comiXology Conversations: Matt Kindt | Dept. H

In this episode Matt Kindt discusses mysteries 6 miles under water.

Topics include why Matt chose the deep frighteningly scary underwater area as his next setting, drowning, Agatha Christie, snorkeling even though we are all deathly afraid, Matt makes divorce jokes, the ultimate Aquaman story, NASA love, secret endings, keeping intrigue on the characters, DEPT H charts, time-management skills or lack thereof, painting over the masters, and what he’s reading!

Links:

• Books talked about on this show!
• Sign up for our boss newsletter!
• the comiXologist > Subscribe on iTunes
• comiXology: Conversations > Subscribe on iTunes

Transcript:

Slim: Kara, phoning in via satellite we have a big-time guest today.

Kara: Yeah.

Slim: Huge guest, second time with us, known from Mind MGMT, Ninjak, Revolver, The Valiant … one of your favorites, and now Dept. H. Matt Kindt, welcome to the show.

Matt Kindt: How’s it going? Thanks for having me.

Slim: Dept. H: Is your grand hope that this will do for comics what Jaws did for movies?

Matt Kindt: I don’t know, it’s been a different vibe to it. It’s almost like … I’m hoping to do for comics and then the water stuff like Agatha Christie did for mysteries maybe.

Slim: That’s still pretty good.

Kara: As an Agatha Christie fan, I can say two enthusiastic thumbs up at this plan.

Matt Kindt: Ah, nice.

Slim: Dept. H is billed as a murder mystery six miles deep. What made you come to this theme and setting as your next work? For me myself, I’m deathly afraid of being under water, so if I was a writer, I’d probably never choose this, but what about you?

Matt Kindt: Yeah, that’s the same with me. I’m terrified of drowning, and I’ve gone snorkeling a few times. I don’t know if you’ve ever done it, but I’m like, well, snorkeling fine. You’re on top of the water and you’re just looking down into it, but the few times I’ve done it, I put the snorkel in there and I start to hyperventilate because I can’t trust the tube, even I could just move my head and breathe. There’s something I think visceral about the water and being under it, and if you’ve ever been in the ocean and you look around, and just how small it makes you feel. All that stuff, I felt like it was things that I’ve always felt and I was trying to tap into that here and couch it like in a murder mystery and like a locked room and a deep sea base, but also just tap into that primal terror of all this water pressing down on you and it’s dark and you don’t know what’s in there. Also I don’t like walking in water I can’t see the bottom of. When something brushes against your leg, it’s a horrible feeling.

Slim: My visceral terror was last year. I accidentally threw my wedding ring into the ocean and lost it. Maybe if I become a writer I can turn that into something. Divorce, Dept. D.

Matt Kindt: What you need to do is examine why you threw it into the ocean, not that it’s lost.

Slim: We’ll save those questions for my therapist.

Kara: I was loving this first issue because I was telling Matt a little earlier that this is the kind of thing that I’ve just been expecting to see in an Aquaman comic for decades now. The ocean is horrifying, why hasn’t anyone used that aspect of it? I really liked how you took, like you were saying, drowning is a pretty common thing for people to be afraid of, no matter how rational that is. You could be in the middle of America with no ocean around you and still just be like, “Oh God, not that water,” so it was a really primal fear to latch onto with this mystery. We have questions also about the actual characters that you have in this book, not just hypothetical sea gods should be doing stuff like this. How did you arrive at Mia’s character? She’s been to space and now she’s at the bottom of the sea. Where did her inception come from?

Matt Kindt: I think just in general, since I was a kid and you watch the space shuttles go up, and I’m always like, “Oh, I hope I live long enough for them to find something alive somewhere on some planet.” I’ve read a lot of science fiction and I was always interested in that. Then as I got older, I’m like, “Boy, they’re not finding anything. Maybe there’s nothing out there.” Then I started watching documentaries. I watched this great Jacques Cousteau documentary called World Without Sun, where he builds a space down there and records the process of going down and what it’s like and all the crazy stuff and all the sea life down there. I was like, “Whoa,” so in my mind, I’m like maybe we shouldn’t be spending all that money on space travel, and finding out what’s in the ocean and discovering that.

That’s always been a weird dichotomy, I felt. I love space, it’s awesome. I love science fiction, but I also think we’re sitting on a virtual gold mine of life in the ocean we don’t even know about, because we can’t get to it or we don’t see it. I always thought that’s a fun, intellectual question to tackle, so that’s one of the themes in the book, too. It’s not just a murder mystery and she’s stuck down there and trying to figure it out, but also bigger issues like what’s most important? What’s best for the earth and humanity and all those issues as well? She actually has a brother that’s down there, so then they represent both sides of that equation. He wants to be in the ocean, she wants to be in space. She doesn’t want to be down there, so then their struggle is a way of getting into an argument about what’s most important.

