Interview with Matt Kindt, Part 2 of 2

How did you come to design Lost Girls, for which you won a Harvey Award?

Chris and Brett at Top Shelf had recommended me to Alan [Moore] and Melinda [Gebbie] as someone that could achieve the sort of antique look and feel they wanted for the book. They trusted Top Shelf, so I ended up working on it. I think I was a good candidate also, because I was flexible — and could do a lot of different production things.

Did Moore and Gebbie already know they wanted LG to look like children's books when you accepted the assignment, or did you collaborate on that? How much input did you have?

I really didn't have too much input. They really had a specific idea of what they wanted and they would spell that out. Then I would give them several different options to choose from and we would go back and forth a few times until they were happy.

The idea was to have it look like an old children's book or an old-fashioned storybook from the 1920s. I actually scanned in textures and pages from vintage books to get the texture onto the covers and have it look a little more authentic.

There's a darkening of tone in the Super Spy works. To what do you attribute that? Is it the absence of Hall?

I would say yes to that. Jason was definitely injecting a lot of humor and jokes into PWTYM and while that was fun, it wasn't exactly my style or the kind of mood I wanted to set. I like humor but I like it to be organic — something that is funny because of the natural circumstances of the situation — or something that is funny and strange but real at the same time. As much as I like clever dialogue and the snappy patter of old movies it just isn't natural for me to write like that.

Wordless sequences are really fun for me to do. A lot of times I'll have a scene with words and dialogue and then once I start drawing it, I just strip out the words. I think as a writer there's a tendency to over-write things for comics and the words just don't add anything. I've been buying up a lot of those Marvel Essentials volumes with the black-and-white reprints — and for the most part, they're unreadable. There is SO much dialogue and explanatory text — and it all repeats the image in the panel. Now, at the time, I'd read that stuff as a kid and it worked great. A lot of it has to do with being a kid too — I was getting my comics off of a magazine rack at the grocery store. So that three or four comics would have to last me a long time — so all the words and detail, it was great. On the other hand, having double-page spreads and no storytelling at all doesn't really work either and that happens a lot in modern comics.

I also think that wordless sequences can sometimes be more emotionally effecting too. Especially if used sparingly to sort of underline an emotional moment.

But I can't let that question go without giving props to the silent issue of G.I. Joe — issue #21 maybe? I can't remember but reading that as a kid was a revelation.

I've gradually worked my way up — on Pistolwhip I was using a #0 and for 2 Sisters I used a #1 and then for Super Spy and the books I'm currently working on, I'm up to a #2. I can definitely attribute that to my friend here in St. Louis, Brian Hurtt. We will hang out and work on our separate comic projects and talk a lot. Sometimes about comics and our process — and he was using this fat #2 brush — but then he was showing me how you still get the fine points and lines but you also get a nice wider variation since it's bigger. I've been using the #2 ever since.

I find 2 Sisters very Hitchcockian, with its use of dramatic irony and its questioning of identity. Was that intentional?

Well, I always like a good twist ending and it's hard not to compare it to Hitchcock —but truthfully, I didn't think about him until after it was done. I'm a big fan and I'm sure part of my subconscious channeled him. But that can also be a kind of trap — if you're known for that sort of twist, then you have to keep coming up with it every time which I don't necessarily want to do. All of my stories have a little twist, but I try to keep it more human, you know? Maybe a revelation about a person's character or feelings but not like "they were on Mars the whole time!" kind M. Night Shyamalan type of twist.

I really hope that doesn't come off as a trick — and I know it can. I just feel like, as a reader I don't want to just have some bomb drop out of nowhere and then this character is gone. To me it's just more interesting and hopefully builds a little more tension as you read it. Okay, here's a bomb. Here's a character I care about. Why are you showing me both simultaneously? Uh oh. That's kind of the effect. I think Chris Ware can be a little guilty of that at times. I think the narrative and emotion are masked by the structure and style of his storytelling. I happen to like that — his stories become entertaining because they're like puzzles to be solved in a way. I guess I'd like to harness some of that structure but make it a little less puzzle-like and a little more intuitive. Part of me just gets bored with linear storytelling. When everything is linear, stories just seem too plotted out. You've got the intro, rising action, climax, and then resolution. Most stories have that and my books do as well, but I think audiences are so used to that pattern, that anything that came mix it up a little is good.

We had Ella's name picked out a long time before she was born. We loved the name. When I was choosing character names for 2 Sisters I wanted names that could be read forward and backward (to sort of simulate how the book worked). So ANNA and ELLE were easy choices. Strangely though, for the french translation, "Elle" means "girl" in French so I had to change the name to "Ella". Oh well!

I really just start out with the characters. Then I think about their situation and what they would do. A lot of Super Spy just "happened". I created characters and their situations and then they just started to naturally bump into each other. The mother was escaping Germany and so were the children's book authors. They end up being on the same boat and never meeting. I never start out with "how can I get Spider-Man and Hulk to fight?" But I like making those tentative connections between characters if I can so that was always in the back of my mind — to kind of draw all the chapters of Super Spy together into a larger theme and purpose.

When it originated, what was the scope of the Super Spy project? For example, did you know that 2 Sisters was the groundwork for Super Spy, when you were creating the former?

Super Spy originally started as a piece for an art show — the 12 comic strips that link to the briefcase (in Super Spy). It was a stand-alone piece designed so you had to hunt for that last missing comic-strip panel to get the end of the story. There was a secret code in place of the panel that told you where in the art gallery to find the last panel. So it was fun to watch people from a distance wander around and hunt for that last piece. And then when they found it, I had a small print-version of the whole story as the "reward". So it started there and then I was working on a book about two sisters that gradually morphed into a spy piece set in WWII. Then by the time I was finished I had ideas for how it could be a larger world — so the title of 2 Sisters — on the cover it actually says "A Super Spy Graphic Novel".

