Comic book creator Colleen Doran has been doing A Distant Soil for over 22 years. The latest trade paperback, A Distant Soil: Coda, has just been released by Image Comics. I figured it was time to catch up with this groundbreaking illustrator to find out what the Coda is about and what she plans to do next.
Buy A Distant Soil: Coda
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?
Colleen Doran: Im just about to send off a cover to Marvel. Im going to be spending the next week working on this Manga art book so I think Ill be doing that all day.
DRE: I read about the Manga art book. What company is that for?
CD: Its for North Light Books. They mainly publish a lot of art books and how-to books and that sort of thing. I never worked for them before. They approached me about doing some how-to books and I agreed to do this one because I thought it was up my alley. I put a final proposal together and they liked it so it picked it up right away. That was nice. Unfortunately Im just so busy I dont have that much time to work on it but its actually quite fun drawing all these cute shoujo Manga pictures.
DRE: Am I crazy to say that I havent seen a lot of your Manga work.
CD: Thats okay because I dont think that that much has been published. Its funny because in the 1980s when it first started coming out, people were calling it Manga because there was so little Manga available. There were about a half a dozen Mangas that I really liked and I was always touting them and putting little in jokes in my work so people associated me with that medium for years. Ive done a few covers for Manga. About ten years ago I did some consulting work for some of the Japanese companies like Bandai when they were trying to break into the American market. They really didnt understand how the market worked and they couldnt understand why theyd spent over 15 years trying to break the American market but couldnt seem to do it. So its actually not that much of a leap for me to be doing Manga work even though very little of its been published in American comics. Ive had a couple of the Manga companies contact me about asking me to do entire books for them but I think thats something for a year from now because I dont have time to work on any other work.
I like drawing in that style. Its really fun and really simple. Since its so simple you can concentrate more on the storytelling process. My American comics tend to be very elaborate and very detailed oriented and heavily drawn while Manga tends to be all about simple lines.
DRE: When I interviewed Lea Hernandez I asked her if she anticipated in this huge rise in Manga here in America. She said Ive been telling people for years and now Im right.
CD: Yeah, I had that conversation with Heidi MacDonald last year and she said You get the last laugh. When I got into comics in the 1980s, I used more deconstructive storytelling elements and sometimes it would be very decorative. I would throw symbolism into the background and flowers would spontaneously generate from nowhere. Some of my editors would just go berserk. They hated it. Ironically Id never seen Manga until I had already been a professional for a while. I was introduced to it by Leslie Sternberg who is a cartoonist for Mad Magazine and does a lot of underground stuff. I had been incorporating a lot of elements in my work that looked like Manga without ever seen Manga because some of my primary influences were the turn of the century illustrators, art nouveau and so forth. A lot of the linear style and decorative look of illustrations in the mid 18th to mid 19th century were heavily influenced by Japanese graphic work and of course Manga didnt really exist yet. I got the Asian influence but not directly from Manga. But when I first saw Manga I was like Hey that is the look Ive been thinking about. Thats what Ive been going for. My editors told me I was crazy, that I drew like a girl and this stuff would never sell. Now whats selling folks?
DRE: Its really wild to see all the young girls grabbing Manga books off the shelves at Barnes and Noble.
CD: Its very gratifying to go to a convention now and see girls and women really enjoying comics. Its harder to get into the bathroom at the San Diego Comicon which never used to be a problem. Wed go in there and the place would echo and now you have to wait. Thats no good. But its very gratifying to go to a convention and see legions of young girls with portfolios under their arms and stacks of comic books to read. Theyre going to be creating their own work and were gong to have a lot to look forward to. Ive been hearing that some of the art schools are for the first time getting stronger enrollment from girls than boys in the comic book classes. Also is changed the whole market paradigm. Publishers can no longer say Girls dont read comics and girls cant draw comics. I know that sounds like a completely ridiculous statement but up until a few years ago women getting into comics heard it all the time. Silly as it sounds, it was that wisdom that kept editors and publishers from cultivating that audience. They didnt see any point in hiring female creators but almost nobody says that now. There a few die hard yahoos that sit in their office and grumble about how things are changing. Thats fine; theyll go of the way of the dinosaur.