Kara: This is just reminding me of the first five minutes of Pacific Rim, when the aliens came. They came from the ocean, not from the stars, because we don’t know what’s down there.

Slim: Maybe that’s the secret ending that Matt doesn’t tell us about, that it’s a Pacific Rim tie-in.

Kara: I uncovered the mystery.

Matt Kindt: I can promise you that’s not the ending.

Slim: What’s different, or difficult, rather, for her character is there’s a murder that takes place as she goes down there, and obviously everyone is a suspect, but her brother is treated as a very hard suspect. That’s got to be so difficult for her, but as a family relationship that she can just pinpoint him as a possible suspect and almost not second-guess herself, that really says a lot about her character. Ultimately, we’ll discover … eventually, I hope, is the breakdown of that family.

Matt Kindt: Yeah, I think that’s the real heart of the series, is that. It’s a family and their relationship and as brother and sister, their sibling rivalry, and then the relationship with the father, which at the end of the first issue, you realize the murder victim is her father, so she’s dealing with that loss and so is her brother, in his way. Yeah, it’s a murder mystery. It’s also a lot to do with family and that kind of thing and how she’s coping with loss also, trying to get to the bottom of it, and then her brother maybe being the suspect.

We’ll be able to go into that as we go along. The whole series is structured to be in real time, so every issue is like an hour of real time, but we’ll give little glimpses of the past, so you see them as kids and we’re going to see them with their father and in space a little bit, and we’ll get to jump back and forth the longer she’s down there, in these sort of … they’re almost like little waking fever dreams. She’s not going to sleep. For the entire series, she’s going to be awake, so she starts hallucinating a little bit and have these memories that keep popping up.

Slim: Yeah, she has … one of my favorites lines … I think this is in the first issue, I’m not sure if it’s in the second, but “death is just a consequence of ineptitude or a miscalculation.” Her character is very set in her ways, and you get to dig a little bit deeper as the series goes on in issue two about how she thinks. You just referenced it, but how difficult or important is it for you to drop enough flashbacks or fever dreams about her past and not too much at once, but to keep the reader invested in that character, while also keeping things mysterious enough?

Matt Kindt: Yeah, it’s a fine balance, and I think when I first started working on the outlines of the series, I wasn’t going to do it at all. It was just going to be all real time, we’ll never cut to anything else. Then when I got into the writing, I was like, oh, I really … there’s not much of her history, and her childhood and different things. I really wanted to see and I wanted to show and I just felt like ultimately I have to do that a little bit. You have to see a little bit of her back story, you have to see what makes her who she is, because you start out and she’s very analytical. It’s like it’s this or it’s that, I’m going to find out no matter what, so I feel like part of an interesting facet of her character is showing how she got to that, what makes her that way. Was it her father, a little bit of her mother? Then her friction with her brother, and that’s what makes it interesting, how her family has shaped her into what she is.

Kara: Each issue in this series covers a 24 hour period. Did that help you early in your planning process, to put together your long-term plan? Is there a chart somewhere with all the days meticulously planned out so you don’t lose track of your continuity?

Matt Kindt: Yeah, there’s definitely an outline with everything in it. I think it’s gone from … first it was going to be every issue was a day, now it’s every issue is an hour, so it evolves over time. Pacing out a few like this is just crazy and hard and you have to reveal things in certain times and have as big a mystery, so I’m also really paranoid about not tipping my hand too early about who did it.

I’m trying to structure the series in a way too, where the big reveal is who’s responsible, but I also wanted it to be something where you can read it and when you figure out who it is, it still holds up. It’s still good, like you want to go back and read it again anyway, even though you know who it is. That’s what I find, like a lot of great movies, they have a big twist or a big reveal … I’m trying to think … like Chinatown. You know, a bunch of movies have that crazy twist, but they’re good, like you watch it again. It’s not just about the twist, it’s not about who did it. It’s about a lot of other things, so that’s what I’m trying to do.

Slim: We already revealed that it’s the robots from Pacific Rim, so hopefully people will keeping reading, but …

Matt Kindt: Yes.

Slim: I think last year there was a preview for the series and you had talked about wanting to take the summer off, to be able to make this project happen, because you’re writing and drawing it. I’m not even sure if we mentioned that yet, but what’s that process like? You have other books out, you have work in Valiant. A lot of people know you from your Valiant stuff, but if I were a writer, it feels like it would be just so … like I would be under the Six Miles of Water stress, in order to plan writing and drawing a new project. How do you balance the time, to be able to make something like this a reality?

