In this episode Chris and Gabriel walk the redacted line.

Topics include pop culture mixing, non-fitted metal suits, breaking stereotypes, creative synthesis yes, Guyver, redacted teasers, backmatter bonuses, space invasions, mutant animals, space navy special ops teams, and what they’re reading.

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Transcript:

Matt Kolowski: Kara, we’re broadcasting live from podcast lair in San Diego Comic-Con. First, welcome.

Kara Szamborski: Welcome, yes.

Matt: We have special guests, legends. We have Gabriel Rodriguez, legendary artist, “Locke & Key.” Welcome.

Gabriel Rodriguez: Thank you very much.

Matt: And the big boss over here, Chris Ryall, the IDW CCO. I don’t know how you find the time to do anything.

Chris Ryall: I would just say legendary is a bit appreciated but unnecessary hyperbole at this point.

Matt: You guys just got done signing. We had a great turnout, and Onyx was the variant cover that you guys were signing.

Chris: Yeah.

Matt: You guys have worked together in the past, but what made you want to collaborate on Onyx, specifically?

Chris: The funny thing is that we’ve worked together for probably 10 years, but we’ve never created a thing ourselves. We’ve done adaptations of a Clive Barker novel, a Neil Gaiman movie, or a George Romero movie, these different things along with way, but we’ve never had a thing that was just ours.

Once Gabriel became exclusive to us and “Locke & Key” came to an end, we were talking about various options of what to do next. We shared so many pop culture touchstones and things that we like and have grown up on.

We just started talking about what we want to do, and we both gravitated toward the idea of this science fiction series. The talks developed from there, and then it became more and more real, to where now we’re signing copies of the actual printed comics.

Matt: Was “Rom, SpaceKnight” the kind of book that you gravitated towards? What was the specific genesis of, “This is the book we want to make.”?

Gabriel: It’s a lot of different influences, but I guess it’s all swirled around the stuff that we like about pop culture of the ‘80s and '90s that we wanted to take back and refresh with a new vision. It started with stuff like “Rom,” the “Aliens” movie, or stuff like that – Predator. There’s some of that in Onyx, too.

Mostly, we wanted to do something fun, something outrageously adventurous. In a way, we were discussing several times that we think that somehow the sense of fun in adventure comics was sort of lost, and we tried to recovered that with a new vision, and we entered this one.

I’ve been wanting to do science fiction comics since five or six years ago, and never got the chance to do it. When Chris and I started discussing doing something together, we put everything we wanted to do right now into this book, and we’ve been having a blast doing it.

Chris: I do talk about “Rom” all the time. That was certainly one thing that I grew up on and that I really liked, but it always felt like every Cyborg character or every android character was a male, like, “Why does it have to be a male?”

Also, if we do have a female character, the suit shouldn’t be fitted. A space suit or an astronaut suit is just a thing that fits a human.

We wanted to make sure that this wasn’t a thing played for stereotypical gender roles. This is a character that comes down in a metal suit, but there’s nothing that cues you into the fact that we’re trying to use a female character in a way that sort of felt cheap. It was that’s just who this character is.

Gabriel: There are lots of traditional icons that inspired Onyx, I think, in ways not just comic book references, but the idea behind the myth of Minerva and Ishtar. Historical characters like Cleopatra or Boudica are into the character the Onyx to take us a strong female role in the lead, in a way that’s not enhancing her femininity, but other stuff, also, as a human person, even though she’s an alien.

That’s the role we wanted to explore and to approach in the design of the character in a non-stereotypical way, trying to do something new and refreshing to the approach.

Chris: The amazing thing about the Internet is I grew up in California. Gabriel grew up in Santiago, Chile, and yet we share so many of these pop culture touchstones, as I was saying. The fact that we could take our entire lifetime of consuming pop culture, whether it’s comics, movies, TV, or whatever else it is…

Gabriel: Or music.

Chris: Yeah, and it all channeled into this, and there were so many overlaps, similarities, and things that we’ve always loved and wanted to do, that it all just poured into this book.

Gabriel: It was sort of fun, also, that when we started talking about this book, Chris had this idea for this character that we started developing as a character for another series, as a secondary character. Then we’re like, “This is really cool. We have to put it in its own book.”