You structure your work so that the reader has to read it multiple times; for example, Super Spy can be read in a different order if you follow the dossier numbers. Why is it important to you that your work is read multiple times? What kind of narrative purpose does this serve?

To me, I don't like comics that I can read in 15 minutes and forget. I like a book that makes me work a little bit. Books like From Hell and Watchmen. And movies too. There Will Be Blood was a great movie — but I got it all on the first viewing. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one where I always want to watch it again to try and put all the pieces together so it's a favorite. My favorite books end up being those that I can enjoy the first time, but make me feel like I didn't get it all, so I can go back and read or watch them again and again.

You got to work with color with Super Spy for the first time. How did that come about, and for what aesthetic purpose did you decide to go with spot color and not full color for the entire book?

I'd done the books in color since they were appearing online via Top Shelf's website and through Sony's media manager thing. I figured, worst case there's no budget and it all goes grayscale. But Top Shelf sprung for full color and there it is! As for color, I keyed the color to the geographic location. England and France were cool greens, Germany was blue and Spain and southern France was oranges. Then, anything that took place outside of the war was in full color.

Spelling mistakes. LOTS of spelling mistakes. Other than that, there weren't any changes.

You put chapters of Super Spy up on the Internet. What were the advantages and disadvantages of that? Did it help you to gauge if you're parceling out information effectively?

The benefit was lots of immediate feedback — from people that were reading it every week. I'd get e-mails on Monday night if I hadn't posted it in time (usually Monday mornings). The disadvantage was that it broke my back to keep up a weekly schedule and still have a life. The weekly format was fun and figuring out how to get a weekly dose of story that was satisfying but fed the whole was exciting. Closer to the end of the run though, I had enough readers that I felt like I could expand the stories and have some "to be continued" chapters without losing anyone.

You discussed creating Super Spy as something suitable to read on the PSP. What are your thoughts on downloading comics?

I'm all for it. I'd LOVE to put the books I'm working on now up for free on Top Shelf's site. I haven't talked to them yet about doing that with my Super Spy follow-up (Super Natural) but I hope to do something similar. I don't think (right now) there are people reading comics online that aren't going to buy the actual book if they'd buy the actual book anyway. I had a LOT of people buy the book that said they'd read the first half online and just wanted to wait for the book. I try to design my books so that they can't really be duplicated online anyway. So the web "experience" is only part of it.

For me, the online comics acted as a great teaser and advert for the printed book. As for the future, who knows? If I could charge every reader 10 cents for a weekly online comic I'd be set for life.

Sometimes. I actually had about four or five stories that DID appear online and then I didn't put them in the book. They were more stand-alone stories where the characters didn't impact anyone else or fit into the larger picture so I just didn't put them in. But strangely, I didn't mix up the stories too much from how I originally presented them online. I did write everything sort of out of sequence and then had to go back and put it in sequential order later (to double-check myself).

Gosh, I don't know. I LOVE spies. I grew up watching all of the James Bond movies and reading the Ian Fleming books. But the funny thing about reading the Fleming books — those are more like travelogues that happen to have some crazy spy plot in them. And that's why I really like those books — armchair travel. So it's the same thing with me and any genre really. Super Spy is really just about characters trapped in horrible jobs they want to quit and then trying to get out. It could just as easily be set in a modern day city. It just happens to have gadgets and gun and stuff blowing up.

Did your research differ significantly for 2 Sisters/ Super Spy than it did for PW?

Yes — definitely. For Pistolwhip I didn't really do any research. It was a fun story that I put everything I liked into: pirates, detectives, femme fatales. I didn't really need to be researched because it was just a mix of all the disparate things that I happen to think are cool. For 2 Sisters and Super Spy, I was framing events around real-world events and cities so I needed to read a lot and make sure I got the details right. You won't see a lot of that research on display in the book because the book isn't about the 1940s or even World War II for that matter. That's just the foundation that the rest is built on.

Wrap up:

I have no idea if that's condoned or not. I know that you can pay Mike Zeck to redraw his famous Wolverine/Captain America cover with any character you want — so I figure if he can do it and not get shut down, I should be okay. I was going to a lot of conventions this year with my friend Brian Hurtt and he would get TONS of these really fun commissions of characters — Krypto and all those super-pets, just crazy stuff. It looked like a lot of fun — since I never have time to even think about drawing those kinds of characters, but if I take the commissions, then it's an excuse to draw some of the characters I loved as a kid.

Super Spy is definitely having a follow-up. It's not a direct sequel by any means but it's called Super Natural — it's an historical ghost story set in 1950s Paris. Houdini, Amelia Earhardt, Morgan Earp, and a teenage girl are the main characters. There's conspiracy and Conan Doyle and a lot of fun stuff happening. The tie to Super Spy is one of the characters from that book "Mattie" who was the Arabian Nights dancer. The idea now is to have a "Super Trilogy" with Super Natural the second book and the third book being Super Computer, which would be science fiction and have a crossover character from Super Natural. I'm trying to hit all the genres! But with a twist.

Would you please tell me a little about End of the World, which is coming out from Dark Horse?

End of the World is a prose novel with illustrations that I finished over the summer and I'm getting feedback from agents on now. I'll keep you updated!

Diana Schutz was a HUGE supporter of me from the beginning. I handed that first mock-up of Pistolwhip to her in San Diego and she gave us some tips and encouragement. And I've always read a lot of Dark Horse books. They're kind of that neat bridge between "indy" and "mainstream" — so a good fit for me as a reader and also as a creator. I pitched her an idea for a book Giant Man and she liked it.

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