Matt Kindt: That’s funny, I get that question a lot, and I think the answer is something that happened to me yesterday, because I woke up and it was … my birthday was yesterday, and I told my wife, “I think I’m going to take the day off today and just not work.” Then an hour later, I was like, “You know, I think I’m going to work today.” I was thinking about this and it was like, “What can I do?” I could play a video game or I could watch a movie or I could read a book, and I’m like, “You know what? The thing I’m most excited to do is to go in and write and do some drawing and visit these worlds that I’m working in.”

I think that’s the key. It’s not really about time management or how do you balance all these things? It’s just that I love doing it. I love writing, I love drawing, so it’s like if I have a choice to do one thing, this is what I’m going to do. I think that’s really the key, is just have fun doing it. The balance to me is I try to take weekends off, because if anything, I’d work all the time every day, so I have to consciously be like, “Okay, Sunday I’m not working. I’m just leaving everything at the studio. I’m going to go home and just have a good time.”

Slim: I think the reveal too, is that if you’re ever asked that question, it means the interviewer, myself included, they’re terrible at time management and they don’t get it, so I’ve revealed myself to you, Mr. Kindt.

Matt Kindt: Oh, that’s funny. I’m definitely obsessed with it. I’ll time everything I do, and even drawing and different things, I’ll time everything. I’m constantly looking for ways to steal a few minutes here or there, or figure out a process that makes it just go a little quicker.

Kara: You mentioned your wife, Sharlene. She’s working with you on this project, and doing the water-coloring, the painting. That’s over the master pages, right?

Matt Kindt: Yes, I ink everything like I always would, so it’s not me painting or whatever, I hand it off to her and then I get to go do something else.

Kara: My next question was going to be do you provide direction, or do you just watch the magic happen?

Matt Kindt: No, I don’t watch it because I don’t want to make her or me nervous, but we have a meeting and we just talk about everything. Talk about the story, talk about what we want to do with the scenes and color and how it’s going to work with the story. I think every issue we do, it gets a little quicker because we’re starting to develop a shorthand with okay, this is the theme that’s going to be on this one. Do we want to have it more on the two color? If it’s outside or if the airlock’s filling up, we go red on certain things, so we have a meeting.

Then she goes and paints it all and then she gives it to me and then that’s it. It’s funny, because the first issue, as I was making it, I was like, “Oh, maybe I should scan these in before I hand them to her.” I’ll have the black and whites. We can print them out and she can paint them again, and then I just forgot to do it. I was oh, I guess I’m not nervous, because I forgot to paint them.

Slim: I was going to say, that’s what I didn’t … I didn’t realize, stupid me, who’s ignorant of the whole process, but I just didn’t think that her work would just be right over the master files, like God forbid … it’s just something I don’t think about anymore, is that in my head I just assume oh, they’re all scanning it in. It’s all being scanned and there’s just scans everywhere, but you’re literally working with the drawn pages and that’s it. One mistake, God forbid, and it’s either a work of art or it could be Bad News Bears.

Matt Kindt: Right. No, I think there’s something really great about it, because it’s definitely more an intimate process where she’s working off the lines I drew, and then her paint is on my lines and everything. It’s just neat when it’s done; it’s a little bit of both of us on the page, and I think it’s exciting. I think she might be a little nervous to begin with, but I’m like, "This is great. You’re not going to mess it up.” I’ve known her for … gosh, how long have we been married? Over 18 years, and I’ve known her longer than that. We met in school, and she was doing watercolors before I was even doing black and white; I was only doing them in black and white, so I know she could do it. It’s been nice to get to a point in both our careers where you want to and are able to, and actually to get finally collaborate on something.

Kara: You’ve been creating so much, working so much, you have to force yourself to take time off. Do you ever get time to read any comics? What are you reading?

Matt Kindt: Hardly ever. I was talking to another friend of mine. I was like, “You know, it’s weird. Now that I am doing comics so much, I have more comics than I could ever want or need, and I have no time to read them.” I guess I could make time, but I do … I’m trying to think. The last couple of good books I really loved were … what’s his name? Frederik Peeters. I think he’s French, and he did a book called Pachyderme, a novel, and then he also did … he’s doing a series of science fiction books called Aama. It’s spelled A-A-M-A, which are really great. It’s like weird sci-fi and then a little mystery, like David Lynch doing science fiction, in a way.

Slim: That’s a win right there.

Matt Kindt: Yeah, they’re good.

Slim: Yeah. Matt, I appreciate taking the time out today to chat about Dept. H. It’s a great first issue, and I think people that loved Mind MGMT or your work at Valiant will appreciate it, so thanks for taking the time out today.

Matt Kindt: Yeah, thanks, appreciate it.