Josh Fialkov + Bernard Chang | KING

In this episode Josh Fialkov + Bernard Chang stop by to talk KING and Disney Imagineering.

Topics include meeting Sam Raimi, self-aware works, lush landscapes in a dreary future, living and creating in LA, classic little old lady moves, David Lynch was right, Department of Reclamation seeking to get life moving again, Karate Robot Bears, Cobra Kai, Maiolo as the third man, planning the release schedule, changing gears with a new kind of publisher, jazz analogies are the best analogies, Bernard mentions his time as a Disney Imagineer, and also what they’re reading.

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Transcription:

Matt Kolowski: Welcome everybody back to ComiXology Conversations. Kara is out on assignment. She will not be with us today, but we have two creators that I’m very anxious to speak with – Josh Fialkov of “The Bunker” and Bernard Chang most recently of “Batman Beyond” for their book “King.” Welcome back to the show.

Josh Fialkov: Hey, man. Thanks for having us.

Bernard Chang: Ditto.

Matt: The pitch for King I have to say is pretty much the greatest pitch of all time: Conan the Barbarian as directed by Sam Raimi circa Army of Darkness. Why haven’t we just been giving pitches for books and making books as “as directed by Sam Raimi”? I feel like that’s the greatest idea of all time.

Josh: Here’s my humblebrag. Sam is attached to The Bunker TV show. The first time I met him I was very professional. I really was very cool. I didn’t want to still be a nerd. There was a moment where we were standing at William Morris waiting to go down the elevator.

I leaned over and I said, “I remember sitting in the theater watching Army of Darkness and thinking, ‘That’s what I want to do with my life.’” Sam looked around and leaned back at me. He’s like, “I remember making Army of Darkness and thinking, 'This is what I want to do with the rest of my life.’”

It was a nice moment. It is. That tone and managing to do stuff that’s both actiony and exciting while also being self-aware and tongue-in-cheek is something I’m just a huge fan of. I feel like I’ve done it. I’ve done it here and there in some of my other work, like working on King and working on it with Bernard. Bernard is a laugh riot.

You might not believe it because he doesn’t talk a lot, but the things in this guy’s head are ridiculous, just so filled with oddity. It’s come together better than I can ever hope or dream.

Matt: Bernard, too, that was one of my other main points and take-aways from reading King. The future is very desolate, and King, the main character, is the last human. The world is very lush, and there are so many colorful locations and characters.

Is that what made you excited about doing this book? You can design this world, make it your own, and pretty much do whatever the heck you want with it.

Bernard: First off, when you’re working with Josh you have an abundance of material to jump off of. Also being a Los Angeles resident for the last 17, 18 years has helped fuel a lot of the design aspects or just quirky humor that goes into being an Angeleno. It had been almost a dream project from the get-go in terms of the material and the subject matter.

Josh: There’s something about living in LA. People watch David Lynch movies. You watch them and you’re like, “This is surrealism, right? This is a weird expressionistic surrealist nightmare.” I remember moving here. Literally within the first month of living in Los Angeles, I was walking in West LA.

I saw a little old lady pushing a baby carriage, pushing a stroller. In the stroller was a baby that was loudly crying. Like you do, you look at it as you’re walking by. This lady was pushing a stroller that had a baby doll in it.

On the lap of the baby doll was an old-fashioned tape recorder playing the crying. I remember standing there and thinking to myself, “Oh, David Lynch is not making expressionistic movies at all.”

Matt: It’s all real.

Josh: It’s what it’s like to live in LA. It’s this strange amalgam of people and history. The city itself already feels like all these different eras jammed on top of each other almost willy-nilly. Taking it one more step of what happens when all the people are gone and all that’s left are the monsters that destroy it?

How do they cope? Because look. The weather’s great. You’re not going anywhere. Once you level Los Angeles and unleash Cthulhu upon it, you’re not going to go to Detroit. It’s great here. The weather’s nice. There’s oranges still. It’s a little dry, but without all the people showering that will improve the drought situation a bit.

Matt: To expand on the pitch, too, King the lead character works for the LA Department of Reclamation in a not-so-great post-apocalyptic future. He’s the last human on earth he thinks, and his job is to find the one thing that could get life going again on earth.