DRE: Im not a huge Manga fan at all but its nice to see things change.
CD: Yeah, the irony is for all intents and purposes, Im not either. I really only like classic Manga. Im not a big enthusiast of the work thats coming out now. I tend to like the classic Manga because the storytelling density is greater. Theres more story content on a page than there is with a lot of the modern stuff. I have a certain number of books that I like very much and I tend to be drawn to them for the technical skill of the storytelling as much as anything else. Some of the stuff that comes out really is oriented for 12 and 14 year old girls and thats fine, but Im not that. But some of the more interesting material is making it over here and of course Im going to read that but part of the fallout of Manga coming over here in quantity, is that readers can afford to be discriminating. Youve got choices now but when it first started coming over, you almost felt obligated to buy anything that came out. We were like We must support the Manga, we must get it to sell in the United States and cultivate an audience. But now I go Yeah I really didnt like that book.
DRE: Just like most comics in a lot of ways.
CD: Just like anything else. Just like American comics, you get a few hot titles and theyll sell in the hundreds of thousands but when you add 500 titles in the mix and theyre all competing for the same dollars, the stuff at the top is going to be diluted a little bit. Of course the graphic novel market continues to expand so theres plenty of room for that.
DRE: Whatd you think of the New York Comicon?
CD: I really enjoyed it but unfortunately I picked up some bug like a lot of people did. So Im sitting here feeling sorry for myself. But I had a great time otherwise. Im sure that the people who were stuck trying to get in on Saturday have a very different opinion of the show. But as for being an exhibitor; it was certainly all that and a bag of chips. For a first convention, it was an amazing success. Who thought that many people would show up?
DRE: Every creator I spoke to leading up to it, didnt think it would do as well as it did. I didnt think it would sell out. I thought it was going to get maybe 75% of capacity.
CD: Thats what I thought too and then it ended up being absolutely huge. My agent was responsible for getting a lot of talent for the show and so I had a little bit of inside information about what was going on from moment to moment. On Saturday morning he came over and said Dont leave the room since they gave some of the guests vouchers for meals and expenses. I was about to leave to go get something to eat and he told me that I wouldnt be able to get inside.
DRE: I got in about 10 minutes before they pretty much shut it down. I was really lucky. I cant wait to see what its like next year.
CD: I know some people who work in San Diego and live out on the west coast and they said its just too expensive to attend. I said Well now you know how it feels for us on the east coast to have to go to San Diego. Shipping boxes of books out there costs a fortune. You have to come in really early because the whole process of setting up is quite laborious. It takes a whole extra day to get everything set up. My entire shipping expense for the New York Comicon was $60. If I dont have $600 in shipping expenses for San Diego, Im lucky. Also because San Diego is so huge and theyve always got artists alley in the middle of nowhere, no one can possibly find you. But the New York Comicon is still small enough that if youre in artists alley, youre fairly centrally located. It doesnt cost that much to display so theres no need for the average artist to pay almost $2000 for a booth like you have to in San Diego to get a decent location. Im going to skip displaying in San Diego this year.
DRE: Youve been doing A Distant Soil for so long, how far in advance do you know whats going to happen?
CD: I know how the series ends and volume four just came out. Im working on volume five which will end the story. Its going to take a while to get this one out but I do have like half of a prequel done. When its all said and done its going to go from volume zero to five. Im going to be like 947 years old before I finish the series.
DRE: How many years has it been with the book?
CD: I dont even like to admit that. Its been a long time and it feels a little strange because when youve been with something for this long, you almost cant conceive of it not being a part of your daily life. But I guess Im going to have to get used to it at some point.
DRE: What company was it with when you first started?
CD: I self-published part of it in the very beginning and that was when I was a teenager. I went to a couple of small presses but it didnt work out. Then I completely threw out everything Id done before and started all over from scratch with self-publishing in the 1990s. Then I went to Image who I am still with. Ive actually been with Image longer than anything else.
In fact I actually got ambitious fairly recently and tried to take over a lot of the operations and do them in house here. Image had been doing all of my design work and putting the books together and I was doing the art and editing and putting the books together. I had an acquaintance who swore up and down hed be good at it and all he did was take off with the original art. It was an absolute disaster. He was supposed to design the new graphic novel, the one that just came out. I trusted him with a couple of small jobs previously and it went pretty well but unfortunately my trust was misplaced.
