Interview | Drew Crowder
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 Tailwand’s Drew Crowder.
Kara: OK. It’s Slim and Kzamm at C2E2. We’re here taking with Drew Crowder about his book, “Tailwands.” It’s the final day of the Con!
Drew: I know.
Matt: You are exuberant. I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how much sleep you got last night?
Drew: Tons! That’s my whole thing. I go to sleep early. Well, I wake up early. But still, I go to sleep early. Get a good night’s sleep. Let my art director do all the schmoozing.
Kara: Then you’re alive on Sunday, when everyone else is a zombie.
Drew: Yes, yes. I’m a morning person. I think that helps. We have 35 artists at Hashtag, coordinating people from all over the world. You need to have a good early morning schedule, especially when you’re talking to people that are drawing out of London, Mumbai, Philippines and that kind of thing.
Matt: Or a heavy caffeine addiction.
Drew: Right. I don’t do caffeine, I do water.
Matt: Well, that works. That works, too.
Kara: All righty, let’s talk about Tailwands. First of all, the mice-in-fantasy sub genre seems to be a recurring genre, so when I saw that’s what your story’s about, I was like, "Yes!” So, why mice?
Drew: You know it’s funny, when I was concepting the book, I saw mice. Tailwands takes place in a mystical, fantasy world called Silmay, and if you’ve seen the very, very first cover we did, there’s a weird cityscape in the background of this huge wooded area. It’s because Silmay is actually Central Park, New York.
Kara: Really?!
Drew: I was at New York Comic Con, and I was talking to Jimmy Palmiotti and Mike Richardson and Ross Ritchie and couple other guys after a panel, and I said I was gonna go for a walk. I went on a walk through Central Park, and I was like “Wow! Wouldn’t it be neat if you stepped in that puddle, and sank all the way to China?”
I was like a kid walking around, and that was how we developed our stories. So, we created a world within our world. I said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was magical mice living over there?” Then I thought that’s not a bad idea. I was sitting in my car, I write in my car.
Matt: That’s not safe at all.
Drew: No, not when I’m driving. When I get home, put my car in park, and I’ll just sit there and write. I don’t use a computer to write. I do it all by hand, and then I put in on the computer later.
That’s how it was born. I like mice as a character, because they are very passionate in their looks, and the way they act. They have a tail, which is really important for the book because it’s called Tailwands.
Kara: Exactly, which I thought was such a clever idea. Did that just come to you?
Drew: No. My dad has a big construction company, and one of the products they use is “Tailwinds.” It’s a big furniture lifeguard chair. I mispronounced it one day and I said, [laughs] “That’s the name of the book.” I didn’t do it on purpose. Everything’s been by accident.
Kara: It worked out.
Drew: It does. Sometimes when I say things, I just create a world around it, like when I was flying home from Vegas one day. We were up above the clouds and it was a full cloud cover underneath, you know when you look out the window and it’s really neat.
The sun’s setting, and I was like, “Oh, wouldn’t it be cool if a whole group of people lived up here?” and so we have a title called “Cloud Riders.” They control the weather.
Matt: The ideas just come naturally to you, it sounds like.
Drew: Overactive imagination!
Matt: I think that helps anyone that’s making comic books, in general.
Drew: I started in the film industry, so that got the wheels spinning and moved to comics because it seemed like a lot of fun.
Kara: You touched on this in one of your answers, but why do you think the mice fantasy subgenre is such a noticeable subgenre?
Drew: I couldn’t tell you. I think a lot of us have a history with adventures with those cartoons that we were used to seeing when we were growing up as a kid. There’s a lot of mice in there, you can identify with mice. They’re innocent, they’re fragile, and they’re small.
When you can make them something powerful and magical, I think it has a really cool effect on people sometimes. When they see that the little guy, the mouse…some people are mousy. They keep to themselves, and you can see that they can really blossom.
One of the reasons why I have a strong female character as the lead, is because you can see her blossom. In the first few pages of the book she calls herself a nerd. She’s quiet and reserved.
The first whole arc is called “Kaya’s Journey Begins.” As the book progresses, and we get into issues two and three, you see her blossom into this fantastic wizard of magic. It’s full of fun.
Kara: I really liked how, in the first issue, she’s definitely a kid. She’s excited to go through her magical transformation ceremony. She’s not, like you said, “A strong female character,” and a lot of people when they hear that phrase, they get an image in their head of a Lara Croft type character, and that’s not her.
Drew: I think hers is more inner strength. She’s a mouse. We’re not going to give her big guns or anything intimidating. She’s not going to have fierce looks. She’s always going to be adorable, just in her methods and actions.
The writer on that, she’s 20. She’s actually about to graduate from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Morgan Rae Myers. She is phenomenal. I’ve had her working for me since she was a junior and she’s just excellent. She’s fantastic at drawing characters like that. She does a lot of kids’ art as well. I think her art speaks really well to the whole subject.
Kara: Yeah, the look is really cute. I did notice there were a couple of predatory birds that showed up in the first issue, and the mice didn’t seem to be fazed by that.
Drew: I know. We’re all friends, right? Mice are friends with owls. How can that be? It worked along with the storyline that we didn’t actually use a lot of the natural predators. We used more of the scary characters, like snakes and frogs and toads.
The cover for issue two has one of the main baddies, and it’s just this big frog. He’s really gooey. He’s got like a broken up eye. It’s awesome. Issue two is actually done. It’s going to hit stands in about two months.
Kara: Cool. When will we see it in on Submit?
Drew: We will see it as soon as I possibly can get it up there, because we’re going to do a digital release first. So comiXology is gets all of our books first, and then we go to print.
Kara: Very cool. When you’re creating these stories that have all these different elements going on, how do you keep all of that straight?
