Chat Log from Creative Series With @matt_sturges

Cuppycake: Matt Sturges is our guest today, he is a comic book author with many comics under his belt :)
Cuppycake: You might be familiar with a couple of them, such as the Jack of Fables series and the House of Mystery series.
vraxoin: And hopefully blissfully unfamiliar with some of the others....
Cuppycake: Matt, how long have you been writing comics?
vraxoin: I had my first comic published in 2006, which was Jack of Fables.
vraxoin: I'd been pitching to Vertigo comics for years before that, though.
Cuppycake: And there it is!
vraxoin: And I'd been writing tons of unpublished prose prior to that.
vraxoin: Including the first version of Midwinter, which is over there.
Cuppycake: Great!
Cuppycake: So, can you tell people what all the author of the comic book DOES? For example, what is the process?
vraxoin: Sure
Cuppycake: (I ask this because when I told my boyfriend we had a comic book author, he assumed you were the artist too)
vraxoin: It's much like writing a movie or television script, in that you're writing for a very small audience, which is the artist(s) and editor.
vraxoin: The scripts are broken down into pages and panels; essentially you're giving an artist a blueprint for what you want them to draw.
vraxoin: The artist acts as a sort of cinematographer, picking the shots, the angles, that sort of thing.
vraxoin: It's very much a collaboration in that respect.
Cuppycake: That's neat. :)
vraxoin: It IS neat.
Cuppycake: How do you go about picking the artist to illustrate your comic?
vraxoin: Typically in mainstream comics the artist is picked for you by your editors.
vraxoin: I'm very lucky though, because in House of Mystery .. hop over there cuppycake...I get some latitude to request artists and sometimes even get the ones I ask for,
vraxoin: In House of Mystery there's a short story each month that's self-contained and illustrated by a different guest artist each month.
Cuppycake: I liked those parts, are those mostly the "stories" that are being told in the bar?
vraxoin: But I've been very lucky in that I've gotten to work with some really spectacular artists.
vraxoin: Yes, all the stories that are told in the bar are the "inset" stories, we call them.
Cuppycake: Got it
vraxoin: But it's not alway ssomeone standing in the bar talking, because that would get old pretty fast, so we try to mix it up and do different things with them from month to month.
Cuppycake: We have a question from the audience :)
vraxoin: shoot
FatherAzerun: Hey matt, Bill jahnel -- thanks for inviting through facebook. What has been the most sensitive issue you felt you haev dealt with through comics, and which issue have you been most proud of handling?
vraxoin: Good question.
vraxoin: I think they're both the same story, which is "Maidenhead" from House of Mystery, drawn by Gilbert Hernandez. I think it's in issue 14.
vraxoin: That was a very oblique stab at cultural misunderstanding and oppression, sort of an Israel Palestine thing, but with werewolves, in an alternate history.
vraxoin: It was more about the loss of innocence, and how difficult it is to come back from.
vraxoin: Hi Bill, btw
Cuppycake: Wow. I haven't gotten that far yet. I'll be getting to that one soon :)
vraxoin: But Gilbert did a fantastic job with it -- it's one of my favorites.
vraxoin: And plus also he's a comic book legend.
Relay: Matt for me comics are comical so you can get at the really important stuff without having to confront it- - is it the same for you or what is your motivation to use comics?
vraxoin: To comic book people, comics are simply another medium.
vraxoin: You can tell any kind of story, from the silly to the serious, sacred, profane, sublime to ridiculous.
vraxoin: Comics does certain things very well.
vraxoin: Just as every medium does.
vraxoin: It's the marriage of words and pictures that makes it unique.
vraxoin: You can read the words at your own pace and participate in how those words are interpreted, as in a novel. So basically you're "performing" that part.
vraxoin: And when you're processing the images, your mind fills in the space between them, what Scott McCloud (comics guru) refers to as "closure."
Cuppycake: I actually sometimes find it difficult while reading to jump back and forth between the imagery and the text. Are there techniques used to marry the two together well to keep the reader engaged?
vraxoin: It's a skill that comics readers develop naturally -- it just takes a little while to get used to.
vraxoin: I didn't star treading comics until I was in college, so it was very odd for me at first. A little off-putting.
Cuppycake: I think I just need to read more :)
vraxoin: It was the same the first time I read manga -- translated Japanes manga reads right to left, both in the pages (you start at the back) and in the panels.
vraxoin: Everyone needs to read more comics.
vraxoin: Did that answer your question, Relay?