DRE: What a bizarre thing for someone to do. Was that his plan?
CD: I dont know. Its actually one of the funniest weird things Ive ever been through. Of course I found out later he has a tendency to get involved with artists and build himself up as somebody who can really help the artist. Then you give him some property, pay him some money and he takes off.
DRE: He cant sell any of this stuff. Does he have a huge vault somewhere?
CD: He actually did sell some of my art over in England. The guy from England contacted me and asked if this guy should he have all of this stuff. I said that he definitely shouldnt. We were able to send some threatening letters and I was able to get some of my stuff back. I havent been paid back any of my money and Im still missing some of the art. I talked to a lot of artists about this guy. Jeff Smith had an entire issue of Bone disappear and James Owen said he had an entire issue of a book disappear. He handed it to somebody to do some construction work on it and that went away. Apparently it happens all the time. Ive been waiting for stuff from this guy for about two years now.
DRE: On a happier note, so many women have become very popular in comics since you started.
CD: Yeah, when I first got into comic, it really didnt occur to me that there would be a stigma about being a woman cartoonist because I remember seeing Romana Fradons work on Superfriends comics when I was a little girl. In particular I remember looking at the Mighty Marvel calendar for like 1980 or something and it had the birthdays and pictures of people that worked at Marvel and there were a lot of women on there. I figured there must be a lot of girls who work in comics already so when I did start trying to get into comic I was surprised at the amount of resistance. Early on, youd get jobs but it would be like the all girl issue of Wonder Woman. It was irritating and tokenism but at the same time, it was the only way to get your work seen. Eventually it paid off but I started campaigning to get work on anything that was not characteristic of being a woman cartoonist. I would avoid jobs like Barbie.
DRE: Im sure you were offered stuff like Barbie all the time.
CD: I swear, all the time. I knew that if I started taking jobs like Barbie, theyre going to be the only jobs Im going to get so Id better just say no. That turned out to be a good strategy because in the end I stopped getting jobs like Barbie.
DRE: What is the exact plot of A Distant Soil: Coda?
CD: Its a continuation of the story so far. This young girl, shes 15 years old but looks about 12. She was born the heir to this alien religious dynasty and she has the power to draw on forces all of her people and use it as a weapon. Its the ultimate weapon for this totalitarian government of this world which is very glamorous on the outside but very corrupt on the inside. Now theres this little kid sitting on the throne of this planet and shes basically the atom bomb. She has the ultimate power but doesnt have any way to control it and shes surrounded by these people who keep her under check and manipulate her and pull her strings to make sure she does what they want. As we go into this new volume, shes faced with the dilemma of what to do. Does she allow herself to be used this way or does she find some way to get out of this situation?
DRE: Whats the book youre doing with J. Michael Straczynski?
CD: Its called The Book of Lost Souls and its a series from Marvels Icon line which is their creator owned books. It is about a young man named Jonathon who we meet when hes standing on the edge of a bridge about to jump off. Its about 1890 and hes lost the love of his life. Shes gone off to marry somebody else who had money. His family disapproves of his artistic ambitions, his school kicks him out, he cant get a job so he decides to end it all. So he jumps off a bridge and he dies. The next thing we know, hes walking along the shore in the 21st century and hes been cast with the job of ushering lost souls to their fate. We dont really know if he works for the good guys or the bad guys. Even though the first couple stories have happy endings, not everyone gets a happy ending in this book. Hes sometimes charged with the task of aiding lost souls who probably ought to stay lost because theyre not necessarily very nice people. Theres a great deal of angelic war in this. Its got a Sandmanesque feel to it but its definitely not Sandman. I really enjoy working on this book.
DRE: Are you considered the co-creator?
CD: Well Im the artist. Straczynski is really the creator. He contacted me about being the artist on it and I had to audition and the whole nine yards but it is fun. Hes actually given me a lot more leeway as the series goes on than he did in the beginning. Hes like I have a vague idea, come up with a character.
DRE: I never heard of auditioning for a comic book, whats that process?
