Interview | JD Oliva
During C2E2, Kara and Matt sat down with (stood up, wrangled, it’s all the same) with some great comiXology Submit creators to talk about their books, their process, and what they read themselves. Since these interviews were done on the fly and in the heat of the con, we also transcribed these interviews. Some parts of the interview have been abridged for maximum hilarity. Enjoy!
Matt: Kara, we’re back at our podcast studio right here. We paid a lot of money for this studio. [Editor’s Note: We were in a random aisle on the con floor.]
Kara: Still haven’t gotten kicked out, let’s hope it stays that way.
Matt: The acoustics are great. JD Oliva is here. You have a book, “Deluge,” which is probably my top five Submit book. It takes place in New Orleans and everything’s flooded and there’s corruption happening. And it just knocked me over when I first started reading it. I wasn’t expecting it at all. What put you on the path to that book?
JD: Honestly, I made a short film in New Orleans in 2008. I’m from Chicago, there’s a huge film Chicago/New Orleans connection, so a lot of my friends in the business live and work in New Orleans and we were trying to make our own film with John Wesley Shipp, who actually starred in “The Flash.”
I was there for about a month, and we were literally out at the bar one night. He was telling me a story about these cops that during the flood, were going around the Ninth Ward and picking people off. I’m like, “Oh, my god, that’s a great idea for a story.” So I filed it away in the back of my head.
I remember we were out one night, might have been the same night, and I saw a cop hit a guy in the face with his nightstick. It was just a drunk guy, he wasn’t being totally over the top, but it bothered me.
I filed it away, and I took Amy Schmitz’s comiXology course. We had to write a first issue of anything. The idea popped in, and I started playing with it from there.
Quite honestly, the first issue was the easiest thing I’ve ever written. It just fell together really, really nicely. The other three were a lot more difficult.
Kara: I got to tell you the thing that really arrested my attention with this story is that, a lot of times with stories, you subconsciously, mentally say, “Oh, I can guess that this character is going to end up here, and this character is going to end up here.” Nothing, nothing I anticipated for any of the main characters, is what actually ended up happening to them.
JD: I love hearing that!
Kara: How did you avoid the cliché projection path, for the types of characters you were using?
JD: When I originally came up with the outline for it, I was going to have more of a traditional ending. The more I got into it, it just felt phony. This story takes place in the first twelve hours of the storm, and things didn’t get better after that. Things got a lot worse.
To have the happy ending, rang really false to me. It just seemed like the right thing to do with everybody. I’m more interested when people do things differently, so I went out of my way to try to avoid cliché’s.
There’s a major death at the end of issue two that most people think, “I didn’t see that coming, I didn’t see that coming.” I worried about telegraphing it the whole time. I kept thinking, “Man, people are gonna see this coming, but I gotta do it anyway, and I guess I’ll just do it.”
You never know when you’re writing, “Does this work, is this not working?” When I hear stuff like that, I’m like, “Oh cool, I didn’t suck that bad that day.”
Kara: It was bone chilling. Obviously we all hear about how terrible it was down there, when everything was flooded, and no one knew was going on. It was anarchy. You can hear that on the news and you’re like,“Oh, that’s so sad.” When you put a story to it, people respond.
Following these characters that you wrote, then having one of them try to call for back up. The person he’s calling is like, “We can’t do anything until the National Guard gets there.” Knowing that the National Guard didn’t show up, freaked me out. Even though this is after the fact.
JD: Thank you. It worked. The sad part is it’s all true. The characters are made up, but it’s all based on stuff that really happened. It bothers me in sense, that was reality less than 10 years ago.
Matt: How does that even happen a decade ago..
JD: I edited this documentary about the storm right when it happened. It was a real short little thing. It really got me interested. It was before I ever went down to New Orleans, just seeing how the system is down there is so terrifying.
My brother did sound on another documentary about the crime in New Orleans. I convinced him of window talking to the filmmakers down there, about how the system is.
Here’s Chicago, and it’s all about gang violence. It’s all about organized crime. New Orleans, It’s the Wild West. It’s, “I don’t like your shoes. I don’t like the way you look at me. You hurt my cousin, I’m going to come after you.” It’s scarier to me, here it’s all business. Down there, there’s no rhyme or reason.
Matt: It’s random.
JD: Yeah, that’s far scarier to me. It’s right for story telling.
Kara: What kind of research did you do, to make sure that you got this right?
JD: Google is amazing. I spent a lot of time reading. I read about a real FBI case, where they were trying to organize the biggest criminals in New Orleans, arrest them all in one fell swoop. This mission that I base this on, was a real thing. It all went south after the storm.
When I was researching it, it was perfect. This might have actually happened. I don’t remember exactly where I found this stuff. It might have been a Time article, but I can’t remember. It’s been five years since I did the research.