Cuppycake: He can't talk out here, but I'm sure it did :)
vraxoin: ok
FatherAzerun: Matt, in teh Fables Universe and other titles, one of their great strengths is teh ability to re-examine world mythos -- form incarnations of the Devil to Jack Frost. . . are there any particular world Myths you have not have a chance to tackle (say teh 7 Chinese Immortals) that you are hoping to in
Cuppycake: It was cut off
Cuppycake: But I think we can guess what he was going to say :)
vraxoin: The Fables universe is a very big one, in that it allows us (Bill Willingham mostly, but me in Jack of Fables) to appropriate from any mythology or folk tradition.
vraxoin: Which is fun
vraxoin: There are particular things we toss about from time to time. For a while we were having fun fooling around with these embodiments of literary ideas...
vraxoin: The Pathetic Fallacy, Dex the Deus ex machina, that kind of stuff, but now Jack of Fables has taken a new turn, which is that we're playing with wholly invented mythoses.
vraxoin: Mythoses? I don't think that's a word.
Cuppycake: LOL
Raph: Mythoi!
vraxoin: But there's always stuff out that we want to look into. The chinese and japanese folk traditions are ones that haven't been touched, nor have we really looked at India.
vraxoin: We try to stay away from religious things, and things that have been done to death by others, but that leaves a wide swatch of world culture to steal from.
Cuppycake: Endless possibilities, definitely.
Cuppycake: (Question from Kitty) Question for Matt: The original HoM is my all-time fav comic - I love the horror anthology format with the creepy narrator Cain. I enjoy the new format as well with the back story but would love to see a little more of the original vignettes - your perspective?
vraxoin: Lots of people ask us for more anthology-type issues, like the one we did for issue 13, and like the Halloween Annual, which comes out tomorrow (at a comic book shopt near you).
vraxoin: We love doing them, but apparently over the long haul they don't sell very well.
Cuppycake: Any ideas why?
vraxoin: And I like Fig & Co. so I'm happy to include their adventures.
vraxoin: I think primarily it's that comic book readers like continuity, and they like the creators that they like. It's hard to get a reader to keep coming back to a book month to month knowing that it's going to be something completely different each time.
vraxoin: But I certainly do love doing those short stories.
vraxoin: It's really the highlight of my career, currently.
Cuppycake: Thanks :)
mamarama: vraxoin - how do you juggle so many projects at once?
vraxoin: I work a lot.
vraxoin: A really lot.
vraxoin: I should be working right now in fact.
vraxoin: And I type really fast.
Cuppycake: Hahaha
vraxoin: I'm one of those people that can't sit still.
vraxoin: I have to be constantly working.
vraxoin: The money helps.
Cuppycake: :)
Raph: You are working, it's just marketing instead. ;)
Cuppycake: That's right!
vraxoin: Exactly!
vraxoin: I'm not so much with the business sense.
Cuppycake: Do you generally write everything out on pen and paper the old fashioned way, or use the computer? And any particular software you prefer for writing?
vraxoin: I have no use for pens.
vraxoin: Like I said, I type really fast, so much faster than I can write longhand.
vraxoin: And my handwriting is utterly illegible.
Cuppycake: You do type fast! We're going to go through more questions than most guests!
vraxoin: Recently I started using a program for the Mac called Scrivener, which is a wonderful, wonderful program for writers.
vraxoin: I write all of my comics scripts on it, and I'm doing a novel on it as well.
Cuppycake: Oh yes.
vraxoin: Highly recommended.
Cuppycake: I'm a Scrivener fan too, I hoped that's what you were going to say ;)
vraxoin: I used to do everything in MS Word, but this is so much better.
vraxoin: If you've never used Scrivener, it's very good at helping you organize information and flow the chunks of your work.
vraxoin: It's kind of a dream tool for writers, in that it lets you outline as you create; it all kind of becomes a single process.
vraxoin: I don't write outlines anyore.
vraxoin: Anymore
vraxoin: Anyore is Eeyore's cousin, I think.
Cuppycake: LOL
NeilsWonkers: I'm curious if there's a different process between Matt's prose work and his comics - like, does he read different kinds of stuff, is it a different mindset, is there a common font or muse
vraxoin: Yes, it's a very different mindset.
vraxoin: Let me see if I can work out how to describe it.
vraxoin: One thing about comics that's both a blessing and a curse is that it's very rigorously structured.
vraxoin: A standard monthly comic has 22 pages, no more, no fewer. So you have to make your story (or portion of story, since most comic stories span multiple issues) fit into that space.
vraxoin: And you're very pressed for space wordwise
vraxoin: Becuase if you have two people sitting there talking for ten pages, your readers are going to feel pretty ripped off.