When I first read the book, the biggest take-away and probably will be for most people were karate robot bears. I feel like that had to be the main reason to do the book just to include robotic karate bears.

Josh: That’s 150% Bernard. We got those pages and our colors. Marcelo Maiolo, our editor Paul Morrissey and I, all three simultaneously hit reply and all went, “Holy shit. That’s amazing.”

Bernard: Because it takes place in the Valley, so what’s the first thing if you think about karate in terms of the Valley? Ralph Macchio and put him in the body bag.

Josh: I don’t know if Bernard knows this. I live three minutes away from Cobra Kai. The gym that is Cobra Kai, I’m three blocks away from it. I drive past it on my way to work every day. Every day I think like, fuckin’ Johnny. The guy’s such a dick. I can’t believe he swept the leg.

Bernard: Josh brought up Marcelo Maiolo was also the third musketeer in this project. Marcelo and I have been working together for two-and-a-half, three years now. The guy is just amazing. He’s a magician and miracle worker. Again the three of us are having that kind of fun and we’re putting on some awesome great comics.

Matt: The colors really pop in the series, and it really brings you into the vibe that overall of what’s this current state of the city. What’s interesting to me as a reader, we see book launches as a new one going from a creative team. I’ve always loved Dark Horse’s miniseries model or initial limited for this arc, and then we’ll change it up.

When you guys were putting together this book, was that limited arc model in your head? Did it have a finite end, or you just want to put this arc out there, then see what happens, and see how people take to it?

Josh: I think a little bit of everything. Jet City is relatively new. Though it’s relatively new, it’s basically in the print market. They’ve been doing digital comics and stuff like that for a while now, but for them to do something print is a big step.

What I really liked about their pitch as to why we should do the book there is this understanding of “We’re giving you a platform to do something really weird.” The book is super-weird. It’s really fun. It’s action-packed, but it is totally just an oddball book. Even though I have a career filled with weird projects, and this one is pretty high up there on the weird factor.

Part of it is, let’s see if this weird thing has an audience. Then the other part is Bernard and I both have been trying to work together. We were originally supposed to work on Green Lantern Corps for DC together. I have never been as excited to write a work-for-hire project as that. A lot of that came from getting to work with Bernard.

When that stuff all fell apart, every time we see each other we keep talking about, “What are we going to do? What’s the thing we’re going to do?” A lot of the early work I was doing getting Green Lantern Corps ready was, “How do we build out this crazy world?”

Finding a way to take a lot of the feel that I wanted in that book and bring it over here has been the reward. Again, to get to do it and have it be something that we own and that we’re both super passionate about has just been so rewarding.

Matt: Now Bernard, how does it compare to you, this creator-owned book that you guys are creating, to doing work for a DC or Josh for Oni? It’s a different publisher. It’s a different kind of publisher in the print market just like you said, Josh.

What’s that experience like changing gears, a new kind of publisher whereas you’re used to doing it the same way for many years?

Bernard: Probably a little bit more like playing in a jazz band. There’s a lot more riffing going on and bouncing back and forth freestyle. We take a lot more ownership in it, too, because these are ultimately characters and solos that you end up owning yourself.

The same amount of passion, the same amount of intensity as in both. For me, it’s more about the people that you work with. Comics is a team effort. Again, I’ve been wanting to work with Josh for a long time. It didn’t work out previously. Marcelo I enjoy immensely. That man makes me look good all the time every month.

It’s more about the people. For me ultimately, at the end of the day, it comes down to who you’re working with. You want to ask me to–


Josh: –It’s a true collaboration. I did a book at Marvel that I had five artists on a 20-page comic. That book turned out OK, actually strangely, but it wasn’t a collaboration. It was a race. It was “Quick. Get everything done as fast as you can.”

I’ve done books at those companies where you have no relationship with the artist. As much as you like to think, “I am the author of this book. I am the one who created.” The fact is that whether it’s work-for-hire or whether it’s creator-owned who you work with drastically changes what a project is.

Not having a relationship with your partners on a book creates mediocre work. There are stories of some fairly famous and beloved runs of comics where the writer and artist had literally no conversations with each other, but I think that is the exception rather than the rule.

Being able to talk and being able to have Bernard say, “Hey, I think this works better” or “Hey, I don’t understand what this is” or “Hey, did you think of this?” It’s gets a better product at the end.