Matt: Deluge came together easily for you. What’s that process like for you, making your decision to make your own self published comic books?
JD: We had a Kickstarter in 2011, and it came through. We had a small publishing deal with our company, which never quite got off ground. I had this book done, and nowhere to put it. We did the normal things, we’re first time creators tried to put in with publishers. But… I’m a nobody. I have no background in that.
Matt: You’re somebody to me.
JD: Well, I appreciate that. ComiXology at the time, seemed so far off. It was the assumption that you have to be with a real publisher to get it there. Then when Submit came out, I had a couple friends from Comix Experience who were involved already, and John Roberts did a webinar with the Comix Experience people.
I went, “Well this is perfect. I’m just going to sit back and listen, and see how it goes, and then I’m going to jump in on that.” That’s the best decision I ever made in my young professional career.
I mean opportunities like this, coming and talking to you, sitting at a table. I’ve gotten a couple real small awards for it. Back when “Bleeding Cool,” did their Submit pick of the week, we were the pick of the week when the book first came out. I never would have had that opportunity on my own. It’s such a small sliver of success, but for a nobody from Chicago, it’s awesome.
Matt: Do you have grander plans, now that you’re getting this quote, “Small sliver of success?” Do you have, “Maybe I could do this now. Maybe I should do this now”?
JD: Definitely. That’s why I got involved with Andy Schmidt’s classes to begin with, because I want to do this. You know, I was in film for a while and I hated life. I did not like filmmaking at all. You live your dream. You work for a dream and you get it, and it’s not what you thought it was going to be. It’s like, “What do you do?”
When I was a kid, I loved reading comics and “I want to write comics and make movies when I’m…” That was unheard of in the ‘90s, and now it’s pretty common. Now I have all these ideas in my head. I have no urge to sit on a film set anymore. I want to have a family. I want to coach my wrestling team. I want to be home, and comics were just the perfect opportunity to get into that.
No, that’s 100 percent what I want to do. I’ve got another book I’ve submitted through comiXology Submit, and I’m waiting to get the final OK with it. I’ll just keep developing stuff and keep putting things out.
Kara: Cool! Really briefly, veering off of this title, you do a lot with wrestling, and Matt and I have been learning this weekend, that there’s a lot of overlap between people who are fans of wrestling, and people who are fans of superhero comics. Why do you think that is?
JD: I think they’re very similar. It’s very morality play based. It’s a lot of, I don’t want to use the corny “Good vs. Evil” terms, but there’s a lot of that involved in it. In wrestling, you’ve got your Faces, you’ve got your heels and people you’re supposed to rally behind.
Matt: It’s like shipping terms, Kara.
Kara: OK. Got it.
Matt: "Faces" would be the good guys, and “Heels” are the bad guys.
Kara: I’m learning.
Matt: I’m just so proud that I was able to tell you a term that you didn’t know, and we’ve switched roles.
Kara: He’s so excited.
JD: Like I said, it’s just the same. It’s storytelling man. It’s all the same things. It’s just wrestling is like a comic book that’s, I don’t want to say, “Brought to life,” but it’s told in a different medium, which is in the ring.
Matt: I think it’s really cool, because we go to conventions and there’s a wrestling component of it. You get to see a little bit, but I grew up on pro wrestling.
Kara, You love reading certain books. I think you would enjoy “NXT.” It’s a brand new thing that WWE has done for people who grew up on wrestling, which is very pared down. You have characters, that you know what their backstory is. Why they’re doing this, and it’s told very well. So NXT is the all new, “Marvel Now” for wrestling.
JD: That’s a really good way to look at it.
Matt: So I could give this to someone and be like, “This is why I like it, and you might like it too.” So, I think it’s interesting there are definite analogs to pro wrestling and comic books because it’s very thick.
JD: Absolutely. I was here on Friday and Road Warrior Animal was doing a panel in the main hall. I mean that’s awesome. You walk around and CM Punk is out of his wrestling career, but now he’s writing for Marvel, and there’s just so much crossover between the two.
It’s fun to see, because when you grow up in the '90s, you like comics, you like wrestling, and you didn’t know there were so many other people out there like you. And now…
Matt: There’s no Internet, it was just you and the people on your block.
JD: Exactly.
Matt: And if they liked it too, then great. If not…
JD: Right. Me and my friends would watch wrestling on Monday nights, you know, “Nitro” and “Raw.” I’d go buy comics on Wednesdays, and that’s just the way it was.
Matt: That’s the ideal life.
JD: Exactly!
Kara: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today.
JD: It’s been my pleasure. It’s great. Thank you guys very much for taking the time to talk to me. I was blown away that you asked me to.
Matt: Anytime. Anytime you want to talk Deluge, or pro wrestling, we’re available.