Cuppycake: I didn't know that
Cuppycake: 22 pages exactly, that's interesting
vraxoin: Why do it as a comic if it's just people sitting around talking?
vraxoin: Yup. Sometimes I can get an extra page, but I always have to pay it back in another issue!
vraxoin: In a novel, on the other hand...
vraxoin: you have all the room you want.
vraxoin: Sitting down to write the new novel (which is a sequel to Midwinter over there), I had to constantly remind myself that it was okay for people to stand around talking.
vraxoin: This is what happens in novels -- people have conversations.
vraxoin: In comics you have to kind of get in and get out, stick to just the really important parts. But in prose you have a lot more leeway.
vraxoin: The downside of prose, however...
vraxoin: is that you have to describe everything yourself. You don't have an artist to make everything look pretty for you, so you have to describe your world to the reader, not just do the fun part, which is the dialog.
vraxoin: That's the main difference.
vraxoin: As far as storytelling goes, though, it's mostly the same. A story is a story.
Cuppycake: That makes sense. I'm impressed you can jump back and forth to both :)
vraxoin: There's definitely a switching cost involved.
vraxoin: If I've been writing comics all day, it's very very difficult to go into novel mode.
vraxoin, private:  done, btw
Relay: What inspires you?
vraxoin: I have no idea.
Cuppycake: ROFL
vraxoin: That sounds flip, but I honestly have no good answer.
Cuppycake: Do you read a ton of comics?
Cuppycake: Watch a lot of movies?
vraxoin: There's this great quote from Albert Einstein that goes, "What I do is, I struggle."
vraxoin: That's kind of how I do it. I grope.
vraxoin: Maybe that's what he said. "Grope." Although that sounds kind of dirty.
Cuppycake: LOL
vraxoin: I watch tons and tons of television and movies -- not haphazardly, though. There are lots of great things from England, and HBO stuff and such.
vraxoin: For TV.
vraxoin: I watch everything on DVD or Netflix now.
vraxoin: And I watch all the standard geek fare as well.
Cuppycake: Of course :)
vraxoin: I do read a lot of comics, although lately not so much because otherwise my life is just comics comics comics
Cuppycake: I can understand that.
vraxoin: And my wife doesn't read comics, so sometimes I have to venture out into the real world in order to have actual experiences.
Cuppycake: Hahaha
vraxoin: but to answer the inspiration question, there are a few things...
vraxoin: One thing is when you're working on a project, read and watch everything you can get your hands on that's sort of like that thing.
vraxoin: You can learn a ton from seeing what other people have done. You can learn what mistakes not to make, see what works, and you also make sure that you're not doing something that's already been done better.
vraxoin: And then also read and watch things that are nothing whatsoever like that.
vraxoin: If you're writing an sf novel, read Dickens.
vraxoin: If you're writing a fantasy story, read a history of WWII.
vraxoin: It's those random connections that you find doing that that can really spark things.
vraxoin, private:  done
Cuppycake: Here's a question from Raph
vraxoin: I've totally leveled up since this conversation started, btw.
Cuppycake: You’re also doing more mainstream comics these days, with stuff in the superhero DC universe (JLA, BLUE BEETLE). Do you prefer superhero stuff, or the more Vertigo-like stuff, and why?
vraxoin: I'm such an entertainment %%%!% that it's honestly all the same to me.
Raph: haha
vraxoin: That was a word that rhymes with "more" btw
Cuppycake: hahaha
vraxoin: Seriously, I like everything, so it's more like I get different things from different types of projects.
vraxoin: It's fun to write superhero comics because they're so operatic and stuff blows up and people hit people and there's like aliens and %!!!.
Cuppycake: (does that rhyme with hit?)
vraxoin: But then I also have the opportunity to write things that are more nuanced, that have a little more poetry or sensibility to them. I'm very very lucky as a comic book writer to have that kind of latitude.
vraxoin: Cuppycake: yes
Cuppycake: I bet jumping from genre to genre keeps the work from feeling stale or tiresome.
vraxoin: It definitely keeps my brain from being able to rest.
Cuppycake: Comics seem to be becoming just a factory for movies. Where do you see the business of comics and comics readership going?
vraxoin: But again, it all kind of melts together in my head alot of the tie.
vraxoin: Comics and movies, yeah.
vraxoin: I think it's a trend in the industry that grew out of a couple of different convergent factors.
vraxoin: I don't know that it's a trend that's here to stay, but it's very tempting for lots of comic book creators to jump on that train with their creator-owned material right now.
vraxoin: It happens a lot, and it seems like a lot of them get made, too.
vraxoin: My guess is that the comic provides a visual storyboard that's easy to get into and get out of, comics tend to be pretty cinematic in their conception.
