Interview | Jim McClain and Rose McClain

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 our interview with SOLUTION SQUAD’S Jim and Rose McClain!

Matt:  We have some special guests. We have Jim McClain and Rose McClain from Solution Squad. It’s probably one of my favorite ones because it fills a hole in comics that I probably have never read on or seen before which is educational, and you can get all ages interested in the book with math, which I totally wasn’t expecting at all.

How did you think of that going in? Was that your goal to fill that void in comic? Can you talk about how you came to make the book?

Jim:  Yeah, it originally started out as me doing worksheets for my class. I’m a 7th grade math teacher by trade, and I would use Superman, Batman, Wolverine, X-Men to make math problems that were interesting to the kids and engaging.

When I realized that Marvel or DC probably won’t let me do that, I started making my own characters. Then it became, “You know what, I could make a workbook of all these activities.” Then it became “Oh, I could make a comic book of all these activities.”

Right about that time, Rose was in college, and she was starting to demonstrate some really good art skills, and I said “I know who I want to draw my book.”

Matt:  How did that dynamic work? Were you just like, “I’m into drawing and this is a really cool idea..”

Rose:  Well, I went to school for art and my sophomore year and I decided that I wanted to get into comics specifically for the type of stories that I wanted to tell. I was posting an ad online and I hadn’t really talked to Jim in a while. Our family is kind of drifted apart.

But he’s somewhere where he was thinking about Solution Squad and it just happened to converge at that point. So he asked me to draw Solution Squad and I was like, "Yeah, comics is actually what I wanted to do.”

Matt:  Jim, have you brought it into your class like the finished product? Have you shown the finished product, they love it, what’s the experience been like?

Jim:  Well, yeah, but not just that. I let them in on the process as I was making it.

Kara:  Oh, really?

Jim:  Sure. Every time I do activities with the characters, “I don’t think that character should look like that.” I will take that and put, “OK, let’s fix that.” I will make notes and make adjustments to suit my students’ interest. They are the target audience.

Kara:  That’s cool that you got that real time feedback with what you were working on.

Jim:  Absolutely. They got to see the pencils. They got to see the inks, the got to see the colors. They even got to see the lettering.

Kara:  You seem to have very fleshed out backstories for each of your characters, and the back of the Solution Squad book is just all these really detailed character bios. Was that a really important part of the process for you before you started writing the actual story, or did that just spring from the plot?

Jim:  That is actually how I started. I started by having worksheets with activities with the characters and then I gave them these detailed back stories to give them depth.

I actually made a mini comic just using paper and a stapler and a photocopy machine that had all those origin stories in the back. It was just a little eight page comic that I handed out to them. Since I’m using school resources, I just gave them out. It didn’t cost me anything except to buy the stapler.

I was always a fan of the Marvel Universe and their Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe back in the early 80s’ because you got to know everything you wanted to know about the characters. I knew if I was going to do with this 24 comic page story, and I wanted teachers to use the characters. They need to know more about the characters. I wanted to be sure to include that.

The fun part of it was getting some of my favorite artists to do the character portraits like George Perez. That was just the best experience.

Rose:  It also fills the gap between reading and math. You can draw a lot of problems coming from the character’s’ background themselves. Like you said that you can draw math problems from characters, their staff, their height and their weight.

Also for the characters to just experience it and also get to a little bit of depth than just “this is the girl that can use fire and ice”. “This is the girl that can fly or run really fast”.

Jim:  It makes a nice selling point too for a parent who is reluctant to buy comics for their kids. I flipped it over to the back side because it’s a flip book. One side is story, and the other side is origin stories. I pointed out, here’s 5,000 words of text. We are not going to finish this in 10 minutes.

Matt:  Yes! That first bio page was very text heavy and looking at it at that angle, it makes sense like you want them to become engaged. You want them to continue reading and really just be involved in that process. Like I said earlier, I don’t think there is a book like that on comiXology Submit.

What made you get into comics? What were those books?

Kara: Comics and math, both of those together.

Jim:  Here’s where I expose my age. I watched the Batman TV Show when it was in prime time.

Kara:  That’s beautiful. You are like a Batman hipster.

Jim:  I am that old. I watched the Batman TV Show on Prime Time in the ‘60s. Batman comics taught me to read, Batman along with Superboy. I always wanted to make a comic book since I was a little, little kid, and so this became my opportunity.

I’ve created heroes before with role-playing games with stuff like that, but these resonated with me. Once I created these characters, I actually hear them have conversations in my head now. I know what each one would say about any circumstance that comes up, that for me, it makes them real.

Kara:  Do you have a favorite character?

