Comixology: Tell us about Fluorescent Black.

Matt Wilson: Fluorescent Black is a bio-punk, science fiction graphic novel. It's set in Singapore, which is a pretty interesting location with a lot of the stuff that's going on there now in bio-tech. The main characters are genetic miscreants, people who have disorders that have limited their citizenship and their ability to live on the island of Singapore. They've been moved off the island and onto the nearby Malaysian peninsula because of the physical and genetic problems they have.

Cmxlgy: And this is being serialized and it's going to be collected into a graphic novel, is that right?

Matt: Yes, it's going to be two or three parts; I don't think we've really decided yet, depending on how we want to break down the next hundred pages. It'll be in Heavy Metal, and then we're going to combine them into one graphic novel.

Cmxlgy: And what's the time-frame on the project?

Matt: We're looking at having the graphic novel hardback finalized by next Comic Con, in July.

Cmxlgy: Could you give us some more background on Fluorescent Black--how did the three of you guys come to work together on it, and how did the idea come to be?

Nathan Fox: It was all my idea (laughter). Matt just called me out of the blue, actually. I had started doing some work on DMZ and I was searching around for some more freelance, and kind of doing the illustration-comics-search thing, and out of the blue I got a call from Matt about Fluorescent Black, and from the get-go, from the premise and everything else I read from the email that he sent me, I was totally hooked. And schedule-wise, we just worked it out so that I could kind of wrap up the illustration stuff and nail down the comic stuff at the same time, and that's where we got into the two-or-more-chapter-edition type stuff, and then Jeromy got on board with the colors, and the rest is page-by-page.

Cmxlgy: And Matt, how did you hook up with Nathan? You knew of his work and decided he was the right person?

Matt: I'd sold a screenplay, or actually a screenplay was optioned by a studio, and they wanted to do-- it's a pretty nasty, gritty story, and studios are very reluctant to take risks on movies, and they were really interested in seeing if this sort of thing would translate visually and narratively to this sort of format, and they approached me about making comic books out of this. And I was like, "I've never done a comic book." One of my close friends, Justin Robbins, who edited the book, is a comic book writer and editor. So he told me he'd help me. And the two of us kind of sat down and put our heads together and basically I was like, "I'm a director, when I'm writing I have an idea of what it looks like." So I started looking around online for artists and illustrators, people who could maybe kind of set this vision. And I came across Nathan's website, and I was like, "Oh man, this is perfect!" (laughter) And what do you know, right at the top, Nathan's telephone number. (laughter) So I picked up the phone and cold-called him.

Nathan: Which was a pleasant shock.

Cmxlgy: And then how did Jeromy get in the project?

Jeromy Cox: I think there were some photographs of me in Tijuana involved, or... (laughter). No, Nathan gave me a call, and I had such a good time working with him on DMZ that I really wanted to work with him again, and then throw in, the concept sounded really cool, and then being in Heavy Metal--those three things really got me interested.

Cmxlgy: So, Heavy Metal was a big part of the draw?

Jeromy: I've been a fan of Heavy Metal since the 70's. I love the stuff. I do a lot of traditional superhero comic work besides DMZ, so any time I get a chance to do something different, I jump at it.

Nathan: Yeah, I think Heavy Metal was a big thing for me as well when we first got started on it. I grew up with it--without the parents knowing, kind of stuff, and other good teen exposure and whatnot--so I was more than thrilled, and then out of nowhere when I get there, the cover is an option, and then it's a wraparound cover, and so all the goodies of going crazy were in play to do the best I could on it.

Cmxlgy: So Matt, you'd already sold the serial to Heavy Metal before you got Nathan and Jeromy on board?

Matt: Actually it was more just sort of, if we could get the pieces together and do something cool, then Heavy Metal was an option, and we knew that. Because I was working with guys from Imagi Studios which did TMNT, which involved Kevin Eastman and they're all friends, and I'd talked to Kevin Eastman and he'd come over and seen initial character drawings and things like that on the wall, and he was really interested. So then it became an option and the more we showed him, the more he was interested, the more he was behind it all the way. And then it opened up opportunities for, like Nathan said, the cover and some other things that we did down at Comic Con.

Cmxlgy: So, now where does the movie stand?

Matt: It's always tough to take the leap on that one. It's a much bigger investment. I think right now, everyone's waiting to see what happens with the book. If there's some buzz, if people like it a lot, I think the movie will follow close on its tails. If it's something where people don't really get it or it's not appealing to certain audiences, then they're going to just shelve it, I'd guess.

Cmxlgy: I assume the content is going to be pretty mature, since it's going to be appearing in Heavy Metal?

Matt: Yes, and the film script's also very intense. It's very violent and there are characters that I think Western audiences might be a little shaken by. We have a character that's a transsexual, and I don't think that's something that's real common in Western comic books. You know, it's a little more of an Asian thing. You go out to Thailand, you know, and you see lady-boys all over the place. You go down to Singapore, it's like part of their culture. There are certain guys that dress up like girls. It's just part of what they do.

Cmxlgy: Do you have a lot of experience of Singaporean culture?

Matt: Well, I have some friends that are from Singapore. I've never been, which is funny, because they helped me do all this dialogue. People from Singapore speak in this dialect called Singlish, which is sort of broken Cantonese/Hokkien/American/British slang. It's kind of got everything piled into one and it's very difficult to write. It's topic-intensive; it was kind of a nightmare, so I enlisted them to help me and the more I was hanging out with them, the more we started talking about other elements of Singapore and how that could fit in. And then I found out about the Biopolis, which is this science city that's growing in Singapore right now. It's one of the biggest bio-tech state-funded developments in all of East Asia. So I was like, "Oh my god, this is perfect." Did tons of research is really what it was.

Cmxlgy: And in terms of the art, then, Nathan and Jeromy, did you guys look at Singapore as a big inspiration for the backgrounds and the artwork, or is it totally science-fiction?

Nathan: I did as much research as I could. I haven't been there myself either, but from everything I could find through links I got from Matt and books and old photographs, National Geographics, anything I could really get my hands on to adapt some of the culture and the slums and the cities, clean utopia versus hardcore destitute poverty, and try and mix all that in there to try and establish how hard it might actually be to live there and exist, I did everything I could to find that. In terms of the characters, kind of the same thing. The two lead characters are a British brother and sister, and then everybody else is from Malaysia. So it was definitely a challenge to try and establish people from those cultures clashing because they're all involved in those locations, so they had to really meld together. Without doing any research and trying to put that in there it would fall apart.

Jeromy: Well, what I liked a lot was, when I heard the idea, there was a futuristic story or a dystopian future. And every time someone does that, it's usually dark and grimy and lacks life, so I got to do a lot of color work where it was still gritty, but it's more colorful.

Next week: part two, discussing the creators' careers and influences