Then we sort of fused that concept with an idea I had to make adventure into a mutant jungle on earth in the future. [laughs] They both retroactively fit each other, so…

Chris: Any time you fit a mutant jungle into a story, I feel like that’s a benefit for everybody.

Kara: Space-suited alien, not human.

Chris: Yeah, exactly.

Kara: What was that creative process like? Did you write the script first, and then do the art? Or, did you do a little bit of both?

Chris: I almost always work traditionally full script with Gabriel in the past projects we’ve done and other artists I’ve worked with. But this one is probably the most organic project I’ve ever done. It started with a dialogue. It was back and forth like, “Wouldn’t this be cool?”

“Yeah, but what about this?” and then traded emails back and forth to where we were like, “Well, this isn’t a traditional writer-artist thing. This is where we’re both telling a story.” It’s where I’m not kind of outlining, based on our conversations, how I see the overall issue flowing. Then Gabriel is doing the pacing and the storytelling.

It’s very much like the old Marvel style of description of just describing what you want to happen on the page, and per issue, Gabriel will pace it out, send me the pages. I then dialogue them. It’s just constant back and forth, and it’s, like I say, an almost organic and enriching way of telling a story.

Gabriel: We were trying to make the process part of the fun of doing it. We tried to try something creatively different than everything we’d done before. It has been a very inspiring experience for both of us.

Matt: I think the first time I really started to notice recently would be creators credited as storytellers was Mark Waid and the artist team that he had on that like Samnee.

It was the first time I really took notice, where it was a true collaborative process where you’re having interactions while you’re making it, and the artist is impacting the way it’s flowing. I guess it’s hard for a lot of fans to realize that that happens in a lot of books now.

Chris: Yeah, and that’s really the way comics should come together. When I’m writing full script, I would always lead every script with, “You’re the artist. You know better. Make the visual choices that help tell the story better, whatever you see fit,” but a lot of times, since it’s written as a full script, the artist is good about adhering to that full script.

It shouldn’t be a thing where you’re relegated to roles. It should be a thing where you’re each playing to your strengths, doing what you do best, and letting the other person do the thing that they do. So, there’s a shared trust in me knowing what Gabriel can do.


Gabriel: The team effort is the key for doing the best possible comic. That’s the way I approached the creative process since I started working with Chris. Then with Joe Hill, the way we were working in “Locke & Key,” it’s always the idea that everyone in the team tries to make the best possible book. Any suggestion that you can give to the other members of the team to make it better, it’s welcome.

In a way, in Onyx itself, I started realizing that, for example, at the beginning, I draw the armor of Onyx with a lot of details about reflections of the armor and everything. Then I realized that Jay’s photos didn’t use that to color the character, so I dropped that, and it started looking better.

You, as an artist, have to realize how to feed yourself with what the colorist is telling you, what the writer is telling you, the way the balloons are placed. It’s all part of the same process. If you keep it organic, fun, and focused on bringing out the best possible page, I think that’s the ideal way to work in this field.

Chris: Without being a cartoonist who’s bringing a singular vision to life entirely on their own, this is the closest that multiple creators collaborating can come to that process.

Matt: Do you remember you were talking about other movies that involve suits. Do you remember the movies that were on Sci-Fi all the time, Guyver?

Chris: Yes.

Matt: Do you remember that?

Gabriel: Guyver was also a reference for me. I’ve never seen, I’ve never read an entire Guyver story, seen a complete manga, but I know the character and I love the way the Guyver and Ultraman, even Gillian are into what fed Onyx. It’s all there.

Matt: Subliminally, I noticed that while I was reading it. Then, as I’m walking the Con floor, I saw a life-sized head of Guyver. I was like, “That is like exactly what reminded me while reading Onyx.” It was so hilarious that I saw it out of nowhere.

Gabriel: What has been fun for us is that Onyx seems to remind people a lot of different things. I think that’s a good way to get it. If it only recalls one character, that would be, “Nah, this is not exactly something original,” but when something recalls different things for different people, according to their own experiences, it means it’s appealing to them.

That’s very rewarding for us as creators of this new character.

Matt: There were definite scenes, like you referenced “Predator” or “Alien.” You totally get that vibe, too of the rough-and-tumble army team squad that’s the elite team, and they’re intercepting something that they’re just not familiar with.