CD: I had the first three scripts to read and I had to do a few pages of finished art and based on the art, I got the job. There were other artists up for the job but I got it which was very nice. Its something I think Im really suited for. Its something grounded in the real world with heavy fantasy elements.
DRE: Are auditions for comics a common thing?
CD: Not usually. Usually somebody just calls me up and says they want me to do this or that. Ive had to audition a few times so I dont mind doing it. Im not a snob. Ive heard some people rail against it but, for crying out loud, Bette Davis used to audition. If its good enough for Bette Davis, its good enough for me.
DRE: Im sure you didnt audition for Warren Ellis to do Orbiter.
CD: Yeah, he just called me up for that one but occasionally I do audition. I dont always get the job. I think I auditioned for Xena [Warrior Princess] comic. I did spot on portraits and it turns out thats not what they wanted. I think they told me they didnt want to pay the actors. Then there was a World Wrestling Federation comic that I auditioned for. Im so glad I did not get that job. I did not want it.
DRE: Im sure it probably just paid too much not to go into the audition.
CD: I auditioned for it because my agent got me the gig and he said it was going to pay a lot of money. I really dont want to do it but I thought I should at least give a shot but my heart wasnt it in. I was glad not to get it.
DRE: Your fan base would have been like Huh?
CD: Yeah, it was not for me. But occasionally I get offered jobs and I just cant take them. I got offered a job to do some ads for the show 24 for a Japanese company. I couldnt take it because they wanted six pages in a week and I didnt have time to do it. So you dont win them all. It would have been really brutal but it was so much money it would be worth not sleeping for a week but frankly Ive got pneumonia.
DRE: Are you in any way excited by the idea of A Distant Soil ending to do other stuff?
CD: I basically do A Distant Soil in my, ha ha, spare time. I dont actually have a lot of spare time. Im working on another graphic novel with Warren Ellis. Ive been offered a couple of things at Vertigo. I only do A Distant Soil when Ive got time to spare and I just dont have that much time to spare right now. That basically just gets done on weekends or if I have a couple hours in front of the television. If anything, its nerve-wracking getting to the end because when you spend years and years working on something, people expect a big payoff. What if they dont like the ending? Its going to be a disaster but I cant really let it get to me. I just have to keep going and finish it. But as for other opportunities, Ive got more work than I can handle.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Buy A Distant Soil: Coda
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?
Colleen Doran: Im just about to send off a cover to Marvel. Im going to be spending the next week working on this Manga art book so I think Ill be doing that all day.
DRE: I read about the Manga art book. What company is that for?
CD: Its for North Light Books. They mainly publish a lot of art books and how-to books and that sort of thing. I never worked for them before. They approached me about doing some how-to books and I agreed to do this one because I thought it was up my alley. I put a final proposal together and they liked it so it picked it up right away. That was nice. Unfortunately Im just so busy I dont have that much time to work on it but its actually quite fun drawing all these cute shoujo Manga pictures.
DRE: Am I crazy to say that I havent seen a lot of your Manga work.
CD: Thats okay because I dont think that that much has been published. Its funny because in the 1980s when it first started coming out, people were calling it Manga because there was so little Manga available. There were about a half a dozen Mangas that I really liked and I was always touting them and putting little in jokes in my work so people associated me with that medium for years. Ive done a few covers for Manga. About ten years ago I did some consulting work for some of the Japanese companies like Bandai when they were trying to break into the American market. They really didnt understand how the market worked and they couldnt understand why theyd spent over 15 years trying to break the American market but couldnt seem to do it. So its actually not that much of a leap for me to be doing Manga work even though very little of its been published in American comics. Ive had a couple of the Manga companies contact me about asking me to do entire books for them but I think thats something for a year from now because I dont have time to work on any other work.
I like drawing in that style. Its really fun and really simple. Since its so simple you can concentrate more on the storytelling process. My American comics tend to be very elaborate and very detailed oriented and heavily drawn while Manga tends to be all about simple lines.
DRE: When I interviewed Lea Hernandez I asked her if she anticipated in this huge rise in Manga here in America. She said Ive been telling people for years and now Im right.
