Recently, FreakSugar reviewed Boom! Studios’ Dead Letters #1 after an announcement was released that the book was sold out at the distribution level and that it was heading back to the printers for a second run. Written by recent Eisner Nominee Christopher Sebela (High Crimes) with art by Chris Visions (Devils on the Levee), Dead Letters is a modern crime noir thriller with a supernatural twist that features an amnesiac man, Sam Whistler, who is stuck in a purgatory-like cityscape riddled with warring factions of criminals.
This week, I contacted Christopher Sebela and Chris Visions to talk about their work on Dead Letters and their evolving creative dynamic.
FreakSugar: Let’s talk about the premise of Dead Letters, what can you divulge about the book and your lead, Sam Whistler?
Christopher Sebela: Dead Letters is a hardboiled crime thriller wound around some more fantastical elements. Sam Whistler is our main character and we meet him as he wakes up in a sketchy motel room and has no memory of who he is or where he is. Except there are people coming after him who seem to know exactly who he is, and they want him to join their team in a brewing gang war in a city known only as ‘Here’. Sam’s torn between three factions and while he’s busy trying to keep himself from getting too deeply enmeshed in other people’s problems, he tries to work out how he got ‘Here’ and how to get out.
FS: Chris, what sort of take did you have on the project when you first read the script? Was there an impression from Christopher’s writing that translated into your artistic intentions as you handled the interiors?
Chris Visions: I really loved the script from the premise. Chris finds a unique way to involve classic crime noir moments and surprise you with them. Initially, I received a short overall description of the story arc and some character details. It is a treat coming to the story and the character is a person of color and the cast is also pretty diverse. With that, he still left a lot of breathing room with how the characters would look, which was very inviting and challenging at the same time. As we developed a back and forth, I quickly realized that we were swimming in the same stream of consciousness, so it really became a give and go. The interiors are a reflection on how I pieced the story together. ‘Here’ really starts to unfold after issue one, which has opened the floodgate to possibilities, which again makes this a great project to work on, I can’t say that enough.
FS: Whistler seems to almost wish that he doesn’t get his memory back. Christopher, what sorts of strategies do you employ when you’re developing characters for your projects?
Sebela: I try not to force the development too much. I come up with a foundation: the facts of who they are, where they come from, what they’ve done, what they want. Enough that I could describe them to a disinterested party and paint some kind of picture. Maybe I don’t know everything they’ve done, maybe I don’t know why they did it. So I wait for them to let me know. I try to let them take over as much as I can. I used to make fun of this notion, but characters, if you care enough about them, if you’ve done the groundwork, they start to move of their own accord, make up their own minds about how they’ll act. I’ve learned the perils of trying to rein them in on High Crimes, so now I give them enough slack to run wild and try to anticipate what they’ll do next. And why.
It’s not the ideal way to work for some, but it keeps me on my toes and as invested in seeing what happens next as it does the reader, hopefully.
FS: What do the two of you think are the strongest elements of Dead Letters? What is an integral quality for a good writer/artist dynamic?
Sebela: Aesthetics, weirdly. Chris and I are totally on the same page about stuff we like, eras we fetishize, architecture and automobiles and fashions. In a book like Dead Letters, the city is kind of the other main character, so we do our best to let ourselves go wild on it. I’ll throw some ideas in, Chris throws some in and then what comes out is this mutant hybrid style that really helps build the world and shape the book.
Visions: I think the world that Chris has laid out, the possibilities that came with that, and the chemistry between Chris and myself, make a strong foundation for Dead Letters to stand on. The setting is a character in itself, and everything that exists ‘Here’ is there for a reason, from my cursed and retired ’88 Pontiac 6000, to the type of statues that are laying on the side of the highway.
Sebela: Trust is everything when you’re collaborating. You have to trust your collaborator, because each of you is bringing your half to the table and no one wants to be watched like a hawk or told what to do. You want to go into each issue, each page, each panel, knowing your partner has your back and they’re going to give as much to it as you are. Soon as I saw Chris’ stuff, I knew this book was in the best possible hands, and every time he’s suggested something or gone another way from what I imagined, it’s all been for the better. You want a book that represents everyone equally, because you’re telling the story together, even if you’re separated by time zones or entire continents.
FS: To close, who are some of your influences? What do you try to bring to the table as individual creators when you’re each approaching a new project?
Visions: The Twilight Zone is one of my biggest influences, since I was a kid, and there are lots of other shows and movies I draw from for Dead Letters: Pulp Fiction, Memento, The Shining, The X-Files, Gangs of New York, The Maltese Falcon…the rabbit hole keeps going. Artistically, I draw inspiration from observational drawing, illustration and comics. Some of my artistic inspirations include: Will Eisner, Alex Toth, Paul Pope, Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker, Mike Mignola, Moebius, Piet Mondrian, George Pratt, Frank Quietly, Chris Bachalo, Joe Madureira; they are some of the branches on my art family tree. Tumblr has been a great tool to share are inspiration back and forth.