Matt: I know it’s a comic podcast, but I want to get even geekier, Bernard. I saw that you had spent time several years as a Disney Imagineer, concepting future theme parks. To switch gears from making a monthly comic that you’re doing now, but concepting future theme parks at Disney I feel that would have such a long, long-term payoff.

You concept a theme park, and then maybe two decades later it could get built. What was that experience like?

Bernard: It was actually a lot of fun. I had moved out to Los Angeles after living in New York and drawing comics at Valiant initially, doing some stuff for Marvel and DC. Imagineering happened. I was doing the Blue Sky design. There’s no ceiling, so you basically come up with as many ideas as you can on a particular project.

You pitch them. Then even if it’s not what the project becomes, it starts to forming the outer walls of what the inside will be. A lot of it is exploration and being forward-thinking. Parks and rides, it takes a while. I would say probably 90 percent of the things that I worked on during my time at Imagineering never got made.

There were times where for a year I’d work on a secret project that I couldn’t talk to any other employees about, other coworkers at Imagineering. If we went out to lunch and they were like, “Hey, Bernard. What are you working on today?” I’ve got to change the subject matter.

Even though we’re in the same company I can’t tell them or talk about any of the things. Pretty much after a while I ended up eating lunch by myself. It’s very isolative.


Matt: It sounds depressing.

Bernard: I worked on cool projects. I remember when I’d go into these meetings, these brainstorming charrettes, creative charrettes. Everyone sitting in the room are people that designed the rides that I went on as a kid. I was just amazed. The first thing, I don’t want to say anything that would make me look dumb in front of all these legendary designers.

I’d just listen, observe, and then try to introduce an idea that maybe they might not have thought of initially. I was always the youngest guy, too. That was a little daunting.

Matt: The sky’s the limit pretty much.

Bernard: It was fun. I was 24. I got to pitch to Michael Eisner in person, in projects. It was quite an experience. I didn’t know anything about Imagineering beforehand. I’d been to all the parks. I knew people designed the stuff, but I didn’t really understand the intricacies of the job.

They have a very secretive campus, non-descript buildings, but inside these blank exterior walls you’d go inside. There’s all these different models and drawings. It was a rich creative environment to work in.

Matt: Hopefully if people enjoy Disney, they should also check out King because King #1 is great. Josh, what do you recommend to the folks listening to check out that maybe they aren’t reading just yet?

Josh: Of everything I’ve bought over the past few months, the thing that I have spent the most time ogling and rubbing my face on is probably the…IDW did Jack Kirby’s “Kamandi Artist Edition.” Kamandi is one of those books. If you like King and have read Kamandi, you’ll be like “Oh, how pathetic. It’s the same thing.”

Kamandi is one of those books that I read as a kid. I would find random issues of it. I grew up a huge “Planet of the Apes” fan. Kamandi essentially was DC telling Jack Kirby, “Go make your own Planet of the Apes. What would your Planet of the Apes be?”

Even within that, as much as I love the Apes, Kamandi is just the most inventive, visually stunning work of science fiction that we all stay in the shadow of. Especially as we’re working on this book, I keep flipping through it.

There’s a hardcover. DC did hardcovers of the whole series as far as their Jack Kirby “Omnibus” series. There’s also like I said the giant, gorgeous full-size artist’s edition that is unreal. That is my “Go get it.”

Matt: That’s a good pick. What about you, Bernard?

Bernard: I don’t read a lot of comics these days. Maybe it will sound a little surprising, but of the comics that I do read or have read, I really enjoyed “The Winter Men.” John Paul Leon and I were best friends in high school. He is one of if not the quintessential storytellers in the business today.

There’s stuff in there that it’s not just great illustrations to look at, but it’s the storytelling that really for me evokes a lot of emotion, a lot of passion, intensity. It’s like reading a song in front of you.

That’s something that I hope we could emulate, too, in King and any work that I do, like you’re reading a song. Truly lyrical with intense emotions, crescendo, staccato all throughout.

Matt: Bernard and Josh, I appreciate you taking the time out. King #1 should be available now. We’ll have a link to it in the show notes, and we’ll talk to you guys very soon.

Josh: Thanks so much man.

Bernard: Thank you.

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