate: The main reason I decided to go digital with Red Plains is simple. I love the book and I love its readers, and releasing Red Plains in a wide-spread, easy to access format like this was the best way to get these stories into people’s hands where they can read and enjoy it. The print publishing environment is filled with obstacles to independent work and the market just isn’t a healthy one right now for new titles or creators. I wanted to be sure that fans of the book can continue to read it no matter what device they prefer, and that we can attract new readers to it by offering it at an attractive price. Like, say, free for the first issue of each storyline!

O’Shea: You released the first issue of “Range War,” and first issues of subsequent storylines, for FREE, and that’s including bonus content – audio commentary by you, as well as additional art, character information and script excerpts. Have you seen an increased response since offering a chapter for free? What was the most fun or interesting aspects of recording the audio commentaries?

Tate: Yeah, we’ve definitely seen a great response already, and I’m sure it has a lot to do with those free first issues. Who doesn’t like free? The relationship between a creator and their audience is a delicate one, and I feel strongly that it’s the creator’s or publisher’s responsibility to extend a hand in good faith that show why their creation is worth the audience’s time, money, and, hopefully, emotional investment. So that’s why I made the decision to offer the first issue of each storyline for free. For upcoming stories that are only 1 or 2 issues long, we’ll be offering a nice sized free preview of the first issue for free, so that it’s still easy for folks to take a look and see if this story is for them.

The audio commentaries are a blast to record! I think the best thing about it is that I really feel like I’m just sitting down having a conversation with the readers of Red Plains, and I can finally tell them all about the creative process for each issue. Being a writer – I think any creator really, but especially a writer – is a pretty lonely job, one that is done alone, and we often don’t get to talk to readers in person to discuss what went into different stories or if they caught this detail or that one. So having the chance to have that conversation, however one-sided in this case, is pretty awesome!

Also I just really enjoy sitting down and re-reading Red Plains storylines. I sometimes get pretty tickled when I’m doing the commentaries and I think you can hear it in my voice!

O’Shea: Did you enjoy the Coen Brothers’ True Grit – or is that the kind of Western story you try to avoid crafting with Red Plains?

Tate: I really enjoyed their version of True Grit! Initially when I heard the film was being remade, I wasn’t interested, but then I saw that the Coen Brothers were directing and it had great actors in it, so I relented, and I’m glad I did. Honestly I enjoyed their version a whole lot more than the original. I’m a John Wayne fan and everything, but I never cared for the original film much. It wasn’t bad, it’s just that it wasn’t to my liking…as I’ve said many a time, I’m extremely picky with my western films, books, etc., and I would go so far as to say I’m a really tough audience for anyone making a western of any kind. So when I say I enjoyed the new True Grit, that’s saying a lot!

And no, I wouldn’t say that’s the kind of story I try to avoid with Red Plains. It all depends on execution. With Red Plains, the artists and I are careful to always portray the West as it really was – in all its glory and its horror. We don’t subscribe to any tropes that have been so unfortunately established in the mainstream for so many years. We respect the genre and the world. The characters are strong and real, with definite personalities and traits and flaws, and all of us working on the book do our damnedest to create a world that’s as real as can be while still providing a really fun, adventurous bang for your buck, so to speak.

O’Shea: What can you tell folks about the recent Christmas storyline and how long did it run? Given the noir tinge to your tales, how hard is it to mix a holiday story with noir?

Tate: It’s called “Christmastime is Here” and features breathtaking art by Gary Fitzgerald, who has worked on Red Plains before (on “Some Kind of Closure” and “The Scurvy”) and I was very happy to have him back for this tale. We released it in two parts in the month of December on Top Shelf 2.0, and I’m really proud of it. I think it’s a great example of what makes Red Plains unusual, for a western but really just in general. Despite the types of stories I normally write, I really enjoy the occasional sweet holiday movie, or book, and the idea of transplanting that kind of story into Red Plains was too tempting to resist! “Christmastime is Here” focuses on several folks in town and how they’re celebrating the holidays – including Sheriff Doles, Doug Stevens and the cowboys of the Devil’s Hed, the Escovidos, and a couple of relatively new characters we’ve only heard mention of previously. Of course, the story is probably not as peaceful and serene as the title would lead you to believe.

I actually didn’t find it hard to mix a holiday story with noir at all. With genres that I live and breathe, like noir and westerns, it’s become second nature to play around with different ideas and twists on people’s expectations. Certainly, when I’m writing a completely different kind of story I’ll draw on other influences and take completely different approaches, but for any Red Plains story, it’s there in my head all the time – whatever tale I’m working on, I’m already seeing all of the shadows, the murder, the lies, the deceit, in the background – and how it all fits in the grand scheme of things. It’s just a matter of figuring out how the characters find out about it!

Adding the Christmas theme was just a matter of focusing on a wide array of different characters (which is the norm for Red Plains) – so while that character may be dealing with some really dark, noir-ish stuff, this character here is actually having a traditional, peaceful, pleasant holiday. Basically you could say that with those characters I tried to show how everyone’s holiday should be, and over here with the dark stuff we see what happens when people get in the way of that.

Since the new year started we’ve continued with a different story called “How Jackson Spent his Summer Vacation,” with art by Patrick Bezanson, that features one of our main characters, Jackson Stevens, in prison. He’s been out of play since the end of “Range War” and while we’ve had mentions of him here and there this is story where we finally see what’s become of him since then and get a glimpse into where he’s going. It’s a lot of fun and definitely shows an aspect of the West that most of us aren’t accustomed to seeing – prison!

O’Shea: What are the plans for Red Plains in 2011?

Tate: We’re releasing more stories for sale digitally – we’ve just recently released “Nice Place to Raise Your Kids Up” with art by Larry Watts – that storyline is a huge one for the series, a big turning point in a way. We have a ton of extra content on those issues that really make each installment an exciting package.

On top of that we have a digital exclusive story we just released, called Mi Amor, and it’s with a brand new artist, Mike D. Kim. I can only begin to tell you how excited I am about this story and how great it is for folks to finally get to see Mike’s gorgeous artwork. The story is honestly one of my favorites thus far. It’s a stand alone tale, really action packed, and features Luis Escovido – and it gives you a lot of insight into this man’s character.

Plus we have a story coming up later in the year that is a huge milestone for me since I’ve been planning it for a couple of years now. It features the return of a favorite but infamous character that we haven’t seen in Red Plains for a while. Stay tuned!

O’Shea: Looking at your website, I’m curious to find out more about Sunny Bear’s Rainy Day–where are you at in the planning stages for that project?

Tate: Well the book is long since done, so it’s all a matter of re-releasing it! It’s been out of print for a few years now, and it’s definitely on my to do list this year to release it in a digital format so that we can get it back into the hands of kids wanting fun books featuring bears (always my favorite animal, next to horses, of course). And with the younger generations now being almost completely digital minded, I think releasing Sunny Bear in that format is perfect.