CD: Yeah, I had that conversation with Heidi MacDonald last year and she said You get the last laugh. When I got into comics in the 1980s, I used more deconstructive storytelling elements and sometimes it would be very decorative. I would throw symbolism into the background and flowers would spontaneously generate from nowhere. Some of my editors would just go berserk. They hated it. Ironically Id never seen Manga until I had already been a professional for a while. I was introduced to it by Leslie Sternberg who is a cartoonist for Mad Magazine and does a lot of underground stuff. I had been incorporating a lot of elements in my work that looked like Manga without ever seen Manga because some of my primary influences were the turn of the century illustrators, art nouveau and so forth. A lot of the linear style and decorative look of illustrations in the mid 18th to mid 19th century were heavily influenced by Japanese graphic work and of course Manga didnt really exist yet. I got the Asian influence but not directly from Manga. But when I first saw Manga I was like Hey that is the look Ive been thinking about. Thats what Ive been going for. My editors told me I was crazy, that I drew like a girl and this stuff would never sell. Now whats selling folks?
DRE: Its really wild to see all the young girls grabbing Manga books off the shelves at Barnes and Noble.
CD: Its very gratifying to go to a convention now and see girls and women really enjoying comics. Its harder to get into the bathroom at the San Diego Comicon which never used to be a problem. Wed go in there and the place would echo and now you have to wait. Thats no good. But its very gratifying to go to a convention and see legions of young girls with portfolios under their arms and stacks of comic books to read. Theyre going to be creating their own work and were gong to have a lot to look forward to. Ive been hearing that some of the art schools are for the first time getting stronger enrollment from girls than boys in the comic book classes. Also is changed the whole market paradigm. Publishers can no longer say Girls dont read comics and girls cant draw comics. I know that sounds like a completely ridiculous statement but up until a few years ago women getting into comics heard it all the time. Silly as it sounds, it was that wisdom that kept editors and publishers from cultivating that audience. They didnt see any point in hiring female creators but almost nobody says that now. There a few die hard yahoos that sit in their office and grumble about how things are changing. Thats fine; theyll go of the way of the dinosaur.
DRE: Im not a huge Manga fan at all but its nice to see things change.
CD: Yeah, the irony is for all intents and purposes, Im not either. I really only like classic Manga. Im not a big enthusiast of the work thats coming out now. I tend to like the classic Manga because the storytelling density is greater. Theres more story content on a page than there is with a lot of the modern stuff. I have a certain number of books that I like very much and I tend to be drawn to them for the technical skill of the storytelling as much as anything else. Some of the stuff that comes out really is oriented for 12 and 14 year old girls and thats fine, but Im not that. But some of the more interesting material is making it over here and of course Im going to read that but part of the fallout of Manga coming over here in quantity, is that readers can afford to be discriminating. Youve got choices now but when it first started coming over, you almost felt obligated to buy anything that came out. We were like We must support the Manga, we must get it to sell in the United States and cultivate an audience. But now I go Yeah I really didnt like that book.
DRE: Just like most comics in a lot of ways.
CD: Just like anything else. Just like American comics, you get a few hot titles and theyll sell in the hundreds of thousands but when you add 500 titles in the mix and theyre all competing for the same dollars, the stuff at the top is going to be diluted a little bit. Of course the graphic novel market continues to expand so theres plenty of room for that.
DRE: Whatd you think of the New York Comicon?
CD: I really enjoyed it but unfortunately I picked up some bug like a lot of people did. So Im sitting here feeling sorry for myself. But I had a great time otherwise. Im sure that the people who were stuck trying to get in on Saturday have a very different opinion of the show. But as for being an exhibitor; it was certainly all that and a bag of chips. For a first convention, it was an amazing success. Who thought that many people would show up?
DRE: Every creator I spoke to leading up to it, didnt think it would do as well as it did. I didnt think it would sell out. I thought it was going to get maybe 75% of capacity.
CD: Thats what I thought too and then it ended up being absolutely huge. My agent was responsible for getting a lot of talent for the show and so I had a little bit of inside information about what was going on from moment to moment. On Saturday morning he came over and said Dont leave the room since they gave some of the guests vouchers for meals and expenses. I was about to leave to go get something to eat and he told me that I wouldnt be able to get inside.
DRE: I got in about 10 minutes before they pretty much shut it down. I was really lucky. I cant wait to see what its like next year.