Jim:  "Radical" is my favorite. Radical is a time traveler from 1984, I have to explain that first to give you context. He’ll use slang than none of the rest of them do. The rest of them are fairly straight laced, “Here we go about our business.” But Radical would say, “Bogus” or “Groovy.”

He’s a time traveler. He would use slang from any era he has visited. He’s my outlet for my culture. My kids don’t relate to it because my students were born after 9/11 for goodness’ sake.

Matt:  What about you, Rose?

Rose:  I think that a lot of the influence of my interest in comics came from his passion of comics when I was a kid. Also, I used to read the Archie Sonic comics, which is a franchise based on something that I already love. I went into comics already liking the Sonic video games. And also… was it Disney Adventure Magazine?

Kara:  Yes! I read the Lilo and Stitch comics.

Rose:  Yeah, a little mini magazine came out and they have the comics on the back and that got me really interested because the illustrations were gorgeous.

Matt:  Were you someone that took those pages and started tracing over them or started doing your own version? When did that start?

Rose:  I traced them sometimes, but it was just like trying to emulate it on my own. You get a feel for the lines when you trace but then you also like to create your own thing where you try to do it, but not trace. That didn’t really turn out all that well for me when you’re like nine, but.

Matt:  What would be like in a few years from now or few months from now like what do you want to be doing art wise? Where do you want to be?

Rose:  I want to be doing my own comic. I’ve got some stuff planned that I’ve written and drawn on my own, but I eventually want to self publish. Right now, I’m also working on some projects for Gene Ha.

Matt:  How cool!

Jim:  Rose also has her own web comic that she works on in collaboration with a bunch of others called Scoundrels with Space Pirates and her stories are really, really good.

Matt:  I love Space Pirates.

Rose:  Yeah, it’s the bunch of us got together and decided we wanted to tell a story, but we wanted to tell it between our different characters. We each created a character and then more of a universe for them to reside in, and then we just kinda connected the dots. Each of us does an issue about our characters and a bunch of us meet up and cross over to everybody else’s story.

Kara:  Oh, very nice.

Rose:  It is kinda like the CrossGen comics back when those were big thing, but in space.

Kara:  I think if you add “In Space” at the end of anything, everyone’s interest is immediately there. They are with you.

Matt:  "Batman 66 in Space.“

Kara:  "In Space!”

Matt:  What do you read now?

Jim:  Not a bunch of super comics strangely enough. Let’s say I’m not really happy with the direction that DC and Marvel had gone in but I read Darwin. I read “Velvet”. I read “Invincible” because I don’t mind him messing around with his own character. I do mind when they mess around with my own characters. I consider Batman and Superman are my characters, but he messes around with “The Invincible.” And it makes a pretty compelling story.

The Star Wars books are fantastic. These are the Star Wars comics I wanted when I was 13 when Star Wars came out.

Matt:  Stuart Immonen is taking over the main Star Wars main title, I think, in a few months. I can’t wait to see his art on that. He’s one of the best out there, period.

Jim:  I’ve been impressed with all of them so far.

Rose:  I don’t really read that many superhero comics either. “Invincible” is one that I really like, so I think it breaks the mold on everything else on what’s going on. I read a lot of webcomics, just the kind of community that I’m involved in. The Meek is coming back from the hiatus. What else?

Jim:  "Unsounded.“

Rose:  "Unsounded,” by Ashley Cole. There are so many webcomics out there. It’s good to explore them all.

Kara:  All right. I had an important question about “Radical” your favorite character. Is there an upcoming confrontation between “Radical” and his evil arch nemesis “Badical?" 

Matt:  Kara has been waiting to ask that question for hours.

Kara:  It came to me. I just looked at Matt and I was like, "I have it.”

Jim:  That’s something you wanted to look into.

Matt:  For files that await the trash bin.

Rose:  He has to write his own comic book but his own version.

Jim:  Yeah.

Kara:  I really enjoyed it. It was a fun book, and I never really consider myself a math person. I have difficulty with the abstract number concepts and being able to translate into a way that was comprehensive. I have seen a few examples of stories over the years where people try to take math and turn it into something that can be conceptualized. I think this book was really a good example of how that can be done well.

Jim:  Thank you. Well, wait until you see the next story that comes in the hardcover when they have to solve the train problem because they have one train pursuing another train.

Kara:  Oh!

Jim:  You know when you have those when you were a kid, it’s like, “Oh, no not that.”

Jim:  I think the visual way that we describe how you can figure out that problem will appeal to lots and lots of people over the line.

Kara:  All right. I can’t wait.

Matt:  Yeah. Jim, Rose, thank you very much for talking with us. I think Solutions Squad is a great book. It’s hugely important so I appreciate you guys taking the time out.

Jim:  Thank you for having us.

Rose:  Thank you!

(Source: SoundCloud / comiXology)