Chris: You do, but I’m very wary of and I’ve been very careful with not trying to go down the road of the James Cameron “Aliens” Marine team. He did that. The last thing anybody needs is a Vasquez rip-off, because it very much feels of its time, and then there have been so many iterations since then.

I wanted to introduce the team in a familiar fashion, because any Marine team or military team being sent in is going to have some similarities to other teams. From there and in subsequent issues, we definitely try to push things in different directions. It’s not just people being able to go, “Oh, that’s character’s this one and this is the tough guy.” We didn’t want to make it that simple.

Gabriel: We’re sort of playing with that. In a way, we tried to present this group to encourage certain prejudicial recall of other stuff, and then surprise the readers when what’s going to happen to these characters after. We’re playing that…

Chris: They’re certainly not all warriors. One of the main characters is a telepath who spent most of her time in isolation, so she doesn’t fit in with the team. They’re not a well-oiled team of soldiers who have fought in battle together. They’re people that were pulled together because this was a very specific mission.

They don’t necessarily get along, they don’t necessarily mesh together, and so, like I say, things very much develop in those lines of future issues.

Kara: I like how, at the back of this issue, there were very brief characters bios, but not about all of the members of the team. Some of them, they just said, “Information redacted.” I’m like, “Well, now I want to know more.”

Chris: I’m a big fan of…I grew up reading letters, pages, and so any kind of bonus content in comics, to me, is just another thing that helps build reader loyalty, and just gives you that bonus beyond the story. Sometimes you get through the 20-some pages of story and you go, “Oh, that’s it?” If we’re giving you Gabriel’s process in the art work, or a little bit more on the characters…

Gabriel: It’s a way to keep expanding the concept and the characters in every possible part of the book itself. It’s how to use the back pages, the cover, and everything to say something. I read a couple comments on the Internet about people that really appreciate the forward page that’s in the back of the cover that they introduce people in the world of Onyx in a very specific and brief way, but it seems to be very effective for the readers.

Chris: It’s funny, too, because monthly comics can be hard to remember what you read last month. If I read a book now and it doesn’t have that page, I literally get annoyed. Like, “I love this book, but I need that page.”

Matt: There was a much loved editor at Marvel back in the '80s who said, as a creator, you need to very clearly think that every issue is somebody’s first issue. If you make it so incomprehensible that they can’t follow or they have to know everything that came before, you’re going to lose them.

Chris: That’s why things like the introductory paragraph, what’s come before, the character bios, all of that, just to help people stay fresh, because it’s kind of egocentric to assume that everybody can remember every detail about the character, about the comic. Everybody is reading multiple comics, so whatever you can do to enhance that reading experience, we’re going to try and do.

Kara: It’s like TV shows, “Previously…

Chris: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah, exactly right.

Kara: "Previously on Onyx.”

Matt: How long do you guys envision…when you sit down together and plot out a new series, how big is your grand vision for a series at that point?

Chris: We kept our grand vision a bit small this time, because we thought, with any new series, you never know if it’s going to find a place in the market. The first story line is four issues. From there, as these things go, the story ends, and then…

Gabriel: We have ideas to keep expanding the universe around Onyx, but…

Chris: They’ll have to tell us they want that, first.

Gabriel: Yeah, it’s all up to the readers at this point. We’re crossing our fingers, doing our best work.

Matt: You already have, helping, two great points. You have the intro page and you have the back matter, which are two of our favorites for any book.

Chris: Now, we just need to catch you on the story, too.

Matt: Yeah, that’s right.

Kara: Who cares about the story? You have those two things. I don’t need anything else. Readers, if you like space invasion..

Chris: Mutant animals.

Kara: …mutant animals on earth, space Navy teams helping to protect the planet. I think we just got the entire demographic of people who were raised in the '80s.

Matt: Absolutely. We keep this interview segments super short. We don’t want to keep people’s attention too long, but I appreciate you guys taking the time out. The signing went great. I’m real excited for people to sit and read that, and discover something they haven’t read before.

We wish the best of luck to you guys with Onyx. It’s a great book.

Gabriel: Thanks for inviting us. Thanks for the interest and the support on our new book. We’re glad to be here. Thank you very much.

Matt: Appreciate it. Thanks, guys.

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