CD: I know some people who work in San Diego and live out on the west coast and they said its just too expensive to attend. I said Well now you know how it feels for us on the east coast to have to go to San Diego. Shipping boxes of books out there costs a fortune. You have to come in really early because the whole process of setting up is quite laborious. It takes a whole extra day to get everything set up. My entire shipping expense for the New York Comicon was $60. If I dont have $600 in shipping expenses for San Diego, Im lucky. Also because San Diego is so huge and theyve always got artists alley in the middle of nowhere, no one can possibly find you. But the New York Comicon is still small enough that if youre in artists alley, youre fairly centrally located. It doesnt cost that much to display so theres no need for the average artist to pay almost $2000 for a booth like you have to in San Diego to get a decent location. Im going to skip displaying in San Diego this year.
DRE: Youve been doing A Distant Soil for so long, how far in advance do you know whats going to happen?
CD: I know how the series ends and volume four just came out. Im working on volume five which will end the story. Its going to take a while to get this one out but I do have like half of a prequel done. When its all said and done its going to go from volume zero to five. Im going to be like 947 years old before I finish the series.
DRE: How many years has it been with the book?
CD: I dont even like to admit that. Its been a long time and it feels a little strange because when youve been with something for this long, you almost cant conceive of it not being a part of your daily life. But I guess Im going to have to get used to it at some point.
DRE: What company was it with when you first started?
CD: I self-published part of it in the very beginning and that was when I was a teenager. I went to a couple of small presses but it didnt work out. Then I completely threw out everything Id done before and started all over from scratch with self-publishing in the 1990s. Then I went to Image who I am still with. Ive actually been with Image longer than anything else.
In fact I actually got ambitious fairly recently and tried to take over a lot of the operations and do them in house here. Image had been doing all of my design work and putting the books together and I was doing the art and editing and putting the books together. I had an acquaintance who swore up and down hed be good at it and all he did was take off with the original art. It was an absolute disaster. He was supposed to design the new graphic novel, the one that just came out. I trusted him with a couple of small jobs previously and it went pretty well but unfortunately my trust was misplaced.
DRE: What a bizarre thing for someone to do. Was that his plan?
CD: I dont know. Its actually one of the funniest weird things Ive ever been through. Of course I found out later he has a tendency to get involved with artists and build himself up as somebody who can really help the artist. Then you give him some property, pay him some money and he takes off.
DRE: He cant sell any of this stuff. Does he have a huge vault somewhere?
CD: He actually did sell some of my art over in England. The guy from England contacted me and asked if this guy should he have all of this stuff. I said that he definitely shouldnt. We were able to send some threatening letters and I was able to get some of my stuff back. I havent been paid back any of my money and Im still missing some of the art. I talked to a lot of artists about this guy. Jeff Smith had an entire issue of Bone disappear and James Owen said he had an entire issue of a book disappear. He handed it to somebody to do some construction work on it and that went away. Apparently it happens all the time. Ive been waiting for stuff from this guy for about two years now.
DRE: On a happier note, so many women have become very popular in comics since you started.
CD: Yeah, when I first got into comic, it really didnt occur to me that there would be a stigma about being a woman cartoonist because I remember seeing Romana Fradons work on Superfriends comics when I was a little girl. In particular I remember looking at the Mighty Marvel calendar for like 1980 or something and it had the birthdays and pictures of people that worked at Marvel and there were a lot of women on there. I figured there must be a lot of girls who work in comics already so when I did start trying to get into comic I was surprised at the amount of resistance. Early on, youd get jobs but it would be like the all girl issue of Wonder Woman. It was irritating and tokenism but at the same time, it was the only way to get your work seen. Eventually it paid off but I started campaigning to get work on anything that was not characteristic of being a woman cartoonist. I would avoid jobs like Barbie.
DRE: Im sure you were offered stuff like Barbie all the time.
CD: I swear, all the time. I knew that if I started taking jobs like Barbie, theyre going to be the only jobs Im going to get so Id better just say no. That turned out to be a good strategy because in the end I stopped getting jobs like Barbie.
DRE: What is the exact plot of A Distant Soil: Coda?