Drew: I don’t. I write it down. Sometimes when you’re planning out an arc, or a theme over all, you start at one point and then you just go. Instead of starting at one point and having an endpoint in mind, I start in the middle and work backwards, to find the beginning. Then, I sort of meander towards the end.
I would like to keep this going. The whole issue of these, is creating Tailwands, and then creating the mini arcs within it. To be able to do three issues, three issues, three issues. These are graphic novels. The first one that we have online digitally…we’re doing a completely different system, digitally releasing.
Kara: Really?
Drew: We’re releasing 24 pages for the first one, 18 pages for all the rest, digitally. The first book is actually 44 pages long. It’s a graphic novel. The second one’s 54 and all the rest are actually going to be 54 page graphic novels. In the 6 by 9 graphic novel format for kids. Perfect bound. It’s going to be like a book. Kids love it.
Kara: Well, that’s exciting to me, when are we getting more, because I need to know what happens next!
Drew: I’ll go grab you some books. I’ll grab you the graphic novel, and you can actually read book two, because it’s in our book one.
Kara: Awesome!
Drew: You can see what happens after Kaya becomes the Tailwand. Let’s see. Where did you leave off in book one? You met Ms. Valta, right? Valta Vestada ?
Kara: We met everyone, there’s mystery happening. It ends with Ms. Valta and…
Drew: Valta and Simon.
Kara: Yes, with their Tailwands and then her daughter like…
Drew: Their tails are intertwined and they’re summoning the Guardian of the Gates, Broodva.
Kara: Then it ended and I was like, “Are you serious?”
Drew: Yes, at the bottom you see, “Mom?” Because Lucy pops in. That’s Valta’s daughter. She’s like, “Mom, what are you doing?” Because Lucy doesn’t know about Tailwands yet. It’s not common knowledge to everyone.
Most of the Tailwands know, and some of the elders of the cities know. In Boe and Broodva. That’s really fun, because now you get to see what happens after that in the book when they have to sort of explain to Lucy what a Tailwand is and how that all works.
That’s when the reader finds out how that all works. That’s how I got it out in the first book, and let everybody know this is what’s going on.
Matt: What made you want to switch from film to comics?
Drew: I worked in film finance for about five years capitalizing film funds and just doing a little bit of finance here and there. Giving money to independent filmmakers to be able to make their movies. I was helping with packaging a lot, because I worked with a lot of first time filmmakers and noticed that my favorite part was the development. I liked helping them build the movies from start to finish, and then find the financing, learning the inner workings from the back end.
Then in 2013, I went to New York Comic Con, and Buddy Scalera was doing the comic book school there. I had a bunch of panels. I didn’t leave from my seat for four and a half hours.
I saw “From Page to Panel” and I learned how a comic book was built. I saw “From Comic Books to Film.” So it showed you the good steps, on how to take a comic and make it into a movie.
I kind of reverse engineered it and I said, “You know what? I can actually probably start making comics. Really get all the stuff I loved out of doing film, and do it for comics.”
I love art. I have tons of art in my house, and I love supporting artists. So we started our art program, and Tailwands is the first book we did. I’d been working on that as a sort of film project, or kid’s book for two years up to that point. I kind of let it rip. Now we have seven titles in production. 35 artists like I said, and it’s…
Kara: It sounds like when you get an idea you really go for that idea.
Drew: Yeah. Go big or go home. That’s what I would say. I’ve been in [venture capital] for a while, and our parent company has the comics, and it’s got the movies and we’ve a couple of restaurants. It’s just a whole gambit of things that we do.
Kara: You’re doing everything.
Drew: Yeah.
Matt: Hands in everything. Do you seek things out to read now? Do you absorb a lot in comics today?
Drew: You know it’s interesting; I take inspiration wherever I can get it. I take it a lot from nature, from art that I see, I take it a lot from commissions that I get from people. I say, “Hey, would you mind putting a concept together of this?” Then they do it, and I take a little bit of inspiration from that, and then I always over compensate.
Note to self, everyone, “always overcompensate your artist when you’re getting your stuff in Artist’s Alley. Overpay. It’s worth it. It’s worth it to you, to them, everybody’s going to be much happier if you just pay them more than they’re asking.“ You have to support art.
Anyway, in creating all of these things, I like to take my inspiration from all kinds of places. Books? Sure. I love where the new art on "Hawkeye” is going. It’s so different than all of the traditional books. At our studio, we have subscriptions to every Marvel and DC book that’s out.
Kara: Wow!
Drew: So I get to see everything. Then I pick the best art, and go with that.
Matt: And you try to work with them.
Drew: Exactly, I try to work with them. For variant covers, we actually do try to get big Marvel and DC artists. Nothing against my artists. It’s really neat to see something that’s done by people who have done other things. Different styles, different art.
Kara: See a different take.
Drew: Exactly, and I’ll bring you one of each of everything.
Kara: That’s so sweet of you.
Drew: I hope they didn’t give them all away. We did this promotion this morning, where the first 30 minutes of C2E2, we called “Free 2, E 2”. We literally gave books away for half an hour.
Kara: Oh, that sounds fun!
Drew: It was fun! I loved it! People were like, “Absolutely I’d love one!” If you want more they’re over there. It was a lot of fun. This is actually our first time at a convention. C2E2 is our first convention ever.
Matt: Welcome!
Drew: Thank you very much. We’ve been having a ball. Meeting all kinds of fun people. It’s just been a truly tremendous experience. I’ve been going to conventions for a long time, covering press for our other websites. At Hashtag Studios, we have 200,000 readerships, so we go to conventions to cover that and nerd blogs.
Kara: Well thank you for taking some time out of your, very clearly, busy schedule.
Drew: I always have time to make new friends, wonderful to meet you.