Sebela: For all time status, my biggest influence is coffee and 24 hour coffee shops. I couldn’t do what I do without them. For Dead Letters, it’s a lot of Hardboiled crime novels and film noir, writers like Dashiell Hammett and Chester Himes, the 30’s, 40’s and 70’s as American eras, the Coen Brothers, TV shows like Hannibal and True Detective, Otis Redding, Jay Reatard, a childhood of Catholic schooling combined with a steadfast interest in the occult, the alien, the Cryptozoic and the supernatural.
What I try to bring to every project is a form of obsession. I like to write about things I’m obsessed with, that I’ve spent months or years getting hung up on in cycles, that I can recite the details of like some people can rattle off baseball statistics. Obsession is what makes me eager to sit down and write a book…the big overriding one and then all the little bits, the influences, that fall underneath it. Also, I try to bring a complete openness to changing my mind on what the book is about, what things should be, what I’ve locked into in my head as the process goes along.
FS: I’ve seen you mention via social media that the first issue of Dead Letters is laden with Easter Eggs. What sorts of things have you tried to embed into your work? Can you tell us about one or two of them specifically?
Visions: Getting in character with Sam and having him chasing after his memories led me to lean on my nostalgia. That feeling that comes from finding something in your past, having a connection with it that unravels parts of your life; I wanted to viewer to feel that too. So for example, in issue one, the diner scene is a pretty big Easter basket.
In the first panel of the diner scene, Sam gets back from the bathroom to sit down and talk with Maia about business, you can look over his shoulder, you may recognized a familiar Italian mob boss from Jersey. I wanted to capture that moment from when Tony looks up. Also, it’s really small, but if you are keen on color, he’s having breakfast with none other than Jackie Brown, another character whose end you’re unsure of. Look behind them and you’ll notice two clocks, both stopped at the same time, and two red doors which is a nod to the Shining. One thing that got left out is that on one of the bathroom signs has two girls holding hands, and the other sign in blank. That’s panel 1, that page is filled with more. I’m a ‘Room 237’ fan, which is another one but I’ll stop there.
FS: Writer’s tend to realize their weaknesses through overcompensation. What are some of your strengths, Christopher? What are some of your weaknesses that you tend to be hyper-vigilant about when you’re scripting?
Sebela: Oof! I suck at enumerating stuff like this. I don’t know about my strengths. I guess for me character is everything, and everything in the story spins out of that. Doing the reverse feels weird to me. I don’t lock myself into story beats and outlines if something makes itself known and wants to go another way. I’m flexible, I like to improvise, and I feel pretty okay about it most times because I’ve got characters I know holding my hand and I’m lucky enough to work with artists who are way more confident than me and who are crazily talented and great storytellers who I can hand some of the control off to.
As far as weaknesses, I know for sure that one of my weaknesses is using the word “just.” I use it way way way too much. That’s my most specific weakness. I’m a bit too talky, my first drafts are just sprawling and huge, it sometimes takes me another draft or two to streamline everything. I know this counteracts what I said in my strengths column, but I fall in love with things too easily and I find it hard to let go of an idea once it shows up. I will do my best to wedge it in somewhere until I have to admit defeat. I’m trying to get better about admitting defeat much sooner than I do currently.
FS: Since Dead Letters has some supernatural elements revolving around “higher powers” are there certain visual archetypes that you draw from or want to stay away from to keep your artistic vision unique?
Visions: I like to encompass all faiths and religions the best that I can, rooted in my own upbringing and research. Given ‘Here’ and the occupants, you really want to touch on everybody. I have always admired shows like the Twilight Zone, the X-Files, even, to a degree of the Indiana Jones movies; the way they handle the unknown and faith has always been provocative and tasteful, so I am shooting for the same approach, but in my own way.
FS: To close, who are some of your influences? What do you try to bring to the table as individual creators when you’re each approaching a new project?
Visions: The Twilight Zone is one of my biggest influences, since I was a kid, and there are lots of other shows and movies I draw from for Dead Letters: Pulp Fiction, Memento, The Shining, The X-Files, Gangs of New York, The Maltese Falcon…the rabbit hole keeps going. Artistically, I draw inspiration from observational drawing, illustration and comics. Some of my artistic inspirations include: Will Eisner, Alex Toth, Paul Pope, Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker, Mike Mignola, Moebius, Piet Mondrian, George Pratt, Frank Quietly, Chris Bachalo, Joe Madureira; they are some of the branches on my art family tree. Tumblr has been a great tool to share are inspiration back and forth.
Sebela: For all time status, my biggest influence is coffee and 24 hour coffee shops. I couldn’t do what I do without them. For Dead Letters, it’s a lot of hardboiled crime novels and film noir, writers like Dashiell Hammett and Chester Himes, the 30’s, 40’s and 70’s as American eras, the Coen Brothers, TV shows like Hannibal and True Detective, Otis Redding, Jay Reatard, a childhood of Catholic schooling combined with a steadfast interest in the occult, the alien, the cryptozoic and the supernatural.
What I try to bring to every project is a form of obsession. I like to write about things I’m obsessed with, that I’ve spent months or years getting hung up on in cycles, that I can recite the details of like some people can rattle off baseball statistics. Obsession is what makes me eager to sit down and write a book…the big overriding one and then all the little bits, the influences, that fall underneath it. Also, I try to bring a complete openness to changing my mind on what the book is about, what things should be, what I’ve locked into in my head as the process goes along.