CD: Its a continuation of the story so far. This young girl, shes 15 years old but looks about 12. She was born the heir to this alien religious dynasty and she has the power to draw on forces all of her people and use it as a weapon. Its the ultimate weapon for this totalitarian government of this world which is very glamorous on the outside but very corrupt on the inside. Now theres this little kid sitting on the throne of this planet and shes basically the atom bomb. She has the ultimate power but doesnt have any way to control it and shes surrounded by these people who keep her under check and manipulate her and pull her strings to make sure she does what they want. As we go into this new volume, shes faced with the dilemma of what to do. Does she allow herself to be used this way or does she find some way to get out of this situation?
DRE: Whats the book youre doing with J. Michael Straczynski?
CD: Its called The Book of Lost Souls and its a series from Marvels Icon line which is their creator owned books. It is about a young man named Jonathon who we meet when hes standing on the edge of a bridge about to jump off. Its about 1890 and hes lost the love of his life. Shes gone off to marry somebody else who had money. His family disapproves of his artistic ambitions, his school kicks him out, he cant get a job so he decides to end it all. So he jumps off a bridge and he dies. The next thing we know, hes walking along the shore in the 21st century and hes been cast with the job of ushering lost souls to their fate. We dont really know if he works for the good guys or the bad guys. Even though the first couple stories have happy endings, not everyone gets a happy ending in this book. Hes sometimes charged with the task of aiding lost souls who probably ought to stay lost because theyre not necessarily very nice people. Theres a great deal of angelic war in this. Its got a Sandmanesque feel to it but its definitely not Sandman. I really enjoy working on this book.
DRE: Are you considered the co-creator?
CD: Well Im the artist. Straczynski is really the creator. He contacted me about being the artist on it and I had to audition and the whole nine yards but it is fun. Hes actually given me a lot more leeway as the series goes on than he did in the beginning. Hes like I have a vague idea, come up with a character.
DRE: I never heard of auditioning for a comic book, whats that process?
CD: I had the first three scripts to read and I had to do a few pages of finished art and based on the art, I got the job. There were other artists up for the job but I got it which was very nice. Its something I think Im really suited for. Its something grounded in the real world with heavy fantasy elements.
DRE: Are auditions for comics a common thing?
CD: Not usually. Usually somebody just calls me up and says they want me to do this or that. Ive had to audition a few times so I dont mind doing it. Im not a snob. Ive heard some people rail against it but, for crying out loud, Bette Davis used to audition. If its good enough for Bette Davis, its good enough for me.
DRE: Im sure you didnt audition for Warren Ellis to do Orbiter.
CD: Yeah, he just called me up for that one but occasionally I do audition. I dont always get the job. I think I auditioned for Xena [Warrior Princess] comic. I did spot on portraits and it turns out thats not what they wanted. I think they told me they didnt want to pay the actors. Then there was a World Wrestling Federation comic that I auditioned for. Im so glad I did not get that job. I did not want it.
DRE: Im sure it probably just paid too much not to go into the audition.
CD: I auditioned for it because my agent got me the gig and he said it was going to pay a lot of money. I really dont want to do it but I thought I should at least give a shot but my heart wasnt it in. I was glad not to get it.
DRE: Your fan base would have been like Huh?
CD: Yeah, it was not for me. But occasionally I get offered jobs and I just cant take them. I got offered a job to do some ads for the show 24 for a Japanese company. I couldnt take it because they wanted six pages in a week and I didnt have time to do it. So you dont win them all. It would have been really brutal but it was so much money it would be worth not sleeping for a week but frankly Ive got pneumonia.
DRE: Are you in any way excited by the idea of A Distant Soil ending to do other stuff?
CD: I basically do A Distant Soil in my, ha ha, spare time. I dont actually have a lot of spare time. Im working on another graphic novel with Warren Ellis. Ive been offered a couple of things at Vertigo. I only do A Distant Soil when Ive got time to spare and I just dont have that much time to spare right now. That basically just gets done on weekends or if I have a couple hours in front of the television. If anything, its nerve-wracking getting to the end because when you spend years and years working on something, people expect a big payoff. What if they dont like the ending? Its going to be a disaster but I cant really let it get to me. I just have to keep going and finish it. But as for other opportunities, Ive got more work than I can handle.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
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[Edited on May 19, 2006 by Ainur]