Cuppycake: For sure, which of your series' would you most like to see as a movie?
vraxoin: And most comic creators are pop culture savants, so they kind of know what the pulse of the culture is.
Cuppycake: (or novels, for that matter)
vraxoin: None of my comic book series, because I don't own any of them :0
vraxoin: I think Midwinter would make a pretty good movie, though.
Cuppycake: Can you explain the ownership issue actually?
vraxoin: If you read it, think Gerard Butler in the protagonist's role.
vraxoin: Sure.
Cuppycake: For those of us (like me) who don't understand that.
vraxoin: A book like Fables is creator-owned. Bill Willingham, who writes it, own the concept.
vraxoin: So if it gets sold, he's the one that gets the money.
vraxoin: House of Mystery is owned by DC. So if someone were to make a movie out of it, I wouldn't get a dime.
vraxoin: It's a house-owned property, like Superman or Batman.
Cuppycake: Got it.
Cuppycake: So did Willingham come to you about writing for his series?
vraxoin: Yes.
vraxoin: We'd been in a writing group together called Clockwork Storybook...
vraxoin: which also included novelist Chris Roberson, and Robert E. Howard biographer Mark Finn.
vraxoin: We'd read and critiqued each others' work for years. So when he needed a writing partner for Jack of Fables, he already kind of knew what he was getting into with me.
vraxoin: I'd been pitching creator-owned books to DC for several years, and gotten very close to getting something going, but that was the first one.
Cuppycake: Thanks for the clarification :)
Cuppycake: Another question from the audience
ina: what advice would you have on writing sff short stories?
vraxoin: I'd advise you to go out and buy Orson Scott Card's two books: Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction and Character and Viewpoint.
vraxoin: Those are two excellent books that tell you really all of the stuff you can't learn from just sitting down and reading and writing lots of short stories, which is pretty much the only real way to do it.
vraxoin: Read a lot, write a lot. That's pretty much my advice.
Cuppycake: Awesome :)
Cuppycake: One quick last question from me - have you participated in NaNoWriMo? Are you planning to this year? :)
Cuppycake: (National Novel Writing Month)
vraxoin: I'm about 95,000 words into a 120,000 word novel that's due at the end of the month, so to say that I have no interest whatsoever in NaNoWriMo would a massive understatement. :-)
Cuppycake: Hahaha
vraxoin: I don't even want to HEAR the word novel until the new year.
Cuppycake: Got it
Cuppycake: One last really quick one from Relay, because I think it's a good one :)
vraxoin: ok
Cuppycake: If someone wanted to read something of yours, who hasn't before...what novel or comic should they start with?
vraxoin: Good question.
vraxoin: For the prose stuff, definitely start with Midwinter. Kind of a no-brainer since it's my only published novel.
vraxoin: For comics, if you're not into comics, try House of Mystery or Jack of Fables.
vraxoin: Superhero comics are lots of fun, but they in some ways serve the same function as soap operas.
vraxoin: So if you come in in the middle it's easy to feel totally lost.
vraxoin: There's decades and decades of history there that can make them difficult to navigate.
Cuppycake: That's my problem, I usually feel overwhelmed.
vraxoin: Of course mine aren't like that at all. I am the exception to that rule so you should go buy all of my comics.
Cuppycake: I actually found House of Mystery really easy to get into, and I'm a comics newbie.
vraxoin: (I am not the exception to that rule.)
Cuppycake: lol
vraxoin: Thanks!
vraxoin: That was definitely one of the intents behind the book.
Chat moderation has been turned off in this area. Everyone may now chat normally.
vraxoin: Fables (of which Jack of Fables is a spinoff) is an extremely accessible book for new readers, and one that I'd recommend to anyone who wants to try comics.
vraxoin: Is that it?
Cuppycake: Alrighty!
Relay: Excellent tahnks!
FatherAzerun: Thank you Matt, and continued success to you.
vraxoin: welcome.
vraxoin: Thanks.
NeilsWonkers: Thanks very much Matt.
Cuppycake: its 3pm so we'll call it :) Thank you very much Matt for coming and chatting with us.
RobH: Thanks!
vraxoin: You can follow me on twitter: matt_sturges, if you want.
Cuppycake: Raph had to AFK, but he wanted me to thank you specifically :)
Relay: Brill Vrax true inspiraton
vraxoin: My pleasure.
Cuppycake: Good luck with your novel!

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